A Country of Smaller Wars (1/3)
"A Country of Smaller Wars", 1/3 ( Main page)
Gallifrey, Narvin/Romana
~23,000 words
R (violence, sexual situations, ennui)
Spoilers through the end of season four.
A spy is a tourist in other people's lives.
1.
Other People
The city wants to know what Narvin's done for it lately.
He's in his office, top floor of the CIA headquarters, watching the first sun set in the canyon of the Maqattac Boulevard. Skyscrapers gleaming on either side. Office buildings, condominiums, in alloy and plate glass, cutting-edge architectural technology. Transdimensional buildings, physically improbable buildings, buildings in constant temporal shift. Millions of people walking around down there, few of them with any idea just how delicate the situation is. Gallifrey exists through sheer force of will; the tiniest lapse, the smallest mistake, and the whole planet could come tumbling apart.
The transduction barrier flickers in the distance. This is the garrison at the center of time. The city is a fortress, was a castle once. They still call the chapter heads of the Chancellery Guard castellans. The lexicon knows, even if the public doesn't.
The students are coming today. The first ship has already landed, a cargo carrier from Earth, holding three hundred tons of mining equipment and two dozen children. Five more are en route. The president will be there, at the quay, shaking hands and making statements to the press, posing for the cameras. The Chancellery Guard will escort them to the Academy gates, where Braxiatel is waiting. The ceremonial ushering in of the invasion.
He turns his back to the window. "I hate wars fought with children."
"As do we all." Darkel smiles, in what he assumes to be an effort at appearing understanding, or comforting. Darkel has never been all that good at masking her true intentions. It's one of the reasons he's willing to work with her, that he knows her particular failings and weaknesses. An evil, but a predictable one, and currently a necessary one as well.
"We proceed, then. No grandstanding, no vigilantism. We do this the right way or there's no sense in doing it at all."
"Don't worry, Coordinator, you can trust me." She reaches out to shake his hand; he draws back, busies himself with sorting paperwork that doesn't need sorting.
"No, I can't," he says, not looking up.
"I must protest, I've been perfectly-"
"That's enough. You can leave, now." He straightens, fixes her gaze, with the blank stare he knows to be intimidating or at least unnerving. She wavers, huffs, readjusts her robes about her shoulders, then turns and leaves. In silence, thankfully.
There's a stillness, here. This is a hinge point. After this, the world is a different place. The decision's already been made.
"I do what I must," he says to the empty room, or maybe to the city outside.
*
Two of his agents arrive in his office twenty microspans after the day's council meeting. They've never met; they carefully avoid looking at each other. He waits fifteen seconds before acknowledging them.
"This is your last chance to change your minds," he says, finally looking up from the console. "There will be no way back."
They nod. He has them sign the relevant forms. He watches them begin to register the finality of the situation. The enormity of what they're about to do. They have already forsaken their Houses, whether actively or emotionally, and they are about to forsake themselves. This could be a desperate, desolate moment, if they were people to acknowledge that sort of thing. Instead, they remain stoic as he leads them through the corridors.
Into the computer's statistically average personalities and pasts, he lays suggestions. He gives them probabilities: 60% chance of marriage, 35% chance of a dead-end job, 2% chance of death by reckless driving. He weights the die. He slides a Chameleon Arch onto each of their heads, attaches the electrodes and injects the serum, then leaves to observe from an adjoining room. They are downloaded and partitioned. For a moment, they are empty. Then he flips the switch.
He's been told it's a painful process. Their language has been cut from them, their voices reset; they scream like animals. He's thankful for the sound-proof walls.
When they've settled, he removes the arches and implants a microscopic, nearly-indetectable data recorder into their cerebral cortices. Vansell had commissioned the first tracker, though he'd never seemed comfortable using it. Narvin has few qualms. Ethics are a luxury, after all.
They will wake up as strangers. He wonders what that's like.
*
Gryben is a breeding ground for terrorists. It's a prison camp for people who didn't know they were breaking any laws, of course they get angry. Amateur adventurers who thought they'd be killing an ancient dictator or shaking their great-grandfather's hand, or skipping forward to an imagined promised land, they all step outside the doors of their hobby-kit time machines and find themselves here. The shanty town at the end of the universe. They have no recourse, nowhere to go, nothing to do except maintain the thriving black market. And join the Free Time insurgency, of course.
Every temporal power has an embassy, but Gallifrey's is the only one that gets bombed. Twice in the past year, plus countless threats and demonstrations, a barrage of graffiti, and the assassination of an ambassador by a sniper camping out in the health clinic across the street. There's a barrier, now.
His office is in the basement. It's suitably airless, over-lit and overwhelmingly beige. There's the same furniture as in his office on Black Rock, partly out of habit and partly for the disorientation it causes. A desk, two chairs. No personal effects. A registration form, an aid application form, a pen.
She's writing, he's tapping his fingers against the plastic desktop. There's no other sounds.
"Welcome to Gryben," he says, watching her fill in the form. Her hand is steady, no pauses and nothing crossed out.
"Get stuffed," she replies.
He carefully raises his right eyebrow, then stands up, the noise of the chair scraping against tile impossibly loud. She flinches. "Your papers will be processed within the week," he says. "Office 271a will provide a temporary ID, office 271b will assign housing and a credit number, and office 271c shows an informative video half past the hour from eight to eleven. A copy of the guide book can be obtained from the information desk in the front hall."
"Where do I go to register a complaint?"
"There's a suggestion box at the information desk. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions." He shines a light in her eyes. "What's your name?"
"Daniella Walker," she says. No hint of hesitation, good.
"Do you know who I am?"
She squints up at him. He turns the light off. She looks at his face, then his robes, then rolls her eyes. "You're a Time Lord. Am I supposed to be impressed or something?" She absently fingers the locket hanging around her neck.
"Do you know where you are?"
"The embassy. What is this? You have my paperwork. And I haven't done anything wrong."
"Not yet, anyway." He smiles widely, aware of how false it looks. He's never been good at facial expressions. "It's just routine. Nothing to worry about. It's already over, in fact. The guard will show you out. Have a pleasant day."
She rolls her eyes again and stands up, giving him one last look of contempt before leaving the room.
*
The CIA has operatives everywhere. Assassins, recon scouts, bribed officials, sleeper agents. The long arm of temporal law can reach to the ends of the universe, Vansell used to say. Anyone could be a spy. You could be a spy and never even know it. So many secret lives, and so much at stake, all the fault lines of history and all the people guarding them.
Deception is in a Time Lord's nature, Vansell had said. We are all of us other people. Narvin's been other people but he's never been a spy, as such. He'd done bomb work in the east. Graduated with a degree in temporal mechanics, imagined a future in the shipyards or else one of the research companies springing up in the capitol, good money, solid work - ended up instead in the desert, working in Glauer's weapons group, a state-funded operation, writing code for artron containment systems. They split time and put it back together in increasingly baroque ways, the alkali flats of the test site slipping and folding over the fact of themselves. Top-secret, very hush hush. Systems work, rumor work, compiling symbol chains in a bunker hidden below twenty feet of salt gravel.
The TFD, how do you call it, debacle, was where the CIA recruited him. The guards have guns, but the spooks have devices, and Narvin was a device man, a containment expert, a person capable of building a box you could put doomsday particles in without fear of contamination or premature detonation. He could make a box you'd put an entire apocalypse into with the highest external safety standards. The CIA was intrigued. He was slipped almost without notice into Special Projects. Ordnance, anomaly utilization, stochastic engineering, the Oubliette. He did well, he kept his head down while everyone else went crazy or renegade. He was promoted to department chief just in time for Vansell to get himself killed.
The president had wanted a scientist to front the Agency. An operator, not an operative. He's occasionally wondered whether she picked his name at random; there were other choices, better choices, people with field experience and political savvy and the ability to hold a conversation without shouting, who hadn't spent the last two centuries sequestered in a laboratory. She promoted him, so halfway through his lives, he found himself needing to fake his way through a new profession.
Being a spy, he's found, doesn't mean becoming someone else, but becoming no one. Becoming unremarkable, unnoticeable, invisible. The best spy will disappear, surface only to accomplish the mission, and then leave quietly. Narvin may have traded the scientist's discretion for the public, politic face of the Coordinator, but he still knows how to fade into the background. That might be part of why he was chosen; the president, on their first meeting, knew nothing about him other than that he wasn't Vansell. Maybe she'd thought he'd been a spy all along, not a nobody but a consummate anybody.
