Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 24

They're not listening to me. They're too busy being important.

So I let the cobblemouse go!

It runs right down the table this live animal suddenly charging right through the middle of all their plans and points and resolutions. Mr Saldaamir looks like he's about to spontaneously combust!

'Sweet,' said the little boy. 'That's my favourite of your origin stories, too.'

The Doctor opened his eyes. He had been laughing, he realised, he felt that lightness in himself. The boys had all moved away, behind him, leaving him facing the empty dark of the warehouse.

'What do you mean?' he asked. His voice sounded very small.

'Is this the version where they banned all mention of his name, and yours, for consorting with aliens? Or the one where he got every record of himself deleted from the files?'

'Feel free to believe either of them,' snapped the Doctor, 'or both of them, or neither of them. If you're curious about my past, I want there to be as many wrong answers as possible.'

'Memory's funny,' said the boy. His face crept into the Doctor's vision, a blur at the extreme right. 'You remember something one way.'

'And then someone tells you it happened a different way,' said the boy, from his left.

'Are you remembering what happened?'

'Or are you just remembering remembering it?'

'And then it sleeps in your mind. Until one day. . . '

He felt the needle flex inside him.

'All gone,' said the boy.

'Did you ' The smell of karmine pudding, the. . . Did you take ' The smell of. . .

151.

'What's gone?' he asked, in a small voice.

Somewhere behind him, one of the boys sn.i.g.g.e.red.

The sound echoed around the crowded kitchen, set off more voices, until a whole chorus of the little boy were jeering at him behind his back.

He waited out the sound.

'Your turn,' he told the boy wearily. 'The location of the unnaturalist's hide-out. That's all I need.'

'Coming right up.'

The boy's hand reached into the corner of his field of view, unclipping the vials from the sampler still deep inside his head, snapping an already-filled set into place.

The ping of a trigger spring. The needle slid out of his skull.

'You cheated,' he said. 'I already knew the address. I remember tracking one of the Henches to the old music shop.'

Giggling. 'Memory cheats,' said a boy.

'But it happened,' said the Doctor. 'You didn't just implant a memory. You changed my biodata. You changed my past!'

'Are you sure?'

'It's impossible,' said the Doctor. 'It's impossible for my people. Our past is unreachable. What's written can't be unwritten.'

'Who said your history can't change?'

Another boy answered, 'Someone from his history.'

And another: 'Maybe it's the second-biggest lie in Time Lord history.'

'Maybe it changes all the time.'

Someone giggled. 'Let's play pin the tale on the donkey.'

'Maybe you didn't use to have a father.'

'Maybe you're living in the middle of a time war. Maybe there's an Enemy out there '

The Doctor shouted, 'I'm not listening!'

' who's rewriting you when you're not looking!'

'Maybe you weren't always half human.'

'But now you've become become always half human.' always half human.'

'Maybe you weren't always a Time Lord.'

'But now you've always always been a Time Lord.' been a Time Lord.'

'Maybe you originally came from some planet in the forty-ninth century. Flee-ing from the Enemy who'd overrun your home '

'I said I'm not listening! Laa laa laa laa laa '

' and you've just been written and rewritten and overwritten, ever since.'

152.

'Pin the tale!'

'How d'you know it's not true?'

'How could could you know it's not true?' you know it's not true?'

The voices crowded in. 'How would you know, huh?'

'How would you know?'

'How would 'How would you 'How 'How would you know? you know? you know? know?'

'Why would I care care?' shouted the Doctor.

The boy fell silent.

'Now, are you going to let me out of this?' He pointed with his eyes at the clamps holding his head in place. The boy on either side started to fumble with it. 'Oh, never mind, I'll do it,' said the Doctor, reaching up with his freed right hand.

He turned his head, taking in the gloriously startled look of the boy on his right. The next dozen iterations were all staring at him, trying to work out how he'd got his hand free. Well, good. Let them wonder.

He went on extracting himself. 'I'm sorry if you were hoping for a tormented scream of "Who am I?" Even if I'm only whoever I am at this particular moment, I've got enough other things to worry about besides the nature of reality.'

