Doctor Who BBCN14 - The Last Dodo

by Doctor Who

  The Doctor was now trying a window. It didn’t appear to have a lock and, due to the condition of the caravan, didn’t fit properly in its frame. He pushed hard, and it sprang open.

  ‘Isn’t this breaking and entering?’ asked Martha nervously, as the Doctor pushed aside the brown curtain.

  ‘I haven’t entered yet!’ he replied. Then he stuck his head through the gap. ‘Ooh! Now I have!’

  Martha stood on tiptoes and looked through the window too.

  There was a table to one end of the caravan. Protruding from under it was a pair of feet, as of a person trying to hide from view but not doing it very well. The feet wore slippers – tartan ones, so at least they weren’t made out of some extinct animal, unless it was a very bizarre Scottish one she’d never heard of.

  ‘Hello!’ the Doctor called.

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  ‘Go away!’ the man said again, his voice slightly muffled by the table.

  ‘We’re doing a follow-up on a recent. . . purchase of yours.’

  The man’s voice, already high, rose up to a screeching panic. ‘I haven’t bought anything!’

  ‘What, nothing?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Ever!’

  ‘Goodness,’ said the Doctor to Martha.

  ‘That’s taking anti-

  consumerism quite far. It’s also probably not true.’ He stretched a hand through the window, leaned awkwardly towards the door, and clicked open the lock from the inside. Glad to get her nose away from the musty curtains, Martha withdrew her head and followed him as he hopped up a tiny portable step and went through the door.

  She would have felt guilty for invading this man’s privacy if he hadn’t been one of the unknown thief’s customers; as it was her heart had hardened. But the man, when he emerged in a backwards crawl from under his fold-down table, seemed about as far from the ‘unique’

  lady as could be. He was short, much shorter than Martha, probably not a lot over five feet tall, and had a fringe of white hair and, when he was finally clear of the table, a face full of white hair too. For a second Martha thought this was some sort of extinct albino weasel attached to his upper lip, but it turned out on closer viewing to be an enormous moustache and extremely bushy mutton-chop whiskers.

  ‘Hello!’ said the Doctor, taking a seat on a padded bench out of which springs were sticking. ‘I’m the Doctor and this is Martha, and we’ve come to –’ He broke off. ‘Hey! Don’t I know you?’

  The little man shook his head so forcefully that the moustache ends whipped his cheeks. ‘I am completely unknown!’ he said.

  ‘No, no. . . yes, that’s it, your name’s Dunnock!’

  ‘I am not Professor Dougal Dunnock!’ protested Professor Dougal Dunnock.

  ‘Professor Dougal Dunnock! Yes, I’ve seen your picture on a dust jacket. Fishy Fingers: Evolution from Sea to Land.’

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  ‘I did not write that bestselling and revolutionary scientific treatise!’

  Professor Dunnock insisted.

  Martha blinked in surprise. ‘Bestselling? Then how come you’re living in a falling-down caravan?’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, that was a bit rude.’

  The old man flung up his hands. ‘Well, obviously I had to sell everything I owned in order to buy. . . nothing,’ he finished hastily.

  ‘Nothing. Because you’ve never bought anything in your life,’ clarified the Doctor. Dunnock nodded eagerly. ‘No. . . extinct animals of any kind.’

  The professor caught his breath. ‘No indeed, sir! Do you mean to imply that I might be hiding some sort of missing link in my bathroom?’ He stepped over to an internal door and stood in front of it, making a human barrier. As it was the only internal door, Martha strongly suspected it led to the bathroom – not that there was anywhere like enough room for an actual bath (and, as far as she could judge, Professor Dunnock certainly didn’t seem to have been acquainted with an actual bath recently).

  The Doctor stood up and, with a foot’s height advantage, reached over the little man to push open the door.

  Dunnock turned and

  grabbed the door handle with both hands, pulling it shut, but not before Martha had caught a glimpse of a small grey creature a bit like a hairy mudskipper sitting in the tiny sink.

  She turned to the Doctor. ‘That’s the missing link between sea animals and land animals?’

