CHAPTER TEN
The time-traveller's arrival at Cormelle had been heralded by the enormous nuclear fireball that erupted over the skies of Northcoping. The explosion was large enough and near enough to shake windowframes in dwellings at the nearer edge of the polity.
Thus, the TARDIS's descent onto a heliport pad didn't surprise the airport staff on duty, even if they had been utterly baffled by the radar returns, which alternated between an approaching mass equivalent to that of a small planetoid, and a one-man aircraft.
Both traveller's behaved differently when they departed from the ship. Martha strode around the big blue box, failing to find any trace of either impact or damage. The Doctor stood and looked around at the polity of Cormelle, recalling the very basic version he'd seen five hundred years and two bodies ago.
'Will you look at this,' he murmured, which Martha took as an instruction. 'No, sorry, I was just remembering my first visit here.'
'Don't tell me – "I remember when this was all fields"?' quoted the young woman, impishly.
'Fields, yes. Fields covered with spaceships and camps and robot equipment. Bounded by forests, too.'
If forests still existed beyond the city, it was impossible to see them thanks to the array of buildings that stood on all sides. Big, small, stone, tall, metal, plastic, every variety existed.
Currently, the most relevant building was the Air Control Terminal, from where a small electric three-wheeler came trundling over the hardstand towards them.
'Will they welcome us or shoot us?' wondered Martha aloud.
'They knew we were coming,' and the Doctor nodded southwards, where an ascending column of fire and smoke stood over the forests.
First man out of the small car wore a dark blue uniform with red braid. His colleagues had similar uniforms with yellow braiding, and holstered sidearms, too.
'Are you mad!' exclaimed Red Braid. 'Flying in over Northcoping!'
Shaking his head in bemusement, he handed a plastic stick to each of the travellers, careful to stay at arm's length while he did so.
'Disease detector?' guessed Martha. Red Braid nodded.
'Hold in your hand until I say let go. Really, you were asking for it, you know. I didn't realise the Norties still had nukes and you were lucky their guidance systems must be rubbished by now. Poor mad dastards. Thanks be to the Lords above that the prevailing winds are away from us, eh? Okay, let go and show me. Fine. No communicable diseases.'
Standing to attention, he saluted them both.
'Welcome to Cormelle polity. If you will follow me I'll lead you to the Refugee Processing Centre.'
A stern glance from the Doctor persuaded Martha not to protest at being categorised so.
The grandly-named Refugee Processing Centre turned out to be a big set of concrete sheds, with decontamination showers, changing cubicles, medical rooms and a small triage morgue. Both travellers had to surrender their uniforms for white boilersuits on the promise that the originals would be returned once cleansed of any contamination, radiation or contagion.
'Look after those trainers!' warned the Doctor. 'Chuck Converse. Priceless out here!'
Mister Red Braid apologised for being slightly-tongue tied at their arrival.
'It's years since we had anyone arrive in an aircraft. Oh, we use them ourselves but we know where to avoid. Really, you were extremely lucky.'
He seemed almost unhappy that they'd not been vapourised. He was also puzzled at their lack of any trace of passage to Cormelle.
'Can you please fill out these forms?'
Two of the intelligent plastic sheets familiar from the Red Star hospital were presented to them. After a minute of scrawling the official read back their entries, pausing to look upwards at the Doctor with a fierce glare.
'So you claim to be "The Doctor", eh?'
'Yup!' announced the Time Lord, rocking back on his heels.
The two silent escorts looked equally grim. Martha began to worry that an arrest was imminent. Instead, the official told them to follow him. He led the way across a hectare of grassed ground, past the far end of the helipad runway and beyond a large semi-cylindrical building with "Hospital" signs around it.
Beyond the yellow-striped emergency zone around the helipad runway, a small stone column that came to waist-height stood alone on a brick plinth. It didn't appear to have any specific function, and stood distant from the much larger structures on all sides.
'Wow – is that the old Number Sixteen?' asked the Doctor, shading his eyes from the twin suns and pointing at a rusty, stained, algae-greened tower surmounted by a copper-blue minaret, towering over an inspection pit. 'The original Power Tower?'
Expressions of utter astonishment crossed the faces of their escorts.
'How did you know that?' asked Red Braid. 'That building is five hundred years old! Oh, never mind. Get on with you.'
A hundred metres on brought them to the plinth. Made of chiselled stone, it bore a bright and shiny brass plaque that looked brand new.
