The Right Honourable Robertson Francis was destined for greatness. He had ambition without intelligence and, despite being in late middle age, had never lost the air of an eager schoolboy. He was using this air to look at a young woman sat on a park bench. As far as he was concerned, the woman was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. She was also, he had to admit, quite stunning, dressed the same way as the Prime Minister. Only, on her, the severe blue suit looked as though it was having a lot more fun.
The Right Honourable Robertson Francis decided that this lady was something special. She was the Goddess Diana, she was a celestial breeze, she was a modern Helen. Most of all, she was what could only be described as ‘fruity’. He was marching over to tell her this when a large blue box appeared in front of him and broke his nose.
The Doctor stuck his head out, and beamed at the sight of Romana.
‘There you are!’ he boomed.
Romana stood, brushing invisible creases from her skirt.
‘I notice you’ve saved the Earth.’
‘Yes.’ Romana started towards the TARDIS.
‘You’re getting good at this, Romana.’
‘You’re just getting better at noticing.’ Romana smiled and stepped inside.
‘True.’ The Doctor shut the door. ‘Where did you get that clobber? You look just like—’
‘Oh, a friend lent me them.’
‘You don’t mean …’ The Doctor burst out laughing.
The blue box vanished from Westminster Green. Robertson Francis stood up, holding his nose in his hands, and went to find a researcher to fire.
The Doctor stood in the console room, tossing a cricket ball in the air.
‘I’ve learned something about myself,’ he said.
‘Oh, really?’ Romana always worried when the Doctor said stuff like this. There was the time he’d taken up pottery.
‘Oh yes.’ The Doctor threw the ball up, watched it spin in mid-air, and then deftly pocketed it. ‘It turns out, I’m the most important man in the Universe.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘I’m just not sure why.’
With its pilot lost in thought, the TARDIS flew on.
Chief Elder Narase sat in her chair and rested her head in her hands. The usually empty skies beyond the window bloomed with distant explosions.
She lifted her head and looked around the Krikkit Parliament. It was deserted. There had been a brief period when the cascade of explosions had caused cheers, but that had been a while ago. There was now a kind of awkward silence that wished it was elsewhere.
The chamber door opened and Richfield and Wedgwood entered at a smart clip. Elder Narase realised how little she cared for them, from their neat white suits down to their overloud shoes. Aliens. She allowed herself a shudder.
‘This is a great opportunity!’ Richfield boomed.
‘Really? You think so?’ Narase prepared herself to be amused.
‘Why, yes!’ There really was no stopping Richfield.
‘Our battle fleets are destroyed. They are saying that our god has deserted us.’
‘Easy come, easy go!’ Richfield rubbed his hands together. ‘Cheer up!’
Narase looked around at the dour grey walls and arched an eyebrow.
‘I’ve done some polling,’ gushed Wedgwood, holding up a chart. ‘And it’s good news. A crushing defeat is something that everyone can rally around. Also, the rumours of God’s demise? They’ll cause a considerable bump in your ratings.’
Narase would have blinked but she worried that her eyes would refuse to open again. ‘How so?’
‘The Myth of the Return!’ boomed Richfield. ‘It’s a classic. God may have left you, but he’ll return at your hour of greatest need.’
‘Isn’t that now?’ Narase asked.
‘Dear me, no,’ Wedgwood held up another chart. ‘This is merely a crushing defeat. They’re good for morale. Leading opinion formers will be telling the people that now is the time to band together and begin the triumphant fightback.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes. You need to march down to the shipbuilding factories, throw together a new battle fleet and start taking back what’s yours. Launch a Holy War.’ Richfield rubbed his hands together. ‘Holy Wars,’ he confided, ‘are terribly happy ships.’
Wedgwood nodded eagerly.
Elder Narase considered the blooming skies for a long time.
‘No, thank you,’ she said, standing and walking away. ‘I never cared for the logo.’
The TARDIS landed at Lord’s Cricket Ground. The Doctor, Romana and K-9 strode out to an unfavourable reception.
