by Doctor Who
Rose was finally, fitfully, drifting off when the lights snapped on.
Someone banged on the door, which clanged and creaked as it was unlocked and jumped ajar, yelled at them to wake up and slop out. Rubbing her bleary, gritty eyes, Rose saw a metal pail under the sink.
‘You so have to be kidding me,’ she muttered.
The girl in the bed against the far wall stirred reluctantly. Rose could see only a black starfish tangle of hair on the pillow at first, but gradually the rest of her pushed out from under the blankets. The girl was Asian, small and delicate with wide, startled eyes. An intricate hennaed design ran along her left cheek, and as she sat up her hair spilled down over her grey vest top almost to her waist.
‘Hi,’ she grunted, her voice almost comically low for such a slight girl. ‘Rizwana Mani. Riz, if you like.’
‘I’m Rose. Rose Tyler.’
‘Cool. Riz and Rose.’ She grinned. ‘Been lonely round here since I lost my last cellmate, Sally.’
‘What happened?’
‘I killed her.’
31
Rose stared at her. Riz stared back, raised her eyebrows.
‘You’re joking me,’ Rose said nervously.
‘You reckon?’ But Riz couldn’t keep her face straight and burst into snorts of laughter.
Rose shut her eyes, sighed with relief. ‘You cow!’
‘I got you, didn’t I?!’
‘You never.’ But Rose couldn’t help smiling too. ‘So what really happened to your mate?’
‘She killed herself.’ Riz picked up the bucket beneath the sink. It made a nasty sloshing noise. ‘One night in solitary. I never even saw the body.’
Rose waited for her to say she was ‘Joking. But there was no laughter this time. She just stared out into space.
‘Sorry, I. . . You OK, Riz?’
‘Fine.’ Riz forced a smile. ‘Come on. We’ll empty this and go get some breakfast.’
The canteen was huge, thronging with people. After the nocturnal quiet and emptiness, it came as a shock to Rose just how many people were jammed in here. She scanned for signs of Kazta, then realised she was looking not only at girls but at blokes too. For some reason she’d assumed that Dennel, as a block-walker, was a special case who’d skipped segregation.
‘Is this the whole prison?’ she asked Riz, standing in a long, long queue for a plate of slops that looked like sick and didn’t smell a whole lot better.
‘Just the main block.’
‘Boys and girls together all day?’
‘New directive. They’re gonna make all the prisons mixed sex.
There’s even talk we’ll get to work together.’ Riz gave her a mock shove. ‘What’s up, you complaining?’
‘God, no,’ said Rose quickly. ‘Just surprised.’
‘So. You got someone?’
Rose thought about the Doctor, and for a moment she could have cried. ‘There’s someone I need to get back to,’ she said.
32
‘Lucky,’ said Riz, a dreamy look in her eyes. ‘I’ve been here six years.
Never had no one. And even if I did, can’t do much about it here. Not till they let us work together, anyway.’
‘What did you do?’
‘My mum was a benefit cheat. She was claiming for me and two brothers and sisters that didn’t exist. They put her away. . . and put me in here till she gets out.’
‘That stinks! You didn’t do anything wrong!’ Rose shook her head.
‘Then again, what did I do?’
‘What did you do?’ asked Riz.
So Rose told her story as they shuffled along in the queue. The fight with the overseers. The long journey here through space. Blanc and Norris stitching her up. Kazta.
‘Kazta is such a bitch,’ said Riz ‘But she’s not alone. This place is full of psychos.’ She gave a weird nervous laugh that suggested it took one to know one. ‘’S all right, though, I’ll tell you which girls to stay away from. . . and which boys are hot!’
Rose smiled. ‘What about Dennel? He’s not a looker, but. . . well, he’s nice. Sort of kind.’
‘Oh, Dennel’s hot all right.’ Riz laughed her funny laugh. ‘You’re playing with fire there, Rose.’
‘All right, all right!’ she said, smiling. ‘He’s the first guy I’ve met, give me a chance!’ She looked round again. ‘God, it’s so weird, though, isn’t it? Girls and boys together in a prison.’
