Dr. Who - BBC New Series 28

by Beautiful Chaos # Gary Russell

  ‘I know,’ Dara Morgan said quickly. ‘You’re never wrong. I’m trying to ascertain what the problem is.’

  ‘Human error,’ Madam Delphi reported. ‘What else is it going to be? I mean, let’s be honest with each other, you lot are always the weakest links in the chain.’

  ‘We need New York,’ Caitlin said.

  ‘Well, we haven’t got New York any longer,’ said the computer.

  ‘Can you override the pulse?’

  ‘No,’ snapped Madam Delphi. ‘Too late anyway.

  Honestly, my sweets, you’re wasting your time. I’ll see if I can shift resources to a back-up server and start again.’

  Dara Morgan lost his cool for the first time in ages.

  ‘Don’t you get it? We don’t have time to start again. We have to have New York’s M-TEKs online at 10am Manhattan time on Monday.’

  ‘It’s the city that never sleeps, if I remember my song lyrics,’ the computer said.

  ‘Yeah, maybe it never sleeps. But it pretty much stops work at 5pm on a Friday and doesn’t go to work at weekends.’

  ‘Oh, my darling boy, have some faith. I’ve been at this kind of thing across the universe for a few million years now. We’ll just have to do a merger this afternoon. A hostile takeover by MorganTech on a small company in…

  ooh let me guess… oh yes, look, here’s one.’

  On Madam Delphi’s big screen a shot of a smallish (for New York) office building, all chrome and glass with people milling about popped up.

  ‘I’m accessing their systems… now. Ooh yes, lots of people. They do hardware service and repairs, a firm co-owned by the Mafiosa, a Chinese Triad and initially set up by IRA laundering. None of whom know about each other obviously. Easy to take over because none of them are going to stand up and scream about it.’

  The image changed to one a little further away.

  ‘Lexington and 3rd, nice spot,’ the computer continued. ‘I knew a cybercafé there once. It never called back.’

  Row after row of figures shot across the screens, too fast for Dara Morgan to even count and then the sine waves returned, pulsing again as Madam Delphi purred at them both.

  ‘Kittel Software Inc, now a subsidiary of MorganTech.

  I hope you don’t mind, I had to agree to allow one Harvey Gellar to remain CEO, with a set of shares and a vote on the board.’

  Cait frowned. ‘Won’t that be a problem?’

  ‘In one hour, eighteen minutes, Mr Gellar will get into the lift… sorry, elevator… and ride it to the ground floor.

  In one hour, twenty-one minutes, the lift will get stuck between the nineteenth and eighteenth floors. He will press the alarm button. It’ll be the last thing he does.

  They’ll find the body within, oh, a couple of hours and assume it was a heart attack. I’ve already rewritten his terms to ensure that on his death his Irish third cousin, Dara Morgan of MorganTech, inherits everything.’

  ‘I’m not his third cousin…’

  ‘You are now according to FBI files.’ Madam Delphi’s screens darkened slightly, the sine wave taking on a red hue as it pulsed. ‘Your constant underestimation of what I can do, Dara Morgan, is beginning to bore me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Good. Now then, this new branch of MorganTech will now appear to have been planning to handle Monday’s launch of the M-TEK all along. They have the specs, details, customer base, everything. All we need to do is get a couple of flunkies in over the weekend to strip out the wiring and put our fibre optics in. And… there, subcontractors booked and assigned. Easy.’

  Caitlin looked at Dara Morgan. ‘Yes, Madam Delphi.

  Easy.’

  ‘Cheers m’dears. Now if it’s OK with you kids, I’m just going to download this week’s Coronation Street omnibus. Whatever will that sweet little David Platt get up to next?’

  Sylvia was putting the shopping away in the kitchen.

  Neatly, everything in its place. Just as always. She was, however, letting the odd drawer or cupboard door slam shut a little noisily.

  ‘What have I done now?’ Donna whispered to her granddad from the armchair that faced the TV in the sitting room. Where her dad used to sit and laugh at The X-Factor. And repeats of Dad’s Army. And that programme where… where…

  Well, all his programmes, anyway.

  And suddenly, she wanted to move to the settee next to

  her granddad but he moved along it instead, so he was sat close to her armchair.

