Part Nine: Not Bad – For a Hu-Man
As you might imagine, seeing a Sontaran warship sat in the middle of Hollandia struck everyone dumb.
Everyone human, I should add. The Sontaran prisoners staggering along behind us let out a great wail of discontent, dragging on their bonds in a manner that suggested they didn't like seeing other Sontarans, or other Sontarans freely walking around at liberty.
'What now!' shouted Officer Headon. 'What now! And what is The Traveller helping Sontarans for!' You can't blame the lass for sounding confused and angry. Even Tad, Mister Deadpan Defined, looked cross.
The Sontarans on the exit ramp accorded the Doctor every courtesy, treating him like one of their own, not leading him, giving him space, refraining from killing him on the spot. Quite bizarre. Not to mention worrying. The Buckethead dastards hadn't managed to Condition him with their hideous mind-bending technology, perhaps?
'Seeing that we are outgunned by a factor of several thousand, I recommend that we exit with caution,' I said, leaving my Nitro rifle in the hovercraft. Being slighly hypocritical, I kept my boot knife.
Once outside I tried to prevent any silly heroics, or heroine-ics, by shouting at the Amaltheans leaving the other hovercraft to leave their weapons inside, not to open fire, and to generally behave with a degree of caution. That warship, bristling with antennae and gun turrets, looked to mean business.
'Splendid! Very well done!' enthused the Doctor, marching off the end of the landing ramp and over the flagstones towards us. 'Lots of live captives and very few dead ones.'
The cluster of Sontarans around him looked to be equally pleased with the outcome, nodding and talking to each other in undertones. The one standing alongside the Doctor maintained an aloofness that meant he was the Sontaran equivalent of a senior officer.
'Excellent!' he managed, in best Received Sontaran. The Doctor's attitude changed subtlely, his focus shifting to the middle distance behind us, his expression of satisfaction abruptly changing to one of worry.
Tad's attention had been less on the display in front of us, and more on the entire surroundings, which meant he hissed a low "John!" to me in warning, twitching his thumb backwards.
My shoulders, spirits and jaw all slumped. There were two Sontarans, both wearing helmets, escorting a naked, bright green Clara from the diplomatic guest house. One Sontaran held a pincer device that clamped around Clara's upper left forearm and dragged her forward by that; the other had an electric prod similar to the one from Seraphim. He jabbed her with that when she slowed down or stumbled. The pincer arrangement was tight enough and sharp enough to cause Clara to bleed. We later learnt that it prevented my Rutan lady from shrivelling the Sontarans into kindling.
John's Tongue had gotten me into trouble before, and now John's Feet operated without any sensible thought behind them. John's Tongue, obviously realising that John's Feet weren't going to get him into big enough trouble on their own, also participated. Tad's testimony afterwards claimed that my eyebrows drew together, my jaw set like concrete and a small black cloud emitting lightning sat over my head.
So, I walked in front of the approaching party. Clara opened her mouth to speak, being forestalled by a jab with the electric prod that sizzled audibly against her skin.
'Excuse me, but that's my girl friend you're abusing,' I said, as coldly and matter-of-factly as possible, clenching my fists. Maybe gilding the truth a little, but "she's an alien acquaintance of mine whom I like quite a bit" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
The Sontarans stopped dead. I would like to think that they feared the Fat Human John, but more likely they were thinking "What did he say!"
Their helmets turned toward each other, then back to me.
'This is a Rutan,' said the external speaker of one.
'She is my girl friend,' with a lot of emphasis on the first word. Clara looked at me, very hard indeed. Green "blood" slowly trickled down her arm, not a fact likely to improve my temper.
The second Sontaran raised his cattle prod to move their prisoner forward, and John's Brain finally joined in.
'A Rutan battleship!' I shouted, pointing behind the trio. Both Sontarans turned and looked (bloody rank and file idiots!), which gave me the opportunity to jump forward and deliver a right hook against the cattle-prod wielder as his probic vent came into both view and reach. I have to say, it hurt, a lot, both him and I. He reeled away, dropping the prod, which I snatched up and jammed against his friend for long enough to make smoke coil up from his armour. After that he wasn't a threat, merely a smokey bundle of convulsions.
