by James Goss
Lafcardio exonerated me. He did so rather too well. I was too busy formally acknowledging I had been cleared to notice that the people didn’t believe it for a moment.
The opposition suddenly became a protest movement with the voice of the people leading it.
I tried defusing the situation. I fired Marianne Globus. I issued a brief apology of sorts. You know the kind of thing: ‘I must regret that some people have perceived that there was any irregularity. While I remain assured of the absolute integrity of the decision of the hard-working electorate, I must also say that I am disappointed in the clarity of the information provided to me by one single adviser. I trust that this is an end of the matter.’
It wasn’t. The people rose up. And the opposition, the people who had killed my wife and spread a plague through the outer colonies, were swept into power.
The Prison had begun construction under my reign, but it was hastily finished by the opposition, handing out contracts to their allies. After a series of show trials, almost my entire government were placed in The Prison. A few were allowed to remain on HomeWorld to form a puppet opposition, their obedience assured by the presence of their loved ones in Level 7. And, as the ultimate humiliation, I was placed here as Governor of The Prison. The jailer of my former friends.
I tried to do my best. But then so many more inmates started to arrive. And I never knew who was guilty, and who was innocent. I don’t know any more.
The one thing they never told me, the thing I never found out, was exactly who caused the plague. Who came to my opponents with the idea. Who carried it out. Who was the mastermind who wiped out all those people. Who killed my wife.
And then, one day, they sent him to me. The greatest criminal ever. The one person I could never forgive.
The Doctor.
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, that all makes sense now.’
‘Are you going to apologise?’ All the anger I’d tried to keep down all these years swelled up suddenly behind my eyes in a red fury.
The Doctor didn’t seem that bothered. He shrugged. ‘No. I didn’t do it.’
‘Prove it.’
‘Really?’ the Doctor groaned. ‘I can’t. Only … it’s always easy to see a great mastermind at work behind things. And they do exist – believe me, I’ve met quite a few. But the thing is, people are such frail, weak beings. It doesn’t need a man twirling a black cape. Some of the worst decisions in history have been made in rooms by people who meant well. There’s a reason they say nothing good ever came out of a committee. Beware of Focus Groups, Working Parties, Conference Calls, and people who find ninety-nine reasons to say no before they find a single reason to say yes. It’s these people who are responsible for most of the evil in the universe. And it’s why they’re all unaccountable. None of them can ever remember making the big, awful decision. No one person decided to build a Death Ray. Perhaps someone can remember making some useful tweaks to the firing nozzle, a few good suggestions at an away day about the Death Ray logo, or perhaps deciding that the nice big button should be red … but … oh, I’m always asked what the end of the universe will be like. It’ll be a room full of people fighting politely over the last chocolate biscuit as they squeeze in one final meeting about how terribly dark it’s getting.’
He’d stopped talking. For some reason I was crying. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I just couldn’t. It was just flippant noise.
‘You’re saying it wasn’t you?’ My voice sounded really calm. Somewhere inside my head though, my soul was shouting HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU?
‘No,’ Clara spoke. Her voice was very firm. ‘You won’t believe him. But you’ll believe me. Won’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I always believe the cranky fans,’ I snapped.
‘It’s her wide eyes, isn’t it?’ suggested the Doctor unflappably. ‘I’ve had words.’
‘Oi!’ Clara stood up, defiant, climbing onto the table-shelf. ‘Listen to me. We arrived in this system just when it was all going wrong for the new regime. The plague had spread, the outer colonies were being kept going by supply ships. And suddenly, there was a suggestion by the authorities that, well, it was costing a lot to supply these ships and that, perhaps HomeWorld should look after its own first. HomeWorldFirst. That was the name of the movement.’
‘Horrible,’ I said.
‘HomeWorldFirst had rallies. They didn’t want to leave the colonies to die, no, not at all. They just wanted to introduce a Contribution Assessment. Basically, to find out what each colony brought in in return for continued supplies of vaccines …’
‘But … but … they caused the plague in the first place!’ I protested.
