‘What do you mean?’ she pressed. ‘It’s just a game. Tell me what’s wrong with cricket?’ She realised how much she missed getting to ask questions like this.
The Doctor just shrugged miserably. ‘Look at them – look at them all. So …’ His lips twisted. ‘Happy.’
A man hit a ball with a bat. The ball went quite a way. Everyone applauded. It looked the most innocent thing ever.
Sarah frowned. ‘What? Doctor, what is it?’
‘It’s obscene, that’s what it is,’ the Doctor growled. ‘If it’s a cosmic joke, then it’s in very bad taste indeed.’
The last time Sarah had seen the Doctor in this mood, they’d been watching a dying star.
She consulted a pamphlet she’d been eating her sandwiches off. ‘It’s the last day of the Ashes,’ she announced.
Several people nearby glanced at her as if she’d fallen off the moon. Which was, she thought, fair enough.
‘In cricketing terms,’ she whispered, ‘that’s very big news. You know – every ten years or so—’
‘Every four years,’ the Doctor corrected, as a man in front of them turned around to snarl it at them.
‘Anyway, doesn’t matter,’ she said, delighting as the spectator turned a colour to match the Doctor’s coat. ‘England and Australia fight a series of cricket matches and eventually one of them takes home a trophy.’
‘The trophy,’ the spectator snapped.
‘Thank you,’ Sarah smiled at him sweetly. ‘There you go, Doctor. Perhaps your space-time telegraph got its wires crossed. The kind of thing that’s terribly important if you happen to like cricket. But, for you and me, well …’ She made a dismissive noise.
The Doctor glared at her. He looked furiously angry. ‘You don’t care?’ he gaped.
Sarah blinked. ‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘It’s just a game.’
The Doctor let out an anguished groan.
In contrast to the Doctor’s despairing mood, the crowd were growing jubilant. Given the amount of applause and the number of people screaming ‘Come on England!’, things were getting pretty exciting. Or, as exciting as a cricket match could be.
She glanced at the scoreboard and, with a lot of frowning and eavesdropping, managed to decipher what was going on.
‘It’s the last round,’ she said, watching the spectator in front wince. ‘And we need three to win. Then we can go home.’
‘Home?’ the Doctor barked bitterly.
Down on the field, the little white figures were moving with a bit more tension. Someone threw a ball. Someone hit it with a bat.
For a moment, eternity waited. The ball drifted higher. Then, with nothing better to do, it drifted higher still.
Then the entire stadium breathed out.
‘It’s a six!’ screamed people to each other with the delight of people pointing out the obvious.
The crowd went as wild as a cricket crowd could. There was polite applause, backs were slapped, and people said ‘Hurrah!’ It all seemed terribly jolly.
‘We’ve won,’ Sarah said to the Doctor.
‘No one ever wins cricket,’ the Doctor sighed miserably.
Sarah changed the subject. She was used to these moods. He’d once got terribly sad in a Chinese takeaway. She looked up at the sky. Clouds were forming.
‘And just in time too,’ she announced, shivering. ‘Looks like rain.’
‘That’s far worse than rain,’ the Doctor intoned predictably.
She punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘It might never happen.’
‘Do you know –’ the Doctor seemed to focus on her for the first time in an hour – ‘I always hate people who say that.’
Which was when the killer robots appeared.
THANKS TO:
Mandy Marvin – for finding it
Steve Cole – for editing it
Joshua Lewin – for bearing with it
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Introduction
fn1I’ve guessed the date, as the science fiction films dominating the box office he refers to were released in 1973 and 1976. Also, and here’s the big clue, he makes no reference to Star Wars.
Chapter Five: Unforgivable Thefts from a Hairdresser
fn1The other day she’d found an old lady with a mop and bucket at the end of one of the TARDIS corridors. ‘What are you doing here?’ she’d asked. The old lady had leant on her mop and breathed out slowly. ‘Cleaning, dear,’ she’d said. Romana had gone to make her a cup of tea, but the old lady had vanished by the time she’d finally got the kettle working.
Chapter Ten: Grim Conclusion in Nowhere
fn1This wasn’t quite true. The Doctor’s approach to Christmas greetings was erratic. Napoleon Bonaparte had once received 75 cards in one year. The Duke of Wellington had had to make do with a toffee hammer.
Chapter Fourteen: The Perfect Planet
fn1On many planets it is said to be blasphemy to try and define God. On other worlds, it’s a compulsion. Some will say that God is in the small things, and will point, with the smuggest of nods, towards a blade of grass or a drop of dew. Others will throw an arm up to a sunset, or a mountain. Others will delight in telling you where God is not – he frequently doesn’t show up when a volcano flattens a town, but that is because the hapless townsfolk must have done something very wrong indeed. ‘Typical God,’ observers will say, ‘serves them all right,’ as they rub some ash from their sandals, before setting off home, secretly glad that God hasn’t found out about all the energetic coveting they’ve been doing of their next door neighbour’s wife and donkey.