Sucking my broken knuckle, I wrenched the pincer-device away from Clara with my left hand, fully expecting that the Sontarans accompanying the Doctor would level their weapons and blow me to bits.
To bits? Not a bit of it. The Doctor told me afterwards that he'd physically restrained the Sontaran leader, laying a hand on the stumpy's arm and loudly ordering that no shooting take place.
In what was becoming common practice, I gave my now very shabby denim jacket to Clara, and tore a length from my now very threadbare shirt. Actually I had to tear three lengths, because the first and second strips weren't wide or long enough to soak up the blood she was losing. In the cinema the torn shirt always fits first time; not on Amalthea.
'I tried to kill them,' she whispered. 'I thought they'd killed you. I tried to kill them.'
That would be the long, long journey we'd taken to get back to Hollandia, a journey without communicating back to base that we were alright and bringing in lots of prisoners.
Ignoring the Sontarans closing in, I felt a ferocious stinging in my eyes. Must be the smoke from that half-cooked Sontaran, Johnny-boy, affecting the pork-pies. My response was slightly different.
'Hey, I am Fat John - padded against any Sontaran weapon. Don't cry now. Don't. Don't!' I blurted, well aware that crying females, or crying pseudo-females, or crying, convincing, self-persuaded pseudo-females - oh what the hell! - crying women – they were something I would tear tanks in two to avoid.
'How touching!' grated a Sontaran voice from behind. Ah. Yes. The spectre at the feast. 'How touching, and how inherently incomprehensible. A human and a Rutan.'
When I turned around, two Sontarans were holding the Doctor in a species of rugby tackle, completely immobilising him.
'John! No!' he shouted, meaning it with every fibre of his being. 'Don't try to - '
A beefy Sontaran hand stopped him from speaking. That same stumpy officer had advanced from the landing ramp to within fifty yards of me. Brave chap, he was backed by fifty other stumpy Bucketheads in armour, toting rheon carbines, who were in turn backed up by a spaceship mounting meson cannon.
'If you want Clara, you have to go through me to get her,' I said. Still not recovered from the brain-bashing of the day before, and the effort of throwing desks around, and fighting Sontarans, and three broken knuckles, I probably sounded pretty pathetic.
'Done!' bellowed the Sontaran commander. 'Prepare the Cirque Sauvage!
I don't think they made up the Circque Sauvage on the spot, and never fully understood why a Sontaran practice came with a French name. It amounted to trial by combat. I realised this instantly because nobody shot me dead on the spot. The Sontaran commander took off his helmet, revealing a face hatched with scars, and he seemed taller and slimmer than other Sontarans I'd met to date. The escorting soldiers shuffled round in a circle, which would be the arena, a small one only thirty feet across.
That put me at a disadvantage, since I wanted to keep space between me and matey.
'Field Marshall Garkos,' he introduced himself, bowing slightly, then drawing his tetrahedral dagger.
'Captain Walmsley,' I replied, bowing a little whilst getting my boot knife.
'Already prepared! Excellent!' he said, with relish. Then he pointed his dagger at a soldier. 'No interruptions. None!'
We commenced our little dance. Frankly I'm not much good at knife-fighting; I make too big a target and can't move nimbly enough. Against a normal Buckethead I might have done better, but Garkos moved as well as I did, thanks to his slimmer build.
A bit of circling, a couple of feints to see how fast the other chap responded, then I swapped the knife over - my right hand was aching where the knuckles had walloped that probic vent five minutes before. Garkos watched this move with interest, then came at me, his blade low and held back to the right. Ducking left, I pushed back hard with my left foot and bounded backwards, catching Garkos out as he moved to his right, and slashing a gash in his tunic across the left bicep. Without hesitation he dropped low and swung his dagger at my shins, making me dance backwards. I swapped the knife again, circling and trying to maintain distance. If he got too close to me I'd end up spitted.
Where did the centre of gravity for a Sontaran sit? With this character it would be higher than the squatter, lower, soldier version, making him more vulnerable to a toppling attack.
Garkos came at me again, this time thrusting his knife arm out like a spear, putting all his considerable force behind it. I dropped onto my back, rolling away to my right, slashing behind me and coming up in a crouch, to see Garkos' left boot spilling insulation above where his ankle ought to be. No blood.
