by Doctor Who
The Doctor tried to stop sounding exasperated.
'Yes, that's the problem with Glamour. The Weave tempted me with it once, but I said no because I DOCTOR WHO
knew it was fake. It's like a drug, 011y. OK, so it's not medically harmful, but none of this is real, and the comedown will probably be pretty dramatic when it fades.'
'Doesn't work that way,' said a new voice at the Doctor's shoulder.
It was the manservant. Chivers.
'You still here then?'
Chivers smiled. 'I'm always here, Doctor. At the side of Nathaniel Porter for the last few years.
Watching over things.'
'The ever-faithful butler-manservant-person.
One step behind, always in the background, never noticed. Oh, you played your part brilliantly. Well done. Question is, which one were you, and which one was he?'
Chivers smiled. 'My name is... was... 3. I was the Executive Officer aboard the Exalted. And I've been trapped here for many years.'
'Nathaniel Porter sussed you, didn't he?'
'Yes. Trapped me in the house — his psychic prowess kept me in his thrall. Physically, I could never leave it. If I tried, it hurt. My punishment, I suppose, because this is all my fault. I was the first of the Weave to explore. The first to contaminate both the human world and our ship.'
'Don't be stupid, of course it's not your fault. Put that nonsense out of your mind and let's focus. Now then, when Nathaniel Porter, or the Weave/Tahnn hybrid of him, needed someone to wait on him hand 216
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and foot, he saw amusement in making you do that, yeah? See, not your fault.'
Chivers agreed. 'I tried to look after Oliver Marks, too. I recognised the Tahnn's handiwork on him but I was pretty useless at that. 25463 kept separating us by taking him outside into the garden.'
'And as you couldn't go out, he used Old John who was just the ticket simply because he could go outside.'
Chivers nodded. 'My crew couldn't get help.
25463 was the Tactical Officer aboard ship. He knew our defences better than anyone. He placed a sort of shield around the whole village. Humans could come and go, but we were limited.'
'I think we felt it slightly as we entered,' the Doctor said, remembering Rory's 'someone walked over my grave' moment. 'It's psychic in nature.
That's why the psychic paper had no effect on him.'
The Doctor eased Chivers/3 away from the bizarre partygoers. 'How long before the Glamour wears off?'
Chivers/3 shrugged. 'We have no idea how it affects a human.'
'I do.'
They turned to see a young boy, no more than 14, standing next to them. He wore thick animal skins.
'It never wears off,' he said simply.
'Who are you?' asked 3.
'I am Owain. I will be a hundred other people.
Five hundred other people. Glamour has kept me DOCTOR WHO
alive for six thousand years.'
The Doctor looked the boy up and down, then spotted a couple of adorned leather straps around his wrist. 'Of course. Owain, modern name, John, you're Old John. Look, John, 3, we have to get out of Oliver's creation. We need to get to the Weave ship.
I think I can reverse this.'
'How?'
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer but realised he couldn't. 'I honestly have no idea, but I'm brilliant at making up solutions on the spot, and frankly I've more chance of doing that at your ship, 3, than here.'
'The architecture keeps changing, Doctor,' said 3.
'I'm not sure we can get out.'
'Yes we can, I have a secret weapon. He'll be here any minute.'
'Rory?'
'Oh yes. A straightforward, simple, down-to-earth human being with no perspective on the world other than his own. He's magnificent.'
Rory was looking around the room - there had to be a way out. He'd got in, so logically there was a way out. 'You just can't see it,' he told himself. 'What would the Doctor do? He'd think laterally, Rory.
So...'
He looked around. So far he'd been shown aspects of Amy Pond and a tree. So the tree... was that the answer? Was that where Amy was? Mind 218
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you, it was a pretty insignificant tree, it looked like any other tree out there.
He looked at the portraits of Amy. The triptych.
'Come on, Amy, give us a hand.'
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Chapter
16
Amy Pond was awake. And she was not happy.
