The Drosten's Curse

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘Argh!’ Putta didn’t know whether to bow, shake hands or cower and therefore managed to combine all three in a manoeuvre that made him look as if he had a rat in his jacket and would have preferred not to.

  The Doctor blinked him and then turned to Bryony as his saner option. ‘It just so happens that I am Time Lord who likes to get involved. How can you be wise, if you don’t get involved. Is what I’ve always thought. And I think that’s, as it happens, a particularly wise thought. Wouldn’t anyone?’

  Putta gulped. ‘Is that a trick question?’

  The Doctor patted Putta’s arm inaccurately, while still fixing his attention on Bryony. ‘The important question is…how do you know that I’m a Time Lord? I haven’t told you and we can’t really say that it was a lucky guess. I mean an infinite number of monkeys might eventually come up with a halfway decent…sonnet…But a late-twentieth-century ape-descendant coming up with a guess that lucky in one go…’ His smile flickered on and off like a tired light bulb. ‘Entirely remarkable, beyond imagining, really.’

  Bryony looked up at the Doctor as if he was entirely remarkable, beyond imagining and a thing of wonder. This wasn’t unreasonable – he was entirely remarkable, beyond imagining and a thing of wonder, but it annoyed Putta no end.

  Putta heard himself almost shouting, ‘She’s clever. That’s how she knew.’

  ‘My dear Putta. I’m perfectly well aware that she’s clever. She’s extraordinary in many ways, but she can’t have known I’m a Time Lord.’

  Bryony interrupted, ‘Yes, I can…do…you told me…I mean, you showed me…I mean…I saw…You’ve been to so many places…So many amazing places…’

  The Doctor, looked immensely troubled, removed his hat and scrunched it between his hands. ‘Well, we Time Lords do have the ability – mild ability – we’re a bit telepathic…It’s impolite to intrude into other beings’ consciousnesses…But sometimes…but…’ He growled to himself like a man trying to shake loose some kind of interior fog. ‘I should know this! I should know about this! This is a phenomenon with characteristics I should be able to identify! Metallic taste, bare feet in contact with planetary surface, control of particulates, psychon energy, unshielded telepathic field…I do know this! I just can’t find it!’ he cried.

  Putta glanced nervously at the approaching golfers. He was able to pick out some of what they were saying by now – it included the phrases ‘layabout hippies’ and also ‘Disgrace, absolute disgrace, the place is going to the dogs.’ Putta guessed this didn’t bode well.

  And then Putta remembered…Oh, dear he remembered. There was this thing that he should have mentioned ages ago – it was exactly the kind of thing that he should have told someone – someone exactly like the Doctor, someone who was a Time Lord. It was the one absolutely important thing, a truly, life-and-death thing that he really ought not to have forgotten. And yet he had. ‘Oh! Oh dear, I’ve remembered…’ In fact, even while he was trying to say it out loud, he could feel the memory wriggling away from him again, swimming off like a finny pippereel in a pool. ‘Ooohnoohnononono…’

  Bryony sat up and turned to him while the Doctor asked, ‘Putta, what’s wrong? You can tell us.’

  ‘Oh, I’m an idiot.’

  The Doctor attempted another smile. ‘Well, we needn’t go into that now….What’s the matter?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. I just. I forgot to say why I came here. Really why I came here. Which I should have said. Only I thought…Or I didn’t think. I couldn’t. It’s just that what I saw on the Model G50 Threat Detector…Which isn’t the best piece of equipment…It’s known for being unreliable, in fact, but it was all I could afford…’

  ‘Keep to the point, Putta. Please,’ sighed the Doctor, his face seeming more and more exhausted, his skin greyer and greyer.

