‘Putta? What are you—?’
She didn’t have a chance to complete her sentence, because Putta then flung up his arm and clenched fist in a reckless swipe which narrowly missed her right ear. His forward momentum and her backward flinch managed to combine enough energy to propel both of them – already tilting at an unsustainable angle – about two feet across the path on the side closest to the brook.
Unfortunately – or, in a way, fortunately – they only had one foot of path left before it cut away to become the sharply sloping bank which led down to the stream. And then there was the stream. Which is to say that, as they staggered and then toppled over, flawlessly obeying the usual laws of physics, they encountered one foot (measured horizontally) of level path and then one foot (measured horizontally) of thin air which allowed them to drop down four or five feet (measured vertically) of nettles, rocks, a few strands of bramble, more rocks, mud patches and then surprisingly cold water with more rocks and mud beneath.
It was just what they needed.
‘YOU MANIAC!’ BRYONY WAS first to scramble upright once they’d slithered to a halt in the water. She was cold, scratched, bruised, wet, shocked and – as a result – so overstimulated and present in the moment that she was completely free of any ideas that didn’t seem to be her own. ‘Oh, that feels better.’ It really did feel great. Her irritation evaporated and she turned to see where Putta had landed.
Putta was wallowing about slightly further upstream and she called over to him, ‘Well done. That did the trick.’ Then she thought that was something the Doctor might have said and felt empty and worried. Still, their position had improved a little and the Doctor wouldn’t have wanted them to give up. She hadn’t been able to know him for very long, but she was sure he would never have been in favour of giving up, even in strange circumstances.
Putta kept on wallowing and looking like a dunked schoolboy. ‘I’ve lost my shoe,’ he bleated. ‘They were too big…one of them’s come off. I’ve lost it.’
‘No, you haven’t.’
‘I have,’ he wailed. ‘These are the only Earth clothes I’ve got and they’re not even mine – we’ve lost the Doctor, we won’t know what to do without him and I’m going to get a foot injury and it’s well known and written in all the manuals that foot injuries impair exploration ability and that shoe-loss eventually leads to death in 63.2 per cent of off-world expeditions.
Bryony couldn’t help laughing – it was such a relief not to have those odd, bland, fake intrusions, banging about inside her skull. Plus, Putta did look very funny. The only thing more amusing than plus fours was wet plus fours. ‘I don’t know about all that. But your shoe’s not lost – it’s right here. Look…there it goes.’
Putta’s shoe – sturdy as a tiny boat – was bobbing merrily past Bryony and continuing downstream.
‘But…But don’t just watch it go! I need that!’ Putta struggled and flailed towards her through the knee-deep water. ‘Ah!’ And then stopped abruptly. ‘See? Now I have a foot injury. It’s the beginning of the end.’
‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. We’ll catch it. I’ll catch it.’ She turned cautiously and began working her way along, through pools and over boulders, pursuing what actually was turning out to be a rather swift and agile escaped shoe. She could hear Putta groaning and splashing behind her.
Already Bryony could sense a mild bumping, as if some large hand was patting the base of her head. The force attempting to control her – whatever it might be – was closing in again. She focused on how chilly the water was and how the several bramble wounds on her shins and along her left arm were remarkably uncomfortable. She tried not to picture the glowing green horror of the carnivorous golf bunker and whether this was the mental equivalent – something that would slowly eat up who she was.
The shoe wagged and swayed round a curve in the stream and she lost sight of it. The water was now flowing between high banks, overgrown with brush and little trees, and these completely obscured the course of the stream beyond. It must, at some time, have been a much more impressive river.
While she strode on, as best she could, she had no idea of what might be ahead. The banks kept the summer warmth and light at bay and here the air was dank. She couldn’t leave the increasingly cold and deepening water, because the harsh slopes to either side were penning her in. The vegetation hanging above her looked both lush and threatening. She wondered if one ruined shoe was worth this effort. She wondered what she would find beyond the bend. She wondered where Putta had got to and yet couldn’t quite manage to glance back and check. Bryony felt the external consciousness as it began oozing in again under her real experiences, her real self. Bryony could tell that something was trying to lift away all the facts and bits of information and jokes and habits that made her Bryony Mailer and no one else. It wanted them to drift away as if they were light, plastic, useless things. It wanted to act like a stream of living water, sweeping along – a stream that could become a torrent at any time, wiping her away.
I’m not having it, Bryony told herself. I’m not allowing it. Nobody in here is going to do my thinking for me. That’s my job.
Still, despite her undoubted determination, she might not have been able to resist the inward rush and swell of flattering temptations and convincing new memories. She might not have been able to fight them as they shimmered and darted in at her. She might have lost the struggle.
Bryony Mailer might have been scooped up and washed away from herself, if it hadn’t been for this other strange sensation, a kind of thrumming electrical tingle which started to prickle and dance along her arms. There was no reason for the sensation that she could figure out and there was nothing on her arms, but the tingling was definitely there and it was definitely, well…good.
