Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Josephine? Was that you? Are you all right?’

  ‘It was nothing, Father.’ In an odd panic she tucked the slab into an old tin box which had once held a childish collection of glass jewellery, and tucked it out of sight under her bed.

  But she looked into the box the next day. The light had gone out, leaving the slab as black and featureless as before. She checked the next day. And the next.

  In the years that followed, she took the box with her to finishing school, and then to her own London flat, and then to her married home. She checked it every day.

  Until the day, nearly ten years later, when the slab flared again.

  And again, ten years after that…

  II

  ‘I was given this when I was sixteen,’ said Mother. She was holding a little tin box.

  ‘Hush,’ said Father. He sat before the televisor, his face bathed in its odd silvery light. ‘It’s about to start.’

  The televisor was a heavy wooden box with an odd glass window set into its front. Father said it was like a wireless, but with pictures. It looked more like a fish tank to Josie Laws McRae. Yet she was curious. She leaned forward to see in the dim light of the living room, through air thick with smoke from her mother’s cigarettes, her father’s pipe.

  ‘This is an experimental device, you know,’ he said now. ‘Only a handful of people have one.’ Her father was a lawyer working for the Logie Baird company in Long Acre. ‘Us and the Prime Minister!’

  And today the BBC, the wireless people, were going to show a play on this little box.

  ‘Make a note in your diary, Josie,’ Father said.

  Josie was sixteen years old, and suspicious. ‘How do you know I keep a diary?’

  Mother looked away.

  Father said, ‘This is the fourteenth of July 1930. The day they broadcast The Man with the Flower in His Mouth. You’ll be able to tell your grandchildren.’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘Apparently they’re thinking of adapting Black Orchid next, if this works. You know, dear, that Cranleigh book—’

  ‘I’m not having any children. Let alone grandchildren!’

  Here was Mother with her battered old tin box. ‘I thought that when I was your age.’ Smiling, tired-looking, Mother was fifty-six years old. It was hard to believe she had ever been young. ‘But, Josie love, when I was your age, I came across this.’ She held out the box. ‘I was sixteen. Which is why I think it’s appropriate to pass it on now.’

  Josie frowned. ‘It’s not something else to do with Grandpa, is it?’ Her mother had always made much of the fact that she was the last of the Laws, a long line of Scottish gentlefolk and engineers. She had insisted, in fact, on her daughter having the name incorporated into her own. All this seemed horribly backward-looking to Josie. This was the 1930s, the modern age; she didn’t want to be burdened by the past.

  ‘No. Well, not directly. I just think it should stay in the family.’ And she opened up the enigmatic box.

  The object revealed, lying on an old silk handkerchief in the box, was black, rectangular, gleaming. ‘What is it? A cigarette box?’

  ‘Not that. Well, I don’t know what it is.’ And Mother began to tell a complicated and rambling story about a poor woman and a dinosaur claw.

  Josie, distracted, kept looking at the televisor, where figures were moving about through a hail of white, as if glimpsed in a snowstorm.

  ‘And it lights up.’

  ‘It does what?’

  ‘It’s done it four times so far, since I’ve had it. Once on the very day I was given it.’ She pulled some bits of paper, yellowed with age, from the bottom of the box. ‘I made a note of the dates. It lights up for a few hours every nine years, nine months and twenty-six days.’

  Josie liked numbers. It seemed to be something she had inherited from the engineers on one side of the family and the lawyers and accountants on the other. ‘Why that period?’

  ‘Well, I spent a long time wondering. I looked in almanacs for calendar cycles, historical significance… In the end it was an astrologer who gave me a clue.’

  Father guffawed. ‘Astrology! As if the stars have anything to do with it.’

  ‘Not the stars,’ Mother said patiently. ‘The planets. Josie, nine years, nine months—’

  ‘And twenty-six days.’

  ‘Is one-third of the year of the planet Saturn. The time it takes to go around the sun.’

  Josie could only gape at her mother, and the wondrous nonsense she was suddenly spouting.

  ‘Ah,’ said Father. ‘I think it’s about to start.’ Tinny voices, like insect scratches, emerged from the set’s tiny loudspeaker.

