FEARFUL SYMMETRY

'Tiger Station statutory report, Code E-37. Week 379. Professor Linus Howard reporting as Head of Development.' Linus Howard paused in order to punctuate his monologue before he continued speaking into the recorder. 'Specimens 125 and 126 have successfully adapted and are now integrated with the others of their genotype. All standard tests have so far produced positive results, and we are due to enter the two new specimens into the third phase in sixteen hours. We predict further success.

'Also, at thirteen fifty-seven hours today, Lady Annabella Zero Sixteen gave birth, and we have four perfect new specimens for the next evaluation. Naturally they will be given the prenominated bonding period before being taken for analysis. Lord Valentine Zero Sixteen is still on security patrol. He has been made aware that he has new offspring but states that he is too busy to attend to family duties at this time.

'Clan Zero Four now controls most of the maintenance section. The family's progress is, to say the least, impressive. Full data records including visi-footage and notes will be included with this transmission.

'There is one security alert to be declared. The computer reports a number of faults in the systems. Examination indicates malicious damage. Therefore we have a saboteur or saboteurs on board the station. Request advice. Report concluded.' Howard cut the recording. 'Issue on secure channel 3440 to Culture Control at once,' he ordered the computer.

++YOUR MESSAGE HAS BEEN SENT++

Howard looked around for his trusty secretary. 'V109?'

A Voc Class Robot entered the spacious office from outside. 'Yes, Professor,' it said in a cool, flat and only very slightly mechanical voice.

'Ah, there you are,' Howard said irascibly, though any show of emotion was wasted on these simple machines. 'Have the scientific staff been assembled?'

'Yes, Professor,' it said in exactly the same tone, as if replaying a recording. 'The full scientific detail is assembled in the genetics laboratory.'

Howard pointed to some papers on his desk. 'Copy up those notes,' he ordered. 'I have an experiment to perform.'

'Yes, Professor,' the robot said yet again and sat at Howard's desk, commencing work on the task to which it had been assigned as the Professor left.

Four or five minutes passed, and a locker door opened in one of the metal walls of the office. A bald head poked out, reflecting the glare of the strong lighting, and then the full man emerged into the open, his black overcoat fluttering behind him. 'Now then,' he said, staring at the Voc Robot at the desk. 'V109, have you recorded a copy of that report?'

'Yes, sir,' V109 replied. 'I remained outside the door as you instructed and recorded the complete message.'

'Play it back to me,' the man in black ordered, and he listened intently.

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS into near-total darkness. 'Well, this isn't Longleat Safari Park,' he muttered disappointedly. 'And I was so looking forward to seeing the big cats.' He waved his sonic screwdriver around, experimenting with various pulse frequencies, and after a few tries a light came on in the ceiling a few feet away. The Doctor looked down the long, curved metal tunnel and knew it instantly for what it was. 'I'm inside a pipe,' he sighed. The lighting, he guessed, would be for engineers doing a bit of maintenance, but that knowledge didn't drag his curiosity from such questions as those of what the pipe was supposed to convey and why there wasn't any in it at the moment. He pressed a hand to the metal curvature and wriggled his palm. 'No scoring,' he observed. 'Not a dry substance then.' He sniffed the air, inhaling and then exhaling deeply. 'And not a gas either.' He crouched and poked at the space between his feet with a finger. The finger came back wet and he licked it. He grinned. 'Just a plain, ordinary water supply pipe, Doctor!' he announced cheerfully to himself. 'I wonder if I can find a maintenance hatch and take a look around?' He checked that he had locked the TARDIS and then strode off down the pipe.

Large eyes watched the unknown intruder from the shadows, and bile built up in a giant throat. The security guard activated his commpatch. 'Marius Zero Seven to Security Command,' he announced, his voice gruff and growly. 'Unidentified intruder in pipeline E, sections 42 to 56. Possibly our saboteur. Advise.'

'Pursue,' said another growly voice. 'Do not attack unless actual tampering is observed.'

'The suspect has already tampered with the lighting, Command,' Marius said.

'Then kill him immediately,' ordered Command. 'Before he causes any more damage. Command out.'

