47 - The Slow Empire

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Enter, with the Doctor, Anji and Fitz, an Empire where the laws of physics are

quite preposterous – nothing can travel faster than the speed of light and time

travel is impossible.

A thousand worlds, each believing they are the Centre, each under a malign

control of which they themselves are completely unaware.

As the only beings able to travel between the worlds instantaneously, the

Doctor and his friends must piece together the Imperial puzzle and decide

what should be done. The soldiers of the Ambassadorial Corps are always,

somehow, hard on their heels. Their own minds are busily fragmenting

under metatemporal stresses. And their only allies are a man who might not

be quite what he seems (and says so at great length) and a creature we shall

merely call. . . the Collector.

This is another in the series of original adventures for the Eighth Doctor.

The Slow Empire

Dave Stone

Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd

Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane

London W12 0TT

First published 2001

Dave Stone 2001

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Original series broadcast on the BBC

Format c

BBC 1963

Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

ISBN 0 563 53835 X

Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright c

BBC 2001

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of

Chatham

Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton

No, no, I couldn’t possibly. I’m as stuffed as a Moblavian ptarmi-

gan, which as all of us well versed in the Natural Sciences

know, is known for ravening its way across the mighty

fjords of Moblavia and eats itself into extinction by the simple

expedient of stuffing itself with nuts and berries and the suchlike

readily available comestibles until it bursts. I couldn’t eat another

mouthful, honestly.

Well, all right, another slice of that roast if you insist, and a few

of those radish-like things to add a touch of piquancy. My word,

are they really? A couple more, then. And possibly a spot of that

rather nice brandy to wash it all down. . .

Now where was I?

Ah, yes, I was telling you of what was, perhaps, my strangest

adventure of all – and I say this advisedly, having been a slave of

the Big-footed People of Robligan, a bondsman to the Grand

Kalif of Hat and a servant of a rather more intimate nature than

otherwise to the Domina of the Hidden Hand herself.

Quite so, since you mention it. The wages of sin, and a life of

perpetual slithering depravity, is death, I quite agree. And personally I

found her ‘matchless beauty’ a little overdone in the slap-and-batter

department, if you take my meaning, and nothing to compare to

that of a good, honest serving wench such as you’d find in – you’re

a pretty little thing, aren’t you? You must allow me, should some

later time permit, some explanation of how the so-called Ruby Lips,

Coal-dark Eyes and so forth of the Domina cannot hold a candle

to your own. Especially the so forth.1

As I was saying, the tale I will relate is in all probability the

strangest in my experience or any other – and so it should come

as no surprise that it involves, to some degree, none other than

the man who merely called himself the Doctor.

Aha! I see you recognise the name. You have no doubt heard

the stories of this magnificent, illustrious and quite obdurately

enigmatic personage and wondered if they can by any way be true.

Well, as a close acquaintance and valued confidant of the man in

question, I am here to tell you that each and every one is as true

as the day is long on Drasebela XIV, a place where – as even the

most ignorant and parochial know – the sun and thirteen rather

extraordinarily luminous planets never set.2Except, of course, for

those stories that aren’t. But then, there’s no helping those.

My tale, as I say, concerns the Doctor and what we once called

the Empire – those Thousand Worlds of which we all once had the

honour (some might say the dubious honour) of being a part. Much

has been forgotten, long forgotten, in the years since those

Worlds were sundered and the Empire passed – and I must, here

and now, confess that I myself had in some small way a hand in that

passing. . .

The Story So Far

Once, there was a man called the Doctor, although he was not precisely a man

and that was not his real name. He travelled in space and time in a marvellous

craft he called the TARDIS, and had adventures, and fought monsters, and in

general made the world – that is, the universe of what we know and all we

can know of – a better and safer place.

Then, for quite some time, he didn’t. Something happened to him, some-

thing that he cannot now recall. He found himself stranded on the horribly

primitive planet Earth – though primitive compared with quite what is hard

to say with any great accuracy – his memories in shreds, his mind close to

insanity, his body somewhat closer to death.

Not to put too ﬁne a point upon it, he got better. After a fashion. Slowly,

over a hundred years, he drew the skeins of memory about himself, knitted

them together into something halfway complete, rediscovered something of

who, and what, he once was – if those things, in fact, had ever actually existed

in the ﬁrst place. For the moment – or so he thinks – this is enough.

So now the Doctor travels again in his marvellous blue box. For the mo-

ment, his concerns are simple. All he needs to do is return one of his travelling

companions to the time and place from which, more or less, she was taken by

mistake. That’s all he needs to do, really.

Things, however, and as ever, are never quite that simple.

Now read on. . .

On Shakrath

The desert sunlight ﬂashed and sparkled dazzlingly on the ﬁregem-inset3

minarets of Shakrath, bright enough to scar the eyes permanently if one

looked at them for too long. It was noon, on the brightest and hottest day

of the year, and in the streets the crowd sweltered and burned. Strangely

enough, rather than wear the light muslin more suited and common to the

climate, every male, female and child was hung and piled with every kind

of ﬁnery he, she or it could afford – every fur and brocade, every splendid

ceremonial weapon and headdress, every scrap and bauble – trading off the

distinct possibility of collapsing and dying from heat stroke with the rather

fainter possibility of being seen.

An Ambassador had been chosen, and today he would be sent out into the

Empire. Quite which world of the Empire he was being sent to was neither

here nor there – the important thing was that he was going among the back-

ward heathen, bringing them such news of the Centre as would make their

eyes (or whatever optical organs said backward heathen might have) light up

with the sheer wonder of it all. News of the Imperial Court and all its manifold

intrigue, including the most surprising use the Emperor had recently made of

his nefariously plotting mother and a team of wild stampede-beasts. News

of the great advances made by Shakrath artiﬁcers, including the network of

canals and aqueducts that were even now making whole new areas of the

Interior habitable. News of the splendid fashion sense of even the most com-

mon Shakrath citizenry, which of course the backward heathenry would soon

be attempting to copy in a quite touchingly inept manner.

And now the new Ambassador himself came, in his carriage drawn by

piebald stampede-beasts broken to harness, as opposed to being used to pull

an Imperial matriarch apart in opposite directions. He stood in the carriage,

in his rather plain black suit, looking for all the world like some miscreant on

his way to being depended, ﬂayed and trisected rather than the dignitary he

was. A young man he was, for all his dignity of bearing, meticulously trained

from the age of swaddling for the function of his ofﬁce. Names had no mean-

ing as such for an Ambassador, representing as he did Shakrath in its entirety,

though partway reliable rumour had it that his name was Awok Dwa, origi-

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摘要：

Enter,withtheDoctor,AnjiandFitz,anEmpirewherethelawsofphysicsarequitepreposterousnothingcantravelfasterthanthespeedoflightandtimetravelisimpossible.Athousandworlds,eachbelievingtheyaretheCentre,eachunderamaligncontrolofwhichtheythemselvesarecompletelyunaware.Astheonlybeingsabletotravelbetweenthewor...

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47 - The Slow Empire

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