Doctor Who: Players: 50th Anniversary Edition

by Dicks, Terrance

  ‘You fools,’ exploded Reitz. ‘That was Churchill. He’s hiding in the armoury, right under your noses!’ He looked around. ‘Is this thing operational?’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘The field-gun. Will it shoot? Do you have live ammunition?’

  The corporal pointed to the pile of shells stacked by the gun. ‘Of course, sir. We’re guarding the rear gate.’

  ‘Then open fire – on the armoury hut!’

  ‘But sir, there was someone with him –’

  ‘I don’t care who was with him. Open fire, I said. I’ll take full responsibility. There’s a dangerous enemy of the Boer republic in there, with a massive supply of arms and ammunition. He could do untold damage. Now, open fire!’

  Orders are orders. The corporal began shouting a stream of orders at his crew and the field-gun opened fire. The first shell merely dented the stone walls but, peering through the smoke, the corporal discerned that the second had made a hole. The third shell went through the hole made by the second and touched off the ammunition inside.

  The hut disappeared in a column of smoke and flame.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JOURNEYS

  THE DOCTOR WAS shaking his right boot when the first shell thudded into the side of the stone hut.

  ‘Doctor, please, hurry!’ urged Peri.

  The Doctor frowned. ‘Funny, I could have sworn…’

  He shook the boot harder, and the key, which had been lodged in the toe, tinkled onto the stone floor.

  The second shell blew a hole in the hut wall, showering the Doctor and Peri with dust and debris.

  ‘Doctor!’

  Coughing and spluttering, half-blinded by smoke and dust, the Doctor scrabbled on the floor for the key. He found it at last, opened the TARDIS door, thrust Peri inside and followed her, closing the door behind them.

  Seconds later, the TARDIS dematerialised with a grating, grinding sound… just as the third shell whizzed through the hole made by the second, struck a crate of blasting powder and sent the hut and its contents sky-high…

  Outside the hut, the corporal in charge of the field-gun detail regarded the result of his efforts with horror.

  ‘Poor devils,’ he muttered. ‘And all the ammo gone up! There’ll be trouble about this.’

  He turned to the Staff Captain who’d ordered the attack. ‘You did say you’d take full responsibility, sir?’

  But the Captain was nowhere to be seen.

  Roused from his brooding reverie by shouts and the sounds of shell-fire, the Commandant found all his worst fears realised. Winston Churchill had escaped. So too, apparently, had the mysterious Doctor Smith and his ward.

  The prison was filled with angry rumours, and the British officers were on the verge of revolt. It was whispered that Churchill had been killed in a mysterious explosion at the armoury, whilst attempting to steal weapons. The Boers had shut him up in there and deliberately blown the place up.

  Things calmed down a little when the Commandant’s inquiries, and his interrogation of the luckless corporal, established that it was almost certainly Doctor Smith and his ward who had died in the explosion. Churchill really had escaped and was on the loose somewhere outside Pretoria, heading, presumably for Portuguese Mozambique.

  To the Commandant’s relief, the uproar about Churchill’s escape distracted attention from the explosion at the armoury and the deaths of two civilian prisoners. He made cautious inquiries about a certain Captain Reitz, and discovered that the officer was completely unknown.

  Since Doctor Smith and his ward were civilians they had never been entered on the list of military prisoners. The Commandant discreetly removed all mention of them from his records, and hoped to hear no more about them. The explosion in the armoury was recorded as a freak accident. A case of gelignite had ‘sweated’, become unstable and exploded in the heat. The corporal and his men were sworn to secrecy – under threat of court-martial for killing innocent civilians and destroying Government property.

  The Boer Government in Pretoria instituted a massive search for the missing prisoner. They circulated posters, with a somewhat unflattering description, throughout the Transvaal:

  ‘Englishman, 25 years old, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, average build, walks with a slight stoop, pale appearance, red brown hair, almost invisible small moustache, speaks through the nose, cannot pronounce the letter “s”, cannot speak Dutch, last seen in a suit of brown clothes.’

