Christmas on a Rational Planet

by Lawrence Miles

  ‘The will of the Watchmakers. There is only one Reason.’

  The Doctor sighed once more. ‘There aren’t any Watchmakers, don’t you see? At least, not in any sense but the metaphorical one.’

  He was sure that Catcher’s eyes flickered around the hall then, searching the corners, as if looking for proof that the Doctor was wrong.

  ‘There is only Reason. What else could there be?’

  The Doctor shook his head. He could feel it, spreading across the town; the fifth law of thermodynamics in full effect. Everything always gets slightly worse. ‘Do you really want to know?’

  Catcher cocked his head again.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ the Doctor said.

  The cloisters had ended abruptly, in a blank white wall that (a) jarred with the classical architecture and (b) wasn’t supposed to be there anyway. Chris had led Marielle Duquesne through a tall gothic archway, pretending that he knew exactly where he was going. Now they found themselves in the middle of the seemingly endless corridor that was generally known as the TARDIS library.

  ‘Library?’ queried Marielle.

  Chris pulled a face. ‘Sort of. You say "library" and you expect it to have some kind of order. You know. Alphabetical filing.’ He shrugged, and indicated the untidy heaps of books that littered the floor for as far as the eye could see. ‘I don’t think it was supposed to be a library, originally. I think the Doctor just kept shovelling old books in here until it got that name. He told me once that he’d spent twenty-six years putting them in order, stacking them on the shelves and everything. He said it was the best meditation of his life. I guess they must have come un-ordered again.’

  But even by its usual standards, the library was a mess. Huge cracks ran across the floor, chunks of the corridor breaking off to form small islands of marble, furnished with cabinets and bookshelves. In the gaps between the sections, there was only darkness. The bad kind of darkness, Chris thought.

  They started to move up the corridor, keeping to the more obviously stable sections of the floor. Encyclopaedias and compact discs fluttered past like moths. A cat with silver fur crouched in a dissolving alcove, its skin like mercury, and Chris knew at a glance that it was a TARDIS-spawned thing. He saw Wolsey creeping up behind the quicksilver animal, attempting to sniff its arse. Just as he was about to succeed, the silver cat exploded into a shower of red, blue, and green pixels. Wolsey looked grumpy and floated off on a loose tile.

  ‘This is the way to Roslyn’s quarters?’ Marielle asked.

  There it was again. That niggling feeling that the woman was remembering everything, making notes. Chris still wasn’t sure he trusted her. To make matters worse, he didn’t even fancy her much. She wasn’t bad looking, but she just seemed kind of distant, like she wanted to be somewhere else all the time.

  Well, all right. So maybe that was understandable.

  ‘It’s, er, one way,’ he told her.

  ‘How many paths are there through this machine?’

  ‘Oh, hundreds. Thousands.’ A thought suddenly struck him ‘Hang on. You said the ship was communicating with you, right?’

  She nodded. ‘It may be.’

  ‘Cool.’ That was a word he’d picked up from twenty-first century America, and he was very happy with it. ‘So you’ve got a kind of instinct for the ship? Like a kind of empathy?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say empathy, Christopher. But...’

  ‘But there’s a kind of contact?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Great. Can you, sort of, listen to it? See if it’s saying anything? I only mention it because we’re in the library, and I’m sure the Doctor said something about the library being telepathic. Something about it being able to find books for you, if you asked it properly. He calls it the Library Angel.’

  Marielle looked bewildered. Chris felt he was having difficulty communicating with her properly. He couldn’t remember how you were supposed to speak to people from this time-zone; in America, he’d seen a TV mini-series set in the early nineteenth century, and that was about as far as his experience stretched. The programme had been inspired by novels like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but the producers had managed to strip costume drama down to its bare essentials, so the series had been called Fights and Cleavage.

  ‘Saying?’ Marielle queried. ‘I’m not sure I understand. The machine does not use words.’

  ‘The TARDIS doesn’t use words. But the interface does. Just listen.’

  So she listened. Chris watched, and waited, as a puzzled frown crossed her face.

