"I came as soon as I could, my lady." "Thank you, Keeper." "Doctor, do you have any further evidence in your defence?" "My lady, with all due respect, have we not seen enough?" "Are you not forgetting Article 7, and the irrefutable charge which faces the Doctor, that of genocide?" "I shall deal with that charge in due course, Valeyard." "Now kindly don't interrupt me again." "Doctor, do you have any further evidence in your defence?" "No, my lady." "But I would point out that much of the Railyard's so-called evidence was a farrago of distortion which would have had Ananias, Baron Munchhausen, and every other famous liar blushing down to their very toenails." "Much of the evidence was not as I remembered." "Do you still maintain the Matrix has been tampered with?" "Yes, madam, I do." "All I do not yet understand is who did it and why." "Your accusation would be laughable if it were not so outrageous." "However, as you see, I have summoned the Keeper of the Matrix." "Keeper?" "My lady." "You have heard the Doctor's allegations." "Is it at all possible for the data stored within the Matrix to be tampered with in any way?" "Quite impossible, my lady." "No one may enter the Matrix without the Key of Rassilon." "And by whom may the key be used?" "Qualified people, for inspection, once in a millennium, perhaps, to replace a transductor..." "But keys can be copied, you'll agree." "The Key of Rassilon never leaves my possession." "Except when it's in the hands of those "qualified people"." "This is a ridiculous allegation, my lady." "The Doctor is challenging the evidence of the Matrix on the grounds that it has been tampered with, a charge that he is totally unable to substantiate." "That is accepted." "Doctor, wild accusations of malfeasance do not constitute a defence." "The Matrix can be physically penetrated." "The Keeper has admitted as much." "Now, much of the evidence you saw was totally at variance with my own memory." "Therefore, it has been deliberately distorted." "And who would do such a thing, even if it were possible?" "Somebody who wants my head, such as the Valeyard." "Let me out!" "Let me out!" "Dibber?" "What's happened to your voice, lad?" "I'm not Dibber." "Neither am I a lad." "And what's more, there's nothing wrong with my voice." "As a matter of total disinterest, who are you?" "Uh, Sabalom Glitz." "And you?" "Melanie, known as Mel." "Are they all like you here?" "I don't know." "Should we go and find out?" "There is only one way to rebut the evidence of the Matrix, Doctor, and that is to produce witnesses who can support your version of events." "Can you do that?" "Well, of course I can't." "You know I can't." "Then we must accept the Valeyard's evidence." "Any witnesses I might produce are scattered all over the universe and all through time." "How can I find them now?" "Procrastination, my lady." "The Doctor's only..." "Melanie?" "Glitz?" "What are you doing here?" "I was sent, wasn't I?" "Not my idea, mind." "Same here." "What have you been up to?" "Be silent." "Who sent you?" "That's the beak, is it?" "They all look the same, don't they?" "Carved out of something hard and nasty." "You said you were sent here, Sabalom Glitz." "By whom?" "By me, madam." "Oh, no!" "Now I really am finished." "Who's that?" "Just one of my oldest enemies." "This is entirely irregular." "Who are you, sir?" "I'm known as the Master." "And as you see, I speak to you from within the Matrix, proof, if any be needed, that not only qualified people can enter here." "But you haven't the Key of Rassilon." "I got a very good copy, Keeper, just as the Doctor said was possible." "This is an independent inquiry, appointed by the High Council to investigate serious charges..." "Madam, I know." "I've followed the trial with great interest and indeed amusement, but now I must intervene for the sake of justice." "Justice?" "Pay no attention, madam." "He has no concept of what justice is." "He'd see me dead tomorrow." "Gladly, Doctor." "But I'm not prepared to countenance a rival." "My lady, I must propose an immediate adjournment." "I'm sorry, Valeyard." "The evidence for the prosecution is completed." "The ball, as the Doctor might say, is out of your court." "Doctor, I've sent you two star witnesses." "I knew you'd need them." "With due respect, Sagacity, the matter of witnesses is for you to decide." "We've