Doctor Who: Mawdryn Undead (5 page)

‘So there you are, Turlough.’

‘Sir?’

Ibbotson came lolloping up behind the Brigadier like an overfed puppy-dog. ‘Turlough, what happened? The sphere.. ?’

‘Do be quiet, boy!’ snapped the Brigadier. He fixed Turlough with a gaze that had withered many a neglectful adjutant. ‘You’re supposed to be in the sick bay.’

‘I was with the Doctor,’ said Turlough, without a word of a lie.

‘Doctor?’ said the Brigadier, testily. ‘Doctor Runciman?’

‘This Doctor,’ replied Turlough, looking over the Brigadier’s shoulder to where the Doctor was approaching from the woods.

The Brigadier turned to face the newcomer. The Doctor stopped in his tracks. A grin slowly spread from ear to ear.

‘Brigadier!’ he exclaimed in amazement.

The Brigadier looked quizically at the Doctor, who held out his hand.

‘Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart,’ the Doctor continued, hardly able to believe his good fortune, meeting up with such an old friend.

The Brigadier had no wish to shake hands with the improbable young man in the ridiculous frock-coat. ‘Who are you?’ he said coldly.

The Doctor looked quite hurt.

Noting this, the old soldier, who was nothing if not a gentleman, smiled politely. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but if we have met before, it’s entirely slipped my memory.’

The Doctor’s hand went to his face which was once again wreathed in smiles. ‘Of course!’ he cried. ‘I’d forgotten. Brigadier, I’m into my fourth regeneration.’

The Brigadier’s heart sank. They’d tangled with some fanatic – one of those born-again Johnnies by the sound of it. ‘Excuse me,’ he murmured, as politely as he could manage. ‘I’ve got to get these boys back to school.’

But the Doctor would not let his old colleague from UNIT go so easily. ‘What would you say if I told you I was looking for my TARDIS?’

‘What on earth’s a TARDIS?’

‘The police box, Brigadier!’ How could the old boy be so obtuse!

‘Doctor, I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about.’ Lethbridge-Stewart indicated that the interview was at an end.

The Doctor grabbed him by the arm. ‘Brigadier, even if you’ve forgotten about the TARDIS, surely you remember UNIT?’

‘What!’ hissed the Brigadier.

‘You do?’ the Doctor was delighted to have elicited a positive response at last.

‘What’s UNIT?’ piped up Ibbotson.

‘The Brigadier and I used to work together,’ the Doctor volunteered blithely. Its an organisation that...’ He got no further.

Interposing himself between the Doctor and the two boys, the Brigadier leaned forward and blasted the Doctor’s eardrum with a stentorian whisper. ‘Doctor, if you know anything about
that organisation
you will almost certainly have signed the Official Secrets Act!’

‘Ah, of course.’ The Doctor smiled. This, at least, was more like the old Lethbridge-Stewart.

‘Right everybody!’ barked the Brigadier. ‘We’re going back down.’

Ibbotson, delighted to be with his friend again, fell in with Turlough, eager to ply him with questions as soon as the Brigadier was out of earshot.

Turlough looked nervously over his shoulder. Whatever happened, he mustn’t lose the Doctor.

He need not have worried. The Brigadier was equally anxious for the Doctor’s company; this young fellow could be a serious security risk. ‘If you really are from UNIT,’ he spoke quietly but firmly to the Doctor, ‘we’d better have a little talk in my quarters.’

Nyssa and Tegan shivered beside the deserted obelisk. A rain squall obscured the valley below them. ‘Typical English summer,’ thought Tegan.

‘Doctor,’ shouted Nyssa for the umpteenth time.

‘There’s no one here.’

The rain in the valley suddenly cleared, revealing the path down the hillside. That too was deserted. A shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds, spotlighting a large mansion, far below, at the base of a rainbow.

But no sign of the Doctor.

‘Maybe the capsule’s malfunctioned.’

Though Nyssa had more confidence in the transmat process than her fellow companion, even she was getting thoroughly nervous – when a silver ball appeared between the two trees in front of them.

The Doctor must have been sheltering from the storm inside the capsule and had operated the camouflage circuit.

A door in the side of the sphere opened and the girls rushed forward to welcome him.

They peered inside the capsule. The spacious interior was engineered with the same dimensionally transcendental principles as the TARDIS.

‘Doctor!’ called Nyssa.

There was no answer from the Doctor or Turlough.

