Doctor Who and the Return of the Gravy Men
Prologue: New York City, 1989
It had taken all morning, not to mention fifty dollars American, but Tegan Jovanka had finally acquired a black orchid.
She suspected it wasn't really black, that the florist had set the stem in ink, but it would have to do. She had less than three hours before the pre-boarding for the flight to LA, and she wanted to actually look around the museum this time. The last time she'd been in New York, she'd had to give up and settle for a purple orchid and a jelly doughnut, leaving them in the museum with a hastily whispered prayer and returning to JFK with only minutes to spare.
Now, with a chocolate-covered, cream-filled donut in a paper bag in one hand and the orchid in another, she entered the Museum of Natural History's Hall of Dinosaurs.
She'd planned to leave the offerings at the feet of the T-Rex. Approaching the massive mounted fossil, she decided to hang back a few minutes. A performance artist had claimed the spot just in front of the display and was spouting nonsense.
America gets weirder every time, Tegan thought, watching the crowd of museum goers gathering around a tall, heavy-set man with curly blond hair. He was wearing what looked like a clown suit. Edging closer, she could make out what he was saying:
"Amid that prehistoric wassail,
I caught the eye of one small fossil.
Cheer up, sad world, he said and winked.
It's kind of fun being extinct."
Tegan frowned. He's English, she thought, noticing his accent. And he flies all the way to America to act an idiot? Well, I guess it's as good a place as any.
"I burn my candle at both ends," the clown/poet continued, "it will not last the night. But oh my foes and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light!"
Tegan glanced down at the boxes in her hands and blinked a tear. You don't say, she thought.
Now some of the patrons had complained to a guard, who was bearing down on the performer. A dark-haired girl in a barely-adequate blouse began tugging on the artist's sleeve, but he brushed her aside and kept reciting:
"Nature's first green is gold,
Its hardest hue to hold.
Its earliest leaf a flower,
But only so an hour.
So leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down to day;
Nothing gold can stay."
Tegan felt a sudden pang at the word gold, thinking, It's like he knows why I'm here, but . . . .
"All right, Ronald McDonald, take the show outside," said the museum guard, pushing through the crowd. "Nobody paid to see you today."
"I beg your pardon," said the clown/poet in a booming voice. "I am reciting poetry, and if you might restrain your philistine instincts for another five minutes . . . ."
"Maybe we should go?" asked the bosomy brunette.
"Not until after Keat's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'," the poet insisted. "Thou still unravished bride of quietness," he said in a voice anything but quiet, hands clasped to his breast. "Thou foster-child of silence and slow time . . . ."
"I don't believe it," muttered the guard. "Who does this joker think he is?"
Tegan stopped listening to the words of either the guard or the poem, and stared at the speaker. On the surface, he was a total stranger. She'd never seen him before. And yet something in his face—not his features, but the intensity of his eyes, the emotion barely contained—mirrored the old grief that had driven her to bring her peculiar offerings to the museum that day.
The guard had pulled out a radio and was presumably calling for someone to help him manhandle the eccentric out of the museum. Tegan stepped forward. "Sir, let me talk to him."
"You know this bozo?"
"I think I used to," she said. Not taking her eyes off him, she walked up to the stranger and said:
"Hello, Doctor. It's good to see you again."
He froze in mid-line, looked down, and stared.
"Tegan? Tegan Jovanka of Brisbane Australia?"
Tegan nodded, tears brimming in her eyes.
The Doctor threw his arms around her in a crushing bear hug; she squeaked a little in spite of herself and he loosened his grip, holding her at arm's length. "Tegan Jovanka!" he repeated, his round face creased with the widest grin she'd ever seen. "You haven't changed a bit!"
Tegan chuckled nervously. "Can't say the same for you, Doctor. What happened? Was it the Master again?"
"Oh, no, it was poison. Peri and I were both exposed, and . . . . Oh, let me introduce you!" He threw one arm around the shoulders of the brunette, who at this point was wearing a decidedly disgruntled expression. "Tegan, meet Perpugilliam Brown. Goes by Peri. Peri, this is Tegan Jovanka. I may have mentioned her . . . ."
"Oh, I've heard the name," Peri said, a bit frostily.
New girl's jealous, Tegan thought. "It's an honor to meet you, Peri. If you're his companion, you must have the patience of a saint. Not to mention courage above and beyond the lot of mortals. I traveled with him for, oh, something like three or four years until I'm afraid I just couldn't take the carnage anymore and left."
"I've seen plenty of carnage in the past couple years," Peri said, "and I have no plans of leaving him."
"Good," Tegan said, stubbornly refusing to let this girl make an enemy of her, "he needs someone looking after him. I have no doubt he'd be perfectly wretched all by himself . . . . Where's Turlough?" she asked suddenly.
"Oh, he went home," said the Doctor. "With his brother. Right after we met Peri. He's fine."
"That's wonderful," said Tegan. "So glad to hear it." She smiled nervously, wondering what to say next. The strange, new Doctor was beaming at her, but Peri still looked like she hadn't decided if she should shake Tegan's hand or slap her face. "You, you look very well," she continued, knowing she was starting to babble. "I'm sure Peri's taking good care of you . . . ."
At this the Doctor laughed out loud. "Oh, Tegan, you know tact isn't your strong suit! Go on, say what you're thinking. I can see it in your eyes: Good God, Doctor, you're as big as a house!"
"I, I wouldn't put it like that!" Tegan protested. "I mean, yes, I couldn't help but notice you're a bit, um, heavier, than you used to be, but I know regeneration is totally random . . . ."
"I wish I could blame it on regeneration," the Doctor said with a chuckle. "But sadly, I have to confess . . . ." He patted his stomach, and paused. "Ew, what's all this on my waistcoat?"
