"Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end?" — Marie Antoinette before the guillotine
The inexorable chuff of the assembly line carried Nyssa ever closer to unsterile drills and saws. The Doctor thrashed somewhere ahead of her, twisting sideways against his straps in a last-ditch effort to jam the workings with his own body. The thuds and crashes as he heaved himself against them nearly drowned out the whine of lasers. She could not see him, trussed as she was with her face scant inches from the ribbed ceiling. But she could hear his groans of pain as the first layers of cyber leads were grafted into his skin. His anguish doubled her own.
"Nyssa!"
Someone was rocking her pallet. The straps had loosened. She threw them off with a gasp and sat up.
By rights she should have slammed her face against the ceiling. Instead, she found herself snarled in a nest of cushions on a bed strung from living trees. The damp air tasted of tears… no, salt. The grind of gears faded to the thresh of breakers striking a distant reef. No halogens, no cruel lasers, only artificial candlelight illuminated a high canopy made of stretched canvas, dwindling away into the dark.
Achille was standing beside her, hand on his sword-hilt. "My lady?" He was breathing hard.
"We were on Mondas," she said, and stopped. The Doctor's last ragged scream still rang in her mind. "I was dreaming."
"Rather more than that, I think," the Hierophant said gently, concern tinged with awe. "Are you a Sibyl, then, able to scry when science fails?"
"Your Grace?" A woman called from outside. "Is there aught you require?"
"No, I'm fine. Thank you, Calliope." Nyssa exhaled and looked around herself, surveying shell-lanterns and tapestries, divans and vases of flowers, a discreet workstation hidden behind a mirror, a disc-shaped chair that she had commandeered for its resemblance to one in her TARDIS bedroom, and the heavy curtain thrown back that divided her half of the pavilion from Achille's. The furniture rested on carpets spread across coral sand, not a half-mile drop. Ground underfoot. Solid, real things. They reminded her of the playhouse her parents had built for her to sleep in the garden on warm summer nights.
"Is the Lord Doctor in danger?" Achille said.
"Oh, probably," she said, trying to keep her voice light. "It's his hobby, after all."
It was only a dream. Even if there were a grain of prescience in it, the Doctor was far beyond help. Again she had to thrust back hurt and longing and the gnawing fear that he would be too careless with the vulnerable body she had helped nurse back to life. But that was to overrate her own significance to one who measured days in decades. He had enjoyed their fellowship, but he did not need her. He had survived for centuries, after all. "The Doctor can take care of himself."
The Hierophant gave her a shrewd look. "As you say. Then let the sea's music dispel nightmare's miasma."
She gulped air and closed her eyes again, focusing her mind on the sound of surf, not so different from the telepathic vibrations she had become accustomed to in the Basilica. "Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry I woke you."
"Not I. I was out walking, composing my own thoughts. But I feared some wild beast had crept into your bower."
She was touched as always by his courtesy, but the admission brought her wide awake. She realised he was barefoot. Looking down, she saw glittering sand streaking the carpet where he had dashed across it. "You were out without an escort?"
He shrugged. "This isle is ours alone. All access save airship is barred. There are no human serpents on these atolls, my lady."
"Nor kidnappers?" Their present whereabouts were secret. But he had after all been abducted from his mother's private island while recovering from surgery a few years back.
"Touché." Moving away, he took her cloak from the row of garments strung along one wall. "Come. It is a fine night, and I do not think either of us means to greet the dawn with eyes closed."
"No," she admitted. "Help me down."
He offered his arm for a ladder and clasped the cloak about her to keep out the damp. Hand in hand, they slipped outside and strolled along the water's edge. No bees stirred among the dunes edging the beach, where whispering grasses shielded tiny flowers from the wind. Nyssa's gaze stole upward so often that she kept stumbling on the soft sand. Ironically, it was her first clear view of the stars since coming to the so-called Celestial Basilica, thanks to the heavy night-fogs that rose from the vale beneath the palace. As always, she could not help searching for Traken, although she would need a star chart to have any hope of finding it. Its sun had been snuffed out, but there were so many places in the universe where its light streamed outwards, oblivious to the death of its Source.
