Chapter Seven.
They barged in.
“I had a bit of a laugh. Pretended that the TARDIS was broken, just so I could go off and explore Dalek City
“You didn’t let me get around to asking one, as usual.”
“No. I don’t think I’ve mellowed with age. Perhaps the universe has mellowed around me…”
“I think we’d best sit at the back. You get them in, gambling man. I’ll sort out the formalities.”
“When a horse comes in first, there’s more to winning than luck.”
“Yeah. Tomorrow’s newspaper today, for example.”
“Best way to study the form.”
*
The Doctor’s thoughts were all over the place. Thinking through his many lives. The friends he’d made. Places he’d seen. Food he’d tasted. The food-making machine in the TARDIS was fine. It could recreate any combination of flavours.
That didn’t make the resultant food better than the real thing. If the Doctor wanted a thousand varieties of Earth cake, he’d go to Earth for cake. He’d managed to squeeze Rose out of her 1923 predicament. And they’d gone on a heartbreaking trip to that space station. He could hardly remember any of the names of the Gallifreyans he’d known in his youth. Thoughts. All over the place. And time.
Such an isolated people. Cold, empty, observers. There had been Time Lords with less fire in their veins than the TARDISes they’d ridden around in. He hated their hypocrisy. Here he was, ordering drinks for his team. Rose had more right to call herself a Time Lord than the husks who’d once inhabited Gallifrey. He couldn’t tell her that, though. She’d demand an increase in pay.
“Here you go. Mine is the hand that sows time.”
“The Master?”
“Led Zeppelin. Cider for you. Rosie.”
“Any vodka in that orange?”
“Keep ’em guessing, I say.”
“Ask no secrets, tell no lies.”
*
David Spode was in love with lust and a football team. These quiz-nights down the local were strictly not for the birds. A bunch of blokes turned up and scratched heads over which footie team scored that crucial goal in whichever year. Or they struggled to differentiate between H2SO4 the punk band and H2SO4 the sulphuric acid.
He popped in to watch them sweat. Miracle of miracles. Tonight, they’d managed to press-gang a girl into one of the teams. Perhaps things were about to change, on the quiz-front. If more women put in an appearance, the organisers would finally get a blokes-versus-birds event running. David Spode would join the fun, then.
She drew his attention, and held it fast. He glanced over at the rear-most table. A table for two. The dark-haired wiry bloke in the glasses seemed to be having a good time. Who wouldn’t have a good time in the company of the blonde at his side? They were dressed identically. A real team-effort. Green jeans, and those matching slogan-bearing green shirts.
THE TIME LORDS.
Odd name for a team. Unless they’d studied history. That might make sense. He could always ask. They were too far back to earwig. The blonde girl turned to the guy and said something amusing. He gave her a thumbs-up sign and fished around in a bag under the table.
Out came a pith helmet. The blonde put that on. Her team-mate slapped a red cap on his own head. There was no breeze in the pub, but the propeller on top of the man’s cap twirled slowly anyway. Maybe there was a window open, back there.
Back there, three pub regulars eyed the newcomers. There were smiles all over when the headgear came out. One regular had caught their names earlier. He nudged his mates. Another story doing the rounds was about to do the rounds.
“The Doctor and Rose. Straight out of that story. Doing the rounds.”
“Here we go.”
“Two blokes are driving along this empty country road.”
“At night?”
“Two blokes are driving along this empty country road. At night.”
“Are you making this up, or are we?”
“And the headlights catch this girl. Running out of nowhere.”
“For her life.”
“Exactly. Running out of nowhere. For her life. Driver hits the brakes. The car almost runs her over. Girl slaps her hands on the bonnet. She’s frantic. Hair dishevelled. Clothes torn. Ripped half-off. Bit of a looker, too.”
“Aren’t they always?”
“Eyes wide with fear. Crapping herself. She has blood on her, but the guys in the car never see the source of that blood. Might be hers.”
“How could they see the blood at night?”
“Headlights. Are you telling this story or am I? And these blokes start to question her. What’s the matter, love? All she can do is ask for the Doctor. Where’s the Doctor? Have you seen the Doctor? I have to find the Doctor.”
The three pub regulars looked around at the Doctor and Rose. Both members of the Time Lord team were obviously listening to the modern fairy story. The Doctor winked. Rose looked away, trying hard not to laugh. Trying not to. Failing miserably.
“Nearest hospital’s miles away, love. What happened? Were you mugged? I must find the Doctor. They bundle her into the back of the car, and start driving. We don’t have much time. Is someone after you? What’s your name? Rose.”
The three pub regulars tried looking over again, none-too-subtly. Rose had one elbow on the table, leaning her chin on her hand to cover her mouth. She looked sideways at the Doctor. He was leaning back, having taken a sudden interest in the ceiling.
“Must find the Doctor. They stop at the first junction, and she jumps out. Doctor. I’m here! Off through the bushes she goes. There’s a horrible groaning sound. She’s never seen again.”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
“What kind of story is that?! That’s bollocks. What happened to her?”
“Some say she was eaten by the big cat.”
“There’s no big cat out in the countryside.”
“Have you searched the countryside?”
“Maybe she was kidnapped by aliens.”
“I’ve heard this story, too. She’s a phantom hitchhiker. Name of Rose. Pops up out of nowhere. She asks for a Doctor. As if her life depends on it.”
“We just heard this one. What are you, the echo?”
“No. The guys are driving around with their girlfriends. Different story. Well, the guys jump out of the car and grab Rose to calm her down. But that sets her off. Doesn’t matter that there are two nurses in the car. Only the Doctor will do. She has a fear of nurses. A pathological fear of them. As if…she’d escaped from the nearby loony bin.”
“Which just happens to be in the countryside.”
“Where else would you put a loony bin? Town centre, next to the school?”
“Why not. Short trip from one to the other.”
“Back to the story.”
“The same story.”
“She breaks free and runs into the bushes. There’s something in there. In the crap version of the story, it’s a big cat. The beast of wherever. Insert your own preferred lonely spot. This thing groans and moans as it eats her. The ghastly light of its eyes shines through the bushes. And there’s no sign of her after that. One of the guys finds her chequebook. With her name on. Rose Taylor. That story is a load of old bollocks. It’s a flying saucer. In the bushes. And she is whisked off to another planet. For evil experiments. This doctor takes his alien probe to her…”
“Oh yeah.”
“Bit of a looker, right.”
“Why would aliens kidnap good-looking women?”
“More to the point, why wouldn’t they?”
“How would the aliens know who was a looker, on this planet?”
“That’s right. Knock holes in the logic of the story.”
“There’s no logic to knock holes in. There’s just one big hole in the story.”
*
“Don’t laugh. Doctor. Don’t.”
“Ridiculous. My alien probe. Do they mean the sonic screwdriver?”
“Stop that conversation there, Doctor.”
“Do they mean the Beast of Bodmin?”
“A myth.”
“No. I think I scared it away. Bodmin. Do you have a map?”
“Not on me, no. Wait, let me think. Yeah, sorry. Left the map in my other pith helmet.”
“We should investigate this. Rose Taylor. The Doctor. Something scary, groaning in the bushes. As it dematerialises. That’s us. We do that sort of stuff all the time.”
“One of our missions? You wouldn’t leave me in the lurch like that.”
“Maybe I pretend to, just so that there’s an urban legend about you. What do you think?”
“Leave it for now. Settle down. Pub-quiz.”
“What were the rules again? No futuristic answers. This is going to be a tough one.”
*
“And a late entry, the last team on the list, all the way from Gallifrey in Ireland
Rose. Information David Spode filed away for near-immediate use. The pair stood, and bowed. There was cheering, and scattered applause. David Spode thought that the blonde girl said wotcher. Didn’t sound very Irish. He made for the toilets, just behind Rose’s table.
“Good luck with the quiz. They’re fierce in here.”
“Thanks. We’ll slay them.”
The bloke didn’t sound very Irish. Though there was something odd in his normal-sounding accent. David Spode couldn’t place it. He wasn’t to know that Rose had set the Doctor a challenge on the way into the pub.
Rose kept that conversation in her head as she sat next to the Doctor. He was drinking a criminally overpriced orange juice. She tackled a rather mild brand of cider. A bloke with a twinkle in his eyes wished them good luck. He vanished into the toilets. Rose fiddled with her shirt-sleeve. Would the Doctor rise to the challenge she’d set?
*
“Spend the evening speaking in Gallifreyan.”
“That’s no challenge.”
“For you, it is.”
“Gallifreyan.”
“Yeah.”
“Which dialect?”
“Behave.”
“Let’s have some fun in here.”
“Remember. When they ask questions about world records, confine your answers to this world.”
“Check.”
“And those world records won’t be future ones. Stick to records which have been broken. Not ones which will be broken after tonight.”
“Ooh, now you’re asking a big favour.”
*
So many things to remember. Rose concentrated on the words the Doctor was saying. He was speaking Gallifreyan. Now, the big question. Why did his lip-movements match the words in English? Shouldn’t he look dubbed? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Time Lord? Where were his subtitles?
“How’s the orange?”
“Chilled. Very nice. Considering the cost.”
The inhabitants settled down as the preamble continued. A door clunked behind Rose. The bloke with the twinkle in his eyes had returned from the wilderness. Rose wondered where the breeze was coming from. Perhaps the Doctor’s propeller was self-powered. He hadn’t mentioned where he’d found it. Might have been made on Earth.
“Does that propeller spin by itself? Is it powered by your brain activity?”
“Good question. Followed by another good question.”
She had asked good questions, at the wrong moment. The Doctor pondered an enlargement of the non-answer. A laugh from the bloke with the twinkling eyes signalled his presence. He stepped in front of them, to throw his words of wisdom their way.
“You’d better hope not. It’s barely ticking over. You want to stay off the vodka and orange if you plan to win.”
“That’s just orange. My partner’s the one on the booze. She has cider inside her. That’s an in-joke. Or an inside one. An insider joke. It’s a cider inside her insider joke.”
What was this guy on? David Spode turned to make some witty observation, endearing himself to the blonde. He was drawn to her shirt. Had he imagined that these non-Irish sounding Irish people were dressed identically? They had the same shirts and jeans. But the blonde’s slogan was different.
NO CHANCE.
What did that mean? She was with him. This bloke in the hat. With the propeller. Odd couple. They made a very odd couple. Not brother and sister. Certainly not husband and wife. A couple? Maybe. Or boss and secretary?
“Nice tan.”
“Yeah. We just came back from a delightful place.”
“That’s right. Skaro. You should see the beaches.”
“The trees are nice. They aren’t trees, exactly.”
“Natives are as friendly as they’ll ever be.”
“Where’s that, then? The Far East ?”
“Over a bit.”
He’d never heard of the island. One of the reasons he wasn’t in the quiz. That bloke was probably good at geography. The quiz started, and David Spode drifted away to get a decent middle-distance look at the blonde chick’s shirt.
She hadn’t nipped into the toilets to change. He turned his back on her for a few seconds as he crossed the pub. When he looked again, he swore that her shirt was the same as the bloke’s. Had he imagined the different wording?
THE TIME LORDS.
Defeatism. Had he decided that he simply had no chance with the tanned blonde in the pith helmet, and imagined the negative slogan? Weird. From Ireland
*
“What a breeze. My propeller’s spinning. And the quiz was easy, too.”
“The best part was correcting all your absurd suggestions.”
“I only said that we could give the real answers to some of those questions, and not the foggy notions printed in a few history books written several centuries after contemporaneous events.”
“Yeah. What was that about the Mary Celeste and some Daleks?”
“I was only saying.”
“Come on. Where did you park the TARDIS?”
“I don’t know. Do they still have Police Boxes on the streets in this era? That would be embarrassing. Stumbling into a Police Box the size of a Police Box. Either some swine stepped in and deactivated the TARDIS while I’d nipped out, or I’d have wandered into a genuine Police Box.”
“We’ll find the TARDIS.”
“Places to go. Things to do.”
“Yeah. Go to the TARDIS.”
“Find the TARDIS.”
“Post a letter.”
“That letter. Can’t post it here.”
*
Trips were made in TARDISes.
The Doctor wandered a country road, late into the freezing night. Roll on 1934. All the Time Lord had for warmth was a match made of Umbeka wood. He read the Master’s letter again, and shook his head in disbelief. There was nothing the Doctor could do. This had happened in the past. Back in the days when Time Lords roamed the universe, observing things.
Before they became ghosts.
Traces of their passing disturbed the dust. Only the Doctor paid attention. This madcap adventure was far more personal. He had walked over the ghost of an enemy from his distant past. The Master. You should have died on Gallifrey, when you rejuvenated yourself. No. You haven’t pulled off that feat yet. That’s from my past. Your future.
What a great future that was. To the Doctor, a stormy past. So many death-defying moments. Those were just in the Master’s unnaturally long life. The Doctor hadn’t counted all the death-defying moments in his own life.
Doctor.
In studying the archives of this primitive robotic race, I found that the alien ship lost contact with its main fleet in 1923. Coincidence? No. These aliens have the capacity to snatch TARDISes from the time vortex. Give them time, and they will learn how to destroy TARDISes.
Naturally, the prospect is remote. I, for one, cannot overlook the inevitable impossible eventuality. Don’t you wonder how it is that you and I are able to roam the space-time continuum freely? From time to time, the Time Lords press you into their service. (That sordid episode involving gold-resistant Cybermen springs to mind.)
The Time Lords would never admit to dealing with the likes of the Master, would they? For my part in the transaction, I don’t mind adding sordid complicity to my long list of so-called crimes. This race of robots must be stopped.
Only the Time Lords are equipped to wipe out a race throughout a time-period. I must take news of this TARDIS-grabbing ray to the Time Lords on Gallifrey. They’d like to lock me away, or worse, but not one will be able to ignore this threat to Time Lord life.
I suspect that the entire race of robots has been dealt with. Mercilessly. The hypocritical Time Lord way. This base suspicion forces me to travel to Gallifrey and reveal all, in order to bring these events about. Purely in the interests of maintaining my own interests.
We both left so much unfinished business on Gallifrey. I know they won’t offer a full pardon. But I will hold the robotic information close to my chest. Ransom myself. And disappear while they are debating things. Even my TARDIS needs refitting, from time to time. The invasion fleet’s command beacon is located as follows…
The swine was going to cut a deal with a bunch of weak-willed Gallifreyans. He had done it. While there was still a meaningful place called Gallifrey left to visit. From the Doctor’s viewpoint, Time Lord society was dust. The Doctor was the only Time Lord left, as far as he knew. Ghosts aside. So. The long-gone Master had parleyed his way to long-gone Gallifrey, with news of a terrible threat.
While the Time Lords discussed appropriate action, the Master grabbed some spares and vanished. Went to Earth and annoyed the Doctor. The spineless Time Lords had destroyed a dangerous race of invasion-mad robots.
There might have been a way to talk the robots around. So much scrap, now. The Master finished with a set of coordinates. Space station. The job was done. A decade cold. Colder than that. Why direct the Doctor to a space station?
