#like to be clear this & the speaking gallifreyan quote are the only times we see the doctor & the master interact in this book.

[corallapis]

<3

[rassilon-imprimatur]

The Infinity Doctors Prologue: The Old Days

Each snowflake melted as it batted into the thick walls of the Citadel, but still they came, like an invading army.

Eighty‐five storeys below, everything was black or white. Only the tallest of the ruins were visible now, the snows covered the rest. Not that there had been much to see before the ice had come, merely the ancient temples and amphitheatres, the last evidence of a race that had ruled by the sword and built an empire planet by planet until it had spread across the universe.

When the temples had been built, the future had been an open sea. Gallifrey had been ruled by seers who remembered the future as they remembered the past. Destiny was manifest, the bountiful cargo that filled the holds of a thousand thousand starships. The prophecies had been bound and bound up to be the charts used to circumnavigate infinity. Explorers travelled ever outward, apprised of the marvels they would find, aware of the dangers. Prospectors rushed to the stars, knowing where to look for gold. Heroes took great risks, certain of the outcome. The future had shone as bright as the moon, and had been just as incorruptible.

Those times had gone, swept away in a few short years. The statues and towers had toppled and the fleets had been scuttled. The heroes had died, blind and alone, as all true heroes must. And as the temples and libraries had burned, the Books of Prophecy had been lost to the fire, along with all the other books. Only one fragment had been salvaged from the rubble. Now there were only memories of those definitive, intricate maps of what was to come. But the memory cheats, it steals, it lies, it tells you what you want to hear.

Today was a day to live in the memory.

The ships were a dream come true, and looked the part. Just from the vivid coloration of their hulls it was obvious that they didn’t belong here – they hung like vast tropical fish amongst the half‐submerged clock towers and minarets, light like the planet hadn’t seen for a generation pouring from their

portholes and hatches and into the evening. No wonder that the crowds of Newborn thronged around the observation levels of the quays. The older generation were more sceptical, seeing the whole enterprise as wasteful, potentially catastrophic. The ships hadn’t been in the prophecy, they insisted. This was a betrayal, a calculated attempt to sever all links with the future they knew: it hadn’t been foretold that the Gallifreyan race would become sterile, there was nothing in the Fragment about Looms, Houses, Cousins, this, that or the other.

Only a handful of the Elders had ventured out here from the shelters, obvious from their stature, let alone their robes of office. Many of them still begrudged the decision that the ships would be crewed by the young, that only a handful of crew members would be over ten years old. But the announcement came as no surprise. Those born since the darkness had fallen were a race apart from their ancestors. The young were eager, enthusiastic and their best days were still ahead of them. They didn’t dwell on the glories of the past, they wanted to live in the future, shape it, rather than merely remember. The new order was no longer shocking, indeed it was becoming comfortable, familiar. The Old harboured a new resentment: the New should have been temporary, they had been meant as a substitute while things settled down, a poor substitute at that. But now they were the only future. And with the wisdom of the ages, some of the Elders knew it would only be a matter of time before the younger generation began to see the past as a dead weight, one holding them back, preventing them from reaching their potential.

Teams of the young were loading the last supplies aboard the ships, passing boxes and modules along in carefully orchestrated lines. In their designated dome, the flight crews would be putting on their uniforms, with the help of the necessary attendants and helpers. A phalanx of the Watch stood guard over proceedings. An army of engineers in protective garments swarmed around and inside the ships, checking every last detail. A small band of musicians had started playing a tune, and the Newborn had taken up the chant.

‘Sing about the past again, and sing that same old song.
Tell me what you know, so I can tell you that you’re wrong.

Just sing about the past, and the past’s where you belong.
Let’s travel to tomorrow, and learn a brand new song.’

Their voices drifted up on the wind. Two robed figures, a man and a woman, watched proceedings from their own balcony on the highest level of the Citadel. It was open to the elements, but the snows and the winds circled around them, not daring to intrude.

‘They are magnificent,’ Omega declared without needing to speak.

‘A dream come true,’ his wife agreed silently. She was slender, with green eyes. Beneath her fur cloak she wore a close‐fitting bodice and leggings.

