Doctor Who_ World Game - Doctor Who_ World Game Part 40
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Doctor Who_ World Game Part 40

There was just one significant difference. The mop of jet-black hair now showed fine streaks of grey. It had obviously been a gruelling assignment.

The Doctor had just been delivering a long and full report on his mission, a report to which Sardon and Luco had listened in a would-be intimidating silence. Nobody took any notes, but the Doctor was well aware that his words were being recorded. At the Agency everything was recorded.

He finished his account and sat back, calmly awaiting their reaction.

For a long moment none came. Then Luco said, 'You took your time getting back here Doctor.'

'I thought I deserved a little holiday. And besides, I wanted to be quite sure that the Countess and her friends really had given up that everything in the post-Waterloo world was as it should be.'

'And was it?'

'I saw no signs of further interference. I visited the Duke in London in 1816 we even had a night out together. I won quite a lot of money playing faro. Then we went down to Brighton and saw the Prince Regent and he persuaded me to invest the lot in some bank his friend Chumley was starting.

I'll be lucky if I don't lose the lot. Then we '

'You were not provided with a fully functioning TARDIS for your own amusement, Doctor,' said Luco.

'I take it you had little difficulty in mastering the controls after Lady Serena's unfortunate demise?' asked Sardon.

'Not really,' said the Doctor. 'A TARDIS is a TARDIS after all and I am a genius.'

'So, there you were with a fully functioning TARDIS in your control, and nobody to restrain you,' said Luco. 'Why didn't you simply take off again?'

'There are reasons. You wouldn't understand them.'

'Why not?'

'Because they're connected with things like honour, and honesty, and keeping your word. Things the Agency finds meaningless.'

Luco flushed angrily, but didn't reply.

'Besides,' said the Doctor, 'do you think I didn't know you'd installed a recall mechanism that or a self-destruct device.'

'Both actually,' murmured Sardon. He sat back and looked thoughtfully at the Doctor. 'Well, Doctor, you seem to have completed your mission successfully despite a good deal of unauthorised interference in human history.'

'Which you knew full well would take place. I couldn't stop interference just by observing it. You knew that when you sent me.'

'The death of the Lady Serena is greatly to be regretted...'

'It's to be more than regretted,' said the Doctor. 'It will be publicly acknowledged, memorialised. The High Council will issue a formal tribute, and her name will be added to the Gallifreyan Roll of Honour.'

Sardon shook his head. 'That sort of publicity will not suit the Agency's purposes.'

'Perhaps not, but it will suit mine and those of her family.'

'Her family knows nothing of the circumstances of her death.'

'Then they will soon. I shall tell them.'

Luco glanced meaningfully at the door. Outside, as the Doctor well knew, were two members of the Capitol Guard.

'You are still a prisoner on parole, Doctor. Do you really imagine you will be allowed to make any statement of which we do not approve?'

The Doctor rubbed his hands. He seemed to be in excellent spirits.

'Ah, but that's where you're wrong.'

'In what way am I wrong?'

'I'm afraid I've already done it.'

'Impossible! You have had no opportunity.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Haven't I?'

'Please explain, Doctor,' said Sardon wearily.

'When your excellent TARDIS passed the transduction barriers and landed outside the Capitol, I emerged and was immediately surrounded by the stalwart young men of the Capitol Guard.'

'Who brought you straight here,' said Luco triumphantly.

'Yes indeed but not before I had told them of Serena's death. They were devastated. Most of them were rather enamoured of her. I asked them to send a message to her family, offering my condolences on her death, and promising them a full account of the circumstances. They agreed to do it at once.'

Sardon raised his voice. 'Guard!'

The door opened and an immaculately uniformed guardsman stamped into the room. 'Sir!'

'Were you a member of the group that met the Doctor here on his arrival?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Did he ask you to send a message to Lady Serena's family concerning her death?'

'Yes, sir. We were all very sorry to hear the news, she was a wonderful '

' Has the message been delivered? Has the message been delivered? ' '

'Oh yes, sir. I attended to it immediately. We in the Capitol Guard pride ourselves on prompt obedience to orders and the efficiency of our communication systems.'

