Who Universe
They changed the food in her cage each morning, but it went untouched.
She sat rapt in her contemplation of the Sphinx's eye in her hand. A dead, jellied thing through which she stared like a window on Eternity. Her arm stretched through its depths to clasp at what was lost.
Vael, her chosen one, was trapped in some closed nightmare prison beyond the bounds of reality. He fought against her call with his thoughts like a caged animal, but he could not resist one so ancient and wise as she. There would be ways to bring him back to heel.
The eye in her hand returned the powers she had lost. She sought through the depths of Eternity for other wisdoms she knew. But across the Universe, the voices of truth were falling silent.
The Sphinx of Thule was murdered. The Logistomancer of A32K, foreseer of that cold empire of logic for ten thousand years, was in her final systems dotage with no sign of a successor program.
Time was growing murky. Seeing was no longer an easy gift. From the nest-worlds of Klanti came rumours that the Core Sybilline had succumbed to a male and her power was diminished. The Pythia still caught distant thoughts from Sosostris in the West Spiral, but they were mordant and cloudy. The voice from the North Constellations of The-Nameless-That-Sees-All was silent.
The Pythia foresaw a point when there might be no more seers. The web of thought that linked the augurers and oracles of the Universe was broken. The veil of Time would no longer be pierced by thought, it would have to be physically travelled. She had foreseen that long ago. Why else had she instigated the Time program? Her powers, branded as superstition by the faithless, were drawing to an end. The Universe would become an empty and desolate place. She would soon be a lone voice.
That is what the eye of the Sphinx showed her. But such visions could be clouded or misunderstood. She reached for Vael's mind again. Vael held keys that would unlock the future.
In the darkness where Vael was trapped, she had touched another mind as well. It was a mind of great power, a mind beyond the strictures of Time. In that briefest encounter, she had immediately recognized an equal. She would find this mind again and consult its wisdom, just as the mighty had once come to consult her. For she must know the future.
But in that mind she had also glimpsed thoughts that chilled her. It claimed to be born of Gallifrey. But she was Gallifrey, knowledge and life. How could she not know this mind already? Unless . . . unless it had yet to be born.
And in this complex, bewildering mind, she had also glimpsed the name of Rassilon.
Above all things, she feared that name.
She must know the future.
In the empty void beyond Time, she found Vael again. He no longer resisted, but his thoughts were dull and confused. The Pythia could no longer see, but she must know. Her luck was cursed. Only the Sphinx could see truly, so she must have the Sphinx's sight.
The formal assembly of one hundred councillors, who sat in the cavern below, watching her cage, awaiting her death, were deafened by the Pythia's scream. Clinging to the wicker of her cage, she gouged out her own eye and inserted the eye of the Sphinx in its place.
There was a new moon in the sky. Slowly rising to its zenith through nebulae of flowing dust. A smoking caldera, surrounded by ruined buildings, marked its birthplace on the world below. The moon glowed from within, seeming to the Pythia like a luminous skull. When it had reached the centre of the sky, she saw that it would begin its descent like a slow comet on the squat, black, fortified structure that lay in its path.
The Sphinx also showed her Vael again and this mind of great power.
***
The Doctor was talking to Vael.
"There is only Now," said the Doctor firmly.
"But one Now can collide with another." The voice was changing. It became higher and older. Female. Catlike. The Doctor could no longer tell if it was speaking aloud or exclusively in his head. "Come, Doctor," it wheedled, "we will bargain."
"Bargain?" He was determined to keep talking.
"I can read all that in books."
"Books are as narrow-minded and subjective as the historians who scrawl them. I am the voice of the past. I can tell you all the secrets that your hearts crave to know."
"And?"
"Then you shall tell me of the future."
"Yes. I thought it might come to that."
The urgency in the voice was growing, but the Doctor could not quite decide if it was driven by greed or despair.
"Tell me of the people and the Heroes," it cried. "Of the great deeds and the legends fulfilled. Of the mighty ships that will travel the bounds of Time . . . and the mighty rulers who will despatch them. Answer the questions, Doctor, and all the forbidden secrets of the past shall be yours."
"You're not Vael," said the Doctor.
"Of course not. Vael is not yet ready for the power he will inherit."
"You're the eye in his head. Who are you?"
"Answer my questions and I will tell you."
The Doctor shook his heavy head. It was hard to think at all. Hanging upside down, all his blood was running to his brain. "I cannot," he said.
"Then live the rest of your pitiful short life in ignorance and pain, wondering what you will never know!"
"How strange," the Doctor observed. "I once said exactly that to a Tellurian police constable. It seems like only yesterday."
"You cannot resist," said the voice.
There was silence.
A very long silence.
"One question each way," said the Doctor at last. He also thought, you're a fool, Doctor. But that was in a separate subconscious.
"Agreed," said the voice.
"No trickery. We think the questions together and the truth after."