The Doctor heard something scrape on the metal behind him, like an old schoolteacher running her long fingernails across a blackboard to silence a particularly undisciplined class, but only for the briefest fraction of a second. He turned around slowly. 'Hello?' he called. 'Is there someone else down here? Is the pipe under repair? I'm aware that there could be hazards.'

'The hazard that should occupy your mind, intruder,' a voice growled in an animal-like way from the shadows, 'is the fact of your detection.'

'Hello,' the Doctor said cheerfully. 'I'm the Doctor. Perhaps it would be better if you'd show yourself and we could talk properly, face to face.'

His eyes widened and he gasped audibly as an enormous tiger emerged into the column of light created by yet another maintenance lamp the Doctor had switched on with his sonic screwdriver. It was clearly a Sumatran tiger, but a little bigger and more muscular, and as it padded closer the Doctor could see it wore a hard black collar with a boxy device attached, mounted with flickering lights. 'I am Lord Marius of the Clan Tigris Zero Seven,' the huge cat announced proudly. 'Vice Marshal of Security, and my superior, Marshal Lord Erasmus Zero One, has ordered your death.'

The beast arched its back, roared loudly and leapt toward the Doctor.

The man in black rubbed his chin and felt a pang of disappointment as he remembered there wasn't a beard there anymore. To be honest there hadn't been one for a good few hundred years. He patted V109 on the head like a faithful dog. 'Well, you'll soon have your saboteur,' he told the silvery-green machine. 'I should think he'll show up any time now.'

The robot registered the statement and considered its implications. 'Do you know the identity and location of the saboteur?' it asked. It was its duty when given possible new information, especially about matters that might affect the station, to investigate.

'Oh yes,' the man in black nodded casually, ambling around the office. 'But you won't need to get that information from me. Your security forces should be dealing with him just about now.'

'On what evidence do you base that inference?' asked the robot.

'I arranged it, you tin-plated nitwit,' the man in black said. 'Voc Robots,' he declared in a mock advertising speaker's voice. 'So sophisticated that they still trip over the obvious like a blind man trips over his bootlaces. Buy one today. Terms and conditions apply. Consumers must be over eighteen and have more money than sense.' He made a show of checking his silver wristwatch, then stuck out his bottom lip. 'Taking your time, eh, Doctor?'

Marius woke slowly, feeling dizzy and heavy. He pressed his immense paws down hard on the floor of the pipe and pushed himself up, shaking his aching head as if doing so would somehow clear his thoughts. 'Sorry about that, old chap,' he murmured drowsily. 'Spot of confusion in the registry centres. Honestly had no idea.'

'That's all right,' the Doctor smiled, pocketing his sonic screwdriver. He'd quickly worked out that the box on the tiger's collar was some kind of computer and that was what gave it the ability to talk, amongst other things. With his sonic screwdriver he had managed to hack the box and cause confusion in the system that would be enough to knock the tiger out without doing it any serious harm, and while it was unconscious he'd fiddled with the box and worked out its function. It was a primitive telepathic circuit with translation and speech processing facilities linked up to a central computer core. The main computer had a complete list of personnel and the tigers did not attack anyone registered as staff. They normally only attacked strangers. The Doctor cobbled up an entry for himself into the computer register, and when Marius the tiger woke up he thought that the Doctor was a friend. 'I'm from Culture Control,' the Doctor lied to the big cat using information he'd gleaned from the computer when he'd hacked it. 'I've been asked to investigate this matter of saboteurs.'

'Yes,' Marius nodded. 'Your registry entry took a moment to appear on our systems and I took you for an intruder. I even considered the possibility that you might be the saboteur. Forgive me.'

'Of course, my dear fellow, of course!' the Doctor gushed. 'Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. I mean, look at me. I misjudged the station co-ordinates and materialised my, er, transmat capsule inside this pipe. It's a good job it wasn't full of water!'

'It's been taken out of phase,' Marius explained. 'The saboteur introduced an hallucinogen into the water supply at reservoir five, the one this pipe serves, and we had some rather nasty incidents with the science staff. Went quite cuckoo, you know.'

The Doctor nodded. 'I can imagine. But there are levels of cuckoo. Tell me, how long has this project been in operation?'

'Were you not briefed?'

'There wasn't time. We understood it was urgent.'

