The first wave of settlers had come to Sunday just over a year ago, and all 800 of them had set up along the banks of the river, rapidly building quite a decent little town from the prefabricated huts and buildings they’d brought with them. Self-sufficient in almost everything, they anticipated a tough but fair start to their new lives. They had a couple of trucks, a fabricator plant to churn out more construction panels, a generator station. Everything looked like it was going to be fine – they’d have a nice little city up and running for the next wave of colonists.
But then, three months ago, the communications and observation satellite they’d left in orbit detected something disturbing. Sunday’s orbit would take it through the debris cloud of a recently destroyed asteroid, smashed to dust when it passed close to one of the system’s gas giant planets. The settlers were worried – but when they analysed the data on the asteroid fragments, they relaxed a little: they were all fairly small, none of them large enough to cause an Extinction Level Event. As the planet entered the debris cloud, the Sundayans sat back, watched the skies and hoped for nothing worse than a nice light show.
‘And I take it,’ the Doctor interrupted, ‘that the outcome wasn’t good.’
Candy nodded, pushing aside bushes as they squelched through the forest. The soft pattering of rain could be heard.
‘Most of the fragments burned up in the atmosphere – it was the best fireworks show we’d ever seen. I mean,’ she enthused guiltily, ‘really spectacular. These huge fireballs and streaks across the sky. We all stood outdoors and watched. The little kids loved it.’
Candy paused, remembering the light show.
‘A couple of pieces got through,’ Candy continued. ‘They didn’t just burn up like all the others. One of them struck the ground a couple of hundred kilometres away – shaking the ground, knocking a few of the half-constructed buildings down. Everyone panicked. People were screaming and crying, but the scientists said we’d be OK – the dust cloud it threw up was tiny, really. Nothing to worry about.’ She paused. ‘It was the last piece, though. That was the problem. The meteorite hit the ocean, just a kilometre or so offshore – about six from Sunday City.’ Candy stopped again, remembering that night.
‘A tidal wave,’ whispered the Doctor, closer to her than he’d been a moment ago. He glanced up at the sky as the rain made the forest around them hiss.
‘It just rolled in along the river – a great, black wall, moonlight catching the top edge of it.’ Candy shuddered at the memory. ‘All we could do was stand and stare at it, you know?’ She turned to the Doctor and he was there, just a couple of metres away. ‘And then everyone started screaming and running. People were grabbing their kids, grabbing bags, clothes, anything they could. It was chaos. They weren’t even all running in the right direction. Some of them headed upslope, away from the river. Others – God knows why! – were running along the bank. Maybe they thought they’d get further by staying on the flat. Some of them…’ Candy closed her eyes, but the images in her head played on. ‘Some of them just went in their houses, calm as anything, and closed the doors. We managed to meet up on the other side of the hill, after the wave had subsided.’ Candy remembered them all gathering around a pathetic fire – dry wood torn from the tops of the salt-trees where the water hadn’t reached, the smell of the sap, soapy and pungent at the same time, as it spat and crackled. She remembered the steamy smoke, coiling away into the warm night. Taking their hopes and dreams with it.
There had been people running around, still wailing and crying, asking if anyone had seen this person or that. She could still see the blank faces of some of the older people who didn’t seem to quite realise what had happened. Marj Haddon, her face even paler than usual in the firelight, sitting hugging her knees, wrapped in a soggy old blanket and not even asking about her partner, Lou. The Richlieu twins, asking their grandpa where Mum and Dad were, and the look on their grandpa’s tear-stained face as he tried to find a way to tell them…
‘We lost almost everything,’ Candy said after a few moments. She brushed her straggly blonde hair back from her face, slicking it against her head. The Doctor didn’t even seem to notice the rain. ‘Some of us went back the next day – to see, you know…’ Her mouth was suddenly as dry as leaves.
‘The waters had fallen by then – a bit, anyway. Almost everything useful was either underwater or had been washed away. Even the ship was gone. We managed…’ She broke off, feeling herself choking up at the memories her tale was bringing up. ‘Some of the buildings on the edge of the city had survived, and we managed to salvage a lot of the stuff that had floated to the surface.’ Candy had to stop again as her mind raced ahead of her mouth. She looked up into the Doctor’s eyes. ‘And then we started to find the bodies.’