"Oh, dear, I think it's my doughnut," said Tegan. "It must have squashed when you hugged me."
He laughed again. "How fitting. Or perhaps I should say ill-fitting, as it seems that either externally or internally doughnuts are going to be the death of this waistcoat."
"You should get a new one," Peri put in. "You should get a whole new suit. Black is slimming . . . ."
"Peri's been trying to convince me to change into something drab since the day I regenerated," the Doctor said. "Not happening. I'll give up sweets first. And speaking of, Tegan, what were you doing with a doughnut in a museum in the first place?"
She sighed. "Probably the same thing you were doing reciting poetry." She held up the now-crushed and oozing doughnut bag and the orchid.
"Ah," the Doctor said softly. "Because where else would we go to show our respects but a hall of fossils? There was no funeral, no grave, no body . . . Nothing but the K-T boundary and sixty-five million years of dust."
"Oh my God!" Peri blurted. "Doctor, did you kill the dinosaurs?" She narrowed her eyes. "I should have known—any great catastrophe, you've got to be there."
"It wasn't me!" the Doctor protested. "It was the Cybermen, trying to destroy the earth with a spaceship. Like they tried with Haley's Comet, remember?"
"Cybermen," said Peri. "Cybermen destroyed the dinosaurs. You know, Doctor, I actually believe you."
"Why wouldn't you?" asked Tegan. "If you've been with him two weeks, never mind two years, you know the sort of things he's involved in."
"So," Peri said, "the Doctor is giving the dinosaurs a poetic eulogy, and you are leaving flowers and . . . a donut? Why a donut?"
The Doctor put an arm around Peri's shoulder. "It's not for the dinosaurs, though they certainly deserve to be mourned as well. Tegan and I, we had a friend on the ship the Cybermen used. He was barely sixteen years old, scarcely more than a child, and he died in in the crash."
"His name was Adric," Tegan said. "He loved donuts, I've seen him eat a dozen of them at a go without blinking. He was, well, he could be a royal pain in the ass. He was a genius, a real, honest, certifiable, do-calculus-in-his-head genius, but he had no common sense at all. Sometimes he was so naive you'd think he'd just fallen off the turnip truck, but in the end he was loyal to his friends, so loyal, and so brave. Entire crew of that damned ship, and soldiers, too, and Adric was the only one brave enough to stay behind and try and stop the crash. All the rest of them were just bloody cowards!" Tegan shoved the crushed donut into the Doctor's hand so she could pull out a tissue and sniffle.
The Doctor put his free arm around Tegan. "Brave heart, my dear," he said softly.
""You couldn't save him in the TARDIS?" Peri asked.
"No. She was damaged in a firefight." The Doctor pursed his lips; Tegan wasn't sure but she thought he might have blinked a single tear. "Honestly, Tegan, what are you doing here in New York?" he said, changing the subject.
"Layover, of course. Waiting for a flight to LA. I'm still working as an air hostess, of course. Best way for a girl with no money and no degrees to travel. Aside from the TARDIS, of course. What are you doing here?"
"Saving the world from bio-terrorists," said the Doctor. "And when I wasn't busy with that, I've been overeating. There is altogether too much interesting food in this city. You know I simply cannot resist the temptation of a novel experience. I've experienced enough this summer to warrant a trip down to the garment district for larger trousers."
"Black is slimming," Peri suggested again.
The Doctor turned to the girl under his right arm. "Peri, not to put too fine a point on it, dear, but you're not exactly wearing the same bikini I met you in, either."
"Oh, so you wanna play that game, Porky . . . ." said Peri.
"Maybe I should just go," said Tegan, extricating herself from the Doctor's arm.
"Don't go yet, Tegan, and don't mind us—we don't actually mean anything by it, bickering is one of our favorite pastimes," the Doctor said. "How long do you have until your flight?"
"Nowhere near long enough to go anywhere in the TARDIS," Tegan said.
"Well, I couldn't hope that I could persuade you to come away with us," the Doctor said. "You made it perfectly clear the last time I saw you that you were done with that life. And I wouldn't want to make you late for work . . . ."
"Again," Tegan said with a smile.
"Again," the Doctor agreed. "But I'd love to catch up, hear how you've been. Maybe we could have lunch somewhere?"
"Notice how he's the one to suggest eating," Peri said.
"Not listening," the Doctor said, putting a finger in the ear closest to Peri. "What is it people say here? Have your people call my people and we'll do lunch?"
Tegan laughed. "Never realized how silly that sounds until you said it. I'd love to have lunch with both of you, but after paying for this flower, I'm almost broke. And I don't trust you to pay. Remember what happened in Hollywood? I don't have time to wash dishes."
The Doctor laughed. "I remember. Though I don't recall you being too upset about the dishes then. We did let you dry."
"I'd given up on getting to work that night anyway," Tegan said.
"Sounds like quite the story," said Peri.
Tegan realized the awkwardness of Peri's being left out of the conversation. "IF the Doctor can prove to me that he's carrying a wallet with money in it that will actually be accepted here, I'll tell you about it over lunch," she said. "I probably remember more of it than he does, anyway."
"As long as it's nothing like our 'broke in a restaurant' story, I'd love to hear it," Peri said.
"No, thankfully," the Doctor said. "No Androgums involved. Just our Adric, and he was Alzarian: he might have been able to match an Androgum in terms of appetite, but not in hostility. He actually tended to avoid violence, for the most part . . . ." The Doctor started walking toward the exit, still talking.
"You coming, Tegan?" Peri asked.
"One moment," she said. The crowd that had gathered around the T-Rex had dispersed. Tegan tucked the donut and orchid behind a plaque.
"Miss you, kid," she whispered, and turned to follow her friends.