"A Whole New World"


Chapter 2

"You're Not Supposed To Be Here!"


Tegan and the Doctor stood off to one side of the club's dance floor and watched as their daughter danced enthusiastically with an awkward-looking Munch. As she moved her body with the music, she sang along with Christina Aguilera:

If you wanna be with me
I can make your wish come true
You gotta make a big impression
Gotta like what you do.

I'm a genie in a bottle, baby
You gotta rub me the right way, Honey
I'm a genie in bottle, baby
Come, come
Come on and let me out.


"You know, I'm not sure I like this song," the Doctor frowned, shouting to be heard above the music. Tegan laughed.
"Hmm, that's funny… you said the exact same thing when they played that Kylie Minogue song… the one that went, 'your lovin' is all I think about', or whatever it was."
"No, I didn't like that one either," he agreed readily.
"And the common denominator between the two is Angelina dancing with her boyfriend and singing along with the lyrics, right?" He gave her a look, but didn't reply. Tegan gave him a sidelong glance; his arms were crossed over his chest and he was rubbing his chin with one hand, frowning with disapproval. She briefly considered asking the DJ to play an old Divinyls song, the one that went I don't want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself just to yank his chain, but decided that she didn't want to ruin Angelina's party with his likely reaction to seeing his daughter and her boyfriend dancing to that. "Come on, Doctor," she shouted, putting a hand on his arm. "Let's go find ourselves a couple of drinks and a quiet place to sit."
"A quiet place to sit? In here? You must be joking!" he yelled over the music, but he allowed her to lead him to the bar. She shouted something at the bartender, who nodded and went off to make their drinks. "This is some party, isn't it?" Tegan yelled in the Doctor's ear. The Time Lord shrugged. "Look, is that Mick Jagger?"
"I certainly hope not!" he bellowed back. "I understand he's got some odd ideas about candy bars!" The bartender reappeared with two glasses of orange liquid.
"I ordered us both the same thing!" she shouted. "Seemed easier that way." He looked around for a moment and then pointed at a staircase that led up to the club's second floor. She nodded, collected their drinks, and followed him up the steps.
The second floor was a balcony overlooking the club's dance floor. It had thick Plexiglas walls that partially insulated it from the sound coming from below, reducing the deafening music to rather loud background noise. The Doctor sat down at a table with a view of the dance floor and motioned to Tegan.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" she said, wobbling along on her high heels and trying hard not to spill their drinks. When she reached the table and set down the drinks, the Doctor gave her a look.
"I thought you were meant to be an airhostess," he said dryly.
"I don't have this sort of footwear when I'm working, Doctor!" she said, sitting down across from him and holding up her foot so he could see her high heels. He took a sip of his drink and made a face.
"What's in this?" he asked as Tegan sipped her drink.
"Orange juice," she said with an innocent smile. The Doctor knew better.
"And…?"
"Vodka," she replied, taking another sip. "And I told him to make them doubles!"
"Hmm." The Doctor leaned back in his chair, studying her thoughtfully. "I wonder how many of those drinks it will take for you to tell me why you're treating me like nothing happened." Her eyebrows went up.
"Sorry?"
"Shall I remind you what you said when we last parted company?" he asked, his voice so quiet that she barely heard him over the muffled music from the dance floor below.
"I remember," she said, her cheeks suddenly coloring. She took a quick sip of her screwdriver. "I've decided to… let it slide," she finally said.
"Ah," he said, his face very carefully expressionless.
"For Angelina's sake," she added hastily, not meeting his eye.
"Of course," he agreed.
"It's not good for her to see us always at each others' throats," she explained.
"I agree." He watched her take a gulp of her drink, still refusing to meet his eyes. He sighed, recalling that apologies didn't come easily to the strong-willed Tegan. "Would it be easier if I go first?"
"What?"
"Tegan, I'm sorry I told you about Benny the way I did. For a Time Lord, my sense of timing is often appallingly poor. I didn't mean to hurt you, and I'm sorry." Her eyes widened.
"No, Doctor," she groaned, seeming to crumple under his direct blue gaze. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. I overreacted, and I didn't…" Unwilling to finish the thought, she had more of her drink instead.
