*******************************************************************************
** The All-Singing, All-Dancing Five Doctors Pro-Am Cabaret Extravaganza     **
**                           part eight                                      **
**                      (c) Matt Clifton 1994                                **
*******************************************************************************

                   ---     INTERMISSION    ---

And now...
For your delectation and enjoyment...
Reversed Polarity Productions are proud to present -

                    Mind Probe! - The Musical
                   ----------------------------

Dramatis Personae:   DOCTOR, THE             Renegade Time Lord
                     PRESIDENT, THE          Secretly renegade Time Lord. Mad.
                     CASTELLAN, THE          Quite obviously mad Time Lord,
                                             not much of a renegade though,
                                             although he is about to be set up
                                             as one.
                     FLAVIA                  What can I say? Not a renegade,
                                             not mad, not very interesting
                                             really. Nice pair of tits though.

Scene: The Chamber of the Inner Council of the Time Lords of Gallifrey.
       Hereafter referred to as 'Bob'. Within 'Bob', the President and
       Castellan are pacing to and fro anxiously. The chamber door opens
       and Flavia enters, balancing a huge tray of mugs and biscuits on each
       of her hands.

Borusa: At last! Our regular caffeine fix. Come on, come on, over here with
        those digestives.

(Behind Flavia, the Guard Captain makes his entrance. May as well make him
Colin Baker, just so the fans can write long, indignant, Maxil-related
letters to the Director-General. He is carrying a medium-sized black box,
carved with arcane symbols.)

Captain: I found this in the Castellan's sleeping quarters. Under his bed,
         to be specific. On top of a big pile of sticky-paged...

Borusa: Yes, yes. No need to go into details. (He examines the box.) Hmm.
        Black Scrolls of Rassilon, perhaps Doctor?

Doctor: No thanks. I'm trying to give them up. (All laugh.)

Castellan: No, no! Not the...

Flavia: (hissing) Not yet.

President: Castellan...I must ask you this. Are you an evil traitor?

Castellan: Certainly not.

Persident: Ah, but you agree the box was found in your quarters.

Castellan: I believe my own eyes.

President: (thinking) Would you say that it contained secret documents?

Castellan: (carefully) ...I would say that, y-

Flavia: Aha!

Castellan: (finishing sentence)...mmm.

President: What's your favourite colour?

Castellan: Blue.

Flavia: Blue?

Castellan: Yes. Oh shit.

(Flavia bangs the gong she holds in her hand and the Castellan is wheeled out
by the Guard Captain to undergo lengthy and painful interrogation, possibly
involving squirrels.)

President: And Captain?

Captain: Yes?

President: You are authorised to use.....the Mind Probe !!!

Doctor: No! No, not the Mind Probe!!!

(The Castellan gapes in surprise, then glowers at the Doctor.)

Castellan: You utter, utter git! That's *my* line! The best line in the
           entire story, and you just snaffled it! I paid good money for that
           line, and what happens? Some long-haired renegade vagabond wanders
           in and says it, right under my nose. I demand satisfaction!

     (he throws down his glove, or, if no glove is available, his ocelot.)

President: (wearily) Oh, for God's sake let him say it, Doctor. Omega knows
           he's been practising for days. Go on then, Castellan. In your own
           time.

(The Castellan smirks at the Doctor. He gathers his lapels and prepares to
deliver the immortal line. He opens his mouth to speak.

Castellan: .........I've forgotten what it was.

           --- AND NOW BACK TO YOUR SCHEDULED PROGRAMME ---

**********************************************************************

"When I say run," yelled the Doctor, "run!"

However, the Brigadier had incredibly managed to work out the simple flaw
in this method, vis. that by the time the Doctor managed to detect enough
danger in the immediate vicinity to make running a worthwhile option, he
(the Brigadier) would have run to the nearest phone, ordered an immediate
and unnecessarily large airstrike, devastated an area of five mile radius,
gone home for his tea and collected his medals in the morning. Fortunately,
he hadn't quite got to finishing item one on the list before the Doctor
caught him up.

"That Yeti isn't giving up!", he panted. "It's got your scent!"

The Brigadier stopped. "What do you mean, *my* scent?", he huffed. Before,
however, the Doctor could elaborate on the old soldier's lack of personal
hygiene, there was another huge roar from the tunnel to their left. Swiftly
the two men dived into a convenient alcove in the opposite wall and pushed 
themselves back against the rockface. 

"Any bright ideas?", snarled the Brigadier. 

"Yes", replied the Doctor, but as it involved slitting the Brig's throat with
a Bowie knife, shoving the corpse out in front of the Yeti, legging it back to
the TARDIS and forgetting the whole tiresome incident, he thought it prudent
not to advertise it. He thought again. "No, I really have got an idea!"
Quickly he rummaged through his voluminous pockets in search of the Galactic
Glitter firework he knew he had somewhere. After a moment he located it : a
cylindrical artifact decorated in gilded swirly lines and topped with a fuse.

"Light!", instructed the Doctor, and took the torch from the Brigadier, who
gave a worried glance into the tunnel. A roar echoed down from the darkness.
Swiftly, the Doctor lit the fuse and pushed the base of the firework into the
soft earth outside the mouth of their alcove. It fizzled for a few seconds...
the Doctor and the Brigadier clamped their eyes shut and stuck their hands
over their ears...then....suddenly....SUDDENLY....

......

......

......

The Doctor looked up. "Oh", he said, peering at the damp squib. He leaned 
closer to the firework, ignoring the Brigadier insistently pulling him back by
his coat. "Get off. Oh damn," he added bitterly. "A lemon."

