The Wintertime Paradox

by Dave Rudden

  It was the gap in Vastra’s attention that the child needed.

  She lunged forward, snagging the pendant with her long fingers. Strax and Jenny both tried to grab her, but there was something evolutionarily advantageous in gangliness after all, and her lanky frame slid in between them like a knife between ribs.

  She flung the door wide and was gone, out into the crystal cold.

  They stared after her.

  ‘Vastra?’ Jenny said. ‘Are you all right?’

  It took Vastra a moment to respond. ‘Yes. Yes. Of course.’

  I could just say nothing. The thought came to Vastra shamefully quickly. She could just say nothing, and they could stay in, and drink wine, and cook a goose the size of Strax. It could just be Christmas.

  ‘Strax,’ Vastra said finally. ‘You know my rules on appropriate weapons?’

  ‘Nothing above a Grade Two,’ the Sontaran said promptly. ‘No grenades, nothing orbital, nothing likely to put a hole in the Earth’s crust, no –’

  ‘Consider the rules withdrawn,’ Vastra interrupted. ‘Load for war.’ She drew her curved sword from its place in the umbrella rack. ‘We’re going out.’

  ‘Madge O’Sullivan! I bring good news!’ the nine-foot-tall cyborg sang joyously, then it opened fire.

  The golden cannon of its left arm turned night to day with a beam of dazzling light, turning snow to steam and the shopfront of Downey’s Greengrocers to sizzling ruin. The cyborg’s other arm, a flared tube reminiscent of the trumpet of a gramophone, followed up with a searing blast of blue-white plasma.

  No response was forthcoming.

  This late on Christmas Eve the streets were deserted, the snow softening even the electric whine of cycling barrels to a dull burr.

  The marble mask of the cyborg’s face was as fixed and expressionless as the sarcophagus lid it resembled. It panned left and right, scanning for prey. Steam vented from the slot of its mouth. The sculpted panels of its chest rose and fell, like the pedals of a church organ, with the beating of its mechanical hearts. It was huge – a Renaissance statue brought to life – and it sang with the overlapping voices of a children’s choir.

  ‘Increase volume!’ it yelled cheerily. ‘Repeat exaltation!’

  This time, it brought the building down. Plasma-chewed joists collapsed. Masonry boiled away to vapour. Walls fell drunkenly against each other, and a small figure detached itself from the shadows and leaped for cover.

  ‘Aha!’ The cyborg chortled as it took aim. ‘Blessed are the meek!’

  ‘Foolish robot!’

  The cyborg swivelled on the brass gimbals of its waist to see Strax marching towards it, topcoat flaring like an angry schoolmaster.

  High above on a rooftop, Vastra winced. So much for a stealthy assault.

  ‘Meekness,’ the Sontaran continued, ‘is disgusting! A feeble tactic intended to pull on the heartstrings. Reject mercy, lest it be used against you!’

  The cyborg cocked its head, dainty as a bird. ‘Goodness,’ it said eventually, then its stone features split into a huge and terrible grin. ‘A debate!’

  That was when Vastra hit it with her missile launcher.

  The explosion didn’t kill it. The Papal Mainframe built their Sacristan kill-bots to be durable – Vastra knew that from personal experience. But the impact did drive the cyborg to its knees, cracking away its marble face to reveal the clicking prayer wheels within.

  It was still kneeling when Vastra approached, and fire had found its way inside its chest. Burning paper fluttered against its translucent ribs.

  ‘Thou shalt not … sha-a-alt not … shalt not –’

  ‘Steal,’ Vastra finished. ‘And, in that, we do not disagree.’

  She brought her blade down in a neat arc.

  Vastra was still staring down at it when Jenny plonked Madge down in front of them. The edges of the young girl’s coat were singed, and she was missing some of that dandelion aura of hair.

  ‘You missed the head,’ Jenny said, a tad sullenly. ‘I told you I’m the better shot.’

  ‘And I told you to stay at home,’ Vastra said. ‘I don’t want us falling behind on our plans –’

  ‘That’s not how we do things,’ Jenny said, cutting her off. ‘And besides, if I had, this little one –’ she scrubbed her hand through Madge’s curls – ‘might have got away.’

