Christmas on a Rational Planet

by Lawrence Miles

  – No, Chris. Don’t concentrate. Remember how it feels. How it feels just to feel.

  And here he was, Christopher Rodonanté Cwej, out in the desert, between the Devil and the deep blue eyes of the Doctor (green eyes, grey eyes, any old eyes), ready to make the decision, ready to kill millions of people with history or throw the whole shebang into an eternal darkness that might have been bad, might have been good, might have been any number of things. Worlds full of pain, or worlds full of the unknown. Which was worse?

  ‘I...’ he began.

  Like a coin on its edge. Ready to fall either way. His senses flooded out through his feet, into the desert, and into the universe outdoors. There; down in America. The last battlefield. Woodwicke? Was that what its name had been?

  ‘Chris...’

  – Chris...

  Warrior-monks were in close combat with the spawn of Baalzebub. Invisible monsters walked through dreams, and wolves walked like men. Balls of light with lips of flame, half-human automatons made from feathers and bones. Angels with rats’ features, villages that sighed as if alive and lonely, gods with the heads of cats, cats with the heads of gods... and it stretched out across the cosmos, an infinity of new worlds, none of which could exist until he let them, except as shadowy possibilities in the darkness of not-being-sure...

  ‘Christopher?’

  – Christopher?

  True darkness... monster darkness... not knowing whether to cover your eyes or open your arms and let it swallow you up. The thing that all children are terrified of. Watching EarthDoom XV from behind the sofa... when he’d been a kid... just a kid .

  The memory hit him like a warhead, a memory so large that it filled his head and leaked out into the world around him, writing itself on the shadows of the Carnival Queen’s domain until everybody could see it.

  Whumf! went the frisbee as it thumped the first robber’s head, knocking him senseless. Fwang! it went as it rebounded off the man’s skull, spinning into the legs of the second thug. Oopf! he went as he fell onto the mezzacrete, and his gun clattered harmlessly out of his reach.

  ‘Curses!’ exclaimed the robber. ‘Foiled again!’

  – Oh, no, said the Carnival Queen. I think I’m going to be physically ill.

  ‘Yes, my boy, law and order is certainly in our blood,’ said Cwej Senior, and the walls of Young Christopher’s city began to cave in.

  Daniel Tremayne looked up at a dark sky shot through with cold yellow light, and sang. The amaranth sang along with him. History turned in his grasp, and turned again, and turned again, and turned again.

  Erskine Morris watched light and fire wash through the streets of Woodwicke, cauterizing the wounds in the world where the madness bled out onto the streets. By God, he thought, as the last of the phantoms turned to cinders. By God. By God.

  The creature that had once been Isaac Penley saw the light crackle across the clouds, and in that one moment of illumination, he saw the future, and knew what it meant. For the first time in his adult life, there was a spark of understanding inside him. It was all so simple. So very very simple. What had he been so worried about?

  Christopher Cwej didn’t know who to trust. He just knew this: that he wasn’t ready for the world of wonders, that he wasn’t ready for the chimeras and the moondust-eaters, the slithy toves and the faerie queens, the flying pigs and the magic apples and the imaginary friends. It was too big, too painful. Too alien.

  ‘Law and order are in our blood...’

  On the streets of Woodwicke, a hundred pairs of eyes were focusing on the heavens, a hundred mouths forming perfect O-shapes as the sky sealed itself up and the sheer darkness of Cacophony was replaced by the star-spangled darkness of just-past-one-o’clock-in-the-morning. The storm ended, and the streets began to dry.

  The gynoids sank into the buildings, the buildings sank into the streets, the streets sank into the columns, and Christopher Cwej looked up. At some point, he saw the Carnival Queen’s endless eyes, and they were full of sadness and pity. At some point, he saw the Doctor’s eyes, and they were full of sadness and pity as well. He couldn’t remember which he’d seen first, or what they’d said to him as the un-city had collapsed back into the desert. He couldn’t even remember whether he’d been screaming or crying as he’d made the decision and answered the question.

  The boy sat among the dunes, shivering. His eyes were wide open, as if the eyelids had been pinned against his skull. The face of someone who’s seen too much, thought the Doctor.