A sour-sweet smell hung in the air, reviving for Tegan a distressing childhood memory — slaughtered cattle on her Uncle’s farm; it was the odour of putrification. ‘Doctor!’

she cried out in alarm.

Something moved, in the shadow of the in-board control console. The two girls stepped forward.

‘Doctor!’ gasped Tegan.

They stared at the floor unable to speak. The object of their concern lay at their feet — a creature that was neither visibly man nor beast; a lump of transmuted flesh that flexed and groaned.

As they looked closer, Tegan and Nyssa could recognise vestigial limbs, and the outline of a mangled trunk that wept pus through charred clothing. Then, as the deformed boy twisted itself towards them, they gazed upon a face that, though ravaged beyond all recognition, had once been that of a man.

If this was the Doctor, he had paid a terrible price for his journey in the transmat capsule.

A ghastly rattle came from his throat. He was trying to speak. ‘Where... where am I?’

For a moment the girls were too upset to answer. At last Nyssa found the strength to reply. ‘You’re on Earth, Doctor. You came in the transmat capsule.’

‘Earth?’

‘Don’t you remember? You followed us through in the TARDIS.’

‘TARDIS? TARDIS?’ The injured man cried like a soul in purgatory that has glimpsed salvation.

‘The TARDIS is outside. We can help you.’

He tried to raise himself up. A palsied hand reached up to the two girls. ‘TARDIS!’ he cried again, and sank back exhausted.

Tegan and Nyssa knelt beside him. They could hardly hear his desperate whisper.

‘Take me... take me...’

‘Doctor?’

‘Take me into... the TARDIS!’

It was an excruciating journey. Though only a few yards separated the police box from the transmat capsule, it was nearly an hour before the injured man, supported by Tegan and Nyssa, was brought into the control room.

As he passed through the doors, he panted like a creature long starved of air that has just been fed pure oxygen, then sunk to the floor, worn out by the pain of the transfer.

‘It’s too risky to move him again. Go and find some blankets. We must keep him warm,’ cried Tegan.

As Nyssa ran into the corridor, Tegan leaned over the body. ‘It’s all right, Doctor. You’re safe inside the TARDIS.’ She felt for his hand to comfort him.

‘Something must have happened to the transmat capsule,’ said Nyssa, returning with some blankets and an assortment of the Doctor’s clothes.

‘I told you those things were dangerous,’ complained Tegan bitterly as she tried to make the patient comfortable.

‘That boy!’ cried Nyssa suddenly.

‘Turlough!’

In their concern for the Doctor they had both forgotten that he had not gone into the capsule alone.

As Tegan rushed off to search the sphere again, Nyssa knelt beside the injured man who began to regain consciousness.

‘Stability not achieved... transmat projection destructive... stability not achieved.’ He rambled on deliriously, then cried out like a child in a bad dream. ‘No end! No end!’ He swooned again.

Nyssa watched over the body until Tegan returned.

‘No sign of Turlough.’

Nyssa was very quiet. She realised the boy had none of the resilience of a Time Lord. She looked gravely at her fellow companion. ‘He could have been atomised.’

As they walked through the school grounds the Doctor tried to find out from the Brigadier what had happened since they last met that had caused his old friend to treat him like a complete stranger.

‘Is this an undercover operation, Brigadier? I mean I hardly expected to find you at a boys’ school.’

The Brigadier grunted politely, but no information was forthcoming.

They came to a halt beside a large clapboard shed at the rear of the old stables, which the Doctor assumed to be the scout hut until the Brigadier indicated they should go inside.

‘Oh dear,’ thought the Doctor. ‘Accommodation, Brigadier, for the use of.’ That his old friend should have come to this! ‘Your quarters?’ he asked, in a voice that suggested they had arrived at Buckingham Palace.

His irony was not lost on the Brigadier. ‘Perfectly serviceable,’ he grumbled, and led the way in.

The Brigadier’s hut was hardly the cosy billet the Doctor would have expected of the old soldier. Even before he saw the disarray, he could smell the damp walls, unaired clothes and abandoned washing-up. It was the usual self-imposed squalor of a bachelor brought up to believe that domesticity can only be provided by a servile member of the opposite sex; but very untypical of Lethbridge-Stewart.

The Brigadier had let himself go. He had always been such a stickler for neatness, discipline and apple-pie order; yet the present owner of the hut was untidy, disorganised and a stranger to the vacuum-cleaner.

