Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen

by Adams, Douglas

  ‘I got it from Brussels.’ The Prime Minister looked at the fleet. ‘Are they going to stay there?’

  ‘For quite some time,’ Romana said. ‘My original plan of putting the entire Earth in a Slow Time envelope would have given me a few hours’ breathing space, but instead that lot should stay there until your sun collapses. At which point they’ll get a rude awakening – but not a long one.’

  ‘A fleet is always smaller than the area it is seeking to attack,’ the Prime Minister said. She refilled her glass and took a moment to admire the view. The Krikkit fleet hung there, motionless. The Prime Minister realised she was standing in a shed in space between her planet and the aliens who had come to destroy it.

  ‘It would be so easy to wipe them out, but I’d like the fleet to remain there,’ she announced. ‘I am not one for trinkets, but it should prove a useful deterrent to others.’

  Romana nodded. ‘The folly of war.’

  ‘Quite.’ The Prime Minister smiled, and then her face fell. ‘Oh dear, what’ll I tell Ronnie about his nuclear missiles? He was so proud of them.’

  Romana shrugged. ‘Again, you have two options. One is to admit you’ve dodged obliteration and move on. The other, which I suspect you’ll take, is to not say a word. So long as everyone believes you still have the weapons, what’s the harm?’

  ‘But what if someone calls our bluff?’

  ‘Then pick your wars carefully,’ advised Romana.

  The Prime Minister looked thoughtful.

  ‘You could always put those submarines to good use,’ suggested Romana. ‘Make peace with your cod.’

  The Prime Minister made her afternoon press conference with a spring in her step and steel in her eye. She waved away questions about apparent atmospheric disturbances, preferring instead to dwell with surprising fondness on income tax. Almost like she was paying tribute to an old friend who’d survived a brush with death.

  Romana gunned her way across the Universe. She’d managed to stop another batch of Krikkitmen. But how many more were there?

  In the shadow of Mars, eleven shapes watched the shimmering Krikkit fleet floating helplessly in space. They could have intervened, but their orders were to wait until they were needed. So, the eleven shapes faded away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  SAVING THE UNIVERSE

  ‘I can’t be everywhere at once,’ sighed Romana.

  Only two people in the Universe have ever succeeded in being everywhere at once. One was Mrs Tamsin Wells, of Hampstead, North London. At the end of a particularly exacting day juggling the varying demands of her children, her husband, her nanny, her builders, her personal trainer and her career spent ignoring various different kinds of paperwork, she had realised it was all too much. There was only one thing for it – either hire a second nanny, or invent a time machine. Pouring herself a large glass of white wine, she knuckled down to the latter, and, much to her surprise, found arguing with the laws of relativity a doddle compared to balancing ballet class with pony club. Having invented a time machine, she was then able to devote the rest of her life to being everywhere at once. There were only two drawbacks to this. Although Tamsin lived a long and happy life, she only lasted another ten years from the point of view of her family. But what a ten years they were – not a recital missed, not a lunchbox unpacked, not a dental check-up skipped. The other drawback was that her family found the whole process utterly exhausting. One day, a few years later, a surprisingly spry 93-year-old Tamsin left her shape-up-and-dance class, announcing that she was just going to have a quick sit down in the park before her next meeting, and was never seen again.

  The only other person who ever succeeded in being everywhere at once did so without even trying. Cardinal Melia had been the pilot of a War TARDIS until his abrupt change of address. The reasons for his complete relocation will be touched on later.

  There is also a philosophical argument that Beethoven is everywhere. The basis of this is that all the atoms that once were Beethoven have by now been broken down, absorbed and re-entered the ecosystem. For a while, Beethoven remained purely a Planet Earth problem. But, then, of course, spaceships started leaving the planet, or arriving on it in ever-increasing and aggressive numbers. A rocket ship couldn’t land, fire a few weapons and then blast off without a little bit of Beethoven getting stuck on its shoes. Beethoven rapidly became ubiquitous. This really wasn’t a problem – given the amount of Beethoven in circulation divided by the sheer number of atoms in the Universe. That was until a lecturer on galactic homeopathy announced that the concentration was such that the entire Universe should now be renamed Beethoven. There was no use in pointing out that Beethoven was simply being used as an example to illustrate a universal truth about the behaviour of atoms. This just caused the galactic homeopaths to double down. To deny the existence of Beethoven was pointless as Beethoven was now everywhere, and would, at any moment, begin composing again. If you listened carefully.