"You didn't know how to tell me that you're sorry without feeling like you were losing face," he finished for her. She nodded silently, finding the fact that he understood her so well to be both quite unnerving and oddly comforting. He reached across the table and took her hand. "Shall we just say that neither of us was at our best that night and leave it at that?" She allowed herself a small laugh.
"That's quite an understatement," she told him with a rueful smile, meeting his gaze for the first time since they'd begun their conversation.
"I seem to have a knack for it," he said, squeezing her hand.
"Too right!" she agreed. Looking at him with his wavy brown hair hanging down around his face and his dark blue eyes mirroring the midnight blue of his velvet jacket, Tegan had the sudden urge to use one arm to sweep everything off the table between them, throw him down on it and have her way with him right there. Get ahold of yourself, my girl, she thought, and took a sip of her screwdriver instead.
"Tegan," he said hesitantly, looking down at their hands clasped together on the table. "Perhaps this isn't very good timing either, but there's something that I should tell you – "
"Hello!" a new voice said brightly, startling them both. The new arrival was excessively tall and very bony, with dark emerald eyes, high, sharp cheekbones, and a mop of straight shiny black hair that hung down around his face. He wore a scarlet tunic gathered at the wrists and matching scarlet trousers. Tegan recognized his outfit as the type worn under Prydonian robes, and wondered who he was and what he was doing at her daughter's birthday party. The smiling young man had paid a visit to the bar, completing his scarlet ensemble with a Bloody Mary garnished with a celery stalk, and he toasted them with it before taking a big gulp. "Brilliant party! You know, I think I just saw Mick Jagger at the bar!" Tegan glanced at the Doctor, who was regarding the man with a mixture of shock and curiosity.
"What are you doing here?" he finally asked. "You're not supposed to be here!"
"Wait, don't tell me," Tegan said to the Doctor, holding up her hand. "He's you, right? Another you, I mean. A future you."
"Never!" he exclaimed, sounding utterly appalled by the notion.
"Theta should be so lucky!" the young man said, casually dropping into a chair next to the Doctor. "Miss Jovanka, you grow lovelier with each passing year," he continued, taking her hand out of the Doctor's and kissing it.
"Have we met?" she asked, frowning suspiciously.
"Don't you remember me? Ah well, I had that decrepit old body with its dreadfully sour disposition the last time we met. I'm – " He gave her his name, about fifty or sixty musical syllables that had Tegan lost after the first ten.
"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that," she told him, a slight sarcastic edge to her voice.
"Zeta, that's not very nice," the Doctor admonished mildly.
"Zeta?" Tegan asked, shocked. "Not Lord Zeta Starkweather?"
"The very same!" he replied, grinning brilliantly, clinking his glass against hers and drinking deeply. She hadn't gotten the naming pattern exactly right, but he decided to let it slide. "I'm flattered you remembered!"
"Well, not many Time Lords have the same name as a famous spree killer," she said with a shrug.
"A spree killer?" Zeta repeated.
"Yep," Tegan confirmed. "Charles Starkweather. They even based a movie on him and his girlfriend… Natural Born Killers, it was called."
"How entertaining. I must remember to look that up," Zeta said, sipping his drink. "Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"I didn't think you'd find it very amusing before," she said.
"Evidently he's more 'fun' in this incarnation," the Doctor informed her dryly. Zeta used the celery stalk garnish to stir his drink, and then pulled it out of his glass and offered it, dripping, to the Doctor.
"Would you like this for your lapel, Theta?" he asked innocently.
"Buzz off," the Doctor replied good-naturedly, only not in English and the exact word that he used was not quite the Gallifreyan equivalent of "buzz". Zeta grinned hugely.
"I've seen your daughter," he suddenly told Tegan, leaning forward in his chair and raising his eyebrows. "She's quite the looker!"
"Don't even think about it!" the Doctor warned, earning a laugh from the other man.
"Why should you have all the fun, Theta?" Zeta asked rhetorically.
"Have as much fun you like," the Doctor replied with a disinterested shrug. "Just don't have any of it with my daughter!"