‘Yes. But HomeWorldFirst were very persuasive.’
‘And that’s what made the people rise up?’ I felt a sudden surge of pride.
Clara pulled a face, ‘Actually, it was over the plans to build a shopping centre on a park, but that did it. A protest movement that even the Government couldn’t control. Suddenly the people of HomeWorld got their political mojo on. It’s not been pretty – we’ve both of us been caught up in the fighting for some time. The Doctor’s done his best, but it’s been anarchy. Literally.’
‘The one good thing,’ the Doctor said, ‘is that all the best mercenaries from the last conflict were locked up in here. HomeWorld’s been trying to get them out, but as they made sure there was no system for getting people out of here, it all got hopelessly tangled in paperwork. That’s the problem with running things by committee.’
‘So, no bloodshed?’
‘Well, some …’ said Clara. ‘But turns out that the new lot really aren’t very popular any more. It’s one thing to order your soldiers to go out and fire on protesters. But when the protesters are your own grandparents … There were a few idiots who opened fire anyway. But not many. The old regime is crumbling. Very fast indeed. They thought they’d scored a coup when they arrested the Doctor. An alien. Clearly an alien ringleader.’
‘Actually, just a tourist.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘I keep telling people. Really. I’ve done nothing but sightseeing.’
‘Really?’ Clara gazed at him proudly. ‘What do you call saving that hospital from the missile?’
‘A day trip.’ The Doctor tried to look modest. It didn’t suit him.
‘The thing is,’ Clara continued, ‘the Government have known since they put you all in here that you’re the only credible alternative to them. It didn’t matter when they were still popular. But, all of a sudden, they’re not, and now you’re a threat. They thought they were being somehow humane putting you here. But they weren’t stupid. They no longer needed Level 7. They no longer needed any of you.’
‘As I’ve been telling you –’ the Doctor stood up painfully, limping a little as he waved his arms around like a general in a play – ‘the Prison systems have been reset. They’re no longer here to protect you. They’re here to wipe all of you out. The Guardians think they’re in on it, but they’re just an embarrassing amount of evidence. They’re for the chop as well.’
‘But what about that creature?’
‘A guilty conscience?’ The Doctor smiled. ‘There’s something hidden here. It has been all along.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think,’ mused the Doctor, ‘this prison has one last surprise to spring on us. And we’ve got to find it before it finds us.’
11
The corridors were dark. The Prison was eerie. Making our way through it was uncertain. I really didn’t know what to think of anything, really. I almost didn’t trust the ground beneath my feet. Which, if you think about it, was fair enough. It really was all just artificial – it was only the ground because the artificial gravity told me to think of it that way. I couldn’t be sure that it would still be the ground from one foot to the next. As we went up the stairs, the Doctor winced on each step. He counted them aloud as he dragged himself along. ‘Interesting,’ he grunted, but didn’t elaborate.
; We passed the bodies of Guardians. There’d clearly been a huge fight between them and the Custodians.
‘No prisoners,’ I said. We hadn’t seen any inmates’ bodies among the fallen or in their cells. I presumed we would, somehow. It wasn’t too fanciful to hope they’d join up with the Guardians against the Custodians.
‘Actually, where are the Custodians?’ I asked.
We were stood in a hallway. Up above us the stairwell spiralled. All of the corridors above us were empty. You’d normally see Custodians gliding from cell to cell, or docked in the walls. But there was none of that.
The Doctor seemed pleased. ‘I’m all in favour of an absence of killer robots.’
‘Um,’ said Clara. ‘Only … well, where have they gone?’
The Doctor’s face fell. ‘Good point. Where?’
I took them to the Control Station. The place had been gutted. At first it looked like sabotage, but then it became clear it had been systematically stripped. Screens dangled blankly. Empty keyboards hung from desks, most of the computers behind them gone or wrecked.
I went to my office. The place was empty. My records had gone. My terminal had gone. Even the rosebush the Doctor had brought me was smashed, a tangle of severed buds lying among spilt earth and broken pottery. The Doctor picked up a stray flower, picking at the petals sadly.
