"Ah, now we come to the delicate part," he said, his habitual half smile gathering a new intensity. "Just remember, Jasmine, you're a robot."
"I'm a wha..."
He was pushing open the door and ushering her forward, and she stifled her own protests at the sight of six pairs of curious eyes turning to meet them.
The white-coated occupants of the room were clustered avidly about a gleaming steel platform at its centre, finding their way between the hulking, tangled machines which competed for the space. On the platform itself lay a disassembled mishmash of human and mechanical parts; a fleshy hand, perfect down to the fine hairs and slight mottling of the skin, segued into a splayed coil of gleaming silver and transparent pipes, rods and filaments; a head, the face that of a thickset, authoritative man, was split open at the back to reveal a firmament of flickering gold lights. One of the scientists stepped forward, running his eyes over Jasmine in a proprietorial manner.
"Well, I trust you're satisfied. As I said, she is a perfect facsimile down to the finest detail."
"She's not bad," the Master said with an air of condescension. "I think the original was a little plumper, but we'll just have to say she lost weight during her captivity."
Jasmine clenched her teeth and made herself stare blandly ahead, robot-fashion. The scientist looked sniffy.
"I see. Perhaps you'll bring her through and I'll prepare the vault for her."
Vault? Jasmine hesitated nervously, and it was the surreptitious prod of the Master's knuckles in the small of her back that got her moving forward, following the man in the white coat through a side door into a second capacious chamber. One entire wall, forty foot by forty foot, was taken up with an immense circular slab of gleaming steel that must have weighed hundreds of tons. The scientist hurried over to a looming bank of computers and busied himself at the controls.
"You're not really going to put me in there?" whispered Jasmine, gazing apprehensively at the gigantic vault door.
The Master smiled slowly, his eyes avidly focussed on the great metal construction.
"I most certainly am. Nothing to worry about. The interior is climate controlled, atmosphere controlled, humidity controlled. It's one of the safest places in the galaxy, and one of the most secure. That's why I'm going to need your help, and the Doctor's, if I'm going to rob it."
He forestalled her bewildered rejoinder by taking her elbow and guiding her firmly towards a rectangular plastic casket which emerged from the wall just under the curve of the door. Six foot long, slightly wider at the near end, and lidless, it looked disturbingly like an open coffin.
"You'll lie down in this," the Master explained. "And when that man has coded in the assorted security information it will whisk you off for storage inside the vault itself."
"And what do you expect me to do once I'm in there?"
The Master's eyes slid briefly over to the man at the computer panel before he answered:
"You'll await my signal," he said, and slipped a tiny black metal sphere into her hand. "On this. Then, you'll open the main vault door for me."
"Open it? How am I supposed to..."
"Here." He produced a sheet of paper, folded repeatedly into a compact square to fit into the palm of a hand. "The vault was designed to keep people out, not in. Follow these instructions and you shouldn't have any difficulties."
Jasmine felt a familiar resigned, sinking sensation as she eyed the confining box she was expected to climb into and assimilated the reality of what she was being expected to do.
"You could have told me this earlier, but you had to spring it on me at the last moment, didn't you? You're worse than the Doctor."
The Master smiled faintly.
"I think the universe would agree with you on that score."
"What are you planning on stealing anyway? I always thought you weren't in it for the money."
"Ah, no. To be frank I'm mostly in it for, as you humans say, the hell of it. The unscrupulous accumulation of power and knowledge has kept me occupied down the ages. But on this particular occasion I'm in it for something rather more fundamental. Survival. My survival, to be precise."
"Survival?" Warily she looked him up and down. "What do you mean? Are you ill or something?"
"In a manner of speaking. I am afflicted with the disease known as life." He smiled in what could have been taken for sympathy at her confusion. He spread out his hands and inspected his fingernails. "I look well enough, don't I? A little pale-skinned but otherwise a picture of health. Well, so I should, I only acquired this body quite recently. But like all things it will in due course decay and grow old and I shall have to find another, and another, and another after that. It's difficult, dangerous, and to be quite honest rather tedious. Hence my ambition to break the cycle, and remain forever in my present form, unchanging, for all eternity."
His dark eyes glittered and grew distant, and Jasmine had to restrain herself from taking a defensive step back.
"Immortality?" she asked. "The Doctor says..."
