3.
"Look what Adric and I made, Doctor," Nyssa said, on Peace's fifth day on the TARDIS. The Doctor had kept the ship in the vortex with coordinates pre-programmed to take them to Thion at first word from the planet's child services. To entertain themselves in limbo, Adric and Nyssa had disappeared into their favorite laboratory suite. Tegan and The Doctor had not seen them for almost a full day. The Australian woman had worried that the two teenagers had blown themselves up or inhaled deadly chemicals, but The Doctor had dismissed her fears.
Now, the two genius children had emerged and stood in the console room. They proudly presented their newest experiment to The Doctor. "It's something Nyssa saw on one of the info cards in the library databanks," Adric said.
"It's a baby carrier," The Doctor said, amazed. He held up the strappy contraption and scrutinized it thoroughly. "Circa Earth, in the twenty-first century," he added, after some thought.
"That's where I found it in the records," Nyssa supplied. "I recalled that you once mentioned how very affectionate humans are toward their offspring, so I thought starting with Earth childrearing devices would be the best idea to help Peace settle in."
"Settle in?" The Doctor said. "No, listen, we can't keep her—"
"It's called a papoose," Adric supplied. "Isn't that a funny word? Humans have some strange vocabularies."
"It's a North American Indian word," Tegan said, and her companions looked at her in surprise. "What?" she asked, somewhat defensively, "I know about my own planet, okay? Papooses are what Indians used to carry their kids in."
Nyssa stepped forward. "It goes on like this, Doctor…"
Before he knew it, The Doctor had been fitted with a papoose, and Peace was strapped to his chest like a sack of potatoes thrown on backwards. Once the initial awkwardness of the added weight faded, the Time Lord found he could continue with his usual activities without any fuss. Peace herself seemed delighted with her new mode of transport. Over the next several hours, she was content to hang in her papoose as The Doctor performed some routine maintenance in one of the less used rooms of the TARDIS. She didn't seem to mind that her small face was pressed tightly against the cream-colored fabric of The Doctor's jumper. Occasionally, she would sigh or whine, and her telepathic caretaker would soothe her with peaceful thoughts and a stroke on her hand or cheek.
A loud pinging noise brought The Doctor out of his tinkering meditation. He left the piloting adjustment room and walked back to the console, unconsciously bouncing his steps to make Peace's telepathic signals turn warm and buttery, as they had a habit of doing when she was swayed back and forth. Adric had arrived at the console before him, but the boy could not stop the chime as it replayed over and over. "What's that noise?" Adric asked. "I've never heard it before. It's obnoxious!"
"Yes, it is, a bit," The Doctor said, absently, as he typed in his access code on the TARDIS's messaging system. "That's a planetary transmission alert. Thion's Children's Welfare Bureau sent us a communication package." He tapped on the message symbol and studied the screen as the message loaded.
After a few minutes, Adric grew tired of waiting for feedback from the older man. "Is it good news?" When The Doctor looked up at him with a bleak expression, the teenager's shoulders dropped. "It's really bad news."
The Doctor took a deep breath, tapped the screen to dismiss the message, and said, "Peace's parents were killed in a toxic gas leak two months ago. She had no living relatives-which is highly unusual for a Thionic baby—so she was placed in an orphanage. But, according to the Bureau, she was stolen from the orphanage a week ago. Since she couldn't be found anywhere on Thion, the Bureau assumed she had been taken off-world and sold."
"And they didn't think it was their responsibility to find the people who stole her?" Adric demanded. "They were just going to let her get taken away and made into a slave?"
"Orphans on Thion are shamed to the point of neglect, Adric," The Doctor said, with a coldness in his eyes that Adric had learned to associate with what The Doctor called 'cultural discrepancies' between his own morals and a foreign planet's customs. "If a baby is not adopted within a year, he or she is put into cryostorage and introduced at a later date, or…"
"Or what?" Adric asked, feeling ill.
"Or they're given a peaceful, dignified death," The Doctor finished. He compulsively patted Peace on the back, rubbing his hand in circles to quiet her sudden burst of babble.
Adric stared at the Time Lord, horrified. At length, he said, "I take it back. Earth is not nearly as barbaric as Thion."