Unfinished business. The Master always seemed to have unfinished business. Would the Time Lords have cut a deal with the Master, knowing that the Master would sneak into Gallifrey, half-dead, looking to rejuvenate himself by blowing the planet to atoms at the end of his days?
Yes, the Doctor had foiled that bit of madness. And no, ultimately, it didn’t matter. Still, the Doctor cared. Even for invasion-mad robots. Trigger-happy ones, at that. He touched the Umbeka wood to the letter and watched it flare. The Master had used some of that paper from…which planet? Earth.
The Master had a Hoagy Carmichael record in his collection? Not any longer. Quite a coincidence, that crossword clue tying in so well. He was lucky to have had that on him. What was the significance of the chess thing, though? Time Lords, versus robots? Possibly. The Doctor perked up at the very familiar wheezing groaning sound a few feet to his left. A blue shape materialised out of the darkness, skipping from 1923 to 1933. He waited for the door to open. A blonde girl in a green shirt poked her head around the door.
“Wotcher.”
“That’s the name of a planet a hundred and fifty-eight light years in…that direction.”
“We should visit.”
“Mostly lava. Are you into lava?”
“Not a huge fan. I didn’t like the third album. Going my way?”
“How’s your head? After that trip.”
“Spinning. I don’t think I threw all the right switches. If I’m just dreaming this, then it doesn’t matter. On the other hand, if this is real…”
“Do you want to see the spaceship?”
“Melted slag, mostly.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll skip that. Not a huge fan of lava. Do we have somewhere to go, besides a chip shop?”
“Yeah. Pub-quiz. I could do with some cheering up.”
“You were great, in the end.”
“No. You did all the work, Rose.”
“Do I get paid more?”
“Yes, but the extra mileage does come out of your pay-packet.”
“Blimey. First I heard. Any word on the Master?”
“Had a letter from him. He’s destroyed the robots.”
“Right.”
“All of them. As far as I know. All across the universe.”
“Does that mean they won’t be invading Earth?”
“Or anywhere else.”
“How did he manage that?”
“Cut a deal with some people from his murky past. The Time Lords.”
“From the past. They aren’t around now. This whole thing has been an echo from history.”
“Yes.”
“Not quite real.”
“An echo involving me, so I lived through it as a real experience. Rather than as a phantom one. We can’t go after the Master. He crossed a time-stream to meet me. Not that he met me. I think time kept us apart. That was the old version of the Master. He’s gone. Left some coordinates to visit. Space station. Want to go?”
“A loose end.”
“Why not. Loose ends want tidying.”
“Do we have to tidy anything up, here?”
“A molten bit of slag? Farm equipment. Robot bodies lying in fields? More farm equipment. Or a piece of art. Sculpture, left on the farm. The Grange, with its strange infinite hallway? Er. Actually, we could hang around and do a bit of cleaning.”
“Oh, the glamorous lifestyle of a Time Lord and his assistant.”
“Shift over. I’ll show you how to really pilot this thing. First, we’ll take care of that material hidden beneath the Grange. The TARDIS is far from run-down. I wouldn’t say no to the prospect of a few genuine Gallifreyan spare parts. And neither would the old girl.”
“Isn’t that stealing?”
“The Master is gone. He can’t complain.”
“Right.”
*
Elsewhen, the Master travelled to his destiny. Trips were made in TARDISes. He cut a deal with the Time Lords, restocked his TARDIS, and marked out a few sites of interest on Gallifrey while he was there. He might have need of the vast stores of energy on that dusty planet, one day. Then he disappeared, before the Time Lords could double-cross him.
*
Rose watched the Doctor make faces as he examined the controls. Finally, they’d leave 1933 behind. The Doctor was aghast. What sort of state had the girl left his precious TARDIS in? More faces were made. She knew what he was going to say, and prepared her obvious counterattack by placing her hands firmly on her hips.
“Rose. There’s jam on these temporal thrusters.”
“That was there when I didn’t use those switches.”
“Ah.”
“You’d dipped into some jam on the way to Skaro. If you remember. Travel broadens the mind…”
“And…jam broadens the palate. No, I never said that.”
“Right you are.”
They spent some time making the Grange safe again. Rose stood in the kitchen, staring at the floor. There was just enough room to do the job. That had been something. Cheating. She thought that the Master had cheated by bringing about some strange sideways move. An impossible time travel piece of nonsense that made sense everywhere except on paper.
The Doctor had gone one better.
He really had cheated. Seriously. No fudging of rules, fluffing of regulations, or woolly interpretation of the laws of physics. The Doctor solved Rose’s problem by listening to her plan, and spotting a flaw in it. Which had given him the silliest idea.
*
Overpriced orange. The Time Lords sampled orange juice and cider in 1970-odd. Rose marvelled at the Doctor’s ability to mutter four-dimensionally. He calculated the best time to pop in, between thwarted alien invasions. Rose enjoyed the cider, and the Doctor’s company. Who else would appreciate the pith helmet on her head? And complain about the cost of the orange? Only the Doctor. He’d acquired some petty cash by sonic screwdrivering a few parking meters and then putting a bet on a horse.
The Doctor insisted that the original portion of his bet be repaid in coins. These were returned to the parking meters. He had a bit of a cheek complaining about the cost of his free orange. Rose rolled her eyes when he moaned about the cost of his second orange. Life was funny when you were a time traveller. Inflation should never be a surprise to you.
*
Cleaning was done. The Grange was safe for human habitation. They missed a spot, where a shrunken skeleton lay forgotten. The time travellers stepped through the doors into the timeless TARDIS. Outside, the year might be 1933. Inside, everything was possible.
The blonde girl had TRUST ME, I’M A TIME LORD written on her green shirt. She handed the Time Lord a pair of yellow rubber gloves. Hanging his head in mock-shame, the Time Lord followed the blonde’s finger to the sorry sight of a jammy console.
“It’s not really dirt. Not if it’s edible.”
“Don’t dare eat the stuff. That console has been jammy for countless years.”
“Only in the broad time travel sense. From the view of an observer…”
“Get cleaning. Think of the old girl’s feelings. And don’t go accidentally dematerialising as you clean. We have a space station to visit, and a pub-quiz to attend. Not to mention a letter to post, in good old 1923.”
*
“Done. Sparkling. Good as new. Apart from the regular wear and tear. Should last until the next shaky landing we have.”
“About those shaky landings.”
“Now. No crude stabiliser comments. Don’t want the old girl sobbing her circuits out. Time travel isn’t an exact science, Rose.”
“No kidding.”
“Time travel relies on several branches of science for success.”
“And some jam.”
“Wouldn’t fly without the jam. Now. A choice of journeys.”
“No chips?”
“I’ll rustle something up. Where’s that food-making machine?”
“Where do you want to go, Doctor?”
“This place the Master mentioned in his letter. Might as well check it out.”
“Followed by chips.”
“And a quiz. The Time Lords versus…the universe.”
“Are we walking…or materialising…into a trap?”
“We’ll never have to worry about the Master. My past self will handle all that nonsense. Has handled all that nonsense. My past selves, I should say. All we have to do is give a space station the eyeball.”
*
Nothing happened aboard the space station until the TARDIS materialised. The blue box flashed into existence without being spotted or grabbed. There was no reaction or response to the intrusion. The space station was dead.
“I’m not picking up any sort of breathable atmosphere.”
“Robots don’t need to breathe.”
“No light. And no heat. There’s some power. No artificial gravity.”
“We’d need to wear suits? Not the pinstripe kind.”
“Mm. We can scan for activity from here. Nothing.”
“Unimpressive, Doctor. This place wouldn’t rate highly on the Tyler Good Space Station Guide.”
“Oh?”
“No aliens. Silent machines. Slight power. Not ominous. Dusty, not dirty. I’d give it one star.”
“Only one star.”
“Four, if we’re attacked by some lurking terror.”
“Ri-ight. Lurking terror. Let’s see if we can stir some up.”
“You are joking.”
“Sadly, yes.”
“Why did the Master want you to see this?”
“Gloating, done at a distance, must have its rewards.”
“Where have all the robots gone?”
“They’ve gone. I know what this is. Not exactly a space station. More of a beacon.”
“Intergalactic lighthouse.”
“Assembly point, for an invasion fleet.”
“A fleet destined to invade Earth. Why feel sad about foiling an invasion, Doctor?”
“I played a sordid part in it. And helped a villain escape. I almost let you age ten years.”
“Well, there’s the small matter of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. It’s not just about saving the universe. There’s the bit about looking out for the people in your company.”
“Which reminds me. I have to look out for a villain. By writing a letter, and dropping it off before the aliens reach Earth. What to say, though. Do you want to post the letter for me?”
“I’d be delighted. Another detour.”
“Twice around the lighthouse…”
“Once around this lighthouse is enough for me. You do have stamps.”
“Penny Blacks. Reds. Commonplace. I’ll find an appropriate one. Now. What to say in this letter. Well, I’ve no intention of giving him exact information. He can whistle for clues.”
“Quite right, too.”
“I’ll call him Old Chap.”
“Seems too friendly. Writing to a villain.”
“I won’t acknowledge him as Master of anything. Not in a letter.”
“Oh. See what you mean.”
“Where am I writing from? And when? Ah. Gallifrey, obviously. Just a joke, doing the rounds. As though Gallifrey is in Ireland
“Galway and Loughrea.”
“Mm. Date.”
“The 12th of Never.”
“It’s that or the 30th of February. What should I tell him? That he’s obviously caught in the same trap. I’m in. We’re separated by time. My past self doesn’t know what’s going on. The Master could help out with a few handy clues.”
“Tell him you are stuck in 1933.”
“Indicating that I know he’s stuck in 1923.”
“Ha.”
“What?”
“You have the last laugh.”
“How?”
“Withholding information. You can’t tell him how you helped me escape from 1923. He’ll think up the other scheme. Relying on you to help him break free just as he relies on you for the same reason. But that’s nonsense. He could do what we did. Not very bright, is he?”
“Unfortunately, that isn’t true. He was very bright. But yes. I suppose I do have something of a last laugh. A smile, at the very least.”
“Let’s get that pub-quiz out of the way. Then post a letter. And don’t forget the chips.”
“Hang on. Energy pulse on the lowest deck.”
“Oh, here we go.”
“Familiar, too. Could it be a TARDIS?”
“I thought he zipped off after finishing his mission.”
“Perhaps this is another part of the web. One final strand set in place. Then we can be shot of him. I’ll make a short hop to that deck.”
“What’s his TARDIS disguised as?”
“I’m not picking up a proper signal.”
“Could it be alien technology? Robotic?”
“No. I wonder what that is. Well, if it’s like a TARDIS, it probably is a TARDIS.”
“Do you think he’s dumped another bit of his TARDIS behind?”
“Hey, you could be right. Let me think. He’s a Time Lord. Evil. Irredeemable. But, at hearts, a Time Lord. He’s been to Gallifrey to cut a deal with the Time Lords. And he’s refitted his clunky old Type One Hundred TARDIS.”
“Not as good as this TARDIS?”
“No way! Great stabilisers, true. Dish it out? Yes. Take it? No. My TARDIS wouldn’t notice a kicking. Remember, his flash TARDIS was still caught by the robot ray anyway.”
“Good point, Doctor.”
“Great stabiliser control isn’t everything. What’s wrong with the odd bumpy landing?”
“Nothing. Love ’em.”
“Character. That’s what my TARDIS has. Good old Type Forty.”
“Forty. Is that high?”
“No. The really low numbers were unpredictable. Erratic. More thought went into design as a result. The Type Three was a flying coffin. And the Type Ten wasn’t much better. Things had settled down by the time the Type Thirty came on the scene. But your classic TARDIS design starts and ends with the Type Forty. This baby can handle real time-stress. Warp Entropy. Holdspace. There are more technical innovations aboard this TARDIS than you could shake a sonic screwdriver at. And I should know.”
“Seatbelts. Airbags. Ergonomic design. Rear spoiler.”
“No airbags. What are you on about?”
“Nothing.”
“There. A slight power-surge through time.”
“What’s powerful enough to cut across time, other than a TARDIS?”
“Another TARDIS. This doesn’t look good, Rose. The readings on this scope indicate that we’re looking at a semi-real TARDIS. Must be damaged.”
“I seem to recall being given a lecture, which you referred to as the Extended Warranty lecture, in which you expounded the view…”
“No, I never did. Maybe I expatriated the view instead. Or exploded.”
“Exploded. Serves you right for having those green beans on that small moon.”
“The beans were fine. Not so sure about the sauce. Had to throw that back at me, didn’t you.”
“You gave me a lecture. The Extended Warranty lecture. In which you put forward the view that the Extended Warranty on a TARDIS was just a con. Seeing as the TARDIS is indestructible.”
“Near-indestructible.”
“Right. So this one’s smashed.”
“By the look of the information here, yes. Maybe. No proper fix.”
“What about the…pilot? Are you a pilot?”
“No. I’m a driver. Can’t pick up signs of Time Lord life. I think it’s an older model.”
“How good is this TARDIS?”
“You are sitting, cross-legged, on the flight deck of a very serious TARDIS. Not for the squeamish. The old girl is the time-travelling equivalent of a 1970s muscle car. She can take it. And she can dish it out. Fast? Forget about it. Durable? Bet on it.”
“Are you in love with the TARDIS?”
“Sh. Not so loud. Don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“Mine, you mean. So. There’s someone else.”
“She’s a tough cookie on the outside, but she has a heart of gold on the inside.”
“Yeah. What about the Master’s TARDIS?”
“Spooky machine. Type One Hundred. Not the A-model. The B-model. Centuries ahead of its time.”
“How can a time machine be ahead of its time?”
“Switch it on, and watch it go.”
“Flashy, then.”
“Very fast. Precise. They don’t corner well in wet weather, though. Sure, they’ll take a fair old kicking. But when one of those babies folds, she folds faster than a Mississippi
“You Time Lords and your TARDISes. What are you like.”
“Right. A very short trip. Here goes, Rose. And here we are.”
“See anything out there?”
“No. There’s that pulse again.”
“Doctor. A light.”
“Missed it, studying the instruments. You watch the scanner, and shout if it happens again.”
“Yeah. Light.”
“Coincides with the pulse. I’ll try contacting the occupant. Might be someone there.”
“I think it’s disguised as that wall.”
“Nothing. Yeah, the wall. Could be. Let’s hop closer. Right next door. Then we can walk from one to the other. Shortest of hops. Here we go.”
The TARDIS materialised on the same deck as the energy pulse, then shimmered out of existence as the Doctor repositioned for docking. TARDIS-to-TARDIS. The Doctor checked instruments and looked at the scanner. Very puzzling.
“Something’s still not right. I’ll open the doors. You have a look. Don’t step outside, though.”
“You’ve slapped the TARDIS right up against the wall. There’s nowhere to go. Oh. Light again. Is that dangerous?”
