Chapter 8:
...is there greed behind your choice of eating?
If yes, the mind that eats is not pure - be your choice vegetarian or not.
-Buddhist Philosophy
Gallifrey:
"Great Pythia!"
No one objected to the blasphemy. There were moments in which Time Lords thought in unison. This was one of them.
Even Sardon could admit to horror at the blessedly brief sight of the frozen victims, and when the Doctor fled from the freezer with the speed of a light-gravity craft, a part of them was cheering him on.
Someone coughed. Sardon risked a glance to the two newcomers, Milvo and Ragnar. They shared his responsibilities with the TSS, and had been invoked to attend this increasingly-less-secretive-by-the-day meeting.
The two were unabashedly uncomfortable and no wonder. 99% of the time their job was to approve records for the slow-grinding Wheel of Bureaucracy. That sad 1% fell under today.
Milvo was shaking his head. The Arcalian had grown sleeker and plumper over the years of service, and his trademark sense of humor was conspicuously absent. Next to him Ragnar's newly regenerated form glowered. He had changed from skeletal and withered to skeletal and young. There really wasn't much difference.
Throughout the room there were various shades of discomfort at the view. The only one unaffected was Karnack, the technician. The crystals on her Royal Bara necklace had slipped to a delicate salmon color, proving she was absorbed in doing her job and not much else.
Goth tapped his chin thoughtfully. Even for a Prydonian, his thoughts were hooded. Sardon doubted even Ragnar knew what his House-mate was thinking.
The Council watched breathlessly as the Doctor slammed and re-locked the door, then frantically stopped long enough to program some sort of code into the wall.
"Get out of there!" Jokul whispered. "Get out of there, you fool!"
"He can't." Sardon hated the emotional breach of personal experience. He preferred to deal with lives from a distance, on the other side of his desk but so far he was dealing with this mess in a responsible manner. "He's covering his tracks. If they notice tampering they'll be suspicious."
"Can't we recall him?" The Patrex woman demanded. "Doesn't he have a Time ring? Sardon, this is too dangerous!"
"We cannot recall him at this time." Sardon said heavily. "Our power reserves are too low from the pinhole's damage. If we employ an unauthorized drain for an emergency recall it will raise questions."
A small sound like a spitting wire erupted from the machine. Karnack quickly placed her hand upon the top of the machine and pressed firmly. The sound stopped.
"Quite all right, my Lords and Ladies." The woman assured them with long-practiced calm competence. "This is an old machine, but in excellent condition. I should be able to operate for the next few hours with a few minor repairs as we go." She glanced thoughtfully at the screen where the little Renegade was free from his task and running like the Birds of Hell were at his heels. "Goodness, he can move." She muttered under her breath.
The observation was out of line but it thankfully broke some of the tension.
"We can only watch for now." Goth mused. "Perhaps this is to the better."
Even Sardon looked at Goth in puzzlement.
The tall Prydonion was now stroking his clean chin. He looked almost feline. "We are seeing evidence of a terrible crime. At worst this is a possible explanation for the missing beings. At best...It would indicate things are not all well in the Third Zone, would it not?" He lifted his eyebrows. "Perhaps it would be for the better if we paused and simply observed...and collected data." He read the mix of expressions correctly. "If we can pull our agent out in time, it will be all to the good of course. But I believe even our worthy agent would agree...proof of crimes supersedes all other matters of importance."
Sardon hated when he had to agree with Goth. Not just because this was one of those incredibly rare aristocrats that believed in doing things, but because the man was...untouchable. "It is true that the Third Zone is missing many of its people. Minyans and people of Karn and other former Colony-born folk of Gallifreyan blood. Perhaps this is the explanation. Or one of the explanations."
"I remember hearing about that from the TSS." Jokul said with narrowed eyes and hard chin. His gaze to Milvo and Ragnar was dark. "It was believed the pinhole was the primary source."
"If so, it will not take long to verify."
"This is a large area of space in which to monitor." Koredin complained to his region-mate.