The survivors of the England team started to flee. They’d learned that a sudden materialisation would be rapidly followed by a lot of explosions.
‘Greetings, we come in peace!’ The Doctor held up his hands, paused, and sniffed the air. ‘That’s a lovely smell – like burning straw in autumn. Remarkable. What is it?’
A disconsolate groundsman pointed to the devastated turf, some of it still smoking gently.
‘Oh dear,’ the Doctor said.
He and Romana took in their surroundings. What had once been a perfect square of England now looked like preparations were being made for building a mock-Tudor housing estate.
‘Good grief,’ Romana said, picking her way through the quagmire of churned mud and undrained water caused by the recently departed fire engines. K-9 bumped to a rapid, miserable halt.
Undaunted, the Doctor strode towards the few men feeling their way around the sodden grass, trying to work out what could be salvaged.
‘Good morning!’ he said.
There were some hostile grunts in response. To one side, a padded-up batsman sat, head in hands.
‘Remember me?’ the Doctor ventured. ‘I was here earlier.’
The glum, frightened faces said that quite clearly, yes, they remembered him perfectly well and had been hoping never to see him again.
The Doctor held up a tattered carrier bag. ‘I’ve brought you all a present,’ he ventured.
The sullen glares continued.
He pressed on, undaunted. ‘… To make up for the deadly robots and the chaos and disruption of that ceremony thing. It’s a mere trifle.’ He pulled down the sides of the bag (labelled ‘Andromeda Cash ’n’ Carry’), and unveiled a package wrapped in newspaper (‘Don’t read it,’ the Doctor warned, ‘I think it’s tomorrow’s.’). Before the alarmed eyes of the cricketers, the Ashes trophy was steadily revealed.
‘I’ve brought the Ashes back,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s the least I could do.’
He handed the trophy over to the players.
‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a picture, is there?’ the Doctor asked.
A grim silence persevered.
‘Ah well, perhaps too soon,’ the Doctor said sadly. But he couldn’t stay sad for long. ‘Anyway!’ He produced that cricket ball from his pocket, ‘While I’m here. I was wondering. Would anyone mind terribly if I had a go? You know, at the cricket?’
Romana stared at the Doctor in alarm. K-9’s head dipped.
For a moment, it looked as though that would be it. The Doctor would never get to claim he’d bowled a ball at Lord’s. However, the miserable-looking batsman raised an arm. He was in, if no one else was.
‘Splendid,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m aces with a yo-yo, so this shouldn’t be too hard.’
Several of the players wandered over. There wasn’t exactly a wild burst of enthusiasm, but it was the only thing going on. The MCC had talked about sending someone official out to inspect the damage, but apparently he couldn’t face getting out of bed.
Instead, the remaining members of the England team humoured an eccentric alien’s desire to bowl at Lord’s.
The Doctor prepared for his big moment. He winked at Romana and K-9. He breathed on the ball, rubbed it a bit, made a wish, turned around and started his run-up.
It was bracing. Like that time he’d played mini-golf with Bo
bby Charlton. He gave the ball a happy little squeeze, and, as he picked up speed he looked the batsman straight in the eyes.
‘Take that!’ he thought.
Then he looked the batsman straight in the eyes again.
Oh.
The Doctor was facing a Krikkitman.
Unexpected.
There were moments in the Doctor’s life when things slipped into unstoppable slow-motion as the Universe queued up to tell him ‘Told you so’.
As he ran helplessly forward, phrases from the last few hours echoed in his mind.
The warning from the Krikkitman long ago – the same one that was facing him now (he could tell by the dent from when they’d dropped a conference hall on it).
Elder Narase asking him, ‘How can you be so sure that you aren’t being manipulated as well?’
Hactar saying, ‘Have I failed? No, failure doesn’t bother me. If I haven’t already fulfilled my function, it’s too late now,’ admitting he had made one or two little things, and his little chuckle when the Doctor said to him … what had he said to him?
Ah yes.
‘The thing about winning,’ the Doctor had said, ‘is that, if you’re clever you can get your opponent to do all your work for you.’