She still doesn't know much about him, and he does his best to keep it that way. She sees his title, a vague annoyance, a symbol of the things she feels is wrong with society. Notably, she lets him keep his job, and does relatively little to interfere. She doesn't need to know what he really does in order to reap the CIA's benefits. And she shouldn't know, of course. He is the dirt kept off her hands, her pragmatism outsourced. It doesn't bother him. Why would it?
He sold his name for three spans of surveillance footage. He finds he doesn't miss it much. His name, stripped of familial inheritance and coded details, is short and easily forgotten. There is no weight to it. He is himself short and easily forgotten, a fact which may have bothered him in this regeneration's youth but now feels like a blessing. No one looks twice. He works hard to make sure they don't change their minds. He sold his name and would sell the rest of himself if Gallifrey demanded it. He is CIA. This is his identity. Anything else is superfluous.
It's morning and cold and grey, and there are six packets waiting for him on his office computer. He presses the electrodes to his skin and turns the device on, and opens Walker's report. Not Walker, he reminds himself. Don't use names. Never use names. She'll be Red Wolf in his files; a code name for a false identity in a program that doesn't exist. Obfuscation, plausible deniability. He starts the playback.
The office in front of him flickers and is replaced by a small, dark room. He's sitting on the edge of a bed. There's a gun in his hands. He's holding it like he doesn't know how to use it, like he's afraid of it. It's heavier than he thought it'd be.
"We have to be prepared," the man sitting next to him says. "There's a revolution coming, and it won't be bloodless. You need to learn how to protect yourself."
He's looking at the staser in his hands like it's a foreign object. "This isn't what I expected," he says. She says. He (she) turns the staser over in his (her) fingers, then slides it into a duffel bag on the floor. This feeling: fear? Disappointment? Resignation? Something complicated, something dangerous.
The room flickers. He's looking out of a window, somewhere high up, watching the people below. Like ants, or atoms; a swarm, a process. Objects moving inevitably along a path. He's thinking about fate, or something quite like it.
*
He wonders what it'll be like being on the other end of this conversation. How that seething, self-righteous hate will feel, what he'll look like through her eyes. Yourself as you are and as others see you: he assumes he'll be a monster. He's fine with that.
"Fascist scum," she spits out. "Hypocrite. Oppressor. Bastard."
"I just need to ask you a few questions," he says mildly. "I'd appreciate it if you refrained from answering entirely in rhetoric."
"I won't give you any information. Do what you like to my body, but you'll never get my mind."
He leans against the table, makes a show of flipping through paperwork. "There are several ways to make you talk. Some of these involve forms of physical coercion, true, but not all. Even so, surely a revolutionary such as yourself would be willing to sacrifice creature comforts for the cause. You do believe in the cause, don't you?"
"Do you believe in gravity? Mathematics? Death? Free Time is not a cause, it is a fact, one which you Time Lords refuse to acknowledge." She's still struggling against the cuffs; futile, but she's got an act to put on as much as he does.
"Rhetoric," he reminds her. "And funnily enough, none of the constants you mentioned are really constants at all. Everything is variable. Time is variable, the cause is variable, your devotion to it - well. I see you're a student, on academic leave?"
She's silent.
"'Reason for coming to Gryben: tourism'. You consider yourself a tourist, Miss Walker?" No answer. "You were on the planet for two months. During that time, you associated with several known terrorists and participated in the dissemination of propaganda. You were arrested twice, once for disturbing the peace, once for unlawful assembly. Both non-violent offenses."
"I won't tell you anything." Her jaw is set, eyes watering. She stares at a point somewhere past his shoulder.
"I don't need you to. You see, Miss Walker, there's nothing you can tell me that I don't already know. You're not a particularly important person. You're here because if I don't interrogate a certain quota of suspects, the cardinals believe I'm not doing my job. You must know how important it is to keep up appearances. No, you will not be tortured or subjected to the mind probe or whatever terrible acts you imagine me capable of. You will be released unharmed, as long as you agree to one thing."
"I'll agree to nothing."
He ignores her. "You will tell whoever is in charge of your little - organization, that Free Time has been infiltrated, for quite some time now. I doubt you'll discover who it is, as even they don't know what they are. I imagine you'll try your hardest, though. I wish you the best of luck."
"I trust my friends. It's a trick, and I won't fall for it. All you people are liars."
"You trust them? Two months, on a tourist visa. I wonder." He presses a button; the restraints around her wrists and ankles relax. "You're an idealist, Miss Walker. Idealists are always disappointed, in the end."
"Better to be disappointed than to never believe in anything at all." She stands up, and with a somewhat forced air of defiance walks through the door.
The problem with dramatic exits is that sometimes you need to undo them. He sighs, gets his rain cloak from the closet, and follows her out.
She's at the edge, leaning over the railing. He can't see her face but he imagines she has a suitable look of chagrin, hopefully mixed with despair. Beyond her, and all around them, is the Petraean Sea.
"We're on an island," he shouts over the wind. "Black Rock, barely a speck on the most detailed map. Completely isolated, no one can help you and you can't go anywhere without my consent. Unless you'd care to swim. Transmat capsules are back this way."
She's still staring out at the water. He's getting bored. "This is not a sight-seeing trip, Miss Walker. Please stop wasting my time."
She turns and walks past him, head bowed against the storm, less defiant than before. She's saying something, but between the wind and the rain hitting his hood, he can't quite make it out. It doesn't really matter, he knows what she means. He made her, of course he knows.
*
He's walking quickly. It's not safe after sundown. There's the wail of a police siren, music coming from a window above, a fight about to break out on the corner. He's thinking 23 days, like a mantra. Hands jammed in his pockets, one fist closed around the drive, the other around a knife. 23 days. Don't make eye contact. Stick to the street lights.
23 days before his case comes before the board. He's got insurance this time, they can't turn him away again. He'll name names, he'll sell her out if he has to. He can't take another year on this planet. Someone told him today that 'Gryben' means 'land of plenty' in Arvonese; plenty of what, junkies? Idiot tourists? Armed guards?
He's turning down the walkway to the project building, his hand's sweating on the knife handle. Someone's put a poster up over the seal of Rassilon on the gate. The Future Won't Wait. He's keying in his access code, he's stepping gingerly over a vagrant in the front hall. He's thinking twenty-three more days and he'll never have to smell this again.
He is opening the door to his unit. He is watching his wife sleep, her arm stretched over the place on the mattress where he should be. He is considering the junction where collarbone turns into shoulder. He feels something, what is this, like he can't breathe, like there is nothing at all in the universe except him and this woman, a room and a doorway, like time has compressed into this one single instant. This is - wanting, longing, he thinks, this is desire curling up inside him. He is watching his wife open her eyes and close them again, turning pointedly away. Time stutters, and continues onward. He is discovering a place inside himself that is suddenly empty.
*
The insomnia is nothing new. An all-nighter is standard operating procedure, two days awake is a busy week. Three days is cause for concern, but there's stimulants to be had and work to be done. Four days, and he'd be in the infirmary if he weren't trying to clear his name of treason. Everything narrows, everything is worse, brighter, louder, more confusing. He can't focus, can't function. The world is operating without him. There's a possibility that something might be wrong.
Things happen, he's there when they do, but he can't think fast enough to stop any of it. Chaos is the status quo of Gallifreyan politics, but this is a special day: he goes from a routine investigation to Darkel nearly arresting him to stumbling blindly around the vaults listening to Braxiatel confess one of his many sins, after which he watches Romana discuss the pros of world domination with a projection of her former self and a disembodied voice. The beginnings of hysterical laughter are welling up inside him right before he gets shot.
There are blank spots in his memory when he finally wakes up. Maybe it's exhaustion, maybe they took something; it's not a gap, per se, just an imprecision. Nobody seems interested in informing him. Romana sends a note which doesn't quite say what happened. Something about Matrix partitions and security risks. No apology, either, not even Your planet thanks you for your sacrifice.
It's Leela, annoyingly enough, who finally tells him. "It was Pandora," she says, working hard around the unfamiliar syllables. "A ghost in the catacombs. She possessed you so she could do her evil works. Romana and the other Romana made her leave, but then she came back, so K9 shot you."
"Give me a nanospan to unpack that," he says.
"You were like a puppet, and Romana cut your strings." She thinks she's being helpful.
