Chapter Five: Fire
The Doctor stared, goggle-eyed, panting, incapable of speech.
"Is something the matter?" Telvar asked. "Captain Harkness taught us that labial contact is the proper form of greeting between humanoid friends. I must have done it improperly. I'll try again." She moved towards him.
"No! N-no, you got it quite right, quite right indeed," the Doctor stammered, backing away. "This headset desperately wants adjusting; the sensory gain is set far too high."
"Really?" said Telvar. "Captain Harkness spent a very long time calibrating the settings. I'm surprised you don't find them more realistic. Anyway, the research library is this way." She pointed towards a stone edifice, with vast pillars framing a massive door.
The image of the door shifted and faded before his eyes. He stared at it, frowning. "Rendering problems. There's some ghosting artifact at the entrance. Your central processor must be under quite a bit of strain at the moment."
"I don't notice anything," said Telvar. "Perhaps the fault is with your headset."
"Or my head," thought the Doctor. It was still spinning.
They went inside. The entrance opened up into a vast reading room, wood-paneled with bookcases along the walls. In the center of the room were several long tables, and clusters of overstuffed chairs along the sides. A fire burned brightly in the large hearth on the opposite wall.
"Don't worry," said Telvar. "You won't have to sift through miles of stacks. Just find a comfortable chair and concentrate on what you want; it will appear in the nearest bookcase."
He did so; and rows of neat laboratory notebooks appeared on an adjacent set of shelves. "Marvelous!" he said. "But I wouldn't have suspected you'd pick such a...low-tech virtual reality."
"Our lives are somewhat sterile. We prefer to make our virtual worlds as tactile as possible." As if to prove her point, she took his hand and laced her fingers through his. To the Doctor, the sensation was like an ice pick to the pleasure centers of his brain: intoxicating, excruciating, and completely distracting.
With difficulty, he disentangled his fingers, and reached for the first laboratory notebook. He flipped it open and studied it. She leaned close and read over his shoulder. He tried to concentrate; but with her so close, he could smell not only her perfume, but also her hair and her skin. Such a sophisticated virtual reality--so why was there so much ghosting artifact on the pages? He tried to read the notebook again; but his eyes were swimming. Or were they?
He dropped the notebook, and reached for another. This one he studied more carefully. The Kaleds had got so close, so very close to working out the graviton solution. But again, they hit a block. And that ghosting artifact returned. Equations slipped in and out before his eyes.
He reached for a third notebook. He marveled at the work. They were so brilliant--they had attempted a sophisticated and completely novel approach. Graviton theory should have been childishly simple for them to develop. And yet, they didn't. The last pages of the notebook faded before his eyes, then seemed to fracture and form again. It was wrong, everything about it was terribly, terribly wrong.
Suddenly, he realised what was going on.
"I'm not the first," he breathed. "And I certainly wasn't the last. Hypocrites!"
"What are you talking about?" asked Telvar, alarmed at his outburst. "What's the matter?"
"I thought it was just me. But they're the ones who've really been mucking about here, over and over again. But they would have held me entirely responsible, disavowed all their involvement, all their culpability. How would it have gone, I wonder, had I returned to Gallifrey as instructed? Another sham trial, ignominious exile? If that's what they want, I'll give them a reason--I'll give them a reason indeed!"
"Gallifrey? What do the Time Lords have to do with anything?"
"Everything!" The Doctor reached into a pocket, producing a pencil. He flipped open the nearest notebook and started scribbling in the back of it. "Ever since the end of your great war, the Time Lords have been watching you very closely, following and shaping your history."
"But…I thought…don't they abstain from all interference?"
Hollow laughter answered her. "I'm guilty, too. You're a Kaled because of me. Otherwise you would have developed into Daleks--evil creatures bereft of pity, conscience--"
"What? You? But...you did not have the right--"
"Correct. Nor did we have the right to stop you from developing Graviton theory. But these niceties don't matter much to the Time Lords." He turned the notebook around and handed it to her.
She puzzled over the equations for a moment. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth in astonishment. "This is it! What we looked for so many years! Graviton theory! But…I don't understand. Why would the Time Lords want to keep this from us?"
"Because if you crack Graviton theory, you crack time travel, too." The Doctor's eyes flashed. A vein throbbed at his temple. "If you'd been able to develop Graviton theory naturally, you would never have gone on to tackle the much more difficult problem of Dark Energy. Thus, the Big Rip is as much their fault as it is yours--or mine! And yet they would have blamed me for it, me alone!"
Telvar threw her arms around the Doctor's neck. "Thank you. Thank you so much for giving us--"
But to the Doctor, in his angry, agitated state combined with his unnaturally heightened senses in the virtual reality, this was like throwing gunpowder on a flame. "Don't touch me!" he snarled, as he jerked away. He reached up and fumbled for the headset. "Never touch me!" His body seemed to fade away.
"I WILL NOT TOUCH YOU."
The Doctor opened his eyes. In place of the ethereal woman was a white Kaled. It regarded the Doctor through its eye stalk.
"No," said the Doctor, softly, immediately ashamed at his outburst. "No, you won't. You can't."
Telvar said nothing.
The Doctor reached out and laid a hand on Telvar's dome. "I am sorry."
"IT IS IR-RE-LE-VANT."
They were interrupted by the appearance of another Kaled in the doorway. "TEL-VAR, THE SUP-REME KA-LED HAS SPO-KEN. THE LAUNCH WILL COM-MENCE AT ONCE."
"NO, WE MUST WAIT! WE HAVE TO--"
"NO MORE DE-LAYS. THE COUNT-DOWN BE-GINS."
