Eram quod es, eris quod sum

And a burning sensation that is rarely the consequence of a great notion

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:59:38 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 25
Sometimes a Strange Longing

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“Does this skirt make my butt look big?” Bilis asked.

Foreman crossed his arms. “You’re pretending to be Cuddy--as loathe as I am to say something House would say, it’s supposed to make your butt look big.”

Bilis frowned and continued to strike poses in front of the mirror. It was a precarious situation, as he was doing so while balanced atop three-inch high heels, and Gwen was certain Bilis had never cross-dressed in his life. After a year with Torchwood, one learned to judge these things; at the least, Bilis lacked the natural flair and poise to pull off heels. He was much too stiff.

“I don’t understand why Tracy can’t pretend to be Cuddy,” she told them. “That’d at least make sense.”

“Um,” Foreman said.

Bilis put a hand on his hip and jutted his butt out. “Tracy is indisposed right now.”

“Did you kill her?” Gwen asked sharply.

“Of course not, dear. I fear Miss Kindle far too much to make an attempt on her life, even if I wanted to, and I do not. I am a reformed man. Love can do that to someone, you know.”

“No, no, no.” Gwen shook a finger at him. “I don’t believe you for a second.”

“You made out with him!” Foreman said.

“I was loaded with morphine after surgery!”

“Thus lowering your inhibitions and revealing your true feelings.”

“For once, I agree with the perpetually disgruntled medical professional,” Bilis said.

“That’s not me, that’s House!” Foreman replied.

“You do seem grumpy much of the time,” Gwen pointed out.

“Have you seen the state of this hospital? Not everyone could be unconscious while aliens rampaged through the hospital and tried to kill us.”

“Just stuck in a corpse locker,” Bilis muttered under his breath.

“Once I’m out of this bed, I’ll try to help you organize the staff,” Gwen promised.

Foreman rolled his eyes.

“What? It’s the best I can offer!”

“I know,” Foreman said. “But if that’s all you can offer, maybe you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Please, would you two stop fighting and focus on what’s important?” Bilis flourished with his hands, ending with them pointed at himself. “Me. Mr. Foreman, this brassiere is unacceptable. The paper we’ve stuffed it with is rustling every time I move. I insist on receiving breast implants.”

“I am not going to approve plastic surgery for you. Even if I wanted to, there isn’t enough time!”

As it stood, the situation was this: Gwen woke about six days after the two Doctors departed with their respective teams of Torchwood members and Princeton-Plainsboro doctors. Foreman discovered two additional tumors after they left and operated to remove them from one of her kidneys, leading to the aforementioned making-out-with-Bilis episode while she recovered. Thankfully, Nurse Brenda had kicked him out before matters could progress much further, and for that, Gwen was grateful. In fact, she wasn’t certain how Brenda had gotten such a terrible reputation as the Evil Nurse. She’d been nothing but kind and protective to Gwen, and even when others crossed her, she wasn’t particularly harsh in ejecting them from Gwen’s presence--Gwen did not equate forceful with vindictive, not when someone was clearly acting out of concern for a fellow human being.

Of late, she’d taken to having odd dreams, thoughts of what life would be like if she miraculously got better. Fantasies about Jack returning like a prince in shining armor, and darker fears about what would become of her if the teams failed. She knew she should be grateful to have as famous and powerful a being as the Doctor on an interstellar mission to save her, but the dreams were getting to her, despite her awareness that they were simply her mind trying to work through and discard her fears.

Foreman and Tracy had explained the events after her initial illness, and they’d settled in to wait for the Doctor’s return, expected at any time considering he was a time traveler. Their attempts to establish a routine had been foiled when, three days after Gwen’s return to lucidity, they received a letter addressed to Lisa Cuddy from Umberto Snyder, New Jersey’s senior United States senator, announcing his intention to visit the hospital in support of its reconstruction after the unfortunate escalation of events by the state National Guard in response to a terror threat.

News reports indicated the government was passing off the events as a terrorist attack. The Republican National Committee headquarters was a bombing, as was the blast in the Princeton Plainsboro parking garage. The National Guard, according to the government, attempted to defuse the bomb, but the terrorists went into the hospital and took hostages. During the rescue attempt, parts of the hospital were significantly damaged. As for the death of the New Jersey governor, well, that was clearly totally unrelated violence due to organized crime, explaining why his wife, his aide, and the attorney general were killed as well, and the DC botanical gardens explosion was pent up swamp gas.

True, it was an eventful two days but not entirely implausible. That Britain still believed three successive alien invasions were mass hallucinations made this cover-up look brilliant in comparison.

Rather than attempt to explain Cuddy’s sudden disappearance, Foreman and Bilis decided to impersonate her on the basis that the senator was 87 years old and had a reputation for operating alone. Having requested a personal meeting, there was a good chance Bilis would need to fool no one but a senile, near-sighted politician who saw this as nothing more than a goodwill stop. Even so, Gwen thought the plan was beyond stupid, but they’d proceeded without consulting her and now it was too late to change course. In any case, when it came to her caretakers, Gwen found being bedridden was equivalent to being disenfranchised, which annoyed her to no small degree.

As though he knew her thoughts, Foreman turned to her, arms still crossed. “I don’t like the plan either, but how are we supposed to account for Cuddy? The media’s making her a hero for surviving a hostage situation and a bombing; we’re lucky they haven’t discovered she’s missing yet, and that’s thanks to the senator getting the state legislature to order the hospital off limits.”

“Tell him she’s ill.”

“She’ll have to show up eventually, and an illness will only inflame curiosity.”

“Maybe she’ll be back by then.”

“And maybe she won’t.”

“It’ll be worse if you get caught.”

“I’ll tell the senator I’m a big, bad wolf.” Bilis clawed the air at her. “Rawr. The better to eat your deans of medicine with.”

“That is not a pleasant image in my head,” said Foreman.

A sharp rap came from the door, and by now, Gwen had an almost Pavlovian response to it. Sitting up straighter, she put on her best smile as Nurse Brenda entered. “Senator Snyder is waiting in the lobby.”

“Drat!” Foreman said. “He’s early!”

Brenda raised an eyebrow. “I can chase him out with a broom if you prefer.”

“How unusually helpful of you.”

“I aim to please,” she said, and only her voice was capable of making a statement sound sardonic and sultry at the same time.

“It is all right,” Bilis said, dismissing their concerns with a flick of his wrist.

“Cuddy does not act like that,” Gwen informed him.

“Very well, I shall remember instead to yell at the senator, kill him with an item of clothing, and throw him out the window.”

“Fine, do whatever you want. He hasn’t met her, has he?”

“I don’t think so,” Foreman replied.

Bilis sauntered past Brenda. “Bring the good man to Cuddy’s office. I will wait for him there.”

* * *

Senator Snyder looked younger than his actual age. Not young enough to be wrinkle-free, but wrinkles told their own stories. Like the erosion of canyons, wrinkles deepened with age, though whether weathered by sweat and tears or designed to do so by a god morbidly fascinated with all forms of torture, great and small, Bilis was not certain. In any case, Bilis was a veteran of wrinkles, both in time and skin, and he felt Snyder’s “real age,” to use a modern term, could be no more than an incredibly youthful 75.

The senator fixed him with an intense stare the moment he stepped into the room. This was an exceptional accomplishment considering he sat with his back facing the door, but the new windows were rather reflective, and no one had bothered to reinstall the blinds. “Ooooooooohhh,” Bilis said seductively, running his hands over his chest and waist. The senator’s eyebrows shot up, which was exactly what would’ve happened had he met the real Lisa Cuddy--of that Bilis was certain. I am a perfect imitation! he thought to himself.

“Is there something wrong?” Snyder asked.

There was. In his overenthusiastic groping of himself, he’d crushed some of the paper that formed his right breast, and now it looked like he’d given himself a mastectomy. “Um...” He turned away and stuck a hand into his blouse, trying to re-arrange its contents. Only too late did he realize the office windows acted as mirrors as well, reflecting his actions onto the windows overlooking the outside and back to the senator.

“Oh dear, are there fleas?” The senator shifted in his chair. “I must say, the place is in even worse condition than the reports suggested, through no fault of yours, of course. I suppose an image is indeed worth a thousand words.”

The bra strap snapped, causing paper to slide down his belly. Deciding it was a lost cause, Bilis rushed to the desk and sat with arms firmly crossed. The senator extended a hand, and Bilis stared at it. “I’m sorry, I can’t shake your hand.” Bilis pressed his arms even harder against his chest. “I, uh, just performed a disembowelment.”

Snyder peered at him over massive, perfectly circular gold glasses. “I was not aware hospitals did that.”

“Autopsy!” Bilis said.

“Ah.”

Cuddy would never have gotten this flustered. Bilis slid a foot across the floor and up the senator’s leg. “I’m so grateful you took time to visit our humble hospital.” It was quite hard to lean suggestively over the desk with his arms crossed, but Bilis managed. At the same time, his foot caught on Snyder’s pant leg. The senator frowned, and Bilis pushed harder. The cloth parted with a soft ripping sound.

Snyder pushed away from the table with the speed of a 65 year old. Doubtless, Cuddy would have found his rapid de-aging incredibly arousing. “Rowr!” Bilis cried, throwing himself across the table onto the man. The chair collapsed under their combined weight, and they crashed onto the floor. Outside, several nurses paused to stare.

“All right, let’s end this farce,” Snyder said, grabbing him with firm hands and setting him aside. The senator stood, brushing himself off, his left pant leg drooping sadly. “We both know you’re not Lisa Cuddy. At least, I hope we both know.”

Bilis’ jaw dropped. But he’d done such a good impression of her!

“Fortunately for you, I know that Cuddy is traveling with the Doctor.”

Bilis’ jaw couldn’t drop any further.

“Are any members of Torchwood present?” Snyder asked. “One Owen Harper, perchance?”

Bilis shook his head as the senator lifted him off the ground and set him on his feet.

“Toshiko Sato?”

“No, my good man. They are traveling with the Doctor as well.”

“Curious.” Snyder stroked his chin. “They added another member recently, didn’t they? Gwen Cooper?”

“She is very ill.” Bilis didn’t like telling Snyder about Gwen, but the man clearly had connections. Besides, he still wasn’t sure what the fallout would be over his impersonation of Lisa Cuddy.

“Regarding your impersonation of Lisa Cuddy,” the senator said--Of course, Bilis thought-- “Please find a better actor, preferably one of similar gender and appearance. And relay this message to Ms. Cooper, along with my sincerest wish that she get well soon: The aliens are still here. In fact, they have infiltrated Congress and the highest levels of government. They are not from the rift, though the technology you tracked through the rift does originate from them. The ones you defeated were low-level scouts. Please be careful. Have a good day.”

Before Bilis could respond, the senator swept out of the room with the serene agility of a fifty-three-and-a-half year old.

* * *

Roald Dahl Plass was empty, as it was wont to be whenever a character involved with Torchwood was present. Today, that character was Tracy Kindle, and while her involvement with Torchwood was minimal, there wasn’t really any other character to spare. Her mission was to rescue Rhys Williams from the frenzied, passionate Torchwood pterodactyl, Myfanwy, something Bilis Manger had declined to do when he appeared to deliver his message of somewhat less animalistic love from Gwen. Instead, Bilis had appeared out of nowhere to the sight of Rhys screaming and trying to beat back the pterodactyl with a lead pipe.

As the pterodactyl carried him off to her nest, Bilis yelled “Gwen says, ‘In case I die, I want you to know I’ve always loved you!’” To this, Rhys replied, rather ungratefully in Bilis’ opinion, ‘BUGGER THIS!” Of course, that might have been in response to being carried away by a pterodactyl, and Bilis wasn’t sure he’d even heard him, but he’d performed his duty to Gwen and as much as he doubted this rather average and clearly un-resourceful bloke was a legitimate rival to himself, Bilis saw no reason to complicate the situation by encouraging a fellow suitor. Therefore, he’d returned to the hospital and stupidly mentioned the situation to Tracy a few days later. She then took it upon herself to take the first trans-Atlantic cruise she could book (the ocean air is great for the constitution! Unlike those crowded airplane cabins...) to head for Wales to rescue Gwen’s unfortunate boyfriend.

“One, two, three...” she counted the blocks in the sidewalk to find the location of the invisible elevator entrance Bilis had told her about. “Ah, here it is!” Opening an umbrella she’d brought with her, she stepped onto the stone and plummeted through. After the first few feet, the air caught her umbrella, and she began a slow drift down.

Before she had time to take in the base, a squawk came from her left. Darting out of the shadows, a slim shape rushed at her. She cried out as the pterodactyl grabbed her arm with its feet. The rush of wind from her sudden change in direction caused the umbrella to rip out of her grip, and she was left dangling from the pterodactyl with no recourse but to let it take her where it desired. Thankfully, the trip was brief, though it ended on a pile of branches and some sticky, slimy material she didn’t want to identify. She struck the nest after a ten feet drop, but the sticks were moldy enough that they didn’t scratch her and, in fact, provided a decent cushion.

Looking over, she found a man lying facedown beside her. He groaned when she poked his shoulder but was otherwise insensate. “Oh, that’s not good,” she said. The flapping of pterodactyl wings sent gusts of cold air in their direction, and she screamed as Myfanwy descended upon them.

* * *

Paperwork was no one’s friend. Trees certainly didn’t appreciate it. Pens and printers bled to make it, only for people to lock their labor away in dark cabinets or shred it and send it to the landfill. The humans filling them out wished to be somewhere else, and yet, life couldn’t seem to run without an extensive paper trail. That was why Foreman realized, now that he was running the hospital, that he faced a dilemma: if he didn’t do the paperwork, the hospital wouldn’t run, but if he did the paperwork, he didn’t have time to run the hospital, for paperwork was but a small portion of the demands the facility and its staff made upon him--it just happened to be the most time-consuming portion. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that Cuddy had used her formidable powers of intimidation to make the paperwork write itself.

As a result, loathe though he was to admit it, he needed to delegate the work to someone else. To Foreman, this smacked of all those times he wrote up House’s paperwork for him because his boss never, ever did that sort of thing. He was too busy downing Vicodin and insulting patients, which clearly took precedence.

A tap on the glass made him look up. Well, he thought of it as glass, but it was really a sheet of plastic over the space where the glass had been. Since Cuddy’s office was presumably still occupied by Cuddy, Foreman had resorted to working in House’s office. The broken pipes and other damages from the bomb blast had been repaired, but since the interior windows weren’t critical to making the office useable again, they remained shattered. None of this helped his psyche, as it seemed to him that he was taking up House’s old position more than Cuddy’s and doing so in a second-rate third-world environment. There were still goo stains on the walls from the not-slug aliens.

As if these problems weren’t enough, it was only a matter of time before the hospital resumed taking the strange cases no one else could solve, and when that happened, Foreman would be leading the diagnostic team, resulting in an even greater time drain.

“Come in,” he said, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. Nurse Brenda burst through the doorway, looking like an angry valkyrie, and this was another problem Foreman did not need--after all, valkyries were usually concerned with dead men. “What’s wrong now?”

“Two more doctors and five nurses have called in with pulmonary illnesses from all the dust. We’re severely understaffed.” Somehow, over the past week, Brenda had inserted herself into every aspect of hospital business. In addition to providing him with constant staff updates in the form of admonishing complaints, she had forced him to give nurses the authority to act as doctors--an authority masked from the public by extensive paperwork but authority nonetheless--due to the number of MDs who had been injured or sickened by the events of the alien invasion. In a way, she was now running the hospital, and he was reduced to being her puppet secretary.

“I’ve put up job postings everywhere,” Foreman replied, “but no one’s applying, for obvious reasons.”

“We could steal them from charities. We’re pretty much working in a war zone anyway.”

“Doctors Without Borders isn’t talking about a hospital without walls.”

“Well, it’s your job to keep this hospital running, Mr. Administrator!” she snapped.

“Seems you’re doing a fine job by yourself,” he replied.

Rather than snarl back, Brenda raised an eyebrow and looked pleased. “I’m glad you’ve noticed.”

“Were you trying to be subtle?”

She took a seat across the desk from him. “You probably haven’t noticed or I wouldn’t have to say it, but nurses are rather underappreciated.” There was an odd softness to her voice, rather like whenever she spoke to Gwen. He recalled Gwen defending her and for the first time, didn’t dismiss it as the mad ramblings of someone who liked to see the best in everyone, even if that best didn’t exist.

He let his pen fall from his hand and rubbed his eyes. “You know, maybe you’re right. I’m sorry if I’ve been impatient with you.”

“Your response is understandable.” She smiled, and Foreman found the sight rather unsettling, so much so that he nearly pulled away when she reached toward him, but he kept his hand where it was as she put her hand on his. “You have so much on your plate.”

As they touched, Foreman got a brief image in his mind of putting Brenda’s helpfulness to better use. He smiled back at her, and she put her hand back in her lap. “Could I ask an immense favor of you?” he said.

“If you get our staff back up and running.”

“The problem is that I don’t have the time with all this paperwork. Backlogged patient files, lawsuits over the attack, insurance claims for the damage, government reports, it’s ridiculous how much work there is to do.”

“You’re asking me to do your paperwork for you?”

He felt a stab of fear that he’d squandered her brief good will toward him and rushed to qualify his request: “It’d simply be if you were willing. This is in no way an official request, but I’m in over my head--”

“I’ll do it.”

Resisting the urge to leap over the desk and hug her, he settled for sitting primly and saying, “Thank you.”

She nodded. “Perhaps you should check your inbox again. Maybe some candidates have applied.”

“I just checked an hour ago.”

“Yes, but clearly your luck is changing.”

Foreman logged onto the computer and found fifteen applications from prestigious medical schools across the country, all sent within the last minute.

“Hmm,” Brenda said, leaning over the desk. “That’s a bit coincidental.”

“Maybe it was a server backlog,” Foreman replied.

“Maybe...”

Two days later, Foreman had called every candidate and invited them to Princeton-Plainsboro for a final interview. The first interviewee was Selina Freeman, a hematologist from John Hopkins who’d graduated with honors and gave him a two-inch thick packet of recommendation letters.

“That’s a bit excessive,” he said, taking the packet.

“I had a hard time narrowing it down to my most relevant recommenders,” Freeman replied. “But I managed to get it down to the top one percent.”

“Should I expect a letter from the President?”

“No, I took out his letter on the basis that he’s not a medical professional.”

Talbot Kemp followed her, and he was a cardiologist from UCLA. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” he said the moment he stepped through the door. “The cranes are so avant-garde.”

“We’re rebuilding from a terrorist attack.”

“My mother always said the best part of an explosion is rebuilding.”

Foreman scribbled down “Mental health?” followed by several more question marks on the profile. “What did your mother do? You don’t have to answer that.”

“It’s quite relevant to my job performance, actually,” Kemp replied. “You see, she was part of the LA bomb squad. Her getting blown to bits is what convinced me to become a doctor.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“She’s not dead. We rebuilt her.”

“Pardon?”

“The doctors stitched her back up. I mean, they had to give her a couple prosthetic limbs and an experimental mechanical heart, along with new kidneys, liver, lungs, appendices, eyeball--”

“Appendices?”

“The hospital had a few extra on hand and figured they wouldn’t hurt.”

A pediatrician named Vivek Pandit came next.

“Tell me something strange about yourself,” Foreman said sarcastically.

“I collect marbles and give them to my patients.”

“That’s it?”

“Er...”

“Marble collecting is the weirdest thing about yourself?”

“Some of the marbles are the size of a small dog.”

Foreman shrugged. “You’re hired.”

Jinx Culver was a walking good luck charm, which she demonstrated by dropping buttered toast on the floor of the office, but she graduated top of her class at Harvard and promised not to bring food to work. Eve Feldman liked to sing everything she said, but Foreman was hard-pressed to find a reason why singing operas about the dangers of obesity was a bad thing to happen in the clinic. By the time he reached the last interview with Stellan Millikan, he was sure he’d gone over his hiring quota, but since Cuddy wasn’t here and the hospital’s budget was in limbo, he decided he could hire as many people as he felt necessary. Besides, there was no telling how many sick doctors and nurses would be willing to return once they felt better.

Everyone he interviewed was amazingly qualified and viewed the opportunity to work at the hospital as a challenge that other locations could not provide. When they passed all his checks with flying colors, he put them to work the next day and found himself with a curious lack of things to do. With Brenda taking care of all his paperwork, including the employment verifications and hiring documents, and new doctors taking care of the patients, Foreman found himself with an excessive amount of free time. Each time he consulted the construction workers, they were on time and following the blueprints exactly. It was like clockwork: disturbingly regular and accurate.

“I think you deserve a few things finally going right,” Bilis commented as they loitered in the cafeteria, picking at the remnants of their salads. “Although if you’re really bored, you could try to tackle the aliens on Capitol Hill.”

Foreman dropped his fork. “What are you talking about?”

“Gwen didn’t tell you?”

“Gwen’s always hanging out with Brenda now!”

“Oh. I told her and assumed she would tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“The senator, he knew about us, and he warned us the aliens we defeated were merely low-level minions. The true threat still lurks in the shadows.”

Foreman pushed his seat back and stormed out of the cafeteria. “Wait! Where are you going?” Bilis called after him. He threw open the door of Gwen’s room.

“When were you going to tell me there’s aliens on our doorstep?” he yelled at Gwen, ignoring Brenda’s startled disapproval as she glared at him from the chair at Gwen’s bedside.

“Quite frankly, I didn’t think you needed to know,” Gwen replied, picking at her blanket.

“What?”

“Well, pardon me, but you seemed happy. Things in the hospital are running smoothly and you never liked the aliens. It’s Bilis’ and my opinions that they do not pose an imminent threat, so I saw no reason to concern you.”

“You don’t get to make decisions for me. I am running this hospital, and since those aliens blew it up last time they were around, I think it does concern me!”

“Since you have so much free time, perhaps you’d like your paperwork back?” Brenda said.

“No!” Foreman replied, perhaps a little too vehemently. “I’m trying to put together a new diagnostics team.”

“So you’re returning to your old position?” Gwen asked in a tone that sounded a little too happy.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve heard you’re very good at what you do,” Gwen said. “Almost as good as House. Maybe you’re happier now because you prefer being a diagnostician to being an administrator.”

Foreman stared, and the two women returned his gaze with smiles and concerned looks.

“Foreman, there you are!” Bilis said, running up to the room. “Really, you mustn’t blame Gwen. She needs her rest.” Taking him by the shoulder, the old man tried to guide him out of the room, but Foreman shook him off.

“Dr. Kemp worked under Dr. Fritz at UCLA,” Brenda said. “I believe Fritz is one of the best diagnosticians in the country. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better candidate for your team.”

“Then perhaps you can appoint him as lead diagnostician.”

Brenda’s brows came together. “I don’t understand.”

Foreman believed her words, but whether she intended to or not, it was clear Brenda had usurped his position as hospital administrator. Somehow, she’d maintained her network of nurses despite having all the paperwork to deal with, and he’d found himself consulting her during the interview process. He could recognize superior talent when he saw it, and he conceded she was doing a better job than himself. Now that the hospital was up and running, there was little for him to do that she couldn’t do better. Beyond that, Gwen was right. He really didn’t like aliens, and the thought of them being still around unnerved him.

There was only one conclusion to his train of thought. He felt trapped in his position, pushed around by Brenda and babied by Gwen and Bilis. Taking up residence in House’s office as lead diagnostician would just turn him into another House, and he didn’t want to be a substitute, trying to fill shoes that didn’t fit while he waited for House and Cuddy to return, if they ever did. If the events at the factory proved anything, it was that the universe was a dangerous place, but that was their choice. It was not the choice he made, and as a result, he had to make a clean break with everything. The aliens, the hospital, House’s questionable methodology, he would leave it all behind.

“I think you should be in charge, Brenda,” Foreman said. “You deserve it. And since you’re in charge, consider this my two weeks’ notice.”

Her jaw dropped. “You’re leaving?”

“This isn’t the life I want. Now that everything’s settled, I think it’s time I move on.”

“But what about Gwen?” Bilis protested.

“Her condition’s stable. She’ll be fine.”

Gwen nodded. “If this is what you want, I fully support your decision. Thank you for all you’ve done, Foreman.”

“It was my pleasure, Gwen. Goodbye.”

* * *

“I wish I could leave,” Gwen said once Foreman was gone. Bilis shut the door behind him.

“Everyone wants things they can’t have,” Bilis said, trying his best not to leer and only succeeding in looking like a bulldog with a twitch.

“I don’t.” Brenda crossed her arms. “I’m quite happy where I am.”

“I didn’t know you could feel happiness.”

Brenda stood. “We should go. You were right that Gwen needs her rest.”

Gwen grabbed Brenda’s arm as she left. “Can you increase the drip?”

“You’re getting addicted.”

“I’m having trouble sleeping.” Which was strange considering her dreams were her escape. In her dreams, she wasn’t sick, wasn’t crippled. She looked forward to them, perhaps too much, yet the more she wanted to go to that other world where everything was better, the harder she found the actual process of falling asleep.

Brenda sighed but complied, increasing her dosage. “I’m going to have to get more bags.”

“Whatever you need...” Gwen said, her eyelids drooping as the sedatives entered her bloodstream. She barely registered the lights going out as she drifted off.

All of a sudden, lucidity hit her, and her eyes snapped back open. She sat up, feeling more awake than ever. The first rays of the morning sun broke through the blinds, and her heart dropped. Where were the dreams? she thought.

On the off chance that this was a dream, she tried to climb out of bed and could barely move, pain shooting up from her abdomen. “Damn it!” she whispered.

At that moment, the windows shattered, and the blinds tore apart like trees in a hurricane. Gwen threw her arm over her eyes, partly to block the flying glass and partly to shade them from the glaring sun.

“Don’t be afraid,” a deep voice said, and as though the words were a command from her mind, she lowered her arm, staring directly into the sun. Instead, she found a shadowed figure blocking the sun, its rays forming a halo around his body. Yet, it wasn’t shadows that obscured his features. He was a shadow, a monochrome figure of dark grey, shaped like a man but without any form beyond his outline.

“Who are you?” she demanded. Her hand inched toward the gun she’d placed beneath her pillow.

The figure stepped forward, and she snatched the gun. In one fluid motion, she loaded the ammo from her pocket, released the safety, and fired three rounds. He ignored her and instead, reached into her chest. His hand passed right through her, and she gasped. Warmth burst from the point of contact, flooding her body, washing away the slightest amount of pain or weakness. When she felt so full of energy that she might explode, he pulled back, then grabbed her hand and pulled her out of bed. She staggered, but her feet hit the ground and her legs didn’t buckle. Standing straight, she marveled at the sense of euphoria that filled her.

“I’m cured!” she gasped. And then, she realized what that meant. “This is a dream.”

“Of course it is,” the figure replied. He leaned toward her. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be real.”

“A dream is by definition a fantasy of my mind.”

“Then don’t call it a dream. I have plans for you, Gwen Cooper. Grand plans. For you to do your part, you must be well.”

“Jack?” she asked.

He laughed, but it was a kindly laugh, the chortle of an uncle rather than the taunt of an enemy. “I am so much more than Jack Harkness could ever hope to be. If you don’t believe me, take this.” Out of the darkness of his hand, a necklace emerged, its pendant a spiral overlaid against a star. When she didn’t reach for it, he fastened it around her neck for her. “Wake.”

Against her will, she sank back into the bed even though she stood still. It was as though the entire room rotated and moved around them until the bed was pressed against her back. Light began to fade so that the darkness of the figure expanded to fill the room.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

Even though he had no face, she could sense he was smiling. “I’m God.”

Gwen Cooper woke. After the intensity of her dream, the pain seemed all the more present, throbbing, stabbing, reminding her of what she’d lost. Hoping against hope, she moved her hand to her throat and gasped.

Her fingers shook so hard she found it hard to undo the latch, but she managed, and the golden chain quivered as she held the necklace before her face. The pendant spun, reflecting the light of LEDs. On the back, two words etched in metal seemed to burst with hope: “I promise.”

Though she didn’t know what he promised, that blank seemed filled more with opportunity than emptiness. She believed him. No, she believed in him, and that was enough. God would heal her, and she would serve him.

Back to Chapter 24: The Water's Edge

Summary: We return to Gwen and Foreman because we eventually must. Turns out, a dark threat still lingers, and it’s not just Myfanwy come to take everyone to her love nest.

Of scenarios concerning liquids and people in various states of undress

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:55:46 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 24
The Water's Edge

Click here for sources used or click the image above for a larger text-free version

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Click here for family trees of Germans.

As Adric regained consciousness, a tangled black and white blur resolved into Susan’s snoring visage, and he yelped as he realized he lay beside her with his arms wrapped around her. He rolled away. The ground squelched and covered him with mud before dropping out from under him, sending him tumbling into water. He gasped at the shock of cold, taking in a mouthful of the Rhine, but by then, his panic had woken Susan, and she grabbed him by the back of his shirt to haul him back ashore.

“Where are we?” she snapped as she set him down on the bank. “The last thing I remember is you getting snatched by tentacles and me running through the woods after you.”

“That’s the last thing I remember too!” he replied. They contemplated their mutual amnesia in silence before Adric suggested, “Maybe the tentacles got you too.”

“I have never heard of anything with tentacles capable of wiping people’s memories.” She looked around, reminding Adric to take in their surroundings as well. They stood on a mix of sand and mud that angled into the river. To the left, the Schneider castle stood on a cliff, separated from them by water. As the Rhine seemed to flow between them and land on his right as well, he concluded they were on an island, albeit a large one, as trees grew up further back from the water’s edge and land extended far enough that he couldn’t guess at the shape of its boundaries. “Besides, how did we get onto an island? Something must have happened and someone doesn’t want us to know.”

“By saying you’ve never heard of tentacles capable of wiping people’s memories, that suggests you’re familiar with tentacles.”

“We’ve already established I come from a strange world.”

Adric kicked a pebble into the rushing water. “I don’t know if we can swim back. The current looks strong.” Then he realized his foot didn’t hurt. “Hey, my foot’s better!”

Susan grabbed his shirt and lifted it. “You should be bruised after those tentacles dragged you through half the forest. Nothing.”

They didn’t have time to ponder the implications, though. “Eeeeee! There they are!” a woman’s voice cried out, causing Adric to jump. Susan pointed at a dark shape moving toward them through the water, their features vaguely visible beneath the pink dawn.

“Ah, my friends! Yodel-ay-hee-hoo!” Siegbert waved at them from atop Beatrice as the cow dutifully paddled toward the island with her two owners on her back. Although she seemed to be struggling a little, she covered the remaining distance in less than three minutes and clambered ashore looking characteristically bored. Adric held out a hand to help Edwynna off, and she bounded over to the grass where her shoes wouldn’t sink into the ground.

“How did you two make it to Unicorn Rock?” Edwynna asked.

“Oh,” Adric replied, “is it shaped like a unicorn?”

“No. Should it be?”

“Never mind that,” Susan said. “Can the cow fit four?”

“I doubt it,” Adric replied to her.

“What?” Edwynna asked.

“She asked if Beatrice could carry four,” Adric explained.

“Oh no, no, no,” Siegbert protested. “Beatrice stayed up all night! It’s time for her to rest.”

He patted the cow on her head, and she mooed, the sound trailing off as her eyes closed. Though she remained standing, it was evident she was no longer conscious. A thin line of spittle dripped from the corner of her mouth.

“Great.” Susan turned and stalked off.

Adric didn’t follow. “Where are you going?”

“To build a raft!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It is a perfectly sensible notion.”

“I’m tired too,” Edwynna remarked, stretching her arms into the air and yawning. “Siegbert?”

Her husband pulled a blanket out of his pack and unfolded it on the grass. “Here you go, my dear.” The two of them settled down and fell asleep cuddled together.

“Wow, our heroes,” Adric said before wandering off in the opposite direction from Susan, figuring that would be the fastest way of exploring the island.

After about twenty minutes of walking, he concluded it was a wholly unremarkable island. There weren’t even unicorns present, for ridiculous as that notion might be, it could not be discounted, considering the other ridiculous things he took for granted. At that moment, he looked up from picking his way across a minefield of broken branches and froze. About a hundred yards away, the TARDIS spun slowly above the river like an ornament suspended from the sky. The ‘Police Box’ light was dim compared to the rising sun, but it drew his attention as if it shone a thousand times brighter. He’d never seen the Doctor park his TARDIS like that, though, just floating there, not moving, not disappearing, not materializing. It was as though it were... lost.

I guess I didn’t imagine the sound before the duel, he thought. But what could be going on inside, so close yet out of reach?

* * *

“I ‘ink you boke my nose,” the Doctor protested, flailing in place on the floor of the TARDIS. Finally, he retrieved the sonic screwdriver and activated setting three (it was an important setting), pointing the tip at his nose, and, taking a deep breath, snapping the cartilage back into place. “Aaaaaaaaaaaauugh!” he exclaimed. He sniffed loudly a few times and declared: “All better.”

His assailant didn’t respond, continuing to work the controls on the console.

“I’m impressed.” The Doctor wandered over, standing close enough to observe the intruder--well, intruder wasn’t strictly the proper term as the Doctor had been the one who brought him on board--but out of reach. True, the hooded figure moved with inhuman speed but now that the Doctor expected it, he didn’t think he’d be duped twice. “The TARDIS indicates you’re an excellent pilot, and that’s saying something considering most humans can’t drive at all. You are human, I’m pretty sure. BRAIN-enhanced, but that’s been naturally occurring in 0.07% of the population since at least 8000 BC.”

“Even so, these controls posed a significant challenge.”

“I can imagine. I’m the Doctor, by the way.”

“I’m the vampire.”

“Oh, I love names that start with ‘the.’ Don’t you, Rainart?”

Rainart groaned near the Doctor’s feet.

“Get up, boy,” the vampire nudged him with a boot. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“I beg to differ,” Rainart muttered. He raised a hand, which the Doctor used to pull him to his feet.

“A good punch in the abdomen never hurt anyone,” the vampire replied.

“Killed Houdini,” the Doctor noted. When the other two stared at him, he shook his head. “Sorry, after your time.”

“Despite the difficulty, I did figure out what you were doing. I apologize for reacting so precipitously, but one can never be too cautious. In any case, my presence muddled your tracker. I filtered out the distortions caused by my energy patterns and found your signal.”

“It appears you did.”

“I had a dream where someone who looked just like you was killing unicorns and drinking their blood,” Rainart told the vampire.

“Harry Potter,” the Doctor said. Again, the stares. “Even more after your time. I need to stop saying things like that.”

“Your comment is uncanny in its relevance,” the vampire said, “considering we are parked above the Rhine beside the island your sister likes to call ‘Unicorn Rock.’”

“You know Edwynna?” Rainart said. His eyes narrowed behind his spectacles, as though he’d just realized the specimen under examination was poisonous.

“I know everyone. Go ahead, Doctor, take a look.” The door swung open, and the view outside stopped on a castle.

“The Schneider castle,” Rainart said.

“Where’s Unicorn Rock?” the Doctor asked as he walked over. “Does it look like a unicorn? I love things that look like other things.”

“It is out of sight behind us, and it does not.”

“Nor is it a rock,” Rainart added. “The topsoil is immensely rich and the sedimentary rock layer is in fact under water. Edwynna thinks Amorphous Blob Attacked By Acid Island doesn’t have the same ring, though.”

“It really doesn’t.” The Doctor dropped onto all fours and stared into the muddy water. “Could you lower the TARDIS twenty centimeters? Er, I mean, down another foot, please.”

As the TARDIS descended, the water level appeared to rise, like the world was filling with water. The Doctor ran his screwdriver over the surface, leaving a trail of minute ripples. “You’re right. The signal is right beneath us.”

“It’s underwater?” Rainart exclaimed.

“Quite right.” The Doctor turned his head to look at the others as he spoke. As a result, he missed the cause of a loud splash. Something tugged his arm, and he pulled his hand back as a sharp sting tore across three of his fingers. “My screwdriver!” he screamed, staring at blood running from bite marks on his fingers. A wake of bubbles surfaced as a fish-like shape dashed away into the murky depths, the sonic screwdriver doubtless lodged in its stomach. “Why would it want my screwdriver?”

“You’re bleeding, Doctor!” Rainart dashed over and wrapped a handkerchief from his pocket around the Doctor’s hand.

“I’m going after it!” The Doctor scrambled forward but Rainart grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled back with all his strength.

“No! Stay!”

“I like my screwdriver. Without it, I might actually have to work to get out of tight situations!” He attempted another dash toward the water, but this time, he was thwarted by the head of a wet and naked woman rising out of the Rhine. She was gorgeous, thick folds of skin draping over each other like luxurious velvet curtains. Gleaming, emerald eyes peered out of an alabaster face inset with ruby lips and gold hair. When she smiled, her entire body wobbled, promising an opulent production being set up behind those stage curtains, soon to be revealed for all the world to see. The water lapped against her breasts, but further down, the Doctor saw human skin transform to fish scales, ending in a fin that paddled back and forth.

“Who are you?” the Doctor asked. Being a Time Lord, he had the presence of mind to see through her alluring appearance, but Rainart was frantically patting down his hair and tucking in his sweater. Part of that attraction had to be BRAIN-generated; Marilyn Monroe might have evinced this sort of reaction from most men, but never the Doctor, and even the Doctor could feel parts of his body quivering to be closer to the mermaid. That hadn’t happened around Marilyn Monroe except for the time Elvis sprayed her with an alien aphrodisiac. The Doctor still wasn’t sure why it affected only Time Lords and kangaroos, but after the incident, he and Marilyn both vowed never to visit a zoo again.

“Call me Toots.” The mermaid smacked her lips.

“I’m the Doctor. You, um, did you, perchance, eat--”

“Are you impressed I swallowed your tool? It was very long, and for a moment, I didn’t think it would fit in my mouth, but then it just slid down my throat and oh, it was magnificent and delicious.”

“I feel rather emasculated without it.” The Doctor took in her girth. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’re bulimic?”

“Trust me, the street inside me goes one way. Anything that comes inside, well, it’s a very tight system.”

Rainart blibbered.

“I think Rainart has a question for you,” the Doctor said.

“Wibble-nibble,” the young man croaked. He tugged at his throat and swallowed. “How... does... you know, work?” he managed, making a circle with his left thumb and index finger and shoving his right hand at it. He squeezed his eyes shut and squeaked, “My inquiry being purely academic interest...”

“It doesn’t,” Toots replied. “The curse of being mermaids. Of course, we have pleasure centers in the back of--”

“Deep Throat,” the Doctor cut in.

“Meep?” Rainart asked.

“Oh forget it.”

“The image is kind of hard to get out of my mind.”

“She’s just toying with you,” the Doctor said. “The number of problems with that physiological setup is enormous.”

“Are you sure? Oh, look what I did to your poor hand. Let me make it better.” She unwrapped Rainart’s handkerchief and stuffed the Doctor’s fingers into her mouth, sucking hard on them. “Mmm, nom nom, yes, oh YES! Wiggle that nom nom!”

Rainart fainted, and the Doctor tugged his hand back. His fingers slipped out of her mouth with a pop. Toots pursed her lips as she surveyed the fallen German. “Men are weak.”

“That was a particularly unfortunate joke,” the Doctor admonished her.

“In beauty lies the seeds of great cruelty,” the vampire remarked, not moving from the console. “I think you’ve seen enough.” The vampire shifted a lever, and the doors slammed shut in the Doctor’s face. A shudder ran through the machine as the central column rose and fell.

“But my screwdriver!” The Doctor threw open the door, ignoring that he would likely find the time vortex waiting for him. Instead, a village awaited him, and the sun was markedly higher in the sky. Panic gripped him, turning his breaths fast and shallow. He couldn’t pilot the TARDIS accurately enough to get back to the right point in time, and who knew where the mermaid had disappeared to by now. She was doubtless on the lam, knowing he’d be hot in pursuit. “You!” he pointed his finger at the vampire. “You’re in league with them!”

“You have an unhealthy fixation on your screwdriver,” the vampire said. “I am not in league with the mermaids, but you should know they exist. That is all.” Robes swished by the Doctor, and the vampire dragged Rainart out of the TARDIS. “Now, I believe someone should be passing through the village about now whom you will be interested in meeting.”

But the Doctor was through listening to the vampire. He had gotten the Doctor’s screwdriver lost for good. The only thing that’d make him feel better would be to find the nachtis and convince himself the trip hadn’t been a complete loss. He dashed to the console and slammed the doors on both of them. As the TARDIS dematerialized, he heard frantic pounding on the frame, but he ignored it. Not until he landed the TARDIS back beside the Rhine to search for the nachtis did he realize the bite marks on his fingers were gone.

* * *

When the TARDIS stopped spinning with the doors facing away from Adric’s direction, he knew there was no point in waiting for the Doctor. Besides, the Doctor had told him that their paths would diverge. He trusted the Doctor to look for him when the time was right, so he didn’t call out for the Time Lord. Part of him protested, stamping its foot and demanding he grab the Doctor’s attention. He forced that voice away and turned from the blue box. As he did so, the sun glinted off a line of turbulence that was too straight to be natural. It extended to the island from a point on the shore between the two castles.

Curious, he circled back the way he’d come until he found the point where the line hit the island’s shore. “Huh,” he said. The turbulence came from pillars of rocks that rose to just beneath the surface. It wasn’t a sandbar but a porous system of stones that formed a flat if somewhat perilous path of steps perfect for an adult with average stride. There was little chance the formation was natural; more jagged, and he might believe, but this was a highway of sorts. Who would want to build such a path and why they’d want easy access to the island were questions Adric didn’t have sufficient information to answer, but he wasn’t about to wait half a day to get back to the castle.

Water streamed over his shoes as he took a ginger step onto the first rock. The current tugged but wasn’t enough to threaten his footing. In fact, the height of the pillars struck a perfect balance between usability and visibility, allowing someone to walk across while hiding the means unless the sun was at the perfect angle. Nodding to himself, he went to find Susan.

She waited back where Edwynna and Siegbert slept. “Did you find anything?” she asked.

“I found a way back.”

“You mean the stepping stones?” Edwynna said. Her eyes remained closed, but now that he knew she was awake, Adric could see her breaths weren’t quite as even as would be normal for someone sleeping.

“You know about them?” Adric knew he should be annoyed, but somehow, he didn’t even feel surprised. Susan sighed and leaned against the cow.

“Yes, I was going to tell you about them, but then I fell asleep, and when I woke up, you were gone.”

“We didn’t think you’d wake up so fast.”

“I’m very good at power naps.”

“We all are,” Siegbert said, his eyes closed as well.

“Are they all awake?” Susan asked. She smacked the cow, who mooed and continued drooling.

“How do you know about the stones?” Adric asked Edwynna, feeling upstaged by her statement.

“I saw someone use it, but I don’t think she’d be happy if she knew I knew.”

“We should go now, but Beatrice can’t use the steps. Can you swim her across after us?”

“She’s ready to go now!” Edwynna opened her eyes and jumped up. Her husband and her cow followed suit.

“Are we sure Siegbert is the reason she got disowned?” Susan asked as they set off.

“Don’t be mean.”

* * *

Torchlight was terrible for the eyes. Karin didn’t understand why her mother wouldn’t let anyone read at night but had no similar qualms about embroidering. On the other hand, the two of them weren’t awake at five in the morning because they loved needle and thread. If anything, the torches needed to be dimmer--their true mission was keeping watch until all the Schneiders had returned from the forest, and it didn’t help that the light affected their night vision.

“Good,” Rosa said, shifting her chair closer to the parapet of their turret, “there’s uncle Viktor. I didn’t even see him leave; a man his age shouldn’t be wandering in the forest at night, but I suppose if your dead sister’s husband gets murdered, honor calls.”

“He could be sleepwalking,” Karin said. “I’m out of red thread again.”

Rosa sighed. “Darling, maybe if you just started out with red cloth--”

“The texture wouldn’t look right.”

“For blood?”

“Mother! These are roses spurting out of the elk.”

“Yes, dear.”

“So that leaves Huey, Gauthier, Susan, and Adric.”

“Gauthier never left the castle. Ula knocked him out after she discovered he got blood on her dress.”

“Then you should go to bed. The others can take care of themselves.”

Her mother raised an eyebrow. “Our cousins are that resourceful?”

“Adric defeated Abelerd von Lahnstein in a duel.”

“So your father told me, though it sounded like an accident. What’s your opinion?”

“They can take care of themselves.”

Her mother studied her, then nodded. “Good enough for me.” She stood and patted Karin on the shoulder. “Come, you need rest too.”

“Ow!” Karin sucked on her index finger after her mother’s sudden contact caused her to jab it with the needle. Several droplets of blood spilled onto her cloth.

“Now you don’t need any more red,” her mother said cheerfully.

“You go on ahead. I’ll put the chairs away.”

“The chairs can wait. You’ll catch a chill up here.”

“I’m still perfectly awake.”

“You’re not fooling me, Karin. I used to be a dancer--I know the limits of even a robust young lady.”

“Hildegard’s slept enough for both of us tonight.”

“Your sister fainted.”

“Which is just a deeper form of sleep.”

“All right.” Rosa sighed. “Sometimes, I don’t know who’s more headstrong, you or Ula.”

“Ula is far more wicked than me.” Karin planted a kiss on her mother’s cheek. “Good night.”

“Good morning.” Rosa strode toward the staircase.

Karin watched her go, but before she could close the door, she called out after her. “Mother?”

Rosa peeked back out. “Yes, Karin?”

“Did grandfather ever go to sea?”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. Father may have been wealthy, but he wanted adventure more than money. He was a sailor in his youth, explored the whole world, yet the only keepsake he ever gave me was a pendant shaped like an anchor. I assume the rest of his trinkets are still with Conrad on the family estate; nothing of great worth, but they have sentimental value, especially now that he and mother are both gone.”

“Perhaps Uncle Conrad can bring them when he comes for the funeral.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea. It’d bring back good memories. I’ve always meant to share more of my childhood with you.” Rosa opened the door wider, stepping back through. “But whatever prompted such an unexpected question?”

Karin shrugged. “I was just thinking about him, and how little I knew about him, and it just struck my fancy that he might have traveled. It seemed... romantic.”

“Romantic. That’s something Ula would say.”

“Well, we are both trouble.”

“Yes, dear. Get some rest.” Her mother disappeared down the stairs, leaving Karin alone with her thoughts, and troubled thoughts they were, for unlike in the real world, that pirate flag still burned in her memory, and nothing she did could extinguish it from her mind.

“Grandfather, what did you do?” she whispered.

* * *

“Come on.” Ula stamped her foot against the dirt path. “Hurry up!”

Gauthier staggered under the weight of seven wicker baskets stacked eight feet high in his arms. “I swear, if I hadn’t trained to run away to the circus, I’d drop these boxes on you right now. What the hell is in them?”

“Fish.”

“Fish? Why are you making me carry a hundred pounds of fish to the village at five in the morning?”

“There’s also vegetables and milk. In many parts of the world, it is customary to perform acts of charity for the less fortunate as a memorial to a dead family member.”

“We don’t live in any of those places, Ula.”

“Don’t you want to honor grandfather’s life? Wait, of course you don’t.”

“Actually, I found my own way to remember grandfather.”

“Really?” She wondered if Gauthier had some soft spot of properness under that disheveled exterior.

“You wouldn’t approve.”

“Really...” Guess not.

“Want to know how?”

“No!” Knowing him, he’d probably dressed all the scarecrows in the shooting range as Imre. Let’s commemorate his death by killing him again! “Just focus on carrying the fish. It’s expensive halibut.”

“Not that I oppose feeding the poor, but did you have to steal from mother’s expensive stores? She’ll throw a fit.”

“It wouldn’t mean much if we didn’t sacrifice something important!”

“You could promise the mayor your firstborn.”

“He already has seven children!”

“Sixteen, actually. He has four mistresses. You’d be the fifth.”

“Gauthier!”

“You thought bringing me along would punish me for throwing you into Imre’s blood and knocking you out, but you’re only hurting yourself.”

“I’m not talking to you anymore.”

“You just did.”

“Did not.”

“Did it again.”

“Shut up!”

“You first.”

* * *

Siegbert skipped alongside Beatrice, belting out a dreadfully cheery folk song in time with the jingling of his bells. Edwynna hummed in harmony with him, swaying her dress side to side as they proceeded down the forest path. They’d crossed the river about half an hour ago, and the couple promised to bring Adric and Susan to the village where they lived. Once they were refreshed, they’d send them down the road to the Schneider castle.

“It is not normal to be so cheerful this early in the morning,” Susan said.

“But it’s not abnormal,” Adric replied.

“What?”

“Say you define normal as everyone within one standard deviation of the mean. Even if sixty-eight percent of people can be considered normal, a value high enough to be considered a supermajority, that still leaves thirty-two percent of the population, or sixteen percent on either end of a bell curve, neither of which is a small number. While traveling with the Doctor, I’ve found that a behavior is usually limited to less than four percent of a population before people think of it as abnormal, and often, that range is less than one percent when a society is more tolerant of eccentricity.”

“Adric?”

“Yes, Susan?”

“Let’s make a deal. You stop breaking everything down to logic and mathematics, and I stop trying to convince you that the world doesn’t operate that way.”

“But--”

“While friendly discourse is a good way of promoting interpersonal relationships, it is not sensible to focus on irreconcilable opinions.”

They walked in silence for a while. Silence filled with yodeling. “I like clouds,” Adric suddenly said. Susan stared at him. He returned her look with wide-eyed sincerity. “Do you like clouds?”

“I suppose. They provide shade.”

“I agree!” He paused. “You’re right, Susan, I feel closer to you already.”

“That’s a trick I’d expect from an eight-year-old.”

“Do you like shoes?”

“Ok, fine! We can talk about whatever we like.”

“You don’t like people confronting you.”

“Does anyone?”

“But you’re fine confronting other people.”

“So?”

“Isn’t that a little hypocritical?”

“It is not hypocritical to take control of a situation.”

“Hmm...”

“Oh, look!” Edwynna pointed. “We’re here!”

Adric and Susan were a ways behind the other two. They’d fallen back because it would look weird if Adric kept talking to his supposedly idiot sister. Now, they sped up to close the distance, and they approached a bend in the path. Rounding the corner, the trees opened up to reveal a well-worn path leading to a cluster of wood and straw buildings too large to be considered huts but hardly the epitome of civilization.

At first glance, Adric counted some seventy structures, most of which appeared to be homes, though a few larger ones farther away might be the village center, assuming they had their own government rather than answering to the nobles. He was certain there were more buildings beyond, as he couldn’t find the church, but the existing structures blocked his view.

Wagons rolled down the streets, streaming out of the village as farmers headed for their fields. Siegbert let out a ringing yodel as they approached, and one of the drivers reined his horses in. “Traugott!” Siegbert exclaimed.

The farmer tipped his hat. “Ah, the Neufelds! Did Beatrice run off again?”

“I’m afraid she had to bring us home this time.”

Traugott shrugged. “I’d love to chat, but I need to get going. The Lahnsteins are watching me.”

“I thought you’re on track to produce surplus this year,” Edwynna said.

“I am.” He grinned. “Finally. But you can never have too much of a good thing.” He snapped the reins, and the wagon moved on.

“Traugott missed his quota the last two years,” Siegbert said, shaking his head, which Adric supposed answered the question of whether the village was independent or not. “If he doesn’t grow enough this year, the Lahnsteins will confiscate his land.”

“That’s horrible,” Adric said. “The Schneiders don’t do that, do they?”

“They haven’t had such a situation yet,” Edwynna replied. “Oh, Siegbert, if only they’d listen to you.”

“Nonsense, your brother’s the visionary behind it all.”

“Rainart’s a bookworm. You, my dear, have charisma.”

“What are you talking AAH!” Adric said as Susan’s fingers dug into his shoulder.

“The vampire’s here,” she said in a low tone.

“Where?”

“I sense him. He’s... coming around that corner, there!” She pointed, and at that moment, a figure did appear, but it wasn’t the robed form of the vampire.

“Speak of the devil,” Edwynna said. “Susan’s spotted Rainart!”

A disheveled young man staggered into the street as though pushed. Adric thought he recognized him from the duel yesterday; he’d been wearing that same maroon sweater and read a book through the entire affair. His utter disinterest in the fight was what had made Adric notice him.

“Oh, hello,” Rainart said as Siegbert ran up to him, grabbed his arm, and dragged him over. He looked dazed, but Adric didn’t think it had anything to do with his bookishness. Susan dashed to the intersection where he’d appeared but shrugged when she found no one.

“I’m Adric,” Adric extended a hand, hoping Rainart wouldn’t remember him.

Rainart snapped his fingers. “The Schneider cousin! Adric! That’s your name! Ugh, it was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t remember! Where’d he go?”

“Where’d who go?”

“Never mind that,” Siegbert said. “We were telling Adric about your brilliant plan for liberating the village from the greedy grip of aristocrats!”

“Ah, that,” Rainart brightened. “I’m working on a treatise, On the Importance of Relations Between the Noble and Peasant Classes. It’s about how the peasants must be allowed to own land, rather than just lease from the aristocracy. I also elaborate on the theory of collective bargaining, whereby labor contracts are negotiated by representatives of both parties, those hiring and those working, for all members of the group, rather than on an individual basis, which opens the process up to corruption and intimidation. Of course, the legal system must also reform to uphold the sanctity of contract and recognize the rights of all citizens as equal.”

“I see...” Adric said, though he knew he didn’t have the background in Earth history and sociology to understand.

Rainart mistook his hesitance. “It is perfectly natural for you to be wary of such significant change; my own family considers my views as bordering on heretical, and that’s because they aren’t yet aware of the bulk of my work. I daresay I’ll be joining Edwynna in the village once they know. However, the reforms I propose benefit both classes, and if the nobility would just give it a try, I’m sure they would find peasants much more productive. Elevating others to our social station doesn’t limit our opportunities, it expands them for the entire empire.”

“Perhaps if our families came into the village more often and saw the peasants as more than production quotas,” Susan prompted Adric.

He repeated her words, and Rainart grinned. “Exactly.” His eyebrows shot up. “Have you been making your views known to the other Schneiders?”

“No, why?” Adric turned to follow his gaze and saw Ula in the doorway of a nearby house, dressed all in black save for white gloves, handing a bundle to a stunned-looking woman. From the portions poking out of the cloth, the contents appeared to be fish and carrots. Beside her, Gauthier scowled from behind a stack of baskets piled so high only his arms and legs were visible when he stood straight. In stark contrast with her mourning colors, his outfit was daffodil yellow.

“Ula?” Rainart called.

The housewife retreated back into the house, and as the door slammed shut, Ula looked over. “Rainart!” Her high heels forced her to pick her way carefully along the road, but she had an easier time of approaching than Gauthier, who nearly got run over by a wagon. “How’s Baron?” she asked breathlessly as she arrived. With a huff, Gauthier dropped the boxes at his feet, causing a single fish to slip out of the top basket and plop onto Ula’s hat, the brim catching and securing it in place. She squealed but regained her composure almost instantly. “Ah, good idea, Gauthier. It will let the peasants know I am distributing food.”

Adric found the pair of eyes staring at him from the flat fish disconcerting, especially since they jiggled every time she moved her head. Rainart paid it no attention. “What are you doing?”

“Mourning my grandfather.”

“By giving out food?”

“Charity is the highest calling,” she said, throwing a hand against her forehead. The fish went cross-eyed.

“While I agree completely with the general sentiment, one might say there’s an even higher calling than that. Charity might nourish the body, but freedom nourishes the soul.”

Ula blinked. “I don’t follow.”

“Liberty. Equality! Can you not see how the peasants chafe under our rule?”

Two men walked past, laughing loudly. “Look at that sunrise!” one said. The other nodded. “It’s a beautiful day to be alive!”

“Not really,” Ula replied.

“In their hearts they do!” Rainart insisted.

She shrugged. “If you say so.” Her gaze moved from Rainart to the next house. “Oh, look at the abominable condition of those shutters. How poor they must be!”

The others stared at the whitewashed shutters, gleaming under the sun with nary a crack in the paint or the wood. “Those shutters are fine,” Rainart said.

Ula hit him on the arm. “You heartless man! And here I thought that all your talk might eventually make sense because you had kind-hearted intentions. I mean, just look at those shutters!”

“I am!” Rainart protested.

“Can’t you see how they’re swinging about?”

“That’s the wind.”

“They should be bolted to the wall!”

Rainart buried his face in his hands. “Ula, peasants use shutters in place of curtains. They’re supposed to swing loose so you can open and close them.”

Her jaw dropped. “That’s preposterous.” The halibut’s eyes took that as their cue to fall out and bounce onto the street. Adric jumped away as they rolled toward him.

“The shutters on our castles are decorative, but these are put to use.”

“How horrible! No one should be so poor that they have to use their shutters as curtains! It’s so, so unfashionable! We must help them immediately!” She stalked toward the house, but Gauthier had used the conversation as an opening to escape. “Gauthier! Where’d you go!”

Rainart grabbed the baskets and ran after her. “I’ll help,” he said, wobbling under the weight.

“Oh, Rainart, I knew you were a proper gentleman.”

Susan grabbed Adric’s shoulder again. “Ow! Stop that.” But before he could protest further, he caught sight of a flash of brown in his peripheral vision. A gust of wind was followed by a thump as the vampire landed behind him. Edwynna screamed.

“Why are all of you never where you should be?” the vampire asked. Seizing Adric’s arm, he threw him onto his back and leapt into the air, carrying him off at superhuman speed back toward the Rhine.

* * *

Baron von Lahnstein whistled as he approached the river. His arm whirled, spinning the bundle that was his shirt and coat in his hands, its motion adding to the breeze that ran the chill morning air against his bare chest. It felt good, especially after the heat of his encounter with Huey Schneider. There was a crisp feeling to the air that left no doubt autumn was coming, and he liked that too. All the leaves changing colors brought a feeling of change and movement that none of the other seasons possessed, and while he didn’t consider himself easily given to fancy, there was something appealing about the idea of falling away from the family tree and starting over.

Nevertheless, it was just a passing fantasy, and there were some leaves that he hoped would continue to cling to the tree for some time. One such leaf waited for him by the water, her pale hair and skin glowing under the morning sun, a stark contrast against the rushing black Rhine.

“Put some clothes on!” Annegret snapped when she caught sight of him. “Honestly, one would think you’d be more discreet about your affairs.”

“I could say the same about you, auntie.”

Her eyes gleamed as she pulled some woody chips out of her knapsack and popped one in her mouth. “Pah, mine’s younger than yours.”

“Cramp bark?” He eyed the pieces as she chewed.

“Want some?”

“I don’t think I need it.”

“Neither do I, but I like the taste. Dear lord, do I look that young to you? Maybe compared to your lover.”

“Excuse me?”

“You men can’t take any jokes. Except maybe that Doctor of Rainart’s, he didn’t seem too scared when Rainart told him you’d shoot him if he got near the river. Good old dependable Rainart.”

“Doctor who?”

“Rainart’s professor from the university.”

“Why would he be interested in the river? You didn’t show him the nachtis, did you?” Baron laughed when Annegret’s cheeks reddened a little too much to be a side effect of the sunrise. “Oh auntie, you and your men. I don’t know how you ever went for Lysanne.”

“Lysanne’s manly in her own way. More manly than your Huey anyway.”

“If your insults continue to be so pathetic, I might think you approve.”

“Who says I don’t approve? I just think you could do better. Someone with a brain, maybe? Someone who won’t trip on his own sister’s ice cube during a duel. You need to stop throwing fights just to avoid hurting your beloved’s feelings, or people will get suspicious. Besides, I’ve found men behave better with a good beating every once in a while. I still have some rope--”

Baron threw his shirt at her. “There’s such a thing as too much good advice.”

“Men can’t tell the difference between good advice and bad advice.” She unfurled the balled up item of clothing and began washing it in the river.

“Why’d you call me here?”

“Because I don’t want Addi eavesdropping on us. People’s ears aren’t supposed to get sharper with age.”

“She has lots of practice.”

“Lots of time and nothing to do. That one really needs a man, if you ask my opinion.”

Baron grinned. “Everyone needs a man.”

“Naughty boy!” She splashed him. “In any case, I want you to keep people away from the river, and that includes Huey. There are dangers we should not tempt.”

“Has Galæsia nachtis developed a taste for live human flesh?”

“No,” Lysanne said, sauntering out of the woods and slapping him across the back. He glared. No maid should be able to move so quietly in the forest, not with that massive white bow affixed to her waist anyway. “Got a match?”

Baron pulled a box out of his pocket and handed it over. She removed a pipe from between her breasts and lit it, the tobacco clearly already inside. A heart-shaped cloud of smoke puffed out of her mouth into his face. A few waves of the hand dispersed it, and he refused to cough even though she used the most abominable stuff he’d ever seen or smelled. “It’s from Montmartre,” she’d told him when he first asked.

“These are so handy,” she said, groping her own bosom, the pipe between her teeth.

“That’s not being manly,” Baron remarked to his aunt, “just seductive.”

“If you find it seductive, then it must be manly.”

“I don’t. I’m commenting.”

Lysanne gave her breasts a good thwack and watched them jiggle back and forth. “It shouldn’t concern you why you need to keep people away. It should be enough that Lady Lahnstein asks it.”

Annegret put on that wicked smile she used when the conversation was over. “She has a point.”

“It concerns me if I’m the one who has to patrol the river.”

Lysanne and Annegret exchanged looks. “He is not,” the maid said forcefully in her thick accent.

Annegret cackled. “He’s pretty enough.”

“He is not,” she replied flatly.

“I know.” Annegret shrugged. “Let’s go before Rainart catches me out of bed.”

“You want him to catch you in bed?”

“The Doctor did, which is close enough. I’m sure Rainart was close behind.”

Baron was amused to see Lysanne’s jaw drop. He didn’t think being caught in flagrante would faze her, but he guessed appearances could be deceiving. Very deceiving. When she caught him grinning, she slapped him across the face and sauntered away arm-in-arm with Annegret.

He sighed. Even considering that most of the aristocrats he knew were a little strange, his aunt was the strangest by far. That was part of why he liked her, but it also made for a rather frustrating relationship at times. Taking a seat by the river, he picked up his shirt, which Annegret had left drying on a log. He’d barely had time to dip his toes into the water when the rustling he’d been waiting for drew his attention.

Schneider pushed through the foliage. “Is the old bat gone?”

“Be polite when you talk about Great Aunt Annegret.”

“What are you going to do, challenge me to a duel?”

Baron tightened a fist, then unclenched it, but he did it on the side of him that Huey couldn’t see. Beyond that, he didn’t respond.

“The silent treatment, eh?” Huey picked his way across the slick, moss-covered ground. “You’re such a girl sometimes.”

“You heard what she asked me.”

“So I’ve got to stay away from the river because she thinks I should?”

“No, you need to stay away because I’m asking you.”

“You believe her? She probably just wants you to clear out the place so she can have a romp with Frenchie.”

“Will you respect the request or do I need to make you?”

“All right, all right! I’ll stay away. Happy?”

Baron eyed him suspiciously. “You’re just saying that because there’s an hour before you have to get back to the castle.”

“And what about tomorrow? See, Baron, I do have brains. Enough to think ahead twenty-four hours, anyway, and I’ve got to be really thick if I’m going to let some old lady get in the way of my play time.”

“When you put it that way, I almost want to leave you to the mercy of the river.”

“Come on, stop taking everything so seriously.” Huey unbuttoned his pants and let them fall. Baron rolled his eyes but grabbed his arm and pulled him onto the ground beside him. Huey grinned. “That’s more like it.”

* * *

He’d been tricked. The Doctor was certain of it. The TARDIS had run scans along the entire shore of the Rhine, both sides, for five kilometers each direction, and there were no unusual energy signatures other than that of the mermaids and the vampire. Galæsia nachtis did not exist here.

“Of course,” he muttered to himself. It was unlikely Annegret had made an elaborate fake, but why would she tell someone she’d never met before the secret of where it could be found? Perhaps she had gotten it secondhand and didn’t know herself. Yet, why lie? Humans could be tricky at times, deceitful as well, but assuming he was a good judge of character, and he liked to think he was a good judge of character, Annegret would at least be tricky and deceitful in a logical manner.

For now, he was crouched by the water’s edge, staring into its depths and wondering if Toots would appear. His recent companions would think he was moping, but the Doctor didn’t mope. He was just intense. Yes, intense and deep, like the water. His screwdriver was probably undergoing intense digestive pressures deep inside the mermaid’s formidable body, and that thought brought him close to moping, but he didn’t, because that was simply impossible for a Time Lord to do.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” a voice screamed from above. Leaves dropped all around the Doctor, and he looked up in time to see a figure plummet through the canopy and fall on top of the Doctor.

“Oof!” the Doctor grunted as the impact sent him centimeters into the mud. His eyes focused on the face of the man lying on top of him, and he was stunned to recognize it. “Adric!” Instinctively, he threw Adric off himself, sending him tumbling meters on end. The Doctor scrambled to his feet, both hearts racing. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

Adric’s brows twisted together, and he opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. When he finally spoke, it was in a calm, flat voice. “Which one are you?”

“What? Oh. I’ve regenerated five times since you... since you died. Or so I thought.”

“And you don’t remember.”

“Remember what?”

“Then...” Adric glanced up into the sky. “If you’re going to listen, then at least do it openly.”

The vampire dropped out of the trees. “I suppose you had something to do with this,” the Doctor snapped.

The vampire snorted. “I don’t bring people back from the dead, but I did bring him here to meet you. The two of you are connected. I can sense that. A sort of common energy that binds you together whenever you are close together. I figured you two would want to talk.”

“That we do,” Adric said coldly.

The vampire glared at the Doctor. “You ran away when I took you into the village where he’d be.”

Adric stepped forward, adding his glare to the vampire’s. “If you don’t remember saving me, then you left me to die.”

A human would have argued that his statement made no sense, but to the Doctor, it could only mean one thing, and it sent chills down his spine. This was bigger than an alien invasion, then, and Singapore was more than an isolated event. The things he’d discovered here in Germany should’ve confirmed it, but Adric. Adric being alive, that had ramifications far beyond Earth. It had consequences for the entire universe, past and present. The only way Adric could expect him to remember saving him would be if some time prior to his fourth regeneration, he had saved Adric before ever meeting him. Yet he didn’t remember that event, and that meant his past was in flux. Something had tampered with time, and now that his own history had crossed with Adric again, that meant there was something waiting for him in his future, something that posed a threat only Time Lords could resolve. There were no more Time Lords.

“I didn’t leave you to die,” the Doctor said, trembling as the memories of Adric’s death came flooding back. “You died before I could save you. I failed you, and going back in time to save you would’ve violated laws so deep that it would threaten the universe itself. The day I died, that is, the day my fifth incarnation died, the last thing I saw in my head was you. There isn’t a single companion I meet that doesn’t make me think of you, make me think twice before inviting or allowing them to come along with me, because I lost you. That doesn’t make right what happened, that doesn’t mean I deserve forgiveness for not showing up when you needed me most. Maybe I should’ve tried to return you to E-Space that day, maybe we should never have gone to Earth, but that’s my curse. It’s my past, and I can’t undo it. I’m a Time Lord. The universe--past, present, and future--it’s all there for me to see, to explore, to experience. But despite all that power, there are laws even I can’t break. I can never go back to save you, and I will have to live with that until the day I run out of regenerations.”

Adric’s expression softened. A hint of betrayal still shone in his eyes, but it wasn’t overwhelming. “You don’t have to go back. Jamie McCrimmon saved me.”

Not me. Jamie. Yet the Doctor couldn’t help but grin. “Of course it’d be Jamie.”

Somehow, that response was the right thing to say, and Adric gave him a tentative smile in return. “Why don’t you remember?”

“That’s the problem.”

Adric nodded. “Of course. You explained it before I left with Death.”

“Left with Death?” His hackles rose again. Something was still unsettling about Adric, but the Doctor was always suspicious about things he didn’t understand. Well, not all things--most of them were puzzles he enjoyed--but this was tampering with timelines, danger on a large scale.

“The Death of Discworld.”

“Discworld? Discworld is a myth, a legend. No one’s ever been able to find it! And it's utterly absurd anyway.”

“I guess someone did, but that’s not important. Death said there is a force pushing the universe off its proper time track, and I have to travel with his granddaughter to stop it. And you, that is, the second you, explained that the time was not right for you to enter the equation, but that eventually, you would. I didn’t expect it to take eight regenerations.”

How different Adric was from the uncertain boy he’d known. From his appearances, he hadn’t grown much since that fateful day over prehistoric Earth, but he had gained maturity far beyond his age. The Doctor supposed that could happen to anyone who died and came back to life--regardless of what had happened, Adric looked like someone who had faced death and not the Discworld variety. “I don’t think it will. Events like this frequently involve more than one of my incarnations. In fact, I’m already on a mission with the Fourth Doctor that, with your information and things I’ve seen, looks like we’re being pulled into events beyond our control. In either case, because history is in flux, I will not know what any of us do, because it has not happened yet, until it does.”

Adric grimaced. “The mathematics of time is beyond my abilities, at least at the level you’re talking about, but I think I understand.”

“So you’re on a mission yourself?”

“Yes.”

“You’re mixed in with the Schneiders and Lahnsteins?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

Adric raised an eyebrow. “I know. I guess that doesn’t include you?”

“Singapore just blew up in my timeline.”

“I understand.”

The Doctor paused. “Do you forgive me?”

Adric frowned. “I thought you weren’t asking for forgiveness.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want it.”

Adric looked down at his feet. Seconds dragged into a minute, but at last, he looked the Doctor in the eye. “From the moment I stowed away on the TARDIS, I put my life in your hands. I’ve lived and died by your actions. In the end, I wouldn’t trade what I’ve seen for anything.”

“I’m not sure that’s a sentiment I’d agree with.”

“I’m not saying I wanted to die, but the chain of events that put me on that freighter with you unable to save me, that was a product of my actions as much as yours. To blame you is unfair. If it’s forgiveness you want, you have it.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor whispered. “You know, I’m not sure I ever appreciated you as much as I should have.”

“I’m just a boy.”

“No, you’re not. You’re brilliant, you are. Now tell me, there are three mysterious phenomena existing in this region, but only two unidentified energy signatures. What does that mean?”

Adric thought a moment. “Either the third signature isn’t actually here, or it’s mixed in with one of the other signals.”

The Doctor clapped his hands together. “Excellent!”

The vampire lunged, putting the Doctor into a chokehold. Adric let out a cry of dismay and leapt forward. Instead of reaching for the vampire’s arms, he went for the hood. As soon as his fingers touched cloth, the vampire roared, letting go of the Doctor to strike Adric in the face. He went flying, but the Doctor took the opportunity to stumble into the TARDIS and trigger a force field over the entrance. It would drop at a moment’s notice if the vampire went after Adric and the Doctor needed to go to his aid, but the vampire just stood before him, chest heaving and hands shaking.

“Why’d you do that?” the Doctor demanded.

No response.

“Speak, vampire!”

Adric staggered to his feet, covered in mud but otherwise unharmed. The vampire glanced at him, and the Doctor’s hand inched toward the field release, but the sight of Adric actually calmed the figure down.

“I, I,” he paused. “I’m sorry. I--” He stiffened, his entire body freezing in place, straight as a board. From the corner of his eye, the Doctor saw the energy readings from the vampire surge due to a flood of foreign power crashing into him. “Leave!” the vampire roared, “Investigate the river and die. Flee back to your companions before the army crushes them like bugs.”

“Do you really expect me to run at your command?”

“GO!”

The Doctor made a decision, and it wasn’t because of the vampire’s words. Adric had heard the admonition against the river, and for whatever reason, this place was his mission. Unseen words passed between them as the Doctor looked over the vampire’s shoulder at Adric. The young man nodded once. They’d just repaired the foundation of their broken trust. If anything would ever be built upon it, the Doctor had to hand this responsibility over. “All right,” he told the vampire. “But know this: I have time on my side. Eventually, I see everything.”

* * *

As the TARDIS faded out of reality, the vampire sank to his knees. Adric could still feel the force of his punch. His face would begin bruising soon, and he was lucky his nose hadn’t been broken, yet the figure looked so despondent he found it hard to fear.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked, taking a few steps forward, watching the vampire for any sudden movement. “I know Susan is wary of you, but she seems to think you’re on our side, so I’m willing to believe that too.”

“I... don’t know.” For the first time, the vampire sounded shaken. Gone was his confidence, his cynicism disguised as insight. His voice was hollow, drained. “I felt so angry. The river is none of the Doctor’s concern.”

“You didn’t need to be so demanding. What’s in the river?”

“Why should I tell you?”

He shrugged. “It was worth a try to ask.”

“I should return you to Susan before she hunts me down.”

“She’ll do that eventually. Monsters never escape Susan.”

The vampire turned to examine him from the dark shadows beneath his hood. “Is that what you think I am?”

“I don’t know who or what you are.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Maybe I am a monster. I thought I knew myself, but now... I’m not so sure.” The vampire glanced at the forest, then up at the treetops across which they’d arrived in such a harrowing manner. Adric could understand the rush if the vampire wasn’t sure when the Doctor would leave, or whether the Doctor would think to explore the river, but there was no call for throwing him down like that. Maybe the vampire agreed, or maybe he didn’t trust his abilities right now. “Perhaps we should walk back.”

“I’m in no rush. Susan isn’t coming after me with a poker.”

“We shall walk.”

They left in silence, and Adric knew the vampire wouldn’t respond to any further inquiries. Still, he’d let slip crucial information. Something was indeed in the river. The tentacles had been real, and something happened to Adric and maybe Susan during the night. He was closer to the answer than the Doctor. Even as they drew away from the water’s edge, Adric felt the pull to return. He would find out what was there. He had forgiven the Doctor for his near death experience, but maybe, if he could do this, he could forgive himself as well.

To Chapter 25: Sometimes a Strange Longing

Back to Chapter 23: Part 2

Summary: There comes a point when characters keep falling into water far too often for it to be anything but some strange fetish on the author’s part. At that point, the author can make a conscious decision either to stop getting people wet or to embrace the fluids. Or, the author can write about mermaids, which is the best of both worlds.

"Atheism is a religion like not playing golf is a hobby."

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:06:08 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 23
Déjà vu of Déjà vu of Déjà vu
(Part 2 of 2)

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Colon and Nobby patrolled along the river Ankh, slowly and methodically. They were in their element.

Minutes earlier, Commander Vimes had sprinted by, closely followed by Dr. House, who was shouting insults and actually moved quite quickly for a crippled guy. The Commander running madly through the city streets was hardly an uncommon sight, but him allowing a stranger to follow him around was not.

"I don't get it, Sarge," said Nobby. "Why would Mr. Vimes be keeping the old man with him? He knows the others were let go, he gave the order. It's just not like him."

"I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation, Nobby," answered Colon.

"Can't think of one."

"Must be one, there's always a rational explanation. They're probably related." In Sergeant Colon's experience, this was grounds for all sorts of strange behavior.

"Why should that matter?"

"As they say, blood is thicker than water."

Nobby looked doubtfully down at the river, which had the consistency of tar. "What sort of water are we talking about here, Sarge?"

"The type you drink," said Colon uncertainly, who had been thinking along the same lines even as he'd said it.

"Ah." Nobby considered this. "What about syrup?"

"Yes, well, no one wants to be stuck together with syrup, do they? That'd be daft."

"And Mr. Vimes and Mr. House are stuck together, are they?"

"Of course they are. Here, Nobby, haven't you ever heard of Ties of Blood and all that?"

"They didn't look very stuck together to me, is all I'm saying. And I didn't see any blood."

* * *

"Do you have to run, you sadistic ass?" huffed House. Vimes finally stopped and turned with an irritated expression.

"I have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in. I have to get back to the Watch House, and this time of day the fastest way is to run there. Can you keep up or not?"

House caught up, and took the opportunity to pop several Vicodin tablets. "Uh, hello? Cripple, remember?"

Vimes made a show of running his hand down his face in exasperation. "Just... just keep up, all right? I don't have time for this."

House watched him run off again and rolled his eyes at the watchman's back. "Good grief," he muttered. He took a couple more pills for good measure, tucked the little container safely back inside his pocket, and limped on as fast as he could. Tonight. he would pay for all the moving about he'd been doing recently, and it wouldn't just be his leg giving him pain. His right shoulder was taking an awful lot of strain from his heavy use of his cane, and he could feel its dull aching even through the Vicodin. He ignored it and soldiered on.

House wasn't an idiot. His success with his career was owed to the fact that he was very, very far from an idiot, but it was just as much due to his excellent observational skills and his ability to read people. Commander Vimes seemed simple at first, but it was becoming clear that he was an exceptionally difficult person to read. All the same, the Commander was certainly no idiot either.

When Donna had snuck off earlier, House had of course noticed, and he knew Vimes had noticed as well. However, Vimes hadn't mentioned it, which meant he wasn't bothered by it, which confirmed House's suspicions that they weren't technically under arrest anymore. This in turn meant that he could probably wander off at any time without any repercussions whatsoever.

He didn't, though, and he rationalized this to himself in several different ways.

The first was pure and simple: interest. House's whole life and every thing he'd done had been based upon interest. If something new and exciting came along, he would leap on it and obsess over it until it made sense. But lately, there had been less and less of interest. Even his medical cases had become mundane to him, and before Torchwood had arrived at the hospital, he'd been drifting. Since they had, even with all the pain and annoyance they had brought, interesting things had been happening. Mysteries begging to be solved, questions awaiting answers, had begun piling up at a rate he'd never experienced before, and for the first time in over a decade he'd felt that thrill of discovery. Though he'd never let it show, he wasn't ready to give that feeling up, and he was willing to do a lot to prolong it.

Slightly disturbed by how introspective his own thoughts were, House felt around in the back of his mind for the presence of Jack Harkness. He was getting much better at hiding his thoughts, but Jack still had decades of training on him. Jack was still there, as strongly as ever, but he wasn't paying attention to House. House got the sense he was rather busy and, not particularly caring what the captain got up to, tuned him back out.

Then there was the Patrician. In the ten minutes he'd been inside the man's office, House had formed and thrown out more first impressions than he'd thought possible. Why had he been allowed to be present while obviously important and confidential information was being imparted? Not just present, but included even. What gave the Patrician reason to trust him?

It was far more likely, House reflected, that nothing of real import had been discussed, and it wasn't as though he'd be able to tell.

The crux of the matter was, the Patrician wasn't like Cuddy. House was used to being able to manipulate the authority figures in his life, but he wasn't going to be able to manipulate or predict or fool this man.

At least one thing was certain, and that was that the Patrician knew a lot more about House than he was letting on. House had a suspicion that the man had him completely figured out despite the fact that he had only arrived at this place a couple hours ago, and that there was no possible way the Patrician could know about his background. Was there? Either way, the Patrician was not going to be the type to be held back by his own conceptions of what was and wasn't possible, and that only made his situation more interesting.

House had no doubt that as long as he was still somewhere on the disc and the Patrician wanted to find him, he would be found.

Was that a good enough reason to stay involved if he didn't want to be, though? Well, no. He wasn't actually afraid the Patrician would hunt him down if he decided he didn't want to be involved. No matter how he looked at things, the only value he could imagine he had to the Patrician was as an outsider with no apparent allegiance. Although House couldn't see exactly what value this was, he had to admit he didn't have even close to the whole picture.

Still running, he passed someone muttering loudly something about hands and shrimp, and then was nearly bowled over by an extremely offensive stench. What is wrong with people in this city? he thought, but soldiered gamely on.

The most likely scenario was that House and his companions had arrived out of the blue and immediately caused a stir, and the Patrician was trying to take advantage of the situation to whatever mysterious end he wished to achieve. The odds were that directly involving House was a chance that had a reasonable potential gain, but a very small potential loss.

Unexpectedly, House found he was okay with that. There were few men more eager for a challenge, and both Vimes and Lord Vetinari presented unique, exciting ones.

At about that point, House's bout of introspection was cut short by his arrival back at the Watch House.

The Watch House was bright pink.

* * *

"Here we are!" said Carrot, looking bizarrely proud with his hands on his hips and his back ramrod straight. "This is the Seamstresses' Guild. It's run by Mrs. Palm, who is a wonderful, kind lady. She gave me a place to stay when I first came to the city!"

The Seamstresses' Guild was an enormous, gaudy affair with a steepled roof and pink and purple trim. It looked something like the castle of an overly zealous princess.

"Uh huh," said Owen suspiciously.

"Looks delightful," ventured the Doctor.

"Guh," said Sarah Jane.

"They're delightful people, I'm sure they'd be willing to let you use a room or two for the night."

In the middle of Carrot's extolling, the door creaked open and a couple of scantily clad women peeked out. When they saw who was there, one of them squealed, and they threw the door open the rest of the way.

"Captain Carrot!" said the one who had squealed. "Have you come to visit us?"

Carrot smiled brightly at them. "Unfortunately I can't stay long. I actually have a favor to ask. Is Mrs. Palm in?"

"Woah!" said Owen, sounding impressed. "Why didn't you tell us there would be a bunch of hot chicks here?" He regarded Carrot with a new respect. Carrot blinked at him blankly.

"Ignore him," advised Sarah Jane.

"Come in, come in!" said one of the girls. "Captain Carrot's friends are always welcome, of course." She giggled alarmingly.

They stepped through the door into a surprisingly tidy waiting room, complete with several plush couches, all with cozy-looking pillows on them, a fancy-looking rug on the floor, and gauzy red-hued drapes covering the windows. There were several more girls sitting on these couches, chatting and playing cards, but when their group entered the room, they jumped up and swarmed around Carrot, all talking at the same time.

There was also a large desk on one end of the room, manned by yet another underdressed girl, who was examining her nails with a bored expression, and while Carrot was being mobbed, the Doctor took the initiative and marched up.

"Hello," he said politely. "We'd like a room, please."

The receptionist, whose name tag--which miraculously had just enough material to cling to--revealed her name to be Cherry, looked up at him, then glanced around the room. "What, for all of you?"

"Of course! Oh, and we should have some other friends joining us later as well."

Cherry raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Well, all right. How many girls?"

"Er, three," said the Doctor, counting on his fingers. "And that's a good point, they'd probably like a separate room."

Cherry stared at him. "If you say so, sir," she said slowly after a short pause. "Would you like any... special services, then?"

"Oh, do you serve breakfast? Most important meal of the day, you know!"

Cherry hesitated again. "We have plenty of butter and jelly, sir, and we could probably rustle up some toast if that's what you'd like."

"Oh, excellent! I do love toast."

"Would you like to choose your girls right now?"

".... Sorry, what?"

The Doctor became aware behind him, Owen was practically choking from laughter, and gradually began suspecting that he and Cherry were having two entirely different conversations.

"Just a moment please," he said to Cherry the receptionist, and all but ran over to where Carrot was still being mobbed. He pushed his way though the girls enough to ask Carrot: "Where did you bring us exactly?"

