by Doctor Who
'Baaaa,' the Doctor said. 'I had wondered what my four-legged chum was trying to tell me this morning.'
Rory tapped the paper. 'Something else weird,'
he said.
The Doctor looked at it and frowned. 'Nope, not seeing your problem.'
Rory sighed and started counting backwards from twenty.
Shooting him an annoyed look, the Doctor stared harder. As Rory went from 4 to 3, the Doctor snapped, 'All right, I got it at 18. I was just trying to work out how he did that.'
Enola shrugged. 'I don't see what else is unusual other than your heads being woolly,' she said.
The Doctor smiled at her. 'Describe Rory. Real Rory, not charcoal Rory.'
Enola looked at him. 'Tall, fair-haired, not stunningly good-looking but not ugly either...'
"Thanks for that.' Rory snatched the paper away DOCTOR WHO
and all but shoved it in her face. 'He hasn't drawn what I'm wearing today.'
Enola shrugged. 'He's imaginative. It's that kind of creativity—'
'What Rory means,' said the Doctor gently, 'is that your friend Marten has drawn me in an old brown suit I've not... fitted into for a while and Rory in his work clothes. That's what a nurse wears where he comes from.'
If Enola was thrown by this, she was more thrown by the knowledge Rory was a nurse. 'You? A nurse?
A woman's job?'
'Equality works both ways in the future,' Rory countered. 'I like the way a male nurse throws you, but you accepted the Doctor is an alien and I'm from seventy or eighty years away without missing a beat.'
Enola shrugged. 'I've seen a lot of strange things on my travels, sir. If I hadn't opened my mind up to accept that there is more in this universe than the Good Book and learned preachers tell us, I'd be pretty poor at what I do.'
'Have you met aliens before?' asked the Doctor gently.
'Not that I am aware of, Doctor. But I don't rule out that possibility, of course not. I'd be foolish to do so.'
'Aliens, OK. But time travel. That's usually a harder sell.'
Enola didn't reply at first, and then she nodded at 138
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Rory. '2010, you said. Wel , that explains why I can't understand half of what you two have been going on about. The future.' She turned to the Doctor. 'Am I famous?'
'Sorry?'
'In archaeology circles?'
The Doctor smiled. 'Are you kidding? Blimey, I've waited years to meet you. Harry Balfour, Howard Carter, Marcus Scarman, Shinichi Fujimura, Indiana Jones, Gordon Childe, Benny Summerfield, Constantine Gedes and Enola Porter. The greats.
The true greats.' The Doctor winked at her and pointed back to the burial mound. 'And you know what puts you up there with them? That does, Mrs Porter. Because as you are going to discover very shortly, what's under there is no Bronze Age chieftain, no medieval king, or whatever else you expect to find in a fogou like this. Inside there is an honest-to-goodness alien starship, and you find it, Mrs Porter. You and your team live in history for the first evidence brought before the public about the existence of aliens.' He hugged her tightly. 'Cor, I love you, Mrs Enola Porter. That's why I'm here. Me and Rory. And Amy Pond. We wanted to meet you before you became too famous to get near.'
`Me?'
'Yup. We're on a sort of Time Team, y'see. Future people can swing back in time and discover real archaeology at work. And now we need to go, leave you to get on with it. Or you know, the time 139
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continuum goes pooff and we never exist or kill our grandfathers or go home and find everyone we loved looks like a butterfly. Bye then. Good luck.'
'Bye,' Rory added lamely, giving a little wave as the Doctor almost hauled him out of the tunnels and back out through the marquee.
When they reached the school building and he was sure they were alone, Rory stopped moving.
After a second or two, the Doctor noticed and wandered back to him.
'What?'
Rory shook his head. 'How many of your wretched laws of time did you just break? I mean, so it's not OK for me and Amy to do it, but it's OK
for you?'
'Nope, that's not true.'
'It's not?'
'Nope, Amy can break 'em too. Only you can't.
Because you have a gob on you, and you never know when enough is enough.'
'Oh.'