As the Brigadier busied himself making a cup of tea in the tiny kitchenette, the Doctor picked up a photograph from the cluttered desk. It was his former colleague in full dress uniform. How different the spruce, military figure of a mere eight years ago from the ageing eccentric spooning Typhoo into a cracked teapot.

The Brigadier turned from the gas ring. ‘So what’s all this about UNIT?’

‘Brigadier, I need your help. I’ve lost the TARDIS.’

‘I don’t know what the TARDIS is. I’ve already told you.’

‘And you don’t remember me?’

‘Certainly not. But whoever you are, I can’t let you wander round blabbing about classified operations.’

‘There’s more at stake than a breach of security.’ The Doctor abandoned the tone of good-humoured banter. He spoke urgently to his old friend. ‘I’ve lost my TARDIS and you’ve lost your memory. I’d be surprised if the two events weren’t connected.’

The Brigadier glared defiantly. ‘Doctor, I am in full possession of all my faculties.’ A raw nerve had been touched. ‘If I were suffering from amnesia I’d be the first to know about it!’ he snapped.

The Doctor said no more until the Brigadier had brought through the tray of tea things and they were sitting together on the sagging horsehair sofa. ‘By the way,’

he asked casually. ‘How’s Sergeant Benton these days?’

If the Brigadier wondered how his guest knew about UNIT personnel he didn’t say so. ‘Left the army in ‘79,’ he replied, equally matter-of-fact. ‘Sells second-hand cars somewhere.’

‘And Harry Sullivan?’

‘Seconded to NATO. Last heard of doing something very hush-hush at Porton Down.’

The tea brewed silently.

‘Ever see anything of Jo Grant?’ said the Doctor in a vague sort of way.

‘What?’

‘Jo Grant. My assistant!’ The Doctor lobbed the rider like a grenade.

‘Jo Grant...’ muttered the Brigadier, disturbed and confused.

‘Sarah Jane?’ The Doctor pressed on. ‘Liz Shaw you’ll remember, of course.’

The Brigadier turned pale. He cradled his head in his hands.

‘Are you all right?’

The Brigadier looked up. ‘Someone just walked over my grave.’

‘Perhaps it was a Cyberman?’ The Doctor looked the Brigadier straight in the eye. ‘Or a Yeti...
Colonel
Lethbridge-Stewart?’

The Brigadier’s eyes glazed over. The Doctor’s hypnotic questioning had transported him a million miles from Brendon School. He was a young man again. He felt the adrenalin flow...

Danger! Darkness and terrible danger... Abominable
snowmen in the Underground. Saved from the Yeti by the most
peculiar man with a flute... Who was this ‘Doctor?’

Promoted Brigadier. Seconded UNIT... Enemy in the sewers

– silver things, bionic monsters. Cybermen! Saved again by the
Doctor...

Not the Doctor, this ageing dandy with the crimped curls and
frilly shirt. Can there be two of them? Regeneration? Impossible!

But only one Doctor could destroy the Autons...

Exterminate! Exterminate! What are they, Doctor? Daleks?

No match for UNIT’s scientific advisor...

Here we go again, Doctor. Is it really you? The clown? The
licensed fool? Jelly babies? Thank you, but no. Where’s that
police box gone to now?

Don’t worry, Doctor, we’ll deal with that robot. Strike
command coming over in four minutes flat.

Alien planet? Don’t believe a word of it. That’s Cromer out
there! Where are you, Doctor? Doctor...

The Brigadier opened his eyes. The young man from the obelisk was offering him a cup of tea. Quite a decent fellow really.

‘One lump or two?’ asked the young man.

‘Bless my soul, Doctor,’ said the Brigadier, smiling at the latest face. ‘You’ve done it again!’

The girls felt so useless, waiting beside the inert body on the floor of the TARDIS control room.

Tegan could bear it no longer. ‘I’m going for help!’

‘Where?’

‘There’s a house in the valley. I’ll use their phone.’

‘If only we had the zero room.’

‘As we haven’t, a hospital is the next best thing.’ Tegan was already half-way through the doors.

‘Take this.’ Nyssa felt under the console and withdrew the Doctor’s homing device.

‘Thanks.’ Tegan grabbed the tiny ball. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Nyssa walked with her fellow companion to the entrance of the TARDIS and watched her run down the steep path towards the house in the valley below.

No one remained in the control room to observe that the breathing of the injured creature on the floor had become stronger and more regular. No one saw the body stir, a bloodshot eye open and gaze covetously at the TARDIS console.