Composedly she switched off her terminal, rose and made a stately exit from the library.
Several young scholars watched her go, sighed hopelessly, and returned to their studies.
Room 30007 proved to be one of a maze of mysterious control rooms and obscure offices deep beneath the Capitol.
Serena entered and found herself in a small, plain office where a thin, dark, intense-looking young man sat at a terminal.
He looked up with interest a little too much interest, she thought but said nothing.
'I am the Lady Serenadellatrovella ' began Serena.
He rose and bowed. 'You are expected, my lady. This way.' He touched a hidden control and a door in the far wall slid aside. He waved her through, followed her, and the door closed behind them.
Serena found herself in a small but luxuriously furnished conference room. The highly polished table held a monitor and a communications console. Facing her, at the head of the table, sat an inconspicuous-looking grey-robed figure. He rose and bowed. 'Greetings, my lady. Thank you for coming.'
'The form of the summons gave me little choice,' said Serena icily.
'Please, be seated.'
Serena ignored the invitation. 'Why am I here?'
'If you will be seated, it will be my pleasure to explain. My name is Sardon. This is my assistant, Luco.'
Sardon might look unimpressive, thought Serena, but he was far from negligible. He was totally unimpressed by her for a start, unlike his assistant, and somehow he radiated a quiet and confident authority.
Luco pulled back a chair and Serena sat. Luco took the chair beside Sardon and the two of them faced her across the gleaming table.
Serena looked disparagingly at Sardon. 'You are a member of the High Council?' Her tone conveyed that she thought it extremely unlikely.
Sardon shook his head. 'The least of their servants. But I speak with their voice on this occasion and their full authority.'
'What do you want of me?'
'You have been chosen for a mission. It offers you an opportunity to serve your planet and your people. It brings great dangers and great rewards.'
'What is this mission?'
Sardon paused. 'You must understand that this is an affair of the utmost security. Should you accept, you will speak of it to no one.'
'What if I refuse?'
'Then your memory of this interview will be erased.'
'That will not be necessary.'
'It will be done all the same, my lady,' said Sardon. 'Shall I continue?'
Serena inclined her head.
'You will accompany a renegade Time Lord known as the Doctor, a condemned criminal, to Earth in the eighteenth century,' said Sardon.
'Not a particularly pleasant assignment,' said Serena coolly. 'What is the necessity? And for what crime was this Doctor condemned?'
It was the dark young man who answered. 'For unauthorised temporal interference.'
'And the mission?'
'You will supervise his efforts to detect those perpetrating unauthorised temporal interference in human affairs.'
'On the well-known principle of setting a thief to catch a thief?' said Serena.
'Precisely,' said Sardon. 'But let me reassure you, my lady.
The Doctor is no common criminal. By the latter years of his first incarnation he was a distinguished member of the High Council, widely regarded as a potential President. But he was always difficult, rebellious. Eventually he went too far. He quarrelled with his colleagues over a point of principle the circumstances are still obscure stole an obsolete Type 40
TARDIS and absconded, taking with him a young relative who insisted, apparently, upon accompanying him. For some time he roamed the cosmos, interfering in the affairs of various planets, Earth in particular, on the side of what he conceived to be good. Not until now, some time after his first regeneration, has he been apprehended.'
'How?'
'He stumbled across a scheme which involved the kidnapping of large numbers of the citizens of Earth from different time zones. The Doctor engineered the defeat of the scheme, but returning the captured humans was beyond his powers. So he turned to us, his own people, for help. We returned the humans to their proper times and places.'
'And the Doctor?'
'He was captured, tried and condemned to death.'
'It seems a poor reward for his altruism.'
'Perhaps so. Now he has a chance to live, to redeem himself with your help.'
Serena thought silently for a moment. For all Sardon's talk of the High Council, she knew perfectly well who he represented. Only the Celestial Intervention Agency would launch an operation such as this. It was possible he had the High Council's blessing as he claimed and equally possible that they knew nothing of his plans. That hardly mattered.
The Agency was a powerful, if hidden, force in Gallifreyan politics. And with their backing...
'You spoke of rewards,' she said.
Sardon leaned forwards. 'You are ambitious, my lady...'
'Is that surprising, in one of my family?'
