With a whine of actuators, the Mark VI lumbered forward on its tracks, sending up a fine film of dust. The whole room shook as it rolled to the foot of the throne, then extended a massive arm. Each mechanical limb contained enough firepower to vaporise a battleship, but at that moment its metal hand contained something quite different: a small blue flower. The Mark VI offered it up.
‘Have. A. Nice. Day.’
‘See, Bernard here has a new set of orders,’ the Doctor explained. ‘Should you attempt to wage one more ridiculous war, you’ll discover he doesn’t like that – and neither do his five thousand friends.’
The Space Lord’s unease was rapidly turning into panic. ‘Five thou–’ But, before he could finish, the throne-room doors flew off their hinges and crashed to the floor.
Dozens of Mark VI combat mechanicals poured through the gap.
The space marines were not only the bravest but the smartest troops in the Space Lord’s navy. That’s why, upon seeing the advancing robot horde, they instantly dropped their blasters in surrender.
Outside the throne room’s enormous curved window, hundreds more Mark VIs hovered into view, using their antigrav engines to keep an electronic eye on the proceedings inside.
‘Oh, yeah,’ the Doctor said. ‘When I said “update”, what I meant was “virus”. I replicated the new instructions across every Mark VI in your armoury. And I wouldn’t try reprogramming them once I’ve gone.’ She wagged a warning finger. ‘Seriously, that would get messy. Fast.’
She swung round and pointed her not-dagger at the containment tubes. There was a hum, the crystal at the end glowed orange, and a moment later the glass prisons shattered. As their cages fell away, the occupants stumbled out of the wreckage and collapsed to the floor, gasping.
‘Take them to the TARDIS,’ instructed the Doctor. ‘And put the kettle on.’
Yaz, Ryan and Graham helped the former prisoners to their feet, hooves or tentacles, and guided them towards the blue box behind the throne.
The Doctor produced a small key from a string round her neck, then strode across to the blue box and inserted the key into the lock below the door handle. The Space Lord and his technicians could only gawp as she swung the door open. In seconds, the group had passed inside, and only the Doctor remained, standing in the doorway of her vessel.
‘I know that right now this feels like a change for the worse,’ she said. ‘But give it three generations – four, max – and you’ll thank me.’
She stepped inside, and slammed the door shut behind her.
Over the years, the Space Lord had seen the knowledge of defeat in the eyes of a hundred opponents. Now, as his head drooped and he glanced at the polished floor, he saw it in his own reflection.
A strange sound filled the throne room. It was coming from the blue box. At first it reminded him of the howl of the Devil Bird, a creature he had hunted in the forests of his home world when he was a youth. Most of all, however, it sounded like the mocking laughter of the universe. The light on top of the blue box flashed, the vessel faded in and out of existence, and then it vanished forever.
There are three universal constants: Planck’s quantum of action, toast always falling butter-side down, and the reaction of anyone entering the TARDIS for the first time. Whether they were a twelve-eyed giant spider from Metebelis III or a short-sighted earthling, their response was always the same: their eyes (two or more) would boggle, they would let out a gasp, and they’d say something like, ‘Kalacha nee-too webweb!’ (Metebelin for, ‘Gosh, it’s bigger on the inside!’)
So, once the Space Lord’s former prisoners had got over their predictable amazement, Yaz led them into the depths of the TARDIS to be treated for the after-effects of their confinement. Her police instinct had kicked in automatically – it was surprising how much of the training she’d received from the Hallamshire force could be applied to dealing with alien races.
Once they all had food in their bellies – or, in the case of one, her external digestive sac – Yaz took them to the temporary accommodation where they would spend the duration of the journey back to their home worlds. The TARDIS, a considerate host, had prepared each of their rooms to suit their needs: the aquatic Dalse slipped gratefully into its acid plunge-pool, the feather-light Chentan performed a series of delighted somersaults in her zero-G suite; the Zraryx couple burrowed into their cosy lava-nest; and the three-headed Hydran sank, exhausted, into a bed covered with pillows.