  ‘It’s over,’ he told Chris.

  Chris started clambering to his feet, his ankles shaking under his weight. The eyes remained resolutely open, staring off across the desert. The TARDIS was visible there, a blue rectangle embedded in one of the dunes.

  ‘I made the decision,’ Chris said. For a second, his voice sounded like Catcher’s, fractured and twisted; but it was just nervous exhaustion, the Doctor realized, nothing permanent.

  ‘Yes. You made the decision,’ said the Doctor. And then, more quietly, ‘Thank you.’

  Chris nodded. Dumbly. He glanced up at the Carnival Queen, but he seemed to be looking right through her. Staring at nothing on the far side of everything. He nodded again, and began to take slow, stumbling steps towards the TARDIS.

  ‘I made the decision,’ he muttered as he walked away.

  – Well. It was a nice idea.

  The Doctor turned, his face angry. Then his eyes settled on the many potential faces of the Carnival Queen – and who could say how many of those faces he could see? – and the fury just blew away on the wind.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  – I know, said the Carnival Queen. – But if defeats really meant anything to me... if I could be disappointed, even after these billions of years... then I’d be a Watchmaker. These things happen... perhaps some other time...

  ‘What will you do now?’

  – Funny. You asked that automatically. Without thinking. You ask that of everybody you leave behind, don’t you?

  ‘What will you do now?’ the Doctor repeated.

  – Oh, the usual things. Try to send a few more good ideas out into the Majestic Clockwork. Influence. Inspire. Eke out an eternity.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  – You said. Nicely manipulated, Doctor.

  ‘Manipulated?’ The Doctor watched Chris amble away over the dunes, becoming a stick-figure as he neared the TARDIS. ‘No. Not this time. Chris made the decision himself. It was all a question of trust.’

  – Oh, really? And I suppose it’s a coincidence that the memory of his father and the bank-robber should pop into his head at that precise moment? And such a sickly, sentimental memory, non?

  The Doctor’s body tensed up. Instinctively. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  – Doctor, you saw what he was remembering. A bank at... where was it? The Shoptronic Mezzanine? His father throwing a robo-frisbee. ‘Law and order are in our blood’. The credo of the Watchmakers.

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t see...’

  – Christopher comes from the thirtieth century. By his time, all financial transactions are performed by computer. That’s my understanding, at least, though my knowledge of history is predictably shaky. Do I have to spell it out for you, Doctor? There aren’t any banks in the thirtieth century. And no bank-robbers. That memory was false. A fraud. A fake. When did you plant it, exactly?

  The Doctor’s expression was unreadable.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said, hurriedly. Then, once more, ‘I’m sorry.’

  And he darted off across the desert, following the footsteps of Christopher Cwej back towards the TARDIS.

  Behind him, the Carnival Queen slowly shook a hundred thousand million billion heads. Sadly.

  ‘Are you okay?’ the Negress was asking.

  Marielle Duquesne didn’t recognize the room she found herself in, but she knew that she had to be back inside Christopher’s miraculous time-ship. Everything was solid, though, no longer fuzzy at the ed
ges. Her head was full of memories, but she couldn’t arrange them into a coherent sequence; a restaurant in Paris, Christopher on the guillotine, a machine breaking open, the sensation of being part of something so much bigger –

  ‘We dragged you in,’ the Negress said. ‘You were standing outside, and then you just fell over. Chris says you’re okay now. Demonic possession or something.’

  Marielle looked up. Christopher was there, leaning against a platform that she took to be the ship’s helm. His eyes were empty and bloodshot.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked, mechanically.

  ‘Well. Well, thank you.’ Marielle wanted to tell him about her spine, about the fact that it had gone completely numb, that it seemed to have just given up and died... but she couldn’t, of course.

  ‘Ak. Cac. Watch,’ croaked a prone figure on the other side of the room, but everyone ignored him

  Then a man appeared at Christopher’s shoulder. Marielle had never seen him before. He was the Doctor. She didn’t even notice the contradiction between those last two thoughts.

