The Wintertime Paradox

by Dave Rudden

  ‘Nothing,’ Rory said, and wondered suddenly why he had lied.

  Once, not long after Rory’s long guard of Amy had ended, the Doctor had taken Rory to a room in the TARDIS that he had never seen before and poured him a drink. It had been a very strange experience. Not just because the Doctor didn’t really understand humans, or because he didn’t understand liquor and had poured them something that ate through both the glasses and the table. Mostly, it was because the gesture had the awkwardness of your dad giving you a long-overdue talk about girls.

  ‘Do you ever wonder,’ the Time Lord had said, ‘why I occasionally – very occasionally, mind you – come across as a tiny bit scatterbrained?’

  ‘No,’ Rory had said truthfully. ‘I thought you were just being scatterbrained.’

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m trying to help.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The reason, Rory, that I might occasionally be a little scatterbrained,’ the Doctor said, ‘is because I have a long memory. And people can get lost in memories. Too much detail. The past, acting on the present. So I try to stay in the present, and only go looking for the memories I need.’

  The conversation had always stayed with Rory, particularly because that was the moment the acid-chewed table had chosen to collapse. He couldn’t remember every single moment of his two-thousand-year service, and the memories he did have were more like brushstrokes of a painting – all texture and colour and feel, blurred from one angle and crystal-sharp the next.

  Their passage through Stormcage had a similar feel; creeping past Amon the Destructovore, as it took on thirteen Draconian warriors at once, breaking bodies with every swing of its fists. Fighting back to back with Silurian corsairs against a shoal of squirming, flashing Rutan, their sizzling tendrils scorching nonsense patterns in the white concrete walls. Running hand in hand with River, and even Chyll once or twice, the psychiatrist’s suit flashing in time with the ever-shrieking alarms.

  I hope these memories fade properly, Rory thought. He had enough memories of war zones already.

  He couldn’t have said how long they had been fighting when Chyll found them a looted infirmary, its floor strewn with scattered bandages and the remains of nurse droids.

  ‘May I?’

  Rory was trying, one-handed, to patch up a cut on his arm when Chyll knelt beside him. Rory flinched, instantly scanning for River, and the psychiatrist gave him an amused look.

  ‘She’s covering the front door. Four rounds left, by my count. And you should let me help with that. I am a doctor.’

  ‘And I’m a nurse,’ Rory said.

  He’d lost some of the Christmas lights from his trembling arm. That was something the movies left out about fighting – swinging around a lump of metal for any length of time turned even trained muscles to jelly.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Chyll said.

  Rory cursed himself inwardly.

  ‘Well. I defer to your professional opinion.’ Then Chyll added, ‘In this, and in the matter of River.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Rory said. It was actually extremely difficult to patch yourself up one-handed. They didn’t teach classes on it or anything.

  ‘You know what’s best for her,’ Chyll said simply. ‘And you think her place is here.’

  ‘I don’t think that,’ Rory said hotly. ‘She does. And –’ He stood up abruptly, leaving his arm untended. ‘Let’s go.’

  They plunged back into the fray, River giving Rory a look of surprise as he barrelled past her with his sword held high.

  Don’t tell him anything, Rory reminded himself with every sword thrust. Even if he’s keeping us all alive.

  That was another awkward truth. Stormcage had become too chaotic to cross without at least some fighting, but Chyll’s cameras had led them round the worst of the brawls. Without him, they might already be dead.

  That doesn’t mean he’s right.

  We could be at home right now.

  If River wanted to be.

  Fleeing from a heated duel with Star Felon and a motley crew of allies brought Rory, River and Chyll to the dim sanctuary of an abandoned cell, just a few corridors from the panopticon itself. Chyll accessed his suit, once again bringing up his camera feeds. The scene hadn’t changed: the cowering technicians, and the lurking, patchwork monstrosity, drool hanging from her elongated jaw.

  ‘Why is she still there?’ River murmured. ‘She has control of the shuttle bays. She should be making her escape.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Chyll retorted. ‘Perhaps she intends to use Stormcage as a base. Recruit the prisoners as a private army, take control of our –’ he paused, straightening his tie – ‘admittedly brilliant medical facilities.’

