Crossed Wires
by ErtheChilde
'You're trying to say that everything you do is reasonable, and everything I do is inhuman. Well, I'm afraid your judgement's at fault.'
General AN: I decided I didn't like the formatting and chapter lengths of Crossed Wires, so I spent the day fixing that. As of Chapter Three, I've added a little to certain chapters, and moved others to their own chapters. The only completely new material today is introduced in the last part of Chapter Eleven, but I highly suggest going back and rereading from the beginning because I have made certain chapters longer and added a few things in others.
SEVEN
Rose was literally thrown to the floor of the containment unit, but even as she hit the ground her brain coached her to move.
You never knew what another person might try to do when you were unconscious, and hadn't she learned that lesson well from Jimmy?
She dragged herself to her feet, casting a quick look around to ensure no one was actually behind her, and then pulled herself into the corner. It would be able to take on any challenge if she didn't have to watch her back.
A second scan of the room gave her a better sense of her fellow inmates; there were roughly two dozen people in the cell with her, most of whom looked human and a select few who looked alien. Upon further study, she realized that it wasn't just the large, brutish individuals she had first seen upon being brought into the cage. Across the room she could actually make two huddled groups with small children, all of whom looked completely shell-shocked.
The man closest to her, middle-aged and one of the taller and bulkier ones, with periwinkle blue skin gave her a bored once over. And then he opened his mouth and said in perfect English, 'I hope you're not a screamer. There's better things you can do with your tongue while it's still in your head.'
'What?' Rose gasped, too stunned by suddenly being able to understand someone for the first time in…hours? 'You speak English!'
'Oh, you're a smart one,' the man drawled. 'Though if you'd been really smart you wouldn't have come to Quiisojeana.'
'Is that where we are?' Rose asked, looking around at the prison setting.
His expression turned shrewd. 'You're new on this moon, aren't you?'
She shot him a cold look. 'Doesn't mean I'm so green I don't know where to aim a knee if I have to.'
'Oh, she's a fighter,' he chuckled. 'Won't do you much good here, luv, or didn't the official welcome show you that?'
'What the hell is going on here?' Rose demanded, refusing to be intimidated. 'How come I can understand you? They actually speak English way out here?'
He gave her a look like she was stupid. 'Obviously.'
'And I understand you but not them…cos of the language barrier, right? Means you can't speak anything else?' she went on, wanting to confirm what she had managed to glean from the Doctor's mimed explanations. 'What's the point of that, though?'
'They really don't like strangers here,' the man told her with a shrug. 'There's a warning for in the entire solar system that outsiders aren't allowed to come here. If you pass a certain radius, the tractor beam around the planet brings any vessel in its range to the surface. And if your first language happens to be something other than Quiisojeanan? Well, obviously you're a spy.'
'So that's why we're here? They think we're spies?'
'Pretty much,' he shrugged. He paused and then offered her a hand. 'Eugene Aiolfi.'
'Rose Tyler,' she replied, giving his hand a brief shake and looking around. 'How d'you know all this? If they speak their language and you speak English?'
'The barrier only went up about five years ago. Those of us who live down on Niho – that's this moon's primary – know the story, and there were people who spoke an alien mother tongue that lived here when the barrier went up. Most went into hiding, seeing as how getting off this moon is impossible.'
'And the Quiis…Quiso…the Q-people think everyone is spying on them? Even the kids? Is that why we're all in here, we're waiting to explain what we're doing here?'
Eugene gave her a pitying look. 'Not even close, I'm afraid. The only way you leave this cage is if you're ransomed or processed.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning the Quiisojeanans don't believe in our right to a trial, but they like to think they're benevolent captors all the same. You get twenty-four hours from when they first pick you up for someone on the outside to claim you – they post your details and everything. If someone knows you're missing, they also know to check here. If they identify you, then you'll be ransomed back.'
'And the Quiis…things are allowed to do this?'
'According to intergalactic statutes, the rules are clearly defined. Any ship travelling to and from Niho know the risks of getting to close to this moon,' Eugene explained. 'If you have the shit luck to end up here, the authorities leave you to it. Unless you're important. Some spoiled rich brat out joyriding a cruiser with their friends.'
Rose shook her head in disbelief. 'So what happens if no one pays the ransom for you?'
'You get processed.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning they cut out your tongue and send you off to work manual labor for the rest of your life.'
Rose felt like she had been punched in the stomach.
'Okay, well, that's not happening,' she decided, feeling quite strong about that.
Eugene looked amused. 'And what do you think you're going to do to stop it?'
'No idea,' Rose answered. 'Yet.'
She didn't know how she was supposed to come up with a plan, either. She decided to do what the Doctor did: get the as much information as possible in order to make a plan.
Talking of the Doctor, she thought grimly, and asked, 'Where do they keep other inmates? I'm looking for a friend of mine that I…lost track of.'
'If he's English-speaking, he'll end up here eventually,' Eugene answered. 'If not, they've probably got him in another section of the prison.'
Rose ran a frustrated hand through her hair. 'I don't get it…not liking foreigners I understand, but this is just stupid.'
