Doctor How and the Illegal Aliens: Book 1: The Doctor Who Is Not a Time Lord

by Mark Speed

  “Oh! Don’t tell me that… that boy is staying with you?”

  A jackpot line, bar one wheel.

  “You mean my new assistant?”

  Nudge.

  “Assistant?”

  Jackpot.

  “Yes. Kevin’s my new assistant.”

  “…”

  “He’s from the Tulse Hill estate.”

  Bonus.

  “Don’t tell me he’s one of them illegal immigrants. I shall have the police round to arrest him if anything goes missing from my house.”

  “He’s as British as you are, Mrs Roseby. Born and bred. Believe me, I do share your concerns about illegal aliens. More than you might care to imagine. Now that I’ve covered Kevin, how else may I help?”

  She recovered her composure. “Well, I won’t stand for having a cab service operating from these premises, Doctor How. It’s quite against planning restrictions, and I shall bring down the full weight of the residents’ association; not to say the council planning officers.”

  “You have no need for concern there, Mrs Roseby. That’s my cousin’s cab. His house is undergoing an unexpected refurbishment after a small accident yesterday.”

  “Well, I think it’s in a disgraceful state and I shall be reporting it at the next meeting. And he can’t be operating it from domestic premises.”

  “If there’s nothing else I can help you with, Mrs Roseby, then I’ll bid you good morning.” He didn’t quite slam the door in her face, and went back into the house.

  “That woman was a cantankerous old bag when she was a blushing bride,” said Ware from the bottom of the stairs. He was only wearing his underwear, and his unsightly pot-belly made the Doctor shudder.

  “Age has not mellowed her, nor will it ever. How did you sleep?”

  “Not bad. My Spectrel was in my dreams. She’s insisting we get her back. Today.”

  “Yes, yes. It’s on my ever-burgeoning to-do list. If you get Kevin up and breakfasted we can crack on. And if you can make sure you both have a shower before joining me in the basement.”

  “Anything else?”

  “If you could remember to tell the house-bot to clean up after you, that would be much appreciated.”

  “And you wonder why you don’t have visitors.”

  “No, I don’t wonder. I don’t have visitors because they make everything so untidy. And unclean.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Good morning, Miss Peterson,” said Thickett drily. “I’m so glad you could join me.”

  She had no idea where Thickett got his energy from. He could only have had three or four hours’ sleep the previous night by her estimate. In her opinion, the man was borderline psychotic. “Good morning, Mr Thickett. I see you got it back in one piece,” she said with a forced smile.

  “More than can be said for the pick-up truck,” he chortled. “Oh, the power of this thing.”

  They were in an observation gallery overlooking a concrete vault fifty feet square and thirty high. Ware’s Spectrel was in the middle of the chamber, brightly lit by strip-lights from above and the sides. Peterson had not been in this particular area before. Judging by her route through the labyrinth of tunnels under Holborn, she thought they must be somewhere under Kingsway – probably at a depth of well over two hundred feet – deeper than the Central Line station which lay to the north. On the side opposite the gallery were armoured steel doors painted a drab military green. There was a three-colour traffic light next to the door to control the traffic going in and out of what would be a long single-lane tunnel to the surface. She knew enough to work out that this would have been built in the Fifties, along with other Cold war bunkers. She guessed that its purpose would have been to quarantine vehicles or supplies whilst they were decontaminated from nuclear or biological material. Below the gallery would be another armoured door, allowing access to the rest of the complex.

  “And what’s your plan?” she asked.

  “Slowly drain it of power, then we’ll be able to get in.”

  “Great plan. You could be here quite a while.”

  “Oh really? What makes you so certain? We’re not detecting anything from it at the moment.” He nodded towards a bank of monitors.

  “Well… It’s just that you’d expect something like this to have plenty of reserves on hand.” She looked away a little too quickly.

  “At the very least, they’ll have to come and get it sooner or later. They can’t just leave it in this state.”

