warmcanofcoke
Well-known member
Jade Pagoda Console Room
Iceberg, Sanctuary
I've tried to trim away the story as much as possible.
http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7679.0
David Banks
[pre]
Iceberg, Sanctuary
I've tried to trim away the story as much as possible.
http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7679.0
ICEBERGhttp://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?action=dlattach;k=152;topic=7679.0;attach=156156;image
David Banks
First published in Great Britain in 1993 by
Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © David Banks 1993
[pre]
7 No Name, No Blame
The Doctor arrived at the door he’d been looking for. He had wandered the
corridors of the TARDIS for some considerable time.
As he had walked, further and deeper into the heart of the TARDIS, the
light had become softer, the smell grown mustier, spiced with ammoniacal
sharpness. He passed through regions he had not visited for hundreds of
years. If ever. He couldn’t be sure.
But this was the door he wanted. He was sure of that.
On it was carved an emblem which he recognized. A human hand curled
in a loose fist. Chinese characters were inscribed below it. They were partly
obscured by the grime of ages. The Doctor pulled out a raw silk handkerchief
from the pocket of his crumpled jacket and wiped away a cobweb and some
dust. In his mind he translated the characters, but he could no longer recall
what the words meant.
THIS ROOM IS EMPTY.His eye travelled over the door’s antique surface. There was no grille to
PLEASE LEAVE YOUR NAME AT THE DOOR
speak through. He glanced at the fluted frame. No intercom where he might
give his name, only a thin skein of cobweb. He looked on the floor around him
where there might be a discarded visitor’s book, but there was nothing except
a scattering of bat droppings and fluff. He looked up. Black huddled bodies
of upside-down bats were hanging from rusty pipes in sleeping clumps.
He had played out so many different guises. He had taken on so many
different names. What name then could he give?
Your name or your person, which is closer to you?
He decided. He would go in without a name. Then he remembered. That
was the point. He would leave his name behind him, at the door.
He stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. There was no handle to be
seen on the door. With point of his umbrella, he pressed on the open fist. The
door swung open with a creak. There was darkness within.
He entered.
45
10 No Beginning, No End
The door creaked almost shut behind him. Only a narrow beam of light cut
through the room and outlined the contours of an ancient console in the centre.
There was a tickle in the Doctor’s nose. He pulled out his handkerchief and
sneezed explosively. A shower of dust particles whirled and floated gently
downwards in the beam of light, like a snowstorm in a paperweight. He
tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket.
Block the openings. Shut the doors.
He reached out behind him. The chink of light was snuffed out. Total
blackness.
...
He sat on the floor in the darkness and put
his umbrella to one side. He removed his hat. He undid his shoelaces and
pulled off his shoes and socks.
...
He replaced his hat and stood. He enjoyed the feel of the cool jade floor, its
smooth solidity.
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13 Attaining Emptiness
The central column of the console lit up and rose with a whooshing noise,
a subterranean churning. He could feel the vibrations of the deeper roar beneath
his feet. The journey was beginning.
The central column was triple-roofed, a tapering tower, a jade pagoda. It
rose and fell. Beneath his feet the oceans thundered on subterranean shores.
The Doctor did nothing. He observed.
His hand went to his head, removed his hat, dropped it over the topmost
roof of the control column tower.
There was a shudder, like the tremor that comes before an earthquake. The
pagoda with the hat on top fell and rose, rose, and fell, fell and rose. Time
was nonexistent. There was only space. Time became space.
His hand reached out. It turned a dial. The pagoda ceased to rise and fall.
The light within the pagoda died. His other hand pulled at a lever. There was
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the whirr of ancient machinery. He sensed a space opening on blackness in
the blackness. A fresher, cooler air enveloped him.
His feet moved him forward. He was advancing to embrace the emptiness,
walking through the open doors of the TARDIS.
There was a sudden hard blow to his head. An agonizing pain. Stars.
Snowflakes. Blackness.
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16 Who?
