But the Doctor loped and slithered and struggled on regardless, getting further and further away.
IN HER LOVELY BATHROOM, Julia Fetch had already run the bath she would always take before slipping into bed, enjoying the cool smoothness of her linen sheets and falling asleep. She had been told, or had read somewhere, that people were meant to sleep less as they aged, but she found that she was sleeping more and more – sometimes she would even sleep right through an entire day.
She had sprinkled lavender bath salts into the water and was looking forward to a calming dip.
When she pottered over to turn off her taps she glanced down at the water and saw, furling and unfurling its delicate and clever limbs, a red-spot night octopus, or octopus dierythreaus, her very favourite octopus. It was a perfectly beautiful specimen – just like a living version of the glass model in her living room.
I can’t think it’s enjoying water this hot, she thought. And I don’t suppose it normally swims in lavender bath salts.
She slipped her hands into the water, thinking she might scoop the red spot octopus out and keep it in more suitable water until she could rehome it, perhaps, in one of her ocean reserves. Or maybe in its own bath – it really did prefer hot, lavender-flavoured water…But then the little animal did a remarkable thing – it reached towards her and, well…it felt very much as if it was hugging her hand, stroking her fingers with a sort of affection and kissing her knuckles with its mouthparts. The sensation was strange, but not unpleasant.
‘Well, I never.’
The octopus withdrew, but watched her with its big clever eyes and continued to dab at her hand and wind the very ends of its tentacles around her fingers, like an attentive friend.
‘You’re a charming fellow, aren’t you?’
She knew that octopodes were highly intelligent and communicative, but she had never encountered one which really seemed fond of her. It was so wonderful that finally such a thing had happened.
Somewhere in her mind she remembered that she had always wanted a moment like this – a time when she had been at one with nature and with the octopuses she was so anxious to preserve. And she had always wanted a time when she felt that something else alive cared for her and wanted to show that.
For a number of reasons, she went and sat on the bathroom chair, hugged her dressing gown tight around herself and cried. The octopus watched her fondly, bobbing and undulating in the steamy water.
Then Mrs Julia Fetch set her head in her hands for an instant to catch her breath. She wasn’t sad, exactly – it was more that she was complete now in a funny kind of way.
When she looked up again, the octopus was gone.
This didn’t disturb her. She felt very grateful, in fact. She felt she had been loved.
PUTTA COULDN’T KEEP UP with the Doctor’s long-legged progress and lost sight of him round the curve of the river’s course. Hobbling along in one sock, Putta finally came within sight of the TARDIS. Its weirdly reassuring shape was solid and neat in the moonlight. He supposed he should call it her…Her small, round light dimly glowing and flickering, as were the letters which spelled out POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX. Putta was unfamiliar with how the TARDIS usually looked, but he was pretty sure that a functioning and healthy Time Lord vessel wouldn’t have flickering lights. And in this he was mostly correct.
As he approached, slowing his progress and searching about, he could see nothing of the Doctor. Putta felt sick and desperate at once. The Doctor had disappeared. Again. He must have rushed out on to the fatal sand and been taken.
Putta snapped. This was too much. After all they’d been through and all that the Doctor had done, it wasn’t fair that he should have been killed.
Then Putta Pattershaun 5, the small ginger male from Yinzill, completely lost his temper and rushed – boulders, mud, water and moss permitting – towards that border of sand between the river and the TARDIS. He no longer cared if he was going to be killed. If he couldn’t help the Doctor, then he was going to try and rescue Bryony, anyway. He was going to risk the sand, anyway. He was going to be a hero, anyway.
Putta half leaped and half fell onto the sand, wheezing and swinging his fists. ‘I won’t let you have her as well! I won’t!’ He dug his hands into the pebbly grit. ‘And you give him back. I need the Doctor! We need the Doctor!’ And then he thumped his scratched knuckles against the TARDIS’s door. ‘And you! You’re not helping! You’re the only one who knows him! You’re supposed to be his friend! You’re—!’
At which point the TARDIS opened her doors.
