Doctor Who_ Human Nature Part 24

August sighed. 'The idea is, we spread out a bit and try and cut off all their exits.

The Pod may be singing away now, but we can't guarantee that it won't have stopped by the time we get there. All right?'

'All right!' Greeneye grabbed the second scanner and marched off determinedly.

'Sometimes,' August opined, 'I wish someone else was the oldest.' He checked the scanner. 'Come on then, let's finish this.'

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'h.e.l.lo, Tim!' Smith called brightly. 'Please, don't run away, we've been looking for you.'

Tim stepped forward uncertainly. 'Dr Smith, Mrs Redfern... What happened to the school?'

'It was blown up,' Smith told him, walking towards him. 'In other circ.u.mstances, we'd have a party, but - '

'No you wouldn't. You liked the place. You liked everything about it.' Tim began to back away. 'You've come to get me because I ran away. When I was bullied, you told me to put up with it.'

'Yes. I did.' Smith stopped and considered. 'I did that because I was trying very hard. To fit in. To be one of the gang. I wanted to have a place so much that I did things I didn't really want to do.' He glanced at Joan. 'I've got a place now, I know who I want to be. I've grown up. I'm sorry that I gave you the wrong advice.'

'So it's all right that I ran away from school?'

'If you don't like a place, you shouldn't stay there.'

'And what about the bullies?'

'They're the worst thing in the world. It's a big circle. They hurt people. The people they hurt feel powerless and go on to hurt other people when they're able to. And the original bullies were once hurt themselves. The wheel keeps on turning. Unless you step off.'

'That's what I'm going to do,' said Tim firmly. 'That's what's in this sphere, you know, the things you need to know so that you don't have to cause harm.'

Joan spoke up. 'John knows all about that, now.'

'Well, that's good. For myself, I know I shall never hurt anybody again.' Tim paused for a moment. 'Were you ever bullied, Dr Smith?'

Smith took a deep breath. 'That depends on what you call me. I remember running through the streets of Aberdeen, with a gang of boys behind me. I remember a lot of military louts shouting at me, and I remember girls hating and excluding me.

That's in here.' He tapped his head. 'But in there' - he gestured towards the Pod - 'I remember other kinds of bullying. A boy in my cla.s.s who so hated and loved me that he kept upsetting my experiments. I made myself forget it, thought that I was an adult and could leave it behind. But if you ignore that, you ignore yourself.' He closed his eyes, concentrating on what the sphere was telling him. 'Recently, I thought I had become wiser than him, but found that I was still hurting people terribly.' He opened his eyes again, an expression of excited discovery on his face.

'I'd climbed back on the wheel. Become a bully. Which is why I decided to stop.'

'Being a bully?'

'Being me.'

Joan put a hand on Smith's shoulder. 'So it's all true? This man I've got to know isn't the real you?'

Smith took her hand. 'He is now. Tim, I know what you're carrying. It's mine, though I didn't know it until now.'

'Then I should give it back to you.' He was frowning, something in his head shouting to him about context and consequences.

'Yes.' Smith held out his hand.

Tim paused, looking at the Pod. 'If I put it to my head, I'd change, wouldn't I?'

'You'd become the Doctor, I suppose. Do you want to?'

'He's the one in the Pod?'

'Apparently.' Smith concentrated on what he was feeling from the Pod. 'He's like me, only inhuman. Dangerous. Loving greatly but not small-ly. He's Merlin. You know the sort of thing.'

'You were him?'

'I took that part of me out and put it in there.' 'Do you want to be him again?'

'No,' Smith said firmly. 'I don't think he's quite me any more.'

'I feel like I should tell them to form a crocodile,' Benny muttered. She and Alexander were leading a group of four boys down the track that led on to the hills.

They'd spent the last half hour wandering about the hummocks and dells of the hillsides in the dark, the boys occasionally gazing down at the moonlit gla.s.s palace that had once been their school. 'I mean, why did we do this? Was Tim really fond of coming up here?'

