by Jenny Colgan
The Doctor gave her a wink. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friend?’
‘Once more,’ said Clara, a sweet smile spreading across her face, as she once again suppressed and forgot the tumult within.
*
‘Who would build this torture garden?’
For that, as the Doctor looked around, was clearly what it was. In the distance he could see lines and lines of barbed wire – landmines? It made no sense. They were being watched, but why the multitude of ways to kill or horribly injure yourself? He and Clara only just skirted a massive mantrap, set up outside a small cave, obviously there to trap the sleepy and unwary.
The chill wind blew right through them as they walked on without speaking, Clara gathering the cloak around herself, her face set against the weather. Finally, across the landscape, the figure they were both following and dreading to see revealed itself; first a dot on the horizon, moving slowly, looking, from this distance, once more like a man. It was only as they grew closer that the hideous skeletal form revealed itself, the pale white bone glinting in the watery moonlight of the two pale moons.
‘Ahoy!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘Where are you off to, matey?’
The skeleton wore its rictus grin, but the slumped posture and weary walk made it seem defeated. Clara, oddly, had the very strong impression that it was sad.
‘Where are you going?’ said the Doctor.
The skeleton held up his scalpel again, and Clara looked away. The shavings of bone formed on the ground.
‘Le Roi des Os,’ it spelled on the ground. Everything except the ‘O’s quickly scattered.
‘Le Roi des Os,’ said the Doctor. ‘Oh, you’re French.’
Clara stared at it too. ‘The King of Bones,’ she read.
‘You belong to the King of Bones?’ said the Doctor.
The skeleton’s sightless eyes were still pointing in the direction of the far horizon as it nodded.
‘Who is he?’ The Doctor circled him, looking closely. The rattling head followed them wherever they went, the scalpel held high. Then he saw it. ‘Cor!’ he said suddenly. ‘They did a right job on you. Come and have a look, Clara.’
‘Must I?’
‘Look!’ The Doctor pointed out near invisible, very thin pale wires that connected the bones to each other.
‘Carnutium filaments. Practically undetectable, but send signals at nearly the speed of light. You, my friend are the most astonishing thing, look at you.’
The skeleton turned its head very slowly to look at the Doctor, who was standing behind him.
‘Human bones held with electro-stimulating filaments. You are the weirdest robots ever. Why can’t you talk?’
The skeleton held up the scalpel again.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘Don’t do that. Does it hurt you?’
The skeleton did not move.
‘He doesn’t want you to talk, does he? The King of Bones? He wants you to do his bidding silently. Is that it?’
‘Is there a person in there?’ said Clara in horror.
‘Y-o-u-a-r-e-n-o-t-a-f-r-a-i-d-o-f-u-s,’ spelled the skeleton slowly on the ground.
The Doctor looked at him aghast. ‘How could I be?’ he said, his voice breaking with pity.
The skeleton stood still for a moment.
‘C-O-M-E,’ he spelled on the ground, and he trudged on.
*
They followed a strange path, sometimes veering wildly to the right, sometimes doubling back. The Doctor inferred, correctly, that the skeleton was avoiding deadly traps in the dark of the night, and was grateful, but worried about where they were being led. If the King of Bones did not want them dead, what did he want with them?
All the way he talked non-stop to the skeleton, telling him silly French jokes and singing songs and trying to get a reaction from him that wasn’t a scalpel.
‘Does he,’ he said finally, ‘does he make you do things you don’t want to do, the Roi des Os? Does he make you? Ooh, Boney! Like that other French bloke, Napoleon. Now, as you know, I like everyone…’
The figure suddenly stopped, and the great empty pits of eyeholes trained themselves on the Doctor. There was an uncharacteristically long pause.
‘Um, OK, carry on,’ said the Doctor finally, clearing his throat.
Just as he did so, a crackle of light raced up the filaments that bound the skeleton together and it jerked backwards as if shocked. Then it turned to face forwards again, and the party continued.
*
Although later Clara realised it was only a few hours, that cold and exhausting journey, across the ruined world, dotted here and there with blast craters and the occasional howl, seemed to her to take forever.
