KORDA

Chapter One

I was looking forward to catching a game of batona on the planet Korda, maybe even finding an amateur competition to join. Nyssa was not so hot on the idea until I explained that batona had a flamenco element to it in addition to its uncanny resemblance to cricket. Tegan said she was up for anything, so off we went to Korda, where, with the passage of centuries, batona had changed, as had the planet itself. I barely recognized the place. We should've just dematerialized right out of there but of course we didn't. I mean, it looked friendly enough. The grass was still aqua, the sky was yellow, not so different from the pale orange I knew, and a warm wind blew colorful balloons all over the capitol city, Ingram, and beyond. The buildings were all different and a lot taller, and the streets less crowded – nearly empty, in fact - but still, It charmed us and wooed us, and despite our disappointment about the batona, we decided to stay a bit.

"There was this little restaurant," I told my friends, as we stood in front of the TARDIS, "that serves something remarkably similar to tapas, with a Kordan twist of course." As it was nearly tea time, they agreed to check it out, and I led the way. However, when we got to where it should have been, there was no restaurant, nor any building at all. Instead, we found a large dais or small stage in an empty lot. I was disappointed. "First batona and now this!" Nyssa and Tegan took it in stride, but as it was now even closer to teatime and we were starting to feel a bit peckish, we set off down the road to find a likely substitute, noting again the absence of people on what could even be the town's high street. ("This was quite a lively place last time I was here," I commented.) The plastic food samples neatly arranged in the empty eateries' windows we subsequently passed ranged from iffy to disgusting but Nyssa and Tegan seemed fascinated by the urban Kordan architecture, a blend of Andalusian, Romani and Robert Adam (neogothic, not neoclassical; as it happens, I was at his funeral, but that's another story).

Before we found anything gastronomically enticing we encountered a (Moorish) hovertrolley station, or I should say terminal, as the trolleys hovered in and then back out the way they'd come. We asked a sandwich woman, advertising what amounted to a Kordan dude ranch, if there might be a friendly batona game out in the country. She assured us there was, so we went in and bought tickets to Sándorton, the country estate in question, using snippets of our hair, collected by the cosmetologist, as currency. She returned our change in tiny, flat plastic purses and informed us that the ride would take only half an hour. There was no trolley hovering over the single rail of track, so we sat outside on a Romani painted divan, watched a green balloon waft by, and waited for the next trolley. By and by Tegan excused herself to visit, as she called it, "the toot."

"Are you sure we should leave the TARDIS this way?" asked Nyssa, softly. She didn't seem worried but I reassured her that a trolley that could take us a half hour away could also bring us back in half an hour. It had been more than half an hour when a trolley finally whooshed into the station, and Tegan came running out just in time. We boarded and within five minutes we whooshed off too.

We settled into our cushy seats and Nyssa closed her eyes. Tegan softly told me what she had overheard in the ladies room: "I think they were talking about you, Doctor. There were two of them, in their 50s if I judge right, and one asked the other, 'Do you think he's trained?' And the other one said 'If he's not, we can train him. It's not that hard.' And you were the only man around."

"Well," I reasoned, "just because the conversation took place in the station, that doesn't mean they were talking about someone in the station. They could have been talking about a horse, or an android."

"Doctor… am I crazy or did these people come from Earth?"

"I can't say whether or not you're crazy, Tegan, but I can confirm that Korda was indeed colonized by human beings, earthlings, long ago. Well, in your distant future, but long before… now."

"Because Earth is gone?"

"Well, not gone. Just unlivable." Tegan looked so sad that I added, "Don't worry. It happens eventually to every planet, every star… nothing is permanent. Earth has a nice, long run. Longer if it gets cleaned up in time."

Tegan seemed somewhat reassured but remained thoughtful and quiet for the rest of the trip. I followed Nyssa's lead and closed my eyes too.

The conductor woke us up. "End of the line," she advised us, cheerfully.

Outside the station we found a woman holding up a sign: "For Sándorton," it read. I smiled at her and said, "Hello. I'm the Doctor. This is Nyssa and this is Tegan. Are you here to take us to the ranch?"

She nodded, also smiling. "Yes, I am here to take you to the ranch for dudes." She turned to Tegan. "Is he trained?"

"Is he trained? That's what that other woman was asking, Doctor!"

"We can get less if he isn't trained. No matter. We can discuss terms when you've rested a bit. Are you hungry? I know I am. Oh, I'm Chula Vista. Call me Chula. Right this way!" She led us to a rickshaw whose beast of burden was apparently a human man in a rather incongruous dark blue 17th-century British cavalry uniform. We piled into the rickshaw and were rattled and rumbled down a good many country roads. Not only was I fairly sure we would not easily find our way back to the station alone, I suspected that we might not be as free to leave as we had been to arrive. (And whatever had she meant by "trained"?) I also noticed, although not at first, that Chula exclusively addressed my companions and more or less ignored me. Sometimes she asked them questions I knew they couldn't answer, and I would open my mouth to help out, only to be acknowledged briefly with a glare and then virtually shouted over. If this was part of my "training," it worked. I shut my mouth and listened, at first intently, then sporadically, then, as my mind wandered, not at all.

We arrived at a much smaller, drabber location than I had expected: a fenced-in lot with a few long squat buildings – no Andalusia or Roma represented here - surely at least one of them serving as a bunkhouse and another as a mess hall; stables and a paddock at the near end; and, to my delight, a batona oval at the far end.

Our arrival was distinctly low key. We were greeted by a rather frail woman who was likely younger than she appeared; her frailty aged her and I wondered at its cause. She didn't bother introducing herself but directly took me in hand and led me away, over the protests of Nyssa and Tegan, who, I presume, were shown around by Chula. My guide just deposited me in the stables, where there were no horses but two men dressed identically to our driver, by whom we were shortly joined. There were no beds in the stables; we were expected to sleep on hay, and the hay I saw – and smelled – upon arrival was none too clean.

