PEARL

Chapter Eleven

Landing face down I got a mouthful of green foam, and the wind was knocked out of me, but I got right up, looked around, saw people helping Carly and the Argog leave the elaborate landing field, a 30-acre mattress-thing topped with a substance that most resembled airplane foam. Observing this I wobbled, fell down laughing and let myself be helped off the field, into the green level palace. Dinsov and Adinsov were there to greet me but to their surprise I couldn't understand them and they couldn't understand me; the TARDIS was on Earth, just a tad too far away to translate. Well, we didn't have to explain chains, did we? Carly was clinging to me in an instant and the Argog was in a daze; as far as he had been concerned he'd been leaping to his death, and here he was alive. Dinsov sent a Quadribras off on a mission that became clear when she returned with bolt-cutters, which Dinsov expertly used to free us.

"Water," I said to Dinsov, pantomiming a drink. He understood and had water brought. I drank it standing, and Adinsov took my hand and led me into a chamber that had seating. Carly was not to be separated from me and no one objected when she sat with me. Without being asked, Adinsov brought her something that resembled milk, and after a sip, Carly approvingly drank it down. I was trying to remember whether or not I had been drugged here upon my last visit when Carly's head drooped against my arm. "Here we go again," I said, nodding too.

Well, one doesn't really need shoes on a cloud, but I did miss mine. I had half a mind to go back up and try to fetch them, but of course that would have been ridiculous. Adinsov was happy to take me and the uncharacteristically quiet Carly down to the next level, since I didn't remember where the stairway was in relation to where we'd landed. When we arrived, Mar and Tar greeted us excitedly, and to my great satisfaction I was able to practice my language skills on them, since Argog was one of those I had been trying to learn.

"So good to view you another time," I tried, eliciting a smile from Mar; Tar had of course faded back into the wall. "This be Carly."

"You are making very strange noises," said Carly.

"We are lost to be here and didn't arrive by will," I explained. "Pardon my bad language. I am yet education."

"We understand fine," said Mar. "You are here without your magic box. We will make you very comfortable here."

I translated for Carly and she said, "But I want to go home!"

"I know, honey." I was not used to calling people "honey" but she just seemed so sad. I thought then of the sheet of paper in the breast pocket of my coat, which I'd left lying on the console room floor. I hoped Nyssa and Tegan were waiting for me in the TARDIS but thought they probably were in our humble apartment downstairs from Mr. Morley. Had a week passed on Earth? A year? I hadn't left them any money. I was starting to feel more sorry for myself than for Carly at that point, when she said, suddenly,

"I can try to think Miss TARDIS here."

"Really?" I hadn't thought of that (and I had never heard her called "Miss" TARDIS before), but the TARDIS is, in fact, a living entity. Maybe… just maybe…. I quickly translated for the puzzled Mar. "My friend minds that she would call my boat with her brain." It took Mar a while to convert that into a sensible sentence, and then he brightened.

"Can we help in any way?"

"Carly, is there anything that makes thinking something somewhere easier? How do you usually do it?"

"Well," said Carly, "It doesn't usually work. It only worked when I magicked you. I guess when I told that pointy thing to go away, we all went away together. But that doesn't count."

"No," I agreed, "we definitely don't want to do that again." I tried, "When you magicked me, what were you doing?"

Carly thought. "I think I was just walking."

"I saw you walking."

"I played with Gwen and then I walked around the block and my legs were walking all by themselves. I like to do that. I think and walk. Sometimes I sing."

"Were you singing when you magicked me?"

Carly thought hard. "Um, I think so."

"What were you singing?"

"I don't want to tell you! You'll laugh at me!"

"No, I won't. I promise."

"Yes, you will!"

I took a moment to tell Mar what was going on. He smiled and left us alone.

"Come on, Carly."

She whispered, "Purple People Eater."

I was all prepared to have a hard time not laughing but I had never heard of that song so it was easy to keep my promise. "Carly, can you sing it for me?"

She looked doubtful. "I don't know all the words. I make up the words or I go 'la la la' and stuff."

