Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani (8 page)

His earnest young face wore a worried frown.

Stephenson began to waver. ‘Dolt reckon us should cancel meeting?’

The Doctor was in no doubt.

‘Luke?’

‘Aye, sir. I do.’

Peri certainly thought so.

Stephenson capitulated. ‘A pity.’ He crossed to a bench.

‘I suspect Doctor’s contribution would’ve put cat among pigeons. Where’s paper, lad?’

Luke ripped a sheet from a pad. Picking up a quill, Stephenson began to write.

‘Fine. Now that’s sorted out,’ Peri said to the Doctor.

‘Shouldn’t we do something about the TARDIS?’

Paying no heed, the Doctor gazed around the workshop with its crude implements, and was consumed with respect for the inventor. Without the more refined equipment of Peri’s twentieth century, George Stephenson’s ingenuity would reshape existence on the planet Earth - provided, that is, the Master and the Rani could be foiled. It was a grim thought but not one that prevented him from being intrigued by the prototype engine.

‘The Blucher, is it?’ he asked Luke.

‘Aye.’

‘Doctor, this is no time to be playing trains!’

‘Mind if I take a peep?’

‘The TARDIS is at the bottom of that pit shaft!’ Peri wasn’t going to be tubbed off.

‘We have to wait -’ his voice became muffled as he stuck his head into the boiler of the engine, ’– until it’s safe.’

‘And that could be forever!’

Speaking quietly, Luke moved closer to Peri. ‘When Doctor were attacked again...’ he faltered, reluctant to hear the answer to his question.

‘Yes, Luke?’

‘Was – did me Da’ take part?’

Peri nodded.

‘I asked me Mam about that red mark. On his neck. She knew nowt of it. She’d nay seen it. Dost know what caused it?’

Selfconsciously, Peri rubbed her own neck, recalling that she, too, was almost a victim.

Stephenson interrupted. ‘Luke, take this to his lordship.’ He gave him the note he had written.

‘Dost mind if I also seek me Da’?’

‘Of course not, lad.’

‘Wait!’ The Doctor crawled from under the Blucher.

‘Luke, your father’s not the man you knew. Take care ...’

Perplexed, the young apprentice left. Stephenson was also perturbed by the Doctor’s warning. ‘I’d nay like anything to happen to Luke. Lad’s got great future. He’ll outshine me.’

This final remark worried the Doctor. It bewildered Peri. ‘You?’ How could Luke Ward outshine George Stephenson? No-one had done that – not according to the history books.

Stephenson continued. ‘I were down pit at nine. Never did get much schooling. But Lord Ravensworth’s seen to it Luke’s been well taught. We’ve both great hopes for the lad.’

Little did he know how tragically forlorn these hopes were to be.

Having gained access, the Master was systematically searching the sprawling environs of the mine when he witnessed a dispute that suggested an entirely new strategy.

‘Hey, Tim! Tim Bass! Hast seen me Da’?’ Luke had spotted the marauding aggressor flitting between the sheds, obviously avoiding the guards.

The jaunty scarf was still tied about Tim’s brow but his jovial manner had been banished. ‘He’ll want nowt to do with thee! Not as long as tha’s lackey to that Stephenson!’

‘But why? He’s nay objected afore.’

‘He do now. Assistant! Traitor more like! Out of road!’

He jostled the slim apprentice aside and blustered on.

Bewildered, Luke stared after him. What had happened to the happy-go-lucky Tim Bass, a man rarely without a smile? There was a red mark below his ear. Could that have something to do with his ugly mood?

‘Excuse me, young man.’ Luke was accosted by a gentleman expensively attired in a black velvet suit trimmed with silver. ‘I’ve been invited here by Lord Ravensworth.’ The gentleman dangled a medallion between his fingers. ‘Can you tell me where I’ll find him?’

The medallion was swinging... rhythmically... gleaming hypnotically...

The scene was being observed but, alas for Luke, not by someone who would help him. The Rani was at her scanner.

With bleak disapproval, she saw the Master take out the box of maggots he had filched from her. She had seen enough! Fretfully, she ripped out the plug, blanking the screen. The imbecile had ruined everything!

Venting her spleen on Josh, she ordered him to dismantle the laboratory.

Selecting a fluorescent maggot, the Master tickled Luke’s lips with the slimy parasite. It squirmed repulsively yet Luke did not flinch.

‘Luke, I want you to swallow this very special sweet-meat.’

