10
Balamory had gone postal.
Cradling the unconscious Doctor in her arms, Rose watched from the rear passenger seats in the yellow bus as the population of an entire town went crazy in a way she'd never seen. People ran out from their houses, most of them dressed in one uniform colour, and began tearing off their clothes and coverings. She saw two women in nothing but their underwear running full tilt down the main street.
That was just for starters.
From somewhere – God knew where – alcohol had been produced, and wherever she looked people were drinking as much as they could, as fast as they could. Packets of cigarettes were being distributed and lighters were in huge demand. Crowds of smokers huddled together taking huge draws, their faces rapt in the sort of ecstasy you usually only associated with-
"Oh my God!"
Spencer smiled as Rose looked away from the scene unfolding. "Yeah…probably best you don't see that," he said. "It can take some getting used to."
"But they were-"
"Yeah."
"All four of them? In public?"
"Not pretty, is it?" Spencer sympathised, before his gaze lingered on her a little longer. "If only there were more attractive sights to look at…"
"What is this place?" Rose said, feeling homesick for home and not even stopping to wonder at the wonder of that feeling. "You're all crazy – one minute you're obsessing about yoghurt pots-"
"Please," Archie shivered in disgust, "don't even say those words. Got my trousers, Edie?"
"Under your seat as always, Arch," Edie called back, gunning the bus down the road. She had to swerve to avoid some revellers jumping into the middle of the street. Someone had produced a boombox sound system. Rose looked out in disbelief at the sight of what looked like an impromptu rave unfolding on the streets of Balamory.
"You might want to look away for a sec," Archie said.
"Why would I oh my God!"
"I did warn you," Archie shrugged, buttoning his trousers. He hefted his kilt and curled his lip in disgust. A moment later it was spiralling out the window and landing in the road. Had they time, Archie would have requested the bus reverse to back up over it.
"How we doing?" Edie asked.
"Eleven minutes," Spencer replied. "There they are."
Rose strained to see who they were discussing. She saw soon enough. The bus screeched to a halt alongside them. They waited for ten or fifteen discreet seconds, to no avail. Finally, Edie opened the passenger side doors.
"Alright, you two!" she called. "Time! C'mon!"
Reluctantly, Miss Hoolie and PC Plum separated from each other…briefly, anyway.
Edie rolled her eyes. "Jesus Christ, don't make me get a bucket of cold water!"
"Aw," Spencer complained, "I was kinda enjoying it."
"Pervert," Edie retorted.
The lovers got on the bus, hand-in-hand. Miss Hoolie was rearranging herself in places Rose would have until recently sworn blind – and wagered good money – were unknown to the touch of man.
"So who are you two?" PC Plum asked her. "How did you get here?"
Rose felt the words stick in her throat. On the one hand – vanishing demon children, entire town suffering from extreme bipolar disorder – she suspected that coming clean about their status as time-travellers might not be dismissed as nonsense. On the other, she was less than convinced of the sanity of anyone here, let alone whether they could be trusted with the truth.
But the Doctor was hurt. He needed her help, and that meant she needed theirs.
On her terms.
"I'll tell you," she nodded, "but you have to help him first."
A significant look was shared between everyone on the bus. Rose interpreted that look. She began to tremble a little bit. It wasn't a particularly difficult look to decipher.
Miss Hoolie sat down beside her. "He's gone," she said simply.
"Gone? What are you talking about? He's breathing! I can see him breathing! Here – feel him breathing –" and she made to grab Miss Hoolie's hand and guide it to the Doctor's chest, but when their hands touched Miss Hoolie's grip was amazingly strong, and Rose couldn't budge her.
"I didn't say he was dead, lass," she said sadly. "He's not dead. But he's gone. When they look at you like that, when the scream comes from within you…you never come back. You close your eyes and you never, ever open them again."
"No," Rose breathed, hugging the Doctor closer to her. "No, you don't know him. He's not like us. He's survived…" she hesitated; how to explain what had happened between them when Rose Tyler, albeit briefly, had straddled the cosmos, imbued with the power of Time itself?
"He'll come back," she finished weakly.
"Eight minutes," Spencer said meaningfully.