  A slam echoed around the chamber, and the floor shuddered, distracting Thickett. Two technicians dressed in black rubber nuclear, biological and chemical suits – NBC suits; often called Noddy suits in the military – came into view and made their way towards the cab. Each was carrying a heavy toolkit. When they reached the vehicle, one of them turned and waved up at the observation gallery. Thickett waved back, and pressed a button next to a speaker.

  “Testing,” said a man’s muffled voice. “Jackson here.”

  “Roger, Jackson,” said Thickett. “Test all the doors.”

  The men did as they were told, testing all four doors, which didn’t open. They looked back up at the gallery and shook their heads. “No luck,” came Jackson’s voice.

  “Try the boot and the bonnet,” said Thickett.

  The other man went round to the back of the vehicle. They saw it bounce slightly on its suspension as he grappled with the boot handle. Once his colleague at the rear was clear, Jackson felt under the lip of the bonnet. “I feel the catch,” he said. He tugged and shook his head. He put his hand on the cab’s badge to steady himself as he tugged hard, and a scream came from the speaker. “That hurt! It felt like an electric shock. But I’m totally insulated in my Noddy suit, so it can’t be.”

  “Gotcha!” said Thickett. “There it is, Miss Peterson. A deliberate assault on a member of the security services by the Time Keepers.”

  “Oh, hardly,” said Peterson. “This is a waste of time. None of these monitors even flickered. The lab should have the results back by now. Let me know if anything interesting happens.”

  There was a sound like a distant explosion. Peterson felt a tremor in the floor beneath her feet, and the monitors on the wall rattled on their mountings. The men in the Noddy suits looked around at the door then, puzzled, looked up expectantly at Thickett and Peterson.

  “On second thoughts, I’ll stay,” she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Like, for real, we’re going to travel in the Spectrel this morning?” said Kevin.

  “Yes, Kevin. This is ‘for real’, not some parallel universe. As you can see, David’s Spectrel is in a Cold War bunker under Kingsway.”

  They were in the Doctor’s basement looking at two projections, which occupied the middle of the room. One showed a three-dimensional representation of the secret complex, including the buildings immediately above it. Kevin was captivated by it: the detail was extraordinary. The other projection was a live three-dimensional feed from Ware’s Spectrel.

  “It’s like that bit in Star Wars, innit?” said Kevin. “Like where R2D2 is showing Luke the recording by Princess Leia, when she’s asking for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

  “Nah,” said Ware. “Surely it’s more like the bit where they see the 3D model of the Death Star? Or the bit in Return of the Jedi when they see the Death Star coming into firing position round the forest moon of Endor.”

  “Yeah, or there’s this bit in –”

  “Can I just remind you that the reason we’re able to mount this rescue mission at all is because I was doing my job, rather than gorging myself on contemporary human cinema?” snapped the Doctor.

  Ware turned to Kevin and muttered, “To be fair, he did get a bit less sleep than the pair of us.”

  “So our Spectrels estimate that they’ll have to be in close proximity for ten sidereal minutes to get the power transfer completed. Unfortunately, it looks like she’s under some scrutiny. Now, that needn’t necessarily be a problem just so lon
g as I can get the connection back.” The Doctor nodded towards his Spectrel and the projections vanished.

  “Excuse me, Doctor. Do you mind if I ask a stupid question?”

  “There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Fire away, but make it quick.”

  “Like, if you’re using this transdimensional feed, why can’t you use it from a distance?”

  “Good question. There are four forces. Gravity is the weakest, but it makes its presence felt at almost infinitely greater distances than the others. The ones that apply on a subatomic level are unimaginably stronger than gravity, but make their presence felt over almost infinitesimally small distances. They bind subatomic particles together, but as soon as those particles are a short distance away – even just a couple of radii of those particles – then they are much weaker. This is a bit like that. Got it?”

  “Um. I think so.”

  “Well it’s a bit like the way I can reach the lab in the Spectrel through my pocket. Does that make sense now?”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s because you’ve not done the Ph.D. in Astrophysics yet. I take it you’re postponing your Nobel acceptance speech by another decade.”

