Who Universe
The sun was setting, slashing the sky with blood. A towering wall of ancient stones was caught in the gory light.
Seen from above, the fortification stretched as far as you could imagine. Birds wheeled in the air below them.
A tiny figure was standing before a great doorway, dwarfed by the blackened gates. He was pushing at the gates, but they would not give. An old woman with an eyepatch flapped lazily down and stood beside him. There were jewels among her ragged clothes.
"Is that you, Pythia?" said the Other.
"The Gate of the Future is shut," she croaked.
"Permanently? Or is it just early-closing day?"
She stood scratching her head with her other jewelled hand. “I used to be able to see the Future,” she said. “But it was denied to me. Now I only see the Past. I rule the whole empire,” said the old harpy. “I foresaw and controlled events and was unassailable. Now all I see is the aftermath and feed on its carrion.”
“No more than you deserve,” said the Other.
She craned her scraggy neck towards him. “I know who you are now. Daily I feed on the death you cause. Once you denied me entry through the Gate. You are trying to escape your past, but now you cannot reach the future either. One day I shall feed on you too.”
“Is that another of your predictions, most sagacious Pythia? As I recall, they were never very reliable.”
“I am the world!” she shrieked.
“Oh, go away,” he said. “Go back to the charnel house. I'm not stale enough to be on your menu yet.”
He turned his back on the blood-red sun and pushed at the gates again, slowly forcing them open on the future. Behind him it was always setting. Beyond the gates, the sun was white and rising through peach-coloured mist. The watchers drifted through after him. There was a scent of roses in the air. A homely woman dressed in brown was waiting, carrying a long robe.
“You Eternals get everywhere,” said the Other.
“Indeed,” the woman said, fastening the many-coloured robe around his neck. “Most of us regard being worshipped as a responsibility. We try to live up to expectations. But there are some gods I could mention who are not nearly so considerate.”
She stood back from him. “There. What do you think? The robe is woven from all your deeds and experiences that you have done and will do. The patterns drove three of the web-weavers insane.”
“I don't have a mirror,” he said, fidgeting inside the garment.
She smiled. “Not as clever as you think, are you? If you were really everywhere at once, you'd see for yourself.”
“I'll rely on your better judgement,” he said.
“It could be magnificent,” she said with a shrug. “Or it could be ghastly.”
“That's life.”
“Exactly. Now off you go. The future awaits.”
He walked to the edge of the pavement. The world was sliding in to meet him. Sliding under the wall into the past.
As he stepped off, the rose pink mist began to clear, laying out the future for him. He moved forward eagerly.
***
The Pythia had lost Vael and was eager to find him again.
"Vael, my successor!" ranted the voice in his mind. "The future. I must know it.”
He twisted and clasped his head. "No! I'm an Individual! It's mine! I'm the future. Not you!"
"Obey me, Vael! You are mine!" cried the Pythia.
"Never!" he railed. "Get out! Get out of my head forever!"
In the blind rage he would never master, he turned his burning fury on the eye in his own mind.
Vael vanished into the curling, greasy smoke.
A tongue of flame leapt up from the abyss and touched her cage.
There was a gasp from the assembly of lords and councillors in the cavern, but the Pythia was unscathed. Only in her mind were there real flames. Vael had burned away the cords that she had woven. The threads that united them — that bound him to her. The anger that compelled him had finally consumed him.
How wasteful. Now she was alone.
Their eyes were all on her. One name, they thought. That was all they wanted. A tiny boon so that their teetering Empire would go on forever.
She gave a deep groan. She owed them nothing. The world tasted of dust. She felt her age for the first time. Her hands were only mottled skin stretched across brittle bone. Her world was corrupting. The people squirmed like maggots on the filthy accumulation of Gallifrey's past.
The Eye of the Sphinx began to weep. The great tears of the Cat rolled down the Pythia's gilded face. It wept for the age that passed with the coming of the future. The Pythia's remaining eye stayed dry as ice.
"My successor! Where is he?" she cried. "Where?"
Figures scurried in alarm below. She heard drums beating outside and the distant fizz of Council Police guns. Handstrong stood by the stair with his ceremonial sword raised. There was the crash of overturned icons in the Temple above.
The future had rejected her, now she would take her revenge upon its snub.