  ‘Dunno what you mean, darlin’,’ he said, not catching her eye.

  ‘Right, cos mum’s using IKEA’s finest to beat out the drum solo from something Ozzy Osbourne wrote because she’s suddenly got an interest in heavy rock, yeah?’

  ‘Oh, she’s just…being your mother. You know…’

  ‘No, Granddad. No, I don’t know.’ Donna sighed and looked at a local newspaper on the occasional table. Its lead story was about Q-Mart and Betterworth’s opening rival supermarkets in Park Vale.

  Thrillsville.

  ‘I’m here. Chiswick. London W3. Earth. Yesterday I was on another planet, stopping robots fighting a civil war. A week before that, we were in the Garazone Bazaar riding six-legged horses!’ She suddenly grabbed Wilf’s hand. ‘They had six legs! Six. I mean, how fast were we galloping? It was brilliant. I loved it. And Martian Boy was screaming at the top of his lungs “Where’s the off switch?” cos he thought they could be stopped just like that.’

  ‘He’s not a Martian though, is he? I thought he said—’

  ‘No, Granddad, he’s not a Martian. It’s a joke.

  Remember jokes? You know, that moment when you open your mouth and go ha-ha-ha? We used to do it, even in this house once or twice.’

  Donna stared at her granddad’s lined face. When did he suddenly get so old? Was that the strain of Dad’s passing, too? What happened to that man who used to take her for

  a spin in his old Aston? Who used to show her off to his old paratrooper mates down at the Social? When did he get replaced by the white-haired old man sitting in front of her?

  When did the idea of coming home fill her with such dread? Was this the downside of being with the Doctor?

  That normality was now alien?

  ‘I got something to tell you, sweetheart,’ her granddad said. ‘I reckon it’ll cheer you up. I hope it does.’

  Good news at last. Donna smiled. ‘Well, go on then.

  Spill.’

  Her granddad opened his mouth to speak, but Sylvia chose that moment to come into the sitting room and flop onto the settee next to him.

  ‘So, where’ve you been, Donna Noble?’

  Donna opened her mouth to answer, but her granddad got there first. ‘She’s been horseriding, Sylv. In Dubai.’

  ‘Dubai? How the hell did you afford Dubai?’ Sylvia sighed. ‘Oh silly me, the Doctor took you, yes?’

  Donna nodded. ‘Yeah. He paid for it and everything. I nearly married a rich oil sheikh and lived in his harem, but you know what? I thought it was more important to be here today. With you two.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice, I’m sure,’ Sylvia said. ‘Perhaps, if hanging out with the rich and famous of OPEC hasn’t been too demanding, you could make us all a cuppa?’

  ‘Course.’ Donna stood up but wasn’t fast enough to stop Sylvia getting another jibe in. ‘Can you remember where the teabags are? And the kettle?’

  And that was it. Time to have this out.

  ‘What have I done, Mum? I mean, really, where did it go wrong? All you ever told me was to go out, do things, get a job, live my life. And I do that. And it’s still not good enough, is it?’ She sat down again. ‘I’m still not good enough, am I? Was Dad as disappointed in me as you are?’

  ‘Don’t you dare speak about your father like that,’

  Sylvia yelled, far louder than seemed necessary.

  ‘Now, now—’ Wilf started, but Sylvia shushed him sharply.

  ‘No, no, it’s time Lady Muck over there had a f
ew home truths.’ Sylvia leaned forward, jabbing at the air with her finger. ‘Your grandfather and I are worried sick, you know that? You up and leave with barely a word, you turn up once in a blue moon when it suits you and you’re off again. I don’t know whether you’re alive or dead. I don’t know if each time the phone rings it’s you telling me you’re in Timbuktu, or there’s a ring on the doorbell and it’ll be the police saying they’ve found you washed up in the Thames. A letter arrives for you and I put it on the mantelpiece, hoping that somehow that means you’ll come home sooner. But after a couple of weeks, I just chuck it on your bed because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t bring you home. Ever since you met that Doctor bloke, you’ve become a different person.’

  Donna stared at her mum in mute shock. Where had all this come from. ‘Why the hell would you assume I’m dead? That’s mad.’