  ‘A missing link, not the missing link,’ he said. ‘It didn’t go cod, cod, missing link, badger, badger, or anything like that, the process was rather more gradual. Something Professor Dunnock should know all about, being a world expert on the subject as I seem to recall.’

  Dunnock waved a hand deprecatingly, then seemed to remember he wasn’t supposed to be Professor Dunnock at all and frowned instead.

  ‘You’re not going to dissect it or anything, are you?’ asked Martha, a bit worried.

  The professor looked startled. ‘Dissect Mervin? Of course not.’

  ‘Mervin. . . the Missing Link.’

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  ‘No!’

  ‘Mervin. . . the not-Missing Link who isn’t in your bathroom who you didn’t sell all your possessions to buy?’ The little man’s head wavered between a shake and a nod.

  The Doctor sighed and sat down again. ‘I suppose you didn’t receive some sort of secret intelligence and set up a clandestine rendezvous to make the purchase, either?’

  Dunnock sniffed. ‘Do I really look like the sort of person to arrange to meet a strange young man in a dark alleyway to conduct an illicit purchase?’

  Martha jumped on this. ‘A young man?’

  ‘And you wouldn’t remember his name – or what he looked like?’

  asked the Doctor urgently.

  But on this, the professor resolutely refused to deny anything at all.

  Finally, fed up, Martha sat down on the bench and sighed. ‘I just don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Can I ask, hypothetically, why a hypothetical professor would be keeping a hypothetical missing link in his bathroom and hiding under the table if anyone comes round?’

  Dunnock threw his hands in the air. ‘My dear young lady, that is precisely the point! Because it is not hypothetical!’

  ‘Well, I know it isn’t, but I thought. . . ’

  ‘I think what the not-professor means,’ interjected the Doctor, ‘is that the “missing link” is no longer a subject for hypotheses, because it is actual.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Martha, remembering her thoughts about how the museum would be ruinous for palaeontologists. ‘You’re worried that you’ll be out of a job when people don’t need to speculate any more.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said the professor, who seemed to have forgotten that he didn’t know what they were talking about, ‘I’m worried that I’ll be out of a job if it’s discovered that my book – my research, my reputation! – is built on a false premise.’ He opened an overhead cup-board and stretched up to reach a copy of Fishy Fingers. The book fell open at an obviously frequently consulted page showing a selection of bones and a diagram of a strange-looking creature. Its resemblance to the animal in the bathroom did not seem marked. Dunnock pointed 59

  out features one by one. ‘I thought that was an elbow, but it’s a knee.

  I thought these were toes, but they’re spines. The mouth is all wrong, it has gills all over the place, and as for the colour. . . ! Not to mention the lack of scales, the way it moves, what it eats. And you wouldn’t believe what it can do with its flippers – it turns accepted theory on its head!’

  ‘Whoops,’ said the Doctor.

  The old man sighed. ‘I thought this would be the crowning moment of my career. But instead it has thrown me into self-doubt. I cannot proceed with theories that I know to be false. But I cannot bring myself to admit how wrong I have been. My reputation would never recover!’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Martha. ‘Scientists have to backtrack all the time, surely, as new evidence comes to light. Just publish a new book and eve
ryone’ll be bowled over in amazement at your incredible in-sights.’

  Dunnock huffed. ‘And what evidence do I produce, young lady? You expect me to explain how I have revised my entire theory with no new fossil discovery, no new analyses. . . ’

  ‘And you can’t show them Mervin because he’s supposed to have been extinct for a few million years,’ Martha realised.

  ‘They would want to put him in a cage! Cut him open! And I. . . ’ he smiled shyly. ‘I have become quite fond of him. I have provided him with a home, food, female company. . . ’

  ‘You what?’ The Doctor sounded incredulous. ‘You’ve found a girl-friend for a millions-of-years-old, extinct half-fish half-mammal? That must have been one heck of an ad you placed in the Lonely Hearts column.’