  ‘What is it?’ Madge whispered. All the defiance had left her. Real fights tended to do that, Vastra mused.

  ‘A Sacristan,’ Vastra said quietly. ‘Assassin android of the Papal Mainframe.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘A church,’ Vastra explained, and pulled back her veil. There didn’t seem much point in keeping it on any more. ‘A church from the fiftieth century, to be precise. A church that takes the theft of its holy relics very, very seriously.’

  ‘I didn’t steal from no church,’ Madge said. Her eyes had widened at Vastra’s features, but she seemed to have decided that the still-smoking cyborg in front of them was the more pressing issue. Smart girl.

  ‘It isn’t the pendant I’m worried about,’ Vastra said. All that planning. All that effort. She had been worried about devising the perfect Christmas. Now, the biggest concern was surviving it.

  ‘It’s the TARDIS key inside it.’

  ‘But it’s just a key.’

  They sat in the kitchen of 13 Paternoster Row. Madge had grudgingly accepted a cup of tea, and her eyes were fixed on the door as if she expected a charging cyborg to crash through it at any moment. It wasn’t a bad instinct. Vastra was warring with something similar.

  ‘All keys are just keys until you slip one into the correct lock,’ Vastra said. ‘And then, with a single turn, all sorts of things can be unleashed.’

  The key was only really visible if you held the gemstone against the light. It wasn’t anything showy: just a standard silver twentieth-century key, a touch battered and scratched. On first examination, the only thing truly remarkable was how it had managed to end up encased in a ruby.

  That’s not even close to the strangest place you’ve been, though, is it? Vastra thought. When she considered the places this scrap of metal had been, the things it must have seen, she felt, briefly, a strange kinship with it. Depending on the calendar, she was either approaching standard Silurian middle-age or older than all of human civilisation. It was a lonely feeling.

  ‘This is the pendant of Tasha Lem, Mother Superious of the Papal Mainframe. She fought with a friend of ours called the Doctor at the Siege of Trenzalore.’

  Madge’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Fought with or fought with?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vastra said simply. ‘She gave her life to protect an awful lot of people. For her service, she was buried with one of the most precious things in the universe. Not the pendant – though I’m sure you could sell that too – but a key. A key to a TARDIS, a ship that can travel through time and space.’

  ‘Dunno what one of those is,’ Madge said, shrugging, ‘but can you get it out so I can sell the stone?’

  Jenny fought a grin. Vastra scowled.

  ‘Unless you have access to the kind of high-grade fiftieth-century molecular folding the Mother Superious’s attendants would have, no.’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t take it from no Mother Superior.’ The teenager had wrapped her long fingers round her teacup as if trying to store the warmth for a cold tomorrow. She was quite obviously focusing on the parts of Vastra’s explanation that she could understand. ‘It was a man in the street, looking around hisself like he was asking to be robbed. He didn’t even see me when I bumped into him. Got a wallet and the pendant.’

  ‘A new wallet, I imagine,’ Vastra murmured.

  Madge started, then nodded. ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘You can always tell a time traveller by the contents of their pockets,’ Vastra said. ‘Or the lack thereof.’

  ‘You robbed the Doctor?’ Jenny said.

  There was a most unseemly look of amusement on Strax’s face
.

  ‘He could have been a doctor,’ Madge conceded grudgingly. ‘Though I never seen a doctor without at least a few coins in his pocket.’

  ‘I don’t believe it was the Doctor,’ Vastra said thoughtfully. ‘He is … frivolous, but I don’t believe he is frivolous enough to miss being pickpocketed.’ And you’re a hungry child, she thought, looking at Madge. The Doctor notices children first of all. ‘But it has to be a time traveller,’ Vastra continued. ‘Tasha Lem died in the fiftieth century and was interred with this pendant.’

  ‘Interred?’ Madge said. ‘Like in a grave?’

  Vastra had always thought it looked like a snowflake. She’d only seen pictures, of course – her own run-ins with the Papal Mainframe meant she gave their territories a wide berth. But, when Tasha Lem fell at the Siege of Trenzalore, a great fleet of morimentum ships had been dispatched to a hundred freezing worlds, and each one had returned lugging a thousand tonnes of ice. Just carving the tomb had taken thirty years. A small price to pay true homage to the last, late Mother Superious.

