THE MARK OF THE CORSAIR
(DISCLAIMER: Various copyrights belong to their various holders; I don't make a bit of money off this.)
Woodstock, Saturday, 16 August 1969. Anyone who saw the blue box materialize on the edge of the field probably thought they were just having a bad trip. A door opened inward, and a young man with a mod-looking haircut peeked out, then stepped out, wearing a brightly tie-dyed t-shirt, bell-bottomed, faded jeans and red Converse trainers. He looked around, closed and locked the door, and trudged through the mud toward the music. He blinked, realizing that he was technically crossing his own timeline – at this moment he was also somewhere in the United Kingdom working for UNIT – but there was little risk he'd actually run into himself.
Abruptly he stopped and frowned, looking at the band on the stage. It was the Who. He smiled, thinking about how Jo Grant would have loved to have been here, being the big fan of rock music she was. He wondered what she was up to – well, actually, in 1969 they hadn't met yet; she was probably still learning how to crack safes and encrypt and decrypt things ... how did she ever become a UNIT agent, anyway? She was so flighty, so simple minded ... or was she like his second incarnation had been, using that apparent flightiness to disguise her intelligence?
His attention was diverted as the band launched into a new song:
There's a man I've found could bring us all joy!
There's a doctor I've found could cure the boy!
There's a doctor I've found could cure the boy!
There's a man I've found could remove his sorrow,
He lives in this town let's see him tomorrow,
Let's see him tomorrow!
He threaded through the increasingly dense crowd toward the stage, smiling and nodding as he went, occasionally flashing a peace sign, then stopping as a girl with thick, rich, shining golden-red hair, wearing a white string bikini, clambered up on the shoulders of a tall, sturdy man in an outfit not unlike his own, blocking his view of the stage. Yet instead of moving, the Doctor stood, transfixed by her shimmering hair, which hung down to her waist, and her proportionately long, white arms. The girl screamed at the stage and clapped her hands over her head. Then she abruptly removed her bikini top, whirled it a few times around her hnd and flung it at the stage. She tossed her mane forward, revealing a circular tattoo on her left shoulder – one the Doctor recognized with a shock. He'd just seen that tattoo ...
"Hey, Prydon-head! Put some clothes on!" the Doctor shouted over the din in Gallifreyan.
The girl jumped off the man's shoulders and looked around. She was tiny, maybe 5 feet tall and 90 pounds, but the look on her face and the light in her eyes made her fearsome. "Who's calling me Prydon-head?" she yelled.
"ME!" the Doctor roared, waving both hands. "Over here! Theta Sigma of Lungbarrow!"
Then he was on his back in the mud, with the girl sitting on his chest, laughing uproariously.
"What are you doing here, Grandpa?" she laughed. "You finally get off Gallifrey? Where's that boring old lady you married? Did you bring her? How's Koschei? Ushas? The rest of the Deca? Borusa?"
"Get off me!" the Doctor urged in English, lifting her by the waist and sitting up. He removed his shirt and gave it to her.
"What's this?" the girl asked.
"A shirt, you idiot! That's indecent exposure around these parts."
"Really? Cool!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet and bouncing up and down, turning in a circle. "Look at me! Look at -"
The Doctor grabbed her shoulders and turned her around. "Put the shirt on!"
She stared up at him. "But now you're indecently exposed."
"No I'm not. Men can show their chests here. Women can't. They'll arrest you and fine you and -"
"That's sexist," she said, pulling the shirt on. "Oh, now look, I missed the end of their set."
"You weren't listening, you were too busy screaming."
"That's listening." She jumped at him again, wrapping arms around his neck and legs around his waist. "Oh Theta, it's so good to see you! You've changed, haven't you?"
"A bit. I've regenerated a few times since we last met," he said, disengaging her and putting her back on the ground.
"Really? How many times?"
"This is my eleventh."
"No way! Whoa, man, what a trip! Wait, how old are you?"
"Not sure, I lost track … I tell people I'm 907, but who knows?"
"How can you lose track of how old you are? Were you doing donuts in the Vortex or something?"
"Psychedelic donuts?"
"No, no, like kids here do in parking lots at night – drive around in endless tight circles as fast as they can."
"What in the name of Rassilon's armpit for?"