Riz shrugged. ‘They like trying out different things. It’s all just a big experiment, see.’
‘Yeah, Dennel said something about that.’
‘I’m just glad I’m not on Justice Alpha. All historical reconstructions and heavy labour.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘Bring the past to life while they work you to death. Shove you down old-fashioned mines, make you row in old galleys – even make you build pyramids!’
‘Don’t I know it,’ murmured Rose, picking up a plate of congealed pasta. ‘But why bother with the history stuff?’
‘Adds a new twist, dunnit?’ Riz grabbed a plate of slops. ‘Any planet can put their crims in a labour camp. But, like Robsen says, spice 33
it up with a bit of history and you can sell it to a colony world as a
“punishment solution”. It brings the tourists in, and it’s educational so you get the school trips too.’
‘That’s sick. Who’s Robsen, anyway?’
‘One of the screws. Soft touch.’ They sat at an empty table, Riz’s eyes quietly sparkling. ‘He’s not bad for one of them. Used to work on Alpha, but he left. Didn’t like it.’
Rose shuddered at the memory of the overseers with their bloody whips. ‘Don’t blame him. What else has Justicia got going?’
So Riz told her. Rose found the grisly details still harder to swallow than the food.
After breakfast you had to tidy your cell for roll call. Didn’t take Rose long; she had nothing to tidy. A warder gave her a kind of credit card thing and told her where she could buy stuff like make-up and chocolate. She would have to earn the money, of course.
Rose had been assigned to the kitchens. She wished she’d been sent to the launderette like Riz. She would be alone again and she felt a nag of worry in her stomach at the thought.
But at lunchtime she was due to see the Governor, to talk through her crimes and her punishment. She knew she must play things very carefully. No way was she going to stay lost in the system for the next however many years like Dennel and Riz and probably most of the others. She had to get out of here and get back to the Doctor. Riz had filled her head with so many horror stories of where he might be. The Middle Eastern jail colony on Justice Gamma. . . the acid plantations on Epsilon. . . But there was meant to be a place in Justicia for alien brainboxes. He had to be there. Had to.
Surely she could work things out with the Governor, explain what an awful mistake had been made? It wasn’t even as if they’d landed on the pyramid planet through choice. They’d been dragged down.
The Doctor had said so. . .
Her nerves built all morning. Her stomach griped and growled, she could hear its running commentary even over the roar of ovens and 34
fryers, the clanking and clanging of crocks and pans. The kitchens were hot as hell and smelled worse. Within minutes, Rose’s hair was hanging wetly down over her face. Sweat trickled into her eyes, down her back, made her squirm and itch.
She was peeling spuds. About a billion of them in a muddy mountain. The peeler was blunt and next to useless, presumably in case she went mad with despair and used it on her workmates. No blokes in here. All the girls wore vests like the one Riz had slept in, blackened with huge rings of sweat.
Rose recognised someone washing up at the giant sink across the steaming room. It was one of the girls who had gone for her last night, Maggi. She was on her own now. She smiled at Rose, a little self-consciously.
Then Rose jumped as the mound of peeled potatoes beside her seemed to explode. Spuds were suddenly rolling everywhere.
A tall, thin girl with almond eyes gave her a spiteful smile. ‘You should put them in the pan. Not on the table.’
Rose glared at her, went to pick them up. But the girls nearby were sniggering and stamping on the potatoes, crushing them, kicking them around.
‘Oh, grow up, can’t you?’ Rose complained.
‘Grow up, can’t you?’ said someone nearby. ‘Grow up, can’t you?’
The childish chant went up, ragged at first but soon gaining in volume and enthusiasm. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her and soon they were all joining in, even smiling Maggi.
‘Pack it in!’ Rose shouted. And she was busy yelling it again just as the chanting stopped.
Warder Blanc had entered the kitchens, Norris by her side. She stared balefully at Rose and then down at the pulped potato mess over the floor.
Wonderful. It couldn’t be Riz’s mate, Robsen the soft touch, could it? No, not for her.
‘Did you make this mess, Tyler?’ asked Blanc quietly.
