The Slitheen Excursion Page 10

  ‘But—’ began June. The Doctor put his arm around her companionably.

  ‘I know you’re going to miss me,’ he said and hugged her.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ she whispered in his ear.

  He held her close. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘They need me away from the alien fan club before they can have their revenge. But what else can we do?’

  ‘Doctor!’ she said, holding on to him tightly.

  He withdrew from her, smiling brightly, that cunning look in his eye.

  THIRTEEN

  THE DOCTOR STEPPED out of the transmat and looked all around him. ‘That was very smooth,’ he told Mamps and Cosmo, who had materialised beside him. The Doctor ran his tongue round his teeth. Journeys by localised transmat always left a taste in his mouth like liquorice. It tasted like he’d been moved about seventy miles due north. A small part of his brain thought this might be important, that it should connect to some other loose bit of memory he’d picked up some time in the last 900 years. He decided it would come back to him if it was important. There were more pressing concerns.

  They had arrived in a wide room cut smoothly through bare rock. He’d seen something like it in a palace of giant termites. Or it reminded him of the Jubilee line on 24 June 2006, when he’d had that ice cream. In fact, the Jubilee line could be a lot like a palace of termites, depending on what time you were there. His mind whirring, the Doctor began to nose round, inspecting the controls and readouts in the wall. And ignoring the two huge Slitheen. They might be planning to sneakily kill him but he wasn’t going to make it easy.

  ‘Atmospheric controls look fine,’ he told them. ‘Air’s a little muggy, but we should be OK. It’ll get the creases out of my suit. Um . . . Is this a hard-hat area? Been ages since I wore a hard hat.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mamps, not listening. ‘The temporal drives are up this way.’

  He followed them up the passageway. They didn’t seem that worried about keeping an eye on him, which he felt was a little rude. He knew they wanted to kill him out here. They knew that he knew. He knew that they knew that he knew . . . It was all about the optimum moment to actually do the deed. With a start, he realised that they thought it was a game. They were like cats teasing a mouse. Well, he’d have to see about that.

  They continued up the passageway. The Doctor’s trainers squeaked on the smooth floor. He found he could make them squeak even more if he dragged his feet. The noise annoyed Mamps, who gritted her teeth. But the Doctor glanced at Cosmo, who looked like he wanted to laugh. Divide and conquer: simple.

  The passageway opened out onto a wide viewing gantry, overlooking vast machines. His eyes danced over them, quickly identifying the different systems and the ways they’d been modified. The gantry led off to a series of control panels and the open space where tourists from the future would materialise. He liked that you got to see the workings of the temporal drive as the first step on the tour.

  Eager to distract the Slitheen, the Doctor cooed at the awesome sight of the huge machines, though he’d already appraised them in a glance. He went right up to the railing, holding the bar tightly as the two Slitheen came to join him, in case they tried to throw him over the edge right away. How easy, to go back to their tourists and badly act their sorrow at some terrible accident. Perhaps that was why they were playing this out; they didn’t want to go back too soon.

  ‘It’s a very clever system,’ he enthused. ‘Cor. Is that a stardrive disseminator bolted to the side?’

  Mamps chuckled wetly. ‘The very idea,’ she said. ‘Do you think we built this thing out of string?’

  The Doctor nodded, admiring the workings, following the route from the generation and treatment of chronon particles to the thing like a Wurlitzer at the core. ‘Did you build it?’ he asked, all innocence.

  Mamps gripped the railing, her claws clanging against the metal, the sound echoing round the chamber. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ said the Doctor. ‘Cobbling this together is an achievement in itself. But it’s all bits and bobs you’ve acquired from other people.’ He pointed. ‘A Navarino time-jump, a Sundayan stabiliser. One of those things that makes the Vortex go wobbly. What are they called again?’

  ‘Doctor,’ said Mamps levelly.

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s it,’ said the Doctor. Cosmo giggled at the joke.

  ‘We didn’t really bring you here to show you the temporal drives,’ said Mamps.