Without even a shudder, the hypnotised youth sucked in the wriggling grub, chewed, then swallowed.

A blue glow suffused his pupils.

‘Splendid. You have a note I see.’

‘Aye. ’Tis for his lordship.’

‘Give it to me.’

After reading Stephenson’s advice to cancel the meeting, the Master knew the task his newly created acolyte could perform.

‘Luke, this meeting is
not
to be cancelled. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’ A slight reserve was the only manifestation of the change in Luke, and that would be interpreted as shyness even by those who were familiar with him.

‘If anyone tries to prevent it, you destroy them! Is that clear?’

‘That is clear.’ His subservience was absolute.

‘Anyone, Luke. Anyone at all!’

11

‘The key is more power.’

George Stephenson and the Doctor were crawling under the Blucher. ‘If I can increase that, speeds of fifteen, maybe twenty miles an hour become possible. Aye, power’s t’problem.’

The Doctor longed to he able to enlighten the inventor, but he dared not. That would be influencing history. Could he, he wondered, just give a hint?

‘Doctor, there
is
a more pressing problem!’ chided Peri.

Reluctantly he squeezed out from beneath the engine, scrubbing a patch of oil from his turquoise cravat. ‘You’re correct, of course. Let’s go.’

As he lifted the loosened planks for her to leave the workshop, Peri thought, for once, they were in accord. She was mistaken. Her reference related to the TARDIS stuck at the bottom of that shaft and without which they were stranded. His worry was the crucial matter of Earth’s destiny.

Someone else was brooding, but on a less grand scale. Jack Ward blamed the Doctor for his present plight. Using his knowledge of the hotchpotch of sheds, he had managed to evade capture.

‘It’s nay right having to skulk round like criminals,’ he grouched to his mate, Dobbs. ‘Guards everywhere!’ They were in the bagging compound where they had soughttemporary shelter. ‘Just because of that poxy rogue in’t yellow trousers!’ He whacked the scales in frustration.

Well, he’s in’t pit somewhere.’ All Jack wanted was a chance to square the account.

The chance came. With characteristic imprudence, the Doctor strutted across a quadrangle parallel to the compound. Signalling to Dobbs, Ward began to stalk his unwary adversary.

Hampered by the voluminous skirt, Peri lagged behind in what was, for her, an unappetising sight-seeing tour.

‘Hey, less haste, more speed!’ Her faith in his sense of direction, literally and metaphorically, was less than a hundred per cent.

She had a point. Anticipating the Doctor’s more circuitous route, Ward, familiar with every nook and cranny, took a short-cut to the overhead track etched against the skyline. Nimble as a cat, he scaled the framework, then lay in wait.

Still trailing in the rear, Peri was disgruntled. Why the heck had she ever gotten herself into this fix? Adventures were all very well so long as they had a happy ending.

Happy ending! In despair, she cast her gaze up to the heavens – and glimpsed a figure easing a tipping bolt from the socket of a stationary loaded truck. Plumb below, having paused to get his bearings, stood the Doctor!

‘Doc –!’ A beefy palm clapped over her mouth killing the warning as Ward braced himself to up the truck.

Eyes boggling over Dobbs’s stifling hand, she was a distraught spectator as Ward sent several tons of coal cascading onto his unsuspecting victim.

A more colourful turbulence was depicted on the room-divider screen that remained in the Rani’s now denuded laboratory. Painted in the style of Turner’s ‘Eruption of Souffrier’, it portrayed, in sultry ambers and vivid scarlets, a smouldering volcano. A chilling antithesis, the Rani was arranging the exotic mural with meticulous delicacy. It dominated the bare room; every item of scientific apparatus had been removed.

The click of the latch. ‘At last you’re back, you incompetent egoist! Give me my phial!’ The sour greeting was for the Master.

‘And I thought you were waiting for me.’ A lie. The Master had no illusions about the Rani.

‘If I didn’t need that brain fluid desperately, I’d’ve put light years between us!’

‘What better reason could I have for keeping it?’

‘You’ll play that card once too often! With you on the scene I might be wiser to cut my losses and go!’

Quelling a tinge of alarm over the possibility, the Master changed from banter to bribery. ‘Read this.’ He gave her the note taken from Luke.

A perfunctory glance. ‘So the meeting’s been cancelled.’

She was unimpressed. All she’d agreed to do was help get rid of the Doctor.

‘No. This was never delivered.’ He snatched the note.