"A lemon?" enquired the Yeti politely. "I'd rather have a pint."

"AAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", yelled the Doctor and the Brigadier
wildly, leaping a foot into the air and crashing back into the pile of rubble
in the alcove behind them. The Brigadier's torch jumped out of his hand and
rolled off a boulder onto the Galactic Glitter, which re-lit. With a grating 
sound, a door opened in the rock face.

The Yeti squinted through the mass of hair covering its face at the hissing
firework. "What do -"

And then it exploded. Er, the firework, that is. Not the Yeti. Ha ha. 
Unfortunately, the two humans were no longer around to have a good laugh at
it.
                                  -

'...and then,' continued Jon, some hours after the rest of the convention
and packed up and gone home, 'I drove this firetruck into the studio,
and aimed a huge jet of water onto the - ha, ha - onto the torch, intending to
put it out, and, you know, get Pat into trouble with Props. But he and Nick 
had already crossed over into studio 3, so, well, I got together with the 
National Rivers Authority - ha,ha - to divert the course of the Thames and 
flood out the entire Shepherd's Bush area. And then - ha, ha - dear old Pat, 
what *he* did was to...'

***********************************************************************

Back in the story, the Third Doctor and Sarah had dragged themselves away
from the Provincials and the remains of the Cybermen, and were ascending 
the steep ridge that led upwards to the Third Door of the Tower. What the 
Doctor had, amusingly, failed to tell Sarah Jane was that about thirty feet 
of blank, screaming space separated *them* from *it*. 

They surmounted the final stretch of the ridge. Below them - way, *way* below
them - crawled, worm-like, a narrow twisting river. To either side, the cliffs
were strewn with piercingly-sharp rock formations, vertical faces of sheer 
granite, mountain goats, the occasional corpse, that sort of thing. Across the
ravine, the Tower was *almost* close enough to jump across to. *Almost*. 
Tee-hee.

Sarah looked down. She looked at the Doctor. He looked down, then up, then 
back at the path they had traversed. Then at the tower. He drummed his lower 
lip thoughtfully with his thumb.

"So, that's the tower", said Sarah brightly.

"Yup."

There was another strangled pause.

"So what now? Back home for pizza, or..."

The Doctor readied himself. "No, I...er, I think the idea *is*...the idea *is*
..." He petered out.

"Yes?" prompted Sarah.

"...the idea *is* ...we go across this chasm. I, um, think."

The calm expression not leaving Sarah's face for an instant, she scanned the 
Doctor's forehead closely.

"What are you looking for?" he muttered irritably.

"The lobotomy scars. They've covered them well, haven't they?" She stepped 
back from the brink. "Are you ...are you *serious*?"

"Never less so. Er, more. Never more so."

"Right, then. Off we go." And she started to stride towards the cliff edge, 
with the evidently insincere intent of doing a Jesus all the way to the tower.

"No need for that", the Doctor replied. He thought. 
"After all, our chasm is the lowest form of pit."

Sorry about that.

He uncoupled the rope and throwing hooks from over his shoulder. Tying the
length of cord to a hole in the base of one of the hooks, he motioned the girl
to step back. He twirled the hook around his head for a few moments - then 
released its weight, and watched its trajectory as it flew across the gap...
towards the tower...over the tower...past the tower and down the other side...
and finally landing heavily onto the skull of a lone mountain goat who had
been standing around playing the ukelele and whistling selected choruses from
'Sound of Music', killing it instantly. All cheered.

On his second try, the hook conected with the parapet of the tower. The Doctor
tied the other end of the rope to the nearest convenient tree, and arranged a
couple of climber's friends, or whatever they're called dammit, onto his
now-taut length. The rope, that is. Fnar. Ignoring Sarah's twirly-mad gestures,
he took hold of the loop, steadied himself, jumped...
...and fell screaming to his death.

*******************************************************************************

No, but seriously, guys...yeah, he made it OK, worse luck, and after a moment
or two of pants-wetting carefully disguised as deliberation, so did Sarah. 

"AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!", screamed the Tower
as it detected a large Sarah-Jane approaching at four o'clock. It cunningly
exuded an Ian Levine-shaped gargoyle to block her path, but all to no avail as
the girl merely stuck her legs straight out in front of her and booted it in 
the nose. The Doctor, snickering (internationally known as 'marathoning', by 
the way), helped her clamber up onto the ledge. They quickly found the door, 
and the Doctor climbed through first...and fell screaming 13,500 feet down to 
the floor of the Hall.

Tch, I'm such a kidder.

******************************************************************************

You know, like, when they produce a series of Doctor Who, only, for some reason
or another, the stories are filmed out of order? Well, it's much the same for
this book. A series of complex perturbations of the event horizon have 
resulted in this scene being the very last, final one I'll ever write. Bit of 
a personal milestone for me, you know, having spent the last five years or so 
working on it. Not five years solid, you realise...I'm not *that* sad...but 
still, it's nice to end it. And why *this* scene in particular? Well, the main
reason is...there are Cybermen in it. And Cybermen are tedious. I mean, really,
*really* boring to write for. All that fist-clenching, metallic striding 
around and stupid vocabulary. Daleks are bad enough, but at least the original
'Five Doctors' only had one of them, and it was dispatched pretty smartly. 

But you can't turn round without having at least *three* Cybermen leering at 
you. God, there are dozens of them! And none of the factions seem to be 
talking to any of the other factions. One lot want to pilot the TARDIS ; 
another lot wants to blow it up ; yet another has the avowed intent of carving
the time machine up into matches and wandering the streets of Victorian London
saying 'Only tuppence a box, mister! Buy a match! Be -' (clenched fist) 
'-*rational*, human. HALT!!! Bugger, that's blown my cover.'

