A Spelling Mistake
Piper and Paige had managed to get Phoebe back to the manor by the simple but risky expedient of Paige orbing all three of them. Phoebe was feverish, in pain, and the green, vein-like markings from around the wound were spreading. Piper was about to call for Leo when she remembered that he was on a mission for the Elders and incommunicado.
"Dammit!" She snapped. "Why did this have to happen now? Right when we don't have a Whitelighter handy?"
Paige was either more philosophical or more practical. "C'mon, Piper, we deal with this kind of thing every week! I'll look after Phoebe, you get on the Book of Shadows and find out what kind of demon that lizard thing is. Then I can whip up a potion to cure Pheebs and we'll go vanquish it!"
Piper almost argued, then decided against it. It was becoming more and more obvious that bossing her younger sisters around was a thing of the past. At least Wyatt and Chris are safe at Magic School. She reflected as she made her way up to the attic.
Half an hour's increasingly desperate hunting through the Book, however, brought her frustration to boiling point.
"Nothing!" She stormed as she came back into the lounge. "Not a damn thing! Either that thing wasn't a demon, or it's a totally new kind!"
"Didn't the book tell you anything?" Paige was looking strained and scared, and Phoebes' condition was clearly deteriorating. Piper got a grip on herself.
"All it said, on the very last page," she replied in a tone of strained calm, "was 'call the doctor'. But we can't call a paramedic, they'd want to know what happened, and we can't tell them a six-foot lizard with an eight-foot tongue poisoned her!"
"Eeeuuh!" Paige moaned. "I don't even wanna think about that tongue!" She reflected for a moment, then said. "Do you suppose the Book could have been talking about a magical doctor?"
"What, a witch-doctor?" Piper responded with heavy sarcasm.
"We've seen weirder things." Paige pointed out. "We could try a spell, a Summoning, maybe?"
"Phoebe usually does the spells..." Piper said uncertainly.
"I'm willing to give it a try!" Paige insisted.
Piper looked at Phoebe, who was tossing and moaning weakly. Her sister couldn't last much longer at this rate. She sighed.
"OK, Paige, go for it!" She decided.
Paige stood up straight and cleared her throat. "My sisters' fate has cruelly mocked her." She recited. "Now make haste and bring a doctor!"
Piper had a moments' disorientation, as if something had gone in two directions at once. Then a man was standing facing them.
He was rather tall and gaunt, balding, with a sharp-featured face, wearing a blue and black outfit that looked part uniform, part work clothing. His posture was rigid, his eyes closed. As the sisters watched, he opened his eyes and intoned in a dry tenor: "Please state the nature of your medical emergency."
Before either woman could speak, the man blinked then stared round him.
"What is this?" He demanded indignantly. "Where am I? The holodeck? Mr Paris, if this is another of your practical jokes, I'll..."
He started toward the door and without thinking, Piper froze him. Normally, she wouldn't have done it, but she was desperately worried about Phoebe. But the results were not what any of them expected. The mans' form flickered and snowed out for a second, like a TV picture in a thunderstorm. He whirled to confront Piper.
"Young woman, I may be only a hologram, but that does not give you the right to scramble my photons on a whim!" He snapped.
For a moment, both women stood there with identical expressions of shock on their faces. Then Paige said. "Hologram? You mean ghost?"
He shook his head irritably. "No, I am not some figment of a primitive imagination, or the visible manifestation of a chronoton flux. I am a skilfully-engineered construct of photonic pseudo-matter and high-level AI software!"
"But," Piper spluttered, "we summoned a doctor..."
The hologram gave another irritable head-shake. "I am a doctor!"
The word hung in the air between them, echoing oddly for a second, before being drowned out by another sound. A whirring, whooshing, roaring sound that was accompanied by a cold wind. A flashing blue light appeared about eight feet off the floor in one corner of the room. This proved to be on the roof of a large, blue, wooden box that somehow materialised out of nowhere.
The sound stopped, nothing moved for a second, then a door in the front of the box opened and a head popped out, followed by a long, gangling body. Piper saw a prominent forehead, a pointed chin, piercing eyes and a wide grin. Paige winced at a combination of blue shirt, red suspenders, darker red bow tie and greenish tweed jacket.
"Hi, there!" The man said enthusiastically. "Which of you sent for me?" His accent was British.
"Are you sure we were sent for?" This was another voice, female, with a different, but equally British, accent. It belonged to a tall young woman who appeared next to the newcomer. She had a mane of red hair, a strong, pretty face and was wearing a denim jacket over a striped t-shirt and a very mini mini-skirt.
"I was sent for," the gangly man replied snootily, "you just tagged along, Pond!"
"We do a lot of that." Yet another British voice, this belonging to another tall man. Casually dressed and inoffensively handsome, he looked about the room with alert curiosity.
Piper finally found her voice. "Who are you?" She demanded.
The gangly man grinned at her again. "I'm the Doctor!" He announced.
"Really? So am I!" The hologram stated.