  If you’d asked Beethoven his opinion, you’d not have got an answer. For one thing he was dead. For another, he was profoundly deaf. While he was still alive, if you’d asked him (probably quite loudly) what he thought about future generations breathing in tiny bits of his toenails, he would have favoured you with a splendidly Germanic look of confused disgust.

  Talk of the Beethoven Universe may seem like a distraction, but it is all about to become relevant to the Doctor’s search for God.

  When tackling a quest, the Doctor liked to sit down and talk it through with his dog. K-9, while flattered at being confided in, was also less certain about the wisdom of it on this occasion.

  ‘Nonsense.’ The Doctor was pacing up and down a TARDIS corridor. ‘Romana can look after herself. She doesn’t need you to defend her.’

  K-9 was weighing the merits of this argument. Yes, the Mistress did possess a high degree of competence. But she was also trying to save several planets from heavily armed battle fleets. K-9 realised the limits of his weaponry, but all the same, something was better than nothing. Also, pleasant as it was to be asked his opinion, he knew the Doctor would ignore it. That said, there was nothing K-9 liked more than to offer advice.

  The Doctor slid in front of him in a beaming crouch. ‘Tell me K-9 …’ He stared at the dog intently. ‘How would you go about finding God in a cloud?’

  For once K-9 was lost for words.

  ‘The God of Krikkit is unique in that they do not want to be perceived. I’ve heard of vengeful gods, wrathful gods, but never bashful gods. Still, all gods, need a heaven.fn1 It’s appropriate that the God of Krikkit actually lives in a cloud. But if the Dust Cloud is all part of that God’s plan, then maybe the God doesn’t simply live in the cloud – no matter how traditional that bit is …’

  K-9 had not spent much time hanging around train stations, but if he had, he would have identified the Doctor’s speech patterns as belonging to the weird man who will inevitably wander up to you on a platform and Explain Things. If you were lucky, he would explain the timetable. If you were unlucky, he would explain religion.

  The Doctor stroked his dog’s nose gently. ‘K-9,’ he began. ‘What if God is the cloud?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THIS JUST IN FROM THE UNIVERSAL CONQUEST

  If you’d taken a few steps back and looked at the Universe, really looked at it, you’d have noticed that all the traffic was heading in one direction: away from the planet Krikkit. Either it was the rapidly advancing Krikkit fleets, or it was people trying desperately to get out of the way of the rapidly advancing Krikkit fleets.

  There was one exception. A small dart-like craft which soared through the skies of Krikkit and made a neat landing on an unspoilt beach. Two people got out, and in the interests of suspense, we’ll have more from them later.

  Meanwhile and worlds away, the vizier ran into the Great Khan’s tent, where the near-ruler of the world was busy unravelling the guts of a sheep. The sheep was expressing strong feelings about this.

  ‘G
reat Khan!’ Bastrabon cried. ‘There are alien battle fleets in the sky!’

  ‘What now?’ sighed the Khan, and put down a promising length of stomach lining, knowing sadly that when he came back to it, it would have knotted itself up again. It was always thus. ‘An alien battle fleet? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ quivered Bastrabon. ‘We need to launch the vipers and deploy the—’

  The Great Khan crossed over to his diary, and ran a thumb across the parchment. ‘I’ve not got anything down here,’ he said, giving the vizier a piercing look.

  ‘They’ve just turned up!’

  ‘Really? First I’ve heard of it.’ He scratched the back of his neck. ‘What am I, chopped liver?’

  ‘Mighty Khan,’ began Bastrabon. ‘We had no warning.’

  ‘Pffffff.’ The long sigh could have come from the Khan or the slowly deflating sheep. ‘Everyone issues a warning. I pride myself on them. Not to do so isn’t really on, is it? Gives people time to surrender, sign petitions, have demonstrations and wave around little placards saying “Not My Dictator”. All jolly fun. You don’t just turn up unannounced.’

