‘Yeah,’ interrupted Jake. ‘We’ve heard this one. You were clinging to the raft like limpets. . .’
‘Quite right,’ said the Major, regardless. ‘Clinging to the raft like limpets. Ten of us.’
He stood between the twins now, at the edge of the hexagonal console in the centre of the room.
‘There were arguments at first,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘Lots of bickering and whatnot. And the same thing occurred to all of us. It went unsaid, mind you. No need for us to get all girly and weepy in a situation like that, even the girls. We realised that there was no point. We had to stay focused on the task at hand, which was to get out of that dreadful swamp. When you’re stuck in a situation like that, it’s working together that will get you out, not shouting at one another like a load of hooligans.
‘For what it’s worth, I’m with young Jake, here. That Doctor seems to know a thing or two, and I trust him. Now if we just sit tight I’m sure it’ll all be over in time for afternoon tea. Just you wait and see.’
The ventilation grill shuddered and shook and, with a final nudge from inside the air duct, came tumbling down into the hotel lobby.
With the grace and agility of a gymnast, Wallace lowered himself from the duct and dropped down behind the reception desk.
The coast was clear – no Sontarans anywhere to be seen – and so he was able to quite calmly go about the business of finding the spare key card for the Doctor’s hotel room in a cupboard behind the desk, before making his way to the elevators.
He took the elevator up as far as the floor where Mrs Carstairs had told him telepathically the Doctor was staying. With every passing second, their power to communicate with one another by thought alone grew stronger.
Stepping out into the corridor he saw, halfway down it, a Sontaran soldier lying on its back, quite unconscious. Wallace made his way gingerly along the corridor and stepped over the body before approaching the door to the Doctor’s hotel room.
He swiped the key card in the reader next to the door. A tiny light changed from red to green, and he entered the room.
It was empty.
There were the usual furnishings – the bed, a dressing table and chair, a smaller table with a lamp – but there was no TARDIS. In a state of increasing panic, Wallace sent his thoughts out across the colony to Mrs Carstairs, who could only reiterate that he was in the room where the TARDIS was being kept.
Wallace thought for a moment, and then, from the pocket of his apron, he produced a small plastic handset. He dialled a code and waited.
Inside the TARDIS there was a sudden, inexplicable ringing sound.
‘What’s that?’ said the Major. ‘Sounds like a blimmin’ telephone. On a spaceship? Has the world gone mad?’
Jake looked at Vienna. The sound was coming from her, and his sister was blushing. With an embarrassed shrug, she reached into her pocket and produced a chatcom.
‘You’ve got a chatcom?’ said Jake. ‘Do Mum and Dad know you’ve got one of those?’
Vienna shook her head.
‘They don’t?’ Jake continued, and then, with a degree of pleasure, ‘Oh, you are so dead when they find out. You are going to be grounded for, like, a year or something.’
Vienna scowled at him and answered the call.
‘Wallace?’ she said, half-excited and half-cautious. ‘But where are you? They haven’t? But. . .’
She paused, her expression gradually turning to one of concern.
‘The Doctor, that man who was with us, he said you’re one of them. You said those words. . . The same words as Mr Pemberton. The Doctor said that all these alien. . . things. . . He said they all say the same words. And you said them, Wallace. You did.’
There was a long pause. Jake could just about hear the muffled sound of Wallace at the other end of the line.
‘Really?’ said Vienna, smiling awkwardly. ‘You mean that? You promise me you aren’t?’
What was his sister talking about? What was Wallace saying to her? Jake was becoming increasingly frustrated that he couldn’t hear both sides of the conversation.
‘OK,’ said Vienna. ‘OK. . . We’re in room 237. The Doctor moved his ship to keep us safe.’
‘What are you doing?’ Jake hissed, getting to his feet and lunging for the chatcom in his sister’s hand.
‘It’s all right!’ said Vienna, pulling it away, out of his reach. ‘Wallace is OK. He’s not one of them.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he promised me. He just heard Mr Pemberton saying that line, so he started saying it too. He’s not one of those aliens that the Doctor was talking about. He’s coming here now.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Jake. ‘And who says so?’
