by Adam Roberts
‘What was the business with the “ey oop” and the “ ’appen” when you came round from your trance?’ I asked.
‘A momentary grammatical aberration,’ said the Dr, looking distinctly queasy. If you’ll excuse me, I must rush to the toilet.’ He hauled himself to his feet and ran from the control room, making a series of repeated bluuerCA’H! noises as he went.
After a half hour or so in which Linn and I did nothing but idle around the control room, peering at the gleaming controls and trying to make small-talk, the Dr re-emerged from the toilet. The intervening period had been marked by the background noise of a grown man attempting, apparently, to force his spleen up through his throat and out into the toilet pan by using the muscles of his diaphragm alone. It was not a pretty sound.
‘There,’ said the Dr, looking pale. ‘I think that’s got that sorted out. Better out than in, I suppose. I do apologise for that. It’s the cerum aerobic bacteria in the lower gut that . . . mostly . . . oh no.’ He put his hand to his mouth and his cheeks ballooned out like a jazz trumpeter’s. ‘Excuse meeeurrkh,’ he blurted.
He rushed from the control room.
Once again Linn and I sat in the control room, looking pointedly in other directions than one another’s faces. From time to time we made eye contact and smiled, weakly, at one another. ‘Well,’ I said, at one point. ‘This is all very interesting, isn’t it.’ And she replied, ‘yes, it is.’ I asked, ‘have you seen him do this before, then?’ and she replied, ‘no, actually, not,’ and I said, ‘ah!’ We sat in silence for a while. All the time, however, we were accompanied by a cacophonous soundtrack of what sounded like a pig trying to give birth to a much larger, and much more noisily unhappy, pig in the next room.
Eventually the noises died away and the Dr emerged, even paler than before but wearing a brave smile.
‘Again I apologise,’ he said. ‘It is an unfortunate side-effect of the DNA mutation, the broad-spectrum change of cellular germ plasm impacts very sharply upon the gut flora, with concomitant isolation of the Lactobacillus plantarum and an anti-Candida emetic that involves certain projectile gut-spasm implications,’ said the Dr, in a sober voice. ‘Also I was puking like a dog.’
‘We heard,’ said Linn.
‘Anyway, anyway, anyway,’ said the Dr, trying to rally the situation by smacking his hands together and rubbing the palms up against one another. ‘It’s all behind me now. At least it will be, as soon as my lower bowel catches up with the more immediate negative reaction of the stomach and intestinal changes. But we don’t want to worry about that now. We need to get on.’
Chapter Three
THE TIME GENTLEMEN’S CONVENANCE
We stepped through into the meeting chamber. It was a splendidly appointed and decorated chamber; every surface was either gilded, silvered or bronzed: except for the floor which was decorated with verdigris, or ‘verdigreased’ as the phrase goes. On tiered platforms arranged in a horseshoe shape about the central podium as many as a hundred Time Gentlemen were sitting on their official benches. When I say ‘as many as a hundred’ I mean ‘as few as a hundred’, which is to say, a hundred. There was a distinctly pompous and official air.
‘Right, you two,’ the Dr said to us. ‘Best behaviour, alright? This is an official Time Gentlemen’s Convenance. It’s not a place for mucking-about-in. Not,’ he corrected himself, glancing about himself nervously as if conscious that the grammatical exactitude expected of all Time Gentlemen applied most particularly in this space, ‘not an environment in which mucking can be allowed about.’ He looked at the floor and tried one more time. ‘Not about in of which, there can, now, be allowed, any mucking. ’
‘We understand,’ said Linn.
‘Convenance?’ I queried.
‘What?’
‘You sure that’s a word?’
‘Of course I am.’
The Dr bowed to the Time Chairgentleman, seated at apex of the many curving rows of seats, behind the sumptuous Time Table of Garlicfree. We both followed suit. Then we made our way to the side of the chamber and slid onto one of the benches.
‘You’re quite sure?’ I pressed. ‘I mean . . . convenance. It doesn’t have the . . .’
‘It is a meeting convened by the Time Gentlemen. Therefore it is a Time Gentlemen’s Convenance.’