The Doctor spun round. "You?" He said. "You can't be me! I'd know if you were me!"
He produced a longish metallic object from his pocket and pointed it at the hologram. A green light glowed from the end and the thing emitted a warbling sound. After a moment, the Doctor switched the device off and examined it.
"Aha!" He said triumphantly. "Mark 1 Holographic Emergency Medical programme. 24th Century, except that portable emitter which is 31st. According to your registry code, you were assigned to the Federation starship Voyager. What are you doing here?"
"Ask these young women!" Snapped the HEM. "They brought me here."
The Doctor turned to Piper and said: "Did you? Brilliant! Wait a minute!" He consulted his green device again. "San Francisco, early 21st Century, big old manor house. You're the Halliwell sisters, the Charmed Ones!"
Piper blinked – this guy talked awful fast and made some death-defying logical leaps, but he was also clearly a wizard of some sort. She shared a glance with Paige, then turned back to the Doctor.
"I'm Piper Halliwell, this is Paige Matthews, my half-sister, and that's...What are you doing? Get away from her!"
This was addressed to the young English guy, who was squatting down beside the couch where Phoebe lay. He had been examining her intently, but now he looked up and said with a touch of asperity, "I'm a nurse! My name's Rory Williams, by the way. Doctor, I've seen this before. It looks like Silurian venom!"
"The demon's called a Silurian?" Paige asked.
"Not a demon!" The Doctor snapped. "A Silurian! Homo Reptilia, an ancient and advanced race of intelligent reptiles who ruled this planet for millennia before you humans came down from the trees!"
"You humans?" Piper asked. "Aren't you human, too?"
"No," said the redhead, "he isn't. Not unless you kick him from time to time. I'm Amy Pond, incidentally, thanks for introducing me, Doctor.
"You! Holo-thingy man! Can you help her?"
The HEM had joined Rory in examining Phoebe, now he looked up. "It's clearly some kind of venom, as Rory here says. If I had my sickbay, or even a basic medkit, I could deal with it in minutes, but I have nothing here."
"Amy," said the Doctor, "store-cupboard on the left, halfway down the main corridor, top right-hand shelf. Grey box labelled StarFleet Medical. Get it. Quickly, Pond!"
Amy was gone only a few minutes, bringing the box out and dumping it at the HEM's feet. The hologram opened it and looked inside, then shook his head again.
"These are antiques!" He grumbled. "Where did you get them?"
"I beg your pardon!" The Doctor was indignant. "Bones McCoy gave them to me!"
The HEM looked up. "Bones McCoy?" He asked. "Dr Leonard McCoy? Admiral Leonard McCoy? That man is a legend in StarFleet!"
"Really?" The Doctor was amused. "He was grumpy, I know that. He told me I was the most annoying person he'd ever met who didn't have pointed ears."
The HEM gave an amused snort, then began taking things out of the box. "Rory, can you assist?"
"OK. What d'you need me to do?" Rory said.
As they worked on Phoebe, the Doctor turned to the other two.
"Right!" He said. "You're Piper, and you're Paige, and that's Phoebe on the couch. I always like to know which witch is which! I always wanted to say that!"
"He's always like this." Amy told them. "Ignore him."
"Look...Doctor," Piper said, "how do we vanquish this Silurian demon?"
"it's not a demon, and you can't vanquish it!" The Doctor told her. "It's as mortal as you are, and it - he or she – has feelings and thoughts and family and everything you have! The Silurians built cities, wrote books and music and had advanced technology before humans even evolved. They were the original inhabitants of this planet.
"But they made one mistake. They thought that a giant asteroid was going to strike the Earth and cause massive damage. So they retreated to their underground cities and put themselves into cryogenic suspension, to wait until it was safe.
"Only the asteroid didn't strike, and in that time you humans evolved and spread all over the world. Their world. You started mining and drilling and digging and sometimes, sometimes, you wake some of them up. Then they see humans, primitive apes, crawling all over their planet and ruining their environment. Nobody stops to talk, or to think, and people get killed!"
"So where did this one come from?" Amy asked. "And is there only one? Because the last time we met Silurians there was a whole city of them."
"Wait a minute!" Paige broke in. "They're doing some work on the storm drains in that area. There was some kind of cave-in a couple days back. Nobody was hurt, but it was after that that people started turning up dead of that venom.
"We figured, demon preying on innocents, so we went looking. But the spell didn't work and that's when Phoebe got hurt."
The Doctor shook his head. "A city would be much deeper than a storm drain. It was probably a sentry post. One warrior in suspended animation, rigged to wake if there was a possible threat to the city further down. The cave-in must have triggered the system. The Silurian will be looking for a threat."
"Well in that case, we're in trouble." Piper said. "Because there was quite a scrap before Phoebe got stung."
"I've got a feeling," Rory said to the HEM out of the corner of his mouth, "that any minute now we're going to have to do a lot of running."
At that point, the doorbell rang.