'Capitol Guard? Capitol idiots!' screamed Luco.

Sardon waved him to silence.

'Is anything wrong, sir?' asked the puzzled guard.

'No, nothing's wrong. That will be all.'

The guardsman saluted and left.

'All very nice boys, those guardsmen,' said the Doctor.

'Very well brought up. Now, my other conditions...'

'You are scarcely in a position to impose conditions,'

shouted Luco. 'Just because you have perpetrated one petty deceit...'

'Oh, but you haven't thought things through,' interrupted the Doctor. 'The Dellatrovellas are still a very powerful family

Old Gallifrey, so to speak. Even the Agency wouldn't want to tangle with them.'

'Go on, Doctor,' said Sardon.

'I'm the only one who can give them a first-hand account of Serena's death, and they're going to insist on seeing me.

Now, do I tell them of her heroic death on a noble mission?

Or do I describe a young life carelessly thrown away on a lunatic Agency project in which she should never have been involved? It's all a matter of interpretation, you see. Some people call it spin!'

'And a favourable spin depends on our meeting your conditions?'

The Doctor smiled.

'You are willing to use Lady Serena's death as a bargaining counter?' asked Luco.

'I learn fast, don't I? Aren't you proud of me?'

Sardon sighed. 'These conditions, Doctor?'

'The first is obvious. I want the traitor who has been sabotaging my mission found and removed.'

'A traitor here, on Gallifrey?' said Luco. 'The idea's absurd.'

'What makes you suspect the existence of such a traitor?'

asked Sardon.

'The Countess always seemed suspiciously well informed about my mission and my movements.'

'Bad luck, perhaps,' suggested Sardon. 'Or astuteness on her part? From your own account, she is both cunning and capable.'

'I'm more inclined to suspect inside information. But what really clinched it, was the two attacks on us the vampire and the Raston Robot. They must have come from the Death Zone on Gallifrey. But how were they dispatched to eighteenth-century Earth and whisked back to Gallifrey when the attacks failed?'

'That's impossible! The Timescoop was destroyed at the end of the Dark Age,' said Luco.

'How do you know?'

'I have made a study of the period.'

'Who do you suspect?' asked Sardon calmly.

'You,' said the Doctor with equal calm. 'If anyone had a Timescoop hidden away, it would be the Agency.'

'What would be my motivation? After all, this entire mission was my idea.'

'Suppose you had been seduced by the Countess's ideas of intervention? If her plan to alter Earth's timeline had succeeded, you might be asked why you had failed to detect it, to stop it. "But I tried," you could protest. "I sent my brightest assistant to Earth, and when he discovered nothing, I sent the Doctor and Lady Serena. Unfortunately, they failed too."'

'It's a possibility, Doctor,' said Sardon thoughtfully. 'But it's a little convoluted.'

'That's what I decided,' said the Doctor. 'So I thought of a simpler scenario. A young man who visits Earth for the first time and meets and is seduced by the Countess. She boasted she'd been investigating the Time Lords. Such a young man might be in line for promotion if his superior's pet project failed. And if he was a student of the Dark Times, and knew of the existence of a hidden Timescoop...'

'I like that scenario much better,' said Sardon. 'It sounds so much more probable somehow.'

'That's the conclusion I came to,' said the Doctor. 'What do you think, Luco?'

The Doctor and Sardon looked at Luco, whose face had gradually drained of colour until it was a ghastly white. He jumped to his feet.

'You were right the first time, Doctor,' he screamed. 'It wasn't me, it was him! It was Sardon!'

'But the name of the Timescoop came to your lips very readily,' said the Doctor. 'Even on Gallifrey few people have even heard of it.'

Luco's nerve broke and he ran for the door.

'Guards!' shouted Sardon again, and again the door opened revealing a guardsman.

'Seize Luco and hand him over to the Security Branch,'

said Sardon. 'He is to be confined and interrogated. The charge is high treason. Tell Security they are authorised to use the mind probe.'

As Luco was dragged away they heard a scream of, 'No, no, not the mind probe!' floating down the corridor.

As the door closed Sardon turned back to the Doctor. 'My apologies, Doctor. Now, these other conditions of yours?'