‘It’s just that I’ve never,’ I said, a little nervously. ‘I mean, in all my years as a tailor of prose, I can say that—’
‘Shhhpshh!’ hushed the Dr crossly. ‘Tsschh! Czsch!’
The Chair had got to his feet. Which is to say, the Time Gentleman chairing the meeting, who had been sitting in a chair, was now standing. The chair itself remained standing throughout the whole proceedings. ‘Time Gentlemen and honoured guests!’ he commenced.
‘It is with enormous, Gentlemen’s, relish that I welcome the Doctor to our proceedings.’
‘Too kind,’ murmured the Dr, bowing his head to the gathering.
‘As many of you know,’ said the Chair. ‘The Doctor has been engaged on a certain secret mission - the nature of which I cannot, in the present company, disclose. This mission is of the utmost importance. It is, in other words, more than most important. There is an ut involved too.’ A murmur went through the room. ‘Suffice to say,’ boomed the Chair. ‘That his mission has been more than a standard Time Gentlemen mission - more than going about painting-in the missing apostrophes from shop-signs, and more than correcting complete strangers on their failure to use the subjunctive mode.’
‘If I were,’ murmured the entire room. ‘If I were . . .’
‘No. Our intelligence informs us that a TGV has been purchased by a mysterious and malefactoral figure in Le Bar Sexy in sector Parsec-“C” out by the Giffin Head Nebula.’
‘A TGV!’ whispered the assembled Time Gentlemen.
‘I need not tell you how serious this matter is,’ said the Chair. ‘The one thing that can destroy the life of a Time Gentleman . . . and it could be used again and again, perhaps to wipe out the entire race of the Time Gentlemen.’
‘Blime-crikey!’ said the Dr.
‘Our intelligence reports,’ said the Chair, ‘that . . . and I ask you all to prepare for a shock . . . but that the gun is now in the possession of . . . Stavros.’
The whole room fell silent with shock.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Chair, sombrely. ‘I hardly need to tell you how serious a development this is. If Stavros is able to arm his evil cyborg army with TGVs, then the whole future of Time Gentlemanliness is in danger. We could all be wiped out!’
‘What can we do!’
‘For now,’ said the Chair, ‘continue with your various missions. We have breaches of time-grammar that need clearing up in every sector of the Galaxy. Meanwhile the Council of Time Gentlemen will ponder our options. We may be compelled to take the most drastic course of action of all - going back in time to before Stavros was able to create his monstrosities, and eliminating them before they are even created!’
There was only one item of ‘any other business’, relating to the washrooms. After that the meeting was adjourned.
Chapter Six
THE SLUTTYTEENS
The TARDY rematerialised on the patch of green lawn just outside the Houses of Parliament in London, England, Europe, the World, Solar System. The date was 1960. It was a bright sunny day.
‘So what’s the problem here?’ Linn was asking as we stepped from the TARDY. Red Routemaster double-decker buses rolled past. Beefeaters walked arm-in-arm with soldiers in busbies. Everybody was wearing miniskirts, driving mini-cars, and laughing with mini-hahas.
‘It’s like a history lesson!’ I exclaimed.
‘Lesson in ahistory,’ Linn said darkly. ‘More like.’
I smiled at this, and even forced out a chuckle, but then I gave up. ‘No, I don’t get that at all.’
‘Never mind.’
‘Come along,’ said the Dr. ‘We’ve a job to do. The government here has been infiltrated,’ th
e Dr said. ‘An alien race called the Sluttyteens. They look on the outside like obese teenagers. But that’s just a prosthetic skin-suit. Underneath that skin, gleaming as it is with the oil of sebum, are pure Slutties, from the planet Slut.’ The Dr shook his head. ‘Very nasty types. No class or style at all.’
‘They shouldn’t be here?’
‘Indeed not. That’s a clear violation of the law of temporal enclitic participles, right there. They shouldn’t be on this planet at all. They should just go back to the planet Slut, and grow up. If we were to do nothing they’d use their hidden positions to pass a series of laws liberalising sexual behaviour, turning nineteen-sixties Britain into a louche and swinging place with no respect of any kind for order, grammar, sequentiality or anything at all. They must be stopped!’