“Just light. Nothing deadly. There’s definitely a TARDIS here. I’m picking up readings for…ah, starting to make sense now. Type Twelve hybrid. No. That isn’t the Master’s TARDIS.”
“One of the older ones. Dangerous?”
“Type Twelve/Twenty-Two. No, not dangerous. They were upgraded into the Type Twenty-Two. Reliable paddle-steamers. They’ll carry you where you want to go. At a leisurely pace.”
“How can you say that of a time machine?”
“I have an extended lifespan. When things drag, they really drag.”
“Who would use this?”
“Only a Time Lord. An older one. Bureaucrat. Spearheading the assault against the robots. That’s how the Time Lords would go about their business. Send a pen-pusher in first. To investigate the Master’s claims.”
“Oh. Doctor…”
“Afraid so, Rose. They didn’t believe the Master. So their lack of belief cost a Time Lord’s life.”
“And the Type Twelve TARDIS?”
“I don’t know how the robots managed it. They’ve really weakened that TARDIS. I’ll boost some readings. Yeah. That TARDIS is fried.”
“How badly?”
“I could nip across and see.”
“Will you be in any danger?”
“Loads. Want to come with me?”
“See inside another TARDIS? Sure.”
“I’ll just sonic the doors open.”
The wall parted, and two doors opened. Light poured out in a lime-green pulse. Rose looked at the Doctor. He bit his lip, and stepped from his TARDIS to the older model. The universe didn’t end. Rose followed close on his heels.
They stood in a temple to the lost world of Art Nouveau. The high curved walls were covered in floral patterns in what appeared to be glass. Every bank of flowers served as a screen from which golden women peeked. Rose couldn’t see the control console from the doorway. Freestanding wooden panels, covered in similar decorations, blocked the view, as high as the ceiling.
“Doctor. She’s a beautiful TARDIS.”
“Don’t make ’em like they used to.”
“This is the multidimensional equivalent of computer wallpaper, though.”
“Yes. Same principle. I don’t have this one aboard my TARDIS.”
“And I can see why. If it weren’t for some of these trailing branches, a lot of these near-naked women would be…naked women. That one’s a bit racy. Those could be seen as rather lewd.”
“Lewdness is in the eye of the beholder.”
“You said some pen-pusher probably owned this TARDIS? You have to watch the quiet ones. Are these images of human women?”
“Time Ladies.”
“Of ill-repute?”
“Let’s find the console.”
Lights flared on the wooden console. The controls were inlaid in gold metal. Glass dials shone. Some coy nymphs had been carved into the wood, using various controls to hide their modesty. A green light pulsed from the ceiling.
“That’s a warning. Old warning. I’d have to look it up.”
“How bad is she?”
The Doctor flipped a few controls. A buzzer sounded, followed by an alarm bell. He reversed the process and hit the bank of switches on the far side of the console. More alarms went off. He worked his way through the controls.
“Trying different versions of the same thing?”
“No matter what I do, I can’t bypass these alarms. Damage is everywhere. This TARDIS has taken a battering. She could be fixed up in the TARDIS yards on Gallifrey. If those still worked. Which is a pity. Not enough bypass systems aboard this older model.”
“Listen. Groaning.”
“Early dematerialisation sounds.”
“Now we have the ghost story to deal with. Ghostly groaning, anyway.”
“I know what causes that. Ghosts. With rheumatism.”
“Rheumatic poltergeists. Can’t be very active.”
“This TARDIS is trying to dematerialise. The dear old bird has nowhere to fly. She’s meant to follow a recall order. But no one’s recalling her. And the pilot’s gone. She can’t work up the power, either. I think the Master was right. The Time Lords were acting properly, in destroying the robots. Before the robots could pull the secrets of this TARDIS to bits. They came very close to victory.”
“What do we do? Walk away?”
“I’ll shut down this pulsing light. Then no one will know she’s here.”
“She’ll know. We’ll know.”
“Yeah. Sad, eh.”
“Would it be better to switch her off?”
“Maybe. She’s useful as a shelter. Could serve as a lifeboat.”
“Is it safe to visit the bathroom?”
“Sure.”
“I’d just like to see how it’s decorated.”
“Probably lots of gold and brass and stuff.”
*
“How was the bathroom?”
“Wow. A bit much. Quite an assault on the eyes.”
“Overdone?”
“You could get used to the designs. In time.”
“She can’t go anywhere. Not really.”
“Could you stay locked together? As two TARDISes?”
“Give her a tow, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Tricky. She might slip off inside the time vortex. There are a few options. They aren’t great. Before a TARDIS becomes a TARDIS, it’s just a box. Very fancy box, admittedly. But that’s all. The same size on the inside as it is on the outside.”
“Until you plug in the extra dimensions.”
“Right. That’s what we’re seeing. Time travel, coupled with those extra dimensions built to contain the vast time engines. Hurtling through space-time.”
“Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.”
“Dimension. With the right equipment, we turn a tiny room into a huge space. The box grows to TARDIS size on the inside. These early TARDISes follow the principle established in the Type One. Very primitive, the Type One. We had to learn about the Type One in our history classes. Though we could never fly one.”
“Precious?”
“Stored in a museum. Precious, and dangerous. The first TARDISes were quite primitive. Rough.”
“Yeah? Hard to imagine.”
“No toilets, for one thing. And not even a thought about putting in a swimming pool.”
“This TARDIS has a pool?”
“Somewhere. Must be decorated with mermaids.”
“Yeah. What are you getting at? Boxes the size of boxes, and not TARDISes.”
“One option is to pull the plug.”
“She’s not in danger, Doctor?”
“No.”
“A bit slow. Can’t race up the hills as fast as she used to.”
“That’s right. We could leave her here, Rose.”
“A monument, to a lost time?”
“Sure. To the Time Lords. They are all gone now anyway.”
“Except for you. What makes you different?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Doctor…”
“Well, honestly. Time Lord society. Nothing happened on Gallifrey down through the centuries upon centuries upon centuries upon centuries upon centuries upon centuries upon centuries…”
“I get the picture…”
“There were bound to be a few rogue elements.”
“You. A rogue element.”
“I saw myself more as a pioneer.”
“A biker. You saw yourself as a biker. I’m dancing across the universe in the company of Marlon Brando from The Wild One.”
“Please. Have some respect. Lee Marvin from The Wild One.”
“It gets worse!”
“I tackled the odd Time Lord masquerading as a meddling monk back in the day. But there was this one character. The Master. He marked his calendar just to bug me. Now he’s gone. They are all gone.”
“Let’s leave this monument intact.”
“Sure, Rose. There’s not much worth salvaging. Hardly any spare parts I could use.”
“Back to Earth?”
“Home.”
“My home.”
“And my holiday home. You know. I pop in and out, now and again. Feed the plants. Water the cat.”
“You can’t go home home, can you?”
“Gallifrey. There’s nothing there for me. Even when there was something there for me, there was nothing there for me. We Lorded over Time. Went to all that trouble to create something as amazing as the TARDIS.”
“Yeah. Amazing.”
“Look at this one. Gorgeous. Packed with nymphs. And we used a wonderful piece of engineering like this to watch over time. Do you have any idea how boring I thought that was?”
“Given the adventures we’ve had, I think I see where you’re coming from. Before I defied death on an hourly basis in your pleasant company…”
“You say that as though it’s a bad thing. My company’s pleasant. And it’s not about the death, is it? Really, it’s all about defying the death.”
“Before I defied death, on an hourly basis, I was bored. I’d go as far as to say I was shallow.”
“And then you met me.”
“You aren’t at all like the Time Lords. The rest of them. If all they did was invent time machines and then use them as…passive television sets…what really made you different?”
“I know a great little place in France
“Time travel for a laugh. And a good meal, well-remembered. Yeah. Why not.”
*
Pub-quiz. Rose rebuffed the nameless bloke with a quick adjustment of her shirt. The Doctor had expressed doubt about sending the Master a letter. He and Rose might be caught up in all sorts of adventures before finally posting that message away.
Rose smiled.
“You’ll have to put a lid on that idea. And nail it shut. We tidied the mess in 1933, zapped across the galaxy to an empty space station, left some flowers, and took part in this pub-quiz. That leaves the business of chips. And the other business of posting a letter. Which we should do, before one of us forgets. In his absent-minded way.”
“I’m not absent-minded. That’s part of my charm.”
“Endearing.”
“What is? I’m just saying. We have to be careful. All these loose ends.”
“Let’s go.”
“I feel as though I’ve forgotten something. Cheese!”
*
First, there was a wheezing sound. This turned into a groaning. A strange blue box shimmered and faded and made a solid attempt at becoming solid. This was a detour to 1923, to post a letter. Not in a car. Or on a bike. But in a TARDIS. Again, the Doctor refused to acknowledge the Master as the recipient. R.A.S. Lions would receive the letter. Rose made an occasion of it. She dressed for the weather, and carried a real umbrella, this time.
“Real umbrella.”
“What’s wrong with the ice brolly? That’s a real umbrella.”
“Brrr.”
“Fine. Now. You do know what you’re supposed to say?”
“Her name’s Sylvia James. My name’s Rose. I’m a friend of the Doctor’s. You helped her out, that time. Not her regular Doctor. The irregular one.”
“Check.”
“How did you help this woman?”
“Her garden gnome came to life. Threatened her. I stepped in and sorted that mess.”
“Alien?”
“Yes, I am. Thanks for asking.”
“Was the garden gnome an alien?”
“A story for another time, perhaps. Details, details. Do you have your story straight in your head, my girl? We can’t flounder at this stage.”
“Sylvia James. I’m Rose. A friend of the Doctor’s. Do I get a badge for that?”
“No. But you do get a shirt that could display a badge-like slogan.”
“That’s just not the same, is it?”
“No.”
“Could she do me…you…us…a favour and hold onto this letter? If I don’t swing by in a week to pick it up, she can post it to the Doctor’s colleague. The good Doctor Lions.”
“Brilliant. If I let that letter reach the Master a week or so after the alien spaceship lands near Fenby, it’ll be a clue in itself. That I popped back prior to the alien invasion, and posted the letter before the aliens could jam my TARDIS.”
“As I recall, you jammed the TARDIS.”
“The TARDIS likes jam. Don’t you, old girl? See. A satisfied hum.”
“More like a hmm. If you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you. Hand the letter on. Job done.”
Rose struggled through the blustery day, and fought valiantly to open the garden gate. Sylvia James was a nice lady who offered tea and scones. With jam. Rose couldn’t resist. When offered more, she said she’d take them with her and pass one to the Doctor.
“How is the Doctor?”
“Same as ever.”
“Such a stylish man. That cape!”
“Er, yeah. He took to wearing a floppy hat for a while. It’ll be a pinstripe suit, next. He’s full of surprises. No more…trouble in the garden?”
“No. He’s a very good gardener.”
“Does what he can, in that department. Been looking into trees lately.”
“Apple trees?”
“All kinds. Thanks for the scones. And the extra scones. Now, you do have it straight?”
“If you aren’t back this way again in a week, I post this letter on your behalf. To this other Doctor.”
“Yeah. It’s…time-sensitive.”
*
“How did that go?”
“Step on it. There’s a crowd of people around the corner. Wouldn’t want them to see a disappearing Police Box.”
“Why not? They couldn’t do very much about it.”
“Here.”
“Ooh. Scones. Why the stern face?”
“They couldn’t do very much about it? That’s how these urban legends start. There’s a mysterious yet helpful figure called the Doctor. He never gives his name. When asked for identification, he always has just the right piece of paperwork to satisfy native curiosity. Though, later, when deeper checks are made, that paperwork tends to generate more questions than answers.”
“Those stories wouldn’t make sense, spread across time. The Doctor in each encounter would look different. And go by many names. No one would be able to make the connection. These glimpses into my many missions on Earth would be written off as disjointed stories. Urban legends. Sue me.”
“Unbelievable! Jealous?”
“Of what?!”
“That these urban legends aren’t all about you. Take the case of the mysterious blonde girl on the country road.”
“At night. Was she blonde?”
“Running in fear. But probably pretending, for the sake of the urban legend. Rose Taylor.”
“There aren’t any urban legends about you. That’s someone else.”
“Until we prove otherwise by taking a trip in the TARDIS.”
“Ah.”
“What does that mean? Ah.”
“It means. Ah.”
“Oh?”
“What does that mean? Oh.”
“Let’s hit the TARDIS scanner, and scan a few of these urban legends.”
“Deal.”
*
“Where do these stories happen? In the countryside. Name one place one of these things happened. Here’s the one about the boyfriend and the girlfriend stuck in the car. No fuel. He takes a can and goes for a walk. Tells her to stay there. While he’s gone, she falls asleep. A noise wakes her. She turns on the radio. A lunatic has escaped from the local asylum. She keeps hearing a thumping sound.”
“I know this one, Doctor. She thinks that the lunatic is outside. Locks the car doors. Can’t drive anywhere. No petrol. Waits ages for the boyfriend to come back. In the end, the cops show up and point guns at her. She climbs out of the car, but the cops are pointing guns at the lunatic. He’s on top of the car, tapping the boyfriend’s severed head off the roof. We never learn the location of this story.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m not surprised. That story didn’t even happen on Earth. And it was a spaceship. Not a car. Fuel-rods were damaged. A party of space-miners…”
“Too much information for my taste. I know a location worth trying. Fenby.”
“Hoping for a mention?”
“Alien assassin wrecks tearoom.”
“You’re out of luck, Rose. Oh. Wait. What’s this. The story of a haunted farm, stalked by the monstrous misshapen form of a farmhand disfigured in a fire back in 1933. His heavy-set form clumps through the undergrowth, searching for the culprit who’d set fire to the barn in which the farmhand roasted. He would appear every winter, when water filled a pond, and wade through the icy pool trying to soothe his still-burning body.”
“I guess the Master missed one of the robots.”
“They said that he’d uncovered a Nazi spy-ring interested in the town, based at the farm where he worked. Some agents had driven up from London
“Lone robot survivor. Accounts for the longevity of the story. Robot.”
“Exactly. Well, let’s hope so. Rather that than…something else.”
“Hey, I’m mentioned.”
“Where?”
“Agents drove up from London
“Good job they weren’t named in this urban legend.”
“Even if they were, that could be explained away. Ian Fleming heard the names, and used the names years later in his stories. Sorted.”
“Leaving aside a book on birds by James Bond. You have an agile mind, Rose. For a human.”
“Are you saying I couldn’t have figured out how to save myself in 1923?”
“What was your plan again?”
“Leave the TARDIS. Return to the Master’s workshop. Sell gadgets for lots of money. Hope that the robots stayed away. Take the money and hire a bunch of men to knock the kitchen wall out.”
“And move the TARDIS away. Yes. That was quite an agile plan.”
“Which led, directly, to your plan to save me from 1923.”
“Indirectly. Your plan led, indirectly, to my plan. Which I would have worked out anyway.”
“Eventually.”
“I have a pretty cosmic-powered brain.”
