- 5 -
Ravenglass picked up his remote again and aimed it at Liz's chair, causing her restraining bands to retract. Before she had time to react he grabbed her right arm and forced his palm into hers. The switch was instantaneous.
"NO!" shouted Adam Foster, as Ravenglass crumpled to the floor and she stood up.
"Miss Shaw?" said the Brigadier.
"I am now!" she laughed, running her hands down her body then spinning around. "Being female until I regenerate as a male is going to take some getting used to, but being suddenly fifty years younger is glorious! I feel amazing! So full of energy!"
"Liz!" said Adam, staring at the fallen form of Lord Ravenglass. "You've killed my Liz!"
"She's not dead," said the Doctor, "merely in a temporary coma. That disgusting device Lord Ravenglass used was designed for stealing bodies not for voluntary exchanges and so incapacitates the victim long enough for the thief to get away. It's why they're outlawed across the galaxy. They incorporate common electronics, but at their core is a resonant crystal found on only one planet, a planet the Time Lords quarantined to stop their manufacture and export. I believed the devices had all been destroyed, but apparently not. Blast the Monk for hanging on to one! The damned man was always such a packrat."
"When she - when he - wakes up he can free you all, but I'll be long gone by then," said Ravenglass.
She reached into the desk drawer once more, retrieving two items.
"Psychic paper and perception filter," she said, slipping them into Liz's handbag. "Haven't used them in a while but it's always best I have them with me when entering new waters. Well, goodbye everyone. Captain Munro has orders from Lord Ravenglass to drive Liz Shaw to her TARDIS when she exits this room, so I'd best be on my way. I don't imagine we'll ever meet again."
There were a few moments of stunned silence when she left the room, followed by futile renewed struggling against their restraints by all but the Doctor.
"Damn it all!" shouted the Brig. "She's getting away, these things are impossible to get out of, and Corporal Branford is too far away to hear our shouts. Can't you get us out of this, Doctor?"
"In a trice if I could reach my sonic screwdriver, but I can't. I'm afraid we're going to have to wait for Miss Shaw to wake up and free us. Poor Liz. She doesn't remember being anyone else so waking in Ravenglass's body is going to be a big shock."
Adam Foster was still staring at Ravenglass's fallen figure.
"That's my wife in there," he said, in a small voice. "How can that be her?"
"Don't worry, old chap," said the Doctor, "we'll get her back for you, I promise."
"Why did Ravenglass need us here to witness this?" asked the Brig. "Did he just want an audience?"
"Possibly, but I think it was mainly as a precaution. This way he knew for sure that you and I were contained and couldn't interfere with his plan."
There wasn't much to say after that so they sat there waiting, with Adam Foster chewing his lip and not taking his eyes off his fallen spouse, trying to make sense of all that had just happened. Five minutes after their captor had left the door opened and someone entered.
"Corporal Branford!" said the Brigadier. "Quick, woman, use that remote on the desk to free us."
"No, I don't think so," she said, all trace of her West Country accent now gone.
"What? What do you think you're playing at, corporal? I gave you a direct order!"
"I don't think Corporal Branford is who you think she is," said the Doctor calmly, as she removed the padding that made her appear larger than she was. It was when she peeled off her facial prosthetics and removed her wig that the Brig realised the truth.
"Miss Shaw!" he said as she shook out her long, blonde hair. "Or is it Lord Ravenglass? But how? We saw you leave here only minutes ago."
"Minutes for you, Brigadier," she said, "but for me it's been months."
- 6 -
Adam Foster's expression was unreadable as he regarded her, the Doctor thoughtful, and the Brigadier outraged.
"I demand to know what's going on!" he blustered.
"It turns out I was right about the War Chief's TARDIS recognising this body and allowing me to enter. The chameleon arch dropped from the ceiling as I approached the control console. Unfortunately the biodata module was missing from it. Search as I might I couldn't find the module in any of the storage lockers. It wasn't on my person or in Liz's handbag, which meant she had to have hidden it somewhere, but where? There were too many possibilities. My only hope of finding out where was to go back in time to the point where she used the chameleon arch and to follow her. I suspected - rightly as it turned out - that the War Chief might have prepared a nasty surprise for anyone who tried activating the TARDIS controls in anything other than a specific order. From my time with the Monk I knew this could involve taking me some time or place I really didn't want to be and ejecting me from it, so I decided to take precautions. Which fortunately I could do because in my rummaging through the storage lockers I'd found a vortex manipulator."
"A what?!"
"A very crude, very basic, and very unpleasant to use time travel device, Brigadier," said the Doctor. "Small enough to be worn on the wrist but offering none of the protections a TARDIS does."
"I set it to lock me in place temporally before attempting to use the TARDIS controls. However, a TARDIS is a lot more powerful than a vortex manipulator so that while the manipulator was resisting any attempt to carry me either forward or backwards in time, it couldn't prevent the TARDIS from ejecting me completely, albeit not as it intended. The interaction of the two threw me sideways in time, and also back a few months."
"Ah, finally I begin to understand!" said the Doctor.
"Well I don't!" said the Brig.
"She was thrown out of the TARDIS and into a parallel universe," the Doctor explained, "ending up on another Earth."
"At first I wasn't sure what had happened, and battling the TARDIS had completely burned out the vortex manipulator so I had no way of getting back. It didn't take me long to realise I was in the fascist version of Britain I'd read about in the report on the Inferno affair, or that I'd slipped back four months in time. Which meant I had a way to return to my own universe as long as I was in position when the opportunity to do so arose. So with the aid of the psychic paper and a dark wig I became Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, and got myself assigned to their Inferno drilling project working under Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart, commandant of that labour camp. Unfortunately, I had to put up with all that tedious, one-track fanaticism for months while waiting for you to turn up, Doctor. Fascists are so bloody boring!"
"Hardly their worst characteristic, but this explains why the TARDIS console took me to that particular parallel. It was homing in on your presence."
"When everything went horribly wrong, dooming that world, you explained that you daren't take any of us back to your universe because we all already existed there. Not true in my case, of course, so I used the perception filter to travel back to *our* universe alongside you, my presence unperceived.
That was two months ago which meant I then existed in two places at once - three if you take into account that the mind-switch had not yet taken place. The Monk had explained to me the perils of crossing your own timeline so I knew I had to be careful, but since I belonged in this universe it didn't create the problems that bringing over others actually from that parallel would have."
"Of course," said the Doctor, as realisation dawned, "it was you who made sure there were four of these infernal chairs here rather than the three your earlier self believed were all he would need."
"A simple matter of altering a works order. As his lordship I was very surprised to see that fourth chair, of course, but considered it nothing more than an annoying if minor cock-up. Through a mixture of using the psychic paper, the perception filter, and masquerading as Miss Shaw when it was convenient. I was able to spy on you Doctor, and to see that it was you who had the War Chief's biodata module. Unperceived by you, I followed you aboard your TARDIS, saw where you stashed it, and walked out with it a few minutes later. Since I triggered no alarms I assume you had instructed your TARDIS to recognise Miss Shaw as a 'friendly', which was very convenient for me. After that it was just a question of setting up my identity as Corporal Branford and letting events follow their course."
"And where is the biodata module now?"
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the pendant locket. Checking her wristwatch, she smiled.
"My earlier self will have been thrown into that parallel universe by now," she said, "which means there's no way the energy could split itself between us. And with that worry out of the way there's nothing to stop me finally doing this!"
So saying she opened the locket and the energies within, the essence of everything that made the War Chief a Time Lord, flowed out of it.
"At last!" she yelled, grinning triumphantly as the energies swirled around her. "This is the day I become a god!"