Chapter 16- Her Indoors
You know those moments when everything is perfect and lovely, and all your worries vanish from sight, and you hope it will last forever, but then whatever god is watching above us decides to ruin everything with a bucketful of chaos?
I bet you can guess what happens next.
A violent jolt woke me from my slumber, so violent that my body actually left the mattress for a moment. After a minute of trying to slow my racing heart (which didn't get anywhere; the TARDIS kept shaking like it was in a blender), I got up and stumbled toward the door, barely heeding the drop in temperature from underneath my warm blankets into open air.
"Why does everything happen when I'm in my room?" I grumbled, feeling my way along the walls toward the console room. The bright light made my eyes sore, so I had to rely on touch most of the time. I found my way to the console (through no small amount of luck) and found the Doctor, back in his usual street clothes, running around it, frantically mashing buttons.
"Doctor!" I called. "What the hell is going on?"
"Meteor shower!" he yelled back. "Parked the TARDIS in the wrong spot, and now we're caught in the middle of it!"
"Then get us out!" I ordered, climbing down the stairs. I didn't appreciate the rude awakening. Can you tell?
"That's what I'm trying to do!" he retorted. "I'd dematerialize us out of there, but it takes time, and the storm is too dense! If I let it go for a second, we'll get rammed!"
"Can I do anything?" I offered. It sounded like getting us out of this meteor storm would be a team effort.
"Of course not! You're only human, you couldn't dream of understanding TARDIS navigation!"
Never mind, then.
The TARDIS bounced again and steam shot out of the crystal pump. Suddenly, vertigo hit me like a brick wall, and I lunged for the banister. The Doctor seemed unbalanced, too, clinging to the console.
"Oh, come on!" he said, gesturing frantically at his ship. Before I could ask, he continued, "The automatic gravity's down!"
I watched helplessly as I circled the console, waiting for an opportunity to be useful. I was now completely awake—you'd be surprised how well panic can get you up. Suddenly, the TARDIS took a mighty hit, shoving the floor into a steep decline and throwing the Doctor and me to the floor. I tumbled down the stairs and the Doctor slid down the glass floor, the latter catching hold of a clump of wires dangling underneath the console. I continued to roll away, further and further from the Doctor's desperately outstretched hand. My hands and feet scrambled for purchase, but the smooth floor offered none.
"ERICA!" he yelled, raw fear in his eyes and desperation in his voice. He watched me cascade down the slope in a tangle of limbs until I fell into the TARDIS doors—which immediately buckled under my weight.
"Doctor!" I screamed as I slipped into space.
I tumbled end over end through nothingness, screaming my lungs out and flailing all over. Due to some act of God or whoever was watching up there, I remained completely intact and alive, breathing oxygen that shouldn't be there. Through some other miracle, no meteors dared to invade the path of my journey; they kept well away from me. What sort of magic was keeping me safe?
Suddenly, I saw the most welcome sight in the universe: the TARDIS herself. It was straight ahead of me, just ten more yards. I had a pretty good inkling that the Doctor was breaking a few rules of the universe to do this (now I know he was breaking them, and way more than a few), but I didn't care. I just wanted to get back inside.
As I flew closer, I noticed a figure standing in the doorframe, reaching a hand out. I reached my own arms out, wanting to get to safety as soon as I can. But when I soared even nearer, I noticed that it wasn't the Doctor reaching for me—it was a woman.
I didn't have time to ponder it, because I was soon falling into her arms and being pulled into the TARDIS, back into the warmth and safety. The woman and I fell to the ground, our arms flung around each other.
"Sorry about the rough landing, sweetie," she said. Her voice, coupled with her English accent, was like a bumblebee: lovely and pretty, but easily able to turn sharp and unforgiving. She kicked the TARDIS doors closed and smiled.
I rolled away from her, climbing hastily to my feet. She rose more gracefully with me and brushed herself off, and that was when I noticed her attire: she was wearing a long, green ball gown, and her blonde hair was set into elegant curls at the back of her head (by the violence of the curls, it looked like it had taken quite an effort to reign them in). I glanced up at the console; a deep emerald cape was draped over the TARDIS's banister, nearly falling to the floor. A pair of black heels lay scattered over its heavy folds, hastily thrown aside.
