Christmas on a Rational Planet

by Lawrence Miles

  Above them, a brass bell chimed ten times. The original bell, Roz had been informed, had been melted down for the artillery shells two decades ago. The replacement was cheap and tinny.

  ‘Our subliminal friend outside seems to want to keep an eye on us,’ mused the Doctor. By the time he’d finished the sentence, he’d already started juggling with an odd assortment of objects that had spontaneously emerged from his pockets, pebbles and credit-chips and oil cans and Sidelian memory-bubbles. It looked like a nervous habit, a way of keeping his mind off the absence of his umbrella. ‘Something very intelligent and very ambitious is at work here. Sadly, we have no idea who he, she, or it is, or what he, she, or it wants.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And I don’t suppose we could just ask them?’

  The Doctor stopped juggling and frowned at her, as if she’d just won the Eurovision Stupid Question Contest. ‘Why else would we come to a church?’ he asked, innocently. ‘Observe.’

  He stood, looking around the church, and Roz wondered where the juggled objects had vanished to all of a sudden. He was taking in the architecture, apparently looking for some special feature, but not giving any indication of what it might be. Then, abruptly, he threw his arms wide, cane outstretched, and whirled around to face the grubby stained-glass window that was set into the wall above the lectern.

  ‘What do you want?’ he shouted.

  His voice echoed around the church, and the words blurred into one deep, steady throb; but there was no answer. No shit, thought Roz. What had he been expecting?

  ‘Here,’ he shouted. ‘Here in the church. Whoever you are, I know you can hear me. These walls were built for calling. What do you want?’

  Roz looked around, checking that there wasn’t anything crawling from the shadows. There wasn’t. Aside from the echo, still bouncing from corner to corner, the church was perfectly quiet, perfectly still. The Doctor lowered his arms and stood, waiting, not taking his eyes off the window.

  The echo was still throbbing through the room, which struck Roz as unusual. Shouldn’t it have faded? Maybe that was what the Doctor had been looking for; maybe he’d been checking out the acoustics. ‘These walls were built for calling,’ he’d said... and she could still hear his last word, ‘want’, repeated over and over, almost like a heartbeat. Want. Want. Want. Want.

  And now the beat was slowing down.

  Now, that just wasn’t natural. The pitch of the echo stayed the same, but the pulse was becoming more relaxed. Hypnotic, even.

  ‘Doctor –’ Roz began.

  ‘I can hear you,’ he said.

  She immediately realized that he wasn’t talking to her.

  ‘Want,’ said a voice.

  Roz spun on her heel. The voice had come from one of the corners. Which one?

  ‘Want,’ it said again.

  It wasn’t the Doctor’s voice. It had crawled out of the Doctor’s voice, the way maggots crawl out of cheese, but it had a character all its own. The Doctor had turned to look as well, but judging by his expression, he couldn’t see anything either.

  ‘Want,’ insisted the voice, and the stained-glass window exploded.

  4

  Moment of Catastrophe

  Erskine Morris stood at the end of Eastern Walk, not sure whether he was staring up at the night sky, staring up towards Heaven, or just staring up in general. Blunt, mud-coloured droplets plopped onto his upturned face.

  ‘Hellfire and buggery,’ he told the sky. ‘Clockwork and anarchy.’

  From somewhere nearby, there was the sound of breaking glass. Behind him, Walter Monroe cleared his throat.

  ‘We’ll be seeing you at the next meeting, of course?’ the pudgy little man said. Monroe’s face was deadly serious. Coldly rational. Brow furrowed. As if nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened to him.

  ‘Of course,’ Erskine heard himself say.

  Monroe nodded, his jowls quivering comically. ‘Good, good. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to offer the world. You know. In the struggle.’

  ‘Struggle,’ Erskine repeated. ‘By Christ, yes. The struggle.’

  ‘Good to have you with us,’ Monroe said.

  Erskine opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t know what. He just decided to say the first thing that came into his head

  He was interrupted by a shout from up the street.

  ‘The church!’ It was one of the other Renewalists, one of Catcher’s arse-kissers, running from the corner where Eastern Walk met Paris Street. ‘Something’s happening at the church!’

