BRYONY MAILER WAS – in a numb way – absolutely ecstatic.
Putta Pattershaun 5 was, if anything, even more numb and even more cheerful. Although they were both absolutely certain – as fingers and ropes of twisting sand raced up their bodies – that they would be dead within…let’s say thirty seconds at the most, they were as content as they could be.
While sand slipped up her torso and contracted her breathing, Bryony sighed, ‘Hmmm…’ as if she was climbing into a lovely bath. Being dead seemed, just then, pretty much the same as a lovely bath, only longer-lasting.
And, meanwhile, Putta just about managed to giggle as ripples and curls of sand gathered under his chin – forming a sort of yellowish, undulating beard – and ribbons of sand snuggled round his throat and gently began to strangle him. He felt only one tiny regret as he began to pass out. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been not to guess how magnificent getting murdered would be. If he’d realised, he’d have found a murderer and made a polite request years ago…
At which point Putta became unconscious and then Bryony joined him.
THIS MADE IT ALL the more surprising when they both woke up completely alive a short while later.
Bryony was awake first, her head tucked uncomfortably into an angle at the bottom of a short staircase. She had a stiff neck. Also, the rest of her was lying upside down on the short staircase and so her spine was in a fair amount of pain. She also knew – even before she half-tumbled and half-scrambled to her feet and sand seem to trickle out of most of her clothing – that her skin was covered in a thoroughly unpleasant gritty layer beneath everything she was wearing.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake…’
She would have complained at greater length, but she was prevented by seeing (a) Putta lying on his side and looking safe – if sandy and still out for the count – and really quite cute in his 1930s golfing gear, and (b) the strange interior in which she found herself.
Bryony was in a largish room apparently decorated by a…actually, it was difficult to tell, but perhaps a Victorian scientist. The walls were panelled in something that resembled walnut, but which felt more like a cross between slick cloth and perhaps metal. There were inset circles set at regular intervals, a few of them decorated with warmly coloured designs showing nothing she could recognise. There was something that looked like an old-fashioned wireless cabinet, some fluted columns here and there, wooden furniture that managed to seem both old-fashioned and remarkably modern. And there were lots of brass hand rails. Loads of them. As if whoever the room belonged to expected to fall over a lot.
The only familiar thing was a hat stand. The sort of object you would see in an older aunt’s hallway.
The hand rails and the woodwork, the brass, the hat stand, they started to suggest this was an older person’s house.
Perhaps this was an older person’s entrance hall.
It felt like an entrance, felt welcoming.
If felt – oddly – like home.
Even the strange sort of mantelpiece / sideboard thingy over on that wall seemed to be pleased she was there. It looked as if it ought to be a window, or show a picture – as if it wanted to do that.
And – right at the centre of the room – this waist-high wooden console thingy positively shone with something close to…pleasure. It had an air of importance and was festooned in hand rails. Bryony couldn’t help exploring its snug little flip-down panels – each with a neat brass handle. Behind every panel was a different array of futuristic switches, press-buttons, dials and levers. And there were also a few jury-rigged controls which looked less futuristic and more as if someone had wired them together in a hurry and never got back to mend them or fix them properly.
As she explored, Bryony felt increasingly excited. ‘Well, if a room could say – pleased to meet you – you kind of are, aren’t you…?’ It didn’t seem that weird to be speaking to this room. ‘Hello? Hello?’ She was sure – even though she’d never seen any alien technology – that this was alien technology. And beautiful with it. She couldn’t suppress a grin. ‘Not that I’m really speaking to a room. It’s the room’s owner that I…’
At the word ‘owner’ the console looked very slightly annoyed. Not that a console could be annoyed…‘You are, though, aren’t you? You’re annoyed that I think you have an owner…’ This made the console’s many switches and polished surfaces glimmer with slightly richer tones. ‘Well. I’m pleased to meet you, too.’ Bryony stretched – apart from the incredible itching pretty much everywhere, she felt as if she’d had the best night’s sleep of her life. ‘How did I end up being here, though?’
