by Paul Cornell
"Second-hand blood doesn't do you much good," Jake told Ruath. "He needs the real thing."
"He does indeed." Ruath tapped some co-ordinates into the console and the TARDIS took off, the central silver column rising and falling. "But for what I've got planned, human blood won't do."
"You what?" Eric frowned. "You expect the Messiah to drink the blood of animals? Why, the lowest Undead wouldn't stoop to that."
"Animals? By Rassilon, no. Yarven needs a very rich brew if he's going to be good for my purposes." The Time Lady flicked another control and the scanner screen spun out of the wall, a globe of the Earth flashing up on it. A cursor was blinking away below Australia. "Another TARDIS, on the island that you call Tasmania. As I thought. Now, if I've got my timing right ..." Her hand became a blur of motion as she asked her TARDIS's systems log to identify the user code of that particular vehicle. "Yes." She smiled up at the screen triumphantly. "I missed him on Gallifrey, but I've certainly got him now"
On the screen had appeared a picture of a fresh-faced blond young man, frowning a pained frown at the troubles of the world.
"The Doctor, in his fifth incarnation." Ruath grinned triumphantly.
"So he's ..." Madelaine raised a finger.
"A Time Lord. Oh yes ..." Ruath stared at the screen in anticipation. "That's why we need his blood."
One
Tegan Jovanka leaned back in her deckchair and yawned. She had her legs stretched out in front of her, hoping for a bit of a tan, but Tassy's cloudy skies didn't look too hopeful. "Bloody place," she muttered, adjusting the brim of her redundant sun hat. "Might as well be in Kent." The countryside around Launceston was green and lush in a restrained, home counties sort of way. It was the first time Tegan had been to Tasmania. Apart from the plants and the shape of the houses, she couldn't see a lot of difference between it and England.
Tegan had, after all, become an air stewardess to see the world, the world being points to the north east and south west, having had enough of Brisbane and London. When her Aunt Vanessa had been murdered by the Master, the young Australian had teamed up with the tall, curly-haired adventurer in time and space known as the Doctor. However, before she'd got to know him that well, he'd fallen off a radio telescope and changed into a really dull Romper Room reject who'd rather play bloody cricket than do anything entertaining.
She didn't always think of him like that, but at this particular moment Tegan was sitting with her back to a cricket scoreboard. It indicated that the Doctor was currently enjoying a mind-numbing 88 not out. She had been marched into this guest enclosure, with access to the pavilion, thank God, and presented with a deckchair. A woman called Frances had chatted to her for a while, but Tegan wasn't in the mood.
"You'll enjoy it, Tegan," the Doctor had said. "You're Australian." She'd told him there and then that a charity cricket tournament in Tasmania was about as exciting to her as a Basic TARDIS Maintenance course would be to him, and about a quarter as useful. But he was already running around the console in excitement, tapping out coordinates like a vicar with the runs.
If she'd never met him, she'd have had a career by now. She'd had the chance to go back and have a real go at it, but then he'd showed up again. The least he could do would be to take her to some alien planets, let her meet some interesting people. Some monsters.
Tegan glanced at the Doctor as he carefully stepped forward to block a ball. His face was a study in concentration. For somebody so open, it was sometimes hard to tell what he was thinking.
She turned back to her book, Primo Levi's If This Is A Man. She'd lost her place. It'd been hard to read, these last few days. Like she ought to be doing something more important. But the book demanded that she finish it. It was the story of the author's confinement in a concentration camp. How he'd managed to survive such staggering inhumanity. What people could do to other people.
And how invasive it all was.
She put the book down again and put on her sunglasses. Why did the Mara have to have been a bloody snake? She could picture it, she kept on picturing it, wrapped around her brain.
Always there, he'd said. Maybe he'd been making some metaphorical point about the nature of evil, but that wasn't the way she saw it. She saw it like she was somebody with a terminal disease. Always waiting for the relapse. Just a question of bloody time.
Somebody was standing at her shoulder.
She looked up. It was Nyssa, in her blue and white dress. "Hi," Tegan muttered. "What's up, you got bored with checking out the scoreboard?"