  ‘The church?’ Monroe frowned, the corners of his mouth disappearing behind large sacks of cheek-flesh. ‘Why should we care about...?’

  ‘Cacophony! At the church!’

  Monroe turned to face Erskine, and said something which – recalling the incident later – Erskine could never quite remember. But the next thing he knew, he was running towards Paris Street with the rest of them.

  The screen was another of the Watchmakers’ great achievements. It was set into one of the walls at eye-level, a grey slab two feet across, and Catcher had found that – if he commanded the sphere in a correct and reasonable fashion – the screen would become illuminated, displaying images of objects in the near vicinity. Evidently a device of great scientific merit, Catcher had decided, probably something to do with mirrors.

  This time, the screen had activated itself. Catcher regarded the new image. A woodland; he instinctively scratched his arm, reminded of the terrible crawling things of the wilderness. The view was vaguely familiar, and he deduced that it was the woodland on the outskirts of Woodwicke, but –

  – but there was something there. Catcher squinted, trying to make out its shape. A box. A blue box? It was hard to tell; the box quivered and shifted, re-arranging itself illogically, seemingly at whim. Catcher suddenly realized that he’d stopped breathing.

  ‘Engine of Cacophony,’ he croaked.

  He felt his hands touch the dais in front of him, felt the vibration as the sphere began to rotate inside the crystal column. He tried to ignore the fact that his knuckles were sinking into the surface of the hexagon.

  ‘Who brought it here?’ he demanded. ‘Who is responsible?’

  There was a pause, as if the room itself were thinking Then the picture on the screen changed. There was the church, the damnable DAMNABLE IS NOT A RATIONAL WORD deplorable church on Paris Street. There were two figures there, staring up at the stained-glass window.

  ‘I know you,’ hissed Catcher. ‘I know who you are.’

  From somewhere deep within the labyrinth, there was an ugly grating sound, machine parts stirring in ancient metal sockets. The Watchmakers were nodding in agreement.

  Roz yelped, and instinctively raised her hands to shield her face from the rain of shards. The yelp was surprisingly satisfying, so she did it again. Good. That was much better. Slowly, she opened her eyes and lowered her arms.

  The first thing she saw was the Doctor, still standing in front of the lectern, his back turned to her. The second thing she saw was absolutely everything.

  The everything hovered above the lectern, and its heart was where the window had been. Whether the shape had absorbed the glass or the glass had absorbed the shape, she wasn’t entirely sure, but the splinters were floating inside its body, forming glittering pathways that twisted and rearranged themselves as she watched. There was a whole new world trapped inside every little piece of glass, and whenever the pieces locked together to form a ‘circuit’, an entire alien universe was born inside its body, the shape becoming something totally new and unfamiliar, sculpted by different laws of physics. Roz felt she was just looking at a fragment of the thing, if ‘thing’ was a big enough word, one face of something that had a million faces. And was that all the gynoids really were? Walking windows, that you could look through to catch glimpses of something bigger and older and stranger?

  The Doctor hardly even reacted. He stood, still and calm, as if trying to out-stare it. There was a moment’s pause. />
  A frown flickered across his face. His ears twitched.

  ‘Run,’ he finally declared.

  Roz backed away slightly, but that was all.

  ‘Run,’ he repeated.

  ‘I thought you wanted to talk to it.’

  ‘It. Not them. Listen.’

  Then she heard the footsteps. Two pairs, maybe three, thick-soled shoes on stone, and a murmuring from the other side of the church doors. People – ordinary human-type people – attracted by the sound of breaking glass.

  Roz turned just as the door opened, and came face-to-face with two of the local men. Funny how they suddenly looked the size of enraged gorillas. Not very funny, though. Their faces were dark at first, obviously expecting to see someone vandalizing the church, but that soon changed.

  They looked at the creature, then at the Doctor, then at Roz, desperately searching for something to say.

  ‘Let me just check,’ said Roz. ‘Do you burn people for being witches around here?’

