Chapter One: Escape to Danger
Alone, he stared at the dark room in dismay, disentangling a red handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopping his high, wrinkled brow as he stepped hesitantly down the steps into the control room of his little getaway vehicle. He was not truly an old man, but the ageing of the first incarnation, personally unprecedented as it is, tended in most to bring on something of an intimation of maturity and mortality and sobriety to youthful spirits. To every case, however, there were exceptions, and now for the first, but not the last time, in his speckled career, he wondered if the impulsiveness he had always cultivated was necessarily an unalloyed virtue or advantage.
"Grandfather, do you even know how to fly an old Type 40?"
"Well, I expect so, my dear, I expect so," he'd blustered, hurrying her into the T-56 they'd originally intended to steal and closing the door contact on her even as he said it, before turning to the old antique standing next to it.
He'd looked around for the young woman who'd suggested this remarkable little improvisation to his plan, to thank her, but she was gone.
Now, standing in this little room of wood and brass, surveying its tiny console, seemingly entirely devoid of instrumentation or controls, and with that infernal antique ambulatory internment casket bumping distractingly at him like an impatiently hungry pet, he felt half inclined to wonder if he'd been led into a strikingly obvious trap.
"I don't even know where to begin... good gracious, whatever do you do for a Time Rotor in this ridiculous contrivance?" he demanded querulously of the room at large, almost gingerly pulling open one of the brass-handled panel covers. A confusion of badly stowed stationery, seemingly for the most part composed of broken pencils, a large and decidedly disagreeable looking spider, and a deceased frog fell out of the aperture.
With an indrawn "tch"of annoyance, he snapped the useless panel shut on arachnid, former amphibian, and writing implements alike, and tugged open its neighbour. That was a little better. Rows of colour coded buttons, whose photocells lit up invitingly as he opened the panel. The white-haired young man started forward urgently, then faltered, one hand stroking his prominent cheekbone and his mouth corners coming down in sour dismay as he was forced to admit it to himself- yes, he had found some controls, but nothing he recognised; he had no idea of the function of a single button on the board.
The artifact floating behind him seemed to hum with increasing urgency, and he glanced hastily at his pocket chronometer, single heart sinking. It was simply too much to hope that his larcenous little enterprise would have gone unnoticed. Of course, with his reputation, he might perhaps pass the whole thing off as an ill-judged and foolish folly - it would likely end his career, such as it was, but could he depend upon the child knowing to remain quiet, to hide? Might she not, if he were discovered, either defy his instructions to wait until he dematerialised; to cover her own stealthy flight into the past in all the eddy and noise and chaos of this antique's attempted escape, and try to flee alone, a sure and clear target for the President's agents; or, little better, erupt from the capsule he'd hidden her in to protest at his arrest?
He opened more panels, increasingly frantic, looking for any control scheme he recognised. Either way, the Castellan was bound to make enquiries. A young cousin of the House of Lungbarrow, a Prydonian student like herself, breaking into the repair shop along with him, another of that House and a known disaffected troublemaker to boot, right on the back of that wretched Cousin Glospin's weaselling and ill-timed accusations. Yes, they were bound to pry into her secrets, and once they found her to be a granddaughter, in the vulgar colloquialism, birth-child of a birth-child, hybrid of the bloodlines of four families and at least two unbroken generations of fertility, he dreaded to contemplate the outcome.
A birth-child was shameful- perhaps no longer a crime, but- disgraceful, irregular. Polite society still insisted that they never happened, that the tiny handful born were nothing at all. Had it been envy that had wrought that, he wondered? Or simply incomprehension? Yet- a third generation, a grandchild, to say nothing of his own uncertain pedigree; enduring fertility in the face of the overwhelming sterility of their race- then, he knew, other emotions would supercede disgust. He had to send her back- back to a time of legend, before history, when child, grandchild, granddaughter, when those were normal, safe things, a real identity, a life, not hidden behind shields and symphonies of lies to keep her safe.
Enraged, he struck at the intractable console with his stick, wishing for a fierce moment that he'd permitted the Hand to put an end to his older cousin - but no. Words of an old dream. Never be cruel or cowardly. The abused console's lights flickered and, absurdly, he laid a hand on the fascia in silent apology. Words he tried to live by. Not, it must be said, always with the greatest success, especially when the child was threatened, but - an ideal to hope to achieve, something better, rather than the something worse that haunted darker dreams.
The pattern of lights on the console shifted again, seeming in response to his gentler touch, and he exclaimed suddenly, ruminations on memory driven from his mind as, at last, he saw something which made sense to him.
