The Slitheen Excursion Page 5

  ‘But they don’t speak of monsters called Slitheen,’ she said.

  ‘Well, they might not have known the names. Or they got lost in all the retellings. You ever played Chinese Whispers? That’s how all of human history works until someone thinks to write it down. And then writings are lost or translated badly . . .’

  ‘So we leave them to it,’ said June sadly. ‘And the king loses both his daughters. As well as his sons and grandson.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said the Doctor, busy with the controls. Then he stopped, just gazing at the screen. He began to work the instruments again. A map appeared on the screen. June recognised the snaggled coast of the Greek mainland and some of the nearer islands. Peculiar writing scrolled across the map, then a pattern of red dots. One marked the site of the Acropolis, another the island of Aegina. And several red spots speckled the island of Crete.

  ‘What do the red spots mean?’ asked June.

  ‘Some sort of spatial something,’ said the Doctor as he worked. ‘Time bending a bit like a localised black hole. Probably a transmat or some other warp system for jumping from place to place.’

  ‘So they can tour the main highlights of ancient Greece in the same afternoon.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘And make sure the people living here all behave. Hmm.’ He adjusted controls and more information scrolled down the screen. ‘But there’s nothing else. No cities. There aren’t even any large towns. Human beings should be much more advanced than this now . . .’ He twiddled some more. ‘I can’t even see any farms. How are they feeding themselves?’

  ‘Actaeus said they were hungry and the aliens had fed them.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor, running his long fingers through his hair. ‘But that’s only a short-term solution. You people forget how to grow your own food and the whole species is finished.’ He leant forward to work the controls and the map zoomed out to show Europe and the top half of Africa. Red dots speckled various places of interest.

  ‘There’s Stonehenge and the Pyramids,’ said the Doctor. ‘But they’re already old. There’s nothing from this time. Nothing being lived in or used. The only place that’s got any large building is . . .’ He tailed off. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What?’ asked June. But she couldn’t read the peculiar language. ‘How come I can understand Actaeus and his daughters, but I can’t read what’s on the screen.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said the Doctor. ‘The Slitheen have gone too far. Oh, if they hadn’t been greedy we could have turned a blind eye. But the operation’s too big now. It’s having too much of an impact. At this rate they’re going to squeeze the human race out of existence.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said June, ‘because if only they’d killed less people it would be OK.’

  ‘Fewer people,’ the Doctor sighed. ‘And not OK, no.’ He stepped back from the controls. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘Where?’ said June. ‘I mean, can’t we just go straight to wherever we’re going? Isn’t that what having a time ship is for?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘But there’s that atemporal mismatch hanging round us like a bad smell. And anyway, turning up at Slitheen HQ in this thing is going to get their attention. They’ll be looking out for disturbances in time. So Plan B.’

  He hurried down the ramp to the doors of the TARDIS. ‘Coming?’ he asked.

  She took the magic wand from him, ready to quiet the lion. ‘But I don’t know where we’re going,’ she said.

  They snuck back into the stone building on the top of the Acropolis. June’s shoes slapped on the coloured, stuccoed floor. They tiptoed to the blankets, still lying strewn where they’d left them. The Doctor grinned up at June as they both sat back down. She grinned back. No one need know they had ever been away.

  But she looked up at the sleeping figure of Actaeus and his daughters. And Actaeus gazed back at her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Shh,’ whispered the Doctor. ‘You’ll wake—’ He turned to see the king and grinned a silly grin. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘We didn’t mean to wake you.’

  The king folded his arms. ‘You left us,’ he said. ‘You stole off in the night like thieves.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said June. ‘But we came back. Didn’t we?’

  ‘And what have you decided?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll like this,’ said the Doctor. ‘Your daughters don’t need to go anywhere.’

  ‘And then our masters will destroy us,’ said the king.

  ‘Nah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Because you’re going to send them something better in their place. You’re sending me and June.’