She cackled. "Fun, of course! As if you wouldn't have done the same thing, you and Koschei, if you got the chance!"
"You would have done it first," said the Doctor. "You were always a bad influence."
"Really?" She looked up at him with a worried expression.
"Absolutely, my dear Corsair."
Her face lit up and she threw her arms around him again. "Groovy! Far out! Outta sight!"
…
The Corsair wasn't academically inclined, anymore than the Doctor himself had been, though he did well enough in subjects that interested him. Out of class, he was the one who experimented with mind-altering substances (he smoked so much parsley that the smell was impossible to get out of his old dorm room), set up a still for alcohol production, and rivaled Theta and Koschei in playing pranks. It was still hotly debated at the Academy who had blown up the office of a certain pedantic professor of eleven-dimensional physics – Theta and/or Ko, or the Corsair. A few people wondered if Theta and the Corsair were working together, but nobody thought it might be all three, or Koschei and the Corsair – they hated each other passionately. Sometimes the Doctor wondered if they were competing for his attention. …
Of course, in the regeneration class, the Corsair had asked the tough, funny, forbidden questions, and he did so in a way calculated to maximize instructor embarrassment and classmates' amusement. Who would have guessed he'd applied some of the answers?
"So why?" the Doctor finally asked.
"Why what?"
"Why are you female now?"
"I got bored with being male," the Corsair said.
They had reached a bank of portable toilets. As they walked around the last one, they confronted a tall creature with a human body and a strange, bulbous gray head.
"What the hell is that?" whispered the Corsair.
"Silence," Theta replied.
"No, really, what is it?"
"Silence," Theta repeated. "That's what they call themselves. They're not really friendly. I, uh, arranged things so the locals would kill them on sight."
"Is that so?" the Corsair said, bending down and tugging on her boot. Before Theta knew what she was about, a knife handle seemed to have exploded from inside the Silence's chest, and it fell to the ground with a terrible cry.
"He's been creeping around here the whole time," the Corsair said casually, going up to the dead alien, planting her foot on its chest and pulling the knife out. "I had a feeling it wasn't up to any good, but I couldn't do anything until I had proof." She cleaned it on the thing's clothing and resheathed it in her boot. "We gotta bury it," she said.
The Doctor groaned, but there was nothing else to be done. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and used it to dig a hole eight feet deep. They dropped the Silence's body into it unceremoniously, then the Doctor put the dirt back where it had been.
"I think we better get out of here," he said.
"Yeah, I think you're right," the Corsair said, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward his TARDIS.
Inside the TARDIS, the Corsair laughed at his jerry-rigged console until the Doctor told her that it would hurt the old girl's feelings, at which scolding she patted the console and said something in a language not even the TARDIS had heard before, if the fact that she failed to translate it meant anything. Then they washed the stench of the Silence death off their hands – "It smells about how they look," the Corsair said, wrinkling her pert nose.
He directed the Corsair to the wardrobe, and eventually they met up in the console room again. SDhe was wearing Romana's old schoolgirl costume, which was just slightly too big for her, to say nothing of utterly opposing her personality. For once, the Corsair looked subdued, twirling a lock of her red-gold hair around one finger and biting her lower lip.
"So you've come across those uglies before," she finally said.
"The Silence? Yes. They –"
"Wait, Theta," she said. "I'm starving. Got anything to eat? Then I'll listen all you want."
They sat in the console room, drinking tea, eating psnocketh and catching up. He soon told the whole story of the Silence, after which the Corsair took over and did most of the talking – she had retained the habit of monopolizing the conversation, but in such an interesting way that nobody usually complained. Those who did were usually bigger egomaniacs than the Corsair – the Doctor had been wont to bitch about it, but this time he was genuinely interested in what she had been doing.
"But Theta," the Corsair finally said, "what about you? I asked about your missus and ..."
The Doctor sighed. And the ensuing conversation was about as awkward as he thought it would be.
Doctor: Um, uh, well, um, before I answer, who was Lord President last you heard?
Corsair: Er … whatshisname. Pandak the Third?
Doc: (Pandak is the one the Master framed him for killing in "Deadly Assassin") And, um, how long had he been president?
C: 700 years, I guess. I don't know. I don't keep track!
Doc: OK … (can almost see him mentally scratching out most of his life on a long list) Well, you never asked why I left Gallifrey.