"We don't have time for this!" PC Plum said impatiently. "We're all sorry about your friend, but there are 400 people in this town and you're the only hope we have."
"Me?" Rose queried, hugging the Doctor still, wishing with everything she had that he would just wake up, open his eyes and make everything a little less confusing, tear through the strangeness of it all with one of his smiles, as he always did.
Where are you? she thought desperately, looking down at his face, frozen in a grimace of pain still. Why don't you come back to me? What's happened to you?
He made no reply.
11
See through my eyes, Doctor.
See through me.
12
The Doctor watched as the battle raged. He stood on the command deck, surrounded by his troops, surrounded by his fleet, and he knew that before the day was done, his homeworld would be little more than a smoking, radioactive ruin.
"Close that flank!" he barked at his tactical officer. "Tell the seventh to accelerate and bring the fifth broadside, to shield them – they need time to bring shields bac-"
The Aevis shuddered then, a deep booming spasm coming from deep within. He knew they had taken a hit, perhaps two, in a system that couldn't take the last five.
"Weapons systems won't respond!" another crew member told him.
"Then target the nearest mothership," the Doctor growled, "and accelerate to whatever speed we can muster."
A heartbreakingly pathetic thrummm began and died choking within moments. "Propulsion is gone."
On the viewscreen, two of the huge craft paused in their task of systematically exterminating his entire race. He watched their huge hulking masses turn in the blackness of the void, illuminated sharply by the deep crimson of his homeworld – the colour caused by a planet-spanning firestorm asphyxiating all that once lived on its surface.
"Abandon ship," he whispered, as the Dalek ships fired, again and again and again.
13
How had he survived?
He hadn't hurried to the escape pods, expecting at any moment the bulkheads around him to vanish into flaming-hot plasma, anticipating that awful pull as he was sucked into the vacuum of space, there to die of exploding lungs, silently screaming. But no.
He hadn't plotted any clever course around the Dalek fleet peppering his homeworld's solar system. His pod meandered at sublight speeds around the huge ships, and he waited for the streaks of death erupting around him to track his course, to impact his tiny little sphere of life and break it open.
But no.
Drifting to the edge of his solar system, he was witness as the Dalek ships finished their work. His homeworld annihilated, they turned their attention to the offworld colonies, pounding them from space until they buckled, imploded, turned to ash.
This work done, they vanished into the realms of the superluminal, leaving behind the remnants of a solar system, the ruin of an entire civilisation, of seven billion lives.
He drifted, alone.
The pod sought out the most suitable refuge inhabitable world automatically. The journey took four years. He was kept alive. Automatically. For that time – the pod had no transmitter of any power – he could only receive snatches of reports of the galaxy outside.
Death was everywhere.
The Time War was raging through the cosmos.
And then one day, he landed in heaven.
14
"Morning Suzy."
"Och hello Josie," Suzie McCormack grinned down as she rearranged the magazines on display. This done to her satisfaction, she hopped nimbly down behind the counter and greeted the young black girl properly. "What can I do for ye?"
Josie glanced furtively around. It was for show, obviously – the shop was as deserted as ever at 10am. "I've run out," she said, trying to keep a smile from her face and not quite succeeding.
"Miss Young," Suzie said, apparently appalled beyond measure, before her poker face collapsed into a fond grin. "Ever thought of buying in bulk?" she teased the younger girl, as she rummaged underneath the counter for two small packets.
"Come on. He's only staying the weekend."
"And your point would be?"
Josie laughed. "You give village shopkeepers a bad name, Suzy."
Money was exchanging hands when the door opened and he entered. Both women noticed the chill in the air, but both put it down to the crisp March air escaping indoors as the door swung open and closed.
"So how's your Jim?" Josie asked, slipping her purchases into her pocket.
"You know our Jim," Suzy replied, in such a fond-yet-I-could-strangle-him way that it made Josie giggle again. "If he's not down fishing he's off in the hills pretending to ramble – thinks I don't know about that little shack he and Albert have a few miles down Tobh Road. "
"Shack?"
Suzy waggled her eyebrows meaningfully. "Still."
Josie looked blank. Suzy clucked in frustration. "Ach you're such a city lass, Josie. Distillery? For moonshine? Poteen? Home brew?"
