Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe (5 page)

Confusion reigned.

Dignity had evaporated from the proceedings.

‘Why don’t you clear off!’ demanded Mel. ‘The sooner you go, the sooner we can see what’s happening to the Doctor and Glitz!’

‘To do so will afford me great pleasure, my dear Melanie. Though I doubt you will enjoy the sight...’

Nor did she.

The Master’s leering face faded.

The screen went white.

Then a dim outline came floating into the vacated space.

Fuzzy at first. Indeterminate...

It resolved itself into a figure. Lying flat. Unmoving.

Mel drew in her breath as the picture hardened... into a corpse-like body prone on the cobblestones.

She peered closer.

Fearful.

It was almost with a guilty sense of relief that she recognised not the Doctor but Glitz.

Relief gave way to a gasp of revulsion.

The petty crook was not resting...

He was skewered by a harpoon..!

8

The festive lights frolicked over Sabalom Glitz’s waxen features, underscoring the sadness of the scene.

Sadness? ‘You’ll get cold lying there!’ quipped the Doctor.

A pause... then the eyelids popped open. ‘You’re a hard man, you are. My nerves are in shreds. I could’ve been killed.’

‘Not when you’re wearing a Mark Seven Postidion Life Presever!’ The Doctor’s insight into Glitz’s character was unflawed by sentiment. Glitz was plump, but a layer of that plumpness was the concealed protective toggery he cannily wore: he was no daredevil; even his pyjamas were made of Attack Repulsor Polycreman pongee, fastened at the neck by Batayn Radaral Buttons with a fifty metre range.

‘Yeah, well, whoever slung that thing hadn’t sussed out my underwear, had they?’ He examined the harpoon, gingerly testing the sharp point. ‘So much for illusions!’

He threw the offensive weapon aside. It clattered on the cobbles. ‘What I don’t get, is why me? I thought it was you he wanted to kill!’

‘He’s playing games. Wants to humiliate me.’

‘Oh I see, he humiliates
you
by flinging harpoons at
me
!

Makes a lot of sense, don’t it?’

‘Of course it does. By using fantasy and illusion, the Valeyard will try to destroy me.’

‘Hang on. Take it more slow.’

‘You’re not that dimwitted, Glitz. No rapscallion of your calibre could afford to be.’

‘Yeah... well. I can see you would be confused. I mean, not knowing what’s what. Real or unreal. But what I don’t get, is where I fit in.’

‘Your presence makes his task more difficult. He knows that. He also knows together we can fight him.’

‘Fight!’ The suggestion brought about a miraculous recovery. Glitz sprang to his feet. ‘Look, I’m a small-time crook with small-time ambitions – one of which is to stay alive. I wish you very good luck, Doctor, but I’m off. I’ve done my bit.’ He swaggered into the swirling fog.

‘The Valeyard must be stopped. And his agreement with the High Council broken.’

‘Something best achieved by another Time Lord.’

Glitz’s proposed departure was suffering somewhat from his inability to decide which way to go. Three paces east. A change of mind. Four paces west. Then south. Refusing to appear nonplussed, he sashayed in and out of the murk with diminishing confidence.

‘Something that can only be done by me. And I’m seeking your help, Glitz.’

‘Yeah – well – look. This is all mighty embarrassing.’ It most decidedly was! He hadn’t a clue how to leave! The north had proved no more promising!

‘If you go – and I die – do you think you’ll have a future? As the only witness to events here, the Valeyard will hunt you down... and kill you.’

Glitz’s perambulations halted, abruptly. ‘Kill..! Me..?

You’ve got a mean method of arguing.’

‘I’m simply assessing the situation.’

‘Hunt me down, you reckon?’

‘And finish you off ! Now, hoist up your life preserver and let’s get on with it!’

Glitz watched the Doctor mount the steps and open the factory door.

Nothing amiss.

Still the sceptic, he picked up the harpoon before following at a jog trot...

The sole splash of colour in the fusty, cramped, Victorian office, was the Doctor’s outfit.

All else was dark brown or grey. The mahogany desk complete with mahagony stool was reminiscent of Bob Cratchit’s in the classic tale of ‘Scrooge’ by Charles Dickens.

An inkstand, copious ledger and old fashioned bell-push were dimly lit by a solitary flickering candle. So was the clerk busily scratching away with a quill pen.

