PEARL
Chapter Ten
In the morning I awoke to a clamor of languages. Although I am, if I may boast, an accomplished linguist, I only understood a few of the tongues I heard that morning. I thought it wisest not to let on quite yet that I understood anything at all, but I overheard snatches of information that might come in useful later – alas, nothing about the location of a stairway, a plot to escape or anything immediately useful beyond "Quiet, here they come" and "Watch out for the new ones," meaning me and Carly.
Carly was awake and crying into her pillow. I said her name softly and in the next instant she was in my arms and I was holding her as tightly as if she were my own child. When everyone else got up quickly and stood silently in front of their cots I did likewise, and Carly followed suit. As far as I could tell, she was the only child in the room. Moments later there were no children at all in the room, as she was whisked away by two translucent Quadribras, as I called them in my mind. I tried to protest but was firmly restrained until Carly had vanished.
We were subjected to a head count. (Beings with more than one head still counted as one.) Then I was whisked out of the room too, down some hallways and out to the back garden of the palace, a huge area already being worked by about 50 beings who had opposable thumbs for holding tools, or claws for turning soil. There was no orange cloud cover above us, just a red sky dominated by a blue sun that burned our skins and dehydrated us all quickly. We were boiling in 20 one-acre raised gardening lots with tall fences around them and bridges between them with low guard rails, so no one risked falling (or escaping) to another stratum, except, I observed to my horror, by being pushed or thrown from one of the bridges. I was burdened with a backpack containing a huge jug of water (from which I was forbidden to drink), and given a soil pH reader; had instructions shouted at me in a language I legitimately didn't understand; and was left to my work, which I did understand: I was to start in one corner of the lot located in the corresponding corner of the same garden, test the soil's acidity or alkalinity every few feet until that lot had been thoroughly tested, then cross the bridge to the next lot, until all 20 acres of the palace garden had been tested. If soil was too dry to test I was to add water to it before testing it, from the jug in the backpack. I was to mark my findings in a notebook with two pages ruled in columns and rows for each lot. Of course the writing system on Philt was completely unknown to me, but I figured it out by perusing what had already been written (a month ago). I'm not a bad cryptographer and I am a fast learner, especially of languages.
I'm also not averse to an honest day's labor if I can do it alone and be left alone to work out how to rescue a kidnapped child, my friends stranded on Earth (and 1959 Philadelphia at that), my TARDIS likewise stranded and myself, stranded in servitude (to give it a kind name) on this oppressive planet. However, I was not left alone. I was stopped to have my notebook checked so often that I thought it would have been quicker and more efficient for the checkers to do the soil-testing themselves. I concluded that efficiency was not as important to them as ensuring that we were all too exhausted to contemplate escaping.
By mid-day the heat was unbearable and we were herded, single file, back inside the palace and into a small room with a water trough the length of one wall. From this we were to drink like animals. Balls of some substance akin to sticky rice were thrown at us, and only those who caught one ate, so there were scuffles for the rice balls and scuffles for a spot at the trough. I drank from my hands and never got quite enough, but I did rub a little water on my face. By the time I had decided to stick my face in the trough like everyone else, it was time to go back outside to work, and I hadn't managed to score a rice ball.
I did get to cross one of the bridges into the next raised bed. Stopping in the middle of it, I looked down at the green cloud layer and wondered if it would be worth it to jump. No, if I did that, I would never find Carly; I'd probably be killed anyway. Someone pushed me forward and I moved on to the next bed.
There was no evening meal. A being with three claws was asleep in the cot next to mine, where Carly should have been. (No: Carly should have been with her father and grandfather in Philadelphia.) There was no lights-out per se, as the lights stayed on all night, but there was an enforced bedtime. We slept in our clothes. When we were awakened for the head count, I found that I had absorbed some of the languages around me, at least to a small extent. That's how, on the way out to work, I understood what I overheard: a little girl had been declared a princess the day before and set up in luxury. A palace required a princess. The little girl was uncooperative. That's all I could glean but my mind was all over the place on this. Carly was alive. Carly was in danger. I was hungry, thirsty, dizzy and slightly feverish from dehydration, and now adding "find a way up" to my disorganized and largely impossible to-do list.
The third being who checked my notebook was angered by my having miswritten a number. I'd crossed it out right away and written it correctly, and initialed the correction, but that was not acceptable and I was backhanded. I assumed complete humility. If I fought back, Carly was lost forever. I tested the soil.