‘You disappoint me. A scientist, yet you’re not thinking objectively.’ He recited the names of the inventors. ‘Over twenty men of genius! Have you no conception of what we could do if we controlled them?’

Her indifference should have stemmed the flow. It did not. The bombast continued unabated. ‘Harness their genius and this planet could become the platform for the most devastating power in the Universe!’

‘You’re forgetting, I already rule a planet. Miasimia Goria.’

‘I’m forgetting nothing!’ This Machiavelli had anticipated her response. ‘Help me and I promise you all the facilities you need!’

An astute offer. The Rani listened.

‘Instead of sneaking back here in disguise, you will be able to set up a laboratory and process as many humans as you choose! A hundred. A thousand. There are millions of them!’

His cynicism began to erode her hostility. This new proposal had its advantages. Having to establish processing laboratories every visit was abysmally tedious. But she was not to be won over that readily. ‘What guarantee would I have?’

‘My need. That unique box of parasites will not go far.

Only you have the formula.’

The Rani was almost persuaded... but there was a flaw.

‘The Time Lords will never permit it!’

‘And who is going to alert them?’

Who indeed? Not the Doctor. She’d make sure of that!

Unlike her incompetent partner, she was going to allow their adversary to take the initiative. These earthlings had a saying: ’fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. She considered the Doctor to be a fearless fool.

When the dust had settled, all that could be seen where the ’fearless fool’ had stood was a smothering pile of coal.

Peri, still captive, scratched and kicked in an effort to get free and salvage the Doctor before he was suffocated.

Tame submission was not her style, but sadly her strength did not match her spirit. Dobbs restrained her with ease.

‘Let lass go or I’ll blow brains out!’ The barrel of a flintlock pistol was rammed into Dobbs’s temple by a patrolling guard. ‘You, too, Jack Ward. Come down from there!’

Released, Peri began clawing frantically at the mountain of coal –

‘You’re making a frightful mess of that pretty dress.’

The Doctor’s voice! Clear, unmuffled, not from the grave! She turned – to be rewarded with a genial smile as he stepped out from behind a stanchion.

‘I thought... the coal... how did you?... I mean, you were directly underneath!’

‘Peripheral vision. All I needed was a split second’s grace.’ He sounded more casual than he felt. He hadlearned the technique from the Shikari, on the Planet of the Hunters. It enabled him to see not just what was in front, but in a much wider arc. He contemplated the pyramid of coal. Without the art of peripheral vision, that would have been his burial mound.

A more blinkered vision was being employed in the laboratory where the Rani was ensuring that all evidence of her occupancy, except the room-divider, had been whisked away. A final adjustment to the spectacular mural and she was satisfied.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ The Master indicated the two assistants passively awaiting her bidding.

‘You can hardly take them out onto the streets.’

‘No. You’re right. I can’t.’

The Rani might almost have been swotting flies for all the emotion she displayed as she tapped the annihilating code on her mini-computer.

Josh and his companion clutched at their throats.

Excruciating pain forced them to cry out. But the crimson mark continued to spread until it had throttled them to death...

12

Chafing the crimson scar that blemished his neck, Ward preceded Dobbs into Ravensworth’s office.

‘Only two! What about the others?’

The guard, holding his gun on the two aggressors, was chastened by his employer’s reprimand; he had been expecting praise. ‘Don’t know, m’lord.’ ‘Got away, you mean!’

‘Good luck to ’em!’ The gun had not completely subdued Jack Ward.

‘Be quiet, Ward.’ The mine owner’s ire was still reserved for the guard. ‘My orders were to round up the lot!’

‘Us hasn’t finished yet!’ came Ward’s interjection.

‘I said that’s enough!’ The peer was florid with anger.

He had never experienced such insubordination. Crass insolence from an employee struck at the very roots of nineteenth-century society.

But the mutated miner was not now a product of that age. He grabbed a chair to hurl at Ravensworth.

‘Do that Jack Ward and I’ll blow tha’s arm off!’ The gun was cocked.

Baffled, resentful, Ward let the chair drop.

‘Tie him up!’ Lord Ravensworth was also confused. He deplored having to resort to these measures. They refuted the very philosophy that he had subscribed to since inheriting the colliery. Reason was the guiding beacon of this enlightened era, but now it seemed to be regressing to barbarism. His own doubts nagged. Should he have taken further action earlier? Sent for the militia? With the woods infested by these disturbed wretches, that option was no longer available. Killingworth was virtually cut off from the outside world.