Doctor Who BBCN05 - Only Human

by Doctor Who

  ‘Time traveller,’ said the Doctor, ‘gotcha.’ He strode towards the man, brushing aside branches. ‘Oi! I want a word with you!’

  The man looked up and Rose was surprised to see the expression on his face. He didn’t look alarmed, just surprised and oddly vacant.

  A second later he dropped his baguette and ran off at an incredible Olympian rate. The Doctor and Rose set off after him, but a few mo-40

  ments later his blue-denimed form was swallowed up by the woodland.

  ‘See,’ said the Doctor. ‘Open spaces, fast runners.’

  ‘That was too fast,’ said Rose, leaning against a tree to get her breath back.

  ‘We know where he was heading, though,’ said the Doctor. ‘Come on!’

  They ran in the general direction the time traveller had taken.

  The Doctor was able to track the man by tiny signs: broken branches, trampled grass. Rose’s sides ached as she ran alongside him, but she was too exhilarated to care.

  About five minutes into their run, they emerged into a clearing surrounded by tall trees. The sunlight dazzled down on them, making Rose squint. The next thing she knew, both she and the Doctor had tumbled into something messy, bringing them to an abrupt halt.

  Rose looked down at herself. Her coat was stained with patches of blood and strands of meat. She realised that they had slipped into the carcass of some huge wild beast. Its flanks had been torn savagely apart and its innards almost totally stripped away.

  She looked over at the Doctor. ‘This is somebody else’s lunch, then?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor, standing up and brushing himself down.

  Rose had got the worst of the mess. She stood up and looked down at the huge dead hulk.

  ‘Must have wandered off from the herd,’ the Doctor went on.

  ‘Who killed it, then?’ asked Rose. ‘Neanderthals? Humans?’

  ‘No spearheads.’ The Doctor looked closely at the carcass. ‘There are teeth marks. . . ’ He pointed out rows of serrated marks at the edges of the massive wound in the creature’s side.

  ‘So it was another animal,’ said Rose. ‘And it’s still warm, so shall we get going?’

  ‘Hold on,’ said the Doctor, turning to her. ‘Say “Aaah”.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Say “Aaah”.’

  Rose said, ‘Aaah.’

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  The Doctor looked into her mouth and examined her teeth, then compared them to the marks left on the animal. He looked troubled.

  Rose closed her mouth. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The Doctor nodded down at the beast. ‘Whatever brought her down couldn’t have been human. Or Neanderthal. She must have been attacked by a predator.’

  Rose guessed what was bothering him. ‘But the teeth marks are human? And how’s a human gonna kill a mammoth single-handed?’

  ‘How’s a human gonna eat a whole mammoth single-handed?’

  asked the Doctor. ‘I know you like your unlimited trips to the salad bar, but. . . ’

  Before the Doctor could carry on, there was a rustle in the bushes.

  Something groaned in the green darkness of the forest, its low cry echoing round the clearing. The Doctor stood very still and gripped Rose’s arm tight.

  He whispered, ‘Whatever it was. . . it’s still here.’

  42

  ‘Get ready to run,’ the Doctor told Rose. His face was blank, not a muscle moving. He raised a finger very slowly and pointed right.

  ‘You’re going that way.’

  ‘And which way are you going?’ asked Rose, her heart pounding as another odd, low cry came from the rustling bushes up ahead.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Doctor, not very reassuringly. ‘I wrestled a tiger once.’

  ‘Who won?’

  ‘You just have to rub its tummy,’ said the Doctor, even less reassuringly. ‘Then it thinks you’re its mum and curls up into a playful little ball.’

  There was a growl from the bushes.

  Rose swallowed. ‘That isn’t a tiger!’

  ‘I know,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now, on the count of three. One, two. . . ’

  It growled again.

  ‘Two and a half. . . ’

  ‘I’m not leaving you, Doctor,’ said Rose.

  The Doctor turned to look at her, smiled and said simply, ‘You are.

  Go. Now.’

