Doctor How and the Illegal Aliens

by Mark Speed

  Delicate latticed red fans flicked out of the tubes to grab at the particles washing past them. Dr How had to admit that they did look rather beautiful.

  "Sexual or asexual reproduction?" he asked. "Adult or infant?"

  "Unusually for such a lower-order species, they are sexual," said Mr Plensca. "This is the female infant stage."

  "And no males hanging around?"

  "No males."

  The Doctor looked hard into Mr Plensca's eyes. "No others of this species, apart from what I see here?"

  "None."

  "Irrespective of your wife's status, you realise that this breach means I now have the authority to search this place from top to bottom? Or, worse still, get a Squag to do it?"

  The Plenscas looked at each other, then at the Doctor.

  "We will eat them all by the end of next week," said the consul.

  The Doctor sighed. "Now is that the end of next Earth week, meaning a week today? Or is it next Rindan week, meaning about the middle of next month?"

  "Happily, both are the same. It is end of Rindan holy month," said the consul.

  The Doctor smiled and patted her and her husband on their naked shoulders, then wished he hadn't.

  "Look, what I really object to is the outflow going straight into the London sewers. It's also wasteful, both of energy and water. I know it looks plentiful on Earth, but you have to remember that this is a primitive society. If you could rig up a closed system it would be much better."

  "Thank you for being so accommodative," said the husband. "We must insist you have a polyp."

  "Thank you, but they don't agree with me."

  "No, it is tradition. You come to Rindan house in holy month, you must have polyp."

  "I really must be getting back home. Lots to catch up on. Can't wait for you to prepare one."

  "No preparation needed, Doctor. Eat raw. Like... Like oyster."

  "Oysters are a bit smaller. One gulp. These look... big."

  "Yes, you must take one, Doctor. Bad luck if you don't." Mrs Plensca left the bathroom.

  "Here. This is nice one," said Mr Plensca. He reached under the spray and touched the foot of a polyp. The whole mass of polyps shrank back against the wall, their orifices shrinking small and tight, like a tapestry of anal sphincters. He peeled the base of one away from the tiles as his wife came back into the room holding a Tupperware box, which she handed to him. He let some of the warm spray fill the box and then put the tight polyp in it. He presented it to Dr How with a bow.

  "Thank you," said the Doctor.

  "It must be eaten in the next six hours," said Mr Plensca, "Otherwise it will begin to go off."

  "I can't imagine how bad that would smell," said Dr How, to puzzled looks from his hosts.

  The three of them went back through to the living room and the Doctor hurriedly put his clothes back on. "Well, thank you again for the polyp," he said.

  "It was nice to see you, Doctor," said the consul.

  "Enjoy the rest of your holy month."

  The door closed behind him. He stepped to one side, put the coat hanger and Tupperware box down and took his shoes off. He leaned back against the wall, removed the sock from his left foot, took out a hygienic wipe from his pocket, unwrapped it and rubbed it over the sole of his foot. He put the sock back on and put his left foot back in the shoe. He was wiping the sole of his right foot when the door opposite opened again. The middle-aged woman stared at his bare foot, the coat hanger, and the Tupperware box.

  "Germs," he said. "You can't be too careful, can you?"

  He made his way out of Du Cane Court and up Balham High Street without further incident, coat hanger and Tupperware box in hand, then turned right at the combined Tube and overland station. On Sundays the service was half-hourly, which was too long to wait for such a short distance, so he walked up past Tooting Bec Common. Murphy's Law being what it was, a couple of minutes later a train rumbled its way up towards Streatham Hill, with a couple of pistol-shot reports as the train went over the points and the electricity sparked from the third rail.

  A couple of green parakeets squawked loudly as they flittered between trees. They were another invading species that had been introduced unintentionally – no one knew exactly when, or by whom. Whilst they added an exotic air to the parks and gardens of London and Kent, they played havoc with the indigenous wildlife.