Thank Heaven we get to see the final demise of at least one bunch of Mondasian
bores. I'm going to enjoy this.

******************************************************************************

The First Doctor, an irrascible heptagenarian with a penchant for childish
giggling, and Tegan, an Australian air-hostess with hips you could balance
a rhino on, reached the main doors of the Tower some time after sunset. The
walls of the building glowed with an inner phosphorescence that illuminated
their surroundings in lurid purple. Amusingly, the Doctor's white starched
shirt had turned ultraviolet in the glow and he stomped about looking for
all the world like Trevor, the Disco King from Peckham.

Within the massive outline of the arched double doors was set a smaller
entrance, with a complex entrycoder and keypad to one side. Tegan peered at
the lock mechanism for a while, fumbled on the ground, and then opened the
door by the simple expedient of smashing its circuits out with a rock. They
strode through into the Hall.

"The Tomb of Rassilon!!", pronounced the Doctor once within its walls. An
echo made a circuit of the room and then came back to them. "Rassilonn..",
it said. ".aassilonn....siilonnnn....onnn..." The Doctor huffed, annoyed,
then shouted "I smell of old socks!!!"

"Do you?", enquired the echo politely, then ran away, laughing, to play for
a while under some raillway bridges. Tegan appraised the hall swiftly, and
began to walk towards a floor mosaic that closely approximated a chessboard ;
or, at least, a chessboard that you could comfortably play football on if
it hadn't lasered your brain out within five minutes. The Doctor yanked her
back by the coat, and fumbled in his jacket for some coins. He turned up a
number of farthings and jingled them in one hand before turning to Tegan.

"Ready?", he asked. She nodded. The old man shuffled to the edge of the
board and carefully dropped the first of his coins onto a square in the
first row. Nothing untoward happened. Again he tried the same with the second
row. Again nothing. The same absolute nothing happened with the third and
fourth row. The Doctor ran out of farthings.

"Do you have a coin I could borrow?", he asked Tegan.

"Why not?", sighed the girl. She reached into her bag and extracted a large,
gold sovereign that her Aunt Vanessa (who she hadn't seen much of lately)
had bequeathed her. It was apparently worth at least 50 kazillion pounds.

"Don't get dust all over it, that's all", she insisted, and handed it over
to the Doctor. Immediately, he lobbed it onto the fifth row of the chessboard
and stepped back. There was a crackle of ionising air and laser bolts stabbed
down into every square, making clouds of smoke hiss upwards from the floor.
The coin disappeared in a volley of melted shards.

"Amazing", the Doctor huffed. "It does nothing until you throw an enormous 
amount of money onto the board...and then it kicks the shit out of you."

"Our ancestors were cunning bastards, weren't they?", pointed out the
Master, who had appeared from behind a Satanically-bearded aspidistra in
a whirl of velvet. He leered at Tegan, then turned to the Doctor and gave
him a long, low bow. While he was down there he did up his shoelaces too.
The old man stared at him in some perplexity. 

"Chesterfield? Is that you?" he quivered.

Of course, it wasn't a large comfortable sofa that had had its heyday in the
nineteen fourties, and neither was it the science teacher that had been the
Doctor's companion for a number of years - which is who he *probably* meant.
No. It was the Master, who needs no introduction. The platoon of twenty or
so silver giants that followed him into the room, though, might.

                                     -

Cybermen, cybermen, cybermen. Big, metallic chaps with stupid great ear lugs,
moonboots, and totally conspicuous chest panels which might just as well have 
had a neon arrow pointing into the grille and a label saying 'Whoops, no gold.'
That's all you need to know about Cybermen. The Cyberleader, distinguishable
from the rest of the troops by dint of the fact that he was the only one who
was David Banks, turned to the Master.

"Why was the main gate left unguarded?"

"The Time Lords are arrogant", explained the renegade, who made no attempt to
extricate himself from the ranks of his fellow Galifreyans in this important
social respect. "They believed nobody could get past the Chumblie." He 
referred here to the small, unarmed robot who had stood resolutely on the
path leading to the tower, and blocked their way. 'Quo vadis?', it had said.
'No passage. Entry to tower disallowed, folks. Back you go.' The Master had 
booted it over the cliff without breaking his stride. 

"And the sign reading 'No traps here, no, not one, not even that lasery
chessboard wotsit'?"

"Yes", said the Master, nonplussed. "Even so." To prove his point, he leapt
erratically across the mosaic, in a completely unsuspicious manner. (At least,
to the Cybermen, who had the combined intellect of a chair.) So, one by one,
they crossed the room ; even when half their number had been decimated by the
hidden weaponry they continued, unthinking, unheeding the growing pile of
corpses in the centre of the floor except when one of them happened to trip
over it. Finally, the Leader strode across the room to the Master, through a
jammy stroke of luck hitting the correct sequence of squares. He aimed his
gun at the renegade, failing to notice the large spike descending from the
ceiling which had been kept aside for just such an eventuality. It pierced
the figure where he stood, then withdrew, taking him with it. The Master
chuckled So did the Doctor, actually, until Tegan belted him in the guts.
 
"Try it Doctor!" the black-clad villain yelled from the other side of the 
room. "It's as easy as pi!" This was, of course, intended to be a huge clue,
as if the mathematical construction of pi could possibly have anything to
do with a load of squares.

The Doctor frowned. "As cheesy as pie? As cheesy as pie?"

"No, he - "

"Of course! The Greek letter pi! Don't you know any basic maths, child?