“Yeah. Which tends to focus on not having any focus. Except when it comes to running.”
“Running. Great tactic. Saved me many a time. Gave me a few moments to collect my wits and save the day. You can’t set yourself up as a sitting target. Not while you’re on the run.”
“Reminds me of a dream I had. I’m in this building, with a Dalek.”
“And you escape by running up the stairs.”
“Initially. That’s no good, though, as…”
“The Dalek uses its hover power, and comes after you.”
“No. Another Dalek flies over in a spaceship and drops a bomb on me.”
“Shocking. I have this recurring dream about alien invasion. Zutons. Or possibly Zygons…”
*
Rose was stuck in 1923, talking to the Doctor on his telephone in 1933. There was no way for the Doctor to save her from the prospect of her lost years. Builders would be brought in to tear out that kitchen wall. A decade in a tearoom loomed ahead of Rose.
“Trust you.”
“A hundred per cent.”
“Assistant to Time Lord, what’s the score?”
“Time Lord to assistant, one-nil. Doctor versus aliens. There’s a minute left to play and the aliens are all over the pitch, trying to crack my defence. They’re desperate. All they have in their favour is the signal. It blocks the TARDIS. I’m going to lose this one. You’ll be trapped in the past for ten years.”
“Rough game.”
“Well, I say ten years. Nine years and six months. More or less.”
“Not so bad, after all.”
“You’ll be forced to take a job in a tearoom. That tearoom will be hit by a van one day.”
“I’ll have to take the day off.”
“Suppose for a moment that you don’t. Take the day off.”
“And watch my younger self walk in the door? With you?”
“Yeah. Just suppose. What would be different, Rose?”
“I’d…hide in the back, out of my own way. Bizarre sentence.”
“Wouldn’t you want to tell yourself how to get out of the predicament you end up in?”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“No?”
“I’d be beside myself.”
“My thought exactly.”
“Eh?”
“It’s a really bad idea to cross the time-stream, Rose. But it can be done. It has been done. I must have crossed the time-stream more often than anyone else. You would be beside yourself. Yeah. Why not. Now forget all that talk about working in a tearoom for years.”
“This is more like you. Veering off into something else.”
“Stand beside yourself. This is going to be very complicated. A lot of switches to throw. Your head will be spinning.”
“I can’t go anywhere.”
“Yes you can. We simply do what the Master did. Instead of using two TARDISes, we’ll use one TARDIS twice over. You are about to throw yourself into the future. Exactly minus four seconds into the future.”
“Not to get technical, but wouldn’t that be the past?”
“Your future, as well as your past. That’s right.”
“Yeah. I can see that you’ll have to explain this to me, even though you are explaining it to me right now. Hope this is the strangest conversation I ever have on a mobile phone.”
“As you materialise slightly to one side of the other TARDIS, the presence of two TARDISes will break the alien signal. And you’ll escape.”
“Eh?”
“A TARDIS will materialise to one side of you as you throw some switches to dematerialise. When that happens, you’ll be able to complete the sequence and throw your TARDIS back in time and to one side. When you do that, you’ll have time to set a new course for 1933 and break free just as the original TARDIS dematerialises. The alien signal will be disrupted by the same TARDIS, twice over.”
Rose always thought those conversations about trees falling in woods were rubbish conversations. If a tree falls over in the woods, and no one is there to hear, does the tree make a sound? Rose tackled that problem in her own fashion. If someone started a conversation about a tree in the woods, and that conversation occurred in the woods with no one there to hear it, would anyone care? She was having one of those bewildered moments now.
He explained the plan six times. With a diagram. Which he didn’t show her.
“Start again.”
“No Rose. You explain it to me.”
“I’m in the TARDIS.”
“Brilliant.”
“So far. I can’t dematerialise. The alien signal’s blocking my exit.”
“Brilliant.”
“A TARDIS starts to materialise next to me as I throw the dematerialisation switches.”
“Brilliant.”
“The alien grip on the TARDIS weakens, thanks to the presence of two TARDISes.”
“Absolutely.”
“So my TARDIS dematerialises. I’m in the time vortex.”
“You certainly are.”
“While I’m in the time vortex, I throw…”
“A humongous amount of switches, setting up your next trip.”
“I’m still in the time vortex.”
“You’d have the time to microwave some tea.”
“Er, no.”
“Fair enough.”
“Then, I’m coming out of the time vortex. Materialising in the past, to one side of the TARDIS, in the kitchen at the Grange.”
“Yes!”
“I finish throwing switches to set up my trip to 1933. The TARDIS with my past self inside starts to dematerialise. Why didn’t you think of this sooner?”
“We had robots to fight. And scones to eat.”
“So, at that stage, I dematerialise again. The presence of two TARDISes allows me to escape the alien ray a second time. I meet you on some open road in 1933. And there’s no ray to battle in 1933. The Master’s killed almost all the robots and melted the spaceship.”
“A deserted road. At night. No traffic. Just me. Not two TARDISes. The same TARDIS, twice over. Think about it. You’ll be beside yourself with glee. Or rage, if it doesn’t work.”
“What’s the drawback?”
“If you flick one wrong switch, you could destroy the entire space-time continuum as we know it.”
“Blimey.”
“It’s that or spend ten years in a tearoom, waiting to play catch-up with me.”
“Doctor.”
“Rose.”
“This sounds like a load of old bollocks. I gang up, with myself, and break free.”
“Yeah.”
“Won’t the robotic ray stop me?”
“You’re thinking three-dimensionally.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Bad habit of mine. Thinking three-dimensionally. There I go, putting the horse before the cart. Crossing my bridges when I come to them. Counting my chickens after they’ve hatched. Mad, I am. Known for it. Dangerous. Should be locked up.”
“Trust me, I’m a Time Lord.”
“That’s going on my shirt if this works.”
“You’ll have to change the slogan for the pub-quiz.”
“The Zutons.”
“I killed them. Humanely. Even though I’m not human. That must be worth bonus points, eh.”
“We’ll be…”
“Yes?”
“The Time Lords.”
“Thank you. He shoots, he scores! Result!”
“But if any Daleks stroll in…”
“Daleks? Strolling in? Oi. Stroll on.”
“My slogan will change.”
“What to?”
“Come on if you think you’re hard, then.”
“Deal. Now. Let’s run over the switches.”
“Some of these look a bit dirty.”
“Nonsense. Decoration.”
“Are you sure?”
“Alien decoration.”
*
“What’s this set of switches to the left of the ones you just explained to me?”
“Let me think. Temporal boosters. You won’t need those for this job.”
“Is that jam? On the console?”
“Moving right along…”
Acknowledgements.
The names Verity Lambert, Terrance Dicks, and Roger Delgado should mean something to the older children in the audience. There are glimpses of earlier incarnations of the Doctor in this book, and it would be remiss not to mention William Hartnell.
Hartnell’s appearance in Carry On Sergeant summed up his career in film. He was always the army tough, or the treacherous criminal. See Brighton Rock for an example of his criminal turn. This went on (and on) until he was cast against type in This Sporting Life. Verity Lambert secured his services as the grandfatherly Doctor.
He became a mischievous character, a crotchety old man, who couldn’t help but meddle in things. The Doctor wasn’t supposed to meddle. But that was more than half the fun of the game. Hartnell’s Doctor was a one-man awkward squad who wouldn’t think twice about putting Terry Nation’s Daleks in their place. Quite right, too.
Terrance Dicks probably had an enlarged typewriter key made specially, set to print the Doctor’s capacious pockets at a single stroke. He gave the impression that travelling in the Doctor’s company was more than just a cosmic adventure.
There was always a deeply human touch to the Doctor’s travels in Terrance’s care. Though there was also an uphill struggle to overcome sexism in the television show. What I tend to think of as Dalek Invasion Syndrome…
“Doctor?”
“You just iron these trousers while I handle this Dalek invasion, m’dear.”
If I picked up one thing from Terrance, it was the idea that you had to give the Doctor’s assistant something to do – other than scream and look pretty. The Doctor’s assistant could be the everyman or everywoman, exemplified by Lis Sladen’s portrayal of Sarah Jane Smith, acting as the conscience of the audience. (Sarah was a bit of a screamer, too, though.) A touch of moral debate between characters was preferable to a constant diet of What’s that, Doctor?
Terrance struggled with all the usual plot problems, so that I wouldn’t have to. There are many familiar themes and plotlines in the Doctor’s adventures. Alien (Nazi) invasion of (England
I was always inclined to think that the Doctor’s theft of a TARDIS, which propelled him into his endless adventures, had an unspoken element to it. There was a story hidden behind that story. One that no one liked to speak of. In other words, the first Doctor’s first story.
There are, doubtless, fans of the television show who have only recently been introduced to Daleks and Cybermen. To the Doctor, his assistant, and the TARDIS. Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the Master. An evil Time Lord. The anti-Doctor. Once his friend and colleague. Later an implacable enemy. (And there were always those idiotic rumours about the Master being the Doctor’s brother…)
The first actor to portray him was Roger Delgado. He had a casual method of dismissing human achievements. This heightened his sense of villainy. He also said very rude things about the Doctor’s TARDIS. Boo, hiss. The role was meant for him.
I wanted to take a crack at writing the Doctor’s first adventure. The television show had been running for a good few years by the time the renegade Time Lord reared his satanic face. The Master had to be there at the start. (I imagined a more convoluted explanation to allow for the absence of the first Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan. A story for another time. In a sequel, perhaps.)
If he were associated with the Doctor, surely the Master would’ve shared adventures with the Doctor back on Gallifrey – before leaving that world. I cobbled together some gobbledegook in the best traditions of WHO writers down through the decades, and this story was the result.
I should say a few words about continuity. Well, I’m glad that’s out of the way.
Certain topics are naturally off-limits in the television show. The David Tennant Doctor crossing his own time-stream to have a chat with the Patrick Troughton Doctor, for example. Only camera trickery or the recasting of the Troughton role would make such things possible on television.
Over in the book world, however, almost anything goes. The Doctor could bump into an earlier version of the Master. Not that the Doctor does, in this story. They manage to miss one another. Could you imagine David Tennant finishing a scone as he jumps through a window? Billie Piper, wielding an icy umbrella against robots? Job done. At least I was able to give the Doctor’s assistant more to do than scream and look pretty…
SEQUEL BLURB.
In this companion-piece to TWICE AROUND THE LIGHTHOUSE, Rose Tyler realises that a time traveller’s unfinished business can be finished anywhere. And anywhen. The life of a time traveller has its ups, downs, and zigzag moves. Just ask the Doctor.
The frantic effort to save Rose begins on a snowy afternoon in 1986. Legwarmers are starting to seem passé. The Doctor slumbers through an important lecture that he’s dragged Rose along to. And a rather disturbed man is about to take to the stage with a very unusual recording.
A sense of emptiness fills the lone occupant of the TARDIS. The Doctor lost so many friends, and relatives, down through the centuries. Is there a way to ensure that Rose Tyler, Chrononaut, makes it home in time for tea?
This tale is a sequel to TWICE AROUND THE LIGHTHOUSE. Go back in time and read that book first.
HOME IN TIME FOR TEA.
Some planets have more than one sun in the sky. The desolate planet Skaro, home of the relentless alien-machine hybrids known as the Daleks, lost its second sun in prehistoric times. Instead of causing mass-extinction, the loss of this remote star altered Skaro’s climate. Giving the Kaleds the evolutionary edge over the competition.
After endless years, these would-be Daleks were to evolve into the planet’s dominant species. With more than a little help from a mad scientist bent on global domination. His creations eventually outgrew that quaint notion, and made many a failed bid for control of the known universe.
The planet Earth had no sun in the sky, on that grey November afternoon in 1986. Floorboards squeaked and creaked. Chairs were shuffled. Humans coughed and spluttered. The alien time traveller in the audience snoozed gently as he waited for the warm-up act to finish.
“Excuse me. Thanks. Hi. Thanks awfully. Yes, I’m with stupid. Thanks.”
The human time traveller in the audience apologised profusely as she bumped past people in an attempt to return to her seat with a minimum of fuss. Though Rose Tyler fought valiantly, hers was a lost cause. The village hall was packed. Disruption was inevitable.
She’d heard a vicious rumour that sandwiches were on sale, and went in search of these mythical treasures. Rose received approving nods from various pasty-faced attendees. Her tan, acquired on prehistoric Skaro, under the light of two suns, had faded. But her blonde locks were drawing attention. As were her bright red waterproof coat and leggings. Rose nudged her companion’s legs off her seat.
“Five more minutes, Davros. Then you can torture me all you like.”
“You’ve used that chat-up line before.”
“Reverse the polarity…”
“Doctor.”
“Davros? Since when have you had blonde hair? Or hair, come to that. And legs. Where did you steal those? The sandwiches, not the legs.”
“I bought some sandwiches.”
“Rose.”
“Yes. Stavros was a character in Kojak.”
“Right. Must make a note of that. Have they started the main show? What did I miss?”
“Halley’s Comet, being hit by a space probe. That was a big story back in March/April. We’ve just had some slides.”
“Huh. Isn’t even Halley’s Comet. Belongs to an alien named Reggie.”
“Sh.”
“What?! It’s common knowledge.”
“Change the subject.”
“Nice coat, by the way.”
“Thanks for lending it to me.”
“You’re welcome. No trouble with the funny money?”
“A lot of people still hate pound coins in the futu…place where I live. Hard to believe they came in just a few years ago. Hope no one examines the dates on the ones I handed over.”
“We’ll just chalk that up to a mistake at the Mint, if anyone asks.”
“Yeah.”
“You remind me of a girl who walks through the woods to grandma’s house, in that coat.”
“Why Doctor, what big teeth you have.”
“Yes. You never quite get used to the teeth when the transformation kicks in.”
The attendees struggled to stay awake as The Planet’s Most Boring Man™ worked his way toward the end of whatever it was he was talking about. Around the Doctor and Rose, ears perked up at the mention of the girl in the coat, the woods, grandma’s house, and transformation. Was the conversation veering off into lycanthropy?
No. The Doctor was referring to a phenomenon he pronounced as Regeneration when speaking his own language. That language was Gallifreyan. Usually, at least in Rose’s company, he spoke English. When excited, or explaining dense technical terms, he slipped back into his native tongue.
This made little difference to Rose Tyler. The blonde in the red coat had been to countless alien worlds. On each, she’d been able to understand almost everything said to her. (Some of the Doctor’s technical explanations were a little too dense at times, and defied logic rather than translation.)
After a trip in the Doctor’s amazing time machine, Rose was dismayed to find that her brain had been scrambled. This wouldn’t have been the case in an ordinary time machine, the Doctor liked to boast. Only a trip in his amazing time machine could scramble a person’s mind. In more ways than one.
For Rose, the side-effect was an uncanny ability to understand, and be understood in, practically any language the universe threw at her. She could read Gallifreyan, and understand the spoken form. When the Doctor said Regeneration instead of regeneration, Rose knew he was speaking in his native tongue.