  ‘It’s not mad, it’s not unreasonable. It’s what I think.

  Every day I don’t hear from you, I think it more. Maybe if

  you were a mother, maybe if you’d got kids, stupid, selfish, unthinking kids, you’d understand.’

  Sylvia was shaking now.

  Donna was horrified. She’d somehow, without meaning to, without quite knowing why, she’d made her mum cry!

  For all the wrong reasons! Like there were right ones…

  You’re not supposed to make your mum cry…

  ‘I’m not gonna die, Mum! No policeman’s gonna ring the doorbell and say I’m dead.’

  ‘Why not?’ Sylvia was almost screaming now, not in an angry way, but tears were rolling down her cheeks – no, they were actually throwing themselves down her face, like wet lemmings. ‘Why not? It’s what happened when your dad died!’

  The sudden silence was gut-wrenchingly terrible.

  Then Donna was across the room, hugging her sobbing mother, holding her, squeezing her, mumbling apologies and soothing words, telling her that it was all right, that she was there.

  But one thought ran through her mind. Tomorrow, she’d be gone again. With the Doctor. Because that’s what she wanted.

  But did she have the right to? Had she really earned the right to go off again if this was what her mum thought?

  All those times she and Sylvia had fought, argued, yelled. As a teenager (and frankly, most of her spoilt twenties), Donna had just put it down to ‘that’s my mum’.

  But Donna wasn’t that person now, and she could see that her widowed mum, one year on, needed her daughter more than ever before.

  And Donna was crying too now.

  Crying for her mum’s pain, her dad’s loss, remembering that knock on the door. The policeman standing there.

  ‘He was supposed to die here, in my arms, with his family,’ Sylvia was saying. ‘Not in a bloody filling station.

  Alone.’

  At which point, with timing for which both the words ‘impeccable’ and ‘inconvenient’ were invented, the doorbell rang.

  Wordlessly, Wilf went to answer it, and Donna heard him say ‘Ah, not a good time.’ Donna knew, without hearing the response, exactly who was on the doorstep.

  And so did Sylvia.

  She looked with red, teary eyes at her daughter.

  And, for the first time that Donna could remember, Sylvia Noble stroked Donna’s face, a soft caress of pure maternal love. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Then she called, ‘Come in, Doctor.’

  A moment later, the Doctor’s face popped round the sitting room door, brainy specs in place, hair madder than normal.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said to all of them. ‘Do you know the Carnes family by any chance? I think they’ve got aliens in the family.’

  The tourist trade in Moscatelli was mainly based around olive groves, orangeries, a nice vineyard and the annual motorcycle race that started thirteen miles away in Florence and ended up the other side of the mountains in

  this small but oft-visited little town.

  The people who lived in Moscatelli were mostly Italians who had been there for thirty or so generations.

  Everyone knew everyone and it was friendly, welcoming and cheerful.

  It was also, in the middle of May, the recipient of stunningly good weather, and Jayne Greene thought it brought out the best in the locals. Not least of which was that Tonio was spending most of the day during the dig wearing nothing but a pair of tight denim cut-offs that left very little to the imagination (and Jayne could imagine quite a lot). The Professor had employed Tonio and his family to help them set up the dig a week or so back.

  Jayne and her two fellow students, Sean and Ben, had agreed to accompany the Professor there for the summer because it would give them really good marks in the end-of-course assessments, it’d be an adventure to travel to a nice part of Italy and it was a great way to get a tan.

  ‘Got it!’ Sean yelled excitedly.

  ‘How much?’ asked Ben, sifting soil a couple of feet away from where the laptop was set up by the food tent.

  ‘Seventy-eight euro.’

  ‘Sixty-something quid. Not bad.’ Ben nodded. ‘Well done.’

  ‘I bloody love eBay,’ Sean smiled at Jayne. ‘Yaay me!’

  ‘Was it the Egyptian pot?’

  Sean looked at her and shook his head, slowly.

  ‘Not the Iron Age spade?’

  More head shaking.

  Jayne dropped her own tools and wandered over to the

  laptop and looked at what Sean had just committed sixty pounds to.

  ‘That?’

  ‘That.’

  ‘It’s a toy.’