"Dedicated to the memory of Roger Cormelle. Pioneer, visionary and founder of this settlement. We take his name in remembrance for this first permanent township of the first polity," read the Doctor.
'Look on the other side,' growled Red Braid. Martha walked round, since her companion was standing in contemplation, staring at the plaque.
There was another, smaller plaque on the opposite face of the column.
"Dedicated to The Doctor and Dorothy. True friends in a time of peril". Er – and there's an etching of an umbrella.'
The Doctor abruptly came out of his silent study.
' "Dorothy"?' he announced. 'It should read "Ace"! She'll hate that!'
'Read the date!' snapped Red Braid.
There was no need. It was embossed in silver plate. "2507".
'Four hundred and sixty seven years ago. So, whoever you are, you are not The Doctor,' finished the official, triumphantly.
'Time machine. Different body. Still The Doctor. Knew Roger Cormelle first time around. Next question.'
Martha laughed out loud at the sheer incomprehension and incredulity displayed by the three escorts.
'That's Time Lord wit!' she warned them. 'Long in the tooth, sharp in the bite.'
'A blue box!' shouted one escort at the other two. 'A big blue box with POLICE written on it.'
'A stranger with a nubile female as accoutrement.'
Red Braid looked unsure. He looked back at the TARDIS, which remained a big blue box with POLICE written on it. He looked back at the man in front of him, wearing an air of amused contempt.
'I think we'll take you to see one of the Initiate,' he said quietly, with the manner of a man happily handing a hot potato to a third party.
Whoever or whatever the Initiate were, the Doctor was happy to see them. He drank in the surroundings, where busy people bustled about driving small electric trucks, or herded livestock. A significant number wore white boilersuits, clearly refugees. They acknowledged the party with cheery waves and greetings, happy to see fellow survivors who had made it to Cormelle.
A sanctuary, realised Martha. That's why people tried to get to Cormelle, because it hadn't collapsed into chaos and warfare.
Why hasn't this city-state collapsed into anarchy and death? wondered the Doctor. What kept it an oasis of sense?
'You seem to have escaped The Breakdown and subsequent Effect almost completely,' he commented breezily. 'No destruction, no fighting, no insanity.'
Red Braid turned to look at him with a nasty expression.
'Come this way,' he snapped, altering course to lead them south across the flagstone plaza and towards a podium under permanent stressed-steel awnings. This structure stood well out into the plaza, away from the much bigger buildings. As their party approached, Martha could see another plaque affixed to the front of the podium: IN REMEMBRANCE. More writing lay below the larger text, which only became legible when they were within a few metres of the awning.
Red Braid indicated the plaque, which Martha read aloud.
' "This memorial marker is erected upon the mass graves that served to bury 10,000 citizens of the Cormelle polity after The Breakdown." '
The angry customs official snorted dismissively at The Doctor and they resumed their original course.
From what they could see as they walked, the central landing site of five hundred years ago had been extensively landscaped, re-surfaced and built upon until the only vestige of the original landing was the battered hulk of Number Sixteen. They were led to a long, low building with a great scalloped hallway that housed hundreds of seats arranged in a semi-circle around a central podium.
'Town hall?' guessed the Doctor. He got a tut from Red Braid. 'City hall, then?'
'The Meeting Hall. Back when we still had a civilisation to communicate with, we used to meet and decide matters that affected the whole polity.'
'Big talking shop full of hot air,' grumbled one of the escorts.
'Since you dislike this building, you can be the one to go fetch some Initiates. Not just one, at least three,' ordered Red Braid. 'Go on with you, be quick.'
Whilst waiting, the curious Time Lord took a long look around the interior of the Meeting Hall. Lots of wood used in it's construction, clearly jungle timber had been plentiful and free. At a guess, those wall panels acted to amplify sound, and so did the ceiling. Drapes hung over the windows to cut down on the twinned sunlight during noon.
Martha, being less analytical, sat impatiently on a well-worn bench and waited for the Initiates.
She didn't have long to wait. The escort returned with four strangers, two middle-aged men and two women, one hearty, red-faced and smiling, the other thin-lipped, dour and thin.
'Well met, strangers,' chorused the foursome. 'Are you hungry or thirsty?' asked the jolly woman, sounding worried about their state.
'Not really. Are we under arrest?'
The Cormellettes looked surprised.
'Arrest?'
'Under arrest?'