In each of their reactions, Yaz saw the same exhilaration she’d felt on first coming aboard the TARDIS. She’d soon realised it wasn’t just the timeship that was bigger on the inside; as soon as she stepped through its doors, she felt bigger and bolder too.
* * *
—
Meanwhile, the Doctor, Graham and Ryan gathered in the console room. Just like the Time Lords who built them, every TARDIS had two hearts: the engine room with its near-magical power source, the Eye of Harmony, and the circular console room.
Around the edges stood six pillars, each as thick as an ancient tree trunk, which seemed to grow out of the floor. The walls were a pattern of nested hexagons, lucid blue. Set into one wall was the TARDIS’s main door, its design echoing the police-box exterior. Incongruous against the fantastical interior, the entrance looked like an extension forced on the architects by a plodding local-council planning department. From the police-box entrance, a hexagon-starred walkway stretched inside, pointing to the console itself. With pipes slinking around its base, the circular console was like something from the brass section of an alien orchestra. The top part was divided into several distinct sections, each boasting switches and controls for governing the TARDIS’s systems. In the very centre, raised above everything else, stood what appeared to be a sand-timer. And from everywhere came the same glowing light.
No chairs. That was the first thing Graham had noticed when he had walked through the doors of the police box all those months ago. Well, obviously not the first thing, but the lack of furniture had become sorely apparent when he went to rest his weary bones and found he couldn’t.
‘But you’ve changed their whole way of life,’ he said now, leaning against one side of the console.
He was relieved to have made it out alive from the Space Lord’s freaky throne room with its shark-fin decor, and the Doctor’s plan had been a total success. Thanks to her, 5,000 invincible robots were policing the bad guys, and would prevent them from starting any more wars until they eventually forgot that they were ever warmongers in the first place. Nonetheless, Graham felt vaguely uneasy about the outcome.
‘I thought you weren’t supposed to meddle in other civilisations,’ he went on. ‘Isn’t it a rule? Wassit called – the Prime Directive?’
‘You’re thinking of Star Trek,’ said Ryan.
‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor, inputting co-ordinates to the navigation system. ‘Meddling’s kind of my thing.’
* * *
—
Yaz left the recovering prisoners to sleep. For the first time in years, they had a chance of happy dreams, and soon they would be reunited with families they never imagined they’d see again.
She found the Doctor in the console room, with Ryan and Graham, carrying out running repairs to the TARDIS. The timeship sure seemed to require a lot of maintenance.
The Doctor’s hand shot out from beneath a recently removed panel. ‘Particle file, please.’
Ryan rooted about in a toolbox, then passed her a flat bar of rectangular metal with a wooden handle. The surface of the metal shimmered, and when Yaz looked closer it appeared to be full of stars. She could see Ryan gawp at the strange device as he handed it over to the Doctor. Although Yaz had gone to school with Ryan, she barely knew him. And, until the business with the Tzim-Sha, she’d never met Graham, his granddad. There was nothing like a bit of life-and-death struggle against an otherworldly menace to bring strangers together, though, was there?
‘Our guests are resting,’ Yaz said.
‘Shouldn’t take long to drop them off,’ the Doctor replied, still fiddling under the bonnet. ‘Even in a TARDIS as out-of-date as this one.’
Yaz frowned. ‘How can a time machine be out of date?’
‘Time and space machine,’ the Doctor corrected her. ‘This is an old Type Forty, and the chameleon circuit hasn’t worked for a long time. The TARDIS is supposed to blend in with its surroundings, but the exterior resembles a London police box circa 1963 because it got stuck in the sixties.’
‘Like Graham,’ Ryan said with a grin.
‘Hey,’ Graham objected. ‘How old do you think I am?’