'Is someone going to let me out of here?' She was in a small, dark room. She could smell the damp still, so she reckoned she wasn't that far from the tree she'd been dragged through. 'Come on, bored now!'
Nothing.
Her eyes were adjusting to the dark and, after a few minutes, she realised she wasn't alone. A handful of other people were lying flat on the ground, and she reached out gingerly to touch the nearest, a rotund old lady.
Yes. She was breathing. Not dead. Not-dead people in a room - definitely a good thing. Not-sleeping people would have been better.
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She tried to focus on the faces as she moved around. Tom Benson was there, a man she hadn't seen before, oh, and that was the weird manservant from the Manse.
'You lot,' she clicked her fingers. 'You lot are all duplicated back in the village, aren't you?'
The fourth and final person she found was different to the others. She wasn't just lying there, she was cocooned in a woollen, well, cocoon. Only her face was visible, and Amy held a hand near her mouth. Yup, breathing but, like the others, shallow breathing. A posh lady, nice hair, about 60. She'd seen her before... of course.
'Hello first Mrs Porter,' she said. 'Glad you're still with us and not under the patio.'
Why was Amy awake and not these others?
She'd been duplicated, too. She remembered seeing that young counsellor changing... oh. Maybe something had happened to her, and that was why Amy was awake now.
Blimey, that's what travelling with the Doctor did for you. You worked things out quickly enough, but they usually had a fairly grisly story behind them.
Amy was about to yell out again when the whole world seemed quite literally to convulse.
'Not good, Amy,' she said aloud, to comfort herself.
It was good, though. When the world stopped juddering, part of the wall opposite just melted away. Amy could actually see the walls unwrapping 222
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themselves and melting away. 'Like wool... Oh great, I'm in their ship and it's all made of wool.'
She glanced back. Sure enough, Mrs Porter's wool cocoon was gone, although she wasn't waking up.
Nor were any of the others.
'Still just me, then. OK.'
She stepped into another part of the ship. As she moved slowly along, she kept seeing things flicker in her peripheral vision but it wasn't till she entered a much larger area that she realised what they were.
It was the crew, unwrapping and re-knitting over and over again. Some of them were on the ground, others pressed against walls, becoming one with the walls, then emerging again, then going back in again.
No one was making a sound, but what she could glimpse of the indistinct faces suggested they weren't exactly enjoying this.
An arm reached out and grabbed her and she squealed. It was Tom Benson, she realised. Well, the woolly alien version of Tom Benson.
'I don't know what to do,' she said. 'Where's 128
or whatever she's called?'
The faux Tom Benson didn't reply, he just merged into a ship's doorway and then out again. Then in again. Then out again.
It was as if the ship was rejecting the crew... 'Like an illness. Like antibodies, kicking out a virus.'
'No, not... not a virus...' said a rasping voice at her feet.
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She dropped to the floor. Pushing its way through the ground, then sinking back, then re-emergi
ng was Commander 128.
'The ship is hurt - the Glamour... leaked out.
The energy is being misused... The only way the ship can survive is by absorbing our lives. When it exhausts those, it'll die anyway.'
'OK, OK, I get that.' But 128 was gone again.
'Come on, come on,' Amy urged the woolly ground.
This time a whole head popped up. 128 was really giving it all she had.
'We need the Glamour back or the ship will die.'
Then she was gone again.
'Right. Find something called the Glamour - and I'm betting we're not talking a makeover - and bring it back here. Simple!'
She waited to see if 128 came back. 'I need to know how to get back to the village.'
Nothing.
Amy got back to her feet and continued walking.
Something had to lead somewhere, surely...
Rory thought about what had happened when the world went mad. The two of them and limping Old John hit the deck. Oliver was in the throes of...
Where the hell were Oliver and Old John?
Old John seemed to know what was going on, so maybe he was the best bet.
'Go on,' Rory said to the picture of the tree. 'Don't show me Amy stuff, show me useful stuff.'
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The tree obediently changed into a picture of a small hillock, covered with sheep.
'Great.'
