by Doctor Who
‘Are you sure?’ Martha asked. Celia looked ready to explode again, so she backed down. ‘All right, all right, you’re sure.’ She asked the stallholder: ‘Have you sold any turtles since we were here?’
‘I sell many turtles,’ he told her proudly. ‘They are all good turtles.
You will get no better turtles.’
‘Yes, but. . . ’ She took a deep breath. ‘There was a turtle. We wanted the turtle. Now it’s gone. Please could you tell us what happened to it. Did you sell it to someone else?’
‘I sell many turtles,’ he said again, causing Martha’s blood pressure to rise. ‘You expect me to remember all of them?’
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‘Well, seeing as we’d only been gone about four minutes, yeah, I’d expect you to remember this one. Or did it become turtle central after we left, with everyone in the market suddenly descending on you demanding turtles?’
He gave in. ‘Old lady,’ he said. ‘White hair, pink bag. Went that way.’ As they raced off in the direction indicated, he shouted after them, ‘But that is a good turtle!’
‘Pink bag, pink bag,’ muttered Martha as she ran. The pendant was glowing brighter. They dashed this way and that as traces of pink were spotted, only to find themselves chasing a cerise scarf or a crimson sleeve.
‘There!’ gasped Celia at last, and they charged towards a little white-haired, pink-bag-toting old lady. ‘Excuse me,’ she panted, ‘but I think you may have our turtle.’
The old woman looked affronted. ‘You say I have stolen a turtle?’
‘No, no.’ Martha hastened to smooth things over. ‘You see, we bought a turtle. But the stallholder gave it to you by mistake. We just want our turtle back.’
The woman pointed at the turtle in Martha’s hand. ‘You have a turtle.’
‘Yes, but. . . ’ This was getting tedious. ‘It’s the wrong turtle. That’s our one.’ She pointed to the pink bag.
‘Now it is my one. I am going to make soup. I cut off head, cut off legs, chop up nice, make soup.’
‘But it’s a very rare turtle!’ Martha told her.
She shrugged. ‘Still taste nice.’
‘Really, really rare. Look, we’ll give you money for it. Lots of money.’
‘And you have lots of money, do you?’ Celia hissed under her breath.
‘You’ve got that card thing!’ Martha waited, palm outstretched, until Celia handed it over, then waved it at the old woman. ‘Lots of money!’
‘Cash,’ she stated firmly. ‘How can I take that?’
Martha was ready to tear her hair out. ‘But we don’t have any cash!’
‘Then you do not get my turtle!’
Martha turned to Celia and raised her hands in defeat. The other girl held out her own hand, and Martha offered the credit card back 91
– but Celia took her by surprise by grabbing the turtle, too. She prof-fered it to the old woman, a pleading look in her eyes. ‘Please,’ she said, and something must have touched a nerve. The woman nodded, and reached in her bag. Seconds later, Celia was holding a little reptile with three black stripes on the back of its shell, and Martha’s turtle was tucked inside the pink straw bag.
Celia snapped into Earther mode, using the pendant to freeze the small creature into immobility, but Martha was staring after the departing woman in dismay. ‘But. . . she’ll kill that turtle. Eat it.’
‘Yes, she will,’ said Celia. ‘That’s what happens. Did you think we were at a pet store?’
‘But we can’t just let her go and cut its head off.’
Celia’s face hardened. There’s a whole crate of turtles back there.
They’re all going to be killed. You want to rescue them all, take them back to the wild? They’ll be caught again by some peasant wanting the money, and be back at the market tomorrow. And you know what?
You’d have just upped the demand for turtles, and they’d catch a load extra to replace them.’
‘But. . . ’ Martha knew Celia was telling the truth – but she knew, too, that she didn’t want to live her life like that. ‘Not being able to do everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘You just have to do as much as you can. Save one turtle here. Save one person there. I know I can’t heal everyone in the world, but that’s not going to stop me being a doctor.’
There was a pause, during which Martha thought ‘oops’ and Celia’s eyes widened. ‘I thought you were supposed to be some sort of detective.’
‘I’m undercover?’ suggested Martha hopefully.
‘A doctor working undercover as a detective?’
‘Um. . . Look, that doesn’t matter right now; I’m going after the other turtle.’ Martha turned her back on Celia, looking round for the old woman. But while they’d been arguing, she’d disappeared.
Martha was ready to start searching – but Celia grabbed hold of the pendant round her neck, nearly strangling her. ‘I think you’ve got some explaining to do to Eve,’ she said, pressing the blue button. . .
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They both disappeared.
And so the other turtle died.
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THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
CHINESE THREE-STRIPED BOX TURTLE
Cuora trifasciata
Location: China, Vietnam
This turtle can easily be recognised by the three black stripes on its brown carapace. It also has a black stripe on its green or yellow head.
Addendum:
Last reported sighting: AD 2062.
Cause of extinction: hunting by man for meat and medicine trade.