  SIX

  THE SUN BEAT down hard on them as they raced across the rocky ground. June held on tight to the Doctor, arms wrapped around him.

  He leant back, laughing and whooping as he drove the chariot. If she hadn’t been so scared, she’d have hit him. The lining of her boars’ tusk helmet felt rough against her hair and ears. Apparently all warriors wore them. Otherwise, the Doctor and June were off to compete in just the clothes they’d turned up in – June in old jeans and a T-shirt, the Doctor in his slim suit. Aglauros had doubted whether she’d find any local clothes big enough to fit them anyway.

  They had strapped a curved oblong shield made of hairy ox hide into one side of the chariot and also a few paltry foodstuffs in case they wanted to stop for lunch. The Doctor had declined any weapons, to the princesses’ amazement. How, they said, could he go off to fight without anything to fight with? Pandrosos had tried to press a dagger on June when the Doctor wasn’t looking, but June turned it down. She wanted to believe in what the Doctor had said – that they could sort this all out without anyone getting hurt.

  The Doctor drove fast yet skilfully. June felt sure she was being bounced around less than she’d been the previous night. Or perhaps it helped to be standing up, so that your legs took all the vibration. She clung on to the Doctor, knowing that if he made a mistake or lost his balance they’d both be in serious trouble. There were no straps to put your feet into, no crossbar at the front of the chariot to press against with your knees. The only way you didn’t fall out was by leaning back, your own weight balanced against the horse’s.

  Moving her head, she caught the breeze as it whistled around the Doctor. The air tasted fresh and clean, thousands of years before car engines and industry. But there was something else, a familiar, nose-itching tang. She eased her grip on the Doctor a bit to glance around.

  They were riding through a shallow valley, over low-cut grass. The grass looked dry and sandy coloured, with regular dollops of dung. Across the valley, sheep and goats chewed nonchalantly, ignoring the chariot as it whizzed past. A shepherd waved at them cheerily, but June didn’t dare let go of the Doctor to wave back.

  ‘You know where we’re headed?’ shouted the Doctor.

  ‘To see these Slitheen people,’ she said into his back.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘But where we’re headed first. We’re heading down through what will one day be Athenian suburbs to the port of Piraeus.’

  Again, June leant back from him to glance around. Yes, she could more or less make out the contours of the land, the gradual slope down which they were racing. She had caught the tube to the port at Piraeus just ten days ago. By high-speed ferry, you could spend a day on the nearby island of Aegina and be back in Athens for the evening.

  A thought struck her. ‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘If we’re going by water, it’s going to take us ages.’

  ‘Won’t be more than a week,’ he called back.

  ‘I can’t be gone for a week!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll still get you home the moment that we left. Nobody will notice.’

  ‘But I will! I’ll be a whole week older. My birthday will be all out of synch.’

  ‘Well, what do you want me to do? Turn back and take you home now?’

  June didn’t say anything. She bit her lip in irritation.

>   ‘Look,’ said the Doctor. ‘This is going to be fun. You don’t get seasick do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said June.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, apart from that, it’s going to be fun.’

  There was nothing even resembling a port at what would one day be Piraeus. The Doctor brought the chariot to a halt in front of a long, sandy beach. A few other people in twos and threes watched each other warily. They carried spears and long swords and all kinds of other weapons. One pair had the same curved, oblong shields as the Doctor, while most had shields that looked like a stretched figure eight.

  ‘We don’t want any trouble,’ the Doctor told June quietly as he helped her down from the chariot. Her legs were numb with exhaustion. Riding a chariot had proved to be quite a workout. She started to unhook the horse. It snorted and shook one of its legs, then cantered off down the beach, neighing happily. She could feel the other competitors watching her. And two stocky, bearded men in metal armour came over to the Doctor.

  ‘Who are you?’ one asked.

  ‘Oh, no one really,’ he said, admiring their armour. ‘A whole bronze suit,’ he cooed. ‘You must be rich and important. So you don’t want to be slumming it with the likes of me. I’ll get out of your way.’