'He did go up there sometimes, miss,' Merryweather said.

'Call me Bernice or Benny, I really don't like being reminded of my marital status every sentence, particularly at the moment.'

'You're thinking about Dr Smith's engagement?' asked Alexander. 'Oh dear.' He glanced at the startled boys. 'That's let the cat out of the bag.'

'To Mrs Redfern, I gather?' said Alton. 'Everybody knows that those two are sweet on each other.'

'Bleh,' said Merryweather.

'My thoughts exactly.' Benny patted him on the head. 'I mean, she's so old. . .'

'Don't you think that you're being a bit jealous, loved one?' said Alexander.

'Jealous? No, no, I don't think it's jealously to hope that the man who's been transporting you about the place won't settle down in one small country and. . . oh yarbles.'

'Yarbles?'

'It's terribly rude, but they won't understand that either.'

'Interesting,' Alton began, 'that we're old enough to be shot at, but not to hear wicked words.'

Benny ignored him. 'The only reason he sent us off to do this was so that he could spend some time alone with Mrs Redfern. And in the middle of a crisis! I ask you!'

'Well, we've got a few minutes to kill before we get back to the pub,' Alexander said soothingly. 'I don't suppose we could go and have a look at what's happened to the school?'

'Oh, could we, miss?' the boys started to call. 'Could we?'

'Stop! Stop!' Benny waved her arms for quiet. 'I don't believe this! There are people out there who are trying to shoot us, but you want to go sightseeing.'

'We could just take a look from a distance. If anybody's there, we'll sneak off again. Benny, it's made of gla.s.s, where are they going to hide?'

'All right,' Benny agreed. 'But we just pop our heads up, say ooh, and pop them down again. OK?'

'Thank you, miss.' Merryweather gave her a little hug. Benny shrugged him off.

'And no hugging.'

They crept up to the remains of the boundary hedge between the school and the forest.

'Ready?' Benny asked. One, two, three!'

They all stuck their heads up over the hedge. 'Ooh,' said Merryweather.

The gla.s.s school shone in the moonlight, casting a fabulously complex shadow of intersecting silver. 'There's somebody inside,' said Alton.

And indeed there was. Two dark shapes moved through the building, randomly like ghosts. 'Is it them?' Alexander asked.

'No,' Alton replied. 'One of them's wearing a Hulton uniform.'

'It might still be them. I'll go and take a closer look,' Benny told them. 'And no, Merryweather, you can't come too.' She hopped through a gap in the hedge.

The two figures resolved themselves as Bernice got closer to the spectral building.

It was Rocastle, with that awful boy Hutchinson behind him, wandering from room to room, a large book in his hands. Benny stepped through an open window, wondering as she did so about the incongruity of the dull panes of gla.s.s in the gleaming walls, and approached them. The aliens would never do anything so trivial and English as whatever these two were doing.

Rocastle turned from inspecting one of the gla.s.s statues that the bomb had made of the boys. 'Ah, Miss Summerfield. I'm glad to see that you survived. Are any of the boys with you?'

Benny found herself chilled by his matter-of-fact tone. 'Dr Smith got most of his House out. Apart from that, I don't know.'

'He ran away, you mean!' Hutchinson snarled. 'If he'd stayed at his post, this might not have happened! How many lives do you think his cowardice cost?'

With a great effort, Bernice ignored him. 'I wouldn't recommend staying around here. The aliens might be back.'

'Oh, do we know for certain that they're aliens?' Rocastle asked, making a tick in his book. 'They sounded almost English to me.'

'What are you doing here, anyway?'

'I staged a retreat, took a number of my boys out through the dormitory windows and on to the roof of the sheds. Then the explosion happened. Like magic, isn't it?

