The Wintertime Paradox

by Dave Rudden

  The creature’s claws flex on Luke’s neck.

  ‘Petronella, please.’

  Osgood takes a careful step towards them. She can feel vertigo wash over her from the swirling vortex between them. It looks like it goes on forever.

  ‘And, if it’s a copy, how would we be able to tell?’

  The terror vanishes from Luke’s face, replaced by a serene, dead calm. It’s frightening to watch. Like stagehands emptying a stage.

  ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘I have a good memory for briefings,’ Osgood responds. ‘Luke Rattigan was a human accomplice to an attempted Sontaran invasion a couple of years ago. That’s where UNIT got the deactivated cloning pool that must have made you all.’

  ‘So that’s who he is,’ the clone says. He’s handsome, in a reptilian kind of way. ‘That makes sense.’ He reaches up and taps his skull. ‘It’s a little jumbled in here. I have memories. Just fragments, churning around and around. Feels wrong. Feels right. Luke.’ One of his eyes is twitching. ‘And the pool won’t be deactivated for long.’

  ‘Well,’ Osgood says. ‘Yes. I think that was one of Helen’s. She’s probably going to be in trouble. How are you feeling?’

  Luke flinches at the question. The monster is staring at him too, growling like an idling engine, like the unseen machines in the walls.

  ‘The briefing on Sontaran invasions was pretty comprehensive,’ Osgood continues. ‘Though it didn’t mention that they sampled the original Luke’s DNA. I wonder, did he know? Luke Rattigan, a prodigy at eighteen, pretty much as smart as the human brain would allow. You look like him. Exactly like him, in fact. And I think you’re probably as smart as him too, or you wouldn’t have worked out how to get here.’

  ‘The gravity bubble ripped a hole straight down through the spatial folding,’ the clone says. ‘Navigating by it was easy. Working out how to use the tablet I found was harder, but Luke liked things like that. I think.’

  ‘Very impressive,’ Osgood says, trying to keep her voice from shaking. ‘What are you, two hours old?’

  ‘I’m clever,’ the clone boasts. His smile is bright and chilling, but his jaw is clenched. ‘I’m very clever. I am the last, best chance for victory.’

  ‘Ah.’ Osgood is at the vortex’s edge. She can feel the floor tiles under her feet quiver and warp. ‘You don’t know then.’

  The clone starts forward, before catching himself. Osgood notes the sweat on his brow, the tension thrumming a vein in his neck. ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you lost,’ Osgood says. ‘The original Luke, that is. He lost, and the Sontarans lost, and you ended up just being tat in our archive.’

  A long, low growl oozes from between the clone’s perfect white teeth.

  ‘I mean, you can’t be blamed. I don’t even think the original Luke knew who he was dealing with, and you’re just an … artefact. A recovered save. You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘But I will know,’ the clone hisses. ‘You will find us the power cube, and we will switch on the pool, and I will not be alone, and then I will have victory. Perfect victory. Sontar-ha!’

  He shouts these last words, and Osgood shrugs nonchalantly, more scared than she’s ever been in her life. ‘Luke hated being alone too.’

  The boy stares at her. There is a genuine, actual monster hunched behind him, a terrible nightmare of claws and blood-red eyes, but Osgood’s gaze is fixed on the quiver in Luke’s lower lip.

  ‘It ate at him. Made him do terrible things. Search for allies in bad places.’

  Petronella Osgood is a reasonable person. Sweeping dramatic statements are more of a Nova thing. But she knows, with an entirely unreasonable sense of certainty, that she will never forgive herself for the words she is about to say. ‘I misspoke earlier. I’m sorry. Luke did find victory.’

  The clone’s voice is childishly hopeful. ‘He did?’

  ‘He did,’ Osgood says. ‘At the end. He found people he was willing to sacrifice himself for. That’s how you win. You fight for people.’

  Osgood takes the Sontaran power cube from her pocket. It hadn’t been that hard to find, in the end. Nobody had thought to lock it away. The technician’s note in the manifest on her tablet had said it wasn’t dangerous at all.

  Luke’s eyes widen in shock.

