Chapter 2
My Clematis Amid the Scent of Lavender
Clematis: I love your mind
Lavender: Suspicion, Distrust
"Okay, let me get this straight. You're worried because the shop assistant was a bloke?"
They were sitting in the shade of a gazebo in the park across from the shops. They'd grabbed some rolls with meat in the middle of them from a vender they'd passed along the way and were now trying to sort out what exactly it was that was wrong with this little piece of shopping heaven. Or hell, the Doctor thought, depending on whether you were the one shopping or the one stuck carrying the bags.
Jack was shaking his head. "No, not really. That didn't bother me. Not at first anyway."
"Really?" the Doctor asked, turning to him in surprise. "That was what first bothered me. I mean, they're women's clothing stores. Why are all the employees male?"
Rose gave him that slightly annoyed, slightly amused look that meant he'd misjudged something she thought was obvious again. He'd been under the impression that he knew both humans and women fairly well before he met Rose. It was tiresome to be constantly wrong at his age. "No, that's not strange for posh setups like these," she said in a long suffering tone. When he continued to stare at her blankly she rolled her eyes. "Women love to be fawned over by men. So, if they get the chance shops are always happy to hire blokes to do the fawning. It's just that they don't usually apply to work in clothing stores so they're stuck with women. The high scale ones that can afford to pay a bit more... Lots of male employees."
"Oh," the Doctor answered, somewhat taken aback. He wasn't sure what bothered him more the idea of working somewhere where you were expected to fawn over strange women or the thought of Rose being fawned over by strange men.
"That's what was bothering you?" Rose was obviously struggling not to laugh at him outright.
He hated it when a nineteen year old human could make him feel clueless. Of course, it was better than when she made him feel... He pushed his thoughts away from what had happened earlier and focussed on the problem at hand. Not that anything had happened, he assured himself. He was completely overreacting and there were other - real - things to worry about here and now.
"At first," he admitted, trying to pull his dignity together. "But there's more to it than that."
Jack nodded. "The guys at the shops didn't bother me until I noticed the other bit."
Rose heaved a sigh. "Which is?"
The Doctor leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and thought about how to put the sense of wrongness he'd been feeling all morning into words and then thought better of it.
"Look over there," said the Doctor, nodding towards the street. "What's wrong with that picture? Don't look at the strange clothes or skin colours, just look at the people. What's not right about a place that's entirely devoted to shopping for women?"
Rose frowned, staring fixedly at the pedestrians, clearly struggling to see what the hell they were getting at. He watched her face, waiting for her to figure it out. It would have been easy to just tell her what it was that was bothering him, what Jack had only just realized. But the Doctor wanted to see her figure it out for herself, both because she could and because she's be happier if she did. Rose Tyler didn't want to just be shown the universe. She wanted to see it for herself, make sense of it on her own terms. It was one of the things he admired about her the most. She wasn't just a tourist as so many of his companions had been. Good people all of them, in their own ways. But Rose was... well, she was more like him.
She didn't always want to be told what everything was or meant and even if she was, she wasn't always willing to take those explanations at face value. She watched and learned and made her own judgments. And she could be bloody stubborn once she'd made up her mind about something. Frustrating as hell when their ideas about what should done contradicted each other, the Doctor reflected ruefully. At the same time though, he wouldn't have her any other way. His Rose was far too much fun as she was.
He paused mid-thought. His Rose? He pushed that thought away as it, like the memory of her in those damn silly dresses, lead in a direction he was trying not to go. She was only nineteen, for crying out load. She was still just trying to find her feet in the universe and the last thing she needed was a complicated relationship with some 900 year old git who was barely sane these days based on the standards of just about any time or place. They were friends. That was all. He'd be damned if he was going to take advantage of her youth and affection. Besides, there was time. He had all the time in the universe, didn't he?
Although he didn't feel quite as confident about that now as he had. The universe was a dangerous place. How close he'd come to losing her yet again only this last week had finally made him feel... well, a little more desperate to make good use of the time he had with her instead of counting on time together they may not have. But that only brought him back to how young Rose still was. No, it was best for both of them to let things stay as they were.
"Hmm..." The Doctor was brought sharply back to the present as Rose bit her lip. Her eyes narrowed and he could almost see the cogs turning in her head.
"Hmm...?" Jack questioned.