seen enough to know that Glitz is an admitted criminal." "Any testimony from him must therefore be dubious in the extreme." "But not from me." "I'm as truthful, honest and about as boring as they come." "This court is not, for the moment, impugning your integrity, young lady." "Let Sabalom Glitz speak." "Criminals have been known to speak the truth, Valeyard, especially when their own interests are not at stake." "My point, my lady, is that this person who calls himself the Master, whoever he might be, should not be permitted to produce surprise witnesses." "You pretend not to know me, do you?" "I'm surprised by the shortness of the Valeyard's memory." "The Doctor may, in his defence, call witnesses to rebut your evidence, after which you may cross-examine them." "That is the procedure, Valeyard." "My lady." "If I might intercede..." "You have no part in these proceedings, sir." "Corporeally, of course not, but I'm present, and enjoying myself enormously." "Doctor, please examine your witnesses." "Yes, madam." "This is real machonite, you know." "Worth a few grotzis today, Your Honour." "I could make you a fair offer on a job lot..." "Do you a very good deal..." "Glitz!" "What?" "You were sent here by the Master." "Well, he's a business partner, so to speak." "We've had a few nice little tickles together..." "Yes, this court is not interested in your sordid business deals, Glitz." "Very good, Doctor." "Keep him to the point." "When we last met, you expressed interest in a box." "Right." "What was in that box?" "I don't know." "Scientific stuff, so he said." "Stuff the Sleepers have been nicking from the Matrix for years." "The Matrix?" "My Matrix?" "Right." "Well, it seems the Sleepers had found a way to break into the Matrix, and they were creaming off all this high-tech info to take back to Andromeda." "But they were operating from Earth." "Course!" "That was their cover, wasn't it?" "They knew that the Time Lords eventually would trace the leak." "He's lying, my lady." "I don't think so, Stackyard." "It all begins to make very good sense." "That's it, Doc!" "Now we're getting at the dirt." "Doc?" "Carry on, Glitz." "What happened next?" "Well, eventually, the Time Lords did suss out the leak, so they wanted to wipe out all the Sleepers, and they used this, uh, magno..." "Magno..." "Magnotron?" "That's it." "Well, that can only be done by an order in High Council." "Of course, Doctor." "To protect their own secrets, they drew the Earth and its constellation billions of miles across space..." "Causing the fireball which nearly destroyed the planet." "Of little consequence in the High Council's planning." "The robot recovery mission from Andromeda sped past Earth out into space." "Gallifreyan secrets were saved." "Except that at the first intimation of the coming fireball, the Andromedans were able to set up a survival chamber for the Sleepers." "So that's why Earth was renamed Ravalox." "That sanctimonious gang of hypocrites were covering their tracks." "Exactly." "It takes time, Doctor, but eventually you get there." "They put an ancient culture like the Earth to the sword for the sake of a few miserable, filthy scientific advances?" "Big market for them, Doctor, so he said." "Worth a lot of grotzis." "All my travellings throughout the universe, I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators." "I should have stayed here." "The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core." "Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen..." "They're still in the nursery compared to us." "Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt." "Take it easy, Doc." "Doctor, these unseemly outbursts..." "Unseemly outbursts?" "If I hadn't visited Ravalox, as I then thought of it, the High Council would have kept this outrage carefully buried, as presumably they have for several centuries." "I must agree." "You have an endearing habit of blundering into these things, Doctor, and the High Council took full advantage of your blunder." "Explain that." "They made a deal with the Valeyard, or as I've always known him, the Doctor, to adjust the evidence, in return for which he was promised the remainder of the Doctor's regenerations." "This is clearly..." "Just a minute!" "Did you call him the Doctor?" "There is some evil in all of us, Doctor, even you." "The Valeyard is an