  Churchill’s capture, the authorities insisted, was only a matter of time. Reports flooded in from all over the Transvaal. Churchill had been spotted disguised as a Catholic priest, as a nun… but the man himself was nowhere to be found. In England the story of his daring escape filled all the newspapers. The whole country waited eagerly for news of him…

  Meanwhile, Winston Churchill’s escape was proceeding with almost unnatural smoothness. He had the feeling that he was aided every step of the way by invisible hands.

  He jumped from the train at Witbank as instructed and found the house of John Howard, the mine manager. Howard hid him in the coal mine for several days and then smuggled him onto a railway wagon filled with bales of wool. The wagon was attached to a train heading for Portuguese territory.

  Supplied with two roast chickens, a loaf of bread, several bottles of cold tea and his Mauser automatic, Churchill was slowly trundled towards the border.

  Before crossing into Portuguese East Africa, the train was shunted into a siding for eighteen hours where it was searched by a party of Boer soldiers. Churchill burrowed deep into the bales of wool. The searchers pulled back the tarpaulin covering the wool bales and rooted around a little, but they didn’t find him and the train was soon on its way over the border.

  Emerging cautiously from his wool bales, Churchill saw the Portuguese station names flash by. He shouted and whooped for joy, firing his pistol in the air… He rode the train into Lourenço Marques, jumped down in the goods yard and made his way to the British consulate. There he found a hot bath, clean clothes, an excellent dinner and a hero’s welcome. The news of his safe arrival was telegraphed to England and the whole country rejoiced.

  Churchill took a ship for Durban that very night. On the boat, he wrote his despatch for the Daily Mail. To his surprise and delight, when he arrived in Durban there was a cheering crowd on the quayside.

  The war was still going badly for the British. They needed a hero, and Churchill’s escape gave them something to celebrate. Churchill found himself having dinner with the Governor of Natal, and going on by train to receive the congratulations of General Buller.

  ‘I wish you were leading troops instead of writing for some rotten paper,’ said the General. ‘We’re short of good men out here.’

  Churchill was unable to resist such a flattering invitation. In January 1900, he took a commission in the South African Light Horse. To his delight, he was allowed to continue as a war correspondent as well.

  There were to be more wars in the life of Winston Churchill… and in the lives of the Doctor as well.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MEMORIES

  BACK IN THE TARDIS, Peri took yet another hot bath.

  After a long, luxurious soak, abandoning any hope of elegance for the moment, she changed into jeans and a baggy T-shirt, dialled herself a cola and a hamburger, and went to look for the Doctor.

  She found him in his shirt-sleeves in the control room. He had removed one of the panels from the control console and was tinkering delicately with the maze of complex circuitry inside.

  ‘What are you doing, Doctor?’

  ‘Just a few in-flight repairs. I’m sorting out the spatial circuits. The wrong place can be as embarrassing as the wrong time.’

  ‘As we’ve just found out!’ said Peri.

  She watched him work for a moment or two and then asked, ‘What was that war all about, Doctor?’

  ‘The Boer War?’ The Doctor considered. ‘Oh, financial greed. Lust for territory. Racial tension. All those qualiti
es that make you humans such a lovable little species.’ He frowned at the hamburger and cola. ‘How can you eat and drink that stuff?’

  ‘It’s my native cuisine,’ said Peri defiantly. ‘Accompanied by the wine of the country.’

  ‘Well, don’t drip any of it onto my circuits. Even the TARDIS has her limits.’

  Peri never failed to be amazed by the way the Doctor could just switch off from an adventure the second it was over. Here he was, already preoccupied with some piece of extra-dimensional DIY or other, when they’d just helped save Winston Churchill for God’s sake!

  ‘Tell me more about the war,’ she said.

  ‘War?’ repeated the Doctor. ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one we’ve just left behind, of course.’

  The Doctor smiled archly, ‘You’re sure I wouldn’t be too much of a boer?’

  Peri groaned.

  ‘Very well, then. The British and the Dutch were struggling over who got which bit of South Africa.’