Rose looked around at the flushed, surly faces ranged around her.
She knew she was going to get done for this through no fault of her 35
own. But she wasn’t a grass.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I must have slipped and knocked them.’
‘You slipped all right,’ she said. ‘Come with us.’
‘Where to?’
‘Don’t question me,’ Blanc barked. ‘Move.’
Rose ignored the smirks and the gestures and the mouthed threats as she trailed out of the kitchens after them. At least she was getting out of this particular corner of hell.
‘Looks like Kazta went easy on you last night,’ Blanc observed.
‘You’d better hope that the Governor’s feeling as lenient.’
‘The Governor?’ Rose frowned. ‘But I’m due to see him in a few hours anyway.’
‘That was before you screwed up,’ said Norris. ‘Shame. Never makes a good first impression – you know, being sent to see the big man on a charge before he’s even welcomed you.’
Rose shut her eyes. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Last night you start a fight, this morning you damn near start a riot in the kitchen block over a few potatoes –’
‘Riot? Oh, come off it –’
Blanc turned on her, gripped her by both shoulders. ‘You’re a disruptive element, Tyler,’ she hissed. ‘And I’m going to make sure the Governor knows that, ahead of any appeal you might be hoping to make.’
Rose looked at her unflinchingly. ‘How come you ended up such a bitch?’
Blanc raised her hand to strike Rose. But Norris caught her wrist, shook his head. Blanc’s eyes flashed, but then she nodded, took a deep breath, calmed down. She seized Rose by the sodden scruff of her neck and marched her forwards down the corridor.
Soon they reached the Governor’s block. The decor became softer, there were carpets on the floors and decorative plants about the place.
Air conditioning whirred softly in the background. A desk stood empty beside them.
‘Where’s his assistant?’ muttered Blanc.
There was a rustling noise from further down the corridor.
36
‘Sir?’ called Blanc. She propelled Rose ahead of her, Norris following just behind. ‘Sir, I’m sorry to disturb you. . . ’
But it looked to Rose as if the Governor was disturbed already.
The heavy oak door to his office was ajar. An eerie blue light sparked and flickered inside, like electricity. A ripe smell of decay wafted out through the door.
‘Sir?’ Blanc frowned.
Rose froze. She recognised the light and the smell from times past with the Doctor. The terrifying memories came rushing back.
Blanc started forwards but Rose grabbed hold of her arm. ‘Don’t go in there,’ she said. ‘That’s not your Governor.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Blanc pulled free crossly. ‘You’ve never even seen the Governor.’
‘It’s a Slitheen!’ said Rose, backing away. ‘Or from the Slitheen planet, anyway.’ She felt Norris’s slablike hands settling around her arms. ‘They’re evil. Killers! They dress up in human skins – they have a machine that squashes up their bodies, see, and when they unsquash, that light starts up and. . . ’
‘Shut her up,’ growled Blanc. ‘She’s crazy.’
Rose struggled in Norris’s grip. ‘I’m telling you, your Governor’s dead,’ she said desperately. ‘There’s a monster in there now. And if we go inside, we could wind up dead too!’
37
The Doctor lay on a thin mattress in the corner of the Slitheen cell.
As digs went, he’d known better. The room was more like a large cave burrowed out of the bare rock. The walls were plastered with pictures of Raxacoricofallapatorians, some butt-naked like Dram and Ecktosca Fel Fotch, others peeking out cheekily from half-shucked body suits, impersonating all kinds of creatures from Meeps to Kraals.
The ceiling might have been thick with pictures too, but it was lost to blackness and shadows. If you squinted you could just make out the glimmer of globs perched somewhere up among the rafters.
Instead of beds, both Dram Fel Fotch and Ecktosca sprawled in elab-orate sticky nests. The floor was tacky, as if fizzy pop had been spilled all over it – the Doctor had almost lost both shoes crossing to his tem-porary bed. A smell of rotting rubbish filled the room.
‘Cosy round here,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ve done so much with the place. Like it.’