  ‘No, I worked that out, thank you. I’m not half as daft as I look.’

  ‘But you came with us anyway.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Probably too trusting. But it’s been fascinating to have a look. And I did ask.’

  ‘Consider it a last request,’ said Mamps. She grinned cruelly, showing her razor-sharp teeth.

  ‘Well, all right, kill me if you have to,’ said the Doctor, and he nonchalantly turned away from her to look back out over the balcony to the huge machines. Mamps reached out her claws to him. But just before she sliced them through his body he shrugged. ‘Seems a shame, though,’ he said. ‘If I’m dead I can’t help you out.’

  Mamps whipped the claws away behind her back just before he turned back to look at her. She glanced at Cosmo, who grinned at her.

  ‘And what,’ she asked the Doctor, ‘can you do for the Slitheen?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ve got a few skills. Make a great curry. Got these long skinny arms if you lose anything down the back of a radiator. Oh, and I can stop your earthquakes.’

  Mamps blinked at him. ‘My earthquakes?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Except they’re not really earthquakes. They’re the time differential shorting out. Think of them as burps in the system.’

  Mamps and Cosmo glanced at one another. ‘You can provide evidence for this?’

  ‘Er, yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think so. If you’ve got a list of when and where all the earthquakes have taken place?’

  ‘We can get one,’ said Mamps.

  ‘Well, it should match up pretty exactly with when you’ve used the temporal drive. Each earthquake will probably be about nine or ten hours before each use. Nine point five three seven, approximately.’

  ‘Look into it,’ Mamps told Cosmo. He bowed and hurried away, his huge fleshy feet slapping on the smooth floor.

  The Doctor grinned at Mamps. ‘You’ve been the victim of your own success, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘So many tourists wanting to nose round this period. Cradle of civilisation, or however you’ve been selling it. But you didn’t have so many punters in mind when you had this thing put together.’

  Mamps sighed. ‘The Navarinos we, um, persuaded to construct it said no more than four transfers per day. We’re doing twelve at the moment and can’t keep up with demand. There’s a waiting list of months.’

  ‘And the Navarinos haven’t been able to get the systems to compensate?’ said the Doctor, though he already suspected the answer.

  Mamps grinned sheepishly. ‘After they’d made it work the first time, we sort of ate them.’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘That wasn’t very clever, was it?’ he said.

  ‘It seemed quite clever at the time,’ said Mamps. ‘Meant we didn’t have to pay them.’

  ‘But it wasn’t very forward thinking,’ said the Doctor. ‘This almighty lash-up just isn’t sustainable. And if the thing breaks down, you lot are all trapped here. I don’t think that would be good for anyone.’

  ‘We’ve got a contingency,’ said Mamps. ‘My siblings in the future can come back to collect us. They’ve got a time bus for emergencies.’

  The Doctor whistled. ‘Expensive,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, so it’s only to be used in emergencies.’ She sniffed and then turned back to look down the corridor. A moment later, Cosmo’s footsteps echoed towards them. He emerged from the darkness, belly wobbling as he ran. In his claws he flourished a digital reader.

  ‘He’s right!’ procla
imed Cosmo as he handed the reader to Mamps. She scrolled the screen, reading the comparison of data. The Doctor noted the readings, surprised at how fast the burps had been growing.

  ‘Yes,’ mused Mamps. ‘Yes. This is pretty convincing. All the earthquakes accounted for but one.’

  ‘What?’ said the Doctor, leaning forward to read the screen. ‘Which one?’

  ‘A minor disturbance at sea early this morning. Sank almost a whole shipment of prey.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, but thought better of revealing that he’d been in that shipment. If they wanted to know where he’d sprung from, they could work it out themselves. ‘Well, can’t be helped,’ he said. ‘The odd anomaly here or there. It’s the exception that proves the rule!’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mamps. ‘We had an exercise on this sort of thing in causality training.’ She tapped her claw against the digital reader, making some quick calculations. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The numbers add up. Cosmo run the drive for five-tenths of a second.’

