‘We let children play.’
‘And die?’
‘Life here is hard,’ Fladon said. ‘Kids learn that adults stay away from the city for good reasons. We tell them, but they have to learn for themselves, so a lot of them go out into the city when they’re old enough. We give the more grown-up kids comms to use in emergencies. It’s healthy to question, to work things out. They all reach the same decision in the end. Some only go there for a few days, others for years. Sooner or later, they all come back.
The girls faster than the boys.’
‘They all have so far,’ Dela agreed quietly. ‘If the ghosts don’t get them.’
‘And the adults never leave this park? At all?’
‘Well, I remember what the city was like. It’s very painful to go back, see the state it’s in. All the places I went to with Gyll, just… dead.’
‘Gyll?’
‘Yes.’ She blushed, didn’t want to say any more about Gyll. ‘I’ve not set foot there for… well, ten years. At least.
Very few of us have. We’ve been busy here.’
‘But all the stuff there…’
Fladon snorted, raised his hand to shut the Doctor up before he’d really started. ‘We learned self-sufficiency.
How to make things and fix things. Not rummaging around in other people’s garbage.’
‘That’s… admirable. To an extent, but…’
‘It must seem odd. Like I say, we all go through a phase of thinking that. All the kids do. But life here is fragile. Our survival is tenuous, and there’s no guarantee that this place is even viable. We can’t control our destiny, but we must do what we can. It’s childish to think otherwise.’
The Doctor considered. ‘OK… one example: medicine.
Even after fifteen years, there must be medical supplies in the city that haven’t expired, so do you—’
‘No,’ Dela said.
‘All those births, you must have—’
‘No,’ Dela interrupted again, laughing. ‘I wish we did at times.’
‘Well… why don’t you?’
‘Because instead of relying on technology, we have to rely on ourselves.’
‘Oh, too simple,’ complained the Doctor. ‘Too glib.
Come on… when the Fortress arrived you would have both have been – what? – mid-twenties? So you know what the doctors of Arcopolis could do. So what was possible? Heart transplants – easy-peasy. Lungs, livers, kidneys… eyes. Faces. Had you done brains? They’re tricky, but I bet a civilisation that could build –’ he found a particularly impressive building on the skyline and pointed at it ‘– that skylon could manage a good old brain transplant. I bet you’d cured just about everything. If you got squished up in an aircar crash, I bet they’d just unsquishify you. I bet it was practically an outpatient’s procedure.’
‘We had advanced medicine,’ Fladon said. ‘We’re certainly at an advantage now because our ancestors eliminated genetic disease. But sooner or later any medicine would run out. Better to get used to making our own remedies, rely on our own strength. Imagine what would have happened if we had been reliant on robot surgeons? I don’t know what we’d have done if we hadn’t had someone like Jennver who could deliver babies.’
‘What’s your life expectancy now, Fladon? Twenty years less than your father’s?’
‘At least. But the survival of the species is more important than any individual. We need to know that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will survive.’
‘The ghosts keep to the city, the lightning only strikes those going near the Fortress,’ Dela agreed. ‘We have a life for ourselves here. It’s hard, but it’s safe. Take risks and we could all die.’
‘It’s a good way to live, here,’ Fladon said.
The Doctor looked at Fladon. ‘In tents, literally in the shadows of some of the most beautiful buildings ever constructed?’
‘Yes. Living in the shadows is better than dying in the light.’
‘We live here, now, Doctor,’ Dela said softly, a little reluctantly. ‘It doesn’t matter what’s in the city. It doesn’t matter what we’d change if we could. We all of us have to learn to make the best of it.’
‘Fatalism? Just letting the universe do its thing?’
‘Given how we find ourselves here, how we couldn’t prevent losing everything we had in an instant, it’s a perfectly rational response, wouldn’t you say?’ Fladon said gruffly.
The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and took a good look around. ‘No. No, I wouldn’t.’