"Er, just a moment ladies, please," said Carrot kindly. "This is the Seamstresses' Guild! I already told you."

"Seamstresses!" said Owen, then promptly collapsed in another fit of laughter.

"Really, it's not that funny," said Sarah Jane, rolling her eyes.

"It is!"

"Ladies, I'm very glad to see you all too," said Carrot diplomatically to his mob. "Miss Dolly, would you please see if Mrs. Palm is in? And if so, could I request a short audience with her?"

"Yes, Captain!" The addressed girl ran off, still giggling.

"Who are these people, Carrot?" asked another girl.

"They're just friends who are in the area for a short time," explained Carrot. "They need a place to stay is all."

"Are we where I think we are?" said the Doctor, who was not very pleased about having been ignored.

"What do you mean?" asked Carrot.

"You brought us to a brothel!" managed Owen.

"A brothel? Oh, no! You misunderstand. This is the Seamstresses' guild."

"They're not wearing a whole lot for women who are supposed to sew clothes," said Sarah Jane.

Carrot's response was cut off by the arrival of an attractive older woman. She was large, and wore an even larger dress with a very low neckline.

"Carrot! How nice to see you, boy," she said, and even her voice was large.

"Mrs. Palm!" said Carrot, who looked quite relieved to see her.

"Now, tell me, what is all this fuss about?"

"This is Sarah Jane Smith, Owen Harper, and the Doctor, Mrs. Palm, and they're in need of someplace to stay for the night. You wouldn't happen to have an open room or two they and their friends could use, would you? As a favor to me."

"Hmmm," said Mrs. Palm as she appraised them.

"We can pay," added the Doctor quickly. "We don't have any traditional money, but we can pay using other means." Mrs. Palm raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sarah Jane. "I mean, I'm sure we could give you something else to compensate," the Doctor clarified.

"Well, all right," said Mrs. Palm. "The Captain has been a big supporter of the guild, and a good friend, after all. We can spare two rooms for tonight. How many more will be staying, besides you three?"

"Just three, I think. Two women and one man," said the Doctor.

"What about Wilson and Archimedes?" asked Owen. "Are they going to be okay staying in the TARDIS all night?"

"Oh, they'll be fine!"

"If you say so...."

"Well, I've really got to be getting back to the Watch House," said Carrot. "I'll check back in a couple hours, but you are of course free to do whatever you like. You're no longer in custody."

"Do come visit more often, Carrot," said Mrs. Palm. "My girls like to see you."

"I will," Carrot promised, and then he was gone.

"We'll have the rooms ready for you in an hour. You can come back then," Mrs. Palm told the Doctor.

"Thank you, again," said the Doctor as they stepped out.

For a moment, they all stood on the steps in front of the gaudy, pink door.

"Well, now what?"

".... Did anyone else notice that Tosh isn't here anymore?"

".... Huh."

* * *

Tosh woke suddenly, feeling the familiar disorientation associated with coming out of a good sleep. She blinked blearily at the many shades of pink surrounding her until they swam reluctantly into focus.

The next thing she became aware of was the sound of voices and clinking dishes coming from downstairs and she leapt out of bed, suddenly excited. She'd almost forgotten! Today was her birthday! She was turning nine, and that was really cool because nine was only one away from ten, and ten was double digits! She brushed her teeth, threw on the pretty sundress her mother had left out for her the night before--yellow with little pink flowers--and rushed downstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

Mum was bustling around the kitchen, which was filled with sunlight and the smells of bacon and pancakes. Papa, home from the base for the weekend, was sitting at the small kitchen table with a mug of coffee and the daily crossword, and he looked up and smiled when she walked in.

"Good morning!" she said, and Mum and Papa both echoed the greeting brightly.

A small pile of presents wrapped in colorful paper sat invitingly on the table in front of Papa.

Tosh sat down at the table and smoothed out her sundress as Mum placed a plate full of pancakes and bacon in front of her. She happily doused it in syrup.

"Happy birthday, sweetheart," said Mum, ruffling her hair.

Breakfast was usually a formal affair, with only herself and her mother present. She was never allowed to come down without being fully dressed, and usually all she got was bland oatmeal or cereal. Her birthday was always special. She still had to get dressed before coming down, but Papa always came home and they always had something yummy to eat.

After breakfast, Tosh was allowed to open her gifts. She opened each one gingerly, taking care not to rip the paper more than she had to. Mum liked to reuse wrapping paper; it was less expensive. She got a nice card and twenty dollars from Grandmother and Grandfather, a book on Topological maps from Aunt Betsy, a brand-new 3D puzzle of a castle from Uncle Rudolph, and a volcano-making kit from her parents.

As she sat beaming at her presents, someone knocked on the door.

"Trevor!" She shot off her chair like a rocket and ran to open the door. A disheveled boy missing several of his teeth grinned back at her from the other side. She thought she saw something small and black dart into the bushes out of the corner of her eye but dismissed it.

"Hi Tosh!"

"Hello Trevor," said her mother, always the perfect host. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"No ma'am! I already ate breakfast! I'm just here to get Tosh so's we can go play outside!" Trevor always spoke with exclamation points.

"Well, all right, but be careful! Tosh, don't come back covered in mud this time...."

"I won't Mum!" Tosh waved to her mother as she skipped out of the house after Trevor.

There was a playground nearby, which was where they usually went to play. It had an excellent pair of swings, a slide, a jungle gym, and there weren't a lot of other kids in the neighborhood, so they were usually left to their own devices.

On the way over, Tosh found a very nice stick. It was long and thin, with a fine point, but sturdy as well. She hated it when her sticks broke.

Trevor immediately went for one of the swings, like he always did, and Tosh squatted in the sand surrounding the playground.

"Happy birthday, Tosh!" said Trevor, as though he had just remembered. Tosh was surprised he'd remembered at all--he almost always came over on weekends, so his visit was nothing special.

"Thanks, Trevor," she said.

"Hey, you know what?" said Trevor. "For my last birthday, which was two months ago, which means I'm older than you--" Before they reach their teens, age is the most important thing to a child, followed by name. "--I got a dinosaur! He was a T. rex! I named him Fritz!"

"I remember," said Tosh. Her stick traced elegant lines in the sand. "I told you that was a stupid name for a dinosaur."

"It was not a stupid name!"

"Was too. Dinosaurs should have fearsome names. Fritz is not a fearsome name."

"Is so! I'm very scared of people named Fritz!"

Their Literature teacher was named Mrs. Fritz.

"You name all your dinosaurs Fritz, though."

Trevor had never been a great reader.

"Not so! I named my Stegosaurus Leroy!"

Leroy was the name of their gym teacher. Trevor liked gym, and he also liked Stegosauruses. Whenever his Stegosaurus and T. rex battled, the Stegosaurus always won.

"Why don't you have any girl dinosaurs?" Tosh asked.

"Don't be stupid! There's no such thing as a girl dinosaur!" Trevor scoffed.

"You don't be stupid! How did they reproduce then?"

"They laid eggs, dummy!"

"Boys can't lay eggs! Only girls can!"

"Fine!" said Trevor, who was at least bright enough to recognize a lost battle. "I'll name my next dinosaur... uhh..."

"Gwen," said Tosh, then wondered where the name had come from.

"Fine, I'll name my next dinosaur Gwen," agreed Trevor. He went back to swinging with enthusiasm and, after a minute, Tosh went back to drawing in the sand.

Trevor was a bit simple, but Tosh liked him. He liked her too, which made him all the more special. Not many people her age liked her. She stuck out.

Several minutes passed in silence. Eventually Tosh said, "I saw something interesting on TV yesterday."

"Hmmm?"

"There's a theorem in mathematics, it's called the Four Color Theorem, and even though people have known it's true for centuries, no one can prove it. It says that any map at all, any map you can think of, can be colored so that no two touching areas are the same color, using only four colors."

Trevor hummed to let her know he was listening. That was another thing about Trevor she liked--he could be loud and obnoxious, but he also knew when to let her speak.

"Cartographers, that is, people who draw maps, have known this for centuries, but no one has ever been able to prove it. There's a pretty simple proof for five colors, though. I was able to recreate it myself yesterday."

All of this was clearly going right over Trevor's head, but it didn't matter. She just needed someone else there. It helped her think to be able to say her ideas out loud."

"I wonder if I could prove the Four Color Theorem."

Her stick began to make quicker, more focused patterns in the sand. Occasionally she'd brush parts out, and on one occasion she smoothed over everything she'd written and started over completely. This went on for a couple hours. Trevor swung and she drew in the sand and babbled mostly to herself.

Around noon, Trevor took a flying leap off the swings, and went to find his worn red backpack.

"My mama packed lunch for us!" he said brightly, offering her a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and a juice box. She took it and grinned back at him, a little thankful for a break. She kicked the sand out of her sandals and sat down on a bench. He sat next to her and pulled out a ham sandwich for himself.

At the smell of ham, a small black cat came out from its hiding place under the bench and pawed at Trevor's leg.

"Oh, so cute! Who do you belong to?" gushed Tosh, reaching down to pet it. It tolerated her hand but ignored her in favor of Trevor. Trevor generously offered it some ham.

They sat in silence for a little while. Tosh's legs didn't quite reach the ground, and she swung them idly back and forth. "Need help with your math homework?" she asked him eventually. Trevor wasn't very good at math either.

"Yeah," he said. "I don't understand fractions! Why do I got to subtract division? It doesn't make any sense."

She giggled. "Subtracting fractions is easy once you get the hang of it. Come over tomorrow and I'll teach you." The cat purred at them.

"Whew! I always learn much easier when you explain it, Tosh!"

Satisfied that he wasn't going to fail his math homework, Trevor bolted down the rest of his sandwich and darted back over to his favorite swing. Tosh had once asked him why he spent so much time on the swings. He told her he was trying to get high enough to go all the way over the top. She told him that was silly and tried to explain why, but he was convinced that if he tried hard enough he could do it. She eventually let it be.

Tosh went back to her proof, which had turned into a giant, sprawling mess of computations. Now it had some footprints in it too, where Trevor had forgotten to look where he walked. She smiled despite herself, then got a new idea. She quickly erased the whole thing and started over again.

This time it was Trevor's turn to babble as he attempted to swing his swing over the top of the bar, about everything and anything but mostly about dinosaurs.

"Yesterday Fritz the T. rex and Fritz the Velociraptor got in a fight over whose turn it was to come with me to school, but luckily Leroy was there to stop them! So I brought Leroy with me instead!"

Leroy always ended up coming to school with Trevor. Tosh nodded and finished a quick computation.

It was nearing dusk when she finished. She rubbed her eyes and looked at Trevor, whose swings had been getting less enthusiastic as he got more and more tired, then checked her work one last time. Satisfied that she really had found a viable proof, she carefully wrote Q.E.D. in the sand with her stick.

"I finished!" she said proudly. Trevor perked up.

"Of course you did! You always get 'em! What was it again?"

"The Four Color Theorem."

"Right! That!"

Tosh beamed at him.

"Tosh! Time to come in, sweetheart," called her Mum, who had just walked down the road to get her. "It's getting dark."

"All right, Mum," she said, brushing herself off.

"Do you need us to walk you home, Trevor?" asked Mum kindly.

"No ma'am, I'll be okay, my home's only a block away."

"Well be careful, dear. Come on, Tosh. It's nearly suppertime."

Tosh waved goodbye to Trevor and followed her mum home, leaving her incredible proof there in the sand.

That was all right. She'd already solved it. She didn't need it anymore.

* * *

Shadows flitted through sunbeams where nothing blocked the light. They were swift and tiny disturbances, easy to mistake for motes of dust or tiny insects, except this was Death’s domain, and neither existed here.

ALBERT, Death called.

His butler, a former wizard named Alberto Malich, jerked away, a line of drool flying from his face as his head darted about, searching for an intruder to menace with the broom in his hand. His comical reaction would have served to make Death appear even more dramatic if anyone was around to witness them. Death stalked past Albert with his sword in hand, its blade so thin as to be invisible, an atom’s width of blue light sharper than any weapon ever made. His black robes flowed around him like water, and it swept Albert up in its wake.

“What’s going on?”

THEY ARE HERE.

“I don’t see anything.” Albert crashed into him from behind as Death stopped in the foyer. The doors opened by themselves, and in the distance, a void of white light grew, appearing about the size of a coin but surrounded by a corona of lightning that seeped into horizon and kept on going. The wizard wheezed as a sharp intake of breath sucked his cigarette down his windpipe. For a brief moment, he resembled the ducks by the pond, thrashing as they choked on the skeletal fish, but Death smacked him on the back and the roll flew from his mouth, flopping onto the ground, a limp piece of wet, unraveling paper.

Death put forward an open palm and the air rippled like water. Spreading from his hands, a wrinkled image of Ankh-Morpork appeared before them. NO... For the briefest of moments, Albert would have sworn emotion tinged that echoing voice. For a moment, the sleep of eternity knew despair, and nightmares threatened its peace.

Tinkling echoed from afar, the sound of little sleigh bells and children playing chimes too enthusiastically. It was a strange herald of apocalypse, but Death had no expectations, so life was not obligated to conform. The two of them raced through the house, their clothing billowing like war banners in the wind. They soared through the hall of life-timers, and the sand that flew around them was not dust from their feet.

Their dash ended in a special room, hidden apart from the main halls. Hourglasses lined the shelves, but each had special shapes, or carvings, and most were far larger than usual. This room was reserved for special beings, gods and demons, anthropomorphic personifications and heroes that defied death.

Recently, Death had gathered a few more timers here, ones that glowed and sparked when touched. These overflowed with life, burst with creative energies. It had taken Death centuries to reach the realization that some mortals, though their lives looked the same as anyone else’s from afar, held the fabric of Discworld’s existence together. Through their words and actions, they inspired others, drove ordinary masses to greatness, led minds and bodies to imaginative heights that were otherwise unattainable. They were pillars that held up the belief field of Discworld, and without them, it would crumble. And on Discworld, as belief went, so did reality.

Now, they were shattering. One by one, the timers burst, and glass fell like rain. Sand fell in waterfalls, leaking and splashing like blood. The light of the hourglasses flashed and faded, bulbs burning out in one final brilliant burst. The failures cascaded, and Death could do nothing but watch as a storm of destruction rushed toward the life-timer in the center of the room, a moderate-sized one that looked humble in the shadow of Om, but the only one whose light never faded, never even flickered, the one that could be a second sun if ever let loose from Death’s domain. Elaborate curls embellished the gold script that ran across its curves, spelling out a single name (well, actually, two, as he’d changed his middle name after his last encounter with Death, hoping to avoid a repeat incident): Ronald ~~Tutankhamen~~-Tiberius Daniels.

His timer broke, and the manor shuddered as cracks shot up its walls. Dust and plaster poured down, announcing the collapse of the roof.

COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE. Death snatched Albert’s arm and dragged him away. The spray of glass narrowly missed him as they dodged out of the room. In the main halls, the shelves remaining remarkably stable amidst the collapsing architecture. By the time they returned to the front door, the sky formed a gaping hole in the roof, and lightning crackled from hemisphere to hemisphere, like the heavens were ready to break apart but couldn’t decide how.

“What’s going on?” Albert demanded. His hands clutched the jacket pocket where his own life-timer resided, and the tips of his fingers were white.

Death didn’t respond. Instead, there was a flash of blue light, and they teleported into Ankh-Morpork. Albert stood, dazed, for about a grand total of twenty microseconds before pulling out the life-timer and bringing it up to his eyes. His mouth was open, ready to berate Death for planning to kill him--something which, despite all his protestations that he didn’t kill anyone, Albert always believed was highly likely--but the grains of sand were frozen in place.

By the time he breathed a sigh of relief, Death had pushed through the front door of the nearby house, and Albert dashed after him, still determined to get an answer. As he rushed in, the floor betrayed him, abruptly becoming a slick and squeaky surface that sent him into the ruthless embrace of gravity.

“What the--” Even without looking, he could tell the sticky wetness on his hands was blood. When he did finally look, he found a trail of red littered with pieces of skin that ended in a man-shaped blotch on the wall. It was as though the killer had struck the victim so hard, he shattered on impact, but the force created enough momentum to send the remains flying across the room until they met something tall and solid. “This would’ve taken an incredible amount of magic to accomplish.”

OF COURSE. IT APPEARS I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PREVENT IT, EVEN IF I HAD BEEN ON TIME.

“Prevent a death?”

Death slashed his sword across the wall, causing the top half to dislodge and crumble. IT WAS NOT HIS TIME.

The shade of Ronald T. Daniels appeared to assemble itself from the myriad remains scattered around the room, a sight not unlike fog coalescing. “You!” His pointed finger went through Death’s right eye socket, causing him to yelp and leap backward. “I knew it! Someone breaks into the house, it’s obviously you. What do you want this time, huh? You got a piece of the moon that you want me to pretend is cheese?”

YOU’RE DEAD.

“You can’t threaten me! I’ve been reading up on you. There’s nothing you can do to convince me not to kill off Yummy-toes, and I don’t care how much you like his dynamic with Hack. In any case, the rumors are all absolutely false. Utter rubbish.”

I AM NOT SUSAN. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT FLAMING BUSHES, AND THE USHER WOULDN’T LET ME IN THE ONE TIME SHE BOUGHT ME A TICKET. HE SAID I WAS TRYING TO SNEAK ROTTEN VEGETABLES IN UNDER MY ROBES, AND THEN HE ASKED ME TO STRIP. I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE THAT I DO NOT SMELL LIKE ROTTEN VEGETABLES.

“It’s Firetree!”

WHAT DO ROTTEN VEGETABLES HAVE TO DO WITH KLATCHIAN HERBOLOGY?

“I mean the play! It’s called Firetree, not Flaming Bushes.”

I APOLOGIZE.

“Look,” Albert cut in, “I don’t give a damn about exploding trees or driftwood. You’re dead, that’s what’s left of you, deal with it.”

The playwright gaped for a moment. “That looks like a horrible way to die. It’ll be sensational! It’ll be all over the paper!” His tone sounded gleeful, but Death thought it might be hysteria. He was never good at judging emotions.

IT WILL CERTAINLY BE PAINFUL.

“But why am I dead? I’ve been cut off in my prime, at the height of my fame! Why, cruel fate, why?”

FROM WHAT SUSAN HAS TOLD ME, YOU SHOULD BE QUITE FAMILIAR WITH SENSELESS KILLING.

“Wait, what was that you said about pain?”

YOUR DEATH WILL BE QUITE PAINFUL.

“But I’m already dead!”

YES, BUT YOU WERE STRUCK BY A FORCE QUITE INTENT ON REMOVING YOUR IMAGINATION FROM DISCWORLD’S BELIEF FIELD. NOW THAT YOUR PHYSICAL PRESENCE IS GONE, THE FIELD WILL IMPLODE UPON YOU. THERE WILL BE INTENSE PAIN. I BELIEVE THE IDIOMATIC DESCRIPTION WOULD BE ‘MIND BOGGLING.’ YES, IT WILL BE EXCRUTIATING AND ‘MIND BOGGLING.’

“What? What?”

AND ONCE THE BELIEF FIELD COLLAPSES, DISCWORLD ITSELF WILL SHATTER AND ALL THINGS WILL DIE.

“WHAT?” Daniels and Albert exclamated (sic) at the same time. Albert, however, had the presence of mind (in addition to having more presence than Daniels, period) to add: “Why?”

I DO NOT KNOW. IT MAY BE POSSIBLE THAT THE KILLERS DESIRE TURTLE SOUP, BUT MORE LIKELY, THEY HAVE GAINED IN POWER AND SEEK TO WIPE OUT THE DISC TO CEMENT THEIR ASCENSION AS MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

“Aaauuuurrrghgbbluurrblbebblebeep!” Daniels screamed as he collapsed, blubbering in pain and fading out of sight. A distant rumble preceded ominous shaking of the ground.

THE FAILURE HAS BEGUN.

“And there’s nothing we can do? It sounds like you had the foresight to predict this eventuality!”

I SAW THE POSSIBILITY, BUT I DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO REMEDY IT.

As color drained away, the world wavered, twisting as though behind a curtain of heat. Albert’s face turned pale to match, but they weren’t witnessing the end. Not yet. Rather, hundreds of transparent grey robes filled the room, each one draped over a formless, invisible body.

“The Auditors!” And Albert had been certain the day couldn’t get any worse.

ARE YOU READY? Death asked the closest cloak.

It spoke: We register our disapproval, but the consensus agrees it must be done.

“What must be done?” Albert asked.

THE AUDITORS CONTROL EVERYTHING. NOW, THEY WILL, I BELIEVE THE PHRASE IS, ‘COOK THE BOOKS.’

“That doesn’t explain anything.”

Daniels will be wiped from existence, the Auditors said. If he never existed, he never sustained the belief field. He cannot die and he cannot cause the world to end.

The robes fluttered in a wind only they could feel. It grew stronger and stronger until it whipped them about, blending them together and sending them swirling around Death and Albert like water going down a drain. Faster and faster they whirled, becoming a solid wall that grew darker and darker, all the while drawing together, each orbit smaller than the previous. All at once, they vanished, leaving in their place a soft sigh.

It is done.

Despite the fact that Ronald T. Daniels had never lived in this house, the décor was still the same, minus the mess of remains. THE HOUSE MUST BE PRE-FURNISHED, Death observed.

“Yes, I wonder who lives here,” Albert replied, injecting his voice with as much sarcasm as he could manage.

Death tilted his head. I BELIEVE WE ARE ABOUT TO FIND OUT.

The floor rumbled, and Albert was ready to accept that the intervention hadn’t worked when an orangutan came bounding down the stairs. He paused when he noticed the unexpected visitors.
s
“Ook, ook?”

Albert glared. “In my day, I would never have tolerated a m—”

HE REQUESTS YOU REMAIN CIVIL AND REFER TO HIM AS AN APE RATHER THAN A MONKEY.

“I see...”

“Eek!”

“What’s he saying now?”

BANANA? Death translated as the orangutan found two bananas from somewhere on his person, even though he was wearing no clothes.

“No, I want to know that if Daniels isn’t keeping the belief field stable, who is? Because I have the feeling I won’t like the answer.”

LIKE THE HOGFATHER INCIDENT, DANIELS’ ABSENCE REQUIRES A NEW CREATIVE FORCE TO FILL THE VOID. HOWEVER, THE DAMAGE HAS STILL BEEN DONE; THE FIELD IS WEAKER, AND A NUMBER OF LESSER PARASITE DOMAINS HAVE BEEN LOST.

Albert groaned. “Like yours?”

THAT IS CORRECT.

“So where am I supposed to live now?”

SEVERAL GODS HOPE TO GAIN FROM THIS CATACLYSM. MOST HAVE CHOSEN HUMAN PLENIPOTENTIARIES TO CONVERT NON-BELIEVERS.

“How is that remotely creative?”

INDEED, THE SERIOUS AND DOUR NATURE OF MOST CONVERSIONS LEAVE MUCH TO BE DESIRED. THERE IS ONE ROLE, HOWEVER, THAT IS BOTH POWERFUL AND CAPABLE OF SPARKING IMAGINATION LIKE NOTHING ELSE.

“And that would be?”

LOVE.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH TIME THE AVERAGE MORTAL DEVOTES TO THE PURSUIT OR LOSS OF LOVE. IT IS REMARKABLE. IT IS THE STUFF OF GREAT TALES. ANYONE REPLACING DANIELS MUST BE CAPABLE OF GENERATING SUCH FERVOR. THE GODDESS ASTORIA IS STILL SEEKING A HUMAN TO REPRESENT HER.

Albert gaped. “You’re pawning me off to Astoria? How the hell am I supposed to inspire love?”

AS SUSAN HAS DEMONSTRATED MANY A TIME, THE ROLE DOES NOT HAVE TO FIT THE MORTAL, THE MORTAL IS BENT TO FIT THE ROLE.

“And what, exactly, is the role?”

ASTORIA WISHES TO REVIVE THE ANCIENT ART OF THE ALLURING COURTESAN.

Albert, once the great Alberto Malich, renowned and feared wizard, old man who could out-curse a sailor, out-fry baby shrimps, and out-elf the Hogfather’s elves, came up with no better response than to stare and imagine himself decorated with jewels and covered with perfume, seducing all manner of clients while whispering sexy nothings in their ears: My hips aren’t as arthritic today… “Good god.”

GODDESS, Death corrected.

“I have no choice, do I?”

YOU COULD DIE. Death showed him the sword.

“No, no, no,” Albert said hastily. “I’ll do it. Or them. Or everyone. Whatever or whoever Astoria wants.”

SHE ASSURES ME IT WILL BE AN ENJOYABLE EXPERIENCE.

“I’m so excited.”

To Chapter 24: The Water's Edge

Back to Chapter 23: Part 1

Summary: House and Vimes learn important information, but get very annoyed by Lord Vetinari. Donna gets suspicious of things. Carrot brings the Doctor, Owen, and Sarah Jane to a place they can stay, but it's not exactly what they expected. Wilson and Archimedes are lost. Also, where the hell is Tosh?

"As God knew / What Judas would do / In the final accounting / Who betrayed who?"

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:58:16 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 23
Déjà vu of Déjà vu of Déjà vu
(Part 1 of 2)

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Tosh was pretty sure her eyes were open, but she couldn't see. She felt that sort of half-awareness, as if she were floating inside a partially remembered dream.

There were whispers of shapes around her, more felt than seen, less tangible than smoke.

What do you feel? said one.

Where do you come from? said another.

What do you love?

She opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Her throat felt parched.

What do you fear?

What do you hate?

She struggled to move, but each of her limbs felt like lead. She couldn't seem to get her brain to send the right signals.

What do you hope for?

What do you regret?

What do you...

What...

What...

What do you want?

* * *

Vimes stood stiffly in front of Vetinari's desk, waiting for the Patrician to look up from his pile of paperwork.

"Commander," Vetinari said after about ten minutes, as if Vimes had just then walked into the room. "I have something very important to tell you, but first, I would very much like to meet this doctor you've been carting around all day." Vimes didn't bother to wonder how Vetinari knew about that. Vetinari always knew about everything that went on in his city, and Vimes had learned long ago that it was futile to try to keep secrets.

"He's in the waiting room," he said, as if Vetinari didn't already know that too. The Patrician picked up a small bell on his desk and rang it. A second later, House was being shown in by one of Vetinari's numerous clerks.

"Where can I get a clock like that?" greeted House with enthusiasm. "It's brilliant! I can sense it would be extremely useful back home. I could put one in the clinic, it might encourage people not to come. Or one in my office for the same reason, although there might be some problems if I need to hide out there. Oh, if I got a whole bunch, I could put one in each patient's room the next time my cable dies! That would be quality entertainment, might also clear out some patients."

Vetinari stared. "Fascinating."

"What the hell kind of doctor are you?" said Vimes.

"So what's up?" said House.

"Please have a seat," Vetinari said, gesturing to the two empty, uncomfortable-looking chairs in front of his desk.

"Lovely," said House as he sat heavily. "I was beginning to cramp." Vimes rolled his eyes and declined to sit, as usual.

"Sir Samuel, you need to take the utmost care in dealing with this case." The Patrician was speaking with a strange intensity. Vimes didn't need to ask which case.

"We are taking every precaution--"

"Take them all twice. This is no ordinary foe you are dealing with."

Warning bells sounded in Vimes's head. "With all due respect, sir, we are doing everything we can, and I think we've dealt with worse."

"You haven't. Tell me, Sir Samuel, what do you know about Il Diluvio?" Vetinari carefully steepled his fingers, elbows on his desk. Vimes frowned.

"About what?"

"I believe they are also known here as The Company."

Vimes's frown deepened. "Not a whole lot. Small gang of rogues from Uberwald, very secretive, tend to involve themselves in important matters over there, but don't often leave Uberwald."

"Correct. In the absence of a unifying government in Uberwald, they consider themselves something of a secret police force."

"Ooo, mysterious! Is that 'company' as in a business, or as in 'honey, we're having company tonight!'?" said House, grinning.

"The latter, Dr. House. Two confirmed members of The Company have been sighted inside the city by reliable sources," continued Vetinari.

Vimes sucked in a breath. "Good name," said House, clearly unaffected by the atmosphere in the room. "Simple, which is good. Too many secret evil organizations try to over-complicate their names with all sorts of acronyms and crap. They don't realize it just makes them sound camp." He was ignored.

"Joshua Law was sighted traveling with am unknown woman, and also Felix Lowell, who was alone. They were seen separately, on different days and at opposite sides of the city, but it's still cause for alarm. As you said, The Company rarely travels this far from Uberwald." Vetinari shuffled some papers around. Vimes knew it was just for show, to occupy his hands--Vetinari never forgot anything.

"Law and the unknown woman appeared to be sightseeing. My spies followed them for about half the day today without noticing anything suspicious, but lost them not long after noon, near the Opera House. Lowell was spotted just inside the gates, but vanished almost right away. I don't yet know where he went." Vetinari's expression betrayed nothing, but Vimes knew he was perturbed by this; the Patrician wasn't used to being uninformed. Next to him, House was staying uncharacteristically quiet, but he still wore that stupid grin, and it was getting wider by the minute.

Vimes searched his memory for details about the known members and came up with a young man and... it was no use, he didn't remember anything about Lowell, except one thing. "Both Law and Lowell are notorious for working on their own," he said, hoping he was remembering correctly. "It doesn't necessarily mean that the Company is getting involved with anything here."

"It doesn't hurt to be careful, Sir Samuel, and it would be quite a coincidence for two of them to end up here." Vimes got the impression he wasn't being told anything and it vexed him, though he wasn't surprised.

"So these people are pretty dangerous, huh?" House spoke up. "Fancy themselves pretty important? How many of them are there?" Vetinari fixed him with a piercing stare. House didn't even seem to notice--Vimes was grudgingly impressed, but only a little.

"Only they know, I expect," said the Patrician. "There are no less than seven or eight members, and no more than twenty."

"That's a terrible estimation."

"Since they rarely gather, it's difficult to identify who is a real member and who is an imitator, of whom there are many. Furthermore, as Sir Samuel said, they rarely travel this far from Uberwald. They have great love for their country, but not so much for the people living in it. They act how they deem is best for Uberwald, and other countries don't matter."

Vimes considered them representative of everything wrong with coppers. You couldn't operate a police force like that. It just didn't work. Coppers have to be answerable to some high power, or else they'd just become another gang. Who watches the watchmen? It always came back to that.

House was following a different train of thought. "If this crazy, secret, and highly unlikely group of supervillains only care about... Uber Waldo, isn't it safe to assume that their business here has something to do with it?"

"Indeed, Doctor House. It's a worrying thought," said Vetinari.

"If you say so." House yawned, bored again.

"What does Rhys have to say about all this?" said Vimes.

"The Low King's official statement is that he knows nothing about it, but he is looking into it."

"And his unofficial statement?"

"He really does know nothing about it, and he really is looking into it."

Vimes rubbed his temples. "So why distinguish between the two?"

"By making an official statement that he doesn't know anything, he effectively ensures that people think he really does, and knowledge is a good thing for people to think you have." Vimes looked pained so Vetinari added, "It's all politics, Sir Samuel." Vimes groaned. House was laughing quietly. "Either way, the dwarfs are not involved in this, although I have no doubt they will do their best to change that."

"So if these supervillains from Where's Waldo are so secret, how come everything and their dog seems to know about them?" House cut in.

"They are very secretive," Vetinari explained. "That's why everyone knows. Secrets have a natural tendency not to stay secrets for long. They are the subject of much speculation and many folk tales. However, although their existence is hardly a real secret, all the details of their organization are. It's almost impossible to distinguish between fact and made-up stories. No one knows how many of them there are, or what they are going to do. There are only five confirmed members, and I suspect that they are only confirmed because they let themselves be. Uberwald is plenty big enough to hide effectively in."

It occurred to Vimes that it was a little odd how much Vetinari seemed to be telling House, about whom he presumably knew nothing at all. It wasn't like him to be so accommodating. "Getting back to the point," he said crankily, "If the dwarfs aren't involved, who is? None of the other options seem pleasant." Vimes had had enough of werewolves, vampires, and various other ghouls common to Uberwald to last him a lifetime.

"I'm afraid it is impossible to say at this point," said Vetinari. "I have people in all the major circles in Uberwald, but there are countless rogue vampires and werewolves, and most other natives don't keep such comprehensive social groups, which makes them more difficult to keep track of. Uberwald is a big place, Sir Samuel."

Vimes thought about all this. "What do you expect me to do about it? This all seems very political. I'm through with political. I've had it up to here with political."

"Calm down, Sir Samuel."

Vimes thought he was being perfectly calm, but he took a deep breath anyway. "Sir," he said.

"I don't expect you to do anything. In fact, just the opposite. I merely thought you ought to know. It's not your place to investigate this, but you can at least be aware of it so you can avoid trouble."

Not my place? though Vimes. If one of those cocky bastards commits a crime in my city, we'll see about whose place it is.

Out loud, he said, "Is that all, sir?"

"Please, don't let me detain you." Vetinari waved a hand dismissively. Grimacing, House stood, and Vimes headed gratefully for the door. "Oh, one more thing, Commander," said the Patrician, as if a thought had just occurred to him. Vimes stifled a groan and stopped, but didn't bother to turn around. "You must not, under any circumstances, go looking for The Company. Do not involve yourself in this. You have enough to deal with. This is not a matter for the Watch." House watched both of them, carefully and with apparent interest. After a long moment, Vimes said, "Sir," again, and walked out.

A couple minutes after they both had gone, Vetinari's head clerk, Drumknott, entered with a fresh pile of papers, which he deposited on the Patrician's desk.

"Tell me, Drumknott," said Lord Vetinari, "do you think I've gone soft?"

"How do you mean, sir?" said Drumknott.

"It occurs to me that perhaps I rely on the Commander a bit too much."

"Sir?"

"It can be dangerous to place too much trust in any one person."

"I think it unlikely that Commander Vimes will do anything other than what you intend, sir," said the clerk loyally.

Vetinari looked troubled. "Oh dear, I do hope that is not the case. That would ruin everything." Drumknott's brow wrinkled. After a pause, Vetinari added, "What did you think of our visitor?"

"Doctor House, sir? He was very... blunt. He told me I need to spend more time in the sun if I ever want to find a lady."

"Did he now?" Something like a smile played over the Patrician's lip.

"If you don't mind me asking, sir, why did you want him in here when you were revealing highly confidential information? We don't know anything about him."

"Two reasons, Drumknott. The first is that he and his companions arrived in the city under very mysterious circumstances. Ensuring he stays with the Commander is a way of keeping an eye on him. I sense Doctor House is probably very similar to the Commander in many ways. Second, he is a chaotic element. Sometimes when a situation is most delicate, what is actually needed is something to shake things up. Every now and then, a chaotic element is necessary."

"I do not understand, sir."

"No, Drumknott, I expect you don't."

* * *

In the cell block, Sergeant Colon gesticulated wildly. "And then I said, 'BACK, YOU EVIL FIEND!' And do you know what he did?"

"What?"

"... he blew up!"

"WOAH!"

"... You two can go on patrol. We've got the situation here covered," said the sergeant on duty.

The girl, who was dressed as a boy and had earlier that day broken into the Patrician's Palace, sat in the corner of a cell and sulked.

* * *

In the darkness below ground, a shadow stirred. Then, so did two other shadows. A fourth didn't bother. In actuality, they weren't really shadows, but they would have been shadows if there had been any light to cast them.

Darkness underground is not like regular darkness. Even on a moonless night, eyes can adjust to the dark and it is possible to see outlines and shadows, but in the depths there's nothing to adjust to. A man (or a dwarf, troll, or any other creature) could sit down there for eternity and never be able to see a thing, not even vague grey shades. Even that, though, isn't the real difference between the dark with which most are familiar and the dark that hides underground.

If you get down far enough in the deeps, you find darkness that is old, older than nearly anything else on the Disc. There are thousands of caverns below the surface and the darkness there is the kind that has never been exposed to natural light. It has existed there since the creation of the Disc. The Dwarfs thrive in underground caverns and mines. They think they know the dark, they think they've mastered it, but even dwarfs will only go down so far.

And who knows what manner of creature may have evolved out of the ancient, dusty, cold, still, merciless dark that exists in the untouched underbelly of the Disc?^[*]

Many scientists and bad comedians alike have speculated on what would happen if the Dwarfs were ever to dig too deep and find themselves on the underside of the Disc, especially with regards to gravity, but that has no real relevance.

Everyone knows that Ankh-Morpork is built on Ankh-Morpork. And that is also built on Ankh-Morpork, which is built on Ankh-Morpork, and so on. But eventually, just like everything else eventually is, Ankh-Morpork is built on dirt and clay and mud.

The stirring shadows were not in the real dark of the Disc's depths, which is why they were shadows at all. Instead they were sitting in some ancient cellar several layers below the surface. The dwarfs that had been digging under the city had left months ago, but no great efforts had been made to refill their tunnels, and although the ever-oozing river had done most of the work already, even temporary dwarf tunnels are sturdy and some sections, though difficult to reach, remained clear.

It wasn't silent in the buried cellar. Someone was cursing softly, and a deep, toneless humming was emanating from one corner. Someone was snoring softly, but a slight echo made it difficult to pinpoint where it was coming from. The sound of rocks being methodically hit together was coming from the same general direction as the cursing. A spark flew, and a minute later some dry sticks and leaves caught fire, dimly illuminating the area.

The four occupants of the underground room made up a strange group. The one who had lit the fire was a petite blonde man wearing a loose, dark blue sweater, glasses, and a pleasant smile. His name was Sherlock Lamport. He looked normal--a person passing him on the streets wouldn't have looked twice. The same could not be said about the others.

The man behind Sherlock was so large that he wasn't immediately noticeable. The eyes passed right over him because it was more likely he was a wall than a person, and it took the brain several long seconds to register what the input had actually been. His name was Franklin, and he was enormous. His head was twice the size of a normal man's head, and his shoulders were three times as broad. He was perhaps eight feet tall or more, hunched over due to the low ceiling and covered in poorly-healed scars. Possibly as a result of some profound mistake, he was clad in a worn three-piece suit that did not at all match his otherwise rough appearance. He was humming softly to himself.

"Hush, Franklin, you're giving me a headache," said a woman from across the room. She sat stiffly on a rock, back rigid and face set in a severe expression. She looked like she had just walked off the screen of a slightly naughty Amazonian adventure movie. She wasn't wearing much, but what she was wearing was mostly leather and fur, with a sort of utility belt and very practical, heavy boots, because although she looked like she was trying to bring back the look of Conan the Barbarian, she wasn't stupid enough to try prancing around in leather heels just to complete the look. To complete the look, she was completely bald except for a thick, high ponytail that hung down her back.

The cavern's final occupant was snoring. His name was Gideon Rosen, and he was draped across a couple rocks in a position that looked something less than comfortable, but that didn't seem to affect his ability to sleep. His legs were stretched out in front of him, the black trousers making them appear longer and slimmer than they were, and a wide-brimmed hat was tilted over his face to shield it from the minimal amount of light present.

The woman, whose name was Elvira Mondego, made an irritated noise. "They're late. Where the hell is Law?"

"They'll be here," said Sherlock, cheerfully stoking the fire. A particularly loud snore came from Gideon's general direction.

"We've been here for an hour."

"You shouldn't let him get under your skin, you know."

"He's not under my skin," Elvira snapped. "His stupid comments don't bother me, I hate how unprofessional he is. I don't understand why the boss keeps him around."

"If you say," said Sherlock agreeably.

"Where's da boss?" rumbled Franklin.

"The boss isn't coming," said a pleasant-sounding voice from the room's entrance, and as they all looked over (except for Gideon, who was still asleep), Joshua Law sauntered in, a lazy grin on his face. He was followed by Genevieve West, who led Spot, her enormous dog.

"Law, you're late. As usual," said Elvira tersely.

"Joshua. Genevieve." Sherlock inclined his head in greeting, still occupied with the fire.

"Hey kiddo!" Law sauntered over and squatted next to the blonde. "How ya been? I haven't seen you in ages. Oh, hey Franklin! It's been a long time since I saw you too. I missed ya, big guy." Franklin was humming again, but he shrugged in response.

"Genevieve," said Elvira, "can't you control him a little better? You two are an hour late!"

"How exactly am I supposed to control him? He ran off! There was nothing I could do." Genevieve sat primly on the nearest outcropping of rocks to Elvira, and Spot promptly curled up at her feet. Together, the two women made a frighteningly severe image.

"What's this about the boss, now?" said Sherlock, finally sitting back.

"Change of plans. He's not coming. He's given us instructions to pass on, though, so don't worry yourself. Mommy and Daddy took care of things!" Both Genevieve and Sherlock made identical disgusted faces.

In the corner, Gideon snorted, shifted, and resumed snoring. Genevieve shot him a concerned look. "Should we wake him up?"

Law waved a hand dismissively. "Nah, leave him be." Genevieve looked to Elvira, who rolled her eyes and nodded.

"Good to see you Genevieve," said Franklin, who was just now catching up.

Law got down to business. "Franklin, the boss wants you to meet up with Bliss, she's already here and she'll find you by tonight. Most of us are already inside the city, but the boss, he doesn't want anyone else spotted if at all possible. You two are in charge of getting everyone else in without being noticed. Here, take this." He handed over a piece of folded paper and made sure Franklin had put it safely away and was paying attention before continuing. "That has the approximate times they'll be arriving, as well as where they'll be entering. Gotta be honest with you, big guy, I seriously doubted the wisdom of putting the two of you on this job. You guys make a great team, but you're a dumbass and she's a ditz, and that's not a good combination when it comes to subterfuge, but the boss has confidence you'll manage. The Patrician is not an easy man to sneak by, so use extra caution. And by extra caution, I mean no singing. Got it?"

Franklin grunted, and Law took it as agreement. "Excellent. Kiddo!" He turned to Sherlock and ruffled his hair enthusiastically. Sherlock narrowed his eyes, but Law failed to notice. "You're on surveillance, section 7-2. Standard operations, you know what to do." Sherlock nodded.

"Oh, hey Law, 'bout fuckin' time you showed up," said Gideon, who had finally woken up and was stretching lazily.

"How would you know?" snapped Elvira. "You were already snoring away over there when I got here, and I know that means you've probably been here since yesterday without waking up once."

"Educated guess." Gideon smirked at her.

"Elvira, gorgeous, you need to relax a bit. You're too high-strung," drawled Law, still grinning broadly despite the arguing. "Sleeping Beauty, excellent timing. Now stop being a little asshole and pay attention." Gideon shrugged and adjusted his hat. "Wonderful." Law pulled two more folded pieces of paper out of his pocket. "I don't know what these are," he said.

"Uh-huh," said Gideon. "Excellent, so glad you're here."

Law cheerfully ignored him and continued. "There's a job description in each, and they each require two of us. Boss said not to look until we were paired and only to look at our own, but he didn't care how we split up. So, Genevieve, babe, since we make such a lovely team, what do you say we--"

"No," Genevieve interrupted. Law strived to look hurt.

"But, babe, I--"

"Absolutely not."

"Fine." He pouted. "My other gorgeous lady will gladly partner with me, won't she?"

Elvira glared at him. "Surely you must be joking."

"Is that a yes? It's hard to tell when I am so distracted by your beauty."

"No."

"Oh, don't play hard to get, now! What would I do without my ladies?" Law lamented.

"You can partner with Gideon," said Elvira with finality. She plucked one of the papers from Law's fingers. "Genevieve and I will take this one."

"Don't do this to me! You can't leave me with him! He's mean and he hates me!" Law pleaded.

"Oh, buck up," said Gideon, then he laid back again and shut his eyes. Law stared at him with exaggerated horror.

"You're really going to do this to me, aren't you? Ladies, you break my heart!"

"You'll be all right," said Sherlock briskly. "Are we finished?"

"I suppose so."

"I have one thing to add, then. As per the boss's instructions, Felix, Genevieve, and Law have all allowed themselves to be seen, but the boss doesn't want the Patrician any more than suspicious. Aside from Law, Franklin is the only one here who's a ‘known’ member, and let's keep it that way. I'll be monitoring all your positions in case there's a problem, but at least for now, absolute secrecy is our number one priority. If you have to sacrifice something else to keep that secrecy, be it efficiency or even the completion of a job, don't hesitate."

"No worries, kiddo," said Law, and this time he sounded wistful.

"What's with that tone?" asked Genevieve suspiciously.

"Just thinkin'. It's been years since we were all in the same place, working together. If things go as planned, we should all be in the city within thirty-six hours. It'll be nice, seeing everyone together."

"Six years," added Franklin. Genevieve looked surprised he could count that high.

"Technically, we've never all been in the same place at the same time," said Sherlock. "We've had two replacements and an addition since we were last gathered." He nodded towards Genevieve as an example.

"Just a minor detail," said Law. "Now, enough nostalgia. Complete your jobs, do them well, they're just set-up for the main event but they're still important. We'll be meeting again, hopefully for a full family reunion, in approximately forty hours. Unless you're told otherwise between now and then, assume we're meeting here. Now shoo!"

Aside from Gideon snoring once again in the corner, the others filed out fairly quickly. As Franklin's lumbering bulk disappeared down the dirt corridor, Law stood, careful not to bump his head on the ceiling, and stretched. He briefly examined the elaborately folded paper in his hand, but eventually put it back in his pocket without opening it. Then he made three long strides over to the other side of the room and gave Gideon a hard kick.

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty," he sang cheerfully as Gideon yelped in alarm, then kicked him again for good measure.

* * *

Wilson was finally starting to have fun.

It hadn't escaped his notice that out of all his colleagues, he had been handling the whole alien invasion business with the least amount of grace. However, upon finding himself wandering around on an alien planet with no one for company except Archimedes, the actual mathematician from ancient Greece, he had finally given up.

After giving up, things had gotten a lot more pleasant. If he actively didn't worry about anything that happened, it couldn't bother him. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of this before. It wasn't like it was new to him--he'd been actively ignoring House's crazy points for years.

At the moment, Wilson and Archimedes were content to explore, and Wilson cheerfully ignored the fact that he had no idea how to get back to the TARDIS.

As they were walking down a busy street lined with thatched-roof buildings, a mouth-watering aroma caught Wilson's attention, and he suddenly realized how long it had been since he'd last eaten. The aroma in question was coming from a small pub to his left.

"Hey," he said, "you hungry?"

"Yes, but have we anything to pay with?" said Archimedes.

"We'll think of something." His stomach growled in agreement, and they went in.

The first thing they noticed was that they were the tallest people in the room by at least two feet. They also noticed that the ceiling was far too low, and the chairs too small. They hesitated, but their presence didn't seem to bother all the short, armored people already in the pub, so they went in further, enticed by the wonderful aroma of food.

"What is that amazing smell?" Wilson asked the dwarf at the bar brightly.

"Pie," he grunted.

"Pie sounds great!" said Archimedes.

"Really? It doesn't smell like pie," said Wilson.

"Pie," insisted the dwarf. Wilson shrugged.

"All right, we'll take two pies." The dwarf grunted again and ambled off.

"This place is quite unique, isn't it?" said Archimedes cheerfully.

"What, you mean this pub, or this planet?"

"Well, both, really. How are we going to get back to that amazing machine?"

"You don't remember where it was either? Well, damn."

"This city is a maze. Who knew there were such incredible things in the universe?"

"Eh," Wilson said. They sat in silence for a minute longer, and then the dwarf came back and pushed two steaming pies in front of them. "Well, they do look like pies. Whenever someone says the word pie, I think of apple, but these are clearly meat pies. Which is good really, because I was looking for dinner, not dessert."

They both dug in, but quickly realized that the pie didn't taste as good as it smelled. The meat was stringy and tough, and there were absolutely no vegetables.

"I do have to wonder what sort of meat this is," said Archimedes dubiously after the first few bites. Wilson's stomach began to protest, and he felt a little green. "Excuse me," said Archimedes to the dwarf, "what's in this pie?"

"What do you think?" said the dwarf gruffly. "Rat, 'course."

Wilson clamped his hands over his mouth to keep from vomiting, stood up, slammed his head against the ceiling, and took off out the door. He vaguely heard Archimedes apologizing profusely before following him and the dwarf shouting about payment, but that was the least of his worries. He managed to hold back the vomit until he found an alley, and threw up in a corner.

"Er, hate to interrupt, but we'd better get moving," said Archimedes behind him, sounding nervous. "That dwarf didn't look very happy."

They ended up being chased for eight blocks by an angry dwarf waving an axe.

* * *

In the end, it hadn't taken Donna that long to explain the current situation to Sally, though she had skirted around details about where she and her friends had come from and what they were doing in Ankh-Morpork.

When she heard about Donna taking over the kitchen at the barracks, Sally had explained that she was independently wealthy and lent Donna some coins. Donna had used them to purchase some broccoli, cabbage, and other vegetables that boil quickly. She also purchased a lot of salt and pepper.

A couple blocks away from the barracks, Sally stopped another passing copper to get an update on the situation at the Patrician's Palace, where Donna knew Vimes and House had been headed before she intentionally lost them.

Through a brief lull in the natural noises of the city, Donna caught a strain of music, headed by a mellow voice.

"What if his captor is cruel in his greed / and keeps both the ransom and king?"

A cart went by and drowned out the music, and by the time the cart had passed the hustle and bustle of the city made it impossible to hear again.

"Come on, let's get going," said Sally from behind her.

Donna hoisted her bag of vegetables over her shoulder and nodded.

Around the next building and across the street, a cloaked and hooded person was playing a lute and singing. With the hood it was impossible to tell the person's age, and the voice was neutral enough that even the gender wasn't obvious, but it was loud and clear and it carried a complex tune, and Donna could hear it easily now. She listened to it vaguely, as they walked by.

"When the king heard the music of the minstrel boy / he brought him into the palace to sing. / And as reward for such a beautiful song / said he'd give him anything."

The tune stayed in her mind even after they were out of earshot.

For the second time that day, the barracks loomed up in front of her, enshrouded in the fog of the city and looking almost unbearably decrepit. She steeled herself and went inside.

It was just as bad inside as she remembered it, but now at least some of the sick smell was masked by the wonderful aroma coming from the pot at the end of the room.

"Miss! Miss! We've watched it just as you told us!" said one of the young women, coming up to greet her.

"Excellent job," said Donna, giving her a wide smile. "What was your name again?"

"Cathy, Miss. My father and brother are both sick, so I came here to help them." The girl couldn't have been older than fifteen.

"That's a very brave thing, Cathy. I hope they get better, I really do. Now tell me, is there a knife in here I can use?" She pointed to her sack as an explanation.

Luckily, there was a knife, and through there wasn't a cutting board, the tiny counter was already so worn down it didn't seem to matter. Donna thoroughly wiped it and then got to work chopping her vegetables.

"I'm going back to the station," said Sally, who had followed her in. "I'll find out where your friends have gone and come back later for you."

"Thanks."

While she was finishing up dicing the cabbage, she noticed something strange about the opposite wall. Most of it was made of the same poorly constructed wooden boards as the other three walls, but a small section, well-hidden in the shadows made by the corner, was brick. It was maybe only three square feet, and dead in the center was a small metal door. It looked almost like an old brick oven.

She dumped her shredded cabbage into the pot and went outside.

She circled the building and still almost walked right by it, but sure enough, there on the end of one of the long walls was a brick protrusion.

She went back inside and went over to examine it.

"Cathy," she called. The girl scurried over. "What's this?"

Cathy looked a little surprised to see it. "I don't know, miss. I don't think I've ever noticed it before."

"If it's an oven, that could be useful."

"Should I open it and find out?"

"That's all right, I'll do it."

"Don't touch that," someone said behind them just as Donna was reaching for the handle. They whirled around.

One of the strangely-dressed doctors had come up behind them while they were talking, and despite his strange clothing, they hadn't noticed him. He was extremely tall, and towered over them. Donna shivered.

"That's not for you to see," he said. His voice was indistinct through the makeshift gas mask, just barely understandable. It made him sound barely human.

"Why not?" demanded Donna.

"Orders," was all the doctor said, then he walked away again.

"Well, that was downright mysterious," said Donna. "I don't know about you, but I'm more curious than ever to know what's behind this."

"You should ask the Commander," said Cathy earnestly. "He had this place built after all."

"Do you suppose these supposed orders came from him, then?"

"Either him or the Patrician, must be, miss. I can't think of anyone else who would have the authority."

"All right, I guess I'll leave it alone for now. No sense in causing trouble. It'll be a couple more hours before that stew is fit to serve, I think, and I'll be staying here for a while. So in the meantime, why don't you show me what you do around here, and I'll help."

* * *

Deep within his underground palace, Dimitri DeLovely was in a rage.

"Where is Dante?" he roared.

"He's not back yet, sir!" squeaked Rothgard the butler as he dodged another projectile vase.

"Well what's taking him so long?"

"I don't know, sir! He hasn't checked in yet!"

Dimitri growled inarticulately, then, having run out things in the immediate vicinity to throw, dropped unceremoniously into his throne and sulked.

"W-what would you like me to do, sir?" asked Rothgard as he edged towards the door. Dimitri's sulks were legendary amongst his subordinates for their violence.

"Send someone out to find him. My stupid little brother should not be disobeying me!"

Rothgard squeaked a reply and shut the door behind him as quickly as he could, just as a table crashed against it with amazing force.

"Oh, hello, Rothgard. Is my brother in a mood?" said a pleasant voice behind him. He whirled around.

"Lord Dante! The Lord Dimitri requests your presence at once, sir!" Rothgard gestured frantically at the door.

"Well, well, I suppose I should go see what my dear older brother wants, hmm?" Dante looked like his brother, but he was shorter and slightly stockier, with muscles instead of a long, slender frame. His black hair was also cut short, and he had a long, jagged scar running down one cheek that marred his otherwise handsome features.

"Where have you been?" hissed Dimitri the moment he entered.

"I was doing what you asked me to do," said Dante calmly.

"What took you so long? You should have been done hours ago. The task I set for you was not that difficult."

"My apologies. I was delayed."

"Delayed by what?" The sour look on Dimitri's face intensified.

"Nothing important," Dante said evasively. "Where is Madeleine?"

Dimitri's eyes narrowed. "What? That is not what we are discussing at the moment."

"Usually she comes running to see me as soon as I get back. I just think it's a little strange, don't you?"

"I suggest you stop right there, Dante. Don't forget who gave you that scar."

Dante growled under his breath and whirled on his heels, stomping out of the hall. He slammed the door shut behind him, badly startling Rothgard. "Bit jumpy there, aren't you?"

"Sir, Madeleine was sent on a mission, sir," said Rothgard quietly, as if he were afraid that Dimitri would be able to hear him from inside the hall.

"A mission?" Dante roared. Rothgard cringed. "That was not part of the Plan! She's too young!"

"She accepted quite eagerly, sir...."

"Of course she did, she's young and naive and thinks she can help, but she can't! She's only eleven. She may be far more skilled than the average eleven-year-old, but she doesn't yet understand her limits!"

"Sir," Rothgard began. Dante cut him off.

"Where did he send her? Tell me!"

"He- he sent her to assassinate the Patrician! It's not my fault, I told him it wouldn't be wise!"

Dante stared at him, aghast. "To assassinate the Patrician? You're joking. How could he think she would be capable of that? That's a suicide mission!"

"He hardly explains his actions to me, my lord, but I don't think he actually expected her to succeed."

"Of course he didn't! That would be a folly. Do you know where she is now?"

"Yes, sir, she was caught and is being held by the City Watch."

"She's not hurt, is she?"

"Last I heard, sir, no."

Dante sagged a tiny bit. "All right. Fine. At least she's okay for now. I'll get her out of there, it won't be a problem."

"You'll do it tonight, in fact," said a new voice. Dante chuckled haltingly.

"Chastaine," he greeted the new arrival, a tall, cold-looking man. "What do you mean, tonight?"

"Lord Dimitri predicted you would stomp out on him, so he had me hang back to let you know that your new orders are to retrieve Madeleine from Pseudopolis Yard tonight." Chastaine examined his long nails primly while he said this, and Dante sighed heavily.

"We're all just pawns to him, aren't we?"

"You should have learned that by now, Lord Dante."

"Yeah, yeah. Anything else?"

Chastaine shrugged. "Just don't cause too much of a disturbance. Be in and out as quickly as possible."

"Fine," Dante agreed. "One more thing. If my dear brother knew she was going to get caught, why did he send her on such a pointless mission?"

"Isn't it obvious? Her goal was never really to assassinate the Patrician. She was just a scout." Chastaine's smile grew into a feral grin. "Now we know what to expect when the rest of us go in tonight."

^[*] (click to go back)
Captain Vimes has an idea, but that was another story.

To Chapter 23: Part 2

Back to Chapter 22: Birds of a Feather

A murder of marauders

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:16:03 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 22
Birds of a Feather

Click here for sources used or click the image above for a log you can read at your own pace

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Lisa Cuddy woke with a pounding headache. Her stomach was doing flips, and she would’ve diagnosed the combination of symptoms as a simple hangover if she hadn’t found bandages when she tried to rub her temple. Working her fingers around her head, she found the right side a little tender.

The events after the tavern were fuzzy. She remembered House dancing atop a copy machine while dressed as a coffee mug with the words: “Caffeine: My Anti-drug” printed on it, and she also recalled boarding a pirate ship and getting chased by giant stone statues while Singapore exploded. Given recent events, she decided to treat both as valid memories until she could get a second opinion.

Although her eyes had adjusted to a lower level of light, the room was still so dim that she could make out few details. The wall was paneled with wood, and she leaned against it as she clambered to her feet. Judging from the fact that she could stand straight--barely, as the roof curved above her head with inches left to spare--she had been lying on a pallet. When she shifted her feet, the bedding clacked, and it felt like reeds wrapped in wool. There were two other beds in the room, probably for Ianto and Gregor. The entire room rocked back and forth, lending credence to the pirate ship memory, and she was glad that she wasn’t prone to seasickness.

She was staring straight at the hatch into the room when someone cracked the door open. Even as she threw an arm over her eyes, the light set off waves of stabbing pain in her head, and while she was still processing this new stimulus, the door flew open and three figures crashed into the room, tumbling across the floor and into the wall beside her. They missed her by about two feet, and she leapt aside as they continued struggling, arms and legs thrashing about and knocking her pallet aside.

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled before clutching her head, instantly regretting the loud reprimand.

The three men paused, and she could now see that Gregor and Ianto had pinned Barbossa against the ground. “Get yer blasted suitors off me before I have them thrown overboard!” he roared.

Cuddy tried her best not to squint as she lowered her hands. “Give me quiet or I’ll toss all three of you overboard, and believe me,” she added as Barbossa tried to cut in, “I am more than capable of following through with that threat. Now an explanation, please?”

When it became clear that Barbossa would not argue, Gregor and Ianto let go and stood aside. The pirate grumbled under his breath as he brushed himself off.

“Barbossa promised not to disturb you,” Ianto explained. “He is not the most savory character, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Arr, I promised no such thing,” Barbossa said.

“We said, ‘Don’t go in there until we’re satisfied Cuddy is all right,’ and you said, ‘Fine,’” Gregor replied.

“What fool expects a pirate to keep his word?”

“That’s why we had an eye on you,” Ianto pointed out.

“You’re here for my toothbrush, aren’t you?” Cuddy said.

Gregor and Ianto stared at her while Barbossa replied, “Why would I want a worthless thing like that?”

She reached into her bra, and Gregor and Ianto stared even more. When her hand came out empty, she strode over to Barbossa and grabbed him by the collar. “Where is my toothbrush?”

“Clearly I had nothing to do with it as I have been kept out of your room until now.”

“Give. Me. My. Toothbrush.”

Ianto half-raised his hand. “I should point out that since the TARDIS is missing, even if you get back the toothbrush, we have no other toiletries except what Captain Barbossa can or will provide.”

“I don't care.”

“As lovely as a strong-willed woman can be at times, I am beginning to find this tiresome.” With a flick of the wrist, a dagger appeared in Barbossa’s hand, and he pressed the tip against her chest. “Let me go.”

About ten seconds later, the crew of the Black Pearl was treated to the impressive sight of the woman from Singapore marching their captain out of her bedroom, his hands locked behind him in a tight arm hold, and throwing him over the railing into the sea.

Her explanation to her startled audience: “It’s all about leverage.”

* * *

It turned out the Persians had brought Cameron’s wheelchair aboard when they fled Singapore, and they offered to return it to her. She thanked them and took it, though seeing that her room was at the base of a staircase, she didn’t see how it would be much use. Nevertheless, she didn’t think it was smart to refuse small kindnesses from her captors.

By the time she returned to her quarters, Olli was awake and rummaging through the chest, presumably looking for something other than clothes. Upon seeing her, he dashed over, causing Kouros to draw his cutlass, but Olli stopped short of the door and didn’t even glance at him, which Cameron thought must have taken some nerve. “Cameron!” he exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. They were kind enough to return my wheelchair and help me with my seasickness.” She wheeled into the room and waved goodbye. Niki waved back, while Bousseh just gave her a small nod. Kouros replaced his weapon, looking a little chagrined, and shut the door.

“I thought that might be a problem for you.” Olli wrinkled his nose. “They put ginger in the milk, but that doesn’t go together well.”

“You seem to be all right.”

“I spent almost five years on cruise liners. They’re a lot steadier than this, but I’ve been on many smaller ships as well. One thing is for certain: I learned how to deal with seasick passengers.”

“When you say ‘deal with’ rather than ‘cure,’ I’m not filled with confidence.”

“Come here.” He wheeled her over to the bed and sat behind her on the lower bunk. “The best solution while you’re getting your sea legs is to be in the fresh air, but while you’re down here, there’s a few massages I can try that’ll help you relax.” His fingers moved over her scalp, working various pressure points.

“I’ve never been a big believer in homeopathic remedies.”

“It’s not directly related to seasickness; it just helps distract your mind. The entire condition is, after all, mental.”

Her stomach gurgled, but the nausea did seem to lessen, so she tried to relax. It felt nice, and her eyelids were growing heavy when suddenly, she pushed his hands away and wheeled around to face him.

“Something wrong?” he asked, hands still in the air.

“Yes, something’s wrong! This isn’t a spa or a cruise; we’re being held hostage!”

“I kind of guessed that. Do you have an escape plan?”

“Er, no,” she admitted.

“You’re getting tense again.”

“That’s beside the point!”

“We’re not going to think of an escape plan if you’re seasick and I’m mopping up vomit.”

“There is no escape plan! We’re surrounded by hundreds of miles of water!”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“Because right now, there’s nothing we can do. They’re treating us well, so we should watch for an opening to make a run for it, but until then, getting worked up won’t help us. You’ve had some contact with them, why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned?”

“I suppose that makes sense.” Cameron sighed. “Well--”

“No.” Olli motioned for her to turn around. “You can talk while getting a massage.”

She obeyed but remarked, “You’re a slave driver, you know that?”

“Yes, ‘calm down,’ ‘talk to me,’ ‘get a massage,’ what terrible things to request.” He laughed and started tracing lines through her hair. She was beginning to get drowsy again when a sharp knock on the door made her bolt upright, nearly falling out of her chair. “Sit,” Olli reprimanded as he stood to answer.

One of the crew whom she hadn’t seen before waited outside. He leaned against a quarterstaff in a pose designed to display his bulging muscles, clothed only by an open vest the color of rusting steel and purple shorts that hugged the half of his thighs that it covered. Oil-slicked black hair fell down his back, glistening even in the dim light below deck, and it struck a contrast against his carefully trimmed beard. A scimitar and an array of daggers hung from the leather belt around his waist, while a strap held a bow and arrows along his back, though she couldn’t imagine how he kept the string dry in these conditions. Cameron found the assortment of weaponry disconcerting which, combined with the scowl on his face, made her immediately antagonistic toward him.

“I am Omeed,” he said, managing to hold the frown while he spoke.

“I’m Olli,” Olli replied, holding out a hand to shake. She couldn’t imagine a response more inappropriate than his wide smile.

“I’m Cameron.” She waved. “We’re the people you kidnapped.”

“I’m aware of that.” The hint of confusion on his face gave her a twinge of satisfaction.

“I think you were the one who put the bag over my head,” said Olli. “Not everyone is as muscular as you. What’s your workout routine?”

What the hell? She wondered if Olli was oblivious or devious beyond belief. It was hard to tell when he was dressed like a terra cotta warrior.

Omeed, on the other hand, seemed to take well to the accusation that might be a compliment. “I load the cargo.”

“Maybe I can help out next time.”

The corsair doubled over laughing and dropped his quarterstaff. “You would get crushed by the empty crates!”

Olli poked him in the chest. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

“You’re on, skinny man.”

“So what brings you to our quarters?”

The scowl returned, which was unfortunate, because he was rather handsome otherwise, in a dirty action hero kind of way. “Bousseh made Sepehr mix a new drink for the seasick one.” He threw her a dirty, the-feeling-is-mutual look, at which point she realized that she’d been scowling back at him. He removed a vial and a ceramic mug that had no handle from a pouch at his belt--the one ensconced between the jagged dagger and the one that resembled a corkscrew. The liquid bubbled and fizzed as he poured, generating clouds of water vapor.

“What is it?” she asked. At least there was no ginger.

Olli peered into the cup and inhaled. “Seltzer with a hint of lemon.”

“I didn’t know Sprite had such a long history.”

“Lemons are good for sea journeys,” Omeed added. “But it’s wasted on her because she’ll throw it up anyway.”

“If Bousseh’s trying to make up for the ginger milk and kidnapping, tell her we want a room upgrade.”

“I suppose you’ll want shore excursion vouchers as well,” Olli said, but then he told Omeed: “A sea view would help her condition.”

“I will ask.” He thrust the cup at Olli, who brought it over.

When he returned to the door, he picked up the fallen quarterstaff and handed it back to the pirate. “Your staff is very big. Do you think you could teach me to use it?”

Cameron nearly choked on her sip of the new drink, but after a minute of frantic gurgling that saw Olli try to give her the Heimlich, she managed to get it down without spitting it out. “Not wasted!” she gasped at Omeed, thrusting the cup in his direction and nearly spilling it. Olli sighed.

“I’ll be happy to make future deliveries if this happens every time,” Omeed said. “But if you want to learn the staff, I’m about to go train on the deck. She can’t come along.”

“Will you be okay?” Olli asked.

“I’ll be fine. Go.”

Olli bounded out of the room. As the door swung shut, she saw him slide a thin dagger from Omeed’s belt and slip it into his tunic. Definitely devious, then.

* * *

As the dust settled, Chase lowered one arm from over his head. The explosion had seemed to last forever, roaring over them like a thunderstorm and earthquake rolled in one, its ferocious winds shaking the Empress and pushing her out to sea. A quick peek revealed the ship was still intact and a safe distance from the rocks that had threatened to sink her when they first headed for the cliff. Yellow dust tinged the sky and, alongside the remaining blazes, created an early sunset.

Slowly, limb by limb, he clambered out of the crouch they’d taught at the hospital for use during tornadoes. Looking about the deck, he felt a tad embarrassed that no one else had reacted in the same way, though most had just grabbed the closest fixed object they could find and ended up thrown all over the ship. Only Elizabeth and her first mate remained standing, though their knuckles were white from gripping the wheel. He assumed they had attempted to steer through the blast and were responsible for them remaining above water.

From the looks of it, Jack Sparrow had failed to reach the railing in time, grabbed the netting as he fell, and ended up entangled at the foot of the main mast. All the subsequent flailing trapped him further, but that didn’t deter him from continuing, issuing a string of curses all the while. Further down the deck, the priestess he had “captured” lay amid a pile of salted cod. Christian crouched near her, one hand still wrapped around the manrope, and he looked to be searching for something, though he could just be dazed--a trickle of blood ran down the side of his face. Joey, of course, stood beside him and had kept him in place during the chaos.

“Is everybody still aboard?” Elizabeth yelled. “Look around!”

The first mate--from Elizabeth’s comment earlier, he guessed his name was Tai Huang--climbed to the crow’s nest, treading over Sparrow on his way up. After a minute, he announced: “All accounted for!”

A splash followed his pronouncement.

“No longer all accounted for!”

Somehow, Chase knew it would be someone from his party--no sailor was stupid enough to jump off a steady ship--and sure enough, a quick scan of the deck showed Christian was missing. He dashed to the side of the ship, accompanied by everyone else who had recovered enough to walk. As a result, the ship tilted perilously until Elizabeth shooed away the non-essential personnel.

“Why the hell did he do that?” Chase asked.

“Was it just me,” Sparrow said, managing to raise a hand through the weave of the net, “or did he scream ‘Norrington!’ before he jumped?”

“Norrington?” Elizabeth replied. “Norrington’s dead.”

And then it hit them. “The skull!” they cried at the same time. Sparrow followed their moment of cohesiveness by requesting: “Will someone cut me loose?”

When Elizabeth drew her sword and approached him, he amended: “No, no, no, not like that!” He yelped as she swung, but the net fell apart in one stroke. “That actually worked quite well. Good job, Elizabeth.”

Meanwhile, Chase searched the water for Christian, but other than the foam from his impact, there was no sign of him. “Does anyone have a life preserver?”

One of Elizabeth’s crew ran up with a coil of rope as thick as his arm. He threw one end overboard, and Chase saw it was tied in a loop.

“Whoa, wait!” Chase cried. As the rope descended, he saw a shape in the water. Christian broke the surface holding the skull aloft over his head.

“I got hi-- umph!” he said as the rope completed its descent and smacked him in the head, sending him back underneath.

Sparrow staggered up beside Chase, surveyed the scene with a dazed look, and asked: “Is that a shark?”

At first, Chase thought Sparrow was just being dense, but then he followed the direction of his finger--a difficult task considering how much it swayed--and saw a fin slice through the water before submerging. “He’s bleeding!” Chase said. Now that he knew what to look for, he saw three other fish approaching the ship.

“Grab the rope! Loop it around your waist!” the crewman urged. Elizabeth motioned for three other men to take hold of the rope, ready to pull at an instant’s notice, but Christian kept missing the loop when he reached for it. Chase wondered how hard the rope had hit him.

There had to be some way to help, but Chase wasn’t sure how, short of jumping in himself, and he didn’t have enough of a death wish to do that. Then he realized the solution. “Of course,” he said. “Joey! Fetch!”

The tiger took a flying leap over the railing and plummeted into the water. A little belatedly, Chase added, “And try not to hurt the sharks!” By then, Joey had pushed Christian through the loop. He quickly grabbed hold with his free hand, and the crew began lifting him as the sharks converged. Joey yowled when one of the sharks bit her leg and pulled her under, but she shook it loose and swam to the side of the ship. Slamming her claws into the wood, she climbed up the side and returned aboard before Christian. As the German clambered over the railing and thanked his rescuers, Joey shook like a dog and sent water spraying all over everyone.

“Good tiger-robot.” Chase hugged her neck as she ran to him and bowled him over.

“Yes, thank you, Joey,” Christian said. “Whoa!” He threw his arms up as Joey got off Chase and headed for him. The tiger skidded to a halt and settled for nuzzling his leg. “And thank you, Chase, for thinking fast.”

“You’re welcome,” Chase replied, but before he’d finished speaking, Elizabeth cut in with: “Are you insane?”

“Yes, were you crazy?” the skull asked. Half the crew fell to their knees when they saw it speak. The other half preferred praying while standing up.

Christian’s jaw dropped. “I was saving you!”

“I spent days underwater before I washed ashore. I suspect I’d survive centuries. It was hardly prudent risking your life to come after me.”

“Toss him back overboard then,” Chase suggested.

Christian gave Chase a confused glance before Norrington quickly said, “That’s quite unnecessary!”

Elizabeth sighed. “What’s done is done, but don’t do it again or we’ll set sail without you. Now Norrington, is that really you?”

“I understand that while my skull may not appear to have aged a day, the same cannot be said for the rest of my body.”

“I’d like proof of your identity.”

“We weren’t exactly lovers with intimate secrets known only to ourselves.”

“Ooh, I sense bitterness,” Sparrow said, and he wasn’t exaggerating. For some reason, Chase felt emotions he was sure weren’t his own, as though the skull’s feelings radiated into the people nearby. Maybe it was a way to make up for the lack of facial expressions. “A lot of bitterness. That confirms it for me.”

“How did the British empire nearly stamp out piracy?” Elizabeth asked.

“Let’s dwell on that rather than the fact that I saved your life.”

“Your reaction is part of the test.”

“I see... well, I stole Davy Jones’ heart despite the best efforts of Captain Jack and your beloved Will Turner. I gave the heart to Beckett for a pardon, and he used the Flying Dutchman to tame the oceans. Whatever your feelings are about Beckett, you must admit he did the world a favor with regard to the kraken. And then, I realized I was wrong in doing what I did, and I died trying to make up for it.”

“Do you think you succeeded?” A softness crept into Elizabeth’s voice that Chase hadn’t heard before.

“I can’t undo the past, Elizabeth, but whether I can live with it, that judgment is in your hands.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Welcome aboard, commodore.”

Relief had followed her acceptance, while surprise and a touch of happiness accompanied the title. Christian’s eyebrows had drawn together as the conversation progressed, and Chase suspected he was wondering whether to hand the skull over or to keep him because giving Elizabeth her dead former suitor would be plain awkward.

“You don’t have dead lovers anywhere, do you, girl?” he said to Joey. Everyone looked at him. “Did I say that out loud?” The tiger nodded. At least I’ve drawn the awkwardness to myself, he thought.

“We should get you a change of clothes,” Elizabeth told Christian. “You’re dripping wet.”

“It seems to happen a lot,” he replied.

Chase raised his hand. “Wait! Aren’t you going to give course directions?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “We’re waiting for someone to find us.”

“Then can we explore the island while we’re waiting?”

“You think there are survivors?” Even the crew looked doubtful on that one, and nobody wanted to volunteer to return to the island for fear of getting killed. Surprisingly, Sparrow was the one who realized what Chase was thinking.

“The tunnels they arrived through,” he said. “We could learn something from them.”

“Didn’t you come through those tunnels too?” Christian asked.

“Blindfolds, boy, and ear plugs too. An unnecessary addition, in my opinion.”

“There’s no point,” Norrington said. “They seal up the tunnels when they leave to prevent people from learning anything about them. All they leave behind is total devastation.”

“How do you know?” Elizabeth gazed at him with suspicion again.

“I’ll explain later.”

She watched him a little longer but then headed below deck, motioning for Christian to follow her.

“How long will we be waiting?” he asked as they descended. “We have friends who’ve been kidnapped...” Tai Huang gave an order in Chinese, and the anchor went overboard, which answered that question.

Before Chase could decide his next move, Sparrow grabbed his shoulders from behind and steered him toward the stern. “Since everyone else is busy, how about we examine your captured priestess?”

“Um.” Chase recalled Sparrow’s comments about the spoils of victory and wondered what to do next. Falling back on years of medical experience, he told Sparrow: “Maybe we should ask Elizabeth.” Yes, when in doubt, always appeal to a higher authority and let them deal with it. “I think she’ll want to know what we can find out about her abilities.”

“Trust me, I know all about her abilities,” Sparrow replied. Glancing side to side, he leaned closer when he was sure no one else was nearby and whispered into Chase’s ear, “Don’t let her bite you.”

“Bite me where?”

Sparrow took a step back. “Whoa, slow down. Where’s your mind going?”

Glancing at the limp figure amidst the scattered fish, Chase became mildly alarmed when he saw she was not quite motionless--the priestess’ head moved slightly. “She’s awake!” he said. “Can she do anything without being in contact with you?”

But he was talking to thin air. Sparrow was halfway to her already and running as fast as he could. Chase pursued, unsure why the pirate was panicking and screaming the way he was but certain that nothing good could come of it. By the time he arrived, though, Sparrow had picked up one of the salted fish and slapped the priestess across the face with it. She fell back, eyes rolling up, but he smacked her a few more times for good measure before stuffing the remnants of the cod into his mouth.

“Mmm, this is good,” he said. “You don’t get preserved fish like this in the Caribbean.”

“What was that for!”

“Don’t let them talk either. She can spell you with a word, and I don’t mean anything related to putting the letters ‘t’ and ‘u’ together. Hmm, I hate to waste a good fish.” He stuffed one into the priestess’ mouth. “There. Better.”

“We’re gagging people with fish?”

“First thing you learn as a pirate, mate: make do with what you have.”

“I’m not a pirate! I’m a doctor. I’m stuck here because--”

Sparrow shoved a third fish into Chase’s mouth, causing him to choke. “If you’re on board, you’re a pirate, savvy?”

* * *

Silence reigned as Pintel and a woman Ianto hadn’t yet met hauled Barbossa back aboard. Water sloshed from his boots as he landed on the deck. “You!” He pointed at Cuddy, stomping toward her the moment he hit the ground. Ianto and Gregor edged in front of her, but she pushed between them.

“I can handle this,” she said as Barbossa drew his sword. Standing her ground, she didn’t blink when he swung at her. At the last moment, she dodged, causing Barbossa to overcompensate for her sudden movement and slice a diagonal gash through Gregor’s shirt, missing him only because he had the sense to jump back as fast as possible. She punched the pirate in the groin and caught his arm, wrenching the blade out of his hand and forcing him to the ground.

“I yield, missy, I yield!” Barbossa groaned as she twisted his arm further behind his back.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. I pulled a similar move on Jack in the marketplace.”

“He wasn’t expecting it!”

Cuddy refused to let go. When Barbossa twisted about to escape her grip, she caught his other hand as well and pushed him toward the side of the ship. “You want to go for another dunk? You might be twice as heavy as me, but my ninjutsu master was four hundred pounds.”

Barbossa stomped on her foot. As she cried out in surprise, he took the opening to pull her onto his back and hop, catapulting her over his head and off the ship. “Your master was toying with you!” he yelled. “And guess what? I be a fast learner.”

The time taken to haul Cuddy out of the water was half that of Barbossa’s dip, a sign that the captain wasn’t the only fast learner aboard. However, it took her about the same amount of time to recover before she stalked toward Barbossa, fists clenched and wet hair whipping about her face.

He held up a hand. “Think twice about that. We could go all day, but I be feeling gracious so we should call it even.”

“I’ll consider it even when you hand back my toothbrush.”

“Ah. I thought it’d come to that. Here you go.” Reaching into his pants, he extracted the toothbrush from its hiding place near his groin and offered it to Cuddy. Ianto had to admit he was impressed but more than a little disgusted when she accepted the offer without hesitation.

“You’re not going to use that, are you?” he asked as she breezed past him to return to their quarters.

“Watch me,” she replied.

“No thanks.”

They followed her back into the room, where they left the door open a crack to let light through. Gregor jogged ahead of Cuddy and opened the door for her, but she ignored him as she passed. Once inside, she slipped the brush under her pallet and retreated to a corner where she could drip water without getting their possessions wet.

“I don’t think it’s wise to antagonize our host,” Ianto pointed out.

“Really? You think it’s a good idea to roll over and beg when we’re at the mercy of pirates?”

“I don’t doubt your diplomatic skills, but there are more subtle ways to indicate we’re not easy prey.”

“Like what?” Gregor asked. “You told me you could deal with him, and we’ve been scrubbing floors for the last two hours!”

It was true that their hands were raw from all the work, but keeping a low profile had worked for him at Torchwood, and old habits died hard. “Everyone’s been at hard labor. We’re lucky the ship didn’t sink after that blast.”

“No offense, Ianto, but I don’t think Barbossa’s like Jack,” Cuddy said. “Your way isn’t going to work with him.”

“And if he’s anything like House, your way isn’t going to work either.”

She glared. “I have never tried manhandling House.”

“I think she did a great job,” Gregor said. “But some of her moves need work.”

“You think you can do better?”

“No, but he got you, didn’t he? You can practice on me if you want.”

“You better not regret when I take you up on that.” She returned her attention to Ianto. “I’ve been unconscious for two hours?”

“I think you would’ve been fine after the coffee if you hadn’t hit your head.”

“How did I hit my head?”

“One of the sails swung loose when the mast broke. The halyard was whipping all over the place.”

“I got knocked out by rope?”

“No.” He could tell this wasn’t going to end well. “The rope hit Barbossa’s undead monkey.”

“Named Jack,” Gregor added, grinning.

“Which sent the zombie monkey flying into my head?”

“No. The monkey was holding Barbossa’s spyglass.”

“Which flew out of its hand and struck you,” Gregor finished.

“Nobody saw but us,” he added quickly.

“But now you’ve told everybody,” Cuddy replied.

“Huh?”

She pointed at the door in time for seven pirates to tumble through after losing their balance while jostling for a good listening spot. More hovered in the background as the others picked themselves up from the floor.

“What are you all doing here?” Gregor snapped.

At the bottom of the pile lay Pintel and Ragetti. A wooden eye rolled across the floor and stopped against Ianto’s shoe. He picked it up and returned it, earning a nod of thanks from the skinny pirate. Meanwhile, Pintel was bowing in front of Cuddy and saying, “Ma’am, we were all impressed with you earlier.”

“Thank you?” Ianto could tell she was eyeing his sword.

“We were wondering, um...”

Ragetti pushed him aside, eye still in his hand. “We want to learn from you!”

“Excuse me?”

But Pintel nodded, looking just as eager and sincere as his partner in crime. “We all talked and decided we want to know how you can fight like that.”

“You were like a cat! Hee-yah!”

“Well, when you put it that way, I suppose I have to agree.”

Ragetti whooped, setting off a string of cheering that resulted in loud applause from outside. When he caught her eye with a raised eyebrow, Cuddy shrugged and followed the crowd onto the deck. As they departed, Gregor put his hand over Ianto’s shoulders and winked. “You got to admit, she did a hell of a lot better than you.”

* * *

Elizabeth left Christian in her quarters with a towel and a pail of fresh water. He handed Norrington’s skull to her before she left, and she nearly dropped him. Now, as she slid the door shut, she found herself in the empty hall with the skull of a man she might have married.

“If it helps, I find this just as awkward as you do,” he said. The movement of his jaw felt weird against her palm, like a small animal scrabbling to escape her grip.

“It’s not awkward,” she replied. “It’s just... unexpected.”

“Far be it for me to question what you find normal. You’ve seen more than me, probably been through more too.” She sensed wryness from him, suppressed but obvious enough for her to get the message.

Tai Huang’s quarters were nearby, and she entered, setting Norrington onto his writing desk. She breathed easier when he was out of her hands, but she kept her face expressionless, assuming he couldn’t sense her emotions. Sinking into a chair so their eyes--eyes and eye sockets, anyway--met, she said, “I do appreciate what you did. I’m sorry if I was harsh.”

“If our positions were reversed, I would not believe you were Elizabeth. You’re different. You’re the pirate king, and somehow that’s justification for leaving behind the woman you used to be.”

“Losing Will is the justification!” She pushed the chair away and stood, taken aback by her own vehemence.

“You still have his heart locked away in your quarters, do you not?”

“And I will be there, every ten years, waiting for him, no matter what.”

“Unless you die.”

