Jogging along at a steady pace, the giant sled with it's prisoners crept gradually closer to what seemed at first glance to be a castle, yet which couldn't be. Could it?
'A castle!' declared the Doctor, having initially persuaded himself that he was wrong.
'What might that be?' asked the alien leader, whose name, the Doctor had wheedled out of him, was Sorbusa. However massive his physical presence might be, the alien seemed cowed and timid. Thrown on the defensive, the Doctor supposed. In a brutal culture that didn't tolerate mistakes or the mistaken, Sorbusa was now one of the dispossessed minors he had once lorded over.
'A castle? A castle is a large fortified building designed to provide shelter for it's inhabitants,' rattled off the Doctor. 'A single protected entrance, crenellations, towers at each corner. What a coincidence of architecture!'
Sorbusa merely looked puzzled. One of his detachment leaned closer.
'The guards say it is the residence of Lord Excellency Sur, head of the Warrior caste in this region.'
Quick to pick up parataxic patterns in the bio-vore's face, the Doctor detected more puzzlement.
'A new title to you, eh?' he asked.
'Blast you, alien!' snorted Sorbusa. 'I don't know how you discover these things - '
'Well,' drawled the Doctor, with feigned nonchalance. 'A chap like myself, well-travelled, been around a bit, seen one or two things, gets to know how the locals act and react. And you've never heard of the title "Excellency" before.'
'No,' muttered Sorbusa. True enough. When he left Homeworld there had been no such rank or title. 'A one-syllable name, however, denotes high rank.'
Off to the west, another team of bio-vores were dragging a huge cylinder across the sands. The end facing the team of towers was covered with a series of grilles, structured in layers. Their progress was slow and spasmodic, a token of a hard job and long hours.
'Interesting,' commented the Doctor. 'Some variety of sieve or dredge, I take it?'
'May the devil's wind take you, alien!' snapped Sorbusa, before looking himself and making a muted sound of surprise. 'Yes it is! An Element Sieve. At least that much remains from my time.'
"Element Sieve"? wondered the Doctor. Must be used to extract minerals and metals from the desert sands. Another interesting datum to include in his knowledge of – call it Wasteworld. Metal-poor. Mineral-deficient. And, of course, devoid of any non-aquatic plant life.
'You can call me "The Doctor",' he told Sorbusa. 'Tri-syllabic. Makes me important, but not very.'
'Silence amongst the prisoners!' shouted a guard. 'Silence in the presence of Lord Excellency Sur!'
The sled whispered on it's runners into the inner courtyard of the sprawling alien castle, to be met by more guards, armed and waiting alertly. The Doctor and Sorbusa were separated from the other prisoners, flanked by two bio-vores, another bringing up the rear and a fourth leading the way. They were marched into the castle, along corridors and finally led to a dead end. The leading guard turned to face them, weapon levelled.
'Not even a blindfold?' jibed the Doctor. Sorbusa pointed at the floor. Incised in the gritty surface was a circle.
'A trans-mat into - '
' – a prison cell,' explained the alien, as their surroundings suddenly became a featureless cube only seven feet high, forcing the bio-vore to crouch down.
'Oh, yes, I see. No way in or out. And the floor must be a trans-mat platform itself, to allow the guards to remove us again?'
Sorbusa merely grunted in reply. The Doctor felt a pang of sympathy for the alien. Revived after five millenia asleep, hoping to be received as a hero, and actually under a probably death sentence. He laughed ironically.
'Sorry, not very appropriate, was it?' he explained. 'It's just that I never expected to end up underneath a castle in a dungeon.'
Sorbusa clarified their situation. This cell wasn't underneath the castle, it was hundreds of kilometres away, buried thirty metres under the surface of the deep desert. If they improbably escaped from the prison cell, they would still die.
'Thorough planners, your aristocrats,' commented the Doctor. 'Except it's bad policy to allow more than one prisoner to a cell. It encourages dissent, and information-sharing.'
The bio-vore twisted and peered around the cell.