  ‘Yes,’ Vastra said. ‘A grave defended by a whole battalion of Sacristans who are no doubt on their way.’

  ‘I didn’t steal from no grave,’ Madge snapped. ‘I wouldn’t –’

  ‘I know,’ Vastra interjected. ‘But someone did, and then you robbed him.’

  She tried to keep her voice steady. It would be easy to be angry. Easy, and pointless. The girl didn’t know any better. Her world was moment to moment, meal to meal. She had no understanding of other worlds, of strife like the kind that had come to Trenzalore. But Vastra did, and the thought of that terrible war reaching out across the centuries and touching her wife and her Christmas didn’t make her angry.

  It made her afraid.

  ‘So, we try and find him then,’ Jenny said, pouring more tea into Madge’s cup. ‘Hand him over to the Sacristans so they go home.’

  Vastra shook her head. ‘The Sacristans won’t care who did the thieving. They’ll hunt whoever has the pendant.’

  Tasha Lem had fallen at Christmas – another Christmas, a long way from here – and she had not been the only one. It wasn’t just the pendant, though that was bad enough. It wasn’t even that possessing such a key gave you access to the TARDIS, one of the most wondrous and dangerous ships ever built, though that in itself was a prize worth almost any cost.

  It was the simple fact that the key was a piece of the Doctor, and any time a piece of the Doctor stayed in one place for too long the universe converged. Time Lords had their own gravity. Being too close could get you crushed.

  Well. Not this time.

  ‘I’ll take it.’ Vastra scooped up the pendant, slipping it into the pocket of her own coat.

  ‘What?’ Jenny and Madge said together.

  ‘I’ll leave London. Draw the Sacristans away. And then I’ll contact the Doctor, and give him back his key.’

  She looked at their shocked faces.

  ‘It’s too dangerous to stay here. We could be bringing great danger down on not just Madge, but on London. On the planet.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ Strax asked.

  Vastra grabbed her veil from its hook. ‘When are we? 1885? Alexander Bell should be on his second prototype by now. A few days in his lab and I might be able to rig up something capable of reaching the –’

  ‘We could do it,’ Jenny said. ‘We’ve psychically linked to the Doctor before.’ There was an odd expression on her face. ‘We could do it together.’

  Vastra shook her head violently. ‘Psychically linking makes us vulnerable. It’s too risky when we are being hunted. I must do this alone. You three will stay here. Continue with the Christmas list.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Jenny said incredulously, but Vastra was already pressing the stack of papers into Strax’s hands.

  ‘We’re a little behind schedule, but I’m sure Madge can take over my duties, and if you jump to paragraph nineteen, subsection twelve –’

  ‘So you’re just leaving?’

  ‘Jenny, I have to. That key is a link to the TARDIS. A link to the Doctor. I can think of fifty alien empires that would want it. I can think of monsters that would burn this entire world just to get their hands on it.’ She forced a smile. ‘I won’t have your Christmas ruined by an intergalactic war. It isn’t on the list, after all.’

  ‘I don’t care about Christmas.’

  Vastra stared at Jenny for a long moment.

  ‘That’s not very in the spirit,’ she said finally. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pack.’

  Time and space bent. The snow drifting through the dark alleyway froze mid-fall, then began to rise upward, flakes spinning in a thousand gentle collisions. A pinpoint of ice-white light appeared. It tore itself in half to become two, then four, then sixteen, and finally a storm.

  The blizzard of lights exploded outwards, rotating in a slow, perfect arc, then crashed together to form two massive kneeling shapes.

  ‘Good news,’ they whispered through unmoving lips.

  Ammo-loaders rattled. War hymns began to throb from inside their ornate chests.

  ‘We bring good news.’

  When Vastra came back downstairs, the house was empty.

  That hurt. She had hoped Jenny would understand. There was a focus of thought that came with being a detective. With being a hunter. The Sacristans achieved it through zealotry and cybernetics, but it had been drilled into Vastra since the day she was hatched.