  ‘Victory means nothing if you’re alone,’ she says, and then she tosses the power cube into the vortex.

  The clone doesn’t hesitate. He lunges after it, with a predator’s grace, and vanishes into the vortex without a word. There is a noise like the feeling of missing a step on the stairs, a smell like the sound of cricking your neck, and something hits Osgood in the chest. She catches it by reflex.

  It is a medal, formed of hard white bone.

  She looks at it for a moment, then she hears a growl.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, as the other clone rises to its full height, spittle hanging from its jaws. ‘Oh dear.’

  Spatial folding or not, the sound of the shot in the confines of the office is deafening. The beast stiffens, a look of very human surprise on its utterly unhuman features, and then topples forward into the vortex too.

  Standing behind it are two soldiers, and UNIT’s Chief Scientific Officer.

  ‘Ms Osgood,’ Kate Lethbridge-Stewart says, her arms folded. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘We monitor everything,’ Stewart says. ‘Well, of course we do.’

  They are sitting in her office, which does not have grey floor tiles but polished dark wood. Osgood finds this reassuring. She doesn’t particularly want to see the colour grey ever again. This may require a career change, but that feels like a January problem.

  A cardboard box sits on the desk between them.

  ‘Everything,’ Osgood repeats a little hollowly. She isn’t sure how she feels about people knowing what she’s just done, even though she is convinced it was necessary.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Stewart says. ‘Your sister is texting, by the way. She’s decided to say that your present is from both of you.’

  ‘Luke –’ Osgood begins, but Stewart waves a hand.

  ‘That wasn’t Luke Rattigan.’

  Osgood has only met Stewart once before, at her very first briefing, when the Chief Scientific Officer gave a five-minute speech about duty that Osgood can still recite by heart. She looks mostly the same as she did then – ice-blonde hair, features sharpened by intellect and alertness. She is, however, now wearing a Christmas jumper, which Osgood finds extremely jarring.

  ‘Sontaran clones don’t work fantastically even when they are connected to the host they’re copying. He was degrading, even if he didn’t know it.’

  ‘I think he knew,’ Osgood says.

  ‘Sontarans,’ Stewart says, shaking her head. ‘All that technological advancement and the only thing they succeeded at was making a Luke Rattigan even unhappier than the original.’ She checks a sheet in front of her. ‘It took the pool years to rebuild enough scrap DNA for four clones, especially with its processors running low enough to avoid detection. Actually birthing them was what finally spiked our graphs.’ Her Christmas jumper has a periodic table done in snowflakes. It says OH, CHEMIS-TREE.

  ‘I’ve always been against the spatial-folding idea. It’s nice for storage, but far too complicated in the long run. Lowers response time too, because we have too many corridors to traipse down. I like what you did with the memory filters, though. Must remember that. Ha.’

  She says this last without a single trace of humour.

  ‘Can I go home now, please?’ Osgood says in a small voice. The bone disc is warm in her hand. I think I know why you didn’t sign up for UNIT now, Dad. Mysteries are safer, sometimes. Mysteries don’t smash down your door.

  Stewart snaps to. ‘Yes. Of course. And, in January, I’m going to speak to your team directly. About reassignment.’

  Osgood stiffens. ‘Really?’

  Stewart nods. ‘I’m putting the Grey Archive on indefinite hiatus. Not your team, of course. We’ll be
keeping you all on retainer. Spread you out among the different departments. But I think the archive itself will be shelved until we can figure out a better system.’

  Osgood isn’t sure whether or not that requires an answer, but she is extremely relieved she hasn’t lost anybody their job.

  ‘And you’ll report directly to me.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You handled yourself very well,’ Stewart says, tapping her lip with a finger. ‘I think I could use that initiative.’ She’s lost in thought. ‘I mean, if thieves invade the Black Archive, it just detonates a nuke. Simple, yet effective.’

  Osgood checks her phone. It’s working again. There are a lot of messages, mostly from Nova. That’s a small thing she can focus on, instead of the last thing Stewart said.

  ‘I should go, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ Stewart stands up and shakes Osgood’s hand. ‘Good work.’

