‘Another one?’ she asked.
Her husband nodded.
‘With guests already on board, I imagine,’ she continued, sighing softly.
‘Most likely,’ said Mr Carstairs.
‘Lots of Newcomers.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
The Grand Hotel had a hundred and fifty guest rooms, and only one of them was occupied. When the Mayor and Professor Wilberforce at the Oxygen Gardens had first announced the Flower Show, the Carstairs had celebrated. Finally, they had thought, an opportunity to make a decent living here on Chelsea 426. The Flower Show would bring guests, and the guests would bring money.
They hadn’t counted on the Newcomers and the hotel pods. Why should the glitterati of the solar system spend their time at the colony in an old-fashioned and slightly threadbare hotel when they could be transported there in six- and seven-star luxury? Wherever the money from the Flower Show was going, it certainly hadn’t ended up in the pockets of Mr and Mrs Carstairs.
‘I suppose we’d better get started on the dining room,’ said Mrs Carstairs with another sigh.
‘I thought I’d ask the children,’ said Mr Carstairs. ‘Keep them busy and out of trouble.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mrs Carstairs, smiling weakly. ‘Talking of which, where are they?’
As if to answer her question, the elevator doors opened, and Jake and Vienna stepped out.
‘And what were you two doing upstairs?’ asked Mr Carstairs, his eyebrows bunched together, giving him the appearance of an aggravated owl.
‘Nothing,’ said Jake. ‘Just . . . Nothing.’
‘I do hope you weren’t in any of the rooms,’ said his mother. ‘I only finished cleaning the windows yesterday. If I find any of your grubby little fingerprints . . .’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Carstairs, tutting and shaking his head. ‘What were you doing, son? Looking at all the spaceships again, were you? There’s no good ever came from daydreaming about spaceships. And what about you?’ He turned to Vienna.
‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I was just looking for Jake.’
‘Right,’ said Mr Carstairs. ‘I see. Well why don’t the two of you pop down to Mr Pemberton’s and buy me a few tins of furniture polish? We’ve still got the dining room to do and we’ve run out.’
‘OK, Dad,’ said Jake.
Mr Carstairs took out his wallet and was thumbing out banknotes when the sliding doors of the hotel’s entrance hissed open, and a stranger walked in.
He was a tall man in a blue suit, shirt and tie, but on his feet he wore a pair of very old-fashioned, burgundy-coloured shoes. The kind people used to call ‘trainers’.
‘Oh, hello!’ the man said, beaming at the four of them. ‘Is this a hotel, then?’
Mr and Mrs Carstairs looked from the stranger to the large sign behind the reception desk that read The Grand Hotel, and then back to the stranger.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Carstairs, somewhat sardonically. ‘It is.’
‘Molto bene!’ said the stranger. ‘Just the ticket. Got any rooms?’
Jake and Vienna looked at one another and then to their father. His expression had faded from one of haughty derision to tired resignation.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Carstairs with a sigh. ‘We have plenty of rooms.’
He walked round to the other side of the reception desk and opened the leather-bound guest book, producing a fountain pen from his pocket.
‘Just the single room?’ he asked, peering up at the stranger over his half-moon glasses.
‘Yes, just the one,’ said the stranger, looking around at the hotel lobby. ‘Just little old me, myself and I. All by my lonesome. Nobody here but us chickens, et cetera.’
Jake smiled and briefly caught the stranger’s gaze. The stranger winked at him and then returned his attention to Mr Carstairs, who seemed far from amused by the stranger’s behaviour.
‘Could I take your name?’ he asked impatiently.
‘Yes. The Doctor.’
There was a long silence. Mr Carstairs held the pen’s nib an inch above the paper but wrote nothing.
‘The Doctor?’ he asked eventually.
‘That’s right,’ said the stranger, still beaming.
‘I’ll need your full name,’ said Mr Carstairs. ‘Unless your first name is “the” . . .?’
‘Oh, right. Yes. Course. Smith.’
‘Smith?’
‘Yup.’
‘First name?’
‘John.’
‘John . . . Smith?’
‘Yup.’
Mr Carstairs audibly huffed through his nose, but still didn’t write anything in the book.
