Doctor Who_ Human Nature Part 7

Greeneye snarled, slammed his gun into some invisible holster and reached down with his free hand to grab Benny. He hauled her up to his eye-level by her hair, and shook her until the sc.r.a.ps of balloon, now turning an ugly brown, fell from her face. 'You hurt her!' he bellowed.

'You started it,' Benny told him.

He yanked her head roughly to one side.

Her hair-extensions came away in his hand. He stared at them for a second.

She b.u.t.ted him across the bridge of the nose.

Greeneye fell back and slashed wildly with his sword.

The blade cut a fine line across the blouse material over Benny's stomach.

She turned and sprinted away along the ditch in her bloomers, glancing over her shoulder to see him scramble to his feet, clutching his nose. A little crowd of townsfolk were kicking the stile away. One pointed at her, and suddenly Greeneye was at the centre of a ma.s.s of hearty and drunken young men, determined to avenge her honour. She ignored gallant shouts to return and jumped up on to a gate, then over it.

She landed in a side-road, right in front of Mr Hodges' greengrocer's wagon.

'Whoa!' Hodges shouted, pulling up the horses as they whinnied and bucked. He opened his mouth at the sight of Benny's muddied and disrobed state, blushed and started frantically to clamber out of his ap.r.o.n. 'What in - ? I mean, by G.o.d, girl-'

Benny jumped up beside him and swiftly covered herself up with the ap.r.o.n.

'Home, Mr Hodges,' she told him grimly. 'And don't spare the horses.'

Chapter Four.

Good and Bad at Games

Smith wobbled out on to the pitch, pullovers wrapped around his waist. He took up his place on the little rise beside the cricket pitch. On a distant hillside, a shaft of undiluted sunlight was illuminating the ground.

Smith wished he were there. Only this cricket practice, and then he could go home, change, settle down to dinner and conversation with Joan.

It had been nice to see Bernice. She was like her father in some way, he wasn't really sure which. Jonathan had been in the Navy, broke his nose in Pompey Barracks. Bit of a clumsy so and so. Which was odd, for a sailor. Smith pondered on his image of sailors. He'd known of two, and both seemed very unlike everything he knew about the profession. Everything he'd learnt.

He glanced down at the woollens wrapped about his waist. He remembered the feel of them. He'd worn one that his mother had made for him, playing in the street with the other children. His should a.s.sociate them with proud poverty and ambition.

But still, somewhere in a dream, he felt different things about this material.

Something about it spoke of sacrifice.

What a strange existence this was, when all that was inside him seemed to contradict the world. Bigger on the inside than the outside, and bursting at the seams.

'Sir? Sir?' Anand was calling. 'We're ready to play, sir.' Smith started and looked up. 'Yes. Ready. Have you picked teams?' He glanced around and saw that a complete field had been a.s.sembled on the pitch, and that Hutchinson and Merryweather had taken up position, doubtless without much debate, with their bats at each wicket. Alton turned his head from wicket-keeping and raised an eyebrow at Smith questioningly. A line of boys were sitting beside him with varied degrees of interest, ready to get padded up and go on. 'I see that you have. Well, go on.'

Anand nodded and turned to begin his run-up. Smith glanced over his shoulder and saw Tim, way out on the boundary, gazing at the infield hopefully. Smith chastised himself. One little mental wander, and the Hulton team captain was sent off to the middle of nowhere. He glanced back at Hutchinson, the watery sunlight dappling the boy's shirt as he thumped his crease, antic.i.p.ating Anand's first ball.

And tried to ignore the fact that the boy looked up to smirk at him.

Bernice ran from the cart into her cottage and bolted the door behind her. Hodges had spent the whole journey asking her half-embarra.s.sed, half-salacious questions, and seemed to be on the verge of either calling the police or following her inside when she'd hopped from his cart.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she ran into her bedroom, and winced. No time to wash the mud off. She flicked open the locks of her cases, and pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt and some more useful boots than these lace-up monstrosities with heels. Finally, her work jacket with all the pockets. They'd expect her to head straight for the Pod, of course, but if she could do that without them tracking her, then all she had to do was to rugby-tackle Smith and put the thing against his forehead.

She crept quickly downstairs, mentally saying goodbye to the place. Her easel still stood in the garden outside, the painting half-finished.

Everything spoilt, as always.

Aphasia staggered down the hospital corridor, holding her stomach. Her tiny hand clutched for the railing on the wall, and she pushed herself along with it, leaving traces of brown liquid at every touch. That didn't make much difference to the overall colour scheme. The walls were covered with a thin organic paste, green and brown, which was also dripping from the ceiling as a cycle of mist and condensation.

