Doctor Who BBCN14 - The Last Dodo

by Doctor Who

Theoretically, with a time machine he could collect them all at the exact same time – but quite how he’d go about tracking down an unknown number of bombs from an unknown set of location to start with was another matter altogether. Much, much better to remove the finger from the trigger instead.

  And he was fairly certain he knew where the trigger was to be found, and whose hand the finger was part of.

  Martha would have sat down in shock if she hadn’t already been tied to a chair. Had the Doctor been saved from a dinosaur only to be threatened with something worse?

  Eve was glaring at Frank, who was trying to look like he didn’t care.

  ‘Bombs?’ Martha asked again.

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  ‘Oh all right, you might as well know,’ Eve said, and began to tell Martha all about her plans, all about the sabre-tooths and the dodos and the eggs.

  And after she’d finished, Martha, feeling sick, really wished she’d remained in blissful ignorance.

  ‘You. . . you can’t be serious!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Eve.

  ‘But. . . ’ Martha couldn’t find the words.

  Suddenly Eve’s cool exterior cracked. ‘The pressure,’ she hissed.

  ‘The constant pressure. The fear that one day you’ll miss one, that a species will slip through your fingers. And Earth – Earth is the worst, by far. Extinction after extinction after extinction, it’s a nightmare keeping track! The instant you’ve updated your records, the stupid humans destroy another rainforest, and there we go again. This way, it will all be over with. I’ll never have to worry about it again.’

  ‘But. . . ’ The words still weren’t coming. ‘But. . . But. . . you’re destroying all life on Earth to cut down on paperwork? ’

  ‘I’m not destroying all life on Earth,’ Eve told her. ‘That’s exactly the point. I will be going to destroy all life on Earth, and then I will have destroyed all life on Earth. It will happen instantaneously.’

  Martha boggled. ‘You’re committing mass genocide and quibbling about tenses?’

  Eve dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘In a very short time, the clone-dos will have deposited all the bombs, with the clone-tooths and clone-osaurs preventing any interference.’

  Martha thought it interesting that the ridiculous names didn’t actually defuse the threat at all. In fact, they heightened it, because it made it even clearer that this was the work of a madwoman. But she had spotted a flaw in Eve’s plan. ‘If you blow up everything, your collection will always be incomplete. You know, because you’ll have killed everything.’

  This brought a smile to Eve’s face. She spoke to Martha as if she were a simpleton who’d overlooked the most obvious of factors. ‘But that’s the whole point! I admit that I panicked when the disaster first happened, when all the Earth specimens got transported back. But 148

  they all died on arrival; the only one of my exhibits that survived for more than a few seconds was a dinosaur. There’s not a trace of any of them on Earth any more, the pressure of the return trip must have been too great.’

  Martha nearly gagged. She was responsible for the deaths of 300

  billion creatures. For wiping out 300 billion species.

  She had to switch off again, that was just impossible to deal with.

  Eve was still talking. ‘But it gave me the idea. A get-out clause! And as long as I have just one specimen to represent the planet – I sent Tommy to collect the dinosaur, but that’s gone now too. Thankfully, I have you.’

  This was too much. Not only had she sent all those creatures back to Earth, but she’d inspired mass genocide while she was at it. It was all her fault.

  And her penance was to be a living death.

  ‘Now if you’ll excuse me,’ Eve continued, ‘I have to see about ordering some new guidebooks. Our current ones will soon be hopelessly out of date.’

  ‘No!’ Martha cried. ‘Please, you can’t do this!’ But Eve had already left the room.

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  THE I-SPYDER BOOK OF EARTH CREATURES

  KAKAPA

  Strigops habroptilus

  Location: New Zealand

  The kakapo is the world’s only flightless parrot. It has an owl-like face and greeny-yellow feathers, with the male being more brightly coloured than the female. They are solitary, each having its own territory, and live on the ground. The herbivorous kakapo is the heaviest known parrot, weighing up to 3.5 kilograms.

  Addendum:

  Last reported sighting: AD 2017.

  Cause of extinction: introduction of non-indigenous predators; hunting for meat and skins.