  There was still no explaining the invertor, and he wondered if the Plenscas might think it had been a ruse to enter their apartment. His apartment, he reminded himself. He was, after all, their landlord. And he did have other caretaker responsibilities – not just to other consuls and out-of-towners in other apartments throughout London. A look to his right was the only reminder he needed as to why this was such a plum posting: lush grass and old oaks. Even the railway embankment was teeming with life.

  He took a deep breath. A delicious twenty-one percent oxygen, mixed with unreactive gases. A strong but reasonable gravitational field, giving a decent pressure and thus a habitable temperature range for any water-based species – which was most of the known universe. Or, at least the known Pleasant universe. He had a predilection for trips to Earth's Carboniferous period, for the thirty-percent oxygen content and the sight of the gargantuan insects it supported – dragonflies three feet long and multi-coloured butterflies with six-foot wingspans being his favourites.

  The invertor. He mulled it over. It hadn't sent a message. What, or who, had? A rogue message was highly unlikely. Conclusion? He'd been hacked. By whom? Or was it by Who? Unlikely, if not impossible at the moment.

  He walked on, up the gentle slope and into the Telford Park Estate. He'd bought one of the solid red-brick Victorian houses off-plan from Telford himself, some thirty years after the railway had arrived in Streatham Hill. Nothing too extravagant – just a semi-detached. It was spread over three floors and a cellar, with three receptions and five bedrooms. He liked the castle-like appearance of the design – the front of the house had a faux turret and the roof sloped into crenellations, rather than guttered eaves. Spacious enough for his needs, but nothing that would attract too much attention in that kind of neighbourhood. Mr Telford had been surprised at the modesty of the Doctor's choice, given the substantial sum Telford had just paid him for this, the last enormous parcel of Doctor How's land.

  It had been one of his longer-term investments – over eighteen-hundred years – having bought it in AD43 as the Emperor Claudius' troops invaded Britain to reinstate Verica, exiled king of the Atrebates. There was nothing like war to devalue the price of real estate, and the previous owner had been only too happy to be able to take the gold and flee north. Few things do more for the value of land than the enforcement of the rule of law, so although he had to pay a higher tax to the Romans he was happy to do so as the rent he received more than covered his initial investment. He'd not needed to visit much in the Dark Ages that followed – just the odd scare with a few projections. The Black Death had proven tiresome owing to a shortage of competent administrators but the rest, as they say, was history.

  The Doctor didn't need all that land and the wealth that came with it. However, he'd always felt that it was important to have a genuine sense of attachment to a place. It gave him something to bat for, and he enjoyed seeing the development of cultures over such long periods – the changes in customs and religions, the evolution of language and the inexplicable, nonsensical fashions. And the people – although he was essentially a loner, he did love to meet the great and the good of each period, as well as the ordinary person on the street. For him, the game of fantasy dinner-party guests was played for real. And having the land and wealth of the well-heeled made it so much easier to be accepted, and to entertain. He was fondly remembering a dinner with H. G. Wells when he came within sight of his house.

  Old Mrs Roseby was in her front garden, pretending to water her roses. His heart sank.

  "Good morning, Mrs Roseby. Lovely day, isn't it?"

  "Good morning, Dr How. Rain
expected later."

  He cast a deliberate look at her tin watering can, drawing her eyes to it.

  "You can't be too careful with roses at this time of year. Besides, the weather girl looked foreign. Them foreigners don't know the British weather so well, do they?"

  "It's all done by computers, Mrs Roseby. Big computers. She's just a presenter."

  "Don't trust them computers either. When I was a girl –"

  "When you were a girl, the very first proper computers saved the free world by breaking the Nazis' secret code, Mrs Roseby. Trust me, it'll rain later. And roses really don't need that much water. Deep roots. Now, was there anything else on your mind?"

  The old woman put down her can, its clang on the brick path betraying its emptiness. "Your dog frightened the life out of my Albert."

  "Albert the cat?"

  "Yes. Poor thing nearly had an 'eart attack. Your dog slammed up against the door and barked and snarled like a... Like a..."

  "Like a guard dog?"

  "Yes! Like a guard dog."

  "Well, that's reassuring."

  Mrs Roseby was confounded, so he moved further down the path to his front door. She shuffled after him on her side of the wall.