  ‘Saturn?’

  ‘Saturn.’

  ‘And when’s it due to light up again?’

  Mother glanced at the calendar on Father’s desk, and Grandpa Laws’ big grandfather clock, and smiled. ‘Actually—’

  ‘Hush!’ cried Father.

  ‘Today,’ said Mother. ‘In fact, if I’ve timed it right—’

  The box lit up, bathing Mother’s face with a pale, unearthly light.

  The picture on the televisor broke up, and a howl emerged from the speaker.

  III

  Mum intercepted her at the door. ‘You’re not going out again!’

  Joss was sixteen years old and felt it was childish to scowl. But she scowled anyway. She pulled her sheepskin coat tighter around her, adjusted her bell-bottom jeans, fixed her woollen hat firmly over her blonde hair, and wondered if she smelled of the incense she’d been burning in her room. ‘No, Josie, I’m not going out again. What does it look like?’

  Mum sighed, and glanced back at the living room. On the TV was a grey image of worried-looking shirt-sleeved men at rows of consoles. ‘I thought we might watch it together.’

  ‘Watch what? That old space thing?’

  ‘It’s important, Joss. The astronauts still aren’t safe. Apollo 13 has rounded the moon, but—’

  ‘Oh, Josie, it’s boring.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Josie.’

  ‘And I wish you didn’t call me Joss. I’m not six years old. I wish you wouldn’t call me Joss Laws. That wasn’t even Dad’s name.’

  ‘I told you, after the divorce, I decided to go back to the old family name… Where is it you’re dashing off to anyhow? The Apple studios again, I suppose.’

  ‘None of your business!’

  ‘You and those other girls. You can hang around out there all day and all night and you won’t make Paul change his mind. He really has left the Beatles, you know.’

  Joss tried to keep a lid on her anger. ‘That’s not the point. It’s not like that. It’s deeper. It’s…’

  Mum put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s you growing up.’

  Joss pulled back.

  ‘Come and sit with me. Just for a while.’

  Joss glanced at the TV, where Patrick Moore was making some solemn pronouncement. ‘Why? So you can tell me again how you watched the very first programme ever broadcast, on a telly handmade by John Logie Baird? Why can’t you be normal, Mum? Why can’t you do normal things, that normal mums do with their daughters, like watching cookery shows, or Morecambe and Wise? Why space? People flying off to the moon has got nothing to do with us.’

  ‘But it has, dear,’ Mum said, almost sadly. ‘Or I think it might do, one day.’

  ‘Oh. You’re talking about that stupid amulet of Grannie’s again, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, it’s not an amulet. Whatever it is. I told you I expected it to light up, last Tuesday—’

  ‘I had a party, Mum. Why should I sit around and stare at a bit of old Victorian jewellery?’

  Mum said, more sternly, ‘I didn’t ask you to. Just listen, for once. I can never get a word in! I took it to an old friend, a contact of your father’s from work. I just remembered that first time when I watched TV with your grandma and grandpa, and the thing went off and scrambled the TV reception. Although we called it a televisor
then. I wondered if—’

  ‘What old friend?’

  ‘Nobody you know. He was a soldier. Well, an engineer, telecommunications. He worked for UNIT.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Military. Sort of. I’m not quite sure. But they do have radio facilities. They listen for – signals. I gave the slab to your father’s friend, who gave it to a friend of his, and they sat and waited for it to go off, and monitored what happened. And they heard something.’

  Joss was intrigued, though she tried not to show it. ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Their radio receivers picked it up. A blast, not noise, like a very compressed signal. And it was aimed right at—’

  Joss sniggered. ‘The moon?’

  ‘Saturn, Joss. The planet Saturn.’ She looked blank. ‘I must say that startled me. I don’t think I ever told your father’s friend about the dates…’

  ‘What dates? Oh, look, Mum, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘All right. Just remember, love – that amulet, slab, box, whatever it is, we’re stuck with it. We Laws girls. It’s yours now. I still keep it in your Grannie’s old tin box. And some day—’

  Joss felt as if she was going to explode. ‘Some day, when it’s mine, I’m going to throw it in the Thames and let it find its own way to Saturn. Good-bye, Mum.’