  He bowed and stepped away from the stocky men. But one of them grabbed him by the shoulder.

  ‘Doctor!’ cried June, running forward. The other stocky man stepped forward to intercept her, withdrawing a long sword from his cloak. June skidded to a halt in the sand in front of him, just out of reach of the sword. Other competitors came closer, eager to see the fight.

  ‘Ow!’ said the Doctor to the stocky man holding him by the shoulder. ‘Watch out. Not all of us are wearing armour!’

  ‘You talk too much,’ said the stocky man. ‘The warriors of Berbati are more about action than words.’

  ‘Is that where you’re from?’ asked the Doctor, wincing under the man’s grip. ‘Berbati’s lovely this time of year. Ow. Look, would you mind letting me go?’

  ‘Say you’re sorry,’ June told him. ‘Please.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the Doctor. ‘Can’t we all be friends? I guess we’re all here for the same reason.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the stocky man. ‘To fight. And you don’t have anything to fight with. So might as well kill you now.’

  Before June could cry out, the stocky man had reached for a blunt cudgel hanging from his belt. He swung it high above his head, brought it crashing down on the Doctor. But the Doctor twisted, caught the man’s wrist in his hand and held it, the cudgel just clear of the top of his head.

  The stocky man gaped. He could not move his hand.

  ‘I won’t fight you,’ the Doctor told him. ‘Unless you force me to. And trust me, you don’t want that.’ He tightened his grip on the man’s wrist. The stocky man yelped in surprise. It might even have been funny, were it not for the terrible look in the Doctor’s eye. ‘Do you?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said the stocky man.

  ‘Good,’ said the Doctor, letting him go and smiling. ‘We’re better working together. Best of the best from all across Greece. Working against the Slitheen.’

  The stocky man regarded the Doctor coolly. June saw the other groups of soldiers glancing at each other. And the man with the sword in front of her, the stocky man’s friend, heading for the Doctor.

  ‘Watch out!’ cried June. The other man in armour was now running at the Doctor, his sword held aloft.

  ‘No,’ shouted the stocky man, stepping past the Doctor to intercept his friend. But the sword was already coming down. The stocky man twisted, slapping his blunt cudgel against the edge of the sword. It hit with an ear-splitting crack, and the man with the sword spun round, off balance, smacking into the man with the cudgel. Both collapsed in a heap just in front of the Doctor.

  ‘I mean it,’ the Doctor told them pleasantly. ‘The Slitheen have got us all fighting each other because we’re easier to control that way. It’s classic divide and conquer. But we can take them on.’

  The stocky man lay tangled up with his friend on the sand. ‘How?’ he asked the Doctor.

  The Doctor extended his hand to the man. ‘You stick with me,’ he said. The stocky man glanced at the other soldiers all around them. He lay prone, defenceless. But he’d been offered a chance. June grinned as he reached up and took the Doctor’s hand.

  They built a barbecue on the beach while they waited to be collected. June wasn’t the only woman, but all were warriors of the first rank. They came from the main towns of Greece – Kokla, Mycenae, Tiryns – and all had the same stories to tell. Earthquakes had ravaged their kingdoms. The Slitheen masters provided their food. And in return they asked only for a small token payment. Every community had to send warriors to compete for glory.

  The Doctor organised the cooking, casually asking questions about the earthquakes and the Slitheen. June helped, building the fire, preparing the food, chatting to the other competitors. Most people had their own small provisions, but the stocky man, Alyon, organised fishing rods and a group of volunteers. Soon they were cooking long, silvery fish in the hot ashes of the fire. More pairs of competitors arrived as the afternoon wore on. There were maybe as many as seventy of them by the time the sun had set.

  They served up, and a portly, red-nosed fellow produced an amphora of wine. He also led the singing once they’d eaten. Soldiers sang of their homes, their loved ones, the stories of their people. They told stories in which they were the heroes, in which they brought glory home. June and the Doctor joined in with the choruses. Then they wanted to hear June’s story, to hear what the future was like. They all seemed quite familiar with the idea of time travel, but had never met a human being from the future before.