"No!" Josie said, delighted.
"You don't know the h-"
"Excuse me," said the Doctor.
Suzy looked down from the conversation. She smiled politely. "Och, hello. Can I help you?"
"I...hope so," the Doctor replied. "Where is the local defence battalion located? I wish to offer my services."
Silence reigned in the shop for a few long moments. Long enough, in fact, for young Kerrie Hoolie and her two boys to tumble in the front door. Suzy nodded a brief hello and then subtly indicated the newcomer with an inclination of her head. Kerrie nodded and tried to reign the boys in, content to wait her turn until Suzy was finished.
"Er..." she began, unable to keep a big smile off her face, "I don't think the Army is looking for people just yet. They have a base on the mainland, not far from the ferry terminal."
"Excellent," the Doctor replied eagerly. "I will go there now."
Josie and Suzy exchanged glances. She couldn't help feeling concerned. He exuded a powerful air of sadness, of loss, that she wasn't even consciously aware of, but it affected her nonetheless, for she was a kind-hearted sort by nature.
"There's no war on, you know," she said, leaning down on the counter to better address the Doctor. "I think we should probably try and get hold of your M-"
But little Matty Hoolie had had enough by this stage. He threw himself headfirst into the quite modest display of toys on show in the shop. There was an almighty clatter as footballs and tennis rackets and water pistols tumbled from their holding racks.
"Matty!"
"Was n'accident Mam! N'accident! Didnae mean it Mam I swear Mam!"
"You little rascal..." Kerrie said ruefully.
"Ach never mind him," Suzy grinned at the four-yea r-old, who gave her a sticky smile back. Josie ruffled his little brother Tyler's hair. Tyler, only two and shaped like a brunette football with two enormous front teeth, squawked indignantly. Josie and Kerrie squatted down to pick up the fallen toys.
"Thanks Josie," Kerrie said gratefully, giving Matty a warning look to remain fixed to the spot. "Eight children at the nursery five hours a day five days a week, no problem. These two to the shops – living nightmare."
"What will their Daddy say!" Josie said loudly. She saw the brief look of concern on Matty's face. "You'll have to be arrested for vandalism!"
"Aye, I might just tell PC Daddy to do just that!"
"Sorry Mam don't tell Daddy Mam he'll shout Mam!!" Matty said, and then grinned hugely. "Love you so much Mam," he added, to the laughter of Josie and Suzy.
"Manipulative little so-and-so," Kerrie said, but she couldn't maintain her strictness in the face of everyone else's amusement.
Well...almost everyone.
The Doctor looked at the two children. They became aware of his stare. Matty stared back in that unconcerned way four-year-olds have. "Hey, what's your name?" he asked cheerily, as beside him, Tyler picked his nose with the kind of exploratory zest that would have made Edmund Hillary green with envy.
"These...are yours?" the Doctor asked Kerrie.
No-one heard him.
He fell silent then. In fact, he uttered not another word in the shop, merely stood back and watched the children as they bustled around, as they traded sly punches with each other, as the little one cried loudly until its…his mind tasted the unfamiliar word…its mother admonished the bigger one (at which point the little one, belying his supposed lack of sophistication, grinned in a most satisfied way), as they both harangued their mother for small pieces of wrapped foodstuffs until their mother raised her voice again, at which point the old female behind the counter supplied the foodstuffs and refused to accept a trade from the mother for them, for which she was thanked.
They left. He slipped out to follow them, causing Suzy some concern. When her attention was distracted avoiding ground-based vehicles which also utilised some of the common living space, he allowed himself to fade into the background. It was a simple survival trait of his race, one that had ensured their ascent to the top of the food chain on Therka, one that had been utterly useless against the Daleks.
And for a week, he watched.
Since the Time War impacted his planet, many years before his birth, children on Therka had been bred carefully and in a controlled fashion. Their early growth was accelerated, supplemented with hormones, genetic therapy. They suckled for only four days at the machines designed to mimic the mothers. After that, they were assessed based on the needs of the war effort and placed into education programs identified as beneficial. Education involved direct electrochemical interfacing with the neurons in the cerebral cortex. It was incredibly efficient.