  And, though she knew it was childish to slam the door, she did it anyway.

  IV

  Jo Laws stood in the doorway, in her uniform, her pack at her feet, the door open behind her. At the bottom of the drive Martina waited in her father’s Volkswagen Dragonfly, loaned specially to fly them off to the army training camp in Northumberland.

  Mum and Dad stood in the hall, carpet slippers on their feet. Dad leaned on the wall, his head almost brushing Mum’s treasured signed photo of George Harrison – ‘To Joss, the Fabbest Apple Scruff’ – until Mum slapped his arm to make him stand straight.

  It couldn’t have been more awkward, Jo thought. She longed to go begin her new life, yet she couldn’t bear to leave. She felt like she was being torn apart.

  It was her father who broke the silence. ‘I still can’t picture you in Venezuela.’

  ‘Dad, I’m only sixteen. They won’t be shipping me overseas just yet.’

  And Mum started crying.

  Jo hugged her. ‘Come on, Mum.’

  ‘I almost managed it. Almost got you out of the door without the tears.’

  ‘Mum, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘But what if you’re not, Josephine Laws Patrick, what if you’re not? You see it on the telly – all you have to do is step on one of those IEDs – children, those soldiers are, children barely older than you coming home in boxes, or with horrible injuries.’

  ‘Mum, don’t.’

  ‘I wish you weren’t doing this.’

  Jo sighed. ‘We’ve been through all this. Mum, it’s a recession. There are no jobs. I’m not academic enough to be bothered to take on thousands of pounds of student debt. The army – well, it’s a good career.’

  ‘When I was your age I used to think we’d all be living on the moon by now. That was the influence of your gran, I suppose. Not that I listened to her. Sailing among the rings of Saturn. How daft that all seems now. But what an adventure it would have been! And instead, here you are going off to war.’

  ‘Venezuela will be an adventure.’

  Mum straightened up, wiping her eyes, taking control. ‘Just make sure you survive it, because I think you’re meant for better things than that. Here.’ She reached back and produced a parcel, a heavy handful wrapped in an old scarf.

  Jo took it reluctantly. ‘This is that amulet, isn’t it?’

  Mum closed Jo’s hand over the bundle, and patted it. ‘I remember when I first showed it to you, you thought it was a smartphone! I did laugh at that.’

  ‘Well, it would be more use if it was. Mum, I shouldn’t take this. What if it goes lighting up when I’m on patrol?’

  ‘It won’t light up for another ten years, nearly. And whatever it is it’s been with us Laws girls for a long time now, so maybe it’s good luck.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘Please, Jo.’

  Jo saw how important this gesture was to her. ‘All right. I’ll keep it safe in my kit…’

  Martina sounded her horn.

  There was one last round of kisses, she had to prise herself away from her mum, and then a dash down the drive to the car. She clambered in, the amulet in her hand.

  ‘What’s that?’ Martina asked as the Dragonfly lifted gracefully into the air.

  ‘Nothing.’ Jo tucked it into her bag. ‘Last-minute stuff.’

  ‘My mum gave me a box of scones.’

  ‘Old folk! They’re all the same… Right here, Martie, not left!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ The flying car executed a high-gravity U-turn.

  ‘Some use you’ll be when we’re on patrol…’

  14

  ‘AND THEN,’ PHEE Laws told Jamie, ‘on my sixteenth birthday, having brought the amulet in a box all the way to Saturn, my mum gave it to me.’

  ‘Wha’ a tale!’

  ‘Yes. My mother says that’s why she got involved with Bootstrap herself. When the mining companies started floating proposals to develop the outer system, they looked at Jupiter first, but she lobbied for prospecting probes to be sent here, to Saturn. And then when the early probes found bernalium on Mnemosyne, she made sure her family were in with the first lot of pioneers to come settle out here. That’s what she says. I wasn’t even born yet.’

  ‘And all this because of yon dinosaur’s amulet.’

  ‘Well, my mother says it’s a link between our family and Saturn, so why not come out here and see if it’s leading us to our fortune?’

  Jamie grinned. ‘Sounds like mumbo jumbo tae me.’