This time I attacked, flicking my knife over, the changed position allowing a downward stab, at which Garkos threw up his left forearm to block, only for me to pivot away and stamp at his right knee. He got me with a raking slash down the back of my right thigh, bad but not critical, and when I spun around to face him, he favoured that right knee. Good! That was a hard kick his knee got, and it should slow him down a bit, having had nineteen stone launch itself off him.
Mind you, that nasty wet stinging at the back of my leg bespoke a wound that might slow me down.
Garkos didn't come at me with anything like his former speed, which might have been caution, or a knackered knee, or deceitful Sontaran tactics. Instead he tried to crowd me in against the barrier of Sontaran soldiery, which meant I had to continually dance aside. No way did I want to get close enough to risk him laying hands on me.
Abruptly, surprising me as much as matey, I danced back in the opposite direction, lashing out with the knife as I did a complete turn in mid-air, and catching Garkos' knife arm on the wrist with some effect. I felt the blade bite in as he responded by reflex, and the triangular dagger went clattering across the stones of the Grande Piazza. Instead of trying to follow or catch it, he went for me, delivering a real hammer of a kick that knocked my feet away and sent me reeling across the flags, incidentally losing the boot knife.
Long training asserted itself and I rolled over repeatedly, throwing myself upright in a way that the unarmed combat instructors at Fulwood would have been proud of. Garkos wiped dark red blood away from his right wrist, across his palms. Might help with traction – blood coagulates and stops being slippery after about three minutes.
Take assay, John, assess yourself. The back of my right thigh hurt, where the dagger tip cut into it for a good foot. My right hand hurt where I'd hit the Sontaran soldier. My shins felt bruised where Garkos hit them.
Nothing effective, not yet. However, we were now down to bare hands, which favoured Garkos and his strength over John and his nowhere-near-equivalent strength. In a contest like this, I needed to maintain a distance and avoid grappling. Garkos came at me in an unsophisticated rush, much as a prop-forward might. I let him get close and dodged aside, giving him a pummel on the ear as he went past. Oh no, Mister Garkey, ten years of rugby have honed my dodging skills to the nth degree!
When he came back at me he stopped short and punched left-handed, catching me under the ribs on my right side, which hurt, so I gave him a quick left-handed jab in the face and a right hook, breaking his nose with an audible crack.
Dancing back again, I saw him shake his head, spraying a disgusting mixture from his nose with a series of huge snorts. I saw an opportunity and jumped at him, hitting him squarely in the chest with both feet. The idea was to knock him off-balance and follow up with a hit to the fontanelle or the ears, killing blows both. Alas for me, he somersaulted backwards, rolling across the flags in practiced style to jump upright again, and his unarmed combat instructors would have been clapping the lad.
What I wanted to deliver was an unsophisticated immobiliser, that would allow me to kill him afterwards. Trouble was, Garkos was thinking the same way. Nor was he one of the Sontaran rank and file, drudges with little wit or ability; he thought fast and moved accordingly.
Thus, whilst we faced each other, I feinted right and made a full circle left on my left foot, which brought me up alongside Garkos but facing away from him. I kicked backwards with my right foot at his right knee as hard as I could, causing him to fold up as biology and gravity took hold of him.
But, the swine, not before delivering a blow to my kidneys with the flat edge of his back-hand that felt like a meat cleaver. Still, I had the advantage of being upright whilst he was face-down.
Don't think that all this was comprehensively thought-out and analysed, I winged it on the hoof without any deep intellectual involvement. Kill kill kill!
I fell on him from behind and above, putting my full weight on my knees as they hit his back. This is the sort of blow that kills people in real-life, breaking spines and ribs and internal organs. Garkos gave a howl and retaliated by driving his left elbow back into my ribs.
Now, remember that he wore an armoured cuirass whilst all I had was my shirt to protect me. Those ribs broke, audibly, which sent me reeling backwards to collapse on the flagstones on my arse.