This place smelt. This whole world smelt. They'd taken her away in a vehicle, when she'd been injured, and they'd tried to make her lie down and put a mask over her face. She'd tried to tell them that she just needed to go and heal herself, but they didn't listen, they just said stupid things to her.

The gas hadn't knocked her out, and when they noticed that, they'd taken off the mask and started talking excitedly to each other. They wheeled her into this place on a trolley.

So she'd opened the pouch in her wrist, and pulled out the bulb, and then they'd started to scream.

Through the haze of her vision, the little girl saw that, ahead of her, a nurse had fallen, pulling over a trolley of instruments as she did. The body lay across the junction of two corridors and was still fairly intact. Aphasia redoubled her efforts to walk and stumbled to her knees beside the body.

The wrist pouch wouldn't close. She'd die if she didn't do something soon and that'd let down all her fathers and her dear son, Hoff.

She reached for the nurse's decaying face, and started to feed.

'Sir!'

Smith, despite his intentions, was deep in Mansfield Park Mansfield Park when he heard the shout. when he heard the shout.

He waved a hand distractedly - - and found a cricket ball in it.

The schoolboys applauded and whistled. Smith tossed the ball back to the bowler and bowed exaggeratedly.

'That could have taken your head off, sir!' said Phipps, awed.

'Oh, probably not. Still, someone must be looking after me ...' Smith would have turned his attention back to his book, but the boys became agitated again, a great whispering and the occasional whistle disturbing those sitting beside him.

He looked up to see his niece, dressed in very tight trousers, running frantically across the ground towards him. The batsmen paused as she ran between the wickets, their gaze following her, awestruck.

As soon as Bernice reached the little rise where Smith was sitting, she was offered a flurry of jackets and pullovers to cover herself with, as well as a panama hat from the laconic Alton. She waved them all aside, grabbed Smith's hand and hauled him to his feet.

'Come on,' she said. 'I've got something to show you.' The boys coughed and muttered things, and a few grins sprang up.

'I haven't time...' Smith looked around in confusion. 'This is Bernice, my niece.

Bernice, these are my boys.'

'There's no time for that. You must come with me, it's a matter of life and death.'

'It is?' Smith squared his jaw. 'Very well. Lead on.' He pointed stoically and marched off, then glanced back. 'Shall I bring some of the boys?'

'No,' Benny told him. 'Just bring yourself.'

'Finish the game,' Smith called back to his cla.s.s as she led him away by the arm, quite a bit faster than he was able to walk. 'Then go in for prep if I'm not back.'

Hutchinson stared after them, shaking his head at the little man. 'Have a nice time, Smith,' he snarled. 'The Head's going to love this.'

'Bernice, where are you taking me?' Smith protested, shaking off her arm. They were marching through the orchard that bordered the school, a vast, overgrown river of fruit trees that was part of the Marcham Estate. They had already ventured too far off the footpath for Smith's liking. This was almost certainly trespa.s.sing.

'To...' Bernice stopped and turned slowly, pointing at strange red marks on three trees. She settled on the middle one. 'This particular tree. Sit down under it. We're about to recreate a moment in history.'

Smith sat, cross-legged, under the tree, looking rather embarra.s.sed. 'Which one?'

'Newton and the apple.' Benny put her foot up on a low branch and started to climb up the tree.

Smith looked quickly away. 'Those trousers are rather immodest.'

Benny frowned as she climbed. 'I'm not used to you noticing things like that. Ah, here we are.' The crown of the tree was swollen, as if a growth of some kind was inside. Following the instructions in the Doctor's note, Benny had put the red sphere there and watched as the tree's wood had grown to encompa.s.s it in seconds.

Apparently, Time Lord biodata had that effect on living things, making them a bit like Time Lords. A Time Lord-ish tree wouldn't be as disturbing as a Time Lord-ish person, or even sheep. Benny wondered if the tree's bark rings were forming question marks or something. Indeed, in the brief time that she'd handled the Pod, Benny herself had felt an odd sense of presence to the thing. For the same reasons, the sphere couldn't be kept in the TARDIS. It would mess up the telepathic circuits.

She pulled the TARDIS key from her pocket, and, dangling it over the tree, slapped the swollen wood three times with her hand.

The wood flowed back like liquid, to reveal - - an empty, ball-shaped cavity.

Benny swore six times. 'And is that really ladylike language?' asked Smith.

'Shut up,' Benny snapped. 'Whether you know it or not, we're both in a great deal of trouble.'

Sitting at a little distance from the other boys, Tim sneaked a look at the red sphere in his pocket.

He'd found it when he was walking on his own in the orchard. He'd felt drawn to a particular tree, and sat down in its shadow. Before long, he'd fallen asleep.

When he awoke, the red sphere was sitting on his chest.

