Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord : The Ultimate Foe by Pip Baker, Jane Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

dissemblers, save me,’ prayed Glitz. ‘A voice from the grave!’
    ‘No,’ came the response. ‘Merely a grave voice.’ How the Doctor loved a pun! For it was he who answered.
    Not from below the ground but from above it... his tall form levitating from the flats nearby. ‘Bad joke. Then, everything here is a bad joke.’
    Glitz, almost mesmerised by the apparition, gawped at the resurrected Doctor. ‘But you – you –’ he indicated the mud in which the Doctor had been interred.
    Only there was no mud.
    Just dry sand.
    He squinted at the Doctor’s fair curls, pink cheeks and brightly coloured coat. Despite their dunking, they were unbesmirched. ‘No mud... yet I saw...’ His inspection centred on the Doctor’s feet. ‘And your ankle armour...’
    Clean and unsoiled, the spats nestled comfortably beneath the unsullied trousers. ‘I don’t get it! I just don’t get it! I saw you going down! Saw you! Tried to pull you out, but you were a goner for sure!’
     
    ‘Oh do concentrate, Glitz. How often must I tell you we’re not dealing with reality?’
    ‘Why waste your breath on that simple-minded oaf?’
    The clipped, incisive rhetoric could only have one source...
    His long black gown, its stiff cape collar edged with white, billowed about the Valeyard as he stood, a stark figure against the skyline. ‘You cannot speak as if reality –’
    The Doctor turned, but before he could locate him, the Valeyard had disappeared. Literally.
    To reappear closer. On the opposite side. ‘– is a one dimensional concept,’ he continued.
    Again the Doctor turned. And Glitz. Again the vanishing act... and a reappearance. Nearby. To their right.
    ‘Fortunately there is a reality that you and I can both agree on. The ultimate reality.’
    ‘Death?’ said the Doctor.
    ‘ "The undiscovered country from whose bourn," ‘
    quoted the Valeyard, ‘ "no traveller returns." ’
    ‘ "Puzzles the will" ’ supplied the Doctor. ‘ Hamlet . Act three. Scene one.’
    A scowl of disapproval at his own failings wrinkled the Valeyard’s features. ‘I really must curb these urges!’ He smoothed his straight, dark hair now unfettered by the tight-fitting skull cap he wore in Court. ‘I’ve no wish to be contaminated by your whims and idiosyncrasies.’
    ‘Yes... quite,’ agreed the Doctor absently. ‘What I don’t comprehend –’ Another vanishing trick!
    ‘Over there, Doc.’ The black antagonist was on the left now. ‘Slippery customer your other persona.’
    The Doctor swung to his left. ‘What I don’t comprehend, is why you want me dead.’ Second thoughts.
    ‘No. No. Let me rephrase that.’ Too late. The evanescent Valeyard had done it again!
    Glitz spotted him. ‘Top of the dune!’
    ‘What I mean is,’ shouted the Doctor. ‘It would satisfy my curiosity to know why you should go to such extraordinary lengths to kill me.’
     
    ‘Come now, Doctor. How else can I obtain my freedom?
    Operate as a complete entity, unshackled by your side of my existence?’ Another disappearance... and reappearance on the Time Lord’s right. ‘Only by ridding myself of you and your misplaced morality, your constant crusading –
    your... your...’ Passion clouded his mind, forcing him to grope for the correct expression.
    ‘Idiotic honesty,’ suggested Glitz, understanding the thesis since it was akin to his own.
    ‘Oaf! Microbe!’ stormed the Valeyard, looming above Glitz and hissing the epithets into his ear.
    ‘Pardon me for trying to help!’ Glitz dug a forefinger into the earhole as if to remove an offensive blob of wax.
    ‘I’m neutral in this set-up, you know.’ In case his neutrality was not recognised or honoured by this disparaging genie, Glitz moved resolutely behind the Doctor.
    The Valeyard ignored him, returning his attention to his true victim. ‘Only by releasing myself from the misguided maxims that you nurture, can I be free.’
    ‘Sounds like Armageddon’s beckoning you,