by Doctor Who
‘None,’ said the Doctor. He tried to remember, but the effort was too much and there was no point in it anyway. ‘I was. . . really steamed up about something.’ The thought popped into his head. ‘Oh yeah, those monsters you’re breeding. Hy-Bractors.’
Chantal laughed and stroked the back of her hand against his cheek.
‘No need to worry about them. What’s the point in worrying about anything?’
The Doctor saw the wisdom in those words. He knew he had been a very anxious person, running around getting concerned about things.
And it hadn’t made him feel good, not like he did now.
Rose was filing away at the nails of the old woman’s son, whose name was Gual. As she used the curved end of the file to pick out huge lumps of grit and dirt from under his nails, she threw a glance at the game players by the fire and decided to risk asking a question that had been bothering her.
‘Shouldn’t you lot be out hunting or something?’
‘I’ve done my week’s work, don’t you worry,’ said Gual, sounding slightly affronted. ‘I do Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.’
‘You do a three-day week?’ asked Rose.
‘It’s Wednesday, and I got Wednesday off, ain’t I?’ said Gual.
The old woman lurched back over. ‘And even when he’s working he messes about while everyone else puts in their hand’s turn. He’s a 98
useless lump, Rose.’ She tapped him on the shoulder, hard. ‘Good job we got some proper men in this tribe, innit?’
‘Mum, will you give it a rest?’ said Gual ineffectually.
His mother pushed him aside roughly and sat herself down in front of Rose. ‘You got my bone?’ she told her son. ‘Go and get my bone.
I’m starving here and there’s some lovely marrow on that.’
Gual mumbled and slouched off towards the cave entrance.
‘And fetch the apron of Ghelthath while you’re about it!’ The old woman turned back to Rose. ‘He ain’t such a bad lad,’ the old woman sighed, ‘but a severe disappointment to me. You should have seen his father. Ooh, he was like one of the Ancestors reborn. Lovely big shoulders, threw a spear easy as clicking his fingers.’
‘I’ve already done you,’ Rose pointed out, indicating the old woman’s immaculately filed nails.
‘No, Rose, I just came over for more of our chat,’ said the old woman. ‘You got a husband back home, have you, dear?’
‘No,’ said Rose.
‘Really? I say. Not engaged?’
‘Was once, but it didn’t work out.’
The old woman shook her head sadly. ‘Got eaten by something, did he?’
‘I hope so,’ said Rose.
‘So you’re free and single, are ya? Let me have a look at you, love.
Stand up a second.’
Rose obeyed. Her plan at the moment was to ingratiate herself with these people and then slip out after nightfall and make her way back to Osterberg. That was slightly complicated by the fact that she had no idea where she’d been taken to, and there were no landmarks here that she recognised. But it was a good enough plan to be going on with.
The old woman gave her a thorough look-over, turning her about, sizing her up from head to toe with almost hungry eyes. Rose had a momentary flash of fear – they couldn’t be cannibals, could they?
‘Look at your lovely figure. Hips a bit of a problem, I suppose, very thin, but I think you’ll do.’
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‘Do for what?’ asked Rose, tensing up with an anxious look at the fire.
The old woman gave her another big, and surprisingly powerful, squeeze. ‘You’re a very lucky girl, Rose Tyler. What a polite young lady you are.’
‘I won’t be if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about,’ said Rose.
‘We’ve had a chat back in the cave, me and the other old girls, and –’
she paused and seemed to stifle a tear – ‘we’ve decided you’re going to join the Family!’
She made the announcement with great pride and Rose realised from the old woman’s tone that this was some kind of great honour.
But she couldn’t bring herself to react with the joy that it was clearly designed to inspire.
‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘What exactly do you mean there?’
‘Oh, come here,’ said the old woman, holding her even tighter. ‘Look how happy you’ve made me, Rose. I’m welling up here. I’m gonna think of you as my daughter.’
‘Right, adoption,’ said Rose. ‘That’s really kind, thanks.’
