Hello.
About a year ago, I started writing a Dr. Who novel called The Laughing Elders. It was to be a story in three parts; I completed the first part. Then, I tried to interest BBC Books, the publishers of Dr. Who, in publishing it, but they only accept submission from writers approved by the producers of the TV series. Makes sense. So, I contacted the agent of Russell T. Davies to see if I could interest him in it, but she politely informed me that he was too busy. Okey doke.
I've decided to put the complete first third of the novel on my Web site, Les Pages aux Folles (.ca), in September to celebrate its seventh anniversary. Until then, I've decided to give those interested on this site a taste of the story: I will publish a chapter every second week of July and August.
I started writing the other two parts of the novel, but moved on to other projects when I hit the BBC wall. If there is any interest, I may take them up again.
Enjoy,
Ira Nayman
Dr. Who:
The Laughing Elders
PART ONE: Harlequin's Toy
Chapter Two
A Very…Kind of…Vowelly Sort of Place
"Toronto."
"Toronto?"
"Yeeesss?"
"What? In Canada?"
"That would be the one I was thinking of, yes."
"Why?"
"Wellll…it's a very…kind of…vowelly sort of place, isn't it?"
"Vowelly?
"Absolutely. Toooo-roooon-tooooo. Caaaaa-naaaaa-daaa."
"You want to go to a place…because it's vowelly?"
"Can you think of a better reason to go someplace?"
With a laugh that surprised her, Martha admitted that she couldn't. The Doctor fiddled with a couple of knobs, hit a few switches, earnestly read a metre or two and, with the slightest sigh, the TARDIS started making its way toward the Canadian city. No, not fiddled and hit, exactly. Although it seemed, at first, like cheap slapstick, Martha had noticed that the Doctor's hands made very precise movements over the TARDIS control panel, as if he was playing a musical instrument. In an admittedly slapsticky way.
"Interesting fact about Toronto," the Doctor cheerily continued. "Some say it is the most multicultural city on Earth. People from all over. People with a variety of different backgrounds. And it works! I'm not saying there aren't problems – put three human beings in a room together and there are bound to be problems. But people can learn to get on with each other – and Toronto is proof!"
"Do we need coats?" Martha asked.
"Mmm…because of the cold, d'you mean?" the Doctor asked back.
"Umm, yeah."
"I suppose we should also take a gun. You know. For the moose."
"Doctor…"
"We'd need the protection. There are some angry coatracks on those moose."
"Doctor!" Martha protested. "I've never been to Toronto. I've never been to Canada. How would I know what to expect?"
The Doctor smiled. Martha thought she should be angry that he was winding her up, but she felt herself smiling back. The Doctor's smile was infectious that way. "Actually, it's the middle of summer in that part of the world," the Doctor informed her, "so we don't have anything to worry about in that department. Normal clothing all around. Did you know that Yonge, the street we'll be landing on, is the longest street in the world?"
Imagine looking at the rear end of a long shopping mall. Across the street, three jets of water rise and fall in front of an empty square. Giant screens are all over the place – a serious case of Times Square envy. If you were in the TARDIS, you would hear Martha ask the Doctor, "Are you sure it's a good idea to materialize in the middle of a large city?" On the street, you would hear a loud mechanical wheezing, like the gears of a carnival ride that has seen better days but wants to give the children one last thrill before it packs it in for good. Then, an old-fashioned blue police call box appears outside a Hard Rock Café next to the square. One moment there is nothing. The next moment, a shimmering. The moment following that, the police box.
The moment after that, the door opens and an unlikely couple emerge. One is an attractive young black woman in jeans and a brown leather jacket. The other is a tall, thin scarecrow of a man in a pinstripe suit, quite natty, really, if you discount the ratty sneakers on his feet and the permanent dishevelment of his hair. "I told him," the man, the Doctor, was saying, "I said, 'Marshall, it's bloody brilliant, but who is going to believe the world is a village?!' But he just saw things that way, and you had to love him for…"
The Doctor trailed off. "What?" the woman, Martha, asked. Turning her attention away from The Doctor, she saw it, too.
People in the square had slumped in their chairs or slipped off and fallen to the ground, completely motionless. In front of the large shopping mall, a man was curled up on his side on top of a half-finished chalk drawing of a dove with the earth in the background; perhaps as many as a dozen people were curled up on their sides around him. All down the road, as far as the eye could see, people were curled up on the sidewalk, motionless. There were dozens of them. Possibly hundreds.
The Doctor ran towards the person nearest to them, an elderly woman. "Martha!" he shouted, pointing to a couple three feet away from them. "Go check them!" Martha ran towards the couple and knelt beside them.
The Doctor knelt beside the old woman. She looked calm, like she had just decided to lie down for a rest. In the middle of the sidewalk. He checked her throat for a pulse. There was one. "Still alive!" The Doctor shouted with relief. "How about your lot?"
"Still alive!" Martha responded.
The Doctor stood up and went to the next people on the street – a young woman and a child. Martha followed him. He knelt down next to them and felt for their pulses.