'Perhaps there is monitoring equipment built into the cell structure. More likely, we prisoners exceed the capacity of the available cells.' The trunk-like torso pivoted to allow Sorbusa to look directly at the Doctor. 'We are stuck here, Thedoctor. Since you are the first alien ever to set foot on Homeworld, perhaps you can inform me about your own world.'
'I wondered when your lack of curiosity would wear off!' chaffed the Doctor. For a good ten minutes he gave an overview of planet Earth, describing the abundant flora and fauna, whilst trying to subtly include the billions of humans, many at this moment in time armed to the teeth and busy waging war.
After he finished, the alien sat silent for what seemed an age, staring into space. Eventually he recalled himself, shaking his body.
'Oh, my apologies, Thedoctor. Your planet's description matches that of our own, ten thousand years ago. Life energy in abundance. Now we are reduced to emergency plantations for oxygen.'
'No wildlife?'
'None at all. Long extinct.'
Finally asking the question that had been nagging at him, the Doctor tried not to be too eager.
'How did this extinction take place?'
The explanation didn't take long. Bio-vores reproduced by asexual fission, the energy derived from living matter helping to create a smaller "bud" from the parent adult, it's genetic material differing from the parent by virtue of the type and amount of energy ingested. The young bio-vore split off and became an individual, able to absorb energy immediately.
A critical population point eight thousand years was attained and passed, with the bio-vore's anarchic society becoming the dominant civilisation and species on Delta Pavonis. With horrifying speed, the planet's animal and plant species became extinct, either being killed directly for their energy or indirectly when their habitats died off. A series of fratricidal wars were fought, with bio-vores killing each other for basic life energies. A formal, strict and authoritarian government structure emerged from the chaos of war. Emergency plantations were instituted, to provide oxygen for the collapsing atmosphere. Vast hibernation dormitories were created, powered by geothermal power, allowing a significant fraction of the population to sleep and thus not need life energy input.
The Infiltration Complex plan had been put forward as a desperate measure to harvest bio-resources from other worlds –
' – difficult without rockets or interplanetary travel,' interrupted the Doctor.
Sorbusa spread his huge hands at the word "rocket", indicating incomprehension. At an encouraging gesture from the Doctor, he continued. The very acme of astronomical research revealed a number of distant worlds within a sphere fifty light years across that could support life, four hundred and twenty-three in all. Without any physical means of transport, the trans-mat Infiltration Complexes were sent out – using gravity lenses at the mid-point of the beam. A gravity lens –
'I know, I know. You use the space-time distortion of a stellar mass within a few radians of your beam to re-focus it at the mid-point. Ingenious!' beamed the Doctor, glad to have his own hypothesis confirmed.
'Your scientific knowledge is formidable, Thedoctor,' admitted Sorbusa. 'Exactly so. Only nineteen Infiltration Complexes could be sent this way.'
'None of which were successful.'
'Not really, no. Our Infiltration Complex on Target Nine did manage to send some biological samples back before being destroyed, we presumed by the native population. The complex on Target Eleven functioned for a week before being destroyed by vulcanism, and found no life on that world. The complex on Target Fourteen arrived on an ice-field and collapsed underneath the polar cap.'
'And on my planet, Earth, your Target Seventeen, the Infiltration Complex landed in a desert, with no indigenous life.'
'We closed down operations and went into hibernation, Thedoctor. Better an endless sleep than a dusty death on Homeworld, we thought.'
How lucky for Earth the Infiltration Complex landed in a barren landscape with no nearby sources of food for the bio-vores! If even one were to be allowed to grow unrestrictedly on Earth, given the super-abundance of energy resources, they would proliferate like a plague, a literal plague. They would kill the entire planet in a matter of years.
Food for thought. The Doctor extrapolated from what Sorbusa told him. "Formal, strict and authoritarian" government, indeed! That was an euphimism for a ruthless planetary dictatorship, established to maintain order at all costs. Doubtless it had led to a stratified society, the scientific one that Sorbusa came from. Matters hadn't rested there, however. No. Whilst the Infiltration Complex on "Target Seventeen" lay dormant, society here on Wasteworld evolved into further stratification. Probably three layers with sub-layers within those.
'Lords, soldiers and peasants,' said the Doctor to the cell walls. 'Self perpetuating neo-feudal fascism – despicable!' he shouted, genuinely annoyed. 'Might is not right!'