"By having me shot? What a calm, measured response." Something's almost, almost clicking in his head. Romana and Romana and the strange, lingering ache at his temples, and, oh, Braxiatel. The hypocritical, tampering bastard. "Suddenly there's more of everyone I loathe," he says, mostly to himself. "Two Romanas, and a - what would you call it, a gaggle? A gaggle of Braxiatels. Two of those ridiculous robot dogs. Next thing, I'll be receiving a report that Wynter tripped and fell into a cloning device. There's still just the one of you, yes?"
"One of me is more than enough to keep an eye on you," she says with a sneer.
"I'm counting on it. How else would I spend my idle hours if I didn't have to constantly struggle to keep my dastardly plans safe from your guile and cunning?" He gives his best empty smile, then walks away with as much flourish as he can muster.
Clever words won't save you, she's calling after him. I know what you are.
*
He's in a space port. He's fighting someone. The man is taller, stronger, knows more about how to do this than he does. There are people arranged around them, cheering, shouting. Some of these people he recognizes as his friends. He is being punched in the face; he is falling. The floor is hard and smooth. There are lights, noises, he sees boots and flight attendant slippers and the blood coming out of his nose. There are hands grabbing his shoulders and pulling him up. "You okay, mate?" a voice is asking. He says, he says, he doesn't know what he says. "I coulda told you you'd lose, not like you'd ever listen. Let me buy you a drink, we'll stop by the infirmary later."
He's wiping blood off his face. He's grinning. "I got a few good shots in, can't deny that," he slurs. There's an arm slung across his shoulder, supporting him. They're walking to a bar.
His office swims back into view. "That wasn't, strictly speaking, necessary," he mutters. He picks up the device, turns it over in his hands. He'll re-write the code for the filtering program as soon as he can scrape together a free span. Then again, there's clues in everything. Maybe this is important. Maybe he's missing something. The fight, the blood, the friend, the bar. Maybe there's something there. He rubs at his face, that phantom pain. Maybe, maybe not.
*
Braxiatel has the same air his brother did before he left. The wink and nod, the amused acquiescence, the self-aware detachment, something hard and sharp under all the posturing. The calculated, obvious falseness of everything he says. He's a hedonist without the hedonist's commitment to physical surrender - he drinks, but not too much, lets cigars idle in the ashtray, visits the bagnio but never rents a room.
He sends a message. The new masseuse is stunning. I've put your name on the waitlist, come soonest. It's fairly transparent, as far as his communiques go. The standard level of insult and mockery. Narvin debates ignoring it entirely, but Braxiatel never calls without significant cause. So he goes.
The baths are a relic, like half of this city. The ritual of luxury, or the luxury of ritual. Two floors of, basically, water: hot and cold, still and sprayed, immersion and drying-off and re-immersion. Occasionally ointments applied by skilled professionals. Occasionally other things.
The heat, or the sybaritism, but he feels sick. A revulsion, almost.
He finds Braxiatel in a sauna, louche and towel-clad. He averts his eyes and clears his throat over the low rumble of the air filtration system.
"Coordinator! Always a pleasure to see you. Come, sit down." Braxiatel gestures to the bench beside him.
Narvin remains standing. "I fail to see why you wanted to meet me here." He pulls at his collar; he's beginning to feel light-headed. Steam rises.
"You'd feel better if you weren't wearing quite so many layers, Narvin. We're here because I'm a busy man, and I refuse to give up my weekly span of peace for a dreary meeting in a dreary office with, well, you. I do hope this isn't too awkward for you."
"Not at all, Cardinal Braxiatel." He clasps his hands behind his back and affects a stance of nonchalance. He does not look at the Cardinal, or any of the other half-naked, half-asleep men scattered about the room.
"Your generation is so prudish. Perhaps if you allowed yourself to relax once in a while, you'd be better equipped to deal with the rigors of the High Council. No matter. I've called you here to deliver a piece of information."
"If it's confidential, I suggest we move to somewhere more private."
"On the slight chance that any of these gentlemen are paying attention, I doubt they'd understand or even care." Braxiatel closes his eyes and slouches down. "Blue Wolf is out of commission," he says, off-handedly.
Narvin swallows. Every muscle in his body stiffens. Behind his back, his hands white-knuckle around each other. "When?" he asks, tightly.
"This morning. I trust you'll make the necessary arrangements. That'll be all, Coordinator."
*
Blue Wolf is being kept in a local hospital. Retrieval is simple. He lands his TARDIS in the morgue after working hours and slides the cart in. He does not pull the cover back, instead does a quick blood test to verify the body's identity. He takes the locket from around the body's neck, and opens it. The body falls back into itself, cold skin shifting; the mind will be saved to the Matrix, after a certain amount of editing, and the corpse will be burnt. He can't afford any loose ends.
Red Wolf is returning from work. Narvin settles the TARDIS down inside her apartment, and sits down in an armchair to wait.
The front door opens. "You again," she says. "This is breaking and entering. This is illegal. I don't care who you are or who you work for, you can't just-"
He presses a button on his handheld computer, and watches her change facial expressions at least five times before schooling herself to blankness.
"There's been a complication," he says. "The mission is being put on hold." She nods vaguely.
Inside the TARDIS, his agent sits in the conference room writing her report. He waits until she's done before sliding the needle into her neck; she'll come to feeling groggy but healthy, and with a fresh set of memories in her head. He takes the data pad from her limp hands and carefully deletes everything.
*
He is dreaming about Gallifrey falling. He's dreaming about a dead world, the country laid to waste. He's dreaming of a field: his boots sticking in the mud, the ache in his legs and his chest and his head, the desperation, how all he wants is to give up and lie down in the muck, lie down and wait to die. He is dreaming about a wolf running hungrily ahead of him, and he is following her.
When he wakes, there is a thought at the forefront of his mind, in a voice that isn't his. The spy is loyal to nothing but his country. Remember that.
He's in a hospital bed, covered in bandages and handcuffed to the rail. He remembers vaguely doing a series of escalatingly stupid things. He used to be a scientist. He'd been a good scientist. Now he's a half-dead ex-spy presumably under arrest for treason, with a raging headache and no sensation in his left leg. There's a line of cause and effect here, if he could just find it.
"Feeling better?" It's Darkel. Of course it's Darkel. It's always Darkel. At least the restraints save him from having to see her face.
"I feel awful, but at least my conscience is intact."
"First of all, you can't prove anything. Secondly, you're in no position to pass judgement. Thirdly, you lost, so none of it matters anyway." She sounds delighted.
He's too busy not crying to wonder what her victory entails. "Please go away now," he says, or, well, whines, to be more precise. He shouldn't be in this much pain, there are drugs he should be getting, molecular therapy, this is a civilized world and the only conceivable reason he shouldn't be comfortable is -
"Torture," he says. "This is, you're enjoying this, you-"
She interrupts with an extended dramatic throat-clearing. "Do you know, I had no idea you'd lost control to this extent. You couldn't even find an agent to deactivate the bomb, you just stood in front of it and hoped for the best. Six months investigating the Free Time movement, and you failed to find the terrorist operating under your own nose. Again. First Torvald, then Gillestes, now Antimon. What exactly is it that you do, Narvin?"
He can't think of anything suitably scathing to say. Blame the head trauma. "I protected the president, that's what matters."
"You mean the ex-president, surely. Oh, I'm sorry, you missed that, didn't you. Pandora's taken control. Romana's in a jail cell. If you still have a brain left under all that gauze, now would be the time to do the sensible thing and change sides."
"Nnngh," he says. He's never had to work so hard at not passing out. There are words, probably, in his head somewhere, which he'll arrange and say out loud as soon as the room stops spinning. "Pandora?"
"In the flesh. I'll let you get your rest now, we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. I wouldn't want you to miss the swearing-in of our new leader. Sweet dreams, Narvin."
There's a faint beeping noise, then the painkillers kick back in. He feels absolutely superb for a few nanospans, really quite lovely and carefree, then he blacks out.
*
The city has been invaded, as his body was invaded. This is dread, what he's feeling, this empty, dizzy space in the pit of his stomach. He has no faith in the ability of the people to resist Pandora. He's realizing he'd been fighting the wrong battle all along.
A general assembly is called. Cardinals, senators, department heads and reporters all filing dutifully into the Panopticon. Full ceremonial dress. Pandora sits in the front row wearing Prydonian robes she never earned. The rod, the sash, the coronet, the key.
He's watching them, all of them, wondering how many know what's about to happen, how many even care. He doesn't notice Darkel walking up to him until her Inquisitorial whites are in his peripheral vision. He resists the impulse to punch her in the face.