‘Someone’s cleaned this place out thoroughly.’
‘Human or robot?’
‘A little from Column A, a little from Column B,’ mused the Doctor.
We found Bentley holed up in the TransNet Room. It was more of a cupboard, really. Once we’d realised how feeble the link was, we’d given it its own space. People who’d grown up used to the TransNet everywhere now came to terms with having it in a single room.
A single room with a solid door. That was barricaded.
Shots rang out from the window, and we threw ourselves to the ground.
‘Go away,’ yelled the voice. ‘TransNet is mine now.’
I’d always found Bentley hard to deal with. Actually, that sentence can be shorter. I’d always found Bentley hard. No matter what I did, no matter how rigorously I followed procedure, there was always that feeling that I was a fake, that I didn’t deserve the appointment.
She had a reasonable point. I didn’t. But then again, when I was President of HomeWorld, I didn’t feel any less of a phoney. At any moment, I felt sure that one of my ministers would expose me as a fool who didn’t know what he was doing. Then again, it did turn out that they were all plotting against me. Which was, in some ways, reassuring, and in other ways, unhelpful.
Every day, Bentley did what she could to just gently remind me that I was just as much of a prisoner as my charges. It was why she never looked me in the eye. I knew that was the real reason why the TransNet did not work on my terminal. Why the Custodians occasionally hesitated – so very slightly – before obeying my commands. Why the Guardians rarely acknowledged me.
Bentley did not want me to feel secure. She was supposed to be Governor, but I’d stolen that from her, even though she ran the place. She’d never forgiven me. She wanted me to remember, every moment of the day, that this prison was my punishment, my humiliation. And that she was enjoying it.
Truthfully, in the early days, I really didn’t need her to remind me of my despair. And then, as time moved on, I felt more secure. I was almost at peace with my exile.
True, my former friends could not forgive me. They saw me as a traitor. They could barely look at me either. And, of course, there was Marianne. Marianne who at first took prison stoically. And then cracked. She’d asked to see me. I remember Bentley showing her in, her eyebrow cocked as though to say, ‘Oh, this’ll be good’. My former special adviser stood before me, shaking, telling me she couldn’t bear to be contained here any longer, that she had to be released.
I tried being soothing. I tried everything. But she wouldn’t listen to reason. She just screamed at me until Bentley led her gently away, talking to her in calming tones. I thought it was going to be all right, but then came her awful, hideous escape attempt.
After that, well … the one good thing that came of it was that no one tried escaping again. Not until the arrival of the Doctor.
The Doctor was speaking to Bentley now. He was talking in a measured, reasoning voice.
‘Bentley, listen to me. It’s 428. We just want a chat.’ He inched towards her, his limp exaggerated slightly, making him look a little pathetic.
‘428 – You will address me as “Sir”.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer “Ma’am”, ma’am?’
‘ “Sir”. Unless you want to be shot.’
A small sigh. ‘Well, all right, sir. Of course.’ His hands were out, placating. ‘You have a gun, sir. I have enormous respect for guns and the people who carry them. Always have.’ He gave Clara a wink at this point and muttered to her. ‘Clara. I’m going to need the full 3B from you in a moment.’ What’s he up to? I thought.
‘Listen, sir, you and I both know how this is going to be. You have the gun. You have the barricaded door. You have control of the TransNet. You have all the power. And us? Well, what are we? A prisoner, a political failure, and a girl in a tea-dress.’
‘Hello!’ waved Clara.
Bentley’s face appeared through the window in the door. She stared at Clara.
‘Her? Where’s she come from?’ Bentley sounded more afraid than anything else.
‘Oh …’ Clara said. ‘Outside. I’m technically on remand. Isn’t that right?’
I nodded. ‘She damaged prison property.’
‘She’s brought lies in with her,’ snapped Bentley.
