Chapter 11
Rula slipped through the stone door as soon as it was open wide enough and leapt into the room. The old man was still there, looking startled and pointing the sonic screwdriver at her in a way that he hoped was threatening. The Time Lord was alone, a hovering viewing globe behind him showing inside the ceremony cave that Rula had just fled. She could make out a tiny, yellow-clad figure who had taken the stand. He relaxed slightly on recognising Rula and used the screwdriver to close the door behind her.
"Shouldn't you be at my trial? Derrin's giving his testimony," he said.
She strode towards him, awe-struck, and he raised his guard again.
"You're Doctor!" she cried.
The man who was once the Doctor sighed.
"I'm not him," he said simply.
"But...they called you Doctor."
"The Doctor," he corrected, "and he came here long ago but never left. I went in his place."
"I don't understand," said Rula.
"What does it matter?" he said brusquely.
"The Doctor...whoever he is...had something to do with the death of Reverend Mother Maren. And they think you're the Doctor so you must have been involved too."
"Where did you get that from? There's no way the Sisterhood would let recorded history have Maren topping herself to save a Time Lo-"
"So you were there!" she squealed with delight at the new knowledge.
"Where did you hear that name from?" he demanded.
"One of the elders...Ohica, one of my neural mainframe participants, she was there when Maren sacrificed herself. But never mind that. This is perfect! I can use your memories to fill in the gaps in the mainframe."
"That's why you came back? So I could help with your experiment?!" the old man said angrily. "It may have escaped your notice," he gestured to the globe, "but I'm a little busy here! Go away!"
He turned back to the viewing globe and crossed his arms. The silence hung between them like a curtain.
Rula didn't leave. She wasn't letting a living witness to history out of her sight. She had too many questions, her curiosity was winning out against her instinct to run. She suspected his would too, in spite of his temper.
"What do you mean gaps?" he asked eventually without turning around.
"Well...uh...Ohica's mind is too atrophied and-"
"Is?" he interrupted, turning back to face her, "You mean, Ohica's still alive?"
"Just about. She's been off the elixir for centuries now, she should have gone long ago."
The old man stroked his scruffy beard thoughtfully. He looked down at the lights from the neural mainframe still scattered around his feet.
"Which one is Ohica?" he asked, pointing down at them.
"I don't know, but I can find out. Uh...shouldn't you be watching the trial?"
"I hate repeats."
It took the pair a few minutes to gather up the blue lights, which were actually neural nodes containing the original reading from the elders, and repair the damage to the machine. The work was speeded up with the sonic screwdriver and the Time Lord's surprisingly precise knowledge of what he'd done to wreck it. Apparently, his dismantling of the machine had been "organised chaos". Shortly, they had everything in place and Rula skipped to the door to turn the lights off while the old man activated the machine with the sonic. Ten blue lights flared into life across the room, but one flickered precariously.
"That one," Rula said, unable to see the Time Lord in the dark, "the unstable one. But you won't get a good reading from it, not with the state of Ohica's mind."
"Indeed," a gravelly voice said through the gloom. "I'll have to go straight to the source."
Rula flicked the lights on just in time to see the old man pluck Ohica's node from machine between his thumb and forefinger and pocket it. He turned to the young Sister.
"Will you take me to her?"
"Why?"
"Because, from what I've seen of the Sisterhood today, chances are Ohica's being kept alive for some reason. I'm willing to bet whoever's behind it also had something to do with what happened to me...to the Doctor."
"And Ohila's murder?"
"That too."
Rula looked around nervously, then met the old man's eyes again.
"I can't. I don't want to get mixed up in this. I've been gone too long already. I…" she trailed off, tears in her eyes.
"Rula," he cooed soothingly, "if you help me, I'll tell you everything you want to know about what happened to Maren but, if I'm right…" he produced the neural node from his pocket again and held it out, "...you'll hear it straight from the jarnik's mouth."
The young fledging still looked uncertain.
"Also!" the daft old man said suddenly, patting his coat and producing a yellow foil packet from the other pocket, open at the top but folded over tightly. "I'll give you a Quaver."
With everyone at the trial, the Warrior got his first proper look at the inside of the deserted temple as Rula led him, free of the sweltering robe that he'd left in the lab, through grand stone corridors. The floor was paved with marble, decorated with thick ringed patterns that clearly shared a common ancestor with Old High Gallifreyan. Rock of shimmering garnet made up the walls, almost every visible inch obscured by tapestries, with the same looped motif as the floor, hung dangerously close to innumerable torches which cast the way ahead in a forbidding crimson light.
