Doctor Who_ Happiness Patrol Part 2

Daisy K spun lightly on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet and opened fire. Fifty yards away an ornate streetlamp exploded into a thousand pieces. Ace was impressed. 'Wicked!' she said, under her breath.

Daisy K faced them once more. 'I'm glad you're happy,'

she said. 'I won't have to lock you up.' The Doctor looked disappointed. 'But why are you here?' continued Daisy K.

'You don't look like locals.' She regarded them closely. 'In fact, you look like killjoys.'

'We're visitors,' said the Doctor. 'Just here for the night.'

'Who are the killjoys?' asked Ace.

Daisy K was surprised. 'You really don't know? You must be from offworld.' The aggression went out of her voice. 'All right, in future stay in the specifed tourist zones.'

The Doctor was puzzled. 'Sorry?'

'You may go,' said Daisy K slowly and clearly. It was like talking to children.

'You're not going to arrest us?' asked Ace.

'I don't see why.'

'They're not going to arrest us, Doctor,' said Ace. The plan wasn't working.

'Badges,' said the Doctor.

'Badges?' said Ace.

The Doctor caught the attention of Daisy K, who had gone back to watching work in progress on the TARDIS.

'I believe all offworld personnel are issued with badges at customs,' he said.

'That's right.' Daisy K realized with embarra.s.sment that she had overlooked this. 'Where are your badges?'

'I've got badges,' said Ace, proudly displaying the front of her leather jacket.

'She's got badges,' said the Doctor.

Ace pointed out a particular badge. 'This one's Charlton Athletic.'

Daisy K's patience was wearing thin. 'Not interested,'

she said, through clenched teeth. 'And you where's your badge?'

The Doctor examined his jacket. 'Oh dear. I don't seem to have one.'

Daisy K's patience snapped. She clicked her fingers and two members of the Happiness Patrol ran to her side. 'He's obviously a spy,' she snarled, 'and she's obviously his accomplice. He will disappear; she can audition for the Happiness Patrol. Take them both to the waiting zone.'

'What does that mean?' asked the Doctor.

'You're under arrest.'

'About time,' said Ace.

'Yes,' agreed the Doctor. 'We haven't got all night.'

They were marched at gunpoint through the gloomy streets. Ace's first impressions were confirmed. The city looked as if it had been built during a period of optimism, with bright colours and beautiful ornate buildings. But now it seemed as if there were neither the time nor the inclination to organize the upkeep of the streets. The paint was faded and peeling, and here and there an iron balcony or strectlamp had fallen down into the street and been left to acc.u.mulate dirt and rust.

They reached a quiet side-street lit by a single light.

Under the light, incongruously, sat an old-fashioned one-armed bandit. A man, Harold V, was playing the machine, pulling at the arm but deriving no joy from it. On the ground, a few feet away from him, was an abandoned go-kart.

While Ace was taking in these things, a woman, wearing the familiar outfit of the Happiness Patrol, approached them. She was carrying a sweet-tray around her neck. With her uniform and her sweets, she reminded Ace of the usherettes at the Perivale Odeon. But Ace forgot the comparison when she saw the woman's face. Ace had never seen human eyes like these: instead of the gla.s.sy stare of an usherette there was the steely gaze of a predator the ruthlessness of an eagle as it circles over a frightened rabbit. Ace watched as the woman accepted the cans of nitro-nine which Daisy K had removed from Ace when she had been searched.

'I thought we'd been arrested,' said Ace, as the Happiness Patrol withdrew, leaving them with the lugubrious man and the frightening woman, known to the Happiness Patrol as Priscilla P. 'I thought we were going to prison.' She turned to the Doctor but he was standing next to the one-armed bandit, offering advice.

'Hold the two bananas and nudge it. It never fails,' he said.

Ace, who knew a thing or two about one-armed bandits, watched with professional interest as Harold V followed the Doctor's instructions. Nothing happened.

'Ah well,' said Ace, smugly. 'You can't win them all.'

Harold V turned from the machine, his long face showing no sign of emotion. 'It's all right,' he said. 'I don't like winning.'