amalgamation of the darker sides of your nature, somewhere between your 1 2th and final incarnation." "And I may say, you do not improve with age." "Madam, this revelation should halt this trial immediately." "Surely, even Gallifreyan law must acknowledge that the same person cannot be both prosecutor and defendant." "The single purpose of this trial is to determine the defendant's guilt or otherwise on the basis of the evidence that has been presented." "Anything else is, for the moment, irrelevant." "What?" "Doctor!" "Valeyard!" "Glitz, come on!" "What?" "We need him." "But he hasn't had time." "Must be another way out of here." "He's gone." "The seventh door." "He must have had a key." "What?" "The seventh entrance to the Matrix." "Well, quickly, man, open it!" "He must be brought back." "I agree." "You'll never find him." "The Matrix is a micro-universe." "Don't go, Doctor!" "I must." "Perhaps nothing in my life has ever been so important." "Come on, Glitz!" "Me?" "Doctor!" "Be silent!" "Come, let us return to the trial room." "Why?" "There's nobody to try any more." "Come along, both of you." "Oh!" "Oh, what an unpleasant journey." "What an unpleasant place." "Doctor!" "Glitz?" "Glitz?" "# London Bridge is falling down Falling down, falling down" "# London Bridge is falling down My fair lady #" "I can't believe you're in there." "Glitz!" "Glitz!" "Doctor?" "Hurry, man!" "What's going on?" "Oh, I don't know." "I don't know whether what just happened to me was real or an illusion." "Looks like someone's had a go at you." "Do you mind?" "What?" "Water." "Oh, yeah, sure." "We're not in the real world any longer, Sabalom Glitz." "Whatever attacked me was in that barrel." "Or was it in my mind?" "How could we be in a different world?" "We just stepped through a door, that's all." "Into the Matrix, where the only logic is that there isn't any logic." "Yeah, I knew this was a mistake." "My grip on reality's not too good at the best of times." "Here, this is for you." "Now, if you don't mind telling me, how do I get out of here?" "It's from the Master." "I know." "I've just given it to you." "He said it would be useful." "It tells me where the Valeyard has his base." ""The Fantasy Factory, proprietor JJ Chambers."" "So that's where he got to." "So why is the Master helping me?" "Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll find out." "I'm off." "No, come on." "I want you to meet my darker side." "I've done my bit." "Pop in and say hello." "You'll be perfectly safe." "What's going on?" "Assuming I accept what you say about the evidence against the Doctor, how much of it had been contrived?" "For a lie to work, madam, it must be shrouded in truth." "Therefore, most of what you saw was true." "Then the young woman, the one who died, was that true?" "Ah, the delightful Miss Perpugilliam Brown." "That was clever of the Valeyard, exploiting the affection the Doctor had for her, but then, of course, the Valeyard would know precisely how the Doctor felt." "Then she lives?" "As a queen, set up on high by that warmongering fool Yrcanos." "I am pleased." "Sentiment will not keep the Doctor alive, my lady." "Isn't there anything we can do to help?" "You'll catch cold lying there." "You're a hard man, Doctor." "I could have been killed." "Not when you're wearing a mark seven postidion life preserver." "Yeah, well, whoever threw that harpoon didn't know that." "So much for illusions." "Anyway, I thought it was you he was trying to kill." "Yes, he's playing games." "Wants to humiliate me first." "Oh, I see." "He humiliates you by throwing harpoons at me." "Makes a lot of sense." "Your presence here makes his task more difficult." "He knows that." "He also knows that together we can fight him." "Look, Doctor, I'm a small-time crook with small-time ambitions, one of which is to stay alive." "I'm sorry, Doctor." "I wish you every good luck, but I'm on my way." "I've done my bit." "If you leave and I die, what future do you think you'll have?" "As the only witness to events here, the Valeyard will be forced to seek you out and kill you." "All right." "I'll help you." "Good man." "Now, button your life preserver, and let's get on with it." "In all my experience, I have never before had to conclude a case in both the absence of the accused and the prosecutor." "One and the same person, madam." "So you've