  ‘Girlfriend-s,’ the professor corrected him, indicating the other end of the caravan. On a shelf stood a tank and a cage.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor blankly. ‘His female friends are – a goldfish and a hamster.’

  ‘I didn’t know which side of the family he would incline towards,’

  Dunnock explained.

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  ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor again, seemingly lost for words. Martha was too.

  ‘And you’re definitely not going to tell us who sold him to you?’

  asked the Doctor when he recovered.

  ‘I can’t,’ Dunnock said. ‘It was dark, my eyes are not good, he wore a plastic mask in the shape of an Iguanodon head. . . ’

  ‘Oh well,’ said the Doctor. ‘It was worth a try.’

  Martha breathed a sigh of relief when they finally exited the caravan, leaving Dunnock preparing a meal of sunflower seeds and ant eggs for his charge. ‘That professor smelled a bit like a half-fish, half-mammal,’ she commented.

  The Doctor grinned. ‘Yeah – but we’re a bit further on. Only a tiny pixie step on the path of progress it’s true, but further on nonetheless.’

  ‘You mean, we know the culprit’s a young man.’

  He nodded. ‘Right. Although given that Dunnock is an extremely old man –’

  ‘And a loony.’

  ‘– and, as you rather perceptively if not elegantly say, a loony,

  “young” could mean almost anything. But if it’s one of the Earthers, as we suspect, it is at least narrowed down to three suspects.’

  ‘Rix, Tommy or Frank.’

  They were resetting the coordinates on their pendants as they walked. ‘Will “Mervin” be OK?’ Martha asked. ‘Shouldn’t we try to get him – it – back to the museum? I mean, he’s living in a sink, looked after by a bloke who’s completely barmy.’

  ‘At least the professor doesn’t believe in cages,’ muttered the Doctor, but he did wrinkle his nose in indecision. Or it might have been due to lingering traces of the caravan’s smell. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said in the end. ‘Are you ready? Maybe we’ll have more luck at the most recent transaction point.’

  She sighed. ‘Oh, I guess so. I hope we sort it out this time, though, these people aren’t exactly my cup of tea.’

  ‘Mmm, I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea,’ said the Doctor. ‘Maybe the next illegal-extinct-animal purchaser will offer us one.’

  But he was destined to be disappointed.

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  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

  AYE-AYE

  Daubentonia madagascariensis

  Location: Madagascar

  The aye-aye is a nocturnal, forest-dwelling lemur. It has black fur with white around its eyes and nose, and possesses very long middle fingers which it uses to dig out insects to eat. It is approximately 30 centimetres in length, not including the bushy tail which is about one-and-a-half times the length of its body.

  Addendum:

  Last reported sighting: AD 2042.

  Cause of extinction: destruction of habitat.

  I-Spyder points value: 500

  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

  Creature

  Points

  Dodo

  800

  Megatherium

  500

  Paradise parrot

  500

  Velociraptor

  250

  Mountain gorilla

  500

  Aye-aye

  900

  Siberian tiger

  600

  Kakapo

  900

  Indefatigable Galapagos mouse

  1500

  Stegosaurus

  500

  Triceratops

  550

  Diplodocus

  600

  Ankylosaurus

  650

  Dimetrodon

  600

  Passenger pigeon

  100

  Thylacine

  250

  Black rhinoceros

  300

  Mervin the missing link

  23500

  Subtotal

  33500

  In common with the first trip, the Doctor and Martha arrived somewhere staggeringly sumptuous; in common with the second, they found themselves outdoors. In every other respect, this place was as far removed from both of the previous locations as possible. They were under a canopy in a brilliant, sunny garden, amid tinkling foun-tains and what seemed like a thousand orchids of every colour in the rainbow. A young girl was lying face down on a silk floor cushion and, as she started up at the sound of their arrival, Martha saw that her pretty oriental features were stained with tears.

  ‘Tea is probably not forthcoming,’ the Doctor whispered out of the side of his mouth. ‘Bother.’

  ‘Who – who are you?’ the girl stammered, although the hesitation seemed to have nothing to do with fear, just her sobs.