  “Is he always this sarcastic?” Kevin asked Ware.

  “Nah, he’s going easy on you. His full sarcasm has been banned by intergalactic treaty.”

  “So,” said the Doctor. “First rule of time: the sooner we start, the sooner we’re back.”

  “Uh, another stupid question if I may,” said Kevin.

  “Go on.”

  “Like, can’t we just go back in time and stop them from taking David’s Spectrel?”

  “No, not really.”

  “But why not?”

  “Misuse of time travel.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because, not only have you failed to complete your Ph.D. in Astrophysics, you have neglected to read the Laws of Time Travel, to which David and I are both signatories and of which we are both enforcers. We can do this another way, and so we must. Or, if you want to put it another way, because I say so, Kevin. Now hop in.”

  Doctor How opened the door of the red telephone box and held it. Kevin looked at Ware and How. He looked at the inside. There was a telephone and a shelf, just as he would have expected to see in any other box on any British high street.

  “Okay, me first,” said David. “Been a while, ain’t it?” he squeezed into the telephone box and glanced around. He took a firm step forwards and disappeared. He didn’t disappear into the back of the box as if stepping behind a curtain – he just ceased to be there.

  “But where is he?”

  “My cousin Where is now elsewhere, if you’ll indulge my humour.”

  “Yeah, but where?”

  “Quite literally, he’s nowhere. Nowhere so far as you’re capable of experiencing at the moment. He doesn’t exist anywhere you could experience him.”

  “Yeah, but isn’t that dangerous? I mean, what if –”

  “I haven’t got time to talk hypotheticals and probabilities right now. Just do as he did and I’ll follow.”

  Kevin stepped into the phone box and looked back at the Doctor, who waved him on impatiently. He took a step forward, and ceased to be.

  He was at the side of a control room. He felt a sudden force in his back and was thrown forwards. A hand grabbed his hoodie from behind and stopped him from falling to the floor.

  “Hell’s bells, Kevin,” said the Doctor. “What did you stop in the doorway for? You’re like those bloody tourists who stop outside Tube stations and block the exit for everyone else. Stop rubbernecking and take a seat, lad.”

  Kevin glanced behind him. There was no door behind the Doctor that he could see.

  “Leave it, Peter,” said David. “It’s his first time. No one’s that confident their first time, are they?”

  “Oh, I suppose,” said the Doctor. “Sorry.”

  Kevin looked around the circular room. It was a brilliant white – so bright that it overwhelmed his eyes. He felt it should have been painful, but it was calming. In the centre of the room was a semi-circular control panel with a single seat. He moved towards it.

  “No, not there,” said the Doctor. “Passenger seat.” He indicated one of several comfortable-looking black seats in rows around the side of the room.

  “Come and sit beside me,” said Ware. “And I’ll answer any questions you might have.”

  “Why are there no seatbelts?”

  “Not needed. Forget your preconceptions about travel. You’re not travelling at all.”

  “Oh, but if we’re not travelling…”

  “Then how do we get there? Easy. I don’t know how much Peter’s explained to you.”

  “He told me it’s all a bit like zip files and things.”

  “Hmm. This bit isn’t. There are all these other dimensions that you don’t – and, indeed, most of the Pleasant universe – doesn’t experience on a day-to-day basis. That’s mainly because most of them don’t harbour life.”

  “Most?”

  “Well, some do, by implication. Obviously.”

  “It might be obvious to you.”

  “If I say ‘most don’t’, then some obviously do. Keep up, sunshine. So when we stepped into the Spectrel we stepped into a space elsewhere. If you were looking at it from any angle, it would always be going away from you to get there because it’s always perpendicular to your own dimensions. Does that make sense?”

  “Not really.”

  “Good. Nor should it, if you were being totally honest. Now, let me give you an analogy as to how this works, if you’re interested.” Kevin nodded. “So the Spectrel provides us with a door into that other space. We just close the door behind us in the Pleasant universe and then open it somewhere else. We’ve not really moved in this particular dimension, but we’ve changed the Cartesian coordinates of the door in the Pleasant universe.”