  "I've never seen that dog in all these years," she said. "You ought to let it out for exercise. That's why it's so ferocious. It's a miracle it doesn't eat that cat of yours."

  "Two salient points to bring to your attention, Mrs Roseby. First, my apparently ferocious dog has not eaten my cat after all these years. Second, would you really want a ferocious dog out on the street?"

  "Well, I... I... You never even let him in the garden."

  "He's agoraphobic. I'll have a word with... With Bonzo. He'll be quieter in future. I promise. Good day, Mrs Roseby." He put his key in the lock and turned the brass handle. The handle felt just a touch different. He sniffed his hand and concentrated. Fried food and human hand-sweat, plus an undertone of cheap soap. He'd had a visitor. An unwanted one, by the sounds of it. He took a sterile bud from his pocket and rubbed it all over the handle, then popped it in its matching test tube and put it back in his pocket. He'd get the DNA analysis later. He pushed a button and the UV disinfecting lights on the sides and ceiling of the porch came on. He gave himself a five-second twirl in their invisible rays. His white shirt glowed a pleasing blue colour. The door to the house was open, and he closed it after entering.

  "Trinity," he called.

  A large black cat with the musculature and movement of a panther padded down the stairs and across the polished oak floor. It rubbed against his legs.

  "Mrs Roseby tells me you've been quite loud. She's probably listening for an over-excited dog right now."

  The cat looked up at him with her green eyes and gave two deep, throaty barks which reverberated around the hall.

  "Good girl. Now, is this who came to call?" He presented the palm of his hand. The cat sniffed it and gave a miaow of assent.

  "I wonder if that's the same person who hacked us, Trini." The cat tilted her head.

  "Yes, I think we've been hacked." The cat hissed and stuck her tail in the air.

  "Oh, we'll get him, don't worry about that. Now, I've brought you a little treat from the Plenscas. How do you fancy a bit of raw Rindan polyp?" Trinity gave a loud growl and followed him through to the tiled kitchen, rubbing against his legs.

  He set down the Tupperware box in Trinity's eating area and she purred as he removed the cover and presented it with the foot of the polyp facing her. The polyp pulsed, feeling the surge in available oxygen. Its red fan flicked out into the air. Trinity looked at the Doctor, then sniffed the creature's foot. It shrank to half the size. If a cat could have shrugged, that's what Trinity did. She bit the foot and the creature squeezed itself tighter. In a couple of swift movements she had just the top of the polyp showing in her mouth. It flicked out its red fan beyond Trinity's nose and she caught it in her teeth. She gulped down hard, then opened her mouth to show Dr How the red innards, which had been pulled out from the body. She chewed the innards and the fan.

  "Oh, that's the best bit. I see. Clever girl."

  He put the Tupperware box in the dishwasher and washed his hands with disinfectant soap.

  Trinity licked around her mouth and sat back, purring. He stroked her head and she pushed back against the palm of his hand.

  "Oh, my dear Trini," he said, "I have a feeling we're going to be terribly busy very soon." She looked up at him and gave him a low, questioning growl. "Oh, I just know."

  If there was a right side to the A23, then Streatham Hill lay on it and Tulse Hill on the other. Whilst the former could boast famous former residents such as James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore, the latter's former residents tended to be more infamous than famous, and to serve their time at Her Majesty's pleasure. If they were lucky, it would at least be nearby in either Brixton or Wandsworth prison, where friends and family could visit more easily.

  It had been a hard day at the office for Dr How; it always is for members of any intelligent species who have to answer to a Dolt. He'd left his Spectrel to figure out the identity of his hacker, and when he'd checked in at lunch it had given him a name, a location and a background. One thing the Doctor had learnt was that action should be as swift and decisive as possible. He used his work computer to access his Spectrel, and used it to perform a hack of his own.

  The address was only a mile or so from his home, and getting within walking distance merely involved taking a different bus up from Brixton Tube station. Distance was a strange concept in London compared with anywhere else, even for someone as well-travelled as Dr How. The neighbourhood on one side of a road could be radically different from that on the other. In east London he'd seen slum housing next to bankers' apartments, as if the physical world had been Photoshopped by a political satirist.

