CANDY
Chapter Two
"Poison," said Nyssa. "I will do the labs and hopefully find out what kind of poison, but she is being poisoned."
"You took a hair sample?"
"Yes, Doctor, of course. That will tell me which poison but her symptoms are clear." Two attendants helped her get the samples back to the TARDIS. I was trying to decide whether or not to ask for permission to move the TARDIS nearer to, or even into, the palace. On the one hand it would make our visit easier (and drier: it was still raining). On the other hand, short hops are iffy and we might have landed, well, just about anywhere and anywhen. I learned that my decision had been made for me: overnight, the TARDIS had been hauled into the palace and was sitting just outside the throne room. I followed Nyssa into the lab but she shooed me out again, so I followed the attendants to the TARDIS door and before letting them out I asked them to inform the royal family and anyone else to whom it mattered that I could be found there, in the TARDIS, if I was needed. Then I set to work trying to find an anomaly in the shape of Shellaran.
I found a bump. It wasn't a big bump by planetary standards but it was a big enough bump to cause one principality, Shellaran's lone principality, to experience an equatorially tropical climate, repel hurricanes and identify itself as the only equatorial entity on the whole planet. I didn't need to know what caused the bump, or the nature of the bump, or anything else about the bump. My curiosity should have been satisfied; I'd explained the climate and located the equator. Why did I need to explore the bump any further? – because I am me, that's why. That's what I do. I stick my nose where it doesn't belong. Maybe I should explore why I do that. Instead, I further explored the bump.
My explorations were interrupted by a call to lunch. I went to fetch Nyssa, but she waved me away, saying she wasn't hungry and at any rate wasn't at a good stopping point. I went out and let myself be led to the dining hall without paying particular attention to how we got there; my mind was all full of that bump. That's how I ended up with a bump on the head to complement the bump in my head: a small animal ran directly in my path, I tripped over it, fell to the floor and hit my head on the frame of the door to the dining hall.
The court physician had a look. "You'll live," he prognosticated. "It'll hurt for a while," he added, unhelpfully.
"Do you happen to know what that animal was that I tripped over?"
"I didn't see and no one mentioned it, but I would guess you ran into a grigna. Did you know this principality was named after that animal? We are overrun. It is a nasty thing, if you ask me. Tasty in stew, though, if you cook it for a day or two." He added, "It would just as soon eat you."
Lunch was half over by the time I got to the dining hall, but the head cook had saved me a sample of each course, and, the courses having been numerous, I was able to eat my fill. Tegan sat with me, nibbling at a peanut cluster. She hadn't seen me fall, nor had anyone thought to inform her, so when I finally did arrive, she was torn between being properly miffed that I was so late and tickled to near hysteria at my attire. When she found out what had delayed me, she went all Mama Bear, the way she gets – the good side of her short fuse. I had a hard time convincing her I didn't need her protection from a freak accident that was unlikely to recur.
As we were rising to leave the dining hall, Nyssa came running in, and the head cook, sighing, as (she told us) she had been about to start dinner, brought her out a small feast like what I had just enjoyed. She pushed it aside and set a sheaf of paper in its place on the banquet table. "Look, Doctor! I don't know the name of this substance but it is remarkably like Thallium, and with the amounts of it I found in the princess' hair, I can't believe she is still alive, much less functioning!" I looked at the papers; they meant little to me but Nyssa is an expert in such things and I trust her completely.
"Thallium," I mused. "How would she be exposed to something like that?"
Nyssa said, "If she is not being fed this poison deliberately, then perhaps she is being exposed through a chemical process that has a different purpose."
"Different from murder, you mean."
"Do you think she is being poisoned on purpose?" asked Tegan.
"I don't know. Doctor, if someone is poisoning her deliberately, and we don't know who, then we must be careful whom we tell about this."
"Yes," I agreed, "but we must at the very least tell the princess herself."
"And the prince?"
"No Tegan. That is up to the princess."
We decided that I should be the one to inform the princess of what Nyssa had found, but before I did so, I wanted to make a stab at discovering where it had come from. I was pretty sure the poisoning was deliberate, since the princess seemed to be the only person affected, but I did recommend that Nyssa take samples from the prince and the household in general. She went off to do this and I repaired to the TARDIS to find out some possible sources. The one that struck me was the small paper mill on the Grigs/Olbarba border. Olbarba was a state that cooperated with Grigs in many matters, including not only global political alliance but trade partnership. The border paper mill was the only one the two entities shared but paper was a major industry in Olbarba, along with hair products, perfumes and fertilizer. I suspected that all of these products were useful all over Shellaran, and that paper (to wrap candy) and fertilizer (for obvious reasons) would be of particular interest to Grigs. Both of those products relied upon sulfuric acid, and thallium is a byproduct of sulfuric acid production. But where was that produced? A little more digging answered my question: Ambarba, the state on the opposite side of Olbarba, and its competitor in hair products, was the planet's main source of sulfuric acid. Maybe this thallium-like substance was, in fact, real thallium, and maybe it was coming from Ambarba. How and why?
I could find no record of hostility between Ambarba and Grigs. That didn't mean there was none; that just meant none was on record.
Princess Regent Vanessa was not in her chambers. I was told she had gone out to one of the gardens but should not be disturbed there. I found that curious, considering the rain, but when I glanced out of a window on my way back to the TARDIS I saw that the rain had stopped. A sudden thought turned me right around, and back in the hallway, I asked an alert attendant where the garden was that the princess was visiting. "The south side," I was told, along with a stern admonition not to disturb her. I asked to be taken upstairs to my room, then, in front of its door, feigned a faint in order to send the attendant running off to fetch help. Now unobserved, at least for the moment, I found a window facing south and looked out and down at a lovely garden, where the princess was walking arm-in-arm with a tall man in quite plain garb, evidently not a royal personage or even of the royal Grigs household. As I watched, they stopped and kissed. I backed up and turned away. This was none of my business… unless…. What a suspicious mind I have, I thought, inaccurately; I have been accused, rather, of being somewhat naive and trusting. I felt ashamed of having snooped, but had no time to wallow in that feeling, as I heard footsteps drawing near; I made myself fall down so I'd land in a haphazard manner, and that's how the attendant and court physician found me, apparently passed out (again) on the gleaming marble floor. Now I felt terrible about this deception as well, but it was bad enough to have snooped; being caught snooping would be even worse.
On the other hand, having snooped, now I had a suspect. If there was a person who interacted only with the princess, his being the poisoner would explain why only the princess was being poisoned. How could I explore this without losing the princess' trust and possibly even making myself persona non grata in Grigs?