"Well, differences in culture—"
"Doctor, it's horrific, and there's no justification for it."
The Doctor looked down at Peace, whose shining blue eyes watched his face with bright curiosity. "You're right," he agreed, at length. "I think it's time we did a little kidnapping of our own, don't you, Adric?"
"I'm pretty sure kidnapping is your specialty, Doctor."
"I was never so cheeky when I was your age," muttered the Time Lord, as he spun them all out into the vortex.
Adric didn't believe The Doctor's comment for one second.
"What I can't figure out," The Doctor said, the next day, "is why someone would abandon a baby they had gone to so much trouble to steal. I mean, Thion isn't a technological wasteland. They have security cameras on every street corner." He stopped talking to focus completely on the task of fitting Peace's hands and feet with snug warmers.
"That is the question, I suppose," Nyssa agreed. She stood before the large mirror in the TARDIS's wardrobe room and tried on a multi-colored knit cap. The cap matched almost perfectly with the thick blue parka she had found. She smiled in triumph and shoved the hat further over her voluminous hair.
"It really doesn't make any sense," The Doctor continued, and then, "Nyssa, would you hand me that other hat?"
Nyssa complied, tossing the second knit cap to her Time Lord mentor. "That's going to be much too big for Peace," she said, as she watched The Doctor fit it on the baby's head.
"I'll just roll up the edges," The Doctor said, and followed up on his words. Peace endured his ministrations with a rather pensive expression. The Doctor switched back to his former topic without a transition. "I think it's rather paranoid to suspect that a baby was planted on a space station specifically to lure you into taking her into your TARDIS."
Nyssa whirled away from the mirror and stared at The Doctor. "You think Peace might be some kind of trap? But, how? And by what enemy?"
"That's why I said it was paranoid," The Doctor said. He stared down at Peace, who stared back, happy now that the particolored hat was wrapped around her head.
"Who would do such a thing, Doctor?" asked Nyssa. "She's just a little baby. Why would someone use her to get to you?"
"Oh, there are so many who would not hesitate," The Doctor said. He gently buttoned the tiny coat he had scrounged up from the TARDIS's lost and found, while Peace made cooing noises and kicked her feet. "There are so many mad, vicious beings in this universe, Nyssa. They have no respect for innocence or fragility. They would think nothing of sacrificing a defenseless child to their purposes."
Nyssa shook her head. "I can't understand it."
"Neither can I." The Doctor's eyes were as hard as crystal, and his posture had stilled into that pent-up energy which Nyssa associated with major confrontations with the forces of evil. Then, Peace made one of her clumsy baby movements and swatted The Doctor on the cheek. The Time Lord started as if he had been electrocuted.
Nyssa couldn't help the giggle that broke free at his wide-eyed expression. "She's like that one Earth film you showed us," the Trakenite said, "the one where the people got slapped with fish!"
"Did you hear that?" The Doctor asked the baby, scandalized. "Nyssa's calling you a Monty Python prop! What a thing to say to you!"
The tension had been effectively dissolved. Nyssa and The Doctor left the wardrobe room and joined Adric and Tegan in the control room as the four companions had previously planned. Tegan and Adric had donned similar winter clothing as Nyssa and Peace. The Doctor had added only a red woolen scarf to his usual outfit (including the papoose) as a concession to the cold climate of the planet they intended to visit.
"Doesn't she just look adorable in that getup?" Tegan gushed. She took Peace from The Doctor's arms and waltzed about the console room, singing, 'Frosty the Snowman'. Peace squealed in delight.
"I'm telling you," Adric said, "people from Earth—they're just a little bizarre, sometimes."
"Their nurturing techniques are just different from Alzarians', that's all, Adric," The Doctor said.
"I used to think it was just Tegan, but now, I'm not so sure."
"I can hear everything you're saying," Tegan said, to the tune of 'Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let it Snow.' Nyssa laughed, again.
"Come on, let's go!" The Doctor said, striding toward the TARDIS doors. "Remember: we are here only to sightsee. We are not taking Peace anywhere we intend to start a conflict—"
"You're telling us this?" Tegan asked, disbelievingly. "Since when do we ever start anything?"
