So what Bryony assumed was Putta freaking out, was actually Putta stamping about in the console room, kicking out with his one remaining shoe at the walls – which erased the scuff marks as soon as he made them – and slapping the little console panels up and down in a way that he hoped was sore.
This produced a definite sense of smugness that permeated the room. The TARDIS wasn’t annoyed – it was more amused by his antics in the way that a passer-by would be if it saw a squirrel misjudging a jump and falling out of a tree and then bouncing about being angry in an impotent way to make up.
Putta was a mild-mannered sort of person, but this did rile him.
And the riling helped.
He loosed off a volley of kicks to the console base, flicked a number of switches that he should have left well alone and began the shouting. He insulted the décor, he insulted the air purification levels, he said he thought the compression field was a cheap trick designed only to fool ape descendants and actual apes, he said that Gallifrey – the Time Lords’ home planet – was a dump full of pompous bullies and then he poked the viewing screen.
The smugness receded and was replaced by a certain chill.
Putta was in his limping stride now – his filthy tweeds, torn shirt and unravelling tank top flapping about him as he slapped chairs, shook the hat stand, tried to break of one of its ornamented finials and said that Time Lords were an overrated bunch of pompous charlatans and that went for Time Ladies, too, only double.
The TARDIS closed the viewing screen up and was perhaps having a think about things. The air became slightly charged.
And then Putta kicked and banged his way up the steps that led to the front door, opened it and sat with his back to the seething sand before starting to do what he knew he must – saying bad things about the Doctor.
‘He pretends he’s all fun and crazy ideas and that genius act is pretty good, but where is he now? Nowhere. He’s useless. I’ve met biscuits with more sense. And I bet…I bet he does this kind of stuff all the time – running about all over the universe, rattling up and down timelines and getting other people into trouble. Just to entertain himself. He makes trouble.’
The colour of the walls began to cloud and a kind of wheezing joined the repetitive tolling of that bell.
‘I think he hurts people. Messing about with things he doesn’t understand and interfering. Then he’ll be off, won’t he? He doesn’t clear up the mess afterwards, does he. He’s just off having more fun.’
It was getting harder to say any of this, partly because it made Putta feel terrible and partly because the air was getting hot and dusty – sandy, even – and that wheezing was becoming louder.
Putta drove on. He felt sick with fear and self-loathing, but he kept talking. ‘The Doctor’s not a good man. He doesn’t have a good heart. He doesn’t care at all. When you look in his eyes, you can see. There are graveyards all over time and space full of people who trusted him. He doesn’t love anything. He can’t. He wouldn’t know how.’
Which is what did it.
Yes.
As he was lifted bodily into the air by a stinging force, a burning light, a kind of tangible fury, Putta thought, Yes. All those years I spent annoying almost everything I’ve met have finally made sense. They were all just practice for this – for starting to save the day.
Yes.
He’d needed the TARDIS to be too disgusted with him to keep him indoors for a moment longer. The way to make it hate him would be to pretend that he hated the Doctor. Then with the hungry sand right outside the door and no one to operate its more sophisticated systems, the TARDIS’s only alternative would be to use roughly calibrated plasma energy to fling him as far away over its threshold as it could – to get him out and also away from the sand.
Wonderful plan.
Absolutely the best ever.
Ah…
Putta hadn’t quite considered how painful it would be when he landed after being flung, however. Being propelled to the other side of the riverbank in one long, low swoop, Putta had time to enjoy his flight before landing on the steep slope which formed the riverbank opposite the one where the TARDIS sat. This slope was covered mainly in nettles, the nettles being interrupted in places by brambles.
Ah…
Putta rolled back down towards the river, but saved himself by impacting with his chest against a broad tree trunk.
He came to rest with extensive bruising, a cut over one eye and a sense of elation. And he’d lost his other shoe.
‘I was right,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I was right.’ Before deciding that hauling himself up the slope would be safer than going anywhere near the river.