‘How?’
‘Should be easy enough. I’ll slip into the main chamber of Parliament, whilst a governmental debate is going on. I’ll walk up to the Minister for Swinging Affairs, and yank off her skin-suit - in full view of everybody. Once they’re exposed, it’ll be a simple matter to chase them back to their homeworld.’
‘Shall we come with you?’ I asked.
‘Nah,’ said the Dr. ‘I’ll be fine by myself. It should only take me a minute.’ He marched off for the main entrance of the House of Commons.
It was a warm and sunshiny day, and it was pleasant to sit on the grass with Linn at my side.
‘Linn,’ I said, plucking strands of grass and twirling them between my fingertips. ‘Now that the Dr’s away for a moment, can I confess something to you?’
‘Go on.’
‘Promise not to tell him?’
‘Alright.’
‘I know how important grammar and everything is to you. And I know I’m a prose tailor and everything. But the thing is . . . ’
‘What?’
‘I can never remember when to use who and when to use whom,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I can’t understand why we have both those words. We could just make do with who and everybody would still understand everybody.’
‘Maybe they would,’ Linn agreed. ‘But then we could probably understand one another if we did away with all grammatical tense, all distinction between subject and object . . . why, we could probably point and grunt and get our message across. But it wouldn’t be a very elegant or sophisticated universe, then, would it?’
‘No need to be snarky,’ I said.
‘Tell me, Prose. Do you understand the difference between he and him?’
‘Um,’ I said.
‘She punched he in the face? Or: she punched him in the face?’
‘The second one.’
‘And you know the difference between she and her.’ Linn pressed. ‘It’s just like he and him, after all. He disappointed she? Or: he disappointed her?’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, in that case you already understand the difference between who and whom,’ she said. ‘It’s exactly the same thing. I really don’t understand why people have such a problem with it. You wouldn’t say I gave the book to he, would you! You wouldn’t say he kissed she. No. You wouldn’t. In exactly the same way you wouldn’t ask to who did he give the book? Of course not. To whom did he give the book. He was the one to whom the book was given.’
‘Is it really as simple as that?’
‘It really is.’
‘I feel like I’ve learned something here today,’ I said.
‘Here comes the Doctor,’ said Linn, getting to her feet. ‘And he’s walking funny.’
He was indeed walking in a most peculiar manner, taking strides with his right foot and them making little hoppy-draggy motions with his left to catch up. He was clutching his gut. ‘Something’s wrong,’ Linn said, hurrying over to him.
‘Help me inside the TARDY,’ he said, in a strangulated voice.
‘What happened?’ I asked, taking some of his weight as he struggled over the grass. ‘Did you expose the overweight minister as a Sluttyteen in a skin-suit?’
‘Not exactly,’ gasped the Dr.
‘Then what?’
‘Well - I managed to get in the chamber alright, and sidle up to the Minister. But no matter how vigorously I tugged away at her fat-suit it wouldn’t come off. It was only when she was rolling around on the floor shouting, with me on top of her, and an enormous commotion all around us, that I realised she wasn’t a Sluttyteen at all. Just an amply-proportioned middle-aged woman. I think I’d picked the wrong one.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘What happened then,’ said the Dr, as we opened the door of the TARDY, ‘was that special branch shot me.’
‘Shot you?’ I gasped.
‘That’s right. Shot me in the gut. Can’t say I blame them. We’d better get out of here before the army turns up.’
He staggered inside the TARDY, fell against the console, pressed buttons to dematerialise us, and then, with a gasp, he fell to the floor.
‘Doctor!’ I cried, running over to him. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Not so much alright’ he said, ‘as dying.’ And on that last word, he passed out.
Chapter Nine
BETRAYAL !
‘For the last time,’ said the Dr, tetchily. ‘It was an accident. Come come come, how was I to know? It could have happened to anybody!’
‘Dead! Dead!’ I wailed. ‘The woman of my dreams!’