"Paige, get rid of them!" Piper snapped.
Paige ran to the door, opened it a crack and peeped out. Then she gave a small shriek, slammed the door and orbed back to Pipers' side.
"It's..." she began. Then the door crashed open, slamming back against the wall.
The figure that strode in was tall, maybe six and a half feet, and clad in leather and metal. The head was oddly-shaped, bony ridges sloping back and up from close to the small ears gave it a dart-like appearance. But the face, Piper noted, was surprisingly human, despite the scaly skin. She raised her hands to blast the creature, but the Doctor seized her wrist.
"No!" He snapped. "You can't just kill him!"
The Silurian swept a glance around the room, then went over to the couch where Phoebe was. Rory immediately rose and placed himself in front of her.
"Not my patient!" He said, in a steely tone that seemed odd coming from such a kindly face.
The Silurian made a series of odd hissing noises. Rory looked down at the HEM, who rose to his feet.
"I've counteracted your venom and given her a vitalizer shot. She'll be fine." He announced.
The Silurian hissed again.
"Then why did you poison her in the first place?" Rory asked.
"Hey!" Piper interrupted. "You can understand that thing?"
"The TARDIS translates for us." Amy said from behind her. "But I don't know how the hologram does it."
The HEM heard her and pointed to a gold badge on his chest. "StarFleet communicator, fitted with a Universal Translator Module."
At that point, Phoebe got up from the couch, rather unsteadily. Putting one hand on Rory's shoulder to support herself, she cleared her throat and said: "Since we all have things to say, make our speech as clear as day!"
A shimmer passed over the Silurian and the three witches.
"That better?" Phoebe asked.
"Impressive!" The Silurian responded, his tones still sibilant, but now understandable. "It seems your skills extend beyond those of a warrior."
"Warrior?" Phoebe asked.
The Silurian nodded. "You struck me a noble blow, for such a frail being!"
"Yeah, well." Phoebe grinned. "The levitation helps."
"OK!" Piper yelled. "You! Mr...Silurian. What's your name and why are you here?"
"My name is Katal, and I was placed as a sentry to guard a great city of my people that lies beneath this new ape – excuse me, human – city. Two days ago, I was awoken by digging above me. Shortly after that, the entire chamber fell in. I escaped injury, but my hibernation chamber and all of my equipment is either destroyed or buried beyond retrieval.
"I ventured out to scout, and discovered that the equipment which destroyed my outpost was not military, but merely maintenance. I then carried on investigating, attempting to find somewhere safe to live out my days."
Katal paused, and Piper jumped in.
"If you were just looking for a place to hide, why did you kill those people?"
"Self-defence." Katal stated. "They attacked me when I came upon them as they were attempting to rob another of your kind."
He slipped off the small backpack he had been wearing and spilled its contents onto the coffee table.
"I liberated their weapons in the hope that they may prove of use. Some knives, rather fragile, and a primitive projectile weapon."
Paige turned to Piper. "Darryl did say that those guys had records. Not really innocents."
"Well!" The Doctor said. "That sorts that out! Now, Katal, I'm the Doctor, and I know of a safe place you can go to, if you want. A friend of mine runs a kind of refuge for people who don't fit in, she'll be glad to have you!
"Phoebe seems to be back to herself, so I don't think we need to stay around any more. It's been really cool to meet the Charmed Ones, but just make sure that something is a demon before you go vanquishing it!
"Give my regards to the Elders, and tell them to behave. I'll be watching them! Give my love to your grandmother the next time you see her.
Come on, Katal, Ponds!"
A few seconds later the blue box had vanished the way it came, and the Halliwell sisters were left looking at the HEM.
"And how?" He asked a little peevishly. "Am I supposed to get back to Voyager?"
"Same way you got here!" Paige told him. The three sisters held hands and Paige said. "Through the realms of Time and Space, return this hologram to his place!"
"Oh, bloody Hell!" Helen Magnus groaned as the familiar whirring sound began in the next room.
Ashley looked up from her computer. "Is that...?" She asked.
"I'm afraid so." Helen replied. "Let's go and see what kind of trouble we're in!"
It took a few moments for Ashley to enthusiastically greet her 'uncle' and be introduced to Amy and Rory. Helen was a little more restrained. You couldn't help liking the Doctor, but he was usually a harbinger of trouble.
"Well?" She asked. "What now?"
"Ah!" The Doctor said. "I've got a friend here who needs somewhere to stay..."
It took an hour or so to bring Phoebe up to speed, then they had to tell Leo about it when he got back.
"So," Phoebe asked, "how come we got two doctors?"
"Beats me." Piper admitted.
Leo looked at them, then asked. "Piper, can you remember what it said in the Book? The exact words?"
"Yeah." She thought for a second. "it said 'Call the Doctor'. Why?"
"Paige," Leo said, "what did you ask for in your spell, exactly?"
Light dawned. "I asked for a doctor!" Paige said.
"So," Phoebe said, "this was all a spelling mistake!"