C: I figured you got tired of the place, or that your wife told you to bugger off, or you finally got in serious trouble with the authorities.
D: Well … someone murdered my entire family – my wife and our offspring, I mean, not my entire house – (he stops himself before saying "that comes later") – everyone except my youngest granddaughter, and that was only because it was her initiation day, and I accompanied her.
C: (after a long silence) Shit, Theta. Did the authorities ever figure out who?
D: No. But I did.
C: Who?
D: (softly) Koschei.
C: Koschei! … well, damn, Theta, you know I sympathize, but honestly, I told you over and over that he was bad news.
D: (quiet) I know.
C: And I'm not the only one.
D: (still quiet but with a steely undertone) I know.
C: You never listened. You were like an abused spouse with him. "He'll change. He's not really –"
D: I KNOW! I've had 900 years to think about it! I KNOW!
C: (long pause) Sorry, Theta.
D: (after another long pause) Some things I've forgotten. Some I never will forget.
C: Yes, of course … well! You can't change it – well, you could, but then they'd just vaporize you and change it back. So what do you say we take your mind off it? What say we go club-hopping?
D: Club-hopping?
C: Yes! Let me fly your TARDIS. I know exactly where to go.
D: (blocking C) Uh, no, I don't think so … tell me the coordinates and I'll input them. She's a little finicky about who gets to pilot her. And she is an antique …
C: And you just don't want anyone else to fly her.
D: Well …
By the time the Corsair passed out in the Doctor's arms, two months later, they'd been to just about every night club, rave, party, concert and music festival that people spoke of in hushed tones and wished they'd attended. The Doctor tried to list them off as he carried his tiny burden back to the TARDIS – the Stork Club, the 21 Club, El Morocco, the Copacabana, the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, Whisky a Gogo (Paris) Annabel's (members only, London), Studio 54, Xenon, The Loft the Paradise Garage, Aux Puces, Trocadero Transfer, the I-Beam, the End Up, The Blitz, the Batcave, the Camden Palace the Club for Heroes, The Cavern Club, CBGB's, both Fillmore East and West, The Marquee Club, and dozens of little unknown nightclubs that deserved more fame; Altamont, Monterey, Lollapalooza, several concerts in Central Park, Glastonbury, Lilith Fair; the Beatles live on the roof of Apple Studios, the first concerts of the Who, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, Nirvana ... the Corsair had been crowd-surfing at a Nirvana show – easy enough feat for someone her size - and he had pulled her back to the floor when she smiled gratefully but weakly at him, then fell into his arms, unconscious.
She was so tiny and light, so easy to carry, that he really hadn't minded the half-mile walk back to the TARDIS with her in his arms. It was a little awkward to unlock the door with his burden, but he managed. He carried her to the quarters nearest the console room and settled her on the bed. Only then did he notice an oroborus tattooed around her left ankle. Two of them? It was unheard of for a Time Lord to have even one tattoo – Time Lords didn't even exist when Gallifreyans abandoned the practice. They were still working on faster-than-light travel when Gallifreyans abandoned the practice. Sol was still a coalescing dust cloud when Gallifreyans abandoned the practice.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"I knew you weren't as out of it as you seemed," he lied.
"Heh," she murmured, opening one eye. "I wanted to see if it was true."
"IF what was true?"
"That men like tiny women better." She yawned. "My first female self was ... bigger than you are. Taller, heavier, Amazonian."
"Do they?"
"They get all protective of me," she yawned. "Well, some of them do. Some others try to push me around. I think I'm done with being female after this."
When the Doctor last saw the Corsair – that is, the whole Corsair, before his fatal trip to House – he'd said he was ready for another go at being female. But he couldn't tell her that. Last time, the Doctor had only been in his sixth regeneration.
She was sound asleep now, and once he pulled the covers over her body, she looked like a little girl, sweet and innocent. The idea was absurd. But he stayed looking at her, thinking about all that they had done and the fate that awaited him, and he bit his lip and shook his head.
"What's wrong, Theta?" the Corsair asked, stretching sinuously under the covers.
"Nothing, just ... thinking ..."
She held out her arms. "Don't think, Theta. Do."
"Do what?"
"You know," she said coyly.
"I'm afraid I don't."