  43

  Rose took a deep breath, tried to smile back and tensed herself to run. . .

  And then suddenly, as so often with the Doctor at her side, the last thing she could have imagined happened.

  Loud music started thumping. No, thought Rose, it wasn’t just loud

  – it was deafening, a screech of what sounded like clashing metallic guitars left too near their amps. Instinctively, she flung her hands up to her ears. The bushes where the predator was hiding rustled and she saw, very briefly, a strange grey shape, about the size of a person, flee at lightning speed. But then her attention was drawn to the other side of the clearing, where two men – one black, one white – had appeared.

  Again, Rose couldn’t help noticing how good-looking they were.

  She wondered about the special part of the mind that decides who you fancy, and how it kept on working away no matter what danger you were in. They wore flared denim trousers and buttoned jackets, and both had what looked like portable speaker attachments slung over their shoulders on straps, from which the music was blaring.

  The weirdest thing about them, Rose decided, was their utterly casual manner. They looked as if they were just walking down a high street, and they seemed completely unfazed by the presence of two strangers and the close proximity of some savage beast.

  The white man clicked off his speaker and shouted, ‘It scares the animals away. They don’t like the noise.’

  ‘I’m not exactly grooving along!’ cried Rose.

  The black man switched off his speaker and silence returned to the clearing. ‘I’m sorry!’ he called.

  Rose took a closer look at the newcomers. They both wore big, colourful metal name badges with large childish lettering, like something off a kids’ TV show; the black man was called Jacob, the white man Tom.

  ‘Well, ta,’ said the Doctor.

  It amused Rose to see him so taken aback by this strange intrusion.

  Jacob and Tom looked blankly at him.

  ‘Thanks,’ said the Doctor.

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  What was disturbing Rose in particular was the men’s casual acceptance of them. They didn’t seem surprised or angry or pleased to find them here. It was as if they weren’t giving out any reaction at all.

  Jacob strolled slowly up to them. ‘You need to take care out here.

  Haven’t you got a stinger?’ He brandished the speaker at them.

  ‘Never been issued with one,’ said the Doctor. He winked and muttered, ‘Do the “own the place” thing,’ to Rose, then turned back to Jacob and shook his hand. ‘I’m the Doctor. This is Rose Tyler.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Tom, smiling. ‘I’m Tom and this is Jacob.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Rose to fill it.

  ‘Have you come to take us home?’ asked Jacob. He started to walk on, back in the direction he’d appeared from, and the others fell into step.

  ‘Cos we were getting slightly. . . ’

  said Tom.

  He stopped and

  frowned. ‘Oh, what’s that word?’

  ‘Worried?’ suggested Rose.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Tom. ‘Worried. About the delay.’

  The Doctor spoke up. ‘Er, gents, that animal. What was it?’

  ‘An animal,’ said Jacob.

  ‘One of the dangerous animals,’ said Tom. ‘We scare them off with stingers.’

  ‘Yeah, but what kind of dangerous animal was it?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘A dangerous one.’

  He smiled at Rose, and she couldn’t help smiling back. His
teeth were perfect. Not just perfect. Immaculate. She’d never seen such a beautiful set.

  ‘You looked a bit strange back there. Afraid,’ Tom said.

  ‘Just a bit, yeah,’ said Rose.

  At the back of her mind she could feel something was wrong and it took her a moment to work out what it was. Then she realised.

  Normally when you look someone in the eye, you get something back.

  A tiny non-verbal signal, a kind of spiritual contact. She got nothing from Tom. His eyes remained exactly the same, as if there was nothing inside to interact with. She kept thinking of the immaculately dressed 45

  young men who sometimes knocked at the door of the flat with badly photocopied leaflets promising eternal damnation if they didn’t turn away from sin, and her mum trying to flirt them into turning to it.

  ‘If you feel afraid again, all you need is combo 410/15,’ said Jacob.

  Rose nodded. ‘Thanks. That clears it all up.’

  ‘We’re heading for base, then?’ asked the Doctor.