"Yes, but apparently not the same maths *you* seem to have..." She stopped,
observing that the mosaic didn't quite reach the edges of the hall. There was,
in fact, a clear path around that nobody had ever really spotted before.

"Why don't we just walk *around* the chessboard?"

The Doctor stared. "Oh...yes."

So they did, and were consequently the first to arrive in the Great Hall of 
Rassilon.

**************************************************************************

Sarah stuffed another handful of 'M+M's' into her maw and surveyed her
surroundings. "Excuse me", she began, approaching a nearby wall with a
clipboard and pen, "would you describe the Tomb of Rassilon as a) near,
b) very near, c) in another building, or d) don't know?"

She then collapsed against the wall in a fit of giggles. For Sarah Jane
Smith, erstwhile journalist and assistant to the Doctor, was pissed as a
newt. Her Time Lord mentor had wandered off down a nearby corridor in
search of a route to the centre of the tower. When he entered the maze
by the rooftop entrance, he had expected twisty, turny, damp tunnels and
fiendish traps and monsters. He had expected dangerous foes and complex
puzzles. He had *not* expected the Dog and Duck public house to be sitting
at the intersection of three passages. After a few drinks to quench their
thirst, the Doctor had ascertained that the inn had been transported as a
test of the Time Scoop equipment by whichever fiend was behind the whole
devilish scam. Sarah seemed to have a lot of thirst to quench, and had
started with a gin-and-tonic. The Doctor ordered a glass of water. Then Sarah
had another gee and tee. Again, the Doctor opted for a glass of water. Sarah
went for a cherry brandy. The Doctor ordered a quart of methyl alcohol, which
he proceeded to down with no effect whatsoever on his sturdy Time Lord
constitution.

Then all five Sarahs ordered a large coffee, before turning aquamarine and
floating off to the purple land where the little wallabies go.

                               -

It was much later. The Doctor thrust his hands into his pockets, pursed his 
lips and peered into the dimly-it corridor.

The corridor.

Many people, the Time Lords included, thought of these ubiquitous quadrosurface
cubicoid two-dimensional tunnels with the name beginning with 'c' and rhyming
with 'snorridor' as, well, reasonably harmless. Just scenery, really, aren't
they? said Borusa once in a lecture, and the young Doctor (or Theta Sigma as
he was known to the faculty, or Spacko as he was known to the Master and his
gang of wannabe megalomaniacs) had had no cause to disagree.

He knew better now, of course. In all his battles against the Daleks, the
Cybermen, the Gods of Rrrragnarrrok et al, *they* had been there. Lurking.
Laughing behind his back. There would usually be a family of them in every
inhabited city on every planet in the known universe, and at Guild meetings
they would gather together, fomenting secret strategems, preparing for the
glorious day when they could be free of their shackles and rise up to control
the cosmos...ahahahahahaha.... Um. Evil, twisted creatures, they got special
pleasure from a range of illicit activities. Luring unwary space travellers 
into their squalid interiors, where they would spend the rest of their days
wandering up and down in topological disarray and having strange disturbing
thoughts about artexed wallpaper. Saying the word 'wee', very quietly, when
no-one was around. Winning design awards at the annual 'Beings with No Nasal
Tract' festival. And - especially - messing the Doctor around. They really had
it in for him.

And the Doctor hated corridors. Almost as much as he hated half-hour info-
mercials extolling the dubious virtues of spending large quantities of coin
in the purchasing of small, white, serrated plastic culinary utensils such as
the Carrot Disney-Character-U-Sculpt, the Cabbage Home Topiary Kit, and the
Radish Friend! which, er, had been on a scrambled channel for some, um, reason.
He turned to make his way back to Sarah and the pub, where he felt he could
well use another dozen units of alcohol. A footfall behind him made him turn
back sharply. He narrowed his eyes and peered into the dark. A shadowy figure
stepped forward. Incongruously, he wore a military uniform, bulging around his
ample midriff, with an Elizabethan-style collar ruff and leather leggings. The
most surprising thing about his head was that it in no way connected with his
neck, so perhaps carrying it under one arm was the only viable option open to
him.

"Hello", said the man. "I'm Colonel Henry the Eighth."

"Colonel Henry the Eighth?" echoed the Doctor disbelievingly. He rubbed his
chin with the back of his hand - a subconscious action - and frowned.

"Do I know you?", he said.

"Of course, Doctor! I was in UNIT for...ooh, ages and ages. Kept myself to
myself, though, so it's no surprise you don't remember me. I was in, um,
sector 7F."

"7F?"

"Yes. Along with...er, Private Lady in White Dress Rubbing her Bloody Hands,
and Sergeant Man with Sheet over his Head Going 'Woo'. All your old friends."

The Time Lord gazed at the newcomer for a second. "And you're definitely for
real? Not a *ghost* at all, then?"

"Nope. Definitely not", asserted Henry the Eighth vigorously. He indicated
the passage ahead of him, beckoning for the Doctor to follow. "This way."

"Hang on", said the Doctor, thinking. "You're *not* a ghost?"

"I just said so, didn't I?"

"Yes, so you did." He did the chin thing again, and this time caught himself
doing it. "What about Sarah?"

The man shook his head in ignorance. "Who?"

"Sarah Jane?"

"No, never heard of her. Sorry."

"She, uh - " the Doctor thought quickly. " - she was a servant in the court
of the Duke of Northampton in fifteen ninety-two."

"Oh well, I'd died by then, hadn't I. Tch."

The Doctor stared at him, saying nothing.