Finally, over the crest of a crumbled hill, they saw it, eerily gleaming by the light of the pallid moons. The only building on, it seemed, the entire world. It was built of white marble, Clara thought at first, and was beautiful in the manner of the Taj Mahal but, as she grew closer, swallowing madly, she realised that it was in fact constructed of bones: thousands, hundreds of thousands of bones, like planking on the huge structure. It had rows of windows, the knobbly extrusions of femurs all lined up neatly; smaller crossed bones making decorative patterns around the arched doorframes.
Clara felt the breath catch in her throat. The awful beauty of the palace was undeniable, built though it was on a slaughterhouse. Silent skeletons stood in rows as sentries; there were hundreds of them. She gasped and nudged the Doctor. Over to the side, standing like the others, its head ridiculously large in comparison to its body, standing with the rest, was the unmistakeable skeleton of a child.
The Doctor blinked twice, rapidly, and marched up to the front door. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the skeleton who had led them there so silently. ‘Courage, mon brave.’
And he looked at the doorknocker, comprised of finger bones, and left it behind, rapping instead with his knuckles, but there was no reply.
He pushed at the door and it opened, slowly. Inside, it was dark, musty smelling, oppressively warm. There was not a sound to be heard.
Clara could hear the blood pounding in her head, the rhythm of her own heart.
The Doctor turned to her with a sudden wink. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said, quietly. ‘But I haven’t met many goodies who live in houses like this.’
*
The first room they entered was covered in weaponry: scores of swords, guns, lasers and axes hanging on the bone walls. Next they passed a stairwell, leading downwards into the dark. Clara thought she could see a faint light coming from the basement, but the Doctor stalked on.
‘Watch out for booby traps,’ he said, which wasn’t helpful as the house was dusty and gloomy, and Clara fully expected the floor to give way with every step.
Moving further in – still they had seen no one, heard nothing – the walls were hung with red woven tapestries that deadened the sound of their footsteps. Dust lay thickly everywhere, under an oppressive layer of heat, and the air was heavy with the scent of decay.
Suddenly Clara stopped. ‘Listen,’ she said.
They did. It sounded like… it was… music. Definitely music. Strange and complex, and played on instruments that Clara didn’t recognise, but it was music. They headed for one of the many doors in that direction, getting closer to it. One of the arched doors was swinging slightly open. That was the room where the music was playing loudly. It was rather beautiful.
The Doctor cleared his throat and knocked loudly on the side of the archway. ‘Hullo?’
Again, there was no response, and they made their way slowly forwards.
*
It was so dark in the room it took a couple of seconds for Clara’s eyes to focus; she could barely make out what she was looking at. It couldn’t possibly, she thought at first, be a living person, a real one. But, as her eyes adjusted, she realised it was: in fact, it was a young man, but he was also incredibly, grotesquely fat, so fat he could barely move.
His skin was pitted with hu
ge red spots, angry and infected-looking. He wore glasses, which were stretched out either side of his head, and his unwieldy mass was perched on some kind of a cushion arrangement that moulded to his distorted limbs.
The man was wearing a huge, dirty shirt with a row of what looked like pens in the top pocket. Everywhere around him were plates of dirty and discarded food piled up; a large hookah, empty bottles, crumpled up paper, screens. It looked, Clara thought with some astonishment, like the world’s messiest teenage bedroom, with the world’s largest teenager. It smelled like it too. Rows of screens displaying different areas they had already been through lit up and flashed, and the man’s fingers played rapidly over the tops of them, as if it were a fast action video game. There was also a large white-glowing console in his other hand.
Everyone held their breath for a beat.
‘Oh yeah, hi,’ came a breathy, nasal voice finally, faux casually. ‘So, well done for getting this far, yeah? Most people don’t.’ He pulled a ‘what can you do?’ face, before picking something up off one of the dirty plates, sniffing it, then eating it and wiping his hands on the large undergarment he was wearing.
‘You’re the King of Bones?’ said the Doctor.
