Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25

by Ghosts of India # Mark Morris

  The Doctor flicked his arm up and suddenly the sonic was flipping end over end towards Gopal. Reacting instinctively, Gopal raised his left hand to catch it - but was distracted enough to lower his gun arm in order to do so. Immediately something flew out of nowhere and struck the back of his gun hand. Gopal cried out and his fingers sprang open. As soon as the gun started to fall, the Doctor was running towards the alien. He had reached Gopal and scooped the gun up from the dusty ground before Gopal had time to react.

  It all happened so fast that Donna just stood there, dazed. She couldn’t work out how the Doctor had made Gopal drop the gun until she saw Cameron appear round the corner of the wall at the end of the alleyway, holding his catapult.

  ‘Where did you spring from?’ she said.

  Cameron looked a little shamefaced. ‘I was in the house when the Doctor came back with those horrible ghost-men. I saw it all from an upstairs window. I wanted to know what was going on, so… I followed you.’

  Donna shook her head. ‘Your mum and dad aren’t half gonna kill you, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ agreed Cameron. ‘But I saved you and the Doctor from being shot. I reckon that’s worth a beating.’

  ‘Sorry to burst your bubble, but old Veec-9 here wouldn’t have shot us,’ said the Doctor airily. ‘As an evil intergalactic warlord, he’s… well, a bit rubbish. Not that we’re not grateful to you,’ he added, winking at Cameron.

  Donna looked at Gopal, who was rubbing the back of his hand and looking sorry for himself.

  ‘Please, Doctor,’ he whimpered, ‘if you have an ounce of decency in your soul, kill me now.’

  He looked so wretched that Donna couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. ‘Why do you want us to kill you?’

  she asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Gopal, ‘but a quick death is preferable to the slow torture that awaits me back on Jal Paloor.’

  ‘Well, if you will build up an army and try to overthrow the government,’ Donna said, rolling her eyes. ‘We’ve got

  a saying here on Earth, chum – if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’

  ‘Ooh, harsh,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘My only crime was to speak out against the tyrants of the Hive Council,’ Gopal replied. ‘I made public my disapproval of the current regime, as a result of which my nucleus colony was destroyed and the Council placed a bounty on my head. I have been running for eleven quadrants. I made landfall here three cycles ago. I thought I was safe, I thought I had finally shaken off my pursuers.

  But once again Darac-7 has found me. After observing your actions today, I could only conclude that you were working in conjunction with him.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re not,’ said the Doctor, ‘and if you want my opinion, which most people do, I’d say we’ve all been hoodwinked. Not that I didn’t have my suspicions, of course. Soon as I met Darac-7, I thought his eyes were too close together.’ He held out his hand. ‘Pass me my sonic, would you, Veec-9?’

  Gopal looked down at his left hand, and seemed surprised to find he was still holding the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Meekly he handed it over.

  ‘Ta,’ the Doctor said. He pressed the sonic to a hexagonal dial mounted on top of the thin tubular gun in his other hand and turned it on. After a moment he switched the sonic off and tossed the gun back to Gopal, who caught it in both hands, a startled expression on his face.

  ‘There you go,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’ve melted the energy cells. Might as well chuck it away now - though

  it’d probably make a decent paperweight.’

  Gopal looked at the gun in bemusement and then put it in his pocket. ‘So… does this mean you are going to let me go?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Not only that,’ said the Doctor, ‘but we’re going to put our heads together and think of a way of getting Darac-7

  off your back for good. Where do you live, Veec-9? As a human, I mean?’

  In something of a daze, Gopal gestured vaguely. ‘I have an apartment a few streets from here.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said the Doctor. ‘Nice splash of Darjeeling and a cosy chat, I think.’ He was striding away before anyone could respond. ‘Well, come on, you lot,’ he called back over his shoulder, ‘chop-chop.’

  Becharji was observing the preparations for dinner when he heard Mrs Campbell scream.

  Snapping at the servants to continue their work, he hurried from the dining room. The scream had come from the drawing room directly across the wide hallway. As he strode across the wooden floor, he glimpsed movement to his left, and turned to see Ronny hurrying down the stairs in his shirtsleeves, drying his hands on a towel.