"If this is what it looks like, we are observing something even more atrocious than the miniscopes." Nescan made a sign against the accidental invocation of misfortune (There was no superstitious mindset outside of Pythia as elaborate or tiresomely optimistic as Quantum mysticism).
"And as I recall, the Doctor was the reason why they were banned in the first place." Milvo agreed.
Of course Milvo would point out the contrary in any argument. It all reminded them that the Doctor was embarrassingly altruistic, and those people had their own, sticky motives behind every action. Noble and utterly untrustworthy when it came down to it.
Sardon hoped the conversation would nitre itself out on its own juices. Goth was clearly suspicious of something, but was it the possibility of Players? The Grey Lord didn't know. That worried and bothered him and threatened his composure. Prydonians were not forthcoming as a species—it was probably bred into them in the cradle somewhere between one's first pet rovie and brain-buffing tutorials.
Players are annoying enough, he reminded himself. But if Goth is willing to sacrifice one of his own Chapter to an information retrieval...what is he really hoping to find? Such a fascinating and useful bit of data if true. The question would have to wait.
Karnack cleared her throat. The woman had permitted a shred of annoyance to crease her brow. "I will have to stay and monitor the Visualizer. Constant use may threaten the circuits." She patted the toolkit at her waist where replacement circuits were waiting.
"That is perfectly reasonable, Karnack." Sardon assured her. He hoped the presence of a high-functioning telepath would be enough to instigate some decent manners.
And then they all fell silent, watching the drama unfold before the screen.
The Feathered Sun:
The Doctor was almost to the lift when the entire ship...shuddered.
FLIGHT PATH INTEGRITY VIOLATED.
FLIGHT PATH INTEGRITY VIOLATED.
The Engineer program must have sustained more damage from the pinhole than believed. The software guttered out, sputtered, and resumed in fits and starts, the mechanical voice faltering and over-compensating as it tried to report to Captain.
And Captain was silent.
Planetside, it would be misconstrued as an earthquake. The little Time Lord went flying as the gravity rippled in a pulse-wave. It took him straight off his feet and slammed him down, hard, to the polished metal deck. His cheek stuck to the smooth glasstic. Several marbles rolled out of his pockets from the impact and took off in all directions—only to roll back as the gravity-wave went from flow to ebb. The bag of jelly babies under his ribs was officially a fused lump of petrochemical byproduct and synthesized wood-pulp derivative dyes.
Good thing it wasn't the usual gobstoppers or jawbreakers...
Dazed, he was climbing back to his feet and stuffing marbles back in his deeper pockets when the next gravity-wave hit him between the shoulderblades and almost propelled him off his feet—thank Rassilon, his lower half was still in the normal gravity part of the room. He stumbled into the wall and hung on to its corners with his fingertips, happy to bruise himself if it meant preventing a more intimate bruising throughout his body. In his secret topit his favorite magnet, Zoe's makeup mirror, and Jamie's spare kilt-pin (a falcon's claw) tugged against his shirt from the pull and push of gravity.
His head was still ringing...
No, wait. It wasn't all ringing in his head...?!
He blinked, trying to filter out what was happening through the confusion of a very angry ship's computer.
Engineer had taken over for Captain.
BOARDING TRANSMISSION RECIEVED.
BOARDING TRANSMISSION RECIEVED.
BOARDING TRANSMISSION REJECTED.
BOARDING TRANSMISSION REJECTED.
BOARDING TRANSM-
(crackle) (pop)
Engineer's language program overrode itself and stopped speaking in the Third Zone Lingua Franca. It had stopped talking in the language of flesh. It reverted to its original language of Decimal Binary:
"01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01110011 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01101111 01100001 01110010 01100100"-1
The Doctor cringed at the over-stimulating assault of numerical translation. He cringed again at another wave of gravity—this worst of all. He yanked at the wall command, trying to get the lift door open.
Nothing happened.
"Oh!" He exclaimed. "Come on, come on you stupid machine-" He risked bracing both feet on the floor with all his considerable energy and tugged, trying to manually open the trauma-stressed door.
