Doctor Who: Harvest of Time Read online

  ‘Something happened after we left him alone. Something that – I hate to say – pushed him over the edge.’

  One of the helicopters was coming in, big as a bus with its rows of passenger windows. She wouldn’t have minded being on that when it took off back for the mainland. But even if the evacuation went all the way, she would be among the last to leave the platform.

  ‘How can you know he was pushed?’

  ‘Because there’s this.’ Irwin had produced something from his pocket. It was a small drawing book, a tablet with ring-bound pages. ‘I found this in Pete’s room. It had slipped down between his bed and the bedside table. You know how he used to like sketching.’

  ‘What made you look there?’

  ‘I wondered if Pete was under the bed. Sorry, but I wasn’t going to leave any stone unturned.’

  ‘You were right.’

  Irwin approached close enough to hand McCrimmon the book. She took it carefully, thinking how easy it would be to let go, to watch it flapping its way down to the waves like a square-winged bird. If there was something in this book, something that complicated things, something that made her job even harder than it had already become, she wouldn’t be at all sorry to see the book plummet gannet-like into the sea.

  But she had to know what was in it.

  She opened the book and flicked through the pages. McCrimmon was no art critic – she would never have claimed to be – but she could see a certain undisciplined vigour in Lomax’s sketches, an energetic roughness that made the drawings look more alive, more artistic, than if they’d been more finished and refined. Lomax had used a black felt-tip pen for all his drawings, and he had worked with evident speed, his strokes contrasting between light sketch work – barely there at all – and thick black lines where he had almost dug the pen into the paper. The sketches had all been done on the missing rig, perhaps in his last tour of duty. Some of the drawings were of scenes on the rig itself – items of equipment, vistas of the accommodation block, the helipad, and so on. The sketches never extended to the limits of the page, but merely faded out into barely hinted at details. Lomax had also drawn people: quick snapshots of workers, usually anonymous, going about their daily business. McCrimmon could imagine him snatching out the sketchbook in odd moments, perhaps when he was technically on duty. The sketches had an impromptu, unforced look – it was as if his subjects had not been aware they were being sketched. He must have completed the individual drawings in a rush of pen strokes, before the view altered.

  She turned the pages. More sketches, not all of them completed. Abandoned efforts. As she progressed through the book, it became obvious that the latter half was still blank.

  Eventually she reached the final image.

  It was another figure, but not one of the rig workers. It was also someone that McCrimmon recognised immediately, even though the sketch was exceedingly rough and unfinished, little more than a scribble forced into the shape of a man.

  ‘The third man,’ she said.

  Irwin gave a slow nod. ‘Hard to miss.’

  The man had been drawn facing out of the page, as if Pete Lomax had been standing in front of him while sketching. The form of the drawing was of a tapering wedge, with the man’s head swollen to almost comical proportions, like a balloon bobbing toward the viewer. The rest of him was suggested, rather than drawn in any detail: a converging inverted triangle of furious black strokes. McCrimmon couldn’t help but think of a malevolent jack-in-the-box. She still didn’t know the name of the man.

  But there was no doubt that this was him. The fastidious beard, bracketed with two symmetrical strokes of white. The prominent brow, beneath a receding fringe of greying combed-back hair. The eyes, boring out of the paper like twin drill-holes. There was a terrible commanding force in his stare. Lomax had made the eyes into vortices: circles of blank paper, surrounded by tight constricting spirals. It was almost as if they had been paper-punched right through to the next blank sheet.

  Beneath the sketch, one word, scrawled in jagged strokes, as if gashed with a dagger:

  MASTER

  That was all.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d be over the moon,’ Irwin said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Men and women had been busy at UNIT headquarters, and the activity was still on-going. Posters, economically printed in black and white, were being pasted or pinned onto every available surface. They were all identical. Each poster showed a grainy full-face photograph of the Master, his head tilted slightly down, his eyes staring out of the image. Above the picture, printed in bold capitals, were the words THE MASTER! Beneath the image, in slightly smaller type, was a more detailed explanation:

  THE MASTER IS OUR GREATEST ADVERSARY.

