Trial's End
by Ewen Campion-Clarke
based on a script by Eric Saward
Chapter 3: Circular Logic
'Looking for something, sir?' came a familiar, clipped voice from inside the hood. The claw withdrew from the Doctor and flipped back the cowl to reveal a familiar silver-haired head, wearing half-framed spectacles.
'Ah,' the Doctor said, relaxing. 'Mr. Poppelwell!'
'Popplewick, actually, sir,' the clerk corrected, and lifted his other arm to reveal a perfectly normal hand, with which he twisted and removed the fake, dripping claw he had been wearing over his hands.
'Do you get extra for dressing up?' the Doctor asked dryly. 'Or is it some sort of fetish?'
Popplewick dropped the alien claw into a pocket on the inside of his robe. 'I sense a certain hostility, sir,' he observed matter-of-factly as he did so.
Suddenly, the Doctor's hands were clamped around the clerk's robed arms. 'You'll sense considerably more if you don't tell me where the Valeyard is,' he growled.
Popplewick was affronted. 'Please, sir!' he complained. 'Show respect for the cloth!'
'The cloth is safe,' the Doctor warned. 'It's you I intend to flatten.'
Popplewick looked at him with deep contempt. 'Such aggression, sir,' he sighed. 'You are letting the darker angels of your nature take over your behavior. If you're going to let this happen, I must ask why you ever came here!'
The Doctor frowned, as if stung, and released Popplewick, who smoothed down his robes. 'And me just a humble messenger,' he muttered.
'The ancient Greeks used to kill messengers who brought bad news,' the Doctor reminded him pointedly.
Popplewick nodded. 'An unruly lot, the Greeks, sir.' He beamed up at the Time Lord. 'But fortunately the message I bring will placate and soothe, sir. Mr. Chambers has granted you an appointment.'
'The Valeyard?' the Doctor asked icily, refused to get drawn back into the facade.
'The very one, sir,' Popplewick nodded.
The Doctor stepped back. 'Then lead on,' he suggested.
Poppewick was in no way surprised at the invitation. 'At once, sir,' he smiled and waddled off down the passage. The Doctor followed, idly noticing his companion was no longer leaving a trail of wet footprints. 'I'm afraid the journey is a long one, sir,' Popplewick continued. 'But before we start we must collect a friend of yours, sir.'
'Sabalom Glitz?' inquired the Doctor eagerly.
'No, sir,' Popplewick said apologetically. 'He's already with Mr. Chambers, sir.'
'Will you stop calling me "sir"!' the Doctor demanding, wincing.
'Of course, sir,' said Popplewick brightly. 'No, sir, the young person we have to collect is a Miss Melanie Bush, sir.'
The Doctor was taken aback. 'She's here?' he exclaimed, surprised.
'Followed you into the Matrix, sir,' Popplewick explained with a shrug. 'Such a foolish thing to do.'
'Indeed,' the Doctor muttered, but he could believe it. It was much like the Mel he met and the Mel he had seen himself travelling with in Matrix projections. Those, however, had been dependent on both of them surviving the trial unscathed. 'And where is she?'
The apparently endless, grimy alleyway did have an end, an abrupt one ending in a heavy green door marked 12/13. Popplewick waddled down to it and shuffled to one side. 'Through there, sir,' the clerk said, pressing himself against the wall to allow the Doctor to move past up to the door. The Time Lord started at the portal and the narrow barred window at the top for a long minute. Sulphurous light spilt out into the alley, providing most of the illumination in the alleyway.
'After you,' the Doctor said quietly, and stepped back away from the door.
Popplewick smiled with thinly disguised exasperation. 'You lack trust, sir. This is no trick.' He turned and pressed gently against the heavy metal door. With a nerve-rending shriek, it swung back allowing more light into the alleyway. Popplewick stepped up into the doorway, almost silhouetted against the glow.
'Follow me, sir,' said Popplewick, and disappeared inside.
The Doctor turned and looked back down the alleyway, but the light from the doorway made it hard to see anything beyond the pool of light. Indeed, part of him suspected the alleyway, the barrel and the Fantasy Factory had ceased to exist, like an idea forgotten. The squeaks of the rodents, the tolling of bells and the distant, distorted sounds of revelry could still be heard though.
Rubbing his cat badge for good luck, the Doctor turned and entered the doorway. A moment later, the door swung shut. The distant noises of Victorian England at night ceased, as if switched off. Indeed, everything outside the door had ceased to be, leaving nothing but a black void - the only light from the barred window, the only sound a faint humming noise.