  ‘Was that Mother?’ Ronny asked, frowning.

  Becharji bobbed his head. ‘I believe so, sahib.’

  The words were barely out of his mouth when the two of them heard Sir Edgar bark, ‘Get back! Get back I say, or God help me, I’ll run you through.’

  Decorum forgotten, Ronny and Becharji made a dash for the drawing room. Just before they reached the door

  they heard the clatter of furniture falling over, accompanied by the shrill crash of breaking china.

  Ronny reached out and yanked the door open. The sight that met his eyes stopped him momentarily in his tracks. His mother was cowering behind his father, who was armed with a poker and standing in a classic fencer’s stance. Ronny knew that his rotund and bewhiskered father had not fenced since his Oxford University days, and the sight of him standing there in his linen suit and highly polished shoes would have been comical had it not been for the two horrific creatures bearing down on him.

  Ronny had been told all about the ‘ghost-men’ who had appeared in the garden that afternoon, having apparently materialised out of thin air. However, the second-hand accounts, no matter how vivid, had been unable to prepare him for quite how terrible the creatures were in the flesh.

  They were not merely pale, as he had envisaged, but white. There was not even a tracery of veins beneath their marble-smooth skin, and neither did they possess wrinkles or hair, birthmarks or moles. Worst of all, the creatures had no eyes, and yet somehow they could see, or at least sense, the exact layout of the room and the position of everyone within it. They did not move with the blundering uncertainty of blind men, but with smooth and remorseless purpose.

  The creatures had been advancing on Sir Edgar and Mary Campbell with outstretched hands, but as Ronny and Becharji burst into the room one of them swung back to confront the newcomers. Ronny faltered for a moment, such was the aura of malevolence that clung to the

  creature, and then he raised his fists in readiness for the fray. He had been a keen pugilist in his younger days and, thanks to his recent army experience, was still close to the peak of physical fitness.

  Not knowing whether the creatures would understand or even hear him, he said loudly, ‘Unless you gentlemen wish to receive a damn good thumping, I strongly advise you to leave this minute.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ barked Sir Edgar with a warning jab of the poker.

  But the creatures ignored Ronny’s warning. They continued to advance, their hands outstretched like children playing blind man’s buff.

  Ronny threw his first punch at the same moment that his father lunged and thrust at his opponent’s chest with the poker. In both instances, the outcome proved the same.

  Moving like lightning, the ‘ghost-men’ shot out their hands, one stopping Ronny’s fist in mid-air as easily as if it was catching a ball, the other grabbing the poker and twisting it from Sir Edgar’s grasp before tossing it almost disdainfully aside.

  Becharji, hovering at Ronny’s shoulder, was not entirely sure what happened next. He had not witnessed the incident in the garden that afternoon, but he had been told about it, and that was enough to make him realise that something similar was happening now. As he watched Ronny and his father begin to grapple with the intruders, the room suddenly filled with a strange silvery light.

  Becharji threw up his hand to shiel
d his eyes as the light flared, and by the time it faded he found himself staring

  not at a knot of men engaged in hand-to-hand combat, but into the wide, shocked eyes of Lady Mary, who promptly gave a high-pitched sigh and fainted dead away.

  ‘Can we trust him, Doctor?’ Donna murmured.

  Gopal was in the kitchen, making tea. The Doctor, Donna and Cameron were sitting in sagging wicker chairs in his modest apartment, a ceiling fan whizzing above their heads. The floor-length wooden shutters that led on to the balcony were standing open, beyond which they could see that a little of the sun’s lustre was beginning to seep from the sky. Despite that it was still hot, almost sultry, like the atmosphere before a storm. The fan was doing little more than stir the warm air around.

  The Doctor looked relaxed, long legs stretched out, hands behind his head. ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘But how can you tell?’ she persisted.

  ‘His ears didn’t turn blue.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When Jal Karaths lie, their ears turn blue.’ Then he jerked upright. ‘No, hang on. That’s the Fostarones. Silly me.’

  ‘So he could be lying?’ Donna said.