  ‘Chris,’ the Doctor said. ‘Listen to me. This may be very important. The memory you had, out in the desert. About your father. Where did it come from?’

  ‘What?’ Christopher’s expression was blank. ‘It’s just... a memory. I don’t know.’

  The Doctor seemed agitated about something. ‘Please, try to concentrate. When was the first time you had that memory? The first time today, say.’

  ‘Today.’ Chris started to nod. ‘I was in a room. In the TARDIS. With brass bits in the walls. And the interface.’

  ‘Interface?’

  ‘The TARDIS interface. I was talking to the interface... and the memory came... for the first time...’

  Suddenly the Doctor was on the other side of the room, vanishing through a doorway and into the depths of the ship. The Negress looked at Chris, then at Marielle.

  ‘What was that all about?’ she asked.

  The Doctor stormed past more nineteenth-century furniture in the corridors, but ignored it. As soon as he entered the room with the brass roundels, one of the walls opened up a lazy eye.

  ‘Interface!’ barked the Doctor.

  ‘Ah,’ said a mouth set into a brass roundel. ‘I did believe you to be unaware of my existence...’

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence.’ He began to pace the room, hands behind his back. ‘Are you in touch with the TARDIS?’

  ‘I suspect that I am the TARDIS, in part. That is to say, the TARDIS has been employing me as a mouthpiece. And it bloody hurts, and all, as my new personality might put it. Do you know how big the ship’s psychosphere is...?’

  The Doctor waved the complaint aside. ‘Ask her what she knows about False Memory Syndrome. Ask her what she thinks she’s doing putting memories into people’s heads.’

  The mouth frowned. ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘The Carn... the force out in the desert was right, for once. Nobody as apparently well-adjusted as Christopher should have a memory like that rolling around inside him. Somebody planted it. Popped the memory into his cerebellum. Somebody with telepathic faculties. Or with telepathic circuits.’

  ‘You guessed, then.’

  ‘It wasn’t difficult,’ the Doctor scowled. ‘And the historical slip was clumsy. Bank-robbers in the thirtieth century? Pitiful!’

  ‘Please, don’t blame the TARDIS for that. The historical records in the data banks were made by – excuse me – by a bunch of doddery old Time Lords with their heads stuck halfway up their... whatever it is Time Lords have at the bottom end. Funny, the data banks don’t talk about Time Lord anatomy much.’ The voice was swinging uncertainly between its usual cultured tones and a rough London accent, as if it had two personalities and wasn’t sure which it should be using. ‘Though I fail to understand why you’re angry. We saved the universe, surely?’

  ‘The TARDIS has no right to play with the minds of its passengers!’

  ‘No?’ The mouth twitched at the corner. ‘Please, Doctor, consider the situation. The "force" in the desert, as you describe it, wanted to create an irrational universe. Yes?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘And who has the most to lose from that? Consider what the TARDIS represents. The ship is the ultimate expression of reason. Its heart is made of mathematics, its architecture the very model of order.’

  The mouth tried to shake its head, with predictably disastrous results. ‘I... it... couldn’t take any chances. It couldn’t allow the rational universe to be threatened. Besides which, any personality the TARDIS might have developed has largely been modelled on your own. To put it bluntly, if you’re an interfering old stoat, it’s not surprising that the ship is as well.’

  The Doctor stopped pacing and pulled a face. ‘I’ll thank you not to lecture me about how the TARDIS works.’

  ‘Why? I must surely have a better idea than you do...

  ‘Hah!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘Interface, I command you to shut down. Priority deactivation code Theta-Sigma-74384338.’

  ‘Deactivation code?’ The eye looked alarmed as the roundel sealed up over it, and the mouth quivered as it shrank. ‘I wasn’t aware that you could do tha–’

  And then the Doctor was alone in the room. There was a pause, during which an entire galaxy-spanning civilization rose and fell within the universe-in-a-bottle that sat in the corner.

  Then he looked up, towards the ceiling, as if some kind of god were watching him from up above. The anger drained gut of his features. A smile began to blossom in its place.