Dressed in Victorian attire, fat, bespectacled and as drab as his surroundings, Mr Popplewick’s assiduous application would have warmed the cockles of the afore-said Ebenezer Scrooge’s heart! He wavered not one jot when the Doctor advanced across the cramped room.

Nor did he glance up as the outside door opened again and Glitz eased in.

‘This isn’t what I expected,’ Glitz whispered.

‘The combination is a bit odd.’ The Doctor made little attempt to moderate his tones. ‘Hi-tech vistani alloy walls cocooning what appears to be rather a crusty Victorian clerk. Quite anachronistic.’ He leaned over the desk. ‘How d’you do? I think we’re expected.’

The rotund Mr Popplewick continued his meticulous copperplate screed.

Glitz, remaining near the entrance in case he needed to beat a strategic retreat, nudged the Doctor with the harpoon. The sharp end!

‘Ouch! Have a care!’

‘Sorry.’ He turned it round and nudged with the blunt end. ‘Doc?’

‘What?’

‘Are you sure we’re in the right place?’

‘Perfectly.’ He pounded on the bell. Repeatedly.

The moon-shaped face of Mr Popplewick was slowly lifted. ‘Yes?’

‘We’ve come to see the proprietor.’

‘Do you have an appointment, sir? Mr Chambers only sees people by appointment. Most particular about appointments is our Mr Chambers.’ The precise, clipped consonants complemented the pendantic tenor of the information.

‘Yeah, but we don’t want to jump the queue,’ said Glitz piously. ‘We’ll come back when he’s not busy –’

‘I think you’ll find we’re expected,’ the Doctor cut in.

‘And your name, sir?’

‘I’m known as the Doctor. And this is –’

‘Anonymous! I’m travelling incognito –’

‘– is Mr Sabalom Glitz.’

Lodging the quill pen behind his right ear, Popplewick consulted the appointments diary, running a stubby forefinger down a list of names.

Glitz inched closer to the Doctor – and to a vantage point from which to look over the list: you never knew what tickles you might chance on by reading someone else’s correspondence! ‘If this Valeyard wants you dead,’ he muttered in a low voice. ‘He’s got a rum way of going about it.’

‘I told you. It’s called humiliation.’ A loud, impatient sigh for the pedantic clerk’s benefit. ‘Can you hurry? We haven’t got all day.’

‘There are procedures to follow, sir. Necessary routines to be completed.’ The search stopped: doing two things at once – talking and reading – were not attributes to which Popplewick aspired. ‘Even when I have found your name, there are many forms to be inscribed before you may move on to the next stage of processing.’

Processing! The prospect sent shivers along Glitz’s spine: isn’t that what they did to ersatz cheese!

Popplewick sniffed. ‘Processing is very important in this establishment.’

He eyed the Doctor with distaste: the yellow and black striped trousers, the patchwork coat, tartan waistcoat and pea-green watch chain filled him with disgust. But devotion to duty dictated he must act with civility. ‘I’m sure even you can understand that such things cannot be rushed... sir.’ He could not resist spitting out the obligatory polite form of address.

The Doctor’s attention had strayed. Faintly discernible in the flickering flame was another door bearing a notice –

ENTRANCE BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always been a bit of an iconoclast by nature.’ The reply was cover to enable him to reach the door.

Popplewick had detected this. ‘You cannot go in there, sir!’ he said, alarmed. ‘Not without an appointment!’

Too late.

The door creaked open.

And so did the Doctor’s jaw...

In amazement...

9

Another Mr Popplewick sat inside.

In an identical office.

At an identical desk. Except that his seniority was reflected in petty embellishments: two spluttering candles instead of one; a branched hatstand for his raglan coat; engraved lettering on the tome-like ledger.

And this Mr Popplewick reflected the similarity.

Same frock-coat, winged collar, and cravat as the other Mr Popplewick. The sole difference was in the spectacles perched on his nose. They were half-frame, enabling him to blink over the top of them at the newcomers.

‘Ah, Doctor.’ His mariner, too, was slightly more friendly: though still weighted by the dogma of bureaucracy.

‘At least you’re expecting us.’

‘We all are.’

‘Your lookalike outside wasn’t,’ volunteered Glitz.

‘He is the exception. As a very junior clerk, Mr Popplewick is not permitted to expect anyone, sir.’

‘Hey, Doc,’ Glitz nudged the Doctor familiarly. ‘What’s he talking about?’

‘I think it’s called bureaucracy.’