"If there was a place like this in London," she said slowly. "My mate, Shareen, and I would have been down here with all the girls we could get together every opportunity we got. Whether we was broke or not we'd still come just to hang about and have a laugh."
"Great bunch of fun you lot must be," the Doctor remarked. It would never cease to amaze him how anyone, let alone someone like Rose, could find something as boring as hanging around a shopping centre amusing. Someone who could appreciate the wonders of the wider universe should be above all that, shouldn't they?
Rose just gave him a look and he hurried to continue. "But that was sort of the point I was trying to make though. Where are the groups of giggling pubescent girls that usually abound in these places? But it's not just that either."
"There's also how many men there are," Jack said, unable to keep himself from showing off any longer. "Just men, shopping here all by themselves. That's what first got me. I mean, I like looking at women's clothes as much as the next guy. I just usually like women to be in them at the time."
"Or on their way out of 'em?" Rose prompted.
Jack grinned. "That too. And they can't all be transvestites here or they wouldn't be bothering to wear men's clothes while shopping for women's clothes, would they?"
"Actually, what really gets me," Rose said, turning back to look at the passersby in the street, "is that just about every women here has got a bloke in tow, but no other women with them."
"Exactly!" the Doctor said, making both of his companions jump. He beamed at Rose. "I've been watching the whole time we've been here and I haven't seen a single woman here on her own. And none of them were with other women either. They were all with men."
"Come on," Jack said, clearly taken aback. "I mean, I've noticed the trend but... None?"
"Not. A. One," the Doctor confirmed.
"Then you weren't looking too hard," Rose said. She pointed across the plaza. "There's one."
The Doctor turned around in surprise to see an older woman walking from one of the shops toward a vender selling drinks.
"So much for that theory," Jack commented, as the lady began ordering something. "It's still weird though how..."
"Wait!" the Doctor cut him off. As they watched, a man in the uniform of what he guessed to be the security guards around here approached the woman and began speaking to her earnestly. She pointed behind her toward the shop, but the guard seemed unsatisfied with whatever it was she was saying and he took her by the elbow, clearly trying to lead her away.
The women tried to pull her arm free but only succeeded for a moment before he caught her again. He continued speaking to her softly, pulling her slowly away from the vendor despite her efforts to stay put.
The Doctor stood up, with Jack and Rose only just behind him as they two continued to struggle, but before they could intervene on the woman's behalf a younger man came running from the store the woman had gestured to. He began speaking rapidly to the security guard, pointedly taking the woman's arm from the other man. There was a brief exchange where the younger man seemed to hang his head as though he was receiving a dressing down before the security guard headed off and the young man lead the woman back into the shop.
The whole thing had been watched with interest by the most of the people nearby. However, the show over, they all turned away and seemed to shake their heads at one another as though to ask what the world was coming to.
In the gazebo a little ways away the three time travellers sat back down and looked at each other.
"Rose," the Doctor said. "While we're here, make sure you stay with Jack or I at all times."
For once, Rose didn't argue. She just nodded.
"What was that all about?" Jack muttered. "I mean, she was just trying to buy a drink."
"Looks almost like women aren't allowed out by themselves or something." Rose looked to the Doctor for confirmation.
He nodded. "That's what it looks like to me, too."
"Well, it sure wasn't like that the last time I was here," Jack said. "I mean, you had to be careful about how you treated women, sure. I almost got arrested for propositioning one. They said it was disrespectful. But it wasn't like they needed an escort to go anywhere. You just had to be nice to them."
"And I bet there were a lot more women in the plaza and a lot less men," said the Doctor.
"Oh yeah."
Rose shook her head. "I don't get it. I mean, how does a culture go from nearly arresting a bloke for being disrespectful to a women, to not allowing them the freedom to go to the shops by themselves? That's a bit of a turn around, yeah?"
"Or a continuation into an extreme," the Doctor mused.
"What?"
The Doctor shook his head, not liking the picture that was forming in his mind. He'd always thought of the Tulorins as a rather silly but generally harmless race. Their love of all things beautiful led to a bit of a neglect when it came to more practical things, in his opinion, but at the same time their fairly egalitarian ideas had lead to a mostly peaceful society. But what they were seeing here...
"Well, there's more than one way to deprive people of rights," the Doctor explained. "There's the kind where you think they're not worth it or the kind where you become... shall we say, overly protective?"
