by Gary Russell
And one by one, each coloured square of land was suddenly linked to another by either a giant ladder or a green serpent that hissed and wriggled.
‘My God, man... snakes and ladders!’
The mandarin clapped his hand. ‘Exactly. Observe.’
The ladders shimmered and became snakes, and vice versa.
As Sir Henry watched this happened at irregular intervals, and on different squares. ‘It makes the game more interesting, don’t you think? One moment, square sixty-eight is the head of a snake. But by the next roll of a die it becomes the foot of a ladder. You see, Sir Henry, it is quite possible to win. Not very probable, I’ll admit, but certainly possible. I have to take a slight risk myself, or life would be boring for all of us. So, you have the opportunity to win. And go home safe and sound.’
A table, plus three chairs that hovered above the ground, blinked into existence in front of them.
‘Sit,’ commanded the mandarin.
Sir Henry sat. On the table was a die. ‘A six gives you another go, by the way,’ he was told.
The third chair was filled suddenly by another man -
muscular and cruel-looking. He had a scar down his left cheek and a front tooth missing. He wore a one-piece white coverall and a small peaked cap.
‘Forgive his undignified attire, Sir Henry, but Stefan here is forever busy and, as my most loyal assistant, I allow him not to wear the clothing he arrived in.’
‘Where is he from?’
Stefan grinned. ‘I met our lord in what you would refer to as 1190. We had a wager. I lost.’
‘Obviously,’ said Sir Henry. ‘What was your game? Cards?’
Stefan just shrugged. ‘I believed my previous master, King Frederick, could swim from one side of the port to the other.
I lost.’
‘And dear Redbeard sank to the bottom of the Bosporus without a gurgle. A brave warrior. But his death cost the German army the Third Crusade and Stefan his freedom.’
Stefan stared at his lord and Sir Henry could see nothing but admiration - indeed love - in his gaze. ‘I have a better fife now, Lord. Serving my new messiah, the Celestial Lord.’
The mandarin laughed with false modesty. ‘Oh Stefan, you flatter me.’ He looked at Sir Henry. ‘Most people call me the Toymaker. A sort of pan-dimensional Walt Disney, Charles Darrow and Hiroshi Yamauchi if you like.’ Sir Henry stared blankly. ‘Oh, well, never mind’ The Toymaker pointed to the die.
‘Shall we begin, gentlemen?’
‘If I lose?’ Sir Henry asked quietly although, after what he had seen of LeFevre and Stefan, he knew the answer.
The Toymaker just smiled enigmatically. ‘Don’t go there, Sir Henry.’ He clapped his hands and the table and chairs rotated and then moved of their own free will so that the three players could get a better view of Square 1. The mechanical man had gone and in its place were the three playing pieces.
‘My God..’ Sir Henry felt ill.
Standing and staring forward, clearly unaware of their surroundings, were his wife and two children.
‘Oh yes,’ the Toymaker said. ‘I knew there was something I forgot to tell you..’
3
The Beginning and the End
Commander Oakwood stood inside the elevator that would lead directly on to the command bridge of the station; although not a space ship as such, the old nautical terminology was still utilised by the crews of relay stations such as this. He ran a finger around the inside of his high-collared white uniform, desperately wishing it was made of some unstable compound that would stretch as his neck widened and his chins multiplied.
Sadly, no one back on Earth had got around to inventing such a thing, and so he was forced either to wear ill-fitting attire or go on a crash diet to get back to the more slimline Commander Oakwood who had been assigned this job two years previously.
Breathing deeply, he opened the door and stepped out on to the bridge, noting instantly that everyone else was at their positions. The morning shift were always punctual. Chief Petty Officer Townsend smiled up at him from her workstation, a multitude of diagrammatic readouts of the various sections of the station flashing unread across her terminal. ‘Morning, Kristan,’ she said, passing him a sheaf of print-outs. ‘ Nothing to report’
Oakwood shrugged. What a surprise. Two years stuck out on the Wastelands between the solar systems had taught the commander that very little actually happened here. ‘Oh look, a new star has been seen’ or ‘My my, the Fipenz are blowing the crud out of the Phailes again. That’s another generation irradiated,’ tended to be the most exciting messages that they ever received. Actually seeing something themselves, oh no. After all, it was only through some bureaucratic cock-up that the Imperial Earth Space Station Little Boy II was ever positioned this far out. Overseeing the planet Dymok and checking that the marker buoys, which kept the world secluded from everyone else, remained in working order.
