4. Crystelle on Gallifrey.
Chloe holds Crystelle One by the hand, thinks of a small street on Gallifrey that she knows of, and activates her Wristwatch Tardis...
The small street is empty and the morning trek to work has finished by then; it must be mid-morning.
"Just where are we on Gallifrey?" Crystelle One asks.
"If you walk down that street there," Chloe says, "you'll arrive at the Municipal Hall. It's one of the few old buildings here that survived the Master's destruction of Gallifrey. No doubt you'll want to present yourself in there."
"Yes, I need to see Wilbrahim. He'll be sympathetic."
There are times when it's important to face the issues and the consequences, and Crystelle One has decided that this is one of them; but having a more sympathetic ear definitely helps.
Chloe could have taken Crystelle One right to his office, but sudden appearance anywhere in the central area of Gallifrey without showing on security cameras would have caused a problem in itself.
"Will you be alright?" Chloe asks. A basic enough question, but Crystelle One's fate is by no means certain.
"I'll be fine, I expect." Crystelle One's response doesn't sound convincing, but she can't do better just now. She's tense and fearful.
"Thank you, Chloe, for bringing me here, I'll go now."
Chloe watches with sadness as Crystelle One walks away down the street. What can Crystelle One do or say to avert disaster? she thinks. Will she ever be allowed to follow the Master again? Crystelle One is wanted by the Judoon police and is essentially on-the-run from the Gallifreyan Authorities. But Chloe can see that she wants to clear her name or perish trying.
Chloe returns home in tears.
Crystelle One arrives outside the Municipal buildings. A fine ancient edifice, with splendid ancient architecture rising effortlessly to spectacular pinnacles, proclaiming the opulence of the earlier days of the Time Lords.
In these days now, everything must be built with practicality in mind; utilitarian - cheap, and out of whatever materials are available. Nearby buildings are a shoddy mess in comparison.
No-one has challenged her so far, but she senses that it won't be long before she's detained.
Without pausing, she mounts the steps to the huge doorway and enters.
There is a short queue to a turnstile for general entry. Doubtless identification cameras are operational.
Crystelle One sighs. She must just try to get as far as she can with dignity before she's stopped.
The turnstile appears to be purely ensuring a single-file entry past the cameras. She has studied the plan of the building and walks rapidly to Wilbrahim's office, knocks and enters without awaiting a response.
"Ah, I'm expecting you!" Wilbrahim says grinning widely from his chair. .
Crystelle One is shocked. "How can you be expecting me?" she asks sharply.
"I had a message from Chloe only a few minutes ago telling me you'd arrive here shortly. I'd have been away on my refreshment break otherwise." .
Relief courses through Crystelle One. "Thank you!" Why didn't I think of that? She thinks. .
Wilbrahim indicates for her to sit down. He's an old man now with white hair and a roughly trimmed white beard. A kindly personage who Crystelle One has met before. He has a leisurely manner that Crystelle One finds comforting.
"You had quite a time depositing Trelim," he says jovially, setting Crystelle One at her ease somewhat, while getting straight to the point. "Tell me what happened."
As Crystelle One chooses a chair to sit on, she hears a short whirring noise. The cameras are re-aiming and focussing on her!
She tenses up, but at least here she will have a more sympathetic hearing than if she had been detained!
"I made a mistake summoning my Tardis; I shouldn't have done it." She's thought what not to say, and maybe where to start, but in the stress of the moment, will she be able to think adequately clearly?
"Why the change of plan?" Wilbrahim asks calmly. He has many questions, and more are piling up already.
"I just happened to press the button on the summoner."
"But the button isn't just a simple button to press, you have to go through a security sequence to activate it. You can't just accidentally press the button."
"Maybe I'd pre-activated the security?"
"No, we saw you activating it. It was quite deliberate. So, why the change of plan? I'm trying to help you here."
Crystelle One had hoped to steer away from her suspected discovery of the Master. Or her suspicion that the Gallifreyan Authorities would take ages to decide what to do.