'An armed escort implies arrest,' continued the Doctor. Red Braid frowned, the two escorts looked at each other and the four Initiates shrugged.
'Er – "armed"?' enquired one escort. With a start, he unsnapped the hip holster and drew out a device that looked like the offspring of a revolver and a petrol pump. 'Oh, I see! You thought this was a weapon!'
A chorus of guffaws went up. The Doctor narrowed his eyes, rocking to and from on his heels, not enjoying being the butt of a joke.
'High-speed pneumatic injector. In case you were carrying diseases,' explained the escort.
'Why were you walking behind us, then?' asked Martha. 'Like police.'
The other escort spoke.
'It's not every day you meet people who claim to be five hundred years old.'
'Hey!' exclaimed Martha. 'Watch who you call old!'
The Initiates looked between themselves in astonishment for the second time in a minute.
'Nine hundred, actually,' the Doctor sniffily informed them. The looks of astonishment remained as he explained who he was, who Martha was, and why they were present on Hargreave's Fall.
'This is – bizarre,' muttered one of the grey-haired men. 'It's common knowledge on the Fall that a person called "The Doctor" helped to get rid of IMC when the settlers landed on this very spot. So – you might be trying to cash in on that. Might you?'
The thin-lipped woman crossed her arms and cocked her head, non-verbal language that the Doctor interpreted as "I don't trust you".
'Let's go to the offices. More private and we have files that we can check.'
"Offices" described a barracks-like building which could have housed several hundred people. Originally, said the jolly woman ("Call me Grace"), it had indeed housed several hundred people: permanent accommodation for the settlers in lieu of the original tented encampments. Once the polity expanded outwards into cleared forest land, the workers moved out of the barracks to build individual hamlets and live there. A single barrack block had been kept to provide the Initiates with work space and offices.
They passed Number Sixteen again, closer this time, close enough to see the corroded surfaces, pitting, rusting and hung about with illegible signs.
'Bit unsafe, your atomic pile in a tin can,' remarked the Doctor.
'Tell me about it!' complained one of the men. 'Oh, I'm Marvon. Senior engineer. Normally I run the light industrial plant. That "Tin-can atomic pile" is impossible to dispose of.'
Without speaking, the Doctor raised an eyebrow.
'Not that we can't.'
Grace butted in.
'Nor should we! That building is the only remaining one from the original landing. It's historical.'
'It's a liability,' said Marvon. 'We've already had to cap it. In a decade or two it'll fall apart unless we dispose of it, and it's so hot inside you'd be dead in thirty minutes were you daft enough to climb in.'
' "Hot" in the sense of radioactive,' added the other man.
Whilst walking they dodged an electric cart towing a train of wheeled cages, each full of sheep. The driver, another white-boiler suit wearer, gave them a cheery wave.
'Glad you made it!' he called over his shoulder and out of the cab.
The Offices were now without most of their internal walls, featuring instead desks and dated, well-used computer systems with nameplates attached.
Lack of importation and limited specie for trade, guessed the Doctor of the IT on view. Another symptom of The Breakdown.
"NORA" stated the nameplate on the desk they were led to.
'Sit down,' ordered the thin, unsmiling Nora. Privately, she considered these two to be con-merchants, out to somehow squeeze a profit from both the Breakdown Effect and Cormelle if they possibly could. Quite how, she couldn't say. Choosing to pose as a character from the colonist's earliest history was clever; claiming that he travelled time was either outstandingly sly or spectacularly bad.
Yet, when she came to check the ancient files kept in an air-conditioned safe, they did include blurry pictures of a blue police box. Only a couple, then many more three-dimensional photos of the empty jungle border where the artefact had stood, taken from all angles. Fond of jungle photography, her ancestors.
For the original Doctor, with companion, she had more to go on. One of the treasured antique photograph albums bore the title "Landing and Early Days" and it contained what she remembered seeing many years ago. At the front of the album, one of those people present in a group photograph aboard the long, long defunct "Headquarters" had taken shots of both Doctor and Dorothy. That particular Doctor had been small, wearing a curious beige suit that featured red question-mark motifs, a multi-coloured waistcoat plus an umbrella that had a question-mark handle. Dorothy wore a skirt and leggings and a battered jacket, and carried a primitive sonic generator.
Nora swung the big, battered album around on her desktop and showed the incriminating photograph to the current claimant, who whipped a pair of spectacles onto his nose and peered closely.
Martha giggled at the picture.