  ‘Oh, fantastic,’ River said. ‘You two can open a practice together.’

  ‘Guys,’ Rory said. ‘Could we focus on a plan?’

  Chyll manipulated the image with deft strokes of his fingers.

  The panopticon was a circular room, divided into a series of concentric circles by clicking, thrumming machines. At their centre was a computer twice the size of all the others, its console studded with screens that pulsed in time with Chyll’s suit.

  ‘If I get to this console, I can shut the doors. Activate suppression fields in common areas. Activate the guards. We can take Stormcage back.’ He frowned. ‘Providing Rubel doesn’t stop us first.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ River said.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Rory said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice. ‘You can’t just charge in and leave us playing catch-up. That’s not how this should work.’

  River sniffed. ‘I know how attacking the panopticon of a mega-jail works, Dad. Do you?’

  ‘No,’ Rory said. ‘I guess I don’t. All I know is that Amy and I spent a lot of time making a portable Christmas party for you and now it’s back at your cell, presumably being eaten by Alfred the Destructovex or whatever he was called.’

  River looked hurt again. ‘I know this isn’t the Christmas you wanted –’

  ‘This isn’t Christmas at all,’ Rory said. ‘This is tinsel draped over an ECG machine.’ He sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. Fine. Let’s charge in.’

  ‘No,’ River said, and now she looked angry. ‘This is definitely the time for you to have a tantrum. I’m sorry you’re spending Christmas in prison, Dad, but this is where I live. Battle and danger and gunfights. I didn’t ask you here. You were the one who wanted a family Christmas.’

  ‘Well, sometimes this doesn’t feel much like a family, either.’

  Something exploded in a nearby corridor, followed by delighted prisoners hooting and cheering. It was a stark reminder that the war zone hadn’t slowed down because they had. If they didn’t take the panopticon soon, there might not be much of Stormcage left.

  River’s voice had turned icy – that cool, considered tone that made even the Doctor stop in his tracks. ‘You see, that’s the thing about family. You don’t get a choice.’

  ‘You have a choice, though, don’t you?’ Rory said. ‘You’re choosing to be here, instead of –’

  ‘Instead of helping Chyll?’ River said flatly. ‘I suppose I am making that choice, yes.’

  The psychiatrist was suddenly very concerned with the play of light on his sleeve.

  ‘Well then,’ Rory said, abruptly standing. ‘I guess we all have to make the choices we think are right.’ He turned to Chyll. ‘We get out of this, I’ll help you write your paper. I’ll tell you anything you want.’

  He lifted his sword and charged.

  Rory didn’t look round to see whether they were following him. He simply ran, pelting down that final hallway and smashing open the doors leading into the panopticon. It looked much as it had on the screen – circle upon circle of gleaming white consoles, presided over by the monster herself: Isolde Rubel.

  She was even more terrifying in person than she had been on screen – at once hulking and exaggeratedly sle
nder, every trace of humanity removed and replaced by layer upon layer of flushed muscle and hooked bone. Mechanical arms had been grafted alongside her biological ones, each ending in a forest of surgical implements that whirred and gnashed and gleamed. Her head was the size of one of Stormcage’s shuttles, a blunt, fanged wedge crowned by spurs of wire, with red gleaming eyes glaring from deep-set sockets.

  ‘Ah.’ Rory’s charge turned into a slightly awkward jog. ‘Hello.’

  Rubel lunged.

  A metal fist caught Rory in the chest, flinging him clear across three consoles before he slammed into a wall. His sword hit a second later and stuck in the wall just above his head, quivering like a tuning fork.

  It is possible, Rory thought, as the mad scientist stalked towards him, that dramatically charging in might have been a mistake.

  ‘Listen, as one medical professional to another –’

  Isolde said nothing. Instead, she vaulted over the first console, fingers leaving visible dents in the metal, and kicked the next one aside.