  ‘Well, I didn’t come here for a sandmaster. There was no indication of a sandmaster, not even a larva…I scanned a lot and there was nothing like that – even a G50 would notice a sandmaster. But what there was…That’s the thing about the G50 – it has all these weird settings and its archive is just basically a series of random, open-source infodumps…There are legends in there, about thirty per cent of the species identification catalogue entries are pure mythology…’ Putta heard a groan from the Doctor which could have indicated distress, or deep irritation. And those golfers were waving their arms in a clear off right now kind of way…‘I’m no use at anything and I needed a really amazing…um…not necessarily bountykill…I don’t think I could…I’m not absolutely cut out for bountykilling…But a sighting. And amazing discovery. That’s it – a discovery. It would have made me famous. That is, when I saw what the G50 told me might be here on Sol 3…on Earth…’

  ‘You there!’ The tallest golfer, resplendent in his lemon yellow slacks, matching cap and powder pink shirt, was stamping ahead of his colleagues and had set his sights on Putta. ‘What on earth are you dressed as? Are you some kind of joke!?’ Putta was the only one sitting on the grass who looked close to being fully alert – but did also probably look as if he had dressed satirically in order to mock golfers everywhere. ‘What you need, my lad, is a serious spell of National Service! They’ll bring it back and you’ll be sorry when they do!’

  National Service on Yinzill was a punishment doled out, 10 STUs at a time – 10 STUs was about 6 Earth years – and involved clearing the National Forests of a toxic and violent invading plant species, nicknamed Spatch. The extra dose of panic that threatened Spatch-clearing provoked meant that Putta was finally able to blurt out, ‘It was a Bah-Sokhar! Doctor, it was a Bah-Sokhar! The G50 gave me a reading for a Bah-Sokhar! A Soul-Eater!’

  As soon as Putta heard himself pronounce the Bah of the almost-forgotten, unlikely, ridiculous and terrifying name Bah-Sokhar – a name from the bleak, dark past at the roots of the universe – he felt a horrible juddering in the grass beneath him. Before he could leap to his feet, the turf domed in two places just ahead of the Doctor and Bryony, split apart and then revealed the perfect, charming, flawless heads and then shoulders and bodies and legs and jaunty bare feet of the twins. Springing up from the earth as if it were water, here were Xavier and Honor, flawless, clean, terrible. Their eyes flickered like minute pools of clever emptiness.

  ‘What on earth…? You can’t…’ The leading golfer stepped forward towards the twins with one arm outstretched. Then he stopped. He absolutely stopped. For a breath or two he looked something like a three-dimensional photograph of himself, snapped at an unfortunate and irate moment. Then his whole body seemed to tense, as if it were fighting some incredible force. It was dreadful to watch the quiet struggle and yet Putta couldn’t turn away – it seemed wrong not to meet the man’s eyes for an instant and at least care about him, while – this was terrible – he began to flatten, to collapse. The man’s limbs, head, torso, all that he was, were being relentlessly crushed until he was absolutely as thin as a photograph. His expression at the end was one of utter, soundless horror.

  Then the thin layer of matter the golfer had become folded and crumpled, smaller and smaller. For an instant he was reduced to a small dot in mid-air, like a full stop.

  .

  Then there was nothing.

  Next Honor and Xavier span their heads round to look directly behind them – without turning their bodies – so that their loveable faces and winning smiles were aimed right at the remaining golfers. It made Putta feel cold all over. And, of course, each of the three men was then inexorably thinned away to the thickness of paper – before being wholly destroyed.

  Putta turned away, sickened. Then he peered up at the backs of the twins’ heads – blank shapes covered in soft, sun-bleached hair and set above their collar bones, exactly as they shouldn’t be. While they were – as far as he could tell – focusing their attention elsewhere, Putta tried to stand.

  But at this point the air thickened.

  It thickened a lot.

  A pair of lapwings directly above halted their progress
across the sky, as did the clouds and a distant light aircraft.

  While Putta wondered if he was going to be crushed now, everything which had been in motion halted. There was a vast silence.

  And then.

  ‘No!’ the Doctor bellowed. ‘No, you don’t! Now I know your name! I may not keep knowing it for long, but right now I do!’ His voice emerged between savagely gritted teeth. Slowly and with infinite effort, the Doctor fought upwards until he was standing. ‘You don’t! Not here! Not now! You don’t come to this planet and do this. You don’t come to any planet and do this.’ Sweat was running down his face, while his chest heaved with what Putta knew must be the immense effort of breathing.