"She's over twenty-one now, isn't she?" Zeta asked, leaning back in his chair, taking a sip of his drink and waggling his eyebrows suggestively at the Doctor. Tegan saw the gleam in Zeta's eye and immediately knew that he was merely needling the other Time Lord. The Doctor seemed to realize it as well, for he sighed and put on his very best overly patient voice.
"Is there a reason that you're here, Zeta, or are you just gate-crashing for lack of anything better to do?"
"Gate-crashing?" Zeta asked with a frown.
"Showing up at a party uninvited," Tegan told him helpfully.
"Oh yes," Zeta said, brightening. "You know, one often ends up attending the most interesting parties that way!"
"Especially since no one who gives interesting parties would ever actually invite you!" the Doctor said, sipping his drink.
"Well, there is that," Zeta admitted readily. "Not that you can talk, Theta. I recall your name being crossed off quite a few guest lists after that time you swung from a chandelier while drinking wine straight from the bottle at the Lord President's – "
"Yes, yes, that's ancient history, Zeta," the Doctor said in a bored voice, ignoring Tegan's shocked expression. He saw her making a mental note to ask him about that incident later, and sighed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," he told her lamely.
"You know, you're a very difficult man to find, Theta," Zeta told him in a deceptively casual tone. "I had to use your bio-data extract to track you down."
"What?" the Doctor asked, caught off-guard by the sudden change of topic. He sat up straight in his chair, frowning. "You used my bio-data extract to find me?" Warning bells were going off in his head, but he kept his tone as level and as casual as Zeta's so as not to alarm Tegan, who was paying very close attention to this exchange.
"You weren't in your TARDIS," Zeta said with a shrug, finishing his drink and setting the empty glass on the table. He made a point of meeting the Doctor's gaze. "New York is a big city. How else was I supposed to find you?" The warning bells in the Doctor's head were getting louder.
"Wait a minute, how did you get his bio-data extract?" Tegan asked suspiciously. Zeta and the Doctor exchanged a glance.
"Very careless of our Lady President to leave such sensitive things lying about like that," Zeta said meaningfully.
"Very careless," the Doctor agreed quietly, raising his eyebrows at Zeta. Tegan had had enough; something was clearly going on, and she wanted to know what.
"All right, you two – " she began.
"Zeta!" Munch exclaimed in surprise as he and a smiling Angelina approached the table. "I didn't expect to see you here!" Zeta frowned at him.
"I don't believe we've ever met before," he said pointedly. Munch blinked. Now the warning bells in the Doctor's head were absolutely deafening.
"Riiigght…" Munch was saying slowly. "I'm John Munch," he continued, holding out his hand.
"And I am Lord Zeta of the House of Starkweather of the Prydonian Order," Zeta told him in reply, shaking the detective's hand. As Munch introduced Angelina to Zeta, Tegan caught the Doctor's eye.
"What the bloody hell is going on around here, Doctor?" she hissed at him.
"I don't know, Tegan. But I intend to find out," the Doctor assured her.
"Why don't you come with me and we'll talk?" Zeta offered, standing.
"You two can include me in your conversation too," Tegan said firmly, coming to her feet.
"Sorry," Zeta told her. "Humans aren't invited to this particular party."
"Now wait a minute – " Tegan began.
"I don't have time to waste debating this!" Zeta snapped impatiently, all traces of the smiling madcap partier suddenly gone. "She can't come along and that's final," he told the Doctor firmly. This was the Lord Zeta that Tegan remembered, the cold, serious, humorless Time Lord who was all business. He said something in another language that Angelina and Munch at first didn't even recognize as such; to them, it sounded almost like a phrase from a song. The Doctor's eyes widened, and he made a reply in that musical alien tongue. "Precisely," Zeta agreed. "Now, will you come with me?" Without another word, the two Time Lords went off together.
"What do you suppose that's all about, Mum?" Angelina asked, her eyes huge. Tegan shook her head, sinking back into her seat.
"I don't know, but it's not good." Both women suddenly looked at Munch. "And you're in on it too!"
"I never saw him before in my life," Munch insisted innocently.
"You liar!" Angelina exclaimed. "If you're going to tell us great big whoppers, you should at least try to be convincing about them!" He shrugged.
"I was told I'm now operating under Laws of Time restrictions and all kinds of terrible things will happen I'm not careful." As Tegan and Angelina goggled at him in astonishment, he suddenly pointed down at someone on the dance floor. "Look at that guy in the red shirt… is that Mick Jagger?"