‘I don’t suppose there will be a Mrs Smith turning up at any point, unannounced, now will there?’ said Mrs Carstairs, leaning into the stranger’s field of view.
‘Oh no,’ said the stranger, his smile breaking just a little. ‘No. Like I said, it’s just me.’
‘Doctor . . . John . . . Smith . . .’ said Mr Carstairs, finally writing it down. ‘Do you have any luggage, Doctor Smith?’
‘Oh no,’ said the Doctor still looking everywhere except at Mr Carstairs. ‘No . . . Travel light. That’s my motto. Well . . . One of my mottos. One of several, actually. Can you have several mottos?’
There was a brief pause, as if Mr Carstairs were waiting to make sure the Doctor had finished speaking.
‘And do you have any specific dietary requirements?’ he asked, eventually.
‘Oh no,’ said the Doctor. ‘Except pears. Can’t stand pears.’
‘No . . . pears . . .’ said Mr Carstairs, jotting down one last note in the book.
Once he had logged their new guest’s details and taken payment for the room, Mr Carstairs handed over a key card, and wished the Doctor good day.
As the Doctor made his way toward the elevators, Mr Carstairs handed Jake a single banknote.
‘There’s ten there. Get me four tins of polish, and don’t go dawdling. You’ll need to get to work on those tables by five o’clock. The pair of you.’
Jake and Vienna nodded dolefully and were on their way out through the sliding doors when the Doctor about-turned and caught up with them.
‘Are these your kids?’ he asked Mr Carstairs.
‘Yes . . .’ replied Mr Carstairs, somewhat hesitantly.
‘Right, only I’m not from round these parts and was looking for a tour guide. Mind if I tag along with them? See the sights?’
Mr Carstairs turned to his wife and shrugged.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Mrs Carstairs, casting a vaguely suspicious eye over the stranger. ‘As long as they are back by five. They have chores.’
‘They will be,’ said the stranger. ‘Wouldn’t want to keep two children from their chores, now, would I?’
Jake and Vienna looked at one another and shrugged in unison before stepping out onto the long, metal walkway of Tunbridge Street, accompanied by their new guest.
Once the doors had closed behind them, Jake turned and looked up at the stranger.
‘Your name’s not really John Smith, is it?’ he asked.
‘Nope,’ said the stranger with a smile.
‘So what is your name?’ asked Vienna.
‘The Doctor,’ replied the stranger.
‘Yeah, but Doctor what?’
‘Oh, just the Doctor. What’s your name?’
‘I’m Jake,’ answered Jake.
‘And I’m Vienna.’
‘Ooh,’ said the Doctor. ‘After the city or the song?’
Vienna frowned.
‘Never mind,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Nice to meet you, Jake and Vienna. I’m the Doctor. Oh . . . Already done that bit. Right . . . Which way are we going?’
Shaking their heads and rolling their eyes, Jake and Vienna led the Doctor down Tunbridge Street. Though it was called a ‘street’, it was little more than a corridor, and a very crowded one at that. People were shuffling in both directions, dragging suitcases and barking orders at their families
to ‘keep up’.
‘Lots of visitors, then?’ said the Doctor. ‘Must be busy at the hotel.’
‘Not really,’ Jake told him. ‘They’ve got these hotel pods. Brand new ones. Newer than our hotel.’
‘Shh, Jake,’ said Vienna. ‘You know Dad doesn’t like it if we talk like that.’
Eventually they came to Miramont Gardens, a wide square lined with silver birches and flanked on each side by rows of shops. In the centre of the square were rows of brightly coloured flowerbeds arranged around a small fountain.
Like Tunbridge Street, Miramont Gardens was bustling with people. Some were recognisable as residents of the colony, the children dressed in short trousers, dresses and polished shoes, the adults in sensible tweeds, but most of the people there looked like tourists, many of them snapping away with their cameras and pointing at the residents as if they were animals in a zoo.
‘Look at them!’ said a large woman in a big pink hat, as she bustled past with her equally large family in tow. ‘They’re all so cute!’
Jake and Vienna were the only residents who weren’t dressed as if they had come from the 1900s.
‘So,’ said the Doctor, craning back his head and looking up at the high curved ceiling of the pod, barely visible beyond the glare of a hundred artificial suns. ‘This is Chelsea 426, then?’