"I envy you," Achille said presently. "Your light is out there, somewhere, untrammeled and free."
"I hope so," she said, disconcerted. He meant the Doctor, of course, but she could not help drawing a Schrödinger analogy between the one light and the other. Realising she was brooding, she shook her head and gave Achille's hand a quick squeeze. She had not missed his own distraction, how he kept gazing towards the dark expanse of ocean dwindling away to inky black. Somewhere out there, across the channel that separated this island-studded reef from the mainland, beyond the the coastal ranges lay the Celestial Basilica. "The Council rejected your petition, then?"
"Out of consideration for our safety." He all but growled in frustration. "I never dreamed my pretext for coming here would cost Adyton his freedom. I cannot return without raising more questions, and I cannot plead for clemency without appearing a fool. My supporters are baying for his blood. They brand him a false servant who betrayed me to put his former master on the throne. Lies, jealous lies, and I begin to fear someone means to draw me out. They will not pardon him, certainly not without trial."
"Leaving you separated from your most capable protector," Nyssa said, "immediately after my new security filters were presented as his idea."
"Well spotted." He hissed through his teeth. "I should have seen that."
"You have good reason to be distracted." She squeezed his hand again. The High Hierophant of the Five Revealed Truths had been forced by his society's strictures to keep his own truths hidden. Now she was abetting his deception. What was it the Doctor had said? A petty game of genealogy? But genealogy came down to love and family, something she missed too much to see this gallant young man destroyed.
"I cannot afford to be. My elder brother and his agents play a wily game of bluff and forfeit behind my back. The Basilica's harmony is at stake should they win."
"Not to mention your life."
"But they do not yet perceive that I have Minerva as well as Mars as my shield."
"I wish I could do more." She sighed. "Hiding here is a stopgap, but if the Doctor doesn't come soon…"
"There is still my original solution, you know. It might be safest."
"No!" Nyssa pulled up short. "Please, don't even think it. Unless you've changed your mind about wanting the child?"
"I would sooner cut off my legs than lose this chance," he said softly, "but your life is in hazard as much as mine. And soon it will be too late to unmake this happy accident."
"We'll find another way." She began to walk faster. "I didn't stay with you to be queen. I stayed to safeguard that future and avert a civil war. Don't be so quick to throw hope away."
Assimilation at seventy eight point one percent. The time capsule's central control hub emitted a series of nonsensical, inefficient beeps and whirrs, some of which seemed to have no meaning beyond aural stimulation of pleasure centres. Removing these would improve funct—
"No!" The Doctor clawed at the tendrils burrowing through his eyelids. "Music… moods… the TARDIS is a living being, not some mindless… mindless… That's… her way of being companionable…"
Eighty point naught percent. This time-ship needed repairs. Its systems would be refined.
He reached for the controls again, only to be rebuffed by a shower of sparks. The machine's erratic defense systems were putting up a fight, or else its faults had simply hit critical mass. A warning klaxon began to sound in the distance, acres of corridors distorting the sound to that of an archaic metal gong.
A memory fragment intruded upon his mental processes. You tricked him! He's been processed!
"N-Nyssa?" The Doctor's dwindling consciousness roused itself. His visual interface was still in flux, new optic enhancements spreading over his corneas. He thought he could see her, standing on the other side of the console, a gray figure with a feathered mask obscuring her face. "Nyssa, is that you?"
Eighty two point six percent. The intruder took the form of a human girl. No, not human. A friend. Incorrect. Former associate, irrelevant to current program.
Doctor? Is that you? Her words were an echo of a living nightmare, when they had been trapped in the heart of Mondas just before its fall. Nyssa had vowed to stay behind then, too, yearning to make a difference for a few unlucky souls even if it killed her. She had always been one step ahead of time's jaws. Oh, Nyssa, why did you make the choice to stay?