Thirty years ago, Dymok had demanded isolation from nosy neighbours. As Earthmen had been responsible for upsetting its inhabitants in the first place, it fell to the empire to ensure their privacy was never invaded again. As Oakwood’s name had been pulled from a metaphorical hat, it fell to him to be placed as commander for a three-year fixed term. Only Sarah Townsend and Nikos Paladopous were there for the entire haul - the remaining seventeen crew rotated with other stations and ships every sixteen weeks.
Oakwood tossed the readouts over to Nikos. ‘You read ‘em, Niki.’
‘Cheers, boss,’ replied Lieutenant Paladopous, winking at Townsend. ‘Good to see you happy and bright today.’
With a weary sigh, Oakwood flicked a switch at his own terminal. The tinny treated voice, translated into Earth Standard, rattled out.
‘Your Masters have ordered you to come no closer to Dymok. We are restating that imperative. We do not tolerate outsiders. Go away.’
Theoretically, the message was to be heard all the time, throughout the station, but Oakwood had tired of that after the first eight hours he’d spent there and now had it down to a regimen of thirty seconds every four hours. Any newbies who came aboard and questioned that got very short shrift from their new commander and tended to spend much of their two months cleaning out waste disposal or the airlocks.
‘Anything personal?’
Townsend shook her head, a little sadly. Oakwood had been
waiting for news of his daughter’s wedding. Circumstances (both professional and personal) meant he couldn’t attend the ceremony, but he was hoping some holograms, or even a recording, might have been beamed up from a relay station by now. Even allowing for the time delay, the wedding had been three months ago - something should have arrived by now.
Sarah Townsend had once expressed the hope that his daughter had not been unduly influenced by the ex-Mrs Oakwood and ignored her father, and deep down he thought that was probably the case. Exes could be like that. As indeed poor Sarah knew from her own experiences.
‘Another drop in about three hours, Kristan,’ she said.
Oakwood just shrugged and settled down in his chair, staring at the main view-screen showing Dymok and a few local stars. Occasionally he overrode the computer and changed the view. He could see beyond Dymok. Or back, towards Earth (relatively speaking, anyway).
‘Computer, open file OakThreeOhFour.’
‘You never give up, eh, bossman?’ said Paladopous.
‘I have to do something Niki, or I’ll go mad out here.’
The view-screen changed, showing a recording of the cargo ship Convergence orbiting Dymok, the tiny figures in the corner indicating this was just over twelve years previously.
The same recorded warning from the planet could be heard, but the cargo ship apparently ignored it. A second voice was added, one of Oakwood’s predecessors, telling the cargo ship to back off. Then in a strange plume of orange and then nothing the Convergence vanished, apparently exploding. No sign of what, or who, caused it. Oakwood knew that the records of his predecessor showed
that nothing from the station was behind the explosion (well - Little Boy II didn’t possess any armaments, bar a gravitron to deflect meteors and any other debris) but no one could say what had. And no one could go and ask the people on Dymok if they were responsible.
Besides, what was the cargo ship doing there in the first place? Common rumour supported the idea that one of the big news corporations had hired it to break the treaty and learn more about Dymok. News InterGalactic, GalWeb and even EBC
denied doing so, but Oakwood secretly doubted them all. He rather supported the theory that it was a group venture and that by all the companies claiming no knowledge, each was protected. This itself was weird - usually one corporation was quick to blame another for the slightest thing.
He found himself freeze-framing the scene immediately prior to the explosion and then moving on frame by frame until the first sign of decompression showed. Just as he always did.
‘Computer, zoom in on site of decompression bottom right.’