'Why's that?' asked the Doctor.

'First of all, I'm a killjoy,' Harold patiently explained, as he fed another token into the one-armed bandit. 'And second, I don't like the prize.'

'What is the prize?' Ace was interrupted by a tinny blast of electronic music coming frm the machine. Lights flashed, and as the fanfare came to an end, Helen A's smiling face appeared on a monitor set into the one-armed bandit. Harold V had won the jackpot. 'You're about to find out,' he said.

On the screen, Helen A's eyes sparkled, set off by her soft make-up, and her pink and mauve hair bounced gently. 'Congratulations and well played.' Her voice was soft. 'Here is your prize joke. Did you hear about the killjoy who won an outing with the Happiness Patrol?' She paused for effect. 'He was tickled to death! Enjoy yourself!'

The Doctor, Ace and Harold V watched in silence as the image of Helen A faded from the screen. Suddenly the machine erupted with tumultuous applause and canned laughter. After about fifteen seconds the noise stopped as abruptly as it had started.

The Doctor considered the jackpot prize. 'I see what you mean,' he said to Harold. 'Her delivery's terrible.'

'The joke's not much good either,' said Harold.

Again the Doctor had to agree. 'You're right. It's awful.

It's tasteless, smug, and worst of all, it's badly constructed.

Who writes that stuff?'

'I wrote it,' said Harold.

'You wrote it?' Ace was amazed. She had never met anyone less funny than Harold V.

'I used to be her gag writer,' he explained, 'when I was Harold F. Then my brother disappeared. I went to look for him, and I heard of other disappearances. They caught me in the rocket-port zone trying to contact Terra Omega.'

Harold V looked down at the ground remembering his desperate attempt at escape, remembering the triumph he had felt when he had contacted spies from Terra Omega, and the terror as he was hunted through the streets by the Happiness Patrol. Then there was the final humiliation when he was trapped. 'They brought me here, where I was regraded to Harold V.' He showed them the large 'V' sewn on to his tunic. Ace could see a few loose threads, presumably where the letter 'F' had been violently ripped off by Daisy K.

Something puzzled Ace. The way Harold V was talking, it sounded as if they were in prison. But looking around, there was nothing to keep them there. Priscilla P was still keeping a wary eye on them, but she looked benign, in spite of her chilling eyes. 'But what's keeping you here?'

she asked Harold. 'Why don't we just stroll off?'

The Doctor had obviously been thinking along similar lines. He approached Priscilla P and doffed his hat. 'Excuse me,' he said.

Priscilla P snarled. 'Yes?'

The Doctor waved his hand around, taking in the street.

'Is this a prison?'

Priscilla P smiled, and almost appeared to laugh. 'A prison? Of course not. This is the waiting zone. There are no prisons on Terra Alpha miserable places.'

The Doctor nodded. 'So there is no chance whatsoever that this is a place of incarceration, and we are free to go at any time.'

Ace watched this exchange from her position next to the one-armed bandit. She noticed for the first time that their part of the street was marked off from the rest of the street by a thin line of tape. The Doctor walked purposefully toward the line.

Priscilla P watched him like a hawk. 'Well, yes and no.

This isn't a prison,' she said. She delved in her sweet tray and produced a small handgun. 'But cross that line and you're a dead man.'

4.

The balloons and bunting in the yard were not for a party they were for an execution. Helen A thought it was unfortunate that Terra Alphans had to die if they refused to enjoy themselves, but if it was unavoidable, which it appeared to be, then she was determined that everybody else would enjoy the occasion. So Daisy K was in high spirits as she led Andrew X into the execution yard.

Andrew X was Harold V's brother. He was a writer, and for many years he had written about oppression on Terra Alpha. He knew that his work would never be published while Helen A ruled the planet, but with the help of Omegan secret agents, he had managed to smuggle his work to nearby Terra Omega. After many long and b.l.o.o.d.y wars, an uneasy truce had been signed between the two planets, but many political commentators were now predicting that hostilities would restart. Andrew X was something of a celebrity on Terra Omega, although he had never been there because his ident.i.ty card had long been confiscated. His books, written under a pseudonym, were always high on the best-seller lists, and his poetry and articles were always published anonymously in the weekly and monthly Omegan magazines.