Before the doors swung to behind her and plunged them into darkness, Ruby
caught a glimpse of the blank walls of the inside of the box. She hadn’t expected
the pagoda-like column with the hat on top of it, rising out of a hexagonal
console which all but filled the room. But otherwise it wasn’t much of
a surprise. In fact it was much as she had imagined. A cramped dark space.
Like climbing inside a wardrobe.
The Doctor was putting on a creditable performance. He seemed genuinely
taken aback. He was muttering to himself in the dark.
‘Someone in the main control room has been messing about with the TVG.
That means we’ve got a bit of a rush on our hands. Now where on earth could
it be?’
It sounded as if the Doctor was scrabbling about on the floor. She switched
on the light of her Holocam. He was on his hands and knees.
‘There it is!’
He picked up a black object. It was not unlike a large spark-plug from a
car. He opened a small flap under the green stone console. As he continued
to fiddle about, he uttered a steady stream of gibberish.
‘Sorry about all this. It’s the time vector generator. It got disconnected.
Probably something to do with my travelling companions. They’re in a different
spatiotemporal dimension, at the moment. Two different dimensions,
I imagine. You see, we’re in a plasmic shell. And the inside – where we are
140
now – is no bigger than the outside. Slightly smaller, in fact, as you were
probably expecting. But this is actually only part of the TARDIS, a part that’s
been jettisoned temporarily and – could you just shine that light over here? –
that’s got it.’
There was a hum. Soft lights faded up. Ruby had been directing the camera
light towards where the Doctor was working. When she looked up again she
had a shock.
It was not a trick of the light. It could not be. They were inside a larger
space. The walls were definitely further away. And they were no longer blank.
They were made up of a bamboo lattice-work and hexagonal rice-paper cells.
Green light glowed within.
‘There,’ said the Doctor, wiping his grubby hands on the tails of his suit as if
it were a hand towel, ‘that’s the transdimensional interior matched up again.’
He adjusted some dials on the console. ‘Welcome to the Jade Pagoda. Now,
I’m going to hurry if you don’t mind. Here we go.’
He pulled a lever. The central column rose and fell. The cream-coloured
felt hat with its paisley-pattern band that was perched on top of the column
rose and fell with it.
18 Bluebirds Fly
The interior of the TARDIS had undergone a transformation as subtle and as
complete as the exterior. Everything had a familiar shape and configuration,
but the greenness had evaporated, and the oriental trimmings had been replaced
by less cluttered, cleaner lines. The console and its central column
would not have been out of place in the control room of a twentieth century
nuclear power station.
22 Once in a Lullaby
He went inside. She followed and slammed shut the TARDIS doors behind
her. She leant against them to catch her breath. They yielded under her
weight, as though made of cardboard. There were people everywhere. The
passengers were waiting for instructions. None had been given, so they waited
still.
The Doctor had difficulty getting through the inner set of doors. She saw
him squeeze past a couple of ageing, near naked, Kinki Gerlinki enthusiasts.
Then he disappeared among the throng of bodies. She eased herself into the
crowded control room.
...
She heard the splash and gurgle of the TARDIS taking off.
214
How to get the passengers out, that was the question. How to get them all
out, and make sure they were all out. If he was able to subsume this plasmic
shell within the greater whole, if he could do it in time, he didn’t then want to
find that some of these people had wondered off into the labyrinthine innards
of the TARDIS proper. There was no knowing when, or where, they might
turn up.
...
He flipped the switch to power the intercom and put his mouth near the
microphone. He could now be heard throughout the TARDIS. Throughout
this particular plasmic shell, at least.
...
215
He opened the TARDIS doors. Cold light, fresh
air, streamed in.
He spoke into the microphone. Compelling words. They echoed down
crowded corridors, they sounded in distant rooms.
...
216
‘Are you going home?’ she asked. She wanted to ask him where that was.
‘The TARDIS is fading fast,’ he said. It wasn’t an answer. ‘I’ll be lucky to get
this lot out before it gives up the ghost. I must get it back in one piece. Or my
companions would never forgive me.’
‘Companions?’