  ‘Nobody asked the Africans, I suppose?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘In the nineteenth century? Nobody even thought about it.’

  ‘So what started the fighting?’

  ‘The Boers had settled in an area called the Transvaal, which just happened to be rich in gold and diamonds. Hearing about this, many of the British flocked there to make their fortunes. Soon there were more British than Boers, but the Boers refused them any political rights. So the British used that as an excuse to take over the Transvaal – and its gold and diamond mines!’

  ‘So much for that famous British reserve,’ said Peri. ‘The Boers seemed to be on top when we were there. Who won in the end?’

  ‘The British did – eventually. But they found it a lot harder than they thought it would be.’

  ‘I guess it often is, huh?’

  ‘They underestimated the Boers. No proper army, you see, just a lot of irregulars dashing about on horseback. Never stand up to regular troops, they reckoned.’ The Doctor sighed. ‘One of your lot made the same mistake about Native Americans. Impulsive fellow called George Armstrong Custer. Mind you, I tried to warn him. “George,” I said, “don’t take your Seventh Cavalry over that ridge or you’ll be in for a very nasty surprise.” Would he listen?’

  Peri swallowed the last of her hamburger. ‘Something else I wanted to ask you…’

  The Doctor huffed. ‘Peri, I’m very busy. These spatial circuits are very complicated things…’

  ‘You said something about meeting Winston Churchill before. In his future and your past.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Peri remorselessly.

  ‘It was a very long time ago,’ the Doctor protested.

  ‘I’m interested,’ Peri insisted. ‘I thought I was here with you to learn!’

  The Doctor gave in. ‘All right…’ He gazed into the depths of the TARDIS console. ‘I was very different in those days,’ he said slowly.

  Suddenly he jumped up, making Peri step back in surprise. ‘Of course!’ he cried, immediately starting to rummage through a large chest lying by the console. ‘Now, it must be around here somewhere…’

  Peri frowned. ‘What are you doing? I thought you were going to tell me –’

  ‘I can do better than just tell you!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘I can show you – at least, provided this thought scanner’s still working.’ Even as he spoke he was putting on an oddly-shaped metal headset that he connected to the console.

  As he closed his eyes, the scanner screen whirred open and revealed a dark-haired little man illuminated brightly against thick blackness, arguing furiously with someone unseen.

  ‘Who’s that meant to be?’

  ‘Me,’ said the Doctor, simply. ‘Told you I was different back then.’

  ‘You’re thinking that for me, aren’t you!’ Peri smiled. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘It’s a neat trick, isn’t it?’ the Doctor said, a little smugly. ‘I last used the thought scanner to show one of my companions an adventure I’d barely survived with the Daleks – an example of how dangerous travelling the universe can be.’

  ‘And was your companion put off?’ Peri asked.

  ‘Not in the least.’ The Doctor glared at her. ‘An incorrigible lot, you humans.’

  Peri snorted. ‘That’s rich coming from you!’

  ‘In any case…’ The Doctor closed his eyes again, and the little man on the screen span away into blackness.

  ‘You’ve lost the picture!’ said Peri.

  ‘No. That’s just what happened to me.’ He sighed. ‘I was captured by my own people and put on trial for interfering in the affairs of the universe.’

  ‘I take it you pleaded guilty.’

  ‘I conducted my own defence very eloquently.’ He frowned. ‘Then sentence was passed and I was exiled to Earth.’

  Peri wasn’t sure how to take this. ‘Could’ve been worse, huh?’

  ‘It was. Before they did that, a group of some of the… shall we say, less scrupulous Time Lords decided they had one or two other odd jobs for me to perform first.’

  ‘Community service?’

  The Doctor didn’t smile. ‘If you like. I certainly didn’t have much say in the matter.’

  Peri tried to stay patient. ‘This is all fascinating, Doctor, but what about Churchill?’

  The scanner showed the little man stepping out of the darkness into another ray of light. Three tall, shadowy figures – Time Lords, Peri assumed – were gathered around him.

