Chapter 17

The Face Of The Enemy

'So. How are we goin' to handle this then?' Rose asked as John put the TARDIS into the Vortex. 'Cos I remember a certain Osirian in Hawaii, forcing you to shoot me in the chest with special FX blood bullets.'

Rose was referring to a previous mission where an old adversary of the Doctor called Sutekh, had escaped from a time prison and tried to open the breach by using pyramids to vibrate the Earth. He had controlled John and the Torchwood team and forced them to shoot each other. It was only because John had planned ahead and used special FX blood bullets that they were able to survive.

John looked up from the console with a concerned look on his face. 'We are going to have to be careful Love. These aliens may be as powerful as Sutekh.'

'So you don't think they're Osirians then?' Rose asked.

John scratched the back of his head. 'Nah. They reproduce normally and rear their own young, teaching them how to use their powers responsibly.'

'Er, Sutekh? Responsible?' Rose pointed out.

'Wellll. Dysfunctional childhood. Every civilisation has its Genghis Khan's, its Hitlers,' John replied. 'But these cuckoos . . . they're like the children in the book "Lord of the Flies". Imagine an adult with the emotional maturity of a six year old, holding a machine gun. If they have a tantrum, people are going to die.'

'And you want to talk to them?' Rose asked disbelievingly. 'You'd better wear your body armour.'

'Wouldn't do any good,' John told her, flicking a switch on the console and pulling down a lever. 'They'd just make me take it off before they made me shoot myself.'

'Tell me you've got a plan. I want the kids to have a Dad while they grow up,' Rose said, remembering her own childhood.

John gave her his special smile. 'When have any of my plans ever worked? No, I've got an idea that will evolve with the situation. But first of all, let's do a bit of research. Find out what we're walking into.'

'Sort of "know your enemy",' Rose suggested.

'Exactly,' John agreed.

The TARDIS materialised in orbit around a world very similar in appearance to Earth. They used the TARDIS's advanced technology to probe the planet during each 90 minute orbit, and at first glance, anyone would have thought it was a utopian society. There were no armed forces, because there were no wars. There was no law enforcement, because there was no crime. Everyone seemed to live together in peace and harmony.

John and Rose knew better though. They knew it was a dystopia of Orwellian proportions. As they scanned the historical records, they saw that twelve years ago, all the populations of the planet had become strictly managed by the state and all aspects of daily life had been subordinated to party and state planning. Employment was now managed by the global party on the basis of political reliability, and travel was tightly controlled by a "Global Ministry of Citizen's Security".

They found unofficial reports from that time of severe restrictions on the freedom of association, expression and movement. Arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment resulting in death, and executions. The Global State Security Department extrajudicially apprehended and imprisoned those accused of political crimes without due process.

Individuals who had been perceived as hostile to this global government coup, such as religious followers or critics of the leadership had been deported to labour camps without trial, often with their whole families. None had yet been released, and it looked unlikely that they ever would be. Around two million prisoners were currently being held in six large political prison camps around the globe, where they were being forced to work in conditions approaching slavery.

Supporters of the government who deviated from the government line were subject to reeducation in sections of labour camps set aside for that purpose. Those who were deemed politically rehabilitated would reassume responsible government positions on their release.

And worryingly, there appeared to be something called "total control zones", where abuses such as torture, starvation, rape, murder, medical experimentation, forced labour, and forced abortions had been reported. There also appeared to be persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, forcible transfer of populations, enforced disappearances of persons and forced starvation. Estimates put the death toll for these prison camps at around 10,000 people every year.

Rose was feeling physically sick as she finished reading the pre-cuckoo history. 'A bunch of prepubescent teenagers were able to do this?'

'Not on their own, no. But once they'd flexed those mental muscles and shown the population what they could do, the power hungry psychopaths would have come out of the woodwork and gladly lent a helping hand, just like any other dictatorship,' John explained. He'd seen plenty of examples throughout history.

'Yeah. I suppose every nut job dictator needs his hired thugs,' Rose realised.

'Although, I think these sixty four prepubescent, nut job teenagers could have controlled the planet without any help. It seems that they've ignored the psychopaths and let them get on with it,' John observed.

'So how do we stop all this and return this world to its natural inhabitants?' Rose asked. 'I mean, what are the long term aims of these invaders? Are they goin' to impregnate the population again?'

'Those are good questions Love. And to answer them, I need to speak to one of them. See if their long term goals are either pre programmed in their genes, sent to them telepathically by their progenitors, or if they just get on with taking over the world on their own.'

'And if they don't want to tell you?' Rose asked with a raised eyebrow.

'Well then, I'll just have to insist.'

The TARDIS landed in a huge, sparsely populated public square, surrounded by enormous municipal buildings. On a raised dais in the centre of the square, was a two hundred feet tall statue of a prepubescent child, smiling down on a small, blue, wooden box. The right hand door of the police box opened inwards, and a tall man in a blue pinstripe suit and brown overcoat stepped out. He closed the door, and ran his fingers through his unruly, sticky up hair as he looked around. He turned to face the blue box and looked up at the marble statue.

