Doctor Who BBC Quick Reads 01 - I Am a Dalek
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‘Very smart,’ the Doctor said, nodding. ‘The most peaceful time in future history,’ he added for Rose’s benefit.
The Dalek lowered its eye-stalk. ‘The impure creatures of this future time care about peace. They know nothing of war, nothing of the Daleks. The one called Kate will come with me. She will plead for materials to rebuild my race. The creatures will supply them without asking questions. When we are ready, we shall emerge to conquer and destroy!’
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Rose took the Doctor’s arm. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘It sounds far away.
It gets us off the hook, but those people in the future are just like us.
We can’t do it!’
The bangle began to pulsate with golden light. ‘Stand back,’ barked the Dalek.
The Doctor and Rose obeyed.
The Dalek fixed its eye in the Doctor. ‘You will not follow.’
‘Never crossed my mind,’ said the Doctor innocently.
‘You will not follow. Because you will no longer exist.’ The Dalek raised its gun, aiming right at the Doctor. ‘The last thing I see before I depart will be your extermination!’
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor simply. ‘I made a deal with a Dalek.
What do you think I expected? A handshake and a box of Terry’s All Gold?’
‘Activate the Time Ring!’ screeched the Dalek.
Kate’s fingers moved over the controls.
She heard Rose’s voice. ‘Kate, please. What’s inside you – fight it. I know you can!’
‘You waste energy,’ said Kate. ‘The Dalek factor is too strong.’
Rose ran to Kate’s side. ‘Listen. All that stuff in your head. All the millions of planets and billions of years. I know what it’s like. Forget it. This morning, you missed the bus. What was the number of that bus?’
‘That is not important,’ said Kate. But she saw the bus, the silly rural single-decker, turning the corner on to the green. The number was 354.
Rose carried on desperately. ‘Toby, your ex, the one who spent all the credit on your card. What did he look like?’ Kate saw Toby, thin-ning hair and paunch, the kind of man you settle for when there’s nothing else going. ‘What did you have for tea last night?’ Rose cried.
‘Custard?’ It was the first word that came into her head.
Custard. Gloopy, yellow, pointless, tasty custard. Kate had never thought about custard before. Not thought hard about it. The Dalek part of her dismissed it. The human part imagined it pouring thickly 59
over bread and butter pudding. She realised she hadn’t eaten for hours.
But it was too late. The Dalek fired. ‘Exterminate the Doctor!’
A glowing sphere of light formed around the Dalek. The blast fizzed harmlessly inside it.
The Doctor clapped his hands together. ‘Custard!’ he cried. ‘She’s put a force field around the Dalek! Humans get hungry. What else do they do? Small things, big things, anything! We can reach her, get her to destroy it! Rose!’
Rose took his cue. ‘ The X Factor,’ she gabbled. ‘Floor polish. Contact lenses. Waiting for home delivery, some time between eight and six.
Gas bills.’ She tried desperately to think. ‘People talking too loud on their phones in trains. Pointless internet arguments, with people you don’t even know. Kylie. When they ask “Do you have a Boots advantage card?”’
The Doctor took over, speaking quickly and passionately. ‘Then there are the best human qualities. They’re inside you, Kate, and I’ve seen them. The potential that is bursting from every human. The explorer, determined to see something nobody’s seen before. Writing home to tell his wife he’s never coming back, he knows he’s gonna die, but he must tell her he loves her.’ He gestured to Rose. ‘More!’
‘My mum,’ she said, ‘waiting up for me in her dressing gown till gone three, then pretending she just got up to put the kettle on.’ She grabbed another example from her own life. ‘When your mates are talking, and you close your eyes and it’s the most beautiful sound in the world, just people you love talking rubbish!’
‘Heroes!’ snapped the Doctor, as he stepped forward, eyes alight.
‘Running into a fire to save someone else’s child. People struggling, surviving, together. There was a time, thousands of years back, when there were only a few hundred humans left – I saw them – I saw them say no, we will go on, and they made it, and filled the world!’ He gasped for breath. ‘It’s the whole messy, glorious human thing!’
‘The Dalek factor will triumph!’ shrieked the Dalek. It fired again and again, the beams dissolving into the sphere of light.
Kate’s mind was divided. Down the middle.
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On the Dalek side there was power, glory, calm. Cities made of steel and oceans of ooze, stretching away into infinity under red moonlight.
There was anger, purpose, absolute devotion.
On the human side there was muddle. Daftness, regrets, accidents. Headaches and lost tickets and scratched CDs out of their cases and missed appointments and embarrassment. Apologies and blown chances. Being ill. Christmas. Half-hearted sex. Wogan and his non-sense.
But there was more to that muddle. There were beautiful buildings, all different, jammed together any old way under nights full of dia-mond stars. There was the thrill of making a new friend. There was music that never stopped changing. There were new ideas, new jokes, new discoveries, pouring out of that human chaos.
And Mum and Dad, taking her back in, giving her chance after chance after chance.
For one second Kate rejected the Dalek factor. In that vital second her fingers, with all their Dalek knowledge intact but with human resolve, flickered across the control unit of the Time Ring.
And instead of disappearing, the Dalek started to vibrate. A thick buzzing hum filled the air.
‘I dunno what I just did. . . ’ Kate told the Doctor and Rose.
‘Never mind now. Come on!’ shouted the Doctor.
Kate suddenly felt very confused, as if this strange day was finally catching up with her. Then something clicked in her head. ‘Self-destruct. I’ve set the Time Ring thing to self-destruct.’