The bio-vore looked at his fellow prisoner with bewilderment. Of course might was right! It was the only way! Do unto others before they did unto you, and faster and harder.
Except, mused Sorbusa, that path had led to his imprisonment here.
Perhaps – perhaps there was an alternative.
His Excellency Lord Sur examined the recordings made of the alien prisoner, Thedoctor, in conversation with the heretic throwback Sorbusa. Sur had to admit that the alien had a quick mind and prodigious scientific knowledge.
There were questions raised that Sur wanted answers to. What were "rockets"? Thedoctor also mentioned conflict raging near the Infiltration Complex involving "aircraft". Not only that, there were "fossil fuels" located in that region, which powered vehicles. Powered how? Could a bio-vore subsist on fossil fuel? Sur wanted to know.
First, he put out a summons to the Administrative Auditor. Let that idle rascal earn the energy he leeched off bottled algae daily!
When the Auditor came pattering into the antechamber, Sur indicated the display panels on the walls above his podium.
'Oh! Thirteen prisoners!' exclaimed the Auditor. Three was the norm. Never more than six.
'Auditor Montrudo,' hissed Sur, leaning forward. 'These prisoners are heretical throwbacks from the far past. I want to know if it is legal and permissible to Eviscerate them.'
The Auditor went scuttling back to his scroll-filled room, ready to provide a precedent for the Lord.
'Meantime,' ordered the Lord. 'Bring the alien to me.'
The transition from cell to castle was disorientingly rapid. One second the Doctor was thinking, trying to extrapolate a society and civilisation that had evolved on the desert world of Delta Pavonis, then next he was in a corridor, facing four armed guards.
'Most disruptive,' he scolded them. 'I was having profound thoughts, you know.'
Discreetly, betraying nervousness that the Doctor doubted was due to him, his guards escorted him up and along corridors, reaching a part of the castle that had tapestries on the walls. Subtle geometric patterns graced what must be woven glass fabrics, hanging in great draperies reaching from floor to ceiling. The floor had inlaid clusters of minerals, of which the Doctor recognised haematite and chalcedony.This whole part of the castle constituted a display of mineral and manpower wealth designed as status symbols. The Doctor felt sure Excellency Lord Sur considered himself to be of overweening importance.
The design of the inner citadel certainly underlined that impression. The Doctor, as a prisoner, had to walk in a deep trench cut into the floor. This room-long gap was constructed with alien size in mind, and the Time Lord vanished into it completely. His guards remained at floor level, looking down at him anxiously lest he manage to vanish completely whilst under their eyes. Hurried gestures sent him along the trench, feet settling softly on an organic blanket that the Doctor didn't want to look closely at.
An alien wearing what must be a cape stood at the end of the trench.
'Lord Excellency Sur, I presume,' the Doctor began, trying to combine the correct degree of obsequiousness and vigour in his tone, and also not to laugh at the alien, who looked like an amateur dramatics villain.
Sur's tone, however, was anything but uncertain. It was that of a creature used to being obeyed, without the possibility of dissent. Behind it lay the threat of Evisceration.
'Tell me about "rockets",' ordered Sur.
'Invented by the Chinese circa 300 BC, later refined by William Congreve, shortly due to be mounted on the Typhoon aircraft for ground-strafing.'
'Interplanetary rockets,' growled Sur.
'Ah! Yes, shortly to be inaugurated by Werner at Peenemunde. Werner Von Braun. Yes, with the A4 ballistic rocket, using liquid fuel, the space age can be said to have begun. From there the various superpowers on Earth will create fleets of rockets, powered by solid-fuel, that are able to travel beyond the atmosphere and to the Earth's primary satellite. Nuclear-engined models are used – sorry, will be used – to travel to Mars. Earth's nearest neighbour in the Solar System.'
Sur felt that the alien was mocking him. In answering one question he had created others. What was the liquid fuel that rockets used? Nuclear-engines? Aircraft? What might they be? Any connection with the long-extinct air gliders, those creatures now deemed almost mythical?
The Doctor cocked his head to one side, having surely sown the seeds of doubt in the alien's mind.