‘I know why they sent you down here, the Tylers,’ the old woman went on. ‘Young girl sent out on her own, not hard to see why.’
‘Yeah, to use my skills,’ said Rose, trying to keep up.
‘And the rest,’ said the old woman. ‘You’re a gift to us. We’ll be allied to the Tylers, our flint for your. . . what is it again?’
‘Manicuring,’ said Rose.
She was beginning to work it out. The scattered human tribes must use trade partnerships to form alliances. She decided to encourage the old woman. The more they accepted her, the less likely they were to keep their eye on her too closely, and then she could be away.
‘Yeah, I’m really glad to be one of the Family, er. . . ’
‘Call me Nan,’ said the old woman.
‘Nan,’ said Rose happily. ‘Shall I get on with my work?’
‘No. What are you like? You haven’t met him yet, have you?’ said Nan.
‘Met who?’
Nan sighed. ‘My lovely grandson.’
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‘And why would I need to meet him?’ asked Rose, worries rising again.
‘Well, you wanna give the goods a look-over, don’tcha?’ said Nan.
‘You wanna see what you’re gonna be marrying.’
Rose gulped. ‘Marrying?’
‘Yes, you’re gonna marry him, love,’ said Nan. ‘It’ll be lovely, and we’ll have good Tyler blood and lots of pretty Tyler babies in the Family, make us strong.’
‘I’m not,’ said Rose simply.
‘You are!’ Nan shouted gleefully. ‘I know you can’t believe your luck!’
‘No, I’m really not,’ said Rose firmly.
‘You’re too modest,’ said Nan. ‘Lovely girl like you was made to be queen. We’ll have it all done by tonight, and then a grand fish supper!’
Rose coughed. ‘Thanks, Nan, but where I come from, right, it’s not decided like this. Like, I have a say in it, and there’s loads to sort out
– takes months – order of service, seating plan, are the invites gonna be plain or embossed. . . ’ She realised she was babbling.
‘Here he is now!’ said Nan proudly.
‘OK, I’m flattered, but I am not getting married to some big hairy cave person,’ said Rose very definitely.
And then she saw Nan’s grandson walking towards her, and he was probably the fittest boy she had ever seen.
‘On the other hand, though. . . ’ said Rose.
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The Doctor could tell Chantal was doing something to him, but he didn’t care what it was. He had no interest in anything but lying here and looking up out of the metal chair at the light that hung from the ceiling of the small wooden room. Even the ceiling wasn’t that interesting, but then what did being interested get you? A lot of stress, he seemed to recall, though right at the moment stress just sounded like a word for a feeling it was impossible to think he would ever experience again.
‘By the way, where do you come from?’ asked Chantal, leaning over him.
The Doctor was happy to answer her. If there was anything he could do to please Chantal, he’d do it. ‘I’m an alien, from a planet you’ll never have heard of. It got blown up at the end of a war. I’m usually bothered about that, but now. . . ’ He grinned. ‘I don’t care.’
He gave a deep sigh. ‘That’s. . . nice.’
‘Of course it is,’ said Chantal. ‘And did you come to Earth in a space rocket?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor breezily. He knew he’d always been tight-lipped about personal details in the past, but he couldn’t remember 103
why, so he went on, ‘No, well, sort of. It’s called the TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It can travel anywhere, anywhen.
I came back here to have a look at what you lot are up to with your primitive time engine, cos it’s quite dangerous. There was a Neanderthal man running round the twenty-first century, you know!’
‘Yes, that was unfortunate,’ said Chantal. ‘He found his way into the town, went wild, but I got rid of him before he could do any damage.
Popped him into the time beam and packed him off somewhere at random. Anyway, don’t fret, because we won’t be using it again. Is it really that primitive?’
‘Laughably,’ said the Doctor.
‘It would be nice to see your TARDIS, if it’s so much better,’ said Chantal.
‘Oh, right, you’re welcome. I’ll show you round, full guided tour.
Shouldn’t take longer than a couple of years.’
