Chapter Fourteen

A Small Miracle

In the room of swirling colors on the other side of the dimensional fissure, a more controlled Juris watched as the scene in the mind probe room played out before him. He had spent several hours explaining the emotion of love to his captor, having tried to cover as much as he could. From time to time his own emotions would get the better of him and he had to stop to regain his composure. This only served to intrigue the entity all the more and it inquired as to the reasons behind each emotion he experienced as he fought to control his grief. When at last he finished, he was doubtful Asta was capable of grasping any of what he had been trying to impart, but felt he had done the best he could.

Once the Prince finished his explanation, more than half an hour past as the entity assimilated everything. It asked a number of secondary questions that the youth found intriguing and at tempted to answer as thoroughly as before. After a second pause, the entity announced that it was satisfied with the explanation and reactivated the view screen. To Juris' amazement he found that, just as Asta had said, only a few minutes had passed on the planet's surface. He watched as the Doctor was brought into the mind probe room, being inwardly grateful for his lengthy if unnatural interlude. At least it had given him the opportunity to recover, however slightly, from the shock of witnessing his father's brutal murder.

The eerie silence was broken as Asta said almost sadly, "The Doctor speaks the truth. Without my Master, I don't exist."

Juris looked up sharply as an extraordinary thought struck him, and he wondered somewhat hysterically if he were going mad. "No, he's wrong," he breathed, shaking his head. "You are real."

"Explain your meaning."

Not even realizing he had spoken, Juris was startled from his deep thoughts. "What?"

"You say the Doctor is wrong. Why?"

The Prince looked from the entity to the view screen and back. "Because…I think…you may be real after all."

"Your words are meaningless. I have always been real."

"No, I mean real, as in a real person. A living, sentient being, not a thing."

"I am the creation of Ormril," the entity said flatly.

"I could just as easily say I'm a creation of my parents," Juris countered sharply. "But I'm not a thing, I'm a person. I have awareness. I have—" Pausing, he sighed heavily, searching for the right words. "There's a saying, I think, therefore I am. And…well, you seem to do an awful lot of thinking lately."

As if to verify this, the cloud of smoke changed in size several times as the entity took in this fascinating concept. After what seemed an eternity, it said, "I must consider your words," and returned its attention to the viewer where Farrell was still arguing with the Doctor.

"You know nothing, Doctor!" he spat.

"Farrell, are you blind? Can't you see the evil influence at work here? It's sweeping this planet like a cancer. It's taken a boy from a race of beings repulsed by violence and turned him into a cold-blooded creature who'd stand by and watch the murder of his own father—the one person on this entire planet who loved him despite his obviously twisted nature."

("This emotion called love has many facets," Asta observed, only to be shushed by the captive Juris. "Quiet, I'm trying to listen.")

The connections to the Time Lord's head had been completed during this altercation and the Probe operator was at his place at the controls awaiting orders.

"Stop now, Farrell," the Doctor insisted. "Now, while there's still time."

The Inquisitor responded with a laugh of pure sadistic delight. "Your time is up, Doctor," he announced and gave the word to commence.

The Doctor braced himself, knowing that, barring a miracle, the only way he would leave the room was in the same manner as Jason.

In her cell, Peri was in high hopes a miracle might actually be occurring. She was still patiently dabbing drop after drop on the lips of the unconscious Alterran, and thought she saw some color returning to his face. She took the cloth and wiped his face again, only to scowl. In the dim light it was hard to tell anything. It might very well be a shadow.

After another minute, Peri could not deny that something was happening when she felt Jason's lips move against her finger. After a few more drops, they moved again. Then his eye lids fluttered slightly open to reveal dull, unseeing eyes. Encouraged by this sign of progress Peri continued to administer the solution, letting out an involuntary cry when Jason seemed to stir weakly.

Peri lifted the Alterran's head and put the cup to his lips. "Come on, Jason," she encouraged. "Just one little sip. That's it. Come on, one more."

Each little sip revived the Alterran more and more until he returned to partial consciousness. Then his reactions became even more pronounced. The next sip caused him to wince; the one after that, to cough, and what turned out to be his last brought him completely to his senses.