The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Wow, very good, you got them to talk to you.’ His face turned stern. ‘I told them not to do that. I stopped them talking, stopped them signing, stopped them writing in sand, and now this. Waste of good bone. Stupid robots.’
His eyes blinked behind the thick-lensed glasses. Clara had the very clear impression he didn’t need them; that they were not his, but a trophy.
‘Who are you? You guys seem a bit cool about the whole thing,’ he said, sounding disappointed. ‘Normally everyone is gibbering by the time they get here. Vomit, wet pants, the lot.’
Clara swallowed crossly. ‘He’s the Doctor and I’m Clara. We don’t scare easily,’ she said, in her strongest voice.
He just stared at them. ‘He doesn’t,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Clara.
‘I don’t like your house,’ said the Doctor.
‘I don’t like your jacket,’ said the man. ‘But I’m far too polite to mention it.’
‘Did you build this place?’
‘I did,’ said the man. ‘With blood, sweat, tears. And some bones.’ He barked an awkward laugh at his own joke.
The Doctor squinted at him. ‘But why? What reason?’
The man shrugged huge beefy shoulders and said the last thing the Doctor had expected to hear. ‘It’s my job, mate.’
Clara leaned forward. Sure enough, he had a faded, encrusted nametag clipped onto his shirt pocket. It looked completely incongruous in the hideous room.
‘Etienne Boyce,’ she read aloud.
The man smiled. His teeth were blackened and ghastly, his gums so pink they looked blood red. Clara could smell the decay from clear across the room.
‘What kind of job is this?’ said the Doctor, struggling to hold on to his temper.
The man blinked very rapidly. ‘Security,’ he said. ‘I’m in computer security.’ He indicated the bank of monitors surrounding him. ‘Well, I was. Bit more of a freelance these days.’
Clara gasped ‘This is a computer simulation?’
The man laughed. ‘No! Please. I’m not some ruddy amateur.’ He put his hands over his belly in satisfaction. ‘Everything here is real. With a few modifications.’
‘You’ve gone rogue?’ said the Doctor.
‘Best analyst in my division,’ said Etienne proudly. ‘Was just too good. Don’t know how they thought they’d keep tabs on me.’
‘Are you a hacker?’ asked Clara timidly.
‘The best. Hacked the Nestene Consciousness when I was 14. Resting Consciousness more like. Nestene Semi-consciousness, I call it.’
Again came the peculiar barking laugh of someone who didn’t spend a lot of time conversing with other human beings. The man took another large bite of something he had found on a plate beside him and belched loudly.
The Doctor look around, nodding. ‘So you’re keeping this place secure?’ he said. ‘You were sent to hide this planet. And you did – even from the people who sent you?’
The man sighed. ‘Well, yes. I am brilliant. But I still get the odd adventurer turning up. The odd person who won’t take a telling. Plenty of crashes of course – that’s a hazard of not turning up on navigational equipment. Still got to stop you all. That’s my job. Was my job.’
‘So, just to get this straight in my head,’ said the Doctor, ‘you’re not here to protect us from the dangers of this planet.’
Etienne laughed again. It was a horrible barking sound. ‘No, mate.’
‘You made it this way.’
The man wiped his greasy fingers on a filthy napkin.
‘It is unspeakable,’ said the Doctor, ‘what you have done to the people who landed here.’
‘Come on, are you joking? Carnutium filament? It’s brilliant! And it’s not like I kill them. They die, and I just use the leftovers.’
‘But there’s a million things here that can kill you!’ burst in Clara.
‘Yes, because I have to protect the planet,’ said Etienne, as if explaining things to a slow child.
‘But those are people!’ Clara was still horrified.
‘Were,’ said Etienne. He checked his console. ‘Oooh, acid rainstorm coming up. You don’t wanna be out in that. You know, I’ve got the Carnutium machine downstairs. Would be jumping the gun a bit, but it’s totally painless, probably.’ He looked at Clara. ‘Or you can stay a bit, if you like.’
‘But why?’ said the Doctor, almost to himself. ‘Who wanted a whole planet hidden? Who wanted something off the map so badly they would send a nutcase like you to do it? Why not just blow it up?’