"Sisters. My sisters," she called to them alone. "This world is doomed. I curse it. As I die, so shall it wither. Go now my followers, and flee this world. Seek out the fire fountains of Karn. There you shall endure forever. The gods shall protect you in their cupped hands."
She gripped the weave of her basket and cried aloud, "Let the world hear my curse. I am Gallifrey, sky and rock, flame and flood, womb and bone. When I am no more, the world shall be barren and empty of new life. It will live a slow death and come to nothing in its own dust. I have spoken these words. Let them be fulfilled."
From her robe she pulled an ancient sacrificial blade. She reached up and cut the umbilical rope that held the basket. It plunged into the abyss and there was silence.
***
Lord Dowtroyal gathered his papers and left the Temple.
"But she gave no name, my lord," called one of his secretaries, scampering to keep apace. "There is no successor."
"She said, 'He'," proclaimed his lordship.
"A man, my lord? Surely not."
"Did she speak any other name? He will suffice. She foresees the future, but who says it has to be propitious for her? The Empire's just been spared a revolution."
The secretary nearly dropped his document files. "But you cannot mean . . ."
"We can all hazard a guess as to His identity. We have the successor from the crone's own lips! He!"
He burst into a great rolling laugh as he picked his way through the riot debris in the snowy courtyard. The place was deserted, but the frosty air was thick with rumour.
The driver was waiting at the gate with the covered skimmersledge. Dowtroyal snapped his fingers as he heaved himself inside. Another figure leant back in a mound of cushions.
"Right into our hands," blustered Dowtroyal. "Just as was predicted! She's dead, of course."
"I hate predictions," said the Other gloomily.
Dowtroyal looked startled. He turned to the driver. "Thrift, whatever your name is, back to the Academia now. The new Pythia won't want to be kept waiting!"
He burst into another fit of laughter as the sledge pulled away. The merriment echoed up through the walls of the silent City. Finally it was drowned by a cry — the anguished shriek of a mother faced with the limp form of her stillborn child.
It had begun to snow hard.
***
The return against all odds of the missing Chronoscaphe was interpreted by the people as the one good omen that presaged Rassilon's assumption of power. Otherwise, the Pythia's terrible death-curse took instant effect. Babies died in their mothers' wombs. From that day on, no child was ever born on Gallifrey again.
Rassilon played with the onion doll while he waited. It was a ridiculous object. With a twist of the hand, the toy could be split into two hemispheres to reveal another patterned sphere nestling inside — but the onion inside was bigger than the first. Impossible! And inside that onion was another onion, bigger still.
Rassilon's desk was already littered with coloured onion shells. Soon his office would be impossible to get into.
Lord Dowtroyal walked in unannounced. His red-heeled boots left patches of melting snow on the floor. He had come from another funeral. "How's the toe?" he said grimly.
"Painful as usual." Rassilon pushed away the latest onion section. "There must be a simple solution to this wretched thing."
Dowtroyal looked grave. "I was erm . . . sorry to hear of your loss," he said.
"It would have been a girl," Rassilon said. "Her mother has taken it badly. Her mother? What am I talking about? She'll never be a mother now." He fiddled with the onion shells. "It's strange. In a way it brings us even closer to the people — they know that we suffer too."
Dowtroyal weighed one of the onion shells in his hand. "The Council are preparing to offer you a new crown."
"Again?" interrupted a voice by the ornamental stove in the corner. "Isn't twice enough?"
Dowtroyal glowered into the shadows. "I didn't see you sitting there," he muttered disdainfully.
Rassilon was shaking his head. "I cannot take ultimate responsibility. I will only share leadership." He unscrewed the latest onion and found yet another inside — it was bigger than ever.
There was a polite cough. Thrift was standing in the doorway. "Apologies meyopapa but the new Hero is waiting to see you."
"Must I see him?" Rassilon complained. "Can't this wait?"
"No," said the other Councillor beside the fire.
Thrift went out.
"Why me?" demanded Rassilon. "Why do the people see me as their deliverer?"
The Other leaned forward to the samovar and helped himself to another glass of tea. "Because you're one of them. You said it yourself."
"Which is more than can be said for you," muttered Dowtroyal. He looked up as the Young Hero entered the room.
"Quennesander Olyesti Pekkary. Come in, please," said Rassilon. "The return of your ship has given us all the greatest pleasure in this desperate time."
"Thank you, uncle," said Pekkary.