  ‘Course it’s a toy,’ Ben yelled as Tonio poured some more earth into his sieve. ‘What else does Sean ever buy off eBay?’

  Jayne couldn’t understand it. ‘You mean, you spent all that money, and seven days’ frustrated watching the auction, for a mass-produced toy?’

  ‘Action figure,’ Sean corrected her. ‘Limited edition.

  Only five hundred produced, and that was eight years ago.

  It’s a variant paint job, y’see, she’s wearing her red Dark Period costume instead of the traditional green one.’

  Jayne just looked at Sean. ‘You are an adult. You are a grown man getting excited about a plastic toy. A figure for kids. A…’

  ‘Don’t say “dolly”,’ Ben muttered to himself.

  ‘… a dolly?’

  Sean slammed the laptop shut. ‘My money, my choice.

  You get excited about Roman pins and earthenware.’

  ‘So do you!’

  ‘Yeah, cos that’s a job. That’s what I do here and at uni.

  But in my spare time, I have other hobbies. I have…’

  ‘Don’t say “a life”,’ Ben muttered to himself again.

  ‘… a life,’ Sean finished. ‘You should try getting one before you criticise everyone else.’

  Jayne stared at Sean, then across at Ben, who made sure he caught no one’s eye and started to run his finger

  pointlessly through the dirt, in an effort to pretend he had something to distract him.

  The tension was broken by little Professor Rossi, stumbling back around the tents after a trip to the town for some milk and teabags.

  ‘Now, now, I could hear you up on the main road.

  What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sean grunted. ‘Sorry Prof.’

  Rossi shook his head, scratching the scar that created a small slash across his cheek. At uni, everyone joked it was a duelling scar he’d got fighting for a woman he loved, but one day someone discovered the truth – that ten years earlier he’d been cut in the car accident that had killed his wife. Everyone lost interest in imagining romantic things about the scar after that.

  ‘What am I going to do with you three? I bring you out here from university for the mid-term break, to visit the family home, and to give you all the chance to improve your frankly dodgy archaeology marks. And all you do is play with the broadband, flirt with poor Tonio there and embarrass him, or drink too much orange wine. You are here to work,
you know. Being sociable is a pleasant side effect but not essential. What is essential, however, is teamwork. Sean and Jayne, I don’t care if you can’t get on, but you will work together. Jayne and Ben, I don’t care if you want to fight over Tonio’s attention, you will work together. Sean and Ben I don’t care if you can drink one another under the table at night, provided you turn up fresh and able the next day. Is all that understood? I am not your parents but I am the man who will mark your

  end-of-term papers, and you would do well to remember that keeping me sweet is a positive move.’ Rossi put some cartons of milk on the table next to the laptop. ‘So, whose turn is it to make tea?’

  Sean volunteered as Rossi scooped up the laptop.

  ‘Hopefully the Bursar has forwarded some more funds to us so we can try and trace those tunnels through the hills across to the lake.’

  ‘How far do your family go back here, Professor?’

  Jayne asked.

  Rossi shrugged. ‘I’m in the process of finding that out at the library. Certainly my paternal great-grandparents were the ones who moved to Ipswich, but I suspect their roots are here right back to the fifteenth century.’

  Ben headed over with his sieve. ‘So we are looking for more than fifteenth-century Italian pots and pans then? I said so! Come on, Professor, what’s the big secret?’

  ‘Ah,’ Rossi grinned. ‘Well, you see, somewhere in this area an entire Dukedom vanished. A whole town with a castle and everything was based around here, or in the hills or somewhere in the vicinity of that lake beyond the orange groves. I’m trying to find its borders.’

  ‘How do we know?’ Sean asked as the kettle boiled.

  ‘It’s in the records in the library,’ Tonio said in good but heavily accented English.

  Jayne and Ben stared at Tonio in mute shock – and slight horror.

  He grinned. ‘Oh right, you both thought I didn’t understand English,’ he laughed, a deep bellowing laugh.

  So did Professor Rossi. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is funny.

  Did neither of you realise?’

  Dumbly, they both shook their heads as Sean busied himself with the tea, determined not to catch their eyes.

  ‘But that means…’ Jayne started.