Without question, I blacked out, and remember coming-to seconds later with little black dots swirling around the edges of my vision. Garkos advanced towards me with his dagger and my knife, the Sontaran swine (my thoughts at the time weren't translatable into human, let alone polite English). About to deliver the coup de gras. Well, I might be immobilised but if he got within lunging distance I'd put at least one of his eyes out.
Garkos halted and sheathed his own dagger, then presented mine hilt-first over his forearm, bowing low to me. Formally. Not trying to gut me with his pig-sticker.
Yes, yes, I know I was slow to pick this up. Sue me. I wasn't even able to breathe properly by now.
Garkos bowed even lower, presenting the boot knife to me.
'Apologies!' he grated, not able to speak properly thanks to his broken nose. 'I did not realise you were not wearing armour. You would have defeated me had I not been wearing a cuirass.'
Blinking madly, I took the humble boot knife, at which Garkos stood and gave a cross-chest salute. He turned and bowed to the Doctor, looked at Clara with uncertainty, then gestured to the guards forming the arena circle. The Sontaran prisoners chained behind the Amalthean hovercraft were released and marched into the small spaceship.
'That's it?' asked a bewildered Tad. Garkos turned to look at him.
'What did you expect?'
'You're not going to attack the Amaltheans?' I asked, coughing wretchedly. Garkos looked down at me and shook his head.
'What tactical or strategic end would be served by slaughtering unarmed peasants? Precious little honour there, Captain.'
After the previous behaviour of the Sontarans here on Amalthea this reply reduced me to silence. My aching ribs didn't help, either.
Hang on, hang on, John – those Sontarans we took prisoner weren't looking exactly happy at being liberated by their comrades, were they? If it came to that, why were their hands being locked behind their backs?
That injured Sontaran I'd shot in the head caught the attention of the Sontarans around the Doctor. They pointed and muttered to each other, with a satisfied sound. The injured Sontaran was Gault, originator of the revolt amongst this flotilla, I was told by the Doctor.
Garkos hung around until the bitter end, stopping to look at me and comment to the Doctor.
'Your chosen champion performed very well, for a human. Goodbye.'
At which point, being completely done-in, I fell over sideways. I would have split my head on the flagstones if a soft green body hadn't interposed itself.
My recuperation in the Mercy House of Hollandia was a trial in itself. It was more than a hospital, having all sorts of therapeutic and counselling annexes in addition to the medical institute. None of these, however, were constructed to take account of male patients. Fitters made me a compact ward for my very own, complete with a male toilet and urinal – a source of endless amusement to the ward staff. At least they didn't install a bidet. Marie joked about the lack of same in England.
The Doctor came to tell me off in the company of Clara and Tad. Yes, "Tell me off". I'd compromised his plans and plotting by taking up cudgels against Garkos.
'Really, John! You spoilt everything!' he told me, paying close attention to a giant Amalthean apple. 'There I was, having persuaded Field Marshall Garkos that Clara was a surrogate human, when you step in and complicate matters.'
Clara poked the Doctor in the side.
'You leave John alone! He fought for me!'
The Doctor smiled wryly.
'Quite true! That was something I didn't plan on. Garkos felt convinced that Clara had to be almost human, especially if a human was willing to fight to the death for her.'
I chewed a slice of apple.
'Yeah – yes, I knew that,' I lied, receiving a look from the Doctor that warned me that he wasn't fooled or amused. 'No-one has explained how these extra Sontarans turned up on Amalthea.'
'It's very simple,' replied the Doctor. 'I asked them to come here.'
I shook my head with exaggerated theatrical emphasis.
'Did Garkey hit my head?' I asked rhetorically. 'Only, it sounded as if you asked the Sontarans to come here. How silly of me to imagine that!'
Withering look from the Doctor. Let him look on in such fashion! Amalthea didn't need any more Sontarans, not after what the last lot got up to.
'Why?' asked Tad, getting to the meat of the matter.
The Doctor looked between the two of us and shook his head in mock despair.
'Gentlemen! John, what have you been doing in your capacity as an officer recently? Planning and executing operations. Tad – what would happen back in Gdansk if half a dozen of your men deserted?'
That insinuation was a good way to get Tad annoyed, which is to say his eyebrows drew together, and his lips compressed by one millimetre.
'The police – that is, the military police – would pursue them.'
