Chapter Four

The Song Sounds the Same

Olivia studied her girlfriend's face with an artist's keen eyes, make-up brush in hand.

"Hm," she said.

Vi cocked an eyebrow. "Hm?"

"Nothing, it's just…." Olivia sighed. She averted her gaze to the screen behind Vi's head depicting an image of the endangered lunevringer - translated loosely to "moon dancer" in English: a purple-skinned creature with silver glittery horns sprouting from its sternum, near-transparent blue irises, and no mouth. It was no doubt they were beautiful beings. Turning a human into one of them with nothing but the power of make-up and a few costumes the TARDIS kept handy, however….that was a bit of a challenge.

"Doctor!" Olivia called out from the dresser. "Do we really have to disguise ourselves as aliens to get onto this planet? I mean, I'm sure the locals wouldn't mind a couple harmless humans hanging around plus….whatever the hell you are." She laughed. "We come in peace, right?"

"You want a piece?" the Doctor called back from the console room. "A piece of what?"

"No, peace. We come in peace, right?"

There was a pause. "There might be some birthday cake left in the kitchen!"

Olivia groaned and Vi smirked. Olivia mouthed, "I'll be right back" and left the dresser to meet the Doctor in the console room.

A big stupid grin took up the Doctor's face when she jumped up the steps. "Olivia! Did you bring cake?"

"Are you sure we need to wear alien disguises on this planet we're going to? It's just, turning my girlfriend into a moon dancer isn't exactly what I specialize in as a make-up artist."

The Doctor just looked at her for a couple seconds uncertainly. "So….no cake?"

"Enough about the cake!" she laughed. "Seriously - I'm not sure how much I can do with the whole alien makeover thing!"

"Olivia," the Doctor said. He walked around the TARDIS and dropped his hands on her shoulders, bowing his head to look her in the eye. "Olivia Simkins, my make-up extraordinaire! Don't go doubting yourself now."

"Doctor, these things are purple," Olivia reminded him.

"You're white!" the Doctor responded. "And Vi has dark African blood! Both equally mystic colouring on many a-planet."

"Woah, really?" she grinned. "Man that is weird. Awesome. Weird. Both." She sighed. "And totally not why I'm here. I just wanted to know why it's so important we blend in…wherever it is we're going."

Slowly, the Doctor slid his hands down Olivia's shoulders until he'd released her. He turned his back on her and fiddled around the console a bit. "I'm afraid humans aren't on the fondest of terms with creatures from the planet Gåel."

"Well what did they -" she stopped herself and rephrased, "what did we do?"

"It's a long story. An old story."

"Sounds pretty important to me."

"Yes," the Doctor murmured, his back still to her, "very…important."

Olivia waited a moment and got nothing. She cleared her throat. "Think you might want to let me in on this long, old, important story?"

A pause. Then he spun back around, eyes lit up again. "Get those alien disguises perfect - I know you will, Olivia Simkins - and we don't need to go down that road." He clapped his hands together. "Chop-chop! Got planets to see!"

She stood there for a moment, arms folded suspiciously.

Suddenly, the Doctor jumped. "Oh! I nearly forgot!" He scurried around the console, dipped downstairs for half a minute and popped back up with something in his hand. He held it out to Olivia - one colourless slip of plasticine - and grinned. "For Vi."

"Um.." Olivia took the plasticine and prodded it between her fingers uncertainly, "can't say I've ever used much play-doe in my profession, Doctor."

"What, play-doe? No, no, no, it's a mask."

"A mask?"

"Yes! Soak it in some purpley watercolours, stick it to Vi's face and it'll meld to her flesh to cover up her pesky human mouth. The lunevringers don't have mouths, you know."

"I had noticed that," Olivia laughed a little cautiously.

"Oh, and…..left side of the dresser cupboards and…two rows down, you'll find some lovely stick-on diamonds that closely mimic luveringer freckles. Or birthmarks." He shrugged. "Go crazy!"

"O…kay." The Doctor started to prance off again when Olivia grabbed his wrist. "Wait - what about me?"

"What about you?"

"Am I gonna be a…a luveringer too?"