  And she could have sworn that the glass gynoid laughed, polished flesh rippling with a sound like applause. The men were starting to edge closer, fists clenched. Not an aggressive gesture, Roz guessed, but a defensive one; they were trying to imagine that they were holding clubs. A primal impulse. And they called me a savage? There was already a crowd building up behind them, shouts and rumours exchanged across the nearby streets. The gynoid shuffled. The Doctor sighed.

  ‘I call Thee, Baalzebub,’ he said, making sinister gestures with his hands. ‘Lord of the Pit, I bid Thee appear, and lay waste to the domain of Thine enemies!’

  On the final word, he whirled around and pointed dramatically at the wall directly above the door. Startled, the men who were already inside the church turned to follow the gesture, still wielding their imaginary clubs, and the others in the doorway surged backwards, not wanting the spawn of Satan to drop down onto their heads. Naturally, no foul apparition materialized. The space above the door remained resolutely empty.

  Roz suddenly realized that the Doctor was looking at her.

  ‘Ahem,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Got it.’ And she began to run, pushing her way through the confused townsfolk and away down the steps of the church. She knew a distraction when she saw one.

  Marielle Duquesne wasn’t even scared. There were sensations buzzing around in her head that she knew she should be interpreting as fear and panic, but her body had forgotten how to make the chemicals that would normally send her into a state of hysteria. Her fears of being abducted by the caillou – to be used as an exhibit in some other-worldly carnival peepshow, perhaps? – no longer seemed to make much sense.

  So she just walked, slowly and calmly, along the impossibly long corridors she’d found inside the ‘magic box’, letting the walls hum their alien melodies to her. Her spine should have been on fire. Instead, there was just a numbness, as if her extra sense (she absolutely refused to call it ‘the Sight’) was trying to scream, but some other force was keeping it gagged, keeping it quiet.

  She stopped, stared at the walls. The roundels stared back.

  ‘Is it you?’ she asked the corridor. ‘Is it your doing?’

  And for one brief and improbable moment, she was sure she saw one of the roundels wink at her.

  ‘Hey,’ called a voice. ‘Hey, hello there?’

  Duquesne turned, startled. There was a shape approaching from down the corridor, a large, lanky shape that moved like a trained athlete. ‘Can you see me?’ the shape asked. ‘I mean, you’re not a ghost or anything, right?’

  It was a man. A tall man, well over six feet in height, dressed in a silky silver-tinged material that reminded Duquesne of the worst fashion excesses of Paris. Paris before the Revolution, naturally. His narrow face was topped by a crop of short blond hair, and from this distance his eyes seemed as wide as the roundels. His accent suggested that he was American, though there was a peculiar alien lilt to it that Duquesne couldn’t place.

  She shook her head, and felt her back press itself against the wall. ‘S’OK,’ the man said. ‘You don’t have to be afraid of me. Er. Hang on. Am I supposed to be afraid of you?’

  The question took Duquesne by surprise. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I mean, you’re not the one who’s causing the TARDIS to... oh, are you French?’

  Ahh, he was a fast one. ‘But I do speak English, sir.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. In here, you speak everything.’ His eyes danced across her face for a moment, then settled on her left cheek. Staring at the burn, Duquesne realized. She caught his eye, and he looked away, embarrassed.

  She decided to take the advantage. ‘Pardon me, Mr...?’

  ‘What? Oh. Cwej. Er. Christopher.’

  ‘Christopher.’ Duquesne smiled weakly, urging herself into ‘flirt’ mode. Acting the agent provocateur. ‘Am I to take it that this... place... is your property?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Well, I live here, if that’s any help. Listen, do you know how you got in? Did you come through the door? Has someone left it open?’

  ‘Door? No, Mr Cwej. Christopher. There was no door. The box simply opened itself up to me.’ She batted her eyelids. He was a caillou, no doubt about it. Then why couldn’t she feel anything? ‘I am but a simple-minded Frenchwoman, here to see the wonders of the New World. If I have stumbled upon your property, I apologize.’

  Duquesne realized she was over-acting, but there was something in this Cwej’s face – something young and stupid – which suggested that he might fall for it. He didn’t answer for a while, and Duquesne wondered what he might be thinking Then she followed his gaze up the corridor.