But Andrew X's success on Terra Omega was a time bomb waiting to go off under his feet: an Alphan agent, working undercover as a taxi pilot, had long been monitoring his writings. Logging every reference to Terra Alpha, she had worked for five years piecing together a description of the area around Andrew X's home. Then Andrew X had written a short poem about a beautiful old theatre that was being allowed to crumble away. When the taxi pilot read the poem she punched the air with joy: she knew the theatre well she had grown up only two streets away from it. The poem was the final piece in the jigsaw, and she knew where Andrew X published from his days of freedom were numbered.

The agent was well rewarded when she communicated her discoveries to Daisy K, and the Happiness Patrol were soon breaking down Andrew X's door. They burnt his ma.n.u.scripts and smashed his printing presses. Andrew X came quietly. The arrival of the Happiness Patrol was no surprise to him the only surprise was that it had taken them so long to find him.

He had been kept in solitary confinement for six months while he had been interrogated. But Helen A had finally grown bored of him, and his execution order was signed. By the time he stumbled into the execution yard, occasionally reaching out for support as he felt his legs giving way, he was starved and weak, his black clothes torn and dirty. Three members of the Happiness Patrol marched behind him, the seams of their costumes razor-sharp; at the end of the procession was Joseph C in full military regalia.

Andrew X was positioned in the middle of the yard, and the Happiness Patrol formed up to be inspected by Joseph C. He complimented each of them on their diligence and appearance and then reached Daisy K at the head of the line.

'Congratulations,' said Joseph C, shaking her warmly by the hand. Daisy K smiled her warmest smile, basking in his approval. Joseph C moved over to Andrew X, waiting quietly in the centre of the yard. He held out his hand.

Andrew X was too weak to respond so Joseph C reached down and grasped Andrew X's limp hand.

'Bad luck, old man,' said Joseph C. 'Still, we've got to be fair, haven't we? Wouldn't be cricket, otherwise.'

Helen A sat in front of a monitor in the headquarters of the Happiness Patrol observing these scenes with impatience. She was always the same watching executions she wanted to dispense with the preliminaries and get on with the action. This feeling was particularly strong for the execution of Andrew X because she regarded him as the worst sort of killjoy a traitor. Still, Joseph was always telling her that it was important to do things properly and that the preliminaries were a vital part of the execution process. She didn't often listen to Joseph, it was true, but he seemed to feel strongly about this, and she was prepared to make a concession.

Her viewing was interrupted by a soft tap on the door.

She spun round in her chair to find the roly-poly figure of Gilbert M slipping into the room.

'You wanted to see me, ma'am.'

At first Helen A was puzzled, but then she remembered.

'Just idle curiosity, Gilbert M,' she said. 'I wondered what the Kandy Man has conjured up for us tonight.'

'It's a fondant surprise, ma'am,' said Gilbert M.

'Flavour?' she asked.

'Strawberry, ma'am,' said Gilbert.

Helen A licked her lips. 'Delicious,' she said, 'my favourite.'

In the waiting zone the Doctor was playing the one-armed bandit, trying to avoid winning the jackpot. Harold V was sitting slumped against the wall, giving Ace a list of all the things Helen A considered a crime against happiness.

'Dark clothes, as well,' he said. 'Overcoats, trilbies, shoes, wellington boots if they're black, they're blacked, if you see what I mean.' Ace looked blank. 'They're proscribed.'

Proscribed?' said Ace.

'Prohibited,' said the Doctor. He sat down beside Harold V. 'So you're telling us that Helen A punishes people for wearing dark clothes.'

Harold V nodded his a.s.sent. 'Public grief she calls it. It also covers listening to slow music.'

'Which explains that horrible lift music,' said Ace.

'And reading poems,' continued Harold V. 'Unless they're limericks, of course,' he said by way of an afterthought.