"Ooooh, good point. Luveringers are occasionally a highly conservative species; rarely seen with their mating partners."

"Excuse me - mating partners?"

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Anyway! We'll have to get you another costume…." he twirled around the console and pulled out one of the monitors, pushing a couple buttons to reveal another alien creature. This one had sleek burgundy-coloured flesh, gold-plated eyebrows, sweet pink irises and thick feather eyelashes. Also, perhaps more significantly, this creature actually wore clothes.

"The kerryanger," said the Doctor, "a species closely related to the luveringer, but slightly more evolved."

Olivia considered this. "Like…the humans to our apes?"

"Uh…" the Doctor scratched his head, "more like the homo sapiens to your neanderthals."

"Huh." Olivia took a moment. "You know, that actually kind of makes sense to me."

"Then what are you waiting for?" the Doctor grinned. He spun Olivia around under his arm and lead her down the stairs. She yelped and giggled, following him until they both met Vi at the doorway of the dresser. She'd slid on the luveringer costume as supplied by the TARDIS's infinite closet and stood with her hands on her hips, purple and exotic from the shoulders down with two glittery horns curling out around her collar bones.

Olivia gasped. "Holy….god, you look like-like -"

"Like an alien," the Doctor smiled.

A smirk tugged up one corner of Vi's lips. Then the Doctor was exiled from the dressing room so Olivia could finish her work.

There was no doubt about it: they would be the most stunning aliens yet.

Much to the Doctor's impatience, it took a solid two hours before Olivia was satisfied with her and Vi's get-ups. To her credit, the Doctor had to admit they looked absolutely…..amazing.

"Next to you guys, people might call me human!" he exclaimed.

"Oi," Olivia nudged him, "what's wrong with being human?"

Vi snorted. "Uh, everything?"

The TARDIS touched down on planet Gåel's soil at local time of 1300 hours. Buzzing with excitement, the girls made a wild leap for the door. The Doctor slid in front of it and held out his arms to stop them, a warning in his eyes.

"Not so fast," he said, "still got a couple ground rules to cover."

"Doctor," Olivia whined, "I did the make up and costumes like you asked."

"We won't wander off, ingest any mysterious substances, or join a gang," Vi promised. "Happy?"

The Doctor folded his arms, cross at having his mind read. "You're forgetting something."

The girls went quiet, waiting. Finally Olivia said, "Well?"

"Well," the Doctor responded, "there's a big question you haven't asked yet. A very important question."

"Just spit it out Doctor," Vi sighed.

He spread out his arms. "Isn't it obvious? The question is why. Why are we here?"

Vi rolled her eyes. "We didn't ask the question because the answer is what's obvious."

"Oh is it now? What is then, if it's so obvious?"

"We're here to explore!" Olivia bursted out. "And, if we've got some spare time, redeem humanity's bad rep around here. Preferably without exposing ourselves as human. Right?"

The Doctor double took. His lips went into a straight line, face mildly outraged at being one-upped for a brief moment before sinking into an expression of defeat. "Alrighty then." Without another word, he flung open the TARDIS door. Vi and Olivia were unleashed upon a brand new world.

They wandered the streets of Haïlon, the planet's capital city, exploring markets and parks and exchanging warm words with the locals. There didn't appear to be many (or well, any) luveringer peoples about. Everywhere the trio looked were masses upon masses of kerryangers - Olivia's disguise. Olivia began to worry about the odd looks being tossed in their direction. At first she just ignored it and focused on the crazy beautiful landscape.

The entire city appeared to be a combination of prehistoric nature and futuristic architecture. Sapphire river streams flowed through the ground like road systems: every stream was a lane carrying floating silver platforms across at the speed of a car. Only one person could stand per platform with protective railing around the waist as they whizzed on down. The pavements were all glassy, like smoothed-over crystal. Lean, tall trees lined just about every walkway and stream. But then there were the buildings; cylindrical and twice the height of the trees, some stretching so high they couldn't even see the top. Most of the buildings were made out of the same crystal substance as the pavement.

Every five seconds Olivia would see something new and burst out in astonished laughter. "Incredible! Vi, look - look! God, it's incredible!"