'Lord Sur, allow me to clarify matters. You don't have fossil fuels on Homeworld?'
Sur considered having the alien punished for temerity, then decided to wait.
'What are these fuels you speak of?'
'The remnants of prehistoric forests, geologically compressed over millions of years into flammable material, retained in the mantle of the planet. The solid form is coal, the liquid is petroleum, the vapourous one is gas. They can be refined for better quality, or to create plastic compounds.'
This was novel, indeed, considered the alien aristocrat.
'We have no such geological heritage. What of the nuclear engine you mentioned?'
Playing for time, the Doctor responded with a query of his own.
'Do you have a periodic table? A table of the basic chemical elements? My answer won't make sense without one.'
Not wanting to seem ill-informed, Sur summoned his Head Technician, who rapidly obtained a periodic table inscribed on a flexible glass sheet the size of a bedspread.
'Circular,' said the Doctor, impressed. 'And also missing many elements. Here, and here, there ought to be a long series of elements called the Lanthanides and Actinides respectively.'
'We have theoretical knowledge of such elements,' explained the Head Technician. 'From spectroscopic analysis of the stars. But they do not exist here on Homeworld.'
Or at least they don't exist on the surface, the Doctor silently chided.
'These elements, particularly Uranium, by virtue of their structure, can be used as fuel in nuclear reactors, to create power. A compact engine of tremendous output can be constructed by using fissile material.'
Looking for confirmation from his Head Technician, Sur discovered that the wretch was looking into the middle distance, doubtless churning over the incredible possibilities of nuclear engines.
'This is possible?' asked the Lord. The technician abruptly recalled himself to the present and gave an emphatic "yes!"
Next the alien pointed at the Doctor and asked the obvious question, one that needed a satisfactory answer.
'Why did you come here, alien? Why did you jump into the trans-mat field? You have not explained that to anyone yet.'
'A chance to travel to another world, naturally,' half-lied the Doctor. If he got the chance to travel to another world, he usually took it, which made it only half a lie. 'I jumped before realising that there were a dozen aliens on the platform already. In hindsight I might have made a slight miscalculation.'
Coughing in a hint that his throat had dried out, the Doctor caught a calculating look from the bio-vore.
'Yes? You want something?'
'A little water wouldn't go amiss,' said the Doctor. 'Nor food.'
At a gesture, attendant guards brought bowls of thick green soup and water. Producing a spoon from the pocket of his waistcoat, the Time Lord amazed and alarmed the watching bio-vores by spooning up the soup, smacking his lips and declaring it to be a trifle bland, but most welcome. The water he sipped slowly, thinking about how the interrogation was going, both from his own point of view and from that of the alien leader.
From one viewpoint, he was like Scheherezade, trying to keep an audience interested by leaving the tale at a cliffhanger, with the cliffhanging element – literally – being his knowledge of advanced scientific techniques. Then, too, he must avoid giving out too much knowledge, for fear that the ruthless aristocrat in front of him would decide that the alien was dispensable.
'Excellency Lord Sur,' he started, bowing low. 'Might I make another request?'
Sur's torso leaned backwards – a gesture of surprise, recognised the Time Lord – and he made a non-commital gesture with his hands.
'I don't know anything about your world. That means I don't have any knowledge of what baseline I am working from. Would it be possible for me to access a library – a data repository?'
'No!' boomed Sur, twirling his cape dramatically. 'You may not, Thedoctor. Guards! Return the alien to his cell!'
Reflectively, pretending to be downcast, the Doctor worked Sur's refusal into the background algorithm he was mentally constructing of Wasteworld and the bio-vore society.
When Thedoctor suddenly reappeared in the cramped underground cell, Sorbusa couldn't physically express his surprise – his size and the low ceiling of the room prevented that.
'You are alive!' he exclaimed, strangely glad that the small, perceptive alien hadn't suffered Evisceration.
'I certainly am,' grumbled the Doctor. 'But I shan't recommend the catering or travel arrangements to my friends!' he shouted. 'Eavesdroppers,' he explained to Sorbusa.
The heretic nodded. He gestured towards a pair of bottles stood upright in a corner, sustenance sent into the cell by trans-mat.