Chantal carried on doing whatever she was doing. The Doctor was vaguely aware of a numbness in every part of his body from the neck down and a kind of squelching sound.
‘Knew you were lying when you turned up,’ she said, ‘but I thought I’d see what you got up to before I intervened.’
‘I’m really sorry if I did anything wrong,’ said the Doctor, feeling a distant pang of disquiet at the thought he might have somehow displeased Chantal.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Chantal. ‘Interesting that you’re not human.
Though I worked it out before you told me.’
‘Ah, what gave me away?’ asked the Doctor, sensing that she wanted to tell him.
‘Your blood for a start,’ said Chantal, holding up a thin glass tube containing a sample. ‘It’s very different from human blood, and full of acids that I’ve never seen before. You’ll have to tell me what they’re all for.’
‘OK,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, I’ve got a self-regenerating genetic im-primatur that –’
‘Not now,’ said Chantal. She looked into the blood in the tube. ‘I had to really up the dose on your popper pack to make sure it would 104
get past your defences. Now you’ve got a massive dose of general well-being flooding into your brain, which I’m also curious about.’
‘I can tell you all about my brain too,’ said the Doctor. ‘Later?’
‘Later.’ Chantal put the tube down and said, ‘Your heart’s beating very slowly, though, Doctor.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yeah? Which one?’
‘This one, the right,’ Chantal replied, and she held it up, a big red throbbing meaty lump, for him to see.
He realised that Chantal had opened up his chest and was poking around in it, taking bits out and putting bits in. And something inside him, buried away in a dark corner of his mind, didn’t like the idea.
Chantal indicated another thing. ‘The design is rather fascinating.
The intriguing monotony in the occurrence of inter-caval conduction block during typical atrial flutter suggests an anatomic or electrophys-iological predisposition for conduction abnormalities.’
The Doctor said nothing. The wrong-feeling stirred again.
The people in Osterberg were designed to be attractive, thought Rose, and she’d rather shallowly been slightly taken with that at first. But the boy-band artificiality of Jacob or Reddy was thrown into sharp contrast by the looks of her prospective husband. He had one of those wonky, asymmetrical faces that you could stare at for ages. He managed to look rough and pretty at the same time, and even with a straggly beard that was half bum fluff, a face splattered with badly applied woad and dressed in a kind of smelly leather skirt he still managed to look like the boy next door combined with the boy who was too beautiful to live.
Nan and the others had backed off to allow Rose and the boy – who was called Tillun – to get to know each other. Rose struggled to make conversation, and, she was pleased to see, so did Tillun. He was fit but didn’t know it, which made him even more fit. To fill the silence, Rose asked about the game with the stone, which was still being played by an avid crowd of tribespeople of all ages.
‘But everyone plays crakkits, don’t they?’ asked Tillun, flicking his super-kissable floppy hair.
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‘No, never heard of it, honest,’ said Rose.
‘What do they play up the river, then?’ asked Tillun.
‘Plenty of games, but it’s all really different,’ Rose replied. She decided to try and broach the really important subject. Stunning as Tillun was, she still had to get out of this madness and back to the Doctor. ‘We don’t get married so quick either.’
Tillun grunted, as if her opinion didn’t count for much. ‘Well, maybe that’s your custom. But you’re here with us now, aren’t you? So you can follow ours.’ He smiled at her, exposing another set of strong, gleaming white teeth. ‘Nan’s done me proud. I quite fancied Jarul over there, but you’re in another league.’
Rose frowned. ‘And my input into this decision would be zero, right?’
She wasn’t getting through to him. ‘My nan’s the wise woman,’ he said, as if it was the answer to everything.
‘My nan’s pretty sharp too,’ ventured Rose. ‘And what she’d say if she was here is “wait a while, see how you both get on”. She got married too quick and it was a disaster. He was carrying on with half the other women in the. . . tribe, behind her back.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Tillun. He reached out a comforting hand to her shoulder and Rose could hardly stop him.
‘Yeah, see, so why not wait a while?’