  ‘Nah, course he’s not lying. Blimey, you’re suspicious.

  Doubting Donna they ought to call you. Doubting Donna from Dagenham.’

  ‘I’m not from Dagenham,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well, you should be. Or Deptford. Or Dulwich.Or Doncaster, that’d be a good one. Doubting Donna from Doncaster. Anyway, it’s obvious he’s not

  lying. He’s got an honest face. And he’s making tea. The Daleks have never made me tea. The Cybermen have never made me tea. The Sontarans never—’

  ‘All right,’ Donna shouted. She took a deep breath, then said it again, more calmly. ‘All right, you’ve made your point. But I swear, if this tea’s poisoned, I’ll swing for you.’

  The Doctor looked at Cameron, grimaced and raised his eyebrows. Cameron smiled back uncertainly.

  They had been in Gopal’s apartment – comparing notes, telling their respective stories – for over half an hour now.

  Gopal had arrived on Earth three months earlier, and had been living among the humans ever since. His craft, smaller and sleeker than his pursuer’s, and powered not by a leaking zytron core but by a selfgenerating fusion coil, was secreted in the centre of an inhospitable mountain range to the north of Calcutta, enclosed within a glamour shield that made it invisible to the human eye. In fact, Gopal told them, his glamour technology was far superior to that used by Darac-7. This was why he had been able to leave his ship and walk among the humans, whereas Darac-7 had had to rely on gelem warriors to do his dirty work for him.

  When the Doctor called Gopal by his Jal Karath name, Veec-9, Gopal held up a hand.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I would be grateful if you would call me by my adopted name. In fact…’ he hesitated.

  ‘Go on,’ the Doctor said softly, as if he knew what was coming.

  ‘No doubt you’ll think I’m foolish, Doctor, but I had been hoping that I might be able to stay here. To start a new life. As a human.’

  ‘Well, you could do worse,’ the Doctor said, glancing at Donna and flashing her a smile. ‘I’m sure you’d be a great asset, Gopal.’

  Now Gopal reappeared from his tiny kitchen, bearing a tray weighed down with a china teapot, four china cups and a plate of roughly cut yellow biscuits studded with raisins and cashew nuts.

  ‘Lovely,’ said the Doctor as Gopal put the tray down on a low wooden table. ‘Shall I be mother?’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m drinking tea with two aliens and a little kid in India twenty years before I was born,’ Donna muttered.

  ‘I know,’ said the Doctor, grinning all over his face.

  ‘Brilliant, isn’t it!’

  When they were sat, sipping tea and crunching biscuits, Gopal said, ‘I still don’t understand why Darac-7 let you go so readily, Doctor.’

  ‘Two reasons,’ said the Doctor, his voice muffled through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Number one, he wanted to play the two of us off against one another. He couldn’t find you, and he knew my technology was tons better than his, so he thought that if he filled me full of lies about you I’d rush out, track you down and deliver you into his evil clutches.’

  He paused, holding up his hand. They all waited patiently for him to continue. However, he seemed, quite literally, to have bitten off more than he could chew.

  Finally Donna got fed up of waiting and said, ‘And two, he wanted the TARDIS.’

  The Doctor swallowed his biscuit. ‘Aw, I was gonna say that.’ Instantly he grabbed another biscuit and bit into it, waving it in the air with upraised eyebrows to express his admiration. Spraying crumbs, he continued, ‘Not that it’ll do him much good. He won’t be able to open it. It’ll just sit there in the corner of his ship like a big blue lemon, taking up space and gathering dust.’

  ‘What—’ Donna began, but then they heard the faint sound of chanting from outside. The chanting rapidly grew loud enough for them to make out the words: ‘Long live the Father… long live the Father…’

  The Doctor grinned. ‘Sounds like the cavalry’s arrived.’

  He jumped up and ran out onto the balcony.

  The street was filled with people. As ever, Gandhi’s appearance in public had attracted an ever-growing band of dedicated followers. The little man’s familiar, white-clad figure was visible at the head of the chanting crowd.

  Next to Gandhi was Ranjit, who looked up at the Doctor’s shouted greeting and saw him grinning and waving from the balcony.