With a shudder and a returning shortness of breath, Bryony remembered the sand: that horrible, unstoppable sand that had come swarming and clawing up over her and…She gripped one of the console’s rails and immediately seemed steadier. ‘I should be dead,’ she whispered.
Just for an instant, Bryony wondered if being dead involved a lot of wood panelling. Certainly, without the soothing and calming influence of the Bah-Sokhar, Bryony was now shockingly aware of how close her death had come to her. It seemed that a chill bullet had just licked past her ear.
She also remembered – in a brief snap of colours and light – a pair of doors slamming back, wide open, and a sensation of being lifted, drawn inside them and taken care of.
‘You should be dead…’ This emerged in a sandy mumble from Putta as he wriggled back to life on the floor – the smooth, brown, not-made-of-wood-but-looks-like-it floor which thrummed comfortingly. ‘I was practically asking to be dead. I was completely…’ Putta rubbed his hair and produced minute showers of sand while looking up at Bryony, bemused. ‘I couldn’t wait to be the monster’s breakfast. I can remember looking forward to it more than anything.’ He tried sitting. Sand ran out of his jacket sleeves. ‘Gets everywhere. Again.’
‘Yes, doesn’t it.’
‘But it’s not trying to kill us.’
‘No. I think it’s just back to being ordinary sand…And I feel…wonderful.’
Putta nodded, ‘Now that you mention it – I’m a bit sore here and there and…’ Yet more sand was shaken out of his plus fours and down over his socks. ‘This really tickles. But other than that.’ He looked suspicious. ‘I feel really happy.’ Putta managed to say this as if he was describing a disease. He peered around, ‘What is this place?’
‘No idea.’
‘Well, how did we get here?’
‘Even less idea…Or, at least, I don’t have an idea that makes sense.’
‘Does the idea you do have involve floating in a cloud of pearly-coloured light and…a kind of whoosh…’
Bryony nodded. ‘It does.’ She smiled. She was having another idea. ‘Isn’t this a beautiful room?’
‘It’s OK, I suppose,’ sniffed Putta, pottering about and immediately banging his knee on the thing that looked like a wireless cabinet. ‘Ah!’
‘I think this is the entrance hall, foyer…kind of maybe…And if we open one of these doors…’ Bryony decided that the door with an impressive light over it and the overcomplicated stubby staircase leading up to it – the door that seemed to be made of velvety darkness – looked most important. It also had a generous supply of brass rails. Therefore, she guessed, it must lead somewhere significant. She trotted up the steps, raised her hand and – it truly did seem – before she could even press against the door, it swung open.
Immediately, she was confronted by something she didn’t understand. ‘Putta! Putta, this is…’ She was looking out at the river she had recently waded along – the rocks, the trees, the sun a little lower in the sky than it had been the last time she saw it, just before she blacked out. Perhaps more importantly, just beyond the door was the angry sand – still writhing, peaking, dropping and frothing impotently. Bryony quickly withdrew the foot that had almost crossed the threshold back into disaster. ‘Oh, my god!’
Putta peered over her shoulder and, at once, tried to pull her away, ‘Bryony!
Come back! I can’t lose you! It can take me!’
Simultaneous waves of pride and embarrassment prevented him from saying anything else before Bryony could tell him, ‘No, no. It’s OK, somehow. The sand can’t get in. It doesn’t seem to be able to even see us, never mind taking anyone.’ She studied him for a moment. ‘Take me…What are you like…? Being all heroic.’ She patted his arm.
‘Well, keep back, anyway.’
Bryony instead leaned her head as far as she could out of the doorway and checked carefully to either side. Then she checked again. The sand seethed beneath her angrily, but with no real focus. ‘Well…I don’t know how this is or why this is, but we’re inside that box.’
‘What box?’
‘The blue box. The police box – blue with a little light on top – the box that we were outside of before we started to…’ She avoided saying the words die horribly at the mercy of angry sand.
‘But that’s not…’ Putta squeezed gingerly forward until he was next to her in the doorway and then also peeked out to left and right. ‘Oh, dear…Oh, dear…’ And then he half-fell and half-staggered back down the steps and was sick. ‘Oh, dear.’