"Who are you?" I asked, too relieved to be as suspicious as usual. Something about her tugged on the back of my mind, but there was still some residual grogginess there, which made it hard for me to want to remember anything.
Her eyes were bright as she looked me over. "Haven't we met yet?" she asked curiously. My eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Apparently not."
"What are you doing in the TARDIS? Where's the Doctor?"
"The Doctor's the one who sent me," the woman answered confidently, striding up the stairs to the console.
"Prove it," I said, staying rooted to my spot. She might have saved my life, but I wasn't going to trust her blindly, not after the whole Star Ariel disaster.
She walked to the banister near the stairs and leaned on it, slipping her hand into the pocket of her dress. "He gave me this," she said, withdrawing the sonic screwdriver from her pocket. She tossed it to me and I caught it, turning it over in my hands. This was definitelythe Doctor's screwdriver; he hardly puts it down. He must trust her if he put the sonic screwdriver in her care.
I slowly walked up the stairs and returned the sonic to her. "Okay," I said. "I trust you. And thanks, by the way. Thanks for saving my life."
"Oh, don't worry about that," she said, smiling. "I'm always cleaning up the Doctor's messes." She strode back to the console and began gently flipping switches and winding cranks. The pump in the center began moving, and the whole ship began vibrating—not the stormy lurches as usual, but a simple sensation beneath my feet that was hard to notice at all.
"Wait, what are you doing?" I asked, worried for the ship's wellbeing.
"Flying the TARDIS, of course!" she replied. "And a sight better than the Doctor can. He always leaves the brakes on and refuses to use the stabilizers."
With a final lever, the TARDIS let out a deep bell toll. "Now we're orbiting the Drasil galaxy. I'll take you back to the Inauguration, but—if you don't mind my saying, you need a bit of a makeover first."
I looked down at myself: wrinkled pajamas, bare feet, a tumbleweed of brown on my head, and the pasty feeling in my mouth of not brushing my teeth. "Yeah, I think you're right. I'll go get myself together."
"We've never properly introduced, have we?" she asked before I could leave. She extended a hand. "Good to meet you, Erica. My name's River Song."
My eyes widened as my doubts fell away, replaced by awe. "River Song," I repeated, extending my own hand. That's why I remembered her face—I saw it in the Memory Display when the Doctor was using it.
This was the Doctor's wife.
Usually, when you meet your friend's wife, you're eating lunch together, or you happen to run into each other at the mall. It's usually not by having your friend throw you into space and his wife happens to catch you.
But this is the Doctor we're talking about. There's no "usually" about him.
River Song walked me down to my room, explaining how she'd been there to catch me. She talked quickly, but I was used to the Doctor's lightning lectures, so her swift speech was easy for me to keep up with.
"The Doctor found me at the Inauguration Ball for Luna University's new headmaster, Professor Okras," she explained. "He told me to take the TARDIS to your space-time coordinates, set up a shielded air corridor, and be ready for you. Then he gave me the sonic screwdriver- he told me you weren't the most trusting person in the universe- and told me to go. He's waiting for us back at the Ball. Oh, I better make sure I get the time right—we don't want him worrying too much. He gets ever so childish."
"Why couldn't he come himself?" I asked. "I mean, no offense, but it seems he went to a lot of trouble just to move the TARDIS over."
"The paradox would've been too great," River answered. "Two of the same TARDIS that close together was dicey. You falling out of one TARDIS, only to be caught by the other was dangerous. It would've been disastrous if the Doctor were in both TARDISes at the same time; it would've been the straw that broke the universe's back."
"I see. Kind of."
We eventually reached my bedroom, where I took a lovely twenty-minute shower to scrub away my grogginess and River dove into the wardrobe room, taking it upon herself to find a suitable ball gown for me under the premise that I was unfamiliar with future fashions. Once I was properly outfitted in a flowy, mermaid-style purple gown; strappy, silver heels low enough for me to walk in; and a fitted, black wool coat (all of which fit me perfectly; either River had an eye for style or the TARDIS had intervened), River reached into her pocket and pulled out a diamond choker, turning me around and fastening it around my neck.