So far, as holidays go, Sándorton was coming a cropper.

I am not sure what I noticed first: that although it was light out and would remain light for some hours yet, no one ventured outside from the stables, which were, after all, not locked; that my three stablemates, as it were, wore what appeared to be ankle monitors but I had none (yet? – and was my head to be shaven like theirs, too?) or that the tea Chula had promised us had not, in fact, been promised to me. I wasn't part of that particular "us." Then I had a sorrowful thought: we men would probably not be invited to play on the batona oval. Surely batona was now only a female domain. Traditional batona is played by men and women together but I had no faith that this tradition would be upheld here. Was Korda like that all over now? Was this an aberration or the new normal?

Tegan brought me my dinner. Ventura, Brea and Feliz had to wait for theirs and eyed me distrustfully. "I made demands," explained Tegan, handing me a fresh celery stalk. I offered her my wilted boutonniere in exchange but Feliz jerked it out of my hand; he and the others gobbled it down as if it were a sirloin. "I told them you had dietary needs due to allergies. They said you were spoiled already and would be devalued if you had allergies and I would further decrease your value if I indulged you. Nyssa told them that keeping you healthy increased your value but they were unimpressed. Doctor…." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "How do we get out of here?"

I whispered back, "The sooner the better – before they slap an ankle monitor on me. That might be at any moment, though. Do you think you can find a key so we'll be ready when that happens? I need time to think." Tegan nodded but didn't look confident. "Are they treating you all right?"

"Oh yes, we're royalty here. Apparently, we own you and we're giving them a right hard time with your sale price. I don't know how long we can put them off but you're still ours." She laughed grimly. "They keep asking where we got you."

"Tell them you found me in a junkyard." Tegan laughed but had no clue what I was talking about.

"I have to go," she said, soberly. "We're still negotiating."

"All right. Find that key! And don't sell me!"

"Not even for a fortune?"

"Not even! If you sell me we may have no legal recourse. We may not depend on a legal recourse but it would be a disadvantage to lose that option. Um, which one of you owns me, then?"

"We've left it up in the air."

I thought for a moment. "All right. Let it continue to float. If you are forced to make a choice, say Nyssa owns me. Traken was destroyed; she can say whatever she likes and they can't check. The original colonists here were from Earth and might be able to trip you up. So Nyssa owns me – she is obviously rich, as she has the longest hair - and you are her assistant."

"Right…."

"And you must tell Nyssa as soon as possible to pretend to be ill so that you both can excuse yourselves without making the sale."

Tegan understood. "Got it! Take care of yourself, Doctor. I'll try to get that key and I'll keep in touch."

After she left, my quiet stablemates were suddenly quite vociferous.

"Well aren't you special!" scoffed Feliz, our driver.

"What's the point of running away?" reasoned Ventura. "You might get bought by someone really nice and have a cushy life."

Brea warned me that if I tried to escape, the three remaining men would be beaten. "We will have to stop you," he threatened.

"Are we allowed to leave the stables if we stay on the property?" I asked.

"It's discouraged," said Ventura.

"Discouraged as in they ask us not to do it or discouraged as in we're beaten?"

"The latter," Ventura replied.

"A pity," I sighed. "I wanted to go to the oval and practice my flamenco."

Brea snorted. "If you do that they might not beat you. They might just shoot you."

I started by enjoying a few good stretches and then standing still in the pitch, listening to the music in my head. In a real batona match, at least the ones I had seen and played, a singer and a guitarist share a platform, usually in front of a microphone, and their meter and tempo control the timing not only of the bailaor's (or the bailaora's) dance but of the bowl. In casual games there is usually a singer or an instrumentalist, not necessarily a guitarist, but not both, and this person stands near enough to be heard but safely out of the way. I was alone in the oval at three in the morning and was not planning to sing aloud; getting shot is not on my bucket list. I just wanted to practice a little sevillana.

Although I did study briefly with Carmen Amaya, and although I am a rather good bowler, I am only a mediocre bailaor. I am fit (time travelers tend to run a lot), I understand the moves (at least the less complicated ones) and flamenco music absolutely inspires me, but I never have a chance to practice. It's not at all like riding a bicycle. It's more like "use it or lose it."

I still had my cricket ball tucked away in a pocket but all alone I wasn't going to bowl – just dance. Anyway, a batona ball is softer than a cricket ball. I had removed my coat and laid it across a cone, and would have removed my jumper too except that the air was quite crisp, almost wintry, as it often is in springtime Korda. I didn't stand on the tiled area of the pitch because I didn't want to make the sounds that are so crucial to the dance, not that my plimsolls would have made the proper sounds, but they might well have made some sound and given me away.

I closed my eyes and listened until all I could hear was that music in my head. (That was reckless but then, so was being there at all.) Then I eased into the dance as I would only do alone, by starting with my feet, then adding in hands, then hips and arms. I kept my face as still as I could, definitely not what I would do in public, rather, just an exercise for my own discipline, my own style. When my plimsolls were quietly stamping in the dust, my hips swiveling slightly but sharply, vaivén, my arms rising to an oval curve and then swooping down while my wrists and hands did their own independent floreo, my head sharply swiveling too, all moves I had learned long ago but deeply informed by how I felt now, I knew my face would translate all that too; I didn't have to think about my face. What I had to think about was refraining from snapping my fingers. It wasn't easy. They wanted to snap.

Because there was no game, I didn't restrict myself to the dancing tile. I started out dancing in place but ended up dancing all over the pitch. I couldn't remember when I had last felt such undiluted joy.

Then they shot me.