  Then she picks up the box containing the Grey Archive and locks it in her desk.

  Later, Petronella Osgood sleeps more deeply than she ever has in her life and, like every Christmas morning, she is woken by Nova bouncing on her bed.

  ‘When did you get home?’ Nova asks, and then, without waiting for a response, points at the neat stack of presents by the door. ‘And you never answered my question. I just assumed it was OK to pop both our names on Dad’s card and –’

  Petronella looks down at the spiked medal of bone in her hand. It is small and pale, and she would rather not be alone with the story of it in her head. At least, not until she goes back to work.

  ‘You know what?’ she says. ‘Keep it. I’m going to give him something else.’

  5

  Visiting Hours

  ‘Drop your weapon!’

  It wasn’t the largest gun that had ever been pointed at Rory Pond, but he had to admit that even saying that spoke to some pretty poor life choices.

  ‘It isn’t a weapon,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s stuffing.’

  He tweaked back the baking tray’s tinfoil. The crisped scent of breadcrumbs and sage wafted through Stormcage Containment Facility’s visitor clearance area for just a moment, before the air filters whisked it away.

  The guard leaned closer, breath snorting out from between its metal fangs. Rory hadn’t seen this design before. Last year it had all been holograms – sleek and bright and cheery, like a prison crossed with a mobile-phone shop. The year before, Stormcage had gone digital. Rory found it hard to explain what it felt like to be converted to an email attachment, except to say that he really didn’t want to feel it again.

  This year, it seemed that Stormcage was favouring the direct approach. The guard was eight feet of pale, ponderous muscle, its face a glittering mass of lenses that clicked and rotated, painting a triangle of targeting lasers over the centre of Rory’s Christmas jumper.

  ‘Stuff-ing?’ the guard growled.

  You couldn’t blame it for being confused. Most visitors to Stormcage travelled light. It was a bit like an airport – nobody wanted to spend an hour emptying their pockets for the scanners while everyone else in the queue glared at them. This was true whether you were spending a cheeky weekend in Lanzarote or visiting the most secure prison of the fifty-second century.

  And yet, it was Christmas.

  Rory didn’t know if Stormcage got a Christmas. He imagined it might be low down on the list of priorities when you were guarding some of the most dangerous felons in the universe. So, every year, he and Amy tried to bring Christmas to them. Or, at least, to one inmate in particular: their daughter, River Song.

  The visitor clearance area was a vast concrete square painted a dazzling antiseptic white. Hulking brutes – much like the one currently pointing its gun at Rory – guarded gleaming white doors that led to what Rory hoped were offices and not interrogation rooms. He had a sudden unpleasant image of the turkey they had cooked being searched for contraband. The poor thing had been through enough already.

  ‘It’s just food,’ Rory said, indicating the shopping trolley behind him, laden down with roasting dishes, plastic containers and tinfoil-covered bowls. ‘And it’s already cooked, so lasering it is overkill. I could make you a plate, if you like? Just a little one?’

  Just a little plate was Amy Pond’s solution to all problems arising between the twenty-fifth of December and the fifteenth of January. They still had leftovers from last year.

  I wish Amy was here.

  Suddenly, every single guard in visitor clearance snapped to attention, bulky weapons slamming against their chests. Rory turned to see a figure entering through a door, hand raised in greeting.

  ‘Rory Pond.’

  The man gleamed. That was Rory’s first thought. His suit was a pressed and perfect white – a blinding non-shade that blended in so thoroughly with the white walls that, for a single, unnerving second, all Rory saw drifting towards him was a disembodied human head.

  ‘Henrik Chyll, Chief Psychiatrist.’ A hand appeared, again seeming disconnected by the brightness of the suit, and after a moment of juggling baking trays Rory took it.

  You could say that being a nurse was the opposite of being a soldier. Rory certainly would. He had been both. But there were similarities, and being both a nurse and a soldier had given him a sort of radar for the people who ended up in charge.