‘I do,’ said Vienna. ‘We can’t just leave him out there. Those things might get him.’
Jake sneered and started walking around his sister with an exaggerated feminine wiggling of his hips.
‘Oh,’ he said, his voice whining and snide, ‘I’m Vienna Carstairs and I can do what I want because my boyfriend wants to be in the spaceship with me so we can hug and kiss and cuddle. Mwah mwah mwah mwah mwah. . .’
Vienna lifted her hand to slap her brother’s face, but they were interrupted by a knocking at the door.
‘That’ll be Wallace,’ said Vienna. ‘And if you say anything, I swear. . .’
‘If you swear, I’ll tell Mum you swore,’ said Jake.
‘I mean it,’ said Vienna, crossing over to the main door. She opened it, and Wallace stepped in. He seemed to Jake more confident and more cheerful than he’d ever been inside Mr Pemberton’s shop, especially considering what was going on in the colony outside.
When Wallace saw the Major he paused and laughed nervously.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He’s coming with us,’ said Vienna. ‘The Doctor’s going to take us somewhere where it’s safe. We think.’
‘He is, actually,’ said Jake. Looking over to the Major he saw that the old man was frowning.
‘Wallace, is it?’ the Major asked, getting up from where he sat and making his way slowly across the TARDIS.
‘Yes. . .’ Wallace replied, cagily.
The Major looked over to Jake once more, and shook his head.
‘What is it?’ asked Vienna. ‘What’s wrong? It’s Wallace! You can see that it’s him.’
‘It’s not,’ said Jake. ‘Look at him, Vienna. . . Look at him.’
Wallace’s eyes darted from side to side, from Jake to the Major. His lips curled back in a sneer, baring his teeth, and he lifted up his hands like talons, balls of blinding white light glowing at his fingertips. He aimed his fingers at Jake and let out a terrifying howl, but before he could do another thing the Major had charged forward and wrestled him to the ground.
Together the old man and the boy rolled across the floor, cocooned in a shuddering ball of crackling energy, until Wallace broke free and got to his feet. The Major lay paralysed on the ground, his breath little more than a rattle.
‘Wallace?’ said Vienna, horrified. ‘What have you done?’
‘Oh, do hush,’ snapped Wallace. ‘With any luck we’ve killed him. Now where is the Doctor?’
Vienna shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Jake looked down at where the Major lay, still struggling for breath, and launched himself at Wallace, his hands reaching out as if he might strangle him. Wallace flicked his hand toward Jake with the slightest of gestures, and a thin bolt of zigzagging energy sent the younger boy reeling.
Wallace turned back to Vienna.
‘Now,’ he said, more coldly than before. ‘Where. Is. The. Doctor?’
‘I’m here,’ said a voice from the doorway.
Wallace turned on his heels and saw the Doctor standing inside the TARDIS. He had closed the door silently behind him, and was now leaning against it.
‘So,’ said the Doctor, ‘this is what’s become of the Rutan Host after more than fifty thousand years of
endless war, is it? Attacking old men and using teenage boys to do their dirty work for them?’
‘What would you know of our kind?’ said Wallace, leering at the Doctor.
‘Oh, enough,’ said the Doctor. ‘Enough to know that you’re more intelligent than the Sontarans, however pretentious they get. Enough to know that even when you’re winning this war you never really enjoy it like they do, do you? I mean. . . The Sontarans. . . They love it. They love war. But the Rutans? No. . . You’re different. So why do you do it?
‘Do you know what I think? I think you do it out of boredom, and to make yourselves feel superior. There are billions – and I mean billions – of sentient life forms out there to pick a fight with, and you pick the Sontarans. It’s kind of like playing chess with a lobster, really. OK. . . Not a brilliant analogy, but you get my drift. And yet you carry on doing it, because it makes you feel oh so important and clever.’