And the War TARDIS saying to him, ‘It’s what you will do.’
The Doctor looked down at his hands in horror.
He’d never held a Supernova Bomb before. In his defence, it looked like a cricket ball. It weighed the same, it was the same cheery red colour. There was just that subtle difference between being a ball and the most powerful bomb in the Universe.
‘I’ve been had,’ the Doctor realised.
The Krikkitman continued to glare at the Doctor, and the Doctor was caught in its hypnotic gaze. His feet continued to run and his arms to pull apart as one hand got ready to throw the ball.
At the other end of the crease, the Krikkitman was readying his bat. It was primed to strike and detonate the bomb.
And then what?
Would the Supernova Bomb explode, wiping out existence?
Or would it trigger an entirely different chain reaction, ushering in an endless age of madness and war?
Horribly, the Doctor realised he would be responsible for whatever happened. Events had been tweaked and manoeuvred to get him to this point. Hactar and the War TARDIS had nudged and pushed things. They’d flattered, distracted, and even given him the satisfaction of stopping the Krikkitmen – all to get him to this miserable moment. He was, right now, the most powerful man in the Universe and he felt thoroughly wretched about it.
The Doctor tried to hold on to the bomb, to fall with it, to somehow contain it, but he felt his fist opening, the ball slipping out. The bomb left the Doctor’s hands and sailed down the crease.
He could have stopped and watched the start of the inevitable end of everything. But the Doctor didn’t stop running. It was the triumph gleaming in the batsman’s eyes that did it. The way the robot raised the bat, poised to swing.
The way the bomb started to glow and pulsate, making the kind of excited noises a bomb would make just before it went boom.
All these things made the Doctor keep running. Maybe he could catch up with the ball. Maybe the ball would go wide. Or maybe …
The ball bounced in front of the Krikkitman.
The Universe did not end. Not yet.
The ball bounced up, spinning at an unexpected angle, catching the Krikkitman’s swinging bat off guard. It slipped underneath it, and nicked a bail off the wicket, before dropping neatly into the wicketkeeper’s hands.
‘Out!’ called someone.
But the Doctor was still running. This was one of those thrilling moments when the Universe both did and did not exist. The Krikkitman had whirled around, slicing at the wicketkeeper with its bat.
Only it was no longer holding its bat.
The Doctor had seized the bat, and, with a powerful swipe of its blade, decapitated the Krikkitman.
The head rolled across the ground, coming to rest at the umpire’s feet.
The last Krikkitman in existence sank to the ground, pitched forward and burst into flame.
‘Howzat!’ roared the Doctor happily.
The umpire had seen many things, but, that night, as he sat nursing a pint, he’d mutter, ‘Cricket. I dunno, it’s getting a bit racy for me,’ and grab another handful of peanuts.
The Doctor staggered away from the pitch, just as the robot exploded.
Romana ran up to him, stunned. ‘What just happened?’
‘I think I’ve just saved the Universe.’
‘Again?’ said Romana.
The wicketkeeper threw the Supernova Bomb to the Doctor. He caught it, holding it up to the light.
‘This is the real thing. A working Supernova Bomb – slipped into my pocket in the Dust Cloud. If that Krikkitman had hit it, that would have been it for the Universe. And I’d have looked like a prize chump.’
‘Then it’s lucky he missed.’ Romana prised the ball from the Doctor’s hands.
‘Luck? Pah! Luck had nothing to do with it. That was one of my super-top-spun googlies.’
‘Do you have any idea what one of those is?’
‘Not a clue,’ the Doctor said.
He and Romana strolled back across Lord’s towards the TARDIS. Behind them, the most prized cricket ground in the world was once more in flames. People in cricket whites were running backwards and forwards, and an umpire, aghast, was holding the head of a robot in his shaking hands.
‘Anyway,’ the Doctor said, ‘it would take more than the sub-meson hyper-computer brain of a Krikkitman to work out how that ball was going to bounce. I hadn’t a clue how it was going to go myself.’ The most important man in the Universe sniffed the wood smoke in the air appreciatively. ‘Ah, well. Can’t complain.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE MEANING OF LIFE
‘Hurry up, Doctor,’ said Romana.