He towered over her, he seemed to be twice her size at least, an effect only magnified by his immense armour. It was bronze, studded with aluminium, with a lead breastplate. ‘I must go to my ship. We have to embark before nightfall.’

‘Good luck,’ she said wordlessly.

‘We have prophecy, so who needs luck?’ he laughed, hugging her. She nodded, and they parted. He strode away, leaving the woman alone on the observation balcony with her thoughts and memories.

Or so she had thought.
‘Who indeed?’ the little man said, breaking the silence. She turned to face him.
‘How long have you been here?’ He stood in the middle of

the tiled floor as though he always had been there.
‘Time is relative.’ He checked his pocket watch. ‘Or at

least it might be from lunch time tomorrow.’
‘We know from the last line of the Fragment that the

expedition will succeed. It is written.’ She turned back to face the ships. ‘It is what comes afterwards that is uncertain. But soon we will not just know the future, soon we will walk amongst it.’

‘The Fragment,’ he said, walking over to her, placing his hand easily on her shoulder. ‘I thought you must have guessed.’

She knew what he was about to say.

He spoke softly, deep sadness in his voice. ‘Rassilon needed to rally his people, he needed to justify his insane plan. You remember what it was like a decade ago, after the Curse. The Elders were looking to the past, they were giving up. All we had was our memory. All those golden ages and legendary adventures, all that infighting over which past glory was the best past glory. Gallifrey had died.’

‘Even without Rassilon, we would have lived for many millions of years. We are very difficult to kill.’

‘Oh yes. We’re immortal, barring accidents. But accidents happen, my Lady. We would have died in the end without Rassilon and his plan. Didn’t it ever occur to you how contrived the situation was? A workman clearing away the rubble of some fallen temple just happened to find a page from the Book of Prophecy. A single page, a little charred around the edges. Didn’t you think that was odd? Didn’t you wonder what had happened to the rest of the book? And it was such a useful page – the very one that told of the coming decade, showed the whole of Gallifrey that we would become the first of the Lords of Time. Even Rassilon’s enemies conceded that the future seemed to be quoting word‐for‐word from Rassilon’s manifesto half the time. An interesting coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

‘The discovery of the Fragment was the clearest possible indication of our destiny,’ she said firmly. ‘The universe moves in mysterious ways.’

‘The Fragment!’ the little man snorted. ‘Rassilon wrote it himself, placed the paper under a stone during one of his walkabouts. He doesn’t want to see the future, he wants to shape it. The Scrolls are what might happen, what he wants to happen, not what will. Without the Fragment, Rassilon and the Consortium would not have been allowed to continue the time travel experiments, we’d have squandered the planet’s resources just trying to stay alive, rather than investing them.’

And it made sense, but it made the future an abyss.

She shrugged his hand from her shoulder, turned to face him. The little man didn’t speak for a moment. Finally, in that soft voice of his, he said, ‘There are many races across the universe who have never remembered the future.’

She shuddered. ‘It has been bad enough not knowing what would happen this last nine years. To be blind for ever is that how you want to live?’

‘You would be surprised how easy they find ways to explain away what happens. They have many beliefs that we would find strange. They talk of “cause and effect”, “quantum mechanics”, “prediction”. Mostly they put their trust in their gods. They believe that the gods can directly influence the mortal sphere, rewarding their followers, punishing the unbelievers. The laws of physics bend to tile will of the gods. They call it “divine intervention”.’

She stared at him.
‘A curious notion,’ she said finally.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Without it, we are forced to create our

own miracles.’
He pointed back at the ships and she turned. The sun was

behind her, and barely above the horizon. The shadows were long, matt black, beginning to flow together, like droplets of mercury. The ships hung above the ruined Capitol, inviolate. The gangways and docking tubes had withdrawn, the ground crews were retreating back to the safety of the Citadel. The singing had stopped some time ago.

Without further ceremony, the air filled with an unearthly wheezing, moaning sound and the massive ships faded away like memories. Then there was nothing there except the ruins of the Capitol, the shadows of the past, and a winter’s evening.

‘Shouldn’t you have been with your ship?’ she asked. But he had gone.