Chapter Eleven

The Brash Young Man

Peri watched the Doctor work for a few minutes before getting bored. He was scowling over his work, making entry after entry into the computer. From time to time a non-communicative grunt would escape him when the holographic image suspended above the table changed.

Peri sighed heavily and wandered aimlessly around the room. She studied the contents of the jars, looked at the books on the shelves, which turned out to be written in a language she could not comprehend. She sauntered over to the French doors and looked out into the courtyard. The Doctor admonished her from venturing out, as there was no telling if any of Farrell's men were about. Eventually she returned to her chair and leaned back, perching her feet on a stool. She was in the process of dozing off when a strikingly handsome young man came into the room by way of the King's private entrance. He was dressed in an exquisite suit of clothes and wore an ornamental collar around his neck. While the latter meant nothing to Peri, it told the Doctor the youth was a member of the nobility and he immediately rose to his feet, casually switching off the holograph as he did so. The young man's response was not what he expected.

"How did you get in here? No one may enter the King's rooms without escort." The newcomer came forward a few steps only to stop and look the Time Lord up and down. "You're the prisoner who escaped last night!" he gasped. "The saboteur from the solar generator!"

By this time Peri was also on her feet. "No, you've got it all wrong," she said, trying to ex plain. "We were—"

"Silence, female!" the brash young man commanded. "I was not addressing you. And when I do, you will address me as sir, or your Royal Highness."

This verbal slap in the face did nothing to endear the surly youth to the Doctor, who had already taken an immediate dislike to him. "You're a member of the elite aristocracy, aren't you, your Royal Highness?" he asked mildly.

"Naturally," the nobleman sniffed, puffing out his chest. "It shows, of course."

"Of course," the Time Lord agreed amiably, his voice hardening as he went on to say, "Your lack of tact and good manners would make you stand out in any crowd."

The Doctor's affront took the aristocrat completely off guard. "How dare you! I'll have you know I'm a member of the Alterran Imperial court."

Not usually one to throw his rank into another's face, the Doctor felt the occasion veritably screamed for an exception. "So am I," he replied devastatingly. "But you're a human inductee, aren't you? No Alterran of my acquaintance could ever be as appallingly arrogant and abrasive as you are—sir."

"You are insolent!"

To the Doctor's astonishment, he realized the ill-mannered youth actually meant to strike him and he took an alarmed step back. Should this ruffian actually turn out to be Alterran, he would possess a strength several times that of the Doctor himself and be capable of inflicting some very serious injuries.

From out of nowhere, an authoritative voice suddenly thundered, "Juris!"

The youth spun around to see an enraged King Jason standing in the doorway, still in his guise as the old man. His eyes, however, were not the kindly ones Peri had looked into the night before. They were blazing with an anger the Doctor knew only too well. "Do my eyes deceive me?" he said angrily. "Or is it possible that you're actually preparing to strike a guest in my own rooms?"

"I can explain—"

"Explain!" Jason roared, his rage and disgust written clearly across his no longer gentle face. "This is unconscionable! You're an Alterran of the Royal Bloodline. What possible explanation could there be for lowering yourself to the level of barbarians?"

"This man is an escaped prisoner!"

"This man is the Doctor," the King informed coldly. It was clear from his tone that this should mean something to the ill-mannered Juris, who responded with a disinterested shrug, infuriating Jason all the more. "Get out! Just get out before I really lose my temper!"

The aristocrat stood glaring at the monarch a moment before striding from the room with as much bravado as he could muster. Jason glared after him, closing his eyes and clenching his fists in frustration once the arrogant youth had gone. "I did not need this today," he complained under his breath. He turned back to his guests, obviously embarrassed by the scene they had just witnessed.

"Who was that unsavory young man?" the Doctor inquired, having been greatly relieved by his friend's timely intervention. "A member of your acting troupe or just a rogue stray from your entourage?"