"There you are," she said, finally satisfied. "You look perfect."
"Thank you," I said bashfully. There weren't many occasions when a bakery owner that cared for her younger sister could dress up like Movie Star Barbie. "You ought to become a fashion designer."
"Oh, I just love playing dress-up," River said. "You should've seen me in Nazi Germany."
We quickly strode back to the console room, where River began piloting the TARDIS again and I watched unabashedly. She was a gentler pilot than the Doctor: he would slam and jab at the controls, and got us in the wrong place half the time anyway. But River: River knew how to work the TARDIS; she knew that the ship needed only a gentle press here or a loving pull there, and she knew how to stop the TARDIS from shaking like San Francisco during an earthquake. After another deep bell toll, the TARDIS landed, and River retrieved her heels and cape ("Why did I ever decide on these?" she said, slipping the deathly shoes on. "Such impracticality,") before we both marched out of the TARDIS, eager to reunite with our mutual friend.
River had expertly parked the TARDIS right outside a convention hall, in a shadowy corner of a parking lot no car had parked in. I drew my coat tighter around me: it was chilly out, and night had fallen. A blue moon- no, really- shone down at us from the black sky, painting the parking lot in an eerie luminescence.
"Where are we?"
"Earth," River answered. "But future Earth to you. Let's hurry, he was rather anxious when I left. God knows how he is now."
River led me to the brightly-lit ballroom, where people milled around the entrance, bored. River pushed through the crowd and pulled me into the hall, with even more bored people. An orchestra played quiet dinner music in one corner. Groups of people clustered the room, having discussions that had a vibe of, "once lively, now dying." Tables crowded the place except for a large dance floor. No one was on it.
"You guys certainly know how to party," I quipped.
River searched over the heads of all the guests. "Oh, he's got to be here somewhere, I made sure to arrive ten minutes after I left!"
"You can fly it that well?" I asked incredulously. River certainly seemed to know what she was doing, even better than the Doctor, but the TARDIS had a mind of its own. Getting somewhere exactly when you want was near impossible when the Doctor was flying.
"Yep," River answered offhandedly, still searching for the Doctor. "Where could he have possibly gotten to?"
Suddenly, the huge double doors at the entrance of the hall slammed shut with a loud, ominous thump. The electric chandeliers on the ceiling began shorting out, a third of the lights going dark. The music ceased abruptly as the orchestra stopped playing, just as bewildered as the guests. Suddenly, a grinding, electronic, hellish voice echoed around the room, with no sign of its origins.
"All guests will gather in the cen-ter of the ro-om!"
Screams joined the cacophony of the monstrous voices and people began running around. I tried running away with them, but River's hand was suddenly iron on my arm, keeping me right in place.
"Erica, whatever happens, stay close to me," River said, her voice low and urgent. "Follow their orders, do not leave my side, and please, whatever you do, do not draw attention to yourself. They will not hesitate to kill."
"Who?" I asked, bewildered and scared. River pulled me into the tightly-packed throng, taking cover behind the other terrified guests. People pressed in on us from all directions, wanting to get away. "River, what's going on?"
"We're being rounded up," she answered, a bite in her voice. "Like cattle for slaughter." As River pulled us further into the prey, a gap in the heads appeared, and through it I viewed one of the universe's most demonic creations.
It was a tall, white-and-gray, life-size thing, with strange half-spheres on its lowest section, whose base was an irregular hexagon. The middle section had two arms: one was a streamlined ray gun-looking thing, and the other was an honest-to-God plunger. A tower of strange vents served as its neck, and its crown consisted of a bronze dome with a pair of lights set on it, placed like the ears of a cat. They briefly flashed whenever the thing facing us down spoke. It didn't have a real eye; a glowing blue eyepiece on a stalk took its place. Worst of all? There were a dozen of these horrific creatures surrounding the partygoers, their ray guns and plungers twitching threateningly at us. Everyone was screaming, or praying, or muttering obscenities (even the ones in other languages I could tell were foul); all but River, whose breath I could barely hear through her nose.
"River," I whispered, eyes wide in terror. "River, what are those things?"
"They're Daleks," River answered, her voice filled with hate.