  The Great Khan strolled over to his tent, and tugged back a flap that had once been the skin of an adviser. He peered up at the battle fleet even now blotting out the stars.

  ‘Well I never,’ he said. ‘This really is inconvenient. I’ve my Awfulness For Mindful People seminar tomorrow, and I won’t get a penny back if I don’t show.’

  With a sigh of ‘No Rest for the Wicked,’ the Khan snatched up his favourite axe and marched out.

  The sheep, finding itself with nothing better to do, died.

  On the once idyllic fishing planet of Devalin, the appearance of a Krikkit battle fleet caused a crisis. People assume the word crisis means only bad things, normally because it gets a bad press in sentences such as ‘It was a crisis in our marriage when I ran away with the milkman.’ This is being unfair on the word, on milkmen, and on the Ancient Greeks (where all good words come from). A crisis is a period of potentially interesting change. It’s just a shame that no one when falling off a cliff ever says, ‘How potentially interesting.’

  When a Krikkit battle fleet soared out of the sky and started pounding the buildings on Devalin’s one tiny island, this was, in some ways, bad news. But, in other ways, as the Devalinians rushed to the harbour, grabbing whatever pieces of flying debris they could for makeshift rafts, it was also potentially interesting.

  The planet of Mareeve II took great offence at the arrival of a Krikkit battle fleet. They launched a series of really stinging rebuttals over every communications channel that was still working. The leaders of each continent issued strongly worded speeches about how personally upset they were by the infringement of their rights. The leaders then took exception to each other’s speeches, and then demanded apologies and retractions. They were still issuing angry rebuttals when the battle fleet blew up their satellites, and they took great offence at the abrupt severing of communications. They were still screaming at each other as the skies caught fire.

  The planet Mareeve II died as it had lived – unhappy with itself.

  Andvalmon of Bethselamin looked up at the ships blotting out the perfect sunset. For the first time in his life he experienced a purely negative thought.

  It was: Tourists!

  Back on the planet of Krikkit, two figures walked from their spaceship, through the streets, and into the Parliament. They were confident, dapper and grinned complacent smiles, smiles which managed to say both ‘Good morning’ and also ‘I am somehow better than you.’ They greeted everyone they passed with these smiles, not so much wearing them as wearing them out.

  They followed the trail of bodies, wending their way towards the Elders of Krikkit. It was there that, stepping neatly over a pool of still-drying blood, they introduced themselves.

  Narase, newly appointed Chief Elder of Krikkit, surveyed the two new arrivals sourly. Her world was at war with all existence – surely she had better things to do with her time?

  ‘You are aliens,’ she growled.

  ‘No, no,’ the taller one corrected her. ‘We are worshippers.’

  ‘Of what?’ she asked.

  Considering they were standing in a room full of disgusted people and amid the bodies of several more, who, if they had been alive would have also expressed their disgust, the two newcomers were unconcerned. They were beaming. Beaming like a lighthouse. Beaming like a bonfire. Beaming like a dental laser.

  The new arrivals both wore immaculate white suits and expressions which were carefully trained to be the exact opposite of undertakers’. The taller one spoke and the smaller one seemed to exist only to nod in excited agreement.

  ‘We are here to worship your new religion!’ the tall man said, clapping his hands together with delight. ‘My name is Richfield. My acolyte is Wedgwood.’

  ‘Blessings on you—’ Wedgwood began, but Richfield silenced him with a flick of an eyebrow.

  ‘I know that your views on outsiders are currently unfavourable.’ Richfield laughed as though this were the mildest faux pas. ‘But we are worshippers of your new god. I don’t suppose you have a name for your deity yet, do you?’

  Elder Narase stared at him.

  ‘It’s fine,’ simpered Richfield. ‘Just “God” will do. Helps to have a few other names for the guidebooks, but God is splendid for now. How exciting! Praise God!’

  ‘Praise God!’ echoed Wedgwood.