‘My fellow travellers. They’re with the proper TARDIS. This one’s a kind of
echo, really – and as you see the echo’s fading rather quickly – but without it
the TARDIS couldn’t function as a whole. So –’
...
The Doctor held his hat to his head and picked up his umbrella from the floor.
It looked a bit worse for wear. Two thousand feet had trampled all over it.
The TARDIS had returned to its source, the centre of stillness. The TARDIS
had returned to the heart of the TARDIS.
He left the empty room. The door swung to behind him. The door without
a handle.
The smell of mustiness was almost overpowering. He had grown used to
the clean bite of Antarctic air. He reached for his handkerchief to cover his
nose.
Gone. He must have left it somewhere.
A black shape flapped past him. A bat. It fluttered down the corridor. He
followed it.
No, he wasn’t going home.
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SANCTUARY
David A. McIntee
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by
Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © David A. McIntee 1995
Chapter 2
Benny had been waiting only a few moments when the Doctor joined her
outside the richly textured antique door, which was inscribed with the symbol
of a fist and some Chinese script; the markings, however, were too indistinct
for Benny to read under the dim and dense-seeming light at the heart of the
TARDIS.
. . . ’ She followed him into the surprisingly cool interior of the Pagoda.
After the oppressive heat of the TARDIS’s central areas, it was quite a relief.
. . . He moved towards the small central console while Benny looked
around. The room was shadowy and cool, with small statuettes in wall-niches.
All the walls, floor and ceiling were of smooth – almost marbled – jade, while a
19
faint sunlike light filtered through from the ceiling; just enough to see by. The
whole room had the air of some ancient oriental temple built into a mountainside,
and Benny also noticed that there was no interior door – instead there
were several floor-to-ceiling partitions of paper and bamboo.
While she had examined the room, the Doctor had been busying himself at
the miniature version of the central console. This only had four sides, with a
triple-roofed housing for a smaller time rotor at the centre, and clearly held
far fewer instruments than the main TARDIS console. The Doctor glanced
up, as she approached with a questioning look. ‘The Pagoda’s really just an
emergency escape pod of sorts, so it only has the most basic of controls,’ he
said.
‘Enough to pick a nice relaxing bolthole?’
‘Not really. Most of these are life-support and environmental systems controls.’
He made a few small adjustments to one panel, and the triple-roofed
column began rising and falling. Watching its progress for a moment, he
moved round, and began typing instructions into a small keyboard. ‘The
Pagoda just homes in on the nearest location within specified survival parameters,
so the best I can do comfort-wise is to specify a Class-M planet orbiting
a main sequence G-class star.’
‘That shouldn’t be too difficult,’ she commented, as the central column began
rotating to and fro. ‘There must be a million to choose from.’
‘There are closer to six hundred and fifty million in this galaxy, as it happens;
or so the statisticians say. There should be one somewhere out of the nearest
four hundred and sixty or so stars.’
‘Knowing our luck, the nearest one’s probably swarming with omnivorous
wildlife.’
‘The odds are pretty long, and in any case we certainly had to make a time
jump to avoid the time displacement field that was affecting the rest of the
TARDIS.’
‘Had? You mean we’ve already left?’
‘Of course!’ The Doctor appeared to Benny to be confused that she even
asked the question. ‘The Pagoda left the TARDIS as soon as the door closed –
it is for emergency escapes, after all.’
I must be getting old not to have thought of that, she thought wryly. ‘And
have we also arrived wherever?’
‘No, I’d say our ETA’s about three hours – subjective time, allowing time for
the autosystems to home in on a suitable site.’
20
Chapter 2
She broke off as the central column
stopped rotating, and a gentle sound of oriental windchimes rippled through
the room.
Beaming, the Doctor glanced over at a monitor. ‘
24
The Doctor frowned at the
read-outs as if unsure whether he was relieved to be landing safely or not.
. . .
‘Going by the relative positions of the stars, maybe half a millennium. I
can’t be more precise until we land in a few minutes.’
25
Illuminated by the steady yellow light, beyond the intricately carved jade portals,
the Doctor fiddled around with some controls on the console as Bernice
watched ambivalently.
