We can now move forward many, many, many millions of years.
CHAPTER TWO
SANDWICHES AND OUTRAGE
Romana was appalled. And that was before the Killer Robots turned up.
‘You’ve brought me to a cricket match?’
‘Hush,’ the Doctor looked around furtively, pulling his hat closer around his face. He handed her some weak tea in a Styrofoam cup.
Romana was a Time Lady from the planet Gallifrey, nestling in the upmarket constellation of Kasterborous. In her travels with the Doctor she had reassembled the Key to Time, thwarted Davros, and outclassed the Nimon. It was fair to say that she thought she’d seen it all. But life with the Doctor was full of surprises. Not all of them pleasant.
‘A cricket match?’ she repeated, making absolutely sure she wasn’t misheard.
The Doctor and Romana were wanderers in the fourth dimension and potterers in the fifth. Romana had been raised in the Time Lord Academy to expect a life of august calm and academic rigour. Instead she now spent her days dashing around in a blue box saving random bits of the universe. One of her best friends was a robot dog. Well, it wasn’t the life she’d expected but she thoroughly enjoyed it.
Apart from today.
‘A. Cricket. Match.’
‘I know.’ The Doctor pulled his hat down even further and sank even deeper into his deckchair.
The day had started so well. He’d promised her the universe was ending. (‘Oh goody!’ Romana always liked those days.) Instead, he’d brought her to Lord’s Cricket Ground. The seats around them were crowded with greasy-looking bankers treating each other to corporate hospitality. Further below was a sea of middle-aged men trying to get sunburn. Adrift in the middle of it was the occasional Colonel, angrily completing the Times crossword with the help of a thermos flask containing tea, soup or gin. Romana conceded that all of human life was here – if your definition of human life was really very narrow.
To give the Doctor credit, he’d got them very good seats. They had a splendid view of the pitch – a strip of grass as cossetted as a rich old lady on life support. Dancing around it were two teams of men in spotless white overalls, looking like fastidious knights who’d ordered their armour with a high thread count. Occasionally one player would throw a small red ball at another. Sometimes they’d hit it merrily into the air with a plank of wood. Sometimes they wouldn’t. Often nothing at all would happen to polite applause. Cricket was the most English invention imaginable. As if a prep school teacher had tried to demonstrate eternity. And yet …
And yet it wasn’t.
‘It’s like they don’t have a clue of its true significance,’ Romana gasped.
‘I’m not sure they do.’ The Doctor was shaking his head sadly.
She really should have known something was up. The Doctor’s time machine had been drifting amiably between planets. On the outside it looked like a small blue box that had got a little lost. On the inside it was a collection of infinite white rooms, decorated with the verve of a hospital run by an antiques dealer. One of the many problems with the TARDIS was that the Doctor really didn’t know how to work it. The Doctor had, over time, simply taken to labelling the controls with bits of sticking plaster which he’d scribbled his best guesses on. She’d been staring at one which said ‘handbrake’ when he’d strode into the room. The Doctor was an obscure punctuation mark of a man. Infuriating, charming, puzzling and brilliant, one of the things Romana adored about him was that his eyes never stopped smiling.
‘Romana, the universe is ending!’ he’d said. ‘And we need to dress for it.’
Normally Romana liked dressing up. The Doctor’s time machine may have been, like him, obsolete and cantankerous, but one of the perks was the infinite wardrobe.
Sensing her eyeing up the wardrobe door, the Doctor headed her off, fishing in a pocket. ‘Ties must be worn,’ he announced solemnly, handing her one. ‘I’ve been reading up.’
K-9’s ears twitched, but the Doctor ignored them.
Romana watched the Doctor trying to tie his own tie for a while, and then, when it stopped being amusing, she did it neatly for him. She noticed the label read ‘Women’s Institute Champion Bread Makers’, and she glanced hastily at hers. It merely contained a row of cartoon penguins. Well, it wasn’t what she’d have chosen.