The Doctor punched Rory's arm in a playful way that suggested he'd not actually tried it before, which was confirmed by Rory's 'ouch'.
'Another thing not to do again,' Rory told him.
The Doctor pouted. 'Aw. Quite liked doing that.'
He smiled. 'I was joking, by the way, Rory. You're getting the hang of this time-travelling lark.'
'Even if I am,' Rory replied, 'I'm still confused.
I'm not an archaeologist, but I've heard of Howard THE GLAMOUR CHASE
Carter. And Indiana Jones,' he said pointedly. 'But how come I've never heard of Enola Porter? If she has discovered aliens, I think that might have permeated through the History curriculum by the time I went to school.'
The Doctor nodded. 'My thoughts exactly. Even I haven't heard of her, and I've heard of everyone,'
he said.
'Heard of who?' asked Amy, suddenly standing behind Rory.
'You have to stop doing that,' Rory said, touching his chest. 'One day I'll have a coronary, and it'll be your fault.'
'Ooh, sorrrrry,' she said and kissed his neck. 'So, who haven't you heard of, Doctor?'
'Enola Porter,' he said. 'She's—'
'The archaeologist?' Amy laughed. 'Wow. I mean, wow! Rory, we're finally ahead of the Doctor.'
Rory frowned. 'You what?'
Amy shrugged. 'She's mega-famous, Doctor.
Discovered evidence of aliens in some Roman-y Iron Age-y burial mound, yeah? Did her in Year Ten.'
The Doctor looked at Amy for a second, then laughed. 'Course you did. Rory must have been in the remedial class.' He gave Rory a look that both challenged him to argue and simultaneously suggested, for his own continued health, it'd be best not to.
Or at least that was how Rory interpreted it.
The Doctor threw his arms around their 141
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shoulders. 'Let's find Oliver Marks and head back to the Manse for some grub. I'm famished. Besides which...' He hauled Enola Porter's canvas bag of notebooks off the ground. 'I have some reading to catch up on.'
'Isn't that theft?' asked Rory.
'Not if he gets them back before she notices,' said Amy.
'Your young girl's got a point,' said the Doctor, and Rory almost winced as he anticipated the tirade from Amy at the 'your girl' quip.
But Amy shrugged. 'Food sounds good,' she said. 'Omm nom nom.' She led the way back.
Chapter
9
Amy Pond was a pretty certain kind of person. She was pretty certain it had been Shirley Morgan who had nicked the sweets from the Leadworth Post Office when she was 10. She was pretty certain that Darren Cotham had knowingly lied when he'd told her that Pernod was all aniseed and no alcohol when she was 13. She was pretty certain that Doctor Griffiths had had more on his mind than psychological counselling when she was 14. She was pretty sure that biting him had been a good move, too. And, of course, she'd been pretty certain that her Raggedy Doctor existed.
So she was pretty sure, on all the available evidence, that she was in a whole host of trouble right now.
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It was the fault of the wretched tree made of wool, she decided (and there was a phrase she'd never expected to think in her life). One minute she'd been touching it, feeling its weird movement beneath her fingers, the next it had reached up and grabbed her like a bad outtake from the Lord of the Rings movies and pulled her into... into what? The bark? The wool? The centre of the Earth?
If this was the centre of Earth, shouldn't it be hot? Or full of bad stop-motion dinosaurs and Doug McClure in a torn shirt and bad Seventies hair?
(She'd won her team a lot of kudos in a pub quiz once for knowing his name - oh yes, she knew her bad movies.) And, above all, shouldn't it be dark?
There was a dull green glow, which immediately reminded her of the yellowy-green of the woolly tree. So there had to be a connection (hooray for time spent with the Doctor teaching her that).
Amy tried to move, to get up from wherever it was the tree had dumped her, but her left ankle was held down by a tree root. She didn't bother finding out if that was made of wool, too - she just chose to assume it was. Besides which, it had a degree of give in it and didn't seem to be digging into her skin, so yeah, woolly stumpy thingy was holding her where she was.