'Exactly. The military polices it's own, which means that Provost Field Marshall Garkos was delighted to hear of the whereabouts of the renegade flotilla. He brought a lot of firepower to the task.'
Ah. That would be the false dawn on the other side of the planet, and Garkos blowing the renegade Sontarans to vapour.
'This lot were Sontaran Military Police?' I snapped. 'Why not tell us! Ow.' The last part came because my ribs didn't like the exertion.
My question contained it's own answer. "Hello friends I've just called down a flotilla of Sontaran spaceships" didn't conjure up the most reassuring image. Sontarans didn't have a good press to begin with, and a Sontaran incursion into Amalthea –
'That's why I wanted a small renegade Sontaran raid on Hollandia,' continued the Doctor. 'To capture one of their ships and use it to send a message. Garkos' knew everything when he arrived here thanks to that broadcast Salamander made.'
So the Doctor had used the Sontarans by proxy to get rid of the renegades on Amalthea. Quite rational, really, since the local systems didn't have anything remotely capable of fighting off the flotilla and it's weapons. Rational, yes, but bloody difficult to manage properly. I tried to put the plot in a comprehensible context. What would the Redcaps have done if a whole company of British infantry deserted after D-Day in Normandy, killing and robbing locals? Why, they would track the deserters down, and if canny French locals passed on information about where to find the culprits, so much the better.
'What happens to the prisoners we took?' asked Tad, causing a wrinkle to appear on the Doctor's brow.
'Hmm. A court martial. Long prison sentences for the fortunate, rendering of organs for the less fortunate, medical weapons testing for Gault.'
Ouch! Still, they deserved it.
'Did you know they wouldn't stay?' asked Clara. The Doctor shrugged.
'Not definitely, no. However, this planet, indeed Magellania, has nothing they might want or need.'
'They need to deliver their prisoners for sentence,' added Tad.
'That, too,' said the Doctor, punctuating his reply with a huge sigh. 'I only wish my plans hadn't backfired so badly.'
'Badly!' I questioned. 'How the hell did you do badly!'
Typical Doctor, he can't resist a bit of self-flagellation. Cup half-empty viewpoint, you see.
'Too many people died,' he said, ticking the body-count off on his fingers. 'One: all those Conditioned slaves we were too late to save, to the number of maybe eighteen thousand. Two: those killed by the Sontaran's bombardment of Hollandia, at over two thousand. Three: Amaltheans killed by that appalling broadcast signal, three thousand at least.'
Tad, glowering like – was Dostoevsky Polish? – well, glowering like a very bad-tempered Slav, snapped his fingers in annoyance.
'You left out more bodies, Doctor, the ones who did not die. The surviving mine slaves have been rescued. Two entire garths of Amaltheans escaped from the Sontaran sweep – maybe as many as a thousand people – thanks to you alerting them with exiled soldiers. Most of Hollandia survives at this moment because the Sontaran war-vessel attacking it was destroyed before it could make good it's threat. Over two million people on Amalthea survive as individuals with free-will because you smashed the Sontaran's mind-control technology.'
Cocking his head to one side, the Doctor stroked his cheek with a finger.
'That, Doctor, is the good news,' finished Tad. I think it was the longest speech I've heard him make, and certainly the most emotional.
'There is more good news!' beamed Clara. Bless her, she really couldn't restrain herself. What was the good news? She'd found more clothes that fitted her? Escaped survivors of the Sontaran conditioning programme had been found in the wilds? The Doctor gave her a photography book of human faces she could copy? The Seraphim had been repaired? The life story of the fascia she'd adopted could be found in an Amalthean archive?
None of the above.
'John said I am his girlfriend!' she announced, proudly, holding my hand in hers. Tad's eyes narrowed and his chest rocked in what another, less charitable, person might have identified as silent laughter. The Doctor merely smiled, patting our mutually entangled hands.
'How thoroughly charming!' he added with complete sincerity, as the ward supervisor, a person who would be the matron back on good old planet Earth, came in and shooed away all my visitors, including Clara.
My head fell back on the pillow. Like I kept saying and feeling, Monty Python, farce and bitter, bitter tragedy all combined.