"Oh, bugger", said Henry the Eighth, realising he'd been tricked, then faded
away. Chuckling, the Doctor swung about to head back to his companion and
bashed his head violently against the corridor, which had been slowly edging
forward throughout the conversation with that very purpose in mind.

*************************************************************************

It was amazing. Jamie and Zoe looked exactly as they had the day they'd been
booted permanently out of the TARDIS by the Time Lords and sent to resume their
pathetic, mundane excuses for lives. In fact, Zoe had spent the last fifteen
years putting her brilliant brain to work in solving the inverse relationship
between quality of television programme and the number of people who watched
it, using 'Neighbours', 'Baywatch', and 'Don't Forget Your Toothbrush!!!' as
prime examples. She now stood decked in a dress of her own design which
appeared to be fashioned out of pieces of fish. Jamie, clad as usual in full 
Highland regalia, had been whiling away the intervening years running around
Culloden Moor, waving his dirk and shouting Craig An Tuour! at any cattle
who dared to cross his path. Several people had tried to take him to one side
and explain gently that the war with the Redcoats had ended some five years 
back, and they were all now at home eating muffins, but Jamie was undaunted.
He had told his acquaintances about his adventures fighting yon Cybermen and
yon Ice Warriors and yon Yeti ; his trips through time and space to the
future and the undersea depths and yon Moon, and at that point even his
friends had started wandering away. Now he stood side by side with his old
travelling companion Zoe, and the Doctor would have welcomed them both with
open arms if it hadn't been for two reasons.

One was the forcefield.

"Pass that retro-oscillator gauge, would you Brigadier?" said the Doctor, who
had disconcertingly temporarily metamorphosed into his third incarnation ; his
second woudn't have known a retro-oscillator gauge if it had stopped him in the
street and asked directions for Sainsbury's. *He* would have dealt with a 
force-field - or indeed, any other form of alien menace - by licking his index
finger, jabbing it into the offending article and leaping back with a slight 
electric shock and the ubiquitous phrase, "Oh, my word!!" escaping from his
lips. 

"Why are you bothering with all this?" hissed his military companion. "You told
me you hated these two with a deep and abiding repugnance equalled only by the
presence of Chris Evans."

This was the *second* reason, and was absolutely true. The Doctor had, in fact,
only travelled with the pair because he felt sorry for them ; had they remained
on Earth they would have been sliced open and casseroled in white wine by their
relatives at the earliest opportunity.

"Doctor!" warbled Zoe. "If the forcefield is disturbed it'll set up a reverse
feedback induction effect - "

"Och", put in Jamie sagely.

" - and destroy us! You must go back!"

The Doctor paused in his work and frowned at the two captive youths. At least,
'youths' would have been an apposite descriptor if Frazer Hines and Wendy
Padbury had been sealed in a glacier for the last fifteen years which, of
course, they hadn't. Jamie had so many wrinkles on his face that it could 
comfortably be used as a road map, and Zoe bore the telltale outline of a
whalebone corset beneath her spangley catsuit. The Time Lord extracted the
recorder from his inner pocket, as he was wont to do in moments of stress, and
fingered a few experimental notes.

"Oh, my name is Jamie McCrimmon", he began, then paused, momentarily stuck for
a rhyme with 'McCrimmon'.

"Brigadier!" appealed Jamie plaintively.

"Sorry old chap, not a lot I can do", ruminated the fat old soldier. "These
Time Lord scientific mumbo-jumbo wotsits a bit beyond my capacity, what?
Any johnny foreigner who can spirit you back to your proper hoojammaflip
thingies certainly knows his forcefields, hem hem?"

Zoe stepped back slightly. "Wait. Wait a minute." She pointed at the Doctor
and the Brigadier in turn. "When the Time Lords returned us home, they re-
generated you! And you - ", she declared, glaring at Lethbridge-Stewart,
"should be in the middle of a six-year amnesia cycle induced by the Blino-
vitch effect! So how do you know our fates? Well?"

The Doctor frowned at the script. "Wait...this isn't supposed to..."

Jamie gasped. "They're yon phantoms! Illusions of the mind!"

"No we're not, we're...", started the Brigadier, but was cut off when he 
realised that the boy was right, and with a swirling of dust, the two men
vanished up their own quasi-temporal backsides. The forcefield clicked off.

"Phew, that was close", sighed Zoe, and they buggered off for a pint.

                                    - 

Meanwhile, the *real* second Doctor and Lethbridge-Stewart were at that very
moment rounding the corner of the corridor that wound into the Great Hall.
They were, coincidentally, discussing just how crap Jamie was. If God had meant
there to be Scotsmen, reasoned the Time Lord, He would have given us earplugs.
He stomped off, the notched, poison-tipped dart just failing to make contact
with him and, instead, careering off the ceiling and snapping into two.
Cursing, Sylvester McCoy dropped from the shelf high on the wall, rumbled
tetchily, then ambled off to see a man about a television series.

Ahead, in the corridor, the melodious tone of a recorder echoed back through
the maze of passages.

"Oh, my name is Zoe Herriot, and I am..." 

There was a long pause.

 "...damn."

******************************************************************************

Some time later, when Sarah had sobered up to the extent that the Doctor no
longer had to drag her along the corridor by her feet, the two travellers
found the way into the Great Hall. Aready present were the First Doctor, who
the Third knew, but Sarah didn't ; Tegan, who neither of them had met before ;
and, of course, Rassilon, who was well dead and looked it. Just then, the
Second Doctor and that bulky old buffoon Lethbridge-Stewart bustled into the
chamber. Introductions followed. 