01001001 01001110 01000011 01001111 01001101 01001001 01001110 01000111 00100000 01000010 01001111 01000001 01010010 01000100 01001001 01001110 01000111 00100000 01010000 01000001 01010010 01010100 01011001 00101110 00100000 00100000 01000101 01010011 01010100 01001001 01001101 01000001 01010100 01000101 01000100 00100000 01000001 01010010 01010010 01001001 01010110 01000001 01001100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 00110001 00110100 00100000 01000100 01000001 01010010 01001001 01001001
"Incoming Boarding party?!" The Doctor yelped. This was looking worse and worse. "Fifteen Darii? Why that's no time at all! That's illegal boarding, or seizure...or...or invasion!"
Fifteen Darii was the 3Z equivalent of twenty minutes. It wasn't nearly enough time to properly activate the ship's protocols and possible quarantines.
He had to get out of here—preferably far away from the ship itself, but especially out of this room!
The little renegade stopped his futile tugging on the door, and glowered at the panel. He struck it with his elbow, making it pop partially out of its in-wall housing. Holding his breath in case the gravity hit again-
-like now-
"Oh, my word!"
He clutched a tiny groove just in time, which kept him from sailing halfway up to the ceiling. This spared him a nasty crunch when the gravity wave ebbed backwards, returning things to their statu. He hit the ground with a jarring of the teeth, but at least it was on his feet and not his face this time.
Refreshing his grip, he used his other hand to tap the panel off until it hung by a connector's cord. He prodded with his fingertips and found what he was looking for—or rather, the solution. Which wasn't his idea of efficient mechanical engineering.
"Negative ionic glass circuits?" He blinked at the row of neat little glass rods. "Who thinks of these things?"
The bald criticism went unheard and unheeded. He yelped and grabbed at the wall again, this time latching his toes to the edges of the sealed jamb. Somehow. It never ceased to amaze him how one could accomplish the impossible when they had no choice.
"All right, you..." He grumbled, and fumbled for his favorite silk handkerchief. Smashing his marbles into his hand he clapped the silk handkerchief over them and wadded it all up, rolling the little glass spheres inside the silk over and over. He counted the time as he did so, trying not to pay too much attention to the computer as it announced the incoming boarders.
01010000 01010010 01000101 01010000 01000001 01010010 01000101 00100000 01010100 01001111 00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000 01000010 01001111 01000001 01010010 01000100 01000101 01000100
"I will NOT prepare to be boarded!" The Doctor snapped at the ceiling. "It isn't MY ship!" He glanced down at his hand. "Aha!" With a tight grin he slapped his hand into the hatch of the lift.
The friction of the silk against the marbles had charged up the glass with positive ions. They struck the negatively-charged glass rods and forged an effective circuit. The doors opened so quickly the Doctor fell inside and flat on his back. The doors hissed shut; the ionic charge dissipated, breaking the circuit.
In seconds the lift was scrolling back up to its original deck.
Elsewhere from the Doctor, the crew and passengers of the Feathered Sun were in a new panic.
The passengers were few in number—less than ten percent of the ship's active population. They had a civilian's view of the over-hyped and more colorful than truthful accounts of space pirates and corsairs.
It was no ill reflection on them that they had no experience with binary. It wasn't their fault their minds were not thirsty—or obsessive enough—to learn an "impractical" language.
To say they were unprepared was a simple way of summarizing the panic that ripped through the narrow corridors. All ages were represented in this unthinking hazard. Adult, child, and every age in between, they ran without rhyme or reason, and hurt themselves in the blindness. The crew, exhausted from the pinhole's attack and the endless repairs, was no match for their frantic and mindless fervor. In the madness people were getting hurt; getting killed was too real of a possibility.
Tokish was in the middle of the latest wave of chaotic group movement. Like a boulder, the civilians simply flowed around his powerful body, too fast for his attempts to stop –or at least direct some crowd control.
It didn't stop him from trying.