"Architectural Configuration Systems - yes, yes, excellent," he swiftly opened the menu, hurriedly glancing again at the chronometer, a Time Lord all too aware of the expiration of time.
There. Full expansion, yes, yes, that was it. Complete manual control suite. At least then he should have some clue what he was about. Eh? What was that? What was the wretched thing asking him to confirm now?
"Analogue or digikical-digital? Oh, good grief, how the- " his lips moved to form the relevant voiceless labiodental fricative and then stopped, opting for swift decision over self-perpetuating frustration of delay, " - analogue, there, yes, analogue," he made the selection. "At least I should say I can see change, that is, change over time, and speed, in that case, not just have this wretched contraption jabbering a lot of meaningless numbers at me, hmm?"
Loading. Please wait.
"Hmph!" Exasperated, he glanced around the console, noting a slow shimmering beginning to spread across its surface. "Well, now, let me see... if the architectural systems are here, then, yes, why yes, of course, it stands to reason that - eh? Oh, whatever is it now?"
The configuration panel flashed and cluttered at him.
"Do you wish the current configuration to be spatially archived, yes, no... Oh, yes, yes, if you like," he cast a sharp look across at the large televiewer screen embedded in one wall and wished fervently that he had the faintest idea how to operate it. Outside, he was sure he could hear a fresh alarm sounding now, adding to the cacophony of bells and sirens that had plagued the Capitol since the arrival of the floating monolith that now dogged his steps. "Put it behind the boot cupboard or above the pigeon loft for all I care, but do be quick about it!" He flapped a hand nervously. "We mustn't derdle about here any longer, madam!"
As the room and the console before him began to expand and change with infuriating slowness, the thief rooted in the depths of another false panel, disclosing a plastic sheaf of felt-tipped pens until he found what he sought; two brass studs, currently together about half the size of one hand, but shimmering and expanding with almost imperceptible languor. With a grunt of triumph, he laid one hand flat upon the left hand stud, pausing to grip the lapel of his jacket with his free hand and half pivot on the balls of his feet, regarding the hovering object with sudden, almost gleeful good humour as it settled on to the arms of a protesting chair.
"Shut me away in the archive towers, to waste centuries of my life on filing old biographies, would they?" He giggled suddenly, an impetuous, high pitched little laugh, slapping his other hand down on the telepathic circuit and making contact. "Yes, I rather think I'll show them a thing or two."
The console steadily changing around him, scarcely conscious of the controls he touched slowly migrating up its whitening surface, the young rebel accessed the Matrix archives, smoothly guiding his connection through back doors and security loopholes he'd idly installed and hidden out of little more than idle mischief over decades of long afternoons spent trying to avoid doing his job, deactivating and circumventing security protocols with the help of a variety of codes and subroutines he'd talked out of a good friend in the Agency who he very much hoped wouldn't come to overly regret that indiscretion, until he reached the bio-data extract archives.
"Typical Panopticon arrogance," he snorted to himself. So sure, so very sure their precious excitonic circuitry was unparalleled that they shoved their heads in the sand like... what were those odd flightless birds, from somewhere out in old Mutter's Spiral arm? Ewoks? Yes, shoved their heads in the sand like ewoks and ignored that out there, out in that wonderful miasma of possibilities that one day, perhaps, he might visit for himself if he ever overcame this disgrace, science could march on.
There. He was in. The Matrix, the vast undermind of the Citadel, the planet, the collective wisdom of the entire race, linked constantly and forever to the minds of each and every Time Lord. What one knew, all could know - what one could forget - yes, he thought grimly, it was the only way. Let them try to find her, when all of them, even that fatuous little toad of a President, could scarce remember she even existed.
Arkytioristrellazezanneilungbarrowmas. His mind gathered all of her digital existence together under the umbrella of that name - and he hesitated, looking up and around at the changed room. Splendid - this, he could work with. There, that must be the main drive lever. Quickly, he reached out and threw it across, impelling the ancient relic of a ship into flight, hoping and almost praying to Time herself that the girl would be ready to start the programmed flight in the neighbouring ship, maintaining the telepathic contact with one hand as he uncertainly and inexpertly flung the Type Forty into the Time Vortex.
Ah, capital, capital, that must be the time-path detector; his granddaughter's ship, far faster on take off than this wretched contraption, was also in flight. For a moment again he paused, fixing her features in his mind, fondly tracing them with his inner eye. So like her mother, and her mother's mother, so unlike her squat, amphibian looking, unwitting father.
