We stop. I have no idea why we've stopped, but we've stopped somewhere, so I head down to the console room to see what's wrong.
Nothing, apparently. Just that we've stopped. River's standing with her fingers still falling off the handbrake, so I can only presume that's why we've stopped. But I didn't say we could stop. "Why have we stopped?"
"Mummy just wants a few things from home," River purrs, and looks up all sweet and innocent like that's going to change anything. Amy, who apparently wasn't even thinking of excusing herself from company, is halfway to the door. Mr Pond is playing poker for matchsticks with the Little Ghost, and losing. Chaos. Utter chaos. It's a barnyard I'm running, not a Tardis, they're worse than chickens.
"You could have asked."
"Would you have said no?" Amy says. And it's such a dangerous question, such a potential minefield, that I don't dare venture beyond a one word answer.
"Well, no, but-" Three words. Whatever. Only one was useful.
Amy and River turn to each other, and nod, and gesture out with open hands, saying, 'There you go then' to each other and not a word to me, and Pond puts her hand on the door handle. At that moment, there is a knock at the door. Her hand jumps back as though the brass were red hot. "Doctor, we're in my back garden, who would be knocking at the door?"
Aha, I feel like saying, now that you don't know what to think, my dear Pond, now, it is now that you come running back to me. I don't say that, though. I say, with not a little trepidation, "What date is it? I mean Earth-date, here, where we are, what's the date?"
"It's still 2011, sweetie," River says. And now, now, aha, she is concerned about me, now that I stand before her hurt and fearful.
"Be specific."
She checks the monitor, "November 27th."
"Pond, do not open that door! River, get us going again, come back tomorrow, or yesterday, or any day that isn't the twenty-seventh of something. Or better, Amy, what was it you wanted? I'm sure there's a place in the universe where they make it better, we'll get you shiny new... whatever, just not on the twenty-seventh of any given anything."
I have said enough now. And they have looked upon it and known that they've done wrong and they will respect what I have told them. They're not bad girls, the wife and mother-in-law, they're really not. They don't mean to ruin things and do terrible horrible wrongs and land Tardises on the twenty-seventh. The one thing they absolutely won't do is look at each other, and both break into long, slow, lopsided smiles in perfect unison.
They won't do that.
Pond's hand won't go to that door handle again, oh no. Not after what I told them.
River won't question me, won't slyly grin, "Why?" like I didn't just make it perfectly clear that the reason is I do not want to be here on the twenty-seventh.
Rory, hanging his head as the Little Ghost takes matchsticks one by one to her side of the table, won't chirp up out of nowhere, out of the obscure grey fog of his prior uninvolvement, "But it's only the postman."
"How did you know that?" Pond and River say it with interest. I cannot keep my suspicion out of my voice.
"Postman always knocks like that. Doctor, the Ghost is cheating."
"She's not, she has no concept of it, and you only taught her the rules a half-hour ago." That, I say very quickly. I feel I must, so that there will be no misunderstanding, but the thing is, in saying it, I lose time. Time that could be better spent physically restraining Amy Pond away from the door. I am about to begin on that, but the postman knocks again. Calls through with his stupid, useless voice and tongue and lips and teeth, "Hell-oo?"
"Yeah," says Amy. "That's the voice of our postman."
Her hand is on the door. Fingers flexing. She is leaning, ready. We square up in perfect standoff, and her eyes glitter at me like the very devil's. "Don't do it, Amy."
And she pulls. The postman stands there, shifting the weight of his bag on his shoulder. But he has trouble, because his arms are full, overflowing, with letters of all shapes and sizes and in all sorts of envelopes.
"I've got post for... The Doctor?"
I sigh. "Yeah, just dump it anywhere..."
"You get post?" River asks, bemused.
"Only on the twenty-seventh, but yes and you," this addressed to the postman, who is peering in around the Tardis all big-eyed and childlike and about to tell me it's bigger on the inside as if I don't already know, "Clear off!"
There's a heap of it now, all over the plaque. Amy kicks some of it away to get the door closed.
"Who do you get post from?" River goes on, and as I charge down to the foot of this stationery mountain (not stationary, mind, all mountains are stationary. Well... on Earth) she falls into step behind me.
"Everybody! All the mad, grasping people who think they have some kind of claim. You think Earth debt is bad, you need to start thinking universally, and if you think compensation culture is bad here, you have seen no more than the outside electron shell of the uppermost atom upon the tip of the iceberg and me, always me, all for me!"
