by Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk)

Fifth Doctor:  Rated U.

Doctor Who is copyright BBC.


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The explosion killed him.

The titanic detonation sent a concussion wave girdling the globe.  Many
times over, that wave thundered across the land.  The deafening sonic boom
smashed flat the forests of fern and pine.  The mountains, like rotten
teeth, were rocked to their roots by the blast.  Crushed to dust, millions
of tons of rock lifted, to wreathe the world in darkness - a ghostly grey
shroud for a grievously wounded world.

A mighty fireball flashed the air into incandescence.  That which the shock
had not destroyed, burned.  A pall of ash rose; and the day grew darker
yet.

And after fire - ice!  The eon winter descended with the dust, treading
hard upon the heels of that firery hell.

He was at the exact centre of all this fury, so naturally it killed him.

Yet it did not end him.

Being born of the line of Alzarius, he was heir to fundamental changes of
state.  Some, even the Doctor had not known, though perhaps he had
suspected.

That which had been Adric of Alzarius, mathematical genius, drifted in the
cold dust of a ruined planet, thoughtful.  In his transitional state, he
saw clearly.  His perceptions were uncluttered by the pride, selfishness
and greed that had filled him in his previous avarta.  They were still with
him.  They were part of him, but the transitional state had loosened their
iron grip on his soul.  He remained Adric.  Yet he could no longer be the
unpleasant little boy he had been.

So what should he now become?

There was the profound peace of the Golden Reward?  That path lay open to
him now.  The bliss tugged gently upon his perception, upon his being.  To
go to that peace was his by right of Alzarian descent; and he wanted to go;
yet he could not.

The eyes held him.

Blue they were, encompassing that eternal question, the one for which he
had no answer.  Gentle, but insistent, they recalled him to the pain and
struggle of living.  They did not reproach, nor condemn, simply posed that
question, and would not be denied.

Were it not for that gaze, now that he was dead, it would be so easy to go.

Living, he had turned aside from that question, and fled away into the
precarious security of the numbers.  Even there, the question found him
out.

"Well?  Adric?  What have you don today that is worthy?"

At the moment the freighter struck the atmosphere, the running stopped.

Now the promised peace of the final dissolution called him.  The boy he had
been answered, plaintiff and miserable.  "I can't!  I can't!"

Lurking in future time, the purpose he was to become, held him with fingers
of steel.  Its grip on his soul was resolute and inescapable.

There was something that MUST be done.  Something that Adric of Alzarius
alone could do.  So he had to do it.

There remained only the choice, which was no choice.  That important
selection could be made at random, because no matter which of the huddling
creatures he chose, it would be right.  This he knew - he had already seen
the flowering of his handiwork a half a hundred million years hence.

He was in no hurry.  He had all the time in the world now that he was dead.

Adric drifted on through the dark.  Time passed.  As he drifted, the
darkness lifted to a pearly grey.  The thinning dust took on an edge of
pink.  Soon, the sun would rise once more on this ravaged world.  A new
dawn was coming.

He sifted down through the lightening air to find the material he knew he
had already found.

Yes, it was there, huddling in a burrow in the sterilised earth.

On the brink of creation, he hesitated, tantalised by the call of the
promised peace of the final dissolution; but refusal came without anguish
now.  He would brave once more the agony of life.

before he committed himself anew, Adric had a fancy to mark the beginning
place.  To set his own personal seal upon his handiwork, he would make a
small monument, just to say "Adric of Alzarius did this.  Behold, it is his
masterpiece sign-posting his rite of passage to adulthood, the mark of his
maturity."

It was vanity, yet he would not eschew it.


He called to the shattered earth.  It answered to his summons,
Bending to his will, it took a form he remembered with fondness.  The shape
harked back to the prideful Boy; but this no longer caused him anguish.

It was, after all, only a small vanity.

He might have smiled, had he still the physical form.

Drawing back from his sculpting of the earth, Adric turned, with
resolution, to the fashioning of flesh.  He sifted down through the
sterilised soil, to where the tiny creature cowered.


In the tight womb dark of the burrow, Adric changed.  He made of his
essence a template of imperatives.  This new pattern he incused into the
genes of the proto-mammal.  Marrying his will to the mutable flesh, he made
of the creature a chimera.  He filled it up with purpose beyond the
comprehension of its meagre amount of intelligence.

All of that which had been Adric was bent to this design - the light and
the dark.

This caused him consternation, for the darker aspects of his soul, he knew,
would trouble his creation greatly; but that was beyond his mending.

He would not fret over his actions.

As self-awareness dimmed and was made over into tailored instinct, his last
thought was of the blue eyes in that young face.

He now had an answer for that silent question in those eyes.  That question
that had held him from the Reward that was his birthright, dogged his
conscience even unto transition.

"What have you done today, boy, that is worthy?"

"Why today?  Today, Doctor, I assisted in the making of mankind!"

The eyes no longer questioned.  They were full now of a wry approval.  "You
have done well, Boy," they said.  "Very well indeed."

In the choking air above, the sun lightened the murk.

It was dawn - on the first day of the age of Adric's children.

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With an unsteady hand, Tegan slopped some more wine in the glass.  She was
drunk; but she intended to get a whole lot drunker yet.  Perhaps then, the
world would not seem such a bleak place, as it did just now.

She got the glass to her lips, and took a long swallow.  Setting it down,
she stared into the African night.  The first tentative streaks of colour
lightened the eastern sky.  Dawn was coming to end this terrible night.

Tegan shook her head sadly.  It wasn't even as though she liked the boy?

The rim of the sun squeezed between the division of earth and sky.  The old
Life Bringer sent long streamers of light across the African landscape.

As Tegan watched, an oddly shaped hill of rock blazed into brilliance.  She
caught her breath at what she fancied was revealed by the new day.

"Doctor?"

He looked up from the book he had taken from Nyssa's lax hands.  The Traken
girl was snoring gently.  In repose, the habitual serenity had once more
laid claim to her pretty face.  But the lines of grief waited only upon her
awakening.  Unwilling to face that, the Doctor let her sleep on.

He turned his attention to the book.  Closing the worn covers, he traced
over the title incised in the leather.  "On the Origin of Species by
Charles Darwin".  He set it on the table and peered at Tegan, concern
hooding his eyes.

"Hmmm?"

She brandished her glass at the small hill in the Kenyan bush.  "Doctor?
That hill?  What does it remind you of?"

The Doctor looked.  He said nothing; but his lips tightened in a small
smile.

"You know what?" Tegan went on into the noisy silence.  "I think that looks
like that stupid badge that the boy - that Adric was so proud of ."

"It's just an accident of the landscape, Tegan," the Doctor answered
quietly.  "Or a trick of the light."

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The end.

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