‘How will you make everyone believe?’ asked Ollus.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘And what’s more, I don’t even know how I’m going to get the TARDIS back.’
At that moment, the door opened and the woman who had interrogated the Doctor breezed through, clearly not expecting to see them there.
‘Oh,’ she said, stopping.
‘The girl with no name,’ said the Doctor, smiling.
‘What are you still doing here?’ she asked, a little blankly.
‘Um … Where are we supposed to go?’ asked the Doctor, gesturing around the room.
‘The exit is through this door and down the corridor,’ the woman explained.
‘And that’s it, is it?’ asked the Doctor. ‘I just leave here with three children and … where do we go? What do we do?’
‘That’s not our problem,’ said the woman. ‘There’ll be a full examination of the ship. An investigation. If you’re needed, we’ll find you.’
‘Oh, will you?’ the Doctor smiled, intrigued.
‘You’ve been implanted with a data-chip,’ she said, as if he should have known.
‘Oh. Nice. Thanks,’ said the Doctor. ‘Isn’t that an infringement of my inalienable rights or something?’
‘No,’ she said, moving off towards another door on the other side of the room.
‘That’s it, then?’ said the Doctor, starting to hurry after her.
She turned and looked at him, a little alarmed, he thought, as if she was considering calling for security or something.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said, turning and exiting through the other door.
‘Well,’ said the Doctor, turning back to the children, his arms wide in one of his larger shrugs. Before he could say anything else, they had assembled in front of him in their customary formation again. He knew he was going to have to take all this one moment at a time.
As they headed down the corridor to the building’s exit, the Doctor was trying to fathom how he was going to get back to the TARDIS, how he was going to convince the people of this world that the Daleks were a force for evil and, perhaps most importantly, how exactly he was going to look after three orphaned children without anywhere to live and with no money in his pocket.
When they passed through the main doors, the Doctor immediately saw a potential solution to one of those problems.
It was now night, but in the brightly illuminated street in front of them, there was a crowd of around a hundred people. Perhaps not as impressive as the thousands they had seen earlier, but, thought the Doctor, this gathering would do … especially since they had a very particular air about them.
Immediately, the crowd seemed to move almost as one, dashing towards the Doctor, Sabel, Ollus and Jenibeth. Dazzling lights from hand-held holo-cameras bobbed and swayed closer and closer. A gabble of overlapping questions started firing at them. These, the Doctor realised, were journalists.
‘How did you find the ship? What happened to their parents? Who are you? What do you think of the reports that everyone on board had been killed? Did you know about the strength of public reaction back home?’
More and more questions piled on top of other questions and the more the Doctor and the children did not answer, the more versions of the same questions came firing at them in an increasingly grotesque symphony of intrusive craving. So far, the Doctor reflected, shutting off his mind from the dazzling lights and the incessant questioning, he had encountered two unpleasant aspects of human social behaviour on Carthedia: uncaring officiousness and a rampantly insensitive press. Not rating as one of his favourite planets, that was for sure.
As he held up his hands in an attempt to stop the flood of questions, the Doctor realised that Sabel, Ollus and Jenibeth were all hiding inside his jacket. Ollus had actually fastened one of the buttons, so from just below the waist up, the Doctor now looked like a sort of bulging, tweed tent with a head.
‘Please! Please! Please!’ the Doctor shouted at the top of his voice. ‘There are children here!’
But the journalists either simply did not care or did not hear.
The Doctor fished inside his jacket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He held it aloft, portentously. Some of the journalists looked up for a moment, but still their questions and grappling for position continued.
Flicking the sonic controls to a high oscillation, the Doctor activated the device and about twenty or so of the nearest street lamps exploded in a shower of dancing sparks. A nearby, oval-ish tram-like vehicle, very probably on its last night-time journey back to the depot, also bore the brunt of this sonic assault, as the metal pick-up arm on its roof sizzled furiously on the overhead cables, causing the whole tram to skitter off its tracks and into some parked, domed car-like vehicles.