  I-Spyder points value: 900

  For a few moments, Martha found it hard to breathe. What could she do? She had to do something! But here she was, tied to a chair and helpless. In desperation, she turned to Eve’s accomplice, who was still looking slightly sulky after his telling-off. He probably wouldn’t care about her, but she could appeal to his self-interest. ‘Frank, you’ve got to stop this! I mean, if you were planning a new life on Earth, why on Earth – no pun intended – did you agree to help her destroy every living thing on the planet? Think of the servants! Think of the grapes!’

  He threw up his hands in the air. ‘Pay attention! It was that or spend the next however-many-years in prison!’

  Martha sighed in disbelief. ‘You’re strictly a short-term-gain sort of person, aren’t you, Frank.’ She tried again with a defiance she no longer felt. ‘The Doctor will stop you.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Frank.

  There was a noise like a thousand trumpeting elephants, and the TARDIS appeared.

  ‘Yeah, right!’ said Martha, overjoyed.

  ‘Hello,’ said the Doctor, bursting through the TARDIS door, his mo-mentum carrying him across the room, plucking Frank’s gun out of 151

  his hand on the way. A few buzzes from the sonic screwdriver later, the gun was tossed back to Frank, who’d barely had time to realise it had been taken in the first place. In some confusion, Frank gingerly raised the weapon and pointed it at the Doctor, who tutted. ‘Franky, Franky, I’m hardly likely to give you back the gun if it still works, am I? Six to one it won’t do a thing if you try to shoot, half a dozen of the other it’ll explode in your hand. I appear to have mixed up a few expressions in that sentence, but you get the general idea. Shooting equals bad idea.’ Scowling, Frank put down the gun.

  ‘I don’t like to say “I told you so”, Frank. . . ’ Martha was laughing with relief as she turned to the Doctor. ‘How did you find us?’

  The Time Lord whipped a feather out of his pocket. ‘Automatic dodo detector!’ he said. ‘Only I specifically tuned it in to Dorothea this time.’ He gave the bird a quick pat on the head. ‘What a fantastic invention that is. A million uses.’

  ‘What are the other 999,999?’ asked Martha. ‘You know, apart from the detecting dodos thing?’

  ‘All right, one use,’ the Doctor admitted, leaning over her to untie her bonds. He smelled faintly of peaches and patchouli, and she smiled. ‘But you could detect a million different dodos.’

  ‘Like the ones which are burying bombs ready to destroy life on Earth?’ Martha said.

  ‘Could do, could do,’ said the Doctor, and there was a touch of seriousness underneath his apparent levity. ‘But I thought it would be far simpler to deactivate them all at once from the source.’

  As he undid the final knot, they heard a door slam. Frank had taken advantage of the Doctor’s back being turned to make a getaway.

  ‘He’ll have gone to fetch Eve,’ Martha said urgently. ‘She’s the one behind it all!’

  ‘Quelle surprise,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, we’d better find the detonator controls soon, then.’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Martha. ‘Please, please don’t let the Earth be destroyed. I don’t want to be a Last One.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Eve’s planning to put me in a cage, you know.’

  The Doctor froze for a moment, like he was being put in suspended 152

/>   animation again. Was it horror? Or had he had an idea? Martha wasn’t sure. She turned her attention back to the immediate problem.

  ‘Frank recalled the dinosaur from over there somewhere,’ she said, indicating the desk. ‘Perhaps the detonator’s in the same place.’

  He nodded. ‘Good, that means I can bring back the clones while I look.’

  ‘Can’t you bring back the bombs too?’ Martha asked. The nod switched to a shake. They’ll have been buried by now, they’re no longer in contact with the dodo carriers.’ The Doctor began to search frantically, sorting through piles of equipment with one hand while tapping on the computer keypad with the other. Martha hurried round the rest of the room, looking for anything that looked at all technological and remote-detonator-like.

  After a few minutes, the Doctor took a step back and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Nothing!’ he said, a touch of panic shading his voice. ‘I’ve sorted the dinosaurs – dromaeosaurs, I think, it means

  “fast-running lizard”, I suppose she couldn’t get away with breeding anything much bigger, and – sorry, getting distracted, matter in hand, matter in hand, yes, sorted them and the sabre-tooths and the dodos, but not the faintest tiny smidgen of a trace of a remote detonator.’

  ‘Look again, you might have missed it!’ said Martha, who had climbed into the dodo pen and was now crawling around on hands and knees, just in case the controls had been hidden on the floor there.