  ‘Maybe. But my mother’s quite superstitious. She says old soldiers always are.’

  Jamie was feeling quite pleased with himself. He had no idea what all this meant, a family story about some old bit of stone, and a planet in the sky, and dinosaurs. But it was just the kind of nice twisty puzzly stuff the Doctor liked. And if it was puzzly, it was a fair bet it had something to do with the bigger mystery of the Doctor’s Relative Continuum Displacement Zone, and the way the TARDIS had reacted to Phee in the first place. All he had to do was get this news back to the Doctor and let him do the rest…

  The ground shuddered again. This time it was unmistakeable; Jamie felt it through his legs, up his spine.

  The tent quivered, its fabric walls rippling. A bowl of soup began a slow-motion fall to the floor, spilling as it went. The youngsters stopped making their music, or woke and sat up, looking around.

  ‘That’s a vent blowing,’ Phee said. She was already up, sealing up her suit, making for the airlock.

  Jamie struggled to get to his feet. He got it wrong in the low gravity and went floating up in the air, tangled in his blanket. Flustered, frustrated, he called after her, ‘Phee! Don’t go out!’

  ‘Sam’s out there somewhere.’

  Jamie hadn’t been aware of that. She, of course, would always know where her brother was.

  She turned, pushed through the airlock, and was gone.

  Jamie was out on the surface of Enceladus in less than a minute. He was the first out, after Phee. Only he had had his suit on, ready to be sealed up.

  ‘Phee!’ he called, looking around, stumbling as he spun in the low gravity. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I see her.’ The voice in his headphones was Sam’s. ‘Sis, get down from there.’

  ‘I was trying to find you.’ That was Phee. ‘I climbed up here for a better view.’

  ‘Where are ye, for heaven’s sake?’

  Then he saw Sam, a speck in his skinsuit, standing on top of a heap of ice rubble, waving his arms. ‘She’s to your left, Jamie,’ Sam said. ‘Towards the end of the tiger stripe.’

  Jamie hurried along the valley. It was frustrating trying to run, because he kept lifting off the gro
und; in the end he settled for making huge bounds, pushing sideways against the ground every time he landed. He neared the end of the canyon and saw the huge, shattered ice blocks piled up there.

  The ground shuddered again.

  And now he saw Phee. She was standing on an unspectacular mound of ice. It reminded Jamie of the hill forts in Scotland that people said had been built by the fairy folk.

  But even as he watched, he saw the mound swell.

  ‘Phee, that’s a vent,’ Sam said. ‘A new one. And it’s about to blow.’

  Still Phee didn’t move. She seemed bewildered. She’d got herself in trouble remarkably efficiently.

  Jamie snapped, ‘Phee. Speak tae me. What’s a vent?’

  ‘A geyser,’ she said. ‘Where liquid water erupts from the interior of the moon. You know, to make snow, and the ring in space.’

  ‘These tiger stripes,’ Sam said. ‘They are faults in the crust. This is where the venting happens.’

  ‘Wissat?’ Jamie could hardly believe what he was hearing. And now he remembered the ‘vent’ they’d flown over in the scooters. Like a huge, burst boil, he’d thought at the time. Well, he’d been right. ‘Sam, ye brought us here knowing it was so dangerous? Are ye tapped, man?’

  Sam sounded defiant again, the prickly kid. ‘That’s what makes it fun, granddad.’

  ‘Fun, is it? That’s yer wee sister up there, man! What’ll happen if that vent blows? Will she be scalded, or what?’

  ‘No. It’s not as hot as that. But she’ll be blown into space – maybe lost—’

  The ground shuddered again, and Jamie saw silvery wisps of vapour squirting up around Phee, up on the mound.

  ‘Blown into space, is it? Not on my watch.’ He glanced around for the scooters. Too far away – no time for that. Only one thing for it, Jamie lad. He looked up at the mound, took a pace back, braced himself. ‘I’ll show ye granddad—’ He began to run, straight at the mound. He had got the measure of this daft little moon now; his legs worked like pistons, and he drove himself forward over the ice. Even the worsening shuddering of the ground didn’t put him off. ‘I’ll show ye granddad!’