Fortunately, the impacts were fairly minor, and no one was hurt.
All this commotion, however, was, thankfully, enough to stop the journalists long enough for the Doctor to get a word in. Realising that this might be his only chance, the Doctor knew he had to go for the big story first.
‘The Daleks are evil!’ he cried at the top of his voice. It had the desired effect. The journalists all looked at him. ‘Well,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s better. You all look pretty gobsmacked. So, now then, there’s a story for you, right there! I don’t know how long you’ve been thinking the Daleks were your friends, but I’m here to tell you that you can be sure that they are up to something. I’m not sure what it is, but it has something to do with the planet Gethria. Some secret so terrible that the parents of these children were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep it from them. But let me tell you …’
For a moment he trailed off, noticing that the journalists were starting to peel away, shaking their heads. He heard words like ‘nutter’ and ‘lunatic’ and worse drift towards him. They were simply finding his story completely unacceptable.
The Doctor reached out and grabbed the arm of one of the retreating hacks, an older, grey haired, balding man in a heavy, dark coat.
‘Wait a minute!’ the Doctor pleaded. ‘Why’s all this so difficult for you to believe? I mean, you’re journalists, aren’t you? Don’t you love a juicy bit of scandal? This could be a great story.’
‘A great story?’ the journalist sneered. He fixed the Doctor with a look. The Doctor looked straight back into his eyes. This was a veteran of the news trade, the Doctor could see that. A hardened man who felt he had seen it all. He had waited out here in the dark for several hours to get hold of a great story, and instead, all he had got was something totally crazy from a madman.
‘You want us to say that the Daleks are evil?’ he asked, dumbfounded.
‘Why not?’ asked the Doctor. ‘It’s true, and I can prove it to you!’
The journalist opened his arms wide, inviting the proof.
The Doctor found himself wrong-footed. ‘Well, not now … obviously, but—’
‘Look, the Daleks created the Sunlight Worlds,’ the journalist explained.
Those Sunlight Worlds again, thought the Doctor. What were they?
The journalist was still talking. ‘They’ve made life better for a generation of people whose lives were ruined by the worst galactic recession on record. You’re going to have to do a lot better than shouting wild accusations in the street to get anyone to believe they’re anything but … well, to be frank, saviours!’
‘When did they create these … Sunlight Worlds?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Oooh, I dunno,’ the journalist said. ‘About thirty or forty years ago. Something like that. I’ve got an aunt who lives there. Says it’s like paradise!’
‘Paradise?’ interrupted the Doctor, aghast. ‘The Daleks created paradise?’
‘Yeah!’ said the journalist. ‘So are you seriously telling me that makes the Daleks evil?’
To the Doctor’s intense annoyance, he could find no answer to this. As the journalist retreated down the street, the Doctor gazed around in frustration. H
ow could you prove something so obvious to people who had clearly had such a different, distorted experience of the Daleks? And then he noticed that the children had emerged from inside his jacket. They were the next problem he had to solve.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ asked Sabel.
The Doctor held up a finger, as if he was about to tell them something significant. But when he looked for an idea, it was as if the cupboard was bare. He was well and truly stumped.
He turned back to look into the building they had just exited. He pushed at the door. It was locked securely. He looked at the windows. Heavy shutters were now down.
‘I’m cold,’ said Jenibeth.
‘Me too,’ said Ollus.
‘And it’s way past our bedtimes,’ said Sabel, as if the Doctor should have known that.
The Doctor scanned the darkened street for inspiration. They seemed to be in what looked like a run-down area of a great city. A long, straight road stretched off far into the distance, towards the high, bright lights of what must be skyscrapers, he thought. Closer at hand, a few shabby, unlit buildings, possibly shops or cafes littered some untidy wasteland. This enormous spaceship landing terminal had perhaps been built away from the main, and possibly more affluent inhabited areas, as a safety precaution against crash landings.