'Oh,' nodded Marius. 'Well the conservation side of it started just over seven years ago. My genotype, the genus Panthera Tigris, originates on Earth, but it's been extinct there for centuries. Do you know Earth at all?'

'I used to work there,' the Doctor smiled. 'I pop back from time to time.'

'I'd love to see Earth,' Marius said dreamily. 'The ancestral seat of my race. It would be so fascinating to see the rainforests.'

The Doctor realised the conversation was running off-point. 'You were telling me about the project,' he pressed.

The big cat frowned for a moment, then went on. 'Oh yes, yes of course. Sorry about that, old man. Yes, we all died out on Earth a long time ago, Tigers, and a Professor Emily Burrows came up with the idea of bringing us back using an advanced cloning process. Apparently she was rather big on cats.'

'Sounds like the Emily who was a friend of Bagpuss,' the Doctor said glibly.

'Bagpuss?'

'Oh nothing. Do go on.'

'The project went swimmingly, and this space station was built to house a lab, living quarters and resources for the humans but also a genetically reconstructed jungle for us.'

'There's a rainforest on the station?' the Doctor whooped. 'Impressive.'

'Hm,' nodded Marius. 'Nice place. Do love the trees. Then Professor Burrows died very nearly four years ago and her replacement, Linus Howard, took over. He had other ideas about the direction of the project…'

'Computer chips on the brain, education by electronic auto-suggestion, that sort of thing?' the Doctor inferred, having worked that much out already.

'Quite,' Marius confirmed. 'Professor Howard proposed that our chances of survival as a species could be vastly and rapidly improved if technology were used to enhance our intelligence.'

The Doctor was angry. 'Marius, your chances of survival as a species could only possibly be improved in any significant way by putting you as far away from human beings as possible. Your Professor Howard is trying to make cats into men, and do you know what men do better than anything else?'

'What?' asked Marius.

'They kill each other,' the Doctor said. 'Now perhaps you could show me to a maintenance hatch so that I can get above decks.'

Marius nodded. 'Oh yes. Of course, dear chap. This way.' And he padded off down the pipe.

Professor Howard took off his goggles and withdrew his arms from the immersion gauntlets that reached into the containment tank. He punched up the computer readings on the big screen for all of his scientific staff to see. 'The cub in the tank is our second Indochinese tiger, a female from a diverse bloodline,' he announced proudly. 'Our young male has a mate. When they are both adults, we can introduce them in the fifth phase. In the meantime, these bloodlines are being cultivated along with others in order to produce more specimens. Like our fellow pioneers aboard the other stations, we are making fantastic progress in the restoration of extinct species, and now we're finding them planets to live on and making them atmospherically suitable, there could be no stopping us.' He paused for a moment to listen to the applause and then held up a hand to stay it. 'Already the Amur leopard proliferates in a brand new jungle on a brand new planet, along with such other previously extinct species as the hippopotamus, the pygmy marmoset and the gold anaconda. Eventually we will be able to take specimens back to Earth for the new rainforests our best people have been building on the sites of the old ones, and we will be the gods of a new Eden.' There was further applause.

'Delusions of godhood are usually clear signs of psychosis,' a voice declared in a bitter tone from somewhere behind the applause and a figure not dressed for laboratory conditions wormed his way to the front of the small congregation. 'Or are you just euphemising? Gods in place of corporate owners?'

'Who the hell are you?' demanded Professor Howard.

'I'm from Culture Control,' the Doctor said. 'Check the computer for my registry entry.'

Howard raised his voice. 'Registry database, latest entry,' he called into the air.

++SMITH, DOCTOR J X, APPOINTED BY COMMISSIONER OF ETHICAL CONDUCT, CULTURE CONTROL, TO AUDIT THIS FACILITY FOLLOWING REPORTS OF SUSPECTED SABOTAGE++

'Commissioner of Ethical Conduct,' Howard grunted. 'So you're here to do more than just catch our saboteurs, then Doctor?'

'I'm afraid so,' the Doctor said gravely. 'The CEC has expressed concerns that some of your experiments on felids may be immoral. I intend to make a full report, and I'm afraid if I detect any sign of obscenity I'll have no choice but to shut you down.'