There was no wound on his temple, no puncture mark. Nothing.

He sprang to his feet, gave the boys a brief bow, and walked away.

He was halfway to the front door of the church when he saw the white hypercube, lying there, abandoned on the floor.

He was still staring at it when the boy came up behind him. 'I sent this,' said the Doctor, and his voice was shaking, for the first time since he'd entered the church. 'They're impossible to intercept. I sent it to Gallifrey, asking for help.

How did you get it?' He wheeled. ' How? How? ' '

'Maybe there's no one home on Gallifrey,' said the boy softly. There was just the one of him.

The Doctor looked at him, cupping the small white cube in his hands. The boy said, 'Maybe they all left. Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment.'

'Enough,' said the Doctor.

'Or perhaps someone wanted us to handle it.'

'Flapdoodle,' snapped the Doctor. 'You're a menace to s.p.a.ce-time. The Time Lords are more likely to quietly erase you from history than do a deal.'

But the cube was there, in his hand.

153.

'Let me tell you a story,' said the little boy.

Once upon a time, says the Book of Lies Book of Lies, Life came back to Gallifrey after ten million years of winter.

The Great Grey Eminence, fast asleep in his tomb, didn't like it. He didn't want any of this pa.s.sion pa.s.sion in his nice, sterile world. They were taking a little too much licence with his favourite reality. So he took a little licence himself. in his nice, sterile world. They were taking a little too much licence with his favourite reality. So he took a little licence himself.

He did a deal with the Devil to make things unhappen. The Devil's minions changed everything back, just the way he wanted. And then they took the one who brought Life back in the first place, and they folded his timeline back on itself pinning his past down, the way they wanted it, making him what they said he should be, nothing more. Pinning the tale on the donkey.

But the Devil did it all for his own reasons. He wanted to teach the Great Grey Eminence the ways of Paradox. And the Devil knows that if he can get G.o.d to break the rules. . . he wins.

'A charming fairy story,' said the Doctor.

'It's about Sam,' leered the boy. 'Think about it. If the old guy in the tomb didn't want any hanky-panky on Gallifrey, don't you think he'd want to make sure you were paired up with a good little girl, who'd never dare to screw you?'

The Doctor decided not to dignify that with a reply.

'It's about the naturalist, too,' said the boy.

The boy was just a shadow among the shadows in the church. The Doctor wondered if they were standing, ghostlike, in the middle of the congregation.

'He wants to pin down the b.u.t.terfly and list it in his book. You gotta be just exactly what he knows you are. Nothing more. They all want you to behave.

But you don't have to.'

The boy's voice was becoming a silky whisper. 'Be a kid,' he said. 'No past.

No future. No rules. No 'sponsibilities.' He reached out a skinny hand.

The Doctor stared at the impenetrable hypercube, feeling small in the face of what he didn't know.

I usually get on so well with children, he thought shakily.

He murmured, 'When I was born this time around, for a time, I had no idea at all who I was. What I was supposed to do.' He drew a ragged breath. 'And I was happy happy.'

'Yeah,' said the boy. 'That's it.'

154.

Slowly the Doctor drew a deep breath. Then he shrugged. 'The thing is, a lot of the time I've been just as happy since then.' He turned away. 'Sorry. Maybe next time.'

And he went out through the dark, leaving the boy singing mockingly, a chorus of jeering child voices in the distance, twisted playground words for a song he'd known all his life.

Sing the past to me, 'cause I'm the one who wrote the song, I made it up next week so all the words will come out wrong, The past won't keep you warm tonight, the future's blown to bits, And everything that you believe is really full of The door slammed shut behind him.

Chapter Fourteen..

For now, there was nothing outside the room they were in. And even the room was negotiable when his eyes were closed.

All Fitz could do was curl himself around her, feel her head and shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s (b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Sam's b.r.e.a.s.t.s) pressed against his ribs, and try to shush the little voice that was gloating, just waiting waiting for something to go wrong. for something to go wrong.

He trailed a lazy hand down along her back, around her side, down past the slight curve of her lower belly.

'Hang on,' he said. 'Where did your piercing go?'