The Doctor’s impromptu exploding of nearby street lamps had almost certainly made this area a good deal darker than usual. Perhaps surprisingly, the minor tramcar crash had caused only the smallest of consternations. Luckily for the Doctor, no one had connected this incident with the man in the tweed suit and his three children. There had been only one, sleeping passenger on the tram, and she looked like she had not even been woken by the impact. The driver was climbing onto the tram roof, trying to check the power pick-up arm. None of the owners of the three empty smashed cars had emerged. Feeling rather guilty about it all, the Doctor hoped the cars had, perhaps, been abandoned.
He looked back at the children again. They stared back up at him. There was nothing for it, he would have to use his sonic screwdriver to break into the spaceship terminal and somehow find a way to get back to the TARDIS. Checking around to make sure that there was no one looking, the Doctor moved close to the terminal’s main door. But just as he was about to press the control to operate his sonic screwdriver, a terrible noise swooped in from above. A noise like a rusty wheel scraping against a blackboard – ear-piercing and distinctly unpleasant.
There were green flashing lights too, playing all around, and these, coupled with the horrible din, seemed to transform this dark little backwater of a street into something resembling the opening moments of some horrifically bad-taste alien rock concert.
The children once again ran for shelter under the Doctor’s jacket. The tram driver nearly fell off his tram roof. The Doctor clamped his hands over his ears, wincing. All of them looked up to see a large, metallic vehicle descending.
‘Oh dear,’ murmured the Doctor. He knew a police car when he saw one.
‘Stay where you are! Do not move!’ echoed a distorted voice, bouncing off every hard surface in the area.
The vehicle finally touched down and the grating siren croaked to a halt. The green lights were still flashing all over the place as the door opened and three people in green and black leathery uniforms with blunt-looking peaked caps and tinted visors stepped out, pointing what were clearly weapons at the Doctor and the children.
‘I haven’t done anything!’ shouted the Doctor, putting his hands up. The children put their hands up too. The Doctor nodded towards the door of the space terminal. ‘You can check for yourself. The door’s still locked.’
The police officers stood perfectly still, as if they had not heard him.
The Doctor glanced at the tram. The driver was standing on the roof of it now, looking over, scratching his head.
‘Oh, and I’m sorry about the tram!’ said the Doctor. ‘It was an accident. Sorry. Really, really sorry.’
The middle one of the police officers put his weapon into a side holster on his hip. He immediately produced a waxy-looking piece of paper from his pocket and held it up firmly, like an old-fashioned town crier. He started to read from the paper, through his visor, in a rapid, staccato manner that suggested he was just going through some motions he had gone through many times before.
‘You-are-not-obliged-to-say-anything-but-you-are-hereby-warned-that-comments-you-have-made-in-a-place-of-public-assembly-have-been-deemed-offensive-to-the-Dalek-Foundation-and-as-such-are-classified-as-incitement-to-hatred-under-Carthedian-law—’
‘Incitement to hatred? This is ridiculous!’ said the Doctor. Then he thought to himself, I suppose I was trying to incite hatred of the Daleks. What’s wrong with that?
‘And-therefore-under-the-Prevention-of-Hatred-Act-9/70-3/4-you-are-hereby-to-be-taken-into-custody-and-detained-until-such-time-as-a-hearing-can-be-scheduled-for-you-to-justify-your-actions-and-words.’
‘Custody?’ the Doctor said. ‘But what about …?’ He was pointing to the children. Already, one of the other police officers was approaching the children, threateningly.
‘You are no longer deemed a responsible guardian for these minors, and therefore, in accordance with Carthedian Child Protection laws, these children, namely Sabel Blakely, Jenibeth Blakely and Ollus Blakely are to be made wards of the state until such time as you are released from custody and once again deemed a fit guardian,’ said the officer approaching the children.
‘Fit guardian? I’m not a fit guardian!’ protested the Doctor, as the police officer stepped swiftly forward, twisted the Doctor around and fitted his wrists with some form of handcuff.
‘Doctor! Please!’
