by Adam Roberts
‘Nah,’ said the Dr. ‘I’ll be fine by myself. It should only take me a minute.’ He marched off for the main entrance of the House of Commons.
‘Linn,’ I said, plucking strands of grass and twirling them between my fingertips. ‘Now that the Dr’s away for a moment, can I confess something to you?’
‘Go on.’
‘Promise not to tell him?’
‘Alright.’
‘I know how important grammar and everything is to you. And I know I’m a prose tailor and everything. But the thing is . . . ’
‘What?’
‘I can never remember when to use who and when to use whom,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I can’t understand why we have both those words. We could just make do with who and everybody would still understand everybody.’
‘Maybe they would,’ Linn agreed. ‘But then we could probably understand one another if we did away with all grammatical tense, all distinction between subject and object . . . why, we could probably point and grunt and get our message across. But it wouldn’t be a very elegant or sophisticated universe, then, would it?’
‘No need to be snarky,’ I said.
‘Tell me, Prose. Do you understand the difference between he and him?’
‘Um,’ I said.
‘She punched he in the face? Or: she punched him in the face?’
‘The second one.’
‘And you know the difference between she and her.’ Linn pressed. ‘It’s just like he and him, after all. He disappointed she? Or: he disappointed her?’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, in that case you already understand the difference between who and whom,’ she said. ‘It’s exactly the same thing. I really don’t understand why people have such a problem with it. You wouldn’t say I gave the book to he, would you! You wouldn’t say he kissed she. No. You wouldn’t. In exactly the same way you wouldn’t ask to who did he give the book? Of course not. To whom did he give the book. He was the one to whom the book was given.’
‘Is it really as simple as that?’
‘It really is.’
‘I feel like I’ve learned something here today,’ I said.
‘Here comes the Doctor,’ said Linn, getting to her feet. ‘And he’s walking funny.’
‘Help me inside the TARDY,’ he said, in a strangulated voice.
‘What happened?’ I asked, taking some of his weight as he struggled over the grass. ‘Did you expose the overweight minister as a Sluttyteen in a skin-suit?’
‘Not exactly,’ gasped the Dr.
‘Then what?’
‘Well - I managed to get in the chamber alright, and sidle up to the Minister. But no matter how vigorously I tugged away at her fat-suit it wouldn’t come off. It was only when she was rolling around on the floor shouting, with me on top of her, and an enormous commotion all around us, that I realised she wasn’t a Sluttyteen at all. Just an amply-proportioned middle-aged woman. I think I’d picked the wrong one.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘What happened then,’ said the Dr, as we opened the door of the TARDY, ‘was that special branch shot me.’
‘Shot you?’ I gasped.
‘That’s right. Shot me in the gut. Can’t say I blame them. We’d better get out of here before the army turns up.’
He staggered inside the TARDY, fell against the console, pressed buttons to dematerialise us, and then, with a gasp, he fell to the floor.
‘Doctor!’ I cried, running over to him. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Not so much alright’ he said, ‘as dying.’ And on that last word, he passed out.
Chapter Nine
BETRAYAL !
‘For the last time,’ said the Dr, tetchily. ‘It was an accident. Come come come, how was I to know? It could have happened to anybody!’
‘Dead! Dead!’ I wailed. ‘The woman of my dreams!’
‘There’s no point in getting so wound-up about it,’ said the Dr. ‘I can’t believe you’re blaming me for that . . . can’t you see how irrational that is? Can’t you see that I really had nothing to do with it?’
‘He does have a point,’ said Linn.
But my grief was making me blind.
‘You have to understand that everybody dies,’ the Dr said. ‘It’s the way of things.’
‘It’s all very well for you to say that!’ I said. ‘If you die you just pop back to life with nothing but an upset tummy. It’s not so easy for the likes of us.’
‘Well,’ said the Dr, looking around him in a faintly senile manner. ‘I wouldn’t describe re-un-de as easy. My dear fellow,’ he added, kindly. ‘You do look upset!’
‘Can you blame me?’ I cried.