Minerva Corrigan and a crowd of her relatives, employees and friends came to visit me in the Mercy House. The smaller girls exhibited no sense of fear or worry, and needed to be prevented from climbing all over me.
'Where the polar bear bit me,' I wheezed to Ellie as she got lifted off my mattress after sticking her foot in my ribs and provoking an agonised face on my part. 'After – after I hit him in the face with a snowball as big as this - ' lifting both hands two metres apart. 'And I put cow poo in it!' I whispered to her as she frowned and bent closer to listen, bursting into a fit of giggles and refusing to tell her mum what I'd said.
'He's getting better,' she announced to the ward. 'But he's still a terrible fibber!'
Minerva told other women to keep quiet and told me what was happening out at Frangipani. The Sontarans managed to steal some cattle and crops, but not much thanks to the preparation undertaken. The garth was being repopulated and rebuilt, at full speed thanks to no worries about encroaching Sontaran killers. Anne, with the backing and support of her beefy partner, was no longer the butt of jokes, but rather a hard-working construction operative much in demand for the heavy rebuilding jobs. I gave her a wink and a thumbs-up from where she stood at the rear of the crowd. Gloria Corrigan, looking sullenly at her feet every second she was there, waited until the Corrigan clan had departed, then darted back.
'You're still a horrible nasty man,' she informed me over a pointed finger. I mimed being struck in the heart with an arrow, to her unsuccessfully-stifled amusement. 'But – but just now we needed horrible nasty men. Bye!'
Faint praise is better than none, I suppose.
There was a lot of time to lie back and think about things in that one-man ward. Salamander, for one. Looking back, his little speech began to sound like more of a warning to us about the remaining Sontarans, rather than a boastful escapee gloating at his escape. I don't know, perhaps he really did cause the spaceship to blow up by intent.
Then there was old Garkey, Provost Field Marshall Garkos. If Sontarans were simply ruthless butchers, he'd have shot Clara and I to bits and walked away. Instead he took part in a trial by combat, won it, then deferred because he'd cheated. "Honour", he quoted, a concept not associated with the Bucketheads already on-planet. Honour meant not slaughtering the Amaltheans for no reason. Okay, so the regular Sontarans were a cut above the renegade version.
Lastly, there was Clara, dammit. I didn't think of her as a Rutan any longer, simply as "Clara", and – there you go, using the label "her". She liked me, a lot, for no reason I could understand or that anyone else could or would explain to me. I had gotten very fond of her, and wondered at what point "very fond" became "fancy" with a touch of worry. Not that Marie was around to make me feel guilty – she'd been dead two thousand years by now, a point Anne made back in Frangipani. Part of my concern was that declaration by the Doctor that I bore a reciprocal responsibility to Clara. Plus, how could I admit to Tad that I had a polymorphic green-skinned alien girlfriend?
I'm sure things go easier in fiction.
'I'm going to return to Earth whilst you recuperate, John. I'll be back in a couple of hours,' said the Doctor, politely popping his head round the door the next morning to inform me. 'Collecting Winifred.'
Hastily, I gestured him over. He came in a little apprehensively, obviously about to depart.
'Doctor, do you know why Clara likes me so much?'
He looked taken aback.
'Isn't it obvious?'
'Not to me!'
'Why don't you ask her!' he grinned. 'You're asking the wrong person, John. I'm a Time Lord, not a human, and one aspect of humans I find most fascinating is their ability to surprise.' He turned and gave me a wave goodbye. 'Ask Clara. Rutans are highly intelligent, you know.'
Now, I do wish he hadn't said that.
Officer Headon paid me a visit – no, actually that would be Julie Headon, out of uniform.
'Came to warn you,' she told me. 'The Archate are sending a delegate with a medal.'
'A medal! What, for getting pummelled into jelly by a Sontaran?'
She shook her head.
'Don't try that false modesty, John. For helping to get rid of those alien butchers.'
'Ah, that honour would go to the Doctor, you know. I think Tad and I got in his way, rather.'
Once again I got a shake of the head, but she left a bottle of that nice Perry Crush for me. Guess who came to visit again? Clara. This time I had a little insight of my own to inform her about.