Whenever the Doctor worried Vi would respond, he held up a finger to silence her. "Ah-ah-ah - no mouth remember?"

"How do the moon people communicate?" Olivia wondered, bending down to examine a glowing amber flower at the base of a tree.

"Movement," the Doctor responded. He smacked her hand away from the plant. "No touching the poisonous plants please!"

Smirking behind her mask, Vi leaned in close to Olivia's ear and murmured, "Naughty girl."

"Like sign language?" asked Olivia, nudging her girlfriend.

"Mmmm, not quite. More like dancing."

Olivia stopped. "A language of dance. No way."

The moon dancers, Vi realized.

The Doctor grinned. "Way."

They got another hour of exploration in before it was time for some food and a short break. Olivia ordered the first thing on the menu without any clue of what it was, smiled at the waiter, and sat down at a table in the back of the café with Vi and the Doctor. All around them, other kerryangers (still not a luveringer in sight) were casting rather unfriendly glances behind them. Vi returned the glares with an matching venom, Olivia was preoccupied trying to decipher what 'melted gam liver' was, and the Doctor was busy providing a highly ambiguous explanation.

At leat half an hour later when their food still hadn't arrived, the waiter Olivia spoke to earlier approached the table with a stern look on his face.

"I have been ordered to escort you out," he said.

"Escort us out?" Olivia asked. "Out where?"

He nodded in Vi's direction. "Their kind is not welcome here."

Vi raised her eyebrows like, excuse me?

Olivia just blinked, stunned and disbelieving. "You're a racist."

The waiter said nothing.

The Doctor laughed. "A racist? On planet Gåel? Don't be ridiculous! The last time I was here, the kerryangers and luveringers lived in harmony! Worked together, laughed together, danced together! Where's all that gone?"

The waiter clenched his jaw. "You remember a Gåel of the past."

"How far past?"

"Five hundred years, easily."

"Oh." The Doctor blanched. "Dear. Oh…dear."

"Doctor…" Olivia growled.

"I did think the place looked a little different," he said, and straightened his bowtie with a sheepish blush in his cheeks. "Oops."

Sixty seconds later, having gotten thrown out of the ultra-racist café, it suddenly became very clear to the trio why everyone had been shooting them such dirty looks.

"Unbelievable," Olivia shook her head angrily on their walk back to the TARDIS, "we travel to place thousands of light years away from Earth….and they've still got racism."

"Different planet, same song," Vi said.

"Oi," the Doctor reminded her, "no mou -"

"At this point, I think they'd like her better if she were human," muttered Olivia.

"Olivia," Vi sighed, "baby, it's okay. Still got to see a brand new planet, didn't we?"

Reluctantly, Olivia nodded.

"Hey." Vi took Olivia's hand and squeezed as they walked along. The TARDIS was in their sights. "Next time, we'll go somewhere even better. Planet of the puppies. Won't we Doctor?"

"Planet of the puppies," the Doctor nodded, draping an arm around Olivia's shoulder. He planted a friendly kiss on her hair. "That's right."

The trio had almost reached the TARDIS when Vi felt something hard hit her back. She flinched, and turned around to see three kerryanger males with a handful of pebbles in their hands each, glaring pokers into her back. Before Vi could stop them, the tallest one chucked a pebble that hit Olivia square on the back of the head.

She spun around. "Ouch!"

"You disgrace us!" he spat. "Affiliating with an insuperior species! Grasping their flesh in your own."

"Give me a reason," Olivia shot back, "just one thing that makes her so insuperior, and I'll let go."

Not surprisingly, the idiot kerryanger males didn't have a response to that one.

Without warning, Vi ripped off her purple mask to reveal her very human mouth. She grinned. "Thought not," gave her girlfriend a great big kiss on the lips, and slipped into the TARDIS. She was followed closely by Olivia and then the Doctor, who managed to slam the door closed just as an angry mob pounced.

"Up, up and away!" the Doctor laughed, throwing a couple levers.

The TARDIS jolted and the three of them got tossed against the railing, laughing and cheering.

"The song may sound the same," the Doctor cried, "but we are bloody brilliant!"

And as that blue police box twirled through outer space, the Doctor taught his two brilliant companions the language of the moon dancers.