'Oh, hello,' he said cheerfully. 'So that's what you look like. Basic humanoid form. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. Ooh, pentadactyl appendages. What's the chances of that?'

John turned away from the statue, and saw a local hurrying towards him. He was slightly shorter than John, with pale skin that had spotted markings running down his neck from his ears to under his collar, which suggested the markings carried on over the rest of his body. The collar was mandarin style, as were the rest of his drab, grey clothing. His dark eyes darted around the square, as though he expected to be pounced upon at any moment.

'You are not from here. You should go. Now!' he said, trying to guide John back towards the TARDIS. 'Leave. Please, while you still can.'

The man slapped himself hard across the cheek. 'No, please. Don . . .' He grabbed himself around the throat and started to make gurgling noises.

As other people in the square walked past as though nothing unusual was happening, John rushed forward and tried to pull the man's hand from around his own throat. 'What are you doing? Stop it!'

'Arghh,' the man gasped as he collapsed to his knees.

John put his index and middle fingers on the man's temples and frowned in concentration. He could feel the weight of sixty four minds compelling the man to strangle himself.

'Oh no you don't,' he muttered to himself. 'Not on my watch. This stops NOW!'

From the man's thoughts, John discerned that his name was Narwal. His hand fell from his throat.

'Thank you, but you shouldn't have intervened. They know you are here now. You are in danger. Go quickly,' Narwal insisted.

John helped him to his feet. 'It's okay. I want them to know I'm here. I'm here to help. I want to be taken to your leader. Now go on, off you go. Go on.'

Narwal squeezed John's hand in gratitude. 'You cannot beat them, but may the Gods bless you for trying. Good luck.' His eyes widened in fear as he looked past John's shoulder. He turned and hurried away across the square without looking back.

['So, have you got their attention?'] Rose thought in his head.

['Oh yes! I think I've just stuck my hand in the hornet's nest,'] John thought back as he turned to look at the building which had caused Narwal such fear and trepidation.

One of the large, imposing buildings had stone steps its entire width which led up to a row of Doric columns. Standing at the top of those steps, in front of those columns stood a teenage boy with silver hair.

John gave him his best smile and waved. 'Hello there. I've come a long way to meet you and your siblings . . . across half a galaxy in fact,' he called out as he made towards him. His voice echoed across the near empty square.

He jogged to the foot of the steps, and strode up the dozen or so steps until he stood on the wide platform in front of the entrance. The alien child was slightly smaller than John, and he was dressed in a grey, roll neck sweater, black trousers, and a black leather jacket. His hair was short and neat, and close up, John could see that the iris' of his eyes were golden.

'That was a bit harsh down there,' John said, nodding sideways to where he had just come from. 'He was only saying hello.'

'He was being subversive,' the boy said. 'Who are you?'

'Oh I'm just someone passing by who happened to notice a once vibrant world which is now stagnating under the weight of an oppressive regime,' John replied.

'We do not believe you. You came here with a purpose. What was that purpose.'

John stuffed his hands in his coat pocket as he tilted his head back and looked down his nose at the alien. 'Direct and to the point, eh? Okay, tell you what, an answer for an answer. What do you say?'

There was a pause. John suspected he was communing with the others. 'Agreed. Why did you come here?'

'I came to meet you. I want to know where you are from.'

'We are from here,' the alien replied.

'No - you - are - not,' John said forcefully. 'You were left on this planet by your parents.'

'Our parents did not leave us. They are here on this world,' the child said, as though it was obvious.

'No - they - are - not. They are your surrogates. Your progenitors implanted you into their wombs. So where are your progenitors?'

'I believe it is my turn,' the child said smugly. 'How do you know of us?'

'Your progenitors visited my world recently. I'm clever . . . Well, I'm a genius actually. But I don't like to brag,' he said dismissively.

['Much,'] Rose added in his head.

John gave her a mental grin. 'So I did a bit of investigating and found this planet. My turn. I refer to my previous question, where are your progenitors?'

'We do not know. It's not important. Why do you want to know about us?'

'Not important?!' John exclaimed in disbelief. 'It might not be important to you, but to fifty one women on my planet, it's very important. And that answers your question, because there are fifty one of your lot gestating in their wombs, and if I don't get an answer, there will be genocide.'

'They would kill their babies?' the child / alien asked with a frown.

'That was my turn,' John said and then threw his arms up in frustration. 'Oh this your turn, my turn thing was a bad idea, can we drop it? Yes they might kill THE babies, because they know THE babies are alien parasites . . . Er, no offence,' John added. 'So I need to know about you. Your origins, your long term goals, so that I can find a peaceful solution.'

'As we told you, we do not know our origins. We were born here. We live our lives . . . we survive.'

'But do you thrive?' John asked himself more than the alien. 'I've been looking back to the time when you arrived here. There were some violent incidents while you were growing up,' John told him.

'As babies, we had an inborn reflex to compel our mothers to tend to our needs. As we grew and others learned of our abilities, it frightened them. When people are frightened, they seem to react violently.'

'Can't argue with that,' John agreed. 'But with your abilities, you could have just made the mobs go home. You didn't have to make them hurt and kill each other.'