"Your coup, as promised," she says. "I doubt we'll be seeing much of Romana after today."
"This is low, even for you. I had no illusions about your fealty to the state, but Pandora? Really? Please tell me how she's better for Gallifrey than Romana, because honestly I can't understand your rationale."
"It's a bit late to be developing a set of scruples, Coordinator. And I'd watch my tongue if I were you, there will be no place for dissent in the new administration." She bows, smirking as she goes, then heads down the steps to sit next to Pandora, who smiles and shakes her hand like they're old friends. What a monumentally stupid mistake he's made.
The president takes her place on the center stage for the last time, shaken but unbowed, and says we must not abandon our home and ourselves, we must not relinquish our responsibilities. No patriot will stand by and allow it to be destroyed. I will not allow it, and I will not resign, and I will not rest until the parasite that is eating at the hearts of our world is eradicated.
It's a rousing speech. Narvin doesn't clap, but then nobody else does either. The cardinals look nervous. The magistrates look bored. Behind and above him, the Senate is whispering intently to itself. This is the government that will fall. No one wants to make the first move.
Coordinator Ithos turns to him and says, "I knew I should have retired last year." Narvin ignores him. He has a feeling there won't be any particular need for a Department of Conservation in the coming months. He taps the button on the arm of his chair and stands up.
"Coordinator Narvin of the Celestial Intervention Agency has the floor," the Speaker says, somewhat uncertainly. "Please state your position."
Narvin clears his throat and says, "I serve at the pleasure of the president." Both Pandora and Romana turn and look at him. "The true president," he clarifies. "The preservation of the state and its ideals take precedence over any political misgivings I may have. I am, first and foremost, a citizen of Gallifrey, and as such my loyalty must be to President Romanadvoratrelundar. I will support her, even if it means engaging in a civil war."
There's a wave of murmurs, rustling, anxious shifting. Ithos is gaping at him, bewildered. "Don't you have a lamppost or something to induct into posterity?" Narvin snaps.
"Senator Weyar of the Eighty-Sixth District has the floor. Please state your position." The Speaker is clutching at the microphone like it's a life line.
Weyar's thin falsetto comes floating out of the gallery above him. "Contradict. The esteemed Coordinator seems to be under the misapprehension that..."
Narvin isn't listening. He's staring at Romana, who's staring back, and she nods, and he nods, and that's the moment everything changes.
*
"I received your letter of resignation this morning," Darkel says, face fuzzy through the poor reception. Regular video transmission has been down for weeks; they've been using the emergency broadcast system. Her syrupy condescension comes across just fine. "I'm flattered you thought to send it to me."
"I didn't," he says. "I sent it to Pandora. You just decided to read it."
She smiles. "It's my job to know what goes on in this city. The defection of the CIA coordinator is quite an event, you know. The news that the ex-coordinator was seen running from a building that blew up not half a microspan later - well, you can imagine my surprise. I always thought you were a reasonable man. Romana's really gotten to you, hasn't she."
"I'm doing what's best for Gallifrey," he says.
"You really believe that, don't you. Poor thing. Sooner or later, you'll come to your senses, but I'm afraid it'll be too late. You're a traitor, Narvin, and you're following a madwoman in her absurd vendetta against her own people. You could've had so much more."
"I could've worked for you, you mean. I could've cheered when you bombed the Academy. I could've welcomed that invader with open arms. I could've chosen ambition over patriotism. Perhaps I should've. It's working out so well for you." He is, he realizes, fiercely angry. He finds his hands clenching into fists, a dozen slurs and epithets crowding the back of his mouth. It's an unfamiliar feeling.
"I really don't think you should be playing around with words like 'patriotism', not when you're committing acts of terrorism against the state." She smiles again.
Something in him snaps. "I hope you rot," he grinds out, then slams his fist down on the monitor's power button. Darkel's face wavers and fades to black.
*
He's playing field operative, setting bombs, running scared. The city is crumbling around him. He's setting bombs in the artron forum, antique controllers on degraded explosives, this hallowed ground, Leela laughing with the sheer joy of it. Destroying his city, building by building.
He doesn't say much, not really. He lies a bit, just enough. He argues, even if his heart isn't quite in it. The president's been watching him. He wonders if he's giving anything away, his face betraying emotions his brain is too tired to comprehend. He wonders if she looks at him and sees Pandora, sees the creature that had infiltrated them both, the phantom that is slowly unravelling her.
This isn't an army. This isn't much of anything. Half a mile of cable, tape, a handful of remote detonators, two cases of F-20 cartridges, a walkie talkie. Percussion blasts, flash burns, picking shrapnel out with tweezers. He bombs himself and comes to in the outlands, sand everywhere, an imperfectly healed skull and a roiling nausea. Elbon complaining from the shadows of the triage room, an exhausted, dangerous look in his eyes. This is a thing neither of them quite know what to do with. The men they were, the men they're becoming, and Pandora's guards closing in. Inlands, outlands. The fear of what comes from the wild versus the fear of what's behind them. The heat, the unforgiving rock, the citadel shining in the distance.
Romana's gone to the anomaly vault. Narvin's not quite surprised. It's a brave, stupid, clever thing to do; she'll get herself killed. He spares a moment to appreciate the irony of his own half-realized plans being what finally does the Imperiatrix in. Deathless Icino, lying in wait, again and again and again. And he knows, somehow, what Romana will do, when they transmat in and he sees her typing frantically away at the control panel. She thinks she's going to save the world.
It hits him later, after he's nearly blown them all up (again). A Time Lord has a dozen lives and his president is two women, is waging war against herself, is treading the line between herself, was nearly crying when she stumbled out from the sentience's control. He can't stand to look at her. Romana, Romana, holding the ghost of herself in her head.
They wake up as other people. It's basic biology.
*
"You can't go home again," Arkadian says. "There's no place left for you here. Whatever you do, you'll always be Romana's man, and unfortunately in this political climate that sort of thing is a deal-breaker." He's been talking non-stop since he got here. Narvin doesn't remember who invited him. This is desperation, this is the High Council giving up, and Arkadian is the vulture circling high overhead.
"I'm not you, Arkadian. I don't run away every time things get difficult." Which is, possibly, a sort of lie; he's more a runner than he'll ever be a soldier. Still.
Arkadian puts on his older-brother expression. "It's more than difficult. It's a lost cause, Narvin. Do you really think Matthias will keep you on? Even if by some miracle Gallifrey recovers to the point of requiring a Celestial Intervention Agency, you won't be in charge. It's too risky, too unseemly. And come to think of it, is Matthias someone you'd even care to serve? He struck me as something of a wet blanket. None of Romana's spark and verve. He certainly doesn't inspire any confidence in me."
"I serve the office of the president, not the person occupying it. My personal feelings are irrelevant, as is my ambition. I will do whatever Gallifrey asks of me."
"But that's just it. Gallifrey isn't asking anymore. What do you have to offer? I'll tell you."
"I wish you wouldn't," Narvin says.
"Funds," Arkadian continues, undeterred. "The CIA has assets. Technology, information, personnel, even property. Surely there must be something you're willing to sacrifice. A planet here, a Chameleon Arch there. You could keep your people in beer and skittles on the sale of the Thoros IV outpost alone."
"You realize what it says about you that you thought I would even consider what you're suggesting." And there's not much left to sacrifice, he thinks but doesn't say.
"You've sold things before. Tell me, Narvinektrolonum, how long has it been since you've seen your family? Coming on a century now, isn't it. Was it worth it?" Arkadian is doing everything short of actually twirling his mustache.
Narvin tries to sneer, but finds his face isn't quite up to the task. He settles on a sort of distracted stoicism. "My name was mine to sell. Matrix secrets aren't."
"Noble words. Do you find they ring a bit false? You have no influence, no power, and very few options. You're nobody, Narvin. A nobody who nevertheless has access to a great deal of marketable items. I don't want to pressure you into anything, of course, I merely wish to remind you that you have the ability to put out some of the fires currently ravaging the land, and I would be more than happy to broker the necessary transactions."
He wishes he were the sort of man who punched people. Just once, just this once, he wants to give up decorum and reason and lay that bastard out cold on the ground, wipe the smile off his face. But he isn't that sort of man, of course, so he just rests the palm of his hand on his holster and says, "It's been a pleasure talking with you, but I must attend to my duties."
"What duties?" Arkadian is saying, but Narvin's already leaving, the door sliding shut behind him.