  ‘Mr Doctor! Mr Doctor!’ Ranjit shouted, jumping up and down.

  ‘Hang on, I’ll come down and let you in,’ the Doctor called. ‘Don’t think we’ll have enough biscuits for all your mates, though.’

  Three minutes later, Gandhi was settled in the chair that the Doctor had vacated for him, and Ranjit was sitting crosslegged on the floor, munching biscuits. The crowd

  below were still happily chanting away. The Doctor leaned against the wall, arms folded, one leg crossed in front of the other.

  ‘How did you know where to find us?’ Donna asked.

  ‘We didn’t,’ said Ranjit. ‘I knew Mr Gopal lived here because he brought me back earlier to give me some food before I returned to the camp.’

  ‘The boy looked so thin,’ Gopal explained, as if embarrassed by his generosity.

  ‘And so I decided to ask him if he knew where Mr Doctor was.’

  ‘And now you’ve found him,’ Donna said.

  ‘So what’s happened?’ asked the Doctor quietly.

  ‘The half-made men came to the camp, Mr Doctor,’

  said Ranjit. ‘Many, many of them. The people ran, but the half-made men still took them – just as they took you earlier. Whoosh, like that.’

  The Doctor frowned, staring into space.

  Donna asked, ‘Why would they attack the camp, Doctor? Were they looking for Mohandas?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘As far as Darac-7’s concerned, Mohandas is no different to any other human.

  No, they’re harvesting. You said Darac-7 was an opportunist, Gopal. You’re obviously not his only business interest – probably not even his main one.’

  ‘What do you mean, “harvesting”?’ Donna asked. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

  ‘I told you that the leaders of the eleven hives were corrupt,’ said Gopal. ‘There have been rumours on Jal Paloor for some time that the Hive Council has initiated a

  build-up of secret military forces on one of the outlying planets. It is said they are planning to spread across the stars, to establish a new and glorious empire. Of course, no one really believed it.’

  ‘Except that it’s true,’ said the Doctor grimly, ‘and they’re going to use gelem warriors to do it.’

  ‘So as well as looking for Gopal, this Darac bloke is kidnapping humans to sell to the Hive Council to make into them gelem things?’ said Donna.

 
The Doctor nodded.

  ‘And he’s keeping ‘em… where? You said his spaceship was pretty poky. So are all those people being transported straight to the planet of the weeds or what? No offence, Gopal.’

  The Doctor stared at Donna. Then he marched across the room, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to him in a fierce hug.

  ‘Brilliant!’ he shouted.

  ‘What did I—’ she began, but the Doctor was already off, running his hands through his hair and talking at a hundred miles an hour.

  ‘If he’s taking this many people, he must have a holding area close to his ship. Somewhere huge and out of sight – an underground cavern, maybe. When he’s reaped his first harvest he’ll give his mates on the Hive Council a bell and they’ll send a prison ship to pick up the first consignment. The gelem warriors he’s already using must be programmed to transmit straight into the holding area with every new catch and then back out again. So if we can get those coordinates…’ He looked up wildly. ‘Gopal,

  how do you move to and fro between here and your ship?

  Transmat pod?’

  Gopal nodded.

  ‘Mind if I have a look at it?’

  ‘Certainly, Doctor,’ said Gopal. ‘Would you help me move this table?’

  Gopal and the Doctor lifted aside the low table on which the tea things stood and placed it against the wall.

  Beneath the table was a red and green rug, which Gopal rolled up, revealing a neat, hinged square in the wooden floor. He produced a key, unlocked the trapdoor and raised it. In the gap between the joists was a small hidey-hole.

  Donna caught a glimpse of various neatly stacked alien artefacts – boys’ toys, she thought. There were things made of brushed black metal, studded with dials and switches and flickering green lights. Gopal extracted a device like a miniature rugby ball, which he handed to the Doctor.

  ‘Ooh, nice,’ the Doctor said.

  He took a moment to familiarise himself with the array of controls set into the top of the device, then produced his sonic and pressed its glowing blue tip to different parts of the device, hmming and ahing as he did so.