  ‘Wait!’ said the Doctor as Cosmo hurried away to the controls. ‘You don’t need to do that.’ He knew he couldn’t change anything, that it had already happened. But at the same time he couldn’t stand by while they killed all those poor people on the boats. He ran forward to stop Cosmo, but Mamps swept an arm out and threw him skidding across the smooth floor.

  ‘But we do have to do it,’ she said. ‘The storm happened within the same parameters, so Cosmo must have turned on the drive. It’s how time works.’ She turned back to Cosmo, stood by the machines. ‘Do it!’

  Cosmo turned a lever.

  ‘Please!’ said the Doctor from where he lay a little stunned on the floor. ‘Let me just try to work it out.’

  ‘Too late,’ said Cosmo. ‘It’s done.’

  ‘You killed all those people,’ said the Doctor, quietly.

  ‘They were already dead this morning,’ said Mamps. ‘It’s causality. It takes a while to get used to but that’s just how things are.’ She brought her claws down on him and for a moment he thought she meant to kill him. But the claws stopped above his head and he realised she meant to help him to his feet. He accepted the offer.

  ‘That’s all the paradoxes taken care of,’ she said. ‘Now you can fix it so no one else has to die.’

  FOURTEEN

  JUNE WANDERED AMONG the alien tourists, trying to avoid Leeb and Cecrops. Leeb watched her coldly, guarding her while his siblings were away. She could see that he had wicked designs on her, that he considered her his prey. But, weirdly, she felt more bothered by Cecrops, who wouldn’t leave her alone. He kept wanting to ask her opinions on various theories and legal arguments relating to interference in human history. She understood his enthusiasm, she ought to have admired it. But she didn’t want to be the mascot for his cause. And she found his zeal exhausting. Couldn’t he show any interest in her for herself, not as the emblem of a species?

  Having finished dinner, she and the alien tourists were back out on the balconies overlooking the main courtyard. Clay braziers burned at regular intervals to keep them warm as they gossiped and drank cocktails. June had asked for a glass of water, but none had been forthcoming. She kept near the braziers, toasting her bare feet.

  Humans in historical costume performed down below for their entertainment. They sang, they danced, they wrestled, and the aliens paid them little heed. It seemed they only cared to watch the festivities when there were lives at stake.

  June felt numb to it all, drifting through the crowd of aliens to the part of the citadel overlooking the sea. There were no braziers out this far, but she welcomed the cold cutting at her body. Beyond the citadel’s walls she could see small communities of houses scattered across the rocky landscape. The sea glinted away in the distance. It should have been a beautiful evening but June felt simply wretched.

  She hated being up on this higher tier, looking down on the other humans. And she hated being so helpless. She wanted to shout out, to rail against the aliens and what they’d done to her people. But she also knew that that would do no good. She might as well rage at the sky for all the difference it would make. Causing a fuss might give Leeb the excuse he’d been waiting for.

  There had to be another way. But what could she do? She wasn’t like the Doctor. She couldn’t somersault over wild animals or anything like that. June was just an ordinary, boring girl with no special powers at all.

  Deukalion came to join her, but she declined his offer of a kylix of wine. She wanted her senses to be sharp. They stood, watching the stars sparkling above them, ignoring the crass laughter of the aliens and the crash of the sea on the cliff beneath the citadel, the sound carried up to them by the still night air.

  ‘The Doctor will be back soon enough,’ said Deukalion, though he didn’t sound like he believed it.

  ‘He’s a match for the Slitheen,’ said June. ‘He can change all this. Make it right.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘But what do we do if he doesn’t come back? It’s so vast.’

  ‘We don’t stand a chance,’ said Deukalion, draining his own kylix and starting on the one he’d brought for her. June rolled her eyes and turned away from him, to find Leeb lumbering towards them.

  ‘Hello, dear humans,’ he leered, waving his claws in what he probably thought was a friendly gesture. Deukalion let out a squeak of terror and cowered behind June.