Eighty four point nine percent. Irrelevant. Memory fragments corrupted. Cybermen genesis (tag entry for future study) and Basilica coronation not contemporaneous events. Yet the visual artifact resisted erasure. The host brain was dredging up persistent memories just as the time-ship's rotor was pouring out smoke in a last-ditch effort to fend off assimilation.
He could see the grey-feathered cloak fluttering lightly around her shoulders, veiling her in someone else's mythology like the fine filaments spreading out from his cheeks. But that was nonsense. Ornamentation was valueless. Nanoskin was useful.
Her anguished voice came back to him, but he could no longer remember why. Stop it! It's horrible!
Eighty six point one percent. The TARDIS beeped and chittered as if scolding him. No. That, too, was delusion, pathetic fallacy. It was merely a machine, no more a person than he was. Why was it fighting him?
No more fighting. Resistance was counter-productive. The Web of Time was immutable. He straightened and removed his jacket and shirt. He began to press his fingers in a methodic pattern up his breastbone and across key nerves and muscles, pausing at each patch of skin to allow the fibres time to root and divide. The itching had stopped. The pain had stopped. Even his tears of blood had stopped, now that he had ceased digging at the wires colonising his face.
The girl's agonised query called on a designation that was now obsolete. Doctor?
Ninety two point four percent. Phase one modifications nearly complete. No doctor was required. Autonomous nanofibres had adapted to nonhuman physiognomy and were now accelerating. There was no cause for alarm. The ship's alarm should be shut down. Something had triggered a debilitating emotional response earlier, but he was no longer troubled. There was no need to care.
The Doctor would care.
Was that the girl's voice, the ship's voice, or his?
A stray thought danced along errant synapses like static. Not even a proper wedding, and she was going to die in childbirth as if it were the seventeenth century and not the seventieth. What a stupid, stupid waste.
The memory-hallucination evaded every effort to kill its process. He could still hear her voice, an echo from another place and time. Now it's up to me!
"No. No it… isn't." Faint awareness flickered in the back of his mind. "I wish you'd… leave that kind of thing… to the local constabulary."
Please, listen to me!
Static blurred her words like a shroud.
Or a chrysalis.
Hear me. Short-term memory carried the imprint of a plaintive distress signal, wires of words embedded beneath the surface of the transmission, like a gestalt of music woven through living architecture… He tried to remember, something about a choice, a choice to stay… but it was gone.
Nyssa's grief cut through the static again, the relentless memory from Mondas playing itself out. He's gone. The Doctor's dead. Worse than dead. And Adric's dead too.
"No," he said, and he felt his hearts beating again. "You're the one that's dead. It's just that history hasn't caught up with you yet. So many people killed since I donned this face…" He reached up, felt the wires crusting his cheeks, tore at them until the blood began to flow once more.
Nyssa's defiant words tore through the silver curtain. I have to stop this once and for all!
Thinking him dead, she had vowed to continue his work, her belief in him unshaken despite all his patent failures. No, that was the past. She was dead to him, in the most literal sense. She was a casualty of history. Yet the past is always present, and all moments exist, when one is…
Time Lord.
He could not amend the past. But he had a responsibility to the future, not to let himself become a vector for a new race of techno-zombies. He had to seek aid, if not from Nyssa, then from someone else. Surely, in all his travels, he had met another doctor who could help him fight this alien invasion. Hadn't he faced such perils before? Dimly he remembered the Swarm, an invisible enemy tunnelling through his mind and body. Must… fight… back…
The Swarm. That was it. Humans had helped him then.
"Bi-Al medical facility," he whispered. He lurched against the console, fighting for autonomy. Again, an agitated series of beeps and alarms rebuffed his attempts to program a flight path. His hands kept trying to graft themselves to the TARDIS controls. Electricity arced in his face, burning the wires embedded there.
