City of Death

by Douglas Adams

  They crunched on for a little in gloomy silence. Eventually Duggan realised something.

  ‘That’s a spaceship!’

  ‘Hush now,’ whispered the Doctor, patting his shoulder. He crouched down, trailing a hand through the sludge and pulling up a handful which dripped and glopped back through his fingers to the ground. ‘This stuff, Duggan, is the amniotic fluid from which all life on Earth must spring.’ The unappetising slime trickled slowly back through his fingers. ‘This is where the amino acids fuse that come slowly together to create minute cells, the cells that will eventually evolve into vegetable, animal and human life. You, Duggan.’

  The Doctor poured the liquid reverentially into Duggan’s hand, then hastily wiped his own hand clean on Duggan’s raincoat.

  ‘I come from that? From that soup?’ Duggan flung it away hurriedly.

  ‘Well, not that soup exactly. It is inert. There is as yet no life in it at all. It’s waiting for a massive dose of radiation to start it off.’ The chain of thought that had begun in Leonardo’s study came to a juddering halt. The Doctor stopped wiping his hand and stared at it in horror. He’d finally worked it out. Romana had too, judging by the way she was staring at the Jagaroth ship in awe. Scaroth’s first gift to the human race. ‘The Jagaroth ship! It’s worse than we thought. The explosion which caused Scarlioni to be splintered in time also created life on Earth. And that is about to happen. The birth of life itself.’

  ‘Here?’ Duggan looked vaguely revolted. ‘While we watch?’

  ‘Well no,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘If we’re still watching then we’ll be in dead trouble. We must stop Scaroth. If we don’t make sure he remains the last of the Jagaroth, the human race will suddenly cease to exist.’

  Romana spotted the figure striding across the plain towards them first. Considering he was a monocular cephalopod in a lounge suit, he looked rather suave. Apart from the gun he was pointing at them.

  As he approached them at the base of the Sephiroth, Scaroth nodded to them. It was the polite acknowledgment one makes to party guests, saying that you will talk to them later while firmly intending not to. Instead, he turned his attention to the craft. Several million years of planning and he hadn’t thought to bring a megaphone with him.

  He shouted and waved his hands in the air. ‘Stop, stop my brothers! In the names of the lives of all of us! Stop!’

  Nothing happened.

  The engine noise of the ship rose slightly.

  Scaroth fired a bullet into the air. Given the flammable fug of the Earth’s atmosphere, the noise and the flash were both quite impressive.

  ‘We must stop him,’ the Doctor said, rushing forward.

  Scaroth stopped pointing his gun in the air and instead trained it on the Time Lord. He was more annoyed than surprised. ‘Damn you, Doctor. Not now. I must stop my ship.’

  When the Doctor replied, it was without any trace of the dilettante adventurer, or even the carefree wanderer. It was with the weary gravity of millions of years.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am in that ship!’ The hand with the gun was wavering a little. ‘I am in the warp-control cabin. I must stop myself pressing that button.’

  Scaroth fired the gun again, the bullet pinging off the tough metal hide of the ship.

  The Doctor planted himself firmly between Scaroth and the hatch in one of the ship’s legs. He shook his head ever so firmly. ‘No, Scaroth. You’ve done it already. You’ve thrown the dice once. You don’t get another throw.’

  Scaroth knew he didn’t have time for an argument. ‘But I’ll be splintered in time again. My people will die.’

  ‘That’s the chance you took. That’s the chance you’re in there taking.’

  Scaroth waved frantically. He could glimpse a distant face in a filthy porthole, staring at endless screens. Me. So close. Look down, you fool. Look down and see me.

  ‘I can save myself. I can save them all,’ he cried, dashing forward.

  ‘No,’ the Doctor said it again, holding out his hands, pleading. ‘The explosion that you are about to trigger is destined to give birth to the human race. The moment that your race kills itself off, another race is born. That has happened. It will happen.’

  The Doctor and Scaroth stared at each other.

