Warp War Chapter 26: Two Drops of Blood

"Taranium!"

The word was spat out by the Doctor as an incredulous curse."Oh the stupid, stupid children..." He turned to Kim. "I've analyzed the Warp signature of that thing. They used pure Taranium as part of the drive."

Kim tried not to appear impolite. She had just witnessed the end of her world, after all. She wasn't in the mood for technobabble. "So?"

"Taranium is a very rare substance in this universe, Kim. But in E-space? Who knows?"

"What's so important about Taranium?"

"It's naturally time-sensitive. Back in 4000AD the Daleks used an Emm of it to power their Time Destructor. It didn't work, fortunately. But it looks like the Screamers may have it in abundance."

Kim was beginning to lose patience. "And?"

"I think it's the answer to the time mutation, Kim. If they're using Taranium to power their Warp Missiles then the effect on the flow of time in this universe could be catastrophic. According to the readings, the background Taranium level is up a millionfold compared to normal."

"But we're in the fifty-second century," objected Kim. "How could this stuff affect us back in the twentieth?"

The Doctor took a deep breath. "The Time Ram, " he whispered. "When the Tardis hit Dekka's ship and rebounded back to 1968 it carved out a time-corridor. The Taranium seeped through like water down a drain."

"Oh God."

"That's the only explanation I can think of that fits. Time was infected back in 1968 by the Taranium leak, with the results we have experienced."

Kim glanced at her empty left sleeve and thought of her mother. "Look. You keep going on about this mutated time thing. Who's to say what's right or wrong? It's just random isn't it?"

The Doctor leaned back on the control torus. "My people used to think we could keep time on the right track."

"Can't they help us now?"

The Doctor shook his head. "They're all dead. As good as."

"Tell me."

"Not much to tell. We were quite a normal race but then someone decided to stoke up a star or two. Manipulated them. Turned them nova. All of a sudden we had more power than we knew what to do with. We discovered time-travel, regenerated our bodies to cheat death. We grew arrogant. Called ourselves Time Lords, had the nerve to lay down so-called Laws of Time."

"What went wrong?"

"We were merely observers at first. Then we began to get involved and finally we went to war with the Daleks. I mentioned them before. They wanted to rule time themselves. The Time War wiped out both races."

"But not you."

The Doctor looked uncomfortable. "That is my curse. But the fact remains that without the Time Lords time is fragile. Given the right circumstances it can twist with unexpected results."

"And you can see all this?" Kim was incredulous.

"Sort of. And in this case I don't like what I see. There are too many new fixed points. It's a mess, Kim. And I don't know what to do." He entered the centre of the control torus through the small opening at its rear. "Look. I'd like to show you what I mean."

The Doctor snapped on a switch and a new holographic canopy sprang up around him. It was transparent, like a giant soap bubble. Many colours infused its surface. Kim could make out a web of pale blue lines within, surrounding the Doctor like an ethereal wicker basket.

"This is a Timescape, Kim. A representation of all the recent events affecting us. Look at the blue lines. Those are the fixed points. I can't see a break, can you? There's no weakness Kim. Reality, as we now know it, is fixed." His voice seemed to falter momentarily as the Timescape image snapped off.

"Then all the things that have happened...the crash...you and my mother...Jo Grant...the end of the world..."

"But it's plain wrong Kim! I know it. In here." The Doctor tapped his forehead. " I was at the end of the Earth. Billions of years in the future. When the sun expanded and swallowed it up. Not destroyed in the 52nd century. And Jo Grant. I told you about her. She didn't die on Peladon. Then there's your mother and me. I'm not meant to be your father, Kim. It's, well, ridiculous." He had become animated, angry in his helplessness. In sheer frustration he slammed his fist down onto the surface of the controls with some force. Kim had never seen him like this.

He came out from the control torus and looked at his companion. "I'm sorry, Kim. I-I don't think there is anything I can do about it." He sucked at his fist, like a recalcitrant schoolboy.

Kim tried to be breezy. "Look. It's not your fault. We need to find somewhere to rest. So that you can think things out." She took his hand away from his mouth, noting the beginnings of a bruise and a smear of blood. "You haven't broken this have you?"

He shook his head.

"Thank God for that. We'd barely have a pair of hands between us-"

Kim was interrupted by a small chime from the control torus.

They both turned to look at it and saw a remarkable, if unnerving, phenomenon.

Where the Doctor had struck the controls in his anger there was a faint smudge of red.

Blood.

As they watched it seemed to move of its own accord, hovering slightly. It then began to float towards the centre of the torus, becoming a small globule in the process. It reminded Kim of footage she had seen of water in zero-gravity.

"What the hell-?"

The Doctor shushed her frantically.

The blob hung at the centre of the torus, at about head height. Suddenly the Timescape hologram snapped on again. The little drop of blood moved erratically within it, bouncing off the internal blue lines like a pinball.

"It's a Bloodline Search!" exclaimed the Doctor, high-pitched with excitement. "The Tardis is using my genetic material, my DNA, to scan the Timescape! I didn't even know it was capable of this..."

Suddenly the hologram snapped off, leaving the little drop of the Doctor's blood hovering motionless in the air. The Doctor eagerly scanned a readout panel on his control unit but, when he turned to face Kim, disappointment was clearly written on his face.

"No good?" asked Kim.

He shook his head. "Not enough genetic material."

"Well, just give it a bit more of your blood then."

"it's not like that Kim. The sample is reading only 50% viable..." The Doctor straightened up and gave Kim a most searching look. Suddenly he was scrabbling at his egg-timer badge, unclasping it from his coat and straightening out the pin of the clasp. With his other hand he scanned the pin with a flash of blue light from his sonic probe.

"Quickly, Kim. Your thumb!"

"Eh?"

"Don't worry, I've sterilized the pin."

Without further ado the Doctor grabbed Kim's hand and jabbed her thumb with the pin of his badge.

"Hey!"

He squeezed out a bead of blood until it sat like a blister on her skin.

"Come on, Kim."

He led her to the torus and thrust Kim's hand across the threshold. She watched, fascinated as the drop of her blood eased up weightlessly from her thumb. It floated, with unerring accuracy, towards the drop of the Doctor's blood hovering in place.

"You have Time Lord blood in your veins," whispered the Doctor. "You are the other 50% it needs."

The two drops of blood met and formed one. With a suddenness that made them both stand back, the holographic Timescape canopy snapped back on. This time the blood sample flew straight to a single strand of the blue web within. A strand that was noticeably yellow in colour.

"It's found a weakness." The Doctor's voice started as a whisper but ended with a triumphant shout. "IT'S FOUND A WEAKNESS!"

The hologram snapped off. The blood dropped onto the floor.

Wonderingly, the Doctor examined his controls.

"We've got a chance, Kim. Just a single chance. The course is laid in."

"What chance? Where?"

As if on cue the unstable molecules on the Doctor's T-shirt flooded to form a single giant question mark across his chest. "I don't know. But wherever it is, whatever it is, I know it's got something to do with us."

He threw the dematerialisation switch.

(End of Chapter 26)