Zeta led the Doctor to his TARDIS, which turned out to be a dumpster behind the club.
"How appropriate," the Doctor could not resist pointing out dryly. Zeta absently called him a filthy name while searching his pockets for his TARDIS key.
"And speaking of TARDIS keys," Zeta said, though they hadn't been, "whose brilliant plan was it for your daughter to go about with one strung around her neck?" he asked as he unlocked the dumpster and motioned the Doctor inside.
"Not mine, I assure you," he answered with a sigh, glancing around the console room. The walls were dark silver with inset roundels that glowed with a faint blue light. The control console echoed this theme, its Time Rotor lit from within by a deep blue glow. "This is a Type 60, isn't it?" Zeta nodded, leading him out of the console room and into the main corridor. "I see what they say about the 60's chameleon circuit is true," the Doctor continued in a musing tone. "It really does turn the exterior into the most ignominious object possible for its current environment."
"It certainly does," Zeta agreed ruefully. "You should have seen what it became when I made the mistake of taking it to New Orleans for Mardi Gras not long ago!" He pulled open a door and ushered his visitor into an enormous outdoor garden complete with a small waterfall pouring down into a tranquil pool.
"What a nice room," the Doctor murmured appreciatively. "You'd never know it was indoors." Zeta shrugged.
"They've gotten better with atmosphere and weather synthesis since the Type 40. Really, you should consider trading in that traveling junk heap of yours for a newer model."
"That's what everyone tells me," the Doctor agreed. He sat down on a rock near the pool, closing his eyes and tipping his head back to inhale the scent of hundreds of different plants and flowers from more worlds than he could identify offhand. "This is just marvelous… very relaxing."
"Before you get too relaxed, you should hear what's been going on at home," Zeta said, sitting next to him on the rock.
"All right," the Doctor agreed, sounding not at all worried about whatever it was Zeta wanted to tell him.
"The Lady President has used the Eye of Rassilon," Zeta said bluntly.
"What?" the Doctor exclaimed, nearly falling off the rock. "Why on Gallifrey would Romana do a stupid thing like that?"
"I am not privy to the inner workings of the High Council, Theta. You would have to ask one of them for the details. The Lady President was quite sketchy with them when I met with her, as you can probably imagine." The Doctor nodded, deep in thought. Zeta glanced at him and decided that getting this over quickly would be better, rather like yanking off an adhesive bandage before the body has time to register the pain. He took a deep breath. "Theta, your daughter is going to be murdered tonight," he blurted out. The Doctor slowly turned his head to regard the other Time Lord.
"If this is a joke, it's not funny," he said very quietly.
"It's not a joke, I promise you." The Doctor looked at the ground.
"Why…" he took a shaky breath, visibly trying to compose himself. "Why would you tell me this when you know that the Laws of Time prevent me from stopping it?" He looked up at Zeta, his dark blue eyes full of puzzlement and hurt. "Why would you do this to me, burden me with this knowledge when you know that I can't… that I mustn't – " Zeta laid a hand on his friend's arm.
"There is a chance that she will live," Zeta told him quietly. "The Lady President saw that possibility in the Eye, as well as the consequences if she does not. Apparently, Angelina's murder is some kind of linchpin event upon which other key events will turn… and the events if she dies will be utterly catastrophic." The Doctor blinked.
"So you were sent here – "
"To warn you," Zeta finished. "Yes, but not the way you think. I can't tell you how she is to be killed, or exactly when, or by whom; I wasn't given that information. I was told to be as oblique as possible when approaching people. When I visited Detective Munch earlier today, I only told him to carry his firearm to the party tonight and to be extra vigilant."
"And how much are you allowed to tell me?" the Doctor asked, his voice low and rough.
"I've already told you all that I know," Zeta said, rising to his feet with a sad smile. "If I knew more, I'd probably tell you everything, the Laws of Time be damned." The Doctor looked up at him in shock. "Well," Zeta continued, amused by the other Time Lord's surprise, "it's not as though either of us has an excellent record for obeying the rules, is it Theta?"


CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3, "Catch Of The Day"