Inside the Valeyard's TARDIS, Glitz peered through the spinning, swirling circle of ever changing light as first Popplewick and then Doctor stepped into the building. As the door swung shut, the Valeyard snapped down two switches. 'Now, Sabalom, you will see the power of the most perfect geometrical shape.'
'Can't wait,' Glitz yawned, as the scanner image changed to show the Doctor and Popplewick standing in a tunnel. He wasn't sure what was going to happen but it was obvious that the Valeyard was certain that this final illusion would finish the Doctor off - at least, unless the Valeyard said otherwise...
Beyond the imposing door, the Doctor found a circular tunnel made of brick, as if he was standing in the London sewers. Thankfully, the ground was clear and the air was clean. The bright light came from gas lamps arranged around the doorway. After a few steps the tunnel became gloomier, as the space between the lamps seemed to get further and further, but maybe that was just a trick of the light. Like the way an obviously straight tunnel seemed to curve slightly to the left.
Popplewick stood further down the tunnel and waited patiently for the Doctor to follow. Casting the occasional glance back at the closed door and wondering what, if anything, still lay behind it, the Doctor moved down the tunnel after Popplewick.
After a few moments, it struck the Doctor that there was a genuine curve to the tunnel, for he could no longer see the entrance, even though it couldn't be more than fifteen seconds walk away. Popplewick increased his pace ever so slightly, kicking up the hem of his robes. 'Not much further, sir,' he promised as they moved into the gloom between gas lamps.
The Doctor was not prone to claustrophobia, but he felt uncomfortable in this all-in-all cramped tunnel leading... where? In the fictional world of the Fantasy Factory, it could be leading to the Thames, out to sea, or maybe down into Hell itself? In fact, he was finding it hard to remember how long they'd been walking down this tunnel. If only it was a bit more cheerful. 'What a depressing place,' he sighed.
Popplewick looked over his pudgy shoulder back at the Doctor. 'I'm surprised you don't recognize it, sir,' he said, frowning over his half-frame spectacles.
'Should I?' asked the Doctor, baffled.
Popplewick continued to frown. 'Oh, yes, sir,' he confirmed.
The Doctor opened his mouth to ask Popplewick what could possibly make him think that the Doctor frequented gloomy, depressing subterranean passages when a third voice was heard, a shrill female voice booming down the tunnel towards them.
'Doctor!'
The Doctor halted and so did Popplewick. 'Melanie?' he called cautiously.
The only reply was the echoes of running footsteps on the cold stone floor.
'Melanie!' the Doctor called. He'd only really met her twice, but his recent failure to protect Peri galvanized him. If she was in trouble he had to save her, even if this was another of the Valeyard's traps.
'Help me, Doctor!' Mel cried, panicked.
The Doctor peered down the tunnel, but there seemed to be no more gas lamps. The gloom was an impenetrable curtain and Mel was stuck behind it, facing something she didn't believe she could handle. Which meant something very nasty indeed. 'What's happening?' he demanded of Popplewick.
No reply.
The Doctor swung to face his guide - and realized he was standing alone in the tunnel. The Time Lord spun around, but there was no sign of him. Surely if he had simply run off then his shadow would be caught by the gas lamps, and his footsteps would echo over and over?
It was as if he'd simply ceased to exist, like an idea forgotten. Which, the Doctor supposed, he was.
Nevertheless, he called out for the clerk. His own voice bounced off the tunnel walls reassuringly. 'Popplewick? Mr. Popplewick?'
'Forget him, Doctor,' urged another voice right behind him.
The Doctor spun around and saw that Mel was standing in the gloom right behind him, hunched over, hands on her knees as if exhausted after running a mile. Maybe she had, how far did this tunnel go anyway? And how far down it had he already gone.
'We must get out of here,' Mel was gasping.
'Are you all right?' the Doctor asked.
Mel managed to nod. 'For the moment. But there's something dreadful down here, I can sense it,' she said, straightening up and looking around her grimly.
'Let's go,' the Doctor, taking her hand in his and heading back the way he'd came.
Mel didn't move. 'The door's this way,' she pointed out, nodding in the direction she had run from.
'But I came from this direction,' the Doctor replied brightly and moved off once again, but was drawn short as he was holding Mel's hand and she was digging her boots into the ground.
'There isn't a door in that direction,' Mel snapped, irritated.
The Doctor abandoned his attempts to move forward. He turned to face Mel, determined to keep his temper after losing it so badly with Popplewick. 'There must be,' he explained reasonably. 'I just came through it. Come and look,' he offered and he once again set off, still holding Mel's hand.