"That's okay," I reassured her. "Okay, Carly, let's go to the big hall where there's lots of room for you to walk."

"Can't we just go outside?"

"No, you mustn't. It's really dangerous to go outside. I'll just ask Mar to direct us to the big hall. Mar? Oh, he left. Tar, are you there?" Tar moved away from the wall and became visible. "Tar, acceptable to view you! Are you skilled to push us to the bigger room?"

When Tar stopped laughing he said that if I decided to stay on Philt, he would teach me Argog. He reached down a cream-colored flipper/hand and took Carly's. She looked up at me. I nodded encouragingly. She went with him and I followed.

It only took a few minutes to navigate the corridors of the palace to the great hall, from which I could see its portico and beyond that the steel gray surface of the stratum. Tar released Carly's hand and settled against a wall, effectively vanishing.

"Carly," I said, squatting down as I had when we'd first met, "Will you try to think the… Miss TARDIS here, the way you thought me to you? Can you show me what you were doing when you thought me down to Earth?"

Carly started walking, at first in a small circle in the middle of the great hall, and then to a wall, which she followed, tracing and retracing the perimeter of the room, at first self-consciously and then relaxing into her own rhythm, seeming to forget I was there. She sometimes skipped but mostly walked, often silent, sometimes murmuring to herself; I couldn't make out what she was saying. After her third go-round she started humming. Soon I could make out a jaunty tune and, by and by, "It was a la la mm mm flying purple people eater, mm mm, da da flying purple people eater…."

I was beginning to think Carly's efforts and my hopes were all for naught when I heard the whir and groan of "Miss" TARDIS responding to the little girl's call. I ran to Carly, grabbed her and swung her around before putting her gently down again and running to that daft old box, reaching into my pocket…. No! My pockets had been emptied by my captors. I had no TARDIS key. Had I given a spare to Tegan or not? I couldn't remember. Anyway, Tegan and Nyssa were back on Earth. The TARDIS was here and I couldn't get in. Carly and I were trapped on that planet of clouds after all.

The prospect of spending the rest of my lives here was depressing enough, although my exile on Earth had not always been a picnic either, and here I already had friends… and some justice to serve if possible. I could make a difference here, I rationalized. But Carly! Her father and grandfather would never know what had happened to her. She had never signed up for this. She was six, for heaven's sake. ("… and a half," I corrected myself.) I was now completely responsible for her, in loco parentis. Apparently I wasn't too good at that: Nyssa was orphaned all over again, and Tegan was as stranded as I, albeit on her own planet, misplaced in time.

Then it struck me: that brief, innocent conversation I had overheard had been nagging at my subconscious ever after. I had half-formulated a resolution to comfort them, each of them, both of them, the next time they were feeling "low," as Tegan had put it. Surely that was not a difficult thing to do. Well, they must be feeling pretty low right now, and where was I? I would never get to bestow so much as a comforting hug. They'd never see me again, nor I them.

Carly was so thrilled with her success that she was yelling "Yay!" and bouncing around the room, impatient for me to open up the TARDIS. How could I tell her that she had succeeded but I had failed?

"Doctor?" The TARDIS doors opened and out flew my friends, for whom I was responsible and who were responsible for me.

"Nyssa!" I cried. "Tegan!" I collected them both at once in my arms and squeezed. I think Nyssa actually squeaked. "I am so sorry, my dearest friends! I didn't mean to abandon you!"

Nyssa was confused. "But you didn't, Doctor. You were only gone an hour."

Tegan dangled the TARDIS key in front of me; she had put it on a keychain that boasted an airplane charm. "Here, Doctor."

I shook my head. "You keep that, Tegan. I'll have the TARDIS make up another… two others," I added, looking at Nyssa. "Come on, Carly! Let's take you home!"

Nyssa stocked up on jawbreakers at Morley's before we left. Tegan had a thing for those pickles. I spent all my pennies treating the neighborhood kids to whatever penny candy they wanted, and I paid Mr. Morley for an extra week even though we were vacating the apartment. After a tearful reunion with her father and grandfather, who'd had no idea she'd been gone, Carly went looking for Gwen. She wasn't in our flat. She wasn't at home. She hadn't been home but everyone had assumed she was with Carly.