‘Why do we need ties?’ she’d asked suspiciously. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Well …’ the Doctor had said, looking guilty. This was never good. His time machine roared to an abrupt halt. He’d opened the doors. ‘Let’s go and find out.’
And then he’d taken her to that cricket match.
The TARDIS had bellowed into the Members’ Enclosure like a tipsy aunt. The apparition was greeted with alarm and outrage, which was rapidly transferred to the Doctor’s appearance.
There were times when the Doctor was every inch the champion of eternity. Romana had seen giant green blobs look hastily at the floor with all 100 of their eyes. The Ninth Sontaran Battle Brigade had remembered an urgent call they just had to make. The Kraals had muttered something about really having to knuckle down and write their Christmas thank-you letters.
There were times when the Doctor was precisely that wonderful. And then there were others when he just looked insane. This was one of them. The assembled men were glowering at the Doctor’s random assembly of jacket, trousers, waistcoat and long scarf, and completely ignoring his proudly worn tie. Even though he waved it at them like a religious totem.
The time travellers were confronted by an army of disapproving sports jackets. Someone said very loudly, ‘Well really!’ Someone else cried, ‘Disgraceful!’
Romana found it all baffling. Where were they? Normally people just locked them up, or took them to be interrogated by something green and smelling of Swarfega. The shouting was new.
The Doctor faced the deadly tide of tweed and felt the full blistering force of middle-aged disapproval. It was quite something. Nevertheless, he fished about in his pocket and flashed a crumpled card.
‘I’m the Doctor,’ he announced grandly with only the slightest of hesitations. ‘This is Romana. We’re from the MCC.’
Romana, along with most of the front row of sports jackets, squinted dubiously at the card. It was signed by W.G. Grace and dated 1877.
The card worked, eventually. It allowed them grudging access to the cornucopia of the hospitality suite. This amounted to a leaking tea urn and a pile of fish-paste sandwiches.
‘Where are we?’ Romana hissed, throwing a sandwich behind a plant. ‘This is England, isn’t it? But I’ve never seen it quite so hostile.’
‘Race memory.’ The Doctor sipped a cup of tea and winced. ‘They all feel angry and ashamed and very intolerant of outsiders. But they’ve not a clue why.’ He led them out onto the terrace.
Which was when she finally realised where they were.
‘You promised me the end of the universe, and you’ve brought me to a cricket match.’
‘Any true Englishman would tell you they were the same thing.’ The Doctor’s attempt to laugh it off was mirthless.
So that was it, she thought, the Doctor’s dark secret. He was trying to excuse the obscenity before them. Well, of course he would. He was such an eccentric anglophile – he adored tea towels and jam, he’d made her go fishing, he liked stately homes so much he’d blown up at least a dozen. Why wouldn’t he bring her to a cricket match?
‘How could you?’ Romana demanded. She tolerated his love of this planet, sometimes she even enjoyed it. But there were limits. Cricket. That was where a neat line had to be drawn.
A small red ball arced through the air and the players scurried back and forth. Polite applause rippled through the crowd. Romana shuddered and looked away.
‘The odd thing,’ the Doctor ruminated, ‘is that it all seems harmless enough.’
‘Harmless?’ Romana scoffed as two of the players shook hands.
‘I’ve always meant to find out why something lik
e this could happen,’ he said gravely. When he wanted to sound grave, he could sound extraordinarily grave. Like a rumbling of distant thunder in a cathedral.
Romana looked up at the cloudless sky, at the bright sun soaking into the green, green grass, and she shivered.
‘They seem so innocent, don’t they?’ The Doctor shrugged miserably. ‘Look at them – look at them all. So …’ His lips twisted. ‘Happy.’
A man hit a ball with a bat. The ball went quite a way. Everyone applauded. It looked the most innocent thing ever.
‘It’s obscene, that’s what it is.’ Romana fidgeted in her chair. If anyone saw her, her chances of being President of Gallifrey (not, of course, that she had any ambitions in that arena) were well out of the time window. ‘If it’s a cosmic joke, then it’s in very bad taste indeed.’