'Did you lose a bet?' she asked, to a cool look from the Time Lord.
'Different body, different personality. Sorry, Nora, your point was?'
'To prove what I already knew - you look nothing like him!'
'Of course I don't. I already told you, that was me two bodies ago. Or would it be three?' Leaning forward, he tapped the group photo picture. 'That person there, the tall one, that was Dean. Very helpful, Dean. He took a trip with us to help sort out IMC.'
Nora jumped in her chair, then flipped forward several pages to a laminated sheet of typing . An inelegant scrawl at the bottom of the page might have been interpreted as "Dean". She knew the page well; it had been one of the most memorable articles she had ever read, describing briefly how Dean Lundy, a close associate of the legendary Roger Cormelle, took a trip in an incredible machine able to change shape and move in both time and space. He had to write the experience down, he said, since it was so fantastic that he'd probably rationalise it away as an hallucination within days.
Having taken the lead in the examination, Nora felt like a punctured balloon. Could this man actually be the Doctor? With a shape-shifting machine to keep him company as he changed appearance himself.
'I can prove who we are with this,' declared Martha, holding up a key. This spoilt the Doctor's planned denoument in five minutes time, by which all the Initiates would be champing at the bit to find out who he really was.
The young woman departed with Grace and the two men. It took twenty minutes for them to return when it ought to have taken ten, if that.
'It's him,' stated Marvon, without any pause or prevarication. Nora looked ashen and opened her mouth to speak before Grace interrupted.
'Don't even think of arguing. He really is the Doctor.' She looked at him. 'I'm so sorry we disbelieved you.'
Marvon sat heavily in a chair and remained silent. Even those not gifted with telepathy could see his mind struggling to accommodate the concept of an object being dimensionally transcendental.
The second man, hitherto un-named, spoke up.
'We were also rather graceless at your intent to try and help analyse the Breakdown. I wish you all the best.'
Beaming with all the manic intensity he could muster, the Doctor erupted upwards from his chair.
'No harm done! I take it we're free to roam around?'
Nora made a wordless gesture towards the door, signifying that they were free to roam.
'No escort?' asked Martha, a trifle acidly, getting her own back for being under suspicion.
Grace shook her head, with all the weariness of a woman who had been witness to something larger than life.
'No, dear. You just have a wander. If you need anything, ask someone to contact an Initiate and we'll sort it out.'
The Doctor offered his arm to Martha, who took it. Together they almost waltzed out of the tired Office building.
Once the door closed behind the two recent arrivals, Marvon walked over to check that they had gone and were out of earshot.
'Safely gone.'
Nora glared at Grace.
'Is that wise, inviting them to nosey around?'
Slumped in her chair, Grace didn't answer at first.
'I said - '
'I heard you, I heard you. Wise? We could hardly forbid him, could we? News that "The Doctor" has come back to Hargreaves Fall will be over the entire polity by nightfall. Any restrictions would make us look guilty straight away to the non-Initiates. Let me remind you we are still a minority.'
'Let them look. They'll not find anything,' said Marvon with assurance.
'Why should they suspect anything needs finding, after all?' finished the other man. 'Who could suspect Cormelle of anything?'
In an unconscious gesture that many Initiates had, Nora rubbed the back of her neck, up and down, over the old scar tissue.
'We need to make a report out for everyone involved. And we don't want any Breakdown while this Doctor is on the prowl.'
Marvon shrugged.
'Let's pray to the Lords above that the Norties stay quiet, then. Throwing nuclear warheads is a big step backwards and I'd rather not rely on good wishes to protect us.'
The Doctor casually looked backwards, and determined that they were out of earshot of the Offices. For the moment there were no passing herds of animals or busy little electric vehicles.
'Well, something is rotten in the state of Denmark,' he remarked to Martha in a low voice.
'There is?'
'Oh, definitely. Quite what Cormelle has to do with The Breakdown is beyond me at the moment, but they're definitely guilty. Hands-in-the-cookie-jar guilty.'
For a mad moment Martha remembered the aphorism that Conan Doyle had created for Sherlock Holmes: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The Doctor seemed to have arrived at a truth and was looking to find impossible things to eliminate.
'I – how do you work that out?' she asked, genuinely curious.
'I'm a Time Lord. I travel time. I have a time-travelling spaceship. I travelled from their past into their future, a trip of five hundred years. They acknowledged all this, even Nora, who didn't see the TARDIS interior.'