The novelty of moving through the temple unrestricted wore off once the Warrior realised that they were all more or less identical. Despite their need for haste - the Warrior estimated that the trial was coming to a close, he was running out of time - Rula wouldn't move faster than a brisk walk and she winced with every footfall. The Warrior surmised that Sisters typically move through the temple at a slow, reverential pace and the idea of moving faster, along with the noise the Warrior's boots squeaking and slipping on the marble floor, was unnerving her. Eventually, they stopped at a blank bit of wall and the young Sister gestured silently, though quite unnecessarily, at a panel and imitating waving something. At her prompting, the Warrior produced the sonic screwdriver and used setting 63-Q, otherwise known as the lockpick, to run through every known security protocol in at least two-thirds of the Universe until it found one that caused a heavy thud behind the door and the panel light to switch from red to green. A section of the wall slid aside, revealing a doorway into a room lit dimly by a dozen candles, their flames still.
Rula stepped cautiously inside.
"Sister Ohica? May I come in? I have a visitor for you."
No response came. Rula turned to the Warrior.
"She usually has a serving chief tending to her, guess he's at the trial too."
At Rula's bidding, the Warrior stepped after her and the door slid shut behind him. The room was sparsely furnished. A single wooden chair accompanied a four-poster bed with gold trim along amber curtains that were drawn back. Inside, a sleeping creature was nestled among the blankets. Its impish face was sallow and shriveled, with a thin nose and cracked lips of a dull, faded gold. A few wisps of grey hair over the inert face rose and fell with laboured breathing. The Warrior, still holding the sonic screwdriver, changed the setting and scanned it over the slumbering woman, shaking his head as each change in the device's pitch revealed a new ailment.
"Aren't you doing anything to help her?" the Warrior whispered.
"Like what? The elixir is a cure-all, we don't need medics. Ohica chose to end her service, which means no more elixir. All we can do now is make her comfortable and…"
"Let her die," the Warrior finished her sentence distastefully. Then he said, "It cures everything?"
"By degrees," replied Rula. "Small doses will keep you alive but won't cure you. A proper dose will cure you temporarily, regular administering will eventually make it permanent."
"What about death? Can it resurrect?"
"Theoretically, but it's a grave sin to revive a Sister who has chosen to die."
"What about Ohila? She didn't choose to die. Why hasn't the Sisterhood brought her back?"
"I suppose they don't know the will of Pythia is in this situation, there hasn't been a sudden death on Karn since Maren and even that was by choice."
The thing in the bed stirred at Rula's words. Two large brown eyes opened within the nest and rested on the girl's face, regarding her with calm recognition, before moving on to the man. The Warrior saw brown irises thin and pupils dilate. Suddenly, the bed exploded in a swirl of scarlet blankets, limbs and loose burgundy robes, barely hanging on the bones of the frail creature that was now standing on the bed, finger jabbing in his direction.
"Doctor! Doctor! DOCTOR!" she wailed.
The Warrior had leapt back in surprise but Rula was unperturbed.
"Hello, Ohica," the Warrior stammered. "Not quite, but even if I was...him, I've regenerated, you shouldn't recognise me."
"She doesn't," Rula answered nonchalantly, "she always says that."
Ohica fixed her wide eyes on Rula, dropping to hands and knees and peering into the young Sister's impassive face.
"Always says that? The Doctor always says that! The Doctor lies!" she squealed.
Rula ignored her, "See what I mean, Doctor? Atrophied. Useless. Not sure what you want you think she can tell you but here we are."
The Warrior shot her an icy look and turned to the old woman.
"Sister Ohica?"
Ohica whirled around, still on hands and knees, and faced the Warrior.
"Can you tell me what you remember? About the Doctor? And Ohila?"
"Doctor, Doctor! Sarah and Solon! Morbius and Maren-" she stopped at her last word and shuddered. Ohica began grasping around her, finding the strewn blankets and clutching them to her.
"Ohila tried to help me. My fault...my fault...my fault…" her voice quietened and she kept repeating those two words at a murmur, no longer meeting the man's eyes.
"Ohica. Do you want to sleep? Do you want me to help you sleep?" said the Time Lord, pulling up the wooden chair and sitting.
The creature nodded and lay down, looking at the Warrior expectantly. The old man reached out with both hands and cradled her face gently, then he placed two fingers of each hand on Ohica's temples and each thumb along her jawline. Her watery brown eyes and his bloodshot blue eyes closed in unison. The Warrior took a deep breath.
And entered her mind.