'You'll have to take that up with Mr Masters,' Howard grunted.

The Doctor felt his own blood chill in his veins. 'Mr Who?' he hissed.

'Michael Masters, our Executor of Projects,' Howard answered. 'All decisions directly relating to work here go through him. His office is on the centre deck, centre suite.'

'It's all right,' another voice said. 'The Doctor and I have already met.'

The Doctor turned to face the tall, bald man in the charcoal grey suit and black overcoat. 'I might have known,' he spat in disgust.

'Hello you,' smiled the Master.

'Masters again,' the Doctor mockingly observed the reuse of the simple pseudonym. 'Taking up recycling are we?'

The Master shrugged. 'What's in a name, eh, Doctor? I once pointed the superficiality of names out to someone else a while back. Her name was Kassia, not that her identity, age, gender, background or any other personal details mattered to me particularly at the time. But I do so love to reminisce.'

The Doctor glared hatefully at his old enemy. 'The only thing about any living creature that matters to you is how you can use it,' he said bitterly. 'And how are you using the staff of this facility? Some kind of mass hypnosis?' He was aware that none of them had moved or spoken since the Master had entered the room.

'Nothing so crude, Doctor,' the Master replied. 'They've all been kind enough to enslave themselves. The computer chips they've had implanted in their brains link them all up to the main computer core, and I've been getting intimate with that for nearly a week now. Control the computer and you control every man, woman, tiger and robot on the station.'

'And what would you want with a few hundred tigers and a handful of Voc Robots?' scoffed the Doctor. 'Don't tell me you've had a change of heart and decided to open an exotic pet rescue centre.'

The Master's eyes burned and in them the Doctor could see the evil Time Lord's naked lust for power. Whatever he had planned, it wasn't a charitable exercise. 'The tigers' intelligence, enhanced by technology, is getting better all the time,' he explained. 'Soon they'll be walking upright and able to wear armour and carry energy weapons.' He stared right into the Doctor's eyes. 'I could rip whole galaxies apart with an army like that, and the robots will maintain the computer for me so that I can maintain control.'

'And the humans?'

'Will be the first to die in my great experiment, Doctor. My registry entry in the computer marks me out as the true Master, the controller of this entire station. It has for about an hour and before that for the past week it's given me an access-all-areas pass. I control all the tigers and in just a few minutes I'm going to order them to kill every human being on this station, and when they've done it I'm going to order them to kill you.'

A hand suddenly grabbed the Master's shoulder and whirled him round. 'You're what?' roared Professor Howard.

The Master was taken by surprise. How could Howard have escaped his control? He stared deep into the scientist's eyes. 'Unhand me at once,' he hissed. 'I am the Master and you will obey me!'

'That won't work, I'm afraid,' the Doctor grinned, producing his sonic screwdriver from behind his back and stepping clear of the computer console he'd backed up against. 'I've removed your registry entry from the computer, recorded your full confession and reset the system to factory defaults.' He looked at Howard. 'This man is your saboteur, Professor. He introduced hallucinogenic drugs into your water supply so that he could nip about unobserved just until he could take control of your computer. He then used that and your microchips to take control of your minds.'

'My God,' breathed Howard. 'Robots!' he shouted. After a few moments, five Voc Robots marched into the laboratory. 'This is the saboteur,' Professor Howard said. 'Take him away and lock him up.' He glanced over to the doorway where the Doctor's feline escort had been waiting. 'Marius, guard the saboteur and kill him if he tries to escape.'

'Righto, Professor,' Marius nodded and padded off after the robots and the Master.

Howard looked around at his disoriented staff and then at the Doctor. 'I feel we owe you a debt of gratitude, Doctor,' he said apologetically.

'And you owe those tigers far more than that,' the Doctor said. 'Cats are cats and people are people. Trying to have the best of both often leaves you with nothing of either. You're free of the Master's insane influence now, so take this opportunity to look at your experiments from a fresh angle. Mechanical implants aren't the way forward for animals; natural growth is. Take the chips out of their brains, take their computer collars off them, put them in jungles and let them roam free, otherwise they'll grow to be capable of destroying each other, and when they've done that the universe will be no better off than it was the first time they became extinct.'