“I will never be his Calypso.”

“Rather, you will die at sea and break his heart instead of stab it--is that so much better? I speak as one who has endured both, and given the choice, it is the latter I would prefer to live through again if I had to choose.”

“And I was the cause of both.”

“Then we are all walking dead, you, me, William Turner. Yet somehow we’re all still here. There’s hope in that.”

“Or great irony.”

“I was being quite literal when I said we’re all here.”

Elizabeth gasped, but no amount of air was enough to prepare her for Will taking her breath away as he came up behind her and pulled her into a deep kiss. She didn’t know how long she was in his embrace, but it was too short a time before they broke apart.

“I came over without my ship, if you’re wondering why no one alerted you,” he said. “You know, Davy Jones’ transporting trick.”

“Good. The crew needs to be on alert.”

“And hello, er, admiral,” Will tipped his hat awkwardly.

“Call me James.”

Will nodded. “Elizabeth, you could’ve asked Calypso to deliver your message. The man who comes back to life is a little disturbing. And he’s distracting the crew.”

“He’s flirting with them, you mean?”

“Yes!” Will shifted back and forth on his feet. “I... the Dutchman will meet you in a few hours. We’re still trawling for victims of the blast. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“I don’t know what happened, but whoever did this will pay. Tai Huang is checking with the crew to find who had relatives on the island. Even if they were cast out as criminals... we will pay our respects.”

Will stepped forward and kissed her forehead. “I need to go now, but I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He disappeared. One moment he was inches from her, the next he was gone. She almost cried out at the sudden loss, but she shook herself and returned her attention to Norrington. “I’d like to know what happened to you. Maybe we can find some way to restore your body.”

Before he could respond, Christian called her name from down the hall. “I will explain later,” he said as she scooped him up.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed when she saw Christian peeking through her door and realized she hadn’t given him a change of clothing. Sure enough, he was wearing nothing but the towel when she entered and headed for her wardrobe. “There’s not much in the way of clothing. I’ve cleared out most of Sao Feng’s items--he was the captain before me. The only things I kept were a few formal dress robes that work for me.” To be honest, she’d just found them too gorgeous to discard. Any clothing that fit on Feng would be comically large on her, but the size looked right for Christian.

He peered over her shoulder. “That’s silk!”

“I did say formal.”

“I can’t wear those! I’d ruin them in hours.”

He had a point, she thought, as she located a beautiful jade robe with dragons wrought on the shoulders. It would pain her to see that floating in the ocean. She pushed it aside to reveal a mass of pink.

“Whoa,” they said at the same time.

There was no denying the workmanship of the piece, a glossy royal purple overlaid with two vertical pink bands and covered with yellow magnolia flowers, each threaded by hand in various stages of bloom. Nevertheless, something about the color scheme made her brain do flips and her eyes water. It was like staring into a fire for too long. A great, pink bonfire. She glanced at Christian, whose face was screwed up in an expression of horror as he realized the inevitable outcome.

“If I had to lose one of the robes, it’d be this one,” she said.

He shut his eyes and muttered something, though all she heard was “make them commit suicide.” A comment about potential enemies, then. That was more optimistic a reaction than she’d expected.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said as she took it off the hangar and handed it over. The outfit came with matching undergarments, which Elizabeth considered the mark of an overzealous tailor. While she did feel bad about forcing something so... blinding... on a guest--a guest who’d knocked her out with a giant stick, she reminded herself--she refused to feel sorry for anyone who hadn’t experienced the pain of a corset.

All of a sudden, Norrington swiveled so that her hand nestled in the gap where his spine would’ve been, leaving him staring up through the ceiling. “The priestess is awake!”

She exchanged quick glances with Christian before dashing out the door. He followed, staggering as he tried to dress while running. By the time they were up the stairs, however, he was finishing tying the belt on the robe.

“Grab onto me!” Norrington commanded. In response, she held out the skull and let Christian take hold as well. Stepping onto the deck, complete chaos reigned as her crew dashed to and fro, screaming and cowering behind imaginary objects. The priestess stood under the main mast, head held high and smiling as she waved her hands about. The only people unaffected were Chase and Jack, who were gripping Chase’s pet tiger and edging toward her, but every time they got too close, the priestess pointed at them and sparks flew through the air.

Christian dragged her aft, and she saw the stick he was so fond of using. Digging her heels in, she remarked, “That’s not going to work. We won’t get close enough.”

Flames burst from Chase’s pant leg as they made another push, and he hopped up and down, trying to put it out. In the process, he lost hold of Joey and started screaming. “The koalas, they’re everywhere! Stop biting me!”

His pet immediately leapt onto him, smothering the fire but also crushing his leg. Jack lost his grip on her as she soared away, and he dropped to the ground, clutching his head. A few seconds later, though, he looked up, studied his surroundings, and jumped back up. “Woohoo! I’m fine!”

“I have an idea,” Christian said. “She was there when Jack and I passed their test.”

“What test?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, let go of Norrigton and was also fine. “She’s not targeting them because she believes they are long-lost allies,” Norrington said. “At least, that scenario would make sense, and I think I remember some test about a nightingale.”

“Then why’s she attacking us?”

“Wouldn’t you be suspicious if your long-lost allies showed up with your enemies, knocked you out, and brought you into their lair?”

Christian reached Chase, patted Joey on the head, and punched his friend, knocking him out cold. Elizabeth held her breath, expecting the tiger to maul him, but she instead followed close behind as Christian dragged her master toward the priestess. He called out to her in a language Elizabeth didn’t recognize, and a second later, the screaming stopped. Those who had been running continued to do so, this time hiding behind real objects, namely masts and crates. Tai Huang crouched behind the wheel and refused to come out. He was pretending to steer the ship, though how he could steer facing aft, she didn’t know.

A brief conversation ensued, still in that same mysterious language, before the priestess announced, “I am your prisoner! I yield!” Then she tore at her bodice and collapsed on the ground.

“Uh.” Christian scratched his head. “I didn’t tell her to do that.”

“It’s the classic chicken and the egg problem,” Jack said, hovering over her. “Do you get captured because your clothes are torn, or do your clothes get torn because you’re captured? My experience is it happens at about the same time, but what matters is that if you’re going to be a prisoner, you might as well get the look right so everyone knows because those who don’t know try to stick swords in you. And I was going to try that if you weren’t, punching the Australian.”

“Her name is Maria,” Christian said.

“And how do you solve a problem like Maria?”

At that moment, Chase jolted awake. “Yaarrggh!” he screamed upon finding himself face to face with the priestess, grabbing a fallen cod and slapping Maria across the face.

“Not like that,” Jack said. “That was half an hour ago. Half an hour ago is not now.”

Christian took her arms and pulled her into a sitting position with her back against the mast. “They’re just going to ask you a few questions, all right? It’s nothing to worry about.”

“He glows,” she said, pointing at Chase. “The touch of water is upon him.”

“More like the touch of smoldering cloth,” Chase replied.

“And there is a woman who is the same, as though they are twins.”

Chase blinked, pausing in his attempt to back away from her. “What? She’s not talking about Cameron, is she?”

Maria smiled. “She sits in a chair that rolls. Her leg is broken. She is being held against her will.”

Christian dropped to one knee. “Where is she? Do you know her location?”

“There’s someone else with her,” she continued, staring through space.

“Yes, a man,” Christian prompted, frowning when she didn’t respond. “They’ve both been kidnapped.”

Her hand shot up and grabbed the front of his robes, pulling him close. “The anchor!” she cried, eyes bulging. “The anchor is with her!”

“Yes, you could say that.” Christian nodded. “My anchor is with her.”

“You must get the anchor back!”

“I need your help! If you can see them, where are they?”

She shook her head. “I can only see that which has been touched by water. Like him.” She pointed at Chase. “And creatures like those.” Her finger moved on to Norrington and Joey. “Tricky ones, those are.”

“They can block your powers,” Elizabeth said.

The priestess glanced at Christian before answering. “We are all touched by water. Those who are clever can use that bond against me.”

“How can we find Cameron and Olli?” Christian persisted.

Maria’s hand moved again, this time to point back toward land. “Follow the guardians of the water.”

“Norrington-- James said the tunnels have been sealed,” Elizabeth said.

“A priest can open them.” She smiled, pointing at herself. “That would be me.”

“We are not following her into the tunnels,” Jack said.

“You don’t have to,” Christian said, “but she and I have common goals.”

“She wants to kill you...” Jack took in the pink and purple robe. “...and you want to kill yourself as well.”

“I wanted to look at the tunnels too,” Chase said. “And we have Joey and Norrington to keep us safe.”

“Does Norrington want to come?” Christian asked.

“I made you a promise, and I will keep it,” he replied. “I don’t see how going into the tunnels will help, but if you go, well, you can’t stage a rescue if you’re dead.”

“Are you going to talk his attackers to death?” Jack asked.

“You have other friends aboard the Black Pearl,” Elizabeth pointed out. “She’s the fastest ship in the world.”

“And which direction will she go?”

Elizabeth sighed. Her priority was finding the invaders, not rescuing a couple captives, and the tunnel sounded like a good way to gather information. However, Will couldn’t go into them, so if she wanted his help, she needed to stay on the water. “I won’t stop you if you wish to go.”

Jack threw up his hands. “Not going.”

“Going,” Christian said.

“Suicidal as it sounds, I’m going too,” Chase affirmed.

“Suicidal? You have a robot tiger!”

“And you only have a skull, which means you’re going to make me go first.”

“You’re volunteering? Great.”

Chase slapped his forehead, forgetting he still had a fish in hand. “Ugh!” He threw it into Jack’s face.

“Then it’s settled,” Elizabeth said. “We’ll get you supplies and tender you ashore in two hours.”

* * *

The sun was by the horizon when Olli climbed onto the deck with Omeed. He threw a hand over his eyes to block the light, but Omeed slapped him on the back and said, “Never practice in ideal conditions, because you’ll never fight in them.”

“Or you could make your own perfection.”

“Spoken like a sage. That’s clever. It is said you can never strike down a wise man.”

“How nice of you.”

“No, it is not because we do not try but because the wise man knows how to avoid your blow.”

“But what if you do kill him!”

“Then he is not so wise after all.” Omeed walked to the weapons rack that surrounded the main mast and handed him a bamboo stick. “Here, it is lighter.”

“I can take the weight! I want to trade.”

“You can’t have my stick!”

“If I have to choose between carrying a heavy stick or getting hit by one, I’ll take my chances on the former.”

“I don’t want you to touch my stick!”

“I am grabbing your stick and you are taking mine!”

“You don’t know how to handle my stick. It took many years to get it into the right shape. Perfect balance and handling, the correct compromise between speed and strength.”

Olli thwacked him on the wrist with the bamboo and took the staff. “Better.”

“You are a dirty opponent.” But Omeed took the bamboo and made no move to attempt another exchange.

“I believe the correct word is ‘wise.’” He ducked when Omeed tried to hit him over the head but scraped the bottom of the staff along the deck, denting the wood paneling and staining the metal cover end cap. Omeed winced at the crunching sound. “Oops.”

The pirate moved, and Olli winced, thinking another attack was coming but unsure what to expect. However, Omeed positioned himself behind him and took his wrists in his hands, cocooning Olli with his body. “Despite what I have said, the quarterstaff is not a stick. Do not hold it like one. Treat it with respect, hold it as though it were your lifeline.”

“Your arms are very big. Have I told you that?”

“Numerous times,” Omeed replied, sounding amused. “But my wife is even bigger.”

“Huh?” Omeed used his hold to make Olli point the staff at a woman who was at least 190 centimeters and whose appendages looked to be wound from thick rope. She smiled, waved, and blew them a kiss.

A crowd was congregating around them. With the sun down, the rooms below deck would start cooling. Many had completed the day’s tasks and looked for a diversion before retiring for the night.

“She’s pretty. What’s her name?”

“Jannat. Perhaps you would like to become more acquainted with both of us tonight?”

“I would love that, but I don’t think my boyfriend would approve.”

“Fair enough.” Without warning, Omeed swung his hands in a semicircle. Olli let go of the staff to prevent it from crushing his fingers, then snatched it again as it flew away from him. Only afterwards did he realize that he’d twirled it a full 360 degrees. Omeed grinned, unleashing a blast of hot air on his right shoulder. “Quick fingers, I like that.”

Scattered applause came from the other pirates, and Olli grinned at them as Omeed stepped away.

“Before you get too confident, though, perhaps you should see how experienced fighters duel.” Omeed motioned for his staff back, and Olli tossed it to him. He caught it in one hand and spun it twice before slamming the base onto the deck. Jannat winked at Olli as she sauntered past him and picked out a staff two feet longer than Omeed’s. He wasn’t kidding when he said her arms had more muscle.

Olli slid into the circle of spectators and watched as the man who’d escorted Cameron into their room raised his hands and counted down, “Three, two, one, begin!”

Husband and wife swung into action, and if their movements were too quick for the eye to follow, their weapons were invisible, their existence given away only by the distortion of air rushing into the space where they had been. Each time the staffs struck, two brown lines formed an “X,” and the ship’s sympathetic wood frame echoed the clack that rang out. Then the staffs would disappear again and flash again, like arcs of lightning or ghostly St. Elmo’s fire.

The two fighters spun about each other, and there seemed to be as much legwork involved as hand-eye coordination. Sweat ran down their skin in rivulets and flew into the audience like droplets from a sprinkler. At one point, Jannat landed a blow on Omeed’s leg, but he turned his fall into a spin and rolled into a defensive position. His next strike caught her staff, and he quickly slid forward, keeping enough pressure on the weapon that she couldn’t pull away. Locked together, they flew toward the boundary of the sparring zone until Jannat dug her heels in at the last minute and pushed him away. She landed four successive blows along his upper body before catching him behind the knee and sending him into the air. He hit the ground on his back, the impact sending jolts along the entire ship.

For a moment, he was still, and Olli nearly ran over to check his condition, but then he leaped back up, soaring a meter into the air, and landed on his feet. Spotting Olli’s dropped jaw, he came over and put the staff into his hands. “I will teach you how to fight like that. I will be gentle.”

Olli nodded. “Thanks.”

Omeed’s smile never flickered. “That is the least of what you will face if you try to escape.”

* * *

Between the setting sun and the repairs on the mizzen mast, there was no time for Cuddy to begin the sparring lessons she’d promised the crew, but considering they were stuck aboard for an indefinite period of time, no one seemed too upset. Barbossa had been polite to them after the mutual dunks, going so far as to offer dry clothing for her. She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten the dress, a large and lacy red affair that showed far too much cleavage, but he claimed it belonged to Elizabeth, the mysterious governor of Singapore, when she was a guest aboard the vessel. While the history and the explanation set off warning bells, she had no alternatives since all their carefully packed luggage was aboard the missing TARDIS.

Meanwhile, she wasn’t sure if Ianto had truly taken offense to her methods or if he was just a workaholic. She suspected a combination of both, as he had rejoined the cleanup effort as soon as they finished talking and hadn’t been seen taking a break since. There was method in his madness that left her a little awed as the pirates went from disgruntled laborers to organized cleaning crews over the space of an hour. When she mentioned it to Barbossa, he grunted that the ship was still a mess, but the well-trained eye could see the beginnings of something approaching efficiency. The important point was that he had accomplished it without ordering anyone around; Ianto took specific chores from some of the pirates to group those who worked well together and followed up with casual suggestions and examples that left people feeling grateful rather than overworked.

Deciding her own administrative services weren’t needed, Cuddy took to exploring and discovered beside the captain’s quarters a descent that led to the ship’s figurehead. It was a woman releasing a dove, an image at complete odds with the ship’s black masts, but that mattered less to Cuddy than the fact that it blocked her view. There was little to see up ahead that couldn’t be seen to either side, namely endless stretches of waves, but that was beside the point. It bothered her like a cot left in front of a doorway, even if it was a door that led to an unused maintenance closet.

The sea did have a calming effect, and the sunset had been gorgeous, turning the crests of each wave into strings of diamonds. But the crash of water against the hull reminded her of time running out, like the soft whisper of sand through an hourglass. Each passing hour without sighting another ship increased the chance that the others had not survived the blast. Every minute, she waited for the sound of the TARDIS appearing on the deck, but it did not come and the absence was gaping. The seconds took turns reminding her she was trapped in the 18th century, far from home and before her time, and if these problems were not enough, she could remind herself that they were failing a patient. They weren’t one step closer to a cure for Gwen--in fact, they’d probably run backwards.

Footsteps caught her attention, though they weren’t the thuds of Barbossa’s boots, so she wasn’t too concerned. Gregor descended the stairs, his shirt and hair fluttering in the night wind. She could barely make out his chiseled features, but as he approached, the moon came out from behind a cloud and illuminated their positions with pale blue beams.

“The dress looks good on you,” he said. “It makes you look formidable.”

“Is that German for ‘slutty’?”

“Red is a powerful color, especially on a woman.”

“I’ll thank you for the compliment and advise you to stop while you’re still ahead.”

He stood beside her and leaned on the railing, just far enough that he wasn’t touching her but close enough to violate her personal space. She suspected he was not just exhibiting European sensibilities but didn’t move away.

“What do you do back home?” she asked.

“I own and run a coffee lounge. It’s a lovely place, though less so now that floating robots blew a few holes in it.” He sighed for emphasis. “Before that, I was a helicopter pilot, but I’m not allowed to fly anymore. Medical reasons.” Cuddy was about to ask for specifics when he grinned and winked at her. “And before that, I was an escort for hire.”

“You’re joking.”

“Are you sure?”

“We have a game called two truths and a lie.”

“I’m not familiar with that game, I’m currently managing the career of a rising star in boxing, and I once killed three men with a rubber band.”

She laughed, and her hand brushed his before she pulled it back. “I’m going to say the last one.”

“That brings you up to one out of two. Your turn.”

“I want to know who this rising star is. Can I get his autograph and sell it when he makes it big?”

“I don’t know. Depends on how much my brother likes you.”

“Christian?”

“Is that surprising?”

“He’s not as buff as I would expect.”

“That’s why he’s still rising. His skills are fermenting, like yeast.”

“All right, I’m the administrator of the hospital at Princeton in New Jersey, I have three children, and I specialize in endocrinology.”

“Easy, you don’t have three children, you’re too young.”

“Oh, you’re pulling out all the stops.”

“Try again. But if I get this one right, you have to let me cook you dinner.”

“I’ll have to try harder then.” She smiled. “I am Jewish, I scuba dive, and I am in love with one of my employees.”

Gregor surprised her when he didn’t laugh and grab the obvious lie. Instead, he leaned closer and said, “Isn’t it cheating not to include a lie?”

“Of course I included a lie.”

“No, you blinked several times when you said the last one. That means you were thinking about it and feeling guilty about it. You want to think you’re not in love with someone, but really, you are and you know it.”

“If you’re trying to smooth-talk me, it isn’t working.”

“How am I supposed to compete with a man in your head?”

“I am not in love with House.” She realized she shouldn’t sound so vehement.

“House? He wasn’t one of the people in the TARDIS.”

“No, he’s with the other Doctor, but he likes to play mind games and tell people I’m in love with him.”

“And you like that?”

“I do not like that! Apart from how miserable he makes himself and everyone he cares about, it violates so many ethical boundaries that I don’t want to think about it!”

“Then you’re not in love with him?”

“Of course not.”

“I see...” He pulled away from the railing and headed for the stairs. “Try not to stay out too long. You might be a doctor, but you don’t seem to take too much care with your own injuries.”

It was a ploy, she knew. He might really be worried about her, but everything else was a prince charming act. She wasn’t in love with House, and anyway, in the factory, she’d seen the way he looked at Wilson. House had never seemed to belong with anything except work until that moment. There’d been a time when she wanted to be on the receiving end of that realization, when something finally clicked and everything fell in place. Now, the puzzle was done, and she helped solve it but had no place in it. So where did that leave her? Now she was the one who didn’t belong, and if she didn’t grab the loose pieces and put them together, who would?

“Gregor, wait,” she said.

He turned and looked genuinely confused. She put her hands on the sides of his head and pulled him close. Once their lips met, neither of them had any confusion about what to do. Gregor moaned as they fell against the wall. The wood reverberated with a loud boom as they struck. Seconds later, Barbossa thumped out of his quarters.

“Arrr, who be banging so hard-- oh, I spy two lover birds nesting on me ship.”

Cuddy broke apart from Gregor, pushing him away and accidentally sending him sprawling down the three steps below them.

“Did the plumage I give you attract desperately needed attention?” He leered.

“I hate to dampen your feathers, but that’s none of your business.”

Barbossa glanced around to make sure the crew wasn’t congregating to see the source of the commotion and lowered his voice. “Try to keep it together,” he said as Gregor tried to get up and fell over. “Your friends will be here soon.”

“How do you know?” Cuddy asked.

“Nothing be coincidence. Prophecies speak of your blue box, and they mention Elizabeth too. Aye, rest assured, they’ll be with her, and if there be any certainty in life, it be that fate always draws the same people together. We can hate and love, fight and fight side by side, but whatever happens, we always find each other and suffer the company once more.”

To Chapter 23: Déjà vu of Déjà vu of Déjà vu

Back to Chapter 21: Part 2

Summary: Everyone's adrift.

Oh no, Captain Ahab, it's the FAIL WHALE!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:23:12 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 21
In Which the Doctor Medicates Many People
(Part 2 of 2)

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Click here for family trees of Germans.

“Absolutely not!” Susan snapped. “We both know the forest search is nonsense, so we are not participating.”

“Shouldn’t we try to keep up appearances?”

“We are stupid cousins from Bavaria; no one cares what we do, and if you want to be productive about the murder, we might as well use this time to investigate actual leads.”

“But we’re supposed to stop the feud! What if they run into some poor Lahnsteins in the forest and kill them?”

“The forest is a vampire’s domain. Let him deal with it.”

“Give me the dice.”

Susan scowled but handed the dice and tray over. “What do you want them for?”

“To find out where we need to go,” he replied, grabbing her arm.

“Oh no you--”

The world blinked, and they materialized in the black forest. Unfortunately, they were ten feet in the air above a lake. Screaming, they plunged through the mirror-smooth surface, which didn't stay mirror-smooth for long, but Susan was a strong swimmer and brought them back to the surface before either started breathing water. He was too busy spluttering to hear Susan’s words the first time around, but then he heard, right in his ear, “Where’s the dice?”

“Don’t worry, they’re right here!” Adric raised his arm so that the tray flashed in the moonlight. The dice sat on the surface as though glued there, and he saw Susan breathe a sigh of relief. She began towing him toward land, and he kicked to speed up their movement. By the time they reached land, his muscles were burning, and he couldn’t imagine how Susan could stand there, barely breathing hard, while he flopped on the ground and gasped like a fish out of water. He made a mental note to do more full-body exercises when with the Doctor. There tended to be a lot of running and little else with him.

“You should get up. There are frogs around.”

Adric turned his head and saw a mottled brown frog sitting near his shoulder.

Ribbit, it croaked. The tongue shot out and grabbed hold of the spatial die. The white sphere vanished inside its mouth, and the frog teleported three feet away. Such a shift in surroundings didn’t seem to phase it much since it then started hopping away, disappearing and reappearing within a five meter radius at the end of each leap.

“Grab it!” Susan cried, throwing herself across the ground to cut off the amphibian’s water escape. She nearly fell on it, but it rematerialized just out of reach. Adric scrambled through the mud and once wrapped his fingers around its leg, but the skin was too slippery and the frog jumped off into the forest.

They were in hot pursuit when gunfire stopped them in their tracks. The frog was in the process of leaping off a log. One moment it was there, the next moment the air was full of blood and frog bits flying in every direction. Adric spotted a glimmer of white and reached out, catching the die mostly on instinct as it soared past. He grinned as Karin stepped out from a blind camouflaged amidst some bushes.

“I assumed you wanted the frog dead for some reason,” she said.

“Well, just caught, actually, but that worked,” he said, wondering whether to feel guilty about the animal’s untimely demise.

“You should be careful. There are Lahnsteins all over the forest.”

“Why? Did one of them get murdered too?”

“No, but I overheard Abelerd and Edmund talking. Apparently, they fell asleep while playing some game of Elise’s--I don’t blame them one bit--and when they woke up, Rainart was missing. They think some professor from Cologne inspired him to try to negotiate an end to the feud so they want to stop him before he can. It’s dishonorable to talk things over, you see, almost like engaging in barter. Only women are allowed to negotiate, and that’s only behind everyone’s backs while pretending to hate each other.”

“Ah, it’s like being in Sto Helit again,” Susan said.

Adric glanced at Susan. “Wait a minute. You’ve understood everything everyone says so far!”

“I told you it was similar to a dialect I know. The rest is guesswork, but I hardly want to botch the language. Give me a week.”

“Get down!” Karin pushed them into the blind and drew a canvas cloth over the entrance. This was problematic because the blind had only been designed for use by Karin and her dress, so with three people inside, Adric and Susan were in danger of suffocation by fabric, and he didn’t want to move around too much in case his actions were construed as inappropriate.

“Yodel-ay, yodel-ay, yodel-ay-hee-hoo!” someone sang as two figures moved past.

“Stop singing! You might attract wolves!”

“Nonsense. I can’t believe your father actually asked for my help.”

“Well, he’s desperate, and only men can search the forest.”

“Then you, my dear, should not be with me.”

Karin relaxed. Adric could tell by the way her dress deflated. “It’s just Siegbert and Edwynna,” she said, stepping outside. “Edwynna got disowned for marrying Siegbert, so they’re not really part of the feud.”

“Stop!” Siegbert cried upon hearing her voice. “If you are wolves, I’m warning you to stay back!”

“It’s Karin Schneider.” She looked over at Adric and Susan trying to make their way out of the blind and bringing down half the walls in the process. “And two Bavarian cousins.”

Edwynna burst out from behind a tree and knocked Karin over in her rush to embrace her. “I am so glad to see you! I was convinced we would be eaten!”

“Wolves rarely attack people.” Karin wrinkled her nose at Edwynna’s close proximity but gave her a pat on the back anyway.

“Tell that to poor Beatrice. She saw her calf get eaten alive before Siegbert could chase the pack away with his dogs.”

“You exaggerate,” Siegbert said. “I am positive the calf was only half-eaten while alive.”

Adric groaned as his stomach protested. It’d be a miracle if he kept a single meal down while here.

“In any case,” Siegbert continued, “we are looking for Rainart von Lahnstein. It would be appreciated if you would not shoot him if you see him. YODEL-AY-HEE-HOO!”

Everyone clapped their hands over their ears as he let out three piercing yodels in a row.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Karin asked, pulling at her dress. Somehow, despite traveling through brush, hiding in the blind, and getting knocked down by Edwynna, the dress remained an unblemished pink.

“Rainart is a good friend of ours. If he hears me, he will come.”

“My dear, that’s so clever!” It became Siegbert’s turn to get tackled by Edwynna.

Karin put away her gun and used both hands to waft air toward her face. “Does anyone else smell smoke?”

“Oh, yes,” Siegbert pointed back toward the Schneider castle. “There was a small campfire going back there. Gypsies, I assumed, so Edwynna and I went to investigate because we of course love gypsies, but there was no one there! So, of course, it is a hazard, having an unwatched fire burning like that, so I put it out.”

“We’re half a mile off any road,” Karin said. “Why would any traveler be out here?”

“Perhaps you could take us back there?” Adric suggested.

“Yes, it is not far.” Siegbert jogged away, singing all the while.

Once they found the remains of the fire, it became clear that it had not been intended for warmth or light at all. Rather, an abandoned lantern sat beside a pile of ashes. Adric pushed his fingers through the blackened remains and found one small piece of paper that had not been destroyed. “Someone was burning paper?”

Karin took the scrap from him and moved to a spot where moonlight shone through the canopy. She squinted at the paper, then gasped: “This has grandfather’s name on it!”

“There’s something else!” Adric said. Tugging, he pulled a piece of burlap out from some rocks that had been used to anchor the contents of the fire. The cloth was tougher than paper and had mostly survived. The ash was difficult to dislodge, but he made a reasonable effort, shaking the fabric until Edwynna’s scream distracted him. “What’s wrong?”

Goosebumps went up on his arms when she pointed at him, but then he looked down and saw the reason for her terror. Emblazoned in white on the cloth was a grinning skull.

Karin’s jaw dropped. “I recognize that from the papers.”

“What is it?” Adric asked.

“It’s...” her voice trailed off. “But no, that can’t be. That would mean...”

“What?”

“You realize whoever set this fire was trying to destroy evidence.”

“You think this is related to your grandfather’s murder?”

“His name is right here.” She waved the scrap of paper at him. “But that is a pirate symbol. That’s the flag of the Pirate Lord of the Mediterranean.”

“You’re saying your grandfather was a pirate?”

“I don’t know. I have no other reason to think so, but we find grandfather’s body and within the hour, someone is burning a pirate flag with documents containing his name? There has to be some connection.”

Adric turned to Susan. “And you said we shouldn’t investigate the forest.”

“Has it occurred to you that the murderer might have set the fire and is still around?” She smiled sweetly.

Adric yelped and spun around, setting off another fit of screaming from Edwynna, which for some reason caused Siegbert to resume yodeling. Karin sighed. “We’d better get back to the castle. Edwynna, stop screaming! There might be a murderer on the loose”--Edwynna screamed even louder, so Karin fired her shotgun into the air, causing immediate silence--“so you should head home. I’m sure Rainart is fine, and I can tell you for a fact that there aren’t any Schneiders in the castle for him to find even if he wanted to talk to one.”

“But if the Schneiders aren’t in the castle, then that makes them easier to find,” Siegbert said. “In fact, they--”

In the distance, a man’s voice boomed: “Raoul Schneider!”

“Abelerd von Lahnstein!” replied a surprised voice, not quite as loud as the first.

BANG!

* * *

White moths swarmed Baron von Lahnstein the moment he broke into the dirt clearing by the stream. Their wings caught the moonlight, glowing like fairies, but he paid them little attention. A figure perched on the rocks beside the water, back turned to him and ears deafened by the gurgling. At least, he shouldn’t be able to hear him approaching--Elise and Rainart used to place bets on how many of the semi-feral castle cats he could catch in one day--but Huey Schneider always knew when he was there.

Sure enough, Schneider tilted his head fifteen degrees when Baron came within striking distance, just enough to let him know he’d been foiled yet again. Not that it mattered. Crouching behind him, Baron wrapped his arms around Schneider’s chest and rested his chin on his shoulder. “So what was it this time? My reflection in the water?”

“No, you were quite good about that.” Baron felt a slight shiver run down Schneider’s neck as he began nibbling on his right earlobe.

“Then how?” he asked, his breath hot against his cheek as he planted kiss after kiss, drawing ever closer to Schneider’s lips.

“It was--” he paused long enough to push Baron away. Twisting around, he managed to get a firm grip on his shoulders, and Baron let himself be thrown against the ground. Straddling him, Schneider’s eyes flashed. “It was the moths. They flocked to your lantern before you blew out the flame. Too easy, Lahnstein.”

Baron grabbed his collar and pulled him closer. “You don’t like it when I wear moth repellant,” he growled. Schneider’s lips were cold, indicating he’d been out quite some time, but heat radiated from his chest as Baron worked his hands into his shirt.

“This is wrong,” Schneider panted between kisses.

Baron responded by lowering his attention to Schneider’s neck, causing the man to let out a soft moan. There was always some objection when they were together; it wasn’t worth his breath to respond, not when there were other things he could use it for.

Schneider shook his head. “It’s like, I like you like a moth... likes... fire... oh god.”

“You like that.” Schneider’s hands went straight for Baron’s pants, but he intercepted them and forced them away. Deciding to push his luck, Baron tried to swing Schneider off, but he wouldn’t budge. He should’ve been a wrestler.

“You know, I was just reading up on the straddle this morning.” Schneider bent down and kissed both his hands. “It’s amazing what you can learn in the library.”

“I didn’t know your parents had books like that.”

“Oh, you know us merchants brought too high, always possessing things we shouldn’t have.” He pushed down with his hips, and Baron conceded the battle, letting Schneider put his hands wherever he liked. “Did you know ‘straddle’ is actually a financial term?”

“Really...” As far as Baron was concerned, the words coming at him were just sounds, which, when it came to Huey Schneider, was probably a good thing.

“Yeah. It’s an option consisting of a put,”--and there was definitely some placement going on, especially with Schneider’s right hand--“and a call,”--and now the left hand, and--“combined, both at the same current market price,”--which must be a good deal, whatever that meant,--“and for the same... specified... period.” Cold air rushed against Baron’s skin as Schneider stripped him in one swift motion.

“That sounds good,” Baron murmured, wrapping one leg around Schneider’s. At that moment, the wind picked up, and a frenzied whirlwind of leaves and branches distracted Baron from the things Schneider was doing to his body. “Hold on, something’s wrong.”

“No one knows about this place.”

The sound of a door opening caused Schneider to throw himself backward and tumble into the stream. Baron looked up to see a large blue box towering over him. At its entrance stood a man with crazy hair who looked more embarrassed than Baron felt. It was clear he was neither a Schneider or a Lahnstein, and as such, Baron couldn’t care less that he’d been caught in flagrante, despite the man's... unique method of arrival.

“I’m terribly sorry!” the man exclaimed, dodging back into the blue box. As the door closed, Baron distinctly heard him say, “That’s twice today.”

The whirlwind started up again, and a light atop the box began flashing as it faded into thin air, leaving behind only the dying sound of vworp-vworp.

* * *

Before Rainart could figure out the monitor controls, the Doctor pulled several switches with more force than he needed and set the TARDIS through the time vortex again. “Ah, settings not quite right. See? I was right in not letting you go out first.”

“Twice today? Twice what today? You drove into Aunt Annegret’s room?” Rainart’s head looked ready to explode.

“Your brother wouldn’t happen to have dark hair, would he?”

“Yes, Baron’s the only one whose looks take after father’s. If I was more petty, I’d say that was the reason I got passed over as heir, but I know that’s not the reason. Wait, why? Did you run into Baron? You ran into Baron sleeping with Lysanne?”

“Stop speaking in italics!”

“Sorry!”

“It wasn’t Lysanne.”

“But you were in the forest.”

“Possibly...” The Doctor tried very hard to look fascinated by the dials in front of him, but this did not deter Rainart.

“It was a Schneider?”

“ITALICS!” the Doctor screamed, flapping his arms.

“ULA SCHNEIDER!”

The Doctor froze mid-flap. “Who?”

“Straight black hair, pale skin, fingernails that can slice French bread.”

“Oh. Mmm, sure, why not?” With all the weirdness going on, the Doctor decided it was better not to rock the boat any further. Drugging Rainart’s entire family was enough for the day.

“I knew it! I knew it! It’s like that English play about the crazy Italians. I once argued that all feuds end this way because love and hate are two sides of the same coin but none of my friends would believe me. What do you think?”

“I think love and hate are very different emotions.”

“Do you have a mortal enemy? You must, traveling through time and space and all that. Think about it.”

“Well...” The Doctor shifted on his feet. “...there’s this Time Lord called the Master, but I wouldn’t say I hate him.”

“Does he hate you?”

“Maybe.” Did he? The Doctor liked to think they had extremely divergent viewpoints that happened to clash every once in a while. Different methodologies and all that. On the other hand, he’d been quite vehement the last time they met. And there’d been that argument during the Time War when the Doctor might have said a few nasty things about his goatee. Surely he hadn’t lost it for that reason? The Doctor remembered thinking a Dalek death ray had burned it off, but the look could also have been the result of a hasty and angry shave. “No, absolutely no way,” he amended as Rainart studied him.

“Think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about it!”

“Who’s panicking now?”

The Doctor swiveled a knob and caused the TARDIS to lurch to a halt, sending Rainart flying across the room and through the door that the TARDIS decided to open. A second later and the young man screamed: “OH MY GOD!”

“Not Annegret’s bedroom,” the Doctor pleaded to the console. He yelped when a bullet ricocheted off the central column and tunneled through the tip of his sneakers.

Rainart ran back in as a second shot splintered wood off the doorframe. “SCHNEIDERS IN THE FOREST!”

As the door closed, the monitors lit up. “Isn’t that your father?” the Doctor noted. “What time is it?”

Rainart kicked the chronometer. “You’ve taken us forward four hours!”

“Oops. They must be searching for you.”

He turned the sound on. “That was Rainart!” someone said from off screen.

Abelerd von Lahnstein lowered his rifle and squinted at the blue box. “It may have been. Well, that means he’s not in your castle.”

“That’s Raoul Schneider.” Rainart pointed as the Doctor swiveled the camera over to get both people on screen.

“He'd better not be,” Raoul replied. “If that problem’s solved, then we might as well get on with it.”

“Agreed, but you fired the customary warning shot, so I get to set the duel rules.”

“What?” The Doctor frowned. “They’re not curious about the big blue box that appeared out of nowhere?”

“Nothing can stop a duel once it’s in progress. It's very single-minded. From what they’ve said, I’m guessing they initiated les règles des rencontres: if opposing families meet on neutral ground and possess weapons, one party may fire a gun or brandish a sword to commence a duel. If both parties decline to do so, they may continue peacefully. The precedent is binding for one day, and all subsequent challenges within twenty-four hours on neutral ground are null and void provided both original parties can verify the time at which they met and parted peacefully.”

“I’ve never heard of such a rule.”

“Someone's great-great-great-great-parent or something made it up.”

“Is there a manual or something? The Idiot’s Guide to the Lahnstein-Schneider Duels?”

“No, we’re expected to memorize the rules by age four.”

“Your families are insane!” At that moment, newcomers crowded the screen as Siegbert and Edwynna appeared with a girl in a massive pink dress and a woman with autonomous hair. “And you’ve got spectators on call!”

“That’s Karin and Susan Schneider. Susan’s the strange cousin I told you about.”

“I see.” The Doctor turned away to check more readings. The tracking told him the signature from Singapore was somewhere close by but not in the immediate vicinity. “Well, we’re not really where we should be. Don’t you think we ought to try to break up the feud? That’s your family out there. Well, three of them, anyway.”

“I told you, nothing short of new family members can stop a feud. Speaking of new family, I wonder where Susan’s brother is. I still can’t remember his name; that’s going to bother me the whole night...”

“But what if someone dies?”

“No one’s died for decades. Come on, let’s get moving.”

* * *

Adric’s foot was stuck. Somewhere between the clearing with the fire and the clearing with the Germans shooting each other, he’d stepped into a tangled mess of aboveground tree roots and hadn’t been able to get out. By the time he thought to yell, other voices had risen to drown him out. On the upside, that meant the gathering was nearby, possibly just out of sight. On the downside, that meant the shooting was nearby, possibly just out of sight, and that was a major concern considering two additional shots had fired just before he fell. That had been followed by voices but he’d been busy trying to free himself and hadn’t paid attention. That was apparently a mistake, because in the distance, Raoul now yelled: “You can’t do that!”

“The rules mandate a minimum of three,” Abelerd replied. “There are three of you.”

“What are they up to now?” Adric muttered as he tugged at his ankle one more time. The roots creaked but showed no sign of yielding. A light breeze started up, which given that it was the middle of the night, meant that the temperature went from cold to freezing. “Great, at least I’ll freeze before I get eaten...”

He was taken out of his thoughts by the reverberating sound of a TARDIS disappearing, and he almost strained his neck to stare in the direction of the voices, wondering whether his ears were playing tricks on him. Surely if the TARDIS had appeared and disappeared, someone would’ve noticed, but the arguing continued without pause.

“Susan doesn’t count! She’s a cousin.”

“We cancelled the duels this afternoon to welcome her into the feud!” Abelerd countered. “If you don’t consider her eligible, then the cancelled duels must be fought tomorrow!”

“But she doesn’t even understand directions.”

“She can run, can’t she? By shooting gallery rules, only one target needs to have a gun. In this case, you have two.”

Shooting gallery? That did not sound good. “WAAAAAAAAAAIT!” he screamed at the top his lungs.

After a pause, Karin said, “That’s Adric. I’ll go get him.”

“I don’t think you can get me out of this,” he said when she arrived. “I mean, I’ve tried pulling as hard as I can and oh my god what are you doing?”

The root released him when she fired, shattering the wood and sending splinters flying past his face. He barely had time to shield his face with his arm, and several shallow scratches leaked blood across the back of his hand when he lowered it. “I guess that works,” he said doubtfully.

“Come on, you’re not going to let your sister get shot at, are you?”

“Of course not.” In truth, his intention had been to get someone to help him, not to remind them that there was someone who could replace Susan in whatever constituted a shooting gallery duel. She was, after all, capable of freezing time, whereas he had no special abilities to speak of, unless it was to calculate exact probabilities of where the bullet might be so he knew the locations to avoid. Probably. Maybe. “Wait, I thought only men dueled.”

“A shooting gallery is different,” Karin replied, and Adric noticed there was a spring to her step. “I’ve always wanted to participate in one, but what are the chances of so many people meeting in the forest?”

“So it’s a forest-based duel?”

“I suppose you could do one in town, but people wouldn’t appreciate it. You need a lot of free-standing obstacles that are taller than a person.”

Once Abelerd saw them, he brightened. “Well, that solves your problem. Adric is certainly eligible to participate.”

“That he is!”

No, I’m not! he wanted to yell, but Susan winked at him, so she must have something in mind. Out loud, he said, “What are the rules?”

“Since Abelerd and I met on neutral ground, we weren’t obligated to challenge,” Raoul said. “But I chose to do so.”

“Great,” Adric said in a flat voice, not surprised in the least.

“Indeed. As a result, Abelerd is allowed to put my family at a disadvantage due to my antagonism.”

“Even better.” Adric glanced at Susan. She winked again, and he began thinking she might have something in her eye.

“The shooting range, therefore, is what it sounds like. The three of us take positions at one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred yards from Abelerd. We then run through the trees as fast as we can while he tries to shoot us.”

“WHAT?”

“No, no, no, don’t worry. That’s not all. We only need to run fifty yards, and if we make it without getting shot, we’re allowed to maneuver into position and fire back.”

“I don’t have a gun!”

“Well, technically, I’m the only one who should have a gun, so that’s all right.”

“That is not all right! I demand a shield instead of a gun!”

“I don’t think that’s covered in the rules.”

“Yes, it is,” Abelerd replied. “He’s allowed one as long as he doesn’t have to leave the shooting grounds to retrieve it.”

Adric threw himself at Susan and pulled the tray out of her bag. “This’ll do fine.”

“All right,” Raoul said, looking slightly stunned. Everyone, even Susan, had taken a step back at his sudden movement, but they appeared to be recovering their composure. “One last thing: the duel lasts three runs. However, after the first run, the members of the shooting gallery may shoot back while running if they choose to do so, but that forfeits their right to take the shot at the end of the run. It is a tradeoff between firing as many times as you want while running or firing once in a position of your choice.”

“And what am I supposed to do, throw the tray at him?”

“If you must,” Karin said, rubbing her hands together. “Are you ready?”

“You’re sure in a rush to get started.”

“Doesn’t it sound fun?”

“It sounds terrible!” He turned to Susan for support, but she shrugged, and when he turned around, the two Schneiders were gone. “Great, just great,” he muttered. Even better was when Karin yelled, “I’ve taken 300” followed by Raoul staking out 200 yards.

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Adric shouted back.

“It would not be honorable to fire back from 100 yards!” Raoul replied.

If he remembered his TARDIS history lessons, guns in this era couldn’t hit anything beyond a hundred yards anyway, which put him on the border between life and death while everyone else was safe. To add to his concerns, the path before him was filled with bushes and rough undergrowth of the sort that’d ensnared him minutes before. He could barely see anything ahead in the darkness, but at least the tray was large enough that, combined with the shrubbery, most of his body would be covered. And Death’s traveling gear was surely bullet proof, right? Adric was vaguely aware that there was a flaw in this logic, but the pressing circumstances did not permit him to examine it.

“THREE-TWO-ONE-GO!” Abelerd yelled despite no one declaring double-time.

“WHAT?” Surprised by the sudden start, Adric nearly tripped at the starting line. A bullet slammed into the tree behind where he’d been as his startled cry gave away his location.

After a few more lurching steps, he regained his balance and put up the tray without daring to look away from the ground before him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Raoul running almost in time with him. The glimpses he got of the man between passing trees showed his arms wheeling in wide circles as he ran with wild abandon, screaming at the top of his lungs. The rifle in his hand spun completely out of sync with the rest of his body, and Adric winced every time the barrel pointed at him.

There was no sign of Karin, however, and he was beginning to think she’d finally gotten trapped because of her gigantic dress when a flash of pink showed that she was running in the opposite direction, having started on the other side of the gallery. Shots continued to ring out at a rate of about one every three seconds, but given the lack of exploding foliage nearby, Adric guessed he was no longer the target.

Right after he thought that, the tray exploded at him, the outer edge crumpling as the center bulged and twisted. The force of the strike threw him sideways just enough that he lost his balance. He managed to hop behind a tree before he fell, but he lay there and refused to get up once he was on the ground. Moments later, Raoul tip-toed past and put a finger to his lips.

“You made it!” he whispered, indicating that Adric had completed the first fifty-yard dash. “Now you just have to head back and do it again! Atta boy!”

Adric made a rude gesture he remembered seeing his brother use once as Raoul disappeared into the darkness to take his shot at Abelerd. Picking himself up, he leaned against the tree to catch his breath and inspected the damage on the tray. The bullet was still wedged in the crater it’d created. A few thumps knocked it loose but otherwise failed to improve the overall condition of the tray. The entire surface was bent, and he spared a thought to how that would affect future dice rolls before concentrating on calculating the probability of it blocking a second hit. Based on the thickness of the bottom and the damage the first shot had caused, he guessed it could stand a second bullet but no more.

He was about to make the dash again when he remembered that Raoul was trying to shoot Abelerd. If he timed it right, maybe the man would be too distracted to fire at him. Peering around the edge of the tree, he tried to make out any human shapes, but he couldn’t even tell where he’d started from, and branches blocked his view of Abelerd’s most likely direction.

“Moooo.” A wet nose nudged his back, right between the waistline of his pants and the bottom of his shirt.

“Eeeew!” he cried. Spinning around, he batted at the cow that had appeared out of nowhere and succeeded in sticking his hands into her mouth. The cow lowed and pushed against him, toppling him over. As he fell, the tray slipped out of his grip and clattered into the underbrush several meters away.

Another tree was close by to his left, so he scrambled to it and hoped the cow wouldn’t follow. However, it was already occupied by Siegbert, who hushed him. “We are here to help you!” he said in a whisper that was louder than his normal voice.

“Uh...” Adric said as Edwynna appeared behind the cow and waved at him, a huge grin plastered across her face. Now that he thought about it, they hadn’t been there when Karin dragged him into the duel. “Where’d you guys go?”

“Don’t shoot me daddy!” Edwynna yelled before dashing to join them at the tree. They jostled about for the best spot until the other two remembered Adric was the only one in danger of being shot and moved to stand on either side of him. Once she was in place, she leaned over and whispered, “We heard about the duel and since you’re from Bavaria, that’s about the same as being disowned, so I figured you didn’t deserve to be shot at.”

“Yes.” Siegbert nodded, and his bells jingled in agreement. “And it just so happened that Beatrice followed us into the forest.”

“I don’t see how that helps me,” Adric replied.

“Well, you see--” Edwynna began, but she was cut off by the two successive gun shots Adric had been listening for, and not daring to wait any longer, he bolted with the tray held over his chest. “Wait!” Edwynna cried, but Siegbert grabbed her before she could leave the safety of the tree.

“We will meet him on the other side,” Siegbert said.

Despite his course of action, Adric was interested in hearing what their plan was, and he tilted his head to the side to try to hear their conversation. As a result, he ran straight into a branch, getting smacked in the face and falling flat on his back. All the breath was knocked out of him, and he lay on the ground panting until Beatrice’s tongue joined the stars floating across his vision.

“Auuurrggghh!” he cried. Abelerd fired in response, which caused the cow to moo and step on his foot.

“Don’t fire, daddy, you’ll hit Beatrice!” Edwynna screamed. “Poor girl,” she added, patting the cow on the head, but the incident having been more than three seconds ago, Beatrice had already forgotten about her panic and started nibbling on Edwynna’s hair. Unfortunately, Beatrice had also forgotten she was still standing on Adric until he gave her a sharp kick.

“Moooo.” The cow glared at him but shifted its weight enough for him to yank his foot away.

Limping to a safe distance, he said, “Now what? I can barely walk!”

“But that was the plan!” Edwynna exclaimed.

“To cripple me? Is there a rule in the code duello that says crippled parties are exempt?”

“No, of course not, silly. With Beatrice here, daddy won’t dare fire at you for fear of hitting her!”

“Remind me to be grateful once I take the cast off.” Nevertheless, he staggered away, and the next few shots were clearly aimed at Raoul, who was making his second run. No one had thought to tell him not to shoot at Beatrice, though, resulting in a bullet knocking the bell off her collar. Siebert yelped and clutched at his own bells as the three of them ran after Adric, now seeking the shelter of his presence from the Schneiders.

When they reached the end of the fifty yard path, now clearly visible due to the zigzagging line of crushed plants that Adric had left after his first run, Karin was waiting for them. “Oh good,” she said. “You made it.”

“That’s what your dad said,” Adric muttered.

“I did my best to end the duel. I mean, being female and not the offending party, I can’t actually hit Abelerd, but I did my best to scare him into dad’s line of sight. It’s not my fault he missed. I mean, even a graze would’ve ended the duel, but--”

“What? Not that I’m upset it doesn’t have to end with someone dying,” he added quickly.

“Oh, don’t be like that. If every duel ended in death, both our families would’ve been wiped out ages ago. Or the men, at least, and that’d be a pity, because Rainart is ever so cute--” She let out a tiny gasp and covered her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that! I talk too much when you’re around.”

Edwynna giggled. “You like the skinny, brainy types? Oh, I knew it! I knew you were lying when you said you were too young to be interested in men!”

Karin sighed. “Don’t worry, I’ll disarm Abelerd. Just wait a couple minutes before you make your last run.”

“How are you going to disarm him?” Adric got no reply as Karin headed back to the two hundred yard line. “You’re going the wrong way!”

“Oooh, I love this part,” Siegbert said, then added quickly, “Not the shooting at Edwynna’s father part, of course. But, well, just watch.”

A pair of ravens scattered out of the bushes as Karin burst into the open. “Abelerd von Lahnstein!” she yelled, garnering a blast in her direction. The flash of igniting gunpowder gave away his position. She raised her barrel, sighting him without ever missing a step, and fired. A flash of light, moonlight on metal, was all Adric could see, but it was enough to tell that Abelerd’s gun had flown into the air.

Karin reloaded as she ran and let off one more shot as Abelerd’s rifle began its downward journey. Sparks flew as the gun blew apart, shattering into three pieces that went hurtling through the leaves. By the time he heard the muffled thuds that indicated they’d hit the ground, Karin had begun the last leg of her run. Edwynna grinned and gave Adric a little shove, sending him off as well.

It seemed everything was resolved when Abelerd cried out, “You coward, Schneider! How dare you let your daughter do your dirty work!” Adric nearly stumbled when he heard the sound of a blade being drawn out of its sheath, the vibration of freed metal ringing through the forest. “We go to first blood!”

With a roar, Abelerd charged, fallen twigs snapping under his footsteps. Adric’s heart nearly stopped when he saw a large shape charge in his direction. It didn’t take long for Abelerd to come close enough for Adric to see the contorted expression on his face as he let out a long battle cry. There was no escape, not with his foot half-crushed. Adric froze, his voice blending with Abelerd’s as he screamed at the blade swinging toward his neck. He raised his arms, trying to block the sword and knowing that his action was a feeble defense. What he’d forgotten was the tray still clutched in his hands, and as his arms came up, the rim caught Abelerd beneath the jaw, slamming his teeth together and sending him flying away.

As Abelerd hit the ground, Adric stared, too stunned to respond after his narrow escape, but when he groaned and showed signs of getting back up, Adric ran up and whacked him over the head, knocking him out cold.

“Oooh, how brave!” Edwynna exclaimed. She and Siegbert started a round of clapping that didn’t stop until Raoul and Karin appeared.

“Those were incredible shots,” Adric told Karin. “You must be a real math genius to be able to calculate the trajectory of a bullet over such a distance. I mean, it’s not like these guns are designed to hit so accurately.”

She blinked. “What? I just practice a lot.”

Raoul bent over Abelerd and ran a finger under his nose. He showed Adric the glistening splotch on his fingertip. “That drew blood. Congratulations, Adric, you just won your first duel!”

Adric raised his eyebrows. “Yay?”

“Of course,” Susan said from behind him, causing him to jump.

Adric grabbed her arm and drew her away from the others, who were trying to revive Abelerd. Once they were out of sight, he poked her in the arm. “Fat lot of use you were. You winked at me! What was your plan?”

“I didn’t have one.”

“Then why’d you wink!”

“Because Edwynna and Siegbert had one. I heard them sneaking off and talking about getting some cow to protect you.”

“You trusted a cow to protect me? Look what it did to me!” He took off his shoe and thrust his foot at her, but he hit her shin, causing pain to shoot up his leg. “Ow!” He dropped the shoe, and water sloshed out of it, splashing onto Susan.

“Look on the bright side: you won a duel. That’s got to be something to be proud of.”

“I was terrified out of my mind! And it was a duel! Who would be proud of winning a duel? It’s not like it was something noble or useful like killing a monster.”

Susan’s eyes widened at his last words, and her hair started to curl.

“What, don’t tell me you’re afraid of monsters.”

Instead of replying, she threw out her hand and snapped her fingers. For anyone else, the motion would’ve been meaningless, but at that moment, it seemed her skull flashed from under her skin, and Adric recognized the gesture Death had performed aboard the crashing freighter. Flames leapt up about him, and sparks slowed a thousand fold as time came to a standstill, or close enough that it didn’t matter. Five minutes, Death had promised him, five extra minutes before he died.

But he hadn’t died--Jamie and the Doctor rescued him--but just like last time, reality defied his expectations as Susan snapped a second time and a third, and nothing happened. “Drat,” she said.

Three tentacles wrapped themselves around his arms. Dripping with slime and river water, he could only assume he hadn’t noticed them poised above him because he was already wet, but that was the least of his worries. Recovering from shock, Susan tried to grab him, but the tentacles pulled back and drew him through the forest. His body plowed a furrow in the ground, throwing up dirt and uprooting small trees as he bounced back and forth, scrabbling for something to grab but unable to gain a secure grip on anything as the surroundings rushed past in a blur.

“HELP ME!” he screamed, gaining a mouthful of spider webs for his efforts. “Mmphh, SUSAN! KARIN! HELP!” He knew it was pointless, because he was moving too fast for them to catch up.

“Hold on, Adric!” he heard Susan yell, but her voice already sounded distant.

He struck a tree. When the impact spun him around, he saw he was approaching the river’s bank. With a few seconds left, he pressed his forearm against the ground, grinding one of the tentacles into the dirt, but it didn’t even flinch. The water drew closer and closer. The last of the forest dwindled away, and then, for one moment, he soared toward the sky, gaining one last breath of fresh air before he plummeted into the Rhine.

* * *

The Doctor had been ready to stay a little longer, if only to await the appearance of the mysterious Schneider whose name caused Rainart to have selective amnesia, but Rainart had watched him too closely when he was piloting and managed to hit the right button to send the TARDIS into the time vortex. Granted, he did so in a way that catapulted them straight into the stomach of a brontosaurus, but the Doctor was willing to give him credit for initiative.

“That is why you never, ever touch the controls without my say-so,” he scolded.

“I’m so sorry!” Rainart exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, no harm done.”

“But what if we caused the dinosaur indigestion and made it throw up on a butterfly?”

“What is it with you people and butterflies?”

“Can we go back and take a look around?”

“No, we’re going to the Rhine!”

“You didn’t even want to be in the Empire in the first place.”

“Hush! Look, maybe this will interest you.” The Doctor pulled up the energy signature he’d been tracking. “You ever seen anything like this? Of course you haven’t, you don’t even have computers yet, how would you--”

“They look like sound waves. We played with that once, funneling our voices through a stylus onto a physical medium.”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes. “That’s a century early too.”

“Maybe my family’s composed of geniuses.” They looked at each other and thought about croquet. “Each in a unique way.”

When he returned his attention to the monitor, he realized Rainart was right. “Now that’s interesting...” Spinning a three-layered knob, a speaker at the far end of the room crackled to life. Static whined from one frequency to another as he rotated the rings in different directions.

“...right outside and I hopped inside a cab...” a voice sang at a sort of breakneck pace that reminded the Doctor of himself after too much sugar. The music faded in and out, refusing to let him get a lock on it. “I went out… this Englishman said, ‘Fab’... saw me... hot dog stand...”

A whine of feedback cut through the speakers, causing Rainart to throw his hands over his ears. Wisps of smoke rose from the wires, and the Doctor slammed his hand on the circuit breaker. “Whoops, sorry about that. But it looks like you were correct. Good job, Rainart.”

“Does that change anything?”

“Nope!” The Doctor kicked the console one last time. “And we’re here!”

“Where?”

The TARDIS shuddered, but this wasn’t the typical stop-by-slamming-on-the-brakes-and-hitting-a-parking-meter. This was more ran-into-the-Titanic-with-the-shields-down.

“Doctor?” Rainart pointed at a spot that corresponded with their positions to form the third corner of an equilateral triangle, but the Doctor had already noticed.

A robed figure was fluctuating into existence in a manner not unlike the TARDIS materializing. Face shrouded in the darkness, the person’s posture did not appear alarmed or even surprised, but the Doctor figured he was surprised and alarmed enough for the both of them. “That’s impossible!”

The hood shook as the figure’s head turned toward the Doctor. “More visitors?”

“You, but, what?” The Doctor grabbed the monitor and rotated it toward him. According to the readings, the energy signature was coming from the figure, and the TARDIS had locked onto him, materializing around him. “But that can’t be! Those energy signatures are too strong to belong to any one person!”

“Doctor!” Rainart yelled, running toward him.

He turned in time to see the robed figure dash up to them, closing the ten meter distance in the space of a second. One punch caught Rainart in the gut, followed by a blow to the head that made him crumple to the ground.

“Whoa, whoa,” the Doctor said as the figure approached him. “I think we should discuss--”

The figure grabbed a fistful of the Doctor’s hair and slammed him face first into the console.

To Chapter 22: Birds of a Feather

Back to Chapter 21: Part 1

Summary: Illicit affairs, drugs, murder, piracy, and tentacles. How scandalous!

Cheese, Gromit!

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:11:43 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 21
In Which the Doctor Medicates Many People
(Part 1 of 2)

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Click here for family trees of Germans.

Elise von Lahnstein had really done afternoon tea right. The Doctor was impressed.

“Scones! Cakes! Sandwiches! You’ve even got the multi-layered stand!” The Lahnsteins stared at him like he was a madman. “Sorry, I’m British myself, so it’s like being home again.”

“You speak excellent German,” Elise commented.

The Doctor noticed Rainart’s eyes had widened at his proclamation and guessed the cause. “Of course. I must, to teach in Germany.”

Rainart followed up with, “Absolutely. Dr. Smith had taught at the University of Cologne for three years before I attended.”

“Love Cologne.” He smiled at a room full of cold stares.

“You look young to have been teaching for eleven years,” a severe-looking woman with half-moon spectacles said. Her blonde hair was graying, creating streaks of white against light gold, making her waist-length hair shimmer like a weave of cloth. Yet her face was free of wrinkles, and since the Doctor smelled no make-up on her, the blush on her cheeks was natural. She must have been a renowned beauty in her youth, and age had only refined and, indeed, perfected her looks. With a figure to match, the Doctor wouldn’t have been surprised if the feud had started over her. Wars had been fought for less.

“Thank you,” the Doctor replied, “but you of all people must understand what it means to appear younger than your true age, for if Rainart is correct in his description of his mother as a woman who could subdue a lion with a look, then you must be her.” He gave a deep bow and checked Rainart’s expression to make sure he had guessed correctly. When he saw the boy give him a pursed smile, half impressed and half annoyed, he winked before straightening back up. Elise giggled.

“Rainart is correct.” She inclined her head deep enough to indicate grudging respect.

Rainart stepped forward. “Frau Schmetterling von Lahnstein, meet Professor Smith.”

The Doctor grinned. “Just John Smith is fine.” It helped when everyone made up the same pseudonym for him. Saved him having to remember different names.

Rainart indicated the plump figure beside his mother. “Herr Abelerd von Lahnstein, my father.”

Abelerd gave a hearty laugh and clasped the Doctor by the hand. The rest of the family went by in rapid succession, almost too fast for even the Doctor to take in. Waldo was the family patriarch, the elderly father of Abelerd, pushed about in a wheelchair by a massive old man named Jakob, who was evidently his wife’s brother, a gentle giant who wasn’t all mentally present. Waldo was a stick of a man, as though all his weight had gone into his son, but his arms and legs appeared bloated, like the limbs of a balloon animal. The gout, it appeared to be.

Adalie was Waldo’s wife, and she had the same slightly-pouting, eagle-eyed look of severity that her daughter-in-law possessed. She was an exercise in contrasts: every movement of her body was like part of a planned dance while her face could not be described as better than plain; her skin was wrinkled like a prune while she spoke with a voice clear and pure as a mountain stream rushing into a roaring river; her snow white hair was tied into a tight bun but the binding consisted of a dazzling red bow and dangling ribbons. Her dress was entirely grey, managing to be elegant rather than drab and stylishly stark despite a large number of frills along the front. She had a wheelchair that matched her husband’s but got by fine without it, preferring to hover beside Jakob, the brother who dribbled a little out the left side of his mouth and didn’t have his shirt tucked in.

Annegret was Waldo’s younger sister. She was pale and resembled tissue paper, in danger of being swept away by the slightest touch. Of all the older Lahnsteins present, she was the only one who seemed to enjoy the party, looking about at all the decorations like a wide-eyed child, though she clutched her teacup as though someone might snatch it from her at any moment. As people moved past her, she swayed a little, teetering this way and that--as though her cane was a metronome and she was keeping time--before her maid appeared to steady her. Then Lysanne would lean against the wall and vanish from notice again, which was quite impressive considering she looked like Marilyn Monroe, all the way down to the short French maid’s dress that fluttered in the drafts that swept through the castle.

There was, Adalie explained, one more Lahnstein from their generation, but Bernard died twenty-two years ago--the latest casualty of the long-standing feud between the families-- while dueling Friedrich Schneider. At that pronouncement, everyone crossed themselves and muttered something in low tones, and when the Doctor strained to hear what was said, he realized not all of it was complimentary.

The introductions then moved on to Abelerd’s siblings--the children of Waldo and Adalie--which included another Adalie, an old maid who had not been as fortunate as her namesake mother and who tended to loose a braying laugh at awkward times, Edmund and his wife, Dorothea, who lived on the adjacent property but were visiting for tea, and Adolfa, who was not present, having married a wealthy duke (also named Bernard) and moved to his larger castle in Saxony.

“Ah, and there’s Edwynna,” Rainart said as the lowing of cattle preceded a large heifer pushing through the crowd of aristocracy.

“Sorry, terribly sorry!” exclaimed a young girl dressed in periwinkle lederhosen as she bounded through the room. A man in tight-fitting red overalls and a fedora with a large yellow feather sticking out of it skipped into the room after her, jingling with a cowbell in his hand and a belt of lesser bells looped across his chest from the shoulder to the waist.

“Who?” Schmetterling asked, her voice crisp as a fresh apple. She turned so that she faced the exact opposite direction from the newcomers. “I don’t see anyone.”

Abelerd slapped the Doctor on the back, and he would’ve sprawled across the ground if the cow hadn’t been there for him to fall against. “Never mind the wife. Women get silly ideas in their heads sometimes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Abelerd. I would’ve thought the family honor would be more important to you.”

“If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then how do you know I’m talking about a matter of family honor?”

Schmetterling sniffed. “Everything is about family honor.”

“And who are you?” Edwynna asked, bouncing up and down in place. The cow mooed again and started in on the platter of cheese. “Please don’t mind Beatrice. She loves her own cheese.”

“What people would we be to deny her such simple pleasures, when she provides so much for us?” her husband interjected.

“People who aren’t freaks,” Edmund said. With that pronouncement, he and Dorothea swept out of the room.

Rainart shrugged. “Uncle also disapproves of Edwynna.”

Schmetterling made her way around the cow to retrieve a scone for Jakob, and the Doctor was impressed how nonchalantly she managed to ignore the bovine presence. It was as though she just happened to weave across the room in a large semi-circle, and she didn’t even need to act drunk to be convincing. “I wonder where Baron is,” she said. “He’s normally quite good about social appearances.”

“A family tea is hardly a social appearance,” the Doctor ventured.

“True.” Schmetterling brightened. “Family gatherings aren’t nearly as important.” As she said that, she managed to bump into Edwynna’s husband and spill tea all over him.

“Yodel-ow-ow-ow!” he half-sang and half-screamed his way out of the room.

“My, how lucky. I nearly tripped but none of the tea fell onto the ground.”

“Mother!” Edwynna stamped her foot. “That was cruel!”

Schmetterling ignored her, so Edwynna came closer and stamped again, this time catching the edge of her mother’s dress. Schmetterling’s hand swept out and slapped her across the face, all without the slightest change of expression. Edwynna burst into tears and ran to her father, who swept her into his arms and shot his wife angry looks. She continued to nibble on her scone, never glancing at him.

“Your family is very...” the Doctor realized that a thousand years of travel through space and time hadn’t provided him with an adjective that would be adequate yet tactful so he settled on the tried-and-true human standby: “...interesting.”

Rainart led him to the corner of the room before a full-out argument could erupt. “That is why I didn’t know how to answer you when you asked for something strange.”

“Not that sort of strange. I was thinking more along the lines of giant stone statues rampaging across the countryside, but you probably haven’t seen any of those, have you?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. Do you mind if I poke around?”

“Yes.”

Rainart and the Doctor both froze, because the voice had come from between them. They looked down and saw Annegret staring up at them with beady eyes. The Doctor instinctively turned his head to track down Lysanne and found himself face-to-face with her, his lips a bare centimeter from her wide-open mouth. Then he realized that, in taking up a spot in the corner, he’d crushed her against the wall.

“I’m terribly sorry!” he yelped as he leapt aside.

“You’re very bony, Dr. Smith,” Lysanne replied, brushing herself off and catching her breath. He found himself transfixed by her heaving bosom, not because of any sexual curiosity but because their motion defied the laws of physics. “Surprisingly strong as well.”

“I would appreciate if you do not take any further liberties with my maidservant,” Annegret said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see either of you there!”

“Neither did I,” Rainart added, fighting back a laugh.

“I object to you ‘poking around,’ as you put it,” Annegret said. “My quarters, at least, are off-limits, even if Rainart doesn’t respect the boundaries of his other family members. I expect nothing less from a radical revolutionary.”

“Auntie, I am not a radical, and my friends are visionaries, not warmongers.”

“Political change is bloodshed.”

“Now that’s not fair,” the Doctor said, “though given history to this point, it isn’t an entirely unreasonable conclusion.”

“If you’re looking for something strange, you don’t need to look any further than the river.”

“Really? What’s there?”

Rather than answer, Annegret removed a sprig of a withered plant from her dress. At first glance, it looked like nothing special, but then the doctor noticed purple mottling along the stem and undersides of the mint-like leaves, so light he’d mistook them for shadows. His breath caught.

“May I?” he asked in a hushed tone, as though they were in a church. She thrust it into his hand, and he lifted it to his ear.

“What is that?” Rainart asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a species before, though Baron is the naturalist, not I.”

“Lean closer,” the Doctor replied. “Listen.”

Their ears came together beside the plant, and a faint ringing began, like humming wineglasses, but the tone shifted back and forth in the semblance of a melody.

“Galæsia nachtis,” the Doctor said, and even though he’d said the name out loud, he still couldn’t believe he was holding a specimen. The shock was such that he found he couldn’t continue the explanation, which was a rare enough event in itself.

“It’s a mythical herb,” Annegret spoke for him.

“Legendary,” he managed.

“You may hear similarities to ‘nightingale’ in its etymology, and you would be right if you do. Roughly speaking, it means ‘spell-’ or ‘song-in-the-night,’ but the common name is ‘Singing Plant,’ so named because of the sound you just heard. It is believed to be a cure for all diseases, but that is legend corrupted in re-telling. I have run experiments on the small sample in my possession, and its true properties are even more amazing: Galæsia nachtis reverses the aging process.”

“What?” The Doctor wasn’t sure whether he should be elated or disappointed. On the one hand, the singing plant could have been the answer to Gwen’s plight, but this new development was even more revolutionary. If true, Galæsia nachtis might induce a process in humans that was similar to Time Lord regeneration. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! I don’t have enough to create visible effects in a human, but I tested it on plant cells and small animals, and the results speak for themselves.”

“Where did you get it?”

“The river. There are growths on the bank where the Rhine runs most turbulent, but the footing isn’t good. Investigate at your own risk.”

“Most turbulent... do you mean the Bend?” Rainart asked.

“Yes, you children call it the Bend.”

Rainart shook his head. “You can’t go there. It’s near the black forest, and Baron’s reported poachers. Until he’s back in the castle, you risk being shot in addition to drowning if you go.”

“I wouldn’t mind waiting until evening,” the Doctor replied. He extended a hand to thank Annegret, but in the few seconds he’d turned his attention to Rainart, the old lady had disappeared, along with her maid. “Now that’s a woman with many talents.”

“I agree. I’ve heard Aunt Annegret was quite the lady in her day, and no one understands why she never married.”

“Maybe she liked it that way.”

“I rather suspect she does. A man would only slow her down.”

* * *

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It was dark, because nights usually are, unless a massive asteroid is burning through the atmosphere, but there wouldn’t be much use for quibbling about the time of day in such a situation. The sky lacked any semblance of storminess, however, and the full Milky Way was plastered across the sky as clearly as wallpaper, or tapestries full of dark and creepy woodland animals.

For a moment, Adric was certain the animals’ eyes were following him, but he credited the effect to a talented weaver and didn’t trouble Susan with the issue. There might be secret passages hidden behind the cloth, but the eyes didn’t look like holes, so people probably weren’t lurking. Besides, the number of eyes vastly outnumbered the number of humans in the castle.

“I think I like the pink room better,” he said to Susan.

“Smart boy,” she murmured. Her eyes remained fixed on the tapestry behind which the vampire had vanished.

“Let’s go to the kitchen, see what we can do to help.”

Susan’s hair curled up by itself, and she batted at the strands absently without putting much effort into flattening them. “That... feels like a good suggestion.” Her voice was distant, and even though she looked at him, she wasn’t looking at him.

“Are you all right?”

“Something’s not right, and I don’t mean the vampire. I feel... hurry!” She grabbed his hand and rushed into the hall. He flew after her, his legs moving as fast as he could make them go, but the initial tug had squeezed all the air out of his lungs and he didn’t think he could keep up the pace.

Through a parlor, down one flight of stairs and up another, they traveled an assortment of rooms, each as empty as the last, before dashing through the servants’ quarters and ending up in the kitchen. As they struggled to catch their breath, Adric managed: “I think we went in a huge circle.”

“I don’t know how the castle’s laid out!”

“You could’ve... asked... for directions.”

“When they don’t understand me?”

“I’m sorry, may I help you?” Adric jumped as Rosa Schneider took his arm. Ula’s mother loomed a head taller than Susan and four times as wide. Although half her girth consisted of layers upon layers of frills and cloth, she was still a significant woman, from the explosion of curly strawberry hair to the water tower-shaped bustle of her dress. Nevertheless, she moved with the grace of a ballerina and had, in fact, been a dancer in her youth, if he correctly remembered the stream of information Ula had thrown at him on their way back to the castle.

“I, we, were just wondering if we could help.”

Before Rosa could respond, Ula swept over with a bleating lamb in tow. “Cousin, you should be resting!” The lamb tried to back away, its hooves scrabbling against the ceramic tiling. She jerked the leash. “Bad Sassy. Cook! Here, can you take care of Sassy for me?”

“Uh, is that--” Adric began as the goat was led away. His sentence was cut off by an urgent baa-ing followed by a squelchy thud. “I guess it was.”

“Sassy was a good lamb. I don’t know what got into her.”

“I can’t imagine.” A bright red rivulet appeared from around the corner and made its way across the floor. His stomach did a few flips before settling down just in time for a blood-curdling scream that wracked the castle. It was pitched at a frequency that intensified as it bounced off the stone walls, culminating in a piercing assault on the eardrums that was akin to the downpour of arrows on the French at Agincourt--he knew because the Doctor had accidentally materialized there with him and Jamie before beating a frantic retreat.

Being the lady that she was, Ula’s reaction was to cry out dramatically: “A murder!” and faint. Rosa hailed from the school of “The show must go on!” and caught her daughter as she fell.

“Do you think it’s really a murder?” Adric asked Susan, who glared back at him, making him realize how stupid he must look, querying his supposedly dim sister. It was like one of the Earth shows he watched with the Doctor and Tegan. Lassie, he remembered it was called, though instead of Timmy falling down the well, it was Timmy’s remains being pushed in to dispose of the evidence.

As this train of thought left the station, the rest of the household poured out of the kitchen and scattered in every direction to find the source of the scream. Most headed for the entryway and the library, which were located on the first floor where an intruder might be, while the more mystery-novel-oriented went for the wine cellar, and all seemed to possess no survival instinct considering they believed they were looking for a crime scene where, presumably, the killer was still nearby.

Adric was about to follow the crowd when Susan tapped his shoulder and pointed at a curly-haired young woman who looked about his own age. She skipped past them in a frilly pink dress so large that it had an accretion disk all its own, or maybe that was just more frills falling off due to the stresses of the dress swirling and quaking and rotating in an attempt to keep up with the movement of the person at its core. Her destination looked to be the stairs, and she moved with an otherworldly air that belied her airy teenage appearance.

Susan muttered something about skipping, but when Adric gave her a questioning look, she just said, “People in large groups never know what they’re doing. You want to find the truth, you follow the creepy, solitary ones.” Her hair twitched as she spoke, like frog tongues darting at invisible flies.

Once the woman was out of sight, they followed her up the stairs. “I’m going to guess that’s Karin,” Adric remarked in a low whisper. “You know, the one Ula said your bedroom belonged to.”

“That would explain a lot.” Susan nodded.

Karin did not stop at the second floor, or the third, and when they reached the topmost landing, Adric pushed open the door to reveal a sight that took his breath away. They were atop a rampart connecting two turrets that loomed into the sky like giant pillars. Overhead, the stars were so innumerable that they shone like a layer of foam atop the sea. The black forest was a line of absolute darkness to their right, standing as an abyss between the feeble torchlight of the Schneider and Lahnstein castles. Evenfall had made the colors more vivid in a visceral way that sent shivers down Adric’s spine. The blue tinge of the night sky seeped into everything, and the dark emerald of the lawn fifty feet below called to him. The maroon of the Schneider banners looked like old glory and smelled of the sweat and tears of battles won. All of it glowed, catching and reflecting whatever light would come its way. In that instant, it hit him. He didn’t think he’d ever been more removed from technology--no spaceships or electricity or Time Lords standing by to whisk him away. It was just stone and fire, wood and water. Primal fears called to him, howling about life and blood and death.

A gun cocked, its sharp crack ringing clear against the castle walls before bounding into the distant gurgles of the river. Adric threw up his hands in time for the barrel of a shotgun to swing into his vision and stay there, a line of steel leading into the burnished copper eyes of Karin Schneider.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her voice was low and melodic, the sort that could lull bears to sleep and make rivers change course.

“What are you doing here?” he replied, more because he couldn’t think of anything else to say than out of defiance. Saying, “I’m following you because I think you can lead me to the scene of a murder” didn’t seem the best course of action given the gun in his face.

There wasn’t the slightest change in expression as Karin lowered the shotgun. Within moments, the weapon vanished amidst the folds of her dress, and Adric wondered how many more surprises she had hidden in her clothing. He didn’t want to find out. “You’re not a killer.”

Adric’s jaw dropped. “Of course not!”

“And you’re the idiot.” Karin had turned her gaze to Susan. “You’re the cousins from Bavaria.”

“Yeah. Yes, I am, er, we are. Do you, uh, know what’s going on?”

“My grandfather is dead.” She swiveled and rustled along the rampart. The two of them followed at a brisk pace, and somehow, Susan got ahead of him. The moment she caught sight of the view inside the room, she pushed him aside and moved to block his vision.

“What?” he exclaimed.

“You don’t want to see this.”

“I’m not a child!” He shoved past her, and then the stench hit him. Retreating as fast as he arrived, he leaned over the parapet and retched.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t eat dinner yet,” Susan said in her governess’ voice, the sort of tone one used on a frightened child who needed to be reassured without hurting his ego.

“I wasn’t expecting...” Well, he wasn’t expecting quite that much blood. Over such a large surface area. And so many body parts scattered around the room. There had also been that hand still clinging onto the back of the chair.

Then Susan added, “Although, I’ll admit, it seems like a little more blood than is in the human body.” Adric threw up again, this time on Susan’s shoe, but she deserved it.

From the doorway, Karin examined the room as she might a painting in a museum. “This was deliberate.”

“Really?” Adric hoped he didn’t sound too sarcastic, as her rifle was still fresh in his memory, but he couldn’t help thinking she was stating the obvious.

She tilted her head, watching him like a bird. There was something of an offer in her eyes. Taking a few tentative steps closer, he paused three feet away from her and the terrifying room. Her response was to remove a handkerchief from the purse draped over her left shoulder and tie it over his nose. “Think of the blood as nature’s paint,” she said as she tightened the knot, her fingers brushing the hair at the back of his neck. “Without it, her canvas would be empty.”

“Paint.” Pressing the handkerchief tight against his nose and mouth, he stepped into the room with Karin. “They were just redecorating... with mannequins... and did a really bad job.”

The main part of the body--that is, the chest and one complete leg--lay upon the bed, an elegant four-poster with ripped sheets and a torn canopy, some of which looked sliced apart by a knife while others had collapsed from the weight of someone pulling on them. The body lay at an angle with the neck ending beside the pillow on the far edge of the bed. A writing desk beneath the window by the door was snapped in half, and the chair had been knocked over, but one arm was still clinging to the back of it. The other arm hung from the candle chandelier overhead, but the hand that belonged to it was nowhere to be seen. The head had rolled into the dresser opposite the bed, while several feet of intestines decorated the windowsill.

“Where’s his other leg?”

“Grandfather Imre only had one leg. The other one’s wooden. It’s that pile of splinters beside the gallbladder.”

“The gallbladder?”

“The pear-like thing in the puddle of candle wax at the head of the bed.”

“Ah. I see. You’re awfully calm about this.”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Such as?”

“Gauthier at a tea party. His manners are absolutely atrocious. Oh, you mean in terms of violence? There was that time a pack of wolves tore a live deer apart in the forest. It’s incredible how much blood is in an animal.” Her eyes sparkled as she spoke, but then she caught herself with a sharp intake of air and blushed. “I’m sorry, my stories probably aren’t helping your stomach.” He didn’t think she was actually sorry, but he appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.

“Well, I didn’t know there was so much blood in the human body either.”

“There should be more.”

Adric goggled.

“She’s right,” Susan commented, stepping into the room for the first time. “I was being sardonic earlier. Pay attention.”

“Look at the smear patterns on the wall.” Karin pointed with an umbrella, and even though Adric had been staring right at her, he couldn’t tell where it had come from. “A bleeding body thrown against the wall should smear in a vertical pattern, and splashing should cause blots that drip downward. However, the blood is at a sideways angle, and it is congealing.”

“You’re saying there wasn’t a struggle.”

Karin gave him a small smile, lips pressed tight in a somewhat pouty manner. “Good. I think you catch on too fast to be a cousin of mine.”

“You said it’s congealing. Is that important?”

“Yes, as is the fact that there are stains but no puddles on the floor even though it’s stone.”

“There should be more blood,” he repeated. “So everything about the scene indicates there was a struggle. Something happened, a cold-blooded murder attempt or a robbery gone wrong--”

“Or a Lahnstein,” Karin added.

“Yes, or that, I suppose. But Imre fought back and had a messy death. But it’s not messy enough, which means someone wants us to think that’s what happened but Imre actually died before being cut apart. That’s why there isn’t as much blood”

“Precisely. In fact, he died in bed. There’s only one set of footprints around the entire room.”

“Those are bare feet! How do you-- oh. Imre had a false leg, but there’s no markings from it. But... we heard a scream just moments before!”

“Who said it was my grandfather’s scream?” Karin tip-toed through the room, keeping her dress and feet from touching any of the mess. When she reached the head, she pushed back one eyelid and nodded. “The eyes have filmed over. Grandfather was dead for hours before the scream.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means my family’s about done searching the castle.” Karin put her hands to her face and let out an ear-splitting scream. “HELP! HELP! Oh my goodness, someone’s killed grandfather Imre in his room and would someone please hurry up and get here already!”

“I think that’s the end of intelligent conversation for the evening,” Susan said. “Time to watch the fireworks.”

And fireworks there were, for the first person to answer Karin’s summons was her twin, Hildegard. She scampered along the bridge to the tower, took one look at Karin’s grin, and fainted splendidly before catching sight of whatever caused her sister so much enjoyment. Adric doubted the faint was real, but considering her dress had even more accoutrements than Karin’s, there was little danger to her falling over. She could probably jump over the parapet and bounce to safety.

In addition to the fancier outfit, Hildegard had bleached her hair, clearly striving for an angelic appearance to distinguish herself from her less savory counterpart. Adric decided it made her look insipid but did not voice his opinion out loud.

Raoul came next, looking every inch the operatic hero his name forced him to be, but upon seeing his daughter’s limp form on the ground, scooped her into his arms and ran off to revive her and wasn’t seen again until the murder scene had been cleaned.

Ula was much too fascinated by blood to be a proper lady, but she stomped on Adric’s foot (“Oh my, did I get you? I’m terribly sorry. I sometimes stamp the ground really hard when I get upset and people have an unfortunate habit of being underfoot!”) when he pointed that out. Then she retreated to a spot that silhouetted her figure against the moon and stood there like a dramatic princess awaiting rescue.

Her mother became the first person to do anything useful, which was to shoo away everyone and send Karin to summon the castle staff. “I’m terribly sorry you had to see this,” she told Adric.

“It’s all right. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Just shield the young ladies from seeing any more. They are delicate flowers and should not be exposed to the uglier elements of the feud.”

“The feud?” Adric wisely did not comment on the flower statement.

“Well, surely, this must be the deed of a Lahnstein, and a terrible deed it is.”

“Absolutely horrible.” Adric nodded in sympathy.

“Savage!” Rosa was working herself up into quite a state, quivering like a gelatin cake in an earthquake.

“Gruesome.”

The word cut off Rosa’s impending tirade against the Lahnsteins. “Gruesome? Well, I suppose...”