He wore the official uniform of one who has been honoured. The weal of a cruel scar across his face was not hidden. He looked older than his years. One eye was a blank orb. He sat down in Lord Dowtroyal's proffered chair.
Rassilon handed Pekkary a glass of tea. "We have all read your report," he said. "Extraordinary. I should have guessed that the Pythia would have an agent on board as well."
They talked long through the evening, going over Pekkary's report in detail. When food came, Pekkary ate little. He had developed an addiction for plain dry biscuits and found most other food unpalatable.
Time and again, he returned excitedly to the subject of the ship that was infinitely variable in form, and smaller on the outside than in. His eyes grew wilder.
"And it was from Gallifrey. From the stolen future. So, you see, the Time experiments will work. One day we shall travel in ships like that."
Dowtroyal burst into sudden laughter. "And this other pilot, this Doctor, he sounds a strange fellow, whatever his powers."
The Other stared coldly from his chair. "Is that how we shall be in the future? Strange and small?" He caught Rassilon's wounded reaction and added quickly, "Present company excepted, of course."
"I should have spoken to the Doctor further," insisted Pekkary. "I would have done in the future. But his ship was still a marvel. It travelled by artron power, not by its crew's will."
Rassilon smiled indulgently. "We have seen through a window. It is a possibility we must take into consideration."
Pekkary was almost fanatical. "But there's work to do. We've already started. One day we'll be the Lords of Time!"
"There are far graver matters pressing," said Rassilon. "The Time programme is suspended until further notice."
"But . . . uncle."
Rassilon's eye's blazed. "We can't pour treazants into a bottomless vortex, not when our people face extinction through a witch's curse! The Time programme is suspended!"
He turned away, shaking.
Pekkary came to attention. "My nurse is waiting," he said flatly. "Thank you. The hospital is very comfortable." He bowed and walked to the door, but a hand touched his shoulder.
"Go and see Omega at the science faculty," said the Other. "I'll arrange it. He'll be interested in what you have to say."
Pekkary left silently. After a moment, Dowtroyal made his excuses and departed for another funeral.
"That was cruel," said Rassilon.
"But necessary," said the Other. "Poor unhappy fellow."
Rassilon glared up at him. "Don't you have a family? Don't you care about the future?"
"Your future . . . or mine?" He smiled grimly, his every movement radiated dark and calculated power. "Isn't the present enough to be going on with?" He picked up the onion kernel. "An amusing toy. It can go on forever. Always another mystery inside the first."
Rassilon snatched up two of the half-shells. "Bigger on the inside. But if you invert the process, the original fits neatly inside the second and so on and on. Like so." He completed the trick.
"That's not what I meant."
"But I'm right, aren't I?" said Rassilon. He turned for confirmation, but the other, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.
***
When the Other landed on Gallifrey in his time machine, he agreed to help Rassilon with his time experiments. Of course Rassilon wanted to know who he was and where he was from. The Other wished he knew where he was from but just couldn’t recall. As far as his identity, he could no more reveal that than a warlock could reveal his true name. That knowledge could give others a power over him, if they knew how to use it. He couldn't risk anyone having that power. He had done so once before. No never again. Consequently both were lost to time. So most just revered to him as the Other.
Right now Rassilon need him more than ever since he was great at bioengineering among other things. The Other decided cloning was a option but that would mean the same people over and over again. So he experimented with idea of taking old organic flesh that already exists, since curse kills new organic form in the womb. If he could have a machine change the DNA at random at the cellular level and have it expand by weaving into a new organism with new independent thought. But growing them as babies would be risky and it would need to be fast before the curse could kill them.
After much time experimenting the Other managed to create new life out existing organic remains. These life forms were only just loomed but they were already about the age of five. New problems arose though. This would mean no more parents and homes. Who would care for these new Gallifreyans? The Other decided to experiment in growing buildings with minds of their own where these new Gallifreyans would live. This knowledge would prove to be helpful towards the time experiments as well.
The Other had succeed in growing objects.
So now he was going all over Gallifrey planting seeds that would eventually be the houses of Gallifrey and would soon contain their own genetic looms. For now some of the Gallifreyans would guide the new generation, but once they were older a, Kithriarch and Housekeeper would be chosen for each house. The Kithriarch would replace Fathers and the Housekeeper would replace Mothers. There would no longer be Brothers and Sisters only Cousins.
***
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