‘Yes,’ said Jake.
‘Hmm,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Very post-modern.’
He looked to the children for approval but met only blank faces.
‘So how long is it since you were last on Earth?’ he asked.
‘Two years,’ said Jake and Vienna, in unison.
‘Ooh, make a wish,’ said the Doctor.
Again, the twins frowned.
‘It’s a saying. When you say something at the same time as somebody . . . Oh, never mind. So two years, eh? Two years all the way out here on Saturn?’
Vienna nodded, rolling her eyes.
‘Someone’s not impressed!’ said the Doctor, grinning. ‘And how about you, Jake? How are you enjoying life here in Boring-Upon-Twee?’
Both children laughed, quickly covering their mouths with their hands as if afraid somebody might hear.
‘Well, I can see why,’ said the Doctor. ‘I mean, it’s very nice and everything, but . . . I don’t know . . . It’s all a bit samey, isn’t it? Like one great big . . . jamboree of samey-ness. Two teenagers, out here, in Quaintsville? What do you lot do for a laugh?’
Their smiles fading, Jake and Vienna looked at one another and then back at the Doctor, both frowning.
‘You know,’ said the Doctor. ‘What kind of mischief do you get up to? I mean, there must be somewhere you all hang out? Playing your music and scaring the oldies, or whatever it is kids do these days . . .’
Jake shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘We just help out at the hotel. And we go to school.’
‘What?’ said the Doctor, and then more insistently. ‘What? But that’s ridiculous. You mean to say there’s nowhere on Chelsea 426 for kids to just muck about and make little nuisances of themselves?’
Vienna laughed, shaking her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s strictly against the rules.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, his tone sarcastically sincere. ‘And what rules would they be?’
‘The Colony Code,’ said Jake.
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Is it anything like the Highway Code? The barcode? The Da Vinci Code?’
‘The Colony Code,’ repeated Vienna. ‘The rules for living on the colony.’
‘Number one,’ said Jake. ‘No loud music utilising repetitive beats or lyrics of a lewd or lascivious nature.’
‘Number two,’ said his sister. ‘No clothing of an unnecessarily ostentatious or revealing manner to be worn at any time.’
‘Number three. No public drunkenness.’
‘Number four. No public displays of excessive affection, e.g. open-mouthed kissing . . .’
Jake giggled.
‘. . . Or fondling of any kind.’
‘Number five,’ said Jake. ‘No bawdy humour or foul language.’
‘And number six,’ concluded Vienna. ‘No gatherings of children between the hours of 4 p.m. and 8 a.m.’
The Doctor nodded sagely.
‘Is that all?’ he asked. ‘So, basically, in a nutshell, if you had to summarise the Colony Code, it’s “Thou shalt not have fun”?’
‘Yeah,’ said Vienna, laughing. ‘More or less.’
‘HELLO!’ SQUAWKED THE mynah bird, landing on its swing. ‘Hello!’
‘Hello yourself,’ grumbled Mr Pemberton as he carried four tins of paint from the stockroom to the shop floor. He handed them to Wallace Fitch, his 15-year-old assistant, whose skinny frame sagged from the sudden weight. ‘There you go. Top shelf, next to the varnish. And then I want you to empty the mousetraps in the scullery. Honestly . . . Mice . . . They’ll get anywhere. Here we are a billion miles from Earth and we still get blimmin’ mice.’
Wallace nodded obediently as he climbed the stepladder, his paint-tin-laden arms shaking at his sides.
‘And don’t drop ’em,’ said Mr Pemberton, chuckling softly to himself.
Once Wallace had placed each tin of paint on the shelf, the ladder wobbling and rattling beneath him, he stepped down and scurried back into the stockroom, his head bowed, leaving his boss alone on the shop floor.
Mr Pemberton was a tall, portly man, his thinning hair pomaded over the dome of his bald head. He was only very rarely out of his shirt, tie and white apron, and in the pocket of his apron there were always three pens: one black, one blue, one red.
His was the oldest hardware shop on Chelsea 426. He and Mrs Pemberton had emigrated only a few months after the colony had first opened to the public.
