'We must have a game sometime.'
'But there is no more time, Doctor. Not for you. Besides, I have played once tonight already.'
'Have you? Have you indeed?' answered the Doctor grimly. Stefan motioned him forward with his pistol, and the Doctor climbed the stairs before him.
The corridor at the top was of quite a different style. Once more echoes of the Orient could be detected, and the Doctor was not at all surprised when Stefan motioned him to a halt outside an ornate and deeply carved door, whilst Stefan reached across him and knocked respectfully. There was no reply the Doctor could hear, but Stefan turned the handle and motioned the Doctor through.
'Ah, Doctor,' greeted the Toymaker, 'good of you to come.' He rose from behind his desk in an elaborate gesture of courtesy.
'Your choice, Toymaker, not mine,' replied the Doctor shortly. 'I do admire your taste in furnishings, I must say, but don't you think that tapestry's a bit too recherché? I mean, I'm very flattered and all, but I did make it in a hurry, and the Han-Sen original was awfully grubby by the time it reached me.'
'During one of your usual meddlings, I take it?' asked the Toymaker, quite unfazed by the Doctor's claim.
'Not mine,' replied the Doctor, idly. 'As I recall, the British Fleet was busy shelling the city at the time. They were the ones doing the meddling.'
'The Opium Wars?'
'Yes. Right up your street, all that, wasn't it?' 'I wasn't there.'
'No, or I'm sure we would have met. With your interest in matters Eastern, the downfall of the Chinese Empire was a foregone conclusion anyway.'
'You do me too much honour...'
'Oh, I didn't mean to,' replied the Doctor, disingenuously, 'after all, you lost, didn't you? It would have suited you far more to keep the corrupt Empire going for another couple of thousand years. Lots of room for games in Imperial China, eh?'
'Lots of room for games anywhere on this planet, Doctor. As you, and I, have remarked, the human race is a very ingenious little species.'
'They can be more than ingenious if they're pointed in the right direction.'
'How very patronising.'
'That's another difference between you and me, Toymaker. I'd sooner patronise them than butcher them.'
The Mandarin sighed with regret. 'I am yet again astonished that with such differences between us, we can still enjoy the odd game together.'
'I don't enjoy them, odd or not. I play them because you force me to.'
'And you are confident of winning again this time?'
'Why not? You can't have got any better.'
'Whilst you have had lot of practice?'
'As much as I wanted.'
'Good. We shall see if you are sufficiently prepared...'
The Mandarin crossed to the door, and Stefan stepped forward to open it for him. The Doctor promptly sat in the chair before the desk and once again nonchalantly hooked his leg over the arm and casually swung it to and fro.
'Why did you come here, Toymaker,' he asked lightly. 'The natives are ingenious, we're agreed on that, but no more so than a dozen other places I could name in this galaxy alone.'
The Mandarin looked at him, long and hard. Then he crossed slowly to sit in his own chair behind the desk.
'But it's not just ingenuity, Doctor. The local inhabitants have an obsessive interest in games rivalling my own. In one of their greatest wars, one that was waged by the entire planet, they stopped fighting one day and played a game of football together — between the barbed wire, can you imagine? There's a tribe to the east who, until very recently, played a game using their fallen enemies' heads as a ball! My little pranks pale in comparison.'
'There are madmen and cruel children in every society —' began the Doctor, but the Toymaker leaned forward and cut him off.
'But not at every level of that society... No, Doctor, sometimes I think this world was made for me...' And he leaned back in his chair, relaxing, the glint back in his eye.
The Claw was tapping on his pipe, a disconsolate and wistful note to the clanging iron. There was no one there to understand a word he was saying.
'He can tap all he likes,' grunted Kevin. 'I don't know what he wants..
'Don't understand how we can "give him a hand", grumbled SB, 'if we can't —' He got no further with his complaint, for the Claw, in frustration or out of pique at being ignored it was difficult to say, had moved its attention from the pipe, scuttled over towards SB with surprising speed and agility, and had firmly and most convincingly snapped the serrated edge of his principal appendage around SB's arm, just above the elbow. The claw started to close, slowly.