‘I prefer to call it order, sir. And the holy writ of order is procedure. I’m sure you agree.’ The mellifluous tones, so reminiscent of his junior, were directed at the rough and ready Glitz.

‘Oh, yeah, of course.’

‘For example, you wish to see the proprietor.’

‘Not me! Him!’

Pausing only to allow the interjection to die, Popplewick patiently plodded on. ‘Now the procedure is to make an appointment.’

‘We’re already expected,’ reminded the Doctor.

‘But the junior Mr Popplewick is not empowered to expect anyone.’

‘Look, old mate, you knew we were coming. Why didn’t you give him the nod?’

‘And upset the procedure?’ Fleetingly the bland expression showed shock. ‘The junior Mr Popplewick has his pride too.’

The stifling tangle of red tape goaded Glitz. ‘I don’t understand any of this. Here we are, waiting to duck a terminal sandwich from the Valeyard, and this screed’s –’

Mr Popplewick huffed at the disrespectful description!

‘– going on about whether we’ve got an appointment or not!’

‘Gently, Glitz.’

But Glitz was launched. ‘He’ll be wanting to examine our teeth next to see how old we are!’

‘That only applies to horses.’

‘Does this geezer know that!’

‘Mr Popplewick.’

‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘Is there no way we can expedite the procedure?’

‘Expedite?’ The portly clerk pulled himself up to his full sitting height. He was tall. Surely as tall as the Doctor. ‘I am a senior clerk, sir.’ His ample chest rose and fell with outraged emotion beneath his spruce alpaca waistcoat. ‘To me the procedure is sacrosanct.’ He lifted his chin – chins

– with pride. ‘My work is a celebration of all that is perfect.

Why speed perfection?’

‘Because your proprietor wants me dead.’

‘Ah.’ A temporary hiatus only. ‘It seems you have found the one little weakness in our procedure, sir.’ Matter-of-factly, he adjusted his half-spectacles, pinched the bridge of his nose between plump finger and thumb... and then selected a document. ‘Would you sign this, please?’

‘What is it?’

‘A consent form, sir.’ He offered his quill pen. ‘The corridors in this factory are long and dark. Should you unexpectedly die –’

The mention of death convulsed Glitz. The harpoon clattered to the floor.

‘Do go on, Mr Popplewick,’ urged the Doctor.

‘Should you, as was afore stated, unexpectedly die, our blessed proprietor, Mr J. J. Chambers, insists that he inherits your remaining lives.’

‘The Valeyard must be concerned the High Council may no longer be in a position to fulfil their side of the deal.’

‘Don’t sign anything, Doc! You’re a dead man as soon as you put your monicker on there.’

‘No choice, Sabalom. We are in the Valeyard’s domain.

He can kill me any time he likes. I’ll sign my remaining lives over to Mr J. J. Chambers.’ He accepted the proffered quill pen and wrote his signature with a flourish.

‘Excellent. Thank you, sir.’

‘Now can I see your proprietor?’

‘The waiting room is that way.’ Lodging the quill pen behind his left ear – as opposed to the right ear used by his junior
doppelganger
– Popplewick pointed to a door on the far side of the office labelled –

WAITING ROOM

‘You will be summoned as soon as your signature has been verified.’

The Doctor crossed to the door.

‘This is madness, Doc!’

‘Not if it precipitates my meeting with the Valeyard.’ He twisted the old fashioned brass handle and was projected into a most unusual waiting room...

Mud!

Vast stretches of it, lapped by a desultory sea and hemmed in by barren sand dunes.

‘This is a very odd waiting room. Where are the hopelessly out-of-date magazines?’ he quipped. Even at moments this bizarre, the Doctor’s irrepressible humour did not desert him.

Glitz had though.

‘Glitz!’ he called, aware he was alone. ‘Glitz!’

And received an answer.

But not from the amiable rogue.

Instead, a gloating laugh echoed through the troughs of the sandy hillocks.

‘Valeyard!’ The Doctor recognised the laugh. ‘What’ve you done with Glitz?’

‘Look to your own predicament, Doctor.’ The threat in the resonant reply was only thinly disguised.

The Doctor swivelled round, seeking the direction from which danger would come, describing a three hundred-and-sixty degree circle with his keen eyes.

Danger, though, was not to come at that level.

It came from below.

From the gooey patch of beach on which he stood.

The mud began to bubble... and, thrusting from the lower depths – a slime-streaked hand broke the surface...

and scrabbled for the Doctor’s sneaker-clad feet.. !