  The Doctor stepped forward and spoke gently. ‘I’m the Doctor, and this –’

  But he got no further. The girl began to shake her head violently.

  ‘You’re too late! Too late! He would not have seen you anyway, not a western doctor – not that it matters now.’

  ‘You mean he’s. . . ?’ The Doctor was clearly fishing for information.

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  ‘He died twenty minutes ago.’ She suddenly frowned. ‘Why are you here? Why did you not go to the house?’

  ‘We did,’ the Doctor lied. ‘But we couldn’t make anyone hear. So we came looking. . . ’ He tailed off, hands spread out to indicate the dilemma of a doctor who could not gain access to the place he had been summoned to. The girl seemed to accept this. In a house of mourning, clearly all could not be expected to run smoothly.

  The Doctor went over to the girl, and plonked himself down beside her. After some hesitation, Martha followed. She felt a twinge of guilt – surely they were exploiting this girl’s grief? But an investigator couldn’t afford such scruples.

  ‘Did he suffer much?’ the Doctor asked, sympathy dripping from his voice.

  A shiver ran through the girl before she nodded. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, eventually. ‘It was. . . It was not an easy thing to watch.’

  ‘But I’m sure you did everything you could to help him.’

  She smiled then, a smile with not the faintest trace of warmth or happiness. ‘I would have dealt with the Devil to save him,’ she said.

  Martha drew in a deep breath. She believed her. Well, she knew at least one thing that the girl must have done. One of the reasons they became extinct in the first place – idiots getting it into their heads that rhino horn could cure all ills.

  Then the cold, inhuman smile vanished, and she was a sobbing child again, tearful and snotty, a ridiculous figure amid the beauty and calm of her surroundings. She thrust a hand into a pocket and rooted blindly for a moment before pulling out a square of cloth to wipe her face, a strangely inelegant gesture.

  And then Martha jumped. Without quite realising what was coming out of her mouth, certainly without thinking, she cried, ‘Where did you get that hankie?’

  The girl swivelled to look at her, regarding her as though she were a mad thing. After all, th
ese were the first words Martha had spoken to her and it was hardly a conventional address to the recently bereaved.

  Then she glanced down at the handkerchief. So did the Doctor, and he had clearly realised exactly what Martha was thinking.

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  This was no delicate square of Chinese silk. This was a great flapping piece of cotton, about a foot square. It was covered with small print dinosaurs.

  The girl looked slightly puzzled herself. ‘Oh,’ she said after a second. ‘I. . . found it. Someone must have dropped it.’

  ‘What “someone”?’ said Martha, harshly, because she knew the answer and didn’t want to hear it.

  The girl bridled at her tone. ‘Just. . . someone.’ She drew herself up. ‘I picked it up. Not that it’s any business of yours.’

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ Martha told her, despite the Doctor’s warning hand on her arm. ‘If you trade with people like that you’ve got to expect a few awkward questions. You know, about handkerchiefs,’ she added awkwardly. ‘And stuff.’

  ‘The “stuff” being slightly more important,’ the Doctor said, rather more gently. ‘So perhaps you would tell us who you got the rhino horn from.’

  The girl looked terrified. ‘He said no one would ever find out!’

  ‘And you trusted him? Oh dear. Oh dear-dear-dear-deary me.’ Now the Doctor was a policeman, shaking his head and tutting. ‘I think you’d better tell us everything you know about this man.’

  ‘But I never saw him! Truly, I never saw him, never spoke to him face to face, I know nothing about him at all! I just found the handkerchief after the. . . delivery.’

  And, reluctantly, Martha believed her. Not that it mattered. The evidence clearly pointed the way. She reached out and took the sod-den square from the girl, holding it up so there could be no mistake in what they were looking at. Both she and the Doctor knew exactly where they’d seen an identical hankie, barely hours before. ‘Tommy,’

  she said sadly.

  He nodded. ‘I think it’s time we got back to the warehouse.’

  They shimmered back into existence in the exit-free office. The Doctor had moved through to the main warehouse before Martha had got her head together, but after a few dizzy moments she set off after him. The 67