  HIS CRIMES HAVE ALREADY ENDANGERED

  THE EARTH AND COST MANY LIVES.

  ALTHOUGH HE REMAINS IN CAPTIVITY,

  THE MASTER IS USING HIS POWERS TO

  AFFECT OUR MEMORIES OF HIM.

  WE MUST RESIST THIS INFLUENCE!

  STUDY THIS POSTER.

  COMMIT IT TO MEMORY.

  TRY AND BRING THE MASTER TO MIND

  FREQUENTLY.

  MENTION HIM TO YOUR COLLEAGUES.

  CARRY REMINDERS ABOUT YOU!

  COLLECT A WHITE ARMBAND FROM THE

  QUARTERMASTER’S OFFICE AND WEAR IT AT

  ALL TIMES.

  RECITE THE WORDS

  ‘I MUST REMEMBER THE MASTER’.

  TOGETHER WE CAN RESIST THIS INFLUENCE!

  REMEMBER THE MASTER!

  Periodically, a recorded announcement would come over the general address Tannoy, as a woman with a cut-glass accent recited the same words: ‘Remember the Master!’

  As impressed as he was by this industriousness, the constant interruptions were making it very hard for the Doctor to concentrate on the task in hand. Perhaps that difficulty (he was normally very good at blocking distraction) was the first faint sign that he, too, was being affected by the time-fade. If so, he just hoped he could keep the worst of it at bay, until he had an idea what they were up against.

  He was still struggling with the damaged chronometric stress analyser. Such a shame that he had been careless with it! It had been hard enough dealing with the Blind Watchmakers in the first place. Large mole or bat-like creatures (opinions varied), with a highly developed sense of acoustic perception, and whiskers so acutely attuned that they could literally see by touch, right down to the discrimination of colour, they lived in tunnels, under the ash-black, airless crust of their battle-sterilised husk of a planet, and they had been living in these tunnels for numberless aeons. Despite their highly refined non-visual senses, Blind Watchmakers were famed for their almost comical clumsiness, their inability to squeeze past each other without a collision, and the many accidental indignities, injuries and deaths they inflicted on their hapless guests. No one ever paid them a second visit unless there was very good reason.

  But they were worth the trouble. Despite this clumsiness they were instrument-makers of unparalleled ability. Their clocks made pulsars look slipshod. A Watchmaker compass was sensitive enough to detect the nervous system of a gnat, half a continent away. Their chronometric recording devices were without equal.

  The Doctor’s was fixed in place in a makeshift cradle on the laboratory bench, wrapped in a nest of coloured electrical cables and Christmas tree lights, the substitute parts rigged in with crocodile clips, electrical tape and dollops of plasticine. From this uninspiring chaos extended several dozen peripheral tangles, connecting the instrument to the grey metal boxes of a number of hefty government-issue oscilloscopes. As primitive as these analysis devices were, the Doctor had long ago learned to make the best of what was available to him.

  Adapt and survive. Make do and mend. These were good mottos for a time traveller.

  By careful manipulation of the dials and switches on the oscilloscopes, and by painstaking observation of the flickering green sinusoid trace
s on their little gridded screens, the Doctor had made considerable headway. The time ruptures, if he could believe the readings, were increasing in frequency, magnitude and longevity. Whoever was doing this – whoever was opening ruptures to the present – was definitely getting better at it. That water falling from the sky was coming from somewhere, the Doctor felt certain. He just wished he knew where that place was, and when.

  Another world, perhaps – elsewhere in space and time. And the logical conclusion was that the occupants of that world, or at least someone, was intent on transferring their oceans across time to here, Earth. It was small beer right now – mere billions of litres of water. But it was continuing, and the amount coming through in each event was increasing. It might take years or decades, but the effects would eventually be hard to ignore. Earth’s seas would swell. The oceans would swallow the land. The good people of this planet, who the Doctor had come to like, would drown under the impossible, endless deluge.

  Who – what – would do such a thing? And to what purpose?