"Agreed."
The Doctor let his mind go blank. In his subconscious, he braced himself to deal with one riddle. Its implications were unknown, and their effect might be devastating for all of Gallifreyan history. Knowledge could be a dangerous thing. But he had bound himself by the laws of honour and would not resist.
He thought-sent his one question. It was all he needed to know.
"Who are you?"
Into his head came the balancing question and the scales tilted against him. The voice asked the same riddle in inversion.
It asked, "Who am I?"
A moment's silence. The Doctor eased out a slow breath. He could guess the identity of the voice. It terrified him. She came from the Dark Time before Rassilon came to power, but she knew of that great Hero. He was plainly an obsession. Only one figure at that time, maybe two figures, wielded such powers of telepathy as she exhibited. She spoke of a successor, but that was not in the history books. The whole of Gallifrey's development rested on one moment in Time. One terrible accursed moment which he might now undo with his meddling. The turmoil that led to Rassilon's assumption of power might never occur. No Triumvirate of rulers, no Intuitive Revelation, no Time Lords.
"The answers," said her voice. "Together."
"Yes," said the Doctor.
But he held back as his head flooded with her response.
I am the five hundred and eighth Pythia in the line of Gallifrey. I am the Crown of the Empire, Mouthpiece of the Gods and Guardian of the Great Book of Future Legends. I see the Past, Present and Future as one. Through me, all thoughts meet, all Time is fertile. I am the hub of the world. I am Gallifrey.
The Doctor still held back.
"These are just titles," he said. "In my time there are no more Future Legends. The Book is a relic. Its predictions were all used up ages ago. It's all got rather boring."
"This is trickery!" she cried. "You are bound to answer my question!"
"Yes," he said.
"Who am I?"
The Doctor sighed. "In the history books, you are the last of the Pythias."
This time the silence was on her side.
"I knew you wouldn't like it," he added.
"Impossible! I have chosen my successor. How can this be?"
"You've had your question," he snapped. But to annoy her, be added, "Perhaps you should have asked who I am?"
She was not listening. "Vael will return to Gallifrey," she cried. "The Book of Future Legends foretells that my successor will be a man. I have chosen him."
"Then I should look at it again. Those books of predictions are notoriously cryptic. I suspect it says the next ruler after you will be a man."
The Doctor heard Vael choke. The Pythia's voice projected through his mind, crackled like fading reception on an old radio. "You lie!"
"Do I?" he retorted. "You know better than that. You've been clumping round my head in your hobnail thoughts for long enough."
There was a last cry of anguish. "Who are the Time Lords? Who are you?"
"Nothing to do with your time, venerable one."
"Liar!"
That accusation cut deep.
As her distorted voice faded completely, he heard: "Vael will succeed me. Not Rassilon. I have chosen!"
There were crashing sounds from all around. Showers of falling masonry were striking against the iron Tower.
The three spindly stairways rose from the edges of the Watch Tower, one from each Time Phase of the Process's World City. They met at the centre of the sky in an arrow-headed chevron, aimed at the oncoming moon.
The vast globe struck the pinnacle dead-centre. The stairways bowed and shattered into a cascade of stone, tumbling against the crude, jutting flanks of the Tower beneath.
The Pythia stared at the destruction around her. All the detritus of the Universe had accumulated in this place. All the flotsam of Time was cast into this grey limbo. These images filled her with dread. Why was she watching? If this was the Future, she did not want to see. She willed herself to return to her cage and her cavern, but could not break away. This reality beyond Time stayed lodged in her head and she was fascinated.
And then, in her distress, she knew.
Vael had driven her to look. Just as she had watched through his eyes, he now watched through hers. His was the idea, inserted unbidden into her head. His burgeoning power was greater than she had anticipated. Vael Voryunsti Sheverell, her chosen successor, was an inspired but dangerous choice. The pupil now taught the tutor. One day, when he is Gallifrey, the Empire will quake before his power.
"Vael," she cried. "I await your return!"
"When I am ready," came his dismissive reply.
She sought to find a direct link with the Doctor, but her thoughts glanced back. There was a mirror across his mind. A surface that reflected back her probes and concealed the devious complexities beneath. She was certain this unknown voice had dogged her before. It lurked in the shadows of doorways just beyond the torchlight, full of hidden gestures and soft insinuating whispers. She recognized the mockery with which it predicted what she was forbidden to foresee — her own fate. Somehow this world of monsters was its world.
And in the wind, on the lowest strata of thought, she caught a feeble drone. Sequences of figures and equations were running in a sluggish stream, possibilities and statistics in continuously faltering assessment. This was another mind, barely existing, that she had not encountered before. Her own thoughts swept the City for its source, but found nothing. It was everywhere, in every shape and form. The place itself was thinking.
The place was the TARDIS taken over by the Process, which remapped out the interior to look like a planet.
***
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