  ‘I don’t miss things,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, not that sort of thing.

  Birthdays, I’m terrible with. Socks! I’m always losing socks. Never have enough socks. If you’re ever trying to think what to get me for Christmas, socks is what I’d suggest. Remote bomb activation controls, on the other hand, I’m good with. If they’re there, I find them.’

  The door opened and Eve walked in. The Doctor sprang towards her. ‘Eve! You mustn’t do this!’

  She smiled at him. ‘But that’s just it. I must.’

  He shook his head. ‘No-no-no-no-no!’

  Eve continued to smile as the Doctor turned to the work bench, flinging circuit boards and test tubes over his shoulders as he searched and discarded. ‘Where are the controls?’ he yelled at her furiously.

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  ‘Oh, they’re near at hand,’ she told him. ‘But you’ll never find them.

  Don’t waste your energy. And if you try anything, I’ll just detonate the bombs remotely anyway.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ the Doctor said – and he pulled a white sphere from his pocket. It was ticking quietly.

  Martha yelped. ‘Is that. . . ?’

  ‘Uh-huh. If Eve doesn’t deactivate the bombs, bang goes her museum. Well, part of it.’

  ‘The part with us in,’ Martha felt she had to point out.

  The ticking got suddenly louder. Much louder.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Countdown,’ replied the Doctor, grimly. ‘We’ve got, ooh, maybe five minutes before all the bombs explode.’

  Martha stared. ‘Five minutes. Until the end of the Earth.’

  ‘Unless Eve intervenes, yes.’

  Eve and the Doctor had locked eyes. ‘You’re bluffing,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve disconnected the charge.’

  ‘Want to bet on it?’ he replied, not smiling.

  ‘You wouldn’t destroy her. You wouldn’t risk other people’s lives.’

  ‘To save a whole planet? I think I might.’

  Eve shrugged, but her gaze remained fixed. ‘I leave the room. I lock you in. I teleport back to my office. We’re not near enough the exhibits to damage them. Everything else in here is a clone. I’m not going to deactivate the bombs.’

  ‘You’re bluffing!’ Martha said suddenly. ‘You don’t want the Doctor dead. Or me, come to that. He’s a Last One, I’m a Last-One-to-be. You must be bluffing.’

  Eve didn’t smile. ‘Want to bet on it?’

  The Doctor blinked first. He turned away and sighed, as the bomb ticked on, measuring out Earth’s last seconds.

  Dodos clustered around Martha’s ankles as she stood in the pen, waiting for the Doctor’s next move. But suddenly she saw a look in his eyes that she’d never had a glimpse of before. A look of defeat.

  But – they still had minutes! Whole minutes before life on Earth was wiped out! Everything she’d discovered about the Doctor so far had 154

  led her to believe that that was plenty of time for him to save the day.

  In fact, he preferred to leave it that late. . .

  Surely he hadn’t given up now?

  ‘I think you will deactivate them,’ the Doctor said to Eve, and Martha breathed a sigh of relief. He had a plan!

  But in that case, why was he still looking so defeated?

  ‘I don’t think I will,’ Eve replied.

  ‘But I’ve got a bargain to offer you.’ The Doctor took a deep breath.

  ‘If you agree not to destroy the Earth – you can have me.’

  ‘What?’ yelled Martha, horror-struck.

  The Doctor didn’t look at her, kept his gaze fixed on Eve. ‘I’ll voluntarily become an exhibit. The last of the Time Lords. The most elusive specimen in the universe. Only survivor of an extinct world. The One Cent Magenta. I’ll do that, if you disable your bombs. Don’t destroy the Earth. And then you won’t have to imprison Martha, either. She can go home.’

  For a moment, Eve was clearly tempted. But Martha could see the madness rising in her eyes.

  ‘I need Martha,’ she said. ‘I need both of you. But I have to destroy everything else. Do you know what I felt?’ she said, a beatific smile spreading across her face. ‘Do you know what I felt when I made the decision about Earth? I felt relief.’

  The Doctor took a step towards her, but she waved him back. ‘One more step, and boom!’ she said. She sighed. ‘I’ve been doing this for ever. And I thought my job would never end, not until the end of the universe itself. But this forced me to think about it – and I found a loophole.’