Candy was suddenly aware that she was sobbing into the warm, muddy shoulder of a complete stranger. A complete stranger who held her whilst she let it all out. She barely noticed as the rain continued to fall.
She didn’t know how long he held her – silently, saying nothing, passing no judgements. No telling her not to cry, no telling her that everything would be alright. No vague, meaningless words of comfort from someone who hadn’t been there, someone who hadn’t seen what she’d seen. No trying to be a father or a brother or a friend. In a strange way, he reminded her of Ty.
Eventually, she pulled away from him, and he let her.
‘Sorry,’ she said, rubbing her nose on the back of her hand. The rain was falling heavily now, and it just made her face wetter.
‘Don’t be silly,’ the Doctor said. ‘Nothing like a good cry. Lets all those brain chemicals run free, sort themselves out.’
‘Does it?’ she sniffed.
He stared at her – and shrugged.
‘Probably,’ he said, as if he’d just made it up. ‘But you stuck it out – all of you. You stayed.’
‘Not much choice. The One Small Step – our ship – was gone. And the second wave of colonists’ll be here in a year. Can’t let ’em down, can we?’
‘Oh no,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘That’d never do. Sounds like you could do with a bit of moral support.’
Candy snorted a laugh.
‘Couldn’t we just!’
‘Well perhaps you’d better take me to Sunday City – I’ve got a City & Guilds in moral support.’ He beamed the smiliest of smiles. ‘First class!’
‘I’m worried about her,’ said Col, checking the locks on the cages and throwing the clipboard onto Ty’s desk. It narrowly missed her coffee cup, the one with the picture of the kitten with its paws up in the air and the caption saying: ‘You’ll never take me alive!’
Ty snatched the cup up in an easy, fluid gesture.
‘Hey!’ she said, her voice deep, but tinged, as always, with just a hint of amusement.
‘She’ll be fine – Candy knows the Slim Forest like the back of her hand. Anyways up…’ He plonked himself in an orange plastic chair across the desk from Ty. ‘What’s the result of the latest maze test?’
He threw a glance towards the other side of the timber-walled room where twelve cages sat, three rows of four. Each contained an otter – most of them curled up on the dried leaves they gave them for bedding. A couple were sitting back on their haunches, watching the two humans talk about them.
Ty shook her head and ran her fingers through her braided, black hair. She’d been talking about getting it cut for a while, but Col knew that was all it was: talk. Ty was too proud of her braids to let anyone at them with a pair of scissors.
‘Same as before: the newer ones are about sixty per cent worse at it than the older ones. I took the three from last week out earlier and let them go: they were beginning to work out how to work the locks. Too clever by half, some of ’em.’
‘Sssh!’ Col chided her with a grin. ‘They might hear you! Who knows how sensitive they might be? You don’t want to hurt their little egos. Not with those claws, anyway.’
Ty smiled.
‘If you ask me, i
t’s the ones we’ve caught in the last two days that we have to be nice to.’ She raised her voice and directed her words at the cages. ‘They’re the dim-but-aggressive ones.’
Col turned to look – they were still getting back on track with their research into the otters since the flood had washed away almost everything they’d done before. And they were no closer to working out why the otters seemed to get smarter and smarter the longer they were in captivity.
‘Just don’t tell Pallister, that’s all.’ Ty’s voice had dropped in volume and in pitch. Col knew what was coming. He rolled his eyes and slid his half-empty cup across the desk. He really didn’t want this conversation again.
‘I’ve told you, Pallist—’
‘Pallister’s an opportunist,’ Ty cut in. ‘He’d never have been elected Chief Councillor if it hadn’t been for the flood. And a right mess-up he’s made of the reconstruction.’
‘Oh, and you could have done better?’
Ty waved his comment away.