Truth be told, they’d had enough of Earth. Not long before their departure, Mrs Pemberton had had what they’d called ‘a spot of bother’ with a gang of teenagers, and her purse had been stolen. Shortly after that, their shop had been vandalised and its windows broken. The town in which they lived had seemed so much noisier and more aggressive than it had been when, as newlyweds, they’d first moved there.
The world had changed without anyone asking them if they wanted it to.
Life on Chelsea 426 could hardly have been more different. People greeted one another in the street; everyone left their doors unlocked; and the children knew to speak only when spoken to. It was a simple way of life compared to the hustle and the bustle of Earth, but they liked it that way.
Mr Pemberton was back in the stockroom stacking boxes of nails when he heard the bell above the door jangle and the mynah bird flapping its wings. He walked back out into the shop to see the Carstairs children from the Grand Hotel and a tall, thin stranger in a dark blue suit. He greeted Jake and Vienna with a cheery ‘good morning’, but his expression soured as his eyes met the stranger’s.
‘Good morning,’ he said, phrasing it almost as a question.
‘Morning!’ said the stranger with a cheerful smile.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Oh no,’ said the stranger, approaching the counter and holding out his hand. ‘I’m the Doctor. I’m just tagging along for the ride.’
With a stern nod, Mr Pemberton shook the Doctor’s hand, and then turned to Jake and Vienna.
‘We need some furniture polish,’ said Jake.
Mr Pemberton nodded but didn’t take his eyes off this stranger who called himself the Doctor, even as he crossed the shop floor to the shelves of polish.
The Doctor, meanwhile, walked over to the mynah bird’s cage and peered in through the bars.
‘Hello, there!’ he said.
‘Hello, there!’ said the mynah bird.
‘How many was it you needed?’ asked Mr Pemberton, climbing the small stepladder until he was level with the tins of polish.
‘Four,’ replied Jake.
Mr Pemberton took down four tins and carried the
m back to the counter.
‘That’ll be twelve credits,’ he said. ‘Prices have gone up, sorry.’
‘But we’ve only got a tenner,’ said Jake, ‘and Dad said we had to get four tins. Can we pay you the other two credits tomorrow?’
Mr Pemberton smiled.
‘That would be agreeable,’ he said.
‘That would be agreeable!’ squawked the mynah bird.
The Doctor frowned at the bird and then looked at Mr Pemberton.
‘Oh, don’t mind him,’ said Mr Pemberton. ‘He never shuts up.’
‘I can imagine,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not much fun, being stuck in a little cage.’
‘Well I’ve not heard any complaints,’ said Mr Pemberton. ‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t properly catch your name. Doctor . . .?’
‘Oh, just the Doctor,’ said the Doctor, smiling disarmingly. ‘I’m here for the Flower Show. Looking forward to it, in fact. Can’t wait.’
Mr Pemberton nodded, still eyeing the Doctor with caution. As he handed Jake the tins in a brown paper bag, Wallace came out from the stockroom and froze in his tracks.
‘Oh . . . er . . . hello, Vienna,’ he said, his voice changing pitch mid-word and his cheeks turning a brighter pink.
‘Er . . . hi, Wallace,’ said Vienna, staring at her shoes.
‘Oh, hello Vienna,’ said Jake in a mocking, squeaky voice, giggling.
Mr Pemberton turned to Wallace with an admonishing glare.
‘I hope you’ve cleaned out them mousetraps!’ he barked, and Wallace nodded sheepishly, running back into the stockroom. Mr Pemberton folded the top of the paper bag before handing it to Jake, and in return Jake gave him the money.
The children cheerfully waved goodbye to Mr Pemberton as they walked out of the shop, but the Doctor paused in the open doorway and looked from Mr Pemberton to the mynah bird and back again. He nodded thoughtfully without saying another word, turned and closed the door. With the bell above the doorframe still jangling, the mynah bird squawked, ‘Goodbye!’
Mr Pemberton waited a moment before stepping out from behind the counter and walking up to the window. He followed the three of them with a steely glare, and hissed, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, ‘The Doctor . . .’
They were halfway across Miramont Gardens when Jake began to sing:
The Taking of Chelsea 426 Page 2