Clara leant forward. The old photograph on the ID card was of a much slimmer, very young man – a teenager, really, all Adam’s apple and awkwardness, the bare whisper of a moustache on his top lip, in a neat white shirt, looking for all the world completely and utterly normal.
Etienne shrugged. ‘Job’s a job, innit. Then they started complaining about my methods, so…’ He blew on his fingers and opened them up.
‘You disappeared for good,’ said the Doctor.
‘And I want to stay that way,’ said Etienne. ‘Guards, take them downstairs!’ he screamed suddenly, in a startling contrast to his laidback speaking voice, and immediately four skeletons came to the door.
Once again, Clara flinched as the ghostly shapes emerged, their feet clacking on the floor. Then she saw the little one was with them, the child.
Overcome, Clara forgot everything: her fear, her exhaustion, her surroundings; forgot absolutely everything, except the many children over the years and centuries who had been in her care; some she remembered, some who were nothing more than dreams: the new and certain knowledge that these too had been people once, even if they were only robot-operated bones now; even if, whatever the Doctor thought, nothing of them remained except the hideous mechanisation of this man who animated the dead.
On pure instinct alone, she knelt down and opened her arms.
There was a moment’s pause in the hideous, stinking, oppressive cavernous room built of the bones of the dead and the lost, the fat discontented king on his dead throne in his charnel house, ruling an empty wasteland.
Unsure it wasn’t the last thing she’d ever do, she held her arms wide, shaking once more. And with a rattling and a clicking, its oversized pale white skull, the bones as smooth and cool as a snake’s, breaking free of its programming, the skeleton child ran into her arms.
Clara knelt there waiting for a blow to fall, her eyes closed once again, but it did not. She glanced up. The Doctor and Etienne were both staring at her.
‘That’s new,’ said Etienne, still chewing. ‘Huh. Hey, insensate matter!’ He held up the white shining console, menacingly. ‘Seize her! Down below!’
There was a long pause. Then another skeleton, shorter than the other two, step
ped towards Clara, foot bones rattling on the floor. Here it comes, thought Clara.
Instead, the skeleton moved towards her – then knelt down next to her, and took the smaller skeleton in its arms, cradling it like a baby.
‘Aha!’ shouted the Doctor in delight. ‘Clara, you’re amazing! Look at that. There is something left behind! Which makes you a monster,’ he said, turning to Etienne.
‘They can’t feel a thing,’ groused Etienne. ‘Sometimes I have to readjust the mechanism, you know, bit of a shock just to keep ’em in position, that kind of a thing. But they’re just… it’s just bones I find lying about. Did the same thing with the trees, and they didn’t mind.’
The Doctor looked at him, shaking his head, and turned to address the skeletons. ‘You don’t have to move for him, you know.’
‘Oh yes they do,’ said Etienne, sweat popping out on his vast forehead. He pressed down a white button in the middle of the console, and instantly the crackle of white light pervaded the skeletons, causing them to stiffen and throw their heads back in what was clearly pain.
‘No!’ said the Doctor, whipping out his screwdriver and pressing another button, making both devices squeal with feedback. ‘No, you don’t.’
The remote exploded in Etienne’s hand and he dropped it rapidly, swearing. He then looked up, his eyes full of fear, as he gazed at the wall of white in front of him.
The Doctor advanced. ‘Tell me,’ he said sternly. ‘Tell me what it is you’re protecting that’s so special.’
Etienne gave them a twisted smile. ‘Make me.’
‘You’re a child,’ said the Doctor, dismayed. ‘How old are you, anyway?’
The ruin of a man looked down. ‘Dunno,’ he said quietly, inching towards the remote control. ‘But I am so good at my job.’
The Doctor scowled, grabbed the remote from the floor and stuck it in his top pocket. ‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Skeletons, can you watch him?’
One held up his finger.
‘No, don’t do that! Just nod!’
The largest of them nodded.
‘Come on,’ said the Doctor to Clara. ‘Let’s figure this out.’
Etienne cringed back a bit then sneered, grabbed one of his screen consoles and started typing feverishly on it.