‘Very insightful, Doctor,’ said Wallace, lifting up his hand, the fingers splayed. ‘And you may be right. Perhaps victory over the Sontarans will be too easy, in the end. Imagine how much greater our victory will be when we have killed the last of the Time Lords. . .’
He thrust his hand forward with a sudden jerk but nothing happened; no bolts of electricity, no flash of energy. Wallace looked down at his hand and frowned.
‘Oh, that’s another thing,’ said the Doctor. ‘I also know that this spore version of yourselves that you’ve engineered. . . It had to survive in Saturn’s atmosphere for almost five centuries. To do that, it had to breathe ammonia.’
‘But how. . .?’ said Wallace. He was now looking weaker, his body hunching forward, his breaths getting shorter by the second.
‘The smell,’ said the Doctor. ‘Noticed it when I first set foot on Chelsea 426. Not pleasant. The locals probably hadn’t noticed it. . . You don’t when you’re around it all day. Like when somebody smokes. They can’t smell the smoke, but everyone else can.
‘The thing is, the TARDIS isn’t a part of the colony, is it? The door’s shut, and the air conditioning in this thing is second to none. Any whiff of something just a little bit nasty and it’s straight out through the vents. You’re running out of air.’
‘What?’ said Wallace, now struggling to breathe. ‘But you can’t. . . you can’t do this. . .’
‘Oh, I can,’ said the Doctor, standing over Wallace as the young boy curled up on the floor, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish out of water. ‘I asked you to leave these people alone when I was talking to Mrs Carstairs. You can remember that, can’t you? Shared memories and all the rest of it. I asked you to leave, and you didn’t.’
Vienna ran across the console room and knelt beside Wallace. She looked up at the Doctor, crying and red with anger.
‘What are you doing to him?’ she demanded. ‘You’re killing him. . .’
‘I’m not,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s the Rutan spores. They’re dying.’
Wallace looked up at the Doctor, his eyes narrowing malignantly, and laughed with what little breath he had.
‘You’ll regret this, Doctor,’ he said. ‘You will regret this.’
His eyes closed, and his head fell back onto the grilled metal floor of the TARDIS with a dull clank.
‘What have you done?’ Vienna cried. ‘What have you done to him?’
The Doctor remained expressionless, walking around the console to where the Major lay clutching at his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Ah,’ wheezed the Major. ‘Don’t mention it. Got hit worse than this in a dogfight over the Corinthian Archipelago. Can’t say I’ll pull through this time, though. How about the twins. . . Are they OK?’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, smiling weakly. ‘They’re fine. Thanks to you.’
The Major smiled.
‘That’s good,’ he said.
He closed his eyes and winced in pain.
‘Well, Doctor, at least it wasn’t one of them Sontarans that did me in, what? Little tyrants that they are with their funny little heads and their funny little ears.’
The Doctor laughed softly.
‘That’s the thing with little ears though,’ said the Major. ‘Only takes a little sound to deafen ’em.’
The Major held the Doctor’s hand, squeezing it gently, and then he winked.
‘What does that mean?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Major?’
‘You’ll work it out,’ said the Major. ‘Clever chap like yourself. Think I’ll have a little nap, now. Feeling a little bushed, truth be told. Night, night, Doctor.’
The Major laughed and coughed one last time, and then his eyes closed and his arm fell limp at his side.
The Doctor ran one hand through his hair and let out a shuddering sigh. If only he had stayed with them, or returned from the Mayor’s office just a few minutes earlier. . .
‘I don’t believe it!’
Vienna’s voice interrupted his thoughts. The Doctor stood and, looking over the edge of the console, saw Wallace sitting upright, shaking his head as if he had been woken suddenly from a deep sleep.
‘What happened?’ he asked, coughing and spluttering. ‘Where am I? Where’s Mr Pemberton?’
‘You were right,’ said Vienna, looking up at the Doctor.
The Doctor nodded.
‘See?’ said Jake, smarmily. ‘I told you we could trust him.’