"Come on, old girl. It's me. It's me. The Doctor!"
Movements jerky, he drew a cricket ball from his coat pocket and began to punch in the coordinates one by one. He was running out of time.
Ninety five point three percent.
The sleepy tranquility of the Healing Hives of Hygieia seemed half a world away from the bustle of court. Sequestered away on a sun-drenched knob of coral with gardens and a forested hill to break the skyline, surrounded by women for the first time since coming to this world, Nyssa found it easier to live here every day. She had even grown accustomed to bees alighting on clothes and hair, riding along for several steps before buzzing away. Their droning hum soothed the spirit, even if nowadays their sacred honey was used mostly for ritual purposes rather than medicinal ones.
She was increasingly tempted to accept Rhea's invitation to become ordained.
Only a select few of Rhea's priestesses were permitted on her son's private island. Obeying the Hierophant's command, they spread the rumour that he had taken blood poisoning from a gunshot wound and might need to remain there for weeks, even months. He broadcast his weekly blessing to the Basilica, but had otherwise retired from public view.
It was, he confessed to Nyssa as they strolled under the palms, his first holiday in years. Hers too, in a way. In all her travels, she had seldom spent many days at a time with her feet on solid ground, among growing things that bloomed.
Yet Achille was not at ease. He could not be, not while Adyton remained back at the Capitol in gaol. Others were already jockeying for the position of Warder, which was known to grant exclusive access to the High Hierophant above and beyond that of any titled lord. No one, not even Achille's few friends who had known him long enough to surmise and wink at secrets, doubted Adyton's guilt. The evidence was beyond doubt: the gun, the shots, the wall.
"Which is folly," Achille lamented. "Apollo's reason is all of the mind, taking no account of hearts. This much is fact: his heart is true. We must find some other means to explain bullets that fly from unseen sources."
"I might have an answer for you soon," Nyssa said. "It's difficult to gather precise data from here, and I've had to add new security to the Pavilion's network before I could even begin working the problem. But if I'm right, the simulation I'm running should show us how it was done."
"Truly?" His eyes shone behind his mask. "You believe the assassin was cloaked by some form invisibility?"
"No." She pointed to a sea-bird circling overhead. "But there are other ways to pierce the Basilica's walls than by transmat."
He followed her gesture quizzically. Then he burst out with the first true laugh she had heard from him in days. "Yes. Yes! Oh, it is child's play! And if that be the case, we have the means to defend against it." He threw his arms around her. "Why did you not tell me this sooner?"
"I may be wrong," Nyssa warned. "It's only a theory, not a fact."
"It is a truth! You, owl-blessed one, see through walls that others take as constants. I must summon Adyton here at once, that I may beg his forgiveness and render him recompense. My dearest Patrocle! Look, there's Mother. I must give her the good news." So saying, he dashed off across the sand towards the pair of women coming out to greet them from Rhea's many-winged pavilion.
"Achille, wait!" Nyssa smiled and trailed after, watching his graceful lope. The sea air seemed to agree with him. That, or he was simply relieved to be unencumbered by robes of state. He had foregone most of his finery for a ruffled white shirt unbuttoned down to the cummerbund of his knee breeches. His bare feet kicked up sand as he flew. As always, his joie de vivre was infectious.
The priestess accompanying Rhea hung back by the pavilion, although Achille in his excitement was speaking loudly enough to be heard up and down the beach. A sharp rebuke from Rhea brought him to his senses. He continued inaudibly, but his exuberant gestures sketched the thrones, the bullets, and the dancers so clearly that Nyssa suspected anyone versed in the Celestenes' nonverbal communications could read the whole story.
"Our young master seems restored to his usual spirits," the old priestess observed as Nyssa circled around the pair to join her. Lucina had been the midwife at Achille's birth, and disregarded all changes of name and title. "You'll be leaving soon, then?"
"I don't know," Nyssa said, sobering at once. "I'd hoped we could stay here a while. It's easier to shield him here than in the Basilica."