Chapter Seventeen: Hit for Six
fn1They’d been advised by the firm of Richfield & Wedgwood, of whom, regrettably, more later.
Chapter Nineteen: From A to Not to Be
fn1‘This is all very well,’ she’d told a high priest once, ‘but splendid as your god no doubt is, I’m afraid she is either non-existent or a folk memory of a visit by an alien tourist. Much as that visit may have meant a good deal to your ancestors, and no matter how many times the visitor may have promised that they were coming back, you have to realise that space tou
rists are fickle beings and the next year they made for somewhere with a better beach. Anyway, even if that theory can be discounted and you wish to harp on about how your god is the one true god, do you have any idea how many one true gods there are out there? Literally, I couldn’t even make you a list, and I am good at lists. There’s a primal Ur urge to find solace from existence in a codified deity figure – gods are like a warm blanket for slightly chilly thoughts. Put simply, supposing your god – what was she again – Shuba the Sand Snake? –was the one true god of salvation, isn’t that a little bit unfair on the rest of the Universe who’ve never made it to your rather arid world? All those billions and billions of souls who have no idea that Shuba offers the key to eternal life because they’ve not discovered light speed overdrive? Doesn’t that seem a bit mean of Shuba?
‘I suppose there’s the theory that all the various gods are simply different facets of a vast underlying spirit that holds the Universe together. But that’s only good so long as you’re very generic and don’t draw up a spreadsheet. Because then it all gets hazy. Some gods absolutely forbid sacrifice, you know, whereas Shuba seems to just love having strangers skewered with a long and dirty knife. That’s just one example – how could you reconcile all the conflicting rules? Well, you can’t. Bit of a facer isn’t it? Perhaps you should think long and hard about your life choices. Or, yes, bring out the gag. But that’s not solving the problem is it, it’s simply—mrrf.’
Chapter Twenty-Two: Parliament of Fools
fn1This was, of course, nonsense. Such simple defences only deterred dull people – criminals, sightseers and antiques dealers. One of the advantages of time travel was that it gave you perspective. No lock endures for ever, nor does the value of what is behind it. Paper decays, data cores corrupt, even precious metals corrode and gemstones finally degrade. It’s just a matter of time.
The easiest lock pick of all was a time machine. In theory, the Doctor and Romana could stroll back to the TARDIS, and set the coordinates for the other side of the door. There were two reasons they never did this:
1) It felt like cheating
2) Romana would have to do the driving. The Doctor was to precision parking what cement mixers were to stirring a fruitcake, and he hated admitting it.
fn2A future regeneration of the Doctor, with nothing else scribbled down for that day in his 500-year diary, spent time popping around the Universe lecturing architects on the importance of ventilation shafts. Along the way, he found himself increasingly fascinated by the people who designed secret bases. There were a few questions he’d always wanted solving. How did you get planning permission, for one? How did you get insurance? What kind of disasters did the insurance cover – volcanoes, explosions, meteor strikes? Was he himself listed as a policy exclusion? Did secret bases only include cells, corridors, a lair and a big room full of red buttons, or were there also canteens, squash courts, and places to store the piranha food? He’d never really got to the bottom of it.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Interruptions to a Great Mind
fn1This voice did not belong to an Alovian. The voice did also not belong to the Doctor, Romana, K-9 or Hactar. The identity of the owner of the voice would not be revealed for many, many millions of years.
Chapter Thirty-One: The First Eleven
fn1The First Barrier was a force field of such staggering power that it could rip open the hearts of atoms. The Second Barrier was a barrier of ideas – it refused to let anything through because it didn’t believe that was possible. The Third Barrier was a barrier of reflection – it countered any approach with an equal and opposite idea. Then there was the Fourth Barrier of Stubborn Philosophy. This barrier refused to believe in the existence of the alien craft, and reiterated it until, exhausted, many fleets would slink away, announcing that they’d suddenly remembered another appointment.
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Iron Lady
fn1Curiously, this was not the only time this had happened. Due to a horrendous diary conflict, the Post Office Tower’s grim attempt at global domination and the Chameleons’ plan to kidnap teenagers from Gatwick Airport had both clashed with the Daleks unleashing chaos from their time-travelling antiques shop.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Saving the Universe
fn1Heavens were often seen as places where gods could look down on people. The Ancient Greeks assumed their gods sat on mountains, always on the lookout for wars or maidens bathing. The SmartFish of Dallion IV mistook fishermen for deities. Which led to a lot of sadly mistaken talk about the chosen being taken into eternal happiness by the Great Hook.
Appendix 1: Life, the Universe and Photocopying
fn1Olbers’ Paradox is a real thing, by the way, and honestly troubled Edgar Allen Poe almost as much as subsidence. It was recently, definitely, proved by the Hubble Telescope. It’s probably been discredited by now.
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen Page 35