'Here, steady on, old chap,' muttered SB. The grip tightened. SB's voice filled with alarm and anger. 'D'you mind? That's my second best arm!'
'That's it!' exclaimed Peri.
'Eh?' queried SB, trying without success to fight off the unwelcome amputation.
'That's what he wants —'
'Bit early for lunch, old girl,' protested SB.
'Look, he can't very well build anything with just that claw of his, can he? If he's a mechanic, he'd need a whole range of tools — how does he hold them?'
The mechanic had certainly suspended operations on SB's arm, and Peri took the chance to swallow hard and examine the claw more closely. 'There, see?' she exclaimed excitedly. 'Look, all sorts of grooves and sockets.' And indeed, the claw was well equipped indeed to take a vast selection of fittings in, over, under and on its surface.
'Isn't evolution somethin'?' breathed Kevin, to no one in particular.
SB, intensely proud of any thought he gave vent to which was unconnected to fighting or eating, and was therefore higher philosophy, protested weakly at this barefaced hijack of one of his prouder moments. 'That's what I said... sort of... I think that's what I meant, anyway...' Unable to sustain the concentration for a moment longer, he gave up. 'Oh, all right then, just give it a couple of turns,' he volunteered, grumpily, which was just as well as the mechanic seemed to be eyeing his head in a thoughtful manner, as if deciding to go right to the root of the problem.
Kevin gripped the arm just above the wrist and started to turn it, slowly. The wrong way, it seemed, for SB gave a yell, and Kevin muttered, 'All right, all right, what d'you think I am, a neurosurgeon or summat?' when the arm screwed off smoothly, leaving just a multi-pin socket at the elbow. The mechanic eagerly helped them fit it on the claw, where tiny grooves and plates raised and lowered themselves until there was a perfect fit.
'Actually,' murmured SB, interested in applied mechanics for the first time in seven years, 'actually, the trigger finger on that one's a bit stiff — you don't think he could give it a bit of a tweak while he's at it, do you?'
Peri looked at him coldly. 'You ask him.'
SB gulped and smiled weakly as the Mechanic flexed his new fingers with evident satisfaction.
The Doctor looked sharply at the Toymaker. 'The vortex isn't running now, is it?'
'It fluctuates,' answered the Mandarin, disinterestedly.
'But you can intensify it?'
'On occasion..
'It doesn't affect Stefan,' said the Doctor, almost to himself.
'Doesn't it?' asked the Mandarin, a smile appearing for the first time in several minutes.
'Nor any of the other people around you.'
'Like a child,' scoffed the Mandarin, 'fishing in a dark pool.'
'I must say, you do seem to hang on to your staff for an impressively long time — two hundred years for poor old Shardlow, wasn't it?'
'I really couldn't say.'
'And how long has young Stefan been with you?' 'Young' Stefan gave him a look that would have stunned a normal human being into a rigor of apology.
'Stefan was my first, and best, recruit,' answered the Toymaker fondly, nostalgia seeming to tug his mouth into the semblance of a smile. 'We had a game of dice, didn't we, Stefan, in Constantinople..
Stefan also seemed to enjoy a trip down memory lane, for he to grinned bro
adly.
'We did, Lord. Never was I so pleased to lose a throw.' He turned to the Doctor, and announced with fierce pride, 'I was with Barbarossa. The Army of the Third Great Crusade against the Turk.'
'The Third Crusade, one long bloodbath. You killed more of each other than any enemy... One of the most savage and barbaric forces in history...' The Doctor's eyes narrowed in contempt.
'We took what we wanted,' sneered the henchman. 'We bowed our heads to our feudal Lord only. To no other man, of this world or any other.'
The Toymaker remembered a detail, something that had obviously been nagging him, like what colour shirt he'd been wearing, that sort of thing. 'You wagered a young Greek family, didn't you? They were Greek, weren't they?'
'They were, Lord,' grinned Stefan, 'strong, and good workers, too, given the right treatment.' He flexed his right wrist with his left hand to leave the Doctor in little doubt as to what the 'right treatment' was.
Whatever became of them?' asked the Toymaker in evident concern.
'You sold them, Lord,' Stefan reminded him, shortly.