‘There’s no point in getting so wound-up about it,’ said the Dr. ‘I can’t believe you’re blaming me for that . . . can’t you see how irrational that is? Can’t you see that I really had nothing to do with it?’
‘He does have a point,’ said Linn.
But my grief was making me blind.
‘You have to understand that everybody dies,’ the Dr said. ‘It’s the way of things.’
‘It’s all very well for you to say that!’ I said. ‘If you die you just pop back to life with nothing but an upset tummy. It’s not so easy for the likes of us.’
‘Well,’ said the Dr, looking around him in a faintly senile manner. ‘I wouldn’t describe re-un-de as easy. My dear fellow,’ he added, kindly. ‘You do look upset!’
‘Can you blame me?’ I cried.
‘Of course not. Nobody blames you. Why don’t you take a seat, maybe have a cup of tea? You’ll feel better in a moment.’
‘My heart is shattered into a googolplex of pieces!’ I snapped.
‘There there,’ he offered, vaguely.
‘Doctor,’ said Linn. ‘Not to ignore Prose’s sufferings, but: we still have our mission, don’t we. And if we can’t go outside . . .’
‘It’s a puzzler,’ agreed the Dr.
‘There must be a solution.’
‘Hey, I’m in emotional pain over here,’ I cried.
‘Have you any ideas?’
‘I was thinking,’ said the Dr. ‘I could send out my robot dog, K2. He could fetch the device, and suffer no ill-effects. ’
‘You have a robot dog?’
‘Yes! Well, sort of. Or, to speak absolutely accurately—’
‘Yes?’
‘In absolutely accurate terms, no not really. He’s a little less a robot dog, and a little more, strictly speaking, the second-highest mountain peak on Earth.’
‘You keep the second-highest mountain peak on Earth aboard the TARDY?’
‘I put it in the dog kennel.’
‘The TARDY has a dog kennel?’
‘From the outside it’s kennel-sized. On the inside it’s large enough to accommodate - well, the entire mountain. ’
‘I don’t understand why you’d detach the Earth’s second highest mountain and put it inside the TARDY.’
‘I didn’t detach it,’ said the Dr. ‘It detached itself. It was never a real mountain in the first place. It was a mountain-sized robot pet from a planet inhabited by a race of particularly large rocky aliens. I won’t bore you with the story of how it ended up on earth, or why I gave it sanctuary aboard the TARDY. Suffice to say that it inv
olved me saving the Earth from certain destruction.’
‘But—has nobody noticed that you’ve removed the Earth’s second tallest peak?’
‘Who’d notice? A few dozen mountaineers. Nobody else. And who pays any attention to them?’
‘But surely they would raise the alarm?’
‘They travel all the way to Tibet to climb this mountain. When they get there they discover that it’s actually a small hillock about ten feet high. What do you think they’re going to do? Go back and make a big fuss? Or climb straight to the top, have their photo taken, and then trot back down and spend the rest of the expedition playing PS3? The latter, of course. That way they can boast that they climbed K2 in record time.’
I could stand it no longer. I got to my feet and rushed from the control room, dashing down the corridor in search of a room where I could be alone with my misery.
I stumbled into the TARDY’S extensive car-parking facility, a room just large enough to take a narrow single bed. On this I flung myself, and abandoned myself to my grief.
After a while, as my sobs died away, I thought I heard something.
‘Hello?’ came a voice. It sounded tinny, distant, like a voice over a crystal radio set.
‘What?’ I snapped. ‘Who’s that? What?’
‘To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking—?’
‘Leave me alone!’
‘Is that the handsome young male assistant to the Doctor?’ asked the voice.
My curiosity was engaged just enough to overcome my self-pity. I looked around the tiny room: four grey walls, a grey ceiling; a bed (nothing underneath it; I checked). There was nowhere for another person to hide. ‘Who is this?’
‘I am the Master Debater,’ declared the voice. As soon as he said it, I thought to myself: I knew I recognised the voice.
‘Didn’t we abandon you upon Earth in nineteen-twelve? ’ I said.