  The Doctor had the vaguest inkling that he already knew the answer to that question. Somewhere in the deep past. A vanquished foe, a singular alien menace. Tiny creatures, deceptively beautiful in their unarmoured form. Little gemmed things, like ornaments.

  Stealing oceans, draining worlds and flooding others, was the way they had always done things.

  But that had been so long ago. They had been locked away. Put aboard that terrible ship. And that terrible ship had been fired into the black hole, and destroyed. It could not possibly be them.

  Could it?

  That was when the telephone rang. The Doctor picked it up grumpily, knowing exactly who was on the other end.

  ‘You know, Brigadier, a chap can’t be expected to do any useful work if—’

  ‘Never mind, Doctor.’ Lethbridge-Stewart had that certain manner about him, the one that betokened a particular kind of military seriousness. It usually meant the balloon had gone up, metaphorically speaking. ‘We’ve found something. I’d rather like you on site before we bring in the big guns.’

  ‘The big guns, Brigadier? I bet you can barely contain yourself.’

  ‘There’s a helicopter on standby. I’d like you aboard it, with me, in five minutes.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, man. Aren’t you going to give me at least some explanation?’

  ‘Crabs,’ the Brigadier said succinctly.

  ‘Crabs? What do you mean “crabs”?’

  ‘Metal crabs, Doctor. Coming ashore. In rather large numbers.’

  *

  The serenity of a lightly travelled secondary road was shattered by the approach of a red and white luxury coach, tilting on its suspension as it took a bend at reckless speed. A roadside observer, of which there were thankfully none, might have found the excessive velocity troubling. The coach appeared to be in the hands of a maniac – a thief, perhaps, who had stolen the vehicle and was now determined to get as far away from the scene of the crime as possible. But the driver of the coach appeared in no way perturbed or out of the ordinary. He was a respectable-seeming middle aged man in a crisply ironed shirt, tie and blazer. He sat bolt upright, both hands on the wide horizontal steering wheel. His face was a mask of utter composure. Behind him, compounding the sense of ordinariness, were rows of patiently seated passengers, most of them women of at least middle age. They seemed surreally unfazed by the coach’s careering progress, its cavalier tilting, the way it bounced and swayed from one pothole to the next, the manner in which the back end swung out on the more slippery parts of the highway. The women leaned to the left and right in their seats, but in curious metronome-like unison, as if they had been practising for weeks. The same was true of the five police officers who had taken seats on the same coach.

  The woman behind the driver leaned forward. She wore a paisley-patterned blouse. She tapped him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Slow down. We are not yet ready to breach the facility.’

  The driver rotated his head to the extent of its travel, taking his eyes off the road for an alarming interval. ‘We have sufficient force of numbers. Now is the time to strike.’

  ‘We must have more hosts. Not all ambulators were provided for. Those without hosts must gain hosts.’

  This was correct. All of the passengers were under Sild control now. But they also carried ambulators in their laps and handbags, waiting for more hosts. And more Sild were coming ashore with each successful time rupture.

  ‘What do you propose?’ the driver asked, swivelling his eyes back onto the road. The bus, which had veered to one side of the highway, clipped a farm gate with its rear end.

  ‘If we strike before success is guaranteed, the authorities may organise a counteroffensive.’

  ‘They will not win. Sild forces will eventually overwhelm this world. The process has commenced.’

  ‘That is true.’ The woman – the former Mrs Gambrel – spoke in the same uninflected tones as the driver. ‘But occupation and control of this world is only our secondary objective. Our primary objective is the Master. We know from our other encounters that the Master is resourceful. If we do not achieve success on our first strike, the Master may elude us.’

  ‘He cannot escape. We will find him, wherever he goes.’

  ‘That is true,’ the woman said again. ‘But needless delay and confusion must be avoided. We will not strike until all local ambulators have hosts.’

  ‘That could take hours. Days.’

  ‘It need not. Remember, our hosts need not be human.’ The woman was looking over the speeding hedgerows, into the fields beyond. Huge and docile creatures grazed there, supremely oblivious to the coming end of their world. ‘They need only be useful,’ the woman added.