'Your family, although eminent, is relatively ineffectual,'
said Sardon bluntly. 'It has long been inactive in politics.
Political success requires both money and influence. Those whom I represent are lavishly supplied with both. With their support...'
'With their covert support,' corrected Serena. 'I should not care to be publicly linked with...those who you represent.
Someone of my name must be fastidious in her associates.'
The young man, Luco, flushed angrily. 'You would not be the first bearer of a noble name to benefit from our assistance.'
It must be galling to be universally despised, thought Serena. Even if you were universally useful.
Sardon waved his angry assistant to silence. 'Covert support, of course,' he said impassively. 'Such an arrangement would suit our purposes as well as yours.'
Quite so, thought Serena. It would scarcely suit the purposes of the Agency to have it known exactly how many members of the High Council it had bought or blackmailed.
According to popular rumour, it was a good two-thirds, though some put the figure considerably higher.
Sardon's voice hardened. 'Well, my lady? Do you accept this mission or not?'
Serena considered briefly. There were dangers in forming an association with the Agency. They would certainly seek to control her, perhaps totally. Equally well, once she was in a position of power, she might well succeed in controlling them.
The possibilities were intriguing. And as Serena knew, great success could never be attained without great risk.
'I accept, she said. 'When do I meet the Doctor?'
'Very soon,' said Sardon. 'He is currently on Earth, as it happens, checking that the Earth captives have been safely returned.'
Serena looked surprised. 'Whatever for? Surely you informed him that this had been done?'
'I did. He refused to accept my word or that of the High Council.'
'And you permitted this?'
Sardon shrugged. 'He made it a condition of his acceptance of the mission.'
So, the Doctor had the strength to strike a bargain, thought Serena. Even under the shadow of death.
'You are confident of his return?'
'He is temporonically tagged,' said Luco. 'We can observe him and retrieve him at any time. Would you care to take a look at him?'
'Very well.'
Luco went to the monitor and operated controls. He waited for a moment and then nodded. 'Yes, there he is.' He stepped aside and waved Serena to the monitor.
She rose, and crossed to the screen. It showed a little group of figures outside the outer wall of some kind of chateau. One solitary figure was being marched up to the wall by a little group of soldiers.
She studied the picture more closely. The soldiers were carrying rifles. 'This Doctor of yours...Is he a small, rather untidy man with a shock of black hair?'
'That's the Doctor,' said Luco. 'Scruffy little fellow, isn't he?'
'I should retrieve him without delay,' said Serena calmly.
'He appears to be about to face a firing squad.'
'What?' Sardon leaped to his feet, stared at the screen incredulously for a moment, then stabbed furiously at some controls. 'Temporal Control? Retrieve the Doctor at once! At once, do you hear me? And Rassilon preserve you if you bring me back a corpse. Summon Councillors Milvo and Ragnar immediately.'
He whirled round to Serena. 'Forgive me, I must go to Temporal Control at once. Thanks to those bungling fools this mission may be over before it has begun.'
He ran from the room, followed by Luco. Serena smiled and followed them at a more sedate pace. It was amusing to see the impassive Sardon lose control. She wondered if the little Doctor would survive.
Lieutenant von Schultz, the young officer in charge of the firing squad, placed the man who called himself the Doctor with his back to the chateau wall, and assembled the firing squad in front of him.
From a vantage point close by, an old man stood observing the scene with eager approval. He was about sixty, with a high forehead and hooded grey eyes. He was wrapped in a cloak against the morning chill, and he leaned upon an ivory handled stick. Beside him stood an extraordinarily beautiful woman with a cloud of black hair and startlingly blue eyes. She was wrapped in furs and her expression, unlike that of the old man, was sombre and concerned.
His arrangements for the Doctor's execution complete, Lieutenant von Schultz looked towards the watching old man for instructions.
Savouring the moment the old man called mockingly, 'Blindfold, Doctor? Last cigarette? We must do things properly.'
'No blindfold,' said the Doctor. 'Not on such a lovely morning. And I don't smoke, it's very bad for the health you know.'
The old man smiled, and gestured to the lieutenant to proceed.
'Ready,' shouted Lieutenant von Schultz, his voice cracking a little. 'Aim...'
The soldiers raised their rifles.
Von Schultz, a sensitive soul, averted his eyes.