'I saved supplies for later. Would you care for some?'
The Doctor paused and looked piercingly at Sorbusa.
'How very thoughtful. Thank you, but I've already had food.'
Food for the body, he told himself. In the meantime he had mental fodder to digest, and plenty of it.
Fourteen: Shadows from the PastWithout a watch, the Doctor found it difficult to mark the passage of time in the featureless glass box he and the Detachment Leader were imprisoned in. Subdued lighting generated by the walls allowed him to see, yet was dim enough for him to take a long sleep. The walls possessed an opacity that prevented him from seeing beyond them.
Baulked at any external stimulation, he turned instead to Sorbusa. The big alien remained silent most of the time, occasionally looking at the Doctor, obviously debating internally.
'I take it that your planet is poor in metals and minerals, Sorbusa,' asked the Time Lord of his fellow prisoner. 'Big emphasis on recycling.'
'Yes,' agreed Sorbusa. 'Always. More of a demand now than when I was last here, I would venture.'
'And part of your population hibernates?'
'Correct again. The fraction used to be that twenty per cent of the population remained dormant in hibernation shelters. With the emergency plantations extinct, the proportion now in hibernation may have increased.'
That was a significant datum. Advanced hibernation technology. The ability to sustain millions of bio-vores indefinitely. With a prickling of his scalp, the Doctor began to feel he might have given too much information out to Sur.
'Powered geo-thermally?' asked the Doctor again. 'And how long have you had this technology?'
For millenia. Long ages before the Infiltration Complexes were ever despatched.
'The great stone chambers in the desert are where my people lie,' intoned Sorbusa, sounding almost religious.
"The great stone chambers" sounded like the vast granite sarcophagi seen from the prison sled, those huge structures in the desert depths.
'Have you any idea why Sur would prevent me from accessing data about Waste – sorry, about Homeworld?'
Sorbusa clenched one mighty fist, smacking it against the unyielding surface beneath him.
'May the devil's wind take you, Thedoctor! You never stop asking questions!'
'That's where your civilisation fell into error, Sorbusa,' remonstrated the Doctor, gently. 'You stopped asking questions.'
Little else could have perplexed the bio-vore more completely.
'We stopped asking questions? By the cold and the dark, what do you mean!'
It must have been easy, ignoring the rights of other races, other species, other worlds, to exist; to send out the Infiltration Complexes, to try to strip life from other planets –
'I mean, Sorbusa, that your culture, or the culture of eight thousand years ago, looked for the quick-fix solution. They never asked "how do we maintain this world?" Instead they attempted to export their problem. They never asked "what are the answers in the long term?" Instead they tried to fudge things for today, not tomorrow. They didn't ask "What right have we to take what does not and will not belong to us?" Instead they tried to take regardless. They never asked "Why must we surrender our consciousness and liberty?" Instead they - '
' – acquiesced,' finished the Doctor, startled at being whisked away from his cell so abruptly. He found himself under the guns of a guard quartet, who escorted him away from the spartan trans-mat corridor and into the altogether more luxurious quarters of Lord Excellency Sur.
For this appearance of the prisoner, the aristocrat had adopted a full cloak, and had two other similarly-clad companions sitting on stone benches at either side of him, both looking slightly flustered.
This time the organic matter in the trench, under the Doctor's feet, seemed fresher and crisper than the previous occasion. His attention was on the three bio-vores, but the unpleasant crunching underfoot sounded ominously as if other prisoners had been Eviscerated. One particular footfall hurt his sole, and he struggled to avoid expressing any pain as he walked toward Sur. What could that be?
'Thedoctor! Tell us about "aircraft"!' boomed Sur, expansively, darting a look at the bio-vores to his flanks. 'Not the creature but the construct!'
I am being paraded as a trophy, and a combination of performing monkey and encyclopedia! realised the Time Lord. Did I really tread on a metal object in that dreadful trench?