It was Sabel crying out as she, Ollus and Jenibeth were ushered firmly into the police vehicle. The Doctor realised that it was the first time any of the children had referred to him directly by name.
‘You can’t let them take us away!’ said Sabel, her eyes full of angry tears.
And in that instant, the Doctor knew he must take care of them.
‘No!’ he cried out. ‘Stop!’
For a moment, the police officers stopped, very probably out of shock.
The leading officer, now putting his waxy paper away, turned to the Doctor, tilted his head to one side and flicked up his visor.
‘What?’ said the officer. One word alone, but drenched in the sentiment of ‘Don’t waste my time’.
‘You can’t take these children away. They’re my responsibility,’ the Doctor found himself saying. He looked at the children and saw that all three of them were looking straight at him. In this moment, they had all suddenly decided they belonged together. It was as simple as that.
‘Not any more,’ the officer said, flicking his visor back down again. ‘They’re wards of the state. Take them away!’
Chapter Four
Prisoners of the State
Locked inside a small compartment at the rear of the police skimmer, the Doctor could hear the muffled sobs of Jenibeth. From what he could make out, Sabel was comforting her. He couldn’t hear anything from Ollus, except the sporadic, strange little whizz and pop noises from his spaceship toy.
Through a narrow, smudged, metal-meshed window, the Doctor could catch only glimpses of Carthedia at night. It did indeed seem as though the city below was enormous. There were vast, rising plumes of steam or smoke, and as they drew nearer to what the Doctor assumed was the centre of the city, the lights below became more vibrant, and many more flying vehicles buzzed through the night air.
At one point, the vehicle landed and he heard the children being taken away. Sabel called out ‘Doctor!’ to him, only the second time she had called him that. The Doctor called back, trying to reassure her, but he was fairly certain she could not hear him. He hated the thought of them being put into some institution. From his brief encounters with Carthedian state hospitality so far, he didn’t hold out much hope as to the warmth of compassion with which wards of the state might be treated he
re.
The police skimmer lifted off again, leaving the children far behind, travelling further and further across the city, occasionally sounding its screeching siren, to get other vehicles to fly out of the way, the Doctor assumed. Finally, the skimmer descended into a large, dark chamber. The Doctor heard something enormous and metallic crashing shut above them. He imagined they had made a vertical landing inside into some kind of police station.
The door to his tiny cell was suddenly wrenched open and he was roughly manhandled out of the vehicle, his limbs aching from being so cramped.
‘Where now, then?’ asked the Doctor of the green and black police officers. None of them had anything to say to him. He could see their tired eyes through their visors. This was probably the end of their night shift, thought the Doctor. They were clearly not in the mood for idle conversation with prisoners accused of hate crimes.
They took him across a large, aerodrome-like space, where other similar police vehicles were parked. From there into an elevator, through several dimly lit corridors filled with unpleasant smells, muted chatter and howls of protest, pain and anguish from cells and custody suites … and finally into a strangely incongruous, wood-panelled room.
Here, all was quiet. All three police officers left him alone, the door sucking shut behind them, sealing out the noise of the police station.
The Doctor waited, sitting on a padded bench, breathing in the sweet, varnished air. He was pretty certain this was some kind of courtroom. Ahead of him was a raised platform with an elaborately sculpted, grand wooden desk built into it. There were two other, smaller desks to the left and right of it.
Moments passed. The Doctor’s mind was racing. He had the distinct suspicion that he was about to be swallowed up by the petty, legal complexities of this human colony planet. He knew he was going to have to extract himself from all this pretty soon if he was going to have any chance of finding out what the Daleks were up to and how to stop them.
An almost invisibly fitted wooden door swung open behind the large desk and a man in a plain black suit with a high-collared black shirt and a thin silver metal strip on his lapel entered without looking at the Doctor and sat down at the desk. From the light suddenly illuminating the man’s face, the Doctor assumed there was some kind of computer screen built into the wooden surface. This must be the judge, he thought to himself.
Doctor Who: The Dalek Generation Page 6