  ‘Everybody was so busy arguing about the Watchmakers, they forgot to ask the opinion of the Watch,’ he mused.

  He reached out, felt the warmth of the nearest wall, patted it affectionately. Any personality the TARDIS might have developed...

  The smile burst into full bloom. ‘I saved the day again,’ he said. ‘Or at least, part of me did.’ And with that, he turned around and walked back towards the console room.

  A few minutes later, the TARDIS began wheezing with its usual rhythm, coughing its way back into ordinary space and time. The gynoids watched for a while, waiting for the ghostly after-image of the police box to disappear, then sulked off into the desert.

  Idly, the Carnival Queen let her attention wander out into the land of clockwork, and watched the people of Woodwicke as they woke up and realized that it hadn’t all been a terrible dream. History breathed out, the world kept turning, and 25 December proceeded according to the usual schedule.

  The Carnival Queen sighed.

  -– And a merry Christmas to all of you at home, she said.

  An Epilogue:

  One Way or Another, the World Will Be Saved

  The men looked grumpy. Distinctly grumpy. Though the militia were duty-bound to be ready for action at all times, none of them had been expecting to work on Christmas morning, and Jake McCrimmon was waiting to see which of them would be the first to complain, or to question an order, or – worst of all – to start singing The Bonnie Way Back, the way soldiers always did when they wanted to give up and go home.

  God’s truth, if it had been like this in the old days – when McCrimmon had stood against the Sassenach hordes at Dolman Hill, or even when he’d watched his elder clansmen fight the seige of Quebec – then the world would have been in the grip of anarchy by now. Back then, any man who griped or grumbled or answered back or even looked like he wasn’t pleased to be serving his country would have been tied to a big tree and thrashed senseless. A command from a superior had been like an order from On High, in those days, like an edict from the Pope himself.

  McCrimmon led his poxy band through the riot-worn streets of Woodwicke, finally bringing them to a halt on the corner of a place called Burr Street. Anarchy had been loosed upon the town, right enough. The place stank of liquor, the road littered with the remains of shattered beer-barrels. A few of the townsfolk wandered to and fro across the street, dazed and lost expressions on their faces. A man was curled up in the ashes of a bo
nfire, a scrap of sackcloth clenched in his hands, a bloody makeshift bandage wrapped around his head. The man was weeping, and McCrimmon guessed he’d been weeping for hours.

  Then there were the buildings. The buildings, which looked like they’d started melting in the rain. Even the soldiers stopped their mutinous murmurings when they saw that. Where the walls had folded in on themselves, McCrimmon saw ungodly patterns in the bricks and the timbers, like leering, half-formed faces. Dozens of families had left this God-forsaken town in the early hours, according to the authorities in Dill Village. Mass hysteria, some had said. But hysteria couldn’t turn walls into jelly, could it?

  McCrimmon ordered his men – the literate ones, anyway – to note down everything they saw. His chiefs would want to know all the grim little details, surely. Information was like gold dust to the Special Congress, and McCrimmon had a sworn duty to report incidents like this one to them. ‘Anomalies’, the chiefs called them. The Congress knew it could trust him to tie up any awkward loose ends, and besides, like Mr Jefferson himself had told him, the strangeness was in his very blood...

  France, of course, wasn’t the only country with a Shadow Directory.

  The old woman on the ground floor – the landlady, Duquesne guessed – was huddled by the fire, nodding to herself. That was all she did. Nod. When Duquesne had introduced herself, the woman had nodded. When Duquesne had asked after Tourette, the woman had nodded. Duquesne imagined that someone could probably loot the whole boarding house without the woman even noticing. She’d seen the horror, and she’d lost her mind to it.

  And was she the only one? Duquesne recalled the ‘magic box’, the magician – the Doctor – the lightning god – standing at the ship’s helm, carrying her home. Vague memories. Nothing more.

  She made her way up the creaking stairs, and began searching the rooms on the upper floor. It didn’t take her long to find the place where Tourette had been staying; the door had been broken off its hinges, and a solid metal box lay among the furnishings that littered the room, housing one of the Shadow Directory’s miraculous communications machines. There was no sign of Tourette himself.