He was about to suggest something else when it struck him. 'Show me a door. Out of this room, to wherever the Doctor is.'
The picture showed a wall, and Rory recognised it.
'Oh, you good scary picture thing.'
He looked around and sure enough, there was the exact bit of wall.
Closing his eyes, Rory walked at it.
Through it.
He opened his eyes to find himself at a party.
'Rory!' Someone slapped him on the shoulders. It was Oliver Marks, full of life. And possibly alcohol.
'Welcome to my new world. Free of Tahnn, free of Weave, and with my beautiful family all here.' He indicated the woman Rory had seen in the garden, plus two kids.
'Hi,' Rory said lamely. 'Don't s'pose you've spotted the Doctor. He likes a good knees-up.'
He saw Amy before Oliver could answer. He pushed his way through to her, but somehow every time he nearly got to her, she was six people away again.
'Got you!'
He was yanked away from Amy. It was the Doctor. 'It's not really her, sorry. Anyway, how did you get here? No, doesn't matter, you are here, that's 225
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the important bit. So if you are here, we can get in and out. Question is how. So yeah, actually, how did you get in here?'
'Through an invisible door.'
'Of course you did. Thank you. That's helpful.'
'No, really. It was exactly where you went out, only to me it had been sealed over with a bit of wall.'
The Doctor swung round, back and forth, back and forth. 'Focus, Doctor, focus,' he muttered. 'Think think, think. Came in through a door - what was in front of me? Paintings? No. That table? No. That huge window? Yes!' He swung around 180 degrees.
'Door's that way, Rory. Come on, you two,' he yelled to two people. Rory recognised one as Chibbers/
Cheggers/whatever. The other one was a scrawny kid dressed like a Womble. The Doctor held Rory's hand, tighter than Rory thought appropriate. 'Rory, grab 3. 3, grab Owain, careful of his gammy leg.'
Gammy leg? thought Rory. Is that Old John? Wow, some people have weirdself-image problems.
'Right,' the Doctor announced. 'Let's go. As my old friend Stitch once said, "No one gets left behind"!'
'I've seen that film,' Rory muttered to the manservant who seemed to have a number not a name. Oh. Oh he must be a Weave. 'Disney. Love a good Disney.'
Any further conversation was stopped as the Doctor ran at full pelt into what Rory hoped wasn't 226
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going to be a solid wall.
It wasn't.
They were in the hallway of the Manse.
'OK, assuming we're out of Oliver's illusion, bless him, let's get to the Weave ship.'
3 stopped. 'Doctor, there's a problem with your plan. I can't go outside.'
Rory noticed the Norfolk accent was gone, along with the subservience.
'Yeah, course you can go outside,' the Doctor said. 'Nathaniel Porter is dead. Oliver was pretty thorough in his revenge on him.'
So they exited into the night air.
'At last,' 3 murmured.
'Doctor,' said Rory. 'If all that in the Manse is an illusion, what's going to happen to Oliver when it stops?'
'If it stops,' said 3.
'When it stops,' confirmed the Doctor. 'And Rory, I don't know. Much as I like Oliver and feel sorry for him, right now, getting the Glamour back aboard that ship is more important.'
'Why?'
'Because it doesn't belong on Earth. Look at Oliver. Look at what he's done with it. Imagine if it spread and everyone's fantasies came to life. Blimey, imagine your fantasies brought to life. That's a scary thought. Poor old Amy wouldn't know what'd hit her.'
Rory frowned but chose to say nothing.
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They ran as fast as they could to the schoolyard, Owain/Old John having stopped and told them to go on without him - his leg was killing him.
The Doctor reached the entrance to the dig first and bolted down it. By the time Rory and 3 caught up, he was staring at the exposed side of the Exalted, a massive tear in it. Standing next to it, unmoving, like freeze-frames on a DVD, were Enola Porter and her team.
'OK, so we can see what happened here.' The Doctor pointed behind him, to Marten Heinke. '3, see if you can free your chum there.'
'I daren’t.'
'Why not?'