Bryony closed the doors again gently and walked to him while he heaved and coughed and then was sick – fortunately into one of the now extremely numerous piles of sand. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Spatial dissonance.’
‘Come again.’
‘What?’
‘I mean I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh…Ughghch…It’s just if a ship has a compression field – and this has the – oaagh – broodmother of all compression fields – then it always makes me – hoooo. Sick. Transmats make me queasy. Most portals. Just plain motion sickness isn’t great…’
‘Wonderful!’ grumbled Bryony.
‘No, it’s not,’ heaved Putta – Yinzill wasn’t famous for its grasp of irony…‘I’m supposed to be travelling the universe looking for adventure. I spend most of my time feeling dreadful and losing my meals. I’m basically malnourished apart from…’
But then Putta stopped talking, because Bryony was clearly paying no attention to him and was simply rushing from the big throne-like chair, to the wall panels, to the console…to basically everything else in the room…touching each item, giggling, spinning round and punching the air. ‘I knew it! I knew this was a spaceship! I mean, I guessed fairly quickly. Oh, it’s beautiful.’
Putta mopped his brow with a corner of his shirt. ‘It’s not that great when you’re used to them…I’ve seen better,’ he mumbled, struggling to stand upright and join Bryony. ‘Ow!’ Then he seemed to trip over nothing in particular on the floor and jar one of his ankles. ‘I don’t think it likes me.’
Bryony eyed the one other, less-impressive door in the room. It seemed highly conventional and sported a nice doorknob and a pleasing round panel with a red design. ‘The rest of it must be through here. It’s amazing! I mean, huge! When you say compression field, I suppose you mean whatever’s keeping all this inside a much smaller—’
But as she reached out and turned the doorknob, she was interrupted by a voice both she and Putta knew – a voice they had thought they would never hear again.
‘Hello.’ It was the Doctor.
They span round to find the source of the sound and watched as the space above what Bryony had been thinking of as the mantelpiece opened to display a type of viewing screen. (Bryony only had an unreliable 13-inch black and white television, so even this simple technology impressed her.)
And here was the Doctor’s face – his slightly wild eyes, the grin with which he had irritated so many pompous and violent beings in so many turbulent times and places. He appeared to be sitting in his generous shirt sleeves and waistcoat – the image stopped halfway down the waistcoat – somewhere with very white walls which were set with circular indentations at regular intervals. ‘Yes, hello.’ He reached forward and adjusted what had to be some kind of camera recording him. ‘Hmm…’ He sat back, happier with image. And Bryony found it crossed her mind that the ship was now, somehow, paying attention. It seemed to miss the Doctor, too.
The Doctor sat back again and started to talk with his usual strangely irresponsible brand of authority. ‘I must congratulate you on being able get inside the TARDIS. The Type 40 has a double-curtain, trimonic lock – which I suppose you must know – and there are very few civilisations advanced enough to produce technology that could open one of them…Are you a Time Lord…?’ He pondered the screen intently. ‘It’s terribly rude, you know, to come barging into another Time Lord’s TARDIS…Anyway, whoever you are, I do hope you’re using all that knowhow in wonderful and interesting ways. Although, since you’re creeping about like burglars, perhaps you’re up to no good. I wouldn’t want to speak ill of a stranger, but maybe that’s the case.’ He swept his hair back out of his eyes and continued, peering in at Bryony and Putta with so much focus that they felt he was, somehow, able to observe them. Which made both of them wish heartily that he still could. ‘So right now you’re probably wondering what kind of death-dealing defences the old girl will launch at you – force fields and omni-clamps, electron excitation beams, vaporisation nets…Well, I’m afraid I really couldn’t approve of anything like that. Which means there aren’t any defences to speak of…Although I would be a little careful if you decide to go wandering around any more than you already have. I would mind your step and be polite.’ A huge grin loitered just under what was a stern expression. ‘But if you’re a friend – then you won’t be in any danger. Or not much danger. I mean one never can tell really, can one…? And I can hardly be responsible for any damages to limbs and property and so forth – I mean, I haven’t invited you, have I? I’m not even there.’ Again there was a sense that he was studying their weaknesses and strengths. ‘Equally, I do apologise that I can’t be here to greet you in person. And I do hope that’s not because I’m dead – it’s so inconvenient when that happens. If I am still alive, I’m sure I’ll be along directly. And if I’m not…well, I may be a little delayed.’ At which, he reached down out of sight and his hand then emerged bearing his hat, which he slapped on to his head. ‘Do take care of her. She takes very good care of me.’ And then he leaned forward, obviously reaching for an off switch which he threw. The screen blinked out for an instant, after which it showed the river outside and the churning sand, all the details of the landscape around what they now knew was the TARDIS.