When the Doctor came back from his jaunt back to Earth of the twentieth century he found me up on the roof of the Mercy House, accompanied by a half-full bottle of Perry Crush.
Why sit on the top of a hospital building? For the view, which was fantastic. From the service hatch covers you could see off to the horizon in every direction, in an atmosphere untainted by pollution. Closer to, the rambling outskirts of Hollandia rose to higher public buildings nearer the city centre and the Grand Piazza. Great savage scars, craters made by the brief Sontaran attack, pocked the city at random. Thank heavens the Doctor risked his life and TARDIS to destroy that warship, ran around my mind, seeing the immense damage a few minutes of bombardment had caused.
Amalthean construction and demolition workers – the latter a skill not needed much in this planet's history – were already at work on the ruins and unsafe buildings below. The Seraphim was inbound from Philandros with a cargo of heavy plant equipment from Andromache; the Andromacheans waived their payment and the Philandreans provided hundreds of voluntary workers – Julie Headon told me that would be the biggest number of males ever seen on Amalthea, cause for a little trepidation. Another starship I'd not heard of yet, the Angelus, was also inbound, bringing women from other Magellanian worlds who had taken Emergency Elective. Amalthea needed re-populating!
'Ah, there you are, John,' said a familiar voice from behind me. The Doctor climbed out of the service hatch and onto the acre-wide flat roof, coming to stand next to me.
'The staff are worried that you might do something silly,' he commented, looking over the parapet and crinkling his eyes against the sunslight.
'Do something – what, chuck this bottle over the side? Don't be daft!' I snorted. He instantly perked up.
'That's better! No, they worried in case you threw yourself over the parapet.'
I goggled. That is, I expressed utter incomprehension. Which is to say, I goggled.
'I'm up here for the view, Doctor, not to put an end to myself!'
'I did wonder. You strike me as being very level-headed.' He sniffed at the Perry Crush bottle's open mouth. 'Be careful with this vintage. It packs a well-concealed punch.'
Being stood next to a human, he must have anticipated the next question.
'Why, exactly, did the staff worry about me?'
'Clara left in tears, according to the ward supervisor.'
Bloody nosey women! I scowled, noticeably so.
'I hope they weren't listening-in as well, that was a private conversation.'
I had earlier hit Clara with my new insight, not long after she started puffing-up the downy pillows on my bed.
'I know why I like you so much, and why you like me,' I said, very matter-of-fact and nonchalant, as if addressing the ceiling instead of another person.
My girlfriend – and by now I had to actively remember that she had green skin – slowed down in plumping up the pillows.
'Tad is feeling much better, he says,' she replied, trying to be nonchalant as well, but spoiling the effect by hitting the helpless pillow several times in the same place. Also by looking at me with the intensity of a searchlight.
'I have a weakness for intelligent women. You're intelligent. You're a woman. It should have occurred to me sooner, that you were able to assimilate a completely alien culture in a matter of days. Not mere mimickry but assimilation. Language, appearance, beahaviour, relationships. Only an intelligent entity can manage that.'
Clara stood stock-still, half-strangling my pillow. I carried on.
'That's it. I liked you from the off, and you picked up on that. Since I regard you as female, and – the Doctor will confirm this if you ask him – one thing I absolutely go raving mad about is women or children being abused, it puts me into a – into a - '
Clara had dropped the pillow and instead got me around the bicep, painfully. Whilst I winced and my eyes watered, she looked about to cry.
'You like me for what I am, not what I appear to be.'
'Er – yes,' I replied, slowly and not seeing where this would lead.
'And you put yourself in risk of death to protect me.'
Tortured grammar, perhaps, and a rather poetical interpretation, yet close to the truth. I nodded.
'I love you Captain John Walmsley!' she blurted, giving me a convinvingly human kiss. She must have been practicing. Damn, that was a convincing kiss! I even managed to kiss her back. Probably reflex action.
Next I knew, Clara burst into green Rutan tears and waved goodbye, backing out of the ward and leaving me to my tortured pillow, green-stained blankets and confused memories.
I gave the Doctor a pretty accurate account of the above, then stopped to comment.
'How – how, I ask, can an alien feel for me like that? Damnation, I think I do feel serious about her in turn!'