I-Spyder points value: 700
THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES
Creature
Points
Dodo
800
Megatherium
500
Paradise parrot
500
Velociraptor
250
Mountain gorilla
500
Aye-aye
900
Siberian tiger
600
Kakapo
900
Indefatigable Galapagos mouse
1500
Stegosaurus
500
Triceratops
550
Diplodocus
600
Ankylosaurus
650
Dimetrodon
600
Passenger pigeon
100
Thylacine
250
Black rhinoceros
300
Mervin the missing link
23500
Tau duck
5
Dong tao chicken
4
Red-eared slider
40
Chinese three-striped box turtle
350
Subtotal
33899
Celia and Martha materialised in the Earth section, but in an area unfamiliar to Martha. The museum’s arrangements seemed hap-hazard to her: reptiles mingling with mammals; fish next to birds; creatures from the Cretaceous period side by side with animals that had still been alive in her day. Here, the turtle’s new home was ad-jacent to a box containing a dragonfly nearly a metre across, with a terrifying-looking bird towering behind, its head the size of a horse and its beak hooked and vicious. According to a small sign it was a phorusrhacos, and Martha made up her mind then and there to look it up in the I-Spyder guide as soon as possible, so she could find out exactly when and where it walked the Earth and ask the Doctor never, ever to take her there.
But she didn’t have time to spare for that sort of thing now. Celia had taken a brief second to check that the turtle was properly in place, and had then flicked the switch on the back of her pendant and called Eve.
Martha wasn’t really worried. After all, she hadn’t exactly committed a crime, and anyway, the Doctor would soon straighten everything out. So she was a bit surprised when, after Celia had explained to Eve that Mar
tha was an impostor, Eve ordered security guards to arrest 97
her and lock her up.
‘Hey! I want to talk to the Doctor!’ Martha called.
But Eve’s voice came back over the tiny, tinny speaker: ‘The Doctor is indisposed.’ Now what did that mean? One thing Martha did know, she wasn’t going to meekly submit to being stuck in prison for however many months.
Time had been passing at the museum while they were gone, and it was now open for business. Martha thought this was a good thing, because Celia probably wouldn’t expect her to make a fuss in front of all the visitors – and she certainly wouldn’t expect her to clobber the newly arrived security guard and make a run for it.
But that’s just what Martha did.
I ran. I’ve always been a good runner, anyway, and I’ve had quite a lot of practice since meeting the Doctor, so, even though Celia and the guards know this place better than me, I still managed to evade them.
Hurrah for me! Ducking and dodging and hiding are also things I’ve got better at recently.
Mind you, I didn’t really know what to do after I’d finished the running and the hiding et cetera. Museum big as a planet and all that, it doesn’t really narrow down your options. I still had the pendant, yes, but as I only knew the coordinates for the places I’d already been to, like the doorless warehouse and the Vietnamese market – none of which contained the Doctor – that was very much a last resort. The only thing I could think of was to try to make my way back to the TARDIS, although what I would do when I got there I didn’t have a clue, unless the Doctor was leaning out of the door waving at me –unlikely, but I cherished a hope anyway. Ms Optimist, that’s me.
The TARDIS was still in the Earth section, as far as I knew, and the great thing about being on the run in a museum open to the public is that everywhere is signposted. So, despite the size of the place, all I had to do was pick up a guidebook and follow the directions to the dodo. And as the clock had ticked round to opening time, it meant that (a) I didn’t have to worry about movement sensors or anything, and (b) there were members of the general public around to act as 98
camouflage. I say general public; there was as much variety in them as in the exhibits: lizard-men and one-eyed green creatures with dodgy haircuts and some jelly-like blobs that didn’t seem to have any eyes, but must have been able to see the exhibits somehow as they were commenting loudly on them.
It was also reassuring to know that there weren’t CCTV cameras hidden around, so unless I actually ran into a guard or one of the Earthers I’d met earlier, I was pretty much invisible. Actually, a guard did pass me at one point, looking suspicious, but I cunningly grabbed a nearby small lizard-child and started to lecture it on the Steller’s sea cow (poor confused child, it now thinks that Earth is full of Sea Farms, containing Sea Pigs, Sea Chickens and Sea Sheep giving Sea Wool for Sea Sweaters), and that seemed to put him off the scent.
But it did make me think a bit. There’s me joking, but I’m actually seeing a Steller’s sea cow, something wiped out in the eighteenth century, according to the I-Spyder book. I’m seeing all these things that no one else of my time will ever see. Funny how quickly you take things for granted, going ‘oh, there’s a passenger pigeon, there’s a Tasmanian tiger, there’s a woolly mammoth: I suppose it’s hard to put them in context. I mean, a lot of the things here seem to be, you know, everyday sorts of frogs, or birds, or mice. Like the turtle – if I’d stumbled across one on Earth, I wouldn’t have had a clue they were unique, otherwise extinct creatures – after all, there are hundreds of thousands of frogs and birds and mice on Earth and I’d only recognise the tiniest number of them. It takes things like the dodo to bring it home to you, things you know you couldn’t possibly see in the normal run of things.
I’m seeing things that no one else of my time will ever see, visiting places that no one else of my time will ever visit, and I’m treating it like a school trip. The trouble is, I’m always so busy running away from things or hiding from things or looking for clues that I don’t have time for anything else. Speaking of which. . .