It transpired that the Brigadier knew one of the other Doctors, and both
companions ; the Second Doctor recognised both of his other incarnations,
but hadn't a clue who the shapely young companions were ; the girls instantly
recognised the Brigadier and ticked the rest of the men off as Doctors of
some form or another. This had the consequence that K9, who had faithfully
followed his Mistress through the Time Scoop, and was now gliding towards the
group, his little tail wagging, was discounted by all present, including
Sarah-Jane, as a pointless irritating whiney box of vomit, and it was
consequently thrown bodily into the nearest dimensional rift.

"This is interesting", commented the Third Doctor as he studied the Gallifreyan
markings covering one section of the wall. It certainly *was* interesting, but
it would have been a damn sight more meaningful if he had had a clue what any
of it *meant*. Old High Scripture was too long ago in his own personal time-
stream for him to remember any of it ; however, the young Acolyte Flavia's
unorthodox, paper-plane throwing lectures were still relatively fresh in
the minds of the first two Doctors, who deciphered the carvings with ease.

"Oh, it's that Immortality guff again", remarked the Second flatly. One of
the reasons for his disinterest was that almost every piece of Old High
ever translated banged on about Immortality and the old Days of Chaos which 
everyone knew the history of full well, they just didn't bother telling anyone
else about it for fear of sending them to sleep. They were only called the 
Dark Ages, after all, because nobody knew why they were called that. 

The Master hadn't paid *any* attention to Flavia's course, and consequently
was quite excited at the idea of living for ever. He leapt out from his
disguised TARDIS, TCE brandished, and took a breath in preparation for
delivering a ruthless ultimatum.

"No it's not!" argued the First. "It says nothing about immortality. That 
bit says 'Will the last one out please extinguish the torches.'"

Swiftly, the Master, who nobody had noticed anyway, snuck back into his
time machine, cursing.

"Ah yes", returned the Second Doctor, "but *here* it mentions immortality..."

The Master jumped back out into the Hall, brandishing his TCE.

"...in the sense that you can't get it here." 

The Master didn't bother with the leaping back ; he leant against the Ionic
column that was his TARDIS exterior and started examining his nails.

The Third Doctor traced a couplet with his index finger. "What does this
mean - 'No Trespassers. No Hawkers. No Time Lords with Stupid Names like 
'Spandrell''? "

Thoroughly fed up, the Master leapt out from the shadows, still brandishing 
the TCE, but not as energetically as before : he brandished it like a marathon
runner with a vegetable allergy might brandish, say, a stick of celery.

"Right. Right", he said again. "I've had just about enough of this. I don't
care what that nonsense says, there's immortality here somewhere, and I intend
to find it. Don't try to stop me."

"We wouldn't dare", put in the Brigadier as the renegade Time Lord crept around
the chamber, peering into dusty corners in search of the elusive immortality.

"Right", he said for the third time, and very quickly, the fourth. "Right. 
That's it. Turn out your pockets." He turned to Lethbridge-Stewart. "Turn out
your pockets, fatty."

Fatty did so. There was a fist in one of them, as the Master discovered to his
surprise and misfortune when it flew into his jaw. He folded to the ground.

"So much for the Master", grinned Tegan. "I wonder how *our* Doctor is getting
along?"

Nice link, dear.

******************************************************************************

Note from the author: Readers who still don't want to know the identity of the
chief baddie (ie Borusa) should skip the next scene. Oh, and the scene after
that. Then you can read the following scene, but avoid scenes 54-60 (not
including 57). Actually, you may as well just skip the rest of the book. It's
all crap anyway. Why are you still reading this? Are you such a saaaaad bastard
that you have absolutely nothing better to do? Go on, sod off. I said sod off.
Go on, get a life.
                                   -

"Well, I rather enjoyed it," remarked the Doctor, slipping the script back into
his trousers, "and," (winking at the audience), "I knew it was Borusa all
along."

"NO, YOU DIDN'T!!" screamed the ten thousand small children in the first four
rows of the auditorium. "YOU'RE A FAT LYING BASTARD, AND DESERVE A SLOW,
LINGERING DEATH. HE'S BEHIND YOU."

"What?" he exclaimed, and discovered their meaning as Quimm De Sarnie, the
President's personal bodyguard, masseuse, chess partner and good, all-round
bastard-in-a-pinstripe suddenly wrapped six metres of cheesecloth around his
throat. This, naturally enough, had very little effect.

"It's *cheesewire*, you spastic," noted the Doctor civilly, tasting the rennet
issuing forth from his neck and proclaiming it very good indeed. Unwrapping the
towel from his throat, he dipped it in some water and flicked Sarnie viciously.
The bodyguard flinched and yelped.

"Ow," he protested, camply. "That hurts."

"What are you doing here, Sarnie? And answer truthfully or it'll be Chinese
Burns for you." Chinese Burns, he had discovered on a trip to Earth, were a
form of playground torture where the aggressor placed his hands on the victim's
lower arm and twisted in opposite directions. The intended effect was to reduce
the victim to screaming fits of agony ; the actual effect was to make the
aggressor look like a complete cretin while the victim stood there, bemusedly
having his arm painlessly twisted in several directions. Quimm De Sarnie,
however, had always regarded Chinese Burns as the worst form of torture one
human being could inflict upon another. At this moment in time, The Richard and
Judy Show was still some years into the future.

"I'm protecting my master, the President," he declared proudly, attempting to
fold his arms and getting the motion completely wrong.

"Oh, so he's here, is he?"

"Ummmmm...no."

"Yes, he is." The Doctor took a menacing step forward and pinched his finger
and thumb together. "Do I have to give you a taste of the Spock Clamps?"