'Hullo?' she called out. 'My name is Amy Pond, and I'm really very nice and not at all a danger to you. Whoever you are. Woolly tree things. Or whatever.'
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No reply.
Quel e surprise.
The greeny-yellowy glow was good, and her eyes were adjusting with each passing second, so before long she could make out that she was in a circular chamber with a long corridor leading out of it. That itself faded into complete darkness, so she had no idea how long it was, but 'quite' seemed a good guess.
Tom Benson. Where the hell was Tom Benson?
He'd got her here, under false pretences of being nice, kind, slightly jealous of Rory and what was it?
Oh yeah. Human. Pretending to be human.
'Oi, Tom Benson, where are you?' she bellowed as loud as she could.
There was no response, but she saw a shape in the darkness ahead. It didn't move as much as...
well, OK, it did move. But it moved in a strange way Amy couldn't put her finger on. It sort of floated.
No - floated wasn't right. Flowed. Wafted. Like it wasn't quite solid. And yet she saw it.
'Not helping yourself, Pond,' she muttered aloud, hoping that might draw it out again.
And then she realised it was in the area between the corridor and the chamber she was held in. One second, space, the next, a... thing.
'Don't come any closer,' she said, then paused.
'Unless you are here to rescue me, in which case come as close as you like.'
The 'thing' dropped to the floor, and Amy realised 145
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it was like a soft ball of something. Oh, of course. It was a ball of wool. Earth had been invaded by the associates of the local Women's Institute.
The bal quivered for a second and then started to grow, reshaping itself. As she watched in horrified fascination, it shaped and smoothed and eased itself into a woollen copy of a human figure. It reminded Amy of those little wooden blank figures that artists used to draw human shapes with.
After a few seconds, she was faced by a greeny-yellowy woman, with a face that seemed to be knitted, but with definite eyes, mouth, nose all formed by the wool (or whatever it was) just being slightly differently shaped or indented.
Amy couldn't stop herself. 'Wow,' she said. 'Wow, that's astonishing.'
'Thank you, Amy,' said the woollen woman.
'Apologies for scaring you. The person you know as Tom Benson was meant to bring you here voluntarily, not through the... tree?'
Amy nodded, like this was the most casual conversation in the world. 'Yeah, tree,' she confirmed.
'Nice tree. Must've taken ages to knit those.'
The woollen woman laughed. 'Seconds. The Weave can manipulate ourselves into any shape for short periods, but what you see now is our basic shape.'
'The Weave? You?'
The woman nodded. 'I am 128. The Commander of the WSS Exalted. We crashed here centuries ago.'
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'Wow,' Amy said again. 'And you've not conquered us, or enslaved us or wiped us out yet?
Cool.'
128 shrugged. 'We wish the people of this planet no harm. We are no threat, we are just trying to survive.'
'Underground?'
'That's safest for now. We realised when we awoke that this era wasn't ready for us. They had not encountered enough other species to accept us for what we are.'
'But you're telling me.'
128 laughed. 'You are not from this planet. Like us.
'I most certainly am,' Amy said.
A frown wove across 128's forehead and then vanished again. It was fascinating, Amy realised, the way 128's movements were fluid, how nothing she did was ever still.
'If you are from Earth, you are unique amongst these humans.'
Amy shrugged. 'Aye, that's us. Unique, amazing and the bestest.'
128 blinked slowly, digesting this information.
'We assumed you, the Doctor and Rory Williams were travellers like us. You arrived in a capsule -
456195 saw you!'
'45... what?'
'You call him Tom Benson.'
'This is 1936,' Amy explained. 'Right?'
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The Commander nodded. 'So I understand.'
'I'm from 2010.'
128 blinked slowly.
'The future.'
128 blinked again and tilted her head, thinking.
'Me. And Rory. 2010. June to be precise. Getting married, too. If we make it back.' She raised her left hand. 'Look. Engagement ring. Cost a fortune, so of course Rory doesn't like me wearing it too often. He thinks I'll lose it. As if.'
'Time travel. On this planet?'