  ‘Hi,’ said June. ‘No word from the Doctor, yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Leeb, shaking his head. ‘I hope you’re not getting bored waiting.’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said June.

  ‘Good, good,’ said Leeb. ‘But I thought I’d make a suggestion. Perhaps you’d both volunteer to take part in our next entertainment.’

  ‘What?’ said Deukalion. ‘I thought I was a local guide! The Doctor needs me.’

  ‘But the Doctor’s not here,’ said Leeb in a cruel, sing-song voice.

  Deukalion whimpered.

  June appraised the Slitheen. She and Deukalion were dead anyway, but surely Leeb wouldn’t try anything in view of all the tourists. For the moment, he couldn’t touch her.

  ‘What’s it going to be?’ she asked, forcing her own horror down. ‘Another wild animal? That didn’t work out so well last time.’

  Leeb seethed with anger. ‘We thought something a little more educational, this time. A re-enactment of the last battle of the Platonic War. You’ll like it; the humans win.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound so bad,’ Deukalion admitted.

  ‘What’s the catch?’ asked June.

  ‘Catch?’ said Leeb. ‘Catch? Perish the thought. You two and fifty other competitors putting on a show.’

  ‘Where we have to kill each other,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ said Deukalion.

  ‘We want it to look authentic,’ Leeb gurgled. ‘Of course, you could always refuse . . .’

  ‘Then we refuse,’ said Deukalion. ‘Oh, now you’re going to kill us, aren’t you?’

  ‘You can’t do anything to us in front of your tourists,’ said June. ‘They won’t like it.’

  Leeb considered. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s true. But no one will see when I do something to your friends.’

  ‘I don’t have any friends,’ said Deukalion. ‘There’s a few estranged wives, but do what you like with those.’

  Leeb ignored him to blink slowly at June. ‘Actaeus,’ he said. ‘And his daughters. Oh, don’t look surprised. We ran a sweep for technology the moment you turned up. We’ve found your funny blue box.’

  ‘Please,’ said June. ‘What are you going to do to them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Leeb. ‘If you do as I tell you. Volunteer for the show. Fight and die like you mean it. Make sure there are no awkward questions.’

  ‘There’s no way!’ laughed Deukalion. ‘Is there, June?’ He swallowed hard. ‘June?’

  ‘What would you do to them?’ she asked Leeb.

  ‘Well,’ said the tall Slitheen. ‘Your friends are u
p on that rock, aren’t they? What will one day be the Acropolis. And underneath is one of our transmat machines. Imagine if there were a problem. Imagine if I accidentally switched off its shield! There’d be the most awful explosion. And for the next thousand years that whole valley would be a nuclear wasteland.’

  June gaped at him. ‘But you can’t!’ she said. ‘You’d change history. You’d stop humanity ever developing!’

  Leeb sighed. ‘You think humanity owes everything to the Athenians?’

  ‘Who?’ said Deukalion.

  June blinked at the huge, green creature. ‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘All kinds of other people played their part. But take the ancient Greeks out of the picture and who knows what the effect could be.’

  Leeb scratched at his forehead with the tip of his claw. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘We were told humans would never get into space if we did anything to this period.’

  And June stared in horror at the awful creature. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You know the effect you’re having. You’re doing it on purpose!’

  Leeb smiled. ‘Keep your voice down, girl,’ it said. ‘You’re going to behave. You’re going to take part in this show. You’re going to fight and die with gusto. Our way, humans just grow up without all the war and conquest. You say no and we make them extinct.’

  He grinned, showing razor-sharp teeth. ‘Your choice.’

  ‘I don’t really like heights,’ said Cosmo as he clung to the ladder beside the Doctor. They were up at the very top of the cavern, checking the connections of the uppermost machines. Far below them, Mamps watched from the gantry. She seemed quite convinced that there was nowhere else the Doctor could escape to. But he kept glancing round, just in case.

  ‘Me neither,’ said the Doctor. He leant backwards from the ladder and began to unscrew the clamps securing one of the devices. ‘Best not to think about it,’ he said. ‘Might help to close your eyes.’