Jesus! thought Sarnie, not the Spock Clamps! While the Chinese Burns were
infamous in the field of personal torture, the Clamps were near-legendary. He
had never heard of anyone being dealt this death-blow and surviving with an IQ
higher than that of a parsnip. Whereas the Doctor had never heard of anyone
being dealt the Spock Clamps and being aware of it, let alone suffering any 
ill-effects whatsoever.

Quimm glanced at a portion of wall behind Borusa's desk. "He's a million miles
away from here now," he said loudly, pointing at the wall. "You'll never find
him now, never ever, never ever never. I'll never betray him," he continued,
writing, 'HE'S BEHIND THAT WALL' on a piece of paper and waving it before the
Doctor's face."I'll die rather than tell you anything." As he concluded this
brave defiance, he mimed banging on the harp and the door in the wall sliding
open.

The Doctor smiled. "You're right, faithful old Sarnie," he conceded. "I don't
think I'll get any information out of you. Still, there's no harm in looking
*here*." So saying, he thumped the top of the harp unceremoniously, breaking
three strings, and the hidden door hummed open. The Doctor began to walk
through.

"Oh, by the way," he turned back to Quimm, "THANKS FOR BETRAYING BORUSA!!!"

The laser bolt that slammed out of the darkened entrance left little of Quimm
De Sarnie but his Wayfarers, which were quickly scavenged by a roving horde of
poor people who had entered the scene on the offchance that there might be a
corpse or two to pick the bones from and make a stew out of. And end a sentence
preposition with.

The Doctor navigated the short tunnel, emerging in - hey guys, guess what - a
black room. Borusa was fiddling with the controls to what, at first glance, the
Doctor took to be a Neutro-Laser-Death'O'Matic-HyperMega-Painifier-Staser-
O'Thon. But it was only the light switch, as he discovered when the lights 
came on.

"Thank God for that," said Borusa. "Bloody thing's been broken for centuries. I
kept bumping into things." He extended a gloved hand in what the Ancient
Gallifreyans termed a High Five Greeting. "Welcome, Doctor, to my domain. You
don't look surprised."

The Doctor laughed and examined the room cursorily. "Surprised? Borusa, this
had your slimy name all over it. When the black triangles started appearing, I
knew. When there were reports of large sums of money being transferred from the
Council treasury to a company specialising in build-your-own Dalek kits, I knew
exactly what was going on. Hell, I was aware of the whole plan even before you
started wetting your pants in excitement at the thought of it."

"You're lying, aren't you?" challenged the President, hoping the Doctor didn't
really know that it was true about the pants.

"Yes." The Doctor sat on one of the bar-stools dotted about the room and kicked
his legs. "Oh, by the way, thanks for getting rid of the Castellan. He was a
tedious cretin."

"Too true," echoed Borusa and a host of extras including Flavia, K9, the
Castellan's mother, the man from the ice-cream van, and Mrs Jones from no. 47,
who doesn't appear in this story, and who didn't even know the Castellan very
well, only she saw him once walking to the shops with that stupid high collar
on, and immediately proclaimed him a tedious cretin and the perfect target for
a staser beam in the back.

"Well, here we are," the Doctor said unnecessarily. "You're spent millions of
credits over a period of years building this plan, you've mastered the Old High
Technology, reawakened the Death Zone, kidnapped four of my incarnations,
chucked the fifth into the Vortex, and regenerated into one of the Old Gits.
Now why?"

"I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?"

"You heard, frogface. The power? The glory? The tight silk leggings?"

Borusa laughed at such naivety. "Such puny ambitions, Doctor! Power? Glory? I
have those already. Leggings? Still saving the coupons. No, my plan is much
more far-reaching. I shall have... immmmmmmmortality."

"Did you say, 'Immmmmmmmortality'?"

"I did."

"I see." The Doctor mulled it over. "Meaning what?"

"Do not play with me!" hissed the President, spraying the controls with a light
coating of spittle. "I wear the Coronet of Rassilon! Nice, innit?"

"Very."

Borusa pointed at the Doctor. "You are feeling sleepy, Doctor."

"Um, not particularly sleepy."

"You are in my power."

"Am I. Am I."

"You are going back to your childhood."

"*Back* to my childhood? Look, face it Borusa, this hypnosis lark just isn't
working."

Cursing, Borusa discarded the Coronet, which he had picked up at a boot sale
anyway, and picked up a pair of bolt cutters.

"Put it this way. Do what I say," he rumbled, "or the testicles get it. Get
it?"

"....OK."

The President grinned. "I knew we could do business."

****************************************************************************

"Right," announced the Third Doctor. "I've reversed the pola..."

Before he could get any further with this cliche, the other Doctors clubbed him
senseless. All cheered.

***************************************************************************

Turlough cautiously stuck his head out of the TARDIS door and located the
Cyberleader. "Excuse me", he began, "excuse me."

"YES?"

The boy pointed a finger at the large, coloured ticking device that had been
jammed up against the side of the time machine. Two bright red leads led out
from it to a handled box in the centre of the group of Cybermen. On the box
was stencilled the word 'BOMB'. 

"That, um, device thing of yours."

"YES?"

"Not, um, not a bomb at all, is it?" grinned Turlough nervously.

"NO. IT IS NOT."

"Phew", sighed the boy in relief, and re-entered the TARDIS, closing the
door behind him.

"IT IS A CYBER-MEGATRON BOMB", finished the Cyberleader, then he noticed
the boy's absence and gave up his attempt at witty dialogue. He began to
hum Colonel Bogey. Colonel Bogey had no intention of being hummed. He 
marched off the set in search of a stiff one. Drink, I mean. A stiff drink.