"Will I forget you too, my dear?" he quavered plaintively. It was a risk, he knew - he had warned her of as much, but promised her that, come what may, he would find her in the past where they were both bound, and that, somehow, somehow, they would always find and know one another.
Gathering himself, and with a sudden flare of decision, he pressed one thumb down - hard- on the Fast Return contact, hard enough for the control housing to creak in protest, sending the elderly ship lurching and spinning back into the past, even as with his mind he brought her file to the forefront once more -Arkytioristrellazezanneilungbarrowmas - and drew up his own biodata alongside.
Hmm. Now, tricky, tricky. He could not erase himself altogether from the Matrix, as he planned to do her - even as he thought this he was aware, with another part of his mind, of strident warnings from Space Traffic Control, of the floating artifact adding its power and noise to the Type Forty's struggles for freedom - splendid, as he'd hoped, all attention seemed to be on his noisy escape, the second capsule for now slipping out undisturbed - but if he were to totally blank himself from the Matrix not only would he lose his own access, negating the very changes he was trying to make, but worse, he would be useless as a smokescreen for her. Nevertheless, he could significantly deface and corrupt his own records, hopefully enough to prevent them mind-linking with his timeline from afar. There. Splendid- and not daring to allow himself the time for qualms or second thoughts, he sent the erasure command in one savage burst of thought.
The thief stumbled backward, narrowly avoiding knocking an intricate ormulu clock from its stand, and reeling against a large empty birdcage. He grasped at his forehead in confusion, a dizzying haze of overlapping voices receding into the back of his mind. Something seemed to be retreating from him, fading away even as Gallifrey's present receded into futurity. He stared up hawkishly at the televiewer; uncovered, now, and active, mounted high in the wall above the now revealed databanks, watching the silver swirl of the time vortex. He had been doing something to the A.P.C. network... A.P.C.? The acronym's meaning seemed to elude him, swimming in a shifting fog that spun and danced like the vortex itself. For a moment, he felt a tenuous touch on his mind, then felt it slide off in confusion. There were no more, as the stolen ship spun further away out of range of the Gallifrey of the present day.
"Yes, yes, of course, quite cut off," he waved a hand airily. "Well, I must say, I dare say it would have been a boring conversation anyway." He gazed again at the vortex as he attempted to familiarise himself with the new controls. The Time Rotor hummed resplendent in a beautiful oscillating column of glass, its velocity indicator two strobing circular lights set in the telepathic circuitry housing. That was the dematerialising control, that over yonder the time path detector - he could not recall it registering, indeed, he seemed oddly definite about that, a curious fixed yet woolly certainty that he had no memory of any reading from the device. He waved it aside, his eyes still magnetically drawn to the televiewer screen. There, the Fast Return switch - it wouldn't do to activate that by mistake; on an impulse he collected one of the stray pens from the console and carefully wrote "FAST RETURN" on the console fascia adjacent, then stepped back. Up there was the scanner, over there - he glanced back - were the doors, that - his brow wrinkled briefly - was a chair with the fabled Hand of Omega on it. It was looking at him again, as meaningfully as a box without eyes or features could look.
"Sheer poetry, you infernal thing, now please stop bothering me." Now, he had some errand to complete in the past, way back in the Old Time - again, the details were infuriatingly vague, but of that he was certain - then he really would have to find a safe place to stow that awful, insistent artifact- then, finally, he supposed, he would have to face the proverbial music, he would have to try to find some explanation, some way back, perhaps some way of making peace with the Castellan. He faltered, uncertain, his eyes drawn yet again up to the monitor. On the screen, for a moment, the dizzying clouds of the vortex parted, and he gazed in wonderment straight into the glittering heart of the Isop galaxy.
The thief stood open-mouthed, unconsciously reaching out toward the sheer majestic beauty and promise of the myriad stars in their courses as they shone down upon him.
So many stars. So many worlds, so many lives and histories. So, so much life and colour and wonder in the universe. There were more things than it seemed could ever be dreamed of in the dry and barren natural philosophy and endless lists and numbers of his home. The Isop Galaxy alone- vanished now, whirled away from view by the eddies of the vortex- but he recalled, decades ago, he had dedicated the xenoanthropological part of his qualifications to the study of research on one world there - what was it? Vertis? Vortis? Oh, but how very much more it would mean to see it with his own eyes, to touch it... to touch the sand beneath his feet, to look up, to hear the cries of strange birds, to watch them wheel in countless - endless- skies. He was weeping, but with a sudden wild exhilaration, not fear or grief, as a wild fancy took hold, fast hardening to a certain resolution which gripped his thought with a finality that somehow told him it would never let go again.