"Everyone!" He bellowed with the impressive force of his lungs. "Calm, please! We are working to-" A young male Centaurian bounced off his chest. Out of habit, the Pereleccan stopped what he was doing and steadied the boy, who simply re-joined the frightened crowd the moment his breath returned.
"Oh, this is awful." The alien muttered.
And lifted his hands, trying again.
The lift opened and the Doctor literally fell out.
Always sensitive to sound, his abilities had never been higher in this new body, and this was now putting him in a situation of 'too much of a good thing'. The blaring alarms were putting his nerves on edge, and they'd been nearly shredded by the collapse of the computer systems in the databases below. The mechanical shrieks blended all too well with the shrieks of the panicking passengers.
The terror in the air was thick and full of metal. The little Time lord felt his hearts lurch in his chest. He realized the trauma of the pinhole was still too fresh in their minds—and the crew had possibly been lax in keeping them informed.
He climbed to his feet just in time to be knocked aside by a knot of women and children.
"Oh, my word!" He huddled up against the wall, hand upon his chest.
It was just bad timing that the pressurized pain in his head returned.
Gallifrey:
"Does the Doctor have an illness? A disability?"
Goth's question was reasonable. Time lords—even bad ones—usually had some attempt to dignity.
"None that was identified or reported." Sardon answered truthfully. Because he was a Bureaucrat and accustomed to finding truth buried under piles of disguises, he found himself studying their technician.
Karnack was outwardly her usual calm and collected self as she kept her hand pressed against the Visualiser...but a sheen of sweat upon her brows belied that calm.
She must have felt his gaze. Her eyes lifted to his briefly, and it was a perfect card-player's lack of expression upon her countenance.
Sardon kept his own countenance. If his suspicions were correct...his work could suddenly become more fruitful.
Assuming the Doctor survived.
"Oh, no...not again..." The Doctor winced and put up his hands to his temples. He swayed and staggered into the wall. A sensation of vertigo was mixing with the pressure under his skull. "Who are you?" He asked out loud without meaning to. Karnack's face stayed exactly the way it was, but a drop of perspiration slipped down her remote face. Her necklace flickered, so quickly Sardon was certain the others missed it. He, however, had been looking for that to happen.
Somehow, Karnack's contact with the Visualiser, which in turn was tied to the Doctor's TSV, and was overwhelming him with feedback.
Sardon had no blame in his hearts for Karnack's silence. She had no idea what to say—who would? Sardon doubted anything like this had ever happened to her.
For that matter, to anyone. This was truly an interesting problem.
She's only half-Gallifreyan. It could be her methods of filtering away her unprofessional, distracting emotions are being picked up by the Doctor.
He had a feeling he was right, but proving it was a different matter.
It has to be his old TARDIS. It's a telepathic machine...he gets anxious when he's away from it for very long...who is to say how it's been slowly changing his neural pathways?
On screen, the Doctor yanked his hands away from his skull and stiffened his spine, blinking rapidly in an effort to drive out the unwanted pressure hammering to get in. "Stop it!" He hissed under his breath. "Stop it right now!"
He was talking to the source of the pressure, whatever it was, for there wasn't a hope of being heard over the ruckus.
"It must be some sort of mental attack," Milvo scowled. As an Arcalian he was better versed in the life sciences than most.
"There are many unknowns in this case, ladies and gentlemen." Sardon reminded them.
Karnack looked relieved that he was helping obfuscate her dilemma. Sardon briefly wondered at the depths of her emotional state. Telepaths held non-consensual mental contact with other beings—especially mentally less advanced beings—was abhorrent and criminal.
Now that she believes she is safe...she just might relax. Let us see what she does...
Karnack turned her head, and quietly adjusted a small, nondescript chip in the half-open maintenance port beneath the flickering image of the Doctor.
The doctor's head shot up. Despite the smallness of the images, there was no mistaken the look of relief on his expressive face.
But just as the pain and pressure melted away, he was struck from behind by a fresh wave of panicking civilians.
The first of the panicking crewmen were with them.
The Doctor went down in a flurry of bodies.
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