“You suppose?” he squeaked. He felt the urge to vomit once more.

“I was speaking of the fact that they did not kill him in a field of combat. To murder someone, in secret, in their room. That is, well, it is quite dishonorable.” She pronounced “dishonorable” as one might say, well, as one might say something that is not proper to say at all. The concept was uncomfortable for her to consider, much less discuss with someone of a younger generation, like a parent trying to have the sex talk with her child or a manatee fending off a motor boat.

The awkward silence was broken by voices drifting over from the other tower. “Quick, do something!” Rosa implored. “Do not let them see this disgrace.”

“Er.”

“You’re not going to be able to stop her from cleaning the crime scene,” Susan said in response to his unspoken concern. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re equipped to learn anything from it. Not unless you know some enterprising dwarves in the region.”

Adric shook his head. Gauthier led the pack of oncoming Schneiders, so bad things were going to happen very soon if he didn’t stop it. Yet, what would stop a bunch of honor-obsessed, bloodthirsty aristocrats from arriving at a murder scene?

“Tell them the murderer ran into the forest,” Susan again answered his question without needing to hear it.

Right, nothing like a good romp in the dark with a murderer on the loose, not to mention the wild animals. Adric ran to the edge of the walkway and pointed. “I think I see a figure running into the forest! It must be the murderer! Look!”

Everyone except Gauthier looked, but Rosa seemed all right with that--you could only be so improper when no one was around to judge. Like a stampede of elephants, it took a while for momentum to turn the other way, which in this case consisted of many people pointing and arguing about which shadow was the killer and just exactly which direction they were headed. It took about two minutes before anyone realized that the killer must be headed for the Lahnstein castle if the killer was a Lahnstein. Once that reasoning sank in, the crowd vanished in the blink of an eye.

Before Ula could leave, Gauthier caught her by the waist and threw her into a puddle of blood.

* * *

The Doctor knew something was terribly wrong with time. There were instances when this was self-evident, like when Earth got turned into a flaming wasteland by the Daleks--come to think of it, that had never been rectified...--and there were times when it was so subtle that only he knew it, the burden of the last Time Lord, listening to distant temporal currents and hearing a pebble slip into the turbulence. There were times when it was serious and other times when the solution was more trouble than the original problem. There were the best of times and the worst of times, purple times and fuzzy times, times with thyme and many times in the same time happening multiple times, which did not make for fun times for Time Lords, even back when there was more than one, or two, or maybe four, along with a red fish and a blue fish.

This time was none of those times and could never be one of those times because it was infinitely more painful than anything even the Daleks could throw at him.

It began with the end of the tea party. He and Rainart had given up trying to track down Annegret when it became evident she had retreated to her quarters and, of course, they had no excuse to leave the party. They could have left, but the Doctor didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the Lahnsteins just yet. The throbbing bumps on his head told him that he’d had enough objects thrown at him for one day.

“I think we’re in trouble,” Rainart remarked as he dumped his teacup into the cheese platter. “What?” he said when the Doctor gave him a look. “It makes cleaning more convenient for the servants when everything’s on one easy-to-gather tray.”

“Not that I don’t approve of your thoughtfulness, but I had my eye on the gouda.”

“There’s much better cheese than gouda.”

“I like how it sounds. Gou-da. Gouuuda. Gouda.” He grinned, but Rainart looked unimpressed. One of the castle cats began lapping up the newfound mixture of tea leaves and dairy products.

“Like I said, I think we’re in trouble.”

“Why? I don’t believe I’ve violated any common etiquette rules.”

“Oh no, you’ve done wonderfully in that regard. But Baron isn’t back yet.”

“Eager to get on the trail of nach-tis, are you?”

“Not really. It’s just, he has a good sense of things, and usually, if he’s gone for so long, that means something bad is coming, probably from Elise.”

“If it’s bad like a tea party, it can’t be that bad.”

“No, not at all. More like--”

“I know!” Elise clapped her hands together. “Let’s play croquet!”

“This isn’t right,” the Doctor insisted. “Croquet isn’t supposed to be invented for another century, and certainly not in Germany.”

“What?” Rainart sounded as though someone had announced that they’d delivered the crate of cockroaches to his bedroom and no, it didn’t matter that he hadn’t ordered any such thing, could he please sign and initial on the line there? “Are you implying this actually becomes a professional sport?”

“Oh, you mean it’s not?” He felt his hearts slowing back down at the thought that perhaps this wasn’t a temporal violation after all. “But still, it’s a century early in the wrong place.”

“Maybe people tried to kill it and it kept coming back.” Like cockroaches.

“Did your sister tell anyone about croquet at university?”

“No, she didn’t think it up until after she came back.”

“This is the game with mallets and balls going through hoops on the ground?”

“Oh good, you know it, that means you can take my place.” Rainart raised his voice as Elise came over. “The Doctor volunteers! I’ve explained the rules to him.”

“What? No, no, n-- oh hello. Yes, lovely-sounding game, would love to play.” He tried to look disapprovingly at Rainart but suspected he just appeared confused, because Elise took him by the hand and started explaining all the rules in painstaking detail. Which was a good thing, it turned out, because some of them were quite different from the ones he knew. That was why, three hours later...

“SCATTER SHOT!” Elise screamed, firing a shotgun at her ball. Scatter shot indeed burst forth from the barrel, sending her red ball rocketing toward the next hoop, while the Doctor’s ball launched toward the pond but stopped just short owing to the obstructive nature of geese. There wasn’t much he could do about this development, however, because even though scatter shot was intended to send the ball into a less dangerous position, and while just about anywhere was safer than in the scope of a shotgun, he didn’t think that was what the rules meant, but it was not prudent to argue with anyone who played croquet with guns. There was also Abelerd’s comment at the beginning of the game when the Doctor went for the yellow ball:

“No, dear doctor, the men always get black and blue balls in this game. I think Elise meant that as subtle commentary, ha, ha, ha.” His comment earned him pursed lips from his wife, but the Doctor suspected he was getting back at her for the Edwynna incident. No doubt Abelerd found the joke much less amusing after Schmetterling sent her first ball off his shin, through the hoop nailed into the trunk of a nearby juniper, and into his black ball, sending it tumbling near a haystack. Her continuation stroke was clean, but somehow his ball ended up inside the hay afterward and play was suspended for ten minutes while Abelerd searched and pricked his finger on a needle instead of locating the ball.

“Look at the time!” the Doctor exclaimed, pointing at the setting sun and trying to ignore the fact that the panicking geese were pushing his ball closer and closer to the water’s edge. The yard line for the game was actually drawn through the middle of the pond owing to the fact that one of the hoops was on a floating platform anchored to shore by five meters of string. He did not think a water hazard would make this game more enjoyable. That was before colors exploded across his vision as a spike of pain drove its way through his head, and he woke up on the ground.

Elise let out a cry: “He’s regained consciousness! I’m so sorry, but I do remember telling you that during scatter shots, the team partner is allowed to take one extra stroke at the same time.”

“Right. Forgot that.”

“I’m sure mother is sorry too.”

Schmetterling shrugged. “The rules are the rules, and I must thank the Doctor, because without him there to deflect it, I’m sure the ball would’ve overshot and I’d never have run that hoop.”

“Glad to be of service, Frau Lahnstein.” If his head swelled enough, all the bumps might run together.

“Anyway, now that you’re back up and running, we can finish the game!” Abelerd said. “I do hate losing, and I think our luck’s about to turn.”

“But it’s dark!”

“I, uh, mixed together a substance that can be applied to surfaces,” Rainart said, scratching his head, “and it, unfortunately, ah, well, it glows in the dark.”

The Doctor bounced up and seized Rainart’s coat. “A substantive escape plan would be saluted,” he hissed before turning back to the field. Indeed, the balls, hoops and mallets were all glowing green, as were the boundaries, which was one advantage of nightfall. It would make finding the balls in haystacks easier as well. “Do I want to know where you found the glowing substance?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, your family’s exposure is minimal enough that they shouldn’t get radiation poisoning. You, on the other hand, I can’t speak for.”

“Radiation poisoning? Whatever that is, it doesn’t sound good.”

“Get me out of here and maybe I’ll explain it to you.”

Rainart removed the mallet from the Doctor’s hands and headed for the castle. “I think we should take a break and find the Doctor some herbs for his headache. It wouldn’t be a fair game if one of the players was impaired.”

Once they were far enough away, the Doctor admitted that, as he did not sense any radiation in the area, Rainart’s discovery was biological rather than radioactive, but it was too late to prevent a lengthy inquiry on the subject that didn’t cease until they were outside Annegret’s room.

Rainart frowned upon realizing where they were. “When I said we were getting you some herbs, that was to get us away, not to justify you breaking into Great Aunt Annegret’s quarters.”

“Nonsense, I’m sure she won’t mind us dropping by, her favorite nephew and his favorite professor.”

“How did you know I was her favorite? Not that the status imparts much special treatment.”

“She doesn’t seem the type for your average aristocrat.”

“Good point. You go in alone.”

“What? That’d be breaking and entering!”

“Exactly.”

“But you’re her favorite!”

“So she’ll kill me quickly rather than hang me out the window for crows to eat alive.”

“You’re exaggerating.” The Doctor tried the handle and found it locked.

“How unfortunate. Let’s go.”

The Doctor removed his sonic screwdriver, waved it across the handle, and opened the door. As he slipped it into his pocket, he winked at Rainart. “Pretend you didn’t see that.” Cracking the door open, he darted in, and as he expected, Rainart followed him, eyes still on his pocket.

“What do you mean ‘pretend you didn’t see that’? What is it? How does it work?”

“Shhh, you’re in your aunt’s room!”

“Damn you!” Rainart shut the door with the handle turned to make the action as quiet as possible. As he let the bar swing back into its regular position, the Doctor tiptoed over to a large mesh rack that extended along one entire wall.

The room was an antechamber, about thirty square meters in size and wider than it was long. The ceiling was vaulted, and herbs hung from the rafters. He recognized several bundles of lavender, along with some sage and dill. It was too dark for him to identify the ones farther from the window. There was no sign of Galæsia nachtis, but he didn’t expect her to leave samples on the table.

“Guard the door!” the Doctor said.

“Which one?”

“The one with your terrifying aunt behind it.”

“Um.” The Doctor didn’t understand what Rainart’s hesitation was about until he realized that there were not two but three doors in the room. One was for the hallway and another, the bedroom, but where did the third lead? Rainart chose one at random and pressed his ear to it. “I think the other one’s a store room.”

“Do you hear snoring?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should check the other door.”

“Maybe you should hurry and get what you need!”

“Fine, fine.” The Doctor set to work, but Rainart’s eyes followed his every move. “Would you stop staring?”

“That combination isn’t a painkiller.”

“I thought you weren’t a naturalist.”

“I’ve read books.”

“Of course. Oooh, valerian, very good. And kava kava? What does your aunt need kava kava for?”

“Maybe she likes to shake it shake it.”

“That was inappropriate.”

“Can we go?”

“Make yourself useful and find some chocolate. I need hops, do you see any hops?”

Rainart performed a short hop on his way to the cupboard.

“No, not like rabbits. More like banana daiquiris.”

“We’ve got chocolate.”

“Good, grab some, and I’ll check the store room for things that aren’t bunnies.”

“Wait! I’m not sure if that’s--”

“You’ll never get anywhere in life if you don’t take risks.”

The Doctor threw open the door to discover Annegret in bed, completely naked save for the sheet below her waist and the maid-shaped lump it covered, her back arched and her bosom heaving, every wrinkle on her body stretched taut as she cried: “Yes! Yes! Just like when we were young! YES!”

Slamming the door shut, the Doctor confronted Rainart’s dropped jaw. “You win some, you lose some. I think we can do without hops.”

Their next stop was the kitchens. The staff had not recovered from afternoon tea yet, so there were still pots of boiling water available. The Doctor threw in the herbs and started mixing.

“Are you planning to drug my family?”

“I thought a little nap would be the perfect opportunity for us to slip away because, if I’m right, and I’m usually right, there’s still dinner to come after croquet.”

“That is brilliant.” Rainart started scribbling on a pad he had in his pocket. “What’s the recipe?”

The Doctor snatched the pad out of his hand and put it in his pocket. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Extraordinary circumstances and all that.”

“They’re just herbs.”

“Kava kava’s just an herb.”

“That’s different.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Did you just throw in catnip?”

“Where’s the chocolate?” Rainart handed over a pouch. The Doctor pulled the drawstrings and peeked inside. “Cocoa powder. Perfect. It’ll mask the other tastes.” He poured out the entire packet.

Back on the croquet field, Adalie had parked Waldo over the next hoop to prevent Schmetterling from making her shot. She didn’t dislike her daughter-in-law--she just liked her son more.

“Look what the servants cooked up!” The Doctor brandished his tray of cups as one might a shield bearing the heroic dead. One could never be too overdramatic when trying to sell drugs. “Not only did it help my head, but it’s supposed to stimulate health and protect against chills. Everyone should try some, but mind the taste.”

“I thought you put in chocolate,” Rainart whispered.

“Watch and learn.”

Elise took the first cup and took a sip. “It’s not that bad, Dr. Smith. It tastes like chocolate.”

“In that case, I’ll try some as well,” Abelerd said. General murmurs of agreement followed as he downed an entire cup in one gulp and pronounced it excellent. “Whenever did the servants learn to make something so incredible?”

“I believe it’s one of Annegret’s recipes.” The Doctor noticed Rainart shudder at the name and thought it was good he hadn’t witnessed the event, only overheard it. For his part, the Doctor felt everyone deserved to be happy, and so long as Lysanne the maid wasn’t being pressured into anything, he wished them all the best. On the other hand, he had shut the door rather loudly, so maybe he was biased in hoping they’d been very, very distracted.

“It’s your stroke,” Elise said.

“One second. Here you go, other Adalie. Is that everyone? Good.” The Doctor hit setting ninety-thousand, two hundred ten on the sonic screwdriver and the entire family hit the ground before he’d finished speaking. “Sonic waves targeted to enhance the human metabolism, causing the herbs to work faster,” he explained to Rainart. “Cricket is so much better.”

“But what about Baron? He’s still in the woods, and I’m more worried about guns than croquet mallets.”

The Doctor grinned. “How would you like to ride in a time machine?”

To Chapter 21: Part 2

Back to Chapter 20: Interview with a Vampire

Summary: Illicit affairs, drugs, murder, piracy, and tentacles. How scandalous!

DOUBLE-TIME. MULTI-DUEL. BLERNS, BLERNS!

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:33:11 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 20
Interview with a Vampire

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Click here for family trees of Germans.

Susan and Adric rematerialized amidst Death’s field of golden wheat. There was now a clearing in the middle of all the gently waving stalks, and Susan looked down to see trampled plants underfoot. Uh oh, she thought to herself, wondering what new incursion had caused the damage before remembering that what she really should do was wait and feel sorry for it once Death found out about the situation.

BACK SO SOON? her grandfather’s voice echoed. She jumped, realizing that there was more to the clearing behind her. Turning around, she saw a group of figures dressed in tight-fitting black-and-white-striped outfits doing yoga. They had on black silk top hats with a rose sticking out the side. Her first thought had been, Mimes! Get the poker! but they lacked the characteristic powdered make-up. Besides, Death--who remained in his usual robes--was imitating their movements with astonishing grace for a skeleton.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

THIS IS SURPRISINGLY RELAXING. MY ONLY PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE WITH YOGA WAS THAT TIME I PICKED UP THE POOR FELLOW WITH THE BROKEN BACK. I HAD THOUGHT IT WAS A FORM OF TORTURE.

“Yes, grandfather, but why are they here?”

The group got onto their backs and flipped into the plow posture. Adric shuffled aside to avoid getting kicked. Susan decided to get to the point; past experience told her that there wasn’t much she could do about Death’s quirks. “We need the time die.”

THAT WOULD BE DANGEROUS.

“We found the location of a pivotal event, but we were too late to see what happened. We need to go to the right time to find out what threat we face.”

Death considered for only a moment. After all, given the enormity of the situation, he didn’t have much of a choice. He reached into his robes and dropped the other sphere into her palm.

“Thank you.”

GOOD LUCK.

* * *

Ula Schneider skipped along the bank of the Rhine, singing a nursery song about pillaging mermaids. For those disposed to a more vivid imagination, one should clarify that the song is not about mermaids getting pillaged since mermaids rarely have much of value on their persons and, additionally, such acts are illegal (except in the Netherlands and a few other less scrupulous parts of the world) and frowned upon in higher society. Rather, the song was about mermaids waylaying unwary travelers of the Rhine, beating them senseless, and stealing their gold in hopes of attracting dwarves. The dwarves then pillaged the mermaids, but that part isn’t in the song.

As a young adult, Ula knew she shouldn’t be given to fancies, but she’d always loved the tale of Lorelei the mermaid, partly because she had a rock named after her and usually only men got to have pieces of scenery named after them, and partly because she got a lot of people dead in really gruesome ways. It was too bad she only got to be awesome after killing herself over a man, but that couldn’t be helped.

When she was six and didn’t know any better, she tried to emulate her hero by telling her mother she was going to jump off a cliff because she was hopelessly in love with her younger brother. Her mother fainted, and when she woke, pretended the incident had never happened, which meant that Ula must have done something very bad. Being the curious girl that she was, she asked her father which part of the story had offended. Her father was named Raoul, which meant he had to be awesome, so he explained that it was considered improper to be in love with a family member closer than a cousin. It was quite all right for young women to jump off cliffs, but she shouldn’t because all the time her parents had spent educating her would go to waste.

Satisfied, she took the extra initiative of informing her brother that she didn’t love him, and he wasn’t allowed to love her either. It was improper. She didn’t know that Gauthier ran to his room afterwards, cried all night, and vowed to fight against all that was good and proper for the rest of his life. She just assumed her parents had saved him from a wolf clan when he was little and thus he wasn’t actually born an aristocrat and couldn’t be blamed for always doing the improper thing. Every time he used the wrong spoon at dinner or spent leisure time with the servants, she ignored the mistake and chalked it up to inferior blood.

Ula Schneider skipped because the action came naturally to children but was hopelessly complicated for adults to recall. Skipping was like the anti-riding-of-a-bicycle (Ula was fond of the practice of using words-that-combine-to-describe-something-else-that-no-one-bothered-to-make-up-a-new-Noun-for). Today, she wanted to remember being a child again, because today wasn’t a happy day. Today was the appointed day for Gauthier and Baron von Lahnstein to duel because Baron had spotted Gauthier romping naked through the hills with a sheep and taken offense. Of course, Gauthier had been deep on Schneider land at the time, so Baron must have trespassed, so Huey Schneider, her older brother, challenged Baron to a duel to defend the family’s pride. Annoyed that Huey would impinge upon Baron’s honor, Baron’s father, Abelerd von Lahnstein, then challenged Huey to a duel. Of course, that meant Raoul Schneider challenged Abelerd, leading to Abelerd’s father, Waldo, challenging Raoul. That was totally improper because Waldo was too old to fight, so Rosa Schneider and Schmetterling von Lahnstein had spent an afternoon slapping each other before both going home and reporting that the other family had pulled out of that duel because they were cowards.

Thankfully, the chain reaction had stopped there because Ula’s grandfather was five years dead, and corpses hadn’t found a way to express their desire for a duel yet. Nevertheless, there might be a lot more corpses soon because the Schneiders and Lahnsteins had been feuding for generations, and while the worst that came out of their duels was usually an eye poked out or a bird in the wrong place at the wrong time getting shot, no one had actually died in twenty-two years, which meant an epic-tragedy-of-many-deaths-and-misunderstandings was long overdue.

There was also the fact that duels were considered a proper thing to do, which meant Gauthier would either not show up at the appointed time, leading to more duels, or he’d bring that awful weapon he was working on which he’d--being a man--tried to name after himself. A Gatling gun, he called it, or something like that.

On second thought, she really shouldn’t be skipping along the Rhine. She was conducting an illicit love affair with Baron, and that’d be a lot harder to do if he was riddled with bullets.

Ula Schneider ran along the Rhine in the opposite direction. It took her just as long to return to the castle as it had taken her to skip away, because real ladies don’t run any faster than they can skip.

Gauthier was in his room with the standard one-shot pistol when Ula walked in. “You’re using those?”

Gauthier smiled. “At this point, everyone expects me to do something improper, but the most improper thing of all is to defy expectations. Proper hates surprises. So, of course, I will duel like a normal gentleman.”

“You could not show up.”

“That would be even more predictable than the Gatling.”

A new scenario presented itself, one which Ula had not even considered. Terrifyingly unexpected, it was an unpleasant shock, and Ula finally understood why proper society hated surprises. Her brain tried to take in the new factors and figure out a course of action, but Gauthier was ready for the duel, and the appointed time was less than fifteen minutes away, just long enough to walk to the border between their lands. She had no time to think, which meant there was only one possible course of action.

“Oh Gauthier, I feel ill!” she cried and fainted.

When she woke, she realized her mistake. Rather than call for help, Gauthier must have thrown her in a wheelbarrow and carted her to the dueling grounds. This would have been a wild and complicated deduction if she’d woken on a lawn chair under an umbrella in the viewing area of the dueling grounds, and she thought this scenario would have been vastly preferable. Instead, she was jostling up and down in a wheelbarrow on the path to the dueling grounds, and her surroundings told her they had less than two minutes of travel remaining.

“Let me out!” she screamed. “This is indecent. No one carts an unconscious lady around!”

“I do,” Gauthier said.

“I’d think that even if you have no sense of decency for yourself, you’d care about your sister enough to keep her out of ill repute!”

At that moment, something strange enough to distract even Ula occurred. There was a light pop and sizzling sound, accompanied by a flash of blue light and the smell of burnt toast. Right before their eyes, two figures appeared out of thin air, right in the middle of the path ahead. Gauthier’s mouth dropped open, while Ula scrambled out of the wheelbarrow to appear presentable. It was all for her own benefit, no doubt, because these two new arrivals would not appreciate her sense of propriety. After all, what sort of decent person just appears out of nowhere on a deserted forest road? Only highwaymen, that was who, and... “Oh my goodness, they’re going to rob us!” Ula screamed.

Gauthier kicked the back of her leg. “Shut up.”

The two strangers were absorbed in an argument in some language she’d never heard before, oblivious to the presence of Ula and her brother. One was a tall woman all in black, regal enough to be nobility except for a head of white hair that was scandalously wild, seeming to move of its own accord and containing a single streak of black through it. The other was a boy in yellow and green nightclothes, which wasn’t presentable either. The woman held out a silver tray and kept dropping two marbles on it, her voice getting higher and higher every time she let them roll.

“I think they’re crazy,” Ula whispered, backing up to put Gauthier between her and the newcomers.

“Don’t be silly. They must be sorcerers to appear out of nowhere!”

“Maybe you were busy hauling your sister around in a wheelbarrow and didn’t notice their arrival!”

Then, the woman picked up the two spheres, carefully rotated them halfway around, and set them on the tray. The two blinked out of existence...

...and reappeared in the wheelbarrow, which promptly overbalanced and sent them sprawling into the dirt. Ula let out a little shriek as dust got on her dress, and she ran to the edge of the road. Gauthier, on the other hand, stepped forward and offered the woman a hand. How totally stupid and characteristic of him.

The woman accepted his help but forgot about him once she was on her feet. Turning to the boy, she said something and then stuffed the tray and marbles into a bag of some sort. At that point, the boy pointed at Gauthier and, once she nodded, extended a hand to him.

“Hi, my name’s Adric,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, Adric. Do you have a family name?”

“No, but we’re kind of lost.”

“I guessed that with the...” Gauthier thought a moment, then made an expansive gesture with his arms, “poof and all.”

“Oh, you’re not going to pretend that didn’t happen?”

“Should I? Why?”

“Because it’s improper!” Ula felt this was an appropriate time to jump into the conversation as the moment to flee had passed.

The woman jabbered something. Adric replied in the same language, and she said something else. “Susan--this is Susan, by the way--told me that’s the more common reaction.”

Ula Schneider was common? She would have to teach that boy a lesson about aristocracy. Why, this was the eighteenth century of our Lord, and no one was savage enough to confuse nobility with peasantry anymore.

“Well, my sister can be rather common at times.” Gauthier sounded apologetic. She stalked forward, ready to give him a good rap on the head, when a thought occurred to her.

“You said you were lost. Are you not able to, mmm...” For lack of a better description, she copied Gauthier’s gesture, “Are you not able to poof away?”

“No, we’re apparently not.”

“I think I can help you.” The look on Gauthier’s face alone was worth it, but shocking Gauthier was not her priority at the moment. “And how rude of me not to introduce myself. My name is Ula Schneider. You can see the castle I live in once we’re out of the woods. This here is my brother, Gauthier.”

“Nice to meet you.” Adric looked just as confused as her brother, while Susan was eyeing Ula suspiciously. Women did always catch on faster than men.

“You need a place to stay.”

“Yes...”

“Fantastic! You and Susan will be distant cousins who are visiting from Bavaria--that’s to cover up any problems with manners you might have--because your parents died and your uncles cheated you out of your inheritance. You found out about us and came for help. Susan is your older sister who’s not right in the head, and you’re caring for her. On your way here, you got robbed by highwaymen, which is why you have no wagon or luggage and are wearing your nightclothes.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Susan!”

“Of course there isn’t, dear,” Ula said, her own story already solidifying into fact in her own head. “Does she speak any German?”

“Oh.” Adric glanced at Susan. “No.”

“Well that is no fault of yours. You do try so hard to take excellent care of her, and we have servants who can see to her every need. Now if you don’t mind, we have a duel to interrupt.”

“Interrupt?” Gauthier said. “It hasn’t started yet. And...”

“There are clear rules in the Schneider-Lahnstein code duello that require the families to forgive all offenses in the event of the arrival of new family members or distant relations in order to celebrate the enlargement of our feud.”

“So all the duels get cancelled?”

“Exactly!” Ula smiled primly.

Gauthier took in her look of satisfaction and Adric’s look of confusion and shrugged. “I suppose that’ll piss off everyone involved. Good by me. Come along, cousin Adric, cousin Susan. Welcome to the family.”

* * *

The TARDIS drifted in the time vortex. Spinning slowly amidst the swirls of red and blue, it waited on silent running, sensors listening for the slightest sign of danger. Deep in its heart, memories of the Time War pulsed like a suppressed infection biding its time in the blood.

Run, flee, protect the Doctor... The TARDIS remembered, and something terrible had shown its face in Singapore. Darkness drawing closer, madness infecting everyone around.

The time vortex wasn’t safe either. Daleks knew how to hijack a TARDIS even in the time vortex, and they weren't the only ones, but for now, there was no sign of pursuit. For now, the TARDIS could wait and hope the Doctor got better. Once the Doctor was awake, he’d know what to do, and for now... hide.

* * *

Susan was upset but not for the reasons Adric had expected. Jamie would have been livid if Adric had tried to claim he was “not right in the head” but Susan had taken it in stride, saying that the language sounded like a dialect from Überwald but wasn’t similar enough for her to pick up immediately. Besides, people talked more freely around someone they thought was a fool, so the role suited her fine. On the other hand, she was still ranting about the fact that she had tried to cheat the dice and failed.

“How on earth is it logical to put two nearly identical coordinates on opposite sides of each other?” she demanded. “It isn’t right!”

“First, with an infinite number of points, there’s no--pardon the pun--point in trying to guess at the system in which the coordinates are organized, if there even is one,” Adric explained. “Second, a progressive system is not necessarily the best way to organize a set of coordinates, especially on a sphere, because you’ll have discontinuities unless you assume space curves back around on itself, which even if it does, time probably does not.”

“That isn’t remotely sensible! Common sense dictates that if you want to cheat at dice, that’s how you do it!”

“Common sense applies to common mortals. Those dice belong to Death.”

Susan continued to look disgruntled, which was a problem because her hair was on the verge of irrevocably knotting itself.

“Look, we’re not in the clear yet, so can you be quiet and let me concentrate?”

Susan was silently disgruntled, which Adric supposed would have to do. Ula and Gauthier had led them out of the forest about half an hour ago onto a flat, cleanly cut field of grass where an assortment of fancily dressed aristocrats awaited them. They had set up two rows of gleaming white lawn chairs on the two longer sides of the dueling grounds, complete with massive umbrella sunshades and tables set with refreshments. Servants bustled around with trays of drinks and little snacks while also tidying the grounds and trimming the trees that were growing too close. On the field itself, each pace was chalked out and numbered, and miniature blue cones indicated boundaries that the opponents couldn’t cross.

For some reason, Ula skipped her way across the last few meters of forest before shouting breathily, “Stop the duel! The duel must stop!” and fainting. Adric found this melodramatic but Susan explained that in high society, it was the proper thing to do.

Everything that followed was a blur as the servants brought an assortment of smelling salts over while the rest of the people started speaking in stern tones at each other, though none of them reached the point of yelling. Nevertheless, with over twenty people present, the noise rose to a level where no one could hear what anyone else was saying, but they kept talking anyway.

Some time in the midst of all this, Gauthier managed to get Ula’s absurd story across, and from the resulting responses (“They can’t be Schneiders! They don’t have black hair!” “But he has Friedrich’s chin!” “She looks exactly like Sascha--the vacant eyes and terrible hair!” and other sentences ending with an exclamation mark) few were questioning their claim to be Schneiders. Rather, they were debating whether to press on with the duels anyway.

Ula had woken up the moment a servant approached, later confiding to Adric that she hated smelling salts. The three of them were now lounging in lawn chairs holding glasses of iced water, and from Ula’s satisfied look, she knew the families would set aside the duels. It was tradition. However, none of his observations answered the question of why he and Susan were here. The dice had been adamant about them staying, so Susan couldn’t teleport them back to Discworld. Or rather, she could, but the next time they rolled the dice, they’d be right back here again. Yet Ula had given him the date, and they were over a hundred and fifty years too early and on the wrong continent for whatever had happened in Washington DC, though at least they were on the right planet.

The hubbub was dying down, so Adric put his thoughts aside and watched. The Lahnsteins had withdrawn to their side of the field, save for one. “Baron von Lahnstein,” Ula named him with a quaver in her voice.

“This is a travesty!” Baron declared. Adric got from him the impression of a well-fed wolf, proud and threatening, killing not because he was driven to it but because he wanted to hunt. He stood a hand taller than most of the men present and was more muscular than an aristocrat probably ought to be, though he remained lean and moved with a grace that suggested he had acquired his strength from practical use rather than for vanity. His looks continued to differentiate him from his family in that his hair was dark brown, rolling and luxuriant as a mane, while the rest of the Lahnsteins were so stubbornly blonde they almost reached platinum. “What would our ancestors think, who laid down their lives for our honor? Would you disgrace the memory of your uncle, father? He died fighting a Schneider, and you didn’t even have the guts to avenge him, letting a chicken do your duty for you!”

“A chicken?” Adric looked at Ula for help. Now was not the time for the TARDIS translation to start malfunctioning.

Ula nodded. “Yeah, you know, bawk-bawk, lays eggs, runs around with its head cut off. Grandfather Friedrich choked on a chicken bone at dinner.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, that was five years ago. Mourning periods only extend one year past burial, and that’s if you really liked the person. I put off the black for grandmother Franziska only two months after she died because she smelled like paprika and I hate paprika, not that it really helped, because there was more black underneath for mourning Friedrich-- they died the same night--but still, it was a lot cooler in the summertime not having to wear two layers of black.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense just to wear one black outfit the whole time for both people?”

“You’re from Bavaria, dear, you wouldn’t understand.”

Baron’s father took a step forward and coughed politely into his fist. He was bulky, wrapped tightly in his suit like a water balloon about to pop. His other hand leaned against a cane, though given how thin it was, the support it offered was more mental than physical. Indeed, Baron’s father’s entire appearance conveyed the sense of one long oppressed, his hair prematurely grey with only faint streaks of brown above the ears, and as soon as he was about to speak, a severe-looking woman pulled him back into the line and took his place.

“You speak inappropriately, Baron, though I trust your father forgives you in light of the zeal with which you pursue our cause. Bernard, God rest his soul, died in a duel against Friedrich. We do not avenge deaths in the field of honor or risk sullying the memory of those who remembered that we are civilized people.”

“Nevertheless, this was a multi-duel! The code duello does not specifically address our situation!”

“What are you suggesting, Baron?” one of the Schneiders asked (“My father, Raoul,” Ula commented). “Your father has already given up his duel with my son, and as a result, I renounce my challenge as well.”

Baron inclined his head in a bow to Raoul. “And as the original challenger, I forgive Gauthier his offenses to me in honor of Adric and Susan. But Huey has not relinquished his claim on me and is not required to do so, considering the new relations are an addition to his family and not mine.”

“Indeed!” cried a young man whom Ula identified as Huey. If Baron was a wolf, Huey was one too, but more the sort that climbed onto hills and howled at the moon than the type that ate all your sheep. He was slimmer than Baron, and his features were softer, but rather than make him seem less dangerous, the comparison just made him appear more cunning, his threats concealed beneath the surface. In keeping with that impression, most of his face was hidden by a layer of coal-black stubble which served to offset and sharpen his emerald eyes, currently shooting daggers at Baron. “I do not forgive him the offense of trespassing!”

“I wish to clear myself of his false charges and teach this Schneider a lesson he won’t forget! I choose swords!”

With a wail, Ula leapt to her feet. “You forget yourselves! Brother, aren’t you concerned for Susan? She is frail and a duel could send her into fits.” She jabbed Adric’s shin with her foot. “Can you set her off?” she whispered.

Adric rolled his eyes. “Susan, she wants you to flail around and moan so everyone will force those two idiots to stop fighting.”

“Could I just slap them?”

“I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Oh fine, sister,” Huey said. “Just this once I’ll go easy on the Lahnstein dog. I shall set the combat rules as first blood.”

Ula snatched Adric’s glass of water from his hand, walked across the field, and threw the contents into her brother’s face. For good measure, she dropped the single remaining ice cube into Baron’s hair, causing him to shake it off like a wet dog. “You are both fools with heads full of steam. Just once, you men could do something nice for a lady and allow her to start preparing the welcome feast for our cousins rather than waste time watching you play with your swords.”

Huey and Baron stared at her as though they couldn’t believe their eyes. She looked down, hoping she’d grown a tail and turned into a mermaid like Lorelei, but then Baron unsheathed his sword and declared, “First blood it is! But for the sake of your sister, we’ll hurry up. I declare double-time!”

Ula stomped back and dropped onto her lawn chair with arms crossed. “That’s the trouble with brothers and lovers,” she muttered. “They take you for granted.”

“See, I don’t understand what you like about them,” Gauthier said. “That’s what proper gets you: nothing.”

“That’s not proper! I don’t understand what’s gotten into them. They almost used to get along. Then Huey disappears for a day, comes back with a broken arm and his face all bruised, and they’re both challenging people to duels every chance they get.”

“I’d be angry if Baron beat me up in the forest too. But I wouldn’t get all proper and drag everyone else into my problems. I’d just shoot him in his sleep. I imagine it should be scandalous to follow up by dragging his body around the castle with a carriage, but since Achilles did that, everyone thinks it’s all right. Bloody Greeks.”

“I know what’ll make Ula happy! Hey, Ula!” Huey called. The Schneiders were clearing the field and settling into their chairs in preparation for the duel. “You want to honor our cousins, right? I choose Adric as mediator!”

“What?” Adric sat up. Mediating between two men with swords did not sound good at all.

Ula put a hand on his arm. “Don’t worry, it’s easy. You just have to give the countdown, call foul if either of them steps off the dueling ground, and declare a winner once first blood is shed.”

“Can I call a winner before then?”

“Not unless you want the winner to duel you.”

“The winner?”

“Well, you falsely gave him the win. It looks like you think he’s too weak to win for himself.”

“Um...”

“Don’t worry, first blood means they’re aiming to cut each other, usually across the arm. And they’re both excellent with the blade, so there won’t be any body parts flying or gooey things spilling out of them.”

“Sounds fantastic.”

“It would be if they weren’t both idiots.”

Baron and Huey stood facing each other, blades drawn in typical fencing fashion. “You may proceed, Adric,” Baron announced. “A count of ten is standard here.”

“Ok. Er, ten, nine, eight...”

Huey sighed. “No, no, no. Baron declared double-time. That means you have to count twice as fast.”

“Sevensixfive--”

“No, start over!” Baron snapped. “Who speeds up in the middle of a count?”

“Tennineeightseven--”

“Too fast!” Baron’s father yelled from across the field. “Hee hee, this is fun.”

Adric felt ready to challenge someone to a duel himself. “Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one-go!” He poked Ula. “I thought double-time was supposed to make the duel end faster.”

“It does if the mediator knows what he’s doing.”

Huey and Baron lunged at each other, swords moving so quickly they were nothing more than silver blurs. Clink-clink-clink, the blades met and parted in rapid succession, the opponents circling as they fought. Then all of a sudden, Huey fell with a yelp, his foot arcing into the air as he landed on his back. The sun glinted off a single ice cube as it soared up and away. Huey’s hand hit the earth and lost its grip on his sword, letting it fly off in the opposite direction, landing beyond the nearest blue marker.

“Ula!” Huey screamed. “DAMN YOU!” But he had nothing to worry about. Baron just stood over him, looking confused and not particularly inclined to take his victory. Then he took a step forward and also slipped.

“Aaarrgh!” he cried, the sword leaving his hand before he’d even finished falling. It spun several times before cutting through an umbrella and landing point down a centimeter from the groin of an elderly woman on the Lahnstein side.

She stared at the blade, swinging back and forth like a pendulum from the spot where it’d lodged into the ground. Putting a hand over her mouth, she tittered like a high-pitched goat: “Heee-aaaaaahhh!” she said. “It’s a good thing I’m not a man, hmm?”

“Do I declare a draw?” Adric asked Ula.

“Yes!” she nodded so violently her dress bounced up and down.

He raised his voice. “Both participants have lost their weapon of choice. I declare a draw!”

“Bravo! Bravo! Excellent show!” Baron’s father clapped, so everyone else felt obligated to clap as well. Everyone except Baron and Huey. They evidently thought it was more appropriate to continue with a fist fight.

Gauthier grinned at Ula. “Oh my! How improper!” He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled as loudly as he could: “Break his nose!”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Susan announced as the two men crashed into a table on the Schneider side. She waited until Huey threw Baron in front of her and swept them both up by their ears. “While I am in no way looking forward to a welcome feast or any other silly pleasantries, I am tired of this duel business and think it would be best to set everyone straight right now. Even though neither of you understand me, I am sure my actions speak louder than words, so you will behave yourselves!” As she spoke, she dragged them into the woods, whereupon she found a little stream at the bottom of a hill and threw them into it. The Schneiders and Lahnsteins burst into applause yet again, having followed her to see what she would do.

An old Lahnstein woman in a wheelchair remarked, “I wish my idiot brother was half as interesting as her, but he’d just have dribbled on them.”

* * *

The Doctor woke to silence, and that wasn’t a good sign. Having nine fellow travelers with him, especially when they were human, meant one of them should be making trouble at all times. And if they were in the TARDIS, he should hear the TARDIS’ soothing hum whispering the ship’s status to him.

Of course, they weren’t in the TARDIS. They were in Singapore. He liked old Singapore, before they got all hung up about rules and punishments. Singapore was earthy and watery at the same time, and it had great food.

Singapore was... the TARDIS?

He was in the TARDIS!

“Jack?” he called. He was sprawled on the ground, his body hurt all over, and everyone was hiding from him: Jack had to be responsible. But how had Jack shut down the TARDIS? Jack wouldn’t shut down the TARDIS, Jack loved the TARDIS.

His head pounded, but he had to think. He took hold of the console and dragged himself to his feet. “Let’s see,” he said out loud. The sound of his voice helped him think. “I was in a pub. Yes, that’s consistent with Jack. And there was coffee and... ooooh, that waitress with no clothes. Well, she had some clothes, but it might as well not have been there for all practical purposes.” He should stop talking about naked waitresses since that would amuse Jack and encourage him to continue his game. “And they were getting violent--not the naked waitresses but everyone else--and I got knocked out! Yes. Because Jack started a bar fight.”

He stared at the dimmed column in the middle of the TARDIS. “But why am I in the TARDIS and why is it on silent running?” His eyes widened. “Silent running?” Checking the displays, they all read the same thing. “Emergency protocols! Automatically activated! That’s not good... what happened?”

A giant lever activated a video recording of what had happened around the TARDIS before it fled into the time vortex. There was a lot of screaming, a lot of people he recognized, a lot of people he didn’t recognize, and a giant stone statue destroying the island. “Not Jack’s fault then,” he concluded. “Probably.”

His mind already had several possibilities as to what the stone statue was and why it attacked Singapore. After all, there wasn’t much that could send the TARDIS running. “And without letting anyone else in,” the Doctor admonished the ship. He could track them down using the keys he’d given them, which meant his more pressing concern was to find the invaders so that he knew how to counter them when he went to rescue everyone.

“Aha!” A lock on the same energy signature emanating from the statue. Tying the travel coordinates to the scanner, he put the TARDIS back into full operation. “Here we go!” The ship roared to life, rocking and lurching as it followed the signal out of the vortex.

He was out the door as soon as the ship stopped moving, but he skidded to a halt when he found himself in a sparsely decorated room with stone walls and wooden floors littered with loose pieces of paper and pamphlets bound by string. There was a king-sized bed at one end and an antique writing desk at the other. Outside the window, a river swept its way through rolling green hills and dark forests.

“This isn’t Singapore,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” a voice came from behind him. “And that blue box wasn’t here when I left, though for that matter, neither were you.”

The matter-of-fact tone of the young man in the doorway impressed the Doctor. A little over 170 centimeters tall with unkempt blonde hair and blue eyes still as a glacier and framed by golden oval spectacles, he wore a maroon sweater and scuffed leather pants, good clothing for wandering the woods in a colder climate. A simple description of him would have been bookish, as his arms were wrapped around a rumpled stack of notes and literature, but there was so much more to him because his posture gave nothing away, not his habits and not his thoughts. He just stood and analyzed. Yet when he broke into a smile, it was like finding a sunlit clearing in the darkest heart of a wild forest. “Is that what I think it is behind you?” He leaned forward, his neutral stance shifting into one of excitement and delight.

“I really don’t think so,” the Doctor replied, moving to close the TARDIS door.

“Yes, yes it is!” He bounded past before the Doctor could stop him and entered the TARDIS. “It’s bigger on the inside! Oh, this is brilliant.”

“What?” The Doctor checked his chronometer. He was in the mid-1700s and talking to someone who expected to find a box that was bigger on the inside. Several regenerations ago, he would’ve been ecstatic, but now his interest was tempered by a touch of wariness.

The man pushed his stack of papers into the Doctor’s arms and went to investigate the console. “We’ve been arguing about the mathematical validity of folding space to contain a greater volume within an object than its dimensions would allow. The sticking point has been the possibility of extra dimensions beyond the four we physically experience!”

“Excuse me, who’s ‘we’?”

“Some friends from the university. We keep in contact. You have some of their letters.”

The Doctor staggered over to the desk and dropped the collection onto its surface. He skimmed through the top few letters. “You argue complex mathematical proofs of n-space in casual correspondence?”

To the Doctor’s relief, the young man exited the TARDIS and even closed the door behind him. “My name’s Rainart. Rainart von Lahnstein. You’re in the Holy Roman Empire, and that river out there is the Rhine. By the fact that you were checking your watch, you don’t just travel through space but through time as well, but you probably now know when you are.”

“Very good. I’m the Doctor, and I like you. You’re perceptive and you’re clever. Bit too clever, really, but so am I.”

“I assure you, I’m just a humble German citizen.”

“Really? Looks like you’re nobility to me.”

“What are titles but empty webs we spin, brushed aside by winds of change in the blink of an eye.”

“Sounds like you’re preparing for a revolution.”

“We look to the future, Doctor, not the past. The question is, based on your advanced technology, why are you wandering the past?”

“Oh that’s-- I’m just a little bit lost. I was expecting to find something that...” He hesitated. “That... I’m not even sure what I was looking for, but hey, you’re clever, maybe you can help me. Have you seen anything, I don’t know, strange, recently?”

“Even my siblings seem like strangers sometimes.”

“Not what I meant. I was tracking an energy signature of something that can distort space. Rather fearsome technology, doesn’t belong in this era. It would manifest in a form that would be called magic.”

Rainart pondered this description but at last shook his head. “Mind, I don’t pay much attention to stories like that. I dismiss them as superstitious. A little narrow-minded of me, I’ll admit, but with some of the tales that villagers have, it’s much too difficult to sift fact from fiction. I can introduce you to the family, though, and they might be more helpful.”

“I’d love to meet your family, Rainart.”

He gave him a wry smile. “The rest of my family is not like me.”

“Oh, give them some credit. They did raise you.”

“But the mind--our library raised my mind, and the university matured it.”

The Doctor followed Rainart out of his room. “And how will you introduce me? Could I be a distant cousin; I always like being a distant cousin of someone.”

“I’m afraid you’re too much like me to be a Lahnstein. I’d have a much harder time passing you off than Ula did with those strange peasants.”

“It’s beneath you to speak poorly of the lower class. And did you say strange? Strange in what way?”

Rainart paused in the middle of the hallway, nearly causing the Doctor to run into him. “I had the strangest sensation when I saw you. Almost like déjà vu but not. Now I know why. It’s the look in your eyes. That woman had the same look. It was... well, maybe I should start from the beginning. You see, there were a series of duels scheduled between my family and the Schneiders, who are feuding with us, earlier this afternoon, but one of the daughters, Ula Schneider, broke them up by bringing in two strangely dressed people and claiming them as distant cousins. What were their names, what were their names? Oh, I can’t remember. Susan! That was it. The woman was Susan and the boy...”

An insistent chiming started up, like someone ringing a bell much too hard. “Afternoon tea!” a woman cried, her voice pitched at just the frequency to feel like a piece of iron being driven through your head. “Afternoon teeeeea everyone!”

“It is not the right time for afternoon tea,” the Doctor remarked. “And I didn’t know the Germans did afternoon tea.”

“We don’t,” Rainart said, sounding for all the world like Marvin the terminally depressed robot. “That’s my sister, Elise. She dropped out of university in Britain but picked up their damned customs. And afternoon tea got delayed because of the duels, so mother pushed dinner back by three hours to accommodate.”

“Your parents sent your sister through higher education? That’s progressive of them.”

“It was mother. She wanted her daughters to get the same education as her sons, but they disowned Edwynna when she married a cowherder at sixteen, so everything came down to Elise. That’s why, even though she dropped out, she still gets coddled.”

“That wasn’t very nice, disowning your sister.”

“I argued against it, but she still comes and goes as she pleases, and it’s only mother who won’t talk to her, which to be honest, is a blessing.”

“TEA, RAINART! WHERE ARE YOU?”

Rainart flinched. “On the other hand, there’s something to be said about silencing Elise as well.”

“Shouldn’t keep them waiting. I like tea, anyway, what do you have against tea?”

“It gets boring.”

“How do sandwiches get boring?”

“RAINART! TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA!”

“Uh oh.” Rainart ducked behind the Doctor, which was an ineffective move considering how thin the Time Lord was. A woman the Doctor assumed to be Elise came marching up the staircase at the end of the hall, a wonder in a sky blue dress with white frills, the sort of color combination that conjured the image of an avalanche coming at you. Yet other than the terrifying prospect of tea, Elise seemed an enjoyable presence. She had a smile despite seeming annoyed and tended toward a plumpness that helped enhance her natural looks. He could picture her as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps forcing all the sheep to have tea parties.

“Tea missionaries,” the Doctor said as she approached. “That’d be a brilliant idea, tea missionaries.”

“I wrote a thesis about that, but the teacher failed me because the assignment was about the Medici family.”

“Ironic, as the Medici family was quite interested in the development of new ideas and the building of wealth.”

“Oooh, I like you professor.” Elise blushed.

“Who told you I was a professor?”

“You’re with Rainart, and you don’t look silly enough to be a student.”

“I told you I couldn’t pass you off as a cousin,” Rainart said.

“You!” Elise pointed at Rainart. “You! I will forgive you for being late this time, but I’m mad at you for concealing such a wonderful, learned man from us.”

“I didn’t hide him; he just arrived!”

“Nonsense. How come none of us heard him arrive?”

“The servants let him into my room during the duel.”

“Yes, the help is wonderful here.” The Doctor hoped they could move on soon, as he sensed an argument building.

“Servants are not supposed to take initiative,” Elise replied.

“Yeah, Rainart left explicit instruction. Incredibly explicit instructions. So, tea?”

Elise brightened. “Of course, the tea! How could I forget? Come on, then, Rainart, and uh...”

“The Doctor.” He performed an elaborate bow, figuring that was the best course of action. “Just call me the Doctor.”

* * *

“It’s quite lucky our family averaged ten children per generation when they built the castle,” Ula explained to Adric, “because we have all these bedrooms free. I only have five brothers and sisters, see. It goes Huey, me, Gauthier, Hildegard and Karin--they’re twins--and Louie. Louie’s only nine, and to be honest, I think he was a bit of an accident, but that’d be impolite to say to anyone else, so it’ll be our little secret.”

“Okay.”

“If you see Louie coming, run. He’s a right little terror with his slingshot.”

They were halfway down the hall when she threw open a door and led them into a pink room. It was pink. That was really the only way to describe it. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, the drapes, the bed, the wardrobe, the rugs, the tapestries, the desk, the lamps, the teddy bears big and small, the finger paintings hung over the pink fireplace, all of it was pink.

“Er,” Adric said.

“This,” Susan said, “had better be your room.”

“Hildegard and Karin used to have adjoining rooms,” Ula told him. “We thought that would be good for you and Susan. This room was Hildegard’s; it’ll make sense once you meet her.”

“What’s the other room look like?” Adric asked. “And I hope we didn’t kick anyone out.”

“No, the twins don’t get along that well, so they moved into new rooms years ago.” Ula pulled back one of the wall hangings to reveal a door. The next room continued to prove that the resemblance between Hildegard and Karin was only skin deep.

Painted brown and green, the room contained a matching set of painstakingly-carved mahogany furniture that looked like they were built around live trees. The sheets and curtains were layered and embroidered to resemble leaves, and the tapestries were all set deep in the forest with paintings from fairy tales like little red riding hood and the wolf or Goldilocks and the bears. At first, Adric thought they were chosen because they were fairy tales, but then he realized the tapestries all had one other thing in common: they all contained depictions of wild animals.

“The true heart of a child,” Susan murmured.

“Does that mean, since you’re older than me, I get this room?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“I’ll let you work out who gets which room,” Ula said. “Though I’ll be honest, it looks like she’s taken a liking to this one. Tough luck for you. But I need to help prepare your welcome dinner.”

“No chicken I hope.”

She frowned. “I do not find that funny, cousin.”

“I’d thought it was clever,” Adric said once she’d left. “I mean-- urmph!”

Susan slammed her hand over his mouth, pulling him after her until they stood between the bed and the fireplace in the one portion of the room that was a clear, open space. She took two steps to the mantel to pick up a poker and returned to his side.

“What’s going on?” he asked, his heart pounding wildly.

“Show yourself,” Susan demanded in German as she paced circles around him. He wondered when she’d picked up the phrase.

There was a span of five endless seconds in which nothing happened, and then Susan repeated her words, but this time, he didn’t hear them so much as feel them: SHOW YOURSELF.

A soft cackle filled the room, and a robed figure emerged from behind a Turkish tapestry of a nightingale singing beside a rose. Drawing closer, the newcomer’s presence seemed to expand, trying to fill the room and being countered by Susan’s stubborn refusal to fear anything, supernatural or ordinary.

“There shall be a feast soon,” the figure announced in an androgynous pitch, slightly raspy and echoing around the room. Adric noticed the person was shorter than himself, though he seemed to walk with back slightly hunched. A hood hid the figure’s face and identity.

“Is that a threat?” Adric asked.

The figure pointed at Susan. Adric had hoped to get a hint of his identity based on the appearance of his hand, but he wore black leather gloves. “They were fools to believe you a fool. You are more right in the head than the entire household combined, and you are more real than those who mock and pity you.”

THEN LET’S NOT PLAY GAMES. YOU CAN UNDERSTAND ME WHEN I SPEAK LIKE THIS.

“Of course, though that voice doesn’t work on me.”

YOU CAME OUT READILY ENOUGH.

“I was intrigued. Go on, tell me to dance a jig, and I’ll show you how readily I obey commands.”

TELL ME WHO YOU ARE.

“No. In my own time. See? Perhaps I should ask who you are, one who does not speak our tongue but knows a language much more primeval.”

TELL ME WHO YOU ARE.

“A one-hit wonder, aren’t you? You can call me... vampire.” The figure cackled again, drawing closer.

“‘There shall be a feast soon,’” Adric quoted. “That was a threat! You’re going to eat us!”

YOU’RE NOT A REAL VAMPIRE. I’VE MET VAMPIRES, AND THEY DON’T SMELL LIKE YOU.

A soft giggle answered them. “But I’m a vampire of sorts, feeding on the vitality of youth, swept along by time.”

“What do you want? No, wait, you know about Susan. That means you were at the duel!”

“I witnessed the duel, yes. Was I present amongst the Lahnsteins and Schneiders? You don’t think I’m dull enough to answer such an obvious trap, do you? As for what I want, I wish to speak with you.”

The vampire was within striking distance now, but Susan raised her poker. The tip vanished into the darkness beneath the hood. He stopped his advance but didn’t otherwise show any signs of concern.

I COULD PUSH YOUR HOOD BACK.

“But you won’t. Look deep down into me--you’re real enough to do that. I’m not evil.”

EVIL IS SUBJECTIVE, BUT THERE IS THE TOUCH OF ANOTHER WORLD UPON YOU.

“Which is just a fact. What are facts but the tools with which people build great lies?”

LIKE YOURSELF. IT’S TAKEN A LOT OF SLEEPLESS NIGHTS TO CONVINCE YOURSELF YOU’RE A VAMPIRE.

“Think of it as a metaphor. A metaphor more telling and useful than most. Besides, when you’ve seen what I have, sleep is overrated. Now, I don’t know who you really are--though I don’t think you’re hapless cousins from Bavaria--but I’m warning you that I intend to end this feud between Schneider and Lahnstein. Your presence serves my ends, but if you try to make the situation worse, I will... take you out of the equation.”

“Why would we want to help this silliness continue? This feud’s the stupidest thing I’ve seen, and I’ve seen people do a lot of stupid things.”

“Good. We must cooperate or perish. The fate of the world depends upon it. Think on that. I have seen the storm that approaches, though the sky may look clear now. Think on that and decide whether you will help.”

Susan lowered the poker. NO, THINK ON THIS: THE FATE OF EVERY WORLD DEPENDS UPON THIS. IF WE FAIL, THE UNIVERSE DIES.

The vampire contemplated them for a moment before shrugging. “And what’s the universe to me? I haven’t seen the universe. The universe has never done anything for me. No, it’s this world I care about, and it’s this world I intend to save.”

THAT’S RATHER SELFISH OF YOU.

“Well, vampires aren’t exactly known for charity, are they?” He let out that echoing cackle one last time and swept away, disappearing behind the tapestry and leaving no hint of his existence except for a few dying ripples of cloth.

Susan dropped the poker and ran over to throw back the tapestry, but the wall behind was solid stone, and the vampire was nowhere to be found. “We’ll have to be on the lookout for secret passages,” Susan said.

“Why would the fate of the universe depend on these two families?”

Susan patted down her hair. “I don’t know, but if you want to hide a secret, the best place is with family. That’s true for anyone, but with nobility, well, you could find a thousand secrets and still not be sure you’ve uncovered the one you need.”

To Chapter 21: In Which the Doctor Medicates Many People

Back to Chapter 19: Fairy Tails

Summary: Fate drops Susan, Adric, and Ten in the middle of a feud between two aristocratic German families in the 18th century because, let's face it, fate's a bit of a bugger.

"I will!" said the Earth. "For all I've created returns unto me."

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 23:16:04 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 19
Fairy Tails

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Everywhere, words have real power. Perhaps not the cosmic power ascribed to them by dwarfs (although it's difficult to tell), but one word in the right place at the right time can alter how things are perceived; it can open minds, close them, drive them mad, or keep them sane. A single word can start a war, and a single word can end it^[*] (Editor’s note: yes, that is a freaking footnote in LIVEJOURNAL. Scroll, baby, scroll. Or, fine, we were nice and added code to let you click. CLICK IT.).

Certain words uttered in the right settings by the right people can summon gods or demons or even Death himself. These words have direct magical power, but it's often the case that the ones that don't are the ones that change the world.

* * *

"Your name is Emerson Keys, isn't it?" said Carrot as he reentered the Commander's office. He offered his hand in greeting.

"That's me, yessir," said the boy, shaking it. Carrot examined the kid quickly, noting first impressions. Small stature, fair-haired--not blonde exactly, but a very light brown, and wavy--and delicate, almost womanly hands.

"I don't think I've met you before," Carrot continued. Angua had remarked earlier that this was strange; Carrot knew everybody.

"New in town, sir," said Emerson.

"Are you sure you're old enough to be a Watchman?" Carrot was skeptical. It was difficult to determine how old the boy was.

"I'm older than I look." Emerson shrugged. "My mama's always told me being a copper is a respectable job, and I've heard the city is the best place to learn how to be one. I completed the training course, sir," he added reproachfully.

Not ours, though, thought Carrot. The kid had apparently graduated from some school in Genua. Carrot hadn't even known there was a Watch force in Genua--at least not a real one, because most cities had gangs of bullies masquerading as a police force--but then, it was a long way away, and news traveled slowly.

"When can I see the Commander?" said Emerson.

"There's a lot going on right now," said Carrot. "I told him you wanted to meet with him, but I think he considers you pretty low priority." He watched carefully, but Emerson didn't seem to be offended by that, or indeed show much of a reaction at all.

"Should I wait here then?"

Carrot glanced at the clock on the wall. He didn't have time to sit and wait with the boy, and he doubted Mr. Vimes would appreciate a stranger being left alone in his office. "I don't think so. Come with me, Mr. Keys."

Carrot made sure Emerson was following him, then made his way briskly downstairs to the main floor. He glanced around, scoping out who was around. There weren't many people in the Watch house today--there was so much going on that even with everyone pulling double shifts, there weren't enough Watchmen to go around. He ruled out Constable Visit on the basis that he didn't want to scare the boy off. Sergeant Detritus was there but looked about to leave, and anyway, Detritus wasn't the best candidate for the position of mentor. A door opened to the right and Sergeant Cheery walked in, humming to herself. Carrot's face lit up.

"Cheery!" he said brightly. "We have a new recruit all the way from Genua! He didn't go through the training program here, so show him around, will you? Just take a couple minutes, let him know how we do things, then send him home for the day. He starts tomorrow."

Cheery looked surprised but nodded her agreement and introduced herself to Emerson. Satisfied, Carrot turned.

"I have to go deal with the people in the cells," he told the Watchman at the desk. "If Commander Vimes returns, tell him I'll be back shortly and that I have something to discuss with him."

"Yes, Captain," said the constable. Carrot nodded his acknowledgment, walked over to the steps leading down, and very nearly collided with a wildly unlikely man of the sort for whom there are not enough adjectives in existence. "Interesting" might be a good start, but it was difficult to decide where to go from there.

"Ah," said the man, "I begin to see the obvious flaw in this plan." A petit girl behind him made an exasperated noise.

"You must be the Doctor," said Carrot, smiling and holding out his hand. The Doctor shook it, smiling amiably.

"I am indeed," he said. "And you are?"

"Carrot! They're trying to escape! Stop them!" said Sergeant Colon, who was only now making it to the bottom of the stairwell. People like Fred Colon were not built to be sprinters, even if the sprinting distance was only the length of a room.

"Does it look like we're going anywhere at the moment?" snapped an irate-looking young man who Carrot thought was probably Owen Harper (Carrot always did his homework).

"It's all right, I'll take it from here!" said Carrot, waving to Colon. "You and Nobby can get back to your post."

Colon called back an affirmative and Carrot turned his attention back to the group in front of him, smiling pleasantly.

"I'm Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. I was actually just coming to tell you all that you're free to go," he said.

"Oh really? That's great! We'll be off now, then!" the Doctor said brightly.

"What?" said Owen. "Are you kidding?"

"Now hold on," said Carrot. "Before you run off, I wanted to ask you; do you have a place to stay? You're clearly new to the city...."

The Doctor frowned, tilted his head, and looked thoughtful. "Doctor," Sarah Jane hissed, "we're not staying!"

"Oh now don't be hasty, Sarah Jane. We'll have to stay one night at least! No, Captain, we have not found a place yet. Any recommendations?"

"I know of a place or two that might have rooms open," said Carrot. He motioned for them to follow and strode back out of the stairwell. The Doctor cheerfully followed and, after some glance-exchanging and shrugging, the rest did as well.

* * *

"We should head back to the Watch House," said Vimes. "Probably Carrot has released your friends by now, and if we're lucky they've stuck around long enough for us to get back."

"They won't have. The Doctor never sticks around," muttered Donna.

"That's a little confusing, isn't it? He's the Doctor, but you're the doctor," said Vimes, eyeing House. Donna eyed both of them.

"Not really," said House. Vimes raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting more, but House, it seemed, was lost in thought. They turned onto yet another long, winding street that looked much the same as all the others--dirty, ancient, and containing a wealth of strange folk milling about. Donna took in everything, trying to memorize the route.

When it became clear that nothing more was forthcoming from House, Vimes didn't bother to push it, seemingly content to let the conversation lapse into silence. Donna hadn't known either of them long at all, but she thought it quite clear that they were made from the same mold. She approved of them both, which was rare, but she couldn't stick around.

The walk back to the Watch House wasn't far and Donna needed an escape route before they got there as she had to keep track of even more people. There were definitely some things she wanted to check out about this place, and if she knew the Doctor--and she thought she did even though his face was different at the moment--they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. She had a good sense of direction and there would be plenty of time to find them again later.

The chance arrived sooner than she expected in the form of a wide-eyed, slightly twitchy looking man in a copper's uniform. Vimes sighed heavily as he saw the man running down the street towards them.

"Sir! I'm so glad I found you! It was only by the grace of the Great God Om--"

Vimes interrupted him. "Yes, Constable Visit, what is it?"

"That's Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets, sir," said Constable Visit reproachfully.

"Of course it is. What's the matter?"

"There's a commotion down by the Palace, sir! They're sending out the clacks message now! All available officers to report to the Palace!"

"What sort of commotion? Can't Carrot take care of it?"

"Carrot's not around, sir! Busy, sir! They say the Patrician might be in danger!"

"What!" Vimes shouted. "Why didn't you say so?" He took off running in the opposite direction.

"Hey! Wait up! You're not ditching me here!" shouted House as he hobbled off after him with impressive speed. Constable Visit followed after them, and Donna simply stayed there, wondering if they'd notice she wasn't coming. They didn't.

She shrugged her shoulders and surveyed the area. There had to be something more she could do for those poor sick people.... Maybe do a few hours of work in exchange for some food or blankets?

About half a block further up the street was an intersection. She headed towards it, feeling that it was a promising place to begin.

The street she turned onto was lined with peddlers and fruit stands and, feeling pleased with herself, she stopped at the first stall that she liked the look of.

"Excuse me, would you perhaps be willing to--" she began.

"No freebies!" said the frowning man behind the counter.

"I wasn't going to ask for a freebie," said Donna crossly.

"Suuuure, lady. That's what they all say. But lemme tell ya', I can smell a leech when I see one!"

"Look, you terrible little man, that doesn't even make sense! And I wasn't going to ask you to give me anything! How dare you imply such a thing!" She stamped her foot for good measure.

"Just run along before I'm forced to make you go away," the man growled.

Donna was very offended, but she wasn't stupid. She blew a raspberry at the man, turned on her heel, and walked away.

"Honestly," she said to herself. "This place doesn't make an ounce of sense."

She next stopped by a stand apparently selling candles, soap, and other fat-based items, but got a similar reaction. She was stomping away when an older man stopped her and said, "If you don't show them you got coin straight up, they ain't gonna be receptive." He grinned at her, showing a mouth containing only a few brown teeth.

"Uh, thanks," she said, flinching away in disgust. She turned and left without giving him a chance to say anything else. Unfortunately, she wasn't watching where she was going, and she smacked right into a tall woman. "Excuse me," she muttered in a tone that wasn't very polite at all.

"Hello Miss, I'm Constable Sally von Humpeding, and I think you'd better come with me," said the tall woman. Donna finally looked up and noted belatedly that the woman was dressed in a copper uniform.

Christ, are they everywhere or something? she thought to her self. Out loud, she said, "What for?"

"I've been watching you, and you've been acting very suspicious. We've had some unpleasant things happening lately and I'm under orders to bring in anyone suspicious for questioning. I do believe you qualify."

"Oh, no, I am so not doing this again!" Donna darted around the woman and took off as fast as she could, thanking her lucky stars she wasn't wearing tall heels.

"Hey! Come back here!" she heard Constable von Humpeding call as she took chase.

Not many people knew this about Donna, but she was actually quite a fast sprinter. She was no good on the long distances, but she had strong legs that allowed her to make a good dash when she had to. The Doctor had been impressed.

Her good initial burst of speed coupled with the element of surprise meant that Donna was able to turn the nearest corner before the Constable ever got moving.

She leapt over a crack in the road and sprinted forward, then turned the next corner she came across onto another bustling street. She chanced a look behind her and nearly ran into a man wheeling a large cart.

"Sorry!" she shouted behind her as she ran on, dodging people.

"Stop!" she heard the Constable shout from behind her and she picked up another burst of speed, turning two more corners at random.

This wasn't going to last. She could feel herself wearing down already. Oh, buggerall, she thought crossly. She looked about furiously for a place to hide, but for a city full of nooks and crannies, everything seemed surprisingly unsuitable.

She was still running, though slowing down drastically, when something down another street caught her eye. Overwhelmingly curious, she stopped and backtracked.

That's odd, she thought to herself.

The thing she was looking at was a forest, right in the middle of the city. The city didn't seem to mind. Derelict houses and other structures surrounded it and almost seemed to fade into it, as if they suddenly realized they couldn't exist there after all. The bustling crowd seemed to avoid it naturally, without thinking about it, perhaps without even realizing it. None of them were looking at it--in fact, they were looking everywhere but the forest, and they parted naturally in front of Donna so her line of sight was unobstructed, like the sea before Moses.

The forest itself was confusing to the eyes. It appeared to go on forever even though Donna could see where it ended, only a block or so wide. Fog curled out of it and mixed with the natural damp of the city, but instead of the dark, dirty haze that perpetually hung around Ankh-Morpork, it was a cool, light mist., thick but refreshing. Donna imagined she could feel it even from where she stood more than a block away.

The wood was ancient and gnarly, the branches and roots entwined with each other so thickly that she could not see past even the first line of trees.

As the sounds of the city faded the forest appeared to come closer without ever moving, until the stretch of cobble-stoned street between her and it gave off the impression of being no distance at all. Donna thought she could hear sounds emanating from within the forest, a hypnotically pleasing chime-like sound.

At that moment she wanted nothing more than to go to it.

She took a step. Then a voice rang out, shouting at her. She turned to look, and--

Shit! Corporal von Humpeding was sprinting at her. She turned and ran, but this time she didn't get far; the Corporal had gained too much ground and caught her in a flying tackle.

"Oi!" she shouted. "You don't have to try to kill me!"

"You're under arrest!"

"I bloody well am not!"

"Yes you are, I'm arresting you!"

"Look, I've already been arrested once today and that's quite enough."

"Wait, what?"

Sally stood up and Donna followed, wiping the dirt off herself in the process. "I wasn't doing anything wrong anyhow. I was just seeing if I could work for a couple hours in exchange for some food or something."

"I doubt you'd have much luck with that lot. What's this about already having been arrested? Were you part of that big group they brought in earlier?"

"Yes, and I've been released, so kindly stop chasing me all over the place and manhandling me."

"Ah, my apologies. I'm under orders to bring in anyone acting suspiciously, you know," Sally said.

"You've managed to get me completely lost anyway. Where am I?"

"Quarry Lane. Is there somewhere you need to be? I can take you there. You can call me Sally, by the way."

"Well, I suppose I probably should be getting back to the barracks, see how they're doing," said Donna, tapping her chin.

"The barracks? Why there?"

"I'm helping. I'll explain on the way if you like," said Donna in a very no-nonsense tone, and then turned sharply on her heel.

* * *

Wilson yelped softly when something small and heavy knocked against his leg.

"Watch it, mister!" said a gruff voice from around waist-height. A bewildered downward look identified the source as an absurdly hairy child mostly encased in iron. Wilson adjusted part of this assessment when angry, beady eyes glared up at him from a face that could not possibly belong to even the most unfortunate child. The entire exchange last less than three seconds, but it left Wilson frozen as the--whatever it was--continued on its way.

"What?-- Sorry?" he managed belatedly.

"I think he's well out of hearing range by now," Archimedes commented mildly. "Good try, though."

"What was that?" Wilson said in a stage-whisper.

Archimedes shrugged. "The world has seen stranger things."

"Yeah? Not much, I expect."

The other man wasn't paying attention anymore and had instead resumed walking down the busy street. Wilson followed. "Look," he said, pointing upwards at a nearly 90 degree angle. Wilson craned his neck and squinted against the sun, which was hot and high in the sky. "What do you suppose that is?" Archimedes was pointing at one of the most illogical structures Wilson had ever seen. It was ridiculously tall and slightly crooked as well, like it was taunting gravity, daring it to try something.

"Wow," Wilson said. Then, feeling that this was perhaps not sufficient, he added, "Looks more like modern art than a building."

"I wonder what's up there?" said Archimedes.

Wilson squinted up at it critically. "You know, I think I'd rather not find out. I can't even imagine the vertigo I would get from such a position," he said. Then he tripped over something. If this is another hairy armored midget I am going to-- to-- I'm going to do something really stupid, he thought as he flung his arms out to stop the onrushing cobblestones. He managed to avoid serious injury , but he banged his elbow pretty badly and by the time he'd regained his bearing a stern-looking woman was standing over him with a raised eyebrow and Archimedes was smiling amicably at her.

He noted that the thing he had tripped over was a very large dog, and this helped to calm him. Dogs were familiar. The dog, which in addition to being very large was also very sleek and dark brown with big, floppy ears. Wilson scrambled to his feet.

"I'm really terribly sorry about that. I'm normally not so spacey, I swear, I've just been a bit distracted lately. Oh, what a cute dog! What's her name?" he said.

"Spot," was all he got in response. He stared.

".... But she doesn't have any." The dog woofed loudly and gruffly.

"Hmmm?"

Wilson gave up and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"We're very sorry for causing you trouble, madam," said Archimedes.

"Genevieve!" called an unconventionally handsome man, tall, thin, and perhaps in his early thirties, as he jogged up to the group. The woman put a hand to her forehead and let out the unmistakable sigh of the long-suffering. Wilson felt something of a kinship.

"Yes, Law?" she said. "Where have you been?"

"I must've gotten lost," said the man, switching to a slow gait and adjusting his sunglasses as he approached. "Big city. Who didja find?" He nodded at Wilson and Archimedes.

"Nobody. We had an accident. I were just about to go."

"Ah. Well. Hallo there. My name is Joshua Law. My associate here is Genevieve West, and I mention this because I'm sure she hasn't said a thing." The man turned a blinding smile on them and offered a hand.

Wilson shook it. "Err, James Wilson, and this is Archimedes. We're not from around here," he said nervously.

"What a coincidence! Neither are we," said Law.

"And we really should be on our way," cut in Genevieve, who was already walking in the opposite direction.

"Oh, we're terribly sorry, we don't mean to keep you," said Archimedes. The dog barked once, loudly. Wilson jumped.

"Ah well." Law shrugged and turned to follow her. "It was nice to meet you," he called over his shoulder.

Wilson and Archimedes watched them walk away.

"Well," Archimedes said after a moment, "they were interesting folk."

"Err, yeah," said Wilson. "I must be really tired. I can't seem to keep up with current events well enough. I'm sure I came off as an idiot."

"Now now, it's fine I'm sure. Anyway, we should really be finding the others, shouldn't we?"

"Ah. Right. Um. I have no idea where to even start. I doubt I could even find my way back to the TARDIS at this point."

"This city is like a giant maze, isn't it? Fascinating, though! So advanced."

Wilson glanced around at the ramshackle wooden, thatched buildings and the horse-drawn carriages. "Err, right," he said. "Doesn't seem that much different from where you came from to me."

* * *

"Why do you have to stay and chat with every moron who comes into your line of sight?" growled Genevieve as she and Law made their way down a busy street.

"Don't be so uptight, dearie, I was just making conversation. Who knows what I might find out?" said Law off-handedly. He strolled along casually with his hands in his pockets and his sunglasses slipping down his nose, dressed somewhat bizarrely in brightly colored trousers, t-shirt, and vest, with shaggy brown hair that was mostly covered by a forest green beret. Although he was clearly over six feet tall, this was understated by his slightly slouched posture and unassuming, friendly demeanor.

This was all in direct contrast to Genevieve, who cut a severe figure, dressed in greys and dark blues, and also tall but with a ramrod straight back and a no-nonsense expression. She had light curls in her brown, shoulder-length hair, but while on anyone else the style might have worked to soften the overall appearance, on Genevieve it did the opposite. She was beautiful, but the kind of beauty you only dared to admire from a very great distance.

Spot the dog padded along silently next to Genevieve, taking no special notice of her surroundings

"It is not uptight to wish that you would behave for five minutes. We are going to be late now, because of you. This is very important!"

"Hey, hey, you're hardly new anymore. You've been with them for three years now. You don't have to worry so much about making a good impression."

"Not all of us are content with just strolling through life, Law. And not all of us get everything just thrown in our laps. Most of us have to work for it." Genevieve's shoulders were tense and squared. Law sighed.

"Look, babe--"

"Do not ever call me that," Genevieve hissed.

"Whatever, Gen, look--"

"My name is Genevieve. Try it."

"Genevieve, that's way too long a name, you definitely need a cute nickname. I quite like Genny myself. I could call you Vee."

"If you ever call me that you won't live to see the next sunrise."

They turned a corner onto a slightly less populated street that was the quickest route into the heart of the Shades.

"You really need to lighten up, Genevieve. Acting like you have a stick up your ass isn't going to impress the Boss," Law said and adjusted his sunglasses.

"How I act does not concern you in the slightest. And neither does anything I do."

"C'mon, babe, lighten up!"

"I will end you!"

"If you do that, babe, we'll be even later."

* * *

Vimes knew he shouldn't, but he felt a thrill as he bolted through the streets. The sun was high in the sky, sweat was pouring down the back of his neck, and the chase was on.

Granted, he wasn't chasing a criminal, but running towards the Patrician's Palace trying to beat the clock and get there in enough time that no harm would come to anyone was almost as good.

He was vaguely aware of House limping along somewhere behind him, shouting for him to wait up, but he considered that the man was resourceful enough to find his own way there. If he wasn't, surely he could at least find his way back to the Watch House.

Vimes leapt over a random beggar and wove his way through the busy streets. When he glanced up he could see the Watch's semaphore towers blinking furiously, and the thrill of the chase rushed through him like a breaking wave, refreshing and exhilarating.

The Patrician's Palace wasn't all that far away though, and that was probably a good thing because Vimes wasn't as young as he once was and being Commander meant that he didn't get as much exercise either.

He arrived after only five minutes and a predictable scene of chaos met his eyes, but it didn't look like the dangerous one he'd expected. There were lots of coppers milling about and also lots of civilians because in Ankh-Morpork everyone likes free entertainment, and everything counts as free entertainment if it's on the street. He had expected to see something indicating immediate danger, but since he didn't he stood there and waited for something to make sense.

He didn't have to wait long. Sergeant Angua pushed through the crowd, followed by Sergeant Detritus, who didn't have to push--people will naturally make way for a massive troll coming at them. Detritus was carrying someone of small stature, who looked even smaller against the troll.

"Angua. What's going on?" said Vimes. "This doesn't look like the emergency I was told was happening."

"It's not. People panicked for no reason. This boy here--" she indicated the boy Detritus was carrying, who looked extremely miffed, "--broke into the Palace and was making his way up to the Patrician's office. He wasn't being terribly subtle about it, though. One of the guards on the first level alerted the rest of the Palace, which means he was spotted pretty quickly. He still got pretty far up, but luckily Detritus was just arriving for guard duty and he quite literally ran right into him."

"That's sort of pathetic."

Angua shrugged. Vimes took a closer look at the struggling boy and raised an eyebrow. Huh, he through. He's dressed like a boy, but that is definitely not a boy. And surely Angua with her sense of smell knew that; nothing much got by her. Which meant that she didn't see any reason to announce that she knew the intruder's real gender.

At that moment House, whom Vimes had all but forgotten about, came huffing and limping up behind him.

"Hah!" he said, after pausing a second to catch his breath. "Is that kid trying to dress like a boy? Because that is definitely a girl."

Vimes sighed. So much for that.

"Yes, thank you Dr. House." He sighed. Then, to Angua and Detritus, he said, "What's her name? Has she said anything?"

"She won't talk to us," said Angua. "But I didn't really expect her to."

"Of course. Well, take her back to the Watch House, will you? Put someone on her more competent than Colon and Nobby. We don't want her escaping. I'll be back there shortly; I just have to speak to Vetinari."

"What about me? Are you just going to leave me here all by my lonesome to get lost in this big, ugly city?" said House.

"You can go with Sergeant Angua and she can hook you back up with your friends, or if you like you can follow me. I'll be going back to the barracks later," said Vimes, not in any mood to deal with inanity.

"Well, as much as I love a beautiful woman, I think I'll come with you. Interesting things seem to follow you, don't they?" House snickered.

"Well don't expect anything interesting to happen soon. You'll be waiting in the lobby while I talk with the Patrician."

* * *

Captain Carrot strode along with the Doctor, Sarah Jane, Owen, and Tosh following him. The Doctor was pointing out things and yammering about them with enthusiasm, and Sarah Jane's eyes followed his finger with obvious wonder. Owen just looked grumpy and was resolutely not looking where the Doctor was indicating, and Tosh seemed lost in her own world, staring at the people who passed her.

"There's a very nice place where I stayed when I first came to the city," said Carrot when the Doctor paused for breath. "That's where I'm taking you."

"Oh? What sort of place is it?" said the Doctor brightly.

"Very nice, good people, reasonable rates. It's run by a very friendly lady named Mrs. Rosemary Palm, she heads the Seamstresses Guild."

"Seamstresses, huh?" said the Doctor.

"Okay, really, why are we sticking around?" groused Owen.

"Don't be a party pooper now," said the Doctor. "Have a sense of adventure!"

"I sort of agree with Owen actually," Tosh interjected. "We really need to be off. We have a job to do, and someone's life depends on us."

"It'll be fine, it's all right! End of the line and all that."

"What?"

"We're going there."

"You are making no sense at all," said Owen. He crossed his arms crossly.

"He never makes sense," said Sarah Jane in a stage whisper. "You learn to ignore the filler, and there's a lot of it, because he's always talking."

"Now, now, Sarah, I do not at all!" said the Doctor.

"You do so," she retorted.

"It's just a couple blocks away now," said Carrot.

"Oh good!" said Sarah Jane. "I'm really looking forward to sitting somewhere comfortable for once! And I'm starving."

"For once, you and I are in agreement," said Owen. "Can we stop somewhere quickly and get something to eat?"

"There are a couple of street stands the next block over."

"Great!" said Sarah Jane.

Owen wasn't picky--he chose the first stall they came across and started pulling change out of his pocket and pointing at things.

"How much can I get for, uh, $1.61?" he said. The stall attendant got very excited at the sight of the unfamiliar coinage and started offering up slightly old vegetables.

"How come they don't mind that it's not Ankh-Mopork money?" Sarah Jane asked the Doctor.

The Doctor shrugged, but Carrot replied, "As long as it's metal, most people don't care. I don't really understand it myself."

Owen collected a nice armful of vegetables and some fruit and handed over his coins. The man behind the stall took them quickly, like he was afraid Owen would change his mind, and started looking them over carefully. Owen turned around and shrugged.

"Give me that," said Sarah Jane, and stole an apple.

"Hey! That's mine!"

"You can't possibly eat that much and you know it."

"I could try!"

"Hush, children, don't fight now," said the Doctor.

"I'll take you to Mrs. Palm's place now, if that's all right," said Carrot. "I really have to get back to the Watch House."

"Of course, we don't mean to keep you," said the Doctor, smiling. He flipped his scarf over his shoulder and marched off in a random direction.

"Uh, Doctor, I think it's the other way," Sarah Jane called.

"Quite right, Sarah Jane! Thank you very much!" said the Doctor.

It wasn't until they reached the large building that was apparently Mrs. Palm's place that Owen noticed Tosh was no longer with them and spoke up.

"Oh no!" said Carrot. "I'll put out a notice if you like! I can't believe I got her lost, oh, I feel terrible!"

"Don't worry, Captain," said the Doctor brightly. "She's a bright girl, she can take care of herself!"

* * *

Oh shit, thought Tosh. How did I get separated from everyone? I just wanted something to eat!

She hadn't meant to get lost, she really hadn't. She was sort of intimidated by this place, this strange city with its strange people and strange way of life. It was in many respects similar to Earth, or perhaps fifteenth century Earth, if there was a God and he was a science fiction enthusiast who took everything a lot more literally than would be normal.

Either way, she had only just stopped when she'd been called over by a very insistent sausage salesman, and in the five minutes it took her to convince the man there was no hope of selling her one, the others had wandered far enough that she now had no idea where they were.

There had to be an easy way out of this situation. Maybe if she could find another Watchman, he could take her back to the Watch House, and that would at least be a start.

She started walking at random, taking in the city and almost enjoying herself with the exploration, all the while looking out for anyone in a copper's uniform. Even after over fifteen minutes, however, she still hadn't seen any, and she was beginning to get a little anxious. She had no idea when they were going to be leaving this place and although she knew it was completely irrational, she still had a slight fear of being left behind.

Tosh was crossing a moderately busy intersection when she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look, she saw nothing out of the ordinary--or, what passed for ordinary here at any rate.

She dismissed it and kept on, but at the next intersection the same thing happened and this time when she looked she was confronted by an ancient forest growing right in the middle of the city.

She stared at it, baffled. It almost seemed to stare back.

She took a step towards it, and now she thought she could hear something, voices, coming from inside. She took another step.

The closer Tosh got, the less aware she was of her surroundings, and the more focused she became on the forest. The gnarled roots seemed to shift heavily aside to make a path for her as she approached, and the twisted branches reached out to her in a way that seemed almost welcoming. She was overcome by curiosity, and by wonder. What was such a thing doing here, of all places? She had to find out.