  The A23 headed due south to the coast, and was nicknamed the Brighton Road after the city at its southern terminus. The A205 – the South Circular – went directly east-west. Streatham Hill lay to the south-west of the crossroads, and Tulse Hill to the north-west. They were polar opposites. If the Luftwaffe had had a plan to destroy Tulse Hill in the Second World War, and to sap the morale of its inhabitants by making their lives a misery, then they had failed utterly in their mission. Unfortunately, the plan had been taken up in the Sixties by enthusiastic young urban planners, and had succeeded on a scale that would have delighted Hitler.

  When he'd invested in Du Cane Court in Balham as it was being built in the Depression of the Thirties, the Doctor had known it was a winning prospect. It had overground rail services to Victoria, Clapham Junction and London Bridge. The newly-extended Northern Line connected it with just about anywhere else in London you'd want to go. Designed as easy living for the well-off, Du Cane Court had filled with minor West End stars, who could get home from a show in twenty minutes. Streatham Hill, then the 'West End of South London' was just four minutes away by overground rail. Although Tulse Hill did have an overground station, it was not much used by residents and therefore not much used at all; there being no reason to visit the area.

  He got off the bus and walked up the hill to the squat, brutalist five-storey block of flats. His sense of being watched didn't come from the CCTV cameras perched on custom-built poles and masked within mirrored protective globes. The cameras were probably more of a disincentive, rather than a true deterrent.

  His bespoke black suit and white shirt were his everyday wear and his uniform. And, like a uniform, it was a signal to whoever was watching him that he wasn't afraid of being noticed, of being different. His business attire showed that he meant business.

  There had been a long and successful campaign against anti-social behaviour by the local council. One part of this was the CCTV; the other increased physical security. The stairwell had been secured with a steel gate against entry by drug-users looking for somewhere dry and private to take a hit.

  He walked up to the entryphone and took out a little oblong object the siz
e of a pocket knife, with a surface of brushed metal. He swept it over the keypad and heard the buzzing as a solenoid pulled back the bolt. He pushed open the gate and went through. The eyes were curious now – warier. But he sensed they were turning to another subject of interest. He took the stairs up to the third storey and looked at the door of number thirty-eight. The dark blue paint indicated that it was not privately owned. On this type of estate, the doors of the tenants who'd opted to buy at a discount were generally fancier. He'd not noticed any in this development, and it was little wonder. He rang the bell.

  The footsteps were heavy, and the door was answered by a plump Afro-Caribbean woman in her forties. Her clothes were cheap but smart. "It's Kevin again, innit?" she said, before he could utter a word. "I swear I will disown that boy one day."

  "Is he in?"

  "Nah, he's out with his mates. Well, he's out. Whether they're his mates or not is another matter. He's had his dinner so probably won't be back soon." She paused. "I hope it's not serious. Mind if I see some ID?"

  "My card, Mrs Thomson. Here."

  Mrs Thomson examined his card. "What does someone from the Technology Transmission Department at Imperial College want with my son? Anyway, I need to see photo ID. Sorry."

  "Certainly. My driving licence."

  She examined the Doctor's licence but kept his business card. "Good enough. Won't you come in, Dr How?" She put his card on the mantelpiece, next to a wedding picture of what he assumed was Mrs Thomson and her husband – an older white man with black-framed glasses. "Tea?"

  "No, thank you. I wasn't planning to stay long."

  "Come." She took a seat on a black leather armchair and motioned him to a place on the matching sofa. "I take it you're not about to offer him a position as an associate professor?" She let out a cackle and slapped a substantial thigh, which wobbled.

  He smiled. "Unfortunately not, although I don't doubt that your son is smart enough."

  "Reeaaaally?" she said. "I just wish I could direct that brain of his into something more productive. Like so many young ones, he's not got the focus. Lord knows I've tried to make him knuckle down. ADHD I think it is. I see it a lot up at the hospital. I work in A&E. The younger ones, they just don't have the patience to sit quietly. Can't read a book or a magazine. Always fiddling with their phones."