'It made more of an impression,' the boy told him.

'But wasn't it politically unsound to take that extra step that simply increased anger and hatred?'

'Fear, too,' the boy pointed out.

'Oh, so you wanted to instil fear . . . Why?' inquired John.

'Only to make them leave us alone,' said the boy. 'It was a means; not an end.' His golden eyes held John's, with a steady, earnest look. 'Sooner or later, they would have tried to kill us. However we would have behaved, they would have wanted to wipe us out. Our position could only have been made stronger by taking the initiative.'

'So you created a global totalitarian state, ruling by fear and intimidation,' John realised. 'But wanting to wipe you out seems a bit of an assumption,' he said.

'It was a biological obligation. It still is. They couldn't afford NOT to try and kill us, because if they didn't, they knew they were finished . . .' He paused to give that weight, and then went on:

'It is a very primitive matter. While we exist, we dominate them, that is clear and inevitable. Would you agree to be superseded, and start on the way to extinction without a struggle?'

'That's a very blinkered and cynical view of how people behave. Surely there were men and women of learning and reason who would have helped you integrate into society,' John said.

'A person can be reasonable, but people cannot. They develop a herd mentality and become a mob. And from the point of view of a ruler, could any State, however tolerant, afford to harbour an increasingly powerful minority which it has no power to control? Obviously the answer is no.

'We were safe for a time while the authorities talked about us. The more primitive of the masses let their instincts lead them. They wanted to hunt us down, and destroy us. The more liberal, responsibly-minded, and religious people were greatly troubled over the ethical position.'

'And I'm guessing the political parties argued over you, each one claiming the moral high ground,' John said.

'Correct,' the boy said. 'One party was reluctantly driven to consider drastic action against us, the other saw a chance of party capital, and possible dismissal of the Government. They defended our rights as a threatened minority, and children, at that. Their leaders glowed with righteousness on our behalf. They claimed to be representing justice, compassion, and the great heart of the people.

'Then it occured to some of them that there really was a serious problem, and that if they had forced an election there would have been a split between the promoters of the party's official acceptance policy, and the rank and file whose misgivings about us made them an intolerance faction; so the display of abstract righteousness, and the plugging of well-tested, best-selling virtues diminished.'

John saw where this was going. 'And as the politicians debated, it occurred to them that the problem of dealing with a more advanced species than themselves was not going to be easy, and would become less easy as time passed.'

'When they realised that, there were practical attempts to deal with us. They sent soldiers against us, so we made them attack each other. They sent aircraft, which we made the pilots crash. They probably thought of artillery or guided missiles, whose electronics we could not affect. But they would have killed all the people in the community as well. What government could survive such a massacre of innocents on the grounds of expediency? Not only would the party that sanctioned it be finished for good, but, if they were successful in removing the danger, the leaders could then have been safely lynched, by way of atonement and expiation.'

'Wellll, I know of one case where the government made it look like an accident,' John informed him as he scratched the back of his head. 'But you lot, you used the people's decency and morality against them.'

'There was a curious hiatus where all parties were fighting to keep out of office rather than be the one that had to take action against us.' He paused, looking out thoughtfully across the square.

'And you used that hiatus to set yourselves up as the new rulers of each of the governments on the planet,' John suggested and then frowned. 'But did you have to establish such an oppressive State?'

'That was not our doing. We just took control to protect ourselves. We gave the people a simple instruction; abide by the laws that they themselves had created . . . no violence, no conflict, no stealing for example. We told them that any infringement of the rules would be punished. The very leaders who had been fighting to keep out of office, stepped forward to take up office so that they could oversee this new, global Government.'

'I bet they did,' John scoffed. 'And reap the rewards of office.'

'And there it is,' the boy said in an adult tone of voice. 'None of us have wishes that count in the matter . . . or should I say that both sides have been given the same wish . . . to survive? We are all, you see, toys of the life force. It made the population numerically strong, but mentally undeveloped; it made us mentally strong, but physically weak: it set us at one another's throats, to see what would happen. A cruel sport, perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very, very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself.'

John silently considered the alien's words before considering his own. 'Your paranoia is second only to your arrogance,' he said angrily. 'You are right of course, survival is a cruel sport. But only if you are playing to win. What's wrong with playing a sport just for the fun of it?'

'Wouldn't both sides ultimately end up losing? How can the fight for survival end in a draw? Who would keep score?' the boy asked.

John had that scary look in his eyes as he grinned at the boy. 'Every sports enthusiast knows what a sporting event needs.'

The boy tilted his head questioningly to one side. 'And what is that?'

'A referee,' John said as he took a Torchwood stun pistol out of the pocket of his long coat and pointed it at the alien. 'And this is my whistle. The game's over, and I'll leave it up to you as to whether it's a draw, or if you lose.'

The boy's eyes seemed to glow with a golden light as John turned the pistol to point it at himself. 'I think you will find, that we win.'

John looked down at his own traitorous hand in disbelief, and back to the ice cold, dispassionate eyes of the alien. It had a smug, evil smile on its face as it made John pull the trigger.