Four days after birth infant Therkans entered the educational program. Three days later, fed throughout on more of the refined growth accelerators, an seven-day-old Therkan – already at 80 of adult brain capacity, and with fully developed co-ordination – could be relied upon to pilot a cruiser with adequate training, could perform surgery or make tactical analyses of battlefield losses and gains.
Seven days.
In seven days, Kerrie Hoolie's children learned to put toast in the DVD player.
That was it.
That was all.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. These people lived in a heaven he had never come close to witnessing. And how he longed to experience it. How he longed to watch television and refuse to put on pyjamas and scream if he didn't get chocolate and then use the mystical factor known only as cuteness to get his own way and not be resented for it.
His homeworld was a charred ruin, his people dead and gone. But here...perhaps here he could learn how to fill the void within him. How to feel alive again – to feel something again.
He would be a child.
Everything had to be perfect. Everything had to be right.
And when he was done, it would be perfect. It would be a paradise for children. A town built for them, a town without malice or spite or violence or sex, a town with only kindness, goodness, fun, and above all...innocence.
And no-one would ever want to leave. Because that might make the children sad.
And no-one would ever disappoint these children.
15
"We don't have time for this!" PC Plum said impatiently. "We're all sorry about your friend, but there are 400 people in this town and you're the only hope we have."
"Me?" Rose queried.
The Doctor's eyes snapped open. "No, not just you," he said. "I thought I could ooof-" and whatever his next words would have been, they were muffled for the massive hug she enveloped him in.
"I knew you'd be alright!" she said when she had released him.
His smile died a little as he sat up and stretched a little. "I wasn't so sure myself for a while," he admitted, rubbing his eyes and blinking. They itched and stung like someone had just rubbed his corneas with sandpaper, but that horrific burning sensation he'd experienced had receded.
Everyone else was astonished.
"Just what are you?" PC Plum demanded, a mite suspiciously. "No-one has ever recovered from the Look."
The Doctor shrugged semi-apologetically and tapped his head. "I'm a little more receptive to telepathic communication that strong. And talk about stron-"
"Six minutes," said Spencer.
"Would you give over with the minutes!" Rose snapped at him. "You're like a James Bond countdown henchman with that – it's really getting on my nerves!"
Spencer demonstrated what he thought of that.
"Charming," Rose retorted. "Same to you."
"I hate to interrupt," Edie called from the driver's seat, "but if we have a destination of, say, whatever boat or plane got you two here, shouldn't we be barrelling for it now, before it's back to square one?"
"Well done that bus driver!" cried the Doctor. "The road south out of here Madam, and step on it!"
The bus shot forward on command, leaving behind the huge open-air orgy party that was Balamory main street. Rose noticed something so obvious about the scene they were speeding away from that she wondered how she hadn't noticed it before...
"Where are all the kids?" she said aloud.
PC Plum's hand dropped to Miss Hoolie's shoulder and squeezed. Rose saw this. So did the Doctor. He leaned forward and offered his hand. She looked to him.
"You know, don't you," she said. "You know what's going on here."
"He showed me," the Doctor replied.
"Where are they?" PC Plum asked urgently, desperately.
The Doctor shrugged. "I don't know."
PC Plum lunged out of his seat, grabbing the Doctor by the lapels and propelling him forcefully into the back doors of the bus, even as they continued to hurtle out of town.
"You DO know!" he hissed accusingly at the Doctor, agonised tears beginning to form in his eyes. "Tell me where my sons are!"
"Leave him alone!" Rose shouted over the roar of the engine, standing up and almost losing her balance as they rounded a bend.
"This isn't helping anyone, Plummers!" Archie cried, stepping forward.
"Don't Plummers me you English pansy!" the policeman retorted, keeping his grip on the Doctor and not moving his eyes from the Doctor's face for even a second.
Rose had seen enough of the Doctor in action to know that he could have escaped Plum's grip any time he saw fit. But he simply stared back at the broken man, nothing but deep and genuine sympathy in his eyes.
"I am not your enemy," he said softly. "You called my friend here your best hope. You were right about that, but you were wrong about who. Because believe me, I will not stop until I return this town to normal and until your children are back with you. Now, you can either trust me on that, or you can toss me out this bus and go back to making Memory Trees and Wish Buckets in – Spencer?"