Late afternoon, and Alsa had just got out of bed and dressed. Her limbs ached. She sat there, half-crouched, thinking about her next move. A shape shifted behind the milky plastic wall, a parent coming her way. It turned the corner, and Alsa was surprised to see the Doctor.
‘I was just popping in to see Dela,’ he said. ‘You were on the way, so I thought I’d say “hi”. Hi.’
‘How’s the head?’ she asked, careful to sneer. Alsa realised she was sitting upright. Something about the Doctor put her on the alert.
‘I had a bandage, but I took it off. There’s a bruise there, but nothing worse.’
‘It’s so small, isn’t it?’
The Doctor reached for the bruise.
‘No,’ Alsa said. ‘This place. The settlement. All these one-storey buildings. I don’t think you can even measure the tallest buildings in Arcopolis.’
The Doctor laughed. ‘Well, someone had to, to build them. The tallest ones are eight, nine hundred storeys, I think, something like that.’
‘You’ve seen taller, though?’
‘On Gammadendrax, they have a tower that reaches all the way to their moon.’
‘Their what?’
The Doctor spent a second considering the quickest explanation, then he said, ‘It’s so tall it would be like stacking all of the towers of Arcopolis one on top of each other. There’s no roof, just two ground floors, one on one planet, one on another.’
‘That’s stupid. What happens in the middle when
you’re going up it? Do they start falling instead of climbing?’
‘That’s just what I asked. You’re a very smart young woman, Alsa.’ His grin melted away, and all of a sudden he looked very stern, very serious. ‘Why do you behave the way you do?’
Alsa frowned. ‘What choice do I have?’
‘You tell me,’ said the Doctor.
So she did.
Almost every kid went to the City when they were old enough. There came a point when you just did the sums, and realised that if all the parents were busy at their work, and if there were so many more kids than adults, then there was no way the parents could stop you doing what you wanted. The very first thing every kid wanted to do was to explore the City that had been looming over the settlement all their life, utterly taboo.
Usually what happened – Alsa’s experience was pretty typical – was that you’d tag along with some older kids, perhaps even break away and run back if they went too far.
Her first trip into Arcopolis, she hadn’t liked it. The buildings were too tall, everything was wrong. There were shadows and tiny dangers and humiliations everywhere.
She’d slipped over on a walkway and fallen into a pothole and got wet and bruised.
A lot of the girls, in particular, didn’t stay there for long. They were always better looked after by the parents than the boys were, given more interesting things to do.
Alsa stuck with it.
She got used to the City quickly. Soon, she was leading younger kids there herself. She’d discovered a department store once, all by herself, close to the settlement but which hadn’t been touched. She’d prised open the sliding doors with a crowbar. There had been eleven kids with her, and they’d swarmed in, pushing and biting and shoving to be the first inside. They’d just run around the place in a pack at first, before breaking up into smaller groups and exploring for themselves. The store was full of everything.
Clothes and make
-up and sport stuff, a load of dead electronics.
There was a food hall, and that was where Alsa ended up. Most things people used to eat had been made by machines, but there were luxuries, and people got those from stores. The smell was terrible, like a cesspit. A lot of stock had just rotted. There was fruit juice, in pretty green bottles but, judging from the first half a dozen of them Alsa broke open, it had all fermented, so she left the rest alone. Some food was perfectly preserved, in plastic packs or in metal tubes. Most of the tubes had pictures of the food on.
She’d peeled back the plastic on one pack, eaten something strange, a bit like mushroom but with an odd melty, stringy texture.
‘Meat,’ the Doctor said.
‘Eh?’
‘The muscle and fat of a dead animal.’
Alsa thought about it, more curious than anything else.
‘That was meat? The parents go on about meat.’ She’d liked the taste, but mainly because it was so gross. She looked down at her own hand, flexed the muscles of her fingers.
‘The attack wiped out all the animals. Except for the parents. Given that cannibalism is, um, off the menu, that means you’re all lifelong vegetarians.’