'Same reason I'm staying in my human disguise.
If we lose concentration, we'll be absorbed by the ship as it tries to regain energy.'
'3, don't see if you can free your chum there, instead, tell me how we get the Glamour away from 01ly and back into your ship.'
'I have absolutely no idea.'
'Great. Fabulous. Absolutely marvellous.'
'Couldn't we just...'
'What, Rory, what? Couldn't we just what?'
'Doesn't matter, daft idea.'
'Daft ideas I like. Right now I could do with a daft idea. I prefer great ideas, but daft will do.'
'Couldn't we tempt it back. I mean, it presumably went to Oliver because his need to create a fake world was greater than Nathaniel Porter's.'
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The Doctor said nothing.
'Ah well.'
The Doctor walked over to Enola Porter, waved a hand in front of her. No reaction. 'She's no good to us, then. Your idea is brilliant, Rory. But I'm not sure how we can make it work.'
'About blooming time!'
Amy Pond was stepping out of the rent in the ship. She hugged the Doctor and then Rory, who noted happily that he got the longer hug.
'Doctor,' she said, 'we have to help Commander 128 and her crew. The ship's absorbing them.'
'Back ten seconds, already giving orders. Yup, this is the real Amelia Pond all right. But she's right, 3.'
'Oooh, I saw your original inside there.' Amy waved at the ship's interior.
The Doctor clicked his fingers. '3. You can't manipulate the Glamour, can you?'
'Of course I can.'
'Yes, all right, but not in your current state.
Otherwise, why did it go for Oliver? Why not any of the actual crew - I assume it's actually programmed to work for you lot. Entertainment system on long voyages, that sort of thing, yes?'
'Yes. But no, it doesn't work on injured crewmembers. An illness, a fever, the Glamour could go utterly haywire.'
'Rather like it has done with 011y. So it can't go to a damaged Weave mind - and you're all damaged 229
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anyway in your natural state because the Glamour can't go to you - oh, God bless Oroboros-esque problems.'
'You what?'
'Catch 22, Rory. To stop the Glamour we need an undamaged Weave body to draw it out. All the Weave bodies are damaged by the Glamour, and the only way to un-damage them is to use the Glamour, which we can't...'
'Because all their bodies are damaged, got it.'
'So we need something more damaged than Oliver's mind. Or at least a confused one. You, me, Amy, old limpy John, wherever he is, we're useless. We're all too self-aware right now. But if one of the sleeping humans in there were suddenly awoken...'
'No good, Doctor,' said 3. 'Whenever we take a human form, we are obliged to give them full disclosure first. They all knew what was happening to them.'
'That's true,' said Amy. 'I did.'
'So in there is the real Chivers, hopefully the real Marten Heinke and the real Nancy Thirman. That's all of you, yes, 3?'
'Mrs Porter!' shouted Amy.
'She's over there Amy,' the Doctor pointed at Enola.
'Oh not her. The first Mrs Porter.'
'Dead,' said 3.
'No, she's not. She's asleep in there. With the rest THE GLAMOUR CHASE
of them. She was in a cocoony thing, not like us. First-class service, I suppose, for the local aristocracy.'
'No.' 3 grabbed the Doctor. 'If Amy's right...'
'She's always right,' Rory muttered.
'If she was in a cocoon, it's because she's in hibernation. She's not been copied, she's being fed nutrients from the ship. There's no copy of Mrs Porter, so she won't have been conditioned. Most likely 25463 tried to kill her and my people found her and saved her life.'
The Doctor grinned. 'Wake her up, she'll have the biggest shock, show her an alien and BAM! The Glamour will come straight to her like a shot. The mixture of confused mind and its own ship, best bait we've got.'
Rory frowned. 'But you're only guessing all this, aren't you?'
'Course I am,' said the Doctor. 'It's more fun that way.' He ran into the ship, followed by the others.
Amy led the way back to the chamber. It took a while.
'Blimey,' the Doctor said. 'This ship's huge.'
'It stretches right out of the village and under—'