As Graham and Ryan teased each other, Yaz quietly studied the Doctor. How old indeed? A Time Lord’s lifespan, Yaz had learned, dwarfed that of a human being, but the Doctor hadn’t always lived in the same body. When her body grew too old or became irreparably damaged, she had the ability to create a new one through a process called regeneration. The Doctor was apparently on her thirteenth body.
As incredible as that was, there was something else too. The Doctor’s twelve previous bodies had all been male. Yaz’s mind boggled every time she tried to picture the Doctor as a man – which she had been for over two thousand years. Knowing her now that just seemed silly. Although, it did explain one thing.
‘That’s why you call yourself a Time Lord, not a Time Lady,’ Yaz muttered.
The Doctor had sharp ears. ‘No, it’s because “Time Lady” sounds like a watch you’d buy on the shopping channel.’ Her hand shot out again. She waggled her fingers and said, ‘Electron spanner.’
* * *
—
Not long after they’d returned the last of the former prisoners to their home world, Graham requested a visit to earth. He claimed he had to go back to water his houseplants, but Yaz suspected it was about more than a neglected yucca. Despite having been the keenest of all three to leave earth behind, he sometimes got very homesick.
So, a few weeks after they’d first left the planet, they arrived in Graham’s front room. The geography was spot on, the chronology less so. Yaz had noted that the Doctor’s piloting of the TARDIS was variable. Often they’d arrive in the right place, but at the wrong time – or vice versa.
While Ryan settled himself in the front room to catch up on some TV shows he’d missed, Yaz and the Doctor helped Graham sort through a deep pile of mail. Then Graham turned down the heating, watered the plants and popped next door to ask his neighbour to keep an eye on the place, spinning her a line about visiting relatives in Australia for a few months. The short visit seemed to be enough to satisfy him, and after a couple of hours he was ready to leave again.
‘What’s that?’ Yaz asked when he returned to the TARDIS, pointing to the houseplant cradled in his arms.
‘A begonia,’ said Graham.
A piece of earth, thought Yaz. In every sense.
The Doctor was waiting for them in the console room. They found her sitting cross-legged on the floor, head buried in what looked like a glossy magazine, with dozens more littering the space around her and scattered over the central console. She poked her head over the top of the magazine.
‘Group vote,’ she said. ‘Which one do we like best?’
Yaz picked up the nearest magazine and inspected its cover. ‘It’s a holiday brochure.’
‘I thought after our recent excitement, we could all do with a spot of R and R,’ the Doctor went on.
‘I’m in,’ said Graham. ‘So long as it stands for what I think it does, and not something like Robots and Ravenous monsters.’ He scooped up a brochure with a photograph on the front of a beach with rainbow-coloured sand. ‘What about this one?’ He read from the description. ‘Argolis, the Leisure Hive, offers –’
The Doctor plucked the brochure from his hand and tossed it over her shoulder. ‘Been there. Had a few issues with their tachyon generator. Next.’
‘Minehead?’ suggested Ryan.
In the end, they decided on a planet called Lotos B – but as it turned out it was of no consequence, since they didn’t ever get there.
And it was all because of Graham’s begonia.
The TARDIS’s wardrobe was lined with more racks than a department store but, unlike an earthly clothing shop, the fashions covered every time period imaginable, not to mention attire suitable for any number of alien weddings and birthday parties.
Graham was packing a case for the upcoming holiday and singing along to a playlist of seventies classics, which was being piped into the room by the TARDIS’s rather fabulous – when it worked – sound system.
‘Giver of Water,’ squeaked a voice.
Graham ignored it, putting the high-pitched outburst down to the Bee Gees. He carried on with what he was doing, dangling two jumpers over his suitcase. It was a short break, and he knew he should only pack one, but, much as he might have liked to be, he just wasn’t one of those carefree one-jumper people. What if there was an accident? What if there was spaghetti bolognaise? He packed both.
Just as he was picking up a third jumper, the voice squeaked again.
‘Gray-ham, Giver of Water.’
That definitely wasn’t the Bee Gees.