Jack frowned. "You mean, that they decided they respected women so much that they couldn't be allowed out without someone to look after them, protect them?"
"Don't ya think that's a little unlikely," Rose objected. "What I mean is, that's not respect. It's the opposite. The highest from of respect is to give someone self-determination."
The men both looked at her in surprise.
"What? I can use big words, too!" she huffed.
Jack tried to hide a grin, but didn't entirely succeed and got kicked for it.
"I agree with you, in principle," the Doctor said, intervening before a scuffle could start in earnest. This wasn't the time or the place for it. "Unfortunately..."
"...not everyone's gonna to see it that way," she finished for him. "I get that, but I still think it's a bit of a stretch from what Jack was taking about to this." She gestured around them.
"I have to agree with Rose on that one," Jack said. "But either way, if I'm remembering my dates right this is only about two centuries ahead of when I was here last. How did it get from that to this - which ever way they got there - that fast?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" The Doctor stood up and stretched. "Whatever it is, we're not going to find it sitting around here. And Rose, you get to carry your own bags from now on, okay?"
"I don't know," Rose said, eyeing them without enthusiasm. "It might be disrespectful here to make a woman carry her own bags."
The Doctor just made a face and strolled away from the gazebo leaving Rose to carry the bags herself or leave them behind. He grinned at her when she appeared beside him, bags in tow. He didn't get kicked, but she did refuse to hold his hand for nearly five minutes.
An hour spent walking the circuit the Plaza of Glass and its immediate surroundings had revealed nothing but the confirmation of their earlier observations. Most of the shoppers around them were either men alone or in small groups, sometimes they had a women with them, sometimes they didn't. Rose had tried making eye contact with the women they passed and while they'd smile back readily enough, but they always turned their attention back to one of the men with them immediately afterward. However, when the Doctor and Jack had tried the same thing, neither could get any of the women to even meet their eyes. The three puzzled over this while they walked and Jack couldn't help noticing with mild amusement how tightly the Doctor was holding Rose's hand by the time they got back to where they'd started, in front of the store where Rose had tried on the gowns.
"No eye contact except with the guys you're with," Rose muttered to herself. "How boring!"
"And the shop assistants," Jack reminded her. "That seemed okay."
"Yeah, but still. Kind of limits your flirting pool, don't it?"
"Definitely," Jack agreed, bestowing his most charming smile on a particularly attractive woman and getting absolutely nothing in return.
"Still," the Doctor said. "I'd be careful about who you make eye contact with, at least until we understand what's going on. And that goes for both of you."
Rose sighed and rolled her eyes. "I think we got that much, thanks Doctor."
He grinned at her. "Knew you were a clever little ape."
She stuck her tongue out at him and Jack snorted. "What about me?" he demanded. "I'm clever, too."
"Still waiting for evidence of that," the Doctor said. "For that matter, I'm still waiting for evidence that you're actually human."
Jack fluttered his eyelashes. "Want to examine me, Doctor?"
"Don't think your insurance would cover it, mate."
"Uh, not to interrupt your male-bonding or anything, but have either of you noticed that before?" Rose had stopped, pulling the Doctor to a halt with her and was pointing toward the park.
The centre of the park had seemed to consist simply of a small area of densely growing bushes and trees. Jack had written it off as an attempt to bring a bit of stylish "wilderness" into the town. But from the angle they were looking at now they could see a gap in the thick hedge into which a small path led. Inside was a semi-private area where they could just see a man standing in front of a tall white column, two children with him. Something about the little area suggested someplace special.
"It's probably just an area for a bit of peace and quiet," the Doctor said dismissively, but he headed towards it anyway, Rose in tow and Jack beside her. The three quickly crossed the road and headed into the park. While they approached they saw one of the children, a little girl, step forward and lay a small bunch of flowers on the ground beside the column. Then the man took her and the other child by the hand and lead them out of the area away along another path.
By the time they entered it, the little hedge room was disserted. It wasn't large, probably only about five metres across Jack guessed. Two small gaps on opposite sides of the circular enclosure were the only way in or out and the tall hedges and trees around it muffled the sounds of the city around them, making the place much quieter than the world outside. Jack felt the loss of the sounds keenly. He just wasn't sure yet whether it was soothing or eerie. The white pillar stood directly in the middle of the circle with a path going all the way around it, around that was a small space of grass which quickly gave way to trees, then hedges. The little girl's bright red flowers lay forlornly against the white gravel at the pillar's base. There were a few other faded bunches of flowers about the pillar, most of which had clearly been there for some time.