"I think I've got it ..." Nyssa glanced up at the black slab behind them. "You see, the number up there - "
"What I don't understand about cricket," Tegan interrupted her, "is that it's a sport where most of the team stay back in the pavilion and stuff their faces. They ought to be made to sit out here and suffer with the rest of us. I'll bet they've got a few tinnies back there."
"Tinnies?" Nyssa sat down beside her, cross-legged.
Tegan sighed. "Cans of lager. Alcohol, you know."
"Yes. We had ale on Traken." Nyssa came from a distant planet that, Tegan had come to believe, was the interstellar equivalent of Public Service Broadcasting. "We had several sayings about it."
"I'll bet." Tegan opened her book again and pretended to read.
Nyssa began to play with her bracelet, a ring of Trakenite gold that she'd quietly taken to wearing after the death of Adric. "Tegan ..." Her voice had taken on that head prefect tone.
"What?" "How are you feeling?"
"Fine."
"About the Mara, I mean."
"Yeah, I understood that that was what you meant. I'm fine."
"Only you seem to have become very - "
Tegan threw down the book. "I'm okay. Do you know what it's like to have all your doors thrown open? No you don't. And it's still in here, right? So you be careful, or I'll bite your head off!"
Nyssa was silent for a moment. "I think you just did," she said carefully. She stood up and walked away.
"Rabbits." Tegan stamped her foot, angry at herself. Nyssa seemed to expect her to whinge about what she'd gone through, and that was annoying. Tegan just wanted to get on with something, anything. It was sitting here that was the problem.
Nyssa had gone into the pavilion. Tegan stood up and stretched, getting between several of the other spectators and a fine cover drive from the Doctor's batting partner, a man called Boon who had a stupid moustache. "Sorry," she muttered to them.
As she made her way towards the exit, there came a sudden shout and a gasp from the crowd. The spectators in the guest enclosure got to their feet and applauded.
The Doctor was walking back to the pavilion, his bat held high. Out for ninety.
"Serves you right," said Tegan.
By the time she'd checked out the shops of Launceston's little centre, bought a bag of apples and tried on some bright flowery shorts, the light had started to fade. So had her anger. She'd say sorry to Nyssa and try to explain. It wasn't like the kid hadn't suffered herself. The Master was currently going around wearing her Dad's body like an off-the-peg suit. It was just that she was so level-headed and logical. On a camping holiday, Nyssa would have been the one with the emergency matches and the insect repellant. Tegan would have been the one without a tent.
1993 wasn't that different from the eighties, thank God. A glance in a bookshop cheered her with the news that the cold war was over, and it was great that that creep Hawke was out of office. Maybe things towards the end of the century were looking up. Book prices were still too bloody high, though.
The TARDIS had landed out by the nets that morning. The Doctor had explained to the organizers of the competition that the police box was a small part of his collection of thirties memorabilia. They'd been delighted, such behaviour being just what they'd expected from the writer of By Lord Cranleigh's Invitation, Seventy Years Of Charity Elevens, a piece that the Doctor had, apparently, had published in Wisden. Tegan had flicked through a pile of the Doctor's cricketing magaz
ines at one point, and had been delighted to discover a ferocious letters-page dispute concerning the details of one of the Time Lord's historical reminiscences.
As she approached the nets in the dusk, she could see that he was practising alone, facing a steady stream of balls from a bowling machine. His cream coat hung from it, leaving him in his shirtsleeves, ignoring the chill of the evening air like he ignored the poor light. He was adjusting his stance, his blond hair catching the last light of the descending sun. His face was creased in a frown, but it wasn't the frown of somebody who was worried about duties or careers or anything serious. It was the frown of somebody free, somebody whose whole concentration was on enjoying the game. That could change, of course. Sometimes Tegan had glimpsed a giant old pain on that face, a sort of despair at how all the universe's hopes could end in violence. He'd always try to do something about that. But he preferred to just be free to play. He'd once said to her, and she thought he was quoting somebody: "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?"