  There were the kind people – or, rather, the tired people. The leaders who were tired from trying to be kind in a job where there was often no kindness to be had. The leaders who cared about those they led. Then, there were the tyrants. The sell-outs. The leaders who saw those they were responsible for as a number, or a nuisance, or both.

  Which, Rory wondered, are you?

  Chyll wasn’t so much handsome as he was well assembled; his dark features sharp and alert, his eyes a deep and clever brown. He was smiling, open and friendly, and yet there was something a little too precise about the expression, as if he’d learned it from a book.

  ‘Where is your lovely wife?’

  ‘At home,’ Rory said. ‘Her mother’s not well.’

  Amy would be better at this. Rory had seen his wife stare down Daleks, defy presidents and argue with reptiles from the dawn of time. She’d even broken Raymond Chetterley’s nose in fifth form when he had tried to glue Rory’s hand to a school locker. That might have been the moment when Rory fell in love with Amy, except for all the other moments that had come first.

  ‘So sorry to hear that,’ Chyll said. He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded like he was saying the kind of thing you said when people told you other people weren’t well. It was like having a conversation with a scalpel. ‘I trust your transit was satisfactory?’

  That was a complicated question to answer. Travelling from the twenty-first century to the fifty-second had been as smooth as could be expected, in that Rory and the Doctor had only been diverted twice for life-threatening adventures. Rory knew he shouldn’t complain. It had taken him a while to realise that, in terms of space travel, taking your first trip in a TARDIS was like doing your driving test in a Ferrari.

  Prison policy had dictated that Rory make the final approach alone, in one of Stormcage’s own transfer ships – a blunt bullet of a vessel that stank of sadness and sweat. That was something to complain about, except Rory never would. He would have walked there, if he’d had to. It was what you did when you were a parent.

  ‘A Christmas dinner!’ the psychiatrist exclaimed with a dry clap of his hands. Even that seemed calculated to draw Rory’s attention to the echoey vastness around them. ‘How marvellous. Doctor Song is very lucky to have you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Rory said, with his best British must-get-going smile. ‘But you’re very good to say.’

  Chyll waved the guards back. ‘I apologise for my boys’ dedication. They can’t help it.’ Again, that mathematical smile. ‘It’s how I designed them.’

  Tyrant, then. Amazing how it never took long for people to show you who they really were.

  ‘Ma
y I accompany you to her accommodation?’ Chyll phrased it like a question, but they both knew it wasn’t.

  Rory found himself thinking of the conversation he’d had with Amy after their visit last year.

  ‘I hate it there,’ Amy had said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hate River being there.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘But I understand why she has to be there. Everyone thinks she killed the Doctor. If she wasn’t in prison for it, then his enemies would hunt him and her. And, yes, she breaks out all the time, and he visits her, and I understand. All right? I do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Rory had said, taking her in his arms. ‘I mean, they’ve explained it, and they’re happy with it, and that’s important, but it doesn’t mean I understand it. So I don’t feel bad about being upset about it. And neither should you.’

  ‘Mr Pond?’ Chyll was still smiling, neat as the signature on an eviction notice. ‘Shall we?’

  The conveyance cart hummed, and Henrik Chyll hummed along with it.

  The black beetle-like craft descended through wide white tunnels, and Rory soon realised that the glare of the psychiatrist’s suit came from some sort of internal illumination. Like a portable searchlight, and with rather the same effect – deepening shadows, freezing security officers in place, bouncing from blade edges and gun muzzles so they seemed dazzlingly sharp.

  Steel door after steel door spooled out before them, neat as the notches on a measuring tape.

  ‘Brandon Sadness. Megatheft.’

  Occasionally, Chyll would call out the occupants of the cells they passed, like the lift announcement in a posh department store.

  ‘Hynern Oshhovo. Two thousand counts of murder. Such a busy boy.’

  ‘Star Felon. Really, with that name, I don’t know what they were expecting.’

  He smirked at that. Rory didn’t. Instead, he busied himself with checking the food, or absently counting the stencilled black numbers on the prison wall. This was something he had learned in long shifts at Royal Leadworth Hospital – if you couldn’t topple a tyrant, the least you could do was not give them an audience.