She sat up on her elbows. "Come on, you're a man, I'm a woman, you've been married, for Omega's sake ... you should be able to figure it out. Or do I have to take all my clothes off, take all yours off and -"
"Oh, that!" the Doctor exclaimed, coloring up a bit, pulling at his ear and scratching his head as he tried to find an answer. "I, um, well, er, um, well, thank you for a very interesting offer, but um, I think I'm married."
"Bullshit, Theta."
"No, really." The Doctor started backing toward the door. "I'm ... well, I'm still trying to figure it out, she's a time traveller too, and we're sort of meeting in reverse order from each other ... until I know what's going on I don't think I should do anything like that with anyone else, not even an old friend ... no offense, Corsair." And he ducked into the corridor and ran as if for his life.
There didn't seem to be anything for it but to drop the Corsair off at her TARDIS, which she had left at Woodstock.
"You might have said something," the Corsair said.
"Well, I'm not entirely sure, that's why I didn't," the Doctor said. "Besides, you kept asking about my late wife, not if I had remarried."
The Corsair said nothing, but twisted a ring around one finger. "Well, sorry about the embarrassment, old chap."
"Don't think of it," the Doctor said, holding out his hand. "It's nothing."
The Corsair put her tiny hand in his and they shook. "It was good to see you again. Whatever baby face and square clothing you're wearing."
"Square?" the Doctor echoed. "it's mostly rectangular, if you're going to apply any simple shape to it ..."
"No, you ninny, I mean square, as in boring, fuddy-duddy ... I thought you'd broken out of your respectable mould when I saw you after your trial."
"Which one?"
"The one where it turned out one of your future regenerations was prosecuting you. What was he calling himself ... Valeyard?"
"Oh, that." The Doctor scratched his head again and frowned, then led the Corsair to the door. "I remember. You liked that suit?"
"Liked it? I found it for you, dear fellow. Or have you forgotten?"
"Well, at my age, and as busy as I am ..."
"Pffftht." She opened the TARDIS door; outside, Woodstock was still in full swing. It was as if they'd only been gone a few hours. "Well, that's the last time I saw you, anyway." She stepped through.
"But it's not the last time I saw you," the Doctor said.
"Oh?" She turned around. "How was I? What was I doing? Was I happy?"
The Doctor looked at her, trying to find the right words. "Corsair, you were –"
"Never mind, don't tell me. I'll find out sooner or later." She looked at the band on the stage. "I want to see them! Crosby Stills Nash and Young! They are so far out! Bye, Doctor!"
"Bye! Keep an eye out for our ugly friends!"
"That's why I'm here!" she shouted back, running toward the stage.
The music was slow and souful, and the words were bittersweet:
If you smile at me, I will understand
'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does
in the same language.
A second singer came in then:
I can see by your coat, my friend,
you're from the other side,
There's just one thing I got to know,
Can you tell me please, who won?
The last sight the Doctor had of the Corsair was her climbing up on some guy's shoulders – was that the same one she'd been on when he first saw her here? How did she know him? He wasn't sure. A gust of wind blew her hair to one side, exposing the oroborus tattoo on her shoulder blade; then he closed the door. But he could still feel the vibrations of the music through the door; and when he put his ear against it, he could hear them in a beautiful close harmony:
Wooden ships on the water, very free and easy,
Easy, you know the way it's supposed to be,
Silver people on the shoreline, let us be,
Talkin' 'bout very free and easy...
He smiled. It was better than the previous last sight of the mark of the Corsair. But the next stanza reminded him of that last time:
Horror grips us as we watch you die,
All we can do is echo your anguished cries,
Stare as all human feelings die,
We are leaving - you don't need us.
"Well, that's enough of that," he muttered, walking back to the TARDIS console. But the old girl, as she was wont to do these days, ever since she had been in a three-dimensional body, did something without orders: She engaged the sound system. The band was singing:
Go, take your sister then, by the hand,
lead her away from this foreign land
Far away, where we might laugh again,
We are leaving - you don't need us.
"Turn it off," he ordered. But softly, the last verse came over the speakers:
And it's a fair wind, blowin' warm,
Out of the south over my shoulder,
Guess I'll set a course and go ...
"Guess I will," he said. He plotted a course. "Goodbye, Corsair," he said, and engaged the engines.