"When you and that thing disappeared, Gwen was so freaked out," said Tegan, "she ran right out into the street and almost got hit by a taxicab. She was out of our sight before we could react. I mean, we were still trying to believe that thing had taken you!"

"She summoned it," said Nyssa.

"Yes, she did," I said, "and when Carly told it to go away, it had to go. Unfortunately it took us both with it. For you it's been an hour and for us it was days. I thought I'd never see you lot again…." I was unable to speak for a moment.

"Doctor?" Carly was back. "Can that monster come back and get us?"

"I don't know," I said, honestly. "I hope not but I don't know. I wish we could find Gwen and see she's all right." I thought for a moment. "Is there a place you two go a lot, a special place you like?"

The four of us set off down the street. Along the way we ran into kids and adults who said they'd seen some kind of monster attacking me but when they told the police they were laughed at and disbelieved. I shrugged and smiled and murmured something about practicing for a play. I am sure they remained unconvinced but I was unwilling to stop and make up anything better. We had to find Gwen.

We found her easily at a small nearby playground; Carly knew where to look. Gwen was immediately visible, perched atop a jungle gym, swinging her legs and whistling a tune I didn't recognize. She saw us, smiled and waved but made no move to come down. Carly scampered up pretty quickly. I practically flew up the bars and settled on one facing the children, who were holding hands. Not consciously imitating Gwen, I swung my legs too, until I caught her staring at my bare feet. "They took his shoes," explained Carly.

"They?"

"Bad people."

"So that was pretty scary," I said, Gwen nodded. "I was scared too." At this Gwen looked more serious but somehow not especially traumatized. "I wouldn't want to see that spiky thing ever again. Do you think you might?"

"Definitely not," said Gwen. "Never again."

"How do you know?"

"I know." I am sure I looked as uncertain as I felt, for she continued, "I have been having awake dreams since I was six years old. Even when I'm not in the middle of having one I can feel it coming, even if it doesn't come for a day, or a week. I can still feel it. I feel it all the time, waiting to come out. Then it comes out but no one can see it but me. Then it goes away. I mean did. It went away."

"I'm sorry," was all I could say.

"But today everyone could see it and it kidnapped you and Carly. Is it kidnapping if a monster does it? I made that happen and I don't know how I did it."

I looked around at the playground. The jungle gym wasn't very high; I could see the playground and indeed the surrounding streets were not packed but dotted with happy humans who had been on the same planet, and would remain on the same planet, for their whole lives, and never even realize they were trapped. Or perhaps they weren't trapped at all – just happy. "Maybe," I said, "That Spiker was trying to come here and it made you bring him. The Spiker made it happen, not you."

"I think I made it happen, too, but I won't anymore. I can't feel it now. I hope I never feel it again. I feel different now. It came out and it went away. You and Carly came back and it didn't."

Carly let go her friend's hand and came around to my side. "Doctor," she said, "I thought you here and you came. I think people here all the time. They never come. You came."

"Yes, of course," I said, automatically.

"But they hurt you."

"Well, you didn't hurt me."

"I can't explain it," she said, upset.

I insisted, "You're doing great. You're just wrong is all." She looked about to cry. I think she thought I didn't believe her. "I mean, well, two things. First of all, we had a choice. We heard your call and we decided to come. You called us but you didn't magic us. Okay?" She nodded slowly. "By the way, your signal bounced a lot. It took a long time to find you, but we did, because we wanted to. Second thing, I am not sure whether the Spiker was after you or after me. It doesn't matter. The important thing is, he can't come back. And the third thing is…."

She shouted, "You said two things!"

"Three now! The third thing is that you got us back home. You got me my TARDIS back. Thank you!"

"Hey guys!" called Tegan. "Everything okay up there? Are you ever coming down?"

"What," I protested, "down to Earth?"

"You're welcome," said Carly, simply.