Without any real memory of the moving process, she found herself standing right in front of the tree line. Somehow, she couldn't really see into the forest, despite the inviting path that was there for her. Mist and fog rolled out and felt pleasantly cool against her face.

The voices called her. Without thinking, for once without considering the consequences, without being suspicious, she closed her eyes and stepped forward.

When she opened them again, the city was gone. Trees surrounded her on all sides, and the pleasant coolness had already started to become something colder. The forest was dark and its canopy let in no light from the sun above, but there was still a glow that was eerie, but enough to see by. She could not locate the source.

She heard laughter. The voices that had drawn her near were laughing almost merrily, but there was an undertone now that she couldn't identify but didn't quite like.

Unsure what to do, she took another step forward, looking around now for a way out. She decided she didn't like this place after all, and wondered what had possibly possessed her to waltz so casually into a strange forest in the middle of a city where it clearly did not belong.

A few more steps and suddenly the forest opened up and she was standing in a clearing. All around her were dancing lights and voices, and mixed in with the soft laughter was singing.

Follow me in the twilight of this slow summer night, for a while.

The song was soft, slow, melancholy, and the slightly dazed feeling she'd felt entering the forest was starting to come back.

Let me tell you a tale that's never before now been told.

The lights drew closer and she saw they were some sort of lantern, and each was held by a smallish flying creature, bobbing back and forth on the light breeze. The voices came from them.

I can take you back to a time before those memories. Only you have the power to decide.

The song ended there, but the laughter did not. Tosh found herself nodding, although she wasn't sure what she was agreeing to.

One of the creatures, slightly larger than the rest, floated forward. It, like the others, was humanoid, but had a strangely elongated head, dark, large, opalescent eyes, and a long torso. Its arms were shorter than a proportionate human's would be, but the legs were long and slender and accented by a long, wispy tail that curled and twitched and ended in a long tuft of fur. Everything about it was longer, more graceful, than a human, and its wings were nearly transparent. They seemed to have their own shine, as well, like their skin produced a soft glow naturally. We are the iele, it whispered.

"Yes?" was all she could manage. She felt dizzy. The moistness of the air and the soothing sound of the laughter were hypnotizing.

We would like you to come with us. We can show you many things, said the creature. Its tail twitched forward, then glided back.

"Yes," she gasped.

We would be very pleased to help you. I am Vie, and I am the ruler of this forest, which is called Baia.

"Yes," she said again, then passed out.

* * *

Alice the cat was stealthily following Carrot and the rest of the group, and so she was the only one who noticed Tosh, who had been trailing slightly behind the rest in order to take in the sights, getting waylaid by one of the only people she never accepted food from. In fact, she always stayed well clear of this particular sausage salesman. A cat's sense of smell is well-developed, and in this particular case that was not an advantage. She could smell all the bizarre and often unidentifiable ingredients that went into those sausages.

Tosh wisely refused the man's offer of a sausage in a bun for half off, but it took her several minutes to shake off the insistent man. Alice debated letting her go and following Carrot, who was much more likely to produce treats, but in the end curiosity won out and she stayed and waited for Tosh.

Because of this, Alice was the only one who witnessed Tosh entering the giant and clearly magical forest, and she was the only one who followed.

* * *

"Look, I need to know where the rest of my group is," said Donna as she and Sally walked along together.

"No worries, I think Captain Carrot was supposed to deal with them. I can send a clacks down to the Watch House, and if they're still there they'll get it directly. Otherwise someone at the House can deliver the message."

"Clacks?"

"See those big flashing towers on top of some of the buildings? The ones with the shutters?" Sally pointed up to the rooftop of the Thieves Guild, where there was a small clacks tower.

"Yeah," Donna nodded.

"They're used to send messages really quickly! They're fairly new technology."

"Ah," said Donna, eyeing them dubiously.

"We--the Watch, that is--have our own private towers within the city. So do most of the larger guilds," said Sally. "By the way, I've been meaning to ask you; what made you stop like that, back there? When I was chasing you. You looked like you'd seen a ghost."

"Oh, yeah, that was really weird. Is there, er, is there a forest in the middle of the city?"

"What?" Sally laughed. "No! It would hardly fit. This city isn't all that big actually, it's just very densely populated."

"Well, that's what I saw. A great bleeding forest sitting cool as you please between two blocks. And don't tell me I'm crazy, because I know I'm not."

Sally stared.

"Um," she said. "Hang on...."

"It was all misty and there were voices or something coming from it. Totally weird."

"Hang on, you saw the Laughing Forest?"

"I suppose it could have been laughter, yeah."

"But that's a myth! It's not even a common one!"

"Well, what I saw wasn't a myth, and I can guarantee you I don't know any of your myths. I'm not from around here."

"It's pretty vague. It's a really old story, so people just kind of make up the details, but basically it says that there's a mysterious force residing in Ankh-Morpork that doesn't like all the crowds and people and noise. Occasionally it rises up and sort of... steals people."

Donna raised an eyebrow. "The mystical force steals people?"

"Well, people disappear and never are seen again, you know, that sort of thing. They say it appears in the form of an enchanting forest that draws people in. And they say there's always the sound of laughter emanating from it, which is why it's called the Laughing Forest." Sally shivered a little.

"If they're never seen again, how does anyone know these things?"

"That is the question, isn't it? Everyone thinks of that, no one has really looked into it. I mean, it's just a myth."

"Well, I saw it, and I'm still here."

"Uh huh."

Donna got the feeling Sally didn't quite believe her. She felt she ought to be indignant, but she couldn't bring herself to really care.

Laughing Forest, huh.

As they walked, the barracks of the sick loomed up before them.

^[*] (yes, you can click to go back)
Though more usually it's a great many words, often shouted, occasionally over great distances, and almost always over great periods of time, and even then it's rarely conclusive.

To Chapter 20: Interview with a Vampire

Back to Chapter 18: Escape from Singapore

Summary: Rabid Rabbit Sally races Not A Turtle Donna, while elsewhere House gets Vimes into trouble and Carrot is stuck playing babysitter. Also, several dubious characters appear, and one of them likes to play fetch.

Not starring Kurt Russell

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 22:57:32 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 18
Escape from Singapore

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Elizabeth surveyed Captain Jack Harkness, eyeing him up and down, and up and down, and then a little further down.... Shaking her head like a wet dog, she demanded: “Who are you?” Then she glanced over at Calypso and muttered, “It’s not like you to leave the front door open.”

“Would you prefer I kill him?” the goddess responded.

“You can try, but it won’t do much good for you,” Jack said. “Now if street gossip serves me, you’re Elizabeth Turner, ruler of the island and recent jumpee off of the cliff I just fell from.”

She nodded. Against her better judgment--one shouldn’t trust a man who could smile like that--she found herself inclined to confide in him. Something about him told her he could help, even if he had the swagger of a pirate. “This is Calypso, a nymph with power over the seas. I’ve summoned her to me.”

“Seems you came to her, not the other way around.”

“While Calypso can’t harm the pirate king or any who serve her, she isn’t sworn to obey me. The only way to summon her is to force her presence.”

“Ah, a game of chicken. Jump into the ocean, and she has to save you. Maybe I should try that with Ianto, though I suppose ‘Help, I’m drowning!’ won’t carry much weight with him.”

Unsure how to respond to that, she gave him an authoritative stare. The man shrugged it off and replied, “Whenever I die, I always come back to life.”

“That’s impossible.”

“We’re standing in a bubble of air under the ocean with a sea goddess while giant stone statues ravage the island, and you want to lecture me on what’s possible?”

“What?”

“I said--”

She waved a hand to cut him off. “Giant stone statues.”

“Of course--you’ve been down here. Singapore has been invaded by... something. Fifty-foot tall stone statues erupted out of the ground and started blasting everything in sight while rampaging across the island.”

She turned to Calypso. “If Singapore’s in danger, I have to return at once.” The goddess nodded and pointed to the other end of the bubble, opposite Jack Harkness. A platform of foam coalesced out of the wall of water and drifted over to hover above the sand. “Thank you for all your help.” Elizabeth stepped onto the foam cloud. Jack had taken barely a step closer when she held out a hand, stopping him in his tracks.

“What, you’re just going to keep me here?”

“No. You say you can’t die?”

“I can die, but I’ll come back to life.”

She grinned. “Then you’re exactly who I need.”

Jack looked at the foam, then at the dome of water overhead, then back at her. He sighed. “Really? I hate drowning.”

“If you don’t agree, you can come with me, but you’ll have my eternal gratitude if you do me this favor.”

“Eternity’s a long time when you’re talking to me, baby.”

Nevertheless, he was thinking about her offer, and that gave her time to think about him. He had an accent like he was from the colonies, but he was unusual, even without considering his claim to immortality. Jack took the strange in stride and responded with even stranger claims, yet she also saw a hint of desperation, both in his stance and in the way he acquiesced to many of her commands. For example, he could’ve stepped onto the cloud, but he’d waited for her permission. That meant he needed something from her too, and that was a fact she could exploit.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

She smiled. “Thank you. Now when you come back to life, you’ll be on the deck of a ship called the Flying Dutchman. The captain’s--”

“Whoa, hold on. A ship? You want me to deliver a message to a ship. What’s so special about this ship that you have to drown me to--” He glanced at Calypso. “Oh. This is a very special ship.”

“My husband, Will Turner, captains the ship. It is his job to ferry those lost at sea to the land of the dead. Therefore, I need to send a message to him through someone who has drowned, and since you resurrect, that satisfies my need to stay as moral as a pirate king can be.”

“How handy.”

“I hope you don’t mind getting wet, Captain Harkness.

“As long as you don’t either. I love a woman who’s not afraid to get wet.”

She struggled not to roll her eyes. There was another Captain Jack she’d like this one to meet. As though sensing her thoughts, the platform ascended.

“By the way,” Jack called after her, “I have two friends on the cliff, Chase and Olivia. Tell them not to wait up for me.”

“I’ll make sure they’re safe, Captain.”

As she approached the dome, she held her breath and closed her eyes, but all she felt was warm air billowing against her face. When she looked, she was floating above the churning ocean, and the waves rushed into the bubble like earth collapsing into a sinkhole. Water sprayed up as the ocean filled in the void, bursting upwards like the great burp of a diner who has devoured a feast.

The cliff side rushed past as a blur of grey and brown lines, and she barely had time to look up and notice smoke crawling toward the horizon before she was back on solid ground where she found herself staring into a giant stone eye. Stepping back, she took in the statue’s entire length. Painstakingly carved, it might have passed for a real person had it been not been solid grey. The brows were furrowed in a look of concentration, its face forever frozen in the instant before a warrior’s battle cry. A massive headdress covered the top and sides of its head, and real, colored feathers a dozen feet long extended from them, though most were bent or broken from the fall. The figure was carved with a studded leather tunic which seemed to be the only protection this race wore into battle, as the rest of the body was bare except for a short skirt and bejeweled boots.

She had seen outfits like that before. If she had to make a wild guess, she’d say they were from the Americas. Same place as the fountain of youth, she noted to herself.

A rustling of a nearby feather attracted her attention, and two people, a man and a woman, emerged from the headdress. She nodded at them, “Are you Chase and Olivia?”

The man’s eyes grew wide. “Jack?” he asked.

The woman struck him on the shoulder. “Don’t be stupid. Men don’t just turn into women.”

Elizabeth thought she heard the man mutter, “I did...” as he rubbed his arm, but then the woman stepped forward and said, “Yes, we are. I’m Olivia, this is Chase. Who are you?”

“My name is Elizabeth Turner, pirate king and lord of Singapore. You saw me come out of the ocean--that is where your captain is right now. He has agreed to undertake a mission for me and will meet us later. It has fallen upon me to see the two of you safely off this island.”

“We have other friends here too,” Chase said.

Olivia shook her head. “I heard that old pirate, Barbossa, say that he would take them to his ship.”

So there was an entire group of strangers here. Of course they had attracted Barbossa’s attention. “If Barbossa has taken your friends under his protection,” she said out loud, “then they are in capable hands.” Which was certainly true. What the hands were capable of, she didn’t think was a good idea to tell them right then.

“And you have a ship?” Olivia asked.

“The Empress,” Elizabeth replied. “She should still be in the harbor if I know Tai Huang.”

“We still have to save Joey!” Chase blurted.

Elizabeth sighed. Chase was reminding her of a small, petulant child, and right now, she preferred to keep intact her fairy tale image of children as cute, wonderful little friends. “Who is Joey?”

“A robot,” Olivia said at the same time Chase said: “A white tiger!”

Elizabeth had never heard of a breed of white tiger called ‘robot’ but decided that wasn’t important. What was important was that Singapore was entirely in flames and it was never a good idea to run into a fire. Nevertheless, that was exactly what Chase was doing.

Before Elizabeth could give chase and knock him to the ground, Olivia grabbed her sleeve and said, “Is Jack coming back any time soon?

“It might be a few minutes, but I can’t wait for him. I need to get my own crew to safety, as well as Chase.”

“But if I stay here, will I be safe?”

“I can’t guarantee your safety if you stay, but there will be a ship at this very cliff within the next fifteen minutes.”

“Wait here, or dodge rock monsters in a burning harbor. Hmm... such a difficult choice.”

“Stay or follow, it’s your decision, but I must go now.” Elizabeth ran, and Olivia didn’t follow. That was fine--one less person to take care of, and it didn’t even violate her promise to Jack, as there probably wasn’t anywhere on the island safer than here. Besides, she had that massive headdress to hide under.

Once she drew close to the city, she had to pull out a handkerchief and draw it over her face as a shield. Burning ash and glowing embers blew past her like leaves in a storm, while searing gusts from collapsing buildings drew black smoke back down from the sky into the streets. Within moments, she lost sight of Chase, though she’d been right behind him.

“Chase!” she yelled, her voice muffled by the cloth. She forced her eyes out of a squint to try to catch any hint of him, but her eyes began watering immediately, blinding her further.

“I’m headed for the Sib Zamini!” Chase replied from somewhere ahead and to her left.

A vague recollection of an exotic tavern allowed her to guess where it might be in relation to the marketplace. She began heading in that direction, hoping her memory would pull up the exact spot before she arrived. As she ran, she spotted no sign of any more stone statues, but distant rumbles behind her suggested the attack had moved to the harbor, which meant she was running out of time.

“Damn it, we don’t have time for this!”

Chase appeared out of the smoke right beside her and grabbed her hand. She fought down a yelp of surprise as he said, “We’re almost there!” Turning away from her, he screamed, “Joey! Here, Joey! Where are you, girl?”

Barks that did not sound like a tiger ensued, and a five-foot long feline terror fell out of the air onto Chase and began licking him. Luckily, he’d let go of Elizabeth the moment he heard the barking or she would’ve gone down with him. Giggling, Chase patted the tiger on the head and hugged her, muttering, “Good girl! Daddy isn’t going to leave you behind.”

“Quiet!” Elizabeth snapped. Between gusts of black smoke, she saw two figures moving through an alley, a mane of foot-long feathers bouncing atop their heads. “Those are people!”

Chase peered in the direction she indicated. “The invaders?”

“I would think so.”

“Should we follow them?”

She smiled. “I would think so.”

Chase groaned. “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.”

She ran after them. “You don’t think they’ll stop with Singapore, do you? The whole world’s in danger, and we need to find out what the threat is.”

“Hold on!” Chase called. She skidded to a halt next to the turn the two figures had taken. He jogged up beside her. “We should send Joey first; she can tell us if there’s danger.”

“How can a tiger warn us about danger?” she asked, but at that moment, Chase’s eyes widened.

“There’s someone behind you!” he yelled, but she’d already guessed that from his expression. She swiveled around, her hand already on the hilt of her sword, but it was too late. Something heavy struck her over the head, and stars erupted across her vision as she collapsed.

* * *

The building was made of old wood, withering and fragile to the point of being ready to catch flame even in Singapore’s humid climate. By the time Christian and Norrington made it to the front door, the façade had ignited from the heat of passing sparks. The top floor collapsed first, already weakened by Christian’s fall through the roof, setting off a chain reaction that brought the front half of the building crashing to the street like an avalanche of timber.

Christian dropped to the ground to avoid the flying debris and rolled straight into the building across the street. The home was abandoned, and he dashed through it, leaping over a toppled dining table to reach the back door.

“Stop!” Norrington cried when he started running in the direction of the harbor.

“What? Why?”

“Head the other way. I can sense them when they’re close. It feels like the same magic that brought me back to life.”

“The army is coming?”

“Yes.”

Christian hesitated but obeyed. Distant, painful-sounding screams spurred him on, though he hated that he was running away from them. “Is there nothing we can do for them?”

“You want to be useful, stay alive,” Norrington replied dryly. “Take it from the skull lodged in your sweaty armpits.”

“I need one hand free to fight!” he protested as they ran past a stall selling firewood. Christian grabbed the sturdiest-looking stick and paused. “Do you think I should leave some money?”

“I think we’re beyond that now.”

“I don’t want to be a looter!”

“Well, if it makes you feel better...” Christian could hear Norrington rolling his nonexistent eyes. He ignored him and tossed a few coins onto the stand anyway. A moment later, a giant rock fell out of the sky and crushed it.

“Of course, that copper wouldn’t have helped us secure passage on a ship anyway,” Norrington added.

“Thanks, Mr. Sarcasm.” He glanced upward, on the lookout for more falling rocks, in time to see a shadow flash across the sky and disappear behind the roofline of the center of town. “Was that a bird?” When he looked at Norrington for an answer, a second wave of darkness swept over the area, and he was sure that anything that large flying overhead would have caused a gust of wind, but he felt nothing.

“Norrington?” he said when there was no response. The skull remained motionless. Then the wire holding the jawbone to the rest of the skull snapped, causing it to fall to the ground. “Shit!” He kneeled down to pick it up and heard an ululating cry from his left. By instinct, he threw up the stick in time to catch the axe swing of a man dressed like the stone statues. The crescent edge bounced off the wood and swung past his ear with two centimeters to spare. Christian followed his block with a punch to the gut and sent the man reeling. The stick came down against the side of his head and knocked the warrior out.

That taken care of, he retrieved the jawbone and tried to put it back in place, but the skull refused to respond. Unless Norrington had suddenly dropped dead, so to speak, he guessed the sudden silence was related to the darkness he had seen, maybe some spell that suppressed magic?

His assailant began moving, so he went over and pinned him to the ground. “Who are you? Where are you from?”

The man’s eyes went wide. “You speak the language.”

Remembering what the Doctor said about translations, Christian tried to focus on the actual words being spoken rather than what he heard in his head. It was like a whisper at the edge of hearing, almost a premonition, a memory of something that hadn’t happened, as though his mind was playing tricks with him.

“Of course I speak the language.” But what he heard himself saying was unlike anything he had heard before, in school or on television.

Pero habla la lengua de los guardas! “But you speak the language of the guardians!” And that was Spanish. Guardians... some sort of Spanish sect? A priesthood or a cult? He thought the man sounded reverent but also confused.

“Why shouldn’t I?” He hoped he could come up with a better response soon before the man’s distrust overcame his awe. He’d have to ask the Doctor more about this translator.

“But you can’t be one of the traitors... you don’t have the marks...”

“I have been sent.” He hoped that sounded grandiose enough.

“Then... are you the nightingale?”

It was one thing to claim a supernatural background, another to admit to any specifics. Christian hesitated, but the man did not. With a yell, he lunged forward and head-butted him. Christian fell but had enough time to twist the axe out of the man’s hand. It didn’t matter; the man went for his neck instead, and Christian rolled away in time to save his jugular, but the teeth sank into his shoulder instead. He screamed as he felt blood burst from the wound and clubbed the man on the back repeatedly.

“Stop it! I’m not the nightingale, I swear!”

He was a little surprised when the attack stopped. He didn’t know why the man would choose to believe him until he heard: “Oh, I forgot. All the prophecies say the nightingale is a woman. How silly of me.”

Christian couldn’t help glaring even though he knew it wasn’t a good idea to appear hostile. “What’s your name?”

“Celso.” There was no reluctance in his voice. “You are sent by the gods to fight the nightingale!”

“Sure...” he replied, not sounding sure at all. The translation came out booming and confident, and he wondered what the Doctor’s machine was doing. Maybe it was trying to protect him, but it didn’t seem that way from his perspective, because now Celso was pulling him to his feet and dragging him down the street.

“Come. You must be present at the sacrifice of the thief. The priests will be overjoyed to meet you!”

“Sacrifice!”

“Yes, to cleanse this island of our enemy’s touch before we blast it into a smoldering ruin.”

They took a turn and arrived at the edge of a crater some thirty meters in diameter. The three-story building they stood beside had been cleanly sliced so that the structure was still standing but the part over the ground where the crater now existed was nowhere to be found. Indeed, the hole was a gradual slope of smoking dirt and rocks. Christian guessed this was where one of the statues had emerged, but there was now a platform blocking where the passage would have been.

The platform was three stone slabs, each successive one three-quarters the size of the previous, stacked one on top of the other like an incomplete pyramid. Tied down by ropes wrapped around small rings embedded in the topmost slab was a pirate. He could tell because his dress was similar to Barbossa’s, except his hat was a massive tricorn that had somehow managed to stay on his head through whatever number of adventures had led him to be in a smoking crater in Singapore at the mercy of a supernatural army with giant rock golems.

Standing over him was a priest (Christian guessed his occupation by the extra amount of feathers in the headdress) with a shiny and probably sharp--though he couldn’t really tell from this distance--dagger.

“Stop!” he yelled and found his command echoed by Celso.

The massive crowd gathered to watch the ceremony turned as one to stare at them. Christian shifted uncomfortably, but Celso raised his hands and cried out, “Behold, the lost children of the City have returned to us!”

Everyone continued staring. Celso elbowed him and hissed, “Come on, say something in the sacred language!”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Something nice!”

“Er...” he raised his voice. “It’s nice to see you all again! Feels like, uh, home...”

As one, the crowd intoned, “He speaks the language!” and fell to their knees. All of them except the group of priests by the alter.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” the pirate said, trying to gesture despite his bonds. “Me, uh, speak-o that lingo too... oh.” The priests glared, but then the man continued smoothly, “All I had to do was use the right language for you to believe me? Come on, are you saying I don’t look holy to you?”

With a snarl, the priest brought down the dagger, and Christian winced before seeing that the blade had cut the ropes. The pirate got to his feet and gingerly flicked the last of the hemp off himself. “Thank you very much,” he said, heading for the stairs.

“You may not go.” The priest gestured at Christian. “Approach, silver-tongued foreigners, that we may test your words for false metal.”

“The test!” the crowd exclaimed as one. “The lost children must pass the test.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Christian muttered, but Celso was pushing him forward already and there was nothing to do but go along with the crazy people.

“You’ll do fine,” Celso whispered. “If I remember my training correctly, you just have to answer a few questions about the City, but your ancestors will have passed down the correct responses.”

“You’re a priest in training?”

Celso bit his lips. “I was,” he said to his feet.

“Any chance they taught you the questions and answers while you were there?”

The young man brightened and let out a laugh. “Oh, you’re very funny! I like you already, lost brother.”

And now they were atop the platform where the pirate was lounging against the pole which had been intended as the final resting spot for his head. He looked as though everyone was best friends now, though up close, Christian could see tears in his clothes that had to have come from a sword. There was also an arrow hole in the hat. He smelled as though he hadn’t bathed in months, which didn’t improve the condition of his matted dreadlocks. In fact, it looked like his hair was growing mold.

“Thanks, chap. Great timing,” the pirate said in English, giving him a wink.

“You have a plan?” Christian replied in English, hoping the TARDIS would take a hint.

“Do I look like a man with a plan?”

He eyed him up and down, then took a step back when he noticed lice. “No.”

“Precisely.”

The priest slapped both of them on the back of the head. “Enough! Three questions you must answer. Since there are two of you, allowances shall be made, and one may answer only one, so long as someone answers each.”

“Best of three?” the pirate asked.

“No.”

He shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Though its song is sweet, the words are poison. With great wings fleet flies our darkest cousin. Of whom do I speak?”

“Er...” was the pirate’s response.

“The nightingale?” Christian guessed. Celso grinned while the priest looked disappointed.

“That is correct.”

“Woohoo!” the pirate exclaimed.

“The next one’s yours,” Christian told him. The priest brightened again and faced the prisoner with a smug look.

“From the water rose the world, from the world flows the water. What are the immortal guardians who swim our borders?”

“Oooh, ooh, I know that one! It was written... er, I mean, written in the sacred scrolls that my mother recited to me over and over from memory when I was a child. Dientespeces!”

A lengthy pause preceded the priest’s pronouncement: “That is correct.”

Christian let out the breath he’d been holding from the moment the pirate fielded the question. Just one more. Let their luck hold...

“Final question. Either, or both,” the priest glared at them as though daring both to guess correctly, “may respond.”

Now that he knew the pirate wasn’t completely brain dead, Christian knew their hopes lay with the one who’d actually had dealings with these people before half an hour ago. Of course, unless the question was about the interior of a prison cell, the pirate might not know much either.

“How many roads must a man walk down?”

Both their jaws dropped at the same time. Their eyes met and both knew the other had no clue what the man was asking. “Take your time,” Christian said in English. “Let’s just think.” He glanced at Celso, hoping he might give a hint, but the young man looked horrified, as though Christian had just killed a puppy. Looking out at the crowd, he saw a mixture of confusion and anger. People had wanted to believe they were some long lost saviors--why a civilization with 50-foot killer statues and the ability to blow up an island needed saviors was not a pressing concern at the moment--and now their faith was dwindling away. The situation was going to get ugly if they didn’t answer soon.

“Don’t worry, take your time.” The chief priest grinned.

Then his eyes fell on the soldiers assembled at the foot of the platform. Something struck him as peculiar about their formation. There was something out of place, something uneven... And he saw it. The squadrons were arranged in alternating patterns of seven rows of six and six rows of seven. Glancing at the priests, he saw six standing on each side of the sacrificial platform, but the chief priest was clearly closer to one side than the other.

Hoping against hope, he laughed and said, “Ha ha, got you all worried, didn’t we? Thought we didn’t know the answer, but it’s more dramatic this way, you know?” No one was smiling, but his point was made. Now if only his guess was correct. “Forty-two!” he announced.

The look on Celso’s face was all he needed to know he was right. The young man blanked his expression when the priest looked his way, but then he put on a lopsided smile, and Christian knew what he was saying: Very funny, brother. Very funny.

“That is correct.” The priest winced as the pirate whooped and pulled him in for a long hug. The crowd roared as though their team just won the World Cup.

“I always knew we were related, Marques, old buckaroo,” the pirate said, taking the opportunity to bend some feathers on the headdress. The priest pried his arms apart and pushed him away.

“On this most auspicious day,” the man spat, “we shall honor the gods with our enemies’ blood.” He waved at thirteen women, six standing in front of seven. “Let’s blow this place and get out of here.”

“I think that’s our cue to run,” the pirate said in English. Switching over to Spanish, he added, “Right, chaps, we’ve got this little, uh, long lost brother ritual that we have to perform once we reunite with our long lost brothers. And sisters. And we have to do it in private. Don’t worry, we’ll be back in time to watch the island blow. Boom-boom time good, yes? Half-naked people no go anywhere. No getting long lost again the moment we turn our backs!” Without waiting for Christian, he dashed off the platform and set off full speed toward the docks.

Christian rushed after him. “Wait up!”

“How about you catch me!”

It didn’t take long for the smoke to build up once they were back amongst piles of wood, and Christian found the pirate doubled over, coughing, two streets from the crater.

“Ah,” the pirate said when he noticed him. “Good time. I was testing you, you know, seeing if you were in top shape. Glad to see you are.” He coughed some more. “Captain Jack Sparrow, by the way.”

There were an awful lot of Captain Jacks in the world, it seemed. And they probably all showed up with trouble. “Christian Mann.”

“That’s a nice skull you have there,” Jack replied, still wheezing. “Just give me a few more seconds to savor the run. Nothing like a nice run after days of torture.”

Christian had almost forgotten about Norrington, but he’d kept a tight grip on the skull anyway. Glancing down, he saw the jaw was still detached. “It’s a talking skull,” he said defensively.

“Ran its mouth off, I suppose.”

“I think the priests did something earlier. There was a flash of darkness, and he just stopped.”

Jack nodded. “Probably the summoning.”

“The summoning?”

“They do this dance, see, and it concentrates their magic. The magic gets so strong it overloads anything else magical. Like if you set off a great big fire, it sucks the oxygen away from any little fires nearby.”

“And that magic is to blow up the island.”

Jack thought about that. “Don't know about you lad, but I’m ready for more running.”

Christian grabbed his arm before he could take off and regretted it when he got slime all over his fingers. Lowering his voice, he said, “Do you hear that?”

“You mean the sound of a great big wall of magic about to blast us apart?”

“I mean the sound of voices!”

Jack listened. “Yes, over there,” he pointed. “You have a club, I nominate you to check it out.”

Christian raised the piece of firewood. “Coward.”

“Well, if you want me to face a bunch of savages unarmed...” His eyes went wide when Christian offered the club to him. “I think it looks better on you. Matches your... uh....”

Christian rolled his eyes. Tip-toeing forward, he saw the outlines of two figures in the smoke. The person closest to him had his back turned, but the other was facing him and would see him coming. Well, there was no helping that. He could take someone one-on-one, and he had the element of surprise.

Charging, he brought the club down, and the first person crumpled. He was coming around for a second swing when he saw the other person was Chase. “Whoa!” he yelled, wrenching back. Chase screamed and brought his arm up to shield himself from the blow, and then a gray shape streaked through the air, seizing Christian’s injured arm and bringing him down to the ground. Norrington struck the street and bounced down the alley.

“Wait! Back, Joey, back!” Chase yelled.

The tiger retreated, leaving Christian to inspect the new gashes on his arm. They didn’t look like anything a band-aid couldn’t fix. Chase looked over the injuries, pulling apart the rips in his sleeve. “They don’t look too bad, but-- are those teeth marks?”

“It’s a long story.” Seeing Jack approach, he said, “I picked someone up.”

“I got your skull!” Jack said, waving the head in one hand and the jawbone in the other.

“Okay, two people.”

Chase shrugged. “The person you knocked out was Elizabeth Turner, apparently the ruler of the island. Everyone else is off the island or about to be.”

“Good, ‘cause it’s about to explode. Does she have a ship?”

“Once she wakes up, we’re supposed to go there. Did you just say explode?”

“Elizabeth?” Jack said.

“You know each other?” Christian said. That might make it easier for her to forgive them knocking her out.

Jack removed a small bottle from his belt and waggled it. “I know just the thing to get her going.” He removed the cap and put it under Elizabeth’s nose. She gasped, started coughing, and sat bolt upright.

“Jack?” she exclaimed as her eyes focused on the nearest person.

“I know that look. That’s the look Cuddy gets every time she’s mad at House,” Chase muttered.

Jack retreated with the flask held behind his back. “Can we please get moving? The island’s about to explode.”

“Barbossa’s livid with you.”

“Is Barbossa aboard the Empress?”

“No.”

“Then it doesn’t matter. Shoo, shoo.”

“Did you just say explode?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking!” Chase snapped.

Elizabeth jabbed a finger at Jack. “No one blows up my island.”

He took the finger and pointed it in the direction of the dock. “But the trampling statues and burning buildings are fine?” When she didn’t reply, he moved her hand back and forth to emphasize his escape plan.

“How do you blow up a whole island anyway?” Chase continued. “It’s not like they have atomic weapons yet.”

“There’s a circle of thirteen chanting priestesses back there.” Christian pointed. “It’s some sort of magic overload thing.”

“No, no, no!” Jack yelled as Elizabeth went for the crater. He whacked Christian on the arm and stole his club. “I’m declaring a mutiny, Elizabeth! We do not run toward exploding women!”

Elizabeth whirled around, and Jack skidded to a halt with less than a centimeter left between his throat and the tip of her blade. “You could catch some tortoises with your back hair and set sail that way.”

“I hate to break this to you, but your subjects have eaten all the tortoises around here.”

Elizabeth pushed the tip into his flesh and glared. “Fine, fine,” he said, handing the club back to Christian when he came up behind him. “You get to stay captain.”

“I’m your king, Jack, and it’d help if you remembered that.”

Jack waited until she lowered her sword. “So what’s the plan, your majesty?”

“Before we wander in, I’d like to point out there’s no such thing as magic,” Chase said. “I wonder if it might be BRAIN technology.”

“Brains? The gooey stuff that comes out when you shoot people in the head?”

“What I’m saying is that there must be a scientific basis behind these claims of magic, and since we haven’t seen any obvious signs of technology, then BRAIN seems the only logical explanation I can think of.”

“What is BRAIN, exactly?” Elizabeth asked.

“It’s a sort of technology that tunes into the brainwaves of humans to allow them to manipulate the physical world around them.”

“So you think something and it happens?” Jack said.

“More or less.”

“That sounds like magic to me.”

“But it isn’t!”

“What’s the difference?”

“You mean if we have to fight them?”

“Yes.”

“Er, none.”

“Exactly. Can we borrow your tiger?”

“No!”

“Jack, that skull looks like it’s moving,” Elizabeth said, raising her sword again.

“So it is.” Jack slammed the jawbone back in place and threw it at Christian who nearly fumbled the catch.

“What just happened?” The skull twisted around in his hands like a small kitten.

“You’re working again!”

Chase looked sick. “There is no way that’s an actual skull that talks. I mean, a talking skull. Why do you have a talking skull?”

“We need to save Olli and Cameron!”

“And you thought a talking skull would help?”

Christian was about to launch into the entire story of how they’d met before he realized that didn’t explain much. In fact, he didn’t know how Norrington was supposed to help. He just had a rather reassuring voice.

Thankfully, Jack cut into the pause the question had created in the conversation. “Talking skulls are rare. You meet a talking skull, it’s got to be something special, right?”

“I’d like to point out that I sense a fully-formed destructive spell of some sort not too far from here, and Elizabeth has run off toward it,” Norrington said.

Jack sighed. “ELIZABETH!” he screamed, arms wheeling about as he ran after her.

The priestesses stood in a circle, holding hands and swaying back and forth as they chanted. There were enough to encircle the topmost slab of the platform, five meters above which a glowing sphere of black and purple hovered. It pulsated with the regularity of a heartbeat and sparks danced off the surface like oil on a sizzling skillet. Elizabeth was already half-way through the crowd, which parted to let her through. From the murmur of excitement, it appeared they were hoping she’d both another long lost sibling of some sort, and a great, “Oooooh!” rose when they caught sight of Jack and Christian.

Celso fell in beside Christian as they ran. “Do you bring more lost children?”

“No, no, that’s the lord of the island.” It was safer to assume the invaders had done some scouting before they arrived, and Elizabeth was a conspicuous figure. “But we’re pretending to be her friends so we can spy on her!”

“That’s clever! Can I come along? You can pretend I’m your captive! I’ll even let you tie me up and beat me.”

“I don’t think so. But thanks for offering?”

“No problem. I’ll hurry ahead and tell the priests not to shoot her.”

“Not to--” Christian noticed the rows of archers with their bows drawn. “Oh. Yes, please do that.”

On the platform, the high priest had unsheathed an axe, swinging it wildly at Elizabeth whose sword was too flimsy to parry. The women continued chanting, their voices rising into a high-pitched ululation. Christian, Jack, and Chase slid to a halt beside one of them, and Christian saw the other men looking at him expectantly.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Hit them!” Jack and Chase replied in unison.

“They’re not armed!”

“They look armed to me!” Chase pointed at the growing ball of darkness. Jack stepped forward and punched one of the priestesses, sending her tumbling off the platform and into the dirt. As one, the others fell backwards, breaking the circle and becoming silent. Overhead, the sphere continued glowing. "That was suspiciously easy."

“It’s too late!” Norrington said. “The spell is complete!”

“So we’re dead?”

“No, you have five minutes until detonation.”

“That’s enough time to set sail!” Jack cried. “Come on, Elizabeth, he’s definitely not your type.”

“Mmmrrggh!” Elizabeth had wrestled the axe from the priest, who responded by falling on her. He now had one hand clasped across her mouth, sliding toward her windpipe, while his other hand held back her sword. Christian ran over, but she kneed the priest in the groin and threw him off. “Let’s go!” she said, giving him another kick for good measure.

The crowd had begun dispersing the moment the spell completed, probably to put some distance between themselves and the impending fireworks. A path was clear to the harbor, and the only delay was caused by Chase stopping to throw the unconscious priestess over his shoulder and carrying her with him.

“Yes, the spoils of victory. I like your thinking,” Jack told him.

“I’m just going to run some tests on her to prove my BRAIN theory.”

“Of course. ‘Tests.’ Elizabeth and I have a lot of ‘testy’ history between us.”

“It must be a natural aptitude for BRAIN,” Chase continued, clearly thinking the best course of action was to ignore the mouthy pirate. “I mean, otherwise our entire basis of scientific thinking is incorrect.”

The ground shuddered beneath their feet, and a loud roar emanated from behind them. Christian glanced back and saw rows of structures collapsing like houses of cards. The dock was in sight, and one warship remained, its masts now the tallest wooden structures on the island. Further out, a ship with black sails was fading into the horizon.

Two rock golems rose out of the water and stomped toward the vessel, sending wave after wave crashing against the shore. A volley of cannon fire knocked them back into the sea, but they clambered to their feet again soon after.

A gangplank came down as they approached, and Elizabeth acknowledged the cheers of the crew with a small salute. Then they were inside the ship, which began turning. Lightning shot up from the sphere, and Christian counted a minute remaining.

“We’re not going to make it!” Jack said, realizing the same thing.

Elizabeth shook her head. “We don’t have to reach the open sea.” They climbed the ladder onto the deck where her first mate was waiting. She shouted a few words in Chinese, and he ran to the wheel. The ship angled for the shore.

“What are you doing?” Jack clasped her arms and shook her. “What are you doing!”

Calmly disengaging herself from him, Elizabeth pointed out the sloping shoreline. “We have enough time to get around that cliff. With luck, the blast will sweep over us, and we’ll be safe.”

Christian ran to the railing and noticed the sea was beginning to churn and foam. “What about the rocks?” he asked. The ship now swayed back and forth as the water threw them about. Great walls of spray shot up over the bow and soaked them. Overhead, dark clouds gathered so thick they blocked out the sun. Beneath the cliff, jagged outcrops littered the water, and all of them looked large enough to sink the vessel.

“We’ll steer around them,” Elizabeth said. From the look on Jack’s face, that wasn’t as easy a feat as her confidence suggested.

“The spell is going!” Chase announced. A blinding flash of light filled their vision before being blocked out by the wall of rocks. The ship groaned, and they launched over the crest of a wave to crash down between two jagged formations of stone. The air itself began to vibrate as a distant rumbling drew close, and then a cloud of dust swept over them, blotting out the world.

* * *

Ferrying souls to the afterlife was not as exciting a job as the description would suggest. Will Turner knew this firsthand and wondered if that wasn’t the real reason Davy Jones had gone off the deep end, in a manner of speaking. Most of the time, the crew hung around in Davy Jones’ locker--Will wondered if they should rename it Will Turner’s locker, or maybe just Will Turner’s fishing hole--and waited for fish to bite. Every once in a while, they’d check the lobster traps, but poor Vernon Hills, the new cabin boy, was allergic to lobsters, even the sight of them, and would turn as deep red with rashes as if he’d been boiled himself. Therefore, they only checked the traps when the kid was asleep, but he had insomnia--on top of the fact that he was mostly dead and didn’t need to sleep anyway, having traded a reprieve from the afterlife for service aboard the Flying Dutchman--and so lobster pretty much didn’t happen at all.

Then someone would die in the real world and Will’s squid senses would tingle and the ship would turn upside down and go zoom through the water, which was the only cool part of the job, and they’d pop up on the other side and get out the giant fishing nets to bring up the corpses. Sometimes, dolphins would get tangled in the nets, but Will had gotten so good at freeing porpoises that he held the record of two minutes, fifteen point six three seconds. The only person who came close to his time was his father, Bootstrap Bill, who had a personal record of three minutes fifty.

Every rare once in a while, when Will finished explaining to people that they were dead, that Davy Jones was also dead, and that Will was now doing his job--no, not the terrorizing the seas part, the ferrying dead people part--a sailor would ask to join the crew for some personal reason. Calypso had told Will he couldn’t keep them for more than a hundred years or they would start going mad, but most just wanted to stay around long enough to dress up nicely, convince their loved ones that they were a ghost, and say goodbye. The more successful ones also dug up hidden treasure to leave behind or frightened their lawyers into having one last look at their will.

Playing with the kraken was fun, though. Yes, the kraken as Davy Jones knew her was dead, but Will had found her soul drifting along the currents of the Indian Ocean and plunked it into an octopus he molded out of clay. It was a small octopus, barely larger than his hand, because he didn’t want to keep anything big and destructive around in case he went crazy too. He chose an octopus because the creatures could crawl around out of the water and play fetch on the deck of the ship. It was an extremely slow game of fetch, but no one had anything better to do.

The kraken was about to make it across the deck in less than three hours, a feat she had accomplished only twice before, when Will felt a new death near Singapore. He perked up, since Elizabeth was near there, and didn’t even bother tossing the kraken overboard before ordering the ship to sink. The kraken responded to his negligence by stealing his hat once they were underwater, but he didn’t mind.

The corpse was heavier than usual, and once they’d heaved it aboard, Will realized with a shock that they’d fished up not only the soul but the actual body as well. That was odd. Souls usually separated easily. He bent over the body, checking for irregularities and signs of magic, when the corpse stopped being a corpse and expelled a jet of water all over his face.

Will wiped the mixture of seawater and bodily fluids out of his eyes to find his vision impaired by the sun gleaming off a dazzling set of teeth. “Captain Jack Harkness,” the teeth said to him. “Sorry that got all over your face. Seems to happen a lot with me...”

An extended hand seemed to be waiting for him to shake it, so he did. “Captain William Turner.”

“Great, great, everything’s gone as planned then.”

“As planned?” Who planned to drown and resurrect just to meet him? “I’m sorry, were you dead?” He’d hoped the words would sound less stupid out loud than in his head, but he had no such luck. Maybe he was going crazy. He looked over to his dad for some reassurance and got it from the fact that the entire crew looked as though they were staring at Christ reborn. A thought occurred to him. “Are you Christ reborn?” Damn, that sounded stupid too. And now he’d missed the man’s response to his first inquiry.

“No, it doesn’t take me three days unless it’s something really nasty like quartering. Ugh, I hate quartering. I think it gives me wrinkles.”

“I’m sorry, were you dead?”

“Yes. But now I’m not. While I’m explaining, could you sail a little closer to that cliff? I assume your ship is indestructible.”

Will nodded at Leathery Heather, who had the wheel.

“Thanks.” Jack flashed that smile again. “Elizabeth sent me, and she’s not very good at keeping her word, apparently.”

At the top of the cliff, a woman had appeared and was waving at them with both arms over her head. “Help me! Help me! Wait, never mind! Pull back! You’re going to crash!”

The ship slammed against the rocks, tilting until the crow’s nest lodged against the top of the cliff. Jack cupped his hands to his mouth. “Climb aboard!”

“You expect me to--”

“Climb aboard!”

The woman stomped her feet a few times, but the tide was coming in and waves dislodged the Flying Dutchman. As the ship began righting itself, the woman leapt over and landed in the crow’s nest with a thump.

They waited for her to descend, less out of politeness than from the fact that she looked about to fall. Vernon and Whirly Eddie even brought out some empty canvas bags and held them beneath the mast to catch her, but she reached the bottom without incident. “Where’s Chase?” Jack demanded.

“He went with Elizabeth to save Joey, but I told her I’d stay right here where it’s safe until someone comes to pick me up.”

“I told her to take both of you.”

“And I told her I wasn’t going. You got a problem with that?”

Will cleared his throat. “Back to Elizabeth. Is she all right?”

“She looked pretty good to me,” Jack said. Will’s eyes narrowed, and the man said, “Husband, right. I meant her health. It looked very good. She wanted me to pass a message to you, though now that I mention it, she never told me what it was. Nevertheless, since the island looks pretty razed, I imagine you can catch up with her ship and ask her then. It’s just important that she needs to talk to you.”

For the first time, Will noticed Singapore was not in the best shape if the plumes of black smoke were any indication. “I’ll do that. Look, did you say your name was Captain Jack?"

"Yup, Captain Jack Harkness. Why?"

"Nothing, except I seem to be cursed. Thank you, Captain, ah, Harkness. It must have taken a lot to do what you did for Elizabeth.”

“You mean dying? Seems like it happens every day.”

Upon further contemplation, lazy days at Will Turner’s fishing hole weren’t so bad. No one he liked faced immediate danger, and the catch was good. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was in trouble, and that trumped any other concern of his. Feeling adrenaline race through his veins again, Will Turner took the helm and set a course for the Empress. As they raced across the seas, he heard Jack Harkness say, “Nice to meet you, Leathery Heather. Does your nickname mean what I think it means?”

* * *

Cameron woke to find herself in a cabin. One oil lamp swaying from a hook on the wall provided dim illumination for the wooden hold that was just large enough for two bunks and a medium-sized chest about two feet long. There were no windows, but from the rocking and the sound of lapping water, she guessed she was aboard a ship. It wasn’t a bad guess considering her last memory was of being drugged and kidnapped by Persian pirates. In fact, all things considered, her accommodations were quite comfortable. At least she wasn’t in chains or locked in the brig. There was even a silver tray with two glasses of warm milk on the floor, along with a brick to keep the arrangement from sliding away.

Two glasses?

She peered over the edge of the bed to find Olli sprawled unconscious on the lower bunk. His hair was ruffled and three slight bruises were forming on his neck, but apart from that he didn’t look any worse for wear.

There was no ladder to her upper bunk, and she had no wheelchair even if she got off the bed. It was a clever trick, but she refused to let her captors win. Taking a firm grip on the wooden panel at the head of the bed, she swung herself off and lowered her feet to the floor. When she let go, she tried to keep her weight off her legs and tumbled to the other end of the room. As expected, the door was locked. The chest was not, but it was filled with clothes.

Her options exhausted, Cameron sat with her back against the wall and waited for Olli to wake up. After a while, the motion of the ship began to make her nauseous, and she tried to settle her stomach with some milk, but it had a strange taste and made the situation worse. She felt a light pounding in her head, and then the milk tried to come back up.

Trying not to gag, she crawled to the door and began pounding. “Someone let me out! I’m seasick and it’s an emergency!”

Not expecting anyone to answer, she was surprised when the door opened as soon as she finished speaking. Niki threw Cameron’s arms over her shoulders and carried her toward the stairs. “This should not have happened,” she said apologetically. “I even put herbs in the milk to combat seasickness.”

“What’d you put in it?” Cameron asked. Niki’s movement on top of the motion of the ship was not helping her situation. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the regularity of each footstep. The interior of the ship was growing hot and stuffy, and she hoped the air would be cooler outside.

“Ginger. Ginger is good for seasickness.”

“I hate ginger!” A blast of hot, humid air swept over her as they opened the door and stepped onto the deck, and that was the last straw. She retched and everything she ate in the last twenty-four hours went all over Niki. Milk and hamburgers. Delightful.

When she was done dry-heaving and realized what had happened, she apologized, which was a rather silly thing to do to someone who had just drugged you. It would serve her right if that had been the root cause of her nausea.

“It is all right. The sea takes getting used to. I will go clean up.”

“No, wait!” But Niki eased her onto the deck and left her all alone.

Propping herself up against some barrels, she looked around to find a landmark in case they intended to lock her back up for a long time, but water was all around for as far as she could see. She didn’t even know how long she’d been unconscious.

“Please don’t be alarmed,” someone said from right behind her.

Cameron yelped and spun around, losing her grip on the barrels and falling on her bottom. “Sneaking up on me doesn’t help!” It was Bousseh and beside her was the barkeeper, whom Cameron remembered was her brother.

“I am Kouros,” he said. “I apologize that my sister was rough with you before, but I assure you it was necessary.”

“I hardly think kidnapping can ever be considered necessary.”

“We were under orders,” Bousseh snapped. She did not sound like she was apologizing at all.

Kouros shrugged. “It is true. The arrival of strangers in Singapore attracted the attention of many. However, it was auspicious that we took you and your friend off the island when we did. Strange invaders attacked shortly thereafter, and we saw an explosion rise over the horizon as we sailed away.”

Cameron looked in the direction he indicated and noticed a line of yellow that would have been pollution in the present day. Since no city in the eighteenth century generated that much smog, she had to conclude they were not lying, but if the smoke was visible from this distance... “How far out are we?”

“The city is just over the horizon. You have been unconscious for less than two hours.”

“Then Singapore’s gone. An explosion that size would level the island!”

Bousseh nodded.

Cameron felt her heart drop. “What about my friends! Are they safe?”

“We abandoned the tavern the moment we grabbed you. Our orders were to take as many of you as possible while still departing almost immediately.”

They had the TARDIS. There was no way the Doctor wouldn’t get them off the island, and as soon as he realized she and Olli were missing, he’d come for them.

“Who ordered our capture? Why?”

“You do not need to know!”

Kouros patted his sister’s arm. “We cannot give you a name, and I assure you that he is not aboard this vessel, though you need not believe me. However, the hope is that your friends will come rescue you. He wishes to strike a deal with your leader and you are a bargaining chip. Knowing this, you realize you are safe, and we will treat you as honored guests. Do we have your cooperation?”

“As long as we’re at sea.”

He laughed, a hearty, booming affair. “That is not a problem.”

It rather was. “Am I allowed to know where we’re going?”

Kouros and Bousseh raised their eyebrows. She didn’t think their surprise was false.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Bousseh said. “We’re going home to Persia.”

To Chapter 19: Fairy Tails

Back to Chapter 17: Part 2

Summary: Time doesn't go forward when you're having fun, 'cause there's too much good stuff to describe. Elizabeth beats people up, Christian makes unexpected relatives, and Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner finally show up.

Attack of the 50-foot Statues!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:00:16 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 17
Into the Fire
(Part 2 of 2)

Banners forthcoming (sorry, we saw no reason to keep delaying a finished chapter for graphics reasons)

Click here for list of characters and general info.

“They’re called durians,” Gregor explained.

Cameron hefted the fruit--about the size of a melon--in her hand, though not with much force due to the large spikes on the husk. “I remember hearing something about them smelling.”

“These aren’t ripe yet.” He dug through the pile and extracted one which didn’t look much different from the rest. “Ah, here we go.”

The smell hit her before he handed it over, and she started gagging. “Oh my god! Put that away.” She imagined a cross between curdled milk and something that had been killed and left in the sun for a while.

“Guess we’ll just take the mangos.” He handed some money over and stuffed the thirty they’d put aside into a canvas bag the Doctor lent them. “They’re really quite good if you give them a try.”

“Maybe the Doctor has something that’ll take away the smell.”

“But the smell’s the best part!” the Doctor enthused, his sudden appearance causing Cameron to start. He grabbed a durian and inhaled. “Ah, reminds me of Snelfaeton Three. Brilliant cooks there. Make these delicate vegetable smoothies with little umbrellas.”

Ianto, Olli and Christian appeared beside him, and she gaped at their outfits. Gregor burst out laughing, shaking so hard she took the sack away from him before he hit someone with it. “Did you guys raid a museum?” he asked. Cameron stuck a mango in front of her nose to block out the smell, hoping the Doctor would put down his newfound-love some time soon.

“Did Cuddy find a toothbrush?”

Cameron shrugged. “We lost the others a while ago.”

“No problem.” The Doctor fiddled with his screwdriver until the light went on without any accompanying sound. “Hello? Jack? I know you’re there. Pick up!”

A flicker of static coalesced above the tip of the screwdriver into a miniature Jack Harkness. “I didn’t know you had my number,” he said.

“It was a general call; I figured no one else would answer. Where are you?”

“Just follow my frequency. We’re in a pub, and Cuddy’s trying to drink a pirate under the table. Chase is complaining because he thinks if Cameron were here instead of him, she’d have stopped her.”

Great, as if Chase hadn’t learned to stand up to his boss every once in a while. “Tell him to try anyway,” Cameron snapped. “Maybe she’ll think I’m still in his body.”

“What?” the Doctor asked.

“Let’s not agitate her any more than we have to,” replied Jack.

The Doctor did a quick head count with his screwdriver, causing Jack to complain about dizziness. Then he said, “We’re missing one person. Oh, yes, the, uh...” he paused and glanced at Olli, then continued quickly. “Is Olivia with you?”

“I think she went to beat up Angela Merkel. Wait, no, there she is. Yes, she’s dangling her goods at a merchant.”

“What?” Olli cut in.

“The necklaces,” Jack amended, waving his free hand carelessly. “I’ll see you soon.” He blew a quick kiss, then pressed his wristband and the image faded.

Ianto came over to push her wheelchair as the Doctor set off, pointing his screwdriver at every side street as he tracked the signal like a hound on the scent. Gregor intercepted him. “Please, allow me.” Cameron shot Ianto a minor eye roll as he assented and stepped aside. He just smiled back.

It wasn’t that the attention wasn’t flattering, but just as she found herself safe from Jack Harkness’ notice--she supposed that between House, Ianto and Cuddy, he was busy enough--along came another man to flirt in his place. She had promised Owen a date, so her schedule was quite full as far as she was concerned.

“You’re not interested in Jack because he can’t die or get sick,” Chase had told her as they packed for their trip. She didn’t bother to point out that they hadn't known about his resurrection habit until Cuddy slipped up after being harangued by Ianto for an hour about their foursome.

So sure, Gregor was handsome and suave and knew a lot about cooking. But he wasn’t her type, and by that, she didn’t mean someone with a terminal or chronic condition. Owen didn’t have a chronic condition (at least, not that she knew of), unless you counted irritability, and anyway, they had met under stressful circumstances. There was no telling what he’d be like when he relaxed. Except there is no downtime with Torchwood, apparently.

“Cameron?”

She realized Gregor had been saying something. “Sorry, what?” They were outside a ramshackle tavern, and cheers broke through the walls like they were paper. With luck, Cuddy would not be at the center of attention.

“I said this is no place for someone injured. Maybe we should go back to the TARDIS and wait.”

“No!” She saw the Doctor stop and look back at her, and she blushed. “I mean, I’m quite fine. It’s not every day you’re in eighteenth century Singapore.”

“Well, for the people who live here, it is,” the Doctor replied.

Gregor didn’t bother to press the issue and pushed her in. The smell of tobacco and alcohol hit her the moment they passed through the door, and it took her a few moments to adjust to the darkness. This establishment had no windows, though light sneaked in through cracks in the wood. Flames burned in lamps all around the room, which was such a safety hazard it didn’t bear thinking about, and the straw littering the floor compounded the danger. The patrons had arranged chairs and tables in a semi-circle--one that could have been drawn by a hyperactive first grader--around a man and a woman with shot glasses laid out before them. Jack and Chase were making rounds collecting wagers. She sighed.

Ianto leaned over and yelled into her ear, “I don’t suppose she’s going through a mid-life crisis?”

“I don’t know!” Maybe the TARDIS wasn’t such a bad idea. She could see if Owen was around for a videoconference. Waiting any longer would cause him to think she was backing out of their date, and that wouldn’t do. Not that they had anticipated a long-distance relationship of this sort in the first place, but she suspected the time vortex fazed him less than the hospital cafeteria.

The pirate opposite Cuddy glanced at them as they entered, then grabbed a nearby man and pointed, whispering something into his ear. The approach of a veiled woman distracted Cameron from the contest.

“Welcome to the Sib Zamini. Perhaps you would prefer a room where it is quiet?”

The Doctor kept staring at Jack but replied, “Yes, yes, that’ll work.” Ianto had to drag him away.

“What’s your name?” he asked the serving woman as they circled around the counter and entered the backroom. It turned out to be as large as the main area and furnished in the same manner. Only seven patrons sat here, though, each slouched over a separate table and drinking out of tin mugs without looking at anyone else.

“Bousseh, sir.”

“Well, Bousseh, I’m the Doctor, nice to meet you. Sorry, but I couldn’t help noticing a lot of the staff isn’t local. I believe they’re speaking Farsi amongst themselves. Is this a Persian establishment?”

“Why yes, it is. You are a scholar?”

“Sort of. I guess you could say that. What are Persians doing out here?”

“We are just trying to make a living. Like everyone else.”

“Yes, but why Singapore?”

“Pardon, but my brother is calling.” She indicated a man motioning for her from the bar. “If you need anything, ask Niki.”

“Will she answer my questions?”

Bousseh glided away. “Niki is very shy.”

“Of course.” The Doctor flopped into a chair. “See, that’s shady.”

“Why?” Gregor asked. “Because she won’t answer your questions? If you asked me what I was doing with a coffee house, I wouldn’t be able to give you much of an answer either.”

“Yeah, but you live there.”

“So Persians aren’t allowed to live in Singapore?”

“It’s uncommon, so many of them. And all running a tavern? None of the patrons are Persian.”

“I think you’re being obsessive,” Cameron said.

“Look, when you’ve been around as much as I have, you start noticing things.”

Ianto nodded. “Things that tend to turn into alien threats.”

“So the Shah is an alien?”

“Your attorney general turned out to be one. And the governor was a collaborator.”

A new server approached them, this one dressed similarly to Princess Leia in her gold bikini, only with more tassels. “Why hello,” Gregor said, striking a pose. “You must be Niki.”

“Yes,” she replied, her soft voice drowned out by a sudden roar of laughter from the common room. She quivered, as though the sound shook her constitution. Cameron found herself feeling sorry for her. Anyone that delicate shouldn’t be scantily clad amidst a crowd of corsairs.

“Do you make coffee here?” Gregor asked.

Ianto perked up. “Yes, I hear the Persians make excellent coffee.”

“The Colombians make better,” the Doctor said, receiving several glares. He was sitting with his back to Niki and thus did not see what the other men were seeing. “What? They don’t put drugs in it, I swear! Not the type I drink, anyway.” He reached over to pat Niki’s hand, saying, “Sorry, no offense to...” His face contorted as he missed her hand and, trying to figure out what he had touched, felt his way along her waist, tracing the outlines of a thong. “Whoa!” He jerked away and toppled off the chair. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Cameron gave her a sympathetic look, but she winked back. “I’ll bring a pot.” She was gone before the Doctor extricated himself from his coat, which had managed to wrap around his head as he fell. He glared across the table at Ianto, but because he was sitting on the floor, looked like a petulant six-year-old. “You could’ve warned me.”

“I assumed you knew you should have a dollar bill in hand before you tried that.”

Gregor put his head down into his arms as he broke down laughing. She elbowed him in the ribs but didn’t get much of a response. “That’s not what I meant!” the Doctor protested.

“You’re objectifying women,” she told the two men. Ianto looked confused and Gregor shook harder with laughter, so she decided to appeal to his brother, who had been sitting apart from the table with Olli, their heads together as they discussed something in a low whisper. “Aren’t they, Christian?”

Their conversation broke off and Christian gave her a deer-in-the-headlights look. “What?”

“Oh never mind.”

“Yes, exactly!” the Doctor said as he clambered back onto his chair. “I did it on accident but you were ogling her.”

“You’re not changing the subject that easily.” Ianto grinned. And here she’d thought he was a proper gentleman, with his suits and calm manner. The man had probably been around Jack for too long.

Niki returned with the coffee in a tall silver jug with an S-shaped neck. Their mugs were earthenware painted with bright colors, sturdy but still out of place in this dim, ramshackle establishment. Gregor paid her with more coins than was strictly necessary but she didn’t comment. Niki could use the money, and maybe he’d stop chasing after Cameron if he had other women to distract him.

At that moment, Cameron felt goose bumps, and she finally understood the phrase about someone walking over her grave. There was a shift in the atmosphere, something she couldn’t pinpoint, but she shifted uneasily. Then she understood. Quiet had come upon the tavern, and everything was so still she could hear a fly buzzing. Christian and Olli looked up, also sensing something wrong. The Doctor eyed the common room like a cat facing down a dog.

“She’s cheating!” someone roared.

“Now wait, wait, let’s be reasonable,” she heard Jack say.

“He was helping her cheat!” another person yelled. “And the blondie boy too! They rigged the wagers! You ragamuffins!”

Another long silence. “Really, Bob?” the first person asked. “‘Ragamuffin’? That’s the best you can come up with?”

“Does it matter?”

“Beat them up!”

“YEAH!”

The thud of fists connecting preceded Jack flying through the doorway and across several tables, smashing the items atop them into sprays of glass. He crumpled at the Doctor’s feet, followed by Chase several seconds later, who was much luckier, as Jack had taken out all the bottles along the way and was also a soft spot to land on. The Germans leapt to their feet, Christian falling into a boxing pose. Ianto remained stationary but removed his gun from the holster. The Doctor gave them all a dirty look, but before he could admonish them for their aggressiveness, a flying flagon crashed into his head. He fell sideways against the table and flopped onto the floor like a dead fish. Gregor and Ianto rescued the pot of coffee before the Doctor could knock it over.

Cameron leaned forward and seized Chase’s collar. It didn’t look like he had a concussion, so she used her threatening voice. “What just happened?”

“Jack sneaked her shots of water that she switched with the vodka.”

“And she got caught?” A crowd was forming beyond the counter while the barkeeper tried to keep them out.

“No, no, the back room is for quiet!” he said. “Don’t break anything! Wait here and I’ll kick them out for you.” How helpful...

“God, the woman should be a magician,” Jack mumbled, rubbing his head. “Her hands do incredible things.”

“No, some idiot came and stole one of her shots,” Chase explained. “And found out it was water.”

Olli ran up from behind her. “The only exit is the way we came in,” he announced. Another glass bottle flew through the doorway. Ianto leaned aside and let it fly past just inches from his ear.

“Oh screw it,” the barkeeper said as the mob seethed closer. “The whole place is ruined anyway. Have fun.” He dodged under the counter, and the pirates roared past.

A gunshot stopped them cold. Ianto stood behind the table, his gun smoking as he stared at them, implacable as a glacier. Sure, they had the numbers to overrun them, but these were pirates. No one would want to risk being the one who got shot.

Jack grinned and cocked his own gun. “Not so tough now, are you?” He sneered at their cutlasses, which wavered for a moment before they vanished and became replaced by muskets. Cameron found herself staring into over forty barrels. “Oh.” Jack exchanged glances with Ianto. Chase took the opportunity to duck behind her wheelchair.

“Coward!” she snapped.

“You’re already injured! A little more can’t hurt.”

“Where the hell is Joey when we need her?”

Chase grimaced. “I ordered her to wait outside...”

“It’s obviously a life-threatening situation!”

“I told her to wait until I came back out, no exceptions. I was afraid she’d freak people out.”

“Great. Just great.”

“How about this?” Ianto proposed. “No one wants to die, right?”

The crowd stared until someone in the back yelled, “Right!”

“You just want to beat someone bloody but have a good laugh about it over a drink tomorrow!”

This time, his audience was much more enthusiastic. “Yeah!” they yelled in unison.

“So how about we drop the weapons. Good old fashioned fist fight. With chairs and tables, of course.”

“What about bottles?” a man with an eye-patch up front asked.

“One bottle per person. No cheating. That good?”

“Aye!” Over a hundred swords and guns clattered to the ground. Suddenly, Cameron's chair jerked and she looked up to see Gregor taking hold of the handles. “What are you doing?”

“You’re injured; you’ll be safe out of the way!” He gave her a push and sent her careening into a corner of the room.

“Hey!” Chase protested. “I was hiding there!”

She crashed into a table and the chair tipped, balancing on one wheel for a second before steadying and landing properly. She wheeled around, ready to join the fray, but an all-out brawl had already erupted. Many of the pirates didn’t seem to care who they were fighting anymore and threw punches without worrying about who they hit. One bit the ear off another, but both took this in stride and then allied to beat up a third pirate who’d dared to whack them both over the back with a chair leg.

Jingling announced the arrival of a serving woman, and she swung around in time to see Niki and Bousseh approach her. “I’m sorry about the fighting,” Cameron told them. “We--”

“All is part of a plan,” Bousseh said.

“Well, that’s a very zen approach, but I assure you we can pay for damages.”

Niki wrung her hands but didn’t say anything, and Cameron realized something wasn’t quite right. Bousseh removed a vial from her belt and, twisting the cap off, stuck it under Cameron’s nostrils. She jerked away, hands dashing to the wheels of her chair to escape. Bousseh snapped something at Niki so quickly Cameron couldn’t catch the words. Niki hovered a little while longer before dashing over and holding Cameron’s wheelchair in place. Bousseh grabbed her hair and forced her face toward the vial. With nowhere to go, she could only hold her breath, but even that wasn’t working. The smell permeated up her nostrils, and she sneezed. Her subsequent inhale caused the smell to hit her like a hammer, and her vision blurred.

“I’m sorry,” Niki whispered into her ear as she slumped forward and lost consciousness.

* * *

Christian feinted to the right and followed with a quick jab of his left fist, sending his opponent to the ground. He’d had some doubts about how appropriate his boxing training would be for a bar fight, and indeed, the pirates didn’t fight fair, but they also fought without thinking. As long as he kept a cool head, he could anticipate their next move with fair accuracy. The lingering question was how hard he should hit. He was loathe to use his skills to injure someone, but they weren’t in twenty-first century Germany, and sometimes violence was unavoidable. He settled for knocking them out and tried his best not to leave any permanent injuries in his wake.

A yell attracted his attention, and he saw a man with a three-foot long beard and a two-foot long table leg charge Olli, whom he’d taken care to keep behind him at all times. He flipped a chair over and jabbed its legs at the oncoming threat. The chair splintered in half but the pirate went down. From the corner of his eye, he saw Olli throw a vase, and when he turned back around, noticed someone stagger away from him, clutching his head. The entryway to the main common area was only a meter away.

“Christian! Help!” Gregor waved at him. Four people separated them, and Olli picked up the table leg from the downed pirate and swung. Two people separated them. Meanwhile, Gregor and Ianto were still passing that pot of coffee between them, depending on who needed his hands free to fight.

“Just forget the coffee!” An opening appeared, and he dodged between the two, dragging Olli behind him. Then there were four of them in a circle, their backs to each other, which made for much better odds. “Okay, if we charge the door, we should be able to push through.”

Ianto nodded. “On three. One, two, three!”

Yelling at the top of their lungs, they ran forward, bowling over the remaining pirates. As they were about to reach the counter, Gregor stopped, causing the three of them to trip. “We have to get Cameron!”

“What?” Ianto gasped. “Where’d she go?”

“I pushed her into a corner so she’d be safe!”

“You pushed her into the corner of a room we were trying to escape from?”

“Fine, I’ll do it myself. Here, I turn the coffee over to you. Guard it with your life.”

“As if I needed telling,” Ianto muttered as he caught the pot. At that moment, hands grabbed Christian by the shoulders and lifted him over the counter. Another pair tried to seize Ianto but met the scalding surface of the coffee pot.

Christian grabbed an overturned wine bottle as he fell to the floor and smashed it against his assailant’s head. Someone else’s fist connected with his temple, and he went down in a daze. He fought down the urge to vomit as he tried to get back up. A body fell upon him, and he braced himself for another punch, but none came. Glancing over, he saw the man was unconscious.

Staggering to his feet, he looked around but couldn’t find anyone he recognized. The pressure of fingers on his collar caused him to swing around, ready to attack, but he stopped himself at the last possible moment when he recognized Olivia.

“Stop! Don’t hit me!” she screamed, shielding her face with her hands. A bald, shirtless man with a chain of earrings that fell to his chest stood beside her, scowling. He had a chain of shells around his neck, so Christian assumed she had bribed him into being her bodyguard. It was working. People took one look at him and the lines of scars that ran from his face down his arm and decided to choose a less imposing opponent.

“Have you seen Olli?”

“One of the serving men put a hood over his head and dragged him into the back! We’ve got to save him!” Olivia dashed off, and Christian ran after her, his heart pounding. If anything happened to him...

They didn’t get far before Chase crashed into scarface. The doctor bounced off Olivia’s bodyguard and onto the floor while he remained steady as a pillar, utterly implacable. Chase squeaked before spotting familiar faces and gasped, “They got Cameron and Olli!”

“Where?” Christian demanded. There was no sign of either.

“They went down a trapdoor! Come on.” Chase scrambled through the crowd on hands and knees, which wasn’t a bad idea, as most of the fighters were focusing on those at eye-level. Christian ducked down when scarface’s circle of influence began waning, and Olivia followed his example. Then her bodyguard got smacked in the face by a large platter and went down. She stopped and dashed back, blocking Christian’s way.

“What are you doing?” he snarled, giving her a little shove.

She tore the necklace off the man, taking care to keep the shells from spilling, and stuffed them into her pocket.

“You’re unbelievable,” he told her as they continued moving.

Ahead, Chase dug his fingers between two floorboards and pulled, A panel large enough for Cameron’s wheelchair flew open, knocking two people over, while a third backed into the hole and vanished with a yelp. They listened as his screams faded into the distance.

“That’s a long way down,” Chase said. “Make sure you take the ladder.” A chair came out of nowhere and struck him in the back, sending him through the trapdoor head first. Christian lunged for his foot but missed.

Olivia shrugged. “At least he’ll have the other guy to land on.” She pushed him aside and began sliding down the ladder. Christian looked around to see if anyone else was around, but Gregor was making his way back through the doorway and Jack had the Doctor thrown over his shoulder as he held off four thugs. He didn’t seem to realize that every time he turned around, he swung the Doctor into the person behind him. “Are you coming?” Olivia yelled.

“Yes, yes,” he replied, grabbing hold of the first rung and beginning the descent. Before he went too far, he closed the trapdoor. Sure, no one would be able to follow, but at least no one would fall on top of them as they climbed, either.

The drop turned out to be fifteen feet, which wasn’t as bad as it’d seemed. Chase was waiting for them when they arrived and looked unscathed, save for a rumpled hairdo, as he had, indeed, landed on the other person. “Is he alive?” Christian asked.

Chase nodded. “He’ll be in pain for a while but nothing life-threatening, surprisingly enough. He didn't hit his head.”

The tunnel was damp, with a centimeter of water on the ground at the deepest point--the floor was concave. Since it ran underground, running was difficult, as everything had turned to mud. The trail was clear, though, because Cameron’s wheelchair left distinctive marks. Iron holders anchored into the walls held a row of torches that lit the way.

“Is it me or does this seem like a lot of work for a simple pub?” commented Chase.

“Simple?” Olivia injected a good amount of contempt into the word given how hard she was breathing. “There’s nothing simple about its owners.”

Christian recalled the Doctor’s comment about the rarity of Persians in Singapore. “They’re pirates too, aren’t they?”

“Yes. I mean, it’s a profitable enough side venture, but Fafa said the tavern served as their home base for the region.”

“Fafa?” Chase said. “Are we talking about the Mr. Frankenstein dangling you on his knee earlier?”

“His name is Fafa and he knew a lot about the area!”

“But the tavern’s ruined!” Christian said. “That makes no sense.”

“And the owner’s brother uncovered Cuddy,” Olivia added.

“They started a fight that wrecked their base just so they could kidnap Olli and Cameron? Why would they do that?”

“I hate to break this to you,” Chase said, “but as a group, we kind of stood out, even in a port full of foreigners.”

“At least we tried!” Christian snapped, pointing at his outfit. He was growing kind of fond of it; the leather had padded many blows during the fight.

“I’m not accusing anyone of anything, but maybe our strangeness suggested we had value.”

Olivia clapped her hands. “Maybe we fulfilled some ancient prophecy by showing up!”

“This isn’t a movie! We’re still on Earth!”

Chase groaned. “Don’t mention prophecies. Prophecies always involve something blowing up and lots of people dying.”

“I see light!” Christian exclaimed. Sure enough, the torches ended some thirty meters away, leaving the end of the tunnel in darkness, save for a shaft of daylight shooting down from the opening above. Shadows moved in the light, indicating the pirates were close. Christian grabbed the ladder as soon as he was in range and shot up it, skipping two or three rungs at a time in his hurry to close the distance. The last pirate climbed out and saw him coming. Barking out a command, he kicked the hatch shut, but Christian threw his weight against it before it could close and pushed through. There were three Persians guarding the exit, which opened into an alley. They drew their scimitars, but Chase and Olivia rushed through the entrance and ran into them before they could swing. Christian picked up the hatch and threw it at the last pirate.

He looked up in time to see the trailing edge of Bousseh’s dress turn the corner. “That way!” he yelled.

The alley opened back into the marketplace, and the crowd had grown since they entered the tavern. He jumped up and down, hoping to catch a glimpse of their quarry over the heads of all the shoppers, but nothing stood out. “Shit!”

“Let’s ask if anyone saw anything,” Olivia said, grabbing a nearby man and smiling at him.

“You can flirt later!”

“It doesn’t hurt to ask directions!” she snapped back. “Excuse me, did you see a group of pirates barging their way through with a woman in a chair?”

The man laughed. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” He shook her off and proceeded on his way.

“See?”

“It was worth a try!”

“Now we’ve wasted time!”

“Shut up!” Chase screamed. “You go that way and Olivia and I will head the other direction! We can cover both possibilities.”

“Ooh,” Olivia said, stroking his arm. “Why am I coming with you?”

“Because you two seem intent on biting each other’s heads off. Plus Christian doesn’t need help in a fight.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Typical.

Before they could execute the plan, a deep rumble emitted from the ground, and cracks split the ground, sending up clouds of dust. Those less steady on their feet tumbled, spilling the contents of their shopping bags in every direction. The three of them grabbed each other to brace against the shaking, which lasted almost ten seconds before ceasing. Stalls tumbled and chickens went wild as their cages bounced off.

“Okay, just an earthquake,” Christian said. “Let’s get moving.” But he spoke too soon, as a moment later, a pillar of fire blew apart a building across the square, sending burning pieces of wood in every direction. The flames reached close to fifty meters into the sky and hadn’t died down before a giant rock hand reached out from the crater and slammed against the ground, obliterating half the market.

“See?” Chase cried, pointing a shaking finger at Olivia. “Prophecies! This is what happens when you mention prophecies!”

The head that followed the hands out of the ground was made of granite, large enough to belong to Optimus Prime and carved in the image of an Aztec warrior, complete with stone headpiece and real feathers, though Christian had no clue what sort of bird could provide colored feathers to match the scale of the figure. The stone man let out a moan, like the earth crying, as it heaved its mass out of the hole and clambered to its feet, easily achieving the height of the flames that preceded its appearance.

“Now we should definitely run,” Olivia said, breaking off in the direction Chase had indicated, which happened to be away from the monster. Chase didn’t look back as he dashed after her.

Christian sighed. If the pirates had taken Olli the other way, that meant he had to get past the moving statue, which was at this moment kicking away the few stalls that remained standing. Taking a deep breath, he charged, weaving through the mass of screaming shoppers and dodging the earth and wood flying up from the statue’s feet. The creature spotted him, the only person heading for it rather than running away, and decided to reward his individuality by trying to swat him like a bug. At the last possible second, he leapt aside as its open palm crashed down. A shockwave of air erupted from the point of impact, sending him tumbling like a paper plane caught in a storm. He thumped back to the ground only to see a second hand dropping from the sky.

He rolled aside in time to get caught between two spread fingers. The statue tried to close the space between its fingers and crush him, but its hand had buried into the dirt and gotten stuck. He took the opportunity to clamber over the back of the hand, but it pulled free before he could reach solid ground. As the stone rose, it catapulted Christian into the air. His trajectory followed an arc over its shoulder and through the thatch roof of a building down the street. Dust and straw accompanied him as he crashed through the attic, managing to avoid rafters before smashing into the floor and landing on a pallet in a dimly lit room.

Every part of his body screamed in protest as he groaned and rolled over. He found himself staring into the empty sockets of a skull on the floor beside the bedding. He yelped and began scrambling away when it spoke. “Hello,” it said in a British accent. “How nice of you to drop in. I don’t get visitors often.”

“Uh,” he replied. Screaming You’re a skull! didn’t seem polite and was, anyway, a rather obvious thing to say. He settled on obvious but practical instead. “Hello. Excuse me, but am I dead?”

“Not yet,” the skull replied. “I’m James Norrington. What’s the commotion outside? Are they here?”

“You mean the giant killer statue?” He tested moving his limbs one by one. Nothing seemed broken. Wriggling his toes, he confirmed they still worked.

“Oh.” Norrington emitted a sigh of relief. “No, the rock golems are just the advance guard. The main army isn’t here yet.”

“How reassuring.”

“Yes, exactly.” Norrington didn’t seem to understand sarcasm, but then he added, “That means we still have a chance of getting off the island alive. And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you.’ I’m quite dead already, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He tried sitting up. It felt like a hundred horses trampling on him but worked out. “You’re not doing too badly.”

“I suppose,” the skull replied bitterly. “If you follow my instructions, I can get you on a departing ship.”

“I have to rescue my boyfriend! He got kidnapped by Persian pirates.”

“Ah, that’s good then.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Pirates usually have ships. It means he’ll get off the island alive, so if you’re smart, you’ll pursue a similar line of action, though I don’t recommend getting kidnapped on a general basis.”

“If I help you get away, will you help me find him?”

Norrington chuckled. “You assume I want to flee.” He paused. “But for Elizabeth’s sake, I suppose I have to. I don't know how you think a talking skull could help, but very well, we have a deal. Get us both out of Singapore, and I’ll help you save whoever you want.”

* * *

Jack finally caught up with Gregor, who had been weaving in and out of the backroom several times for no apparent reason. Maybe the guy just liked to fight. Jack, on the other hand, was getting worried the Doctor might start glowing from all the hits he’d taken to the head, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone. Well, maybe his eleventh incarnation would be less bony, but he might also end up ginger and spend all his time staring into a mirror instead.

Gregor looked relieved to see him. He sat against the wall, pretending to nurse a black eye, but when he lowered his hand, the worst he had suffered from the fight was tussled hair. Jack approved. “What are you doing there?”

“They’ve pretty much forgotten who they were originally fighting,” Gregor explained, “and it looks like they’ll be tired or unconscious within a few more minutes, so it’s easier just to wait it out.”

“We should make sure everyone else is okay!”

“Yes, but you looked like you wanted me to wait for you.” He got up. “Let’s go.”

They sneaked into the common room by virtue of ducking below the average pirate’s height, thus escaping attention. Nobody remained standing except Barbossa, who was carrying Cuddy out the door in his arms. “Stop right there!” Jack yelled. He was a little surprised when Barbossa obeyed.

“I was just taking her outside to your friends.”

“Sure, yeah...”

The pirate shrugged. “Look, I don’t resent her cheating. I paid off the bartender to do the same for me.” Beside him, Jack heard Gregor sigh.

“So what happened to her?”

“Some of the others got mad and forced a few shots down her throat,” growled Barbossa, eyes flashing malice. “They’re the ones with extra lumps on their heads.”

“Stop that, House!” Cuddy yelled before drifting into semi-consciousness again.

“I’d hand her over but you appear to be at full capacity,” Barbossa remarked.

“I have two shoulders.”

Before Barbossa could respond, bursts of flame shot up across the city, accompanied by minor tremors. They stepped away from the building as its walls crumbled. The relocation turned out to be a better decision than they could’ve known, as a massive eruption knocked them off their feet and columns of fire transformed the place into a pyre. The ground below began crumbling, setting off a stampede away from the epicenter. As they ran, Jack realized their group was much smaller than it had been. Ianto was with them, but he was the only addition. Gregor must have come to the same conclusion, because he yelled, “Where’d everyone go?” He slid to a halt and grabbed Jack. “They better not have still been inside!”

“We didn’t see them!” Jack replied. “They must have gotten out before us.”

“Then where’d they go? My brother wouldn’t leave us behind!”

“I didn’t see any of them come out,” Ianto replied.

At that moment, Chase and Olivia came running down the street. “Run!” Chase screamed. “There’s a giant rock golem coming this way!”

Jack caught his arm as he passed and forced him to a halt. “A what?”

“A two-hundred feet tall rock golem!” Chase repeated. “And shit! You didn’t tell me one was chasing you too!”

“What?” They all looked up in time to see a massive stone man emerge from the ruins of the tavern and start jogging their direction.

“How’d you get out?” Gregor demanded.

“Uh, trapdoor,” Chase said. “The Persians kidnapped Cameron and Olli. We chased them but got lost, so we split up.”

“We?”

“Christian went the other direction.”

Gregor did some quick counting on his fingers. “That’s everyone still alive,” he replied, giving Jack a look that made him feel like he had narrowly escaped certain death.

“Where’s Joey?” Chase asked.

Gregor blinked. “Almost everyone.”

“You mean Joey’s still over there?”

“Forget the robot!” Olivia screamed. “We’re going to get pinned between two giant statues!”

“I agree,” Barbossa replied. “If you’re talking about that tiger of yours, well, tigers can take care of themselves.”

“Not against giant rock men!”

“Come on!” Jack started running, and Gregor and Olivia dragged Chase screaming and kicking away from the tavern.

“Where are we going?” Ianto asked.

“We should head to your ship,” Barbossa suggested.

Ianto frowned. “Do you think we should--”

“He’s not going to steal the TARDIS,” Jack pointed out. “One pirate isn’t a threat. Let’s go!”

“We’re going the wrong way if you want the harbor,” Barbossa told him.

Jack glared. “You know perfectly well we’re talking about that blue box.”

“Oh. So you caught me staring, did you?”

Cuddy moaned. “That’s the last Vicodin prescription I’m writing you!”

“Arrr, I hate talkative drunks.”

They reached the marketplace, which was pretty much in ruins--those parts that weren’t burning down, anyway. The TARDIS stood unscathed between two flaming buildings, but two men had tied ropes around her and were pulling with all their might to no avail. Barbossa shoved them aside and slashed the ropes, allowing Ianto to move in and fumble with the key. Both golems were hot on their heels, the earth trembling with each step they took.

“Captain!” the skinny one with an eye patch said as he recovered. “We can’t move it!”

“Shut up!” Barbossa snapped.

Jack glared. “You were trying to steal the TARDIS.”

“That was before these creatures attacked! I’m a pirate; spare me the moralizing.”

The door swung open, but the golem from the tavern threw a wagon at them, forcing Ianto away from the door. Jack didn’t move but instead threw the Doctor into the TARDIS before the wagon bowled him over. He half-expected to be crushed and wake up later, but the vehicle was so damaged it split in two as it struck the ground, sparing him most of the impact. Instead, he flew some ten meters down the street and survived.

A light wind started up as the familiar whooshing sound of the TARDIS dematerializing filled the alley. Jack stared as the door swung shut and the blue box vanished with only an unconscious Doctor inside.

“DOCTOOOOOOOOOR!” Chase screamed, as though he were auditioning for the Time Lord version of A Streetcar Named Desire.

“Angel of death indeed,” Barbossa muttered. A giant foot stamped down where the TARDIS had been moments before. “Fine! To my vessel then.” He dodged through the ruins of a one-story building, heading straight for the docks. The others hesitated only a moment before following, except for Chase, who went straight between the golem’s legs and ran for the tavern.