And, just as it always did, the computer gave him a digitally enlarged picture of the decompression - a tiny fragment of ship jettisoned from the main hull. Frame by frame he watched as a flash of flame shot out of the resultant hole, only to be extinguished three frames later by the vacuum.
Over the next eighteen frames that first hole became a massive gash in the hull of the ship, occasional blooms of fire rapidly vanishing as the oxygen ran out. He ordered the computer to zoom out a bit until the cargo ship filled the screen and was then rapidly consumed by the eruptions throughout its body. Twenty-three frames on there was just empty space, bar two or three fragments of debris spinning uncontrollably in different directions. They would hang in space until a salvage team from the station collected them a week later.
How many times had he replayed it? How many times had any number of his predecessors replayed it?
‘Niki, how much d’you know about our computer system?’
Paladopous frowned at the unexpected question. ‘Not my field, Commander.’
‘Oh bugger the regs, Niki. Using your interest in anything shady, how do the computers work?’
Ignoring the startled looks from the rest of the bridge crew
- and a wryly raised eyebrow from Townsend -Paladopous sucked in his top lip and sighed. ‘What exactly do you need to know?’
‘Whether or not, using the links between computer systems, there would be some way of artificially creating an image of the cargo ship seen from the other side.’
‘You mean, using all the computer babble going on at the time?’
Oakwood nodded. ‘Surely it’s stored in a mainframe somewhere. These days I can’t sneeze without someone on Earth knowing four seconds later due to these wretched computers’
Paladopous started tapping at his console, muttering to himself, and Oakwood settled back in his chair, grinning. ‘
Nothing better to do today, Niki. Might as well work on the mad commander’s pet project.’
If Paladopous thought Oakwood mad, he sensibly kept quiet. Instead, he concentrated on his new task.
‘Commander,’ Townsend was frowning over to Oakwood.
‘Have you noticed something odd about Dymok?’
Oakwood instantly tapped away at a keypad, linking his operations console with hers. He looked at the same readings as Townsend, and likewise began frowning.
‘Niki,’ he said sharply, ‘forget that now.’
With a sigh, Paladopous glanced over at Townsend’s workstation and took in what had alarmed his colleagues.
‘There’s nothing there,’ he said. ‘It’s just... stopped’
Paladopous was referring to the steady stream of readings that emanated from the planet recording their movement, their planetary transmissions, their everyday life.
‘Is something blocking the signals?’ This was the first moment of action Oakwood had seen since getting to the station, and already he had a sense of dread trickling down his back, along with a dribble of sweat. Around him, the bridge crew were rapidly trying everything they could to re-establish contact. Townsend’s fingers ricocheted over her keypad with expertise, tying in every possible malfunction, cross-checking all their on-board sensors. Paladopous was going over the alignment of their exterior satellites, while everyone else noisily did their jobs. After only a few seconds Oakwood suddenly yelled out.
‘Shut up, everyone.’ The crew froze. ‘Thank you. Yes, we have a potential situation, but we’d all get a clearer idea of what that situation is if we did our work quietly and efficiently, OK? Carry on.’
Everyone did, but at a lower pitch - and the communications officer cut off the chatter from the rest of Little Boy II, confining himself to his own earpiece.
Oakwood waved Townsend closer. ‘Well?’
‘Everything’s fine, Kris. The station’s as good as it was four minutes back. It’s the planet that has stopped. It’s like it was switched off or something.’
Oakwood nodded, and hit the station-wide intercom.
‘Attention everybody. Note that we lost contact with Dymok at 08.47. Everyone is to go through their records and search for anything unusual - space phenomena, equipment failure, anything at or around that time. Report to CPO Townsend any findings you have within fifteen minutes.’ He cut himself off.
‘Niki, Sarah, in my quarters in twenty minutes, OK?’
They nodded and he stood up, exited the bridge and headed back to his private room, mentally writing the message he was about to send back to Earth. Every fibre in his being told him to wait, to ensure that he had all the relevant information, each segment of the puzzle before alarming Earth. And yet, deep down he knew that he had as much information as he was likely to get. He had a crew who knew their jobs. Fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds, they were good enough to tell him everything instantly, as a matter of course.