With a sigh, she decides she must just say what happened. It's usually the best course of action.
"When I led Trelim through the portal onto Gallifrey as agreed, suddenly his eyes lit up. This was out of character with Trelim. I've never seen him look like that before. I panicked. I thought - what's gone wrong? I could see the Master's eyes, but in Trelim. What could I do? I wanted to keep him in sight, so I summoned my Tardis, planning to ask it to enclose him and take him to the Master Palace to be checked."
"Alright," Wilbrahim calmly moves on. "I can see why your change of plan. But your choice of what to do? Why didn't you immediately inform the Gallifreyan Authorities?"
"But, they would have taken ages to decide what to do, by which time who knows what the Master might have done - if Trelim was the Master."
"Let me show you this room over here," Wilbrahim says, rising. "Come along," he says gently, politely offering his hand to assist her from her chair.
He leads her to a door which he opens. Behind the door it looks like a Tardis interior, but more simplified. No console in the middle of the room, but chairs around the edge like a debating room where all are equal.
"We can come in here to discuss things that happen. We can be out of the normal progression of time in here while we discuss things. Then, when they are decided, we can emerge and act. It is a Tardis in the Time sense but without the spatial movement. Ingenious?"
"Wow, I didn't know," Crystelle One says. "So, you could take ages deciding what to do but take no time at all to do so?"
"That sort of thing," Wilbrahim says gently. "We ought to have arranged a hand signal that you could have made for us to see. Maybe it was our fault. You weren't to know about this." He is bending over backwards to be forgiving towards Crystelle One.
Crystelle One takes a deep breath. "Thank you for your extreme understanding," she says more calmly.
"That's alright," Wilbrahim says, motioning gently for her to return to her seat and smiling. "I have other questions, too."
Crystelle One had thought there would be plenty of questions, many of which she would find impossible to answer.
"A few moments later, you reappeared on Gallifrey with someone else. Who was that?" Wilbrahim knows, but just wants confirmation.
"That was Chloe, my daughter," Crystelle One says.
"You'll appreciate there will be plenty of people in places of authority who will want to know just how you reappeared instantly on Gallifrey?"
Crystelle One sighs. She had thought they would question her bringing an unauthorised person to Gallifrey first.
"A little time slip," Crystelle One claims. "Or maybe the Portal I'd used was a little faulty."
She desperately wants to avoid revealing Chloe's Wristwatch Tardis. That's Chloe's secret for her to reveal when she decides to.
"I'm sorry," Wilbrahim says courteously, "but on Gallifrey we know how Portals work and how they go wrong. We've studied them and their quirks for centuries. We know there was something else going on just then."
"Alright, but we were using only equipment that's registered on Gallifrey and ours to use. Of that you have my word!"
Wilbrahim looks straight at Crystelle One. "You say that truthfully," he says quietly and evenly, yet seriously. "You know, my bosses are perturbed that an unauthorised person could possibly suddenly appear on Gallifrey. We can see from our localised monitoring system. There's no temporal or spatial disturbance, yet we suddenly detect you and another person present on Gallifrey. Do you have any idea how my bosses feel about this? If people can arrive without any of our sensing equipment telling us, and quite clearly you did arrive and leave, what does that mean for the security of Gallifrey?"
"I'm sorry I brought my daughter, Chloe, and involved her."
"Alright, that aspect we can overlook," Wilbrahim sighs. "The automatic equipment couldn't, but I'm sure we can cancel that."
Wilbrahim is still puzzling just how Crystelle One and Chloe arrived on Gallifrey, but it seems Crystelle One is truthful in saying they were only using registered Galifreyan equipment, however recently registered! .
Wilbrahim has further thoughts to share. "You know, if Gallifrey dealt with the Master, we would execute him. It is only in deference to the Doctor that we give responsibility for this task to yourself, a non-Gallifreyan."
So kind. .