The Doctor was holding a peanut in one hand and a large, miserable-looking bird in the other.
‘I don’t think there’s any particular hurry, is there?’ Judging by his tone, the Doctor was talking more to the Next Time bird than anyone else. He’d started by trying to lay a trail of peanuts to the TARDIS, and, when this had failed, he’d tried nudging the bird gently in the direction of the time machine.
‘On the contrary.’ Romana was standing anxiously on the shoreline. ‘We need to get a move on.’ She was looking out across the water to where a large number of ships were heading in their direction. ‘The Great Khan’s coming in his boats.’
‘Is he?’ The Doctor stroked the crest of the forlorn-looking bird. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
‘Yes!’ said Romana. The beach was beautiful but she didn’t want to be on it in a few minutes’ time. Not when the Khan’s vast and bloodthirsty hordes got there. ‘It seems a terrible shame, to put the Steel Stump back only for him to rob it.’
‘Well, yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it has allowed me to gather up these poor birds.’
‘And?’ The ships were little more than 2.7 kilometres away. ‘We can’t keep them.’
The Doctor coaxed the bird onto his shoulder. ‘These poor things are at a dead end of evolution. No, they need a lovely deserted island.’ He smiled. ‘And I’ve got one in mind. There we go …’ And, having fed the Next Time bird a peanut, he vanished with it into the TARDIS.
‘Can we go?’ Romana was running back up the beach.
The Doctor stuck his head out. ‘Oh no. I think you’ll want to watch.’
The Khan’s ships of mighty oak drew closer, prows lifting themselves out of the water as though getting ready to devour, the vast timbers seeming to shake with rage.
Romana blinked. No, the ships were actually shaking. She could hear shouts – not of anger, but of alarm.
‘Doctor, what have you done?’ As she spoke, she realised the prows were only lifting because the rears were sinking.
An entire
fleet sinking.
The Doctor stood beside Romana, his hands casually in his pockets, clucking critically at the naval disaster unfolding before him. He produced a matchbox from his pocket and opened it. It was empty. He smiled and put it away again.
‘Before setting sail, always check for woodworm. Can’t think how it got there. Ah well, they’ll have to swim home,’ he said, and walked back up the sands, whistling.
On the planet Devalin, there was an island no one needed any more. The people had abandoned it, and once more skimmed across the azure seas, living off the rich variety of sea creatures who bobbed to the surface almost as though they’d missed them.
As no one needed the island, it was an ideal habitat for the Next Time bird. The Doctor ushered the animals out and stood proudly by as they pecked their way through the rubble. After a few minutes, they proved partial to the fragmentary remnants of the already forgotten Devalinian currency.
One of the doleful birds staggered away from its food, and looked around at the ground, at the azure sky, at the seas teaming with life, and it gave a happy little hop and a flutter.
Much to its surprise, it found itself staring down at the receding ground.
For the first time in its history, a Next Time bird was flying.
The next moment, they were all flying, an ungainly, uncertain flurry of wings and beaks, lifting up and out over the seas, past the laughing boats, and one miserable off-worlder. Deprived of any of form of living, Ognonimous Fugg was learning how to fish. So far he’d discovered he was bad at it, and that he hated fish.
He was distracted by the laughter. He turned around, and saw those strange figures on the shore.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Mr Fugg said, and started to row frantically in their direction.
The Doctor and Romana didn’t see the boat heading towards them. They were instead watching the birds swoop, dive and call to each other. The Next Time birds no longer sounded mournful, instead they seemed full of joy.
‘I forgot to tell them.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Slightly lower gravity.’
By the time Mr Fugg arrived on the island, the small blue box had gone.
There wasn’t that much left of the planet of Mareeve II. To be fair to the rest of the Universe, certain civilisations had rallied round. Their closest neighbour had been first on the scene, but the Mareevians had been so swift to threaten legal action if anything went wrong that the rescue fleet had suddenly remembered another engagement.
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen Page 30