Part Two
Gallifrey, Narvin/Romana
~23,000 words
R (violence, sexual situations, ennui)
Spoilers through the end of season four.
A spy is a tourist in other people's lives.
1.
Other People
The city wants to know what Narvin's done for it lately.
He's in his office, top floor of the CIA headquarters, watching the first sun set in the canyon of the Maqattac Boulevard. Skyscrapers gleaming on either side. Office buildings, condominiums, in alloy and plate glass, cutting-edge architectural technology. Transdimensional buildings, physically improbable buildings, buildings in constant temporal shift. Millions of people walking around down there, few of them with any idea just how delicate the situation is. Gallifrey exists through sheer force of will; the tiniest lapse, the smallest mistake, and the whole planet could come tumbling apart.
The transduction barrier flickers in the distance. This is the garrison at the center of time. The city is a fortress, was a castle once. They still call the chapter heads of the Chancellery Guard castellans. The lexicon knows, even if the public doesn't.
The students are coming today. The first ship has already landed, a cargo carrier from Earth, holding three hundred tons of mining equipment and two dozen children. Five more are en route. The president will be there, at the quay, shaking hands and making statements to the press, posing for the cameras. The Chancellery Guard will escort them to the Academy gates, where Braxiatel is waiting. The ceremonial ushering in of the invasion.
He turns his back to the window. "I hate wars fought with children."
"As do we all." Darkel smiles, in what he assumes to be an effort at appearing understanding, or comforting. Darkel has never been all that good at masking her true intentions. It's one of the reasons he's willing to work with her, that he knows her particular failings and weaknesses. An evil, but a predictable one, and currently a necessary one as well.
"We proceed, then. No grandstanding, no vigilantism. We do this the right way or there's no sense in doing it at all."
"Don't worry, Coordinator, you can trust me." She reaches out to shake his hand; he draws back, busies himself with sorting paperwork that doesn't need sorting.
"No, I can't," he says, not looking up.
"I must protest, I've been perfectly-"
"That's enough. You can leave, now." He straightens, fixes her gaze, with the blank stare he knows to be intimidating or at least unnerving. She wavers, huffs, readjusts her robes about her shoulders, then turns and leaves. In silence, thankfully.
There's a stillness, here. This is a hinge point. After this, the world is a different place. The decision's already been made.
"I do what I must," he says to the empty room, or maybe to the city outside.
*
Two of his agents arrive in his office twenty microspans after the day's council meeting. They've never met; they carefully avoid looking at each other. He waits fifteen seconds before acknowledging them.
"This is your last chance to change your minds," he says, finally looking up from the console. "There will be no way back."
They nod. He has them sign the relevant forms. He watches them begin to register the finality of the situation. The enormity of what they're about to do. They have already forsaken their Houses, whether actively or emotionally, and they are about to forsake themselves. This could be a desperate, desolate moment, if they were people to acknowledge that sort of thing. Instead, they remain stoic as he leads them through the corridors.
Into the computer's statistically average personalities and pasts, he lays suggestions. He gives them probabilities: 60% chance of marriage, 35% chance of a dead-end job, 2% chance of death by reckless driving. He weights the die. He slides a Chameleon Arch onto each of their heads, attaches the electrodes and injects the serum, then leaves to observe from an adjoining room. They are downloaded and partitioned. For a moment, they are empty. Then he flips the switch.
He's been told it's a painful process. Their language has been cut from them, their voices reset; they scream like animals. He's thankful for the sound-proof walls.
When they've settled, he removes the arches and implants a microscopic, nearly-indetectable data recorder into their cerebral cortices. Vansell had commissioned the first tracker, though he'd never seemed comfortable using it. Narvin has few qualms. Ethics are a luxury, after all.
They will wake up as strangers. He wonders what that's like.
*
Gryben is a breeding ground for terrorists. It's a prison camp for people who didn't know they were breaking any laws, of course they get angry. Amateur adventurers who thought they'd be killing an ancient dictator or shaking their great-grandfather's hand, or skipping forward to an imagined promised land, they all step outside the doors of their hobby-kit time machines and find themselves here. The shanty town at the end of the universe. They have no recourse, nowhere to go, nothing to do except maintain the thriving black market. And join the Free Time insurgency, of course.
Every temporal power has an embassy, but Gallifrey's is the only one that gets bombed. Twice in the past year, plus countless threats and demonstrations, a barrage of graffiti, and the assassination of an ambassador by a sniper camping out in the health clinic across the street. There's a barrier, now.
His office is in the basement. It's suitably airless, over-lit and overwhelmingly beige. There's the same furniture as in his office on Black Rock, partly out of habit and partly for the disorientation it causes. A desk, two chairs. No personal effects. A registration form, an aid application form, a pen.
She's writing, he's tapping his fingers against the plastic desktop. There's no other sounds.
"Welcome to Gryben," he says, watching her fill in the form. Her hand is steady, no pauses and nothing crossed out.
"Get stuffed," she replies.
He carefully raises his right eyebrow, then stands up, the noise of the chair scraping against tile impossibly loud. She flinches. "Your papers will be processed within the week," he says. "Office 271a will provide a temporary ID, office 271b will assign housing and a credit number, and office 271c shows an informative video half past the hour from eight to eleven. A copy of the guide book can be obtained from the information desk in the front hall."
"Where do I go to register a complaint?"
"There's a suggestion box at the information desk. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions." He shines a light in her eyes. "What's your name?"
"Daniella Walker," she says. No hint of hesitation, good.
"Do you know who I am?"
She squints up at him. He turns the light off. She looks at his face, then his robes, then rolls her eyes. "You're a Time Lord. Am I supposed to be impressed or something?" She absently fingers the locket hanging around her neck.
"Do you know where you are?"
"The embassy. What is this? You have my paperwork. And I haven't done anything wrong."
"Not yet, anyway." He smiles widely, aware of how false it looks. He's never been good at facial expressions. "It's just routine. Nothing to worry about. It's already over, in fact. The guard will show you out. Have a pleasant day."
She rolls her eyes again and stands up, giving him one last look of contempt before leaving the room.
*
The CIA has operatives everywhere. Assassins, recon scouts, bribed officials, sleeper agents. The long arm of temporal law can reach to the ends of the universe, Vansell used to say. Anyone could be a spy. You could be a spy and never even know it. So many secret lives, and so much at stake, all the fault lines of history and all the people guarding them.
Deception is in a Time Lord's nature, Vansell had said. We are all of us other people. Narvin's been other people but he's never been a spy, as such. He'd done bomb work in the east. Graduated with a degree in temporal mechanics, imagined a future in the shipyards or else one of the research companies springing up in the capitol, good money, solid work - ended up instead in the desert, working in Glauer's weapons group, a state-funded operation, writing code for artron containment systems. They split time and put it back together in increasingly baroque ways, the alkali flats of the test site slipping and folding over the fact of themselves. Top-secret, very hush hush. Systems work, rumor work, compiling symbol chains in a bunker hidden below twenty feet of salt gravel.
The TFD, how do you call it, debacle, was where the CIA recruited him. The guards have guns, but the spooks have devices, and Narvin was a device man, a containment expert, a person capable of building a box you could put doomsday particles in without fear of contamination or premature detonation. He could make a box you'd put an entire apocalypse into with the highest external safety standards. The CIA was intrigued. He was slipped almost without notice into Special Projects. Ordnance, anomaly utilization, stochastic engineering, the Oubliette. He did well, he kept his head down while everyone else went crazy or renegade. He was promoted to department chief just in time for Vansell to get himself killed.
The president had wanted a scientist to front the Agency. An operator, not an operative. He's occasionally wondered whether she picked his name at random; there were other choices, better choices, people with field experience and political savvy and the ability to hold a conversation without shouting, who hadn't spent the last two centuries sequestered in a laboratory. She promoted him, so halfway through his lives, he found himself needing to fake his way through a new profession.
Being a spy, he's found, doesn't mean becoming someone else, but becoming no one. Becoming unremarkable, unnoticeable, invisible. The best spy will disappear, surface only to accomplish the mission, and then leave quietly. Narvin may have traded the scientist's discretion for the public, politic face of the Coordinator, but he still knows how to fade into the background. That might be part of why he was chosen; the president, on their first meeting, knew nothing about him other than that he wasn't Vansell. Maybe she'd thought he'd been a spy all along, not a nobody but a consummate anybody.