‘You’ve eaten meat?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You’ve done loads of things, haven’t you?’
The Doctor pursed his lips and nodded. ‘That’s… fair to say. I’ve had more opportunities than you.’
‘Yeah, well, obviously.’
‘What’s your plan? What’s it all about, Alsa?’ He sang that last bit, although she didn’t recognise the tune.
‘What?’
‘Are you going back to the City and staying there all your life?’
‘Doesn’t matter what,’ she said, frustrated. ‘Girls become women, they get pregnant, have babies, look after them, the men help, but they can’t have babies, so the women have to, so there’s no choice, we need to repopulate.’
‘It’s your duty.’
‘Are you laughing at me?’
‘No.’ He clearly meant it, for what that was worth.
‘It’s what we do.’
‘But there is a choice about how you do it,’ the Doctor said.
He was the first person who’d ever understood.
‘They don’t get angry,’ she said. ‘You notice that? Are they holding it all in? I can’t tell. When I get angry… it boils. It never completely goes away.’
‘They’re not guilty, either,’ the Doctor added.
‘Guilty?’ she said, annoyed with him. ‘What have they got to be guilty about?’
‘Even if you were there and saw it all, even if you know it’s not your fault and you did your very best, you ask yourself why. Why did I survive? Why do I deserve to live, when so many others have died? Why was I the only one?’ He paused, then, ‘Guilt. Even if you hide it, it’s there. It eats away at you.’
He looked up at her, gave a nervous smile.
Alsa had watched the performance, unimpressed. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel any guilt. I wasn’t there. Not my fault. But I get angry. I hate this. It’s stupid. I want to lash out, hurt people. All the time. I can’t help it. It’s all such… it’s all…’
‘Wrong?’ the Doctor supplied, and it was as good a word as any. ‘Not the way things are meant to be. This isn’t the life a 13-year-old girl should have. You’ve been denied so much.’
‘Doesn’t matter what.’
‘So you keep saying. But you don’t mean it, do you?’
‘No one could do anything about the Fortress. Even if there had been a warning, even a hundred years’ warning, what could they have done? There was nowhere to run to, no way of fighting it. We are where we are. Here in a load of stupid, small, cold plastic tents. Everything perfectly balanced by Jennver and Jeffip, no alternative, no way to change even the slightest thing without all of us dying.’
‘So your solution is to lose your temper?’
She looked at him, stared him right in the eye. It was very important for him to know that this wasn’t an act, this wasn’t a game, this wasn’t anything trivial or stupid or childish. ‘Someone has to.’
The Doctor was nodding, mouth clamped shut. It was like he was grinding his teeth. Without another word, the Doctor turned and left, his coat tails flapping.
‘It’s all different now, though, isn’t it?’ she said quietly, once he’d gone. ‘Now is when everything changes.’
The evening was a little chilly, and the Doctor had his coat on. He’d still not had a chance to recover his possessions, and felt almost naked wandering around with empty pockets. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it. Hundreds of years ago, at the very least. It was also odd not having to plan the rescue of any friends from imminent danger.
Not that he was short of company. Unfortunately. Qerl – the Doctor thought that was his name – was doggedly at his side.
Qerl was a farmer. Dela had left the Doctor with Qerl about two hours ago. It was teatime, and then it was going to be bedtime for the young children. So the Doctor had been stuck with Qerl who, unlike Dela, wasn’t terribly prepossessing. They’d spent the whole time discussing soil yields and crop rotation. Qerl was now onto the subject of nitrogen fixation and the Doctor had concluded he would have had a more rewarding chat with a diazotroph.
The Doctor glanced up at the sky. It was evening, so it had gone a very dark green. He couldn’t tell where the missing stars would have been. He hadn’t spent all that much time in Galaxy Seven, so wasn’t familiar with the night sky, and it was clouding over anyway. Peering up, though, he could swear three of the stars were moving in close formation. Before he could confirm it, they were behind a cloud.