'There are two varieties of aircraft,' he began, thinking and talking about two different subjects simultaneously, not an easy feat by any means, even for himself. A metal artefact from within the body of a bio-vore. 'Lighter-than-air, and heavier-than-air. Generally, referral to an aircraft is to the latter.' From a bio-vore of five thousand years ago, when metals were less scarce. 'You may consider an aircraft to be an aerodynamic vehicle designed for rapid transit through the atmosphere, both powered and unpowered. In the latter case it is known as a "glider".' It must be a prosthesis of some kind, an internal implant because all external metallic objects were confiscated from the prisoners. 'Powered aircraft may utilise propellers or jet engines, the latter giving much greater performance at the cost of increased complexity and fuel requirements.' A prosthesis that was robust enough not to deform under his weight, which must mean a limb support.
A strategic pause. For one thing, the three aliens were conferring. Another concept difficult for them to understand?
Strike while the iron is hot!
'Lord Excellency Sur, may I put a proposition to you?' asked the Doctor. Sur, busy hob-nobbing with his cronies, merely waved a hand. 'Why begin a war in which millions on either side will die? Planet Earth has flora and fauna with which you could re-populate your world, and I know reclamation techniques that could roll back the deserts - '
'Silence!' shrieked Sur, bounding upright and looming threateningly close with his proboscis. 'Insolent animal! Earth will be our larder and storehouse combined. From it we will reap the necessary resources to achieve interplanetary conquest. Conquest, alien, conquest, not petty co-operation!'
'Your peculiar little pet is not properly trained, Sur,' joked one of the other aristocrats. Sur looked to be on the verge of attacking the Doctor, but restrained himself.
'Take this one back to his cell,' he ordered, turning back to the other two bio-vores. He watched a dejected Thedoctor stumble back up the trench, under the guard's watchful eyes.
'I apologise that you needed to suffer this alien's insolence. It will not last long.'
Nastily ambiguous! Not until I've given up what scientific knowledge I have! and that won't happen even if I have to die first, the Doctor angrily told himself, also exulting silently at what he had found.
Left in isolation, Sorbusa sipped at a bottle of water and looked at his situation.
Not rosy. He was deemed a heretic, for reasons that completely escaped him at present. Imprisoned, in one of the cells of an aristocrat who would doubtless Eviscerate him at the first chance.
Might was not right? He may have scoffed at that new, amended phrase twelve hours ago, when he firmly believed might was as right as right got. Sitting here in a cell, waiting to die, rather altered one's perspective.
Detachment Leader Sorbusa of yesterday, who boldly ordered the harvesting of local biomass resources, who Eviscerated minions deemed a threat, seemed to be another being altogether. The dispossessed Sorbusa of today, experiencing what the Longer Names must endure daily – well, he wasn't the self-assured arrogant monster of yesterday.
What alternative existed to turning another world into a surrogate Homeworld, full of barren deserts and salt-flat wastes?
Thedoctor seemed to have ideas for alternatives. A single alien. How could a single alien know what the whole Technician society of five thousand years ago did not know? Or, for that matter, what the current bizarre society knew?
Sorbusa felt as if his old view of the world had been shattered, broken into a thousand pieces. He held those thousand pieces in a mental limbo; he could remake them into any picture he cared to, to explain where and how he found himself.
'Ooof!'exclaimed the Doctor, landing indelicately in the underground cell. 'You know, I think I rather rattled old Lord Excellency Sur, talking to you about alternatives.'
Sorbusa looked over at his fellow-prisoner, indicating the bottles in a corner. Politely, the Doctor refused.
'We already presumed that the guards can listen in to our conversation, Thedoctor.'
'I meant that his guests looked as if they'd been hurried to the meeting to gloat over me. He didn't like the course our conversation was taking.'
What had the subject been? Oh, yes, hibernation for a fifth of the population. A willing surrender of liberty. Allowing the technicians to dominate the bio-vore culture, what remained of it. And then the evolution of the aristocracy, the Warrior culture.
The Doctor and Sorbusa were struck by the same idea simultaneously. They turned to each other, Sorbusa gesturing for silence and the Doctor reaching for a blank page in his 750 year diary.
"Could the aristocrats use hibernation to extend their rule?" scribbled the Doctor. Sorbusa nodded in agreement. He picked up the pencil, which he found awkward in his massive hand.