  ‘The reason I was captured,’ the Doctor went on, ‘was because I helped stop a series of war games. Thousands of soldiers were kidnapped from Earth’s history and made to fight and die in a series of carefully controlled wars.’

  Peri frowned. ‘That’s… that’s awful.’

  ‘Your talent for the understatement is considerable, Peri. I couldn’t put things right alone. I had to ask… them. They put everyone back in their proper place and time, and took away my freedom for my trouble. But before I’d agree to do anything they asked, I insisted on seeing that they’d actually put things right with my own eyes.’

  Peri watched as a silver bracelet formed round the little man’s – around the Doctor’s – arm.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  The Doctor smiled faintly. ‘Wait, watch, and learn!’

  The Doctor held up his arm and examined the bracelet. ‘What the devil is this?’ he demanded.

  ‘That, Doctor, is a Time Ring,’ said the first Time Lord. ‘The technology, perhaps, is new to you.’

  The Doctor tugged at the bracelet. There was, he noticed, no obvious point of closure. The thing appeared to have sealed itself.

  ‘It cannot be removed,’ said the second Time Lord. ‘At least, not by you.’

  ‘It will take you to the time zone you wish to visit,’ said the third Time Lord. ‘And return you to us here, at a time we decide, to perform as we would wish you to.’

  ‘Anyone would think you didn’t trust me!’ said the Doctor indignantly.

  The first Time Lord smiled thinly. ‘Have you decided which time zone you wish to visit?’

  The Doctor considered his options. Ancient Rome, the Mexican Revolution, the American Civil War…

  There was only one possible choice.

  ‘I have,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘Hold the time and place in your mind,’ said the first Time Lord. ‘The temporal transference beam will do the rest.’

  A beam of light shone down from somewhere in the high ceiling. Slowly, the Doctor faded away…

  CHAPTER NINE

  NO MAN’S LAND

  THE DOCTOR FOUND himself standing at the edge of a road. It wasn’t much of a road, mind you. It was muddy and rutted and potholed, barely distinguishable from the surrounding landscape.

  It wasn’t much of a landscape either. An unending sea of mud, stretching in all directions, broken up only by the occasional glimpse of a shattered farmhouse or ruined bar
n. The land on either side of the road had once held houses and gardens and farms – fertile, cultivated fields. But it had been fought over so often, churned up again and again by advancing and retreating armies that it had become a wasteland.

  He’d been here before, only recently. The soldiers of this war had a chilling name for the place: No Man’s Land.

  It was a dull and misty winter afternoon, with a hint of rain in the air. From somewhere in the distance came the dull rumble of heavy artillery.

  The Doctor waited. Soon he heard the sound of an engine coming towards him. The sound was rasping, spluttering and uneven, suggesting that the vehicle was in a bad way. But somehow it laboured on.

  The Doctor peered through the mist in the direction of the sound. He saw a square vehicle lurching along the road towards him. It was so caked with mud it was more or less impossible to discern what colour it might once have been.

  As the vehicle came closer the Doctor jumped up and down waving his arms.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Hey, huzzay, hullo!’

  The vehicle came to a halt. Close up, it was just possible to make out the red cross printed wide and fat on the side.

  Through the open window, the Doctor saw a woman in uniform at the wheel of the ambulance. She had the faintly horsey good looks typical of the female English aristocrat.

  Beside her was a young man. He wore the uniform of a Lieutenant in the British Army.

  ‘Sorry to be a nuisance,’ said the Doctor. ‘I wonder if you could possibly give me a lift.’

  ‘A lift?’ echoed the woman. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Oh, to anywhere at all. I seem to have got separated from my delegation.’ The Doctor smiled in what he hoped was an appealing manner.

  The woman smiled back. ‘I don’t see why not, sir, always room for a little one!’ She had a high, clear upper-class voice.

  ‘Splendid, splendid!’ said the Doctor, rubbing his hands.

  ‘Seems to be my day for picking up stray lambs,’ she went on. ‘I found the Lieutenant here wandering around just back down the road.’ She held out her hand. ‘Jennifer Buckingham – Lady Jennifer, actually, not that it matters a jot.’