'I suppose I did,' mused the Mandarin, 'I mean, what else would I do with a Greek family? Oh, it's a long time ago...' With a wave of his hand, he consigned the Greek family, and the whole episode, to history.
'Eight hundred years,' breathed the Doctor.
'Does it seem a long time to wait, Doctor? For a game? I've been waiting a lot longer than that.'
'Time, as someone once said, is relative,' started the Doctor, and seemed set to go on into a detailed discussion of this fascinating subject, but the Toymaker would have none of it.
'Come, Doctor. Pleasant though our little chat is, we should move to a resolution of the main event, should we not?'
'I could simply refuse to play,' speculated the Doctor. 'What would you do then? Lock me away and throw away the key?'
'Something like that, Doctor, I imagine. And whilst you were locked away, Stefan here would have no end of amusing games of his own with your two companions... the young lady first, I would imagine..
Stefan's grin lit the skies.
The Doctor jumped to his feet and strode towards the door. 'What are we waiting for, then?' he asked. 'Time's a-wasting..
'And we mustn't waste time, must we, Doctor?' asked the Toymaker, softly. The Doctor looked at him closely. Had the Mandarin seen through him? How much did he know? Had he been listening and looking in at the wrong moment downstairs in the cell? The Toymaker's smile was as inscrutable as ever.
Peri was holding the antennae for the Mechanic, who was working on it deftly with SB's robotic arm attached to his claw. Close up, the alien wasn't nearly as repulsive as at a distance — a pleasant lemon scent came from the furry part of its body, and the mandibles either side of its mouth worked together to produce something akin to a tune — the monster's equivalent to whistling while it worked, she supposed.
'Back home, they've built an entire race of robots to do all the messy work,' SB was informing her. 'And funny thing is, those robots make the most marvellous after-dinner speakers — had one in our mess one time, jolly good, I must say... dunno how they do it..
'Do what?' murmured Peri, against her better judg-ment.
'Well, you know, sort of teach them how to do that — speak well, crack the odd funny, you know... I mean you wouldn't think he'd know where to start, would you?' He gesticulated with his electronic stump at the monster, working away.
'No you wouldn't, would you?' answered Peri, softly. Was it her imagination, or was that hideous mouth with rows of teeth and vicious mandibles on either side actually smiling to itself?
'Wonder what the score is?' asked Kevin, of no one in particular.
Peri and SB looked at each other, wondering too...
Stefan watched carefully as the Doctor walked around the machine slowly, examining it in what seemed like some detail.
'It meets with your approval, I trust?' asked the Toymaker with the utmost courtesy.
The Doctor was pretty convinced that the question was a very idle one — if he said no, the Toymaker was hardly likely at this stage to say, 'Oh well, that's all right, old thing, let's just call the whole thing off..
The difficulty was not thinking about anything the slightest bit relevant to what was going on downstairs whilst he was in such close proximity to the Toymaker. He just didn't know how accurate the reports of his telepathic abilities were, or much of anything else about the man — being — thing — whatever it was...
'Fine,' he replied. 'I prefer the classic simplicity of Space Invaders myself. I mean, they were good for what, a good ten or fifteen seconds before they got boring.'
'I shall try to ensure you are not bored, Doctor,' promised the Toymaker, softly.
'I'm sure,' replied the Doctor, drily.
'There is only one rule —' the Toymaker began.
'You have to win, yes I know,' replied the Doctor absently. He was examining the screen, and noticed the All Time High Score sector. '125,550,' he read off. 'Who made that?'
'I did,' was the Toymaker's bland reply.
'And, of course, I have to take your word for that?' The Doctor smiled at him cynically.
'Don't you trust me, Doctor?' asked the Toymaker with wide-eyed innocence. The Doctor didn't bother to reply.
'Last player 175,' he read again. 'Poor chap...'
'Are you ready?' asked the Toymaker, archly.
'Not quite,' replied the Doctor, starting to roll up one of his jacket sleeves.
'Good,' replied the Toymaker calmly, as his hand reached forward and pressed the One Player button. The machine immediately sprang to life, and the Doctor's hands raced to the controls.