The Doctor sat down on the roof slates and looked at me, then the Amalthean suns, and the horizon.
'Remember this – "The heart will out".' He turned a weighty look on me. 'I don't expect you to trumpet this around, John, but when I had to say good bye to Jo Grant at Polwheal, a real goodbye, knowing that we would only ever meet briefly and occasionally in the future, it felt like saying goodbye to part of me.'
Idly, he picked up the bottle of Perry Crush and took a dainty swallow.
'You don't have to be human to be humane. Some things, John, some things transcend physical boundaries and the dictates of physiology. Affection, regard, love – nobody has ever been able to quantify those feelings and I doubt they ever will.'
Great. "I have a green alien girlfriend". I said it to myself and kicked mental midget John squarely in the wedding-tackle. I have a green alien girlfriend! Said proudly and with force. She chose me, and I subconsciously chose her. What the hell did I have to be apologetic about, given the swinish murdering humans I'd encountered far too often as a member of UNIT back on Earth.
A slap on the back took me by surprise.
'That's the fellow!' declaimed the Doctor. 'Lack of prejudice. The best starting position to be in.'
He seemed to take it for granted that a confused human and confused Rutan could hit it off big time, not seeing anything unusual in it. Broad-minded fella, the Doctor.
'Ah, yes,' I complained. 'I still don't think my brain's wired the way it ought to be. You know, hazard causing flight-and-fear or fight. Except in my case exclusively fight.'
This isn't a mild worry. In situations of extreme duress I went past the rage barrier and into a state of cold-blooded assassination. Had the Sontaran renegades been paraded in front of me I could have quite calmly killed them, one after the other until they were all dead, the end.
'You have potential, John. If you merely killed without compunction then that would be a worry. Your conscience is troubling you, however.' He took another well-mannered sip of the drink. 'And to have a conscience is a most worthy affliction. Not something I can help with, except to say that the moral struggle will strengthen you.'
'Wow thanks. Hey I'd better away to torture some puppies.'
He cuffed me over the head and we headed back down the service hatch.
Winifred, wearing the fascia of Gertie Millar – it does get confusing, doesn't it? – took Clara's green skin coloration with a touch of huffiness. Clara rebuffed any criticism with the simple reply "John likes it", whether I did or not.
So, finally, after rescuing the rascal we came to rescue, then losing him, then helping to save the planet, we were ready to leave Amalthea. The Archate turned it into a formal goodbye ceremony, honouring The Traveller primarily, his two less welcome male assistants, and Clara. Thousands of people clustered around the TARDIS on the Grand Piazza, waving us off. Quite affecting.
'Time for us to part company,' said the Doctor after powering the TARDIS doors shut. 'Winifred and Clara need to start anew, and not on Earth.'
That probably explained why Clara looked somewhat glum.
'I have chosed Magellania,' said Winifred, in a tone that brooked no argument. 'Because it is far from the Rutan Hive, the Sontarans and the Grey Imperials of Earth.'
Magellania constituted a fair stretch of space. Even I, not an astronomer, knew that.
'Well chosen!' congratulated the Doctor. 'Let's see if we can find you an unpopulated world.'
The TARDIS demonstrated it's ability to function like a spaceship, proving the "S" part of it's acronym and the following day was spent orbiting three different planets in different Magellanian star systems. Winifred chose a gas giant that possessed two planets the size of Mars, but in considerably better condition, and well able to support life. Clara seemed more resigned than pleased, poor lass. Her opinion didn't count for much when weighed against her parent's.
After the un-nerving wheezing of landing, the Doctor hunched his shoulders and opened the TARDIS doors, allowing us to see the impressive bulk of the gas giant looming overhead.
'I'm not one for long, painful goodbyes,' he said quietly. 'So I shall just say, farewell for the moment.'
Clara gave me a big hug, and Tad got a peck on the cheek.
'See you soon,' she called, walking out into daylight with a surprising spring in her step. The pollen or light or dust got in my eye and made it water.
'Would you like a standing invitation to accompany me when I return, John?' asked the Doctor, fiddling about with dials and switches.
'Well, yes! So far there's a lot of worlds out here we haven't seen.'
'And Clara,' added Tad for completeness.