"So... So the twenty-seventh," Pond tries slowly, "is your bill day?"
"Which is why I skip it! It's all completely erroneous, you know..."
I am about to suggest that they help me sweep this all into a nice neat pile which can then be pushed into a supernova. Amy, I think, sees the suggestion coming, and darts down to the floor. She has one in her hand and open before can so much as speak. "Invoice for one statue, twenty-feet in height, designed to client specifications, to be placed on Correl. ...Doctor, are those zeroes? Please tell me space money is counted in, like, hundredths of pennies."
River, meanwhile, begins to laugh, low and cruel, and poking me in the ribs. "I never knew you ordered that yourself! You're so vain..."
"River, I haven't even fought that war yet!
"So vain." And seeing the fun in Amy's game, she too crouches down and slits one with her thumbnail. "A fine! For the deletion of a location called the Cursed Place, from the Galatic Ordnance Survey starmap."
"I'm not paying that. Nobody will miss it and no one's ever going there again."
Amy, meanwhile, has gone for a fat white envelope from BT. "This can't be a phonebill, I need two hands to hold it."
"Well, stop reversing the charges then!"
We could argue about that. I've actually been meaning to have that argument with the Ponds for a while, but seeing as I never land on the twenty-seventh of anything, it's never been a problem. I've never been able to go to any of Mozart's birthday parties, but I've never gotten any phonebills. We could argue, but River clears her throat.
"When were you at Kalderash Beach, my love?" Mentally, I beg Rory to say 'Stag Night', and solve everything. That's what Stag Nights are for, isn't it? Wild resorts and brightly coloured alcohol and barely dressed women. I don't remembering being at Kalderash Beach at all, lately, but that wouldn't be unusual for the place. But Rory says nothing, labouring an Ace-Eight that's never going to get him anywhere. So I snatch the letter from her, looking for an alternate explanation. "They're suing you for damages," River tells me. "And a couple of the girls are getting involved in a class-action suit against-"
"Against Scone," I say, and point out to her where it is on the paper. "They've just sent it to me because they don't have an address for him. River, write back to that one, tell them the pastry in question is mouldy, rotted and therefore very much deceased, and I know nothing of his legacy." Then, to myself, "Naughty Scone. Never thought he had it in him..."
River and Pond are starting to exchange glances again. I understand the bills I get must look odd to an outsider, but it's all really very simple. The Hindu religion would call it karma.
Pond gets distracted form worrying about me by something more worrying altogether. From out of the heap, she snatches a grubby manila envelope. "Hold on... Rory, this is your writing." What she says comes only moments after a low groan and a clatter of matchsticks, so he's free to come and see.
"I never wrote a letter. The Doctor's standing here, if I had something to tell him I'd just tell h- Oh, that is my writing."
It's the bill for the hotel room I wrote into his mind. Also for the damage to the Favourite Car that was borrowed-not-returned during that particular caper. These are things of which Rory himself has no recollection, the program that they were originally part of having been almost entirely collapsed. Amy understands, though. She was there. "But... but that was, like, a dream, it wasn't real."
They've missed the point entirely, Amy and River. Rory isn't even looking in the right direction.
Howard Hawks has sent me one, claiming back the cost of an Italian glass coffee table, which I'm not paying for because I got punched through it and if he wants to charge anyone he can bloody well charge Bogart. There's one in Amy's handwriting, complaining about the destruction of her last three attempts to grow a herb garden. There's a three page itemized docket from Governor Bracewell for damages incurred, chaos caused, riots stirred and the cost of suppressing them, and the upkeep of the three-dozen or so Silents he is now carrying.
There is one in a deep blue envelope that I make a point of at least checking.
"I was hurt," it says. "I know you fixed me, but I don't think you're sorry. Lots of love, Sexy."
Amy has an envelope in her hand, about to open it. I snatch it away, too fast and rude about it, but I know what it is. And I don't want her to see. It's the logo I recognize. Almost the logo of a very famous company, altered a little. 'Friend-U-Store', they're called, or would be called, if they were real. That's a cumulative bill. That's run up a while.
You can't live as long as I have and not run up a few debts. Not in monetary terms, of course. I wish. That would be easier. When it's money, you can pay it off. Even if you can't, you just go bankrupt, it's not the end of the world. No, the twenty-seventh brings round much worse bills. You never run out of guilt, you see. That's how you know you're turning into a monster.
I have a wheelbarrow, somewhere. The sooner I can get these into a fire, the better.