. . .
The scanner screen in the Pagoda was the silvered surface of a free-standing
Chinese mirror which had images of dragons and rather more ordinary pagodas
painted on the back.
. . .
Although the image was one of shadows and invisible features, Benny
couldn’t help being attracted to it in a way that even the most exciting image
on the normal TARDIS scanner had never achieved. It was, she realized
after a quick self-inquest, because the tall mirror was so large that one almost
felt that it could be stepped through.
The Doctor adjusted a few more controls, and the computer-enhanced view
of the outside environment became as visible as if it were a midsummer’s day.
. . . He turned to consult a read-out.
. . . I’m going to keep an eye on that scanner, and if I see any sign of Doug McClure,
I’m hitting the dematerialization switch no matter what.
43
‘Ah, the Middle Ages, it seems.’ He thumped the console, waiting to see if
this would produce a more specific read-out. It didn’t.
. . . ’ As the Doctor spoke, he slid one of the bamboo and paper panels
aside, revealing a floor-to-ceiling stack of drawers that were flush with the
wall. ‘Survival kit’s usually in the bottom one, which would be of more use if
they’d fitted a handle,’ he finished crossly, trying to get a grip on the top edge
with his fingernails.
. . . ’
44
Inside were various thermal blankets, emergency rations, torches and everlasting
matches, a Swiss Army knife, a very dusty brandy hip-flask, a spare
first-aid kit, and half a dozen paperback books – a copy of the Junior Colour
Encyclopedia of Space, two books in some weird alien script which she couldn’t
decipher, something on mythology by Gilbert Horner, a Charles Fort collection,
and an Agatha Christie with the last couple of pages ripped out. Benny
shunted the contents of the drawer around as if she were stirring a stew. ‘Are
you sure this lot will keep us all right until the TARDIS gets free?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ the Doctor snapped indignantly. ‘When you’ve been
stranded in hostile environments as much as I have, you come to know exactly
what works best.’
‘As much as you have?’
‘It hasn’t always been plain sailing in that old TARDIS, you know. I’ve had to
fend for myself in lots of places: from the glaciers of polar Mars to the jungles
of Veltroch, from the plains of Leng to the fire sands of Canopus III, from the –’
‘Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli? I get the idea,’ she acquiesced
hurriedly at his peevish gaze. She shoved the books aside to get at the brandy.
‘Well, you might be right about this, I suppose.’
‘It’s Napoleon’s brandy.’
‘You mean Napoleon brandy, don’t you?’
‘No,’ he replied firmly, ‘I don’t.’
A strange blue hut now stood
where the Mongol shrine had been,
...
Bernice looked across at the Doctor, who jerked his head towards the
wooden hut.
It sent her reeling through a narrow portal of darkness, an
arrow clattering off the stone wall opposite, after passing through the space
where her head had been. A second shaft rattled from the closing double
doors as they slammed together, sealing the Doctor and Benny up in the
TARDIS’s tertiary console room.
Pulling herself upright, Benny dashed back for the doors, the image of Guy’s
battle so strong in her mind that she didn’t even register the fact that the doors
had closed. Bumping up against them, she looked around desperately for the
door control, spurred on by that last image of Guy’s silver sword flashing
and dancing amidst the press of liveried soldiers. She found it in seconds,
and rattled it urgently, but with no effect. Then she froze in dread as the
realization crept upon her as inexorably as the newly changing tone of the
TARDIS’s background hum.
The tiny LEDs in their shadowed Gothic arches were winking and glimmering,
while the central spire ground slowly but steadily up and down. The
Doctor stood by the console, as if daring her to accuse him of dragging her off,
his fingers tracing a talismanic path round the circular jade brooch he wore.
...
‘Take us back,’ she snapped,
‘I’m doing the best I can.’ His fingers blurred over the controls as he entered
instructions rapidly. ‘There’ll be an automatic time-jump to recalibrate the
ship’s autosystems, but I’m trying to keep it down to as short a hop as possible.’
Benny joined him, looking over the console with little understanding of
what the displays there were indicating.
222