To... not go back. To travel. To set his feet ever on the road until he had seen every star and walked every age. How could he ever do anything else?
It was not as if he planned to break any laws - at least, save this one, he corrected himself, identifying and almost correctly calibrating the ontological stabilisers. The, ah, recommissioning of an antique capsule and this one, slightly unorthodox journey into Gallifreyan history, legally speaking, but, beyond that, he would simply observe. Marvel at the wonders of the universe, see and appreciate them in a way his peers were fools to deny themselves, perhaps even one day return, when he was as old as his current body was beginning to look, yes, perhaps around the third regeneration or so, when he'd been told stolid and respectable middle age tended to set in, write a monograph on his travels - but he would stay out of trouble, naturally. Blend in, respect the spirit of temporal law even if not, if one wanted to be overly precise about it, the very letter, as such. After all, he was a Time Lord. A Prydonian of the ancient and noble House of Lungbarrow - another part of his mind snorted an epithet he'd picked up during a bar brawl full of drunken Shebogans, and he sternly quelled it - he was Lord ... he faltered, swallowing hard, and grasped the edge of the console, almost for support.
"That is, to say of course... er.. Lord..." he looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers. "I mean to say..." Things danced out of reach in his memory, a smiling jester mocking him.
"Keep that HIDDEN, you filthy little Wormhole!" Cousin Glospin struck him across the mouth and he tasted blood in his mouth. The younger cousins had gone swimming in the Cadonflood with some friends from the House at Oakdown, and a blue eyed, sallow faced boy about his own age had pointed at his deformed navel in confusion. Glospin had seen. "Don't you DARE disgrace our House and your betters!" He remembered the taste of his own blood, remembered screaming, floods of tears, the Oakdown boy watching with a strange, almost hungry fixation, and Glospin, two heads taller and mottled purple in rage, raising his fist again, remembered Cousin Innocet, home from the seminary for the summer, splashing out of the water and twisting Glospin's arm back, sending the taller boy sprawling amid the rocks, her own eyes flashing with a protective fury.
She had comforted him afterwards - but even she called him Snail, he remembered. Something else drifted into his errant thoughts.
"Lungbarrow Minor, spit that out at once!" Guiltily, he looked up into two burning grey eyes and a face like an eagle. "Perhaps if you spent a little more of your time attending to your studies of the prograde temporal synthesis equations and a little less decaying your teeth with infantile offworld contraband - and don't think I don't know who sold it to him, Oakdown - see me afterwards, you nasty little boy - then you might actually succeed in completing your preparatory work to the standard required." A pause.
"Well?" Ordinal Borusa could make a vowel into a scimitar.
"Yes, I'm, well, I'm sorry, sir." Behind the tall, scarlet robed figure, Oakdown caught his eye and he went on before he could stop himself, "I'll try harder to make time in future, sir."
"Contrary to how it may appear at the naive and tender age of thirty-three, Lungbarrow Minor, you disreputable little twerp, I assure you that you will never amount to anything in the galaxy, much less in the Citadel, if you retain this propensity to vulgar facetiousness." The Ordinal straightened, steely-eyed, without turning his head. "As for you, Oakdown, while your work may be... adequate," he murmured, grudgingly, "Encouraging the... class clown for your own amusement, to his detriment and the wasting of the time of others, is precisely in keeping with the mentality of the little boy who arrived here twenty-five years ago with a charcoal beard drawn on his face pretending to be the Lord President, and who has spent much of the intervening time alternating between displays of gross antisocial arrogance and wilful sadism masked behind superficial charm that it is my fond hope that sooner rather than later your classmates themselves shall mature sufficiently to recognise as such. I will be writing to your Kithriarch."
The memories marched on through the desert, solemnly keeping vigil for their absent comrades.
"The most insufferable thing of all," Oakdown had fumed, a few nights later, as they sat up on the roof of the Academy with a group of friends, watching the stars come out, "Is how they won't use a chap's name. We're all just scions of the Families, the latest clippings from the House trees." He kicked a stone moodily over the edge, listening for it to hit the ground. "Maybe that little rovie Drax is right, we ought to just use our Cad-Geno Intel ratings. What'd you be then? Theta-Kappa?"
"Theta Sigma" he'd snapped, moodily, not really wishing to be reminded of that.
Oakdown had regarded him carefully for a long moment, lips pursed speculatively, then glanced again over the parapet and chuckled. "Hey, one of my cousins used to tell me that with the proper preparation- you know, hypnosis to totally relax the body, someone could jump down, I don't know, say, a half mile, and just walk off with cuts and bruises. Want to find out if he was right?"