It took him some time to claw and drag and yank his complaining body all the way up to the top of the bank and emerge in the brush under trees between the seventh and seventeenth holes. As he stood, breathless, sweaty, scratched and exhausted he felt taller than he’d ever been. Even in his stockinged feet. He might have looked, perhaps, like an old-time golf professional who’d fallen down a well, but he felt like a hero – the hero the Doctor would have wanted him to be. Now he just had to cross the seventh green and reach the Big Lake.
‘You! You there! What are you doing there!’
A late party of four golfers was finishing their round and usually Putta would have kept out of their way. (He was beginning to think that golf’s main emphasis was on its team elements – one team waving angrily and the other solitary player running and dodging across different lengths of grass while some unimportant stuff with a ball and some sticks happened.)
Even after a golf ball sang rather closer than it should have past Putta’s head, he would still normally have chosen to slip self-effacingly round to the lake, wait until dark and then search for the phial of psy fluid he’d thrown there. Putta really didn’t like annoying people / beings / creatures / mythical mind-controlled assassins / octopus monsters – even though it seemed that he almost always did.
‘Do get out of the way, moron!’ a round-headed man shouted while his partner chuckled and two other golfers in dark blue sweaters and slacks looked at the grass as if it were highly interesting, or as if something was happening which they wanted to know nothing about.
Putta stood where he was.
Where he was – according to the customary rules of golf – was in the way.
But this time Putta wasn’t going to move. He was going to play this game a different way – his way.
Yes, he might even go as far as to say this was his way of playing golf…
‘I said!’ the man with the head like a boiled pudding shouted again. ‘I said! Clear off!’
But Putta didn’t feel like clearing off.
There was one more shout. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you!’ And Putta was dimly aware that two of the golfers were moving away from their rounded companion and another was tugging at his sleeve. ‘Get off me!’ was audible and then, ‘I’ll show him.’
In the evening light, Putta could see the angriest golfer, perhaps, in the world addressing his ball, readying his club…and then – the swoop as the ball was struck. It was aimed straight at Putta.
And Putta – as if he always did this kind of thing – reached up into the air and caught the ball as it reached him. It was one of the undimpled, heavy golf balls that he didn’t like.
Then he put it in his deep, tweed pocket and walked off towards the lake.
Behind him, he thought he could hear at least one pair of hands applauding.
Putta’s right palm – where the golf ball had hit it – was in absolute agony, but Putta didn’t mind. He’d done the sort of thing a hero would do.
He heard feet hurrying behind him over the grass and, looking round, saw the golfer who’d aimed for him rushing up with a strange expression on his face – a blend of confusion, admiration and embarrassment. ‘If you wouldn’t mind…Could I have my ball back?
Putta didn’t answer.
The man winced. ‘Please’.
&
nbsp; And Putta handed over the smooth white sphere before walking on under the wide evening sky, reaching the lake and then continuing to walk.
I can do this. Heroes walk into lakes.
It’ll look really cool.
Like catching a golf ball.
Ow…
THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE for it – she might as well settle down to wait and make herself comfortable while she did so. Bryony wasn’t being allowed to move beyond the increasingly truncated section of corridor the TARDIS had assigned to her. ‘I’m finding this sexist! It’s annoying!’
It wasn’t just annoying – the by now rather rapidly shrinking dimensions of the space around her were a cause for concern. The ceiling was definitely lower by about a foot. At this rate of contraction, it would only take a few hours and there wouldn’t be room for fun activities like standing up. Beyond that, crawling and even lying down while breathing would get increasingly impossible. Bryony didn’t think that the TARDIS would intentionally damage her, but if the thing got overly panicked maybe it locked into certain paths of action and couldn’t get out of them. Maybe the TARDIS needed the Doctor as much as Bryony and Putta did.