The Doctor consulted a pamphlet he’d been eating sandwiches off. ‘Seems it’s the last day of the Ashes.’
Several people nearby glanced at him as if he’d fallen off the moon. Which was, Romana thought, fair enough.
‘In cricketing terms,’ the Doctor whispered, ‘that’s very big news. You know – every ten years or so—’
‘Every four years,’ a man in front of them turned around to snarl.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ the Doctor said, delighting as the spectator turned a colour to match his coat. ‘Anyway, England and Australia fight a series of cricket matches and eventually one of them takes home a trophy.’
‘The trophy,’ the spectator snapped.
‘Thank you, that’s quite enough,’ the Doctor smiled at him sweetly. ‘Maybe the space-time telegraph got its wires crossed. Maybe it is just a game.’ He looked doubtful. ‘Maybe it’s not the end of the universe.’
Romana let out an anguished groan. At least a dozen races had given ‘cricket’ as their reason for attacking the planet. It went a long way to explain why most invasions began in the home counties.
The match went on. In contrast to the Time Lords’ despairing mood, the crowd was growing jubilant. Given the amount of applause and the number of people shouting, ‘Come on England!’ things were getting pretty exciting. Or, as exciting as a cricket match could be. How could something so horrifying be so obscenely dull, Romana thought.
She glanced at the scoreboard and, with a lot of frowning and eavesdropping, managed to decipher what was going on.
‘I think it’s the last round,’ she said, watching the spectator in front wince. ‘And England need three to win. Satisfied? Please say we can go home afterwards.’
‘Home?’ the Doctor barked bitterly.
Down on the field, the little white figures were moving with a bit more tension. Someone threw a ball. Someone hit it with a bat.
For a moment, eternity waited. The ball drifted higher. Then, with nothing better to do, it drifted higher still.
Then the entire stadium breathed out.
‘It’s a six!’ screamed the audience to each other with the delight of people pointing out the obvious.
The crowd went as wild as a cricket crowd could. There was polite applause, backs were slapped, and people said, ‘Hurrah!’ It all seemed terribly jolly.
‘Well, they’ve won, maybe,’ Romana ventured.
‘No one ever wins cricket,’ the Doctor sighed miserably.
Romana looked up at the sky. Clouds were forming. ‘And just in time too,’ she announced, shivering. ‘Looks like rain.’
‘That’s far worse than rain,’ the Doctor intoned. He really wasn’t sounding very English at all today.
Romana tapped him lightly on the shoulder. In the middle of dashing after a Rutan invasion, an old lady at a bus stop had shouted something at her, and she’d been itching for a chance to try it out herself. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘It might never happen.’
The Doctor turned away. ‘Do you know, I always hate people who say that.’
And, with that, he vanished.
CHAPTER THREE
AN INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT
Romana blinked. The Doctor vanishing was never a good sign.
Sometimes the Doctor vanished loudly, with a comforting little yell as he fell into something.
Sometimes the Doctor vanished with a little fizz, as some transmat beam or other abducted him.
But sometimes the Doctor just vanished silently. This was the worst of all, because it meant that he’d slipped away.
‘Of all the places,’ Romana said to herself wearily, ‘he has to go missing at a cricket match.’
She checked over her shoulder, in case the Doctor had popped off in the TARDIS to try to mend history (a situation which invariably called for some hasty re-mending later). Then she looked out across the terraces, trying to spot the Doctor among the spectators. Not a sign of him.
Then she looked down at the pitch.
‘Oh, really, no,’ she said.
The match had ended with a six, and the crowd had gone most politely wild. The Doctor had reacted to this like a mammoth staring down a glacier, causing some to wonder if he was an Australian supporter, though it seemed a little unlikely.
There then followed a little presentation ceremony. This was a new thing, not previously done, and probably designed to make the whole business better television. The Ashes were to be presented to the captain of the English team there on the field. The TV companies didn’t know it at this point, but they were in for some very good television indeed.