'The Doctor. From a place called Mars. Sounds chocolatey to me, but apparently it's like "w00000h, long way away". His ship brought us here.'
128 raised her hand. Amy watched in amazement as something grew out of it and separated itself, like a woolly smartphone. 128 tapped at it and frowned.
Then the frown just melted away again. So did the smartphone thing.
'The name "Mars" means nothing to our computers, but the Weave don't know everything
- every race has different names for the planets of the universe. And the galaxies may have changed a great deal during our time trapped down here.
Planets come and go.'
'It's a big red planet, up there.' Amy pointed straight up. 'On a clear night you can see it.'
'Planet S4,' said 128. 'I know the one you mean.'
Amy opted to change the subject. 'How long have you been here?'
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'Six thousand years, give or take,' 128 said. 'But we awoke only fifteen years ago. Our systems malfunctioned after the crash. We were supposed to be woken within hours of arrival, but the trigger mechanism was damaged. We awoke only when our secondary systems overrode it because of the presence of the Tahnn.'
'The who?'
'The Tahnn. We were under attack by them. They have been hunting our people for millennia. It would appear that they haven't given up, though centuries have passed. They must have finally worked out where we were and sent a raiding party to find us. They failed, but their presence was enough to trigger our alarms and wake us.'
As Amy let this all sink in, a horrible thought crossed her mind. 'You're the leader of these Weave people?'
128 nodded.
'And you've just told me, a total stranger, everything about your mission.'
'I've told you very little, actually, but enough for you to understand. And enough for us to get a basic grasp of who you are, how you think, what you say.'
'You're going to kill me, aren't you?'
128 laughed. 'No, don't be silly. But we can't let you go. Not yet. Though I promise we will.'
'When?'
'Once we are safe from the Tahnn.'
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Amy thought about this. 'Umm, excuse me but if these Tahnn have been chasing you for a few centuries and not found you, then you might be around here for, oh, let's say, longer than a week or two?'
128 shrugged. 'We wait for millennia if need be.
I will not risk exposure to the Tahnn. That's why we have infiltrated this settlement, I have placed my own people in there, partly to
supply the rest of us with food and drink but also to keep the Exalted safe from prying eyes.'
Amy nodded. 'You know there's a huge dig up top, trying to unearth you?'
128 nodded. 'We will deal with that when necessary.'
'Deal with it how, exactly?'
128 smiled and for the first time Amy felt uncomfortable with the Commander. Because it wasn't a particularly nice smile.
'In whatever way I deem necessary to protect my people, Amy. But it's all right. It's why I had you brought here. You are going to help me.'
'I am? Really? Are you sure.'
128's smartphone thingie grew from her hand again, and she thumbed something on it.
'Instant app for dealing with irritating archaeologists?' quipped Amy, trying to sound less concerned than she was.
In answer, the wall to her right bulged, and another figure stepped out of what Amy now THE GLAMOUR CHASE
realised was not earth but the same wool texture as 128.
'Hullo,' she said. 'I'm the ship's counsellor. 6011.
Pleased to meet you, Amy Pond.'
'Back atcha.' Amy said quietly. 'Don't get too close. I bite counsellors.'
6011 ignored this. She suddenly shivered and started changing shape and colour. It was like watching a sweater or socks being knitted in front of her, but on fast forward. Except this wasn't just clothing, Amy realised; it was a person.
Less than a minute later, Amy faced a duplicate Amy Pond, every detail perfect.
'Is my bum really that small? Wow, I look hot,'
Amy said. 'When Rory and I have our first post-wedding dance, I'm going to look fantastic. Thank you for the compliment.'
128 shrugged. 'I'm glad you accept what we're doing, Amy. Thank you.'
'Like I have a choice,' Amy replied, pointing at the root holding her firmly in place. 'So what happens to me while Counsellor Copycat here is running around up there trying to be me?'
'Same as the real Tom Benson, and the others.
Sleep.'
'Not tired, actually,' Amy said.
Another of the Weave grew into solidity by the doorway. 'I am 107863,' he said, 'and this won't hurt a bit.'