While the sand didn’t even attempt to eat him.
Stepping cautiously over sand which appeared to be just perfectly normal muddyish, lumpy sand – Putta walked inside.
What he saw next meant that he spent quite a while standing with his mouth open and his hands halfway to doing something which they had both forgotten. He also made a small noise like a rabbit sneezing.
The Doctor – perfectly healthy, although slightly leafy, wet and mud-spattered – was emerging through the door at the far side of the console room. He was finding this tricky, because he was carrying Bryony in his arms. Bryony was dressed in – as far as Putta could see – a blanketty thing, a big shirt and something else that was stripy and pink. She was not absolutely enjoying being carried. ‘Will you put me down.’ She wriggled like a very large, tetchy, striped fish
‘You’ve had a shock. I told you to go and lie down for a bit—’
‘Lie down?! Lie down?! I’ve been trapped lying down in a bath for I can’t imagine how long!’
‘And I saved you. All the old girl needed was a bit of reassurance. I’m a very reassuring person. I would reassure you if you’d let me get a word in edgeways.’
‘Let you get a word in! I’ve never known anyone talk as much as you! And I don’t ever want to lie down again! And I’m fine!’
‘But my dear girl, you did come quite close – not awfully close and it would have been a complete accident…but contemplating being crushed by a ceiling will have been worrying for you…’
‘Not as worrying as having it nearly happen!’
‘Which is why…’ The Doctor sighed, finally gave up and set Bryony down, slightly before she would have managed to fall out of his arms in any case, because she was trying so determinedly to stand up. He pushed back his prodigious fringe and beamed at her. ‘You are good at all this.’
‘Good at it! My whole brain might have been fried! I could have been squashed flat by your spaceship!’ The TARDIS’s lights dimmed. ‘Who’s lovely, but still…I don’t do well when I’m less than an inch thick. I don’t think it would suit me! And is that it? Is everything safe now? We surely can’t just leave something like that to do what it wants with sand whenever it meets someone in a bad mood. You think I could nip off and have a nap with all this going on!? What do you think I am, a…a…’
No one found out what Bryony thought the Doctor thought she was because this was when Putta made that rabbit sneezing noise and the arguing pair turned to him in surprise.
‘Wh—?’ said Putta. His heart was cartwheeling in his chest because there was everyone, absolutely all right and fine and there and grumpy and grinning and…things were all much better than he’d expected. Apart from maybe how sore his feet were, how sore everything was and how foolish he felt in these trousers now that Bryony was looking at him.
And that doom-laden bell was still chiming.
That seemed a bad sign.
‘Putta!’ the Doctor exclaimed – almost as if he was delighted that Putta had made it and appreciative of all the work and bravery he’d put in, even though he was a naturally cautious being. But then, as Putta was straightening his shoulders in what he thought might look like quiet pride, it turned out that the Doctor was more exclaiming because he needed someone to help him out with the console. ‘Well, don’t just stand there like a wet hen.’ The Doctor began switching toggles and lifting panels, turning dials, padding round the console as if it we
re a musical instrument and he was a virtuoso. Now and then he would stroke a control surface, pat one of the little brass rails. ‘Putta, I need you on the Zeus panel. It’s that one. We need more information and if there’s a mammoth telepathic clamp still in operation, it won’t be hard to detect.’
The Doctor paused expectantly while Putta blinked and tried to remember how his legs worked and noticed that Bryony looked amazing whatever she was wearing – even if whatever she was wearing was…pretty dreadful. And oddly reminiscent of the uniform worn by female members of the security forces on Penal Planet ZZ5#7Λ.
‘Never mind her. She’s perfectly all right.’ The Doctor waved Putta fully inside impatiently.
‘You said that without rest and rehydration I could collapse completely and that my psychic reserves would be dangerously low for months,’ grinned Bryony.