Tillun said sincerely and pleasantly, without a trace of machismo or ego, ‘We’ll have no secrets in our marriage. When I carry on with other women, Rose, I promise I will do it right in front of you.’
Nan reappeared. ‘You all set, lovebirds? We’ll get started about three.’ She indicated a stone marker, some kind of megalith, at the top of a nearby hill. ‘Just when the sun hits the stone of the goddess Brelalla.’
She threw a big furry pelt at Rose. It felt rough and well worn, but it had clearly been very well looked after. ‘There you go, Rose. I wore that, ooh, must be thirty years ago now.’ She handed her a random collection of sorry-looking daffodils and bluebells arranged in a bunch of tied-together twigs. ‘And there’s your corsage. Stand up. Let’s have a look at you.’
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Rose got to her feet, modelling the ‘wedding dress’ and flowers.
Nan nudged her grandson. ‘Don’t she look lovely?’
‘Soon have you all back together,’ said Chantal. She waved a pencil laser, not totally unlike the sonic screwdriver in design, over the Doctor’s chest. There was no pain, not even any blood, no hint of a scar.
‘Then we can go and look at your TARDIS.’
‘Which you think can take you off to deliver value through all time and space,’ said the Doctor.
He could feel a trace of some incompatible emotion struggling to break out, though he couldn’t yet put a name to it.
‘I detect a hint of sarcasm,’ said Chantal. ‘Better remedy that.’ She leaned over him and tapped a number into the popper pack that she had attached on his left side. ‘There.’
‘I see. You’ve found the part of the brain that controls sarcasm, have you?’ said the Doctor. ‘Very clever.’
‘Sorry, was that sarcastic?’ said Chantal, frowning slightly.
The Doctor paused, unsure. He felt the power to be sarcastic melt away as the chemicals did their work.
‘It was,’ he admitted. ‘But no, actually, it is very clever. I mean that.’
‘Good,’ said Chantal. ‘Yes, I’ve always wanted to go into space. I know people did once, long ago. Earth had an empire that reached deep into the stars. You can give me the secret.’
She sat the Doctor up and helped him back into his sweater and jacket. As he moved, he
felt a tinge of nausea wash over him, and it was as if the thoughts that had been pushed away by the great serenity he’d felt were loosened up and shaken back out into his brain like a bag of nails. He felt his personality, what made him him and not just a collection of electrical impulses, his Doctorness, heading back towards him, as if it was trying to step back inside him and reassert itself. An overwhelming urge to ask a question. . .
‘Why are you doing. . . whatever you’re doing?’ he heard himself say. ‘Why are you breeding those things, the Hy-Bractors?’
‘They’re not things, they’re people,’ said Chantal.
‘Technically
speaking, as human as me and you – well, me.’
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The Doctor’s gaze focused on Chantal’s popper pack and another question filled the void left by the first. ‘If you are on these drugs. . .
where are you getting your ideas from? Cos I’m usually full of ideas and I’m not getting any, and it’s a weird feeling and I don’t like it.’
Chantal leaned over and pressed more buttons on his pack. ‘Forget about that.’
‘Cos, if I was thinking like I normally think, I’d be thinking of. . . ’
‘Just relax,’ said Chantal.
The Doctor felt thoughts tumbling slowly towards him. ‘I’d be thinking of. . . a way to. . . an idea. . . It’s nearly there, I’ve nearly got it. . .
Cos if you can have ideas, I can have ideas. . . All I want is one, come on, idea. . . I know you’re in there. . . Come on, baby, you can do it. . .
You’re trying so hard, come on, work those neurones, kid. . . ’
Chantal looked on, amused. ‘You’ll never do it.’
The Doctor blinked. ‘Oh, that is so obvious,’ he said.
‘What?’ asked Chantal.
‘This,’ said the Doctor, and he leaped at her, grabbing her arms behind her back and pinning her against a wall.
Then they just stood there as he tried to have another idea.
Chantal raised an eyebrow. Her face was very close to the Doctor’s; he could feel her fragrant breath.