I was making my way through the displays, getting to the bit that was becoming quite familiar: the lair of the Black Rhinoceros. And that’s when I saw it. Lying on the ground.
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The sonic screwdriver.
Now, you might say I’ve not known the Doctor for very long. You might say that, therefore, I don’t know him that well. Well, yeah, maybe, in some ways; I certainly wouldn’t feel able to take him as my specialist subject on Mastermind, for example – although even after such a short acquaintance I bet I’d score better marks than most people in the universe. So, despite all that, I knew one thing for sure, and that’s that he wouldn’t just leave his sonic screwdriver lying around.
The Doctor forgetting his sonic screwdriver would be like Jordan popping out without her lip gloss.
I looked down at the sonic screwdriver. I bent down and picked up the sonic screwdriver. Then as I stood up I saw something new. A covered box.
When I thought about it for a second, I realised there had been a box there before, empty, when we came back after the rhino rescue affair. But it hadn’t been covered.
The box, so far as I could tell, was maybe a couple of feet taller than me, and an arm span wide. Not only was it covered, but it was roped off. Now, once upon a time, I would have respected a boundary like that. I’m quite happy to follow a ‘Keep off the grass’ sign or a ‘No entry’; I mean, I just assume there’s a good reason for it. But right now? Ha, no puny length of nylon cord was going to keep me away, and damn the consequences!
So I stepped over the rope (in a rather ungainly fashion it must be admitted, having slightly underestimated the necessary leg-raising height), and I took hold of the cover with both hands, and I yanked as hard as I could.
I think that, somehow, I’d known what I was going to find. There was a sort of dull shock, a moment of losing all my breath, but I must have been subconsciously prepared or I couldn’t have assimilated it so quickly, couldn’t have pulled myself together as well as I did.
I don’t really need to tell you what I saw, do I?
Oh, all right, if you want it spelled out – there, in the box – in the cage – was the Doctor.
He’d obviously been taken unawares, his pose and expression 100
showed that.
And his expression showed something else too.
It was frozen, of course, no movement, not the faintest flicker of a breath, not the tiniest dilation of a pupil – but you remember how I’d had the idea I could read something in the eyes of these paralysed creatures before? Well now I was getting it a hundredfold.
The Doctor knew what was happening.
He knew where he was.
And where he was, was in hell.
I had to do something, and I had to do it straight away.
But what? Smash the glass (or perspex, or whatever futuristic material this was)? Didn’t think that would work. But then I spotted the little keypad at the top of the cage, and I thought back, and went,
‘Aha!’ Because I don’t know if you remember, but we’d seen Tommy test out one of these things and I had – ooh, how jammy am I?! – I had memorised the combination! Ta da!
Five, I typed. Then: seven. Followed by nine, three, one, zero and zero. Finally, with the tiniest of dramatic pauses: eight.
And. . .
Nothing happened.
I couldn’t believe it. Surely each box didn’t have its own individual code, surely.
I looked again at the Doctor, the pain I saw – imagined? – in his eyes.
I saw a security guard, maybe a few hundred metres away; not looking this way yet, but only a matter of seconds, perhaps, before he noticed the girl trying to get into the restricted cage.
And so I went a little mad. I did everything I could think of, all at once, and to this day I’ve no idea what bit of it actually worked, what bit of it saved the Doctor but put in motion a series of
events that might have killed so many more. It’s still on my conscience, you see, and I guess it always will be, although the Doctor says that events were moving inexorably in that direction, and as I wasn’t the one who put them in motion in the first place, and I certainly didn’t do any of 101
it deliberately, I mustn’t blame myself. I get the feeling that he’s had to do a lot of justifying to his own conscience over the centuries.
Anyway, I took my collection agent’s pendant, and I took the sonic screwdriver, and I put them together, and stuck them in the little keypad, and I pressed every key and threw every likely-looking switch into reverse, and zapped everything with what I imagined to be the screwdriver’s ‘undoing things’ setting.
And everything undid. I mean, everything.
The front of the Doctor’s cage shimmered away, and he fell over backwards. The first word he said was ‘ouch’, and the first thing he did was rub his elbow. Then he climbed to his feet, and the look in his eyes – well, that was enough for me. I knew, knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I’d done the right thing.
Well, for that one second I knew that. And then I realised that I’d done the wrong thing. The totally wrong thing.
There were yells of shock and surprise and alarm from all around.
I dragged my gaze from the Doctor, and I saw. . .
Every creature had disappeared.
Every single one. Every cage had opened, and every creature was gone!
My knees buckled under me, and the Doctor jumped forward to catch me.
‘What have I done?’ I gasped. ‘Where’ve they all gone?’
My knees buckled under me, and the Doctor jumped forward to catch me.
‘What have I done?’ I gasped. ‘What’s happened to them?’
But he just shook his head, as wide-eyed as me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
I didn’t want to let go of him, feeling irrationally that, if I stayed close enough, the bad things would somehow unhappen, like the way your mum proved there had never been monsters under the bed. But I saw security guards stumbling towards us, and knew there were monsters after all.
We began to run through the hordes of headless-chicken visitors, and I realised after a few moments that the Doctor had a destination 102