"What're you trying to do? Poison me?" Jason asked indignantly as he pushed the offending liquid away. He sat up slowly, a hand to his aching head. Finding the cloth at his forehead, he placed it over his eyes, leaning forward in obvious pain.

"I hope not," Peri replied sheepishly. "I wasn't sure how much of this stuff I should use."

Despite the fact that his head felt like it had been blown into pieces and then put back together with a sledge-hammer, Jason remembered enough of his ordeal to realize he should not be alive and looked at the young woman beside him. "What stuff?" She told him what she had done, and Jason sat marveling at her.

"Peri, do you have any idea what you've just done?" he said at last.

"No," came the timid reply.

"You've just saved my life. That's what you've just done." Taking the face of the astonished Earth woman in his hands, the Alterran planted a kiss on her mouth before he realized what he was doing. "Thank-you. Thank you very much," he said gratefully.

After a momentary silence, Jason slowly got to his feet. He knew what he had to do, but had absolutely no idea how to go about doing it. "I've got to stop Farrell before he releases Ormril," he muttered. "But how? How?"

"Look, just who is this Ormril character anyway?" Peri asked pointedly. "The Doctor never did get the chance to—"

"The Doctor!" Jason whirled around to face her. "Farrell has the Doctor, too?"

"Yes. They got him while you were—"

"Great. This is just great," the monarch moaned. Seeing the puzzled look on Peri's face, he explained about Ormril's history. How he had been able to create a magnified distortion of his own personality; a separate entity from himself that he could direct mentally. It was designed to take a person's negative emotions and turn them against them, ultimately defeating them.

"But Ormril wasn't happy just defeating an enemy," Jason said in disgust. "He wanted total annihilation. Once an enemy was defeated, he had his entity consume them."

"Consume?" Peri said in distaste. "You mean…it ate them?"

"Not physically, no. It sucked what you might call the life force out of them." Jason paused to allow Peri time to take this in before going on, telling of how Ormril's people had attempted to stop him, only to be completely annihilated themselves. Ormril went on to leave wasteland after wasteland until he was finally stopped and banished in to the alternate dimension from which he was now trying to escape.

"How? If everybody that tried to stop him was killed, who put him there?" Peri wanted to know.

The Alterran gave her a wry smile. "The Time Lord's. In one of their rare instances of intervention, they agreed to step in and do something for once."

"How? If this creature of his can use emotions as a weapon?"

Jason smiled, knowing she was basing her question on the Doctor, who was anything but a typical Time Lord. "Their minds are too well trained. Ormril couldn't twist or control them, and without the emotions of hate or fear to feed on, his was powerless to prevent himself from being trapped."

By this time Peri was beginning to wish she had not asked.

"There must be a dimensional fissure somewhere very close," Jason muttered thoughtfully. "Ormril's probably using it to influence—" He broke off as a horrifying thought struck him. Up until that moment his reasoning had been running parallel to the Doctor's, but his final conclusion was completely different. "Juris!" he gasped. "My Lord, Peri, he's using my son!"

"I know. The Doctor said Farrell—"

"No, not Farrell, Ormril. It's just like before." Seeing the blank look on Peri's face, Jason apologized, explaining that Ormril had tried a daring escape attempt once before. Utilizing a dimensional fissure he had established a link with two people on the nearest planet. They became his main operators; the first acting as a catalyst, stirring up trouble: while the second, a telepath, acted as the pathway through which all mental energies created by the violence were drawn off. The story paralleled the current state of affairs save for one detail. There had not been sufficient power available on the planet to open a portal in the dimensional fissure.

"And that's why the new power plant has inter-dimensional spatial equations in its programming," Peri concluded, grinning at the astonished look she received in reply. "You see? I have been paying attention."

Jason nodded absently, his mind racing. "If Juris is anything like—" Interrupting himself, he said firmly, "He has to be telepathic. It's the only explanation. He'd be the perfect pathway." In a strained voice, he said, "Peri, at all costs, we must close that pathway."