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built.
With every passing second, the pillar of light pulsed with
constantly reamplified energies, until the blue-black tapestries
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themselves began to fluoresce. The psionic capacitors housed
in the pyramidal summit of Canary Wharf Tower had reached
the limits that Chapel had specified.
Now that he had sufficient psychic energy, it was time for a
different sort of magic. People such as Anne Travers might
know about micro-monolithic circuits, but they had no idea of
the power of Saraquazel.
Then there was a knock at his door. He turned to see Derek
Peartree entering his office and smiled. There was a very sad
individual who was about to become very happy.
`I don't like her. I don't like her at all.'
The Doctor opened the door of the TARDIS, ushered Mel
inside and closed the great doors before responding. `Aren't
you being a little premature?' he asked, removing his bow-tie
with one hand and extracting himself from his dinner jacket
with the other. With the legerdemain of a conjuror, he stored
the tie in the jacket pocket and flung the jacket on the hatstand
in one fluid movement.
`She means well, but she's a dried up old spinster with a
vendetta against Ashley Chapel,' Mel pronounced, lying down
on the red velvet chaise longue that the Doctor claimed was
from a variant of the Roman Empire he had visited not so long
ago. If it was good enough for Cleopatra, it was good enough
for her, Mel decided.
`Dear, oh dear, oh dear,' said the Doctor, turning from the
hexagonal control console. 'Who's rattled your cage?'
`Nobody,' she snapped. 'It's nothing.'
The Doctor perched himself on the wooden arm of the
chaise longue and stared at her. 'Come on, Mel. What's the
matter? It's not like you to be so  so bitter.'
She sighed. 'It was the reunion, Doctor. They were all ten
years older, but for me it's only been a couple of years. A
couple of years spent cooped up in here'  she waved a hand
around the roundelled white walls of the TARDIS  'while
they've been living real lives.'
`Real lives? Real lives?' He leapt from the couch like an
electrified cat. 'And what have we been doing, eh? Or have you
forgotten the vicious Herecletes? Or the Stalagtrons, with their
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inhuman plans for mankind?' He span round with his arms
outstretched. 'Or the Vervoids?' he proclaimed. 'Without my
cunning scheme to use vionesium, Earth would have become a
galactic compost heap!'
Mel smiled. 'We haven't met them yet. Remember?' For
some strange reason, the Doctor seemed obsessed with the
Vervoids. Apparently, they were some sort of nasty alien plant
race. But every few weeks, he would start mentioning them.
'Or, are you about to tell me about them?'
`Ah, no. No, this is neither the time nor the, um, time. But
the point is Mel, I can drop you back minutes after we left
Pease Pottage. You can have the chance to live those years 
nothing's been wasted.'
`But I've changed my own future!' she exclaimed, sitting
up. 'If you drop me back, I'll end up meeting myself at my own
college reunion!'
`Probably not,' muttered the Doctor, fussing over the
console.
`And what is that supposed to mean?'
He shrugged. 'Time has a marvellous way of preventing
those sorts of paradoxes, Mel.' He leant back against the
console then stood up as a cacophony of bleeps issued from it.
Mel tried very hard to suppress a giggle. And failed. 'Yes, well.
Anyway,' he said, obviously trying to regain his composure.
'Let's say I do return you to 1989. And you carry on your life
from the point at which you left it. The chances are, the night
you set off for the reunion, something will happen. Perhaps
you'll miss your bus, or your taxi doesn't turn up. Or you
change your mind. The end result is that you don't turn up,
your earlier self does, and the web of time retains its integrity.'
He frowned and scratched his chin. 'Anyway, that's the way the
First Law of Time is supposed to work. And don't be so rude
about Anne. She's been through a lot.'
`Has she met the Vervoids yet?'
It was the Doctor's turn to laugh. 'Hopefully not. But she
has had rather more than her fair share of encounters with the
Great Intelligence, and that's enough to make anybody bitter. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]