‘Um, no,’ said Clara. For a moment she looked a little cross. Then her sweet smile returned. She stepped forward, edging the Doctor out of the way. I realised that she wasn’t at all afraid of the gun Bentley was pointing at her. ‘Can I just check – you are in charge here, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t think the Governor could be. I mean … not really. Well, look at him.’
I frowned, feeling a touch betrayed.
‘No, he’s never been in charge,’ Bentley snarled. ‘They told me he was, but it was easy to bypass him. To take command. He’s weak.’ Bentley spat the words out.
‘Oh yes, yes, he is,’ agreed Clara, soothingly. She was oddly close to the door. ‘I’m a teacher, you know.’ She was being lightly conversational. ‘My class is full of boys like him. And they do all right … I suppose. Not wonderfully well, but not awfully. They get by on the minimum of homework. Just scraping through.’
‘They do the reading, but they don’t understand,’ was Bentley’s surprising contribution. ‘I had a friend – Gillian.’ I realised she was talking about Donaldson. How awful. I’d known her first name but never used it. ‘Before she was a Guardian here she was a teacher. She said teaching boys was just like that.’
‘Oh yes,’ Clara nodded enthusiastically. ‘The Doctor’s the same as the boys in 3B, you know.’
The Doctor nodded seriously.
‘So come on,’ Clara went on. ‘Just you and me … Tell me what’s really going on here. I mean, they’d never spot it in a million years. They just don’t understand.’
‘Ah …’ Bentley wasn’t quite that stupid. ‘Why should I tell you?’ she sneered. ‘You’re working for the Doctor. You’re his accomplice.’
Clara put her hands on her hips and laughed. It was a really charming laugh. When people say ‘her face lit up’ it’s hard to tell what they mean until you really see it. I suddenly wished Helen and I had had a daughter. She’d have been just like Clara.
‘I’m working for the Doctor?’ She rolled her eyes and smiled with all of her ruby-red lips. ‘Oh please. He works for me. He’s my front man. Come on, if he really was in charge, do you think he’d have been stupid enough to get himself locked up?’
The Doctor made a noise.
‘He makes a lot of noise and fuss. And I just quie
tly get on with running things.’
‘I know just how you feel,’ admitted Bentley. She’d swung the door open, standing behind her barricade of desks and chairs, facing Clara. She was still aiming the gun. Directly at Clara. If she’d fired it, Clara would have been pulp. But Clara just didn’t care.
‘Now then.’ Clara was all business. ‘I know that you’re not going to trust me. You’re too smart to. But I’m betting that you’re just about now realising that you’ve been … shall we say … a little let down by the HomeWorld? Am I right? You were clever enough to finally work out what was going on with the system failures, and they admitted it, and they led you to expect that, when The Prison shut down, all the Guardians would be rescued. Instead the Custodians have turned on all of you. And you’re finding that no one back home is answering your alerts on the TransNet. Correct?’
Bentley looked at her for a long moment. ‘Correct. We’re cut off.’
‘Right about now, the penny is dropping isn’t it?’ Clara puckered her face in coaxing sympathy.
‘They don’t want there to be any survivors. Any witnesses,’ whispered Bentley hollowly. ‘There’s no escape from here. The only possibility was … was Level 7.’
Clara nodded. ‘Don’t worry about that. I rescued them all.’
‘You’re lying,’ hissed Bentley.
‘Well why would I?’ snapped Clara. Her patience was wearing thin. ‘Won’t someone stop thinking of the children? I’ve had to share my ship with that creepy … oh what was his name … The Oracle? He kept trying to tell me my fortune and assuring everyone that he knew that was going to happen. While crying with relief. Anyway, he says hello, by the way. And –’ Clara’s brow darkened – ‘that you knew it would come under attack.’
‘I couldn’t stop it from happening,’ said Bentley. ‘I had no idea.’ The statements were contradictory. I wondered how wrong I’d been to trust her at all at any point. She’d been working against me all along.
‘I’m sure you did your best,’ Clara said, shooting me a warning look. I was about to say something about how Bentley had herded people onto that ship and sent it off, thinking they were all going to die. But seeing Clara’s look, I shut up.