Something about the air as she breathed it in and then let it back out also felt…comforting. The colour of the leaves overhead, the flickers of light on the stream – they weren’t exactly brighter, but then again they seemed – Bryony couldn’t quite get the right word – but very possibly they had been somehow improved.
While she wondered if these phenomena were a warning of some new assault, Bryony finally finished painstakingly rounding the jutting promontory and caught her first sight of the stream as flowed on, now lazing its way in wide shallows between a series of large rocks. A kingfisher – startling blue and fast – dashed across and away. She’d never seen one before.
But the bird wasn’t what caught her attention. Over to the left, standing incongruously on a flat bank of yellowish sand, in a patch of sunlight close by the water’s edge was a tall, dark blue box. It looked almost ten feet high, strangely substantial and utterly out of place – a blue box.
As she approached, a cloud of butterflies – with small wings in shades of brindled brown and red – rose up from around the box, hung for a moment in the remarkably golden light and drifted away, glimmering through the trees until they were gone.
A box.
A blue box.
It was a mildly battered, dusty, inexplicable blue box.
Bryony examined it and had the distinct impression that it was examining her in return. Something about it had an air of experience, as if it had been to places and done things, even as if it knew things.
She flinched for an instant, fearing this was the source of the mind control she and Putta had been suffering. But, no – there was something about the box that was reassuring. Bryony almost considered apologising for having doubted it.
Which is crazy. Then again – I’m not exactly having an uncrazy day.
She edged closer.
The nearer she got to the box, the easier it was to think her own thoughts.
A police box. Bizarre. Why here? It can’t possibly belong here.
Then again, the box gave her the impression that it could belong wherever it liked. It was – Bryony almost wanted to think it’s dressed up as – a police box. Here were the familiar rounded white letters placidly announcing POLICE PUB
LIC CALL BOX. Here were the usual panelled sides and double door, the little notice on one of the doors with kind black printing which offered ADVICE & ASSISTANCE OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY.
‘I’ve never bothered to read what the notices said when I’ve met other boxes…That is…I mean…This is all peculiar…and lam…talking to a box.’
Bryony wondered briefly if this was another kind of hallucination being foisted upon her.
‘Sorry. No. Of course you’re not. Of course you’re not,’ she told the box.
And she wanted to pat the thing – either to apologise or say hello, she wasn’t clear. But it had to be done. That was clear. She advanced until she was standing on the smooth, calm sand. Gently, she reached out towards the high shape.
‘Don’t!’ It was Putta. He’d caught up with her and was clattering and scrambling out of the water behind her. ‘You don’t know what it is. Alien vessels on alien planets have to be approached with extreme caution.’
Bryony was annoyed – this was her discovery – she was tempted to say this was her friend…‘It’s not a vessel. It’s a police box. And I’m not on an alien planet – you’re the one who doesn’t belong here.’ She extended her fingers towards the looming, blue surface.
‘No!’ Putta tugged at his hair, even more nervous. Then he settled his breath a touch and asked, ‘What’s a police box?’
Bryony sighed and explained, ‘It’s a kind of mini office combined with a temporary cell – but mainly it’s a call box. For calls.’ Putta blinked at her like a badger considering a pianoforte. ‘The police use them. And if you want help, anyone can pick up the phone – it’s behind that little cupboard door there, I think, and you get put through to a police station. They’re old-fashioned these days…But I think that’s the idea of them. You use them to get help.’ Even while she said this, Bryony was warmed by the possibility that she could do just that – something as amazingly simple as that. She very much wanted to be able to just open a little door in a big blue box that was nowhere it was meant to be and speak into a receiver and ask for ADVICE & ASSISTANCE. ‘What I don’t know is why it would be here – maybe it got washed down by a storm…Only it doesn’t look at all like that…’
‘There’s something funny about it.’
‘Well, yeah – it ought to be on a pavement somewhere. And the phone won’t work, won’t be connected…’ And yet – there was still an atmosphere of helpfulness about the thing. Bryony made a decision and – despite a frankly undignified squeal of alarm from Putta, she took a firm hold of its door handle and gave a sharp tug.
Nothing happened.
She tugged again.
Nothing.
Bryony eyed the box again and it seemed rapidly less impressive, less fascinating, than it had.
‘Well, it was worth a try…’ Bryony paused, and this intense heaviness descended on her. Although she was a strong person and had been managing all of the day’s surprises far better than most other Earth inhabitants would, she was tired, very tired, and slowly, inexorably, she could feel her hope leaving her. Even her dodgy boyfriend, even the tedium of her dead-end job, even the horror of today’s casualties and the battering her consciousness was taking hadn’t affected her underlying confidence that, somehow, things would work out and be OK. This was the moment when she allowed herself to consider that maybe nothing would work out, not ever.
And back came the alien consciousness – testing and prying and promising. Even though the calm it offered wasn’t true, for the first time Bryony began to believe it was her best option.
Isn’t life terrible? Isn’t it all going to end in tears? Won’t it be good to just give up and let something else run my mind, my life?