“Goddammit!” Olivia yelled, chasing after him. Jack went after her, because Ianto could take care of the others.

The golem bellowed and scooped all three of them up with one smooth movement. Olivia screamed, Chase kicked before clutching his foot and whimpering, and Jack activated his wristband, hoping it would emit a sonic frequency capable of shattering stone. The sound was inaudible to human ears, but the creature clutched its head with both hands and screamed. They had just enough time to slip through its fingers before its palms slammed against its temples, and they slid along the sleeve until they fell onto its shoulder.

As it flailed, trying to find the source of the sound, the golem crashed into the other one. It shuddered, a crack running across its chest, and Jack nearly fell before getting a grip on one of the folds carved into its collar. The other golem responded by pushing the first one over, lifting it up, and tossing it across the city. Only a quick scramble into the headdress of feathers saved them from being flung off as the golem struck ground, taking down three buildings, and bounced into the air again, this time short an arm and a leg.

Once it stopped bouncing, it started rolling, and Jack was beginning to notice a problem as the seashore drew closer and closer.

“Can we let go?” Chase asked.

Jack shook his head. “We’re going too fast!”

At last, the statue skidded to a halt in the middle of the three-meter-deep gash it had plowed. The head teetered over the edge of a cliff, and a gusting wind threatened to dislodge the feathers, which were already bent and bedraggled. The statue emitted a sigh like the surf and became still.

“Well, that was close,” Olivia said. She unwrapped herself and began climbing toward the neck.

“Wait! Stop!” Jack screamed, but it was too late. Her heel came down on the base of his feather, which was already frayed, and it snapped like a twig. Jack felt a lurch, and then he was plummeting toward the foaming waves, probably churning because of sharp rocks just beneath the surface, and he closed his eyes, thinking this was not one of his preferred ways to go.

When he struck something, it wasn’t hard, cold water but rather a soft cushion of air, letting him down like a feather bed deflating under his weight. He opened his eyes and found himself in a blue oasis. Walls of water loomed overhead, curving as though held out by a large bubble of air, and sunlight shimmered through the movement of waves above. Two women stood to his right, one in silk robes, the picture of elegance, the other wild and untamed, with dreadlocks falling to her waist and small, white crabs circling her feet.

“I know you said help would come from above,” the first one said, “but this is ridiculous.”

Jack shrugged. They were pretty, and he suspected he needed their help too if he wanted to get back on land. “I’m Captain Jack Harkness,” he announced. “What can I do for you ladies?”

* * *

The harbor was burning by the time they reached it. Four golems tore through the piers, swinging at ships still in their berths, while three more waded into the water, trying to form a blockade. Ianto counted twelve ships that had escaped the island, which didn’t amount to much, considering hundreds were in port. The rest were either shattered or sinking.

“I don’t think we’re getting out this way,” Gregor said.

“Have faith, matey,” Barbossa said. “See that beautiful vessel with the black sails? She moves fast as the wind, the Black Pearl does.”

“She’s out in the water,” Ianto said. “I don’t see any tenders.”

Cuddy stirred. “If you’re going to photocopy your butt, at least make sure you don’t have a distinctive birthmark there! Everybody, pants off!”

“What kind of hospital does she work at?” Gregor asked.

“Tai Huang!” Barbossa roared. A Singaporean rushing by paused.

“Barbossa! You’re alive!”

“Why hasn’t the Empress set sail yet?”

“We are waiting for our captain!”

Barbossa stormed over and grabbed the man. “Elizabeth is dead! If you want to live, sail now. I can captain her.”

“No! You’re famous for stealing ships, but this one will never be yours.”

“You’re putting your lives in the hands of a woman who jumped off a cliff!”

The man remained resolute. “Captain Turner will come.”

Barbossa spat in disgust and returned. “We’ll have to find another way.”

“Yeah, steal a ship, brilliant plan,” Ianto told him.

“I’m a pirate! How many times do I have to tell you? This is how we do things!”

“The golems are headed this way,” Ianto said. “What if you signal the Black Pearl from the other end of the dock. If she’s as fast as you say, she can pull in, get us aboard and leave before the golems come back for her.”

Cuddy slapped Barbossa. “No running during surgery!” The pirate looked ready to kill, any sense of protectiveness about her long gone.

“Hold on, let me try something,” Gregor said, snatching the pot of coffee from Ianto. He ran over, forced her mouth open and poured a cup’s worth of liquid into her mouth. Cuddy gurgled and flailed before her eyes shot wide open.

“Where the hell am I!” she snapped. “Let me down!” Barbossa dropped her, and she yelped as she landed on her bottom. When she tried to get back up, she remained wobbly, but Ianto rushed over and let her put an arm across his back.

“Okay, let’s get moving!” he told the others.

The golems ignored them as they ran past, too intent on destroying the remaining ships to pay heed to mere humans. When they reached the end of the dock, Barbossa removed a skyrocket from his pocket and lit it using a burning hull. The firework soared into the sky and exploded in a burst of red sparks. Everyone held their breath. The Black Pearl began turning, and Barbossa’s two lackeys let out a cheer.

“Mind explaining why the city’s suddenly burning down?” Cuddy asked him. “I don’t remember reading about giant rock men in history books.”

“The human race is very adept at covering up and explaining away anything out of the ordinary.”

“Hush!” Barbossa hissed. “This is a very exact procedure. Now, when she approaches, they’ll drop three rope ladders over the side. Pintel, Ragetti and I will go first. The rest of you follow afterward. We’ll have to run out into the water, but not too soon, or you’ll get pulled under. The ship will not stop moving, because it can't. Got it?”

A golem roared and stomped into the water, sending up waves tall as a person. It thundered its way toward the Black Pearl, trying to intercept her, but the ship was indeed faster than anyone expected and raced past, avoiding a swing of its fist by less than a meter. The waves were giving her trouble, though, and before long, it became clear that unless she beached, she would tip once she entered shallow water.

“Back up, back up!” Barbossa yelled. The hull hit the sand with a sickening crunch, like a thousand beanbags getting crushed at once. The ladders went down before the Black Pearl stopped, and the crew put down long oars to push her back out into the water.

Pintel and Ragetti went up the ladder like monkeys, getting aboard within seconds. Ianto motioned for Gregor and Cuddy to take their places, and he followed Barbossa. The Pearl began sliding backward before he was halfway up, but two golems were converging on them now, one from the sea and the other by land. As he clambered over the railing, the ship shook and cannons fired from her port side. The blasts caught the golem in the water in the chest, and it staggered backward. Starboard fired, taking the legs out from the one approaching by ground. It began dragging itself forward with its hands, but Ianto could tell it wouldn’t reach them before they set sail.

The port cannons went off again, but the golem dodged the cannonballs. The Pearl swung around enough to catch the wind in her sails, and she shot away like a swimmer off the block. The golem struck the water, sending out a massive wave, but the ship turned enough to catch the crest, and then they were out of range. Three golems remained further away, but Ianto saw they could outrun them.

The crew cheered as they cleared the edge of the island and reached open water. Barbossa ordered them to circle at a distance and await the Empress.

“I thought you said their captain was dead,” Ianto said.

Barbossa grinned. “I lied.”

“Hail the other ships!” Cuddy demanded. “We need to know if the others made it off.”

“The other ships aren’t waiting to chat,” Barbossa replied. “And they left long before us. If your friends survived, they’ll be leaving on the Empress and we’ll see them soon enough.”

But at that moment, a flare of light caught their attention. As they watched, the entire city erupted into flames, flashes of red and orange engulfing the skyline while lightning crackled across a clear sky and struck targets across the island. As the sound of thunder reached them, a shockwave of dust and debris exploded from the center of the city, the expanding ring leveling every building and ship still standing.

“Brace yourselves!” Barbossa cried. Ianto grabbed the side of the ship as the eruption reached them, tearing through sails and snapping the mizzen mast in half. It was like a wall of darkness sweeping across the ocean, and visibility dropped to zero as the primary debris struck them. Ianto felt the ship buck and shake as they were tossed further out to sea. Barrels of supplies rolled down the deck, one striking him, but he shut his eyes and held on, hoping he’d still be alive when it was over.

A heavy layer of dust covered everything as the last of the blast dissipated. Roiling water surrounded them for as far as they could see, and Singapore was nowhere to be found. The rigging was snapped or hopelessly tangled, and Ianto could see a long journey of rowing ahead of them. Silence smothered the ship as each person stared in the direction where he or she thought Singapore most likely was, and he knew that one question weighed on everyone’s mind: How could anyone have survived that?

To Chapter 18: Escape from Singapore

Back to Chapter 17: Part 1

Summary: It’s all a bit domestic until rock golems burn down Singapore. Two of our heroes get kidnapped, Cuddy bids against Barbossa for a toothbrush, Gregor and Ianto bond over magic coffee, and sociopathic mermaids attack a ship.

Married... with children

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:52:58 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 17
Into the Fire
(Part 1 of 2)

Banners forthcoming (sorry, we saw no reason to keep delaying a finished chapter for graphics reasons)

Click here for list of characters and general info.

A pause followed Lisa Cuddy’s declaration about her need for dental hygiene, during which the Doctor gaped, Jack glowered and the four newcomers just generally stared. Then Jack snapped “Shut up!” at no one in particular. When he realized he was the new center of attention he shifted his feet before explaining: “House” and tapping his ear.

“Okay, first things first,” Cameron said. “Who are they?” She made a sweeping gesture that included Chase and Joey but none of the four people she meant to indicate.

“Germans,” the Doctor replied, and Cuddy wondered if he ever spoke at length about something helpful. Just once, she’d like to see him say something relevant rather than being obtuse right when a few extra words would be nice. Then again, at least he didn’t use strange metaphors like House did.

“So you just kidnap the indigenous population wherever you go?” Chase said.

“What are you, an anthropologist? They’re from the same time period as you. Actually, they’re from your future. Maybe they should call you an awkward primitive.”

“Okay, okay, fine. I get it. Let’s make introductions.” He waved at the woman with the crowbar, took a deep breath and said: “Wij zijn goddelijke gelukkige papavergebakjes.” He beamed after getting through that mouthful. “I learned that greeting in college.”

The German covered in Cameron’s perfume arched one eyebrow, and she thought he could give Ianto a run for his money. That wasn’t her immediate concern, though. “They speak English,” Cuddy said. “In case you weren’t paying attention earlier.”

“Actually,” the Doctor said, drawing himself up as he prepared to launch into another speech, “they were speaking German, but the TARDIS automatically translates any language she knows--which is almost everything in the universe, going back billions and billions of years--both written and spoken. Except names. Sometimes there’s a hard time with names and what language to present them in and whether just to make it up. Limbo-didactism. Tends to happen when you’re far away from us. Likewise, translates anything you write or say to anyone you encounter, as long as you’re still traveling with me and both the TARDIS and myself are physically and mentally healthy, which, don’t worry, is true most of the time. Well, like, all of the time, except a few minor incidents such as when a regeneration goes wrong, but that shouldn’t be happening any time soon, at least I hope not. I mean, I’m a Time Lord, but that doesn’t mean I can see the future. My own future. Everyone else’s future, I sort of can see, except when we’re part of my time line, as would be the case now with everyone present.”

He turned to Chase. “And you just told them we were all divine heroin muffins. In Dutch.”

“I’m Lisa Cuddy,” she said, realizing the Doctor wouldn’t be making introductions any time soon. “I’m a doctor from the United States. These are my colleagues, Robert Chase and Allison Cameron.” She ignored Joey, who was purring and rubbing against the console, figuring the explanation would be more trouble than it was worth. “That’s Ianto Jones and Captain Jack Harkness, from Wales where they run an alien-tracking organization called Torchwood, and the Doctor, who’s an alien even if he doesn’t look it. And yes, that’s really the name he uses.”

“An alien,” orange shirt repeated.

The woman sighed. “And what did you think those things attacking us were?” He glowered at her, but she seemed used to that. “Anyway, I’m Olivia Schneider. The one without any social graces is Christian Mann,”--that would be orange shirt, who looked quite nice wet--“the nice one is my cousin, Oliver Sabel, but you can call him Olli,”--she indicated the one who was probably Christian’s boyfriend, given how close they were earlier--“and the handsome one is Christian’s brother, Gregor.” With that, she gave Christian a pointed look, and Cuddy guessed the drama quotient in the TARDIS was only going to get higher.

“I think the real question is where are we and how are we getting home?” said Gregor.

“None of you have any sense of adventure.”

“You’re aboard the TARDIS,” the Doctor explained.

“It’s a spaceship and time machine,” Ianto cut in.

Joey scurried back to Chase’s side. He bent over, as though reading something on the tiger’s head, and announced, “We’re in Singapore. In the mid-1700s.”

“Thanks,” the Doctor said, “ruin the surprise.”

Joey put her ears back and growled at him.

Olli pointed. “Since no one’s going to ask, why’s there a tiger?”

“Her name’s Joey.” Chase beamed. “She’s actually a large spider-like robot that projects hallucinations into your mind.”

“So, still want to go home?” The Doctor leaned against one of the large, squiggly columns and grinned, as though having a mind-altering spider robot on board was the best recommendation one could give. “Or you could stay and see the universe. Like I said, Earth will be fine, and I can drop you off just an hour after you left whenever you want.”

“You’re encouraging them to stay?” asked Jack.

“They’re clever. Killed two Daleks. You only ever killed two Daleks.”

“Yeah, by myself.”

“You’re being immature, Jack,” Ianto said.

“I am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Just because you want the Doctor to yourself--”

The Doctor spluttered.

Jack threw up his hands. “They can stay! I don’t object. German, clever, and hot, perfect combination.” He winked at Olivia.

“Does anyone have a change of clothing I could borrow?” Christian asked.

Chase pointed in the direction of the living quarters. “There are a bunch of extra rooms further down the hall. Just pick one. They all have bathrooms.”

Ianto headed over. “You look about my size. I’ll try to find something.”

“I’ll help!” Olli said, jogging after them. Definitely dating.

“You mean you actually wear something other than suits?” Chase called after Ianto as they disappeared through the doorway.

Gregor exchanged looks with Olivia. His gaze slid down to her crowbar, and he shrugged. “We’ll stay. It could be fun.”

“We’ll need clothes,” Olivia announced. “I say we go shopping.”

“In eighteenth century Singapore?”

“I’ve always wanted to see Christian in a kimono.”

“That’s Japan.”

“Whatever.”

“Hold on,” Cuddy said, “how am I supposed to get a toothbrush in eighteenth century Singapore?”

“What is with you people and the past?” the Doctor replied. “You think people only became civilized when you were born?”

Jack rolled his eyes, but Cameron replied, “Admit it, civilization is defined by the existence of automatic toilets.”

“Actually, on Gallifrey, we--”

“Whoa, whoa.” Gregor held up a hand. “Too much information.”

“We don’t have money,” Chase noted.

“Oh please, you think I don’t have gold on board?” The Doctor bounded off into another hallway. “This way, come on, metal is heavy, you know.”

“Gold?” Olivia squealed. “How much do you think he has?”

“Don’t even think about it,” Cameron said as she wheeled past. Olivia stuck her tongue out at her and muttered something about cheap perfume and prostitutes.

The passageway twisted and wound, so that they followed the Doctor more by the sound of his footsteps than by sight. The Doctor clearly believed in consistency, because the console room wasn’t the only place that resembled the interior of a tree. In fact, everything had an organic appearance, with some of the walls possessing folds and knots, while the ground felt like it angled up, letting them climb in circles so that any moment, Cuddy expected to see the sun break through a canopy of leaves.

Jack tapped her arm and pointed at a doorway. Inscribed in maybe size eight font along the right side of the frame was the marking ‘7A3.’ The door they’d passed was 7A2 and the next one over was 7A5, which implied Ianto’s “kinky” room probably connected the two.

The procession ground to an immediate halt as the Doctor yelled, “Don’t you dare, Jack!”

“We’ll check it out later,” Jack whispered, grinning.

If anybody had hoped for a large treasure stash, they were disappointed. “The problem is, every once in a while, I’ve had to jettison rooms from the TARDIS--well just once, actually, but if it happened once, it could happen again--so it’s best to spread valuables around,” the Doctor explained as he fumbled through a box of hammers and extracted four worn coins from the bottom. Then they moved on to the next room, where he found a bar of gold and two silver blobs in a stocking.

“Have you ever lost a bedroom?” Chase asked.

“Well, yes, oh look, necklaces!” The Doctor threw four shell necklaces behind him as he continued rummaging through a locker. They hit Jack square in the face. “These are worth a lot, actually. Good for bartering.”

“We were talking about bedrooms,” Chase pressed on.

“Don’t worry, I moved the ones you have close to the control room. They’re within a buffer zone that never gets ejected. Honestly, it’s not a common occurrence.”

“Who wants these?” Jack jangled the necklaces as though tempting a cat.

Olivia contemplated them. “How much are they worth?”

“Tons,” the Doctor insisted. “And more portable than gold. What humans don’t know is that there’s a planet, Kelpax, that’s littered with those shells. They spontaneously materialize--it’s a phenomenon I want to investigate some day. They pay tourists to take them away because otherwise the planet would begin fusion processes within a decade.”

Jack suddenly found himself empty-handed. Olivia had three and was disputing possession of the fourth in a tug-of-war match with Cameron.

“You don’t need that many,” Cameron snapped. “What do you want to do, buy the whole island?”

“Maybe!”

“You’re stealing from the handicapped!”

Gregor hefted the gold bar. “Let go or I’ll tell Olli.”

Cameron’s wheelchair tipped as she suddenly won the match, but she regained her balance just before capsizing. Olivia stuffed the remaining three into her purse. “That one looks better on you anyway. It matches your face.”

Chase made a face. “They look like shriveled mushrooms.”

“Exactly.” Olivia sauntered out of the room and thus missed the Doctor’s discovery of an extremely large diamond.

Three rooms later, they’d amassed enough wealth to buy a meal at an airport, so they headed out.

* * *

A heavy mist lay on the North Sea such that Sir Patrick Spens could barely make out the bow of the ship from his position beside the wheel. Luckily, the chances that they would hit floating ice was minimal, as they were barely moving. Whether something would hit them was another matter.

It was cold, the night showing no signs of spring, though he admitted they were still closer to winter than summer. Nevertheless, a few more hours would bring the sun, which should burn off the fog and allow them to proceed, even if it was with rowers.

“‘Tis a bad night to be out of your cabin, cap’n,” Unlucky Rocky, his first mate, said. “You should be in bed.”

“Superstition,” replied Sir Patrick. After all, his first mate’s nickname had come about merely because he was unfortunate enough to be born on a Friday the Thirteenth with a poorly chosen name. As for himself, Sir Patrick’s own family had begged him not to go on this expedition, reminding him of the ballad he’d spent a childhood learning to ignore. He’d pointed out that if his father hadn’t been stupid enough to give him that first name, they wouldn’t be having this discussion. It wasn’t like they were the only trading vessel on the North Sea at this time of year.

“Oooh, under the sea...”

Despite himself, he whirled around to face Rocky, who had turned so pale his face blended in with the fog. They’d heard singing--ethereal voices. It couldn’t be the crew--though he’d heard some of them pursued unusual activities during shore leave, which might explain the corsets he’d found on board a week ago.

“Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from me!”

Rocky pointed a trembling finger at the darkness beyond the railing. “It’s coming from over there.”

“Nonsense. I don’t hear any singing at all.”

“Then how do you know I’m talking about singing?”

“Uh...”

They heard a sound like an arrow hissing through the air, followed by a clank as a grappling hook locked onto the railing. Sir Patrick unsheathed his sword and charged, screaming: “Pirates! All hands on deck! Pirates!”

He brought his blade down upon the rope so hard it dug into the wood beneath. The length tumbled into the white abyss below, but he heard neither the splash of a human body hitting water nor the thud of the rope hitting a boat.

SPLAT!

From beside the foremast, a dark, glistening form rose up from the deck. His mind jumped to the image of a ghost rising from the grave, and it didn’t help that as far as he could tell, the figure’s hair covered its face, falling all the way to the waist. He forced himself to step closer even as Rocky backed away, falling down a flight of stairs.

Water dripped down the creature’s hair, puddling around what looked to be the outline of a dress. At that moment, the mist cleared enough to let a few rays of moonlight through, and he saw scales flash. He froze, feeling his lungs seize as he saw fins.

Delicate hands that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a princess pushed the hair back, revealing the most beautiful female face he’d ever seen, like a lady at King Arthur’s court, or like the Lady of the Lake, newly risen from her domain. Against all instinct, he forced himself to look down at her waist, seeing where bare human flesh melded into the body of a fish. He had to remind himself she was a monster, or he’d lose himself in her eyes, her tender skin, her breasts. Oh god, her breasts... No, look away, look away! Too late... did she have no modesty at all? Not even a seashell or a starfish...

“What is your name, good captain?” And her voice. The voice of an angel. Why was the world so cruel? He stammered something along the lines of “Wibba-wah-wooo” and she smiled like a mother caressing her newborn babe. “I am Ariel,” she said calmly. “Queen of the mermaids.”

“Aren’t you supposed to...” he gulped, “...to be swimming alongside or something?” There was nothing in the legends about grappling hooks and acrobatics.

“It’s cold in the water,” she said, running her hands along her neck and shoulders as though to warm them. “You wouldn’t want us to freeze, would you?” The hands moved lower. Lower. Now they were upon her breasts. “You wouldn’t want us to get stiff, would you?”

“Us?” he asked, his voice several pitches above normal.

Several more clanks, and this time he saw the forms soaring up and up, then tumbling down toward the deck. All women, their perfect bodies glowing under the moon, their fins swaying in the wind of their descent.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

He winced as they crashed onto the hard wood surface, flopping like dying fish before pushing themselves upright and giving him winning smiles. Part of him was repulsed, but that was mostly just the civilized part of his brain, which accounted for a very, very, extremely teeny-weeny, tiny, small part of his total body mass. The rest of him was drawn to them like a moth to a flame. And like the moth, he felt the heat... it was unbearable, but something told him he could quench it in their sticky, wet embrace.

CRASH! He had enough time to register a large form drop from the sky before he had to duck to avoid the storm of wooden debris that erupted from the newcomer’s landing.

Ariel sighed and dragged herself over to the hole in his deck, pulling, grunting and wriggling her way over the ground like an injured horse being set upon by hounds. Somehow, when she reached her destination, she became all poise and grace once more, so that his mind rebelled against the thought of her looking silly in any way. “Oh Toots, I thought I told you to wait down there.” In his mind, this translated to: “Oh Sir Patrick I want you to ravish me as roughly as the sea swells pound and for as long as the arctic winter nights last!”

“That is not, errmph, fair, aaaaghhk, at all, OOMPH,” said the mermaid called Toots as she dragged herself out of his cargo hold. Describing her as large had been an understatement of extreme magnitudes. She was larger than any opera singer who had ever worn a horned Viking hat, and the bottom half of her put him more in mind of a whale than a fish. He judged her weight at over four hundred pounds, and every bit of that was jiggling as she dragged herself over to him. He had thought Ariel was beautiful, yet Toots managed to make her look like Unlucky Rocky in a corset. If he wasn’t still holding his breath from terror, her beauty would’ve taken his breath away.

“Why hello there, gorgeous,” she said when she was just inches from his feet. Pushing herself into a sitting position--which placed her head at the right height for a certain activity that this was not the right time for. “What’s your name?”

“Sir, sir, sir--” He shook himself. “Sir Patrick Spens,” he said as gruffly as he could. His voice was still an octave too high.

Toots’ eyes widened, and she trembled as she let out hoots of laughter at just the right frequency to set the ship resonating, so that the wood seemed to laugh with her. Then she gave him a good-humored slap, but unfortunately, she was at the right height for that slap to be extremely painful. The other mermaids joined in the merriment as he doubled over.

“Well, that makes me feel a lot better,” said one of the other mermaids in response to his name.

“Yes, Anastasia, it’d be terrible if we met a sailor who wasn’t prepared for us!” exclaimed a fourth mermaid.

Ariel held up a hand and everyone fell silent. “That’s enough. I speak for us, remember?” The silence continued, but there was no mistaking it for anything but assent. “Good. Then Sir Patrick, I must tell you something.”

He straightened up, though his right leg kept twitching. “All right...”

“You are near shooooooore, Sir Patrick!” Ariel said in as dramatic and exaggerated a voice as possible, waving her hands about. “But I feeeear you shall neeeeeeee’er spy laaaaand!” All the mermaids broke down into hysterical cackles again.

This struck a chord, and anger welled up, overwhelming all other emotions. “That’s enough!” he snapped, raising his blade. “Why are you here, and if it is for mischief, then you have chosen the wrong vessel!”

Once again, the laughter stopped as though cut off by a knife, but this time, the air was rife with tension, and Sir Patrick felt his heart beat faster. Ariel slithered over, reminding him of a poisonous slug, and she raised herself up to meet his eyes, balancing on her fins. She caressed his face and drew closer so that their breath mingled and their lips almost touched.

“Do you know the nightingale?” she asked.

“What?”

“We seek the nightingale. Do you know her?”

He had a few seconds to contemplate whether this was a code or whether he had indeed ever heard of a woman called nightingale. Patience seeped out of Ariel’s expression like sand from an hourglass, replaced by a vindictiveness that almost overwhelmed her beauty. “No,” he replied. “No, I don’t.”

“Oh.” She sank to the floor. “That’s too bad.” A snap of her fingers sent the mermaids scurrying. There was a clatter like beads clacking together, and he saw a troupe of crabs climb on board. “Sebastian!”

One of the crabs broke off from the rest to join Ariel. He clacked his pincers in time as Ariel counted, “One, two, three, four.”

“Hakuna matataaaa!” the crab bellowed. “What a wonderful-- erp.”

The look Ariel gave Sebastian was enough to freeze water in the Caribbean. Sir Patrick was so busy feeling glad it wasn’t directed at him that he didn’t wonder why a crab could sing. There was some uncomfortable shifting amongst the remaining crabs, who had formed elegant chorus lines.

“No! No!” Sebastian said. “Please mistress, let me try again!” He began howling when Ariel picked him up. “Please! I don’t wanna--” CRUNCH.

Sir Patrick gaped as Ariel tore the crab in half and began chewing on the dripping remains. “Mmm, talent tastes so good,” Ariel said, unaware of the tradition of eating with your mouth shut. She pointed seemingly at random, but from the way all the crabs were looking at her target, he guessed appearances were deceiving. “You, new Sebastian, go.”

The crab moved so fast he had to slide into position rather than slow down and began singing immediately. “The seaweed is always greener, In somebody else’s lake!”

“You dream about going up there,” the crustacean chorus joined in, “But that is a big mistake.”

The mermaids began swaying. “Just look at the world around you, Down there on the ocean floor.”

“Such tasty morsels surround you,” Ariel continued, also oblivious about the rule regarding not singing while eating. “What more is you lookin’ for?” She offered him a claw, adding, “It’s the meatiest part.”

He shook his head, suppressing the urge to throw up, only to be swept into Toots’ arms as she started flopping around in an extremely vague imitation of human dance.

Under the sea, under the sea. Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from me! Up on the shore they work all day, out in the sun they slave away, while we devotin’ full time to floatin’, under the sea!

Sir Patrick was too busy trying not to get crushed by Toots to notice that as they sang, large barrels were being flung on board by, presumably, the mermaids still in the sea. By the time the chorus finished, the mermaids had some forty containers lined up from stern to bow, having been working as they sang, in true musical tradition.

Finally, Toots let him go and he lay beside the wheel, feeling as though he’d run a hundred miles. Ariel rolled to his side and lay a wet kiss upon his lips. “So how would you like to join us under the sea?”

“I, uh, I don’t think so,” he said, mind spinning. “Like you said, it’s a bit cold down there.”

“Oh don’t worry. You’ll be burning hot soon enough.”

As suddenly as she arrived, Ariel disappeared. He heard soft splashes accompanied by giggling, and when he looked up, he was alone again. Breathing a sigh of relief that he’d gotten off so easily, he sat up.

That was when he heard the hissing.

Looking over, he noticed the barrels for the first time. Under the moonlight, he could see faint specks of black powder from where one was leaking. And further away, tiny flames sparked as they drew closer and closer to the nearest container.

“Bollocks!” he screamed, and hopefully, he enjoyed his choice of words, because it was the last thing he ever said.

* * *

Ianto showed Olli his wardrobe while Christian showered, and Ianto knew something was wrong when he felt awkward about the fact that they weren’t going through a closet of suits. Maybe he should take more vacation time. One of the shirts they found still had the price tag attached.

“Let me guess,” Olli said, “you’re a workaholic.”

“We monitor a rift in space and time. You don’t ever really switch off from something like that.” That wasn’t strictly true. Gwen seemed to manage, going so far as showing up late every once in a while. But then again, that was, in a way, part of her job description.

“That’s the only reason?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“So it has nothing to do with the looks you keep giving the captain?”

“It did.” He flung the black t-shirt across the room in disgust. “I can’t believe I used to wear anything this tight. Nothing will fit him.”

Olli grinned. “I know that. How do you?”

“My father was a tailor. You learn to size people up.”

“Good, or I might have to start getting jealous.” He laughed.

The door slid open and Christian emerged in a towel. “You’re not fighting over me already?”

“Yes, Mr. Macho. Everybody wants you.”

“So did you find anything or were you too busy comparing notes?”

Olli tossed him some boxers. “You can try the other stuff on, but you’d better not plan on moving.”

“Or breathing,” Ianto added. “Let’s check out the Doctor’s dressing room.”

“The Doctor?” Both men asked incredulously. The only thing skinnier than the Doctor was a scarecrow.

“He can change forms, so I’m guessing he wasn’t always that thin. Anyway, he has all sorts of clothes, so he probably plans for his companions too. I mean, we could try some of Jack’s things, but that opens a whole other can of worms.”

Christian shrugged. “Whatever you think is best.”

Ianto hesitated a moment, suppressing the urge to put everything back in place, before he guided them out. “We should all change, actually,” he said, his mind racing ahead. “It’s probably better to blend in with the local culture.”

“And what is the local culture?” Olli asked.

“Chinese, Indian and Malay are the predominant ethnic groups.” It didn’t take long to reach seven alpha three, and the door opened as though anticipating their presence. When he noticed Christian looking around for a motion sensor, he explained, “The TARDIS is sort of alive. I don’t know the details, but if it--uh, she, according to the Doctor--likes you, you’ll find life a lot smoother. I think the rooms sometimes shuffle around, so if you’re looking for something, keep an eye on the numberings on the doors, because you might find the one you want much sooner than you think.”

“What if she doesn’t like you?” Christian asked.

Olli gave him a small peck on the cheek before disappearing behind a rack. “Who could resist you?”

Ianto glanced at a board with rows of dried celery pinned to it and wondered whether he should throw it out. “If the Doctor lets you on board, I’m guessing the worst she’ll be is ambivalent, in which case you’ll have to walk a bit more and open your own doors.” The celery was definitely molding, which was something he’d never been able to notice on celery before, but on the other hand, maybe Time Lords had strange ideas about collectible items.

Christian approached the nearest door and gave it a cautious look. It swung open, and he grinned like a kid on Christmas morning. Then he froze and shot Ianto a confused look. “Is there something we should know about the Doctor?”

“Oh.” Seven alpha four. Right. The four meter square room with handcuffs lining the walls. “I asked him about that. He dodged the question, but I can tell you they’re not for arrests.”

Olli reappeared carrying three sets of robes and studded leather. “Have you seen his collection of scarves? It's amazing!” Ianto mentally dressed himself in one of the outfits and discovered he looked like a terra cotta warrior come to life. He wondered what Jack would say.

Before he could continue or terminate that thought process, rapid footsteps echoed down the hall, and the Doctor yelled, “Jack! I told you not to sneak back here!” He slid into view, hair standing up even more than usual, and caught sight of Ianto and realized his mistake. “Oh,” he said, instantly calming down. Then he caught sight of Christian. “Oh.”

Ianto grabbed a green set of robes and began undressing. He wasn’t sure why he felt such an urgent need to change in front of the Doctor, but he couldn’t stop now that he’d begun or it’d become even more awkward. “Personally, I expected you to lock that room the moment I mentioned it,” he said.

The Doctor blinked and turned away. “Yes, well, I did. The TARDIS must really like someone.” Christian beamed. “Incidentally, the rest of your friends are wandering around the flea market in shorts and t-shirts. Except for Jack, who’s still wearing that ridiculous greatcoat.”

“You wear a coat too,” Ianto pointed out. “Anyway, it’s a little cold outside.”

“It’s never cold in Singapore. And how do you know it’s cold?”

“Weather readings in my room. Twenty degrees. Below average, I’ll admit, but I can’t imagine the TARDIS being wrong. So mind explaining the handcuffs?”

“They’re sonic. And don’t you dare tell Jack. You should’ve heard what he said about my screwdriver.”

“How do they work?” Ianto couldn’t resist. Few sonic artifacts came through the Rift, but he’d heard stories from Jack. They were quite advanced technology, which explained the rarity. He took one pair off the wall, causing the Doctor to dash forward.

“That’s not a good idea!” he yelled.

His fingers found a release along the insides, and with a click, the outer band of metal came loose. He spun it and instantly heard a shrill squeal.

“Duck!” the Doctor yelled, tackling Christian and Olli as a shockwave of blue light burst forth. When the dust cleared, Ianto found himself lying in the far corner of the room, covered by manacles, which had all flown at him as though magnetically attracted. None had fallen anywhere else.

In the dressing room, a hurricane had blown through, knocking everything out of place and creating a carpet of fabric half a meter thick by stripping the racks clean. The Doctor appeared to have experienced the same problem with object magnetism, though in his case, the objects were the pieces of celery pinned to the board. He plucked one out of his hair and nibbled the end, eliciting several groans of disgust from the others, Ianto included.

“Hmm,” he said, “brings back good memories.”

Ianto thumbed the safety latch back into place and set the handcuffs aside. “Now I know why you said they were dangerous.”

“You know, sometimes you’re as bad as Jack.”

“I blame it on the work environment.”

“Right. So if we’re done playing with my toys, get dressed and head out. There’s a bargain on fresh fruit and coffee beans. That’s always been a problem--never have enough fresh fruit. I should just plant some apple trees in the cloister room.”

* * *

The smell of incense was a little overwhelming as Chase perused the little shop. Wicker cages hung from the ceiling, each containing several little yellow birds, chirping and fluttering about. Joey’s tail lashed as she surveyed the creatures, which she informed him were parakeets, seeming a little annoyed that he couldn’t identify them on sight. The shopkeeper eyed her nervously, but Chase didn’t want to tell her to wait outside. Red curtains covered the windows and doorways so that the primary source of light was several braziers placed around the room, making the atmosphere hot and stuffy. In the backroom, he caught sight of several scantily clad woman moving around, visible by the glimmer of their jewels, and he had the vague suspicion that if Joey left, someone would either rob him or persuade him into joining them in some form of obscene behavior.

He really liked the birds though, even if Cuddy had warned him against bringing aboard any more pets.

The curtain over the doorway parted and Jack Harkness burst in like a bulldozer through foliage. “Did your parents not let you have a dog when you were a kid or something?” He grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him out.

Chase waved happily at the shopkeeper. “Maybe I’ll see you later!” She looked pleased to see him go, which was disappointing. He turned back to Jack. “What’s the hurry?”

“That was an opium den.”

“Oh.” So maybe the birds weren’t for sale. That would explain a lot.

They took several turns to emerge out of an alleyway into a bustling market. Several chickens squawked at their appearance, flapping against the confines of their cage. “Look!” Chase pointed at a stall further down. “Ducks!”

“Yes. They like their poultry fresh.”

Chase gaped. “What? They eat the ducks?” He made a beeline for the vendor but Jack grabbed the back of his shirt. After a brief struggle, the captain was victorious. “Let me go!”

“You can’t buy the ducks!”

“Why not?”

“Because lots of ducks get eaten every day. And also, the others would kill both of us.”

“You’re not my appointed guardian.”

Jack waved a leather pouch in front of his face. “You gave all your coins to Cuddy, remember?”

The pouch vanished into his pocket when Chase made a snatch for it. “I’ll barter then.” He began turning around but Jack grabbed his arms and forced him to hold still.

“You don’t want to turn around right now.”

“Why not?” Chase tried to turn his head but realized that, since both of Jack’s hands were occupied, he’d probably get kissed if he tried. He held still, and at that moment, heard quacking cut off by a thunk. This was followed by a soft whimper that he realized came from his own throat. Shaking Jack loose, he dashed away in the opposite direction and ran straight into a gruff-looking man with enough weapons on him to run his own arms dealership.

Realizing his mistake, Chase backed away until he felt the reassuring pressure of Joey behind him. “Uh, terribly sorry.”

The man took in his appearance and his scowl became replaced by a predatory smile. “That’s quite fine. Apple?”

“No, my name is Chase. Oh.” The man was offering an apple. “Uh, sure. Thanks.”

“I am Hector Barbossa. You look new to these parts.”

“Well, yeah, just a little...”

Jack barged into the conversation, and Chase breathed a sigh of relief. “Captain Jack Harkness. Nice to meet you.”

“Aye? A captain. Which vessel in the harbor is yours?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you that,” replied Jack, crossing his arms. “You look like a rogue pirate to me.”

“I wouldn’t call myself a rogue. Much too old for that.”

Chase’s jaw dropped. “You’re a pirate?” Joey circled around to sit in front of him and bared her teeth at Barbossa.

“Relax.” Jack patted him on the shoulder. “It’s the 1700s. Everyone’s a pirate.”

“You know that from personal experience, do you?”

“No. I was a century late. But, you know, you hear things.”

“A century late?” Barbossa didn’t seem fazed by their discussion, but Chase felt it was best if they left as soon as possible. He noticed Cuddy at that moment, standing right behind Barbossa.

“Do you have any toothbrushes?” she asked the vendor. “People tell me you’re the only one who makes any worth buying.”

The old man nodded. “Ah, you are just in time. Our products are very high quality, and I have one brush remaining. I will get it.”

“What?” Barbossa roared. “No!” He turned around and lunged at the stall. “I was here first!” So that solved the problem of how to distract Barbossa, but now Cuddy had him by the collar, foiling their perfect opening for an escape.

“No, no, no!” the seller yelled. “No fighting allowed between my customers!”

“The customer is always right,” Barbossa growled, hand on the hilt of his sword.

Cuddy let him go. “Fine. But I was here first.”

Barbossa removed a handful of silver pennies. “I’ll pay twice the price, whatever it is.”

“I’ll double anything he offers!” Cuddy dropped a gold coin. The shopkeeper’s eyes went wide. Then he scurried off and brought back a single toothbrush which, while not shabby, didn’t hold a candle to anything sold at, say, K-Mart, except for that fact that it lay on a velvet cushion. Chase wondered if the padding felt as soft as it looked.

Barbossa added four gold coins to his pile of silver. Cuddy put down everything Chase had given her. The pirate was glaring at her, and Chase decided that, Rambo or not, Cuddy couldn’t defeat him unarmed.

“Uh, maybe we can just pick up a toothbrush somewhere else,” he said, tapping her shoulder. Cuddy gave him one glance, then looked over to Jack.

“Oh good. Give me your money, Jack.”

The captain sighed but handed over his pouch.

“Shouldn’t we be getting away?” Chase asked.

Jack’s eyes grew distant as he stared at Cuddy’s heaving bosom. “I love an assertive woman.”

“There are thousands of pharmacies! Can’t we just go to one of those? Stop bidding against a pirate--this isn’t eBay!”

Cuddy paused long enough to snap, “We’ve been bouncing around like pinballs for the last three hours! Do you really trust him to find us a drug store? Here, I don’t know how much this is worth, but I’m sure it’s more than the lecherous old swordsman has.”

“Actually, I have another bag.” Barbossa cackled. “And if you permit me to go back to my ship, I can give three times anything she has.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t trouble you to do that,” the shopkeeper said, clearly doubting Barbossa would ever return if he got his hands on the toothbrush. “What is present is sufficient to complete the deal.”

“Excellent.” Barbossa poured out a pile of gold bracelets that stacked higher than both their previous amounts combined. Chase decided not to point out that, technically, the highest bidder won; you didn’t have to blow the other person out of the water.

Cuddy looked crestfallen. Everything the Doctor had scrounged up didn’t equal a quarter of what Barbossa just produced, and thanks to the pirate’s earlier offer, they couldn’t go back to the TARDIS and look under the mattresses for more. Barbossa winked at her, recognizing her expression as one of defeat. Then Cuddy looked up and said, “I’ll trade you Jack!”

“Okay, now it’s time to go,” Jack said, snapping to attention and pushing Chase in the direction of the TARDIS. Cuddy grabbed him and forced his arm behind his back so that he couldn’t move without dislocating his shoulder. “Ow! When’d you learn to do that?”

“Self-defense classes at the university.” She turned back to the shopkeeper. “So what do you say? Strong and handsome shop assistant, extremely hardy.”

“Hey look!” Chase said. “Isn’t that Olivia?” Maybe Cuddy would get in a fight with her and forget about the toothbrush. Both women looked annoyed enough.

The three necklaces swung in Olivia’s hand as she stormed up to them. “The Doctor lied to me! These are worthless!”

“Really?” Jack was rather calm for a man with his arm twisted behind him. “I know for a fact he was telling the truth.”

“Yeah? Try telling that to Angela Merkel on steroids back there!” She switched to an exaggerated Asian accent: “I sell master work, not silly shell on string. Come back when girl move up from whoring in fish market.”

Jack choked down a snort of laughter. Olivia threw the necklaces at Cuddy in disgust, and the shopkeeper looked up from counting money to investigate the new source of commotion. His face lit up as he caught sight of the shells.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had those?” he exclaimed. Then, as though terrified, he bowed before her. “But of course, you must be a noble woman to possess so many. Perhaps someone visiting Lady Elizabeth? Of course, it is not my place to ask, and one would never part with something so precious for a mere toothbrush. Forgive me.”

Olivia looked awfully like a fish at that moment. “You mean these?” Cuddy asked, shoving the necklaces at the little man. He cringed back, afraid to touch them.

“Yes, of course. More precious than gemstones.”

“I’ll give you all three for the toothbrush,” Cuddy said. Olivia opened her mouth to protest, but Jack took the opportunity to twist away from Cuddy and ended up falling into her. They went down in a heap. Cuddy ignored them.

The shopkeeper reached for one, fingers trembling as though suspecting a trick. He tapped a single shell, then jerked back as the string swung like a pendulum. “No, I cannot accept them. They are too valuable. But... perhaps... my lady would be willing to part with one?”

“Of course.” She smiled as Barbossa growled at her.

The toothbrush entered her possession with a lot of bowing, and the shopkeeper retreated with his precious find. “Please, you are welcome to your coins,” he said before departing with all his wares. Chase wondered whether he’d come back or if that necklace could buy him a house from Lady Elizabeth, whoever that was. Probably the governor’s wife.

“I hope there are no ill feelings,” Cuddy told Barbossa as they swept their money back into bags. She tossed the remaining necklaces at Olivia as she tucked the toothbrush into her bra. As she looked around for a place to discard the box, Chase pounced and relieved her of the burden. It was, indeed, every bit as soft as he’d imagined. He let Joey sniff it before securing it in his backpack, which he’d liberated from the hospital shop before departing. It had Powerpuff Girls on it, but one couldn’t be picky in a ravaged, burnt-out store.

“Absolutely not. It was fate.” Barbossa offered a hand and Cuddy shook it. “But if you are feeling gracious in victory, perhaps you could show me where you are staying. I don’t meet travelers like you every day, wealthy and dressed so strangely.”

Chase shook his head. “He’s a pirate!”

“And you’re a coward, but I don’t hold that against you.”

“I’m not a coward!”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Cuddy. “But I’ll buy you a drink to make up for it.”

“That’s a deal, lass.”

Joey gave him a confused look as Cuddy and Barbossa departed amiably. Chase shrugged. “People are weird sometimes. Just... if you ever have to ask for an explanation, don’t ask House.”

“House heard that,” Jack reminded him.

“Shit.”

“Anyway, it’s not that I trust Barbossa, and I don’t think Cuddy does either, but when you’re traveling with the Doctor, you have to take a laid back approach to things or drive yourself crazy. Thirty bucks Barbossa tries to steal the toothbrush.”

Chase had a few mental images he’d rather not have imagined, considering where Cuddy had placed her prize. Jack got that distant look again. “No bet,” Chase replied. “Fifty that Cuddy beats him up for trying, though.”

“Arm hold or strangulation?”

That was easy. “Arm hold. Barbossa has knives.”

“I don’t know how much experience you have with gambling, but higher-valued bets are placed on less-likely events.”

“When you work with House, you take what you can get. So... deal?”

“Deal.” They jogged after Cuddy and Barbossa, but pursuing them wasn’t hard as their clothing stood out in the crowd. Several minutes later, Jack added, “You owe me if Barbossa doesn’t make a move, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Because I don’t think he’s interested in the toothbrush anymore.”

“How do you know?” Why did he always go against people who could outwit him?

“He’s been following us ever since we left the TARDIS.”

To Chapter 17: Part 2

Back to Chapter 16: The Universe

"I've always had a soft spot for people who want to redesign their souls."

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:56:23 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 16
The Universe

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

The TARDIS was empty, but not for long. The doors flew open and a group of seven mismatched people entered.

"We ended up on Earth again!" said Donna. "How are you so bad at navigation?"

"I'm not! The TARDIS just likes Earth! I can't control her!" protested the Doctor.

"She's your ship!"

"We just met Archimedes," said House. "That's amazing! You know he came up with mathematical concepts that are still being used today!" There were not a whole ton of people House admired. Everyone he did admire he had never met, since he found that speaking with his heroes inevitably brought him face-to-face with their faults. Before now he hadn't considered that meeting Archimedes would be possible, and so hero-worshipping him would be pretty safe.

"I should hope so, since 'today' he's still alive." said Wilson cheekily.

"Not met him so much as probably saw him for a second, really. But it's hard to tell the Greeks apart - they tended to dress alike," mused the Doctor.

"Oh, shut up," said House to them both. Tosh also looked rather thunderstruck by their chance encounter.

"You know, that owl was named Archimedes in the Disney version of Sword in the Stone," remarked Owen.

"I loved that movie," said the Doctor.

There was an awkward silence.

"Where to next?" said Sarah Jane.

"Let me just set the randomizer," said the Doctor.

"Well hurry it up," said Donna.

"Hey scarfman, I have a question," said House. Donna sniggered.

"Hmm?" said the Doctor, fiddling with the console.

"In private," House added. The Doctor flicked one more switch and walked over.

"Does this have to do with mustard?" he said.

"What? No!" said House. "I've been thinking. These surgical robot things, if they can heal genetic diseases, isn't it safe to assume they could heal my leg? Because that would, you know, give me a lot more motivation to actually find these aliens."

"Well yes, of course," said the Doctor. "Some of the really advanced ones can even grow back whole body parts."

House grinned at him. "Great! Let's go people!" he added to the rest of the group, clapping his hands. The Doctor grinned back at him and pulled a final lever on the console.

The dematerialization sound began seconds before the doors flew open again and against a backdrop of ancient Syracuse, in strode a tall, slightly imposing man. He had a full beard and looked to be in his late thirties.

"Wait!" he said. "You didn't -- what is this place?" As the man looked around in wonder, the Doctor shouted something indistinct and leapt for the door lever. The doors swung shut just as the TARDIS made its leap into the vortex.

"Fool!" said the Doctor. "Why did you come in here?"

House snickered. "You just called Archimedes a fool," he said.

"Ooooh no," said Donna. "We're taking him back, right now. I'm not gonna have some weird Greek guy in a toga coming with us."

"Who died and made you boss?" said Owen.

"You want him along?" said Donna. Owen shrugged petulantly.

"Wait, wait," said Archimedes, looking around in wonder. "Where am I?"

"Uh, a time machine," said Sarah Jane, who had obviously decided that the gig was up and there was no point in subtlety.

"A what now?"

"It... travels in time. Er, and space too."

"My dear, I would surely know about it if such a contraption existed!" scoffed Archimedes.

"I don't know why you think that," said House.

"Well, see for yourself! We've landed," said the Doctor. "Don't look too long though. You're staying with the TARDIS. I can't be looking after even more reckless humans!"

"What--" began Archimedes.

"Oh yes, and, let's see," interrupted the Doctor. "Wilson, you stay with him! Can't have him wandering off. Don't you wander off either. I mean that!"

With that, he opened the doors with a flourish.

* * *

Otto von Chriek, the vampire/chief iconographer for the Ankh-Morpork Times, was not technically "on duty" when he noticed something curious a short ways from where he was walking, but he still carried his iconograph and enough of his equipment to rush into action in case of an event--in many ways, his was a 24/8 job.

He wondered if he should run and get William or Sacharissa, or at least send an urgent clacks message to the Times' private tower, but the nearest public tower was several blocks away and he didn't want to miss a potential story.

It wasn't technically his job, but he always kept a pencil and pad of paper handy just for situations like this, so he could take notes and hand them over to one of the reporters.

The curiosity centered around a small group of strangely-clothed, mismatched people. Probably foreigners, Otto thought, though he couldn't place from where. That was hardly a big deal in and of itself--everyone in the city was foreign--but these people seemed far more foreign that was usual even for Ankh-Morpork. Otto had been all over the disk and he'd never seem clothing or mannerisms like theirs. The differences were subtle, but the most obvious was the distinctly out of place air around them, as if they didn't know quite what they were seeing. It might do well to follow them for a while, he decided.

"Wow," he heard one of them say, a small, different-looking woman. "This is the first alien planet I've ever been on! I've always dreamed about it!" This seemed an odd thing for someone to say, but certainly not the strangest thing he'd heard in Ankh-Morpork. Perhaps they were just crazies. He strained to hear more.

"Yeah. It's a right pity it's such a dump," said another, an unimpressed youngish man.

"Hey frogboy," said a redheaded lady in a take-no-crap kind of voice. "Why don't you remove those tadpoles from your ass and try to relax? If you weren't being so busy being cynical all the time you might enjoy yourself."

"You haven't got one drop of romance in your soul, Owen," said the first woman sadly.

The unimpressed man scowled at her and snarked something back, but Otto had heard enough, and his interest had left them for the time being in favor of the rest of the pack.

By far the strangest character was a very tall man walking at the head of the group, who was sporting a surprising amount of surprisingly curly hair and a wide, nearly manic grin. This look was topped off by an insanely long multicolored scarf that wrapped around the man's neck twice and still had enough length left over for both ends to trail lightly on the ground. The overall effect was something that on a man of any other stature and build would have been exceedingly comical, and yet on this man it looked impressive. He moved as though it were natural to be weighed down by several yards of wool. Otto thought he was probably the sort of man defined by extremes.

He was chatting cheerily with a young woman who was by far the most normal-looking of the bunch, brunette and not too strangely clothed.

In between the squabbling trio at the back and the two in the front stalked a peeved-looking, slightly unkempt man with a cane. The whole group was being followed by a small black cat, but it didn't look like they'd noticed her yet.

They also hadn't noticed Otto, but he knew how not to be seen. It was part of being a vampire.

It wasn't long before the curly-haired man in front spotted something that interested him near Contract Bridge and headed in that direction. The thing that had interested him turned out to be a man in a copper's uniform. Or rather, several men and two dwarfs in copper uniforms, standing around beside the bridge eating lunch and talking amongst themselves. Interesting, thought Otto.

They looked to be on break, but coppers are coppers and they quickly turned their attention to the odd group approaching them. For most of the men in the Watch, coppering was a state of being as much as a job. It wasn't something they hung up by the door when they got home. Otto connected with that on some level.

The curly-haired man had grinned at them and offered his hand, but the grumpy-looking man right behind him shoved him aside, raised his right hand in a four-fingered V, and said, "Take us to your leader" in a stilted monotone. The watchmen stared at him.

Otto stopped a passing boy and gave him a couple pennies to run down to Gleam Street and fetch William, then quickly set up his iconograph.

During the minute or so he'd been distracted, an argument had erupted between three of the coppers, the man with the cane, and the redheaded woman. This ended rather swiftly when the man whacked the nearest copper over the head with his cane, after which they were promptly arrested. Otto got a couple quick shots of the group being led, some loudly protesting, away towards the Watch House.

Around then, William showed up, huffing lightly and with his pad of paper and pencil at the ready.

"What's going on?" he said, looking around.

"I don't know vat just happened," said Otto, "but I fink it vas someting interesting. Some very curious characters have come to ze city."

* * *

"Is this Chula or isn't it?" Owen demanded for the fourth time. The cell they were sitting in barely held them all, and certainly not comfortably.

"Er, no," said the Doctor, having finally run out of circuitous answers. Owen groaned in frustration.

"How do you know for sure?" asked Sarah Jane.

"The Chula don't look anything like these people. When we get to Chula, I'll know," explained the Doctor.

"Why didn't we just leave right away then?" said Owen.

"For once I actually agree with you," noted Donna.

"I wanted to confirm something," said the Doctor.

"Since this isn't where we're looking for," said House, "can we just bust out of here and leave?"

The two watchmen guarding the cell looked over at them suspiciously.

Sarah Jane rolled her eyes. "Stop bickering, guys."

"What did you want to confirm?" asked Tosh, who had actually known it wasn't Chula from the start.

"This looks like the Discworld," the Doctor said with the air of one imparting a groundbreaking theory. This failed to cause the expected excitement. "You know, the Discworld," he said again.

House rolled his eyes. "I'm pretty sure there is no reason whatsoever why I should have heard of this."

"It's a world shaped like a disc that sits on the backs of four elephants who stand on the back of a giant turtle that swims through space. No one has ever been able to prove it exists because of its constantly changing spatial coordinates. I still don't know for sure that this is it!"

"I hope you don't expect anyone to believe that."

"Is no one going to do anything?" said Donna. "No plans? Doctor, sonic screwdriver? Uhh, do you have that yet?"

"I left it in the TARDIS," said the Doctor sheepishly.

"Sheesh," she said, then stood and grabbed the bars of the cell. "LET ME OUT OF HERE!" she screamed at top volume. Everyone else in the room covered their ears at once. "I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS! I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG! LET ME OUT, YOU PEA-BRAINED, BUMBLING, BUREAUCRATIC MORONS OR I WILL HAVE YOUR BALLS ON A PLATE!"

"I really don't think that's helping," said Owen.

"Why does he keep leading us out into places he knows aren't Chula?" Tosh asked Sarah Jane.

"He's always been a bit, ah, directionless. He gets distracted easily," explained Sarah Jane.

"Doesn't he realize this is important? Someone's life is at stake!"

"Oh, I'm sure he understands," Sarah Jane reassured her. "Whatever his eccentricities, he's not one to underestimate the importance of life. If he thought the situation was really serious, he'd be a lot more focused."

"Serious? It is serious!" said Tosh. Donna continued shouting through the bars, her threats getting nastier and more bizarre.

"Oh, I know it's serious, but you know the TARDIS is a time machine... right? We can just plop back down a second after we left. Theoretically."

"What do you mean, theoretically?" said Tosh suspiciously.

"Ah. Well. He's actually not very good at piloting it..." Sarah Jane admitted. Tosh stared at her.

* * *

Sam Vimes was not happy. His day had started busy, gotten busier, and all signs pointed to the future becoming busier still. It was barely lunchtime and he couldn't even remember all the things he had yet to do. He felt guilty about taking the time even to use the toilet and, worst of all, his investigation was going nowhere. As if all this weren't enough, there had been a very obvious attempt on his life not even an hour ago, and they hadn't caught the shooter. All this accumulated, one problem dog-piling on top of another, and the final result was a Very Bad Mood.

And then he'd been called down to take a look at some "wackjobs" who, apparently, had assaulted an officer. That was ridiculous. He was the Commander of the Watch! There was absolutely no reason why he should have been called in on a matter as trivial as this, as if wackjob wasn't the norm in this city, as if this sort of thing didn't happen every day.

Carrot had insisted, though. He'd said that it would have a calming effect on the rest of the Watch if they saw that the Commander could still deal with the usual problems in a time of crisis. Vimes considered this and decided it was utter bull. Absolutely nothing had a calming effect on any citizen of Ankh-Morpork, where the natural state was one of anxiety, except maybe when they were dead and even then it wasn't a guarantee.

Carrot had added that this group was significantly odder than most they arrested in an attempt to interest Vimes. It hadn't worked, but Vimes had eventually relented under Carrot's firm insistence.

At least they were being held in the Pseudopolis Yard cells, so he didn't have to go far.

There was a pretty steady shouting noise that he could hear from a ground floor, and it only grew louder and more shrill as he descended the staircase. It turned out to be emanating from a sharply dressed redheaded woman, who quite clearly had a superb pair of lungs. She was shouting indiscriminately at poor Corporal Nobbs and Sergeant Colon, who had been trying to get on with a little guard duty in peace and quiet. You needed a certain amount peace and quiet to play poker, which is what they had clearly been doing until somebody had upset the table, probably Colon in his rush to stand up.

"Mister Vimes!" said Colon with an air of obvious relief. "This lady is out of control! I don't know what to do."

"I AM NOT OUT OF CONTROL, YOU DIMWIT! I DEMAND TO KNOW WHAT I AM CHARGED WITH! YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY TO KEEP ME HERE!" the woman raved, already well into her stride and showing no signs of slowing without a very good reason. The other five people in the cells looked slightly pained. One was covering his ears and making absurd faces at her behind her back.

Vimes took a deep, deliberate breath, slowly removed a cigar from his case, and lit it. He took a long drag, then removed it from his mouth and tucked it behind his ear. Only after that did he finally say, "Why am I here?"

"Who the hell are you?" said the raving woman. He ignored her.

"Er, this one claims to be a doctor, sir, and I thought," began Colon.

"Hold on!" interrupted the weasely looking one. "I'm a doctor too!"

"So is he," said a brown-haired girl, pointing to a surly, unshaven man who was sulking in the back.

"So much for subtlety and keeping a low profile," muttered the man she'd indicated.

"Yes, but I am the Doctor," said a wild-looking man with wild hair and a wildly bizarre scarf. He pointed to each of his companions in turn. "This is Dr. Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Sarah Jane Smith, Donna Noble, and Dr. Gregory House."

"Will you all shut up?" said Vimes, trying not to show his impatience. The Doctor--and Vimes wondered what his name really was, because what was he trying to prove with an alias as obvious as that anyway?--looked affronted.

"Er," said Colon nervously.

"You brought me down here because a couple morons you picked up say they're doctors? You know about doctors, Fred," continued Vimes.

"I don't recognize them as belonging to the guild and I thought it might be worth a shot, Mister Vimes," said Colon. "I thought anything might be worth a shot."

"If Igor can't fix it there's no reason why these people should be able to."

"Yes, sir." Sergeant Colon didn't move a muscle. Vimes sighed.

"Fine," he relented. He turned back towards the cell, the occupants of which had ceased making noise a few minutes ago and were now carefully observing.

"Who's sick?" asked the one named House.

"Don't act stupid," said Vimes. The whole city was suffering from a sort of underground panic about the plague, everyone knew. It was impossible not to know.

"We're not really from around here," Sarah Jane explained. Vimes didn't think this was much of an excuse, but didn't press the issue. Most people around here weren't from around here, especially the ones who tended to get brought in by the Watch.

"There's a sickness spreading. We don't know where it came from, how it spreads, or what to do to cure it," said Vimes. He felt silly explaining this to a group of strangers, as if they could do anything to help. But Colon was right: even a vain hope was better than no hope at all.

"How many?" said House.

"Nearly fifty," Vimes said after a moment's consideration.

"It's probably the flu or something equally innocuous," said House dismissively. Vimes raised an eyebrow at him.

"I think I know the difference."

"Yeah, everyone thinks they know the difference."

"Forgive me for interrupting," said the Doctor, who didn't look very sorry at all, "but what does this have to do with the police?"

Vimes had wondered the same thing himself on many occasions. "It is the duty of the Watch to keep order, as much as is possible, in Ankh-Morpork, and the prevention of a panicked riot falls under that category." This was the best excuse he could come up with for himself. He didn't add that he was also under orders from Lord Vetinari.

Colon and Nobby had righted their table and were playing poker again in a failing attempt to cover up the fact that they were both listening in. Nobby had nine cards in his hand. The Doctor looked thoughtful.

"Okay," said the loud one--Donna Noble. "Are you going to tell us who the hell you are, Mr. Bigwig?"

"You really don't know?" said Vimes, a little surprised. He was definitely known all over Uberwald, Klatch, Genua, and all of the other major countries on the Disc, as well as most of the minor ones, even if it was only as being a massive thorn with a penchant for disrespecting aristocracy.

"How should I know? Don't assume you're more important than you are!" she said. Vimes reflected that he could see himself actually coming to like this woman.

"He's Sir Samuel Vimes!" said Sergeant Colon in disbelief. "Commander of the City Watch and Duke of Ankh...."

"So?" said the woman haughtily. Colon's mouth dropped open, but Vimes waved at him to let it go.

"Commander Vimes--that's all right, isn't it? the whole title's a bit of a mouthful--what can we do to help?" said the small brunette, Sarah Jane. This got sneers from House and Owen, who had yet to speak.

Vimes sighed. "Well, if some of you are doctors and you're definitely not from Ankh-Morpork, it can't hurt to let one of you come take a look, I suppose. If you think you might be able to help. It'll have to be quick, though. I've only got an hour." In reality, he didn't even have that, but the idea of getting out of the station was an appealing one.

"Wait, you're just letting us go?" said the other girl, Toshiko, who hadn't spoken until now.

"Normally assaulting an officer is a pretty serious crime, but we've got more important things to deal with right now. Also, you guys don't look very dangerous to me."

"I'll go," said House as he stood laboriously, leaning heavily on his cane and glancing dismissively at the others.

"I'm coming too!" Donna announced.

"Wait, wait, I think I should go," said the Doctor.

"Only one, I said," growled Vimes. "And we need to leave right away. I haven't got time for this."

"I'm going!" Donna insisted.

"You're not a doctor," said Owen. "I'm not staying cooped up in here! No way."

House whacked Owen lightly with his cane. "Down, boy. You're not coming."

"I really think--" began the Doctor, but Sarah Jane tugged on his sleeve and whispered something in his ear, and he hesitated, then sat back again. "All right."

"Fine, you come with me," Vimes said to House, who looked smug.

"Hold it there, big boy. I said I'm coming too! I am not staying here with all these losers!" said Donna forcefully. Vimes stared at her. She didn't back down. He grinned.

"Fine," he said. "You can come too." She crossed her arms over her chest in a very self-satisfied way.

"Of course," she said.

"Let's just get out of here. I'm getting a cramp," House grumbled.

* * *

Alice was a Real Cat. When she caught something, she ate all of it. She could hear a pantry door opening from down the street. She hissed and shit and clawed, but she was as sweet as a cat can be when she thought there might be a treat in it for her. She had a family who thought they owned her, though in reality she owned them. She walked with a slight limp from a previous fight, though it on the whole didn't seem to impede her movement much.

Alice didn't look like a Real Cat, which she saw as being to her advantage. She was small and black and had piercing green eyes. She was half Siamese, but the other half was anyone's guess. She was nearly seventeen years old, but that too was something of an asset. She had survived to be very old on the most dangerous streets on the Disc for those seventeen years and she wasn't about to give up anytime soon.

Alice had survived by being clever, swift, and most of all, a good judge of character. She could tell which humans, dwarfs, or trolls were likely to give her food, and which ones were likely to give her a good kick.

She'd found a promising group of people a while ago and had been following them, waiting for an opening she could use to jump in and look pitiful and cute. The crippled man in the back of the group hadn't looked too likely, but there were several clear suckers.

Then she'd lost them! The cripple had done something severely stupid and they'd gotten taken away by men in weird uniforms.

So Alice had followed. It wasn't like she had any other pressing demands on her time. Sneaking into the giant building filled with uniformed men hadn't been a problem, but it was getting down to where they had been taken that was proving an issue. Alice could usually infiltrate places easily by blending in with shadow. Her black fur and small stature were ideal for it. However, the downward staircases were located in an area that was miraculously devoid of shadow.

Ah well. If there was one thing a cat could do well, it was wait. Alice settled down under a desk for a nice nap.

* * *

Captain Carrot picked up the crossbow bolt and examined it.

Not too much earlier that day this bolt had nearly buried itself in Commander Vimes' head. Remarkably, the Commander hadn't seemed too perturbed by it. It was, he'd explained, part of the job description. Carrot understood that--the Watch, including Commander Vimes, had been getting shot at and worse for a long time before he'd showed up in Ankh-Morpork--but it was still impressive.

The bolt was extremely ordinary. It was one of the most common sizes and makes supplied by Burleigh & Stronginthearm, with no identifying marks or tells. The sort usually bought in bulk.

It wasn't like Carrot had expected anything different. It would have been terminally stupid to use anything unique, and criminals in Ankh-Morpork were either intelligent or dead.

Despite being painfully ordinary, the bolt did reveal some clues. It wasn't an assassin's weapon, because assassins would never go in for something so crude and anyways the Commander had been taken off the Assassins' Guild register. Since other guilds weren't in the habit of committing murder and in fact frowned rather heavily upon it, the would-be killer was probably not a licensed member of any of the heavy-duty guilds, such as the Thieves or the Beggars, which were more likely to find out.

Finally and probably most importantly, anyone who had spent any amount of time with the criminal circles in the city knew that it was damn difficult to kill Sam Vimes, and something as simple as a crossbow wasn't going to cut it. That meant that the killer was most likely new in town, new to the idea of murder, or knew it wouldn't kill him. A warning.

The door to Carrot's office opened and he smiled when Angua walked in and sat down across from him.

"Not unique at all?" she said, motioning towards the bolt.

"No. I didn't expect it would be," said Carrot, setting it down. "Did you get anything?"

"There was a scent trail up until I hit busy streets. At this time of day, with that many crisscrossing scents, there's just no way to follow it."

"Did you pick up any details?"

Angua frowned. "Well.... I don't know if it means anything, but there was a hint of mildew, and damp. Like he'd been underground a while."

"A dwarf?" Carrot suggested.

"No, he was definitely human. And with the housing situation here like it is, there are plenty of basement rooms being rented out. It could be as simple as that, and we'd never be able to check them all even if we could identify him."

"Hmm." Carrot tapped his finger against the bolt, deep in thought.

"It was in broad daylight, though," Angua said. "I don't see how no one saw him!"

"Hmm," Carrot said again. "Well, do what you can. If everyone in the area has been questioned, that's fine. Mister Vimes doesn't seem too worried about it, so I don't think we should worry either."

"All right. I'm going to get back to work on my other investigation." Angua stood and walked towards the door. When she reached it, she paused and turned back. "Carrot, isn't your birthday this week?"

Carrot blushed deeply. It clashed horribly with his bright orange hair. "Er," he said. "You don't have to get me anything! I'm really happy just being here, really, I am."

"I see," said Angua, and she was smiling when she left.

* * *

Wilson kicked the console, then regretted it because his foot hurt. "This is so stupid!"

"This is quite fascinating," said Archimedes from the other side of the console. "Although I admit I do not understand one iota of it. Where did you say this device was from again?"

"I didn't," grouched Wilson. "I have no idea where it's from. Some alien place probably."

"You aren't utterly encapsulated by all this? I am stunned! It is magnificent!"

Archimedes' enthusiasm was really getting to Wilson.

"I'm upset because they left us here, alone, while they went out and had fun! And they've been gone for an hour now! An hour!" he complained.

"But this is just incredible! I could study this device for centuries and still not understand it, and I'm no slouch, if I do say so myself." Archimedes had circled around to Wilson's side of the console and was closely examining a set of suspicious-looking buttons.

"Well have at it," Wilson said sourly. "We'll probably be here waiting for them about that long."

"Oh, don't be so down. This place is huge! There's plenty to explore if you're feeling trapped." Archimedes had moved on to examining the walls. "Fascinating! It seems almost organic!" he said.

"I'm not feeling trapped, I'm feeling left out," Wilson said. "Also I am feeling like a baby sitter." Archimedes shot him an offended look. "I didn't mean it that way," he added. "but you are from, well, more primitive times. I don't claim to understand any of this, but at least some of it's familiar."

"Primitive to you, maybe," said Archimedes, "but that is all a matter of perspective, is it not? To my perspective, where I am 'from' is the present day, and therefore modern, not primitive. In relation to me perhaps you are from a more advanced time, but with respect to this sort of advancement, I'd say we are on pretty equal ground. What's a couple thousands of years in the face of this?" He gazed around him in wonder.

Wilson shrugged, not caring to argue. "Fine, but I still wish I was out there instead of in here."

"Well," said Archimedes, resting his right elbow on his left palm and placing a finger on his chin contemplatively, "it's not like they locked us in. It couldn't hurt to explore a little, if you're that anxious."

"I," said Wilson, "am so glad you said that."

* * *

"I'm not just a doctor," House explained reluctantly. "I'm a diagnostician. It's a special type of doctor."

"And what do they do?" said Vimes as they turned onto the Street of Small Gods.

"I tell people what's wrong with them. Take that guy, for instance." House pointed. "See how annoyed he looks? I'm betting it's because he hasn't been getting any lately. The ring on his finger tells us he's probably married, but the bruise on his cheeks looks like a slap. Also, he stinks like a four-day dead fish on a hot day. I can smell him from here, he must work somewhere awful. If he'd just take a bath when he got home, I'd bet he'd get more action from his wife."

Vimes raised an eyebrow. "That must be lovely for you."

Carrot had accosted him on the way out of the Watch House to inform him that the man who'd shot the crossbow at him could not be tracked and also that a brand new member of the Watch had requested a meeting with him. Vimes had told him to tell the kid to shove off, he had more important things to do, but Carrot had looked at him reprovingly and he'd agreed to meet the kid when he got back.

During the whole conversation he'd had the unnerving feeling that House and Donna, who had been standing a little ways off, were listening in quite closely.

Suspicion aside, Vimes was finding that he quite liked both of them, which was rare. Donna had a large, loud personality and spoke her mind with ease, which was a quality Vimes heartily approved of. She carried herself with confidence and displayed an impressive amount of shrewdness. House, on the other hand, was blunt, sarcastic, and often downright mean, but reminded Vimes heavily of himself. House had a similar vice to his, though unlike his former alcohol habit, House seemed to function fairly well despite the little white pills he was always popping.

Liking them didn't mean Vimes trusted them. He was extremely suspicious of them. They were in his city but he'd never heard of them before, and while that didn't necessarily mean anything (there were lots of people in Ankh-Morpork he'd never met), Carrot hadn't known them either, and although not unprecedented, that was a rare thing.

More than that, they acted suspicious. They'd say words sometimes that Vimes didn't understand, they were dressed funny, and they clearly had not only never been in the city before, but they didn't seem to recognize elements that were common all over the Disc.

As if to illustrate his thoughts, Donna make a squeaky noise and jumped as she spied a passing troll.

"What is that?" she said, pointing. Thankfully the troll didn't notice and kept walking. Vimes stared at her.

"A troll," he said.

"Wow," said House, watching it turn a corner.

Not having ever seen a troll was explainable--it's not like they were common all over the Disc. In fact, they mostly stuck to the mountains, and many people arrived in Ankh-Morpork without ever seeing a Troll. Still, such an extreme reaction was a little strange, and it was one more thing on the top of a pile of slightly strange things.

"What do you do, Miss Noble?" he asked to change the subject.

"You can call me Donna," she said. "I'm a temp."

Vimes had no idea what that meant. "Excuse me?"

"I'm a secretary," she elaborated. "I work at different places for short periods of time whenever they need it. What are you snickering at?" The last bit was directed at House.

"Nothing," House said, still snickering a bit.

"Damn straight."

"Where are you all from?" asked Vimes, changing the subject. He supposed that as long as they were chit-chatting, he might as well try to get some information.

"Oh, around," said Donna, waving her hand vaguely.

"Not here," added House. Vimes raised an eyebrow but didn't press the issue. There was always time for that later.

"What brings you to Ankh-Morpork?" he asked instead.

"The Doctor led us here," said Donna. Her voice took on an irritable tone. "We didn't actually mean to come here. We should have left right away, but instead this lump had to get us involved."

"Hey!" said House defensively. "It's not my fault!"

"It is in every way your fault. There is no way in which it is not your fault."

"If you didn't mean to come to Ankh-Morpork, where were you meaning to go? And how in the hell could you have gotten so lost?"

"Er, it's not as difficult as you might think," said Donna.

"What's with the inquisition?" House growled.

Damn, thought Vimes. He had succeeded in learning nothing of value and they were almost there. "Sorry," he said out loud, more to appease them than because he meant it. "I am a watchman, you know. I do it for a living."

House ignored him. "Aren't you going to tell me anything about this plague?"

"Like what?"

"Symptoms? Affected areas? How contagious is it?" House ticked these off on his fingers.

"Er, Vomiting, fever, aching joints, but what sets it apart is the spots. And it's probably contagious, but we don't really know."

"And? What kind of spots?"

"Black spots. They vary in size and location. We don't know what causes them, and no one has ever seen anything like it before," Vimes explained. There were almost at their destination. Vimes walked swiftly and the other two had no choice but to keep up.

"Interesting," House said to himself. "Some sort of pox, maybe? But if they vary in size it's more likely to be purpura...."

"Excuse me, what?" said Donna.

"What else causes spots? Some types of fungus, I suppose, but those wouldn't be contagious," House mused. "What's the size range?"

Vimes shrugged. "Don't know. I haven't really taken the time to look."

"Aren't you just a fountain of information."

They rounded the corner and there loomed the crudely-constructed barracks, looking not at all out of place in this decrepit part of the city.

In front of them, a man opened the large, crooked door and entered. He was dressed very strangely, with a long, encompassing black coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and oddest of all, a primitive sort of gas mask that looked a bit like a bird's beak.

"Who was that?" asked Donna.

"A sort of doctor," said Vimes. "Come on."

The barracks had been constructed in a hurry, and it showed. They weren't built to last and they weren't built to be comfortable, but they were built to be functional. They were made from wood and even though they were built little more than a week ago they already looked ancient. Ankh-Morpork did that to buildings. There were tiny cracks in between the wood planks and the door swung on poorly installed hinges. The building was big, though, and it needed to be if recent events were to be any judge.

The inside was just as shabby as the outside, if not more so. Bedding, if you could call the dirty rags that, littered the floor, which was covered by sick people in rows. There were paths around the sick people through which a couple of the strangely clothed people walked, as well as a few more normally dressed. Several more people, possibly family, sat beside some of the makeshift beds.

The whole building was bleak in appearance, atmosphere, and intent. Vimes shivered. He hated being there. Carrot, he knew, came here every day after he got off work, and sat with them, providing some comfort and companionship. Vimes didn't know how he could stand it, but that was Carrot at his essence.

Vimes glanced at his two companions. House looked pretty blank, almost bored, but Donna looked horrified.

"Oh my god," she said. "This is awful! What is wrong with you? I'm no doctor, but even I know this isn't how you take care of people!"

Vimes was taken aback. "Our supplies are pretty limited," he protested weakly, hating that she was repeating back to him almost verbatim what he'd said to Vetinari only a few days ago, and that he was being forced to take on the role of the Patrician.

"There are no excuses for this!" said Donna and already she was stomping off down the aisle. House had wandered off and seemed to be going about his own business, so Vimes cautiously followed her.

She almost tripped over a bowl of brown stuff which, upon further inspection, she determined must be some kind of food.

It wasn't even recognizable. Donna wrinkled her nose at it.

"This is totally unacceptable," she said. "Is that the kitchen?" She pointed to the other side of the building, where there were two sad-looking cabinets, a sad-looking counter with a sad-looking and extremely large pot on top, and also something that might have passed as a sink to a blind man who didn't know what the actual function of a sink was supposed to be. The young and somewhat dirty girl she was glaring at stuttered an affirmative. "Good grief," said Donna.

"Er--" began Vimes. She whirled on him.

"You! Aren't you the-- the commander or something important? Don't you have money? Why haven't you helped fund this?"

For a moment Vimes was flummoxed. The idea hadn't even occurred to him, and yet it was so obvious. Since his marriage to Sybil he'd hardly had a deficit of spare money. He could have funded far superior facilities without even making a dent in his own wealth.

The problem, of course, was that wealthy though he may be now, he'd lived in poverty for far longer, and that was his default state. He wasn't comfortable with the idea of having money and as a result he often forgot he did until forcibly reminded of it.

He was ashamed all the same.

He wondered why Sybil hadn't broached the idea, and remembered with a start that he hadn't even really seen her in days, not for more than a couple minutes, certainly not enough time to hold a real conversation. He felt a new stab of guilt but pushed it aside.

Donna hadn't bothered waiting around for an answer, at least. She was shouting instructions to the three women who were volunteering.

"You! Clean that pot out, and when I say clean it, I mean actually clean it, and then go fill it with fresh water," she instructed one girl, then turned to another. "Find me some spices! Anything, I don't really care, oh, and salt, definitely salt and pepper. Don't worry about the cost, Armor Boy over there will pay for it." The nervous-looking girl glanced over at Vimes for confirmation of this statement, so Vimes rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Get! Go! Scat!" Donna added.

Orders doled out, she stalked back towards Vimes. He raised an eyebrow at her as she approached. "Anything you'd like me to do?" he asked dryly.

"We passed a meat stall on the way here, didn't we?" she said in a sharp tone.

"Yes. Why?"

"I'll be back in a few minutes."

With that she left. Vimes shrugged at the swinging door she'd left in her wake.

"Interesting woman," said a voice behind him. Vimes recognized it as House and grunted. "The markings aren't like anything I've ever seen before," House continued. "Most symptoms are pretty ordinary, could be anything, and the fact that some present in different patients than others isn't strange either. The spots, though, they're not compatible with any disease I can think of. One guy over there had a spot on his leg six inches in diameter! How cool is that?"

"What?" said Vimes.

"Anyway, spots like that are usually caused by burst blood vessels under the skin, or pus building up, or most commonly a rash of some sort. These resemble a rash more than the other two, but I don't know of any rashes that are spread so bizarrely over the body. And these aren't raised on the skin at all! They're like freckles, except they're giant, black freckles! If I can figure out what they are, I'll have a better shot at figuring out what it is and what we can do about it." He paused. "Problem is, your facilities are, uh, somewhat less than stellar, and when I say that, I mean I might as well be working in a sewer. Not exactly what I'm used to."

"I can't stay here much longer anyway, and you have to come back with me," said Vimes. "You can figure it out on the way back. I have things to do."

"Don't think you're getting me back into that stinky jail. No way in hell."

Vimes rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, we're not going to be wasting cell space on you and your friends any longer. Just don't get into any more trouble."

"What am I now, twelve?"

"You'd be a pretty hideous twelve-year-old."

Their bickering was cut short by Donna reentering the building, this time carrying a sack. Instead of acknowledging either of them, she went straight over to the makeshift kitchen and dumped the contents - which turned out to be bones previously belonging to several birds, chickens most likely - onto the top of the cabinet.

The pot had been thoroughly cleaned and filled with fresh water, and she carefully placed all the bones inside the pot. "Someone build me a fire!" she said, and two girls rushed to obey her. House looked on approvingly.

"I like a woman who can bend others to her will. Shows strength of character." Then to Donna he said, "We're leaving, you know. Like now."

"You're going to have to wait a minute," said Donna briskly, without sparing him a glance. She located some large bricks in a corner and placed four of the around the fire, one on each side, on top of which she placed the pot. The bottom of the pot was wide enough that it sat on the edges above the fire without falling in, and the bricks were placed so that there were enough spaces between them and the fire wouldn't suffocate. She stood back and looked at her creation with satisfaction.

"Now," she said, "we can go. But I'm coming back here in a couple hours. This needs to soak under a light heat for a long time, but these people need decent food soon."

"What the hell are you doing, cooking bones?" said House.

Vimes, who was completely familiar with this technique, having seen his mom employ it many a time, explained. "By soaking the bones for several hours you can create a broth. The taste seeps out. It's better than nothing, and when you grow up poor you learn not to waste anything."

"My mum always used to make soup with the bones after Christmas," said Donna. "Of course, she'd put a lot more in it, vegetables and all that, but I haven't got any money. I got these at the market down the road. Do you know how hard it was to get that man to give me them for free? He was such an asshole! It's not like he was using them!"

Vimes was impressed she'd gotten anything for free at all. The city's merchants were notoriously frugal. Anything they could sell was theirs, and they could sell anything.

"Keep that fire going, but don't let it get too high!" Donna added to the girls clustered around the pot. "If the water shows signs of boiling, take it off the heat for about fifteen minutes, then put it back on. Don't touch it otherwise. I'll be back!" They nodded, giggled, and then started chatting amongst each other. "All right, let's go. Where are we going?"

Vimes sighed.

* * *

"Excuse me? Excuse me!" said the Doctor anxiously, shoving his face through the bars.

"What, us?" said one of their jailers, a large man, probably in his mid-fifties, whose name was Sergeant Colon, or at least that's what he'd been called.

"Yes, of course you! Can you tell me where I am?"

"What, here?" Sergeant Colon looked around, confused.

"No, where!" said the Doctor.

"Er, this is the Watch house in Pseudopolis Yard."

"No, I mean where. More broadly."

"Er... next to the Opera House?" Colon tried.

"I think he means what city, Sarge," said the other jailer, Corporal Nobbs. This one was short, skinny, and looked more like a monkey than a man.

"Oh, Ankh-Morpork, then," said Colon, who clearly thought the Doctor was an idiot.

"Great! Wonderful!" said the Doctor. "More broadly still, where am I?"

"Uh... the... Discworld?" tried Colon.

"Lovely! Thank you!" the Doctor slumped back. "Do you know what this means? It means that we are on the Discworld, actually on one of the greatest legends in the universe, and I am stuck in a cell!"

"Don't worry, I'm sure Mister Vimes won't keep you here too long," said Corporal Nobbs, then he turned back to his cards. "Give me two, Sarge." Sarah Jane reached over and patted the Doctor's arm consolingly.

"What is that you're playing? Is that Poker?" said Owen incredulously. "How do you have Poker here?"

"What?" said Colon, clearly out of his depth once again.

"There are always some universal constants," the Doctor explained.

"But... Poker?"

"The universe works in mysterious ways."

"What are you now, a bad science fiction narrator?" said Sarah Jane.

"Can I play?" said Tosh.

Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs exchanged glances.

"Ooooh, no, Sarge, Mister Vimes will blow his top if he finds we let the prisoners out," said Nobby.

"No, Nobby, he'll never know! See, Mister Vimes has a lot of pressing demands on his time, which is why he's trusting us to the very important job of guarding the cells. He trusts our judge of character, see, and I'm judging that these guys are harmless. Mister Vimes will be happy that he didn't have to make the decision to let them out himself!"

"I don't know, Sarge. I don't think he'd be all that happy."