She could never be angry at him for long.
The latest ball spun in, hitting the ground at a low angle. The Doctor stroked it aside with sudden force and broke into a grin. "Got it!" he exclaimed. He turned to Tegan, as if he'd been aware of her presence all the time. "My eye wasn't quite in today."
"Did your side win?"
"Oh yes." The Doctor switched off the machine. "We're in the quarter-final tomorrow, against Mike Getting's side. How was your day?"
"Oh, I walked around a bit, did some shopping."
The Doctor had pulled on his coat. He unrolled his panama hat from his pocket and knocked it into shape before perching it one-handed on his head. "Nyssa said that you'd - "
"Yeah, well, I'm going to say sorry."
"Been feeling bored." He'd stuffed his hands in his pockets and met her gaze with that frown again. "Would you prefer to go somewhere else?"
"No." Tegan kicked a twig back into the band of forest that bordered the nets. "It's just that she keeps going on about the Mara."
"Ah."
"I'd like to be able to forget it, but she wants to care and share. I snapped at her a bit."
"Well, you've been through a very trying experience, it's only natural that you should - "
"Don't you start!"
"Sorry. Did you want to get something from the TARDIS?"
"No. Came to find you."
"Tea, then, I think." He picked up his cricket bag and headed back towards the pavilion, Tegan following. His face was lit with a brisk jollity that she knew was for her benefit but appreciated anyway. "I'm told that our boarding house provides a bottomless pot." He frowned again. "Before eight o'clock."
As they doubled their pace across the finely cut grass, the Doctor plucked the hat from his head and dropped it onto Tegan's. She put a hand on it to keep it there.
Nyssa was reading a thick volume of chemical abstracts that she'd propped open on the small bedside table the boarding house had provided. Nyssa had never left Traken before the Doctor's future self, the Watcher, had appeared to spirit her away. She liked Earth, and could see why it was the Time Lord's favourite planet. It had the potential to be like her homeworld, but didn't have the enforced peace that had made Traken ... dull. That was a hard word to apply to such a paradise, especially one that was now just a memory, but ... things were always better when they were difficult to achieve. If two people on Earth were good to each other, it was because they'd made that decision.
There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Nyssa called.
Tegan popped her head round the door, looking abashed. She was carrying the Doctor's hat. "Hi."
"Hello, Tegan." Nyssa smiled. "I shan't ask you how you are."
"Yeah, right ..." Tegan glanced at the volume of abstracts. "Hey, I think I saw the movie. Great twist ending."
"I think the ending's quite obvious. The dissolution and cooling of the universe."
"I wanted to say sorry" Tegan sat down on the bed and dropped the hat on the bedpost. "I shouldn't have snapped at you."
"That's all right. You've been through a..."
"Don't say it. I was just as bloody-minded before the Mara."
"Yes," Nyssa agreed. "But we worry about you. It is hard to tell whether you're really suffering or whether you're just, as you put it, moaning."
"Thanks." Tegan grinned. "I'm just not used to people coming right out with all this concern. I thought that the poms were soft, but you two - "
Nyssa was staring at her. "You thought that the apples were soft?"
"No, poms, Brits, English people."
"Ah. I think that the TARDIS's power of translation sometimes has trouble between Australian and Trakenite. Perhaps that's where the difficulty lies."
"Perhaps." Tegan gave her friend a quick hug. "Cheers, anyway. Good night."
"Good night, Tegan." Nyssa shook her head as the older woman left, and returned to her book. Perhaps the Doctor's impulse to take Tegan to Australia had been the right one after all. She glanced at the panama hat at the foot of the bed and smiled.
Nyssa read for another five minutes, and found her concentration faltering. She put down the book, locked the door, and got ready for bed. She'd closed the curtains, and thought about leaving the window open ... on Traken, you could have done the same with the door, but freedom had its price. She closed it. Finally, she settled down to sleep.
It began during a dream. Tremas, her father, was telling her that she must get out of their house, that there was no longer any place for her at his hearth. He'd found a new wife, and she was going to have a baby.