Bryony felt a wave of loss wash over her again.
And Putta doubled over. ‘Ohnononononono…’
‘I know. I miss him as well. But he wouldn’t want us to–’
‘No! You don’t understand! We’re in a TARDIS. We’re in a Time Lord’s TARDIS.’ He squeezed his head in his hands. ‘Nonononono. Nobody survives that. No one. I can’t even begin…There aren’t even any stories about what happens if you do what we’re doing – there’s just this…silence.’ And then he folded himself into a knot of limbs, crouched on an area of the floor which had remained clear of both sand and vomit. ‘We’re dead.’ He started to rock back and forth. ‘And he’s dead and he could have saved us. The Doctor could have saved us. But now it will all be…’ He shuddered instead of finishing the sentence.
‘Oh, do stop panicking,’ Bryony snapped. ‘Really. I mean, are you going to be a hero or a complete coward? Trying to be both is ridiculous.’ She was attempting to sound sympathetic, but she had also worked out that they were going to need their wits about them and collapsing in a heap was something they could do later when they weren’t trapped in a box that could think – and which might be dangerous – and when a terrible monster wasn’t running amok just outside Arbroath and the only person who might be able to deal with it hadn’t been…The thought of the Doctor simply being disappeared by some alien force was heartbreaking. She hoped that he’d felt no pain, that maybe at least he’d been lulled into a state of acceptance as she and Putta had been. She sighed. This was going to be hard if she h
ad to deal with a spaceman having hysterics on top of everything else. ‘Just…make up your mind.’
‘Can’t make up my mind,’ gibbered Putta. ‘He’s a Time Lord!’
‘So what? What’s a Time Lord going to do – turn you into a frog?’
‘Do you think?’ Putta’s ashen face glanced up at her. ‘Could they do that? What’s a frog?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have thought…You’re the spaceman. I was asking you…A frog’s an amphibian.’ Bryony decided a spot of action was called for. ‘Look. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry and I need a bath and I’m tired and so I’m going to see if this place has a kitchen, or somewhere I can wash, or a bed. We obviously can’t leave. So why not explore…? We can prepare – maybe there’s equipment, weapons…maybe there’s another exit…’
She didn’t give Putta any time to howl, ‘Why not? I’ll tell you why not! Because we’ll be punished for trespassing…!’ before striding to the other available door, opening it and walking through, then hearing it close snugly behind her and muffle Putta’s final, ‘In a million ghastly ways!’
BRYONY FOUND HERSELF IN a slim line corridor. The blank walls, floor and ceiling were so perfectly white that their effect was slightly disorientating – as if she were walking along on nothing.
Apparently in response, the passageway mellowed to a deeper shade of cream and the lighting dropped to something that would suit a seedy nightclub with an interest in concealing nasty stains. ‘Steady. I mean, thanks. But I do need to see where I’m going. Still, thank you, TARDIS.’ The light levels rose again, but maintained a slightly orange glow which seemed more welcoming and gentle. Large circular indentations appeared in the walls, which made all the perfect whiteness less disorientating.
As she progressed, a doorway became apparent to her left, very much as if the wall had decided to provide one. Beyond it was a large kitchen of the sort a sizeable hotel might require – a sizeable hotel carved out of not-really-walnut. There were long work surfaces, banks of what seemed to be ovens and several square plaques of some goldenish marble-like material which Bryony guessed might act as stove tops. Brass hand rails were much in evidence. As were the kind of copper pans that no one used anymore.
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