‘Of course not. Nobody blames you. Why don’t you take a seat, maybe have a cup of tea? You’ll feel better in a moment.’
‘My heart is shattered into a googolplex of pieces!’ I snapped.
‘There there,’ he offered, vaguely.
‘Doctor,’ said Linn. ‘Not to ignore Prose’s sufferings, but: we still have our mission, don’t we. And if we can’t go outside . . .’
‘It’s a puzzler,’ agreed the Dr.
‘There must be a solution.’
‘Hey, I’m in emotional pain over here,’ I cried.
‘Have you any ideas?’
‘I was thinking,’ said the Dr. ‘I could send out my robot dog, K2. He could fetch the device, and suffer no ill-effects. ’
‘You have a robot dog?’
‘Yes! Well, sort of. Or, to speak absolutely accurately—’
‘Yes?’
‘In absolutely accurate terms, no not really. He’s a little less a robot dog, and a little more, strictly speaking, the second-highest mountain peak on Earth.’
‘You keep the second-highest mountain peak on Earth aboard the TARDY?’
‘I put it in the dog kennel.’
‘The TARDY has a dog kennel?’
‘From the outside it’s kennel-sized. On the inside it’s large enough to accommodate - well, the entire mountain. ’
‘I don’t understand why you’d detach the Earth’s second highest mountain and put it inside the TARDY.’
‘I didn’t detach it,’ said the Dr. ‘It detached itself. It was never a real mountain in the first place. It was a mountain-sized robot pet from a planet inhabited by a race of particularly large rocky aliens. I won’t bore you with the story of how it ended up on earth, or why I gave it sanctuary aboard the TARDY. Suffice to say that it involved me saving the Earth from certain destruction.’
‘But—has nobody noticed that you’ve removed the Earth’s second tallest peak?’
‘Who’d notice? A few dozen mountaineers. Nobody else. And who pays any attention to them?’
‘But surely they would raise the alarm?’
‘They travel all the way to Tibet to climb this mountain. When they get there they discover that it’s actually a small hillock about ten feet high. What do you think they’re going to do? Go back and make a big fuss? Or climb straight to the top, have their photo taken, and then trot back down and spend the rest of the expedition playing PS3? The latter, of course. That way they can boast that they climbed K2 in record time.’
I could stand it no longer. I got to my feet and rushed from the control room, dashing down the corridor in search of a room where I could be alone with my misery.
After a while, as my sobs died away, I thought I heard something.
‘Hello?’ came a voice. It sounded tinny, distant, like a voice over a crystal radio set.
‘What?’ I snapped. ‘Who’s that? What?’
‘To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking—?’
‘Leave me alone!’
‘Is that the handsome young male assistant to the Doctor?’ asked the voice.
My curiosity was engaged just enough to overcome my self-pity. I looked around the tiny room: four grey walls, a grey ceiling; a bed (nothing underneath it; I checked). There was nowhere for another person to hide. ‘Who i
s this?’
‘I am the Master Debater,’ declared the voice. As soon as he said it, I thought to myself: I knew I recognised the voice.
‘Didn’t we abandon you upon Earth in nineteen-twelve? ’ I said.
‘Indeed you did. In the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Hardly polite.’
‘But I suppose you have your own TARDY.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And how are you able to speak to me now?’
‘I’ve patched an audio-communication through the TARDY’S control panel.’
‘You’ve done what?’
‘It’s a complicated business, and one that would take me too long to explain fully.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I need your help,’ said the Master Debater.
‘Why should I help you?’ I asked. ‘You are the Evil Time-gentleman.’
‘Why should you help the Doctor?’ the ET countered. ‘He killed the woman you loved.’
I was silent for ten or fifteen seconds. ‘You know about that,’ I said.
‘I told you . . . I’ve been in effect bugging the TARDY via a device lodged in its Hyperspatial Scanner. I overheard the whole of that last conversation with the Doctor. Right now I’ve rechannelled a viral subroutine through to the intercom located by the door. I can’t talk for long: the TARDY’S own antiviral programmes will locate this link soon enough and wipe it out.’