  ‘Yeah, this way. Mind how you go,’ said Tom, pushing through fo-liage on what was clearly a familiar route.

  Rose held the Doctor back a second. ‘Are they robots? Or aliens? Or is it too much tartrazine? Or what?’

  The Doctor thought for a second. Then he said, ‘What.’

  A few minutes later they stopped in what appeared to be another area of wild woodland.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Jacob.

  He walked over to a huge oak tree and knocked a tattoo, a kind of code, on its side. A section of the tree swung up on a squeaky hinge.

  Rose was puzzled. ‘That’s like a Scooby Doo secret door. If this lot are futuristic time travellers, where’s the fancy tech?’

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Dunno. But that’s Das’s strange tree. Strange and squeaky.’

  They followed Jacob and Tom inside the tree into a small, dark metal compartment that smelled of oil. Rose was reminded of the hospital service lift, a couple of hours back – 28,000 thousand years in the future. She looked over at the Doctor, who was unusually quiet.

  He seemed troubled and was looking carefully at everything, weighing it up.

  Tom thumbed a button on the side of the compartment, which juddered and started to descend with a groan of hydraulics.

  There was another uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Your mouth’s very big,’ Jacob said suddenly.

  Rose realised he was talking to her. ‘I don’t know what to say to that.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’ asked Jacob.

  46

  Rose looked to the Doctor for help. ‘Same place I got my ears,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm, they’re pretty huge as well. Were they a mistake?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘You should sue, getting those,’ said Tom. ‘My sister Val threatened to sue Face Plus when she got one blue eye, one brown eye. They told her it didn’t matter, it was going to be quite fashionable, and she should just take combo 553/22 and get used to them, but she stood her ground and in the end they gave her a refund and three new eyes.’

  ‘You can always do with a spare,’ said Jacob, nodding.

  Rose decided this was one of those conversations she wasn’t going to follow.

  The Doctor, slightly affronted, was about to reply when the compartment juddered to a stop. One wall clattered open automatically.

  Whatever Rose had been expecting, it wasn’t what she found as she walked out. It took her a few seconds to comprehend what she was seeing, just to take it all in. She was looking down from a metal platform into a gigantic cave that must have been several miles wide.

  Enormous beams of light shone down from what looked like huge circular floodlights; there were six positioned at equidistant points above the cave, suspended on massive hydraulic cables. And what they shone down on was a wooden city.

  A variety of panelled wooden buildings were laid out in long, curving streets. Each was slightly different. There were three-storey blocks next to tiny huts, as if whoever had designed the place had had no feel for symmetry or rational planning and had just bunged everything together. It was a cross between a shanty town and a folksy Scandina-vian village. A long set of wooden steps led down to the main street, where more people dressed in flared denims were going unhurriedly about their business. Rose heard the gossipy chatter of voices and, distantly, more shouty, bassless guitar music.

  Over the main street was a banner on which had been painted in flowery writing ‘OSTERBERG: RESEARCH DELIVERING VALUE’.

  ‘We’ll take you to Chantal,’ said Jacob, starting down the steps with Tom.

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  The Doctor and Rose followed.

  ‘What is this, Sylvanian Families?’ said Rose. ‘What’s with all the wood?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said the Doctor. ‘Let’s just hope no one invents fire.’

  ‘Normally about now,’ said Rose as they climbed down into Osterberg, ‘you’re filling me in on everything. You know, throwing your arms around and saying, “Well, this is the seventh dominion of Kraal.

  Fantastic!” or whatever.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I normally do,’ said the Doctor. ‘But this time, you see, I’ve got no idea.’

  ‘Makes a nice change, you not knowing everything,’ said Rose.

  ‘Rose, human history stretches over five billion years,’ he replied. ‘I just don’t know this bit. I’ve got a blind spot for May 1982, but that can’t be it. I tell you one thing, forget what Jack said, they’re not from the forty-sixth century.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘No prongs or pods about, for a start, plus everybody’s got hair. And both legs.’

  ‘OK,’ said Rose, deciding to let that one pass. ‘So, what’s our plan?

