Chapter 4 – Reacting Badly
Rose held her newborn son in her arms and grinned at him.
"Oh my, he's got my old ears!" her husband gasped in horror and Rose laughed, her belly still a little sore from childbirth.
"Nonsense, he's gorgeous!" she protested.
"Hello, Jamie," the Doctor crooned at his son. "You are gorgeous, even with the ears," he assured him. "James Alistair Tyler, Jamesalstaratilar, welcome to the universe." He scrubbed at his hair with his hand. "A bit awkward to turn into a Gallifreyan name, but I think we did all right."
Inside of Rose's head, Malla nodded. The elder Time Lady's own ideas were more stringent than hers were, but Malla approved of the melding of cultures implied in it. Sometimes Rose wondered if she was becoming more like Malla, or Malla was becoming more like herself. Thinking about it, it was perhaps inevitable that it would be a little bit of both. Malla's lack of concern and gentle amusement relaxed her. They were both who they were and that was that.
The exchange between them was superficial, really, at their core they were who they had always been.
"Two immensely stubborn women," Malla teased and Rose grinned.
"Too true," she murmured.
"Glad you agree," her husband informed her and she smiled up at him.
"Always, Doctor," she assured him and he laughed.
"Now, that is whatever Susan gave you for the pain talking!"
The Doctor carried his son out to meet the rest of the family and Donna quickly snatched the boy away from him, cooing and trilling in joy. Jenny glanced at her new brother in disinterest. She was far more intrigued by the equipment in Susan's lab.
"Touch that and you will live just long enough to regret it," Susan glared at her and Jenny studied her niece, trying to determine the threat level. Something in Susan's expression must have been convincing, because Jenny carefully backed away from the clone vats with a suddenly angelic expression.
"How did you do that?" the Doctor asked his granddaughter in bemusement.
"That's twenty-five children whose lives could be damaged by that child's meddling. This is an area where I do not fool around," she informed him with a fierce glare and he recalled suddenly that she was no longer the sweet, meek child she once had been, and nodded rather spastically.
"Right." He noted Koschei grinning at him from where he was standing, with a little blonde girl by his side, and simply shrugged. Live and learn, as they said, and he'd done a great deal of both.
Susan sat quietly at the briefing listening to the new security measures being taken by UNIT and Torchwood. Bomb sniffing dogs were being introduced at all the security points and Grandfather had built some new scanners for them to widen the parameters of their searches without being intrusive to the employees. It was a constant balancing act between safety and privacy. How to make sure everyone was safe without making them too uncomfortable about the process. Susan recalled many such meetings back on Gallifrey, during the War. Humans, however, were far more practical than Time Lords and were far more willing to alter habit for the sake of safety. Maybe it was the shorter lives and lack of regenerative abilities, but they weren't as cavalier about their physical safety. Grandfather glanced at her and she knew his mind was running along the same paths. They had both sat in on these sorts of meetings, after all.
"Susan, you say that the cortex bombs were rather sophisticated?" Kate asked and she nodded.
"Your people are highly inventive, so I wouldn't put it past one of you to come up with something amazing, but even so…," she trailed off and looked at her husband.
"It's a leap of at least two hundred years of technological advancement, even for your people. It was probably manufactured here on Earth, all the materials can be readily obtained on your planet, but the sophistication of the design makes me suspicious," he broke in with a frown. "I have to suspect that there is alien involvement here still, even with the Draconians on lockdown."
"Could they have infiltrated agents onto Earth?" Col. Mace asked, his face twisted with his unhappiness at the thought.
"We did find that Mesomorph in Egypt and Torchwood has long been aware of several other aliens hanging about on Earth, who knows which of them might not like our arrival very much," Grandfather pointed out and there were frowns and nods all around the table.
"A thought which had occurred to me before," Kate sighed out. "I was just hoping that I was being paranoid."
"Well, being a trifle paranoid comes with the job, I hear," Grandfather reminded her and they all laughed, but Susan felt as though the laughter was rather hollow sounding.
"I don't want to persecute aliens who have been peacefully living here, with no intention of harming us, but I do need to find out who manufactured those bombs," Kate groaned and they all nodded. Col. Mace, Susan noted, seemed less unhappy about persecuting aliens, but then he'd lost a personal friend in the first terrorist attack and she knew that was affecting his outlook. To be sure, her own outlook towards them was pretty grim. Her mind kept wandering back to the dead babies and that was not a thought conducive to mercy.
"The materials were all acquired on Earth," Koschei reminded them. "There will be ways of tracing their purchase." There were nods all around and the conversation turned back to security and prevention. Susan could feel Col. Mace's intense unhappiness though, in the way his brows beetled and his mouth stayed in a hard line throughout.
As they were all leaving, Susan paused to speak with Kate, out of earshot of the others.
"Col. Mace is a good man and a good soldier, but every man has his breaking point, Kate," she murmured and the other woman's head came up sharply. Kate studied her for a long moment before nodding slowly.
"I'll watch over him," she promised finally and with a sigh of relief, Susan nodded and left for the Trans Mat. She had seen too many good men pushed to the point where they did bad things to not recognize the signs. He really was a good man though, a few words from Kate should turn him back around.
Martha and Rory were talking in low tones in the corner and Rory was looking troubled. Susan knew full well what they were discussing and therefore pretended that she neither saw nor heard them at all.
Martha said something and Rory frowned, and then nodded.
"Susan?" Martha asked softly and she looked up at the other doctor with her best pleasant smile firmly in place.
"Do you think that our families could be brought to live on Gallifrey? We're worried that they might be targets for the terrorists," she murmured, looking uncomfortable. "I mean, we all know that there is a waiting list and forms and all of that... but..." Susan looked into eyes both scared and hopeful and sighed.
"I'll talk to Grandfather," she answered and they both looked deeply relieved, as though everything was already solved. Susan bit her lip and went back to work. For all that she had absolute faith in her grandfather's ability to save the day, she had that from centuries of experience, she'd seen him face down Dalek fleets, and talk his way out of impossible situations.
It constantly amazed her that people who had known him for even a short time found themselves following him blindly, believing in him completely, with no reservations. She shook her head and finished constructing the allele, shifting the tiny genetic components of life to fit her conception of what she needed and wondered, as she always did, if she was doing the right thing.
She shrugged and then sighed out. As she'd said to the Guardian, she came from a stubborn bloodline. They were constitutionally unable to give up, even when they weren't sure whether that was the right choice or not.
Kate looked over at Alan and tried to find a way to say what she was thinking without setting him down the exact course she wanted him to avoid.
The Colonel was staring at the lists of aliens in residence on Earth with his lips twisted in anger.
"What about this one? Mysterious sort, avoids cameras like she can sense them," he suggested, pointing at a blurry image of a dark figure in a trench coat.
"Being shy or reclusive isn't a crime, Alan," she responded, trying for lightness. "This lot in Barkingside is more questionable to me." She flipped the photos of the trio of buxom blond women over to him.
"Hmm. Yes," he nodded.
"But, what we really need is evidence of wrongdoing," she pointed out. "We're not the Americans, after all," she teased and for a moment his scowl lifted and he nodded.
"No, we're not," he agreed, but his voice was nowhere near as firm as she would have liked.
Looking at him, she realized that Susan had been spot on. There was certainly something eating at Alan Mace.