"That boy can't be more than five years old," Martha commented.
"They're still alive," The Doctor responded, standing up.
"What's going on?" Martha asked.
"Oh, typical Canadian celebration of summer, I should imagine," the Doctor said, almost breezily.
"Really?" Martha asked, knowing better. She wasn't surprised, therefore, when the Doctor said, "Naah. Just a bit of humour to mask the fact that I don't really know what's going on."
"You do do that," Martha told him. "It's a wonder sometimes –"
Before she could finish the thought, there was a big explosion somewhere not too far away. Martha flinched slightly, but the Doctor was already looking for the source of the explosion. Almost immediately, he started running down the street.
"Doctor?" Martha shouted after him.
The Doctor stopped and pointed to a column of smoke rising over one of the buildings three blocks away. "You know what they say about smoke," he told her. "I'll investigate. You keep checking people to make sure they're okay!" The Doctor started running in the direction of the smoke. He shouted something over his shoulder. Martha couldn't quite make it out, but it sounded like, "Well, okayish…"
Martha didn't know what to do, so she did what the Doctor told her. The next person she checked was a middle aged black woman. "That could be me," she thought to herself. "In 20 years time." She checked for a pulse, found one, and moved to the next person, a 30ish man in a smart suit.
As she moved down the street – towards the cross street the Doctor had disappeared down – Martha thought, not for the first time, that she had been left with the easy job while the Doctor ran towards the danger. That didn't seem fair. It wasn't like her life had been a bed of roses since the two had met. Just the opposite – she had stopped counting the times her life had been in danger during their adventures. And she supposed that by running towards danger and keeping her from it, the Doctor was actually trying to protect her. Chivalrous, that, if you thought about it. Yet there was something about it that rankled all the same. As she often did when thinking about the Doctor, Martha felt a confusion of emotions.
He had that affect on people.
Fifteen minutes and at least 30 people later – all of whom were breathing but otherwise catatonic – Martha came upon a couple. The looked to be in their early 30s. The man was Asian, the woman east Indian. Who were they, Martha wondered, before this happened to them? Were they in love? Were they happy? Did he make a lot of money? (Their clothes were posh enough.) Did she? Did they have families who would miss them if they…Martha thought of her own family. Sure, she could phone them at any time (literally), but it wasn't the same as being there, was it? She decided that it might be a good idea to –
Martha thought she heard a child crying. Listening attentively, she became sure that a child was crying. She ran down the street, past several catatonic bodies, the crying getting louder. Three blocks later, she came across a young couple, smartly dressed, curled into balls on the ground next to a baby carriage. Like the other people on the ground, they were alive, but catatonic. The little pink bundle in the carriage, on the other hand, was loudly – gloriously – alive.
Martha knew what to do – she had a younger brother, after all. She picked the baby up and, rocking it gently, cooed at it. The baby soon stopped crying and looked at her quizzically. Martha smiled at the child. The child smiled back. She didn't know what was going on, but she knew that she would do everything in her power to ensure that nothing bad happened to this baby girl, and that was enough.
She went off in search of the Doctor to find out what he might have to say about it.
* * *
The Doctor rounded a corner to confront a series of cars that had nudged each other before coming to a stop, all save the last one, which must have rammed into the last in the line with somewhat greater speed. Its engine was on fire. The Doctor ran to it, a small Japanese car, and opened the front door. Sitting in the car, apparently fast asleep, was a middle-aged woman with multi-coloured hair. Apart from a small trickle of blood on her forehead, she seemed fine. Well, fine for somebody who had completely lost consciousness at the wheel. The Doctor fiddled with her seat belt, then, getting her free, pulled her to the sidewalk and gently laid her down.
The Doctor immediately realized that if the engine in the car blew up, it could cause a chain reaction that would blow up all half dozen cars in the line. With grim determination, he set about freeing all of the catatonic people from their automobiles. He was having a bit of difficulty with the second from the front – a man who must have weighed at least 400 pounds – when he heard a woman's deep voice say, "Well, look at you!"
The Doctor looked around. On the sidewalk, a few feet away, stood a slender young woman. She was wearing a full body suit that clung to her form, a dazzling piece of cloth made up of diamonds in a variety of sizes and colours. A black mask, which matched her long black hair, covered her eyes. Around her throat was a black collar with silver studs.
"Well, look at you!" the Doctor replied.
The woman dramatically clasped her hands to her chest and said, "My hero!"
The Doctor tugged at the arm of the man he was trying to get out of the car, but he didn't have any leverage, so his effort didn't actually change anything. "Erm, yes, about that," The Doctor told the woman, "if you could give us a bit of help – much appreciated, you know."
The woman shook her head. "What would you learn from that?" she asked.
"That two people can carry a heavy man easier than one?" the Doctor ventured.
The woman laughed, a most agreeable sound. "I think we can take that as given, don't you?"