‘I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that he’s out to make a name for himself. He’s an old-style colonial. Future only knows why they let him come out here. No, scratch that: I know why they let him come out here. Because he was a middle-ranking nobody of a technician who had a few organisational skills and knew people in the right places. And with the flood, he’s come bobbing to the surface like…’ Her voice tailed off as she realised what she was about to say. ‘Anyway, if Pallister gets it into his head the otters are halfway intelligent, he’ll have ’em rounded up, chain-ganged and set to work building houses or whatever. It’ll be Lucius Prime and the lemurs all over again, and we all know how that ended.’
There was a sudden clumping noise outside and the wooden door to the lab was thrown open. Standing there, illuminated by the overhead fluorescents, was Candy, sopping wet. She had a strange look on her face.
‘Hiya,’ she smiled – but it was a tight, awkward smile.
‘What’s up, honey?’ asked Ty instantly, jumping to her feet.
Without answering, Candy stepped inside. Behind her was someone else – a someone else dressed in a weird, dark-brown two-piece with a couple of buttons down the front, a muddy white undershirt and some sort of tie around his neck. His face was smeared with dirt and his drenched hair was struggling to spring up. He grinned brightly, and it was as though someone had turned on another light.
‘Hello!’ he said. ‘I’m the Doctor. Can I interest you in some uplifting words – cheery banter and rousing speeches a speciality.’
Martha coughed herself awake, choking and retching on the stale water in her throat and lungs.
It was dark. Almost pitch black, in fact. She wasn’t cold – which, in her dazed state surprised her somewhat – but she wasn’t particularly warm either. She lay still for a few moments, trying to get her bearings, trying to remember what had happened.
The last thing she remembered was pushing her hand out of the TARDIS, through the stretchy force field, or whatever it had been. She coughed again, and wiped her face with the back of her hand, feeling the soggy silk glove that she’d forgotten she was wearing. And then it all came back to her: she’d pushed her hand through the force field into water. And then something had grabbed her – something powerful and muscled, something that had dragged her from the TARDIS like a parent pulling a child down a supermarket aisle.
Martha blinked, wondering again why it was so dark, wondering whether something had happened to her eyes. Wondering whether she was blind. She felt her heart begin to race in her chest as her panic began to grow. She heard a soft pattering noise above her. It sounded like rain on a tent.
And then she heard another sound: a tiny, tiny whispering noise. No – more like a scratching. No. That wasn’t right, either. Where had she heard it before…?
Yes! That was it! It sounded like a cat, washing itself – with that strange scraping, slurpy noise they made. She sniffed cautiously. There was a dry smell, musky and animaly. Not unpleasant, but not particularly reassuring, either. And not cats.
Something touched the back of her outstretched hand and she gave a yelp, pulling it back and hugging it to herself. She heard the pattering of tiny feet and a gentle sniffing noise. More than anything, she felt embarrassed that she’d actually yelped.
Was she in some animal’s burrow? Had she been snatched from the TARDIS by something and dragged to its nest? If she had, she could think of only one reason why a wild animal would do that. She suddenly remembered why the Doctor had brought her here, and her skin turned icy cold. He’d brought her here for breakfast.
Only whose breakfast…?
‘We’ve got to tell Pallister!’ said Col firmly.
‘If I—’ the Doctor said calmly, standing awkwardly near the door.
‘Of course we tell Pallister,’ replied Ty. ‘Just not yet. It’s the middle of the night!’
‘So what?’ countered Col. ‘We wait until morning and then tell him that we’ve had a stranger in here – an offworlder – all night and that we didn’t want to wake him?’ He gave a snort.
‘Perhaps I cou—’ tried the Doctor again.
‘He’ll go mad, that’s what he’ll do.’
‘And if we take him there now,’ reasoned Ty, ‘Pallister’ll just have him locked up until morning anyway. And Candy says he has a friend out there.’
‘He says,’ Col scoffed. ‘How do we know that—’
‘Well,’ the Doctor interjected, ‘you could always try ask—’
‘—he’s telling the truth? Candy says he turned up out of nowhe—’
‘Right!’ bellowed the Doctor, instantly silencing the two of them. ‘Enough, as Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand once said, is enough!’
And Col and Ty shut up instantly and turned to him, their eyes wide with astonishment.