"Three minutes," said Spencer obligingly, his eyes wide as saucers.
"-three minutes time. Up to you."
"Let him go Plummy," Edie called back. "Or so help me it won't be him getting tossed off my bus."
The Doctor was released. No verbal apologies were given, but the Doctor read what he needed in Plum's eyes, and accepted it with the merest of nods.
"Veer into the field on your left about a hundred yards down this road," the Doctor called, making his way up the central passage of the bus (and giving Rose a reassuring hand squeeze en route) "and you'll find something a lot better than a plane or a boat for getting off this island."
Edie did as she was told. The bus crashed through a hedge at full pelt, sending everyone reeling for a moment, but it held together and they were driving through the field that the TARDIS had first materialised within.
"Ah," the Doctor said, a mite less cheerfully.
The TARDIS was gone.
"One minute," Spencer said.
"Not now," the Doctor snapped back.
"Well?" Plum said. "Where is it?"
"He's taken it," the Doctor said grimly.
"Er, what is it?" Archie asked.
"Time machine," Rose told him.
"Ah," Archie appeared to consider this. "Fair enough."
The bus shuddered to a halt. Edie opened the doors and the Doctor was out in a flash. The passengers were out a moment after him. He was fumbling in his pockets for the sonic screwdriver, waving it in the air. It flashed purposefully in one direction.
"Strong signal," he said in relief. "That way."
"We haven't time!" Edie said desperately.
"What's going to happen?" Rose fairly screamed in frustration.
"We're all about to go back to Never Never Land," Spencer said, defeated. He glanced over at her thoughtfully. "Don't s'pose you'd-"
"No!"
It was Kerrie's turn to grab the Doctor. "You have to help us. We won't be ourselves for another God knows how long. And it'll know. It knows you're here now, doesn't it?"
Rose didn't like the sound of that. The Doctor only nodded. "Yes."
"Don't leave us," she implored him, beginning to sob. "Please. Help us. Find my boys...please-"
And the music swelled into life, and suddenly she was back in her green house, wearing a huge smile. She walked out of her front door, waved to nothingness, and set off jauntily for the nursery, screaming, crying, hollering for help silently while her body puppeted itself through its usual motions independent of her control.
"Hello there," she announced to emptiness as she walked into the nursery. "I know you, don't I? What's your name...?"
16
They were alone in the field. He interpreted her look as he swung the sonic screwdriver and got a better fix on the signal.
"Come on," he said, setting off, "I'll explain on the way."
How much of my life is spent trotting after him while he explains what's going on? Rose wondered to herself as she jogged to catch up. Will this be what it's like? Me hurrying to catch up to him when I'm 35, 45, saying 'what is it Doctor?' 'what's happening Doctor?' 'what do we do, Doctor?' endlessly?
Am I a companion, or a sidekick? Is there any difference?
The Doctor had stopped walking. Rose realised this a step too late. He was looking at her in a way that made it difficult to look back, and suddenly something he'd said about being more receptive to telepathic communication occurred to her…
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"Being worried about me. Believing in me," and he grinned, "and putting up with me."
"Well," she sniffed regally, "I try, you know."
They followed the signal through the fields, and as they walked he explained to her what was happening, what it was, and what they needed to do.
She didn't mind one bit.
"This town – and a few square miles of the surrounding countryside – all exists outside of the world. He took the real world and pinched it together, like folds of skin, and Balamory fell down between. Completely inaccessible by normal means."
"Who? Who did this?"
17
I did this.
I am being brought to the nursery where they will amuse me. I sit beside the driver, and I sit behind the driver, at the window seat, in the seat by the aisle. When we arrive, the brightly-coloured cheerful driver opens the door and I run to the nursery, and I run to the nursery, and I run to the nursery. All of me runs there. As I enter, the lady calls out my names and welcomes me to a place where I will be warm and welcome, well-fed and loved.
I must be loved.
At the beginning, I tried to be one child. But one was insufficient. I had too much pain, too much loneliness.
And when I was only one child, there were times when other children were getting attention. Other children who weren't me were dancing, painting, blobbing, building, making their favourite thing.