‘Yes!’ cried the Doctor. ‘And on the other hand, no! Warp implosion!’
He grabbed Kate and Rose, pulling them towards the TARDIS. ‘Run!’
He couldn’t resist one last look back at the Dalek.
‘You cannot escape!’ it ranted. ‘Exterminate, exterminate –’ It was rattling uncontrollably now, becoming a wobbling golden blur.
‘You got it wrong,’ the Doctor sneered. ‘Your great plan failed. It was a balls-up. And you know why? Because who wants to be a Dalek, when they could be a human?’ He waved jauntily and said, ‘Goodbye,’
with quiet, satisfied contempt.
Then he ran into the TARDIS after Kate and Rose.
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The door slammed shut. The TARDIS faded away, ancient engines groaning.
The Dalek gave one last roar of anger before it imploded, its atoms blasted into nothingness. There was a mighty boom and every single window in a twenty-mile radius blew out.
Then there was only silence, and a smoking black patch in the quiet market town where the last Dalek had stood only moments before.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘THAT WAS BRILLIANT!’ CRIED the Doctor. ‘Come here!’ He picked Kate up and whirled her round the TARDIS.
‘Stop it! Please put me down,’ said Kate a little crossly.
The Doctor obeyed with a joyful bow, as if he was finishing a dance.
Kate looked round at the weird, gloomy room. ‘Where is this? There was just a box. . . ’
Rose was intrigued. Kate seemed to have forgotten everything. As a Dalek, she’d known all about the Doctor and the TARDIS. ‘She’s lost it?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘No Dalek, no Dalek factor. Just a lot of harmless, useless genes going back to sleep.’
Kate touched her head. ‘What about my hair?’
Kate sighed. ‘No offence, but that’s how I prefer it.’ She yawned.
She was exhausted.
But the Doctor wasn’t going to let her rest. ‘You are a hero! Hero!
Hero!’ he said.
‘OK, Doctor,’ said Rose. ‘Leave her alone.’
‘She’s just prevented a disaster for the universe! She played a blin-der!’ He turned back to Kate. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’d really like to go home,’ said Kate in a small voice.
‘Yeah, that’s easy, we’re doing that. There must be something else, though,’ said the Doctor. ‘Come on. You’re not gonna get the chance again.’
Rose stepped forward. ‘Got your credit card on you?’
Kate handed it over to Rose, who gave it to the Doctor. ‘You could pay off this.’
The Doctor took the card happily and ran the sonic screwdriver along the magnetic strip on the back. ‘All gone. But I’ve battered your 63
credit rating for ever. Don’t even try applying for another one. No second chances.’ He tossed the card into the trunk.
Another thought struck Kate. ‘Oh, my God. I grabbed my boss.
Tried to strangle her. In front of everyone in Twyford.’
‘No problem,’ said the Doctor confidently.
‘It is a problem,’ said Rose.
‘No problem,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘What colour hair did this mad-woman have? Natural blonde. That’s not you, is it? Just looked like you.’
Kate stared at the two of them. The Dalek factor was gone, but she still had a sense of what their lives must be like. ‘Today. That was like a normal day for you, yeah?’
Rose grinned. ‘Just about.’
‘Then the two of you are mad, aren’t you?’ said Kate.
The TARDIS door opened on to the village green. Kate stepped out and set off towards her parents’ house. She didn’t look back as the blue box faded away.
Her head was full of plans. For the first time in years she had no debt. She’d ring her mate Lucy in London tonight. She could get out of Winchelham, start over again in the city. She could stay over at Lucy’s for a couple of weeks. Lucy wouldn’t mind, not really. Then she’d get a job up there. She would get a bloke, a proper bloke this time. Perhaps she could even get the flip-flop business going again.
She walked back into the world of compromise, making do, muddling along, bread and butter pudding with custard, and heroes. The world that she had saved.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE SUN BLAZED DOWN on Durham University in the summer of 1970.
Frank Openshaw crossed the courtyard on the way to his next history lecture. He brushed the long hair out of his eyes and lifted his new canvas bag, from the army-surplus shop, more comfortably on to his shoulder.
A third-year was walking towards him. She was gorgeous, but he didn’t stand a chance with someone like her, so he put it out of his mind.
Suddenly a blonde teenage girl, wearing a weird hooded top, crashed into him on a bicycle. It seemed almost deliberate. The third year hurried over, helped them both up.
‘Sorry,’ said the blonde girl.
‘Try looking where you’re going,’ said the third-year, sharing an amused glance with Frank. Her eyes lingered on him a second too long.
The blonde girl got back on to her bike and cycled off.
‘Are you OK?’ asked the third-year, putting a concerned hand on Frank’s shoulder. ‘I’m Sandra, by the way.’
He shook her hand. ‘Frank.’
Rose wheeled the bike to a stop outside the TARDIS, which was parked in the arch leading off the courtyard. Through the arch the Doctor watched Frank and Sandra walking away together.
‘That what you wanted?’ asked Rose, climbing off the bike.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. He took Rose’s hand. ‘What was it for any-way?’
The Doctor opened the door of the TARDIS. ‘Bending the rules. For my friend.’
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Helen Raynor, Justin Richards and Stuart Cooper. And to Clayton Hickman, Neil Corry and the Not Players.
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Document Outline
Cover
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Acknowledgements
World Book Day: Quick Reads
Back Cover