She still doesn't know much about him, and he does his best to keep it that way. She sees his title, a vague annoyance, a symbol of the things she feels is wrong with society. Notably, she lets him keep his job, and does relatively little to interfere. She doesn't need to know what he really does in order to reap the CIA's benefits. And she shouldn't know, of course. He is the dirt kept off her hands, her pragmatism outsourced. It doesn't bother him. Why would it?
He sold his name for three spans of surveillance footage. He finds he doesn't miss it much. His name, stripped of familial inheritance and coded details, is short and easily forgotten. There is no weight to it. He is himself short and easily forgotten, a fact which may have bothered him in this regeneration's youth but now feels like a blessing. No one looks twice. He works hard to make sure they don't change their minds. He sold his name and would sell the rest of himself if Gallifrey demanded it. He is CIA. This is his identity. Anything else is superfluous.
It's morning and cold and grey, and there are six packets waiting for him on his office computer. He presses the electrodes to his skin and turns the device on, and opens Walker's report. Not Walker, he reminds himself. Don't use names. Never use names. She'll be Red Wolf in his files; a code name for a false identity in a program that doesn't exist. Obfuscation, plausible deniability. He starts the playback.
The office in front of him flickers and is replaced by a small, dark room. He's sitting on the edge of a bed. There's a gun in his hands. He's holding it like he doesn't know how to use it, like he's afraid of it. It's heavier than he thought it'd be.
"We have to be prepared," the man sitting next to him says. "There's a revolution coming, and it won't be bloodless. You need to learn how to protect yourself."
He's looking at the staser in his hands like it's a foreign object. "This isn't what I expected," he says. She says. He (she) turns the staser over in his (her) fingers, then slides it into a duffel bag on the floor. This feeling: fear? Disappointment? Resignation? Something complicated, something dangerous.
The room flickers. He's looking out of a window, somewhere high up, watching the people below. Like ants, or atoms; a swarm, a process. Objects moving inevitably along a path. He's thinking about fate, or something quite like it.
*
He wonders what it'll be like being on the other end of this conversation. How that seething, self-righteous hate will feel, what he'll look like through her eyes. Yourself as you are and as others see you: he assumes he'll be a monster. He's fine with that.
"Fascist scum," she spits out. "Hypocrite. Oppressor. Bastard."
"I just need to ask you a few questions," he says mildly. "I'd appreciate it if you refrained from answering entirely in rhetoric."
"I won't give you any information. Do what you like to my body, but you'll never get my mind."
He leans against the table, makes a show of flipping through paperwork. "There are several ways to make you talk. Some of these involve forms of physical coercion, true, but not all. Even so, surely a revolutionary such as yourself would be willing to sacrifice creature comforts for the cause. You do believe in the cause, don't you?"
"Do you believe in gravity? Mathematics? Death? Free Time is not a cause, it is a fact, one which you Time Lords refuse to acknowledge." She's still struggling against the cuffs; futile, but she's got an act to put on as much as he does.
"Rhetoric," he reminds her. "And funnily enough, none of the constants you mentioned are really constants at all. Everything is variable. Time is variable, the cause is variable, your devotion to it - well. I see you're a student, on academic leave?"
She's silent.
"'Reason for coming to Gryben: tourism'. You consider yourself a tourist, Miss Walker?" No answer. "You were on the planet for two months. During that time, you associated with several known terrorists and participated in the dissemination of propaganda. You were arrested twice, once for disturbing the peace, once for unlawful assembly. Both non-violent offenses."
"I won't tell you anything." Her jaw is set, eyes watering. She stares at a point somewhere past his shoulder.
"I don't need you to. You see, Miss Walker, there's nothing you can tell me that I don't already know. You're not a particularly important person. You're here because if I don't interrogate a certain quota of suspects, the cardinals believe I'm not doing my job. You must know how important it is to keep up appearances. No, you will not be tortured or subjected to the mind probe or whatever terrible acts you imagine me capable of. You will be released unharmed, as long as you agree to one thing."
"I'll agree to nothing."
He ignores her. "You will tell whoever is in charge of your little - organization, that Free Time has been infiltrated, for quite some time now. I doubt you'll discover who it is, as even they don't know what they are. I imagine you'll try your hardest, though. I wish you the best of luck."
"I trust my friends. It's a trick, and I won't fall for it. All you people are liars."
"You trust them? Two months, on a tourist visa. I wonder." He presses a button; the restraints around her wrists and ankles relax. "You're an idealist, Miss Walker. Idealists are always disappointed, in the end."
"Better to be disappointed than to never believe in anything at all." She stands up, and with a somewhat forced air of defiance walks through the door.
The problem with dramatic exits is that sometimes you need to undo them. He sighs, gets his rain cloak from the closet, and follows her out.
She's at the edge, leaning over the railing. He can't see her face but he imagines she has a suitable look of chagrin, hopefully mixed with despair. Beyond her, and all around them, is the Petraean Sea.
"We're on an island," he shouts over the wind. "Black Rock, barely a speck on the most detailed map. Completely isolated, no one can help you and you can't go anywhere without my consent. Unless you'd care to swim. Transmat capsules are back this way."
She's still staring out at the water. He's getting bored. "This is not a sight-seeing trip, Miss Walker. Please stop wasting my time."
She turns and walks past him, head bowed against the storm, less defiant than before. She's saying something, but between the wind and the rain hitting his hood, he can't quite make it out. It doesn't really matter, he knows what she means. He made her, of course he knows.
*
He's walking quickly. It's not safe after sundown. There's the wail of a police siren, music coming from a window above, a fight about to break out on the corner. He's thinking 23 days, like a mantra. Hands jammed in his pockets, one fist closed around the drive, the other around a knife. 23 days. Don't make eye contact. Stick to the street lights.
23 days before his case comes before the board. He's got insurance this time, they can't turn him away again. He'll name names, he'll sell her out if he has to. He can't take another year on this planet. Someone told him today that 'Gryben' means 'land of plenty' in Arvonese; plenty of what, junkies? Idiot tourists? Armed guards?
He's turning down the walkway to the project building, his hand's sweating on the knife handle. Someone's put a poster up over the seal of Rassilon on the gate. The Future Won't Wait. He's keying in his access code, he's stepping gingerly over a vagrant in the front hall. He's thinking twenty-three more days and he'll never have to smell this again.
He is opening the door to his unit. He is watching his wife sleep, her arm stretched over the place on the mattress where he should be. He is considering the junction where collarbone turns into shoulder. He feels something, what is this, like he can't breathe, like there is nothing at all in the universe except him and this woman, a room and a doorway, like time has compressed into this one single instant. This is - wanting, longing, he thinks, this is desire curling up inside him. He is watching his wife open her eyes and close them again, turning pointedly away. Time stutters, and continues onward. He is discovering a place inside himself that is suddenly empty.
*
The insomnia is nothing new. An all-nighter is standard operating procedure, two days awake is a busy week. Three days is cause for concern, but there's stimulants to be had and work to be done. Four days, and he'd be in the infirmary if he weren't trying to clear his name of treason. Everything narrows, everything is worse, brighter, louder, more confusing. He can't focus, can't function. The world is operating without him. There's a possibility that something might be wrong.
Things happen, he's there when they do, but he can't think fast enough to stop any of it. Chaos is the status quo of Gallifreyan politics, but this is a special day: he goes from a routine investigation to Darkel nearly arresting him to stumbling blindly around the vaults listening to Braxiatel confess one of his many sins, after which he watches Romana discuss the pros of world domination with a projection of her former self and a disembodied voice. The beginnings of hysterical laughter are welling up inside him right before he gets shot.
There are blank spots in his memory when he finally wakes up. Maybe it's exhaustion, maybe they took something; it's not a gap, per se, just an imprecision. Nobody seems interested in informing him. Romana sends a note which doesn't quite say what happened. Something about Matrix partitions and security risks. No apology, either, not even Your planet thanks you for your sacrifice.
It's Leela, annoyingly enough, who finally tells him. "It was Pandora," she says, working hard around the unfamiliar syllables. "A ghost in the catacombs. She possessed you so she could do her evil works. Romana and the other Romana made her leave, but then she came back, so K9 shot you."
"Give me a nanospan to unpack that," he says.
"You were like a puppet, and Romana cut your strings." She thinks she's being helpful.