"Aye, but you can't keep the lad tucked behind petticoats forever," Lucina said sagely. "Already there's gossip on the mainland that he's at death's door. Anyway, he's too high-spirited to hide."
"I know," Nyssa said, turning back to watch him. "But what else can we do? If the Doctor were here, I could take him offworld until the crisis resolves itself, but as things stand—"
One minute, she saw them clearly: the slender young man in white, bare arms flung wide as he talked in animated bursts, and the stout, stoic matron whose plumed headdress fluttered in the wind as she bent close to put in a measured word.
The next minute, the world was lost in a flying wall of white coral sand as the pavilion behind Nyssa exploded.
"Ninety two point naught naught three percent eradicated."
"Thank you, K9," the Doctor said, voice slurred. K9? More hallucinations, probably.
"The patient is regaining consciousness, Mistress. Shall I administer supplementary anaesthetic?"
"Negative. Let's see what the gentleman has to say for himself, shall we?"
The gentleman in question was having second thoughts about being awake. Every inch of flesh that was not numb felt raw. His muscles itched wherever those insidious fibres had spread. Stiff-backed adhesive tugged at his face, hands and chest when he tried to move. As for his vision…
He forced his eyes open. White, sterile laboratory lights blared. Two bulky shapes moved over him, black silhouettes lurching before a blinding backdrop. What were they doing to him? He tried to roll away, but fetched up against the siderails of an operating table.
"Please do not be alarmed," K9's voice said. "You are in hospital. Your treatment is proceeding satisfactorily."
"Welcome back," said one of the blocky figures, voice slightly distorted by the comm grille of a biohaz suit. "How are you feeling?"
A memory stirred. The Bi-Al medical station in Sol's asteroid belt. The TARDIS must have completed the journey after he collapsed. "Perforated," he rasped. "Pardon me if I don't get up."
"That would not be advisable," the woman said. "Clear up, would you, Sergei?"
"Yes, Doctor Marius."
"Marius?" The Doctor struggled to muster muddled synapses. "We've met before, haven't we? No, no, that was an old man with feathered eyes… except that was from an infection… but why does K9 have legs?" K9's blocky head was the one familiar thing in his field of vision. The robot dog was sitting on its haunches on a pile of plastic crates beside the operating table. Squinting, he could see its sensor antenna deployed over his forehead.
The surgeon snorted. "Father's prototype couldn't handle irregular terrain. I gather this isn't the first time you've tumbled across our doorstep. What's your name?"
"The Doctor." It felt good to say it. It was the only thing that felt good right now.
"So K9 was right after all. He recognised you. Otherwise he might have shot you as a hostile."
"Thank you, K9," the Doctor said weakly.
The robot wagged its tail in an affectation he knew so well that he almost laughed, despite swollen lips. He didn't altogether approve of the articulated limbs, but he supposed the inventor's daughter was entitled to make modifications.
She passed a hand-sensor over his hearts, grunting at the readout. "Your appearance doesn't match our records. But your vascular system does."
"Status?" he asked. It was difficult to form words, with cheeks and mouth deadened by analgesics. The painkillers were not quite sufficient, but the stinging pain of exposed subcutaneous tissue told him that his face was reasonably intact. "What's… what's my condition?"
"K9?" she prodded.
"Invasive nanofibre network deactivated. All foreign filaments removed save those embedded in prefrontal cortex and secondary medulla. Epidermal and dermal regrowth projected to be complete within nine point naught two hours."
"We're just waiting for our chief neurosurgeon to come off her rest-shift, then we'll see about removing the filaments in your brain."