  Something rippled through the library, riding on a wave of liquid intelligence. Chris saw Marielle’s hand shoot towards the base of her spine, and she made a tiny gasping sound that under any other circumstances Chris would have found quite appealing. He, meanwhile, found himself thinking about his dad throwing a frisbee. Again, he had no idea why.

  Marielle was looking at him, eyes wide in the dark hollows of her face. ‘A voice. English, I think.’ A frown. ‘It does not seem to like me.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘It said... use the secret passage.’

  ‘What?’

  And there was a sound, a popping, springing, boinging sound. Like the noise you hear when a cartoon character gets hit in the face by a brick. Chris had heard it before; the TARDIS occasionally made it when there was a minor systems fault, or when the Doctor thumped the console too hard. The sound was so absurd that Chris had always assumed the TARDIS was making it purely for the benefit of its human passengers.

  Now the sound was ringing through the library, a hundred times louder than he’d ever heard it before, and books were hopping like jumping beans to its echo. The part of the corridor where they were standing was breaking away from the rest of the ship. The larger sections of flooring pulled themselves apart, the smaller sections turned to dust. Islands broke apart and formed smaller islands. Marielle yelped. Again, under other circumstances, it was a sound Chris would have appreciated.

  Once, there’d been another witch-woman. Out on the other side of the state, when Daniel had still belonged to a town, or almost belonged to one. The town had been five or six families big, families who knew him so well that he’d just had to move from house to house to stay alive, instead of town to town. They must have felt sorry for him, what with his father having been carted off to the funny-house when the War was in full swing, when nobody took the time to look after the mad ones. He’d played with the other boys, stayed clear of the girls, pretending to be part of one family or another for as long as he thought he could get away with it, ten years old and learning to live in the cracks already.

  A small town. Five or six families, and a witch-woman.

  The woman had been white, and her face had looked like the world had grabbed hold of her loose skin and tried to pull her down into the ground. She’d worn things in her hair. ‘Coon charms’, one of the men in the town had said, grinning with green-speckled teeth when he’d said it. The woman had owned a garden, where she’d grown herb-plants like the ones the Indians used, and she’d let the boys play there, in the remains of the older buildings that backed onto her house. Games in the ruins. Building things out of the rubble. The woman would watch them and nod, like she’d been happy that they knew how to make things, like she’d thought the world had needed more things to be made, since the War had broken so many.

  The boys had played in the foundations until one day they’d grown up too much to play there anymore. That was when they’d started playing inside the witch-woman’s house, creeping in at night to break the bigger ‘coon charms’ inside, throwing stones at it by day. No one had noticed when the old games had stopped and the new games had started, but the other men and women in the town had watched it happen because no one trusted a witch-woman and they’d never liked her anyway. She’d stopped showing her face after that. Stopped even coming to the windows.

  One day, Daniel Tremayne had crept into the house, stolen the most expensive
things he’d been able to find, and run out of the town. He’d needed to get away from that place, more than he needed to get out of Woodwicke. He hadn’t known why.

  And now there was Forrester. She was moving around Catcher’s cellar with short, careful steps, taking in every little detail. She stopped in front of a shelf, stacked high with books, heavy and bound in black hide. She took one down and opened it.

  Daniel looked over her shoulder. He couldn’t read, of course, but he’d seen enough books to know what letters were supposed to look like, and the symbols scratched into the pages just weren’t right. He thought maybe it was some foreign language, then realized that whenever his eyes moved across the paper, the letters moved too.

  ‘Odd,’ Forrester said. ‘They look just like the Doctor’s old time-logs, but it’s like they’ve been scrambled.’

  She was talking to herself, obviously. Daniel kept quiet. ‘In fact, everything here’s been scrambled,’ she continued, replacing the book and moving towards the altar-thing in the middle of the room. ‘A-ha.’

  Then she was reaching into the glass column at the centre of the table. Daniel held his breath, waiting for... what? An explosion? Worse? ‘Like I said. Lost property.’