  Pretend to be like them?’ She gestured to Tom and Jacob and pulled a blanked-out robot face.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘We find out what’s going on before we do anything too drastic. Nice people, I don’t like ’em. They can turn nasty.’

  ‘They’re weirding me out,’ said Rose. ‘It’s like they’re not even curious about us.’

  ‘Exactly. And yeah, I’ve got no idea why.’ The Doctor slapped his arm round Rose. ‘Tell you what, we can work it out together for a change.’

  They were led along the main street by Tom and Jacob. None of the people of the town gave them a second glance. And there was something else: it wasn’t just Tom and Jacob; everybody in the town was startlingly, movie-premiere attractive.

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  Soon they came to a narrow alley formed by two dangerously sloping roofs. Just as Jacob was about to lead the way down, he was elbowed roughly aside by a man who was quite unlike any of the other residents of Osterberg. To begin with, he was short – only about Rose’s height. He was also rather chubby, and about fifty, with a querulous lined face partly obscured by a broad-brimmed hat. He sported a bizarre combination of clothes. A cape was thrown artistically over his shoulder. He wore a smart purple waistcoat, shirt and tie, and a clashing pair of faded combat trousers held up by a piece of string.

  His feet were encased in scuffed green baseball boots. He stomped off down the alley muttering under his breath, looking to neither left nor right.

  Tom and Jacob reacted to him by looking at each other and laughing gently. Rose found that rather sinister.

  A few moments later they had squeezed down the alley and through a huge wooden door into a large barn that looked as if it had been converted into an office. The floor was bare, the rock floor of the cave.

  There were about twenty desks ranged around in an open-plan design, and the people behind them were typing on unwieldy metal machines that weren’t quite typewriters but were certainly not computers.

  The Doctor and Rose’s attention was caught by the man in the hat, who was standing in front of a desk. Behind it, looking almost indecently relaxed, sat an incredibly tall, incredibly beautiful dark-haired woman. Like nearly all the others in the town, she possessed even, symmetrical fea
tures, but what really set her off were her eyes. They were a vivid ocean blue, framed by long, exquisitely curled lashes. She wore the uniform denim trousers and a handsomely tailored business suit with large lapels. Her name badge identified her as CHANTAL.

  Up close, Rose could see that all the name badges had, beneath the name, a small numeric keypad like the one on a mobile phone.

  Behind her was a long metal tube connected to a network of similar tubes spread all over the office. There was one above each desk and they eventually snaked out through the wall. The woman, Chantal, folded a piece of paper, stuck it in an envelope, sealed it and held it under the end of the tube. A whoosh of compressed air snatched 49

  it from her hand. Rose remembered her nan talking about a system like that, used for sending messages and money in her old job at the Co-op.

  Chantal looked up and saw the man in the hat. She smiled. ‘Oh.

  Hello, Quilley. Pleased to see you.’

  She had a singsong, faintly accented voice. Call centre, thought Rose.

  ‘No, you aren’t,’ said the man in the hat gruffly.

  Chantal quickly pressed some of the buttons on her badge. ‘Well, I am now. What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s day forty-nine, Chantal,’ said Quilley.

  ‘Yes, and quite a nice day so far. Will you be joining us for drinks later?’ She raised her voice. ‘We’ll be breaking out the peach schnapps this afternoon!’

  Everybody in the office except the Doctor, Rose and Quilley cheered and whistled.

  Quilley leaned on the desk, virtually spitting in Chantal’s face. ‘The experiment was only meant to last forty days! Yes, it is day forty-nine, so may I suggest you forget the peach schnapps and try to find out why the heck we are still here?’

  Chantal didn’t react at all to his anger. ‘The Osterberg Experiment’s just been extended, as I told everyone.’

  ‘But why has it been extended?’ Quilley’s knuckles were white on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Chantal casually. ‘It’ll sort itself out in a bit. Now, haven’t you got some work to be getting on with? I know I have.’

  ‘I can’t stop worrying!’ roared Quilley.