Nyssa protested. She'd always been a loving daughter to him, it was wonderful that he was alive and himself, could she not stay?
No, Tremas waved a finger. She must go and sleep in the hut on the hills, with only a rough blanket to cover her. When the baby was born, they would have to treat it as an only child too, so it would be exactly like her. So she could not be in the house with it.
At night, and it was night now, Nyssa would creep up to the window of her father's house and stare in at him and his new bride, slowly dancing by the fire. She had a face, but Nyssa couldn't recognize her.
Something was moving across the wooden floor. A naked baby.
It looked up at the window. It could see her!
The baby rushed across the room, its tiny limbs working like an insect's. With one leap, it was atop the chair, and had its palms and giant face against the window. Its eyes were full of watery desire. They were blue, but they could change colour any day. Its stubby little palms were white against the glass. Its full lips were sucking at the window, making a little cloud of white on red.
"Let me in," he said.
Nyssa wanted to know what the baby's name was, so she carefully undid the window catch, and let it inside.
The cold air woke her up.
She was standing by the window in her night-dress.
And the baby was holding her hand.
Nyssa stifled her urge to jump back. The baby would have fallen from the window-sill where it stood. It was a little, naked, blue-eyed boy, about a year old. No, more than that. It was standing on the window frame, swaying. Only its grip on her finger was keeping it upright. It was smiling at her and pointing, in that curious way of babies, with one finger and all the others spread out, at the Doctor's hat. She looked quickly round the room, expecting for an insane moment to see a mother who'd handed her the child. Nyssa knew enough about Earth children to realize that the baby couldn't possibly have got here on its own.
"Somebody must have broken in here; she said to the child, uncertainly. "And sat you on the window-sill. Thank goodness I woke up, I might have knocked you over the edge." The story sounded ridiculous as she said it, but it was the only way she could make the facts fit.
She picked the baby up. "Come on then, let's go and see the Doctor. He'll know what to do with you." The little boy breathed hot baby breath against her cheek. She reached for the dressing-gown that
hung from the wardrobe door, and in doing so exposed the mirror on the front of the cabinet.
In the mirror, she wasn't carrying anything.
Nyssa looked down at the weight in her arms. The baby opened his mouth. Out of his pink, smooth, upper gums, two elongated fangs emerged.
With a convulsive jerk of her arms, she threw the thing onto the bed. It bounced immediately back at her, flying through the air and grabbing the arm of her night-dress. It spun onto her throat, its little hands pulling at the material around her collarbone.
Terrified, Nyssa found that she couldn't scream. She couldn't will herself to make the sound. She ran at the wall, all instinct not to hurt the baby gone. Its head hit the plaster and rebounded, uninjured.
They fell into a corner and the baby succeeded in ripping open the material at her shoulder. Nyssa grabbed the infant with both hands, trying to pull it off her, but it had enormous strength. Tiny fingers grasped her ear and pulled so hard that Nyssa opened her mouth wide, unable to yell out the pain of it.
The baby's other hand grabbed her bottom lip, pulling it until it was white. Nyssa hit the baby with her fists, punched its body frantically, rolled around the floor, trying to dislodge it as the pain in her face grew greater. She could taste the child's fingers and they were like earth, like old mud in a playground. She tried to bite them but couldn't bring her teeth to bear on the little vice that held her lip. The baby's warm mouth descended to the flesh of her neck, and she thrashed again, kicking against the door in the hope that somebody would hear her.
It would hurt so much, it would hurt too much for her to stand. She wanted to scream, she wanted to beg the baby to at least let her scream.
Two injections into the jugular vein.
She thought of the smell of bottled anaesthetic when she felt the sharp, quick sting, of inoculations at her father's hands.
A huge relief washed over her at the lack of pain.
Then the baby began to suckle.
It was sucking and licking the blood out of her neck, its little tongue working at the wounds. She could lie here until it had taken all of it, until she'd had her life eaten away. An awful calm descended on her, and she realized that the baby wasn't just taking her blood out, it was putting something in, a calming agent, a premed. The animal had to be calm.