   [  God, I get sick of typing this drivel. Sick, do you hear me? Sick. 
      He doesn't pay me enough, you know. Nothing short of a zillion pounds 
      and unlimited access to Sarah Sutton could possibly recompense for this 
      ordeal. I sit here, day after day after *day*, and what thanks do I get? 

      'Oh. Well done.'

      *That's* the thanks I get. And now he tells me I've got to go and be the
      co-villain in a load of New Adventures. Alternate Universe cycle, or some
      such rot. I'll give him Alternate Universe. I'll tell him where he can 
      stuff his Parallel Dimensions, and it'll be somewhere so far up his 
      intestinal tract, he'll be able to brush his teeth with it.    ]

"DETONATE!!!!!!!", instructed the Cyberleader in a hushed, reverent tone. The
tone, in fact, being so hushed and reverent that it only destroyed a very 
*small* part of Mrs Emily Bromphurst of 17, Old Terrace, Streatham. Oh, yeah,
nearly forgot, the TARDIS bought it too.

***************************************************************************

Which is strange beyond belief, because at that very minute the Doctor's
battered old time machine was materialising in a corner of the Great Hall
of Rassilon. Susan and Turlough dressed hurriedly and stepped out into the
crowd of Earthlings the Doctors were, by now, thoroughly regretting having
brought along with them.

The viewscreen set into the bank of controls that the three Doctors were
arranged around began to bleep plaintively for attention. Receiving none
in thwe first five seconds, it emitted a piercing klaxon that perforated
the eardrums of Gallifreyans on the next continent. On the screen appeared
the visage of the Fifth Doctor, the descendant of all the Doctors arrayed
in the Tower, and yet and at the same time younger than each of them. You
work it out.

"Greetings. I..er, send you this message to warn you that, um, well, not
to do anything about the Ring. Er...no, actually, forget I said that.
About the Ring, I mean. Whoops, there it goes again. Um..."

"Ring?", inquired the Second Doctor with a puzzled expression on his face.

"Er...no. There *is* no Ring. So...um, well, forget all about it, OK? Promise?"

"We promise", chorused the Doctors loyally.

"Cross your heart and hope to die?", insisted the anxious fifth Doctor, who
stole nervous glances down towards the pair of boltcutters making obscene
motions toward his nether regions.

"Yup."

"Right. I'll be over in a wee while. See you again."

The screen flicked off. Immediately the three Doctors huddled together and
had a good long discussion about the Ring.

***************************************************************************

The hitherto unnoticed transmat in the corner of the Great Hall buzzed into
life. Molecules danced and span in the field of the matter transmitter ; atoms
swirled and coalesced and danced the mumba. Subatomic particles stood at the
side of the arena, quaffing cans of lager, and commenting dourly on the 
attempts of the older generation protons and electrons to look 'hip' and
'with it'. And then, of course, as you will know if you've been following
the, um, plot, Borusa and the Fifth Doctor appeared in a cloud of ians.

"Shouldn't that have read 'ions'?", suggested one of the Ians heroically.
He was ignored by all, and stepped out of our story forever. In his place,
as I have *repeatedly* pointed out, stepped Borusa, and the Fifth Doctor.
Incredibly, nobody mentioned the magnificent irony permeating the fact that
they could just have transmatted in to the Tower whenever they'd wanted to.
No, the assembled gang of Time Lords, humans, and Turlough were all too
absorbed in the (to them, at least) more pressing matter of Borusa's trousers
(presenting 'Borusa's Trousers', a new BBC sitcom starring Gary Olsen, Belinda
Lang, Paul Nicholas and all those other excuses-for-actors who should have 
been baptised with molten lava), which were scintillating with such radiant
brilliance that the group of humans was stunned into blissful silence for at
least the next few scenes.

"Welcome, Doctors!", he called as he strode across the floor of the Hall, his
bell-bottoms flapping splendidly in the breeze, and setting up a nifty Doppler
effect that gave the impression that the trousers were growing and shortening
at intervals.  

"B'ruso! Babes!", declared the first Doctor illogically, shuffling over to the
President and clapping him stoutly on the back. "How's things?"

His fifth incarnation coughed. "Um...I ought to tell you..."

"Got you too, did he?", continued the old man sympathetically. "Damn the Time
Scoop." Borusa stared icily at the Doctor, who failed to spot anything was
wrong. Behind him, the fifth, second and third incarnations exchanged a glance
and huddled together.

"I don't know who brought us all here", the original persona was saying, "but
whoever it was is utterly ruthless, without scruples or morals - ", he paused 
to wipe spittle from his lip, " - contemptible, unimaginative - ", he thought
for a moment, " - probably impotent, actually, and friendless, and - "

The combined force of three Time Lord brainwaves hit him simultaneously in
the back of the cerebral cortex. He didn't miss a beat. "...and...I do like
your costume, you know, Lord President. Smashing material. Just smashing.
Must give me the number of your tailor." He stopped, stared around at the
hall as if seeing it for the first time, clutched his lapels, said "Hmm? Hmm?",
and wandered off, acutely embarrassed. Borusa aimed a withering glance at his
retreating back, which missed, ricocheted off a pillar, and withered the stick
of celery protruding from the fifth Doctor's buttonhole. The Doctor tutted,
and cast the offending vegetable away. [Ed's note: it is now living happily
in Engand where it has enjoyed the post of Prime Minister for the past four
years.]

There was a voice. "Hello", said the voice, "I'm Rassilon." And do you know
what? He was, too.

                          END OF PART 8