So I screamed and I cried and I made them all go away.
And I became them all.
These two who approach my special place now, my very home, they would seek to bring about an end to what I have done here. They imagine they can do this, to me? I will show them what it means to anger me. I am all children. I will rage at them and they will know my fury.
It's mine. It's mine and I want it!
18
"Ah," the Doctor said.
"I'm starting to dread you saying that."
"I don't understand…" the Doctor waved his sonic screwdriver around in the air like a frustrated conductor. They were standing in the middle of a large field. Rose was beginning to dislike the countryside. I mean, was this it? Loads of grass, a few hedges? It looked nice at first, sure, but after a while the novelty began to wear off…
A cow was meandering over. It regarded them, chewing industriously.
"Go away," Rose told it.
"Moo," the cow replied.
Rose frowned. Something was amiss, but she couldn't…
"Do cows go moo?" she asked the Doctor, feeling more than faintly ridiculous.
"Course not," the Doctor replied, without even turning his head. "But children are told they do."
"Moo," the cow agreed. It sounded odd.
The Doctor cursed luxuriously in an alien language. "It should be here!" he exclaimed. "TARDIS is loud and clear and right here in this field, and I'm not reading any phase shifting, any tesseract activity. It doesn't make sense."
"Could it be…outside, like we're outside the world?"
The Doctor looked at her, astonished. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around," he said.
"Apart from the obvious?"
"And that would be?" he replied, causing her to stick out her tongue out by way of answer. "The cycle…" the Doctor continued, musing aloud, "every time it begins again, his consciousness is distributed amongst the children back in the town. When it ends…it recuperates here before it has the energy to begin again."
"So the TARDIS is back in town?"
"No, but more answers might be," the Doctor said. "Up for another ramble, Rose Tyler?"
"Do we have to go back there?" Rose groaned.
"Oh come on," the Doctor assured her, "they'll be in the middle of another exciting episode of Balamory. What could happen?"
19
"Sounds like we've a visitor. I wonder who it could be? I'll just go and see," Miss Hoolie announced to no-one in particular, and walked to the door of the nursery.
"Archie! PC Plum! Spencer! Penny! Josie! Suzy! Edie!" she said, as each person filed into the nursery. "Gracious me! What has ye all over this fine morning? I'm not sure I have enough cups of tea for all of you!"
"Ach never mind that Miss Hoolie, we don't mind," Edie assured her.
"We don't?" PC Plum said, crestfallen.
"No Plummy, we don't," Edie echoed sternly.
"We're all here because Penny had a jolly exciting idea for an extra special adventure today!" Archie announced grandly.
Penny, sitting with a large wrapped blanket in her lap, blushed modestly. "Wellll…" she said modestly, "it was me and Archie who came up with it really."
"Oh! Sounds exciting!" Miss Hoolie exclaimed. "Tell me all about it!"
"I thought we could all play…" and Penny winked conspiratorially at the others, "…tag!"
Miss Hoolie blinked. "Tag?" she said doubtfully. "Is that all?"
"Oh it's not just any old game of Tag, Miss Hoolie," Suzy piped up.
"No way!" Spencer agreed.
"No, this is the biggest game of tag ever!" Josie whooped with excitement. "We're going to play across the whole island!"
"The whole island!" Miss Hoolie repeated, dumbstruck. "But that'll take all day!"
"It'll be good exercise for us all," PC Plum stated firmly. "Your assistants can look after the children, just for today. What d'you say, Miss Hoolie?"
There was a chorus of Come on, Miss Hoolie from all assembled. Miss Hoolie cast an agonised look at the children playing peacefully in the nursery. Finally, she nodded. "All right."
Another chorus of good for you, Miss Hoolie resounded.
"So, who's going to be 'it' first?" she asked.
"Oh, none of us!" Penny laughed. "There are two people gonna be 'it' and they've already started hiding across the island! And the fun bit is – they don't even know they're 'it', so when we see them we've gotta tag 'em as soon as we can!"
She unwrapped the blanket on her lap. "And we tag them," she continued, "with these."
Miss Hoolie lifted the assault rifle.
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" she said cheerfully, slipping off the safety and loading a clip in one smooth, expert motion. "Let's play!"