Clearly the consciousness had learned how to overcome misery. It had worked out how to use it to surf, ever faster and ever more hungrily, into their thoughts.
Bryony stared emptily into Putta’s face and could tell from his expression that he was feeling probably even more awful that she did and yet was also no longer defended by his overwhelming despair.
Both of them, it seemed, were locked to the spot by gloom. And both of them were beginning not only to give up the fight, but to actively open themselves to the alien mind.
As they did so, the placid sand beneath their feet started to shift and stir. While neither of them could manage to pay any attention, the sand grains were shaped and coaxed into tendrils that rose around Bryony’s ankles that began to grip firmly around her scratched shins. Putta’s remaining shoe and long socks also disappeared into a sandy embrace.
And neither of them minded.
Bryony Mailer and Putta Pattershaun 5 were going to welcome the end of everything. To be honest, they were already convinced that it would be a great relief.
THE DOCTOR WAS NOT alone.
But that wasn’t a problem.
The Doctor appeared to have been ripped out of one spatial location – at the very least – and propelled into another by a transmat process so effective and yet so primitive that it had left him feeling as if he’d been turned inside out and carelessly folded before being stored in some kind of existential sock drawer.
But this also wasn’t a problem. That kind of thing happened every day. Or during a fairly high number of his days, anyway. And the Doctor chose to find this mainly fun.
The Doctor had materialised in mid-air and then dropped what he estimated was a comfy six inches until he hit something solid and load-bearing. Falling onto things was also usual and – now and again – fun.
That’s the convenient thing about landing, he’d thought. It’s always there to stop you falling any further.
Once he’d landed, he’d become aware that his bones were complaining and he was nauseous – which wasn’t like him, he usually had an excellent appetite.
The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast – the first time anyone said that in this galaxy, they were saying it about me. And by supper time I wasn’t condemned at all, I was having a bowl of delicious broth with the Supra Vizier of Mott. Lovely woman. Lovely heads.
Not a problem.
He felt positively over-stuffed and could also have done with a week of sleep in a hammock somewhere bracing – maybe Plymouth, for the sake of argument. I don’t think I’ve ever been there and I wouldn’t want it to feel neglected. And all his systems – nervous, circulatory, immune, autonomic, artronic – just every single one of his available systems were experiencing levels of distress that would have left many other wanderers in time and space lying on their faces and whimpering.
But even this wasn’t a problem.
The problem is the…
Don’t say It. Don’t name It.
I’m getting tired.
Can’t give it a name…
If I name It, I think It will win.
And that will probably – at least possibly – mean no more broth, no more Supra Viziers and no more me.
And where would the universe be without me?
Where would I be?
And since we’re discussing where – and not that I want to be demanding…but where exactly I am now?
Having recovered from his short drop, the Doctor was sitting up with his legs laid languidly out ahead of him, crossed at the ankles, like a man who’d never heard of such a thing as a problem. He was leaning back at a relaxed angle with his hands shoved casually into his impossibly deep pockets.
If the problem doesn’t have a name then It can’t exist.
Maybe. I’m improvising. I would have to point out that improvising is something which I’m usually wonderful at…Perhaps less wonderful today.
His hat was tilted raffishly over his eyes and his scarf lay about him heavily, like something anaesthetised.
I would be perfectly safe if the problem didn’t exist…
So the last thing that I should think of is the problem.
Maybe.
Don’t think of It.
I should, in general, ignore the remarkable levels of danger on all sides…<
br />
He was also humming under his breath like a person completely at his ease.
The Doctor was used to all the weird surprises, odd transmat beams and, for that matter, harsh treatment that a universe – one didn’t wish to be rude, but one did have to mention – a universe filled with some highly unpleasant characters could serve up.
That wasn’t the problem.
Neither was his current location, even though it was – and again he didn’t intend to pry – hard to define.
Quite literally hard to define.
That’s a safe thing to think of – I’ll think of that.
Where am I?
For a start, the Doctor couldn’t quite say exactly what he was leaning against. The surface which was, at the moment, agreeing to support his back and shoulders was gently moving, like the belly of a massive beast. In fact, it was as if he were inside the belly of a beast.
But I couldn’t possibly think of that.
That might be true.
And that mustn’t be true, because that would mean that I have been swallowed and that would imply that I will be digested. A remarkable, handsome, charming and intelligent chap like myself being digested – well, that doesn’t bear thinking about.
So I won’t.
The Doctor concentrated on at least appearing to be relaxed, but there was sweat on his face and his breath was labouring. He forced himself to believe that he wasn’t going to be digested – breathe – that there was more than enough air – breathe – that suited him in here.
And he kept on forcing himself not to think of the problem.
But It’s here – the problem behind the problem. The big problem that makes all the other problems. I can tell that It’s here and It could be named and then…Should I name It? Should I not? It seems shy…Is that a good thing? Does that indicate a weakness? Would naming upset It in a useful way? I wouldn’t wish to annoy It? Or would I?
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