Regeneration was the Gallifreyan ability to rejuvenate an old or dying body, and carry on much as before. With a different face, and modified personality. Though Rose veered into fairy tale territory with talk of her red coat, the Doctor had switched to the subject of his latest set of teeth.
When Rose first met the Doctor, fobbing off one of those attempted invasions of Earth, he had looked and acted quite differently. So she knew what he meant when he muttered about those teeth. Their conversations often carried meanings hidden from casual bystanders. She let the crowd think she was the girl going to granny’s, and that he was the big bad wolf.
“There’s a bad moon rising, Doctor.”
“Is there? No, that’s in the next century. And several star systems across. Is this bloke being paid to sap our collective will?”
“Behave.”
There was laughter and scattered applause at the Doctor’s mini-review. The man on the stage took the applause as though meant for him, thanked the audience, and made a without-further-ado speech introducing the next guest speaker.
“What’s brought us here, Doctor? And I don’t mean a large blue box.”
“An idea I had about tracing the roots of certain things. Or possibly the routes.”
“Yeah. Why did people stop wearing legwarmers in the 1990s?”
“Global Warming?”
“You said our trip was something to do with an article you’d come across in the…back on the boat.”
“Which boat?”
“HMS TARDIS.”
“Oh. Yeah. The boat. Well, back aboard the…boat…I ended up listening to a radio show. Which plugged this talk. Here we are.”
“The radio show wasn’t related to Halley’s Comet. You slept through that bit.”
“Reggie’s Comet.”
“Whatever. Is this the bloke we’re here to see?”
“No. This is the bloke we’re here to hear.”
Shuffling bodies indicated a change in personnel. The Doctor considered this detour to be a detour. Nothing would come of it. Still, at least he’d get a laugh or two out of the audience. The man he’d come to hear loped into view.
“And I’m sure you’ll give a warm welcome to Professor David Whitaker.”
“Pay attention, Rose. And try not to be embarrassed sitting next to me.”
“Here we go…”
Professor Whitaker was a tall lean fellow with the air of Boris Karloff to him. Though he wasn’t a mad scientist, his friends all thought he was. The Professor’s guest-spot on the Radio 4 science-slot did nothing to dispel the notion. Rose whispered to the Doctor as the applause died down.
“What’s his subject?”
“Time.”
“And why are we here?”
“I picked up a Radio 4 broadcast on the scanner. He’s invited time travellers to put in an appearance during his lecture.”
“Try not to be embarrassed sitting next to you. In my blazing red coat. Thanks a bunch.”
*
“I am supposed to be a serious scientist. Though this talk is a little outside my chosen field, I think I can safely state that this topic is outside most chosen fields. To be blunt, is time travel possible? I hadn’t expected such a response to my plug for this talk on the radio. The presenter goaded me into the obvious point about time travellers attending my talk. And I invited any time travellers listening to come on down and join the fun. Perhaps even throw some pointers my way.”
Laughter filled the hall. Professor Whitaker smiled and nodded appreciatively. His gaze was drawn to a dark-haired man in a pinstripe suit who waved enthusiastically. A massive comedy-effect wink added to the strange atmosphere in the place. The blonde girl in the red coat, seated next to the enthusiastic man, seemed put out by his antics. She tutted, and folded her arms crossly.
“Of course, this is not a speculative woolly-minded chat about the possibilities or impossibilities of time travel. I have a few serious points to make about the science behind the science. That’s called observation. Science depends on observation. Without looking into the physical side of the problem, creating a time machine, what could we deduce about time travel through observation?”
The audience found Professor Whitaker’s easygoing style very smooth to take after the appalling warm-up act. They waited for the rhetorical answer to his non-rhetorical question. He had hoped someone in the audience would throw a good idea into the mix. No takers. Not even the enthusiastic man in the pinstripe suit.
“We travel through time minute by minute. This is a physical process. But time travel is more a product of our imagination. We can walk in a straight line, and walk back the way. Our minds tell us that if it is possible to walk in different directions, then it might be possible to travel in the same fashion – not across space, but through space-time.”
He took a sip of water.
“There’s no evidence for this. We simply assume that the idea of travel through time is possible. Whether or not it is practical – ah, that’s different. Can we go forward, and backward? Is it possible to travel up through time, or down? Diagonally? In a zigzag?”
Rose flickered signals at the Doctor by wrinkling her brow, tightening one side of her face and crinkling her eyes. Behave. The Doctor, adept at understanding alien body-language – and bodiless alien language – gleefully ignored her as he whispered into her ear.
“We’ve had more than a few zigzag journeys aboard HMS you-know-what.”
Whitaker was witty, and fielded a few questions from the audience as he gradually took them to the heart of his subject. This was the deduction of the existence of time machines through the scientific observation of surrounding items and conditions. The Doctor opened his mouth to speak. Rose kicked him in the ankle.
“Ow!”
“Sorry.”
The Doctor was clearly in pain. And Rose wasn’t at all sorry. She was trying desperately to come up with a name for herself, so that any name used wouldn’t return to haunt her or bite her on the backside. The first name which popped into her head was Moneypenny. No good here.
“Hauntings. Are these ghosts from the past or are they future events trying to manifest themselves, to the bewilderment of our primitive three-dimensional human sensory organs?”
“He’s good, Rose. I like this guy.”
“YEAH. I’M ALWAYS THINKING THREE-DIMENSIONALLY.”
His cheap trick worked. Instead of kicking Rose back or causing a mock-fuss, the Doctor needled his assistant with whispered comments. She retorted more loudly than she’d intended. Her words echoed around the hall. She felt Professor Whitaker’s eyes on her. The redness of her cheeks sought to match the colour of her coat. Everyone laughed.
“Yes. Thanks. That does raise an interesting point. How do we think beyond the third dimension?”
“Second star from the right. Then straight on…”
The Doctor raised the biggest laugh. There was applause. He stood and bowed. Rose sank as deeply as she could into her coat. Would this day never end? She’d done the daftest thing. Cutting the Doctor off in mid-flow – before the flow had a chance to flow – was futile.
“I see what you’re getting at, Professor W. You aren’t interested in the form time machines might take. But the form taken by time travellers themselves. This isn’t about the mechanical aspect of time travel, but the…human isn’t the right word. The human factor.”
“Yes. Who is to say that space-time travel would be manned at all? That was part of my test on the radio show. I’d asked any time travellers, interested in my lecture, to attend my lecture. But there was a specific reason for supposing that no one would come. I expected an unmanned time machine to put in an appearance.”
“Don’t see one. Maybe it’s disguised as a chair.”
“This is the big question concerning time travel. If time travel is possible, why don’t time travellers reveal themselves to us?”
“There are many reasons.”
“Would you care to share some with us…”
“Doctor. Well. To avoid causing friction in the space-time continuum.”
“By friction, you don’t mean physical friction.”
“Emotional friction. You’d upset people by revealing the results of sporting events ahead of time. Though most of those people would be bookmakers.”
“Yes.”
“Going by observation, someone reading tomorrow’s newspaper tomorrow would see that no one turned up at this lecture in a time machine. If that someone used a time machine to travel back to today, could they alter the events – and the newspaper headline? Now if time is unalterable, the answer is no. And that is why time travellers don’t bother turning up to lectures like this. On the other hand…”
“What if time can be changed?”
“Yes. Going by observation, someone reading tomorrow’s newspaper tomorrow would see that no one turned up at this lecture in a time machine. If that someone used a time machine to travel back to today, in order to alter events, and proved the existence of time travel, there would be uproar, general disbelief, or a cover-up. The newspaper headline might not change at all.”
“That’s a fair point.”
“If you rather foolishly suppose space-time to be immutable, unalterable, and stable, then all you do is read the news and decide not to bother. Accepting that time is mutable, alterable, and unstable, you have to ask yourself that awkward question. What happens to me today, if I reveal, yesterday, that I can travel through time? Will yesterday’s people come for me, and burn me out of my laboratory before today arrives? Before I can make my trip into the past? It’s not a job for amateurs, you know.”
“No. I don’t imagine it would be.”
“If I told you, in strictest confidence, that I am a time traveller, would you believe me?”
“Part of me would like to believe you. What proof could you offer?”
“None. I could give you a few fantastic racing tips. But that wouldn’t be proof of time travel. My winning-streak at the racecourse would indicate race-fixing. And the police would be after me. I might show you a few pound coins minted in the future. That wouldn’t be proof. Again, the police would be after me for faking coins.”
Rose stared at the back of the chair in front of her. A hole was burning its way through her pocket. This imaginary hole was making way for the coins. They would run across the hall floor in a sudden Hitchcockian burst of suspicious activity. All eyes would turn on Rose.
“These are excellent points, Doctor…”
“Yes. Though limiting.”
“How so?”
“Who is to say where, or when, a time traveller will come from? An isolated figure, working in obscurity, might perfect a form of time travel in the Earth’s past, not the future.”
“Interesting choice of phrase. Earth’s past.”
“Or the great scientific breakthrough might have occurred at some point in the deep past of the planet Mars. Where technology grew advanced enough for time travel to become a possibility, while humans were still living in caves.”
“Amazing. Wow. You’ve really given this some thought, Doctor.”
“Do you believe me when I say that I’m a time traveller? Or laugh, as the audience does? Perhaps you’re inclined to believe me when I deny that I am a time traveller. Strapped to a chair, under interrogation, with my futuristic technology in enemy hands.”
The Doctor waved his sonic screwdriver around for emphasis.
“Where did you get this? What does it do? Tell us everything!”
“It’s an electric toothbrush!”
More laughter as some wag broke the Doctor’s concentration. The Doctor bowed, and sat. Rose closed her eyes and sighed. She was trying to count coins in her pocket. Her mobile phone might give her away as a time traveller. Or as an agent, sent into a foreign country with espionage equipment on her shady person. She tried to calculate a fake birth-date, in case someone grilled her under a spotlight.
The Doctor reined in his blustery views throughout most of the rest of the proceedings. When Professor Whitaker started to discuss paradoxical behaviour and changing historical events, the Doctor felt honour-bound to wade in.
“Take, for example the Grandfather Paradox. You travel back in time with the express intention of killing your grandfather at a young age, before the rest of the family is conceived. Does time repair itself and force you and your whole timeline out of existence, or does your action create a parallel world in which you are the only surviving member of your family – complete with memories of the original timeline you had once inhabited?”
“Hello. Me again. Grandfather Paradox. Nonsense! If I were a time traveller, would I conduct such a dangerous experiment in time travel? Far more likely, were I to lower myself to murder, that I’d carry out the experiment on your grandfather…wouldn’t you say?”
“Er…”
“Then observe the results one step removed from the action, so-to-speak. With no direct risk to my own existence. Grandfather Paradox, indeed.”
At the use of the phrase, the Doctor subconsciously grasped for the lapels on his jacket. Both hands came up in a gesture he had not used in hundreds of years. Aside from being a time traveller, the Doctor was a time traveller with a greatly-extended lifespan.
Conversation continued with contributors butting in to suggest that you could be responsible for creating yourself by travelling back in time and impersonating your own grandfather. The Doctor abandoned this mind-boggling concept and sneaked a look at Rose. She stared into his eyes and tried hard not to burst out laughing.
Whispers.
“Doctor. How much longer?”
“We’ll be going soon.”
“I should have done some reading for this.”
“A Brief History of Time, perhaps.”
“Should I tackle that?”
“You’d only go poking holes in it.”
“That bad?”
“Not bad. Oh, and not published yet.”
“I’ll wait for another rainy day, then.”
“Bored?”
“Embarrassed.”
“You know what I’m like.”
“Can’t resist having fun.”
“All our jokes are private jokes, Rose.”
“Yeah.”
*
“Let us try to imagine what a time machine might look like. Anyone?”
Rose placed her hand on the Doctor’s, and shook her head from side to side. He shrugged defeat and sealed his lips as members of the audience cried out. Some answers were most unusual. Others were rather obvious.
“A DeLorean!”
“Yes, thank you. We’ve all seen that film.”
“Doctor.”
“Mm?”
“Can the TARDIS do eighty-eight miles per hour?”
“Certainly. If you throw it onto the back of a lorry that can do eighty-eight miles per hour. Have you noticed anything about the barrage of non-rhetorical rhetorical questions Professor Whitaker’s been asking over the course of this talk?”
“That they aren’t rhetorical. He expects us to answer him, then chips in with his own view when no one rises to the bait.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s just his style, though? Or is he fishing for answers from…real time travellers?”
“Mm. You’ve seen that film. About the time machine made from a DeLorean.”
“Yeah. Why, were you a consultant on those films?”
“No. And it’s that film. Not those films. That film came out last year.”
“The other films…yeah. Last year. That film. I hope they make more. What’s your point?”
“In that movie, the time machine was on wheels. Why would a time machine need wheels?”
“Don’t ask me. Why would a time machine have a swimming pool with a mini-sub floating in it?”
“You never know when you might need a mini-sub. Let’s see if Professor Whitaker answers this particular non-rhetorical rhetorical question.”
*
“My own thoughts? Aren’t confined to imagining what the time machine looks like. I suppose one of the reasons for a lack of time travellers queuing up to reveal themselves…is disguise. They might travel in a time machine that could look like anything at all.”
Strong looks passed between the Doctor and his assistant.
“Then you’d never have to reveal yourself to people who wouldn’t believe you anyway. My real question is, what would the time machine sound like? Is there a rush of displaced air as the machine appears? A thunderclap? Or vast whoosh? A ringing noise, to signal arrival, perhaps.”
Professor Whitaker reached for a bulky tape recorder. All technology in 1986 was bulky, to Rose’s jaded eyes. Television sets, radios, shoelaces, bathroom taps. The Professor shifted his gaze toward a technician at the side of the stage, who gave the Prof a thumbs-up sign. At least the speakers were working today.
“I thought I’d finish with a tape I made for you. This is a collection of thought-provoking sounds. Perhaps some of these might be time machines. Be on the lookout. Or…listen in, I should say. Thanks for putting up with my madcap ramblings.”
The audience applauded. Whoops and warbles started up. Shuddering sounds followed. Squeaky wooden noises scratched their way across the tape. The Doctor looked at Rose as the last sound wheezed and groaned across the room.
Rose dipped her head as she recognised the dematerialisation sounds put out by the Doctor’s time machine. The TARDIS was no DeLorean. But then, no DeLorean was a TARDIS. Rose raised her head and turned to the Doctor.
“Here we go…”
Chapter One.
“Doctor?”
“Yes. I think we should have a word with Professor Whitaker. I’ve taken a sudden passionate interest in time travel.”
“Wouldn’t be like you. Don’t say come on and expect me to follow.”
“Come off it. Don’t expect me to say come on and expect you to hang back.”
“All this from a radio broadcast.”
“Hey, the man invited time travellers. Dare we disappoint him?”
“Can you do some sort of instant background check, to see if he’s alien?”
“You mean, ask directions to the nearest hotel? That’s not a universal indicator. Some alien invaders plan that stuff in advance, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah. Those Muppet-like creatures you told me about.”