  Rory couldn’t help but frown as he scrambled to his feet, ducking a sweeping blow from a scalpeled paw. Normally – and, again, it worried him that he could say normally about situations like this – villains liked to explain, or boast, or preach as to why them killing him was quite a good thing, actually, and he really should be on board.

  He wasn’t sure why this was. Maybe they didn’t get to chat much with their acolytes. Maybe they thought it might somehow put their victims at ease. Either way, Rubel’s bedside manner was leaving a lot to be desired. Rory wasn’t an expert in figuring out facial expressions at the best of times, especially on faces so impressively reconstructed, but did she look … confused?

  It was the wrong thing to be paying attention to. Rory’s back hit another wall. He tried to dodge left, but a tentacled set of pincers slammed into the metal and blocked his path. He turned right, but another arm punched deep. Rubel lifted a third to strike him down – then flinched as River’s first blast took the limb off at the elbow. The monster spun, stained white coat floating around her, as River and Chyll rushed into the panopticon. River aimed to take another shot. ‘No!’ Chyll shouted. ‘Don’t!’

  Rubel hesitated. She actually hesitated, though whether it was in the face of River’s blaster or the shock at Henrik Chyll actually showing some bravery, Rory wasn’t sure. Either way, just like Prisoner 427, Rubel’s hesitation bought them a second to move.

  ‘Now!’ Rory shouted, and River spun on a heel, putting her last blast directly into the console to which Henrik Chyll had directed them.

  ‘No!’

  The console exploded in a flower of sparks. A shudder ran through Stormcage’s bones, as if the facility itself had been shot, and the huddling technicians flickered and vanished in wisps of smoke. Isolde Rubel froze mid-turn.

  A clear voice rang out through the suddenly silenced alarms.

  ++ SYSTEM INTERRUPT CANCELLED. BACKUP SYSTEMS REASSERTING THEMSELVES ++

  Chief Psychiatrist Henrik Chyll sighed, patting down his now-black suit. ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘That you were faking, you mean?’ Rory said.

  He put a foot against the wall and, with some effort, managed to drag out his sword. Rubel had really thrown it quite hard.

  ‘Dad figured it out,’ River said with no little pride. ‘He got suspicious after Prisoner 427’s convenient hesitation. And then your merry dance through Stormcage kept us in in some danger, but never enough that we might actually die.’

  ‘You’re a control freak,’ Rory said.

  Rubel was still frozen, arched like a scorpion in a museum exhibit. Rory had no desire whatsoever to get close to the monster, but even from across the room he could see the faintest tremor in the mad scientist’s tangle of limbs, as if she was straining with every fibre to be free.

  ‘I know the type,’ Rory went on. ‘A massive system failure with no backups that goes just wrong enough that we have to join forces? Didn’t feel right at all.’

  Chyll spread his hands, offering once again that scalpel grin. ‘All in the name of science, dear River.’

  ‘You knew I wouldn’t open up to you,’ River said. By Rory’s count, she had used her last round on the console, but being unarmed only made her twice as dangerous as anyone else in the room. ‘So you thought you could convince Rory to tell you my story instead.’

  ‘And didn’t I?’ He turned to Rory. ‘You seem like a reasonable, baseline human. Far too baseline to have produced something like River Song. You’re nothing alike, and my offer still stands.’

  Rory spun the broadsword in a lazy figure of eight. Chyll’s eyes couldn’t help but follow the point as it hummed through the air.

  ‘I was a Nestene duplicate for two thousand years,’ Rory said. ‘I watched Rome burn, and put the Twelfth Cyber Legion to the torch. I put Hitler in a cupboard.’ He took River’s hand. ‘We’re more alike than you think. Oh and, before you start writing a thesis on me, I also know how medical papers work.’

  River’s smile was tigerish again. ‘If the greater medical community was to find out that your interviews were conducted with synaptic controllers, you’d be ruined,’ she said. ‘Why, you could have been making them say anything. I could tell you that I’m a child of a TARDIS raised by a fanatical church to kill the universe’s last Time Lord, but instead I married him and faked his death, and now I use your prison as free accommodation while he takes me out on dates … and you wouldn’t be able to publish a single word.’