"I'll tell you what. We'll only let them out if they promise to stay down here and not try to leave. How's that?"

"I promise!" said Sarah Jane, raising her hand.

"I do too," said Tosh.

"Sure, whatever," said Owen. The Doctor raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"It's your call, Sarge," said Nobby.

"Great!" said Colon. He stood, grabbed the keys from a tin in the bottom of the desk drawer, and unlocked the cell. Owen, Tosh, Sarah Jane, and the Doctor all piled out gratefully.

"Nobby, go run and see if you can find another chair," said Sergeant Colon. "We've only got five down here now." The five were utterly mismatched and included most of an armchair, and Sergeant Colon was hauling them all around the little round table at which he and Nobby had been playing. Sarah Jane and Owen helped him.

"Mind if I deal first?" said Tosh, gathering the cards. Colon grunted around a heavy wooden chair, and she took it as an okay. Nobby came back down with a cheap folding chair and they all sat. Tosh dealt.

"How do you play?" asked Sarah Jane brightly.

"Really? You really don't know how to play Poker?" scoffed Owen.

"When would I have had time to learn something like this?" Sarah Jane shot back.

"Oh hush," said Tosh. Nobby stared at them uneasily.

The Doctor leaned over and started explaining the rules to Sarah Jane while Tosh passed around cards.

"Three," said Colon.

"Two," said Owen.

"I fold," said the Doctor and he sighed as he set his cards back down.

"I'll take... I'll take four!" said Sarah Jane.

"You don't want to take four," said the Doctor. "You want to fold."

"What? Why? I want to play!"

"If your hand is bad enough that you need four, just fold."

"Fine," she said, and grumbled a bit.

"I'll take three," said Nobby.

"What are we betting here?" asked Tosh.

Colon shrugged. "Whatever you have."

"Alright, then, I'll start off by betting this pop tab." She took it out of her pocket and put it in the middle of the table.

"Great," muttered Owen.

"I'll raise you a button," said Nobby, throwing out a tarnished brass button.

"In that case, I'll bet a piece of pocket lint," said Owen.

"Nuh uh," said Colon. "That's against the rules. No pocket lint."

"What rules?" protested Owen.

"Betting rules."

"What betting rules?" Colon just shook his head. "Fine! I'll bet, uh...." He sifted through his pockets. "I'll bet this flyer." He took out a crumpled flyer that turned out to be for a video rental store. Sergeant Colon seemed satisfied with this.

"I'll see your flyer and raise you two pebbles," he said.

The betting went around one more time. Tosh put down another pop tab (they looked at her strangely but she just shrugged), Nobby a turkey wishbone, Owen a shoelace, and Colon folded.

"Two pair, kings and jacks," said Owen, laying his cards down with a flourish.

"Four fives," said Tosh proudly, laying down her cards as well.

"Dammit!" said Owen. Nobby sighed and threw his down as well, revealing only a pair of tens.

Thirty minutes later, Tosh was well in the lead. The most interesting bidding items had certainly come from the Doctor, who seemed to have all kinds of trinkets hidden within his large coat, including an arrowhead, a travel-sized bottle of lotion, a plastic ring, a keychain with the Eiffel Tower on it, a cherry-flavored lollypop, and a defunct Italian fifty Lira coin.

Nobby was extremely excited by the coin, so Tosh graciously gave it to him after she won it.

"You've been counting cards, haven't you?" the Doctor whispered to her under her breath.

"Me? Never!" she said in an exaggerated tone. Pretty early on, Owen had confiscated the cards from her and taken over the dealing duties, certain she was cheating.

"I think I'm done playing now," said Sergeant Colon, who was sick of losing. Tosh stared at her pile of junk and started doubting the wisdom of counting cards to win.

"I don't actually want most of this stuff," she said. "Anyone who wants it can have it."

Owen seized the chance and took back both his shoelaces and his belt (he'd run out of things to bet with pretty fast).

"Come on, one more game!" said Sarah Jane. "I'm just starting to get the hang of this!"

"Maybe later," said the Doctor. "For now, I think we ought to... RUN!"

With that, he bolted up the stairs. The others, after being momentarily startled, took off after him as Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs yelled after them.

To Chapter 17: Into the Fire

Back to Chapter 15: Divine Heroin Muffin

Summary: Wilson babysits an accidental addition to the TARDIS crew while everyone else goes to Ankh-Morpork and gets arrested.

"There are strange things done in the midnight sun"

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:28:25 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 15
Divine Heroin Muffin

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

The Doctor slammed the door shut, drowning out cries of “Exterminate!” As though something had been constricting his lungs and only now let go, Jack found himself able to breathe again. His hands still shaking, he grabbed the Doctor’s coat.

“I thought you said the Daleks were wiped out. Twice.”

“I time-locked this event,” the Doctor snarled. “It’s not just that we shouldn’t--we can't--be here. This could undo everything we accomplished.”

“It’s too late for that, sir,” Ianto said. “We’re here, and we’ve seen what’s outside. We should be there, helping people.”

Jack grimaced. “Did you swap brains with Gwen before we left?”

“I’m not heartless, sir!”

“We are not going out there!” the Doctor yelled. “You already know too much.”

“Ianto’s right,” Cameron said. “If we already know too much, there’s no harm in finding out more. Sort of like passing the point of no return.”

The Doctor shook his head. “You go out there, you’re dead! I don’t have weapons on board, and the Daleks never detected a second TARDIS when I was here. The fact that all systems are down protects us for now, but if they discover us, the course of history will be changed, and it must not. The time lock exists for a reason! Do you understand what would happen if any Dalek escapes, or if they manage to execute their plan because of our interference? There is more at stake than the life of any single human or group of humans.”

“How much time would we have between the TARDIS recovering and the Daleks detecting us?” Ianto asked nonchalantly. Jack knew better than to answer a question posed like that, but the Doctor didn’t.

“About a minute.” The Doctor stared. “Oh, no you don’t!”

Ianto ran over and threw the door open, but Jack followed hot on his heels. “More than enough time to get back.”

Jack grabbed him. “No.”

“This is not a Torchwood matter, sir.”

“I’m not telling you as your boss.” Jack hesitated, but no matter how angry Ianto might be with him, the man would not ignore reason. “I’m telling you as someone who can’t die. I’ll go and see what I can do.”

“Jack!” The Doctor strode over, pointing his sonic screwdriver at the doors. They shuddered but refused to close. “Even the TARDIS! Why does no one listen to me?”

“Doctor, you know you can trust me with the future, so why not just give in to the inevitable and let me go?”

“Then you’re not going alone. I'm coming with you.”

“What? What if the Daleks recognize you?”

The Doctor grinned. “I’ll hide behind you. I’m not immortal, you know.”

Jack turned to Ianto. “Satisfactory?”

He looked ready to argue, but he stepped back and let Jack shut the door on him. The Doctor sighed. “This is a terrible idea, I’ll have you know.”

“You know you want to.” Jack winked.

“Ianto can still see us on the monitor inside.”

“Why do you always think I’m flirting?”

“Because you are. Allons-y.”

They jogged a ways down the street, but it was deserted. While the dogfight continued to rage in the skies, there was no sign of life at all on the ground, not even shattered car windows or flames to indicate looting. There was a distinct lack of screaming as well.

“Maybe the Daleks didn’t bother invading this area,” the Doctor commented. “They weren’t exactly interested in subjugating Earth. Just... finding test subjects.”

“That sounds so much more pleasant. What about the lack of rioting?”

“People decided to behave properly for once?”

"Unlikely."

They paused outside a building with the words “No Limits” on the front. Jack found the sign oddly appropriate. Peering inside, he found overturned tables and shattered glass littering the ground. “It’s a bar,” he said. “But no one’s doing business. Funny. There’s usually an unwritten rule that bars and churches are open during apocalypses. Otherwise what’s the point?”

“You never struck me as the religious type, Jack.”

“Apocalypses aren’t really my thing. I'm usually one of the people trying to prevent them.” He was surprised to see the Doctor enter, but he followed him in. “Shouldn’t we be looking around?”

“The chairs aren’t up, which means it's not closed. It was daytime when they stole the Earth, so where are all the people?”

Jack reluctantly followed him in, but as they entered there was a faint crunch from behind the counter, too soft to be purposeful, more like someone shifting their weight. Jack would never have heard it if he wasn’t trained to be aware of such things, and he knew the Doctor had more heightened senses than the average human. He shook his head at the time lord when he began heading over to investigate, but the Doctor scoffed. “Daleks aren’t that short.”

The next instant, the Doctor vanished, a cry of surprise muffled as he fell. Jack leapt over the counter, suppressing the desire to yell. A man grabbed his leg, breaking his momentum and slamming him to the ground. A hand covered his mouth until he had the sense to stop struggling.

“Shut up,” the man said, and Jack looked over to see the Doctor unrestrained, grinning and fiddling with his screwdriver. “You’ll attract attention.” Jack looked back at the German and took in his appearance. It was a sort of classic, chiseled look, hair swept back as though both combed and blowing in the wind. He possessed a strong grip, definitely worked out. Jack grinned.

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he said, offering a hand.

The man took it to help him into a sitting position. “Gregor Mann,” he replied, looking a little confused at the overwhelming friendliness. Jack wondered if he should tone down the smile a little.

The Doctor groaned. “Not now, Jack.” Redirecting his attention: “Daleks have been here?”

Gregor nodded. “They swept the streets right after it went dark. We got everyone upstairs in time, but now they’re doing fly-bys of windows.”

“Then we better get upstairs.”

“Not yet!” His eyes narrowed, and he began looking like the sort of dangerous post-apocalyptic survivalist Jack had been concerned about when they first heard the noise. “My brother’s still out there.”

The Doctor wilted a little. “I’m sorry, but he’s either stuck or dead and there’s no point looking for him until the crisis is over.”

“That’s not what I meant. He went to keep a look-out.” He frowned. “You think this will end well?”

“I know it will.” That was part of what Jack liked about the Doctor: even when the odds were against him, he could make you believe it would be all right. In this case, he had cold hard facts on his side, assuming their presence wasn’t a critical strain on the timeline, and this was enough to put even a stranger at ease. Gregor nodded and returned his attention to the front door.

The briefest flash of a reflection preceded the arrival of a young man in orange, which Jack decided was not the stealthiest choice of clothing, even when there were planets in the sky shining weird colors. The door slammed against the wall and bounced back, knocking him over into a chair. He went down with a loud clatter and exclaimed, “Shit!”

Gregor dashed round the counter and tried to help him up, but the man instead pulled him to the ground just as a Dalek death ray lanced through the door straight past where he’d been standing.

“I got spotted.”

“I can tell. Run!”

“Setting one-thirty-seven,” the Doctor said, handing the screwdriver to Jack. “Will meld the door shut.”

Gregor paused halfway in their scramble up the stairs and yelled back, “No one’s melting my door!”

It was too late. Jack was already playing the sonic beam over the edges of the door as the Doctor joined the other two in the rush upstairs. When he’d completed one circuit, he turned the screwdriver off and ran. A beam blasted through the door, glancing him across his side, and he collapsed as a wave of pain swept through him like fire.

The man in orange tried to leap back down the stairs to help him, but the Doctor grabbed his arm and dragged him away. “He’ll be fine!”

“Yeah, it’s only a flesh wound,” Jack snapped. He shook himself, hoping to lessen the residual tingling that felt like ants crawling up his rib cage. As soon as he regained control of his legs, he started running.

“Halt!” the Dalek demanded in a cold, electronic voice that still sent shivers up his spine. “Any human who resists will be exterminated.”

Jack rounded the corner and crashed into the three waiting for him. “Keep going! Stairs don’t stop them, you know!”

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Gregor hissed at his brother. “But you have to run off and play hero!”

“Was I supposed to sit around and wait for them to come for us?”

“Shut up!” Jack said. He sneaked a glance around the corner and saw the Dalek had floated halfway up the stairs. “Get going.”

An explosion rocked the building, and a door down the hall burst open amidst a gust of wind and debris. Several screams followed, the voices sounding thin and empty due to the now-open acoustics of the building.

“That’s your flat,” Gregor said.

“You know the plan,” his brother replied.

“That’s suicide. Remember what I just said about playing the hero?”

“Go!”

Gregor grimaced but obeyed. “What are you doing?” the Doctor protested as the man grabbed both of them and pushed them through the door opposite the room the Daleks were in. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Those Daleks will kill everyone!”

“You have any weapons?” Gregor asked.

The Doctor spluttered indistinctly.

“Then looks like you’re no better off than us. Keep out of sight or you’ll get my brother killed.”

“But--”

Jack wrapped one arm around the Doctor to stop him from struggling and put his other hand over his mouth. The Doctor glared, but Jack said, “He’s right. Whatever they have planned, they’ll definitely be dead if we interfere now.” The Doctor stopped moving, and for a moment, Jack found the warmth of their proximity rather distracting. Then the Doctor bit him, and he stifled a cry as he let go and cradled his hand.

“I know what you were thinking, Jack,” the Doctor whispered.

“No such thing,” he replied, trying to look scandalized, but from experience with Ianto, he knew it just made him look like he was leering.

“Hey, flying trash can, over here!” a voice came from across the hall, sounding like a kid trying out cuss words for the first time rather than someone in a fight to the death, and Jack had to wonder what sort of person felt bad about insulting a Dalek. There was a dull thud, followed by the whoosh of an energy field, but despite the lack of damage, whatever had been thrown succeeded in attracting the Dalek’s attention.

“You will stop throwing remotes at a Dalek. You will be exterminated for this offence.”

“Catch me first.” A man darted through the doorway and stopped when he turned the corner, back pressed against the wall as he waited for the Dalek to appear.

“What’s he doing?” the Doctor asked, shifting his weight between his feet as he crouched behind the door frame. Jack put a hand on his shoulder--to prevent him from bolting, of course. The time lord felt kind of boney; he would not, Jack guessed, be comfortable to lie on.

“You need to eat more,” Jack commented. Gregor glared at him, while the Doctor merely looked confused.

“I just... have a high metabolism,” he said.

“Shhhh!”

“It’d help if you told us the plan.”

“Olli has a theory that there’s one weapon that can get through their force fields.”

The Doctor gaped. “No! They’re not seriously going to try that? But that... oh, that’s clever. Clever but horribly risky.”

“You think?” The Doctor’s boniness was probably the only thing keeping Gregor from taking him by the shoulders and shaking him.

The Dalek exited the room right as the other finished its ascent. Both men stepped into view and raised their hands, but Daleks did not take aggressive prisoners. “Exterminate!” they cried as one, and taking that as their cue, both men ducked.

Twin rays crossed paths and zoomed onward straight into the opposing Dalek. Both exploded in a burst of flame. Modulated screams died away as the fires fizzled out. Jack realized he was holding his breath and let it out. Realizing their plan had succeeded, the dark-haired one from the room ran over and pulled Gregor’s brother into an embrace, lifting him off the ground as they cheered. Then he lost his balance, and they crashed into the wall. Gregor joined them, pumping his fists into the air, while Jack and the Doctor approached more slowly.

“That was impressive,” the Doctor said. “Hi, I’m the Doctor.”

“What sort of introduction is that?” Gregor asked, but the other two didn’t seem to mind.

Lowering Gregor’s brother to the ground, the polite-to-Daleks one offered a hand: “Olli.”

“Christian,” the other one said, rubbing the back of his head where he’d struck the wall.

“Captain Jack Harkness,” Jack said, taking Olli’s hand before the Doctor could. “That was some fast thinking.”

“We’ve had time to sit around,” Olli replied, oblivious to his charms. “Come on, let’s go make sure the others are all right.”

They moved past the remains of the Dalek blocking the door and entered their flat. A blonde-haired woman crouched in the kitchen while a brunette stood by the blasted windows, holding a chainsaw.

“Where’d you get that?” Christian asked, eyebrows coming together.

“My boss asked me to buy it to replace the one that broke at the construction yard.”

“I see...”

“The dangerous one is Judith,” Olli said, pronouncing the “J” as a “Y” despite the TARDIS translator. “And that’s Lydia. This is the Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness.”

“Hello.” The Doctor waved. “Judith, you might want to move back a few steps.”

Judith obeyed, then looked outside and saw a Dalek rising into view. She screamed, but the Dalek fixed its eyestalk on the Doctor.

“The Doctor!” it exclaimed as it landed. “Exterminate!”

“Don’t think so,” the Doctor replied, grabbing his screwdriver from Jack and swinging it at the ruined Dalek in the doorway. There was a squeal as its weapon summoned the last of its energy reserves and fired at the Dalek in the window, which burst into flames. Part of its shell shattered, but the damage wasn’t nearly as extensive as in the hall. “Ugh, there wasn’t enough power left!”

With a roar, Judith brought her chainsaw down on the Dalek and shoved it back outside, where it plummeted several stories and exploded in the street below.

“Well, that’s one way of handling it,” the Doctor said, lowering his screwdriver.

“Who are you?” asked Lydia.

Christian crossed his arms. “Any other helpful devices we should know about?”

“How long has the invasion lasted?” the Doctor asked Olli.

He shrugged. “Several hours, I’d say.”

The Doctor ran to the window--or hole in the wall--and peered at the sky. “Then that means...” The chainsaw rumbled as Judith accidentally pressed the trigger, and she swung it away from the Doctor as he yelped and jumped back. “Watch that thing! Uh, ah... yes! I think they’re returning to the Crucible!” He shoved Jack aside as he dashed out and down the stairs.

“To the what?” Jack yelled. He jogged after him.

“You’re not supposed to know, anyway!”

He caught up with the Doctor outside No Limits, where the time lord was peering up with a hand shading the left side of his face from the lights in the bar. “It was too bright up there. Couldn’t see properly.”

“It melted my door!” Gregor protested, and Jack saw that he had followed them down, along with Christian and Olli.

“I think the hole in our flat will be a bit more expensive to fix,” replied Christian.

“Well, at least you’ll be able to fix it,” the Doctor said. The others came over and looked into the sky, watching as bright lights that were individual Daleks drifted away, from discernable shapes into pinpoints into nothing at all. “It’ll be over soon, and then we’ll be towing the Earth back to its rightful place.”

“We?” Gregor said.

“Yes, well, that’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

“I’m an alien, all right? I travel through time and space, so while I’m down here, there’s a past version of me up there, well, two of me, actually, taking care of things.”

“Two of you?” Jack felt his heart pound. “There are three of you present in one go?”

“Jack?”

“Yes?”

“No. Just no.”

“Oh my god, help!” someone screamed. Jack whirled around to see a dark-haired woman in heels run around the corner, clutching a purse in one hand and a crowbar in the other. It was evident she’d spotted them as she was running straight for them. “Help me!”

“Olivia?” Olli said, dashing over to meet her.

“Olli!” she exclaimed. “I’m so glad to see you! I was on my way over here when those, those things appeared...”

“Friends?” the Doctor asked.

“Cousin,” replied Christian in a flat tone.

“Well, it’s all right now. They’re leaving, see?” Olli pointed into the sky, where an orange spot was growing larger.

“That looks like it’s coming closer,” she replied.

The Doctor squinted. “That would be because it’s a plane. On fire. Headed our way. Run, run, run!”

Jack instinctively headed for the TARDIS, even though the plane was falling in the same direction. The smarter choice would’ve been to go the other way and pass underneath the falling jet before it reached the ground, but now, it struck and tumbled end over end, sliding closer and closer. Everyone followed his lead, and he slowed to let the others pass him, knowing he shouldn’t be the one blocking the doorway if it came down to a last second entry. Olivia made remarkable time, outrunning them all even with her footwear, though he suspected the other men were being almost as stupidly gallant as himself. He could hear the flames of the jet roar as they consumed its leaking fuel and feel their heat licking at the back of his neck as the Doctor sprinted the last few meters, one hand pushing Olivia aside and the other outstretched with the TARDIS key....

* * *

As soon as Jack and the Doctor left, Ianto pulled up the TARDIS monitor to watch them creep down the street. Cuddy felt this was a useless endeavor but didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop. Meanwhile, Chase was trying to teach his new robot pet tricks, which given that it was a five-foot spider-like monstrosity with blades on its feet, did not seem like the best idea in the world.

“Roll over, Joey! Come on, roll over!”

Cameron screamed as the droid tumbled backward into her wheelchair, taking them both down with a clang. “Damn it, Chase, it isn’t a dog!”

“She could be one if she wanted to,” Chase retorted as the droid scurried back to his side after helping Cameron up. “Aw, good girl. It wasn’t your fault.”

“That might not be a bad idea, turning into a dog,” Cuddy said. “If we ever leave the TARDIS, you’ll probably attract attention if she travels undisguised with you.”

“It projects hallucinations,” Cameron reminded her, “it doesn’t shape-shift. No dog is as big as that thing.”

Joey ignored her and turned into a baby golden retriever with glistening eyes. She pawed at the floor in her direction, and Cameron glared back. “Try again. Something bigger.”

The dog transformed into an adult giraffe.

“Not quite that big.”

An elephant.

“Still smaller.”

A Siberian tiger.

“Hmm...” three of them said at the same time. Ianto continued staring at the screen but glanced over when he noticed the sudden silence.

“I don’t think that’s going to help with the ‘let’s not get noticed’ problem,” he remarked.

“But it’s cool,” rebutted Cameron.

“And cute,” Chase added. “Plus the claws remind us not to play with her feet.”

“The blades are retractable.” Ianto spoke from personal experience.

“So are claws.”

“If you look away from the screen any longer, Jack and the Doctor might actually move out of sight,” Cuddy said. She felt a twinge of guilt afterward for goading him like that; she couldn’t keep using the trauma of the last couple days as an excuse for any inappropriate behavior, and if she did, she’d end up like House. She frowned and reflexively tugged at her blouse. That was a thought to keep her on the straight and narrow.

“They went into a building,” Ianto replied.

“Sorry.”

He sighed. “No need to apologize.” Picking up a nearby chair, he took a seat beside her. “I’ve been acting immature anyway.”

Cameron wheeled over to where he’d been standing and began typing on the keyboard. “Does that mean you’re done with the console?”

“Yes. What are you going to do?”

“I want to see what he has installed.”

“According to Joey, the last time you tried to hack a computer system, you nearly got us all killed,” Chase said.

“I’m not hacking. Wow, he has just about every single video game ever made. And emulators for every system!”

Ianto and Chase perked up. Cuddy sighed. Men and their games...

Cameron looked over as though guessing what she was thinking. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

“I had a level seventy night elf ranger,” Cuddy said. “But then I lost interest.”

“Was this that week when House broke the MRI machine and you signed off on the replacement purchase order as ‘McBooby’?” Chase asked.

“House did what?” Cuddy reached over for a desk drawer that was not aboard the TARDIS and felt her cheeks heat as she made a rude gesture instead to cover up the mistake.

Ianto smiled. “If you think that’s bad, you should see Jack’s annual personnel performance reviews.”

Cuddy lifted an eyebrow.

“I rewrite everything when I enter them into the system, so it’s all right.”

She laughed. “That’s what I do with House’s too.”

“Sounds like our jobs aren’t that different.”

“You still have to deal with aliens.”

“You have to deal with lawyers.”

The TARDIS doors burst open and six people tumbled through. Jack was last and kicked the door shut as a burst of flame shot through, accompanied by the squeal of metal against asphalt. The tail of his coat ignited, and Jack cursed as he shrugged it off and stamped on it. At that exact moment, the lights returned, and the TARDIS console hummed to life before an alarm went off, initiating a series of flashing red lights that should’ve given everyone seizures but miraculously didn’t. A muffled explosion rocked the TARDIS, throwing Ianto into her lap. He scrambled away, eyeing Jack as though he’d been caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

“I didn’t do anything!” Cameron said, pulling her hands away from the keyboard as fast as if they’d caught on fire.

“The TARDIS is back online, but the Daleks have detected us!” the Doctor explained as he leaned over her to bang on the panels. “Oooh, high score on pinball, very nice. Never did get the hang of that one myself.”

“It’s bigger on the inside,” the new female arrival said, beaming as she looked around the room. Cuddy could feel a sexual harassment lawsuit coming up, even if the TARDIS was a machine.

“Forget that; is it safe to go back out, or will there be Daleks waiting?” the one in an orange shirt said, getting up and moving closer to the dark-haired man beside him in a definite violation of personal space. Cuddy sighed; it was always the attractive ones...

“No time for that!” The Doctor jiggled some levers. “We have to get out of here now!”

The TARDIS rumbled as the central column began moving. This was followed by the characteristic dilapidated-Disney-ride motion that accompanied short passages through the time vortex. Then came an unexpected creak and a groan, causing the room to jolt.

“That’s not right,” the Doctor said.

“How can you tell?” orange shirt yelled as he fell and rolled into the next room.

Sparks began flying from the console. The Doctor rubbed at some of the resulting ash and licked his finger. “Feels like that time you grabbed onto the outside, Jack.”

“Daleks have latched onto the TARDIS?”

“‘Like’ as in similar to, but not precisely. I’m not sure...” A second jolt knocked the Doctor off balance. He clambered back and peered at the monitor. “Well, whatever it was, we lost it. The Daleks might have been trying to teleport us when we left, severing the connection.”

“You don’t sound very sure.”

With one last shudder, the TARDIS settled down. The column stopped moving, which meant they’d landed. The Doctor rubbed his neck, grimacing. “That’s because we got knocked out of the time vortex again.”

“Let me guess,” Ianto said. “We’re in the middle of the Time War.”

The Doctor grinned. “Nope. We’re on Earth.”

“After all that, we’re back where we started?” Chase said. “Let’s get going.”

“Hold on, aren’t you curious what’s out there?”

“Not if the last time was anything to judge by!”

“Aw, come on, you don’t even know the time period.”

Orange shirt staggered back through the doorway, dripping wet. A pungent smell hit Cuddy’s nostrils, like a combination of lavender and some cheap perfume of the sort usually sold at K-mart. “The zipper broke on someone’s suitcase,” he said.

His words hit Cuddy like a bucket of cold water. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. When everyone looked at her, she shook her head, “No, not mine; I don’t use anything that smells half that bad.” Cameron looked indignant, as though she’d just finished talking to House. “But we have to go outside now! I forgot to pack a toothbrush!”

* * *

Time does not move the same way on the Ramtops. In many senses, the mountains are the spine of the Discworld, and magic runs their length as electricity surges through nerves and neurons. As for time, it ebbs and flows. Like a river, there are places it rushes past, where a careless youth can fall asleep and wake a hundred years later, and there are other places it stands still, where you can try to establish a claim on the land but most likely a wise man has been squatting on it for millennia already.

Then there’s the spot where a man once stood on the bank of the river of time and decided to build a dam. That man was Wen the Eternally Surprised, and that place is the monastery of the History Monks. One perfect spring day repeats there forever, and the cherry trees send out endless waves of blossoms. It’d be easy to protest the dam, but most people don’t know about it, and those who do live downstream. Besides, the History Monks perform an important service: they make sure tomorrow continues to exist.

Susan and Adric followed Lu-Tze along the winding path to the monastery, and she couldn’t help a smile when Adric noticed the snow on the other peaks. “This is so amazing!” he said as Lu-Tze explained where they were. “But there are so many things that are mathematically impossible.”

“Ah. You are one of those scientific fellows, aren’t you? Well, is it not written, ‘Seeing is believing’?”

“Then by your logic, a performance is real too.”

Lu-Tze shrugged. "Often they are believed."

“Your problem is trying to apply the logic of your world to ours,” replied Susan. Not that the theorems he’d brought up during the conversation had made any sense to her, either, but she and Lu-Tze were not the ones having trouble accepting that the universe operated by one rule only--that there were no rules--and even that one it obeyed only on whim. “Lu-Tze, why were you expecting us?”

“But your world is part of the same universe as mine,” Adric pressed on. “Therefore it must be subject to the same laws.”

“And yet you accept that a talking skeleton teleported you here.”

“What about you?” he asked Lu-Tze, clearly deciding Susan was a lost battle. “What is it that makes the Discworld so special?”

“A fish,” Lu-Tze replied.

They were well into the monastery grounds now, and every monk they passed instinctively stopped to make room for Lu-Tze before noticing his guests, whereupon they gawked and began following. At this point, a sizeable crowd swarmed about them, a situation which became a problem when they reached a narrow rope bridge. The press of the group nearly sent one man over the edge, but blue light flashed about him as he sliced time to give himself room to react, then pushed through the people to safety.

When they set foot on the bridge, the others did not follow, but more monks lined the bridges that criss-crossed above and below them.

“The students following us do not have permission to view the mandala,” Lu-Tze explained. “Though today, it would be better if even those who are allowed to see it stayed away. Of course, the prohibition of something just makes people more curious.”

“Mandala?” Adric said.

Susan leaned over the railing, unperturbed by the swaying that resulted, and saw a vast sheet of sand flowing over a hundred feet below her in a flurry that reminded her of a maelstrom. Innumerable colors swirled in an abstract portrait as grains crashed in waves and danced to the rhythm of the universe. Monks hurried around on the ground level, monitoring changes and maintaining the huge drums that rotated beside the seething pattern. “Lobsang never spoke of this,” she whispered, almost lost in the rush of activity, the beauty of raw power calling out to the part of her that wasn’t quite human. For a moment, she felt a part of life, of time, in a way she never had while acting as Death, and it took her breath away.

“He knows better than to involve anyone in this. It is with utmost reluctance that I bring you here.”

Susan grabbed Adric’s arm, holding him as an anchor back to reality, and she forced herself to look away. Of course, the mandala was arguably more real than any of them, but it was too much for her mind to comprehend. Anything bigger than yourself might as well not exist at all; it operated on a completely different plane, and you might as well rage at a lightning storm.

“The mandala reveals patterns of time and space. The drums beside them are procrastinators. We have others that spin time, move it from where it is wasted to where it is needed, but these are for storing the pattern of the sand, so that we may replay any moment in history should the need for analysis ever arise.”

“That’s incredible,” said Adric. “How does it work?”

Lu-Tze gave Susan a look that clearly said, We’re never going to get through to him, are we?

“I’m sure the theory is beyond us,” Susan said. “Lu-Tze is hundreds of years old and has devoted a lifetime to studying this.”

“Hundreds? Are you a time lord?” Adric thought he looked hundreds of years old.

“I am a mere sweeper. We have an abbot, though.”

“Not what I meant, but I guess that answers the question.”

“Very well.” He raised his voice. “Replay the sequence from twenty-one hours ago.”

The tableau froze as the procrastinators wound out. Susan found the sight of time flowing backward profoundly disturbing. It was as though all of her senses were screaming at her, but each relayed a story at odds with the others. When the sand began flowing again, she realized she was gripping the rope railing so tightly her knuckles were white. She let go, but it still felt wrong, because the story in front of her was not now.

“It’s not another glass clock, is it?”

“No, absolutely not. But... I wish it was.”

Susan felt her hair curl of its own volition.

“What’s wrong with a glass clock?” Adric asked.

“A totally glass clock. It stops time,” Susan replied.

Lu-Tze smiled as though indulging a child. “That is one way to put it. A glass clock is so accurate it measures the fundamental time interval. The universal tick, so to speak.”

“Planck time!” Adric exclaimed. “What appears continuous is actually discrete, as described in quantum theory. The infinite is actually finite, since there is a limit to how small something can get.”

The sweeper beamed. “Yes, that is the general idea. But what happens when you gain that level of accuracy?”

“Well, on that scale, mere observation will change reality. So you’re saying that if we could actually measure Planck time, it would freeze time, because your observation alters the nature of reality.”

“Yes, and once time has frozen, you cannot undo the observation--”

“--Because the observer is part of the universe that has been frozen! It’s sort of a paradox.”

“Correct, but a resolvable one for beings that can step out of time.”

“Step? That’s impossible.”

“And we were doing so well,” Susan said.

All further debate ceased as a ripple of motion caught their eye. The collective intake of breath seemed to be the sound of light dying. Then there was silence.

A wave of black sand spread across the mandala like an ink blot staining the pattern, but the splotch grew and grew, obliterating everything, plunging everything into nothing. This is what a nightmare looks like, Susan thought. There was no silence, not even in the absence of life. There was no complete darkness, even in the absence of light. So long as the universe existed, there would be some small atom vibrating, some noise in the quantum foam of space and time. Only in the mind did totality exist, absolute, bleak and unrelenting. Only the imagination could conceive of something so absolutely horrible.

Life will be swept away, the Auditors had said, supplanted by complete illogic. The belief field was failing. Discworld was dying.

The diversity of the mandala was gone, the entire floor covered in blackness. The sand shuddered, and she saw the grains had not become still. The realization was welcome, like a light at the end of a tunnel, and then at the edges, color creeped back in. The black collapsed in on itself and became the memory of a nightmare, rather than a living one. Susan felt a single tear fall from her eye and wiped it away before anyone could see.

“What does it mean?”

“It was an echo of the future, but it did not originate on the Disc.”

“Death explained what the Auditors said on our way back to his domain,” Adric said. “As... disturbing as it was to see the effects firsthand, this information is nothing new.”

“But the timing is.” Lu-Tze waved a hand and the mandala froze again as the procrastinators wound backward even further. Susan braced herself for the horror again, but that was not what the patterns showed. Colors danced as usual, though something was out of place.

“It’s turning dark,” she said. “It’s like... the picture is losing saturation, fading to grey.”

“That is the threat the Auditors warned you about. A weapon of the mind, consuming the universe and reshaping reality in the image of its dreams. The universe was moving toward such a future when something happened.”

The mandala flashed, and the effects they’d witnessed reversed in the blink of an eye. The purity of the colors was startling, and then the pattern froze.

“What comes next, you have already seen.”

Susan shut her eyes while the procrastinators moved forward in time, allowing the mandala to return to the present. Then she repeated, “So what does it mean?”

“It means that twenty-one hours ago, the first threat was resolved without your intervention.”

“How anti-climactic. But what could be worse than that first threat?”

“An acceleration. Twenty-one hours ago, something eliminated the threat and at the same time made it infinitely worse. Before twenty-one hours ago, the threat manifested as a gradual progression in time. Think of mold spreading and growing on bread. Now, the future is in flux. One moment, the bread is freshly baked, and the next moment it is rotten to the core. Two realities are fighting each other for existence. Some time, and we cannot predict when, the other reality will win, unless we take action now and tip the balance the other way.”

“The other reality is one in which the threat has already won. So it is the same threat, but a different execution. A different weapon, perhaps?”

“Exactly.”

Susan sighed. “Thank you.” She reached into her pocket and withdrew the die. Adric held out the tray.

“Where are you going?” Lu-Tze asked.

“To see what remains of the first threat, and where it vanished.”

“Then take this with you, in case we do not meet again.” Lu-Tze handed her a wrapped item the size of a clipboard but about two fingers thick. She tore off the wrapping paper--predictably featuring cuckoos--and stared.

“It’s an etch-a-sketch!” exclaimed Adric, who had once spent a while playing with one on the TARDIS.

“A what?” The object looked like a picture frame, gray in the middle surrounded by a bright red border, with two ivory cylinders at the bottom two corners.

“You twist the knobs and lines will appear on the screen. Shake it and the picture clears.”

Lu-Tze coughed. “That sounds like a toy!”

“It is...”

“Well, this is not a toy! Qu has spent years developing a miniature mandala.”

Susan nearly dropped the object but managed to restrain herself. She held it at a distance, though, as if it were a poisonous snake. “We don’t need one.”

“It may come in handy. Believe me, we spent many weeks debating whether to give you one.”

“What about wind-up procrastinators? For Adric, I mean, in case we run into something capable of freezing time. I believe I am immune, even on other worlds.”

“The boy carries his own time, just as you do. I know not how, but the fact is evident to the trained eye.”

She found herself staring at the boy with renewed curiosity. Who was he and how had he met Death? Perhaps there was more to this coincidence thing than she liked to admit.

Adric shrugged. “I’m from another universe. Maybe that’s why.”

“Ah,” said Lu-Tze, “it is written, ‘A fish out of water is still slippery.’”

“I wouldn’t want to be a fish.”

“Good luck, Susan and Adric. Should you have need of us, you will always be welcome in the monastery.”

Susan nodded her appreciation and dropped the die. There was a clatter, and they found themselves beneath a willow tree. To their right, ducks drifted upon a pond. To their left, a gaping hole in the ground revealed the smoldering outlines of an underground facility. What looked like magma flowed hundreds of feet below the surface. Then she checked her surroundings and found a single white pillar on the horizon, shooting into the sky. Adric gasped.

“This is Earth. We’re on Earth!”

“You know this place?”

“Washington DC. I’ve seen pictures on postcards.” Adric peered down into the burning ruins. “This does not belong here. I’ve never seen or heard of a similar facility on the entire planet.”

“It looks like a factory.”

Adric frowned, and he’d never looked so young. “We can’t tell anything from this. Everything’s slag.”

“You’re right. This is probably the right place but we’re twenty-one hours too late.”

“I don’t see what we’re supposed to do.” His voice trembled. Susan remembered the mandala, the spreading blackness.

“I do,” she replied, injecting as much resolve into her voice as possible. She put a hand on his shoulder and opened her fist to reveal the small white sphere in her palm. A blink, and they were standing in a field of golden wheat. “We’re going to need both dice.”

* * *

Every cloud might have a silver lining, Hector Barbossa reflected, but that didn’t mean the clouds were any more welcome. The bathhouse was in an uproar following his return, and he was lucky Elizabeth’s guards had not been as trusting as they’d seemed. If they hadn’t followed him, someone might have accused him of pushing her off that cliff and he’d be at the end of a rope already. As it was, three eyewitnesses, including her first mate, had seen her leap shortly after he tried to stop her. Everyone loyal was scouring the beaches, hoping she would wash up, alive or dead.

Which, of course, meant no one was guarding Elizabeth’s treasures.

He was halfway through his third flagon of rum, which was watered down so much it barely counted and tasted something like pureed parrot, when Pintel and Ragetti staggered into the bar, the ends of rolled up, yellowing manuscripts sticking out of sacks on their backs like peacock feathers. Spotting him, they headed straight for him, knocking a table over. Barbossa sighed. If they’d been caught in the bathhouse, he could’ve claimed they were idiots acting of their own accord, but now that they were here, he wondered if he shouldn’t have arranged a better rendezvous point, like the Black Pearl. That would’ve attracted attention from the dock master, though, who was certainly in Elizabeth’s pocket. Or had been--he belonged to her successor now. It didn’t matter, though. It was early morning, and the tavern was empty save for the bartender.

“We did it!” Pintel said.

Ragetti nodded, and his false eye nearly popped out. “There was no one there at all. The bathhouse is completely empty. Stealing these was a cinch, though you should know it’s also a sin, cap’n.”

Barbossa rolled his eyes. “Great. Didn’t I tell you not to say a word about your mission?” Without looking, he pointed his pistol in the general direction of the bartender and fired before the man could flee. The thud of the body hitting the ground told him he hadn’t missed. “The things I have to put up with...”

“Sorry,” the men replied in unison.

“Well, now that we have the place to ourselves, lay them out! What did you find?”

The first few rolls consisted of world maps and a few of the Caribbean, though Feng had obviously not been interested in that region of the world. Most were outdated and in poor condition, with a few having been eaten through or covered by mold. Then came a collection that had been stored with the map Will Turner stole the last time they broke in. These were of more interest, though most dealt with local legends, including one about a fish with the head of a lion.

“What’s this?” Ragetti said, flattening out a piece of parchment on the countertop. “Looks like a treasure chest.”

Barbossa looked up from his own study of three maps featuring Florida. If he remembered correctly, the fountain had been somewhere near the southern coastline, and maybe a discrepancy between Feng’s different versions would be a clue. The object of Ragetti’s interest was not a map at all but instead showed a blue box, taller than it was wide. A glance told him it was not a chest at all, and there were words along the top, scraggly as though drawn by someone who didn’t understand their meaning. He could tell it was English, though, and read “Police Box” despite the artist’s uncertain scrawl. He wondered what a "police" was.

Not knowing why, he snatched the parchment and began reading. Ragetti shrugged, turning his attention to their last stolen artifact, which turned out to be a nude sketch of some woman he did not recognize. Barbossa was thankful it’d come last, or else they’d never have gotten through the collection.

“A magical vessel known as the TARDIS,” he read from the scroll, “it contains immense rooms within its frame, despite its small size, and is the transportation of a many-faced man known as the Doctor, who is believed to be an angel of death.”

The king lives to serve, Elizabeth’s last words echoed in his mind. And when the time is right, the king dies for the same purpose.

But Elizabeth’s death had not accomplished anything.

“She is not dead,” Tai Huang had snapped. The wind grabbed at their clothes as the sun dropped beneath the waves, giving a cool evening breeze full reign over the island.

“No one can survive such a fall,” Barbossa replied, but the first mate did not pay him any attention. He just looked over the edge and made a sign with both his hands.

Twin gasps brought him out of his recollection, and he realized he had made the same sign while thinking. “That’s a heathen sign, that is,” Ragetti squeaked.

Pintel hit him over the back of his head. “The Captain’s done plenty of heathen-ish things in his time, he has, and it hasn’t bothered us yet.”

“Aye,” Barbossa growled before pondering the implications of what’d been said. Pintel was aware of his mistake and stared wide-eyed until Barbossa dismissed the statement, deciding it wasn’t worth his time. “It’s just something I saw. What does it mean?”

Ragetti was busy making the cross over his chest, so Pintel replied for him, “It’s the sign of the lion.”

“These fairy tales?” He waved a hand over the mermaid-lion account.

“No. Some say it’s a lion, others a tiger, but whatever it is, it’s a giant orange beast that comes out at night and stalks the island. Every new moon, a child or animal goes missing, always taken from a locked house.”

Barbossa laughed. “Has anyone ever seen this... legend?”

“They say it was here when a prince founded the city,” Ragetti whispered. “And it’s only ever been seen on a cliff overlooking the ocean. At night, you can hear it roar.”

“That’s just water against the rocks,” Pintel retorted, but there was a hint of doubt in his voice. After all, they’d been over the end of the world...

So Huang thought Elizabeth had sacrificed herself to the spirit stalking the island? That made no sense, and doing so didn't advance the pirate cause any. She was king of the Brethren Court, not Singapore. It wasn’t her job to placate some ill-tempered feline.

“Apparently, last new moon, no one disappeared.”

Barbossa gripped his flagon so hard rum sloshed over the rim. “When Elizabeth was here?”

“Aye.”

“Get these papers back into storage before they’re missed.” Barbossa got to his feet and stalked out.

“Where are you going, captain?” Pintel called after him as they swept up the rolls of parchment.

He cast about for a good excuse. “To buy a toothbrush,” he snarled, remembering his current one was so frayed it was worthless (and had been for roughly six years). There’s more to her than meets the eye, he thought. There always had been, from the moment they’d dragged her aboard the Black Pearl back at Port Royal. Elizabeth would not kill herself. The only person he thought she’d die for was Will Turner, and there was no longer any need for that.

Where does she keep that chest with his heart?

Then he froze in the middle of taking a step. A moment ago, he had thought her dead, but now he would bet his life, no, his gold, that she lived.

“Tell your fortune?” a cloaked woman asked, her face barely visible beneath a hood. “Only a penny.”

“No.”

She grabbed his sleeve, and he reached for his sword. Backing away, she did not let go until she said, “Then advice for free, okay?”

“What advice?”

“Not my place to give. You must follow.”

“I don’t have time for this.” But he didn’t turn his back on her. The crone let out a low cackle, like the croaking of a frog, and headed into an alley without looking back to see if he came.

Heeding the same weird that had guided his thoughts to this point, he went after her, though he unsheathed his blade first. With the pirates out of the city, only unorganized crime remained, and that was the most dangerous type if only for the unpredictability; you at least had be sane to be a member of organized crime.

They entered a dank, musty boarding house, the only light coming from two candles on a mahogany desk in the hall, in addition to the rays of morning sun that made it through the doorway, where a brick acted as a doorstop. “This is no shop,” he said.

“And I am no fortune teller.” She swept back her hood to reveal a wrinkled face, ordinary and unmemorable. A housekeeper, he guessed, but she held out a hand and revealed a medal. He took it and saw it belonged to the Royal Navy. Seeing his approval, she proceeded upstairs. The room they entered was small, no more than thirty-five square feet. A pallet, narrow table and stool filled the space, but there was no occupant.

Disregarding this fact, a man’s voice spoke to them. “So we meet again.”

Barbossa swung around to confront an empty hall. The housekeeper pulled him into the room and shut the door, ignoring the blade he brandished before her face.

“I do ask you not hurt her. On the desk, if you would.”

He looked and saw nothing but a single candle and a human skull. A skull, a medal and that voice. Barbossa gasped. “You're that commodore? Were that commodore?” He took a moment to silently thank Calypso that she had not brought himself back to life in such a fashion.

The jawbone moved of its own accord, despite the lack of sinew or muscle. A single metal wire kept the piece attached to the rest of the skull, which kept it from falling off but didn't make up for the lack of muscle, or vocal chords. “The name is James Norrington. And of course, I know you by reputation, Captain Barbossa. Since I am no longer capable of wielding a sword or serving the empire, I hope this meeting shall be less tumultuous than ones before.”

He took a seat, and the housekeeper shuffled out the door, allowing it to creak shut. “How is this possible?”

“Says one man who came back from the dead to another. I do not know. One moment I was aboard the Dutchman, bleeding to death, and the next, I was washing ashore, unable to move any part of my body. You can imagine my dismay when I discovered this was because it wasn't there.”

“You know you’re in Singapore?”

“Yes. And I know Elizabeth controls the island. I once told her our fates were intertwined, though I never dreamed anything like this.”

“If you want me to reunite--”

“No!” he snapped, the movement causing him to tip over. Barbossa righted the skull. “Thank you. When I heard of your arrival, I asked for you personally. I have... memories... that do not belong to me. Memories that do not belong to any past I’ve read in history books.”

“Describe them.”

“A city made of gold, possessing mechanisms I could not have thought up in my wildest imagination or darkest nightmare. The inhabitants wield magic on a level such as we have never witnessed, not from the Aztecs, not from Davy Jones. And they are tunneling, Barbossa, deep under the surface, even beneath the ocean beds.”

“El Dorado?”

“Perhaps.”

“What are the tunnels for?”

“Their armies.”

“Nothing in the legend speaks of an army.”

“Nevertheless, they are coming here. When they strike, even the empire will fall.”

The whirl of the maelstrom flashed before his eyes, as did Beckett's visage moments before they blasted his ship into splinters. Nevertheless, to crush a nation that spanned the Earth would be a different task altogether. An impossible task, most would say. If Britain ever fell, it would not be at the hands of another nation, but of those within its borders, because no one else had the firepower or wealth to match.

“What am I supposed to do with this knowledge?”

“There is an aura about you that I can now see: the glow of magic. You and others here have been touched more deeply, and it calls them.”

“So they’re not coming to take the city. They’re coming for me?”

“And Elizabeth, Turner, Sparrow, all of you. The city is incidental and may not be harmed or taken at all. They are certainly capable of subtlety and subterfuge.”

“What do they want with us?”

“You will be either assimilated or destroyed. It makes no difference to their ultimate goals.”

All the more reason to find that fountain. “Apple?” he offered absent-mindedly as he withdrew one from his knapsack. Then he remembered what he was talking to. Norrington did a fantastic job of glaring, all things considered. “Right, of course.” He took a bite for himself. “Do you know anything about the fountain of youth?”

“No.”

“You’re not saying ‘no’ because of my apple, are you?”

“No.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“I’m not in the mood for word games, Barbossa.”

“Well, you look very good for a skull, and that’s the word of an expert. The curse and all.”

“Thank you,” Norrington replied wryly. “Now, you are their most obvious target, because without magic, you would not exist at all. And you have been touched by that curse. So leave the island immediately. As long as they’re hunting you, they will leave Elizabeth alone.”

Barbossa laughed. “So this is what it’s all about? You’re a skull, Norrington, and you’re still thinking with your dick.”

“With my heart.”

“You don’t have one of those either.”

“Leave, Barbossa. You’d be surprised what a skull can accomplish when commoners are so superstitious.”

“And what about you?”

“I will stay here to protect Elizabeth.”

“You’re magical too.”

“My guess is that stray magic from the tunneling caused my resurrection, giving me a glimpse into their world. If that is the case, then I am already a part of them and will not draw attention.”

“Maybe you’re a spy.”

“I’m giving them a great view, then.”

“You could come with me.”

Surprise emanated from the skull, and Barbossa wondered if that was part of the magic, the ability to transmit emotions in the absence of facial expressions, because he could feel his own heart beat faster and his eyebrows tried to creep up, though he didn’t let them.

“I think not.”

Barbossa shrugged. “Your loss, but you should know, Elizabeth’s dead.”

“What?” His jaw opened so wide he rolled over and off the table, bouncing against the wooden floor and onto the pallet. Barbossa retrieved him and secured him between the wall and candle to prevent further interruptions.

“She leapt off a cliff last night.”

“Into the ocean?”

“Aye.”

“Oh. Then she’s not dead.”

“Why do people keep saying that?” He slapped the desk, dislodging the candlestick and sending the skull rolling away. “Arrrrgh.” This time, when the skull landed on the bedding, he left it there. “And if you tell me she’s the human incarnation of some lion god, I’ll throw you out the window.”

The emotions flowing from Norrington were unperturbed. He supposed not much could bother a skull. “Where did you hear such nonsense? Elizabeth and the sea belong together. It will not harm her.”

Barbossa paused, feeling his anger quail before shock. Why had he not realized that himself? “You’re right,” he said. “Of course.” He’d been the one who told her, so how had he not followed her line of reasoning? Well, because she was a half-suicidal madwoman, deny it though she might. Yet everything made sense. “You’ll have your wish granted. As soon as I spot Elizabeth’s heaving wet bodice on land again, I’ll be off this miserable island.”

The pang of anger at his remark vanished as he finished the sentence, replaced by a sort of haughty satisfaction. He was glad the emotional link did not work in reverse, or Norrington might become suspicious. “I’ll leave you to your retirement, then, Commodore.” That wiped away the smugness.

The housekeeper was outside the door when he left, and he wondered how much she had heard. It didn’t matter. He barely acknowledged her bow as he swept past.

The journey to the marketplace passed in a blur. If Norrington’s tale was true, he wanted the Black Pearl ready to cast off at any moment. Elizabeth’s little adventure would attract more attention than was healthy, but at the same time, there was no guarantee he would see her the moment she returned. Her own people swarmed the coastline, keeping watch all day and all night, and if they felt she needed time to “recover” then they could keep him out for at least a week. That was far too long, especially as he didn’t trust her not to leave without him. With a week’s head start, even the Black Pearl wouldn’t be able to give chase.

A solid wall blocked his way, causing him to run head first into a panel of wood. He backed away, cursing. Why was there a stall in the middle of the street? Then he noticed it was painted blue and stood blocking traffic, as though it had dropped from the sky.

“Well, begad,” he said softly. Too many legends were coming true today. What was a pirate supposed to do with immortality, gold and angels? Actually, a list was already growing ever-longer in his mind, but it was possible to have too much of a good thing. Aztec gold had taught him that.

Nevertheless, there was no ignoring facts, and the words “Police Box” were plainly emblazoned across the top of the box.

To Chapter 16: The Universe

Back to Chapter 14: What Happened Next

Summary: Timelines are in chaos as Ten breaks the time lock on the stolen Earth, the effects of the BRAIN factory battle reach Discworld and news of Elizabeth’s supposed suicide spreads across Singapore.

UNCUT and UNCENSORED!

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:39:58 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 14
What Happened Next

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Tosh could scarcely believe it. Owen's first action upon encountering the immense, twisting insides of the Doctor's impossible time machine was to march straight into the middle of them and get lost.

The Doctor and House found this extremely amusing and were apparently bonding over it. They were following Owen's progress like demented voyeurs using a smallish screen on the wall.

"Oh god, he's found the Orgasmatron," said the Doctor.

"What, like from Sleeper? You're kidding," said Wilson, who had been standing off to the side and generally not participating in the Owen-watching.

"You have something like that?" said House with interest.

"Well, no, not really. It doesn't actually do anything, but it's got ORGASMATRON written in big letters across the top, so whenever people find it they inevitably spend several hours trying to work it and I end up having to explain myself, it's all very embarrassing."

"Aren't we meant to be searching for Chula?" asked Tosh impatiently.

Sarah Jane walked back into the console room. "Well, I can't find him," she said. "I'm afraid to go too deep, I know I'll get lost if I do."

"It doesn't matter," said House. "He's totally useless anyway."

"Oh for heaven's sake," said Tosh. "I'll find him. How hard can it be?" With that, she strode through the door and into the interior of the TARDIS. House watched interestedly as the scanner showed Owen kicking the Orgasmatron in frustration.

"Really, it's just a prop," said the Doctor. "I should put up a sign or something. This is the third time this has happened in the last four hundred years."

"That's actually not very often," said Wilson.

"What? Oh, I suppose not. Still, can't hurt." The Doctor switched the scanner around a bit until he found Tosh. House started complaining.

"Oh come on, she's not going to be half as interesting!"

"Are we going to look for these aliens or not?" said Wilson. Everyone ignored him.

On the screen, Tosh walked confidently down the white TARDIS corridors. If she came to a fork, she simply placed her hand on the wall and asked the TARDIS where she should go. After a moment she'd nod and choose a direction.

"Amazing," said the Doctor. "I think she likes her." He sounded affronted.

"She?" said House.

"The TARDIS likes the brainy girl," said the Doctor. House was about to point out the stupidity of this statement, but he was distracted by Tosh finding Owen, who looked quite embarrassed to see her. They watched in reasonable silence as she led him back and turned when she reentered the console room.

"Can we go now?" Tosh asked.

"Did you know you have a pool?" asked Owen in wonder. "How the hell does it all fit inside a police box?"

"I'm afraid that question has a very long answer," said the Doctor.

"That means he doesn't know," said Sarah Jane.

"Can we go?" said Tosh.

"Yes, yes, alright, no need to get tetchy," said the Doctor, and he moved over to the console.

"Er, where, exactly, are we going?" said Wilson.

"To the planet Chula, with luck," said the Doctor cheerily.

"With luck," repeated House dryly.

"Yup!" said the Doctor, then he pulled a lever and things happened. The middle column went crazy and the room started shaking. This lasted several seconds, and then it stopped. "Well, let's see where we are!" the Doctor said. Then he pulled another lever and the doors slid open.

"Do you even have any sort of guess as to where Chula is, or are you being completely random?" Sarah Jane asked him, but he didn't answer. He was too busy strolling out the doors. The others sighed and followed.

The room they entered wasn't too different from the one they'd left. It was much more spacious and there was no central column, but everything was white in the same way everything in the TARDIS was.

A man who definitely had two heads and three arms stared at them. They stared back.

"WOOOOOAH!" the stranger said, waving all three arms wildly as he staggered backwards. "Ford! Ford! You will not believe what just happened!"

"Try me," said a dry voice, whose source made itself known when another man walked through a side door into the room. He stared blankly at the TARDIS, and at the group standing just outside of it. Then he took out a small electronic book, opened it, and spoke to it. "Police Pub--" was as far as he got. The multi-limbed man was going psycho, dancing around the room wildly.

"Hey Trill! Some weirdos flew a big blue box right into the middle of our spaceship and landed it on top of the Earthman! WHOOO!"

House took offense at this. "Excuse me, we're the weirdos?" he said.

"Don't mind him, that's just Zaphod," said a girl, who had walked in behind Ford. "He can be a little, ah, unmanageable." She looked the box up and down. "Well, it's definitely improbable," she announced. "Hi, I'm Trillian. Nice to meet you."

The Doctor brightened up. "Improbable? Don't tell me... you have an Improbability Drive? Oh, those are so cool! Such an impressive bit of engineering, you know, quite brilliant, although, of course, famously unreliable, and they have a habit of doing things you'd rather they didn't..."

"Oh my god, will somebody please move this thing?" said yet another voice. This one was muffled and came from behind the TARDIS.

"Oh dear!" said Wilson. He and Tosh went behind the TARDIS to see if they could free whoever it was.

"That is so cool!" said Owen, staring at Zaphod. "A real alien! Do most of them have two heads?"

"Oh, he didn't always have two heads," said Ford conversationally. The book was still open in his hands.

"How did he get two then?" said Owen. "I've always thought it would be cool to have two heads."

"Long story," said Ford.

"Get me out of here!" came the muffled voice. Sarah Jane went back to help as well.

"Where the hell are we?" said House.

"Is that a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide?" said the Doctor, looking interestedly at the book Ford was holding. Ford instantly brightened up.

"Oh yes," he said. "I'm a writer for it, you know!"

"You don't say," said the Doctor. "I wrote one or two entries myself, a long time ago. I know I still have a copy around somewhere."

"Did you really? Which entries?" Ford was in his element.

"Oh, let's see, I wrote the one about the Ice Warriors, the Great Vampire, and Gallifrey--although I expect that one's been deleted by now; the Time Lords would never allow something like that. I wrote a few more, but not all of them made it in. I was very sad to see the entry on Jelly Babies rejected. Would you like one?" He held out a small paper bag. Ford looked delighted.

"Absolutely!" He took one.

House was not so delighted. "Will you two stop chumming it up and tell me where the hell we are?" he demanded.

"No need to be so angry," said Zaphod. "Chill out!"

"We're on the Heart of Gold," said Trillian proudly.

"Are we indeed? I've always wanted to see it!" said the Doctor.

"Finally!" There was a loud scraping as the TARDIS was inched slightly out and a man in a bathrobe squeezed out from behind it. "That was extremely unpleasant," the man said. "Ford, what is going on?"

"Oh, Arthur," said Ford, as though he'd forgotten the man was there. "This is--er, sorry, what was your name again?"

"I'm the Doctor," said the Doctor, "and this is Dr. House, Dr. Wilson, Dr. Owen, Toshiko Sato, and Sarah Jane Smith." He pointed to each of them in turn. Sarah Jane waved.

"Just the Doctor?" said Arthur. "How come they all have names?"

"Ummm."

"Hey Earthman, lighten up!" said Zaphod. "I want to know what this thing is!" He was examining the TARDIS with psychotic delight.

"This," said the Doctor proudly, "is my TARDIS."

"Your tar-what?" said Zaphod.

"TARDIS," said Sarah Jane helpfully.

"Look, this is all very fascinating, but could someone please tell me what's going on?" said Wilson.

"What is all this racket?" said yet another new voice, although this one sounded both robotic and extremely depressed. It made everyone else depressed just hearing it.

Trillian sighed. "Hello Marvin," she said. Indeed, a robot showed up a moment later.

"Can I assume these aren't Chula?" asked Tosh.

"Oh, Chula," said the robot. "I hate Chula. They make me feel so depressed."

"Everything makes you feel depressed, Marv," said Trillian.

"I like your outfit. Very spacy," said House, eyeing Trillian's skintight, glittery suit.

The Doctor glanced over. "Reminds me of someone I used to know," he mused.

"So they aren't Chula," Tosh confirmed.

"Excuse me, I hope you don't mind me asking, but how the hell did all you fit inside that?" said Arthur, the man in the bathrobe, who'd been spending the last several minutes examining it.

"It's bigger on the inside," said Sarah Jane proudly.

"That sounds like a dirty pick-up line," said Zaphod.

"I thought so too!" said Owen, who was clearly trying to suck up to Zaphod in order to get the secret of obtaining multiple heads and limbs out of him.

"I would love to see more of your ship," the Doctor gushed to Ford.

"It's his ship, not mine," said Ford, pointing to Zaphod. "Arthur and I are just hitching a lift."

"You wouldn't happen to have any tea in there, would you?" Arthur was still eyeing the TARDIS.

"Er," said Wilson.

* * *

Donna was having a hard time concentrating. She knew she should be focusing on the Doctor’s memories from the Time War in which he had to track other vessels moving through the time vortex. It was her only chance of locating him now, but she kept getting distracted by the need to preserve all the Doctor’s encounters with Jack Harkness.

“Sonic screwdrivers and bananas,” she muttered. “Honestly, that’s the best conversation he can come up with? Rose definitely had the brains in that match-up. Dancing, hah. Oops.”

She had failed to reroute the data stream from the huon modulators into the temporal booster controls, causing the TARDIS to exit the vortex. It materialized in the middle of an African plain, and from the monitors, it looked like the middle of the dry season as clouds of dust and sand drifted across the screen. For some inexplicable reason, the chameleon circuit decided the best course of action when confronted with a bunch of hungry ape people was to turn into a big, black rectangular box. This was a stupid disguise because it obviously panicked the poor hominids. Upon seeing her, they began picking up bones and beating the brains out of each other. Donna considered intervening but decided the best course of action was to remove the offending presence as quickly as possible.

Returning to the vortex, she activated the auto-pilot, which was something the Doctor’s Type-40 had definitely been lacking. A twist of the deep range sub-etheric assimilation dial told the system to lock on to the trail of any TARDIS of a certain age. It wasn’t that there might be other TARDISes around--two surviving the war were already two more than expected--but it would do no good to barge in on the Doctor before he knew who the hell she was and why she was chasing after him in a stolen TARDIS. Thankfully, her remaining memories allowed her to make an accurate guess of how many years the Doctor’s TARDIS had.

That done, she sat down to pursue more pressing matters. “Ooh, Jack in chains,” she said. This image required extra attention.

* * *

“Ducks.”

Albert trembled as he nodded, though Susan suspected he was angry rather than frightened. Unexpected occurrences did not sit well with Albert. In this case, however, she had to admit she agreed with him. She decided to try being sensible one more time: “Are you sure they weren’t small peacocks?”

“I know what I saw,” Albert snapped. “They were ducks, they had color and they ate some of the skeleton fish. A few choked, but obviously they can’t die here, so they’re still flailing next to the pond. I figure the cats will take care of them once the master gets back.”

They passed through the front entrance and angled straight for the pond. There were, indeed, three mallards thrashing on the ground and five more floating on the pond, the motion of their feet sending out ripples where none should be. Even the brown of the females stood out as a brilliant dash of color amidst the black and white of Death’s Domain. Susan bent down and turned the choking ducks upside down, shaking them until the bones dislodged from their throats. The fish were still intact and bounced back into the pond, whereupon they swam into the depths to avoid a repeat experience.

The ducks quacked as they waddled away, and Albert gave her a disapproving look. “It would be better if we were rid of them.”

“Killing them doesn’t exactly help us here, does it?”

The two of them stared at the spectacle of non-feline living creatures wandering around the garden until they heard a boy’s voice declare, “This is a bit depressing, isn’t it? I like the wheat, though.”

Death approached, followed by a young man in what looked to be yellow and red pajamas. A shock of brown hair that looked almost as unruly as Susan’s covered part of his face, but he brushed it aside as he came closer. Albert snorted dismissively, but Susan wasn’t so quick to judge the new arrival. His shoulders were a little hunched, uncertainty and nervousness making him looker younger than he was, but his eyes were steady as they surveyed the surroundings, and when his gaze fell upon her, it did not waver in the slightest. This was someone who was not fazed by the strangeness of Death’s world.

WHY ARE YOU NOT IN THE HOUSE? Death asked.

Susan and Albert parted to reveal the scene behind them, but Susan suspected Death had already seen the ducks, as he’d materialized on a slope. Death nodded and headed back for the house without a word. His companion shrugged, and the three of them followed.

As they entered, the boy exclaimed, “It’s bigger on the inside!” Susan noticed he, quite unreasonably, relaxed upon making the observation and made a mental note of it.

ALBERT, WOULD YOU BRING US SOME TEA?

Once they were settled in the kitchen, Death made the proper introductions. SUSAN, MEET ADRIC. ADRIC, THIS IS MY GRANDDAUGHTER, SUSAN.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Adric mumbled, extending his hand. Susan shook it. “You’re not very eager to leave, are you?”

Susan smiled. “No, I am not. I would feel better if I knew your credentials, though.”

“I’m a math genius, and I’ve traveled space and time with the Doctor.”

“Who is the Doctor?”

“It’s complicated, but I’ll tell you the whole story if you like. It’ll help you get a sense of what to expect out there.”

THAT WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL YOU BEGIN TRAVELING, Death said. WHEN DID THE DUCKS APPEAR, SUSAN?

“Albert came to me as soon as he found them, and we headed over to investigate when you arrived. What does it mean?”

IT MEANS THE FABRIC OF REALITY IS WEAKENING. FAITH IS GETTING STRONGER.

“If faith is getting stronger, shouldn’t your control over your domain get stronger as well?”

THERE ARE DIFFERENT TYPES OF FAITH, AND DIFFERENT PEOPLE WHO HOLD THEM. BECAUSE MY DOMAIN IS A PARASITE UNIVERSE OF DISCWORLD’S, THE TWO WORLDS ARE MELDING TOGETHER.

“The reality of the Disc will begin intruding here?”

IT ALWAYS HAS, THOUGH TO A LESSER EXTENT.

“But you will still exist. Your powers will remain intact.”

FOR SO LONG AS THE DISC DOES, CORRECT.

“Is the Disc in danger?”

THE WAXING FAITH HAS NO PLACE FOR THE DISC. INTERNAL BARRIERS ARE THE FIRST TO FALL WHEN A WORLD BEGINS CONTRACTING.

“Then what will you do?”

THE GODS WILL BE FEELING THE SAME EFFECTS. THERE WILL BE A MEETING, AND THEY WILL TRY TO STRENGTH BELIEF IN DISCWORLD. IT IS OUR ONLY PROTECTION, AND I WILL DO MY PART AS WELL.

“This isn’t going to be like that Hogfather incident, is it?” Alfred asked as he laid out the place settings. “Because I call dibs on the sherry if it is.”

OUR ROLE WILL BE A BIT MORE... MORBID, THIS TIME.

“How grand.”

“I hate to interrupt,” Adric said, “but how are we traveling if you don’t have a spacecraft?”

Death proffered his tray and dice. Susan scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”

IT IS THE ONLY MEANS I HAVE TO OFFER.

“Then we’ll go to the wizards. Maybe they will have something better. Or even the Auditors could assemble something.”

BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW WHERE TO GO.

“A blind guess is better than leaving our fate to chance.”

FATE IS NOT CHANCE.

“I’m not here to debate semantics.”

THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT.

Susan stared at him. This wasn’t the first time they’d argued over philosophy, but the idea that everything in life was fated was ridiculous. Sure, there were the hourglasses, but that was more like a guideline. You had so much time in the world, but that time was yours. You did with it what you could.

THERE IS A WAY TO TEST MY HYPOTHESIS.

“What’s that?”

ADRIC WAS THE ONE WHO ASKED ABOUT TRANSPORTATION, YET YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THE SENSIBLE ONE. THAT MEANS YOU ALREADY HAVE PLANS, AND THEY DO NOT INVOLVE LEAVING THE DISC.

“Clever of you.”

Death put the time die into his pocket, leaving the one that controlled spatial travel. THERE IS AN INFINITELY SMALL CHANCE OF YOU ENDING UP WHERE YOU DESIRE.

“That’s not encouraging,” Adric said.

Susan shook her head. “I have an advantage. I am related to Death. He doesn’t need the die to return home, and neither do I. If we end up somewhere incorrect, I can bring us back in an instant.”

“What if it’s somewhere dangerous?”

THE DIE CARRIES ALONG A BUBBLE OF ATMOSPHERE. THERE WILL BE A GRACE PERIOD BEFORE YOU ARE SUBJECTED TO DANGER.

“Shall we?” Susan asked Adric.

He shrugged. “If it works, will there be food where we go?”

She liked his thought process. “Yes.”

“Then we might as well try.”

They stood, and he picked up the tray while Susan took the die. Without fanfare, she dropped it, and the universe blinked.

The first sensation she felt was the brush of a cherry blossom against her cheek, and she smiled. “Looks like it worked.”

Adric stared. “Where are we?”

A very old man who had been lounging under a nearby tree chewing on cherries got up and approached them. “Welcome to the Ramtops. My name is Lu-Tze. We have been expecting you.”

* * *

“So Chula,” the Doctor said. “Chula, Chula, Chula. Kind of like Tora, Tora, Tora. Did I ever tell you the Chula are fairly war-like? Well, not fairly, more like, have Daleks as role models but are still cuddly.”

“No.” Cuddy said, tapping her fingers on the console and shooting Jack an evil look. “I thought you said they were an advanced race that got along with other species. No one ever mentioned that they like to-- what are Daleks?”

There was an awkward silence until Ianto wandered in with a tray. “Coffee, anyone?”

“Yes, please!” the Doctor grabbed a mug, nearly spilling it when the tray dropped away as Jack reached out. Ianto swiveled smoothly and handed Jack’s intended mug to Cameron. All three doctors gaped at the sudden burst of action, but the Doctor returned to the console and said, “So I’ve been putting a lot of thought into where we should go--”

“What are Daleks?” Cuddy repeated.

“--go, uh, go to and I think that it would be fantastic if Jack explained where he once got a Chula warship and ambulance from.”

“That was a lifetime ago,” Jack said. “Well, for you anyway. Me, more like two thousand give or take several hundred.”

“Jack. Don’t start.”

“I’m not flirting with anyone!”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“That’s usually what you mean.”

“You’re dodging the question. Why are you dodging the question? The only reason to dodge the question is if you have something to hide.”

“You’re both dodging my question,” Cuddy said. They ignored her.

“I’m going to need some coffee to get through this story,” Jack said, glancing at Ianto from the corner of his eye. It turned out there was one mug left, so he had not forgotten that he still had a professional relationship to maintain. Ianto handed the coffee over without batting an eye or offering an apology.

“Hold on,” the Doctor protested. “I don’t remember him signing an application.”

“Application?” Jack asked, pausing as he lifted the mug to his lips.

“Ianto started a TARDIS coffee club,” the Doctor said.

“Yeah,” Chase replied, waving a little piece of paper. “I get stamps for every coffee, and each card holds ten.”

“For what purpose?” Jack said, lowering the mug. “You can’t trade it in for a free coffee. Everything’s free.”

“I just like the stamps. The Doctor has an entire room full of different ones!”

“So anyone not part of the club doesn’t get coffee? Hey, I remember Ianto threatening to do this about half a year ago.”

“It wasn’t a threat, sir,” Ianto replied. “It was a joke.”

Chase crossed his arms. “Those stamps better not be a joke.”

Jack shrugged. “I’ll fill out a form later.” He drank a mouthful and tasted something resembling a cross between grease and lighter fluid, which were memories he didn’t care to revisit at the moment. He spat it all back out, choking, and the black liquid splashed across the TARDIS console, sending the Doctor into a frenzy of cleaning. “What the hell is this?”

“Coffee,” Ianto said. “From the Doctor’s supplies.”

“This is not coffee!”

“Of course it is. It just doesn’t come from the same stock reserved for members of the club.”

“Give me a form now!”

“He’s out,” Cameron said. “I took the last one. Sorry.”

“You’re telling me there isn’t a single printer on board the TARDIS?”

The Doctor glared at him as he pushed him aside and climbed beneath the grating to mop up the floor below.

“But you have everything but the kitchen sink aboard!”

“No,” the Doctor said, wringing his rag out into a bucket, “I have everything including the kitchen sink but not a printer. Never found a use for one, and the ink was always low, even when I changed it. Thousand--uh, I mean, nine hundred--year old Time Lord, and I still don’t understand the physics behind that phenomenon.”

“Can’t I be an honorary member?” Jack asked Ianto.

“No, sir. It would violate the charter and undermine trust.”

“A prospective initiate?”

“That would involve helping me clean the Doctor’s storage rooms. All seven hundred twelve of them, though those are only the ones I’ve found, and I’m not sure some of them aren’t redundant.”

“Hold on, hold on!” the Doctor clambered back up and grabbed Ianto’s sleeve to prevent him from exiting, as he’d been edging toward the door leading to the sleeping quarters during the entire conversation. “You are not cleaning my storage. There’s some dangerous equipment in there.”

“No there isn’t.” Ianto smiled. “Unless you’re talking about the contents of seven alpha four.”

“Ah. So you found that room, did you?”

“That strikes me more as... kinky than dangerous.”

“I’m on board,” Jack cut in. He leaned against the console in a pose that was, in his opinion, thoroughly dashing. “Initiate it is!”

“A human wouldn’t be able to grasp its true nature,” the Doctor said quickly. “Well, don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you’re very, very busy. And stay out of that room! As for you, Jack, no more distractions! Tell your story.”

“Well, it was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...”

“No it wasn’t.”

“‘Solar system far, far away’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

“It’s outer space. Everything’s far, far away,” Cuddy said, giving him an exasperated look he thought she reserved only for House. With that thought, his mental barrier slipped a little, and House managed to get through, You are me, in a way. Isn’t that disturbing? Hmm, maybe I’ll pretend I got the orgasmatron working.

As tantalizing a thread of inquiry that last thought represented, Jack slammed House out of his mind, though he couldn’t resist saying, “Orgasmatron?”

The Doctor choked, covering the console with a second spray of coffee. Jack wondered if that was what seven alpha four was all about. He hoped he could get to the room before Ianto did, though he wouldn’t put it past him to have planned for the eventuality and moved the contents to another hiding spot upon discovering them.

“The story!” the Doctor and Cuddy snapped at the same time.

“I won it in an eating contest!”

Ianto’s head appeared in the doorway, and it was clear he’d been lurking just out of sight. “What? I’ve seen Tosh eat more than you.”

“A hundred years of Earth food gets old, all right?” Jack said. “I’m sorry if it isn’t something exciting like an intergalactic con job or a robbery.”

“Or payment for sex,” Cuddy said. When she noticed Chase and Cameron’s jaws drop, she reddened. “Did I say that out loud? Well, I’m sorry, but he is very good at it. Stop staring at me. Daleks!”

Jack noticed Ianto’s eyes narrow as he remembered Cuddy had also been involved in the shenanigans in the factory, and he yelled, “Initiate! I’m an initiate, remember that!” To be honest, he did regret participating, and it wasn’t just because Ianto seemed hell-bent on making him miserable. But if Ianto was going to be immature, then there was no point in Jack admitting it was a mistake, and he did believe he had done Wilson and House a service, which now that they were part of their mission, meant that he had increased the efficiency of their search. Assuming the two men weren’t shagging like bunnies.

Ianto nodded. “Of course I remember, sir. I’ll just go and make dinner, shall I?”

“I think it’s only impressive if we know what they had to eat,” Cameron said.

Jack knew telling the truth would be a mistake, but he also knew the Doctor would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t. “It was a curry-eating contest,” he said, and he could see the light bulb go off over Ianto’s head as the man slipped off to “prepare” the evening’s food. “You’re not a servant, you know!” he yelled after him. “You don’t have to make everything. There should be a rota!” Ianto did not deign to respond. “Damn it!”

“Wait,” the Doctor said, “so where did the loser get the ships from?”

“Himself,” Jack said. “He was a Chula.”

“You managed to eat more curry than a Chula. Are we talking about the spicy kind?”

“You could use the stuff to etch steel.”

“Is that impressive?” Cameron asked. “The out-eating, I mean. ‘Cause I have a friend who can’t even make it through a poppadom.”

“Chula practically invented curry,” the Doctor said. “They made the early adopters look like laggards. Of course, the real credit goes to humans, but Chula probably own the patent at the Shadow Proclamation.”

“I fail to see why this story took so much effort to pry from you, Captain,” Cuddy said.

“Well, just imagine the state of his intestines after such an ordeal,” the Doctor said. Jack scowled. “But that’s a dead end. Any Chula betting away starships is likely a drifter or an aristocrat.”

“Nouveau riche,” Jack said.

“Which for the Chula means an aristocratic drifter with nothing better to do.”

“If I thought the story would help us any, I would’ve told it sooner.” Jack tried his best to look wounded but knew it wasn’t much. “But if the Chula adopted curry, then that means Earth was one of the planets they settled on.”

“That is correct!”

“Then we know one time and place they’ll definitely be.”

“Can’t do that,” the Doctor said. “The Chula are advanced. Way advanced. I didn’t want to say it in front of the other me, but they went into hiding as a pre-emptive attempt to avoid becoming a casualty of the Time War, and as far as I know, they succeeded. But knowing that battles would not be subject to any temporal restrictions, they had to protect their past as well as their present and future. As a result, they time-locked their entire history. There has been only one precedent for breaching a time lock and that was accidental. Also, the technology is anchored into the space-time continuum, meaning any breach could have dire consequences for the stability of the entire universe.”

“That sucks,” Chase said. “But I think I smell dinner.”

Cameron rolled her eyes but somehow wheeled her way to the door faster than Chase could run. The others followed, and the Doctor patted Jack on the back. “I don’t smell curry,” he said.

Jack was surprised to discover hamburgers, and there weren’t place settings, which meant that unless Ianto meant to poison everybody, he was safe.

“Don’t look so surprised, sir,” Ianto said as he brought over a plate of pickles. “I know it’s not the usual fare, but I thought a change of pace would be nice, and hopefully it’ll help our American friends settle in after their first day aboard.”

“They’ve already had a day.”

“Don’t be pushy, Jack,” the Doctor said. “Not everyone’s from the 51st century.” He slapped the bottom of the ketchup bottle but nothing came out.

“And you’re clearly not from the 21st. Here, let me help you with that.”

“Nuh uh!” He swung the bottle out of reach. “Time Lord, Jack. I can handle a bottle of mashed tomatoes.” The bottle decided now was a good time to give in and emptied half its contents onto Cuddy’s skirt.

“Doctor!” she screamed.

“Oops, sorry! Terribly sorry!” The Doctor snapped the cap back onto the bottle and threw it onto the table, whereupon it promptly slid across the surface and nailed Cameron in the nose. “Let me help you with that!” He grabbed a napkin and pressed down. Then he realized he had a hand between Cuddy’s legs and yelped, falling backward and knocking his chair over onto Jack’s foot.

Pain shot up his leg, and he cradled the foot, hopping up and down. He hated getting injured. It hurt almost as much as getting killed but lasted much longer, as no magical healing occurred afterward.

“Three lefts and a right is the laundry,” Ianto said, pointing Cuddy down a hall.

“Doesn’t that bring me back here?” she said.

“Not in the TARDIS, it doesn’t.”

Meanwhile, Chase had wrapped a towel around some ice cubes, and Cameron cradled the compress against her face. “I feel settled in already,” she said.

“Sorry!” the Doctor repeated, righting his chair. “Just a little-- whoa!” As he tried to sit down, his foot landed in a pool of ketchup, sending him flying into the next room over. “I’m all right!” he said after a resounding crash. “Not regenerating!”

Chase took a bite of his burger. “This is quite good.”

“Thank you,” Ianto replied. “So how are you enjoying your first day?”

“Is it normal to spend so long in the time vortex?” Cameron asked.

“No,” Jack said as he wiped the floor clean. “The Doctor’s stalling.”

“I believe the more accurate term is limping,” the Doctor said as he staggered back into the room. “And remind me never to buy any more furniture from IKEA. I always lose the little screws, and then everything falls apart on top of you when you least expect it.”

“That why you had to make your screwdriver sonic?” Jack asked. “‘Cause it would explain so much.”

“So we could’ve spent our time debating where to go in some tropical paradise and we didn’t?” Chase said. “I hate to say this, but standing around and talking while that little column keeps going up and down is really distracting.”

“I rather like the décor in the console room, though,” Ianto said. “It’s very soothing.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor said. “And yes, I’m sorry about that, but I didn’t want anyone to think I was distracting us from our mission, and I’m telling you, any time we go to a resort-type, someone always insists on going sunbathing, and no one ever listens when they’re sunbathing. You might think they are, but you’re only fooling yourself.”

Cuddy re-entered wearing jeans just as the Doctor made a second attempt at the ketchup. She took the bottle. “Let me, please.”

“So where are we going?” Jack said. “I mean, I was hoping you’d have some idea as to where the Chula went. Don’t the Time Lords monitor everything?”

“We were a bit busy, Jack.”

“But you’re the Doctor! You always have an idea.”

“I’m trying to think!”

“So we’re going to sit around waiting for a flash of brilliance?” Cameron said. “It’s not like God’s going to show up and point us in the right direction.”

“Be nice, wouldn’t it?” the Doctor replied, grinning.

A gong-like bell rang, and Jack saw the Doctor stiffen.

“I didn’t know the TARDIS was a clock too,” Cuddy said.

“It isn’t.” The Doctor got to his feet as the bell clanged a second time. “That’s the cloister bell. Something’s--”

The TARDIS rocked with the force of an earthquake, knocking them all to the floor as the table overturned and everything not nailed or glued to a part of the room decided to defy gravity. Jack grabbed Ianto and pulled him out of the way just as the refrigerator slid past where he’d been. The lights went out to the sound of a sickening crunch, like bones breaking, and then everything went still again.

“What just happened?” Jack asked. He could feel Ianto trembling, but the man broke off to check on the others.

“Something impossible!” the Doctor replied, shining his screwdriver at the roof.

“Quick, apologize to God!” Chase hissed at Cameron.

Cuddy shook Jack off. “I’m fine.”

“Everyone’s fine,” Ianto reported from Chase and Cameron’s side.

The Doctor dashed into the control room, and the rest of them followed. The central console glowed green, but the rest of the lights remained off. A few sparks flew from below the grating, but they looked to be from non-critical components.

“No, no, no, no, no!” the Doctor said. “It can’t be. We were knocked out of the time vortex!”

“Is that possible?”

“Yes, but nothing with the capability to attack a TARDIS travels the time vortex anymore.”

“See? You pissed off God!” Chase said.

“Maybe He’s showing us the way,” Cameron snapped back.

“This was not a benevolent action,” the Doctor said. “It looks like we struck something. The TARDIS can recover, but it’ll take time. However, that amount of energy released into the time vortex will have caused a paradox.”

“So what’s outside?” asked Ianto.

“We’re not going outside. That’s final.”

Chase frowned. “What’s outside, Doctor?”

“You can’t find out.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Cuddy said. “Are you always this secretive?”

“Only when he needs to be,” Jack said. “You better listen.”

The Doctor sighed. “It’s... it’s spoilers, all right? We’re on Earth. Dusseldorf, Germany, if the sensors haven’t been damaged.”

“Well, that’s fine. We’ll just avoid newspapers, unless one of us is going to Germany.”

“No, it’s not that. I’d be fine with us going to Earth, but this is your future. Your near future and... my... my very recent past.”

“I fail to see the point.” Cuddy headed for the door.

“No, stay away!” the Doctor chased after her, but it was too late. Cuddy flung open the doors and gasped. The Doctor ran into the wall to avoid crashing into her and falling out of the TARDIS. “There are things you aren’t supposed to know,” he gasped. “Do you understand, now?”

Cameron wheeled herself over. “I don’t see anything. It’s just night time.”

“Stop!” the Doctor held a hand up, but it was too late. Cameron looked up, and her jaw dropped.

Even at a distance, Jack could see Cuddy shivering. Neither he or Ianto made a move, knowing that when the Doctor meant business, they should listen. “This is horrible,” Cuddy said. “You were going to keep us in the dark about this.”