"Ah, that won't be necessary, thanks all the same," he said, unenthusiastic at the prospect of humans digging around in his dendrites. He had not been thinking clearly when he jumped to this time period. The human race had only just made the leap to nearby star systems, and their xenomedical expertise was still in its infancy. During his previous visit, Doctor Marius senior had done his best, but it had really been Leela's antibodies that had helped him beat back the infection. He could use a dose of her fighting spirit right about now. "My phagocytes can tackle the fibres now that you've rendered them inert. It'll be no trouble excreting them from my tear ducts." Quite a lot of trouble, in fact, and the process was uncomfortably ticklish, but it was preferable to brain surgery.
"How long will that take?" Dr. Marius said, dubious. "I'm not in the habit of making patients perform their own extractions."
"Twenty-two point sixteen hours, Mistress," K9 said. "Rest, intravenous nutrition and hydration are indicated to expedite natural healing processes."
"There you are. You've been enormously helpful, Doctor Marius, and I'm sure I owe you my life. But I can take it from here. If you can spare me a bed for a day or two, I'll be right as rain." His winning smile turned into a wince.
"Oh, very well. Monitor him closely, K9. If those nano-fragments show the least sign of reactivating, alert me immediately and reinitiate quarantine lockdown." She waggled a gloved finger. "You tried to bond yourself to our ventilation system, Doctor. If K9 hadn't been able to navigate the ductwork to zap you, we'd all be wetware by now."
"Oh, dear. I'm terribly sorry for all the bother."
"No problem. It's an interesting change of pace from mopping up asteroid mining accidents. Need anything else?"
"I don't suppose you could stretch the definition of hydration to include a cup of tea?"
She arched an eyebrow, glancing at the IV drip. "Sergei, when you've finished, see if you can wrestle up an infused hot drink and a straw for our patient."
"Yes, Doctor Marius."
"So, Doctor. If you're really who you say you are, shouldn't you have a companion with you?"
"Yes… no." In a rush of pain, he remembered what the nanofibres had almost allowed him to forget. A pointless end for a life that promised more, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it. Certainly not while half flayed and bedridden. But even once he had recovered, he could not intervene. He had no choice but to let another friend die. "No, I don't suppose I should."
The Hierophant paced with hand on sword-hilt, oblivious to curious bystanders. A temporary forcefield fenced off a large dome-shaped pavilion standing a little apart from the rest. In light of the smoke still rising from the neighboring island above the treetops, it was a hopelessly inadequate barrier. His mother's earthly domain had seemed an ideal sanctuary, but he had brought the perils of Olympus with him.
"Surely the physickers have finished by now," he said to Lucina keeping vigil beside him. "I want to see her!"
"Patience, Your Highness," the old woman said. "It's forbidden for men to view female patients, especially when they're unconscious."
He stopped pacing and folded his arms. "She would not be unconscious had I not come here! This is intolerable! Never in five thousand years of celestial harmony has anyone dared indiscriminate violence—" He broke off, seeing the beaded curtain at the entrance thrown back as a priestess exited and sped across the flagstones towards them.
"Your All-Holiness," the healer said, dropping nearly to the ground in graceful obeisance. "Her Serene Grace is out of danger and alert. If it please you, she calls upon you to attend her."
"By all means," he said, all but bowling over the woman in his haste. He hurried through the outer ventricles of the pavilion, where physickers were wheeling away equipment. They paused to bow with grave respect. He rose to elevé in acknowledgement, but his attention was already on the path ahead. Passsing through a series of UV curtains, he reached at last a white-walled inner chamber. There a stout figure lay propped up in bed, swathed in bandages and stabiliser patches.
Nyssa, seated on a stool drawn up at Rhea's bedside, snatched up her mask from a nearby table. Then she recognised his gait, rose and turned to greet him. "She's going to be all right," she said. "Her spine was bruised, but not severed. There's every reason to think she'll make a full recovery."
Drooping with relief, Achille peeled his own mask off and threw it down where hers had lain. He bent to kiss his mother's cheek.
"Pia Mater. This is damnable. How do you feel?"