It looked like it had fallen from the tree. The thing was hard and shiny, a shine that couldn't be scratched. It looked very like a cricket ball, actually, except there was no seam, no indication of how such a thing might have been made.

He always kept it with him now, because it made him feel a little better. It was like he had a secret, something that made him special. The sphere seemed to tell him things, sometimes, in that a thought came into his mind that he couldn't possibly have thought. The thoughts were always brave and n.o.ble.

Perhaps he was a prince, secretly in charge of some foreign land, and this was one of the crown jewels of that place. Just seeing it caused him to remember his true destiny.

'Captain Bug! Are you listening to me, Captain Bug?' Hutchinson was standing over him. 'Our wonderful form master has taken the new b.a.l.l.s away with him.

Give us that.' He s.n.a.t.c.hed the red sphere from Tim.

Tim stared after the boy as he walked off, idly tossing the sphere in one hand. He took up position distantly then ran in fast to bowl at the small boy who'd taken up his stance in front of the wicket.

Tim jumped to his feet. 'No!' he shouted, and ran forward.

Hutchinson bowled. Disturbed by the shout, the batsman skewed the ball high in the air, right above Tim.

The young boy stared up at it, silhouetted against the bright sky. He began to shiver terribly.

The ball was whistling as it came down, and the sky had turned dark and ruddy. He heard Hutchinson shouting something.

He raised his hands in a gesture of prayer. The explosion engulfed them, their whites turning to cinder and their faces jerking back in frozen expressions of pain and sudden surrender.

And then Tim was just standing there, holding the ball.

The other boys weren't screaming, they were laughing. The batsman was staring at him incredulously.

'Is it possible to get one of your own side out?' laughed Hutchinson. 'Just the sort of leadership we need, Captain Bug!'

In the distance, bells began to ring. The boys picked up their kit bags, and started to file towards the school for prep.

But Tim stayed, looking at the sphere, for a long time.

'But there was something there you needed to see! You have to believe me!' Benny walked quickly after Smith back towards the school. 'Your real name is the Doctor, you're not from this planet. Try and remember!'

Smith glared at her with a mixture of anger and disturbed pity. 'If I'm not from this planet, why do I look and sound like a Scottish schoolteacher?'

'I... I don't know why; you've looked and sounded like a number of Englishmen too.'

'Now I know you're making this up.' 'Look, I can show you a box that's bigger on the inside than the outside.'

Smith closed his eyes, as if struck by a sudden thought, but he just as quickly opened them again and kept walking, not looking at Benny. 'Thank you, no, I've got a dinner appointment. I mustn't be late.'

'Listen, there are people out there who might want to hurt you.'

'Ah.' Smith turned suddenly and pointed at her, an uneasy half-frown on his face.

'You're trying to distract me. Don't. I'm confused enough. All these...' He waggled the hand irritatedly, searching for the right word. 'All these... fantasies. They're bad for you. They get between you and the real world. This is all there is, Bernice. The school and the boys and dinner. We can't leave it, we can't change it. We just have to live with it. So do that. University seems to have been a bad idea for you. I'll talk to Jonathan about it. And put some clothes on. Good night.'

Benny stopped, and watched Smith march into the school buildings.

When he was out of earshot, she swore eight times.

She returned to the cottage carefully, making her way from hedge to hedge as if this quiet little town was a war zone. She hadn't been followed going to get the Pod, so the man with the sword probably wasn't tracking her now. A fire engine roared past down the street, a fireman on the side ringing its bell urgently as the wooden ladder on its roof rocked from side to side. Bernice noticed that a column of brown smoke was rising from the other side of town. That looked ominous.

Perhaps the lads at the pub hadn't detained her attacker for very long. That was a worrying thought, unarmed humans circa circa 1914 taking on somebody armed with sophisticated weaponry like that. Between them, the man and the little girl could cut a swathe through this lot. And there was no Doctor to stop them. 1914 taking on somebody armed with sophisticated weaponry like that. Between them, the man and the little girl could cut a swathe through this lot. And there was no Doctor to stop them.

So what was she going to do? There was always the TARDIS. If she could kidnap Smith somehow and get him inside, she might actually be able to persuade him of the truth. She hadn't tried to go into the details of what had happened yet. They sounded pretty ridiculous even to her, but maybe they'd touch a nerve.

She broke from cover and dashed up the path to the cottage gate then unlocking the door with one twist of the key. If this was going to be a long-term job, or even if Smith really was going to snap out of it in three weeks, she needed to put a pack together. The b.l.o.o.d.y forest was beckoning again.

Having checked every room, Bernice quickly a.s.sembled the basics: camping stove; tent; bottle of rather fine Aldebaran brandy; and shoved them all into a bag. She'd brought them along for outings, but the comfort of the cottage had kept her here.