'Quiisojeana has a history of alienating a lot of people,' Eugene agreed. 'They don't take too well to change, either. This little speck of rock's been ruled by the same dynasty for over three thousand years, but it only got real bad about thirty years ago.'
'Why, what happened?'
'The last imo didn't have a son.'
'The…what?'
'The imo. The ruler. According to Quiisojeanan law, only a son can inherit the seat of power around here. And the last one didn't have any sons, or any younger male relatives to pass the throne to – which is kind of amazing, considering the man had three hundred concubines in addition to his wife.'
'How's that possible?' Rose asked. She wasn't very good at math, but she knew that there was something to do with averages and probability that should have made that impossible.
'There was a plague around that time that wiped out a third of the moon's population, and it hit the male population pretty hard,' Eugene explained. 'His oldest surviving child was his daughter Nekane.'
'So she inherited.'
'Sort of. The imo had to do a lot of political and legal wrangling to manage even that little bit of change. In order to keep the dynasty going, his daughter could inherit the title, but he had to offer her in marriage to one of his more progressive rivals from the next most important family. Just to make sure there wouldn't be a civil war.'
'That's awful,' Rose said, the idea of an arranged marriage distasteful to her.
'Yeah, she wasn't too happy about it – but before you feel too sorry for her, you should know that Nekane's the most xenophobic members of the aristocracy,' Eugene cautioned. 'She considers anyone not Quiisojeanan to be little more than an animal. Which was a bit of a problem for her, seeing as how her husband's family was descended from a group of aliens that landed here a thousand years ago.'
'So she must have hated her husband,' Rose realized, and then something else occurred to her. 'Did they have children?'
'One child – I think that's all she could force herself to tolerate. And she disliked her son as much as her husband. They both knew it, too. When her husband died a few years later, he left a group of regents to raise the kid instead of her.'
'I take it that didn't happen?'
'They tried to keep her out of the running of things – but when she realized that, she staged a coup,' Eugene agreed. 'She got rid of the regents, took back control over her son and said she was ruling in his name until he got older – except she started calling herself ime Nakane, which sort of tipped people off that she intended to stay.'
'And no one stopped her?'
'Hard to stop the legal ruler,' Eugene shrugged. 'Especially when she deals with her problems by executing anyone who annoys her. There's a zero-tolerance policy in effect that means even first-time offenders are executed.'
'I can't believe no one's stood up to her!'
'Quiisojeanans are used to doing as their ruler says, and any new ideas about rights and reform don't circulate much,' he told her. 'She's made a point of rejecting any ideas introduced from anyone off-planet. When she first took power, she started cracking down on the foreigners that had come to live here during the reign of her ancestors. First their permission to mingle with the population, then being seen in public. Eventually that moved on to a ban against anyone from off-world landing here, and then…well, you're in here, aren't you?'
Rose was shaking her head, unable to believe it. 'What about her son? Isn't he old enough now to take over?'
'He's been dead for years,' Eugene answered. 'He spent most of his life in isolation because she wouldn't let him be seen in public. Figured someone might use him as a rallying point. I heard he died stuffing his face.'
'So there's no one to carry on the line now – isn't that against the law?'
'She's got a nephew – younger sister's kid – who she's saying she's ruling for right now. Except she had him placed under house arrest recently for supporting a group of Quiisojeanans that wanted reform. They actually tried to get rid of her and set him up as imo, but it didn't work out – in fact, that's when this language business happened.'
'Why?'
'The only reason the plot nearly succeeded was because the conspirators spoke a different language,' Eugene confided. 'Lucky for her, one of her guards spoke it too and figured out what was going on – but she lost one of her court favorites that night. The whole incident made her crack down on foreigners for good. She had her scientific advisors create a language field around the moon to make sure everyone was forced to talk in a way that would be understood by her.'
'Blimey,' Rose breathed. 'A bit overkill, that.'
'You think?' Eugene challenged. 'She also sent a warning to her nephew by having his wife executed.'
'His wife? Why?'
'She was in on the coup, you see? I think she figured if the nephew got in, she might see a share of power as well.'
'Is that when she started this…de-tonguing thing?'
'About then, yeah.'
She looked around at the ragtag bunch she had found herself with. Most of them looked like they should be out doing their groceries or something mundane, and while there was the large bunch she had seen upon being brought to the containment area – the biggest man there was well over seven feet – upon studying them now she saw the telltale signs of bruises and broken bones that suggested they had fought already – and lost.
Still, that was no excuse to just give up.
She gestured around. 'And you lot are just going to sit here and let that happen?'
'Not much else we can do. It's either that or death,' Eugene shrugged. 'Once they've processed you, they send you somewhere else. More chance to escape, in my view. Don't need a tongue to do that.'
'My friend would disagree with you there,' she told him. If anyone could escape and then put this entire system right, probably with just a few well-chosen words and a bit of luck, it was the Doctor.
'Besides, once I get out of here, there's places that can regrow body parts.'
'I'd rather not have them cut off in the first place,' she sighed, looking around her cellmates speculatively.
She had to think of something to say to them, some way of convincing them that sitting around waiting for their tongues to be cut out wasn't the way to do things.
She really wished the Doctor was there right then.
He'd know exactly what to say, she thought morosely.