said, but can you prove that?" "I know them both." "But I suggest you question the High Council." "They set up this travesty of a trial, making a scapegoat of the Doctor to conceal their own involvement." "Is there any reason why I should accept that allegation from a renegade Time Lord?" "Yes, if you're concerned with learning the truth." "What is your interest in this matter?" "Not, I think, concern for the Doctor." "Oh, indeed not." "The Doctor's well matched against himself." "One must destroy the other." "How utterly evil." "Thank you." "I think I lay a shade more odds on the Valeyard, though the possibility of their mutual destruction must exist." "That would be perfect." "You're despicable!" "Am I to take it that some base desire for revenge is your motive for interfering?" "There's nothing purer and more unsullied, madam, than the desire for revenge." "But, if you follow the metaphor, I've thrown a pebble into the water, perhaps killing two birds with one stone, and causing ripples that'll rock the High Council to its foundations." "What more could a renegade wish for?" "How do you do?" "I think we're expected." "Are you sure we're in the right place?" "Yes?" "We'd like to see the proprietor, please." "Do you have an appointment, sir?" "Mr Chambers only sees people by appointment." "Most particular about appointments is our Mr Chambers." "I think you'll find we're expected." "What is your name, sir?" "I am known as the Doctor, and this is Mr Sabalom Glitz." "If this Valeyard wants you dead, he's got a funny way of going about it." "I've told you, it's called humiliation." "Could you hurry up, please?" "We haven't got all day." "There are procedures to follow, sir, necessary routines to be completed." "Even when I've found your names, there are many forms to be inscribed before you may move on to the next stage of processing." "Processing is very important in this establishment." "I'm sure that even you will understand that such things cannot be rushed, sir." "Oh, I don't know." "I've always been a bit of an iconoclast by nature." "You can't go in there, not without an appointment!" "Ah, Doctor." "Well, at least you're expecting us." "We all are." "Your look-alike out there wasn't." "He is the exception." "The very junior Mr Popplewick isn't permitted to expect anyone." "Ah." "What's he talking about?" "I think it's called bureaucracy." "I prefer to call it order." "And the holy writ of order is procedure." "I'm sure you agree." "Oh, yeah, of course." "For example, you wish to see the proprietor." "Now, the correct procedure is to make an appointment." "But we're already expected." "But the junior Mr Popplewick isn't allowed to expect anyone." "Well, you knew we were coming." "Why didn't you give him the nod?" "And upset the procedure?" "The junior Mr Popplewick has his pride, too." "I don't understand any of this." "Here we are, waiting to duck a terminal knuckle sandwich, and all this screeve's going on about is whether we've got an appointment or not." "Is there no way to expedite the procedure?" "Expedite?" "I am a senior clerk, sir." "To me, the procedure is sacrosanct." "My work is a celebration of all that is perfect." "Why speed perfection?" "Because your employer wants me dead." "You seem to have found the one little weakness in our procedure, sir." "Would you sign this?" "What is it?" "A consent form, sir." "The corridors in this factory are very long and dark." "Should you unexpectedly die, our blessed proprietor, Mr JJ Chambers, insists he inherits your remaining lives." "Obviously, the Valeyard doesn't trust the High Council to honour their side of the bargain." "Sign that and you're a dead man." "We're in the Valeyard's domain." "He can try and kill me any time he likes." "I'll sign my remaining lives away to Mr JJ Chambers." "Are you sure about this?" "Absolutely." "Now can we see your proprietor?" "The waiting room is through there." "You will be summoned as soon as your signature has been verified." "This is madness." "Not if it precipitates my meeting with the Valeyard." "This is a very odd waiting room." "And where are the hopelessly out-of-date magazines?" "Hmm, Glitz?" "Glitz?" "What have you done with him?" "Look to your own predicament, Doctor." "This is an illusion!" "I deny it!" "Not this time." "This isn't happening!" "You are dead, Doctor." "Goodbye, Doctor!"