  She turned around. In her hands was a sphere, about the size of a child’s ball, its colour half-way between gold and bronze. ‘This is beginning to add up,’ she said. ‘Your Catcher must have used the amaranth to build this place. Question is, why does it look like a TARDIS? What is he, another renegade Time Lord? Goddess, the universe must be stuffed with them.’

  The sentences made no sense to Daniel. Lord Jesus Christ, did he want them to make sense? Did he want to get caught up in all of this?

  ‘My guess is, the amaranth is linked to the TARDIS. That’d make sense, most of the Doctor’s toys are. So, when Catcher did his magic ritual or whatever it was, the amaranth rebuilt this place according to the pattern it was most familiar with. The TARDIS pattern.’ Forrester paused, thinking ‘Hold on. If this place, this UnTARDIS, is linked to the amaranth as well...’

  She walked across to one of the walls, and stroked it gently. The surface bubbled, shifted, a tiny portion of the wall collapsing in on itself. Daniel Tremayne winced.

  ‘Right,’ said Forrester. ‘So the TARDIS and the UnTARDIS are linked together, via the amaranth. The UnTARDIS is unstable, because the amaranth can only build temporary structures. So the TARDIS is unstable as well. That’s what’s causing the ship to break down. Does that make sense?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Daniel, hardly noticing that he’d spoken aloud.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t care. Please. Just get me out of here. I don’t care about TARDISes and am’ranths. I don’t want to have to care. Just get me out.’

  ‘Daniel –’

  ‘Stop it!’ His hands twitched. Instinct telling him to cover his ears. ‘It’s none of my business. I don’t want any of this shit, all right? I want to leave this town. I want you to get me out.’

  Forrester paused. Then sighed. Then nodded. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ve got what I came for. Time we got after the Doctor.’

  She turned and walked back through the darkness of the entrance, away from the impossible room, away from the heart of Hell. Daniel followed. Christ, yes. Followed fast.

  Monroe was standing by a building that might as well have been made of sticks for all the protection it offered from the elements. He was talking to a Negro man, talking in the kind of language you usually reserved for children and other such sodding nuisances. The Negro must have been about twenty, his clothes so worn and thin that he looked almost naked as the rain flattened the fabric against his body.

  ‘You understand?’ Monroe gargled, poking a thick finger into the Negro’s chest. ‘Ca-co-pho-ny. Diabolists.’

  The Negro shook his head, said something in a language that might have been English. His accent was too thick for Erskine to make out the words.

  ‘Witch-doctors,’ Monroe tried. ‘Unga-bunga men. Yes?’

  Erskine looked around the street, not knowing what to say. Negroes and riff-raff peered out from the doorways and the broken windows of the decaying buildings, some afraid, some just alert. They were watching him, by Jesus Christ and his little brown beard, he was sure of it.

  Thankfully, they couldn’t see his face under the mask.

  The Negro man shook his head again, and tried to push Monroe’s hand away. Monroe reacted badly, looked as if he was going to hit the man. Erskine averted his gaze. Around him, Renewalists and other ‘concerned citizens’ were marching in and out of the houses, while other townsfolk lurked in the shadows, watching the scene but afraid to enter the ‘African quarter’ even now. Some of the Negroes were complaining, screaming unfathomable curses. Some were even barricading the doors. It didn’t help. The doors were pushed open, forced open, broken open.

  ‘Where are they?’ Monroe was demanding. Out of the corner of his eye, Erskine saw two townsfolk grab the Negro’s arms. ‘The witch-folk, yes? Where? Here?’

  ‘In the name of Reason,’ somebody shouted, and another door was broken down. The Negro man was being punched in the stomach, once, twice, three times. Erskine didn’t know who was doing the punching.

  And suddenly, a dark-skinned shape was speeding towards him. Erskine panicked, some deep-rooted instinct telling him that he was under attack from the hordes of Satan, and – without even thinking – he reached out and grabbed at the shape, wrapping his thick arms around the skinny black body. It was a boy, a Negro boy, maybe seventeen or eighteen. The boy shouted something indecipherable, struggled, and turned. His eyes met Erskine’s.

  No. His eyes looked into the slits in Erskine’s mask.