“Infiltrated The Muppet Show, didn’t they? Still, no lasting harm done. Come on.”
“Yes, Holmes. Though I still believe that if you’re the Doctor, then I should be Sherlock.”
*
Bodies were squeezed past.
They ambushed Professor Whitaker in the tiny excuse for a car park. Heavy snow was falling. Rose felt that she’d stand out even more. Red on white. The Professor’s car was a pale grey thing designed in 1980-odd. She reminded herself this was 1980-odd, and that she wasn’t staring at a really old model of car. Rose was a girl out of time.
The Doctor grabbed a box of lecture notes as it slipped from Whitaker’s hand. Whitaker was having trouble with the hatchback. The snow wasn’t helping. Rose spotted a black car parked across the street. A dark-haired woman was peering at them. She was very beautiful. Her gaze cut right through Rose.
One of the jovial hecklers from the village hall scurried across to the black car, blocking Rose’s view of the driver. The car zoomed away. Rose felt alone. People were melting into thickening snow. Only the Doctor’s voice, cutting across the weather, told Rose that she wasn’t all by herself.
Heavy rain was always said to be chucking it down. The same wasn’t true of snow. With rain, you could hear water being chucked down. Snow smothered things. For a moment, Rose felt as though she stood on an alien landscape. But she was home. Out of her own time, on Earth.
Alien landscapes had become the norm. She wondered if she stacked up points, based on the number of space stations she’d visited. There was a running joke about the number of stars Rose awarded to the hulks she and the Doctor toured. Five stars for a space station with a good alien invasion or major interplanetary war kicking off nearby.
“Professor Whitaker.”
“Good catch. Thanks. Doctor…”
“I’m Doctor Ross. This is Nurse Hathaway.”
“Hello nurse. Are you wearing the uniform under there?”
“Oi. Keep it clean.”
“No harm intended.”
“You’ll have to excuse her. She’s been touchy ever since being mistaken for a stripper.”
“Yes, THANK YOU, DOCTOR.”
“Not at all, Rosie.”
“How’s the ankle? Need more treatment?”
“I’ll be fine thanks, Rose. We loved your lecture, Professor. Fantastic stuff. Missed the slides. That was the bloke before you. Yeah, the lecture. Wonderful. I was saying to Nurse Tyler…”
“That it was such a shame she couldn’t get away to take in your lecture. So I came along instead. Nurse Hathaway.”
“Absolutely right, Rose. Nurse Tyler would have loved this. We get a big kick out of time travel lectures on HMS TARDIS.”
“You’re with the Royal Navy?”
“Shore-leave.”
“That’s why we’re not dressed. In that sort of uniform.”
There was an awkward silence. Rose watched Professor Whitaker’s lack of reaction at the mention of the Doctor’s time machine. Properly, the Doctor’s space-time machine. Or, hyping things up, the Doctor’s amazing space-time machine. The TARDIS. Not really HMS TARDIS.
The Doctor also noted Whitaker’s lack of reaction. So. Whitaker was interested in time travel, and time machines. He’d recorded a TARDIS dematerialising. But he hadn’t appeared to recognise Rose, or the Doctor. Perhaps Whitaker had merely acquired the recording of the TARDIS doing what it did best.
“We’d love to come and chat to you about your work.”
“I work in electronics. Time travel is just a hobby.”
“Oh. I’m the other way around.”
“The Doctor means that he loves the idea of time travel so much that he treats it like a job. And electronics is more of a hobby. Isn’t that right, Doctor Ross?”
“Doctor who? Oh. Me.
“Well, I have to get back to London
“Me too.”
“We’re staying in town, Doctor.”
“Ah. Yes. So we are. Thanks, Nurse. As soon as we pack up, we’ll be heading to London
“Well…”
“Rose, why not give him your phone number.”
“Sure. Love to. I’ll write it down for you. We should get back to the hotel, before we disappear under this snow. Prof. Nice meeting you.”
“This is a bit long. It isn’t an international number?”
“Ah. I’ve added the area code. It’s new. They’re always changing, telephone numbers. Aren’t they?”
“Well, I’ll call you tomorrow. See if I can arrange something.”
“That would be good.”
“Time travel, eh. Bags of fun.”
“Glad you both enjoyed the lecture.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it.”
Whitaker packed his gear into the car, drove out into the road, beeped his horn and disappeared into the whitening afternoon landscape. Rose kicked the Doctor’s ankle. He hopped around and made a show of being badly hurt. Which he wasn’t.
“My pretty assistant.”
“It was all I could think of. He didn’t bat an eyelid when I mentioned the TARDIS. And he clearly doesn’t recognise us. So we don’t meet him in his past. If Whitaker didn’t record the tape of the TARDIS dematerialising, or rematerialising, then we have to find out who did.”
“Nurse Tyler. After you introduced me as Nurse Hathaway.”
“Anyone can slip up. Even me.”
“You mean especially you. Doctor Ross. And Nurse Hathaway. You’d better hope Professor Whitaker doesn’t develop a taste for er.”
“That show won’t be on telly for years yet.”
“Give him my phone number.”
“Yeah. It was all I could think of. That will work, though. He’ll get through to you. Even though your number seems suspicious in this era.”
“Yeah. And my phone is suspiciously smaller and more mobile than any other mobile phone in this time, too. Bad enough that I’m wearing red legwarmers over these jeans. Being fancied by a mad scientist old enough to be a pervert. That’s bad.”
“He’s a semi-respectable age.”
“Now, maybe. Not in my future. Twenty-odd years down the line. Being fancied in legwarmers. Blimey. I should nip back to the TARDIS and hunt out dozens of bangles for my wrists. And pump up my hair as big as I can make it go. But for you to start hunting out dates for me…with mad scientists.”
“Rose.”
“You made a Cider with Rosie pun at my expense in a pub.”
“Which I had to explain to you before you went into a stroppy mood…”
“That was once. Call me Rosie again, and you’ll need a real nurse for that ankle.”
“Say no more.”
“Now what?”
“We nip back to the TARDIS, out of this snow, and jump forward one day. To London
“Yeah. Well. There is a mystery we should get to the bottom of.”
“Exactly. Why did people stop wearing legwarmers as the ’80s faded?”
“I’m glad of them, in this cold. Come on, Doctor. Back to that motorway café over the hill. We can sit and eat sludge. Then return to the TARDIS.”
“HMS TARDIS.”
“Suppose the Prof checks your credentials.”
“We’re fine if he checks my credentials, Rose. You might be in a spot of bother, though.”
*
Fortified by motorway café sludge, the Doctor and his red-clad companion faded into the snow. Their tracks led to a broken chain-link fence, and stopped, mysteriously, at a bare patch of ground on which no snow had fallen. They had stepped into tomorrow, to make and keep a date with a mad scientist.
*
“We’ll camp out in the woods.”
“Inside the TARDIS.”
“Of course. Have you seen the snow?!”
“We’d better be able to find the TARDIS in this snow, Doctor.”
“Just look for a bulky badly-made snowman. With a light on top.”
“What did you make of that business back there. The TARDIS. On tape.”
“Poor-quality recording. Either that, or the old girl was in bad shape.”
“How is the old girl?”
“She’s in excellent shape. Never better, in fact. Doing very well.”
“Does this mean that, at some point in our future, we travel back to be recorded by Professor Whitaker’s colleagues? And the TARDIS will be in a right old state at the time?”
“Hope not. Can you see blue?”
“Wow. The snow’s settling over the panels in the doors. You can still read the sign, though.”
POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX.
Rose stared at the obsolete exterior of the Police Box. The meaningful look she’d shared with the Doctor, during Whitaker’s waffle about disguised time machines, had its origins in the incongruous sight before her. At one time, Police Boxes were common. They served as communication points for police officers or members of the public who needed to make an emergency call. Prisoners could be held, temporarily, inside.
The prospect of finding a police officer within, sheltering from ferocious weather, a cup of tea to hand, lecturing a criminal on the errors of his ways, was far removed from the reality inside this particular box.
For this box was an illusory one. The Doctor’s people were Gallifreyans. Solar engineers, and conquerors of time, they had referred to themselves as Time Lords. Theirs was no idle boast. In order to study time, they reasoned, time machines needed certain qualities.
One. They had to be portable. Wheels would not be required. These were space-time machines, capable of travelling the time vortex to reach any destination in time or space. Two. To accommodate the vast engines required to propel their vessels through space-time, the insides would be larger than the outsides. Three. The outer surfaces would possess chameleon qualities, capable of taking on any shape. These vessels were called TARDISes.
The Doctor’s was broken. He’d grown tired of dusty Time Lord life, and planned to steal a TARDIS. Rather than observe time, he’d wanted to participate in time. When he stole a Type Forty TARDIS from a maintenance bay on Gallifrey, he picked the one with a faulty chameleon circuit. At first, he travelled throughout space-time in disguise.
On a visit to his favourite planet, Earth, he set the disguise to mimic a Police Box in an era when they were still on the streets. And the chameleon circuit blew. Being a renegade Time Lord, the Doctor was unable to find replacement parts for the faulty circuitry. His time machine always looked like a Police Box, and always would.
The Doctor had grown so used to the outside shape of the machine that he didn’t really want to fix the broken circuits. Travel through space-time just wouldn’t be the same without a trusty old blue box to come home to, after a hard day fighting off evil alien schemes.
*
“Would you like to go first?
“Age before beauty, Doctor.”
“Pride before a fall, Rose.”
“Ouch.”
“That’ll be the fall.”
“One of these fine days, Doctor, we’ll walk into a genuine blue Police Box by mistake. Then what will we do?”
“Phone the police, and say our TARDIS has been stolen.”
“By a couple of joyriders.”
“Alien joyriders.”
“What makes you think they’d be alien?”
“I’m a Time Lord. Everyone is alien. Hop in. Youth before experience.”
“Oi. I’m quite an experienced time traveller.”
“For a human.”
“Is that a compliment, or a dig?”
“Yes.”
*
Rose shook snow off her shiny red coat, and stamped her feet. Snow blew into the massive interior of the TARDIS as the youthful blonde crossed the threshold. The Doctor glanced at the landscape, whitening behind him. He mock-shivered, and crossed from the outside world to the otherworldly space known as home.
“Doctor?”
“Yes Rose.”
“We’re in another dimension.”
“More or less.”
“That’s why there’s a massive time machine hidden inside a not-so-large blue Police Box.”
“Yeah.”
The Doctor passed some supporting pillars, crossed the large control room, and leaned against the time machine’s main console. Snow blew right in through the doors. He turned, remembered the doors, and bounded back to close them.
“Everything you need is in here. Including the atmosphere. You can open those doors on an airless world. I saw you do it when we stopped off on some lifeless moons, just to get our bearings.”
“Yeah. We’re protected. If the TARDIS has one thing in abundance, it’s protection. Bags of safety. Though, curiously, no airbags. As far as I know.”
“The barrier stops water flooding the TARDIS. And radiation doesn’t bother us. So…what about all that snow?”
“Ah. Benevolent snow. Not harmful. And therefore, safe. That’s how it crossed the threshold.”
“Nothing violent can occur inside the TARDIS. Anti-hijacking technology.”
“Never say never, Rose. There have been exceptions.”
“Back in a minute.”
“Cold out there. You should stay in. Sit by the fire. I think I have a fireplace, somewhere. It’s a digital illusion, but you can stoke the coals with the poker provided.”
“Science experiment. Leave the doors open.”
“Right.”
Rose returned to the cold. The snow was falling heavily, in great waves. Her trip to the TARDIS, after a meal of motorway café sludge, had allowed more than enough time for the snow to lie. She scraped a modest snowball together, whirled, and hurled it at the Doctor. Direct hit.
“Explain that.”
“Unfair!”
“One snowball, or a kick to the ankles for being obnoxious in the car park?”
“Semi-unfair. Well, if that had been a bullet, fired at the TARDIS, or a bomb hidden inside the snowball, I wouldn’t have been affected.”
“My snowball wasn’t lethal enough.”
“Right. If you’d thrown a flaming snowball…”
“Where in the universe does snow burst into flame?”
“Oh, loads of places. The Flaming Snows of Waterloo
“It’s a space station.”
“Course it is. Now. No more monkeying around.”
“Was that an evolutionary dig at humans?”
“Only if you want it to be.”
Rose watched the Doctor sweep snow out of the TARDIS with a handy broom. Surely he hadn’t fished that out of his capacious pockets? With the doors closed and outer coats set aside, the time travellers were ready for a short trip into the future.
The Doctor turned his back on Rose and flicked a pointless sequence of switches. She dragged an old wooden chair into the control room, sat down, and struggled to remove her legwarmers in a dignified manner. The clicking of switches irritated her.
“Just pretend to be doing something while I ditch these.”
“I didn’t want to laugh.”
“Let’s stick to the problem at hand, Doctor.”
“The sound of a dematerialising TARDIS. In very poor shape. We skip back a week, and appear just as Whitaker records the sound. Possibly.”
“Our first task is to meet him in reasonable surroundings. A café. Then get him talking about those recordings. Without giving ourselves away.”
“I’ll dematerialise now, and drop into the time vortex.”
The Doctor set the controls, and whisked his TARDIS out of regular space-time. Lights flashed, indicating the transition. Outside, in the snow, the blue Police Box faded with a wheezing sound. An intermittent groaning accompanied the staged transfer from one reality to another. This barrage of sound had been recorded on tape. How had Whitaker come into possession of that recording?
“London
“Yes, but where in London London
“I was surprised that he didn’t want to accept the stash at first. That was once, Rose.”
“Let’s stick to the regular quite-high-low-profile we usually hide behind.”
“Deal. Let’s move forward in time until Whitaker calls.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We jump back in time. Return to the lecture just as Whitaker arrives. You hide in the boot of his car. Tail him home. Problem solved.”
“Think of a better plan.”
“We visit the BBC. I flash my psychic identity paper at the people on the front desk, and we talk to the people who interviewed him on the radio. Better still, we jump further back in time. Recommend Professor Whitaker for the radio interview. Some research assistant finds his address for us.”
“Why not just look him up in the phone book?”
“Too easy. Yeah. We’ll do it that way. I think I have a 1985/86 phone book kicking around.”
“For Earth, or some other planet?”
“I’m moving the TARDIS forward one hour at a time. There’ll be an energy pulse as Whitaker’s telephone tries to connect to your extra-special mobile phone.”
“What did you do with yours?”
“I sat it somewhere. Under a wobbly desk, I think.”
“And we were supposed to be organised when it came to communications.”
“There’s your pulse. Monday morning. Ten o’clock. Take the call.”
*
“Hello. Rose T…Professor Whitaker? Hi. Rose Hathaway.”
“How did you know I’d be calling?”
“We arranged that earlier. I mean, yesterday. Doctor Ross is interested in your work.”