  Jenny would understand, once they were safe. First, though, Vastra had to make sure she was safe.

  She patted the pocket of her coat one last time, her sword and bag hanging from a shoulder, and felt the hard shape of the pendant within. Such a tiny, tiny thing. It would be good to see the Doctor again. He’d understand that she had to leave to protect Jenny. It was, she imagined, a choice he had made with his own companions many times.

  The storm had worsened, which was a small blessing. Deserted streets meant a much lower risk of innocent casualties should the Sacristans attack. They obviously had some ability to track the pendant. That was good. Vastra wanted them to be able to find her.

  The Silurian moved through flurries of white, her breath smoking against the inside of her veil. The world was silent but for the papery rustle of snow and the fizzing glow of the street lights.

  It should have felt peaceful. Vastra had been raised for the clean purity of the hunt. She had been looking forward to that moment when everything fell away, when you became your senses, when you became your footfalls and your breath, and that shining thread of your quarry’s trail.

  More than that, the time alone to think should have been a relief. Vastra was off. She knew she was off. She hadn’t been thinking straight for months, not since she’d started keeping that damned list in her head.

  Not the Christmas list – that laboriously assembled battle plan – but the list Vastra had been keeping in her head since last year. The list of missteps and silences between her and Jenny. The pauses, the occasional frowns, the awkward jokes that didn’t quite land. Vastra sometimes thought of them as clues, or footprints, but they were what they were – all the signs of the fault she’d introduced last Christmas when she’d momentarily been a fool.

  I hate Christmas, she thought.

  ‘GOOD NEWS!’

  Vastra ducked just as a fat line of light turned the snowstorm to spinning flecks and hissing steam. She went low, tracking the beam to its source a moment before it winked out, only to be replaced by the bark of a missile launcher. A wagon, tucked snugly beneath a tarp, went up in a bloom of flame and smoke.

  Move.

  Her limbs were sluggish in the chill. She should have anticipated that. You’ve been distracted, she thought, scrambling behind a snowdrift on hands and knees, pausing only to draw her sword. The cyborg was a dim shape up ahead, lit only by the street light and the lamp-glare of its single flaring eye.

  You became complacent. You believed in your own invincibility, and so you came alone –


  ‘THOU SHALT NOT STEAL!’ came the voice, deafeningly loud. A voice from behind her. ‘THOU SHALT NOT DESECRATE A TOMB!’

  Oh. Oh dear.

  Vastra had just enough time to scramble backwards as, with a crunch of golden pistons, a second cyborg landed directly in front of her. This one’s face was a golden mask, its expression radiant as a saint’s.

  ‘Suffer not,’ it crooned, and spun a burning scarlet blade through each of its six hands, ‘the sinner to trespass.’

  Vastra raised her own blade, and said a small prayer that the steel would hold.

  Then the cyborg bunched its backward-jointed legs and leaped over her, before barrelling down the street.

  Vastra stared after it, then jumped as a voice spoke near her ear.

  ‘Cold getting to you?’

  ‘Jenny!’ Vastra’s voice was half a snarl. ‘Don’t sneak up on me! I could have –’

  ‘Could have what?’ her wife retorted. ‘I could never have snuck up on you before. Or swapped the pendant out of your coat pocket for one of mine without you noticing. You’re distracted, Vastra. Why is that?’

  Vastra’s hand flew to her pocket, even as the first cyborg let out a whooping blurt of song and rattled down the street past them.

  ‘Jenny, who has the –’

  ‘Strax,’ Jenny said. ‘For now. He is not enjoying the feeling of retreating from an enemy, but I sold it to him as a set of tactical feints and I think he was able to make peace with it. Maybe the re-education is taking hold. But that’s not who I’m worried about.’

  ‘Jenny –’

  ‘Vastra,’ Jenny hissed. ‘You and I are fine. Really. We’d even be happy, if you weren’t desperately overcompensating with forty-eight pages of carefully planned Christmas traditions.’

  Vastra stared at her.

  ‘I know last Christmas was hard. I know we were shaken by it. But I also don’t need to be protected. That’s not how we do things. Just like we don’t run to the Doctor before we talk to each other. And I don’t need this Christmas to be perfect.’