The Doctor ignored her. "—and if we see a hint of trouble, we're going to hightail it back to the TARDIS. Understood?" His companions nodded, so he went on, "Zamimnon is a frozen world. It has spent the past seven hundred years covered in a medium snow. Many of its small bodies of water have been iced over so long, they're considered shortcuts if the traffic is too heavy on an overpass. We should fit right in. The last time I was here, the inhabitants were nearly identical to Earth people in appearance."
"What I want to know is: can we build snowmen?" Tegan asked, as she slipped Peace into the papoose on The Doctor's front.
"The snow is perfect for molding," The Doctor said, with a mischievous smile. "I discovered that on my first trip to this planet. I got my friend Sarah Jane right in the kisser, as the Americans would describe it."
"Yes!" Tegan threw up one fist in the air. "I declare a snowball fight on Nyssa and Adric!"
"Hey!" Adric said. "Why not The Doctor?"
"Because he's holding the baby, obviously, "Tegan said. "Which was a clever strategy, Doctor."
The four TARDIS crew members piled out of the time-and-space-machine and into a winter wonderland. Zamimnon looked like an alien version of a Hollywood Christmas movie set: snow drifted in puffs over a landscape covered in white and blue. They had landed in a fairly deserted spot. The only sign of civilization was a futuristic farming hut in the distance. The three TARDIS guests let out excited whoops and raced out into the cold. The Doctor trailed behind them, grinning at his friends' antics. Tegan wasted no time in making snowballs and pelting Adric. Adric retaliated by constructing a makeshift wall to shield himself, then hurling sheets of snow over the top. Nyssa decided to side with Tegan. The two girls kept up a steady barrage of powdery missiles, and Adric hollered about how unfair it was that they had ganged up on him.
The Doctor had planned this outing in response to the restlessness he had sensed from Adric and Tegan at being stuck in the TARDIS for so long. They rarely spent more than a couple days inside the vast machine, but Peace's presence had kept them adrift in the Vortex for a week. Although he was not the most forthcoming when it came to emotions, The Doctor could observe them in his friends. He felt glad that he had entered Zamimnon into the navigational system. The glacial planet had always been popular with his humanoid companions, and it had not disappointed him this time.
He was so busy watching the older companions play that he didn't notice Peace's reaction to the new setting until her telepathic signals bubbled in his mind like a very fine champagne. A bright smile appeared on The Doctor's face out of pure reflex to the baby's mental wonder. He reached out and let a snowflake rest on his hand. He held it close so Peace could see the way it sparkled against his skin. Then, he attempted something he had not tried before: He communicated a word to Peace through the connection in their minds. Snowflake, The Doctor thought, trying to encapsulate everything about that tiny shard of ice into nine letters. Snowflake.
Peace wiggled so enthusiastically, The Doctor was afraid she might fall out of the papoose. Her mind rejoiced at this new stimulation. With a slight twinge in his thoracic spaces, The Doctor wondered if this was the first word Peace had ever been introduced to, telepathically. Normally, a Thionic baby would 'hear' its mother's name on the day of its birth, and its father's name on the day after. But, what if Peace had never received that gift?
"Listen, Peace," The Doctor whispered. He pointed to the snow-laden earth and began to think. Ground. He pointed to the sky. Sky. Clouds. Snow. He went on and on, walking in a slow line, never straying too far from his bigger charges but introducing his tiniest charge to a host of new words. Peace drank in the attention like it was water in a desert.
"What are you doing, Doctor?" Nyssa asked brightly, as she and her snow-battle comrades sprinted up to him.
The Doctor looked at each one of them. He etched their names clearly in his mind, passing the knowledge to Peace. Tegan. Adric. Nyssa. He couldn't stop the rush of associated memories from flowing out with the words. Other words fell out, like Brave, Foolish, Kind. Peace's mind echoed back a tiny fraction of the affection and loyalty he had accidentally unleashed, but the feelings were her own. They surprised The Doctor profoundly.
"I'm teaching Peace about the world," The Doctor said, but none of his companions understood the double meaning to the phrase.