  Chyll’s smile disappeared.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Henrik,’ she said lightly. ‘I’ll be in my cell. You should probably get all this cleaned up. I wouldn’t like to be near Rubel when the paralysis wears off.’

  Later, after little plates and large plates and crackers and – yes – tinsel, Rory put his arm round River, careful not to reopen his cut.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’

  River shrugged. ‘He needed to believe you were close to caving. But … I do understand. This isn’t the Christmas you were expecting. Or the daughter.’

  ‘I don’t think anybody gets the kids they expect,’ Rory said. ‘And you’ve had a lot of people try to make you into a lot of things. Me, I wouldn’t change you for the world.’ He looked down at his plate. ‘Unlike this ham.’

  River’s expression turned sly. ‘You know, I don’t think security by the kitchens will have fully recovered …’

  Rory set down his plate and lifted his broadsword. ‘You read my mind.’

  AFTER

  ‘Wake up, Henrik. It’s your lucky day.’

  Chyll sat up with a start. He hadn’t been sleeping, in point of fact. Sleep had been eluding him, ever since what he was rather carefully referring to as ‘the incident’. ‘Incident’ sounded better than ‘jailbreak’. It certainly sounded a lot better than ‘failed attempt to manipulate a troublesome prisoner’. The problem was, what Henrik called it wouldn’t matter once word got out. That was the nightmare that kept him from sleep.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he snapped, looking around and trying to rub the ache out of his head.

  A form resolved out of the darkness. A porcelain oval, polished and pale, floating in the blackness like a leaf on dark water.

  No. Not a leaf, Henrik realised, as two slits opened and blinked. A mask.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ Chyll said, trying to keep a note of panic from his voice. ‘My guards, they should have –’

  ‘Stopped us?’ A second mask appeared from the gloom. The voice was light, like a little boy’s. ‘They tried. In this and in many other timelines. Not hard enough, unfortunately. Lucky for you, though.’

  ‘Lucky?’ Chyll’s mouth was dry. ‘What do you mean, lucky?’

  ‘Because, in another timeline,’ the first mask said, its voice soft and female, ‘River Song killed you. You pushed her too far by going after her family, so she put a round through your skull.’

  The panic button. It was beneath his pillow.
He could press it easily. And yet, something stopped him. Fear perhaps, or curiosity – that foolish curiosity that had got him into this mess in the first place.

  ‘She killed me?’

  ‘Then,’ the first mask continued, as if Chyll had not spoken, ‘there was the timeline where Rory killed you. Several timelines, in fact. He is an interesting one. We’re watching him quite closely.’

  Press the button, you fool. They could be anyone.

  Chyll’s hand was still at the back of his head. There was a pain there – tight and piercing and impossible to ignore. He found himself having to think around it rather than through. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

  ‘And then there were the many, many timelines where your own prisoners broke free, and the things they did –’

  ‘Sibling,’ the second mask said. ‘Enough. You don’t need to worry about those other timelines, Chief Psychiatrist Chyll. Because you’re in this one.’

  ‘And what timeline is that?’ Chyll said, still trying to find the source of the pain … and then froze as his fingers found a cold little bulb of steel.

  A synaptic controller. Funny – when he’d designed them, he hadn’t given a lot of time to wondering what wearing one would feel like. You can’t get too wrapped up in that kind of thing, he remembered thinking. It gets in the way of the science.

  ‘The timeline,’ the boy said, ‘where you tell us everything we need to know about Professor River Song.’

  6

  We Will Feed You to the Trees

  ‘Don’t think of it as death,’ I say, checking the shackles on the Doctor’s hands. ‘Think of it as being in service to a miracle.’

  He doesn’t answer, and I don’t blame him. Our ways probably seem fair old-fashioned to an outsider, and he looks outsider to his core, with his long coat and his wide hat and his vest covered in question marks, of all things. The good people of Outsmawe wear sturdy wool and good leather boots. Simple clothes. The kind that will take care of you if you take care of them. We’re not question-mark kind of people.