‘I still say having him here is a cheek,’ mumbled Dram Fel Fotch. ‘If it wasn’t for the globs. . . ’
‘I don’t snore or anything. You won’t even notice I’m here.’ The Doctor blew out a long, bored breath. ‘So is it all right round here?
39
Food OK? A good library?’
‘Solar workshop’s good,’ said Dram. ‘Very well equipped.’
‘Can you make stuff there? Or are there rules?’
‘There are rules,’ snapped Ecktosca. ‘But one learns to get used to it.’
‘Does “one”?’ muttered the Doctor.
A moment later a voice in his head announced, ‘Lights out!’ and made him jump. The room was soon plunged into blackness. He listened to the Slitheen grunting and stretching and settling down for sleep. Then the sound of wet snuffling.
‘He smells like a cool little customer, this one, doesn’t he, Dram?’
said Ecktosca.
‘Exotic,’ Dram agreed.
‘He looks as ugly as a human but his scent is rare and subtle. Brash and distracted and ever so slightly sad. . . ’
‘A tough little morsel, too.’
‘You would make a glorious hunt, Doctor,’ said Ecktosca. ‘I shall dream of hunting you down and tearing you into chunks. No offence.’
‘None taken. So long as you don’t sleepwalk.’ No reply. He glanced up at the glimmering globs. Don’t go anywhere.
A minute passed. The Doctor soon grew bored listening to the rush and whoop of Slitheen breathing as they settled down for sleep.
‘So,’ he said loudly, ‘are you lot still running the family business?
Impersonating aliens, nuking their planets and selling off the radioac-tive chunks as cheap fuel for every bargain-bucket spaceship in the galaxy?’
The heavy breathing stopped for a few seconds.
‘How do you know that?’ demanded Ecktosca. ‘Are you a historian?’
The Doctor considered. ‘Sort of, yeah.’
‘The Slitheen haven’t been in that line of work for hundreds of years. The old firm went bankrupt.’
‘Our ancestors turned to chizzle-waxing for a while to make ends meet,’ Dram added. ‘But it’s such a messy business. . . ’
‘Is that how you wound up in Justicia?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Chizzle-waxing?’
40
‘What d’you take us for?’ Dram complained.
‘Dram Fel Fotch and I have been researching our roots,’ said
Ecktosca. ‘Did you know that 500 or so years ago, there were Slitheen galloping about in skins many sizes too small for them?’
‘Yeah, I did,’ said the Doctor. ‘And if I didn’t, the photos on your wall are a bit of a giveaway. They wore gadgets round their necks, compression fields, so they could adopt the shape of their prey. But it made them a bit gassy. You know, reducing the bulk of something your size into something a bit bigger than me, well – the spare energy’s got to go somewhere, hasn’t it?’ He blew a raspberry. ‘Better out than in.’
‘You’re remarkably well informed.’
‘News travels,’ said the Doctor. ‘The Slitheen almost blew up Earth, you know. In the end they only blew up themselves.’ He sighed. ‘A waste.’
‘The family’s fortunes went downhill around then,’ Dram noted.
‘But as the historians of our clan, we celebrate our failures as well as our achievements,’ Ecktosca added. ‘We’ve been finding out all we can about the industrious Jocrassa Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen and his compatriots.’
The Doctor shifted on his bunk. ‘Sometimes it’s best to leave the past well alone.’
‘Not for us. You see, we are antique dealers,’ Ecktosca explained.
‘We have been searching for our ancestors’ personal effects. Their compression fields alone would fetch an enormous price among col-lectors.’
‘They were destroyed along with the wearers.’ The Doctor paused.
‘Weren’t they?’
‘We heard a whisper that they were recovered from the wreckage of that Earthly explosion 500 years ago,’ Dram confided. ‘They were stored in a government stockpile, filed away, waiting for the day that humans could actually comprehend the technology involved and make something of it. The trail led here –’
‘I do love a trail,’ sighed Dram.
‘– and we tried to deal with the Executive to get back these valuable heirlooms. But we were betrayed. Consul Issabel directed us to a 41
classified building on Justice Delta. The humans believed that we’d broken in and had us arrested.’
The Doctor pulled a face. ‘The boss woman framed you?’