"How d'you think?" she said, her voice a weak croak. "Like… lost a fight with …gravitic generator. Never mind. The Queen and I… conferring." She waved towards the midwife who had followed him into the room. "Lucina, banish eavesdroppers. But… stay. This… for your ears, too."
The old woman bobbed in a creaky curtsey and thrust her head through the heavy drapes covering the doorway. "Out," she bawled. "Out, out, all of you. The Holy Mother commands it. Shoo!"
Nyssa made to join Lucina in guarding the door, but Achille set a hand on her shoulder. "Abide, my lady. Forgive my mean manners. I should have inquired after your own hurts."
"I'm fine. The break's almost healed already." She wriggled her fingers outside her sling to demonstrate. Looking him over, she saw that Achille had not come out of the explosion unscathed either, but his own abrasions and bruises were largely superficial. "Your Highness, listen. I've found the proof you need to clear Adyton's name."
His face transformed like the sun breaking through. "Truly?"
"Without a doubt. I was able to cross-reference the transmat records to prove his coordinates didn't match any of the bullets' trajectories. Those shots came from the other side of the wall. The Lattice is programmed to let birds through, so it won't stop bullets. The gunman simply needed a spatial knowledge of the throne room and a way to smuggle himself into the adjacent chamber."
He hugged her in a loose but heartfelt embrace. "The dawn came late today, but now the clouds are clearing."
"There's something else," she said. "I think they were aiming for your expected location, if you hadn't diverged from the dance's choreography."
"That ridiculous tableau… only reason… I still have two sons," Rhea grumbled. "Otherwise… chaos. Civil war. Kingslayer… anointed Apollo."
"We'll thwart them yet, Mother, if Adyton is free to watch over us."
"Problem," Rhea said. "He's not your…. bodyservant. No longer. If reinstated… and we must convince…"
"Ballistics is simple geometry," Nyssa pointed out. "Your people prize mathematical truth, don't they?"
Rhea nodded impatiently. "Warder of Basilica not… Hygieia. He can't…." She grimaced. "Nyssa, child, tell him."
Nyssa dipped her head. "Even if he's free, Sir Adyton can't watch over us from afar. The Warder of the Heavenly Gates cannot leave his post, even to guard your person. Much as I hate to abandon the peace of these islands, I honestly think we'll be safer back in the Basilica. With the new filters, we should be able to block both unauthorised transmat access and fast-moving projectiles." She smiled wistfully. "At some cost to the birds, I'm afraid, but the Hierophant's life is more important."
"But we cannot return," he said in anguished frustration. "We didn't just come here for my safety, but for the sake of an Apollo yet unborn."
The old woman piped up from the doorway. "What's that, lad?"
"Lucina," Rhea said. "Return with them… Basilica. You're needed."
Lucina was peering at them with bird-bright eyes. "Oho. Is that what brought you scurrying back to the Hives? Well, why didn't you say so earlier? Absolutely, Your Grace. It'd be an honour."
"But—" Achille began.
The midwife pointed a bony finger at him. "I welcomed you into the world, young master, and I mean to be there to catch the next heir to pop out."
"Your Highness." Nyssa turned her mask over and over in her lap, rubbing a thumb across the plain backing of stiff leather. "Remember what you told me about being Achilles at Skyros?"
"That was a sham, a farce, a…" His scowl loosened into sheer disbelief. "You can't be serious."
"Never more so," she said. "I'm sorry. I realise this is a difficult thing to ask of you. But without the Doctor's timely intervention, that may be our only chance to see this through."
"Difficult? Ah, Lady, if you suggested I dance upon hot coals, I would trust your counsel and leap to it like a gazelle. Yet this…" He fell silent for some while, mulling it over. "And yet I see no other path. But then who would be my—?"
She kept looking at him.
"Oh, my brave Minerva," he said. "I could not allow it. Even if it were possible, the risk to you would be appalling."
"Only way… my son." Rhea's usually imperious tones were weary. "Nyssa… watch over him."