The Doctor was winking at Rose and pulling faces. Hardly dignified. She glanced at the discarded leggings on the chair. Those seemed funnier than the Doctor’s face-pulling antics. Rose looked at the Doctor again. He raised a thumb and mouthed doing fine at her.
“Yes. He seemed to have a few interesting ideas.”
“We were both particularly interested in the tape of sounds you recorded. The Doctor had a fanciful notion that one of the sounds might be from a genuine time machine. I’ve been teasing him about that. But he had a whole explanation worked out.”
“Really. I’d love to hear it.”
“We’re driving in specially to have a chat.”
“You could come to my workplace. There’s a decent canteen. And a much better café down the road, if you don’t like decent canteens.”
“We’ve just had motorway sludge at a service station.”
“You’ll be hungry again by one o’clock. I’ll give you directions…”
*
“Where are you off to?”
“To change into different clothes. We barely left this guy. I want to look slightly different. You should change.”
“Nonsense. This suit is fine. Where are we headed?”
“A place called the Genesis Foundation. I’ll give you the details after a change of gear.”
“Sounds ominous. The Genesis Foundation. A flimsy front for a menacing group of scientists devoted to mastering video technology. I wonder if they favour Betamax? Not that video technology matters, in the long run…”
*
Given her alleged nautical profession, Rose should have hunted out a uniform. Instead, she wore black shoes, tights, and a skirt. She went for a black shirt under a black sweater. Very conservative, for the period. You’re supposed to be a nurse, tending patients. Not Cyndi Lauper, just wanting to have fun.
*
The TARDIS wasn’t there. Then it was. Gone again. Back for more. The image stabilised. After a minute, the Doctor emerged and studied the dead-end alleyway in which he’d parked his amazing time machine. Not a good sign.
“Wear your red coat. You’ll be more memorable.”
“Are you saying I’m not memorable?”
“Hello, who are you? Rose. In black. With a severe look, for this era. No ribbons? Big flappy bows. Lethal amounts of hairspray. Bangles.”
“You’re dressed like an Intergalactic Spiv.”
“A mere Galactic Spiv, surely.”
“I’ll wear this red coat. No wolf jokes.”
“Goldilocks, you have my word.”
“No porridge jokes. Is this a dead-end?”
“Yes. But there is a loose piece of corrugated iron. See. And we’re parked across the road from this café we’re supposed to meet the guy at. Come on.”
The Doctor slid the corrugated iron back and stepped through onto a windy street. No snow here. He reached for his hat. Not wearing one, he let his non-existent hat blow away. Rose stumbled into him as she pulled her red hood up to protect her ears. He sighed.
“I’d rather have snow in the country, than a world full of wind in the city.”
“Who are you quoting?”
“Me.
“There’s the café, Doctor. Let’s order as little as possible. I’m full from that meal we had earlier today. Yesterday. Earlier.”
“Earlier today yesterday. Two teas, and a bit of a scrounge when no one’s looking.”
“A scrounge for what?”
“Crumb-laden plates.”
*
David Whitaker sat in his office, next door to the empty lab. All the paperwork was done. He’d been covering his backside for months. Ever since the Genesis project had gone in search of Halley’s Comet. A long trip. With a successful end.
That wasn’t his thing.
He’d recommended one or two electronic devices for the scientific array. Mostly, he covered the Genesis Foundation’s remit to spread the benefits of scientific education. These foundations were all so bloody secret, with fingers in many pies. No wonder they were reluctant, or unwilling, to reveal the full nature and scope of their activities.
Whitaker hadn’t done anything wrong. Stuck to the job. Handled the boring paperwork. Gone on lecture tours and fact-finding holidays. Contributed to the probe mission. Checked the data sent back from the Halley job. Whitaker had no backside to cover.
Unless you counted…that. He stood and shut the outer window-blinds. Then he closed the blinds on the interior window, overlooking reception. The inquisitive Marla Kirk was sitting on the receptionist’s desk, chatting about the latest party she’d been to.
Marla asked an awful lot of strange questions.
She was a favourite with the foundation’s great and good. A devious woman with many fingers of her own in the foundation’s great stack of pies. Marla Kirk had met M.P. Foss. The mysterious voice on the telephone. Was she aiming to become Mrs Foss?
If anyone were to question Whitaker’s sound-proofing of the empty lab, it would be Marla Kirk. That was months ago, and she’d done nothing. No one bothered Whitaker. His unused lab was off-limits on his say-so, and that was good enough for foundation personnel.
“New project.”
That was all he’d said, and all they’d needed to know. He wondered how to explain what went on in that lab. Would his shutting of the blinds attract Marla’s attention? Probably. Whitaker fished a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped into the tiny hallway. He locked the door before moving ahead to the next one.
A separate key was needed for this door. He’d changed the lock himself. Then he was through. He stayed close to the walls. As long as he stayed close to the walls in the dark room, he wouldn’t risk some awful catastrophe by moving anywhere near the centre.
Whitaker flattened himself against the outer wall. No windows. Soundproofed surfaces. He edged to the far side, and felt for the exit. A third key was required for this. He was through and into another short hallway. A fourth key. Unlocking and locking doors as he went, he held the keys as still as could be. Listening for the sound. It never came.
Now he was through to an electronic supply cupboard. This time he listened for activity inside the cupboard. There was no light, but the light would have been blocked by boxes stacked at the rear anyway. He was behind those. Whitaker locked the door, and breathed the smell of a dry room packed with cardboard and foam chip packaging.
He crawled on his hands and knees. The cardboard tunnel was short, ending in an empty box. He pushed the improvised hatch into the main part of the room, and left the tunnel. There was light under the door. Shadows moved. Whitaker heard voices. He waited for silence, then flicked the light on.
By that light, he examined the wall of boxes, and reset his secret door. Key numbers five and six. He used the fifth key to open the supply door. Now he was in an empty hall, close to the stairwell leading down to the canteen.
Whitaker locked the door and pocketed the keyring. The unused key was for his own office door, which he’d wisely left unlocked. Marla Kirk could burst in there to find an empty room. She’d assume that he’d gone to work in the soundproofed lab.
He wasn’t running away. Just…avoiding a tedious conversation with an inquisitive woman. Whitaker walked down the stairs and dodged the canteen. He moved through the main reception hall at the front of the building and swiped a grey plastic card into a slot close to the door. Two receptionists and two security guards saw him do that. If the building caught fire, he would be listed as out rather than in.
“Café and not canteen, Professor?”
“Makes a change, now and then.”
*
Whitaker’s avoidance of Marla Kirk had been pointless. Marla looked in on the Professor a minute after she saw his office blinds shut. Not home. In the lab, then. Or was he? She took the executive lift to the top floor and swiped a red plastic card through the slot beside her unmarked office door.
The door locked behind her. She sat at her desk and unlocked a drawer. Inside was a battery-powered telephone the size of a small car. Marla punched numbers into the walkie-talkie and waited for the familiar thrumming sound which announced the presence of the voice on the telephone.
“Speak.”
“Marla Kirk. I was just going to ask the Professor how his talk on time travel went. He’s retreated to his laboratory.”
“Locked in, again?”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t suspect that we have made our own keys to all those doors?”
“No. There isn’t anything in the lab worth stealing. And I still haven’t asked him about the special soundproofing he ordered. Why would he be suspicious?”
“Perhaps he saw you at the meeting yesterday.”
“Don’t think so. He was busy talking to those mysterious new friends of his.”
“The ones who put forward a few time travel ideas of their own.”
“Yes. Is this all code for something? Has he discovered a sonic weapon? Is he selling his plans to the Russians? My spy in the village hall said they seemed normal.”
“And the other spy. The one you left behind?”
“He had a stranger tale to tell.”
“You should have informed me immediately.”
“There was nothing to it.”
“Tell me everything.”
*
The Doctor grabbed a box of lecture notes as it slipped from Whitaker’s hand. Whitaker was having trouble with the hatchback. The snow wasn’t helping. Rose spotted a black car parked across the street. A dark-haired woman was peering at them. She was very beautiful. Her gaze cut right through Rose.
The knives were out for blondes.
Marla Kirk swished dark hair out of her eyes. The voice on the telephone wanted to know what Professor Whitaker was up to. He’d managed to invite himself onto the radio. Radio 4, no less. To plug a discussion of time travel. And he’d jokingly invited time travellers to attend. Marla had heard it all, now. Or had she? Time travel had nothing to do with time travel.
The ambitious vixen inside Marla scented weirdness in the air. Whitaker had invited people to attend a strange lecture. The whole thing was a set-up to meet…a dark-haired man and his little blonde tart. A tart with a bad dye-job and no fashion-sense.
One of the jovial hecklers from the village hall scurried across to the black car, blocking Rose’s view of the driver. The car zoomed away. Rose felt alone. People were melting into thickening snow. Only the Doctor’s voice, cutting across the weather, told Rose that she wasn’t all by herself.
Marla had seen enough. Her second spy in the camp would report on the newcomers. If Whitaker left his new friends, Marla’s spy would follow the fresh faces. She was interested in what the heckler had to say about the meeting.
“Well?”
“Consider my mind numbed and bent by what went on in there. The preliminaries covered space probes and Halley’s Comet. Wasn’t Whitaker involved in that?”
“At an early point.”
“I thought that was the main bit of business. He hadn’t even taken to the stage. Then he lectured us on time travellers. Not so much time machines, more…time travellers. Did you see the couple he was talking to as I left?”
“Yes. The man grabbed that box Whitaker was holding. Do you think information passed between them? I couldn’t see clearly.”
“Maybe. The way this thing is laid out…just doesn’t seem right.”
“How was the lecture?”
“I chipped in. What would a time machine look like?”
“Did you say a DeLorean?”
“How did you guess. Well, the bloke. He was standing up and butting in. Using very fancy ideas. Phrases. Terms. Maybe they were in code. At the end, Whitaker played a tape of what time machines might sound like.”
“And there he was, in the car park, exchanging information again. His work on our space project wasn’t particularly secret. I wonder what he stumbled on.”
“Are you going to report to the voice?”
“Not immediately. I want to see what my number two picks up. There’s no rush.”
“I wouldn’t keep the voice waiting. He’s patient. But not that patient.”
Marla Kirk’s car powered back to London
*
Fortified by motorway café sludge, the Doctor and his red-clad companion faded into the snow. Their tracks led to a broken chain-link fence, and stopped, mysteriously, at a bare patch of ground on which no snow had fallen. They had stepped into tomorrow, to make and keep a date with a mad scientist.
*
Marla Kirk’s reserve man worked himself up into a cold and bedraggled state. He headed, rather casually, for the motorway café. Snow obscured vision. The dark-haired man and the blonde in red didn’t look back. When he saw the strangers hit the front door, the agent raced back to the village hall car park and picked up his car.
Relocating to the café, he shovelled motorway sludge into his gullet. The couple didn’t seem like a pair of spies. What did a pair of spies seem like? He was spying on them. They finished first, and left. He let them go, keeping an eye on the trail they left in the snow.
His meal done, the reserve agent buttoned his coat and trudged after the pair. He might have to move sharpish if footprints stopped as tyre imprints began. The snow was pretty. And served as a distraction. The foundation agent paused. Was that laughter?
“Unfair!”
He slowed his pace, and glanced back. No one was following him. Now he stopped to listen. Snow settled on his ears. The way ahead was quiet. He moved again, and almost immediately stopped. The wheezing sound he’d heard inside the village hall, on Whitaker’s tape, was coming from a point just ahead. Had Whitaker passed a copy of the tape to these people?
Would they come back this way, after listening to the tape? He’d have to brazen it out, and pretend that he’d gone for a walk in the snow. But no one moved. The agent stooped and studied the prints in the snow. He could only wait so long.
Moving ahead, he reached a disturbed area. The footprints stopped at a square patch in the snow. What was this? No figures in sight. A mystery. Or an airlift? Had they been picked up? Yes. In a basket. Suspended under a hot-air balloon. That was the only explanation the agent could come up with. Could a hot-air balloon fly in cold weather?
Maybe hot-air balloons rose faster through cold air. What about visibility in snow? He knew nothing about hot-air ballooning. The rest of the day was spent scouring the area for some trick. Camouflaged scenery. Had they doubled back on their tracks?
*
The voice on the telephone paused. Marla Kirk’s heart fluttered. She was addicted to power. The thrill of it, used well or unwisely. She didn’t care. Marla liked to be at the heart of things. Whether things went smoothly or not. Would she be reprimanded?
“Again.”
“Whitaker attended a lecture. One man in the audience had an entertaining chat with him. Then a tape was played.”
“Sounds from time machines.”
“Time machines. A coded phrase. For…electronic technology Whitaker must be working on. And hoping to sell to a company. Organisation. Country.”
“Then?”
“The dark-haired man and his blonde friend met Whitaker in the car park. Information changed hands. Whitaker drove home. No one contacted him there. My agent followed the couple to a motorway café. They went into the countryside and played a copy of the tape. But they vanished. My agent thinks they clambered aboard a hot-air balloon. Absurd.”
“Thank you, Marla. In future, be more prompt in providing information.”
“I waited to see what Whitaker would do today. Perhaps someone would meet him at breakfast. That didn’t happen. He’s gone into his lab.”
“Did you search the lab overnight?”
“Nothing there.”
“No tape.”
“The couple must have that tape now.”
“My records indicate that Whitaker’s swipe-card has been used. He is no longer in the building.”
“Did the naughty man sneak out through that supply cupboard?”
“Accessing cameras.”
“My people on the front desk could tell you.”
“I am watching your people on the front desk. He stops to talk. The swipe-card is used. He leaves.”
“Okay. I’ll call down. Is he going to be trouble? Selling your dirty little secrets to the Russians?”
“Whitaker does not have access to my dirty little secrets. His actions are annoying. They won’t affect my plans. I am more interested in these new friends of his.”
“If he doesn’t know your secrets, what’s he selling to these people? What’s the significance of the sounds he records in a soundproof room? Can’t be his singing.”
“Locate him. Watch for the strangers.”
*
Paul Simon was singing on the café radio. Rose sat down first, opening her shiny red coat and busying herself with a quick check of her pockets. The Doctor often said that there was no such thing as a quick check of his pockets. Unless all he did was check that his pockets were still there. That was a pocket check, though. And not a check of pockets. Technically.
Hadn’t they had a conversation about Paul Simon once? What had the Doctor said to him? Or to Einstein? To Isambard Kingdom
“Two teas, Rose.”
“Thanks. Dying for a cuppa.”
“I’ll just commandeer those saucers. With the apple tart crumbs.”
“Whatever.”
“Here we are. Flying saucers. Now it looks as if we had apple tarts. No need to eat anything else. When Whitaker gets here.”
“Yeah. Adjusting meals to cater for time travel. I though jet-lag was bad.”
“We can manage a cuppa.”
“What sort of Time Lord would you be, if you couldn’t manage a cuppa?”
“Exactly.”
*
Whitaker didn’t smile when he walked into the café. He wasn’t sure what to expect. The blonde girl was sipping tea. Her colleague pushed a plate away and patted his stomach. They’d started without him. The door rattled in the wind. Whitaker struggled to close it without smashing the glass.