“I fixed it. Me and others, we fixed it.” But there was pain in the Doctor’s voice of a sort Jack hadn’t heard since the Doctor recounted how he lost Rose. “It’s only for a short time, and it’ll be all right.”

“How is that all right? How can this possibly be all right?”

Chase had been shifting on his feet the whole time, as though debating whether to go and see. Finally, he stepped forward. “Oh my god. There are planets in the sky!”

Jack and Ianto exchanged glances. Then Jack heard a voice he had hoped never to hear again anywhere near Earth, and something must have shown on his face, because Ianto was by his side immediately.

“It’s all right, sir. It’s all right.”

But it wasn’t. Cold dread gripped him, and he clung to Ianto’s arm as cries of “Exterminate” drifted through the open door. Realizing there was no point in hiding any longer and deciding that if Daleks invaded Earth in the near future, Ianto should be as well informed as possible, Jack moved toward the door. The sun and moon were nowhere to be seen, but innumerable planets drifted in their place. Clouds of flame and laser beams illuminated the darkness as Daleks blasted apart the emergency response Bundeswehr fighters.

“I’m so sorry,” the Doctor said, looking at Cuddy. “I had hoped you would never have to know what a Dalek was.”

* * *

Several gargoyle heads exploded as the TARDIS shuddered and lurched, sending Donna sprawling across an almost nude statue. “I really need to redecorate,” she said, the tip of a fig leaf poking her in the face. “Or just clean. Putting everything in garbage bags will do this place wonders aaaaaah!”

Another tremor sent her flying in the other direction, and the statue fell over, shattering into pieces. “This is bonkers!” she groaned, grabbing the console with a death grip so the TARDIS wouldn’t buck her off. She shifted a few levers and read the print-out on the two screens that weren’t displaying static. “You idiot! Stupid, idiot computer.” There was a whine, and she patted a round green thing as though it were her pet. “Aww, I don’t mean you. Just the auto-pilot program.”

It was disheartening to think she had come this close to finding the Doctor, and rather than letting her know, the computer had decided to plow right into him. They’d be lucky if the energy from the collision didn’t rip a hole through one or two dimensions, and she thought the Time Lords would’ve been smart enough to build in protections against this sort of thing. “I guess high and mighty Time Lords don’t tailgate.”

The TARDIS made one final, valiant effort to recover and failed. The central column ground to a stop and the lights went out. Donna banged on the console, remembering the Doctor always tried that as a last resort. There was no response, so she felt her way through the darkness until she reached the door. If she was stuck, she might as well meet the neighbors. The last readings before the power failed suggested she hadn’t damaged the universe, so hopefully she wasn’t in the middle of a paradox or something.

She pulled the lever for the door, but it seemed to be having trouble. She went over to push on it and after a moment it gave way. She stepped out and was nearly blinded by reflecting light.

Oh god, it's even worse than I'd feared, she thought.

* * *

The sound a materializing TARDIS makes is the sound the universe would make if it were to collect and organize itself long enough to do so. In the entirety of time and space it is a wholly unique sound, and to the lucky few who have heard it before, it is recognizable in an instant.

Nearly everyone on the starship Heart of Gold jumped (except for Marvin, who didn't have the necessary knee joints) when the sound echoed ominously through the huge, white hull of the ship for the second time in under twenty minutes.

"Impossible!" said the Doctor. "The odds of randomly encountering two active TARDISes in the same place is... at least..."

"600916802234 to one against," intoned Marvin.

"Improbable, then, not impossible," said Trillian.

"Well, yes," the Doctor conceded. Everyone but the Doctor was instinctively looking around for another big, blue, police box.

"Are you sure yours isn't just malfunctioning?" said House suspiciously. The Doctor spluttered something.

"Hey!" exclaimed Zaphod. "Tril, did you pick up a new couch and not tell me? Because this is amazing!" He bounced up and down on a white couch that looked just like all the others.

"Uh oh," said the Doctor.

"Most other TARDISes use a sort of cloaking device to hide their presence," Sarah Jane started to explain.

"Yes, very helpful, except it means you have to remember exactly where you parked it, and I like mine just fine the way it is thanks very much," said the Doctor quickly.

"What's going on?" said Zaphod wildly. Everyone looked at him in confusion and then alarm as the couch cushion he was sitting on was thrown off, sending him sprawling on the floor. He quickly picked himself up and brushed himself off.

A red-headed woman crawled out of the space where the cushion had been.

"That's pretty improbable," Trillian remarked.

"Not so much," the Doctor said, sighing.

The new woman looked around, spotted the Doctor's TARDIS, and said, "Alright, where's the flippin' Doctor? I need to speak with him RIGHT NOW." This was punctuated with a stamp of her foot. House pointed quickly. She looked and appraised the tall, bescarfed man.

"You're the Doctor?" she said.

"Yes, hello, and you are?" he said brightly.

".... Alright, I suppose. Stranger things have happened," she said, ignoring his question. "I need a different Doctor. Tall, skinny, glasses sometimes. Chatty in a really irritating way. Know him?"

"Er."

"I don't know if he's you in the past or future, see, and I need to speak with him urgently."

"I think he's the one with Jack," said Tosh.

"Jack? Handsome fellow, really flirty? I'm Donna by the way," said the redhead.

"You know him?" asked Tosh, surprised.

"Sure. Only met him briefly, mind you, and we were in a bit of a situation; not much room for chit chat, you know. You know where the Doctor is? My Doctor, I mean," said Donna.

"No," said House. "And please shut up."

Donna stomped over to him. "Excuse me? And who are you to tell me something like that? Mind your manners!" She slapped him across the face. Owen laughed.

"Look," said the Doctor. "I can't take you to see him, I don't know where he is. But we will be meeting up with him eventually if you want to come with us." She thought it over for a moment.

"Fine," she said. "We're leaving now, then. No time to waste. How many of you are traveling with the Doctor?" Owen, Tosh, Sarah Jane, and Wilson raised their hands. House rolled his eyes and raised his cane. "Wow, do you usually travel with enough people for an orgy?" she asked the Doctor.

He grinned at her. "Only under special circumstances," he said.

"Fine. The rest of you, do not touch that couch," she said. "It's mine and I'll need to pick it up later. Bye!"

"Wait," said Owen. "I don't want to leave yet!"

"Too damn bad! We're leaving! Hustle!"

* * *

Dimitri DeLovely slumped casually in an ornate wooden chair, one leg slung over the side and his chin resting delicately on his other fist. From its place atop a dais at the end of the hall, the chair overlooked the entire room. He frowned contemplatively at the tapestries on the wall. A smallish man in a neat but informal black outfit squirmed but maintained his slightly bowed position.

Neither man spoke for several long seconds.

Finally, Dimitri turned his gaze back to the little man. "Is that all?" he said. The man, who went by the name of Gordon Rothgard, started.

"N-no, my lord. I have information that Commander Vimes of the City Watch is personally leading this case."

Dimitri waved a hand dismissively. "Is that all?" he said in a bored tone. "I remember the Watch. They were a sad bunch of lazy, corrupt incompetents. They'll be no trouble." Rothgard gaped at him.

"With all due respect my lord, the last time you were in the city was nearly thirty years ago. Have you not heard the rumors? This Vimes character has shaped the Watch into an impressive force. They say he cannot be bribed, that he's straight as an arrow. They say he single-handedly stopped a war and that he fought a dragon! They say the Watch is huge under him. They say there's a werewolf, an Igor, and even a vampire in the Watch."

Dimitri stared impassively through drifts of shiny black hair. "A vampire?" He grinned, showing off elongated canines. "Interesting." Pause. "It doesn't matter though. He's not important. It is Vetinari I'm interested in. How much does he suspect?"

"With all due respect, my lord, I wish you would please consider my advice on this. Commander Vimes could prove a danger to us." Rothgard was trembling visibly under the weight of Dimitri's stare.

"Fine," said Dimitri after a pause. "Gather a group to investigate him, bring me back any information you can find out, and have a spy infiltrate this Watch, of course." His voice then took on an underlying tone of satisfaction. "Now tell me about Vetinari," he purred.

"It's difficult, my lord. Our spy made it into the Palace, but getting anywhere near Lord Vetinari is proving next to impossible. He stays in his office all day, my lord! We don't even know when he sleeps! It's nearly impossible to tell if he suspects anything, though rumors are that he has a person everywhere, that he always knows what's going on in his city before anyone else."

"It's a good thing we're not in the city then, hmm?" Dimitri's grin was slightly feral now.

"Er, yes, my lord...."

"You speak as though he never leaves the Palace, but he must. He's the Lord of the city, he must attend public functions and the like."

"Oh, he does, my lord. He never takes any bodyguards with him either, it is most peculiar."

"I suspect it's because he thinks bodyguards would be quite useless anyway," mused Dimitri. "I've heard he graduated from the Assassin's Guild school."

"That's what everyone says, my lord," said Rothgard earnestly. "But I cannot find any record of it. No one can prove it. In fact, it seems like no public records even exist of Vetinari before he became Patrician."

"He must have gone to great lengths to make that so," said Dimitri. He looked like a wild cat intent on its prey.

"Indeed, my lord," Rothgard agreed.

"I do not like this consistent lack of helpful information," growled Dimitri. "Place another spy in the Palace. Make it one of the, ah, special ones if you have to. Get what I want and get it fast."

"Y-yes, my lord," squeaked Rothgard.

"One more thing," Dimitri said as Rothgard turned to go. Rothgard froze. "Where is Dante? I have not seen him all day."

"I expect he'll be back soon, my lord."

"Good. You are dismissed." Rothgard walked out of the room as fast as possible and Dimitri stared vacantly at the far door.

So there was another nuisance he had to watch out for, hmm? Commander Vimes. Ah well. He'd been planning for this for decades, and nothing could stop him now. Vetinari was his biggest worry, anyway. He'd heard things about Vetinari.

He smiled grimly.

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. His Plan was perfect, it accounted for every contingency, he had recruited the best minions, and most importantly, he had planned everything himself. Only his brother had been in on the planning--no one else under him knew everything, and that was key.

If everyone was kept a little in the dark, no unlikely betrayers could bring down the Plan.

Nothing could possibly happen.

Ankh-Morpork would be razed to the ground.

* * *

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about the Discworld: "Probability says that it can't exist. Therefore, it almost certainly does."

To Chapter 15: Divine Heroin Muffin

Back to Arc 2: The Search for Chula

Summary: Owen finds an orgasmatron aboard Four's TARDIS, Ten can't figure out the properties of ketchup, Cuddy becomes sex-obsessed, Susan has to deal with ducks infesting Death's Domain. Oh, and Daleks.

It's ladies night, and the feeling's right!

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:33:43 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Arc 2
The Search for Chula

Click image for sources used

Click here for list of characters and general info.

Samuel Vimes awoke suddenly as if from a bad dream, though he couldn't remember what the dream might have been about. He rubbed the back of his head, feeling the sort of headache coming on that came from too little sleep. It was the sort of headache he was well used to, and so he ignored it.

It was morning already so he got dressed and shaved quickly, then went downstairs where Sybil was already cooking breakfast. She smiled and put a plate of extremely blackened bacon in front of him, which he ate with relish. She didn't say anything about his late return home the night before, for which he was grateful.

"Will you be home for dinner, dear?" Sybil asked him as he fastened his armor. He suspected she already knew the answer, but he still told her he'd try. He would try, he just knew it wouldn't happen.

Not right now.

Not with everything that was happening.

It was still early. The sun was in the sky, but it hadn't yet been there long enough to dry up the dew on the grass. Vimes kissed his son goodbye and left, making his way to Pseudopolis Yard, taking as much time as he could while still being able to say he hurried. He wasn't anxious to get back to the chaos and nervous tension of the Watch House.

He let his feet do the walking, so used to the route and the city that he didn't even have to think about where he was going. Instead, his mind whirled with thoughts about the case. He had already examined it from every angle and come up with nothing, but today was a brand new day, and you never knew what they might hold, though experience told him it was usually nothing good.

Sam Vimes preferred the night.

Sam Vimes may prefer the night, but His Grace, Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh and Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had to work during the day. It was part of the job description.

The Watch House at Pseudopolis Yard wasn't actually far from the Ramkin Estate, so it wasn't long before he got there. Captain Carrot was waiting for him outside the doors. He saluted sharply as Vimes approached.

"What have you got for me?" said Vimes.

"Forensics has turned up no new evidence regarding the Patrician's Palace," Carrot began. The forensics team had once consisted of only one member, but had recently grown to a small group of people of varying shapes and sizes, lead by Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom.

"No surprise there," Vimes said. The room in question had been quite thoroughly ransacked by the incompetent palace guards before Vimes had gotten there, and there were any number of passages the would-be murderer might have taken to get out.

"Angua has something for you, though. I don't know what it is yet, she only just got in."

"Good. What about Lance-Constable Sally? Is she back yet?"

"Er, I haven't seen her yet, sir. I expect she will be soon, though."

"Fine. Anything else?" They made their way up the stairs and into Vimes' office. Carrot had the look that said to Vimes he wasn't going to like what else Carrot had to say. He thought he probably already knew what it was.

"Eight more people have presented with symptoms overnight. Five more in Dolly Sisters, two on Esoteric Street, and, um, one on Cockbill Street," he said.

"Cockbill? What? In the Shades? That's nowhere near the others! How could it have spread that far?" Vimes was aghast. As if he didn't have enough to deal with!

"Well, sir," said Carrot sheepishly. "We don't actually know that it's the first. We hardly patrol the Shades at all and the citizens there aren't too likely to come to us with their problems." This was said with a shade of reproach. "There could be many more cases, and this is just the first we've learned about it. I have Sergeant Detritus leading a small squad in a search down there right now."

"Great," said Vimes. "And you've had them all transferred to the quarantined area, right?"

"Er, well, yes," Carrot said, looking uncomfortable. He shifted his balance a couple times. Vimes arched an eyebrow at him and said nothing. Carrot was a terrible liar, probably one of the worst the Disc had ever seen. "All right, one of them was just a toddler! I couldn't take her away from her mother!"

Vimes sighed heavily. So it was affecting children now? Until now, the mystery disease had only hit adults. Nearly fifty humans and dwarfs had contracted the illness, and though none had died so far it was clearly only a matter of time.

Carrot was a great Captain, the best he could hope for, but even after years in the city he was still a little naive.

"If the mother wants to go with her daughter, I'll allow it under the circumstances. But our only hope right now is the quarantine. We can't have any affected outside or else it's useless. Send someone to tell her."

Carrot looked stiff, but he wouldn't disobey a direct order. "I'll go tell her myself, sir," he said. Vimes nodded to him.

"Will you find Constable Downspout and send him in before you go? I need to speak with him."

Carrot nodded and left. Vimes busied himself with meaningless paperwork, the stack of them that needed signing from him in particular. His paperwork load had dramatically decreased since he'd employed Mr. A.E. Pessimal, but it hadn't gone away completely.

It was mindless, though, so he thought while he did it.

Someone had broken into the Patrician's Palace in the dead of night two days ago. That in itself was quite an accomplishment. There weren't so many guards that they wouldn't be easy to avoid, but the Palace itself was riddled with traps and fake passages so that it was nigh impossible to get anywhere meaningful. And then there was the Patrician himself, a man who always knew what was going on in his city. It was a strange thing to think he hadn't been able to foresee this.

But then, Vetinari was getting old....

No. The man only got sharper in his old age. Vetinari going senile? Vimes couldn't see it. The more likely possibility was that the man knew something and just wasn't telling him.

All the evidence pointed to the killer having been going after the head cook, but Vimes had learned not to put much stock in evidence long ago.

Not that there wasn't plenty of reason for someone to want to kill the head cook, apparently. It turned out he was a bit of a womanizer, and it was easy to imagine that the prospective killer was a jilted lover, or at least someone hired by a jilted lover.

It didn't quite add up, though. The person who'd broken in had some serious skill and hadn't left behind much in the way of clues at all. Vimes found it hard to believe he or she was some kitchen wench or laundry maid. He could have been hired, but the Assassins had made it clear that no contract had been taken out for the cook's head and that if there were any mercenaries in town, they'd have been found out and hunted down a long time ago. The Assassin's Guild was very good at being the only trained killers in the city, and besides, mercenaries had no style.

Why would an extremely skilled, well-trained killer break into the Patrician's Palace, of all places, leave no evidence behind except a couple unexpected eyewitnesses and just enough clues to point towards an assassination attempt, but fail in the actual assassination despite not being interrupted?

Unlikely.

One of the unexpected eyewitnesses rapped on his window and he opened it to let Constable Downspout in.

"Anything?" Vimes asked him, knowing not to expect much. The gargoyle said something which translated, after a bit of thought, into "No, sir. Myself and Sediment were the only two who saw him leaving the Palace."

There was a short conversation that amounted to nothing, and Vimes dismissed him.

Then there was this disease. They weren't linked in any way, and while that normally wasn't enough to convince Vimes, his gut told him they were completely separate. The first victims had turned up a week before the Palace incident, and it hadn't stopped. Even Igor hadn't been able to figure out what it was, though his specialty was admittedly not illness, but surgery.

Now a toddler was affected. That hit home for him far more than anything else on this case had so far. What would he do if Sybil or Young Sam caught this disease? It wasn't something he could fight, there was nothing he could do against it except try to contain it. The best he could do for them was to keep them away from it. He wasn't even sure about coming home after having been in contact with the illness, however brief, but Sybil made sure he did, and what could he do?

A quarantine area had been set up just outside the city and it was supplied as best he could provide, but he knew it wasn't good enough. It could never be. Too many people thought those inside were doomed anyway. A cure seemed too far off. People on the streets were calling it the Poor Man's Poison.

Vimes stood and left the office. There was work to do.

On the way out he was intercepted by Constable Visit.

"Sally's back, sir!" he said excitedly.

"Good," said Vimes gruffly.

"She's downstairs, said she'd be up in a minute."

"I'll go down to her," Vimes said, not wanting to spend any longer cooped up in his office.

Sally was in the main area and Vimes ushered her to a corner so they wouldn't be overheard by everyone in the room. Not that what she had to say would be confidential, but it was better not to spread these things around.

"Well?" he asked.

"I think your theory has gained more ground, sir," Sally said. "Angua picked the scent up again by the river. It disappeared again outside the city, but we can definitely conclude that the perpetrator is at least staying outside the city. He didn't smell like city folk, and the scent bomb he used definitely had some Klatchian spices."

"Things are very rarely what they seem. We could just have a smart one," said Vimes.

"Perhaps," Sally said doubtfully. She was a good Watchman definitely, but she was still new and had a lot of learning to do.

Vimes dismissed her. He knew he was right. It didn't add up otherwise.

The offender hadn't been there to kill anyone. That was a decoy if he ever saw one. So if he wasn't there to kill someone, what had he been there to do?

Steal something? Or maybe leave something behind....

Vimes informed Carrot he was going out and left the Watch House.

He'd find out. He always did, in the end. That's what they said about him, that he wasn't the brightest but he was stubborn and he didn't give up. It was true.

He turned a corner and kept walking.

He'd find the fake murderer, bring him to justice, and he'd find out what was causing a sudden outbreak of a new disease, and he'd stop it all.

He had to.

A crossbow bolt shot past his face.

* * *

The light of your life has extinguished, the fortune teller whispered to her in Singapore. And in its absence, dark days and dark nights passed in rapid succession, all alike and rushing away like sand in the surf. She was no longer able to mark the difference; time had cast her adrift and marooned her, unable to live or die.

A week ago, her moon blood had come, and she knew there would be no child from that union they’d placed their hopes on. If she could not have Will, they had thought, she could at least have his child, but now it was too late. By the time they met again, she would be too old, and with no child’s demands to excuse her from piracy, it would become her life and consume her. Elizabeth Turner found she did not care.

If we sail long enough, perhaps we will find him, she found herself thinking, but she knew what that would mean. She knew the reunion would be short-lived, and bitter. Will was no Davy Jones, but no bargain with the guide of the dead could last forever, and then she would leave his side, much sooner than if she did not seek death. It was funny; she had been beyond the end of the world, but she still had no idea what truly lay beyond. There was no need to seek it out before her time, and yet the separation was painful. It tugged at her, drawing her, rushing like a current toward an infinite abyss.

He sails amongst the drowned and shall not return so long as you dare not burn the wick.

“Hoist sails!” she cried, watching her crew leap at her orders. The great warship rocked as the wind caught the canvas, and the Empress soared forward. Already, Singapore lay small on the horizon, but within the hour, it would vanish completely. There would be no outrunning her fortune, though. And prophecy.

“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me...” All through her childhood, that wish had never been granted, yet now that she was a pirate lord, king of the Brethren Court, there was nothing Elizabeth wanted more than to be a woman on land again. An ordinary woman, living an ordinary life with an ordinary blacksmith.

“Are you all right, Captain?” Tai Huang, her first mate, asked. “You appear troubled.”

Elizabeth touched the hilt of her sword, seeking the reassurance of its presence. “We have lost control of Calypso, and she still remembers her imprisonment. If we are not troubled when the seas are, then we are already dead.”

Her words were true and no less than her mate expected, but he still retreated the moment he had an excuse. Gloom brought ill fortune, but that plagued everyone these days. The world was changing. Elizabeth closed her eyes and felt the salt breeze against her face. Somewhere, the Flying Dutchman sailed the ocean, and the wind might yet bring the spray of her passage to her.

“The life line,” the fortune teller said, tracing a wrinkled finger down her palm. The smell of incense overwhelmed even the stink of the streets, but it was the only line to reality in the darkness of the stall, secluded in a corner of an alley where even the moonlight did not reach. Elizabeth enjoyed the seedier parts of the port. She wanted to see if anyone did not recognize her and dared to attack her. Thus far, she had been disappointed; she supposed her bodyguards were better at disobeying her orders and following her than she expected.

One lone candle burned, half an inch of wax remaining, the flame hovering just above Elizabeth’s upturned hand. She listened for want of anything else to do. The old woman’s finger paused as she approached the end of the line. “A life interrupted,” she said. “See here. It breaks. There is a gap in your life.” She did not say when. They both knew.

What did catch Elizabeth’s attention was the fact that there was little left on the other side of the break. She did some quick calculations and said, “If that is my life so far, I have about three years left.”

The fortune teller shook her head and patted her hand, making the flame flicker. “The line of a long life can be shorted if it is wasted. Much can be read from a palm, but only the most important events are written.”

“So you’re saying I might have longer to live, but I might not.”

“And sometimes, when fate twists around a person to write the world with their blood, a line appears longer than it should.”

“Captain!” Tai Huang bounded back to her side. “We are being hailed.”

“By who?” Elizabeth looked around, but the port was smaller than the smallest cloud in the sky. The sea was roiling but devoid of other vessels.

Tai pointed. Right at the horizon’s edge, a black dot grew larger. She nodded. There was no need to guess which ship would spot and hail them from such a distance. It was the only one that could be here before anyone would tire of waiting for them, the fastest ship in the world.

“What does Jack want now?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him again. Not yet, but she supposed the decision was out of her hands.

When the two ships pulled up alongside each other, Barbossa was the one waiting for her on the starboard side of the Black Pearl. “Greetings, Elizabeth.”

“And what have I done that Jack does not come to greet me in person?”

“Jack is not on board. He has stolen my map.”

“You mean my map? Sao Feng loaned it to you, so by rights it is mine.”

“Then perhaps you would be willing to help me recover it.”

“Looks like Jack stole the map, but you stole his ship. Again.”

Barbossa polished an apple on his sleeve and bit into it. “So distrustful, Elizabeth. Well, perhaps I can offer you something that makes my proposal more appealing.” He removed a leather-bound tube strapped to his back and tossed it between the two ships. Elizabeth caught it.

“I thought you said Jack stole it,” she said, removing the lid. There might be a trap inside, but she doubted it. When she removed the contents, she found herself still looking at Barbossa, even with the map unfurled before her. A circle in the center was missing. “Oh.” Then she realized what belonged there. “Oh.”

Barbossa tossed the apple pit into the ocean. “So you see, the goal is of mutual interest. And if, indeed, it is a fountain, we can even share. There’s nothing I’d like more than an eternity of sniping between the three of us.”

Elizabeth turned away, stuffing the map back into its container. “I’ll meet you in the bathhouse in Singapore.”

“Do you think it’s wise discussing this in the city? I mean, I have absolute confidence in both our crews, but...”

“My terms or no terms,” Elizabeth said. “Besides, all we have are stories. Jack has the only object of value.” She wondered if Barbossa would bite. Unless he believed she had a second copy of the map somewhere--which she did not and which she doubted he was stupid enough to think--she was of no more aid to him than any other pirate captain in the world. Yet somehow, he came to her, and it was not for her company. What did he want?

“Very well. It will be good to restock. You are, as always, as intelligent as you are beautiful.”

It was a day later before they met again. Elizabeth had insisted, through her servants, that Barbossa settle his crew in, since planning would take a while. Any unpleasant flashbacks to her dealings with Sao Feng had long since been dealt with in the month she had spent here with her crew after the battle. She hoped the same was not true for Barbossa.

She was surprised that Barbossa agreed without protest. If he had any misgivings to leaving his crew and himself at her mercy, he did not show it. For her part, she did not intend them any ill-will but preferred to keep them under her nose. She used the day to search through Sao Feng’s extensive collection of artifacts, hoping for other accounts of the fountain of youth. She found nothing. That night, as she slept, she dreamt of Will calling to her.

“Do you at least have the compass?” she asked, when they met again.

“Jack has both.”

“Notes from studying the map? Recollections of details?”

“We only began discussing the fountain before I marooned him. I had no chance to look it over.”

“Smart of you. So what do you want me to do?”

Barbossa smiled. “There is one whose powers over the water extends even beyond the seas, though certainly her influence there has been distracting lately. What is it, fifty ships sunk by storms in the last month alone?”

“You have an unhealthy obsession with that goddess, Barbossa. Keep Davy Jones in your mind, if you cannot keep her out. She did not help you last time.”

“But she will help you.”

Elizabeth stared and wondered if the steam had not gone to the pirate’s head. “Why should she help me?”

“When the first Brethren Court bound Calypso, they knew that even if we freed her one day, there would still be a need to keep her in check. There is one spell we did not and cannot undo: she must answer the Pirate King. Not obey, mind, but she cannot harm you or those who serve you, and a summoning will always succeed.”

“That sounds like a poor check, especially since there is rarely a Pirate King.”

“But that is the point. When there is no king, everyone is a potential candidate, and a weakened form of the protection extends across the world. In times of dire need, a King can be elected and provide immunity until such time as we accomplish our goals.”

“What you want is knowledge, not immunity. What if she answers my summons and not my questions.”

“She will answer you.”

Elizabeth leaned forward. “How do you know?”

Barbossa chewed his apple and grinned. “I just do. Call me when you are ready. You know where I sleep.” He stood and walked out.

She remained at the table for some time afterward. She decided to take a nap.

When she woke, it was dusk. The sound of shutters opening and closing, of some stalls closing for the night and others just opening, drifted through the window. Will had appeared in her dreams again, and she went out to watch the sun set. There was a beach not far from the harbor, and at this time of night, it was almost empty.

“Elizabeth?”

She whirled around, drawing her sword, but no one was there. The voice had been a whisper, almost like the sound of the surf. She listened.

“Elizabeth.”

She followed the voice, walking and running the line between the dry sand and the incoming tide. She thought the voice became louder, but in truth, she wasn’t sure. She did know it was closer, the way a blind woman might feel her way closer to a fire.

The beach began sloping upward, and before long, was a path worn into rock some fifteen feet above the ocean’s surface. A sheer drop marked the end of land, and she couldn’t help but walk to the edge and look down, praying against hope to see a ship where it would be impossible to sail. Jagged rocks caused the ocean to crash and boom in the depths below, but there was no ship. And no Will.

“Hello, Elizabeth.” This time, she heard footsteps, and the voice was familiar to her.

“Barbossa,” she said. “Was that you? How did you do that?”

“Do what? Sneak up on you?” Barbossa laughed as he closed the remaining distance between them, implying that calling someone from over twenty feet away could not be considered sneaking. “Your guards let me through a ways back. They know I’m harmless.”

“How did you make that voice?”

Barbossa cocked his head. “What voice?”

“Elizabeth!”

“That voice!” But Barbossa looked as confused as Elizabeth felt, and his lips had not moved. Behind her, the sun vanished, and she thought she saw a spark of green in the edge of her vision.

Barbossa stepped past her to gaze down at the churning waters below. “The ocean speaks to those who would listen.”

Waves whispered in her ears in a language she didn’t understand. The words were urgent, though. Again, the tugging pulled at her heart, and step by step she drew closer to the edge. An arm blocked her, but she pushed it aside. She thought she heard Barbossa protesting, but it didn’t matter.

“Elizabeth!” Barbossa roared.

The sound of her name burst through the haze. The sensation drained from her, as though she had been part of the sea but now it was stranding her. She looked at Barbossa, whose face was white.

“What do you think you were doing?”

Elizabeth touched her forehead and felt sweat. Putting her fingers to her lips, it tasted salty. “Do you know how to summon Calypso, Barbossa?”

Barbossa frowned. “Don’t change the subject, Elizabeth.”

“I’m not.” She smiled. “Answer the question.”

“No, not exactly. It says the King will inherit the way. I assume we have to sail to Shipwreck Island to look for chronicles.”

Everything was clear. The tugging was still there, but now it felt like a lifeline. She felt like laughing, but Barbossa would think her mad.

“Why do we tolerate kings, Barbossa? The Brethren Court elects a king and then she takes away their power to vote for as long as she lives. Why?”

“I do not know.”

Elizabeth reached over and removed an apple from the sack he kept with him at all times. She took one bite, savoring the sweet juice and the crackle of its flesh. Apples had a taste like nothing else. No wonder Barbossa liked them. She handed the rest of the fruit back and gave him his answer.

“Because the king lives to serve. And when the time is right, the king dies for the same purpose.”

Before he could react, she took the final step off the edge and plunged into the ocean’s waiting embrace.

* * *

Heartbeats. Two heartbeats, echoing back and forth through time. Both are lost to this universe now, one trapped in another, the other wiped from existence. The echoes still remain, and one who has spent lives listening to invisible sounds has heard. Through the time vortex, a TARDIS spins and draws closer. Ever closer.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Donna Noble was getting irritated.

“Now you listen to me, scarf boy! I don’t know what you’re playing at, running around the store waving a little stick around screaming about escaped convicts, but quite frankly, I think I know who’s escaped. You, from a mental institution. You’re a nutter!”

The young man ran a hand across his bangs, revealing a jagged scar on his forehead, which only reinforced Donna’s opinion of him. Either he enjoyed cutting himself or it was a gang symbol. He was also wearing big, black robes that looked like an idiot in Paris had accidentally sent somebody onto the runway in a garbage bag.

“Listen, please, you’re in danger,” he said.

“From a scrawny thing like you? I don’t think so! Now get out of here before you knock something over and the manager decides to deduct it from my wages because you’ve been dragged away by people in white coats before you can pay!”

A second madman burst into the coffeehouse, dressed the same as the first but with a shock of red hair standing on end as though he’d just run through a field of balloons. “What are you doing, Harry? We can get coffee later!”

“He’s in the washroom, Ron. I saw him go in, but then this nice lady here started yelling at me because I knocked over a table.”

“Oy! Don’t talk down to me! If anyone’s bursting in on men in the toilet, it’ll be me!”

The one named Ron took several steps back and muttered, “She reminds of McGonagall, only totally off her rocker.”

Donna put a pound in the cash register, ran up a sale, picked up her allocation of donuts and chucked one at him. It was jelly-filled and splattered nicely.

Harry put up both his hands and said slowly, “I’m going to show you my ID, all right? Just going to reach into my pocket and not get any baked goods thrown at me.” When no insults were forthcoming, he reached into his robes and withdrew a wallet. He dropped it on the counter and stepped back before she could interpret it as a threatening move. “We’re police. We’re wearing ponchos because it’s raining outside.”

“It is not.” In fact, it was so sunny the glare off the windows blinded a pigeon and caused it to slam into the sign above the shop. A “B” clattered onto the pavement.

“Down the street,” Harry said. A second glance showed there was indeed water on his clothes, though it didn’t seem enough to merit a poncho. And it still looked like robes made of cloth to her, but she thought grabbing him might give him the wrong idea. His wallet had contained a badge that looked legitimate enough, so she headed for the door. As she went, Ron made a jerky motion with his stick and muttered under his breath. How rude.

Pitch black thunderclouds were pouring waterfalls onto the next street over. A car drifted past.

“That’s odd.” Donna said. “So what’s the man in the toilet done?” A thought occurred to her, and she started yelling again. “DON’T YOU DARE HAVE A SHOOT OUT IN THE SHOP!”

Harry and Ron made desperate shushing noises. “He’d have to be deaf not to know we’re here. If you want us to get him out nice and quiet, just cooperate!”

“But he doesn’t have a gun, does he?” Donna asked in a dramatic whisper that somehow managed to be as loud as yelling.

“No.” Harry fidgeted in the manner of someone telling the truth but leaving something important out on purpose. There was nothing to do but help him, though. Nutter or not, he was police.

Ron leaned over and said, “I still don’t see why we can’t just--”

“Secrecy. Muggles. Shut up, Ron.”

First a criminal in her bathroom and now men in uniform--she assumed they had uniforms on under their “ponchos”--were hissing at each other in police code. She wasn’t sure whether the day was going great or not.

The key they needed was one of several on the keychain on Donna’s belt, but she found the right one and handed it over after Harry shot down her plan of going first. She took the second best option, which was to tiptoe so close behind Ron that she kept stepping on his heels. He glared at her, but she would just go: “Oops, sorry. This is kind of exciting, isn’t it?” and step on him again.

When they reached the door, Harry turned the key and kicked the door open. There was no one inside.

“I saw him go in! He can’t have teleported,” Donna said, using the most absurd possibility she could think of.

“No, he can’t. We set up an anti-apparition barrier,” Ron replied with perfect sincerity. He rubbed the remaining jelly off his face and licked his fingers clean. “This is really good, you know that?”

The situation regained their attention when they heard a clanging in the ventilation.

“He’s transfigured!” Harry exclaimed. “Stupefy!”

The stick he’d been carrying let out a streak of red sparks and the wall exploded. Jets of water knocked them flat on their backs as pipes ruptured and a swarm of mice fell out of hole he’d blasted.

“Which one? Which one is he?” Ron screamed. “Bloody hell, it’s like Pettigrew all over ag-- one’s crawling up my leg!”

Donna grabbed the plunger and started beating Harry with it. “You lying psychopath! Police sure as hell don’t carry sticks of dynamite with them. Get out! Get out now!”

“Stop it!” Harry groped around the floor amongst the squeaking rodents as his glasses went flying. “Aha! Got him!”

There was a flash of light and the mouse in Harry’s hand floated into mid-air, twisting and shrieking, before suddenly growing into the outline of a man and falling back to the floor.

“Oh my god! He’s a naked weremouse!” Donna switched targets and started swinging at the newcomer instead, especially when she saw he also had a stick of dynamite. The man flailed, unable to gain his footing on the wet tile floor, but at last, a random kick of his leg found the base of the sink and he went sliding out into dining area.

He scrambled onto his feet and went for the door, but Donna was right behind him, even as the two worthless police officers were still disentangling themselves from their ponchos. Realizing she wouldn’t be able to outrun him, Donna threw the plunger and knocked him off his feet. He fell forward into Donna’s box of donuts, then collapsed to the floor, a five centimeter thick layer of jelly and flour products plastered over his face.

“Help me!” Donna yelled, tearing chunks off of him and stuffing them into her mouth. “He’s going to suffocate on donuts, and I can’t eat them fast enough!” That last sentence came out more “Erm umph affum yum yum” but she assumed she got her point across, because Ron and Harry were soon beside her, and the man didn’t die, though he probably wished he had.

“What do you think you are doing?” Donna screamed into his ear. “Do you think I don’t have enough trouble as it is? First I get fired from my job, then I have to become a telemarketer, then that job gets outsourced to India, and now I’m a bloody cashier in a bloody bakery and you have to come in with these dimwits on your tail and blow up half the building because you didn’t have the sense to stay in jail? What did you want here, anyway? Is it donuts? I can give you more donuts!” She grabbed another box and started stuffing them into his mouth. “That’s not good? Maybe you need a drink.” She got a thermos of day-old coffee and poured the cold remains onto him. “How’s that? Is that enough for you? Oy, idiots! Next time he tries to escape, you let me know and I’ll beat some sense into him, okay? Just don’t let any more of your prisoners get near my place of employment! Now get out of here and fill out some paperwork to compensate me for damages and emotional trauma!”

“You have emotional trauma?” Ron mumbled, dragging the terrified fugitive away from her. “What about us?”

Harry grabbed her before she could charge at him. “Technically speaking, you saw some things you weren’t supposed to see. I’m, uh, supposed to wipe your memory.”

“Oh yeah? How are you going to do that? You have one of those blue clicker things that you flash in my eyes and make me think it was all swamp gas?”

“Actually, I use my wand.”

Donna took his wand and snapped it in half. “Get me my compensation, Merlin, or I’ll trap you back under your rock!”

Once Harry had left her a note promising full repayment of all damages--she was not going to get fired for this debacle--and restored the sign outside to its pre-pigeon state, Donna went back to the cash register and rang up another donut. She wondered what her gramps would say about all this. They were always looking at the stars, Donna reassuring him that aliens were definitely out there, and now some psycho was claiming everything ran on magic instead? Rubbish.

Ding. She looked down at the cash register, which, instead of the price of the donut, now scrolled: “Hello, Donna Noble. I’ve been looking for you.”

“Now what?” she said. The register replied by opening the cash drawer. A hand reached out and pulled her inside.

It was bigger on the inside.

A man was inside, dressed like Count Dracula at a disco ball. He had a goatee, though the beard was a tad long and half-shaved off, as though he’d had some sort of industrial accident where it got caught in machinery.

“Donna Noble?” he said.

“Yeah, and who are you? Are you the reason cash keeps disappearing?”

“No, that would be Penny, your co-worker.”

“Ah! I always knew she was a treacherous bimbo, but would anyone listen? No. ‘She’s just a bimbo,’ Mr. Rogers always says.”

“I am not here to gossip with you.”

“So what are you here for? You want to suck my blood or something?”

“No, I am kidnapping you to trap the Doctor. At last, I have found a proper companion!”

“What? What doctor? Why would you have a grudge against a doctor? Are you American?”

The man pulled at his beard. “As if. I am the Master.”

“Of what, those stacks of coins that you have to beat against the counter to open?”

“No, just the Master. And my arch-enemy is the Doctor!”

“Stuck-up lot, aren’t you? Aristocracy?”

“Time lords!”

“Dancing queen!”

She staggered. Gallifrey.

Gallifrey, he’d said, as flames roared about them and the Thames came flooding in. The screams of a mother and villainess, both at the same time, and Donna had asked him to stop. He needed someone to stop him. Stop him from what? Stop who? Maybe more importantly, when.

“Stop it!” she yelled, but this time there was no authority in her voice. “Stop it,” she said again, this time quietly. “I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but stop. Please.” Her head pounded, stretched to its limits like a balloon about to pop and yet still inflating. “Stop it!”

“I can’t,” the Master said. “It’s too late for that. You’re remembering, and now you must come with me or die.”

Donna followed, and she felt scared. Images swirled about her, accompanied by strange names. Ood, Messaline, TARDIS, adipose, Spartacus, Medusa Cascade.

“Daleks!” she gasped. She was on the floor clutching her head, the central pillar of the TARDIS looming above her like an idol casting judgment. She remembered the Doctor’s console in that little blue box, his manic smile as he ran about hammering and pulling things and pushing a bunch of buttons that probably didn’t do anything but made him look cool and knowledgeable.

She remembered the brief hour in which all of time and space had opened up to her. An hour that had spanned eternity. Half-human, half-Time Lord, something new and something terribly old. The Doctor-Donna, whose existence had sent shockwaves back and forth through all of reality and all the realities.

But more importantly, she remembered the joy of setting foot onto a new world, unsure of what to expect but knowing it’d be brilliant, even if there was lots of running involved. She remembered running with the Doctor’s daughter, and the look in his eyes when she died. She remembered the look in his eyes when she died, when all the knowledge inside Donna’s head had been too much and he realized he had to take her memories, had to take everything that was her. Had to kill her. And he’d done it to save her life. She didn’t have to live with the consequences of his actions, but he did.

And now it was for nothing. She was going to die, and all so the Doctor’s enemy could break his heart into even more pieces.

The Master put something silver on her forehead, and she wanted to hit it away, only she couldn’t figure out which way was up. “What are you doing? Go away...”

“You’re no use to me dead.”

Somehow, that was comforting. Donna stopped struggling.

“I’m more brilliant than the Doctor, you know.”

“Not possible. Can be smarter... but not more brilliant. Don’t tell him I said that...”

The Master scowled. “Smartasses, all of you. Is that the only quality he looks for?”

“I found him,” Donna said, feeling drunk. “Who chopped off your beard?”

“Your predecessor.” The Master snatched the silvery thing away. “You can get up now. All better. See? More brilliant. I saved your life.”

“You put it in danger in the first place!”

The Master tossed the object up and down. “Would you really want to live the rest of your life never remembering?”

Evil or not, he had a point. She rummaged through her memories, trying to remember if they were all there. It was a kind of silly endeavor, she admitted, but she figured she had the right. “Hey! I still remember it all! Well... most of it...”

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“No, I mean, all the Time Lord stuff. It’s still there.”

“Most of it will soon fade as the Time Lord component of your brain has been partitioned off. Focus on the things you want to remember because the rest will go. Certainly, your behavior will no longer resemble the Doctor’s in any way.”

“So that’s why it’s all misty. I definitely don’t feel the turn of the universe anymore, but that was just vertigo anyway. You should genetically engineer it out. I’ll show you how before I forget.”

“Masters of space and time, and now we’re being made fun of by humans. What’s the universe come to?”

“Tell me, the Master, do you know where the Doctor is?”

“No. I shall have to find him.”

“Does that mean we get to have adventures together?”

“No. I will gag you and tie you up, and I shall have adventures by myself.”

“The Master’s a terrible name. Can I call you beardie?”

“No! It makes you sound like a Scottish duck hunter.”

“How about goatee? Or, ooh, even better yet, Billy Goat! Yes, I shall call you Billy.”

“The gag is becoming a better and better idea by the moment.”

Donna leaned against the console in perfect imitation of the Doctor. The Master growled. “Tell me,” she said. “What did you do?”

“Ah,” he said, steepling his fingers. “Now you shall be in awe of my brilliance. I used a chameleon arch to separate the Time Lord part of your mind and store it into this fob watch. It’s a commonly used device by Time Lords when they need to conceal their identity. For us, it rewrites our DNA and makes us human, removing our memories completely. That process was not necessary for you, of course, so I had to reprogram it. Took me months to perfect, but now it works! So long as you do not open the fob watch, you need not fear a resurgence of the Time Lord part of your makeup.”

“What if someone else opens it?”

“Nothing happens!”

“Oh good. I suppose I shall leave it in your care then. Tell me, where are we now?”

“That is unimportant.”

“Indulge me.”

The Master swooped past her and started fiddling with the controls. “If you must know, we are still in your little café posing as a cash register. However, since you want to go sightseeing, I might as well impress you. How about the triplet moons of Hashas?”

“Boring, boring and a giant advertisement for Mentos. As for Hashas itself, it’s a little bit blue, if you get my double entendre.”

“Stop with the French! I hate it when non-French use French!”

“Now, you know where would really impress me. Allons-y!” She shoved him out of the way and entered coordinates faster than he could follow. The console blinked and then they were there. “See? Not that far. Either that, or we took a shortcut because your TARDIS likes me better.” She patted the lever she’d been holding, though she made a mental note never to do the same thing with any part of her face.

“Where are we?” He tried resisting her, but she pushed him through the door, and the sounds of cheering hit them like a wave.

Flashing lights turned the place into a rainbow as a man on the stage sang his heart out: “I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles, oh yeah!”

“We’re at a The Who concert?” the Master yelled over the crowd noise.

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you! You’re looking for a Doctor Who?”

Well, here’s a poke at you
You’re gonna choke on it too

“Billy, I have to admit, you’re very, very smart. And just a little bit sweet, too.”

The Master gaped, failing to notice the crowd was pushing him further and further from the TARDIS.

“But you know what?” Donna took a few steps back and silence enveloped her. “You are definitely not brilliant.” She slammed the door of the TARDIS on him.

Thirty seconds passed before the Master made it back to the door. She could hear him pounding on it, but the TARDIS refused to let him in. She stroked the door frame. “Good boy. We’re going to have some fun times together, aren’t we?”

Striding back to the console, she watched the panels light up before she arrived, preparing everything for her command. All right, so she definitely felt an urge to give it a little kiss right now, but it would be a different kiss from the sort the Doctor tended to give. Absolutely, completely different.

“But first,” she told the room, “we need to find the Doctor before he drowns any more spiders.”

To Chapter 14: What Happened Next

Back to Chapter 13: Part 3

Summary: Three stories that will rock your world and then steal your lunch money.

How to Give Up Your Addiction to Paradoxes in Just Ten Easy Steps!

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:22:06 GMT

Eram quod es, eris quod sum

Chapter 13
Divine Tragedy
(Part 3 of 3)

Click image for sources used

Tosh slammed her wrists against the jagged edge of broken railing, severing the cords binding her hands together. She spun as Howell lunged for her and pushed him aside. To her right, Cameron and Owen stood back-to-back, wielding cables like lassos, while Foreman held the arm of a chair, ready to knock out anyone the other two caught.

Ianto rushed to her side. “Even the ones not disguised are still carrying biofeedback mechanisms around their necks,” he said, pointing at the nearest alien. “Last time, we overloaded them with an electromagnetic pulse.”

“There’s nothing to power such a blast!”

“On the contrary,” Ianto said, “they’ve brought in what we need.”

There were three laser cannons nearby, mounted on tripods and all still aimed at where Jack had been. The aliens in charge of aiming them were embroiled in the battle, and even as they watched, Cameron roped one in and pulled it close for Foreman to knock out. She jerked a little too hard on the cable, though, and sent the alien plunging over the edge. She dropped it before the twisting coils could burn her hands, but a cry from Owen revealed they’d been using opposite ends of the same cord. The loop he’d had around his arm tightened and sent him staggering off the platform, but Cameron grabbed him just in time, spinning him about so that the cable could continue its plunge taking any more people with it.

Ianto ran to the vacancy and gave her a thumbs up. “Jack’s wristband can interface with the power.” She hurried over and began programming.

As she worked, Howell charged them, but Ianto kicked at the next laser over, sending it tumbling across the ground toward him. The attorney general tripped but kept rolling toward them. “I’ve got it!” Tosh said and activated the device. A loud crack snapped through the air and sparks flew from the battery pack, but all around, aliens went down, and howls of pain filled the air, soon replaced with silence as the blast spread through the factory.

Owen, Foreman and Cameron ran over, cheering. Jack and Cuddy emerged from the stairway, dripping with sweat and out of breath as they climbed the last flight. “Well, looks like you got things sorted out,” Jack said.

“Why are you naked, sir?” Ianto asked, a touch of irritation in his voice. Tosh looked over and saw his brows furrowed.

“He fell into one of the vats earlier,” Tosh said quickly. “My fault.”

“Yeah, see if I give you a pay raise ever again,” Jack said, grinning a bit. “Well, actually, I will if you manage to get this working.” He flourished his hands and revealed the alien artifact, the original one they’d come from Cardiff to find. Tosh took it from him, cradling it as though it were a poisonous snake.

“What makes you think I can figure it out?” Tosh asked.

“You’re a genius.”

Tosh felt a brief spurt of pride at Jack's faith in her, but it was quickly overwhelmed by panic. She fought it down as she focused on what Ianto had told her about the other device. The device she’d found with Monty... No, don’t think of him! She stared it. Think of what you want it to do. Pointing the device at Foreman and Owen, she focused on their arms and thought, Reverse!

A silence that muffled everything, literally a deafening silence, and Foreman and Owen shut their eyes when they saw what she was attempting to do. Cracking open one eye, Owen lifted his left hand, and everyone waited on tenterhooks before he said, “It worked!”

Foreman opened his eyes and waved both hands around. “Yes! It worked!” he exclaimed, pulling Owen into a hug before freezing and backing away.

“Not to spoil the mood, but where are House and Wilson?” Cameron asked.

“Downstairs,” Cuddy replied. “And Chase?”

“Looking for an exit. He, uh, adopted one of the spider robots and named it Joey.”

Cuddy’s eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, she just leaned against the railing and looked out across the ruins of the factory.

“Is that going to be a problem?” Tosh asked Jack.

“I hope not. All the electronics in the device indicate it has a long range.”

“I’ll try to be prepared for anything,” Cameron said, closing her eyes. Tosh pointed it at her and pictured both Cameron and Chase in her mind. Reverse!

Chase’s body shuddered, and he screamed. “What the hell! Why’s everything gone dark?” He had an Australian accent.

Cuddy sighed. “Open your eyes.”

He did so. “That’s silly; why were they closed? They weren’t closed earlier. I... wait!” His hands shot to his chest. “I’m not top-heavy anymore!”

“I hope you weren’t engaged in anything dangerous.”

“No, but I think I found a way out. Joey should be able to fill Cameron in.”

As Tosh pointed the device at Jack, Ianto asked, “What are we going to do about this, sir?” He waved a hand to indicate the entire factory. “If we damage the infrastructure any further, the gardens above will collapse, but if we leave anything at all intact, the government might try to salvage the technology.”

“The aliens might too,” said Owen.

“Oh believe me, we will,” Howell said. Tosh had enough time to spin around in surprise before Howell grabbed her, knocking the artifact out of her hand and stealing her gun. Placing it against her temple, he backed away from the others. Jack screamed as he dove for the artifact, and Tosh didn’t think she’d ever heard him so high-pitched before. It rolled off the platform before he could reach it, and he stared in horror as it dropped toward the factory floor, no platforms or other equipment in place to save it from total destruction.

Tosh decided she had more pressing concerns than Jack’s alien problem. “How are you alive?” she gasped, struggling against Howell’s grip even with his threat of the gun pressed to her head.

“You think I didn’t know about your little EMP trick in the hospital?” Globs of spittle poured down onto her as he spoke, his entire body quivering. “The others didn’t respond to the threat. We have so much bureaucracy sometimes. But I took initiative and shielded my own device, and you idiots should’ve noticed when my disguise didn’t fail even though I feigned death.”

The two of them stopped behind one of the lasers, and Tosh realized what he intended. “Don’t just listen to him! Do something!” she yelled. Howell pushed her head forward, slamming her forehead against the barrel of the device.

“Shut up!” he roared. “All of you back away or I shoot her.”

“I propose a trade!” Jack said, scrambling away from the railing. “Me for her. She’s just an employee, but I lead Torchwood. You want them to follow orders, you should take me as hostage instead.”

“Oh, and you’re just such a bleeding heart that you’ll give up your life for her? No, if there’s going to be any trade, I want Jones.”

Ianto glared. “What did I ever do to you? Well, besides the obvious.”

“Isn’t the obvious enough? Now all you, do as I say!”

As they retreated, Howell aimed the laser and flicked a few switches so that it began powering up. “No!” Tosh screamed, knocking the gun away by lowering her head and swinging her shoulder up. Howell tried to shoot her but missed. Jack threw himself backward, forcing everyone behind him to fall off the landing and down the stairs, putting them outside the laser’s radial range. He miscalculated, however, and Ianto fell against the railing instead of down the stairs. Before he could get up, Howell swiveled the laser over and fired.

A black blur flashed before her and the lights went wild as the barrel rotated, knocking Howell backward. The air filled with streaks of blue and purple before the laser shut off, but when her vision cleared, she saw the weapon had fired upward instead. A large piece of the ceiling collapsed amidst a shower of dirt, and the destruction cascaded outward as girders buckled under the increased strain.

Her gaze shifted downward to find what had knocked off Howell’s aim, and she saw Monty collapsed on the ground before her.

“Monty!” She kneeled down to examine him. His face was flushed and his clothes were wet with blood. “What happened? I thought--”

“Had to get to you,” he whispered. “Tell you I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. Is this blood yours?”

“No. Mrs. Streed’s. Killed her.”

Hands closed around her neck, and Howell said, “Well done, Pike.” Tosh stiffened, but Monty shifted and pressed something smooth into her hand. She ran her fingers along it and found it to be a sharp pair of scissors. The blades dug into Howell’s arm, and he screamed, falling backward. Tosh threw herself to the floor and rolled within range of the gun Howell had dropped when he lost control of the laser. She aimed and fired three shots into his chest, followed by one to the neck, where she assumed he kept his biofeedback device. He crumpled to the ground, and Tosh rushed back to Monty.

“It’s all right,” she said, checking his breathing and the wound on his arm. “It’s over, and we can get you to the hospital within half an hour. Everything will be all right.”

Monty nodded and gave her a weak smile. “I was so afraid you were dead.”

“People, we have a problem,” Jack said, and Tosh saw he was running over from the transmat room.

“What is it?” Tosh asked.

“Well, when your boyfriend transmatted over here--not that I’m not grateful he saved all our lives--he used the last of the power reserves. It was a three-way switch, so House and Wilson are back in Drumthwacket, but the rest of us can’t escape that way anymore.”

The rumbling from the botanical gardens crashing down through the factory was almost deafening, and Tosh could see they would be swamped by mud and foliage within a minute. Further down, the growing fires had reached a stash of oil barrels, sending up massive blasts and plumes of black smoke.

“Tosh, watch out!” Ianto yelled.

She instinctively swung around to face Howell, but he still lay where he’d fallen. He was alive though, and his chest heaved as he chuckled deep, gurgling laughs. A red light flashed by his neck. “The self-destruct mechanism!” exclaimed Jack, leaping over Monty and kicking Howell heavily off the edge.

For three seconds, it seemed he’d eliminated the threat, but then a thundering blast shook the platform and the floor slanted down into a sharp forty-five degree angle. Tosh clung onto the railing before realizing Monty was too weak to react. He rolled toward the drop, clawing feebly at the floor, and Tosh didn’t stop to think before letting go and sliding after him. He went over the edge, but she grabbed his hand as he tumbled down, and she felt his fingers close around her wrist. She kept sliding until pressure around her ankle halted their descent. She looked over her shoulder to see Jack holding onto her. Ianto had Jack’s leg in one hand and a coil of cable in the other, and Chase, Cuddy and Owen were safe on the stable part of the platform, tugging at the rope with all their might.

“All right, pull!” Ianto said. Tosh felt herself dragged upward several centimeters, but the platform buckled further, and she nearly lost her grip as the floor dropped away. She fell with it, getting the breath knocked out of her as she slammed back against the platform. “Come on, faster!” Ianto managed to plant one foot onto solid ground and add his strength to the efforts of those above.

“No, stop!” Jack yelled. Tosh felt his grip slide, and her shoe slipped halfway off her foot. “I’m losing her. Ianto, loosen up a little and let me see if I can’t get a better hold.”

“I can’t, sir!” Ianto protested. “Your leg is too sweaty. If I let go any further, we’ll lose all three of you.”

“Tosh,” said Monty. “We’re too heavy.”

“Speak for yourself,” she retorted, forcing out a laugh. “I’m on a diet.”

Monty shook his head. “I am speaking for myself.”

She stared into his eyes, glistening with fever, then looked down to see the glowing red fate that awaited them. “No, you’re not thinking clearly.”

“There’s no choice.”

“No!” she screamed. The bones in her wrist felt like snapping, and she was still weak from her climb earlier. Half the strength keeping them together came from Monty, and she knew the choice to fall was his. She had to convince him. “I’ve already lost you once, Monty Pike, and I went to hell for it. Do you want to do that to me again?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Pull, Ianto! Do it now, damn you, before this fool of a man gets himself killed!” The sharpness in her voice shocked Ianto into responding without thinking, and her shoe went flying. It clanked twice against the platform and dropped past Monty. Jack howled and lunged for her, closing both hands around the tip of her foot. She heard something crack.

“You’re going to fall!” he roared.

Tosh ignored him, trying to focus on Monty through the blur of her tears. She must not cry or he would give up. She couldn’t cry, not if this was the last glimpse of him she would ever have. She shook her head, but the salty drops poured from her eyes anyway. A drop or two fell onto him, mixing with the sweat glistening on his forehead. But there was no choice, and she knew it. “I love you, Monty,” she cried, knowing it was the wrong thing to say to make him stay and also knowing it was the only right thing she could say.

“I love you,” he replied, and he let go.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. One moment she was watching him shrink into the distance, the molten sea so impossibly large in her field of sight that it seemed a mere backdrop, a moving painting he would never reach. She felt sure that if she kept watching him fall, he would never hit the surface, but then darkness descended upon her as Jack dragged her away. She blinked, pupils expanding to adjust to the new level of light, and it seemed the moment before never existed, so sharp was the contrast between them. Its only legacy was the pain in her chest, so sharp she felt sure that if she looked down, she would see cracks running across a breaking body.

“Let me go!” she heard herself screaming, and she realized distantly that she was fighting the very people that had saved her. Cuddy had lines of blood on her face from where she’d scratched her, and Owen lay on the ground, clutching his side. She must have kicked him, but she didn’t remember.

Drifts of dust reached them as the roof continued falling. They had maybe fifteen seconds left, and then she remembered Jack’s words. “Do you know how to get out of here?” she asked. Jack shook his head, and she laughed. So maybe she hadn’t abandoned Monty after all.

“Well, you might not, but I do!” One floor above them, a bulldozer rumbled into view, and a spider droid loped by its side. Cameron waved at them from the driver’s seat. “Come on! Room for all!”

Jack pulled her into his arms and lifted her off the ground. “Sorry, but you’re going to have to survive this one,” he whispered. She clung to him as he carried her up the stairs and into the bulldozer. Cameron slammed the engine into gear, and they charged up a ramp, clouds of flame and dirt racing them toward the surface. Columns of fire shot hundreds of meters into the sky, overwhelming the first rays of dawn as they burst through a service entrance onto a stretch of dark green lawn.

The others cheered. Cameron leapt out of her seat to hug Chase as she exclaimed, “We made it! We survived! But god, I hurt everywhere!” She slapped him.

Cuddy gave Ianto a high-five. He smiled sheepishly at Jack afterward, but then he looked at Tosh and his face fell. He began saying something, but she turned away, burying her face in Jack’s chest and letting the tears flow as her heart shattered in the line of duty yet again.

* * *

By the time they returned to the hospital several hours later to find Gwen sleeping, it was so late at night that it was early in the morning. They had picked up House and Wilson along the way, and House was in the middle of yet another explosive tirade against Jack about failing to rescue the device before Tosh could reverse its effects, having begun one the moment they came in sight in the mansion and pausing only to breathe and eat a bag of chips from a vending machine in the hospital cafeteria.

“You know what?” Cuddy said. “Shut up! If the mind-link is still working, then yell at Jack in his head. Stop annoying the rest of us.”

Ianto agreed but decided it more polite not to voice the fact. Cuddy seemed quite capable on her own and was not the oppressed administrator she’d been when he first met her. Whatever suppressed rage she’d carried around before had been unbottled by recent events, and Ianto didn’t think even House would cross her. Not until she calmed down, anyway.

“I’m not going into his mind,” House replied. “Every time I go into his mind, I find him picturing me or Wilson naked. Having sex with you was an awful idea, Harkness. Oh, whoops, you were hoping Jones wouldn’t find out about that, weren’t you? Silly me, not reading your mind closely enough.”

“What?” Ianto said. He made an effort to keep his voice quiet, but everyone stared at him as though he’d used a megaphone to declare that he ate babies. He was glad Tosh had gone off with Cameron and Chase to examine Joey, because his relationship problems were nothing compared to hers, yet that knowledge didn’t soothe him one bit. “Let me get this clear. While the rest of us were risking our lives fighting aliens and shutting down the factory, you were busy having an orgy with House and Wilson?”

“And Cuddy,” House added gleefully. “Come on, Wilson, let’s steal me a new cane from the little shop before Cuddy gets security working again.”

“I... it was, I mean, it was nothing,” Jack stammered, and Ianto was glad he at least had the grace to be nervous. “Look, it happened really fast and--”

“I bet it did," Ianto said smoothly. "Go put on some pants, sir. And if you’re not going to do anything helpful, get lost.”

“But the diagnosis. I mean, we need to know what’s wrong with Gwen.”

“You’re still linked with Dr. House, sir. You don’t have to be in the room.”

Jack scowled but followed Ianto’s instructions, ignoring the wink House sent his direction. “That’s the spirit,” House said. “Everyone cheats in the end; sex without morals is the way to go.”

“Your diagnosis,” Ianto said as they followed Tracy into Gwen’s room, “that’s all I’m asking for. No social commentary, please.”

Wilson squeezed through the door as it was about to shut and handed House a new cane before sneaking out again. The door shut with a soft click, and Tracy took a chair beside Gwen. Bilis slumped in a chair across the bed, snoring like a chainsaw. House surveyed the scene and harrumphed. “This is not the dramatic reveal I was hoping for.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you opened your mouth earlier.”

“Don’t encourage Dr. House to think about himself any more than he already does,” Tracy suggested.

“I’d have thought you’d be more grateful, Jones.”

Ianto leaned against the wall. “I appreciate what you did, Dr. House, but not your motivations.”

“You enjoy details, don’t you?”

“This isn’t about me. Diagnosis, House.”

“Actually, the show you’re looking for is called Diagnosis Murder.”

Now that they were finally back at the hospital and the ordeal with the aliens was over, exhaustion was setting in fast and it was being driven home to him that he hadn't slept in over thirty-six hours. It was hard to believe, with everything that had happened, that they'd only been in New Jersey for three days. Enough was enough. “Ball, please, Tracy.”

The nurse sat up, looking surprised, before digging into her pockets and tossing Ianto a stress ball. He held it up before his face and squeezed until there was a spluttering noise, and Ianto let a pancake-shaped mass drop to the floor. House took the hint.

“VHL,” he said.

“VHL?” Tracy repeated. “No way.”

“Yes way, Tracy.” Twirling his cane, he added, “It’s the real McCoy. Wow, I’ve been waiting to say that since I figured it out.”

“Explain, please,” Ianto said, stamping on the remains of the stress ball for emphasis.

House rolled his eyes. “Von Hippel-Lindau disease, caused by a mutation of a tumor suppressing gene on the third chromosome. Obviously, we’ll have to run a DNA test to confirm, but everything fits, from the angioma in her eye to the pheochromocytoma. The lack of the gene causes tumors, some benign and others malignant, to grow in the body, and onset of symptoms varies by age but this case is not particularly abnormal. The pheochromocytoma and other, smaller tumors, coupled with a high-stress lifestyle and excessive sodium intake from her frankly repulsive alien-hunter diet, led to the stroke, which caused her loss of vision and other brain damage, obscuring the underlying condition.”

“But it can’t be genetic,” Ianto protested.

“Why not?”

“Two reasons. The first is that you requested DNA tests from Gwen’s parents. Is VHL not something you tested for?”

“It was. That was the main reason I didn’t reach this conclusion sooner; we dismissed all genetic causes based on her parents, and I didn’t want to take the time to run the test on Cooper when she was already on the verge of death. About twenty percent of VHL cases are caused not by inherited defects but by mutations in the sperm or egg or during early fetal development. Internal corruption, you see, an accident of nature. And as far as I know, that’s the only reason it can’t be genetic, which makes me curious what your second point is.”

“It can’t be because...” he took a deep breath. “It can’t be because if it’s genetic, there’s no cure. If that’s all there is to her illness, she won’t get better. Sometimes she recognizes people, sometimes she doesn’t. She can’t see color. She might have cancer...”

“And she’ll have to monitor her condition very carefully for the rest of her life.” House shrugged. “That’s life. So there, you have your diagnosis. The tests will be back in a few days and then we’ll know for sure.” He headed for the door but Ianto sidled over and blocked his exit. “Get out of the way.”

“No,” Ianto said. “That can’t be it.”

“And here I was hoping a clandestine alien-hunting organization might be a bit more reasonable to deal with, but no, you’re all a bunch of whiny family members too. Or maybe it’s how ordinary the whole condition is that bothers you? Can’t fight genes with guns, Jones, and there’s no funny alien devices to make the problem magically go away.”

House tried to shove him aside, but Ianto was rooted to the spot. He felt as though lightning had struck him, and he laughed before pulling House in for a hug. “What are you doing?” he protested, and his struggles caused him to sprawl onto the floor when Ianto let go. “That’s assault and battery, I’ll have you know!”

“You’re a genius, House,” Ianto said hoarsely. “A bloody genius.”

“Of course I am. But why do you think so?”

Ianto dashed off, and he heard Tracy say, “Hey, I thought you were supposed to make the dramatic exit, House.” He grinned as he heard House splutter something in return.

He flew past confused hospital staff, who glanced around as though expecting to see National Guardsmen in pursuit. “No running!” Brenda yelled as he soared past, but he didn’t care. He burst into Gwen’s original room and discovered several cases in the corner that had remained untouched through all the battles. The one that belonged to him had a small nametag affixed to the lock, and he threw it open and removed a device. An alien device, but one whose function he wasn’t worried about. He turned it on.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked, entering the room fully dressed, complete with the military coat he’d left in the hospital. He looked every inch the dashing captain, but Ianto refused to meet his eyes.

“How’d you find me?”

“You have half the hospital in a panic,” Cameron replied as Chase pushed her wheelchair into the room. “Cuddy’s going to demand your head.” Owen and Foreman piled in, followed by House and Wilson. A few nurses peered in from the hallway, as though expecting a party. It may not have been a party, but it’d be dramatic.

“She can have it,” Ianto replied, feeling a strange sense of giddiness, as though he would float into the sky if he didn’t remind himself to stay grounded. “You know the diagnosis?”

“Yeah, House had me send a blood sample to the lab,” Foreman replied.

Cuddy tapped his shoulder, and he leapt aside to let her pass. “What the hell is going on here?”

Finally, Toshiko appeared in the back, not bothering to make her presence known, but Ianto pushed through the others to take her hand. “You think you can help Gwen?” she asked.

“I know it,” Ianto said. “How are you doing?” It was a stupid question, he knew, but it was the simple gestures that counted, like when Tosh had brought him a cup of coffee after Lisa died. She squeezed his hand, acknowledging his intentions.

“I’m fine. As fine as I can be. If you can help Gwen, then at least something good came out of today. If there’s anything Torchwood has taught me, it’s to take the joys you can have and not wish for more.”

Ianto kissed her on the forehead and only realized afterward that he’d done what Jack usually did in these situations. He tried not to let his consternation show on his face. “Sometimes wishes come true, Tosh.” A light wind started up outside, and the faintest echo of a sound that could not be duplicated anywhere in the universe began. Tosh’s eyes widened as she realized what they were hearing. He grinned. “Are you ready to meet a legend?”

An ancient sound echoed through the still air, and Cuddy dashed to the window. “What’s that? Something’s materializing on the lawn!”

Jack gaped at Ianto. “Did you call him?”

“Yes, sir. That device you refused? He gave it to me instead.”

“What are you talking about?” House snapped. “Who are you talking about?”

“The Doctor,” Ianto and Jack replied at the same time.

“Doctor who?” Chase said.

Tosh peered out the window and flashed Chase the smallest of smiles. “Exactly,” she replied. Outside, a blue police box waited for them.

By the time they reached the lawn, a tall, skinny man in a brown suit and coat was running his hand through his hair and staring in consternation at the ruined hospital, as though perplexed to have caught the aftermath rather than the beginning of mass destruction. Ianto supposed that was a forgivable reaction for the Doctor.

“Ianto!” he exclaimed as he caught sight of him. “You called? Ah, Jack! And you’ve got a whole gang, how lovely. I suppose you must have, to cause so many explosions. Typical Torchwood... but unless I’m completely wrong, which could happen, I suppose, unlikely though, then we’re not in Cardiff. We’re, well, ‘across the pond,’ as you would say. Could say. And, oh dear... timelines. Yes, timelines, timelines, timelines... when did we last meet?”

“Cardiff,” Jack said. “You dropped me off, with Martha.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Let’s just say we’re not quite on the same page. Or worldpage, is that an appropriate term? Worldline, worldpage, same thing. Anyway, can’t say, would spoil things and definitely alter the future, which we don’t want, because any alternative to what happened is one we don’t want to contemplate.”

“Who is this moron?” House demanded.

Ianto let Jack make the requisite introductions and noticed he left out many details, such as the whole Time Lord bit.

“And you travel around in a little box?” Chase said.

“It’s bigger on the inside,” Ianto put in.

"That sounds like a pick-up line," said Chase suspiciously.

The Doctor was already halfway to the TARDIS door, but he skidded to a halt and said, “You just have to ruin the surprise, don’t you?” He flung the doors open.

“Tada!” Ianto said, half dramatically and half jokingly.

“He usually has a pretty female companion too,” Jack said.

“I resent that everyone thinks I behave like some human male showing off his muscle car.” Nevertheless, he shuffled aside and motioned for the non-Torchwood humans to enter and look around. “So now, I’d like to know what happened here and why you called me.”

“Chula!” Jack exclaimed. “Is that what you were thinking, Ianto? Of course, why didn’t I think of that?”

Ianto had not actually been thinking of anything in particular except that the Doctor would probably know of some alien technology that could heal humans, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Er, yes?”

“Nanogenes!” Jack breathed.

“Going back to your old ways, are you?” the Doctor said.

Jack shook his head, but before he could explain, they heard a vworp-vworp, and the doctors piled out of the TARDIS faster than Ianto could say “Boo.” The Time Lord’s muscle car did not fade away, though, and they were all left scratching their heads as to what had happened when Ianto spotted a second police box thirty meters to their left. A young girl bounded through the doors and caught sight of them.

“Uh, Doctor?” she called into the TARDIS. “I think we have a problem.”

An unlikely-looking man stumbled out of the TARDIS, trailing a long multi-colored scarf behind him and looking alert. The group moved to meet the newcomers, and then the man, whom Ianto assumed was also the Doctor, looked them up and down and said, “Alright, which one of you summoned me, and how?"

“Oh,” the scarf-less Doctor replied. “Right, sorry about that. I recovered the device from the Brigadier a while back and gave it to someone else. There must have been cross-link interference with the chronometer, so it summoned both of us when activated. Everyone, meet me. The fourth me, I believe.”

“You?” Cuddy looked like she wanted to hit someone again.

“He regenerates, changes forms, when mortally wounded,” Jack said.

"That's fascinating," said Tosh. "How do you do that? You must change every atom in your body! The amount of energy that must take-- at least, oh, two hundred eleven point three eight eight terajoules every eight seconds, over a period of at least eight hours, and you'd have to be generating it almost entirely internally! There's no natural energy source that could produce that much, at least not on Earth." Both Doctors looked impressed.

"That's actually not too far off," the skinny one said.

“Quite frankly, I’m surprised he isn’t on his thousandth incarnation, the way he behaves,” Ianto added.

“Hey!” the Doctor--again, the one without a scarf--said. “Only on, er, number ten, I think, thank you very much.”

"You think?" said Owen.

"After a while you lose track. It's like birthdays."

“So you’re like a cat with even more extra lives,” Cameron cooed.

“Last I checked, cats don’t go poof in a burst of bright light and come back as a different color,” Jack said.

The fourth Doctor glanced about. “Am I needed for something urgent?”

“Someone needs healing, apparently,” Ten replied. “I’m going to guess it's that pretty Welsh girl, since she’s not here.” Jack nodded, so he continued. “Chula nanogenes, they want.”

“Chula?” Four sounded unnervingly skeptical.

“She’s suffered brain damage and also needs some rewriting of her genetic code,” Ianto explained.

“Ah, Chula it is, then. No other race can perform surgery so deft. Quite fascinating, you know.”

“But,” Ten cut in, “that’s going to be a problem.”

“How so?” Four asked.

“Uh, spoilers. But the planet Chula has been, ah, missing for a while. Since... certain events. I have no clue where it is, and that's not the only issue. The Chula have migratory tendencies. They liked to travel from planet to planet, setting up temporary homes, and generally getting along with the local peoples. Often they moved in on fairly primitive societies and ended up being worshipped as gods, and by the time they'd leave, they'd have adapted parts of that planet's cultures into their own. They moved their planet to go into hiding as a precaution against, uh, cataclysmic possibilities, and there's no guarantee they haven't simply gotten bored and gone on vacation, so to speak, now that the planet does not require defending. Naturally, we could search for it, and two would be, well, twice as good as one, but it would be a stab in the dark either way.”

"We have to save Gwen. I'm not losing anyone else," Tosh said quietly. The other members of the Torchwood team nodded their agreement.

"You'd really help us?" Jack asked Ten.

"You don't have to sound so surprised," Ten said. "Why wouldn't I?" Jack shrugged.

"I'm not so sure I'm enthusiastic about some giant scavenger hunt throughout the whole universe," Four mused, twirling a curl with his finger. "Sarah Jane and I were in the middle of something."

"We were?" said the girl he'd arrived with.

"Hush," he said, looking guilty.

"No reason why you shouldn't!" said Ten, clapping his hands together. "It'll be fun!"

"I don't see why we can't help them, Doctor," said Sarah Jane.

"Oh, all right." Four grinned maniacally. "If I get bored, though, I'm not promising I'll stick around." Sarah Jane elbowed him.

"Fair enough," said Jack.

"So, I guess no one's going to tell me unless I ask. What is a Chula?" said Owen.

"I was wondering myself," said Tosh.

"Oh, they're very interesting!" said Four enthusiastically. "They're quite advanced, you know. They're definitely one of the higher forms of life in the universe, nearly on par with the Time Lords, except they seem to have no interest in time travel or dimensional and spatial physics. No, instead they focus on other types of technology, and their specialty has always been nanotechnology. Despite being so advanced, they're actually pretty laid back as a culture. At a first glance--" He was cut off by House, who was looking slightly pissy and had been unusually quiet until then.

"I'm coming," he announced.

"Excuse me?" said Jack.

"Who are you then?" said Four. House ignored him.

"If I stay here, I'll be essentially jobless for a long time--" he gestured at the broken hospital "--and seriously, you guys are going to alien planets? I'm not going to stay here and listen to idiots whine about their sniffles. My life just got a hell of a lot more interesting, and I intend to keep it that way. Besides," he added to Jack, "you and I are still linked. We have to find a way to undo this. It's driving me mad."

Jack shrugged. "Oh, I don't care," he said. He turned to the fourth Doctor. "This is Doctor House. He's the one who diagnosed Gwen."

"I'm a genius," added House.

"Nice to meet you! What do you mean, linked?"

"Long story," Jack said. "Later."

"I'm coming too!" Chase interjected. "So is Joey!"

"Er," said Jack.

"I'm sure as hell not staying here," Cameron said, wheeling her chair around to the front of the group.

Jack looked about to protest, but Owen cut him off. "Great! The more the better, right, Captain? It means more people to search!" He smiled at Cameron, and she smiled back. Jack didn't bother reminding him that there were only two TARDISes anyway, and gave in instead. Everyone looked expectantly at Foreman. He noticed and started waving his hands in front of himself defensively, backing away slightly.

"Ooooh, no, no freaking way! I'm staying right here, thanks very much! If I go with all of you crazies, I'd just end up locked in some tiny, enclosed space with Owen again, I know it! Do you have any idea how often that happened? At least three! No thanks. I'll take care of Gwen and help get the hospital back on track."

"Your loss," said Cameron, shrugging.

"Dr. Cuddy? Dr. Wilson? You two can come also if you want," Jack offered.

"Oh no, I couldn't," said Cuddy right away. "I have to stay here! This is my hospital, and look at it!" She wanted desperately to come, Ianto could tell. He admired her for putting what she considered her duty first.

"Are you sure? You were brilliant today," Jack said. Ianto snorted softly. The two Doctors observed quietly, standing near their TARDISes. Sarah Jane was watching with quiet excitement, knowing a new adventure was on the horizon. Cuddy looked torn.

"You could put Foreman in charge. He's almost as much of a tightass as you," House suggested off-handedly. Foreman perked up instantly and turned big, hopeful eyes on Cuddy. Cuddy wrung her hands.

"But-- but-- Oh, to hell with it. Yes, I'll come."

Jack grinned. “It’s also a time machine,” he added. “So we could come back to whenever you need.”

House shook his head. “No. No! I’m not coming back until this hospital is rebuilt.”

“Well, we don’t always land quite on target,” the tenth Doctor said. “You know, it’s about right, give or take a few... years...” He paused, probably realizing this did not impress. “But we can always try again if we figure out the problem in time,” he said quickly.

Jack turned to the last undecided member of the group. "Dr. Wilson?" Wilson looked pained, clearly torn between not really wanting to come and wanting to make sure his friends would be okay.

His caring nature won out and he nodded, grimacing slightly.

"Great!" said Ten. "Let's go!"

"Now hold on," House said sharply. "You weirdos may be fresh as a daisy in the springtime, but I've been running around, being chased, shot at, and generally menaced for over twenty-four hours now, and I want a shower, a very large meal, and at least eight hours of sleep before I leave. Another bottle of Vicodin would be excellent too. I seem to have lost mine at some point." The last bit was directed at Cuddy, who rolled her eyes. Wilson, Cameron, Chase, and Owen vehemently agreed with him. Sarah Jane looked crestfallen.

"You mean I have to spend eight hours playing solitaire on the TARDIS computer?" she whined. "I hate doing that."

"No," said Cuddy. "You can assist the National Guard in fixing up my hospital if you want." Sarah Jane brightened up at that, which was probably not the intended response.

"Does Gwen have that much time left? Can we afford to rest?" Tosh asked, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.

"She's technically not in any immediate danger. She could stroke again, but as long as there are people watching her, she shouldn't die," said Cuddy.

"Are you sure?" Tosh said. Jack stepped in.

"Tosh, you need rest the most of any of us. Gwen will be fine, I promise." Tosh hesitated, then nodded. Jack straightened up. "Okay, you all have nine hours to eat, shower, sleep, and do whatever you need to do. We'll meet back here."

"Before you go running off," Ten spoke up, "We should work out who's going with who."

"I get the smart girl!" Four said quickly.

"Hey, no fair!" Ten whined at him. "I wanted her!"

"Too bad. I said it first." Four grinned. Ten pouted. Tosh raised an eyebrow. Jack sighed.

"Fine. I get the pretty hospital lady then," said Ten when it became clear that the pouting wasn't going to work.

"What are you two, high school football captains picking teams?" said House.

"Me?" said Cameron excitedly.

"No, her," said Ten, pointing at Cuddy.

"Fine," said Cuddy. "Since that's settled, I'm going to go take a shower and sleep. See you all in nine hours." She strode off.

"What about me?" Jack asked Ten, sounding hurt.

"Oh yeah, I want Jack too," Ten added brightly. Jack perked up.

"I'll go with him then," said Ianto, motioning towards the other Doctor, who looked satisfied with that. Four surveyed the rest of them.

"I'll also take the froggish one," he said, pointing at Owen.

"Hey!" said Owen.

"Excuse me, what am I? Chopped liver? No! I'm a genius! Everyone should want me!" said House.

"What about me and Joey?" said Chase.

"I'll take him," said Ten, pointing at Wilson. Wilson shrugged.

"I have Sarah Jane also, so you can have the one in the wheelchair and the Australian," said Four. "I guess I'll take the cranky one."

"Good," said House, looking satisfied.

"Are we settled then?" asked Jack, looking morosely at Ianto.

"I think so," said Ten.

House had limped over to Four and was whispering something in his ear. Four looked at him and said, "Really?" House nodded confidently. "All right then. I'll trade you the one with the sideburns for the wimpy-looking one." The last bit was said to Ten.

"Hmmm." Ten glanced back and forth between them, looking contemplative. After a moment, Ianto caught on to what was happening.

"Wait. What? No! You can't do that!" he said. The two Doctors ignored him.

"Who's the wimpy one?" said Wilson. No one said anything. "Wait, me? I'm the wimpy one? I don't--oh, fine. Whatever, I don't even care."

"It's a deal," said Ten.

Four grinned. "Great, that's settled then! Nap-nap time!"

"So it's me, Owen, Dr. House, and Dr. Wilson with this Doctor and, was it Sarah Jane?" said Tosh. Sarah Jane nodded happily. "And Jack, Ianto, Dr. Cuddy, Dr. Cameron, and Dr. Chase with Jack's Doctor?"

"Whose Doctor?" said Ten.

"Don't forget Joey!" said Chase.

"Hold on a minute! I'm not going with them!" said Ianto.

"Exactly. Let's go eat," said House. He turned and walked off. Wilson followed him.

"Hey, what did you tell the Doctor to make him trade for me?" he asked. House smirked at him.

"I told him you were an excellent knitter and you'd knit him some socks to go with that lovely scarf of his."

"House! I don't know how to knit!"

"I know," said House smugly. Foreman caught up with them as they entered the building to look for a phone.

"Didn't you last have your motorcycle at the governor's mansion? Are you just going to leave it there?" he asked House.

House paused and thought back. "Shit! Hot wire me a car, Foreman, we’re getting my bike back!"

Ianto was distracted when Jack put his hands on his shoulders. “Well, looks like we’re fated to be together.”

“Go away, sir.”

“Come on, Ianto. It wasn’t me who arranged the trade.”

Ianto ignored him and proceeded back to Gwen’s room. “You’re staying here?” he asked Tracy when he got there.

“Absolutely,” she replied. “Someone has to keep an eye on Bilis, though if you ask me, he seems awfully devoted.” She sighed. “I wish I had someone like that.”

“He stabbed Gwen’s boyfriend.”

Tracy grinned. “Exactly.”

“Right, I forgot. Cheating, slapping, ball squeezing...”

“You know you’re thinking the same thing.”

“Yeah, but Jack would just get back up again.”Droid is not a real word, but Joey is

“Trouble in paradise, Ianto?” the Doctor asked, leaning in the doorway. Ianto jumped a little at his sudden appearance. “You know, I had a bet going with Martha that you’d have Jack dancing to your tune within a month. I guess I owe her.” When Ianto didn’t say anything, the Doctor came over and said, “This her?”

“Gwen Cooper. What a difference two days can make.”

“History changes in a second.”

They watched her sleep, the rise and fall of her shallow breathing causing Ianto more anxiety than any moment in the factory. “You can do it, right?”

“I’m brilliant,” Ten said. “I can do anything if I set my mind to it.”

“Good. It’s about time we got a miracle.”

To Arc 2: The Search for Chula

Back to Chapter 13: Part 2

Summary: A finale chapter so epic it requires three posts. A battle in a factory under Washington DC, a sexual liaison involving House, Jack and Wilson, and a diagnosis for Gwen are just the highlights as Arc 1: Conspiracy Theories comes to a thrilling conclusion.