"The aristocrats may hibernate to prolong their lives".
The Doctor whistled at the sudden insight this gave him.
'How long does your species live for, Sorbusa? I see. Approximately two hundred years.'
What perfect sense it would make! A way to extend their reign over millenia; hibernate for ten years, emerge for one, then back into hibernation again, extending their lifespan to thousands of years. Select a small number of hibernating bio-vores to serve as Warriors, Overseers, administrators and so on. Use the remaining population to keep the planet alive, barely, with the constant threat of death to keep them in line. Increase the percentage of hibernating bio-vores to eighty per cent, to allow the rulers to keep their subjects in obedient servitude.
'A self-sustaining slave-state,' muttered the Doctor, not happy or impressed. To take his mind off that problem, he started talking aloud to Sorbusa.
'Not feeling too hot, are you? No, I didn't think so. Neither of us are gasping for breath, either, are we?'
The big alien looked around, paying close attention to the cell for the first time.
'Correct. A cell this small would have it's oxygen consumed very quickly.'
Then the air was being exchanged via trans-mat. Nice, cool, static air. Non-desert air. Air from a controlled environment.
An idea began to form in the Doctor's mind, beginning small. Small, yet with prospects.
A hundred and fourteen trillion miles away, Assault Leader Ihouda took careful stock of the situation in the Infiltration Complex.
Of the thirty-nine person garrison of heretics; prisoners, six; fatalaties; thirty-three.
Of the four-hundred strong Assault Detachment; fatalaties, fourteen; injured, five.
Not a bad result, he considered. They had come storming out of the trans-mat, in two waves each two hundred strong. Most of the heretic garrison were overwhelmed straight away, taken by surprise initially and then bewildered that their fellow bio-vores were attacking them.
Once the surprise wore off, there had been a few short skirmishes. Using stunners in defence, the heretics fell back to their armoury, Eviscerating any immobilised attackers they came across. It took a co-ordinated assault to storm the armoury and kill the remaining handful of heretics, and their greater size and physical strength caused most of the fatalities amongst the Assault Detachment.
Ihouda summoned the Sub-Leaders.
'Eviscerate all prisoners and wounded. Send a messenger back to Homeworld informing of success. Establish what the Factory unit has been programmed to produce. Locate local bio-mass resources.'
He looked around the Infiltration Complex again, wondering when daylight would arrive. You didn't know with these Target worlds, and he felt more vulnerable in the darkness. Then there was the immense nearby satellite, which cast a faint light over the sands. Homeworld did not possess such a moon. The novelty of the nearby orbiting body caused many of the Assault Detachment to look over their shoulders warily, feeling under observation.
Lord Excellency Sur felt uneasy.
Not at the current state of things on Target World Seventeen. No, that was highly satisfactory. All the heretics dead, on a par with their Eviscerated comrade's remains lying in the approach trench of his audience hall. No locals aware of the presence of bio-vores. The prospect of a whole world to plunder.
No, what made him uneasy was the diminution in conversation between Thedoctor and the heretic Sorbusa. That damnable alien was alarmingly perceptive and well-informed, able to make unpleasantly accurate guesses about Homeworld's history. What might he not conclude, egged on and informed by the heretic? The only reason Sorbusa remained alive was because he could, unwittingly, draw information out of the alien. Unfortunately resources didn't allow vision in addition to sound; there hadn't been enough time to adapt the cell.
Yet now they were hardly talking! Could they suspect the truth about their prison? No, impossible. The cells were –
" – directly underneath Sur's castle," wrote the Doctor in his diary.
'I'm afraid all your companions are dead,' he said aloud. Sorbusa read the Doctor's notes and stared.
'Yes. I expected as much. Soon my turn will come.' "How do you know?" he wrote, slowly and awkwardly.
The Doctor tapped the side of his nose, grinning. A series of logical deductions. The cells used trans-mat technology, but were far too small to utilise geo-thermal power as an energy source. Ergo, they were part of a larger complex. The air present in the cells came from an air-conditioned environment, swapped through on a regular basis. Ergo, and using Occam's Razor, they were underneath the castle. Still grinning, he produced a length of metal, as thick as the pencil and as long as his forearm, from beneath his shirtsleeve. The grin vanished.