"I will," she promised. "Now rest. Let the healers heal you. We could ask for no better midwife than yours, Holy Mother, but I'll feel better if you're there, too."
Rhea nodded, eyes already closing. The Hierophant, gazing at his mother's white face, looked shaken. He clung to her hand for a long while, stroking it. At last, when she was sleeping peacefully, he turned back to his queen.
"Will you be all right?" Nyssa said in a low voice.
"That you understand and share the burden will make it bearable," he said. His eyes danced, rueful and merry. "So, since we have cast ourselves together under the same yoke, let us make sport of it. Perhaps someday our pas de deux will be worthy of song."
"Well, Doctor Marius, I can't thank you enough." The Doctor started to hold out his right hand, smiled awkwardly, and extended his left. The regenerated nerves were still rather sensitive.
"I wish you'd consider staying longer," she said with a firm shake. "At least return for a follow-up. We've never had a case like yours before, and I'd like to keep an eye on my handiwork." She grinned. "If nothing else, I need the results for my write-up."
"Perhaps I can pop by after I've…" he glanced longingly at the TARDIS, "checked on a few… things."
"Doctor Marius?" The receptionist behind a nearby desk cleared her throat. She had not been well-pleased to have her waiting room occupied by a large blue box, but she was determined to follow proper procedures. "Forgive me, but I haven't received the patient's discharge papers. Or payment?"
The Doctor smiled. "Oh, I'm sure we can come to some arrangement."
"Never mind, Matilda," Marius said. "The biodata we've collected on the Doctor's physiology is going to revolutionise the field of tissue regrowth. Not to mention the upgrades he's made to our K9 unit." She grinned. "I think a Rosalind Franklin trophy would add a certain cachet to Main Reception, don't you?"
"Well…"
"My authorisation, Matilda. Don't worry about it. Doctor?"
The Doctor had dropped to one knee to say farewell to a cousin of an old friend. "Well, goodbye, K9. Thanks again for your help. I must say I'm impressed with the latest model. Don't forget what I told you about Ribot's Law, hmm?"
K9's mechanical ears began to whirr back and forth. "Affirmative, Master."
"Good dog." He patted K9's head jovially and straightened, taking his hat out of his pocket and setting it on his head. "Well, that's that. I apologise for the inconvenience. Must dash." Beaming, he hurried over to the TARDIS, flung open the door, and all but bolted inside. The wheezing groan of dematerialisation reverberated off the plasteel walls as the unlikely time capsule vanished.
Dr Marius shook her head. "Father always said he was a madman. K9, download all biodata from the Doctor to my terminal; I wanted to get started writing up this paper."
"Negative, Mistress."
She blinked. "Excuse me?"
"No data to retrieve."
She stared. And then she swore. Loudly.
"Er, Dr Marius?" The receptionist had turned back to her workstation. "The Ceres Mining Corps is sending over a shuttle. Thrillseekers bypassed security and tried to scale Ahura Mons. Severe iceburns."
The woman gave a rueful laugh. "Back to ordinary routine, eh, Doctor? Come along, K9."
Gaining the vortex like a drowning man surfacing, the Doctor set the TARDIS in hover mode until he could look her over.
So, that was that. A satisfactory ending to an adventure that had almost ended in disaster. Seeing K9 had given him a pleasant kick of nostalgia. K9! Now there was a companion he'd never needed to worry about. If K9 broke, he could just be patched up again.
Fending off darker thoughts, the Doctor was delighted to find the ship's repair systems had been hard at work. He clucked and brooded over the console for an hour or two, making certain that none of the nanofibres had wormed their way into her systems. Thankfully, every diagnostic showed her clean and clear, apart from a few smoky smudges that he wiped from the console with gentle care. Best of all, the TARDIS responded to his touch again. Her simple bleeps and clicks were a warm, enfolding welcome. Life was back to normal. All of time and space lay open to his whim.
He started to key in a destination.
Then he stopped.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, the Doctor hadn't the foggiest idea where to go.