"Pull the other one, hmm?"
Oakdown had arched an eyebrow at him, and, covering offence with a slight chuckle, raised his voice.
"Well, let's find out - hey, Drax? Come over here you little oik - I want to show you something..."
Theta Sigma.
"Hmph, no more me than Lungbarrow Minor, hmm?" He snapped at himself, standing drawn up in the console room, his rambling thoughts failing to mask the increasing cold pit and horrifying sense of loss and confusion that churned within him. Then - another memory - more recent but still, such a long time ago -
Her rooms were dark, soft furnishings and hangings in rich, red velvet, trimmed with gold and ochre. She had stepped back from him, arms sliding down his and resting at her sides, the taste of her lips on his mouth, her almost triangular mouth and chin quirked in an anxious smile. Dark, almond shaped eyes had met his, and nervously,
"Well...?"
Then as now, he had stood, arms up, hands in a tight little cage in front of his chest, fingertips touching, almost twitching to nervously clean the lenses of the spectacles he'd left behind this evening. He'd swallowed, feelings rushing through him that seemed alien to anything the Academy or his Badger had ever tried to teach him, wild, irrational passions where a fear that almost left him wanting to bolt danced with something very different. He'd flexed his fingers open like a butterfly, feeling the blush spread over his face, from his sharp, high cheekbones, almost to the roots of his backswept shock of already-receding coal-black hair. He had parted his lips again, seeing his feelings- his heart- mirrored in her own face, and cleared his throat, desperately trying to recall the lessons on court etiquette he'd half slept through.
"I, um, being of the, er, yes, being of the House of... " he'd stammered and cursed himself.
Lord Oakdown and Lady Ushas had once tried to round up all the old gang for a highly illicit trip to a Low Town brothel, just after their Ordinations the previous year. Much to Oakdown's disappointment and ribald teasing, and Ushas' scathing words about missed opportunities for learning and ridiculous pandering to outdated romantic mystique over simple biological processes, he'd wriggled himself out of it. He had seen neither of those two since, his social life having come to revolve around her, above all his other old friends, with ever greater precision. They had met on a package tour, seven months ago now, sitting next to one another in the crowd of passengers aboard an Observatory Class T-T Capsule as its pilot spun them gracefully through the dazzling beauty of the Medusa Cascade, and as they talked, he had felt that he had discovered a jewel fit to outshine all others in the sky.
On this night, for a moment, he had wondered if he'd have had more confidence, if this feeling that was stifling and bewildering him would have been any less of a problem if he'd taken those two up on their offer back then - he found his thread, "That is it, of the House of Lungbarrow, I, being..."
"No, silly," she'd started forward, stopping his babble with her fingertips and kissing him again, the scent of her long dark hair filling his nostrils. "No names, dear one. Not tonight. Please. Not names, ranks, families. I don't want to spend our first unity in... pedigree and mutual alliance... Please?" She had looked at him again and he had felt the fear draining away, mingling with other sensation, and as his arms enfolded her almost of their own accord, he'd known he had been right to reject that invitation.
"We know who we are," he'd said gallantly, gently drawing the large sapphire domiciliar ring from her middle finger and setting it aside. "Let the rest go hang."
"Hmm, quite so, yes," he stood in the stolen time ship, looking down at the somewhat worn and time-battled sapphire on his finger, and spread his interlaced fingers wide in front of his chest, like a butterfly, "but who am I, I wonder?"he asked of the many fractured and distorted reflections in the curved glass of the time column. He peered into it. They peered back. Finally, he clicked his tongue. "Of course. Truth, you might say, veritable truth." With a certain sadness, but also a return of his earlier sense of resolution, he grasped the controls once more. "After all, a name has meaning only in the community which gave it." A sharp, almost forced chuckle. "I rather fancy I have, ah, outgrown... besides, I'm sure it will turn up again. What was it that young lady called me, outside, just now?" He raised his brows, questioning, his silver-white hair gleaming in the light.
Some inferior academic term - he'd taken it for an insult, one of many seemingly thrown his humble way with impunity over his unspectacular prospects. Yes, but what...?
"Never mind, never mind," he waved the thought away, returning his gaze to the televiewer, letting all its promise and unknowable horizons drown out his own small qualms of identity. Doubtless sooner or later, if he travelled far enough, somebody would call him something which would seem appropriate. He'd just have to listen out for it. Something he could use would turn up.
Still plunging headlong into the forgotten past, the runaway thief reached out with anticipation for the future.