This time, she moved with him down the tunnel. After a few moments of walking, she spoke. Her voice was small, her eyes downcast. 'I'm frightened, Doctor,' she admitted.
The Doctor smiled warmly, but they had moved between gas lamps and the gesture was lost. 'There's no need to be,' he assured her. 'We'll soon be out of here,' he promised. Indeed, if he remembered rightly, they would see the exit any moment.
'I think I've been going round in circles,' said Mel, shaking her head with confusion.
'Circles?'
'You know,' Mel prompted. 'Round things.'
'How do you know?' the Doctor asked, curious, and glad for something to take his mind off their depressing surroundings. They had just stepped into another patch of light, illuminated a jagged scar in the brickwork to their right.
'Look at the wall,' Mel instructed, pointing at the scar. 'See that? I've passed it three times.'
The Doctor stared at the scar. He was certain he and Popplewick had not passed it on their way in. 'Are you certain?' he asked, suspiciously.
Mel sounded defensive at the very idea. 'Of course I am!'
The Doctor shook his head of unruly blond curls. 'No,' he said firmly. 'If you'd been perambulating in an annular fashion, you would have passed not only your entrance, but mine!'
'I haven't passed any doors!' Mel complained, annoyed.
The Doctor shrugged, trying to be placating. 'Therefore you can't have been progressing in an orbital fashion,' he concluded cheerfully.
Mel wrenched her hand from the Doctor's. 'Oh no?' she challenged.
The Doctor took a deep breath. Of all the time and places to have an argument over nothing! 'Well, if you think you were, explain!' he challenged back.
'I don't know,' Mel grumbled mutinously.
'If you don't know, how can you know you've been cruising in a cyclical manner?' the Doctor demanded, marshalling the ultimate argument.
'I told you!' Mel snapped. 'The markings on the wall,' she crowed, pointing to the scar in the mortar. 'I've passed them three times!'
The Doctor ran a hand through his curls in exasperation. 'If you'd passed them three times, you would also have passed the entrances - yes?'
'No,' said Mel firmly.
'No?' asked the Doctor, uncertain.
'No!' Mel was definite.
'I don't understand. Why are you saying "no"?'
'I don't know,' Mel admitted, shrugging awkwardly.
'You don't know why you're saying "no"?' the Doctor clarified doubtfully.
'No!' Mel agreed. 'I mean yes, I do know why I'm saying "no". I'm saying "no" because I don't know why I've passed the markings three times, and yet haven't passed entrances!'
There was an awkward pause.
The Doctor was frowning. 'We're getting very long winded,' the Doctor observed darkly.
Mel shared his worry. 'I know. Positively orbital.'
The Doctor held up his hands. 'All right, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you have passed this way before...'
'Right.'
'...so how could you have done that without encountering the entrance?'
'You've just said that,' Mel pointed out, confused.
'If it's worth saying once,' the Doctor sniffed, 'it's worth a circulatory restatement.'
'Then I don't know,' Mel sighed unhappily.
'What?' the Doctor asked, confused.
'Why I've passed the entrances without seeing them. I can only assume that they've been moved.'
The Doctor nodded. 'Moved as in transportation?'
Mel blinked. 'No... Hidden. Disguised, maybe?'
'Who would do that?' the Doctor protested, although it struck him right away there was a very obvious answer that, for some reason that escaped him, he'd forgotten.
'I don't know,' Mel said again, before breaking off. Her eyes widened. 'Unless someone wants us to think were not orbiting this circulation of a circumference in a peripatetic mode?' She blinked. 'Did I say all that?' she asked the Doctor, amazed and a little unnerved.
'It would have ruptured my larynx if I had,' the Doctor quipped.
'What's happening?' Mel asked, looking around them in anxiety.
'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted, looking down both ends of the tunnel. 'It's as though we're becoming obsessed by circumambulation. Added to which a degree of circumloquacious circumvolution has edged into our vocabulary.'
'Not to mention circular tautology,' Mel pointed out.
The Doctor felt curiously lightheaded and swayed uncertainly. 'What a terrible thought,' he whispered. 'Trapped like mice in an exercise wheel - forever doomed to run around and around and around and get nowhere...'
'What are we going to do?' Mel asked desperately.
'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted. How many times had he said that since entering this accursed tunnel? Come to think it, how had he ended up inside it? Someone or something had lured him in... He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it. 'It's as though we're being conditioned to accept, in every respect, the world of the circle...'
'The most complete shape contained in a single line,' said Mel reverently.
'Also the perfect trap,' the Doctor said, eyes widening in realization.