AFTER THE ANCESTOR CELL

From 2000, my attempt to spin the end of The Ancestor Cell, and the Doctor's amnesia in the EDAs into... 

Chapter Forty-Five

 

 After such mathematics what Forgiveness?

 

"You stopped it!" Fitz was practically dancing around the re-formed library of the Doctor' s old familiar TARDIS; but the look on the Doctor's face, stilled him. Pale, drawn and ghastly, as if some cancer of the bone was eating away under his features; dulling his eyes, the Doctor had evidently failed.

On the gilt screen built into Rassilon's lecturn the sigil of the Worm that eats itself, the ultimate paradox; twisted itself back and forth through space and time writhing. Watching it was like watching a surgeon stitch, repick, and stitch: it made Fitz feel sick. Stolen Faction technology; stolen or given;  turning Gallifrey's own inviolate history back on itself; and back; and back.  In the very instant the forces holding the TARDIS in the form of the Edifice had given way; so the first blow of the Enemy had landed.  Now caught up in one paradox, time screamed!

"No," Compassion said, reaching out a tentative hand for the Doctor's sleeve and drawing him down into one of the Hepplewhite chairs. There was a tear at the corner of her eye. Maybe she'd never really care, Fitz thought but by God her chameleon circuit could fake it.

The screen flared. "Nova Gallifrey," the Doctor whispered, "a single sun burning out a billion years ago; its life wound back and round and finally out; catalysing its own nuclear reactions. The light passing us comes from all the days that never were."   He tottered to the consol. "I can not let this happen".

Compassion frowned "But it has?"

The Doctor';s hands flew over the controls, "Not yet, not quite - the TARDIS is retreating in the vortex at relative speeds faster than light, provided we don’t dematerialise, don’t disturb the links that bind us to these events we still stand a chance. Here in the vortex we are outstripping the news of the destruction and when we are fully outside the light-cone to which the information has spread there may be one thing yet we can try. After all I only "think" I'm witnessing the destruction of my world". His eyes were absolutely haunted, and there was a crack in his voice. "What if I'm wrong, eh?"

 Fitz wondered who the Doctor was trying to convince; them or him.

A day later. One light day and three hours from Gallifrey.

"We are still safe," the Doctor said, "just. Compassion's presence proves that; she draws her power from a future version of the Eye of  Harmony, if its linkages are intact in the future; there must be at least one possible future universe in which Gallifrey survives still bundled up in the quantum mishmash".  He mopped his brow, “That Gallifrey was still in my future just a little, my TARDIS is still drawing power out of the past; at least so long as we remain ahead of the change wave”.

"Er Doctor," Fitz was about to say that Compassion had once told him that her power sources were entirely unbounded tapping the energies of the vortex itself, but before he could do so Compassion's hand was over his mouth. 

"Not now!" she hissed.

On the screen, a vast shape began to form. The Cloister bell began to sound. Fitz recognised it from their adventures in the Black Nebula; a sign that the TARDIS was under stress. He tried to bite Compassion's hand and risked chipping his teeth.

 "A schrodinger box," the Doctor said. "An area of space-time isolated from all else; within it the time-streams need not resolve themselves."

Compassion nodded, "the Enemy device used the random decay of particles to drive its war strategy, to prevent the Matrix predicting the hour it would strike; at some point the fate of Gallifrey hinged on the outcome of a single subatomic event".

"Yessss," the Doctor's breath came out in a long stream, "and such events are ultimately uncertain". He pressed a large onyz and ormalu button on the control panel.

An area of space turned mirror bright.

Fitz spat out Compassion's hand. "Will someone please pass me the Idiot's guide please?"

"There were millions of people on Gallifrey," the Doctor began hesitantly. "As it was they were dead, no question - almost; oh there could have been a billion to one failure of the Enemy's machine, the light could have been its drive energies venting across time as it burned itself out, but it was never likely." He wrung his hands. "So long as the information from Gallifrey is trapped within the area of space defined by the schrodinger field though, that tiny possibility has as much validity as any other. They'll all have their lives, within their solar system, until their star finally does really burn out, maybe longer they'll have the technology and maybe now the will to use it.  No horizon’s to speak of, of course, now vast frontiers.”

"Of course, it can never be opened," Compassion said.

Fitz met the Doctor's eyes. "Romana," he whispered.

The Doctor nodded. "Romana, everyone, all my people, everyone who was on Gallifrey when it fell. They are all dead to me. I'm going to go and lie down for a long time. Please let me be".

"Doctor?" It was Compassion who persisted. "The box, the energies driving its homeostasis, deflecting the disturbing influences of other suns, what's driving that?"

The Cloister bell sounded again slow and distorted.

"I was going to get to that," the Doctor said.   "The TARDIS needs to maintain the box for maybe a hundred years;  after that it should be self-sustaining. Prison or heaven, it won't need us after that. Compassion, Fitz - I'll see you in a hundred years try not to break anything." His voice was only just steady. "As for me I need to forget.  Fitz, Compassion will see you safely away,". He pushed a scrap of paper into Fitz's breast pocket, "this is where I'll be when I'm back to myself."  He made a quirky face, as he thinned out, whisked away somehow on the winds of time and space bound for who knew where, "just a little personal time, a little quiet time, a little folding of the hands in peace". His voice too faded.

Fitz and Compassion looked at the note. "Hang on," Fitz said, "if he's meeting us then he's picked a bit of a bugger of a century to recuperate in".


SBJ 25/7/00