One corner of the young woman's lip curved upwards as she recalled the blustering incredulity of the Initiates when they looked inside the TARDIS after she opened the external doors.
'Right, right: you travel time. Okay, I think we've established that point.'
The Doctor stopped and stared at her.
'Don't get cocky, Martha Jones. This polity is, in ways undetermined as yet, responsible for killing fifty million people and you and I are only two more potential victims if we don't tread carefully.'
Feeling like she had when (very occasionally) in the presence of her Principal, Martha chewed her lip and examined the gravelled ground at her feet. Entirely unexpectedly, a long, strong arm came round her shoulders and hugged her.
'I'm not yarking at you, Martha. I'd never forgive myself if my actions got you into mortal peril, and you came here because of me. Be careful, is what I'm saying. Well, actually it wasn't what I was saying but it is now. You're important. You matter.'
A lightness akin to butterflies in her cardiac system came over Martha as the Time Lord raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.
'Um. Right. Okay,' she murmured. Damn! Tongue-tied like a bashful schoolgirl, she thought. "Matter" in a general sense or "matter" closer to the heart? 'What, ah, makes you so sure about this lot being the guilty party?' she managed.
'Think back about your recent history. If a time-travelling stranger appeared in your midst, on the steps of Saint Martin in the Fields, what would you ask them?'
Unworthy replies about Lottery numbers or Oscar winners were banished from Martha's tongue.
'Stop – stop the Ghost Army, I suppose. The Cybermen, I mean, when they invaded. Stop them killing my cousin. Or the Sycorax, you could stop them. Heck, you could go back and stop Nine-Eleven, or the Gulf War, or SARS, or - '
'Correctamundo,' muttered the Doctor. 'Not that our hypothetical time-traveller necessarily would do any of those things, but it's human nature to ask. These "Initiates" didn't show the slightest interest in changing the past for the better.'
What might be described as a nasty, creeping, horripilation came over Martha. The oh-so-nice people here in Cormelle, all happy to see more new arrivals wearing white boilersuits, were responsible for a planet-wide catastrophe?
'There's more. Nowhere in our travels did we encounter any "hoppers".' Ace, five hundred years back, had been quite taken with the little creatures, which had an electrical encephalography similar to humans and consequently meant they were fearless and friendly with homo sapiens. That they seemed to be extinct hinted that the Doctor's dark imaginings were not groundless; anything affecting humans might also have affected the innocuous little creatures.
'I suggest we split up and cover more ground that way, Doctor. Meet back at the TARDIS when the first sun goes down.'
Rubbing his chin, the Doctor nodded.
'Remember to be careful. I have a slight degree of protection thanks to my history, but you don't.'
Contrary to the dark secrets the Doctor imagined the entire polity to be hiding, he found the locals helpful and friendly. There were lots of them, too; herding cattle and giant chickens, or driving little electric tractors towing harvested crops or lumber, or sitting shotgun on big, battered robotic landscaping plant – surely the descendants of the original automatic equipment landed five hundred years ago. One or two black-uniforms could be seen, patrolling paramilitaries who seemed to be police and army combined, albeit with an approachable air.
'Can we help?' asked one partner of such a pair.
'Are you really the Doctor?' asked the other.
'Yes and yes. First question, is there any need for people like yourselves? I notice you don't carry weapons.'
'Don't need them for police work. Don't need them for defence, either.'
'Not since the force barrier went up, at least.'
The Doctor stretched up to his full height on tiptoes, concealing his surprise at the description of a "force barrier". Did they mean a force-field? That would be an apatanachronism – an artefact or technology significantly in advance of it's normal timeline. No, not possible, the TARDIS had swept into and onto the helipad without so much as a whisper of obstruction.
'So people behave well in Cormelle?'
One of the police snorted.
'Course they do! The only punishment is being banished beyond the force barrier and nobody is stupid enough to want to suffer that, what with the brain-rot being out there.'
Brain-rot? Mused the Doctor. Is that what they believed? Before he could ask another question to clarify what the police, and by implication everyone in Cormelle also, believed, a thin, piping ullulation began to sound from the roof of a nearby light factory. Seconds later it was joined by another siren, then another, and another , and more, until a polyphonic chorus of sirens sounded from nearly every rooftop.
'Uh-oh. Not good,' snapped one of the police, looking at his watch. His partner went pale. Passers-by stopped dead and looked at each other in fear and alarm.