  ‘What do I care for the human race?’ Scaroth sneered, a little uncertainly. They’d done so much together. So many wonderful achievements. He imagined trying to explain any one of them to the other Jagaroth. What would they make of it all? Painting. Patisserie. Pyramids. They would, he realised, simply round on him demanding he got them off this dead planet and found somewhere else to invade. ‘Humanity?’ He sighed wistfully. ‘Primitive scum. They were just the tools of my salvation.’

  ‘The product of your destruction.’

  The wretched man had a point. But Scaroth was a man against the clock. He flung the Doctor to the ground and aimed the gun at his head.

  ‘No, Scaroth.’ The Doctor was begging. He wasn’t fighting back. He was just lying there. Staring at him. Being right. ‘History must not change. It cannot.’

  Scaroth looked the Doctor in the eye, shook his head, and squeezed the trigger.

  * * *

  Duggan had hit a lot of things. Heads. Walls. Dogs. A Mini Metro.

  But punching an alien in that weird squidgy face was a first. The fist sank in. The flesh wasn’t as slimy and horrid as he’d expected. But nor was it solid. It was like punching a pillow filled with cutlery. He felt bits of it all slide together crunchily, and then watched as Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, toppled onto the Doctor, the gunshot burying itself in the fuselage with a dangerous hiss.

  Romana ran up, heaving Scaroth’s body off the Doctor.

  The Doctor stood up, dazed and deafened by the growing whine of the engines.

  ‘Duggan!’ growled the Doctor. He shook his head, trying to clear it. ‘Duggan,’ he repeated in a whisper.

  Spare me the lecture, thought Duggan, and decided, just for the fun of it, to hit the Doctor.

  The Doctor’s hand grasped his own with surprising force.

  The Doctor was beaming at him with every single one of his teeth.

  ‘Duggan,’ he declared, ‘do you know, I think that was possibly the most important punch in history.’

  Romana toed the body of Scaroth. Above them the ship’s engines were building dangerously in volume, rippling the air. The hissing caused by Scaroth’s bullet grew to a whine as a fuel line severed.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Romana asked.

  The Doctor shrugged.

  On cue, the body of Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, vanished. One less problem.

  ‘Scaroth’s time is up,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s gone back to the Château.’

  With nothing else to look at, they all stared at the ship. It was howling now, whipping the feeble atmosphere up into a hurricane of pumice and mud. Just visible, on one side, was a little figure, working away in the warp-control pod. It did not look up. It had problems of its own to worry about.

  The Doctor saluted the oblivious figure and then turned away, crunching across the pumice.

  ‘That ship’s about to take off,’ Romana said meaningfully.

  ‘About to explode.’ The Doctor didn’t look back. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  They hurried back to the TARDIS and, for once, let history get on with its business.

  * * *

  At full power, the Sephiroth glided majestically up from the surface of the desolation. As the sphere rose, the claw-like legs tucked themselves neatly up underneath. The omens were good. A tiny fluctuation caused by a fuel leakage seemed to right itself. For a moment the sphere hovered there, glowing with energy, magnificent, expectant.

  Then it shattered.

  * * *

  The warp field collapsed. The fragments of the ship, squeezed into plac
e by impossible forces, finally felt free to fling themselves in burning splendour far and wide across the surface of the dead planet.

  This time, nothing surprising happened.

  * * *

  There was no explosion. It had, despite everything, worked wonderfully. Scaroth opened his eye.

  He had prepared himself nobly for this end. Awaking in the endless desolation. Perhaps time enough for a final farewell to his colleagues. Perhaps to share a single, meaningful glance with himself. To look himself in the eye, just for a soned. Or perhaps to find himself utterly alone until he faded away.

  Whatever, the lack of an explosion told him all he needed to know. That despite everything, despite that Doctor and Duggan, it had somehow worked out all right in the end.

  It deserved to. After all, he had spent millions of years planning this. The Doctor just made it up on the spot. Scaroth deserved his success.