Chapter Nine
SB was propped against the bed, sitting on the floor. He gassed on quite merrily as the Mechanic performed what seemed to be open-heart surgery on him. Wires and printed circuits and weird looking chips of this and that protruded everywhere from a panel in his chest. Occasionally, as the Mechanic tested another circuit, SB's head would twitch, or his leg would move, or his eyes would rotate like Catherine Wheels. Peri looked on, at first in concern, then in simple bewilderment.
'Honestly,' chirped SB, 'doesn't hurt a bit... I remember a terrific scrap off Vega V — that's what we called it, but it wasn't really, just reminded us of those wonderful old videoscans, where the good chaps always wore the white space armour, d'you remember? Oh, no, sorry, anyway, we were having a really terrific time, dogfight all around the three moons, I just loved it. Both arms, both legs and half me head gone, then a lump of atomic shrapnel split my ship from stem to stern, caught me in what was then me shoulder, just about where your hand is now —' Peri moved her hand hastily — 'did a marvellous job on me after that. Latest everything, couldn't do enough. Wonderful thing, medicine...'
The Mechanic worked on, unmoved.
'Very well paced, Toymaker. Almost enjoyable.'
The Doctor manipulated the controls which spoke of countless hours misspending his youth in some intergalactic dive or other, wherever Time Lords went to misspend their youth, and, by the looks of things, at something considerably more demanding than Space Invaders... The monsters by the cars had been blown away a long time ago, and his score had already passed the 5000 mark. There was certainly no strain evident, not even a sign of any untoward concentration.
'Obviously a lot of research in this,' continued the Doctor, conversationally.
'Years and years,' smiled the Toymaker.
'At the funfair, I suppose?' There was only a look from the Toymaker in reply. 'All those bumps on grab-handles, pressure pads on the seats — whole place wired like an octopodal dishwasher. Random blood tests and medicals too, I shouldn't wonder.'
'I could hardly bring several million people in here for testing, could I?' asked the Toymaker, reasonably enough.
'And you would have to test millions to get these results, yes, I can quite see that,' agreed the Doctor in the same tone. 'But why? I mean, you don't need the money...
do you?' The Toymaker smiled, and inclined his head self-deprecatingly. 'No, I can't see you in Debtors' Prison, worse luck. Oh they don't have those any more, do they? Not here anyway...' As the Doctor rattled on, the screen continued to explode in multi-coloured lights as he caught the monsters in his guns before they could catch him, but the pace was definitely hotting up. Better than 12,000 points now, halfway there and five lives up, with another bonus at 10,000, it seemed. 'Do I get my money back if I win?' he asked the Toymaker, blithely, but now keeping his eyes more on the screen. The Toymaker did not deign to answer, but merely watched the screen, inscrutably.
'So I said to the Sar'nt Major, "PF 4963" I said, "I know it's going to be hell, but I want that kite back in the air by 27.00 hours." And d'you know what he said to me...?'
Peri shook her head, eyes drooping.
'He said, "Sir," he said "For you —" '
The rest of the reply was lost in a wailing squawk as the Mechanic moved the electronic hand in a snipping action to disconnect the android's voicebox. His lips continued to move, and his eyes moved from one to the other, Peri supposed in some form of protest at not being able to finish his interminable story. She soothed him as best she could.
'It's all right "old chap",' she said, 'I think he just needs your speaker for something...' She turned away to find one of the Mechanic's eyes moving on its stalk, examining her speculatively. She moved further away.
'I need all my bits and pieces myself,' she said, nervously. The Mechanic did not look convinced.
The atmosphere in the data room had changed perceptibly. There was a sheen of perspiration on the Doctor's forehead, and the noise from the machine was never-ending. Stefan had edged closer, but the Mandarin looked on, unchanged and unchanging.
The Doctor was fighting for his life now, the monsters on the screen coming from every direction, and now from the upper storeys of the buildings, too. The crunchcrunchcrunch noise had been taken over long ago, and added to by monsters of a different colour and size. They seemed more mobile now, more flexible, less monolithic and less unwieldy. Bending all his concentration to the task, the Doctor started to free himself.
DOCTOR WHO - THE NIGHTMARE FAIR Page 11