Thinking of Putta, Bryony had been additionally worried by a final, very loud yelp from through in the console room. This was followed by a loud bang and then complete silence. Something had clearly happened – probably to Putta – or with him or around him. She tried to assume it was something good…
‘TARDIS…? TARDIS, can’t you let me help you? Is it your compression field? Are you feeling poorly? Or tense?’ Bryony knew that the last thing you want to do when someone is feeling tense was ask them about it, but what else could she do? ‘Maybe if you let me turn that bell off – it seems to be making you…well…tenser. It’s blooming well making me tenser. It’s doing my head in.’ The corridor narrowed by an inch in response. Bryony sighed. Then she shouted pointlessly through the wall to Putta. ‘Putta!?’ He hadn’t answered or made any other sound since the yelp and the bang…
And he didn’t answer now.
Finally, she decided that the most reasonable thing to do under her circumstances would involve having a bath. Perhaps if she was herself more relaxed, this would calm the TARDIS. Perhaps she would prefer to look her best if she was going to be inadvertently crushed to death by a weird box / spaceship…She’d be better prepared for whatever came next if she wasn’t covered in sand and dressed in an impractical and pretty well shredded retro suit. It was a shame – the thing had fitted her much better than the one she had to wear when she was a receptionist. She briefly reflected that her job was probably long gone by now. Mangold wouldn’t be best pleased by her association with a fainting madman, some loud rushing and the horror in the Spa.
She trudged to the bedroom – now conveniently much closer to the kitchen and the bathroom…this section of the TARDIS was basically turning into a bedsit – and rooted in its chest of drawers. The gently thrumming piece of furniture offered up a muddle of socks, small electrical parts, a fossilised slice of cake wrapped in a dirty handkerchief and some complex diagrams which might have charted outlandish wiring plans, or a vascular system – it wasn’t clear. There was also a clean-looking towel, three long-armed white shirts which clearly belonged to the Doctor and would have to do, plus a pair of pink and white striped overalls, which clearly belonged to someone else.
‘Pink bib-front overalls…? What kind of people does he have in here? Feminine lady plumbers? Admirers of Andy Pandy…?’
The idea of wearing pink made Bryony feel slightly ill, but they were roughly her size and would be fairly practical. Once again she tried not get stressed about the idea of wearing pink when she was…I will not think about being crushed to death. No I won’t.
‘OK, TARDIS. I’m having a bath now. That’s what you seem to want, so that’s what I’m doing. But afterwards we need to chat, or something. And we’ll be very happy and feel…expansive…Well feel like branching out…’ Bryony wished she’d paid more attention when that stage hypnotist had visited Dundee…then again, she didn’t think trying to get the TARDIS to eat an onion or think it was Elvis would really improve her situation. ‘And could you at least give me a clue about what’s happened to Putta?’ The lights dimmed and there was a kind of stiff silence, to replace the pervious silence that slipped along underneath the thrumming and that irritating bell.
It was troubling…
THE DOCTOR WAS TALKING. He’d been talking since the fake Mrs Agnes Findlater disappeared – which could have been minutes ago, or could have been hours ago…He hoped it wasn’t hours…He’d been sitting and talking, projecting his thought-self to Bryony and talking, trying to figure out what came next and talking.
‘Yes, I hope it isn’t hours. I would be highly worried about my friends if hours have gone by…Arbroath is a lot more interesting than one might generally expect with you around. And not interesting in pleasant and entertaining ways…’
The Doctor had once talked a torturer on an iron satellite of Betatron 6 into a state of near mental collapse, and Betatron 6 torturers are hardened to almost every kind of experience and not known for their listening skills. Even so, the Time Lord was tiring, the previous mental and physical assaults had left him drained, he really was concerned about Putta and Bryony – and his throat was getting dry. But he continued, trying to establish a connection with an entity which seemed not to be simply an assassin without a controller. There had been signs of sympathy and when their minds met, apart from the great pain this caused the Doctor, there had been those messages of fear and loneliness and pain. The Bah-Sokhar was evolving. It was so old and so malleable it could, as an individual, be subject to the same laws of change which governed whole species.