The Doctor smiled at Jake, and then looked down at where the Major lay. He took a deep breath, and then faced the children once more.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now all we need to do is sort out the rest of the Rutans, rescue your parents and send the Sontarans back to Sontar. Who’s with me?’
Jake stuck his hand up in the air as high as he could reach. Vienna followed suit seconds later, which left only Wallace.
‘I’m sorry,’ he asked, ‘but what’s a Sontaran?’
IT WAS THE first time in two years that Mr Carstairs had seen the Western Docks. It was there that he and his family had first arrived, travelling from Earth on a liner bound for the Kuiper Belt. Their worldly, and indeed otherworldly, possessions had been packed away in a crate no more than a metre deep.
On arrival, they had all, even the children, been interviewed individually by check-in officials and made to present their transfer papers and the legal documents proving their authority to manage the Grand Hotel. The first few months had seen them treated very much as Newcomers by the other residents, but soon enough their neighbours and acquaintances had realised that they were Chelsea 426 people through and through.
Only the children had seemed to have any difficulty fitting in. Their peers on Chelsea 426 were so different from the children on Earth. Less boisterous, less mischievous, less noisy. They dressed less like teenagers and more like miniaturised versions of their parents and grandparents, not something either Jake or Vienna had ever done.
As a result, neither of them had made many friends, but that had caused Mr and Mrs Carstairs little concern. Having fewer acquaintances here on the colony meant they were less likely to get into trouble, not that there seemed to be much trouble for them to get into.
Mr Carstairs couldn’t help but think of those first days on the colony as he and his wife were pushed into the loading bay at gunpoint by the Sontarans. The vast hall was crowded with familiar faces and strangers alike. Many of them were silent, sitting in small huddles looking lost and forlorn. Some were crying, their sobs echoing around the bay.
‘You will wait here until further notice,’ said one of the Sontarans.
When Mr Carstairs turned and glared at him aggressively, the Sontaran lifted his baton as a warning.
‘Come along, dear,’ said Mr Carstairs, holding his wife by the hand and leading her into the crowd.
He thought of the children now, travelling in that curious blue spaceship with a complete stranger. He hoped with every shred of emotion he had left that they were safe, and that the Doctor, whoever he might be, was tru
e to his word.
As he led his wife further into the crowd, he felt her pull gently on his hand. She had stopped walking.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I won’t be long,’ she replied, gazing over at the far side of the loading bay.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I won’t be long,’ she said once more, letting go of his hand and walking away, to where a small group of colony residents had gathered in one corner.
He was about to follow her when a voice said, ‘Excuse me, but do you live here?’
Mr Carstairs turned to see a young couple, neither of them any older than 25. They were dressed in evening wear, though neither of them looked particularly used to wearing such clothes.
‘Er, yes. . .’ he replied, distantly.
‘I’m Zack,’ said the man, holding out his hand, which Mr Carstairs duly shook. ‘And this is my girlf—’
He turned to the young woman at his side and they smiled at one another.
‘This is my wife,’ the young man corrected himself. ‘Jenny.’
‘Pleased. . . pleased to meet you. . .’ said Mr Carstairs. ‘I’m Mr Carstairs.’
The young couple frowned at him quizzically. Even if they hadn’t been dressed as if they had been dragged straight from one of the pleasure cruisers, Mr Carstairs could have guessed they were Newcomers just from the informality of their introduction.
‘My name’s Brian,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Brian Carstairs.’
‘Well,’ said Zack, ‘pleased to meet you, Brian.’
Mr Carstairs couldn’t remember the last time somebody had called him by his first name. Not even Mrs Carstairs had called him by his first name in such a very long time. It was always ‘dear’, or even ‘Dad’, particularly in front of the children.
‘You were on one of the ships?’ he asked, gesturing toward the enormous doors of the loading bay.
‘Yeah,’ said Jenny, still managing to smile. ‘We’re on our honeymoon.’
The Taking of Chelsea 426 Page 10