Frustrated, the Doctor returned his attention to terrestrial concerns. He’d soon be out of here and heading over to the Fortress. He hoped he could get there before it started raining.
The Council met in the largest tent, which was long and narrow, like an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, and set a little apart from the rest of the settlement, on a raised bit of parkland. The Doctor was welcomed inside. There were ten adults in there, all sitting at one end of rows of short benches. Alsa lounged precociously among them, looking at home. Gar was there, but a wallflower. The adults were dressed in a variety of styles – mostly wraps and robes and saris, that kind of thing – all the clothes were clearly handmade and practical.
Qerl was taking his place on the benches. Jennver stood for a moment, addressing the Doctor rather formally.
‘We’re here to welcome the Doctor to New Arcopolis.’
A round of polite applause. Jennver took her seat. The
Doctor did a little bow, thanked everyone.
‘He has already met a great many of us,’ Jennver continued. ‘It’s clear he will fit into this community. He’s a very talented individual, and starting to understand how and why we do things here. I suggest we leave it a few weeks until I formally revise the schedule, so we can see which of his many—’
The Doctor had raised his hand.
‘Doctor?’
‘Er… no,’ he said.
Jennver looked puzzled.
‘I’m not here for weeks,’ the Doctor said.
‘But you said you’d help us.’
‘Well, yes. For a bit. I did that. I thought you were all gathering this evening to wish me bon voyage.’
Murmuring from the adults.
‘Hang on,’ the Doctor complained. ‘I told you. I was happy to see how I can help out around here. If you’d let me have my sonic screwdriver back, I could have done more, but as it is I’ve improved the range of the comm mast, given Qerl advice about his berries, serviced—’
‘You’ve done marvellous work,’ Jeffip said. ‘Don’t you like it here?’
‘It’s lovely,’ the Doctor said, aware there was a dash of tetchiness in his voice but unable to remove it. ‘Charming.
Friendly. But I came to this planet for a reason. There is a weapon inside the
Fortress that is very dangerous. I intend to decommission it.’
‘I say we let him,’ Alsa announced.
Jennver held up a hand, and Alsa fell silent, albeit with
bad grace.
‘Forgive her, Doctor. As the saying goes: children must find their own way to New Arcopolis.’
‘Um… nothing to forgive. I, er, agree with her.’ He looked over at Alsa suspiciously, but the girl was smiling and nodding sweetly.
‘You can’t go anywhere near the Fortress,’ Jennver said. ‘If you go there, you will die. There are the ghosts, but there’s also the lightning.’
The Doctor decided to be gentle. ‘I appreciate that you have a strong taboo against approaching the Fortress. Very sensible. As Alsa will have told you, it’s well defended. I have the ability to thwart those defences. I don’t mean to boast, but I’m uniquely qualified to do that.’
‘You were knocked out by a 13-year-old girl,’ Fladon pointed out, to some laughter from the others.
The Doctor could take a joke. ‘Indeed. A girl whose life I’d just saved. Perhaps she left that bit out.’
‘I told them,’ Alsa said, not rising to the bait. ‘I’ve told them everything. We were really close to the Fortress. I think you can do it.’
‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said, a little unsettled by her magnanimity. ‘Now, there will be no danger to anyone here. In fact, after I’ve deactivated the Fortress, it will be just another building, and you’ll be safe to go back into the city.’ He smiled at them, tried to keep it cheerful.
‘I say we let him,’ Alsa repeated.
The Doctor turned to face her, ignoring the others.
‘Alsa, with the best will in the world, if you wanted to let me get into the Fortress, why did you hit me with that
rock? If you hadn’t, I’d have finished the job by now.’
The adults were murmuring again, glancing at him, talking among themselves. Was this the sort of seemingly polite social situation which would abruptly turn into a trial and end with him being thrown down into a pit filled with local carnivores? He’d been the guest of honour at plenty such events, over the years. Come to think of it, there weren’t any local carnivores left, were there? So he could relax. Presumably.
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