He wriggled his neck and shoulders and began pacing back and forth across the undulating, warm and slithering floor. ‘And with the rate at which your powers are increasing I know it can’t be days that have gone by. I strongly suspect that in only a few days’ time the world could well be a much emptier and more unpleasant planet if you go on as you are. I don’t intend to be critical, of course, but surely you must see that creatures are suffering…You are making them suffer…You are making them hurt and afraid and lonely. I know you understand those feelings…’ The Doctor could see that, if he couldn’t stimulate the creature’s more forgiving side, once the Bah-Sokhar was completely awake, full-scale feeding would begin…and could well be massive. And whoever survived that cull might find themselves no more than a mind-puppet, a way of keeping meat fresh for the creature’s next meal.
It seemed that the Bah-Sokhar was perhaps more terrible than the legends describing it.
Then again…and the Doctor did like to give things the benefit of the doubt…The creature had tried to communicate. It hadn’t harmed the twins and had clearly been sharing its consciousness with them for some time, perhaps also with their grandmother. Yes, there was something about that lady – charming as she was – which smelled of far too much time. Humans in the twentieth century had a predictably fixed lifespan and the Doctor suspected she’d been around for far more than her usual share. He wouldn’t be much of a Time Lord if he didn’t know the signs.
And for a monster supposed to thrive on hate, the Bah-Sokhar had responded to affection…There must be a way to help it through towards a more sustainable way of existing, a less bloodthirsty life.
‘You seem to have a soft spot for those twins, don’t you? And for their grandmother. For Bryony Mailer, too – impressive girl she is – mush less hysterical than most humans would be under the same circumstances…if anything, rather overly relaxed.’
Then the Bah-Sokhar came at him again – not disguised as a nightmare, not in the form of a memory raised from the dead – this time it made him a kind of offer.
DOCTOR
YOU COULD
YOU COULD BE THE JEWEL AT THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSE
USE ME
DO GOOD
The pressure reaching into his mind was monume
ntal, but the Bah-Sokhar had modified its communication so that it caused less pain and more a sense of power and elation. Not that he didn’t also end up on the floor holding his ankles for a while.
‘Too…too loud. Please…I admire your enthusiasm…but…As I mentioned, I have received similar offers over the years…’ Through his thinking span a sudden torrent of images of smiling peoples, saved peoples…his coronation as emperor at the beginning of a long rule over huge swathes of the universe…‘Yes, and that is…splendid and how pleasant that you’re showing me myself in purple robes – I do love a good robe…a hood, too, excellent…but I would have to—’
PLEASE
The Doctor felt as if a long heated spike had been rammed into his forehead, ‘Oh!’ He gasped for a while, getting his senses back into order. ‘I do thank you for using the magic word. I do. Perhaps we could discuss this more quietly at a later date.’
And he rolled onto his back, sweat once again standing out on his face and tremors racking his arms and legs. This was all getting too much, even for him. He needed to get out of here and fast – if not actually, then at least virtually. ‘Perhaps if you show me more of my coronation and some extra crowds of delighted children offering me flowers and little gifts.’ The Bah-Sokhar duly obliged, making this interior cinema seem a touch more seductive, adding colour and depth, tuning it all to suit the Doctor’s weaknesses.
The Doctor dragged up a laugh from somewhere around his socks. ‘Oh! Splendid. Yes. You are good at this, aren’t you?’
He could feel his muscles straining, his head spinning – and the tumult of temptations rolled on. The Bah-Sokhar knew him now – he knew what to offer better than all the petty tyrants and monomaniacs who had tried to buy him with crowns and riches. Nightmares he was used to, monsters he could resist, wealth and glory didn’t interest him…but happy endings, visions of rich and fulfilled lives, of saving and aiding lives…visions of his own life finally reaching a point where he didn’t have to leave just as the good bits happened and the dangers were done with…That was much harder to resist.
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