‘Yes, but other than that – you’re really terribly healthy. And it’s not as if you’ll pay any attention to what I advise…’ His eyes flickered with immense joy. It was clear that there were few things the Doctor enjoyed more than being at the console alongside companions he could bicker with and order about. ‘Bryony, I need you to watch the screen and at the first sign of a signal yell out – and hold down that lever. No, not that one! That one. With the infra-jade handle. Mind you don’t cut yourself on it – it’s slightly cracked.’ He fiddled with a dial. ‘Ow! No, it’s this one that’s slightly cracked. I knew it was something…Running repairs…one never has time…’
And Putta watched as Bryony held down the lever, eyed the screen like a trainee eagle and looked as pleased as anyone who’d always dreamed of being on a spaceship would, if they actually were on a spaceship and – much more than that – actually were being allowed to operate one of its levers. The screen altered the image it showed from the dim exterior around the TARDIS to a more bland dark grey.
Putta shut the doors behind him, shuffled down the steps and took his place as indicated by the Doctor’s absently waggling hand. He was glad to be with the two people he cared about most in the universe, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t annoyed about their ability to enjoy something which still might be a complete catastrophe quite so much.
As he thought this, Bryony and the Doctor turned towards him. The Doctor smiled indulgently and said, ‘Well, if one can’t be cheery during a catastrophe there’s really no point being cheery at all, is there? I mean, catastrophes are highly unpleasant and just the thing you’d want to face while feeling at your best.’
At the same time, Bryony told him, ‘Of course I’m enjoying it. I’m not dead. That’s three times I’ve been not dead in…I suppose…twenty-four hours or so. I like being not dead. And…this is a spaceship.’
‘I beg your pardon.’ The Doctor looked quite stern. ‘This is the TARDIS. She’s not just a spaceship…You should know that – you’ve practically met her. She’s…well…’ It was even possible the Doctor was blushing slightly. ‘She’s herself. And we travel in time. Not just space.’
‘Time?’ Bryony forgot the screen.
‘Time.’
‘You mean time?’ Bryony stared at the top of Doctor’s head – his face no longer being visible as he bent over the console. ‘Time as in time?’
The Doctor nodded and flipped another toggle, while the floor shivered a little. ‘Yes, time. Of course I mean time – that’s the word I always use when I mean time. I’m a Time Lord, I’m not going to get that wrong.’ The view screen seemed to throb deep crimson. The colour faded again. ‘Ah. Putta, depress the harmonisation coils and increase – that one, there – increase the arc of the zenoxtil.’
Putta, fumbled at the controls, trying to guess which one was the zenoxtil, but couldn’t help asking, ‘But what happened? Why are you both all right? Squashed? Why would Bryony have been squashed? And are we safe!?’
As Putta shouted this last, the Doctor tweaked another dial and the entire screen was immediately washed with purple and red light, a leering yellow glow at its centre.
‘Oh, no. Oh no, no, no.’ The Doctor cranked round a small brass handle on one the console’s panels, his face growing pale. ‘That is not good…’ The handle seemed to adjust the magnification of the screen’s image. The Doctor stared up at the screen, his face turning pale.
Putta asked, ‘And why did you both know what I was thinking? The psy fluid would have worn off by now.’
The room turned a touch colder – but from the view screen came a lurid glow – as if lava were boiling out from a vast reserve of molten heat.
The little handle squeaked as it turned and slowly, slowly, the yellow and purple core shown on the screen began to shrink and a border of crimson was revealed around it, its colour shading out towards purple. There were scatters of white which chased about across the dimmer outer areas, like impulses firing along larger and smaller nerves.
‘What? Hmm?’ The Doctor’s face was paler – and now tinged with the lurid illumination of the screen. Bryony, too was focused intently on the image.