First, there came the Doctor. He stormed onto the pitch, like Moses coming down the mountain in a high temper because God had said he hadn’t got any Commandments to hand out right now, but how about lunch next week?
The Doctor marched up to the English captain. ‘Excuse me. Are you in charge of the cricket?’
The cluster of players on the pitch stared at the Doctor.
A small podium had been dragged out for the purposes of the presentation. The chairman had come out, freshly polished medals on his loveliest blazer. The umpire, in his best butcher’s coat, stood to one side. The two teams were getting ready to shake hands and find a pub.
But the Doctor had bounded onto the podium and was addressing them. ‘People of Earth, good afternoon,’ he began.
‘Shame!’ shouted someone.
The chairman was looking around for security, and then remembered that this was a cricket match. They didn’t need security.
‘Honestly, this will take barely a second. I’m doing this for the good of the Galaxy, possibly the whole universe, and maybe the very fabric of space-time itself,’ the Doctor persisted.
‘You’re a disgrace,’ someone shouted.
‘How can I be?’ The Doctor smiled. ‘I’m wearing a tie! So, would one of you care to tell me what’s going on here exactly?’
Confronted by the full force of his personality, the captain of the Australian team blanched. ‘Well, mate …’ he began, and then stopped. This really wasn’t done.
‘Go on,’ the Doctor prompted him.
The Australian captain held up the small silver trophy he held. ‘The other side won. So I’m presenting them with the trophy.’
‘Fascinating.’ The Doctor grimaced. ‘And what is that trophy?’
There was a stunned pause on the pitch.
‘Well,’ the Australian captain began again. ‘These are the Ashes.’
‘Quite right,’ someone in the crowd mumbled.
‘Yes, but,’ the Doctor continued, ‘what are they, exactly?’
‘Well … ashes,’ the captain said.
‘Of what?’ the Doctor’s amiable nature had lowered, just a little.
‘Well—’ the captain began.
‘Do you start every sentence like that?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Well—’
‘Never mind.’ The Doctor looked at the teams gathered around him. ‘Can any of you tell me what those ashes are made of?’
‘A burnt stump.’
‘A budgie.’
‘The soul of cricket.’
The Doctor looked at t
hem, and nodded again. ‘Not good,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose any of you have ever had a peek inside? Have you?’
The group glared at him.
‘Oh come on, not late at night, when no one’s looking?’
The glaring got a little darker.
‘The lid’s welded shut,’ someone muttered.
‘Then you mean to say,’ the Doctor pressed on, ‘that you spend your lives passing this trophy back and forth, and none of you have any idea what’s inside it?’
The group suddenly looked at the grass. ‘It’s just not done,’ hissed the umpire firmly.
‘Well then,’ said the Doctor, pleasantly, ‘I’ve a suggestion. As you don’t know what’s inside that trophy, and I would very much like to know, I was wondering if I could possibly borrow them from you? Just for a bit.’ He flashed his most winning smile.
‘For an X-ray?’ someone stuttered weakly.
‘If you like.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘The thing is, your Ashes are terribly important.’
He had finally said something the group liked. ‘Quite right! They represent all that is good about Cricket.’
The Doctor winced. ‘More than that,’ he said, slowly. ‘They are rather important for the future of the universe.’
This was, even for an audience of cricketers, a bit steep. Confusion reigned, along with bewilderment, indignation, and all the other emotions the English are so very good at. The Australian team just rolled their eyes.
‘Anyway,’ said the Doctor, leaping down off the podium, ‘I really will be as quick as I can. May I?’
And, much to everyone’s surprise, the Australian captain gave him the Ashes. The Doctor held them in his hands as though he was cradling a lump of uranium.
‘How dare you, sir?’ thundered the umpire. He had been looking forward to today, and now things had gone badly astray.
‘Oh, believe me –’ the Doctor leaned forward candidly – ‘I’d rather be leaving this one well alone, but –’ his voice dropped an octave – ‘when I was a child, I was told about Them. They are the things of nightmares. If I was bad, I was told that They would come and get me.’
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen Page 2