Nothing unusual had happened at 08.47 except that Dymok had, to all intents and purposes, died on him.
And somewhere in the back of his head he felt the irrational tickle of fear and guilt.
Fear that something somewhere was powerful enough to wipe Dymok out.
And guilt that it had happened on his watch.
4
Of All the Things We’ve Made
‘It’s not Heathrow, is it?’
‘No’
‘It’s not even Earth, is it?’
‘No.’
‘Twentieth century?’
‘No’
‘Do you actually know where we are? Or when?’
The Doctor was staring at the TARDIS scanner-screen rather intently. Not, Tegan suspected, because he gave a flying fig what was on it, but simply because he didn’t want to meet her gaze. Which, she knew, was accusatory, unforgiving and non-conciliatory. She felt her lips purse in what her father had once, rather charmlessly, referred to as her ‘cat’s-arse pout’.
‘So?’
The Doctor sighed, straightened up, and moved back from the TARDIS console. Its flashing lights, little levers and computer screens were all blinking out of time with each other like an epileptic disco.
‘You know, Tegan, it would be far easier to concentrate on getting you home if I didn’t feel that every time I failed you were going to try and sue me.’
Tegan snorted. ‘Well, if you didn’t... hadn’t failed quite so often, maybe I’d be more forgiving!’
Adric, who was sitting cross-legged by the TARDIS double doors that led to whatever was outside and munching on a bright red apple, looked up from the book he was reading as if noticing them for the first time. Tegan hated that look -
superiority and arrogance from someone who thought green and yellow pyjamas were the height of cool fashion.
‘Of course,’ he said, presumably thinking he was being reasonable, ‘if you stopped arguing with the Doctor, we wouldn’t be so keen to be rid of you and we all might start enjoying our trip around this universe.’
He then dismissed them and returned to his book.
Tegan
wasn’t sure whether to ignore him or kick seven bells out of him. It wasn’t her fault that the Doctor had failed to get her home. Back to the job she wanted to do, flying in aircraft not in mobile police boxes. And it wasn’t her fault that her temper got the better of her now and again. And it certainly wasn’t her fault that she was living with three aliens from alarmingly different backgrounds, none of whom she understood. She was, if she was brutally honest, rather frightened of her companions. They were all basket cases and she was locked up with them!
Take the Doctor, for instance. When she first met him, he was about fifteen years older than he was now, with curly brown hair and a commanding personality that everyone was in awe of, including her. Then, after an accident he changed, literally before her eyes, into a younger, blond man who liked cricket and looked only five or six years older than she was.
Then there was Nyssa. Hey, there was a classic example of damage. She was what, seventeen? Eighteen maybe? Her parents were dead. Her stepmother was dead. Her entire world had been consumed, obliterated and she was the only survivor, anywhere. And what did she do? Shrug it off, wallow in scientific books to learn more about something called Telebiogenesis’ which she claimed to be ignorant of. Hardly what most teenage girls did. When Tegan had been eighteen, it was music, R-rated movies and boys - poor Nyssa should be dreaming of movie stars, calling friends, going to the clubs.
Hell, grieving wouldn’t be a bad thing either. It couldn’t be healthy hiding away her emotions after all that had happened.
Then there was Adric. King-size brat and arrogant adolescent, with his posturing and posing. Oh yes, mathematical genius he might be, but here’s another teenaged boy with too much brain and not enough exercise. So what does he do? He masters the art of the sarcastic, but unfunny, retort, is lazy and workshy and, above all, forgets to bathe regularly. Both she and Nyssa had suggested that the Doctor should have a man-to-man chat with him about how his body was changing as he went through his teenage years, and should offer to give him some deodorant, but the Doctor had suddenly mumbled something like ‘been there, done that centuries ago, no thanks’ and headed off somewhere else. As far as Tegan’s sense of smell could tell even the TARDIS automatic-cleaning atmosphere couldn’t stop Adric’s armpits ponging. With a sigh Tegan realised that Adric was right, however, about one thing. Picking arguments with the Doctor got neither of them anywhere and just created a bad atmosphere.