  Scaroth opened his eye, finding himself in total blackness. This was it. The triumph was his. And then, as he watched, the blackness glowed. Little pinpricks appeared throughout eternity—at first a small fire, then a pyramid, statues, cars and bombs. Ghosts of history flickered into being as he flew past them. So he had failed, after all. He was falling up through the time vortex. He realised then that the three-minute limitation had fired. He was going home. To a home he wished never existed. As he drifted through the swirling centuries, his other fragments stared out at him, looking at him in fury and shame.

  They couldn’t understand how all their hard work had ended up counting for nothing. How could he have failed them? How could the Jagaroth have failed?

  Previously, Scaroth had blamed his failure on not having enough time. Now he’d had all the time in a world, and still he’d failed.

  The other splinters of the Jagaroth glared at him.

  ‘No, no, no!’ he wailed. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  But that wasn’t the end. He knew it wasn’t. He had a time machine. He could simply fire it up again, and go back. Go back over and over and over, until the entire plain was crammed with Scaroths, all waving at the spacecraft, all shouting for it to stop. This was better than the original plan. This plan would succeed. It must.

  It must succeed because he knew what he was going back to. Nothing. The Château, full of valuable objects, but no Kerensky to bully to make improvements, and, of course, no Heidi. No conversation sparkling with the wine. No friendship. Just the solid, grave, cruel devotion of Hermann. Only Hermann. Hermann would understand, of course. Hermann would help.

  * * *

  Hermann found himself lying on the floor of the laboratory. His head hurt. Hermann made one of his lists. The list contained the order in which the Doctor, Duggan and the girl would die and the precise way in which each one would perish. He would make Duggan die last, of course. Having seen what he’d done to the others. Or perhaps the girl? That would, Hermann thought, stop her smiling.

  Hermann staggered around the laboratory, trying to shake the pain from his head. Getting ready for the fight.

  At first, the basement seemed so quiet and then a buzzing began, gradually filling the room. The Professor’s equipment was activating.

  Hermann peered at it. The time bubble was forming.

  * * *

  ‘Scaroth! Scaroth! Scaroth!’

  His other selves, chanting his name, in mockery and fury.

  That wasn’t good enough. It just wasn’t fair. He knew that he would try again. And this time he would succeed.

  He could see the end of the time vortex, a bubble opening up into Paris. This time, he would fix it.

  The Centuries That Divide Me Shall Be Undone.

  Scaroth stepped through into the time bubble, getting ready to walk out into the real world and begin again.

  * * *

  Hermann stared in horror at the grotesque shape standing at the heart of the cellar. And then he did something instinctively human. He picked up the first thing that came to hand and threw it at the creature.

  ‘No, Hermann! No, it’s me!’ the thing cried out.

  Hermann thought that a very odd thing to say. At that moment, the fish-oil lamp he’d thrown smashed into the side of the machine, igniting both instantly in an explosion that ripped up and out through the Château from the cellar to the ballrooms and the neglected galleries.

  The resulting fireball could be seen from the very top of the Eiffel Tower and made a lot of appearances in photographs behind startled tourists.

  * * *

  Scaroth never made it out of the time bubble. He barely caught more than a last glimpse of the Mona Lisa smirking at him from the bench opposite. In a flash, it was all snatched away. Scaroth never stepped back into the world he had made home. He’d captivated all of Paris with his pithy witticisms, his cruel humour, his bon mots. But ‘No, it’s me’ really weren’t great last words.

  But then again, they weren’t really the end of Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth. With the exit of the time corridor closed, there was simply nowhere else for Scaroth to go but the void. He whirled around to seek help from his other splinters, but they had all turned their backs on him. So, with a groan, he walked on, into a darkness that had no end.

  19

  FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME

  ‘The one nearest the wall?’

  Harrison heard the angry voice and thought, No, not today. He’d convinced Elena to come up the Eiffel Tower with him. Now that he’d seen the beauty of Paris, everything was so much easier. Maybe he’d never be able to talk about it as cleverly as Elena did, but that didn’t matter. He could nod. He could smile. And he was doing both right now.