The Doctor was about to make a witty reply when the car at the back of the line did, indeed, explode, flames shooting towards the sky. The ground shook momentarily. Then…nothing happened. The Doctor thought for a second, then, putting the 400 pound man back into his seat, went to the first car. He shoved the driver, a young man who was not wearing a seat belt, into the passenger side of the car, then drove it a little ways down the road. The Doctor turned the car into a conveniently placed alley. Turning its engine off, he jumped out of the car and back to the car with the overweight man.
"Do you have a licence for that?" the woman cheerily asked.
"You can call for a copper," the Doctor responded agreeably, "after I've got these people out of harm's way."
Driving the second car was a bit trickier, as he couldn't really move the overweight man. The Doctor snaked his leg down to the pedals and steered as best he could. It wasn't dignified, and the car did swerve more than once. In the end, however, he managed to park it behind the first car in the alley. When he returned to the street, he expected the woman in the colourful diamond suit to be gone, but, to his surprise, she stood there with an amused expression on her face.
"Well done," she said.
"I'm the Doctor," he introduced himself. "And you are…?"
The woman feigned disappointment. "You don't know?" she asked.
The Doctor thought for a moment, then brightened. He did know. "Harlequin!"
The woman clapped in delight. "You know the Commedia dell'Arte!"
"I wouldn't say I know it," the Doctor modestly stated. "I only hung out in 17th century Italy for a couple of weeks…"
"You know, The Doctor is a character in the Commedia, but they never look quite as good as y…" Harlequin trailed off, as the import of what the Doctor told her sunk in. "Who are you? And why are you still conscious?"
"So, this is your handiwork, is it?"
"I asked first."
"Ah. Yes. Well. I'm a traveler. Just arrived. So, I must have just missed…whatever you did. It was you, wasn't it?"
Instead of answering, Harlequin touched a stud on her collar. An object immediately appeared in her right hand. It was a perfect crescent, very much like a sliver of the moon, in white onyx. It had several buttons on its surface.
"Where did you get that?" the Doctor, surprised, asked.
"I wanted two," Harlequin conversationally told him. "You know, a matching set. A little heavy for earrings, but maybe I could have worked them into a belt or something. All it takes is a little imagination. Well! Imagine my surprise when I was told that there was only one in the universe!"
"Yes," the Doctor agreed, "and it's safely locked up in the Galactic Ministry of Forbidden Weapons."
"Oh, is it?" Harlequin asked. She seemed genuinely surprised.
"Yes, yes," the Doctor grew a little testy. "I suppose the question I should have asked was: how did you get that?"
"Sorry, Doctor. One question per contestant." Harlequin pointed the crescent at the Doctor and pressed one of its buttons. A greenish blue light arced out of the end that pointed towards the Doctor until it was large enough to engulf him. Harlequin counted seven to herself, then took her finger off the button. The light vanished. Harlequin was surprised to see that the Doctor was still standing.
"Ah, I haven't had a good quantum energy ray bath in centuries," the Doctor cheerfully commented.
"How…?" she started to ask, astonished.
"I did mention I wasn't from around here, didn't I?"
Harlequin's frown was heartbreaking. "Oh, pooh. You're not…from the Time Police, are you? Did Harkness send you?"
"What, Captain Jack?"
"Aha! You are! You are from the Time Police!"
The Doctor grinned. "Naah. Captain Jack and I had some adventures together, but that was actually after he quit the Time Police. So, my past, the future of the Captain Jack Harkness you know. This time travel stuff can be a little confusing."
"Tell me about it," Harlequin said. "But, if you're not from the Time Police…?"
"Oh, I need to be taken much more seriously than the Time Police," the Doctor told her. "I'm a Time Lord." Harlequin looked blankly at him. Seeing that his announcement didn't have the effect he thought it would, the Doctor sputtered, "I'm a Time Lord. You know…a…a Time Lord."
"You know, that line might work with some girls, but –" Harlequin started. Martha chose that moment to arrive in the street. Harlequin turned the crescent on her.
"Doctor, you'll never believe –" Martha started.
"Martha!" the Doctor shouted a warning. Martha stopped dead in her tracks. In a blur of motion, the Doctor had his sonic screwdriver out and was pointing it at Harlequin as if it was a weapon. "You will do nothing to that woman," he commanded her. "Or that…baby she…appears to be carrying," he added, a note of amused confusion in his voice.
Harlequin was amused without a trace of confusion. "Or…you'll do what exactly?"
"My weapon will decompose you into your constituent atoms and spread them across the universe in order to ensure that they never reconstitute into you ever again. Ever," the Doctor told her in his most serious voice, which was very serious, indeed.
Harlequin sighed. "And we were having such an enjoyable conversation," she said before pressing a stud on her collar and disappearing. Without moving a muscle, the Doctor looked around, suspecting a prank. When one didn't immediately materialize, he put away the sonic screwdriver and briskly walked past Martha.
"Where we going?" Martha asked, huffing as she tried to keep up with the Doctor's long strides with the infant in her arms.
"We have to see a man about a gun," the Doctor, in his very best take charge voice, told her.
"Aren't you curious about the baby?"
"Time for introductions in the TARDIS!"
NEXT: Chapter Three: The Littlest Companion