‘If you’d have the good manners to argue with me, instead of about me, then maybe we could get this sorted,’ he said. ‘Do you lot take classes in interruption?’ He threw a glance at Candy and raised a hand, his fingers spread out. ‘One,’ he counted off a finger, ‘I was not stalking Candice.’ He paused and frowned at the girl. ‘Candy?’ he puzzled. ‘Candy?’ He shook his head sharply. ‘Two…’ Another finger was counted off. ‘Yes, I do have a spaceship out there in the swamp, just like you do; and yes, my friend is – I hope – still inside it. And three.’ He stopped and stared at his long, pale fingers. ‘Three…’ He sighed. ‘I should have made the one about Martha into number three, shouldn’t I? Two’s just pathetic.’
Col, Ty and Candy were staring at him.
He stared back at them. ‘What? What?’
‘Who the future are you, “Doctor”?’ demanded Ty. He could hear the quote marks in her voice. ‘And where the future have you come from?’
The Doctor’s shoulders sagged. Why was it always like this? With a resigned sigh, he reached into his inside pocket. Ty and Col – but not Candy, he noted – pulled back a little, as if he were reaching for a weapon.
‘There!’ he said triumphantly, brandishing the little wallet with the piece of psychic paper in it under their noses. ‘That should answer your questions.’
He watched them smugly as they scanned it.
‘You’re a door-to-door carpet cleaner salesman?’ said Col eventually.
‘What?’ snapped Ty, snatching the psychic paper from the Doctor’s hand. ‘This says he’s Madame Romana, Astrologer to the Stars.’ She looked at Col as if he’d gone mad, giving the Doctor the chance to grab the wallet back. He peered at it in dismay, shook it, peered at it again and gave a little moan.
‘This,’ he said firmly, brandishing it under their noses, ‘is supposed to be waterproof. I knew I should have had it laminated…’
Candy wondered what she’d done, bringing this madman into the heart of their community. She’d introduced him to Professor Benson and Colin McConnon, thinking that they’d take to him in the same way that she’d done. And now here he was, talking gibberish about some bit of
paper.
‘I’m going to get Pallister,’ said Col firmly, fixing the Doctor with a sharp look.
‘Well maybe that’s best,’ said the Doctor defiantly. ‘Then we can get this whole business sorted out, you can help me get my ship back from the swamp and I can be on my way. How’s that sound?’
‘Sounds fine to me,’ Col said through gritted teeth.
There was a pause. No one moved, no one said anything.
‘Go on then,’ said the Doctor, waving Col away with the tips of his fingers. ‘Run along to this Glenister, whoever he is. Tell him the Doctor will see him now.’
Col looked confused, glancing between Candy and Ty and the Doctor.
‘That’s right,’ said the Doctor pleasantly. ‘Leave me here.’ He licked his lips hungrily. ‘I haven’t eaten in, ooh, hours and I’m feeling very peckish. What are you waiting for, Col? Go on – we’ll be fine.’
‘You’re mad,’ muttered Col. ‘I’m not leaving you here with—’ He broke off as the Doctor simply strode past him as if he’d forgotten he even existed. ‘Oi!’
But the Doctor was suddenly ignoring him, examining the cages at the back of the lab. Ty’s prides and joys, thought Candy. Her babies.
‘Oooh!’ cried the Doctor, staring into the cages. ‘Otters! Otters with the faces of bears. Awwww…’ he cooed suddenly. ‘Aren’t you lovely!’
‘Doctor,’ said Ty sharply, pushing past a speechless Col. ‘I’d be careful, they have—’
‘Rather large claws!’ finished the Doctor sharply as one of the newer specimens reached through the bars and swiped at him. He pulled back just in time, fished out a pair of dark-framed, old-fashioned glasses and popped them on, ‘And what massive teeth.’
One of the otters let out a little ‘Squee!’ at the sight of him.
He turned to the rest of them. ‘All the better,’ he grinned, ‘to eat you with!’
‘They’re vegetarians, Doctor,’ said Ty drily.
The Doctor turned back to the cages, and the otters and peered closer – but Candy noticed that this time he kept his hands firmly clasped behind his back.
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