  Harrison Mandel didn’t pay the man in a scarf and the girl in a school uniform a second glance. If they were wonderfully familiar, then they were just part of the magic. He sniffed the air and really did think Paris the most beautiful place on Earth. He squeezed Elena’s hand, and, joy of joys, she squeezed it back.

  So they went and got on with life.

  * * *

  Sat miserably in his studio, the artist Bourget made his peace with his curse. He was going to take it on at its own game. Instead of trying to draw people, he would draw a clock. If that was what his hands were telling him to do, then so be it. Chacun a son goût. Ignoring the approaching shouts of his landlord, Bourget set out to draw the best clock he possibly could. He worked diligently, and with only a few breaks for Gauloises and brandy. In truth, it was one of the most haunting drawings of a clock the world had ever seen. This was, every stroke and line said, an instrument that firmly regulated time. Relieved, he turned his attention to the dial, shading it in.

  Aghast, he dropped the charcoal, not even hearing the stick shatter on the floor.

  Staring back at him from his drawing of a timepiece was the smiling face of the Mona Lisa.

  * * *

  With all of Paris laid out beneath him, Duggan was doing some rather serious shouting.

  Romana was tuning it out. It was a glorious afternoon. Paris smelt much the same as ever. A definite, joyous bouquet wafted over from the neatly ordered boulevards, from the grand galleries, and from the merrily static lines of traffic. It was wonderful. And yet, Duggan was still shouting.

  ‘The one nearest the wall?’

  Duggan was holding a copy of the Mona Lisa in his hands. It was a very, very good copy of the Mona Lisa. And only a little soot-stained.

  ‘Mmmm.’ The Doctor shrugged a trifle apologetically. It had all been rather tricky. He’d been hoping that Duggan would be pleased. Clearly not. Maybe this hadn’t been the best spot for a rendezvous. ‘Well, it was the only one not damaged in the fire.’

  Romana looked sadly out from the viewing platform. At the far edge of the Marais, where two of Haussmann’s stateliest boulevards met, was a very large hole. The Doctor had blown up a stately home, after all.

  ‘But! But!�
�� Duggan was still shouting and shaking the canvas. ‘It’s a fake! You can’t hang a fake Mona Lisa in the Louvre!’

  Romana still hadn’t really got the hang of painting by hand. Humans seemed really terribly obsessed by it. ‘How can it be a fake if Leonardo painted it?’

  ‘With the words “This is a fake” written on it? In felt tip!’ Duggan was roaring and there was a little foam on his lips.

  Romana still didn’t get it. ‘That doesn’t affect what it looks like.’

  The Doctor nodded gravely.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what it looks like!’ screamed Duggan, shaking the painting at them.

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ the Doctor mused. ‘Some people would say that was the whole point of painting.’

  ‘But, they’ll X-ray it!’ Duggan’s face crumpled. ‘They’ll find out.’

  ‘Serve ’em right.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘If they need an X-ray to tell them whether a painting’s any good or not, well, you might as well have painting by computer.’

  ‘Like we have at home,’ said Romana proudly. Much simpler. Much less fuss.

  ‘Hmm,’ the Doctor agreed. It was, truthfully, a bit of a puzzler they’d landed poor Duggan with. Maybe he could convince them that it was actually a secret cypher left by Leonardo. Give it a fancy name and everyone could try and solve it, the Doctor mused. But what could you call a secret code left by Leonardo da Vinci? Well, he was sure someone would come up with something that had a ring to it.

  Duggan’s glare had subsided into a dogged stare. ‘Home,’ he growled. ‘Yes. Where do you two come from?’

  Romana and the Doctor looked at each other as though that was the funniest joke in the world.

  ‘From? Well . . .’ The Doctor swept an arm out, taking in the viewing platform, the majestic ironmongery of the tower, the sweeping Paris skyline and the distant clouds. ‘The best way to find out where you come from is to find out where you’re going and then work backwards.’