The handle kept turning. ‘It’s immense…immense…’ The Doctor shook his head, disbelieving. ‘And we knew what you were thinking, Putta – and we still do – because we’re practically on top of the universe’s greatest source of artron energy – a huge creature which is, in itself, basically a monumental telepathic clamp – just matter loosely held in stasis by the force of thought. It adjusted the screen to register only artron, rather than photon energy…And I’ve been decreasing the magnification until…What we’re looking at is miles across. The creature is miles across.’ The purple rim of the shape was shown to split eventually into sections – as more and more of an overview was shown, the sections were shown to be like legs, tendrils, tentacles around a roughly circular body. They shifted and flexed. The white impulses fired in and out from the core. The Doctor caught Putta with a glance. ‘Imagine a dream so powerful that it can make itself real, grip matter and shape it as it likes. So powerful that it can decide to be a nightmare. That’s the Bah-Sokhar.’ He patted an instrument panel consolingly. ‘No wonder she’s gone quiet.’
‘But we…But you…It let us go…’ bleated Putta.
‘Yes, Doctor.’ Bryony frowned and Putta was aware that she was mulling over how much the twins had liked her and how they had been kind to their grandmother and how generally pleasant they had been as long as the Bah-Sokhar hadn’t felt threatened. They were the Bah-Sokhar’s way of playing and being affectionate, responding to love – all things which were unusual in an assassin monster, she would have assumed. Then again, when they did defend the Bah-Sokhar, they were merciless – as merciless as the creature itself.’
The Doctor nodded – there wasn’t a lot of privacy inside an increasingly powerful telepathic clamp. He was remarkably good at shielding his mind – but he still couldn’t help hearing the torrent of worries about everything and yearning about Bryony which churned constantly across Putta’s mind. It was slightly anxiety-provoking. The Doctor was equally aware of Bryony’s excitement at being on an adventure, her confusion about the creature and her fondness for Putta. Those two really should sit down and have a chat at some point – preferably a point when they knew whether they had more than a few hours to live. The Doctor clawed through his dense mop of hair and blinked while Bryony pondered how on earth they would be able to keep the Bah-Sokhar in a good mood when it was constantly being interrupted by humans enraged by their own and other’s poor putting. ‘I know.’ He answered the question she hadn’t asked. ‘It’s all very well hoping that the creature doesn’t get alarmed by this or that – that it keeps on learning how to give and receive affection and doesn’t come across anyone with a negative mind-set, but on Earth…a planet covered with human beings…it’s hardly likely. It will be picking up radio waves, television broadcasts, military communications…Good grief, if it’s fully awake during a general election the whole solar system could be destroyed and its atoms repurposed to form more Bah-Sokhar. And it has so much potential…’
&nb
sp; Putta and Bryony then shared the Doctor’s memory of the strange sensation he had experienced – at once gentle and authoritative – when the Bah-Sokhar expelled him, not only from their shared mindspace, but from the space it had created within its body to imprison him. You can bet that being hurled out of a communal consciousness and simultaneously booted clear out of a monster’s fleshy holding cell would ruin anyone’s inner peace. Simply attempting the Lombukso Ultimate could kill you. Even subtle fluctuations in your surrounding temperature could lead to an artron surge that fried your brain. And the Doctor had been suddenly shocked out of the Lombukso Ultimate Meditation – and his inner peace – that was always fatal.
But the Bah-Sokhar had protected him, cushioned his mind against the energy surges and deficits, had taken care of him and deposited him near – in fact on top of – his friend. That must really mean it was a being that could be reached by positive emotion. Treating it with affection in the Spa had saved their lives…there must be a way…If only Shangri-La still existed, the Doctor could have sent it there…
But if the Bah-Sokhar couldn’t be rendered safe, it would have to be destroyed. The last of its kind, a wonder of nature – there was no way the Doctor could harm it.
He needed a plan. His brain – remarkable though it was – felt as if someone had been massaging it with an egg whisk and all he wanted to do was sleep for a while…But he needed a plan. He was usually good at plans…Well, maybe not good exactly…but he was very good at improvising and serendipity and paying attention and…
The TARDIS continued to toll her cloister bell. Clearly she remained less than confident that all would be well.
ABOVE ARBROATH, THE MOON was high and clear and had a playful look – or maybe a sympathetic look, maybe it was that.
Arbroath was perhaps not at its best after a riotous day, but it was peaceful now. Its residents all slept deeply and without stirring or turning – as if they were saving their energy for what might come next.
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