"Yes, yes, I can imagine. The Doctor has many exceptional qualities but ambition is not among them. He is prepared to live out his allotted time and then die, and contents himself with the platitude that it is the natural order of things." The Master's face hardened unsmilingly before relaxing again. "I personally do not hold myself subject to the natural order of things."
He glanced over again at the scientist, still busy at the controls, before continuing.
"You saw the robot copy of you. Unimpressive, wasn't it? As you so rightly observed, no matter how cleverly programmed it is, it could never be a completely convincing replacement because a computer simply doesn't function like an organic mind. Most computers, I should say. Various mad scientists and crackpot dictators have attempted to build an artificial living intelligence, a machine that can genuinely think as we understand the term. The results have been mixed, to say the least, and those which could arguably be described as successful have been the size of small space cruisers, so the prospect of a thinking, intelligent android remains remote. Except for the Hergan Anthropos, of course.
"Its origins are obscure, but it was unearthed in the Hergan asteroid cluster about twenty years ago, and was the subject of first a bidding war and then an actual war between the major technology corporations of the region. It was an android, with an infinitely reconfigurable, dynamically self-assessing mechanical brain capable of mimicking every function of the organic mind. A unique technological miracle. For twenty years scientists have been trying unsuccessfully to unlock the secret of its design. And at the end of the day it wound up here, in that vault."
The Master eyed the great metal door covetously.
"I will steal the Anthropos. Its mind is blank, empty now, so I will transfer my own consciousness into it, and live forever, immune to both age and sickness." He gave a half smile and a shrug. "As long as I keep an oil can handy and avoid excessive humidity."
Jasmine looked at him in disbelief.
"You want to be a machine?"
"We are all machines. I will be a unique, exceptional machine. So no change there."
"Oh, God." She dropped her head and rubbed her hand agitatedly across her eyes. "You're insane. How did I end up here, with you?" She looked up. "All right, so I open the door for you. How are you expecting to get past all those scientists and guard robots?"
"Ah. That's where the Doctor comes in." He took a moment to watch her baffled expression before continuing. "Feigle has made a common mistake. He equates the Doctor's pacifist inclinations with weakness. He has no idea of the danger he's in. The Doctor has killed more sentient beings over the ages than I ever have, and when he realises my precautions will stop him from rescuing you in a low-key, underhanded manner he will have no hesitation in doing it in the most direct, spectacular and destructive fashion imaginable. I can't tell exactly what he'll do, of course, but I know it'll be very soon now, and though a certain amount of improvisation will be required on my part I'm confident that in the ensuing mayhem the combination of your help from within the vault and the high security clearance Feigle's money has bought me will enable me to retrieve the Anthropos and be gone before anyone has the presence of mind to wonder what happened to me."
"And what about me?"
The Master looked at her with empty, dispassionate eyes.
"What about you?"
"The Doctor will be expecting to find me in my cell, or in the lab. If I'm down here, helping you, how's he going to rescue me?"
"Quite," said the Master. "Well, who knows? Perhaps he'll find you anyway. He's really quite good at that sort of thing."
"Can't I just come with you?"
The slight twitch of one eyebrow indicated that he was genuinely surprised. He paused for a moment and said thoughtfully:
"Why would I allow you to do that?"
"Because it wouldn't be any trouble for you if you're leaving anyway, and because I'm helping you now."
He continued to look at her in silence. He seemed to be waiting for her to add something to this.
"Because of what Feigle will do to me if I'm still here when he realises what we've done!"
Again, no response. With a sense of desperation, Jasmine thought hard.
"Because some day, the Doctor's gratitude, and mine, just might come in useful to you."
The Master blinked. Jasmine waited edgily while he considered the point with an air of cool detachment, until at last he focussed his hard, dark eyes upon her and said:
"If you become a hindrance to me in any way..."
"I understand."
He gave a curt nod.
"Then you may come. We'll send the Doctor a message once we're clear of the station and then I'll leave you somewhere he can pick you up."
Jasmine felt a light-headed sense of relief, as if the glimpse of a distant escape route was the same as actually being free. A matter of seconds later the scientist turned from the controls:
"All right, it's ready. Get her into the casket."
Jasmine wrapped her arms about herself to restrain a shudder as she looked down at the confining narrow box she was expected to climb into. She turned to the Master.
"You will come for me, won't you?"
A wicked light sparkled in his eyes, and he leaned forward with a grin, white in the black of his beard.
"Trust me."