  ‘It’s all about tenses, apparently,’ Martha said, resisting the temptation to make a ‘she’s screwy!’ gesture.

  The Doctor looked interested. ‘Really?’ He looked at Eve. ‘Care to explain?’

  She said, as if it made perfect sense, ‘I have to stop any species from dying out. And I have to make sure every planet is represented, remembered somehow. But this way, with the bombs – there is no point 155

  at which any species is dying out, just a single specimen remaining.

  Each species is fine – and then it has died out. . . ’

  ‘You what?’ said the Doctor. ‘I think you could do with a dictionary, this whole dying, dying out business. Martha, if you’re ever stuck on what to buy Eve for Christmas, a dictionary’s probably an idea.’

  ‘Christmas?’ said Eve, happy again. ‘There won’t be any more Christmas. You see, I’ve realised that I needn’t stop at Earth. If I have to carryon until the universe ends, then I’ll end the universe. As long as I have one specimen from each planet, I’ll finally have peace!

  I’ll finally have. . . closure, I think they call it. I’ll have closure.’

  ‘Most people try therapy first,’ the Doctor said. ‘Destroying the universe tends to be a last resort.’

  Martha shut her eyes. Time was ticking on – like the bomb – and Eve seemed lost in some strange incomprehensible non-logic of her own. She couldn’t see a way that this could end well.

  But the Doctor was speaking again. ‘I hate to have to break it to you, Eve – but you’re never going to manage it. You keep talking about the universe like it’s something quantifiable, but it isn’t, not really. You’re talking about the bit of the universe known to you. Look at Earth –that’s just one planet in one solar system. There are maybe, ooh, 50

  billion planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and that’s just one of a few trillion galaxies, in a universe that keeps expanding. I’ve seen the list of planets in your lobby – you’ve been looking at the
Milky Way, maybe a bit of Andromeda – but where are Beaus, M82, M83, M84, Celation, Isop, Kinrexian? It would take you billions of years to destroy all life in the universe, even if you were capable of it – and by the time you’d got to the last planet, got your last single specimen, life would have sprung up again on the first ones – it can be amazingly resilient. Face it, Eve – you’re never going to achieve peace that way.’

  Eve staggered backwards. ‘All for nothing. It’s all been for nothing.

  I have failed in my objective. I cannot complete my mission.’

  ‘Oh well, missions aren’t everything –’ the Doctor began, but Eve screamed at him to shut up. She had sat down at the desk, and her eyelids were blinking at an alarming rate.

  ‘So. . . so. . . I don’t need either of you after all.’ She picked up 156

  Frank’s gun from the desk and pointed it towards them. ‘Don’t!’ yelled the Doctor and Martha together – but Eve had already pulled the trigger.

  The gun exploded backwards. Eve slumped heavily to the floor.

  Martha took a running jump, scattering dodos to all sides, and leapt over the pen wall. But as she reached the fallen body, she slowed down. There was no blood. Instead. . .

  ‘She’s an android!’

  The Doctor joined her, gazing down at the Smoking hole where Eve’s chest had been. Wires sparked and fizzed.

  ‘I did wonder,’ he said. ‘All that odd logic. Her not being affected by the psychic paper. And she seemed to have been around for a very long time.’

  The ticking from the bomb suddenly increased in speed and pitch.

  ‘Talking of very long times,’ he added, ‘that’s exactly what we don’t have.’

  ‘We’ve got to find those controls!’ Martha stared around her in panic. ‘They might not even be in this room!’

  ‘No, Eve said they were close at hand. . . ’ The Doctor had his fingers to his forehead. ‘Think, Doctor, think!’ He span on the spot. ‘Close at hand! And she’s an android. . . ’ He threw himself onto his knees beside the motionless Eve and grabbed her wrist, as if feeling for a pulse. The bleeping from the bomb was getting louder and louder, faster and faster, till it was an almost continuous shriek. The whirr of the sonic screwdriver provided an electronic counterpoint as the Doctor wielded it, and Martha couldn’t help wincing as he appeared to unscrew one of Eve’s fingers. Her gaze darted between these operations and the screens showing scenes on Earth, expecting any second for the views to flare out of existence as she herself stopped existing too. . .