"By having me shot? What a calm, measured response." Something's almost, almost clicking in his head. Romana and Romana and the strange, lingering ache at his temples, and, oh, Braxiatel. The hypocritical, tampering bastard. "Suddenly there's more of everyone I loathe," he says, mostly to himself. "Two Romanas, and a - what would you call it, a gaggle? A gaggle of Braxiatels. Two of those ridiculous robot dogs. Next thing, I'll be receiving a report that Wynter tripped and fell into a cloning device. There's still just the one of you, yes?"
"One of me is more than enough to keep an eye on you," she says with a sneer.
"I'm counting on it. How else would I spend my idle hours if I didn't have to constantly struggle to keep my dastardly plans safe from your guile and cunning?" He gives his best empty smile, then walks away with as much flourish as he can muster.
Clever words won't save you, she's calling after him. I know what you are.
*
He's in a space port. He's fighting someone. The man is taller, stronger, knows more about how to do this than he does. There are people arranged around them, cheering, shouting. Some of these people he recognizes as his friends. He is being punched in the face; he is falling. The floor is hard and smooth. There are lights, noises, he sees boots and flight attendant slippers and the blood coming out of his nose. There are hands grabbing his shoulders and pulling him up. "You okay, mate?" a voice is asking. He says, he says, he doesn't know what he says. "I coulda told you you'd lose, not like you'd ever listen. Let me buy you a drink, we'll stop by the infirmary later."
He's wiping blood off his face. He's grinning. "I got a few good shots in, can't deny that," he slurs. There's an arm slung across his shoulder, supporting him. They're walking to a bar.
His office swims back into view. "That wasn't, strictly speaking, necessary," he mutters. He picks up the device, turns it over in his hands. He'll re-write the code for the filtering program as soon as he can scrape together a free span. Then again, there's clues in everything. Maybe this is important. Maybe he's missing something. The fight, the blood, the friend, the bar. Maybe there's something there. He rubs at his face, that phantom pain. Maybe, maybe not.
*
Braxiatel has the same air his brother did before he left. The wink and nod, the amused acquiescence, the self-aware detachment, something hard and sharp under all the posturing. The calculated, obvious falseness of everything he says. He's a hedonist without the hedonist's commitment to physical surrender - he drinks, but not too much, lets cigars idle in the ashtray, visits the bagnio but never rents a room.
He sends a message. The new masseuse is stunning. I've put your name on the waitlist, come soonest. It's fairly transparent, as far as his communiques go. The standard level of insult and mockery. Narvin debates ignoring it entirely, but Braxiatel never calls without significant cause. So he goes.
The baths are a relic, like half of this city. The ritual of luxury, or the luxury of ritual. Two floors of, basically, water: hot and cold, still and sprayed, immersion and drying-off and re-immersion. Occasionally ointments applied by skilled professionals. Occasionally other things.
The heat, or the sybaritism, but he feels sick. A revulsion, almost.
He finds Braxiatel in a sauna, louche and towel-clad. He averts his eyes and clears his throat over the low rumble of the air filtration system.
"Coordinator! Always a pleasure to see you. Come, sit down." Braxiatel gestures to the bench beside him.
Narvin remains standing. "I fail to see why you wanted to meet me here." He pulls at his collar; he's beginning to feel light-headed. Steam rises.
"You'd feel better if you weren't wearing quite so many layers, Narvin. We're here because I'm a busy man, and I refuse to give up my weekly span of peace for a dreary meeting in a dreary office with, well, you. I do hope this isn't too awkward for you."
"Not at all, Cardinal Braxiatel." He clasps his hands behind his back and affects a stance of nonchalance. He does not look at the Cardinal, or any of the other half-naked, half-asleep men scattered about the room.
"Your generation is so prudish. Perhaps if you allowed yourself to relax once in a while, you'd be better equipped to deal with the rigors of the High Council. No matter. I've called you here to deliver a piece of information."
"If it's confidential, I suggest we move to somewhere more private."
"On the slight chance that any of these gentlemen are paying attention, I doubt they'd understand or even care." Braxiatel closes his eyes and slouches down. "Blue Wolf is out of commission," he says, off-handedly.
Narvin swallows. Every muscle in his body stiffens. Behind his back, his hands white-knuckle around each other. "When?" he asks, tightly.
"This morning. I trust you'll make the necessary arrangements. That'll be all, Coordinator."
*
Blue Wolf is being kept in a local hospital. Retrieval is simple. He lands his TARDIS in the morgue after working hours and slides the cart in. He does not pull the cover back, instead does a quick blood test to verify the body's identity. He takes the locket from around the body's neck, and opens it. The body falls back into itself, cold skin shifting; the mind will be saved to the Matrix, after a certain amount of editing, and the corpse will be burnt. He can't afford any loose ends.
Red Wolf is returning from work. Narvin settles the TARDIS down inside her apartment, and sits down in an armchair to wait.
The front door opens. "You again," she says. "This is breaking and entering. This is illegal. I don't care who you are or who you work for, you can't just-"
He presses a button on his handheld computer, and watches her change facial expressions at least five times before schooling herself to blankness.
"There's been a complication," he says. "The mission is being put on hold." She nods vaguely.
Inside the TARDIS, his agent sits in the conference room writing her report. He waits until she's done before sliding the needle into her neck; she'll come to feeling groggy but healthy, and with a fresh set of memories in her head. He takes the data pad from her limp hands and carefully deletes everything.
*
He is dreaming about Gallifrey falling. He's dreaming about a dead world, the country laid to waste. He's dreaming of a field: his boots sticking in the mud, the ache in his legs and his chest and his head, the desperation, how all he wants is to give up and lie down in the muck, lie down and wait to die. He is dreaming about a wolf running hungrily ahead of him, and he is following her.
When he wakes, there is a thought at the forefront of his mind, in a voice that isn't his. The spy is loyal to nothing but his country. Remember that.
He's in a hospital bed, covered in bandages and handcuffed to the rail. He remembers vaguely doing a series of escalatingly stupid things. He used to be a scientist. He'd been a good scientist. Now he's a half-dead ex-spy presumably under arrest for treason, with a raging headache and no sensation in his left leg. There's a line of cause and effect here, if he could just find it.
"Feeling better?" It's Darkel. Of course it's Darkel. It's always Darkel. At least the restraints save him from having to see her face.
"I feel awful, but at least my conscience is intact."
"First of all, you can't prove anything. Secondly, you're in no position to pass judgement. Thirdly, you lost, so none of it matters anyway." She sounds delighted.
He's too busy not crying to wonder what her victory entails. "Please go away now," he says, or, well, whines, to be more precise. He shouldn't be in this much pain, there are drugs he should be getting, molecular therapy, this is a civilized world and the only conceivable reason he shouldn't be comfortable is -
"Torture," he says. "This is, you're enjoying this, you-"
She interrupts with an extended dramatic throat-clearing. "Do you know, I had no idea you'd lost control to this extent. You couldn't even find an agent to deactivate the bomb, you just stood in front of it and hoped for the best. Six months investigating the Free Time movement, and you failed to find the terrorist operating under your own nose. Again. First Torvald, then Gillestes, now Antimon. What exactly is it that you do, Narvin?"
He can't think of anything suitably scathing to say. Blame the head trauma. "I protected the president, that's what matters."
"You mean the ex-president, surely. Oh, I'm sorry, you missed that, didn't you. Pandora's taken control. Romana's in a jail cell. If you still have a brain left under all that gauze, now would be the time to do the sensible thing and change sides."
"Nnngh," he says. He's never had to work so hard at not passing out. There are words, probably, in his head somewhere, which he'll arrange and say out loud as soon as the room stops spinning. "Pandora?"
"In the flesh. I'll let you get your rest now, we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. I wouldn't want you to miss the swearing-in of our new leader. Sweet dreams, Narvin."
There's a faint beeping noise, then the painkillers kick back in. He feels absolutely superb for a few nanospans, really quite lovely and carefree, then he blacks out.
*
The city has been invaded, as his body was invaded. This is dread, what he's feeling, this empty, dizzy space in the pit of his stomach. He has no faith in the ability of the people to resist Pandora. He's realizing he'd been fighting the wrong battle all along.
A general assembly is called. Cardinals, senators, department heads and reporters all filing dutifully into the Panopticon. Full ceremonial dress. Pandora sits in the front row wearing Prydonian robes she never earned. The rod, the sash, the coronet, the key.
He's watching them, all of them, wondering how many know what's about to happen, how many even care. He doesn't notice Darkel walking up to him until her Inquisitorial whites are in his peripheral vision. He resists the impulse to punch her in the face.