  At first sight, it seemed that the corridor was shrinking, with the dark wall at the far end advancing towards them. That would have been alarming enough in itself; but then Duquesne realized that it wasn’t a wall, at least not a solid one. It was a wave of darkness, rolling up the passage, carrying with it a tumult of chattering clockwork mouths and snapping mechanical joints.

  She felt Christopher Cwej’s hand close around her wrist, saw him turn and start to run, trying to pull her along behind him. Halfway along the corridor, the wave broke. Darkness washed over them, droplets bursting against their skins and exploding into childish nightmares.

  ‘This had better be good,’ said Mr Wolcott, settling in his chair.

  ‘They’re burning down the church,’ said Mr Van DeVanter.

  Mr Wolcott gawped. Evidently, that was good enough.

  If there was one word that could describe the meeting hall of the local council, that word was ‘cheap’. Woodwicke was a small and unremarkable town, a fact which made the Romanesque architecture of the hall seem laughable rather than grandiose. Similarly, the four individuals gathered around the table made distinctly unimpressive VIPs.

  ‘What church?’ demanded Mr Wolcott. ‘Our church?’

  Mr Van DeVanter nodded.

  ‘They can’t do that! Who told them they could do that?’

  Mrs Wilson made an unpleasant snorting sound. ‘If we could follow the proper procedure? Thank you. I would like to call to order this emergency meeting of the Woodwicke town council –’

  ‘Just a moment. Who’s burning down the church, exactly?’

  Mr Van DeVanter shrugged. ‘Jesuits?’

  Mrs Wilson cleared her throat. Viciously. ‘That is the item on the agenda, gentlemen. We have heard that the church became infested with, er...’

  ‘The minions of Baalzebub,’ cut in Mr Van DeVanter. ‘Peter McLeod told me he saw them himself. About quarter of an hour ago. Like something out of Hell, he said.’

  ‘Rot,’ said Mr Wolcott.

  Mr Van DeVanter nodded again. ‘Never believed a word McLeod ever said. The way he tells it, though, some of the people set light to the building just to flush out this devil-thing. You know what that bunch on Hazelrow Avenue are like. Catholic upbringing. Show ‘em something they don’t understand, they’ll set light to it.’

  ‘If
we can bring this meeting to order,’ Mrs Wilson whined. ‘It does seem that we may have a public order problem, and that we may have some other, er, disturbance. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s no precedent for a, er, supernatural panic in the minutes of this council. We therefore have to make a quick decision about what steps are to be taken.’

  There was an embarrassingly long pause.

  ‘Erm, excuse me?’ murmured Isaac Penley.

  All eyes turned on him Everyone had forgotten that he was there.

  ‘I have sort of heard of this kind of thing before,’ he said, blushing visibly. ‘I don’t think it’s, um, supernatural.’

  ‘I could’ve told you that,’ growled Mr Wolcott.

  ‘Yes. Yes. But what I thought was, well... there are quite a few good, solid minds in the neighbourhood. You know. Scientists. Rationalists ‘

  ‘You mean the Renewal Society?’ asked Mrs Wilson. Isaac jumped at the mention of the name.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he admitted. ‘I think they may have some experience with this sort of thing I’ve heard some of them sort of, erm, talking about it. The last few weeks. I thought perhaps... you know. Perhaps we could ask them what sort of steps we should be taking.’

  And, with a sense of timing that even the greatest gods of the theatre couldn’t have matched, the grand double-doors of the hall were pushed open, accompanied by a pained and protracted grinding sound. All heads turned towards the outstandingly ordinary figure that stood in the doorway.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Matheson Catcher.

  ‘– stand away from it. Stand away from it –’

  The church was ablaze, and even the rain wasn’t enough to put out the fire. Tourette wormed his way through the crowd that had gathered on Paris Street. They were like spectators at a carriage accident, he thought. Some kind of monster, the rumours said. Tourette hadn’t seen it himself, but the words ‘demon’, ‘glass’, and ‘electrical’ had all been used.