  His eyes were full of chaos.

  Then he was struggling again. Kicking. Biting. Erskine howled, an exclamation that burst out of his lungs without the hindrance of words. ‘In the name of Reason,’ somebody shouted again, and Erskine began clubbing the boy in the face, wildly swinging his arms until he heard something crack. As the boy fell, he felt a curious relaxing sensation spread through his body. This was easy. Damnation, this made sense. This he could deal with, at least.

  Catcher closed his eyes, felt the lids lock shut. Cogs and wheels were moving in the pink darkness.

  ‘That’s right,’ the prisoner was saying. ‘Close your eyes. When you open them, look for Reason. It won’t be there, Mr Catcher. I promise you.’

  Impossible. That was impossible. Catcher was about to say so, but his head was full of fantasies about worlds whose inhabitants Reasoned themselves out of existence, and he thought he saw the voice of a woman, hiding behind the clockwork, laughing at him. How could you see a voice? Irrational. Unreasonable.

  Everything had gone quiet, but he could still hear the diabolist’s voice. Look for Reason, Mr Catcher... it won’t be there... Catcher tried to summon a snort of contempt, but none would come. Why, he’d open his eyes, and everything would be the same, stable and sound, under the spell of Reason...

  He opened his eyes. The meeting hall was indeed unchanged, every corner where it should be, every surface in its proper place. Astonishingly, it took Catcher some time to notice that the prisoner had vanished. The chair was still in the middle of the hall, but the rope that had bound the man lay neatly coiled on top of the seat. Catcher spun, eyes searching the room. The heavy doors were closed. If they’d been opened, he would have heard. He looked behind the pillars, sure that the man must be there, hiding. He wasn’t. A spring snapped inside his head.

  There was a grating sound. The doors opened, and four figures – the councillors – congregated in the doorway.

  ‘There is a rational explanation,’ Catcher told them, calmly. At least, he thought he sounded calm.

  Mr Wolcott just cleared his throat. ‘Mr Catcher, we feel that something needs to be said. Your Renewal Society –’

  He broke off, noticing the empty chair in the middle of the hall. Four pairs of eyes floated in Catcher’s direction.r />
  ‘A rational explanation,’ said Catcher, and his voice was louder than he’d expected it to be. He pointed at the chair. ‘An agent of Cacophony. Fairy-stories about other worlds. Distractions.’

  ‘Erm?’ said Mr Wolcott.

  ‘Rational. Our course is clear.’ Catcher was nodding, his head bobbing up and down spastically. ‘He must be found. He must be executed. Burned at the stake.’

  There was a shocked silence from the council.

  ‘I am in control!’ insisted Catcher. ‘Do not suggest that I am in any way behaving irrationally.’

  But they were just staring at him, not knowing what to say. Four confused and alarmed people stood aside as Catcher stormed out of the hall with awkward, mechanical steps.

  Half a wardrobe floated past, spewing out tartan jackets and brightly coloured greatcoats that looked like they’d been made for gigantic toy soldiers. Duquesne sat on the edge of an overturned bookcase, which rested on a section of flooring that drifted aimlessly on a sea of darkness. There was still a ceiling overhead, but the cracks were visible even in that.

  She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be within a million miles of this terrible place. Pushed in one direction by the Shadow Directory, pulled in another by the candle-flames that flickered up and down her spine, spirited across the world by politics and lightning-gods... did everybody live this way, she wondered, or were there people who could actually choose the kind of world they lived in?

  ‘OK, how about psychometry? Can you do that?’

  Christopher Cwej sat on a nearby mound of dictionaries, with one of the books open in his hands. He was flipping through words beginning with ‘psy’ to see what kind of ‘cool psychic powers’ Duquesne had. She wasn’t familiar with any of the words, and kept telling him so.

  ‘Psychometry is where you touch something and know who touched it last,’ Cwej explained. ‘Like fingerprints, I suppose. Back at the Academy, they said that some primitive planets had judicial systems based on psychometry. They said it was all a load of bull. But I think they might have had a kind of grudge against psychics. Oh well.’