"Proof your companions are dead. And our means of escape." he wrote. Using the pencil, which left a faint trace on the cell roof, he sketched a cross in the middle of the featureless glassy expanse, then mimed to Sorbusa. The big alien picked up the metal prosthetic, recognising it as an upper armbone replacement, and swiftly snapped it in two. Using the now-sharp ends, he scored at the pencilled cross and rapidly scraped narrow grooves in the glass, drawing a horrid screeching noise from the ceiling whilst doing so. The Doctor handed him a handkerchief, which Sorbusa wrapped around one massive fist before punching at the cell roof.
It took three blows before the glass panel cracked and split, great sudden jagged gaps suddenly shearing across the roof, hot gritty air suddenly flooding over them. The Doctor dragged Sorbusa back, away from the sudden cascade of shattered glass falling into the cell as the roof fell in, creating a storm of splinters, rapidly stilled by an avalanche of hot sands. Bright natural illumination blinded them for whole seconds.
The prisoners looked up into the dry blue skies of Homeworld, from a vantage point below ground level, in a quadrangle of buildings. Sorbusa boosted the Doctor clear of the cell's ruins, throwing him clear into the sand outside, to follow with a tremendous leap that only just cleared the dangerously sharp edges of their former prison. The heretic could manage the feat; his current brethren would not have been able to manage, with their smaller stature.
'Come on!' hissed the Doctor with urgency. 'Those sounds may have alerted Sur.'
'Where do we travel to?' asked Sorbusa.
'The trans-mat platform we arrived on.'
Sorbusa managed the backward bend of surprise very well in the open.
'Do lead on,' he said, concealing any other emotion. Thedoctor took his co-operation for granted, apparently. Not a misguided assumption. Sorbusa recognised that his stature, let alone his heretic status, meant he would instantly stand out from the local population. They would rapidly discover who and what he was and then they would kill him. Why not try to escape such a fate, and – the concept of "might is not right" – somehow that idea just wouldn't go away.
Their escape felt a little anti-climactic. No sirens sounded, no Warriors scrambled to intercept them, no patrols scoured the desert wastes. At the urging of the Doctor, they both headed for the shoreline and the wastes of weeds there.
'High-yield algae,' explained the Doctor. 'Not native. I – urk!' and he dived underneath the green slimy slick when bio-vores moved along the shores, only emerging when the landscapes were deserted again.
'Oh – hello there,' he blithely began. Sorbusa turned slightly to discover a group of reticent bio-vores regarding himself and the alien with interest. 'You must be the local peasant population. How d'you do – I'm the Doctor, and this is Sorbusa.'
The Time Lord looked at the timid bio-vores very intently. A group of three, they seemed disposed to run away instead of attacking or arresting the two fugitives.
'We are not hostile,' explained Sorbusa.
'We are, however, escaping from Lord Excellency Sur,' added the Doctor, to Sorbusa's silent dismay. 'We don't like him very much. We don't like the Warriors, either.' He threw a jelly-baby to one of the watchers, underhand, allowing the alien to catch it easily, snatching it from mid-air with his proboscis. 'In fact you could tell your fellow peasants that the time of the Warriors is coming to an end.'
Without saying anything, the three farmers withdrew, keeping watchful eyes on both fugitives, moving away into deeper waters, taking up creels and nets and poles.
'That went well!' beamed the Doctor to the air and his companion. Sorbusa slowed to look sideways at his companion, slopping up a small crest of green water.
' "Well"? You told them who we are and what we are doing!'
Once again the Doctor tapped the side of his nose, grinning.
'Did they try to kill us, or stop us? Or alert the Warriors undoubtedly searching for us? No, they did not, for the very good reason that they hate and detest their masters more than you or I could begin to imagine.'
Oh, thought Sorbusa. As a former ruler, I'm being helped by people who hate rulers. And why do they hate their rulers? Because their lives mean nothing to the rulers.
'Come along, Thedoctor. We can approach the trans-mat from the sea unsuspected. Then it is but a short distance to the platform. Can you operate it?'
The Time Lord rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.
'Can I? Can I!'