  “Uh. I think I get the analogy.”

  “Oh. Have you read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy?” asked Ware.

  “As a matter of fact, I read it when I was off school with ’flu. This Amazon parcel arrived when my Mum was out. Wrong address, but I kept it. Like, I delivered it to the right address when I was better. I just borrowed it, you know?”

  Across at the console, the Doctor stifled a smile.

  “The Subtle Knife is about the best explanation of the physics I’ve read in your culture,” said Ware. “Will is able to cut a hole into other universes. It’s a bit like that. Except without the other universes. Oh, and we always close the doors behind us. Bit dangerous if you don’t.”

  “So, like, where’s the Spectrel? Are we tumbling through the Time Vortex?”

  “For God’s sake, don’t let him catch you talking mumbo-jumbo like that. This Spectrel doesn’t exist. None of them do.”

  “What? But we’re in it.”

  “Sure, but it doesn’t exist in your world. It’s just a projection of forces. Did Peter at least explain to you that nothing is actually there where we think it is?”

  “Um. Yes. Like a table isn’t really composed of anything at all. It’s just forces, with a tiny bit of matter.”

  “So it’s not there. In the same way as nothing else is there.”

  “Yes, but how come we’re able to exist in another dimension?”

  Ware tapped the side of his nose. “Very good, Kevin. That’s the secret the Time Keepers have which makes us the Time Keepers. The rest of the Pleasant universe would love to know.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell them?”

  “Mayhem. For all our many faults, we do see fit to abide by a strict set of Laws. We’re respected for our adherence to them, and for our all-round goodness.”

  “Sorry to sound cynical, but that’s, like, subjective, innit? One man’s goody is another man’s baddy.”

  Ware grinned. “Oh, no. No, Kevin. Believe me; you’ll know the baddies when you meet them. You think some of the lads
on your estate are bad ’uns? You don’t wanna meet some of the nasty entities hanging around out there.” Ware swept his hand in an arc.

  “And what’s this Pleasant universe you and the Doctor are always talking about?”

  “If I say something like ‘most of’ and what’s left over is therefore ‘some of, but not all’, then if I say Pleasant universe, then…?”

  “Then there’s an Unpleasant universe. And… and the Unpleasant universe is what doesn’t make up the Pleasant universe?”

  “Got it in one.”

  “But that still doesn’t explain –”

  “I think David has explained quite enough for now,” said Doctor How.

  “Are we there yet?” joked Ware.

  The Doctor rolled his eyes and then addressed Kevin. “We’ve always been there. Unfortunately, time has moved whilst you’ve been yakking. You may have noticed that it has a tendency to do that. That movement of time has allowed events to unfold, as you can see.” Above the control panel was a projection of the bunker in which the Spectrel was being held. Thickett and Peterson were visible in the gallery.

  “As I said, he does sarcasm by the bucket,” said Ware. “He could move into wholesale.”

  “But if we’re already there, and if we’ve been there all along, why couldn’t we charge David’s Spectrel?” said Kevin, exasperated.

  “Because we’re still nowhere. We’re all around this place, but we’re at right-angles to it,” said Ware.

  “Then how will we get there?”

  “Just open the door and we’ll be there. You’ll see.”

  “I’m sorry, this is making exactly no sense at all,” said Kevin.

  “I said leave it for now,” said the Doctor. “David, I’ll hold you personally responsible if the poor lad suffers a brain aneurysm. I should warn you that his mother is fearsome. Now, look at this.”

  “That’s the MI16 agents,” said Kevin. “She’s well cute.”

  “And there was me thinking that it was just our giant beetle’s sex-drive that would be a problem on this mission. She was at Imperial. Saw her there as a doctoral student. Peterson. Camilla. Good reputation. The other man is Thickett. Career civil servant. Exactly in the mould of others we’ve seen before in Sixteen. She’ll be the one with the scientific mind and he’ll be the odious pen-pusher.”