The pillar itself was white stone, each of its four sides was smooth but for some kind of runic inscription halfway up to the rounded top.
Jack frowned. "I can't read it."
"Not surprised," the Doctor said. Jack glanced at him quickly, but for once no jibe was forthcoming. The Doctor was starting up at the inscription, too intent on the problem at hand to take advantage of the opportunity to rub in his superior knowledge. "It's a really old alphabetic system, not used much in this part of the galaxy any more. Usually just for ceremonial or religious purposes, if it's remembered at all.
"What's it say then?" Rose asked.
"Basically, 'In memory of our precious flowers, taken in the spring of their lives'," the Doctor said. "Then it just gives a year."
Rose looked down at the flowers around the pillar's base. "This seems a bit extreme in memory of a garden, so I'm thinking we're not actually talking about flowers here."
"I doubt it," the Doctor said, frowning. "Interestingly enough, the year they gave is right smack dab between now and when Jack was last here."
Jack had been scowling up at the monument for sometime trying to remember where he'd heard that phrasing before. It came to him in a flash and he snapped his fingers. "Got it!"
"Got what?" Rose demanded.
"Where I've heard something like that before," he said. "When I was here last there was this big thing about women and flowers, they seemed to use the terms synonymously."
"Come again?"
The Doctor was frowning up at the inscription. "So," he said, more to himself than to them, "about a hundred years ago a whole bunch of women die and this is set up in their honour. But what could possibly..."
"Hey look," Rose interrupted him. She pointed ahead to the grassy area all round the edges of the circle and pulled her hand out of the Doctor's to go to the edge of the path. "What does that say?" she asked as the men joined her, pointing down to a small white stone set into the ground just off the path.
"Donacaro," the Doctor said. "I think that's another city around here somewhere."
"Here's another one," Jack called, pointing out another small stone a few feet from the one Rose had found.
"Torusus," the Doctor reported. "That, I'm sure is a city. About a continent away though, I think."
They spread themselves around the edges of the path and found more than thirty of the small stones with names on them, some that the Doctor or Jack recognised as places on the planet and some they didn't, but were presumably placenames as well.
"Just how wide spread was this thing?" Jack asked finally. "I mean, if these stones have to do with that," he pointed at the pillar, "we've got to be talking about hundreds dead, at least, probably thousands. We've got cities from every continent on it listed here."
"They can't all have been women," Rose objected. "I mean, unless they went around killing them themselves and then felt bad about it later."
The Doctor nodded. "Oh, it had to have been deliberate. Anything natural, like a disaster or disease, would kill both sexes indiscriminately."
They fell silent for a moment, each contemplating the stones around the edges and thinking about just how many dead they might signify.
"Okay," the Doctor said finally. "Supposing we take this as..."
"Doctor!"
He was cut off by a shriek and both he and Jack spun around to find that two of the plaza security guards had a hold of a struggling Rose, while another stepped forward toward them.
"Rose!" The Doctor was across to them in a moment, Jack at his heals. "What do you think...!"
He was cut off again as the leading guard raised a weapon. "I apologise for the suddenness, but we must take the girl with us."
"The hell you will!" Jack said. "What for?"
"Let her go," the Doctor demanded. He'd gone utterly still next to Jack and the low softness of his voice was far more menacing than shouting would have been.
The guard strengthened his grip on the gun and pointed it firmly at the Doctor. "We will not harm her. This is for her own good. Any complaints can be made..."
A bellow from one of the guards behind him, as Rose brought her foot down hard on his instep, caught the leader's attention just long enough for Jack to spring towards him. It was not enough to get the gun away from him however and the next thing Jack knew he was lying on his back, a blazing pain in his left shoulder.
"Jack!" he heard Rose yell.
"I assure you, your violent resistance to our rescue operation will be noted," the leader said, backing up hastily. Clearly as taken aback by this turn of events as they were. "You will be expected before the magistrate."
"Rescue operation?" Jack demanded, struggling into a sitting position. His query was lost though as the Doctor shouted Rose's name again just as the three guards, with Rose still held between them, disappeared.