At the break I stuck my face right in the trough and gulped down an ocean. Then I caught myself a rice ball and gobbled it down before anyone could imagine appropriating it. As soon as I'd swallowed the last morsel, I had my face back in the trough. I lifted it only to breathe. Then I stared at the wall. There was a gap between the trough and the wall that could accommodate a smaller man than I, but probably not me. I put my hands on the rim of the trough as if to duck down and drink again, only instead of drinking I pulled slowly on the end closest to the garden. Aware that our break was nearly up, I slid my hands down the rim of the trough and pulled, slid some more and pulled, until I had reached the other end. Then I slipped behind the trough and flattened myself as best I could, hoping I was really out of view and not just fooling myself.
When I thought the room was empty again, I stood up and made for the door through which the rice balls had been delivered, opposite the door to the garden. I cracked it open, saw no one on the other side, eased myself through, heard footsteps and hid under a staircase, not a secret one going down but an ostentatious one leading only upward. The footsteps faded away and I was up those stairs in a flash.
If I had not been so single-minded in my purpose I might have allowed myself to be dazzled, for the upper palace was indeed dazzling. The cream-colored walls were jewel-encrusted. The molding was gilt. The ceiling would have rendered Michelangelo Othello-jealous. The grand hall in which I found myself, unpopulated at the moment (or I'd have been done for), had no doors, just wide arched doorways on both sides through which other grand rooms beckoned, and a huge glass window opposite the stairway, across the hall. On the right I saw Spikers in the next room. I had never seen more than one at a time and from my (extremely vulnerable) vantage point I couldn't tell them apart anyway, although I hoped the one I'd battled, if it was present, would be displaying some broken quills. The room on the left appeared to be empty but of course I couldn't see more than the arched doorway revealed. I bent over and did a low sprint to the window. From there, looking down, I could see part of the garden in which I'd been laboring. I'd left my testing kit by the water trough but I still wore my backpack, so I wriggled out of it and took out the jug within, unscrewed the cap and raised it to my lips. I should have sipped; I gulped… and spat out the horrid stuff. It was acidic, like tonic water. I rubbed my dirty bare feet in it and suddenly realized that I had to have left a pretty clear trail of footprints up the stairs and across the room. I could only assume I'd left them in the break room and between there and the stairway as well. Why had no one found me yet? I dried my feet as best I could on the cream-colored floor and, leaving both pack and jug behind, tiptoed, holding onto the wall, whose jewels were big enough to make good grips, around to the door that looked safe.
It wasn't. Through the door I could see a throne, two Quadribras attendants, kneeling and bowing so that their foreheads touched the floor; between them, someone resembling Mar, shackled and barefoot but standing calmly; a richly dressed woman whose species I hadn't see before but who looked about as human as anyone I had met on Philt, and, on the throne, Carly, being berated by that woman in hushed tones in a language I was still struggling to learn. I could understand "I am afraid of what they might do to you," and "You need to try or we are both as good as dead," and "They are only Argogs; they can't actually feel any pain." She was offering a mother-of-pearl-handled whip to Carly, who refused it.
"You can't make me," said Carly. "I want to go home." She was wearing so many layers of clothing, even richer in texture and embellishment than the attire of the woman offering the whip, that she could barely move. She looked as hot as I felt.
I walked straight up to the woman and took her by the wrist, flashed her as bright a smile as I could manage, and said, "Hello. I'm the Doctor. I'll just take that, if you please."
"Doctor!" cried Carly, trying to slide off of the throne.
I had grabbed the wrong wrist and the whip rose to strike but I twisted the wrist I did hold, and the whip hand faltered. After a brief struggle I managed to secure the whip and fling it across the room. I slung Carly over my shoulder like a sack – no time for niceties – and tugged on the calm Argog's chains. "Come on!" I urged him, racing toward the grand stairway, and down. He didn't need to be told twice. When we got to the bottom, we were met by the guard who had backhanded me and two of his colleagues. One of them took Carly from me and the other threw the hapless reptile to the ground, kicked him once, hauled him back up to his feet and marched him out to the garden. My guard did the same to me, shackled me about the neck with a thick iron collar and long chain, pulled me to my feet and hustled me out to the garden too. Carly's captor stepped ahead of us and within moments we were all on the bridge. "No," I cried, but it was too late. Carly screamed as she was tossed over the side like so much refuse. Her murderer turned and strutted back into the lot. The Argog broke free of his guard and jumped. Before I could even fully process that, I felt a yank on my neck and realized that I was not simply going to be pitched off of the bridge. My guard intended to hang me with that chain. Maybe Carly and the reptile had survived. I certainly wouldn't.
I body-slammed my guard, tore the chain from his hands and swung it at him. He went down. I swung at the other guard and missed but he fled anyway. I wrapped the chain around my waist so it wouldn't be caught on anything, climbed over the railing and jumped.