  The Doctor stooped against the blast from the helicopter’s rotors. It was a smaller machine than the one that had taken them out to the rig, a waspish craft with a bubble canopy, skeletal tail, exposed engine parts, and room for no more than four occupants.

  ‘Are you quite sure this is necessary?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t wait until we can capture one and bring it back to headquarters,’ the Brigadier said. ‘Whatever these things are, they’re coming ashore in waves. Hundreds of them, all up and down the coast. I need to know what they are, and ideally how to blow them up.’

  ‘I wondered when we’d get to blowing things up.’ But the Doctor was willing to accept that Lethbridge-Stewart had a point. Not that he really needed the evidence of his eyes to know what they were dealing with. That earlier suspicion, of an ancient foe returned from time, was now looking all the more plausible. But it would be good to know for sure.

  He planted a foot on the helicopter’s landing skid.

  ‘Doctor!’

  It was Jo Grant, running to catch up.

  ‘I’m afraid the Brigadier’s got me on an errand,’ the Doctor said, offering an apologetic shrug. ‘But we shan’t be too long.’

  ‘It’s Eddie McCrimmon,’ Jo said. ‘She’s on the telephone! Called the Brigadier’s office, because that’s the number she had. But she really wants to speak to you, Doctor.’

  ‘The perishing woman was no use to us at all when we flew out to meet her,’ the Brigadier said, employing ‘we’ in the loosest possible sense, since he had not actually met McCrimmon. ‘I fail to see why we should jump at her beck and call now.’

  The Doctor had to fight to be heard above the roar of the engine. He was half on, half off. The helicopter was almost ready to lift off. ‘What does she want, Jo?’

  ‘I don’t know, Doctor – she says there’s some kind of evacuation going on – but she really wanted to speak to you.’

  ‘You can deal with her on the Doctor’s behalf,’ the Brigadier said, snapping shut the Perspex door on his side and leaning over to speak to the pilot.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to have a word after all,’ the Doctor said, as Jo backed away from the whirling rotors. ‘If the Master really has been allowed to come and go from Durlston Heath, and if he was on that
platform …’

  ‘Whatever it is, Doctor, I doubt very much that it is quite so urgent as an advancing army of metal crabs. Miss Grant can deal with the woman. Now please get into the helicopter.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Jo called. ‘I’ll talk to her! We ought to at least hear what she has to say.’

  The Doctor nodded, easing into his seat and closing the door.

  And then they were airborne, rising above UNIT headquarters. The helicopter put its nose down and surged for the coast.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Hello? Yes, it’s me, Josephine Grant. We met on the platform. I’m afraid the Doctor’s had to be called away on urgent business. No, nothing medical – he’s not that kind of doctor. Well, actually he’s all kinds of doctor at the same time, I suppose.’ Jo halted – she could sense Eddie McCrimmon doing her level best to get a word in. ‘What I mean is, you’re going to have to talk to me for the time being. Is it about Pete Lomax, the man we spoke to?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. Are you certain I can’t talk to someone in authority?’

  This needled Jo, the presumption that she was no more than a glorified tea-maker, but she was used to it. ‘I am in authority, Miss McCrimmon – I wouldn’t have come out to your rig if that wasn’t the case. I’ve exactly the same UNIT security clearance as the Doctor.’ Jo felt like adding that Eddie McCrimmon was the last person she should have had to lecture about the presumption of authority in a female professional. But she decided to let it go for now. ‘So what is it about Mr Lomax?’

  ‘Mr Lomax is dead, I’m afraid. At least, it’s looking increasingly that way. After you visited him, he seems to have decided to jump off the platform. We’ve searched top to bottom. There’s nowhere else he could have gone.’

  Jo was momentarily stunned. She had barely known Pete Lomax, but in the brief meeting they’d had, she had formed the opinion that he was a decent enough sort. The thought of him jumping into the cold North Sea, falling through the open air, knowing he was going to drown, was awful. What could drive someone to such a thing? If she had learned only one human truth in her time with the Doctor, it was that she would choose life over death, over and over again. Where there was life there was hope, always and for ever.