Quite like magic. Anyhow, after it had all died down, I thought it'd be best to ascertain the casualties. I'm going to have to answer for the life of every one of these boys, Miss Summerfield. The least I can do is identify them.'

Benny couldn't help asking, 'What's the difference between a retreat and running away, exactly?'

'The difference is, he's in charge!' Hutchinson told her. 'He gives the orders, which Smith disobeyed.'

'I wouldn't get so touchy about it. What's past is past.' Rocastle waved a hand airily. 'Smith has some good sides to him. Knock off a few comers and he'd be a solid chap. What he has to do is to concentrate on what's best, eliminate the negative.'

Benny followed as the teacher and pupil wandered into another gla.s.s room, this one full of small statues. Some of them were throwing their hands into the air, some had intensely pained expressions on their faces. The light creaking of the gla.s.s suggested somehow that the pain continued, even in death. 'So what are you going to do after you've finished this?'

Rocastle looked up from the register and tapped his teeth with his pen. 'Oh, I think I shall have to eliminate the negative altogether. Do my duty. I have no future, madam.'

Bernice shook her head. 'Look, there are other ways to go about these things.

We've got a party of boys together. Come with us.'

Rocastle seemed to consider it with the same gentle dislocation that had rolled over all his decisions. 'All right. When we've finished this.'

'If you don't want to use it,' Timothy asked, 'what do you want it for?'

Smith slowly withdrew his hand.

Joan glanced between them and decided to break the deadlock. Her poor old heart had been filled with joy at Smith's declaration. Astonishing as it was that he really had once been some kind of cosmological wizard, his decision not to take it all up again had been vast. A grand sacrifice for her, a big gesture that, in her emotions now, made him every inch her husband.

'I say,' she began, 'could I have a go with this magic object?'

Smith looked at Tim. 'What do you think?'

'Just don't put it too close to your head.' Tim handed Joan the Pod slowly and suspiciously, shivering slightly as he let go of it.

Joan took the Pod in her hand. 'Don't worry, I won't run away with it.' She felt it react, in some odd way, to the new touch. Then she closed her fist round it and closed her eyes. 'Arthur,' she whispered. 'Oh my G.o.d, Arthur.' Then, with a cry, she let go of it.

The Pod fell to the ground. Joan took a step back from it. 'I saw Arthur, my husband, as he died. And then I felt the Doctor in the sphere. His opinion of it. He was so distant, so... cold. It was as if he was watching that death in my mind, but from such a height. Oh, John, I'm afraid of him, I'm so afraid of him.'

John held her, patting her arm. 'I'm quite scared of him myself. It's odd that you saw Arthur. On the way here, I kept seeing images of Verity. It's like she's in the Pod's memories, but also in my own. I remember our courtship, how we kissed on the rocks in the moonlight. But she's in the glimpses I get of my other past. Why should that be?'

Tim picked up the Pod again. 'I don't know. But, please, answer my question. If you don't want to use the Pod, why do you want it back?'

Smith decided to tell the truth. 'I want to give the Pod to those attacking us, since it's all they want. We don't need it. Then they'll go away and stop killing people.'

Tim stared at him, his expression pained. 'I wish - I wish I could agree' - he suddenly stuffed the Pod into his blazer pocket - 'but I can't. I won't let you do that.

It isn't right.'

'Timothy, let's talk about it, work it out - ' Smith grabbed the boy's shoulders urgently.

A blast of blue light silently exploded the ground between them. Timothy and Smith stumbled backwards, both looking in horror in the direction of the blast.

August and Hoff stood at the end of the orchard, their weapons trained on the humans. 'We have cut off your retreat,' August advised them. 'There is no escape.

Now, let's put an end to all this destruction, shall we? We know that the boy has the Pod. Give it to us.'

'What do you want it for, exactly?'

Smith asked. 'We've already been through all this with Professor Summerfield,'

August began.

'Professor? I didn't know she was a professor,' Smith grinned. 'Do you know what of?'