I sat up. My heart was fierce with rage. ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked. ‘Understand: I’m not saying that I will do this thing . . . whatever it may be. But I am only asking. What do you want of me?’
‘I just need to know what the Time Gentlemen Convenance told you.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’
‘What’s in it for you?’
‘That’s my business,’ said the tinny little voice. Then there was a tinny little laugh. ‘But after all, I am a Time Gentleman. It’s hardly my fault that they’ve barred me from their meetings.’
‘Weren’t you banned for acts of unspeakable evil, or something?’ I said.
‘Or something,’ he agreed. ‘But if the Convenance has agreed something, then I need to know about it.’
‘I don’t see how it could do any harm to tell you,’ I said, a little uncertainly. ‘They announced they’d discovered a TGV.’
‘A Time Gentleman Violator!’ exclaimed the Master Debater’s suave voice. ‘How shocking. Did they say whom had obtained this device?’
‘They said something about Stavros.’
‘Oo, how terrible. If he arms his cyborg army with such weapons,’ the Master Debater said, thoughtfully, ‘then the entire race of Time Gentlemen is doomed!’
‘That was pretty much the gist of the meeting.’
‘That means me too, you know. That doomed encompasses me as well.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, don’t you think it was pretty unsporting of the Convenance to keep me in the dark about this news?’
‘Look,’ I said, feeling uneasy. ‘I’m not sure I should even be talking to you . . . I mean, aren’t you the Doctor’s arch enemy?’
‘Well, yes I am. But it’s only a small arch. If I were the Convenance,’ he went on, ‘I’d send the Doctor back on a mission to before Stavros was able to create his robots, and prevent them ever coming about!’
‘I don’t think I can say—’ I said.
‘You don’t need to say anything! Don’t worry, my dear fellow,’ said the Master Debater’s voice, growing fainter. ‘I wouldn’t want you to feel that you had in any way betrayed your Doctor . . .’
And with that he was gone.
Inside the control room, the Dr was at the console. ‘Ah!’ he said, cheerily. ‘Feeling better.’
‘Yes,’ I said, in a weak voice. Now that I was with him again, I felt guilty about my conversation with the Master Debater. Had I said more than I ought? Should I tell the Dr about it? ‘I’m,’ I hazarded. ‘I’m sorry for my behaviour earlier.’
‘Don’t mention it. We’ve just had new orders from the Time Gentleman’s Convenance. We’re to abandon this mission and zoop on back to the Planet Skary.’
‘The Planet Skary?’ I queried.
‘Zoop?’ Linn queried.
‘Yep. We’re to stop Stavros before he can create an entire race of merciless cyborgs and arm them with the only weapon capable of destroying the Time Gentlemen!’
Chapter Five
THE NEAR MAGICAL DISAPPEARANCE OF THE WATER INTO THE TARDY TOWELS
It took the Dr a while to recover enough clean towels so that we could dry ourselves properly. Linn and I stood there as he rummaged through the cupboard in the central console, icy water from the North Atlantic of 1912 dripping off our bodies onto the floor of the TARDY’S control room.
‘Here you both are,’ he said finally, bringing out two large blue towels. I held mine in front of me before starting to rub myself with it, and saw that it carried the words TARDY OFFICIAL TO WEL PRODUCT upon it. ‘Official towels?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have official towels?’
‘Oh I do.’
‘Is there, what, like a complete range of merchandise, or something?’
‘Just the towels. And,’ he added, paddling his fingers in amongst the line of his necktie, and looking therefore not unlike Oliver Hardy as he did so, ‘this natty necktie.’ The tie was black, with a rectangular blue shape upon it. ‘But the towels are super, aren’t they? You’ll find,’ he went on, rather smugly, ‘that they can absorb almost unlimited amounts of water without getting damp.’
I gave the towel a try, and soon discovered that he spoke the truth: no matter how sopping I was, the towel sucked up the water and still felt dry to the touch. ‘It’s like magic,’ exclaimed an impressed Linn. ‘How does it work?’