"Neither." A pained look came to the monarch's face as he replied, "I'm almost ashamed to admit this, Doctor, but—that was my son."

The stunned silence that followed only added to the shame Jason felt for having produced so vile a creature. While at the same time, he loathed himself for feeling this way about the son he still loved very dearly.

"I wish I'd never agreed to let him come to this God-forsaken planet," the Alterran con fessed. "You'd never know it now, but he used to be a gentle and loving person. Now he's nothing but an arrogant, selfish, spoiled brat unworthy of his heritage and birthright."

"Jason…" the Doctor began gently.

The King tried to shake the angry thoughts from his mind, waving a hand in the air. "Never mind, Doctor. You're here to help me sort out this problem with the accidents, not my personal life."

"I'm not entirely convinced the two are unrelated," the Time Lord informed soberly. "Don't you find it just the tiniest bit odd that an Alterran, of all people, should be assimilating the same tendency toward extreme violence that's sweeping this planet?"

Jason met his gaze steadily. "You think it's an alien influence, don't you?"

"Well, don't you?" his friend replied pointedly. "Surely you suspected it before now?"

The King nodded slowly. "I was rather hoping I was wrong." Pausing, he added hauntingly, "You feel it too, don't you? A malignant evil spreading like a cancer, killing all that it touches." He shuddered and hugged himself as a chill ran down his spine.

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Why didn't you tell me you suspected this from the beginning?"

"I didn't want to influence you." Jason shook his head and immediately corrected himself. "No, that's a lie. The truth is I was afraid I was imagining things." He shuddered again. "Anyway, it doesn't seem to matter now."

The Doctor nodded understandingly. If what he suspected proved true, then the son of one of his closest friends was in very serious danger. Keeping this thought to himself, he decided to change the subject. "What did Farrell want, by the way?"

"I don't think even I can remember it all," Jason joked feebly. "He wanted to protest in the strongest terms my having usurped his authority by taking charge of both of you without going through the usual channels." As an afterthought, he added, "He still claims you're the cause of it all, by the way."

"What a surprise," Peri injected dryly.

"He believes, with the two of you in custody, I should consider the investigation nearly complete and—"

"And," the Doctor broke in sharply, "he wants Lord Krystovan to wrangle getting the power plant brought on line."

The monarch blinked. "How on earth did you know that?"

Instead of beaming with pride, the Doctor's face became grave. "Take a look at this." He made a quick entry on the computer, the hologram of the planet appearing over the table again. "I've been analyzing everything Bailey put together. Did you know that all those little accidents of yours have been slowly altering the orbits of the solar generators? They've actually moved from a previously fixed geo-stationary orbit to a slightly higher and more northerly position, which just happens to be where the new power station is located."

A point of light began pulsating on the hologram to indicate the position of the power plant.

"Okay, I'll bite," Peri injected from her place across the room. "Why were they moved?"

Looking like a professor giving a lecture to a class of eager students, the Doctor held up a finger. "What would happen," he asked tantalizingly, "if all the generators were linked together and their combined energies focused on one specific point in space?"

The image changed again. A beam of light stretched from one satellite to the next until they formed a ring like a beaded necklace around the planet. The light from each generator was then beamed out into space where they joined to form a cone directly above the pulsing dot on the planet's surface.

Jason struggled to grasp the significance of it all, but failed to see what his friend was getting at. "Alright, Doctor, I admit it. I'm lost."

"Try adding inter-dimensional spatial theory into the equation," the Doctor said helpfully. "After all, that's what's been programmed, however incorrectly, into the computer in the power plant."

The Alterran caught his breath, his eyes growing wide. The Time Lord confirmed his fears when he touched a final key and the hologram changed to form its final image. A solid beam of energy moved up from the power plant, intersecting the point of the cone. The instant all energy points touched, a swirling vortex opened in space above the cone.

"Violà!" the Doctor announced triumphantly. "The entrance to another dimension."