  She tried to wriggle out of it but that just made them more insistent. They laughed and applauded and called her name. Eventually she gave in.

  ‘I’m nothing special,’ she told them. The soldiers heckled and booed, dismissing this idea. ‘Well, all right,’ said June, ‘I’m great. But my life is pretty ordinary. A nice mum and dad, nice friends, a nice life. A bit of trouble with boys.’ Alyon wolf-whistled and the soldiers laughed. June found herself blushing. ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Just nothing to sing stories about.’

  Alyon tutted. ‘You are the most important one here,’ he told her and the other competitors. ‘Because you give us hope. That one day our lives will be better. That the Slitheen will be gone and there will be no more struggle.’

  June smiled sadly. ‘I wish I could show you,’ she said. ‘It’s not perfect, but it’s all right.’

  ‘There’s always struggle,’ said the Doctor. ‘The struggle to do what’s right. The struggle to provide for a family, to learn, to make things better. It wouldn’t be life if it wasn’t hard work. But things do get better. So long as you lot can work together.’

  ‘What are you proposing?’ asked Alyon.

  The Doctor stared into the fire, saying nothing. June nudged him with her elbow. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘We have to do this.’

  ‘But the Slitheen can wipe out their people if they resist,’ he said.

  ‘And if they don’t resist, all humanity is wiped out.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Perhaps this is how it always was.’

  She snorted. ‘Doctor, does it feel right? The ruins of kingdoms at the beck and call of aliens? We’re no better than slaves.’

  The Doctor gazed into the fire. And then he got to his feet. The firelight glinted orange off his bony features, sparkling in his eyes. ‘All right,’ he told the assembled, eager soldiers. ‘This is what I think we should do . . .’

  The eight boats arrived before dawn. They were long, flat-bottomed cargo boats with huge, square sails and nobody was sailing them. In eerie silence the boats moved at speed across the water, to line themselves up on the beach.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said June.

  ‘It’s just magic,’ said Alyon. He and the other competitors began to load t
heir possessions onto the boats. Each boat could take about ten competitors and their luggage. The passengers sat on the boxes of cargo.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said the Doctor as he helped June into one of the boats. ‘I don’t like no one being in control.’

  June didn’t like it either – the boats seemed so small and vulnerable. She remembered the last time she’d been seasick. The sickness had three awful stages. First you thought you were dying, then you knew you were dying, then you really wished you were dying.

  The Doctor must have seen the look in her eyes. ‘You could stay here,’ he told her.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ she told him, even more horrified at the thought of him leaving her behind. ‘These things run on magic. They’re automatic, like a monorail or something.’ The Doctor didn’t seem any happier.

  When the boats were all loaded, they simply glided backwards out onto the water, turned and headed out to sea. They moved so smoothly that June could close her eyes and believe they were perfectly still. The other competitors marvelled at this ingenuity, but the Doctor sulked at one side.

  ‘It’s not really sailing, is it?’ he said.

  Soon the rocky peaks of Greece were no longer visible behind them, and the sea stretched to the horizon. The sun rose ahead of them, painting the sky and water all the shades of orange and pink. June sat back to enjoy the show, enjoying herself. But she noticed the competitors on the other boats whispering nervously to one another.

  ‘They’re having second thoughts about what you said,’ she told the Doctor.

  He watched the soldiers, then followed their nervous glances to the sky ahead of them. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s something else.’

  The sky ahead of them had turned a beautiful crimson.

  ‘I love a sunrise,’ said June. ‘You watch it from Delphi and you can see what the ancients meant. The chariot of day chasing away the night.’

  But the Doctor looked serious. ‘Red sky in the morning,’ he muttered. ‘Ask any shepherd. That’s really not good news.’

  He hurried to the back of the boat, pushing past a portly bloke who was looking rather poorly. The Doctor pressed and poked at the back of the boat, but could find no workings.