  ‘Have you decided on a sex, by the way?’ Richfield’s tone was confidential. ‘There’s no absolute need, but it makes picking one’s way through the pronouns easier. If it helps, research shows that He goes well with a god of war and vengeance, whereas She suggests more of an embracing planet-mother figure. But we’re all in favour of mixing things up.’

  Elder Narase had seen the Universe fail to end, had staged a coup, and launched battle fleets to wipe out creation. But this? This was really too much.

  ‘Let me make one thing clear, disgusting alien.’ Narase was looking around for her chair. She had never needed a sit down more than now. ‘We don’t know we believe in this “god” yet.’

  ‘Oh, but you must!’ Richfield looked offended. ‘It’s terribly exciting, you know.’

  ‘Exciting,’ Wedgwood produced a foldable placard from his jacket, and scribbled on it with a pen. He held it aloft. ‘HELLO GOD!’ it read.

  ‘What is he doing?’ snarled Elder Narase.

  Richfield smiled. ‘He is our outreach team. He’s creating ground-level chatter about your deity.’

  Wedgwood wiped the placard clean and wrote on it once more. ‘HELLO GOD, IT’S ME AGAIN, WEDGWOOD. HOW ARE YOU DOING?’

  ‘I am old and tired,’ Narase began, ‘and today I have killed a lot of people. Tell me why I should not kill two more. I would just like a sit down.’

  Richfield’s serpentine eyes flicked across the room and realised that there were, currently, bodies in all the chairs. ‘Do something,’ he said to Wedgwood. The acolyte scurried around, tugged at a few of the bodies, which refused to move, and then crouched on the floor so that the old woman could perch on his back.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Richfield. ‘He’s so comfortable. We had his spine removed.’

  ‘It’s been replaced with a posturepedic chair,’ muttered Wedgwood from the floor. ‘It has massage settings, if you’d like me to activate them. Praise God!’

  ‘No,’ Narase snapped. Wedgwood was indeed comfortable. ‘I would like an explanation. Who are you, what are you doing here, why do you wish to worship our god, and what is to stop my robots from killing you?’

  ‘We’re Jehovah’s Witlesses,’ Richfield said. ‘When we heard the Slow Time barrier was down, we simply had to rush here. We are experts in gods.’

  ‘Experts.’ Wedgwood’s voice was muffled.

  ‘And we rushed in on the off-chance that you had a god. Imagine our delight to discover –’ Richfield clasped his hands together and giggled in rapture – ‘that a
brand new deity had been unveiled to you. Not only did you have proof of his existence –’

  ‘Wonderfully rare!’

  ‘But you also had a clear divine plan!’

  ‘To wipe out existence!’ Wedgwood simpered.

  ‘We’ve come to spread the word of the Krikkit God,’ said Richfield. ‘His awfulness must be worshipped. It’s sounding like a he, isn’t it? All creation must know of his plans.’

  ‘I believe our battle fleets are already doing that,’ said the old woman drily.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they’re good in their way, but an organised religion has so many benefits,’ Richfield gushed. ‘In addition to enthusiastic belief, we can also offer a variety of Worship Management services.’

  ‘What, pray, are those?’ The old woman glanced at her hand. The index finger was making little hooking movements, as though firing an invisible gun.

  ‘Well, have you a bible? We can whip one of those up for you. They’re terribly important but don’t really matter. Like instruction manuals, no one ever reads them – unless it’s an emergency, or they’re looking for something that agrees with what they’re thinking. But you’ve just got to have one.’

  ‘Shouldn’t our god write that?’

  ‘No, they’re better ghost-written.’ Richfield shook his head. ‘The word of the actual God tends to get in the way. If they’re one of those gods it can look a bit exclusive. And if they’re one of the other sort it can seem a bit easy-going. What’s the fun in telling everyone to just be nice to each other?’

  ‘I think we can assume our god does not believe in niceness,’ Elder Narase said.

  ‘Oh, how precious!’ gushed Richfield. ‘Leave the bible to us. We’ll go heavy on the smiting. Now, other services. Obviously, we have fleets of Witlesses ready to go out among the stars telling of the Krikkit God—’

  ‘And songs,’ said Wedgwood. ‘We have songs.’