He spun round. The only thing near him, besides clothes of course, was his begonia, sitting on a low table. He’d taken to carrying the plant with him from room to room. He couldn’t say exactly why, only that it reminded him of home, and perhaps of what he’d lost.
The dark green leaves rattled. How odd. He had been careful to position it away from any draughts.
Putting aside the jumper, he knelt down beside the plant so that he was at eye level with its largest flower. Immediately it unfurled, and turned to him like he was the sun.
‘Gray-ham, Giver of Water,’ said the plant. ‘I have a message for the Doctor.’
* * *
—
Five minutes later, a still-astonished Graham stood with Yaz, Ryan and the Doctor in the console room. The talking houseplant sat on the floor before them, stubbornly silent. It hadn’t spoken since Graham had rushed in with it from the wardrobe.
Ryan peered closely at it, then cast a doubtful expression at his granddad. ‘You sure you weren’t hearing things? I mean, at your age…’
‘Cheeky little –’
‘Shhh,’ said the Doctor, clasping a leaf between her fingers and rubbing gently. ‘They don’t like raised voices. Or being moved. Give it a minute to adjust to its new environment, then I’m sure we’ll hear what it has to say.’ She smiled at the plant. ‘Won’t we?’
It remained silent.
‘Does this happen a lot?’ asked Graham in a low voice. ‘I mean, messages coming via houseplants?’
‘Highly efficient means of communication,’ said the Doctor. ‘Root systems run deep, pollen and seeds fly vast distances. Ever talked to a plant?’
Graham gave a sheepish nod. ‘But it’s the first time one’s answered back.’
‘That’s the TARDIS,’ said the Doctor. ‘Its telepathic circuits are translating your plant’s words into English.’
‘But why does this begonia have a message for you?’ asked Yaz.
‘The plant is just the messenger,’ said the Doctor. ‘Someone else is using it to talk to me. The question is who?’
‘And how did they know you’d be in my house?’ asked Graham.
‘They didn’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘All the originator of the message had to do was plant the message somewhere on earth, then it travelled via the root network, seeking out its recipient. Probably find they’ve left the same message on lots of planets.’ She gazed into the middle distance. ‘I thought that orchid on Solaria was trying to get my attention.’
Unlik
e the others, Ryan was now keeping his distance, eyeing the houseplant warily from the back wall of the room.
‘Why are you standing all the way over there?’ said the Doctor.
Ryan blanched. ‘In case it suddenly shoots out snake-like tendrils, wraps them round our throats, sticks them in our ears and takes control of our minds.’
‘It’s a begonia, Ryan, not a triffid.’ She took a step back. ‘Though, it could be a Krynoid…Sarah Jane and I had a few problems with one of those.’
Yaz studied the Doctor’s face. She was prone to these kinds of outbursts, referring to other travelling companions, other times. So many lives had passed through these TARDIS doors, Yaz reflected, and one day she, Ryan and Graham would leave too, just like the rest. She felt a tiny shiver.
The leaves of the begonia fluttered, and its stems straightened, as if the plant was stretching after a nap. The largest flower turned to face upwards.
‘Doctor,’ it declared. ‘I bring greetings from the Gardeners of Tellus. They need your help, and request your presence on Tellus IV in order to brief you on a matter of great importance. The very existence of the universe is staked.’
‘At stake,’ corrected the Doctor.
‘What did I say?’ said the begonia.
‘Never mind. Go on.’
The plant rustled its leaves. ‘I have sent your vessel the planet’s co-ordinates. With your permission, we should travel there immediately.’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ The Doctor stroked her chin. ‘Gardeners of Tellus, eh? Interesting. Very interesting.’ She ran to the circular console, pushed a handful of buttons, and jammed a lever or two from one position to another.
Ryan watched her carefully, as he did every time she piloted the TARDIS, trying to figure out the particular combination of switches, levers and dials that coaxed the vessel into motion. Despite paying close attention, he could never figure it out. If he was honest, it seemed she was making it up as she went along.
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