"Your coup, as promised," she says. "I doubt we'll be seeing much of Romana after today."
"This is low, even for you. I had no illusions about your fealty to the state, but Pandora? Really? Please tell me how she's better for Gallifrey than Romana, because honestly I can't understand your rationale."
"It's a bit late to be developing a set of scruples, Coordinator. And I'd watch my tongue if I were you, there will be no place for dissent in the new administration." She bows, smirking as she goes, then heads down the steps to sit next to Pandora, who smiles and shakes her hand like they're old friends. What a monumentally stupid mistake he's made.
The president takes her place on the center stage for the last time, shaken but unbowed, and says we must not abandon our home and ourselves, we must not relinquish our responsibilities. No patriot will stand by and allow it to be destroyed. I will not allow it, and I will not resign, and I will not rest until the parasite that is eating at the hearts of our world is eradicated.
It's a rousing speech. Narvin doesn't clap, but then nobody else does either. The cardinals look nervous. The magistrates look bored. Behind and above him, the Senate is whispering intently to itself. This is the government that will fall. No one wants to make the first move.
Coordinator Ithos turns to him and says, "I knew I should have retired last year." Narvin ignores him. He has a feeling there won't be any particular need for a Department of Conservation in the coming months. He taps the button on the arm of his chair and stands up.
"Coordinator Narvin of the Celestial Intervention Agency has the floor," the Speaker says, somewhat uncertainly. "Please state your position."
Narvin clears his throat and says, "I serve at the pleasure of the president." Both Pandora and Romana turn and look at him. "The true president," he clarifies. "The preservation of the state and its ideals take precedence over any political misgivings I may have. I am, first and foremost, a citizen of Gallifrey, and as such my loyalty must be to President Romanadvoratrelundar. I will support her, even if it means engaging in a civil war."
There's a wave of murmurs, rustling, anxious shifting. Ithos is gaping at him, bewildered. "Don't you have a lamppost or something to induct into posterity?" Narvin snaps.
"Senator Weyar of the Eighty-Sixth District has the floor. Please state your position." The Speaker is clutching at the microphone like it's a life line.
Weyar's thin falsetto comes floating out of the gallery above him. "Contradict. The esteemed Coordinator seems to be under the misapprehension that..."
Narvin isn't listening. He's staring at Romana, who's staring back, and she nods, and he nods, and that's the moment everything changes.
*
"I received your letter of resignation this morning," Darkel says, face fuzzy through the poor reception. Regular video transmission has been down for weeks; they've been using the emergency broadcast system. Her syrupy condescension comes across just fine. "I'm flattered you thought to send it to me."
"I didn't," he says. "I sent it to Pandora. You just decided to read it."
She smiles. "It's my job to know what goes on in this city. The defection of the CIA coordinator is quite an event, you know. The news that the ex-coordinator was seen running from a building that blew up not half a microspan later - well, you can imagine my surprise. I always thought you were a reasonable man. Romana's really gotten to you, hasn't she."
"I'm doing what's best for Gallifrey," he says.
"You really believe that, don't you. Poor thing. Sooner or later, you'll come to your senses, but I'm afraid it'll be too late. You're a traitor, Narvin, and you're following a madwoman in her absurd vendetta against her own people. You could've had so much more."
"I could've worked for you, you mean. I could've cheered when you bombed the Academy. I could've welcomed that invader with open arms. I could've chosen ambition over patriotism. Perhaps I should've. It's working out so well for you." He is, he realizes, fiercely angry. He finds his hands clenching into fists, a dozen slurs and epithets crowding the back of his mouth. It's an unfamiliar feeling.
"I really don't think you should be playing around with words like 'patriotism', not when you're committing acts of terrorism against the state." She smiles again.
Something in him snaps. "I hope you rot," he grinds out, then slams his fist down on the monitor's power button. Darkel's face wavers and fades to black.
*
He's playing field operative, setting bombs, running scared. The city is crumbling around him. He's setting bombs in the artron forum, antique controllers on degraded explosives, this hallowed ground, Leela laughing with the sheer joy of it. Destroying his city, building by building.
He doesn't say much, not really. He lies a bit, just enough. He argues, even if his heart isn't quite in it. The president's been watching him. He wonders if he's giving anything away, his face betraying emotions his brain is too tired to comprehend. He wonders if she looks at him and sees Pandora, sees the creature that had infiltrated them both, the phantom that is slowly unravelling her.
This isn't an army. This isn't much of anything. Half a mile of cable, tape, a handful of remote detonators, two cases of F-20 cartridges, a walkie talkie. Percussion blasts, flash burns, picking shrapnel out with tweezers. He bombs himself and comes to in the outlands, sand everywhere, an imperfectly healed skull and a roiling nausea. Elbon complaining from the shadows of the triage room, an exhausted, dangerous look in his eyes. This is a thing neither of them quite know what to do with. The men they were, the men they're becoming, and Pandora's guards closing in. Inlands, outlands. The fear of what comes from the wild versus the fear of what's behind them. The heat, the unforgiving rock, the citadel shining in the distance.
Romana's gone to the anomaly vault. Narvin's not quite surprised. It's a brave, stupid, clever thing to do; she'll get herself killed. He spares a moment to appreciate the irony of his own half-realized plans being what finally does the Imperiatrix in. Deathless Icino, lying in wait, again and again and again. And he knows, somehow, what Romana will do, when they transmat in and he sees her typing frantically away at the control panel. She thinks she's going to save the world.
It hits him later, after he's nearly blown them all up (again). A Time Lord has a dozen lives and his president is two women, is waging war against herself, is treading the line between herself, was nearly crying when she stumbled out from the sentience's control. He can't stand to look at her. Romana, Romana, holding the ghost of herself in her head.
They wake up as other people. It's basic biology.
*
"You can't go home again," Arkadian says. "There's no place left for you here. Whatever you do, you'll always be Romana's man, and unfortunately in this political climate that sort of thing is a deal-breaker." He's been talking non-stop since he got here. Narvin doesn't remember who invited him. This is desperation, this is the High Council giving up, and Arkadian is the vulture circling high overhead.
"I'm not you, Arkadian. I don't run away every time things get difficult." Which is, possibly, a sort of lie; he's more a runner than he'll ever be a soldier. Still.
Arkadian puts on his older-brother expression. "It's more than difficult. It's a lost cause, Narvin. Do you really think Matthias will keep you on? Even if by some miracle Gallifrey recovers to the point of requiring a Celestial Intervention Agency, you won't be in charge. It's too risky, too unseemly. And come to think of it, is Matthias someone you'd even care to serve? He struck me as something of a wet blanket. None of Romana's spark and verve. He certainly doesn't inspire any confidence in me."
"I serve the office of the president, not the person occupying it. My personal feelings are irrelevant, as is my ambition. I will do whatever Gallifrey asks of me."
"But that's just it. Gallifrey isn't asking anymore. What do you have to offer? I'll tell you."
"I wish you wouldn't," Narvin says.
"Funds," Arkadian continues, undeterred. "The CIA has assets. Technology, information, personnel, even property. Surely there must be something you're willing to sacrifice. A planet here, a Chameleon Arch there. You could keep your people in beer and skittles on the sale of the Thoros IV outpost alone."
"You realize what it says about you that you thought I would even consider what you're suggesting." And there's not much left to sacrifice, he thinks but doesn't say.
"You've sold things before. Tell me, Narvinektrolonum, how long has it been since you've seen your family? Coming on a century now, isn't it. Was it worth it?" Arkadian is doing everything short of actually twirling his mustache.
Narvin tries to sneer, but finds his face isn't quite up to the task. He settles on a sort of distracted stoicism. "My name was mine to sell. Matrix secrets aren't."
"Noble words. Do you find they ring a bit false? You have no influence, no power, and very few options. You're nobody, Narvin. A nobody who nevertheless has access to a great deal of marketable items. I don't want to pressure you into anything, of course, I merely wish to remind you that you have the ability to put out some of the fires currently ravaging the land, and I would be more than happy to broker the necessary transactions."
He wishes he were the sort of man who punched people. Just once, just this once, he wants to give up decorum and reason and lay that bastard out cold on the ground, wipe the smile off his face. But he isn't that sort of man, of course, so he just rests the palm of his hand on his holster and says, "It's been a pleasure talking with you, but I must attend to my duties."
"What duties?" Arkadian is saying, but Narvin's already leaving, the door sliding shut behind him.
Part Two