  Putta tried to reach out and help somehow, but the air felt like needles being forced into his skin if he even pressed forward slightly. He was terribly afraid this was what it would feel like at the beginning of being flattened. With a pain that felt it was scalding the side of his head, Putta just managed to turn enough to see Bryony – Bryony with a look of such shock on her face and her hands holding each other close to her throat – Bryony who was brave and marvellous – Bryony who he loved with what he believed was going to be the last of all his – larger than the average Earthman’s-heart.

  As Putta wished he could cry, or yell, or do anything – he saw the Doctor straighten his back so that he was standing very tall. The struggle of managing this clearly drained the Time Lord. The twins’ heads whipped round to give him their full attention, their expressions savage, almost hungry, and their eyes glimmering with hard intentions.

  Then, with what was plainly a monumental effort, the Doctor began to lift his hand and to smile, as if he were greeting an old friend.

  And that was the last that Putta or Bryony saw of him.

  For a moment he was standing in front of an unimaginable death and being like himself, like the Doctor – someone who always wanted to smile at the universe and give it the benefit of the doubt.

  And then he was gone.

  There was no thinning, no crushing, no small dot.

  Just gone.

  For a breath, Putta thought he saw something like the shape of an animal – a translucent shape with hooves, a long, strange head, horns and blazing eyes.

  But it dissipated before he could even work out what it was.

  The atmosphere returned to normal and both Putta and Bryony rushed forward towards the children – towards the children who clearly weren’t children.

  ‘No! What have you done! What have you done!’ Bryony was yelling and crying, reckless with fury.

  Putta saw the delightful little girl’s head and the loveable boy’s head shift to fix on her, tilting with a chilly curiosity as she lunged at them.

  This wasn’t going to end well.

  THINGS THE DOCTOR DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THE BAH-SOKHAR

  THE BAH-SOKHAR CAME INTO being at such an early stage of the universe’s development that its true nature remained mysterious, even in the far-distant age when it was first identified. It was a creature capable of surviving in the depths of space, of withstanding the monumental forces which eventually created solar systems, sent comets speeding into flight, or ripped open the space-time continuum.

  Early legends associate it most with a planet known on Earth as Kepler-22b and in some other places as Prax.

  When the first generations of interplanetary explorers reached Prax they simply never returned. But, as the centuries passed, and the Lords of Carnage emerged – pillaging civilisations, melting asteroids, enslaving multitudes, murdering entire populations – rumours spread that some of their monstrous power was supplied by a secret weapon. Sagas were written, songs and poems were created to describe how dreadful the weapon was and each description was horrifying and completely different from every other description. The only thing which remained was the weapon’s name – Bah-Sokhar.

  This caused later readers and academics to believe that the Bah-Sokhar was an invention – a way for beings to express the fear they felt when they were faced by the size and wonder of the universe. Others assumed that tales of the Bah-Sokhar referred to some forgotten god.

  According to one remaining text, thousands died in order to finally discover the secret of the weapon and bring it back to less powerful beings and allow them to control or imprison it. The Lords of Carnage – who may also have been mythical – were said to have destroyed themselves at around the same time the Legion of Seekers – possibly mythical – discovered the Bah-Sokhar’s true nature. Other sources suggest they were destroyed in some dreadful star-threatening apocalypse.

  The Bah-Sokhar was said to have been lost, or also to have been destroyed.

  And yet its name echoed from system to system and age to age. There were – if someone wanted to look – always a few stories about the Bah-Sokhar in most cultures. These were sometimes used by more advanced civilisations to threaten less advanced ones. ‘Obey us, or we will unleash the Bah-Sokhar.’ There were no verifiable records of the Bah-Sokhar ever having been deployed.

  Its threat slowly softened over the vast expanses of time. At some points, it was used by parents to frighten their offspring into behaving. ‘Be quiet, or the Bah-Sokhar will get you. Go to sleep, or the Bah-Sokhar will make you go to sleep. Eat your Maillindian Fever Beans, or the Bah-Sokhar will make you.’ And so on. It was also celebrated in a cycle of song-theatre. Although this period was brief, affected only four planets and ceased abruptly.