“Hello. Rose. And Doctor…Ross. Rose and Ross.”
“Call me Doug. That’s quite close to Doc. Doc Doug. Easy to remember. Doc Doug. Dot com.”
“Doctor. Leave it.”
“Sorry Rose. So. David. Very interesting recording you played us, earlier.”
“Yesterday.”
“Earlier, yesterday. Thank you, nurse.”
“Hathaway. Welcome. Don’t mention.”
“Cuppa, Doug? Break the ice? Apple tart?”
“I’ll nip over to the counter and get myself something.”
*
Marla Kirk absorbed the story from her people on the desk. The Professor had chosen café over canteen for his extended lunchbreak. Marla took the lift down to the garage level and jumped into her car. She drove past the café and had a butcher’s.
Butcher’s hook – a look. She’d gone to great lengths to suppress the coarse sounds and phrases of her upbringing. No one would think, to look at or listen to her, that Marla Kirk was anything but classy. Marla Kirk, of course, was anything but classy.
There they were. The blonde in the red coat. There was something odd about her. And the man in the suit. Whitaker was at the counter, being served tea. Marla drove on, and returned to the underground garage. She swiped her red plastic card into the slot in her car, and a panel popped open.
Inside a hidden compartment, another telephone nestled. This wasn’t as large as the brick in her office desk. The telephone nestling there was of a similar size to the futuristic one Rose Tyler carried. It was nowhere near as sophisticated as Rose’s phone. The Doctor had monkeyed around with that, and invalidated the warranty.
“Speak.”
“Marla Kirk.”
“Report.”
“Whitaker is meeting the odd couple in a café he frequents when he wants a change from canteen food. That meeting was clearly prearranged. Possibly by note slipped to Whitaker at that lecture. Perhaps over the telephone or through the post. We could intercept his letters and calls.”
“I will see to that if I decide that Whitaker is a long-term problem.”
“Now what?”
“Place one of your men in the café. Another in the street. Make sure they have irrelevant cars.”
“What does that mean?”
“The odd couple will give your people the slip again, I’m sure.”
“So the cars are irrelevant. But have them standing by anyway.”
“If Whitaker invites those people to visit his laboratory, place another agent nearby. In the supply room. Whatever he’s dealing in, he’s bound to tip his hand to them. That’s when we learn what he’s been up to in his lab.”
“Agreed.”
“Go.”
*
“Do you recognise that woman?”
“Which one?”
“She’s gone. Drove by. In a black car. Black hair. Very pretty. If you go for that sort of intense brooding look. Second time today I’ve seen a woman like that.”
“Didn’t see her. Sorry Rose. Ah. David. No apple tart? You’re missing a treat. Very filling. I couldn’t eat another slice. No, not even a crumb.”
“You wanted to talk about my hobby. Time travel.”
“Mm. The noises, on those tapes. That wheezy groaning sound. You think that barrage of sound was from a real time machine, don’t you…”
“Why single that section out? Of all the sounds on my tape…”
“Sharp thinking. If two people have similar experiences and come to the same conclusion, are they both right? Or are they WILDLY wrong? You taped that recording, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“A recording of a time machine in action.”
“So I believe.”
“What makes you think that it’s a time machine, and not a poltergeist?”
“My observations. And I don’t believe in ghosts. Spectres, no. Time travel, yes. Have you observed something similar, Doctor?”
“Loads of times.”
“As many times as I have?”
“Now what on Earth do you mean by that?”
They were interrupted by the ting of the café door. Rose had a sinking feeling in her stomach. She’d once had a close call in a tearoom, searching for a quick way out of a soon-to-be-confined space. The figure was no more menacing than anyone else in the place. Just a man.
He stared at the three tea-drinkers in front of him, and marched past to the counter. Rose gave him the beady eye. There was something familiar about him. Just like that woman she’d seen earlier today. Idiot. Rose! Not today. Today and yesterday.
Rose had seen the dark-haired woman give a lift to a member of the audience. From the lecture yesterday. Earlier in Rose’s day, but one day in the past as far as Whitaker was concerned. The brunette drove the same black car, when she cruised by the café. And she had cruised by the café.
Here was a man…had he been in the audience? Was he the man who climbed into the black car? He wasn’t the man who climbed into that car. Why was he looking at Rose? She followed his gaze. The man was staring at her chest.
Rose looked down. The black sweater was a little tighter than expected. What a lecherous…no. He wasn’t lecherous. This man had clocked Rose clocking him. His cover was blown, so he tried to make it look as though he might be sizing up the goods. What a devious sod.
The Doctor had stopped talking when the door opened. He made a fair pretence of sipping tea. His cup was mostly empty. Whitaker did the same. His tea was warm. Rose tuned out the clatter of cups on saucers and listened to the sound of the man’s voice. She put other words in his mouth.
“It’s an electric toothbrush!”
There were several hecklers at the time travel lecture. One offered the idea of a DeLorean to the audience. He climbed into the dark-haired woman’s car. Another heckler called the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver an electric toothbrush. This was the man stationed at the counter ordering tea and one of those cream cakes.
Rose crinkled her eyes at the Doctor. He winked. She frowned. He raised an eyebrow. She bobbed her head. The Doctor half-nodded behind him. Rose lowered her head once to indicate that the Doctor was on the right track. What to do now? Rose pointed her thumb at herself.
“I’ll just nip back there. For my convenience.”
She made a point of bumping into the man. He stumbled, started to mumble his apologies, and made a brave attempt at saving his cup of tea. Rose didn’t give him the chance. She slapped him as hard as she could, and left a huge red mark on his face. Then she really let rip.
“Bloody pervert! Why don’t you grab the other one while you’re at it?! I saw you eyeing me up when you came in. I’m like the Crown Jewels. Look, don’t touch! You smash and grab, you go to jail!”
The agent didn’t know where to look. His face coloured. Rose didn’t want to burn him, so she grabbed the cup of tea and threw it sideways. The hot liquid splashed up the guy’s coat. There were disapproving looks from customers and staff alike.
Whitaker didn’t know what to think. The Doctor grabbed Whitaker and bundled him toward the toilets. Rose was wagging her finger now, and preparing to knee the pervert in the groin. He backed off, surrendered his saucer to a nearby table, and almost fell over himself as he ran out of the door.
Rose grabbed her coat and marched outside. The wind grabbed her hair and threw it behind her in a fan of demonic rage. A waitress pulled her back inside. The Doctor stuffed Whitaker into the cramped toilet, and waited for the payoff.
“Are you all right, love?”
“Flaming cheek. Did you see what he did? I’ve never been so insulted in all my days. What’s the world coming to? Is he still out there? He’s still out there. Lingering. With his cream bun. Do you have a back way out of here? I was finished with my tea anyway. Thanks, you’re all darling girls.”
Rose was escorted into a back street. When the commotion died down, the Doctor eased Whitaker from the toilet into the same back street. Rose was blushing as hard as she had ever blushed. She was a vision in red.
“What was that about?!”
“Come on, Whitaker. I think we’re under surveillance.”
“I’m ever so sorry. He didn’t lay a hand on me. Though he was staring at my chest, to put me off realising he was one of the hecklers at that lecture earlier. Yesterday.”
“Let’s scatter. This way. We’ll work round to…not the same street. All the way around to the other end of our dead-end alley.”
“Someone’s taken a very keen interest in you, Professor Whitaker.”
“My life’s been very strange since mid-March.”
“What happened then?”
“I started to see things. Time machines.”
“And you knew you weren’t hallucinating, as…”
“I recorded them too. And played them to you.”
The trio walked around blustery London
There would be watchers in that main street. And it wouldn’t take too long for the perverts to work out what was happening. The classic back door escape. Whitaker was now a prisoner, playing the role of Professor-in-the-middle.
“Spying on you, eh.”
“Who would spy on you?”
“I don’t know. The Government?”
“Far too busy.”
“A dark-haired woman in a black car.”
“Marla Kirk?”
“They had funny names for makes of cars back then, didn’t they?”
“Rose.”
“I know. This isn’t back then. It’s now. I was in there listening to Paul Simon on the radio. Singing about a man walking down a street. Soft in the middle. The man, not the street. And my first reaction? You’ll never guess.”
“Hey, remember that one.”
“Yeah. But it’s fresh and new.”
“So it is. Sounds like a classic though.”
“And was that Cyndi Lauper singing as we left?”
“True Colours. Though Time After Time would have been more appropriate, in our line of work. All change. Time to make a new plan, Stan. Whoops. Paul Simon fixation. In our case it was slip out the back, Jack.”
“Wouldn’t be like us.”
“This way, Professor.”
“What if they followed us?”
“Doesn’t matter. They can’t follow.”
“Are you sure? This looks like a dead-end.”
“No. This is a lifeline. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
“Who is Marla Kirk, Professor?”
“Works for the Genesis Foundation. She’s important. In personnel, and things. Not the scientific side. Reports to the higher-ups.”
“Who would they be?”
“Names on the headed notepaper. I don’t bother with the personalities on the top floor. She works for M.P. Foss. The voice on the telephone.”
“No one’s ever seen this guy?”
“He goes to the dinners.”
“Oh. That’s disappointing. I was hoping he’d turn out to be a brain suspended in a globe of water, or something. No respect for the classics, these days.”
“Here we are, Professor. End of the line.”
“A Police Box. What’s a Police Box doing in a dead-end alley?”
“I’ll keep this simple. You asked time travellers to attend your lecture on time travel. So we did. I’m the Doctor. This is Rose Tyler.”
“Not Nurse Hathaway?”
“Doctor Ross and Nurse Hathaway are characters in a television show that hasn’t been filmed yet.”
“We were particularly interested in the recording of the time machine doing its stuff. The wheezing groaning sound. Not the bleeping. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“This blue box doesn’t look familiar to you?”
“No.”
“TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. My time machine. Would you like to take a tour? A trip? No one will bother us or spy on us from here.”
“Prove you are from the future.”
“We came here from the past. From yesterday.”
“Yeah. And I’ve had motorway sludge, with tea. Yesterday. Followed by tea today. All today. Even the yesterday part. So I’m going inside to use the bathroom.”
“Is she serious?”
“Never more so. Do you think this is some kind of con?”
“Yes. I think it is. You aren’t going in there with her, to the toilet? Doctor?!”
The Doctor winked, and hopped through the Police Box door. Professor Whitaker was left in the alley, wondering what to do. Was that gag in the café the set-up to some con? Was this one of those annoying television shows? He was being secretly filmed, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?
*
“Speak.”
“Marla Kirk.”
“Report.”
“The blonde girl caused a distraction and allowed the three subjects to elude pursuit. Whitaker must return to his home, or the lab. We’ll pick him up again. Should I put more men on that job?”
“No. The girl recognised your man from yesterday.”
“I don’t see how she could have.”
“Heightened sense of perception.”
“Oh?”
“The method is irrelevant. Clearly, those men were recognised. I will reassign them.”
“What am I supposed to do if you take my goons away?”
“If Professor Whitaker suspects your involvement in the recent surveillance, he will try to obtain information from you. And if not, you are free to obtain information from him. Place someone close to the lab. That is all. Proceed.”
*
Marla Kirk paced up and down her office.
Heightened perception. What did that mean? Binoculars. Telescopes? Was it a case of surveillance versus counter-surveillance? Over what? Industrial secrets. According to the voice on the telephone, Whitaker didn’t know any secrets. He’d worked on a transparent science project, creating basic instrumentation for a probe shot into space.
Had the probe sent secret signals to Whitaker?
That’s what he’d recorded. Signs of life on that comet. And he was offering samples to the highest bidder, by pretending to be interested in time travel. That was a bluff, to hide the real deal. Absurd. If the probe sent signals, surely even well-meaning amateurs could pick them up?
Marla opened a walk-in cupboard and changed clothes. The slit in her skirt was higher, the depth of her cleavage apparent. A quick spray intensified the lure of her perfume. Bolder. A change to spikier heels completed the picture. She asked to be notified when Professor Whitaker returned. One way or the other, she’d prise a few secrets from the man of science.
*
The two goons were invited into the building via the rear underground entrance. A faulty security camera did not record their arrival. And a second faulty security camera in the executive lift failed to record their journey to the top floor. These faults cleared up as the doors closed.
“So did you cop a feel, or was that just froth?”
“I don’t know how she recognised me.”
“Your voice, maybe. Heard you ordering tea. Should have used a silly voice when you were heckling at the lecture.”
“What do you think we’re up here for?”
“A slice of cucumber sandwich, followed by a wafer-thin mint and a glass of iced tea, old boy.”
M.P. Foss had a very personal secretary named Delilah. She was a blonde version of Marla Kirk. Taller. More statuesque. Classier. Delilah ruled the top floor. She smiled and directed the two men to the far side of the top floor. Some labs were located there.
“Mr Foss is tied up at the moment. We’re waiting for the meeting to end. I hope you don’t mind spending some time in my company. Through here. In the lab.”
The agents shrugged, and walked behind Delilah. They concentrated on her locomotive skills, as displayed by her swaying rear. The lab was divided into two sections. Wet, and dry. The wet side was decorated in ceramic white tiling, and was sealed by huge plastic curtains.
Delilah positioned herself on the dry side, and invited the men to take up positions at a workbench which sat at right-angles to the plastic curtains. They engaged in a very small amount of chit-chat. Delilah took a step forward and attacked.
Both men flew into the plastic curtains in a spray of blood and tissue. The corpses were tangled in the curtains, which were designed to fall easily from their mountings. This made the clean-up slightly easier. Two grisly peas, wrapped in a grisly pod.
Water came on.
Delilah made sure that the men were dead. Loose ends weren’t meant to stay dangling. She called the clean-up crew from the basement. That faulty camera in the executive lift really would have to be fixed, one of these days.
Chapter Two.
Yes, and chapters three through to six. Even a scrap of a note for the final chapter – chapter seven. But not today, folks. I stopped dead in chapter six the day that first book was rejected by the BBC and I had no outlet for the fiction. No financially-rewarding outlet.
Do I have an incentive to finish writing the sequel, given that it must, by definition, be free fan fiction? That depends entirely on my audience. The only reason to finish the story is to finish it for fans. Chapter four, with the flashback to the Bill Hartnell Doctor and his granddaughter, is a belter.
I decided, in dealing with the Doctor and the Master in the first book’s fourth chapter, that the granddaughter wouldn’t appear until the second book’s fourth chapter. Splitting the Doctor’s early history across two volumes made sense to me.
Alas, I’m here to make money from writing. So I must spend profitable hours attempting to be profitable. Paid-for books take my time…until I can find the time to finish this piece as a labour of clichéd love. I’m in business. My job is to earn money from books to support myself while I write even more books.
That’s an anvil-sized hint to dive on over to the Amazon Kindle Store and type RLL. Have a look at my books. You may find something there of interest to you. Now, off with you. I have to reverse my reversal of the polarity…