‘Ah,’ said the Dr, sagely, applying the towel to his own prodigious hairdo. ‘It’s all part of the marvellous operation of the TARDY ... one more example of the futuristic technology that has kept the Time Gentlemen ahead of the game—’
‘And how about hot chocolate?’ Linn demanded. ‘You got any marvellous machinery in this spaceship for making that?’
‘Yes?’
‘I was just wondering who we were dealing with back there, that’s all.’
‘Whom,’ corrected the Dr.
‘Whom.’
‘You were wondering,’ said the Dr pedantically, ‘with whom we were dealing.’
‘So,’ I started again, cautiously, ‘whom is he, exactly?’
‘Who is he,’ corrected Linn.
‘What I mean,’ I said, ‘is that you sounded pretty surprised to see him. I’m wondering whether you had any suspicions as whether he was the one who, or whom, either really, was persecuting you?
‘My nemesis,’ said the Dr, in a low voice, as if to himself. ‘The Master Debater. Whom else could it be?’
‘And who,’ I said, drawing out the oo sound of the word and trying to slip the quietest-possible m at the end, such that it could be heard as either ‘who’ or ‘whom’ depending on the listener’s state of mind, perhaps thereby heading-off the Dr’s inevitable correction, something which was, frankly, starting to annoy me, ‘is this Master Debater?’ I finished.
‘He is a Time Gentleman,’ said the Dr. ‘Just as I am myself. He’s from the Planet Garlicfree, as I am myself. But whereas I graduated the Gentlemen Facilities with a doctorate, he only managed a Masters. The bitterness of this failure soiled him inside.’
‘Soiled?’ asked Linn.
‘Do I mean sullied? No matter. It messed him up, that’s the important thing. Internally. I mean, internally-mentally, not internally-physically or anything like that. He was made bitter, resentful. He became prone to evil.’
‘Prone to it?’
‘Such a waste of his Time Gentlemanly talents. He and I. I and he. We were best friends at the College of Temporal Gentlemen. But now . . .’ The Dr shook his head and whistled dispar
agingly. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I love him like my brother. Or, perhaps like a brother. Well,’ he said, rubbing his chin in the search for exact verbal precision, ‘not a brother perhaps. But I certainly love him like a brother-in-law. Or, to be more precise, I love him like he was my brother’s lawyer. Or my lawyer’s brother. Who is also a lawyer, and not a very nice one.’
‘You hate him.’
‘Indeedy.’
‘He certainly seems to be going to some lengths to persecute you,’ I pointed out. ‘Why might that be, do you think?’
‘As to why,’ said the Dr, ‘I don’t know. There will be a reason, I’m sure. Most people usually do have a reason for what they do, after all. The Master Debater will have some diabolic scheme in mind. But that’s not to say I know what it is.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘Master Debater!’ cried the Dr, as if to the air. ‘Oh, wicked Master Debater! Why must you tarry in the ways of ultimate wicked evility?’ He raised his right fist to a point a little way in front of his face, and then rotated it slowly, as if examining it from every angle for the intrinsic interest of its knuckles.
‘Can he . . .’ I asked, looking around me but seeing nothing, ‘can he, you know. Can he hear you?’
The Dr looked crossly at me. ‘Of course not. He’s splashing around in the icy waters of the North Atlantic right now. How could he possibly hear what I’m saying inside my own TARDY in tempo-spacey travel in the vacuum of deep space?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, a little sulkily. ‘I thought maybe . . . I don’t know.’
‘What?’
‘I thought maybe he was eavesdropping. You know, electronically. And that was why you suddenly addressed him. I don’t know how your TARDY machines work, now, do I? And anyway, what was I supposed to think? Why were you talking to him if he can’t even hear you?’
‘I was being dramatic!’ exclaimed the Dr, in an infuriated tone. ‘I was trying to capture a little of the quasi-operatic excitement incipiently present in the situation. I don’t know why I bother sometimes, honestly.’
‘Well there’s no need to be like that,’ I said, hurt, to be honest, by the Dr’s tone.
‘Will you two stop it?’ said Linn. ‘We’ve got our next mission to consider.’