  By the time Earth had reached 2 June 1978 in the Common Era, almost no beings had ever heard of the Bah-Sokhar and, if they had, it was a thing of legend – a lie that adults told to naughty children.

  OTHER THINGS THE DOCTOR DIDN’T KNOW OR MAY HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE BAH-SOKHAR

  THE BAH-SOKHAR IS A creature more terrible than any nightmare.

  The Bah-Sokhar has lived too long to be surprised, or overwhelmed by anything.

  The Bah-Sokhar is invincible.

  The Bah-Sokhar produces a metallic taste in most sentient beings’ mouthparts. It can generate pairs of defence-creatures which always seem to have bare feet in contact with the available planetary surface. It can control particulates. It produces unfathomable amounts of psychon energy, which in turn generate powerful and recklessly unshielded telepathic fields.

  But the Bah-Sokhar also creates forgetfulness.

  Even though the Doctor did know all the available information about the Bah-Sokhar – which wasn’t much – he couldn’t find it. The Bah-Sokhar prevented him without even fully waking from its immeasurably long rest.

  If it had to, the Bah-Sokhar could destroy the body and the mind, even of a Time Lord, in order to keep its true secrets safe.

  JULIA FETCH SAT IN her communications hub – which looked slightly like the cottage hobby corner of an older lady. A basket of half-finished knitting was in one corner, and a neat pile of gardening magazines and a tapestry kit were there too, along with a quaint Regency sewing box in brass and mahogany. She’d always liked the box, ever since she was a girl. Its silk-lined removable tray with so many little compartments still enchanted her, as did its full complement of original sewing equipment in silver and ivory. The equipment wasn’t very practical – and she was very sorry that the ivory had come from elephants – but it made her nostalgic and that was always pleasant.

  An old-fashioned telegraph machine produced tickertape, chattering away, while she skimmed through letters on octopus problem-solving abilities and a request for more office chairs from her new research centre on Hawaii. She also allowed herself to be nostalgic about the days when she had travelled more. That charming Doctor chap – he’d had the air of a traveller, a bold explorer like Ernest Shackleton of the South Pole expeditions, or the mountain climber Annie Smith Peck or Nellie Bly who travelled round the world in eighty days back in…when was it…? 1889…maybe 1889…There were so many people who were so interested in the world and so keen to discover how magnificent it was and often they needed a little money and might possibly call for
tea with someone of immense wealth – like Julia Fetch.

  It seemed that she really could remember pouring out carefully blended India tea to Shackleton and thinking what a formidable chin he had and giving Annie Smith Peck more cucumber sandwiches and deciding, when she saw Nellie Bly’s dashingly neat haircut, that she would have one just the same. Perhaps the Doctor had needed money. His shoes were undoubtedly in an alarming condition. Perhaps she had given him some and he later would return with news about African languages she could learn, or Canadian berries that made good jam for scones, or else types of cake she hadn’t yet served. The invention of good new cakes, Julia had found, sometimes took decades.

  Then again, it did seem that the years went by remarkably quickly, or else that there’d been a remarkable number of years….Either that, or she was turning into just the kind of woolly-headed old woman she’d found so funny and silly and frustrating when she was young and couldn’t wait to leave her father’s big, rattly old house in Cheyne Walk beside the Thames, and all his rules and regulations for proper ladylike behaviour.

  Julia read descriptions of octopuses (or octopodes) unfastening containers to get at treats and climbing out of their tanks when no one was looking in order to have adventures (or, it had to be admitted, in order to eat less clever things in other nearby tanks) and of octopodes (or octopuses) who appeared able to appreciate different types of music and respond in a positive manner to Bach, the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and something called the Electric Light Orchestra.

  It might, in fact, be time for her to play something on her Gilbert Gramophone…perhaps some Duke Ellington or Bessie Smith. It still seemed thrilling to listen to jazz – it had such a joyful and marvellous swing to it and there were so many memories wound up in the lyrics and the tunes: nights of dancing and lovely young men safe home after some dreadful war or other. The chaps still had something terrible in at the backs of their eyes and she recalled that everyone had to dance a great deal in the 1920s, quite frankly, because of all the sadness that so very terribly many lovely young men hadn’t managed to come home.