Doctor Who (18 page)

‘Well, ding-dong, hello Miss Belle!’ said the Doctor, grabbing her hand again and forcing her to shake his. ‘So, me and my friends Sabel and Ollus here have just done a round trip of ten randomly selected Sunlight Worlds, just to get a flavour of what the Daleks are up to.’

Lillian looked around sharply, to see if anyone was watching. Luckily, it seemed as though everyone in the street was quite happily getting on with their own business.

‘Making you nervous, am I, Lillian?’ asked the Doctor, earnestly. ‘That seems odd to me. I mean, I’ve been to plenty of planets run by the Daleks and they’re usually pretty dreary places, full of slave labour camps and zombified Robomen shouting orders and hitting people. And what do I find on the Sunlight Worlds? Nothing much wrong! Imagine that! Eh?’

‘Look …’ Lillian started.

‘Look? I
have
been looking,’ continued the Doctor, fearlessly. ‘I grant you, it’s all a bit “new town”, bit Milton Keynes, but to be honest, it’s all pretty … 
nice. Nice
places for
nice
people to live in relatively comfortable surroundings … 
nicely
. Holographic TV everywhere packed with quizzes and reality shows, a thriving, free press that no one takes much notice of – but then why should they, when everything’s so …’ he swallowed hard and unpleasantly, evidently unhappy with what he was about to say, ‘lovely and
nice
?’

Lillian withdrew her hand again, but placed it on the Doctor’s shoulder.

‘You should come with me,’ she said quietly and urgently, close to his ear.

The Doctor turned sharply to her and spoke equally quietly and urgently. ‘You see, I’m just running out of patience, Lillian Belle. I want to know why the Daleks are covering up their true nature so skilfully. I want to know what they’re up to. And most of all, I want to let everyone know the truth about the Daleks and their long, apparently forgotten history of conquest and extermination. Any ideas how I might do that?’
Deep inside a gigantic spacecraft, at the centre of a structure fashioned over centuries so that it could actually protrude into the Time Vortex itself, the Dalek Time Controller was observing events. Behind it, a squad of high-ranking Daleks assembled. Chief among them was the Dalek Supreme in its pristine white, formidable, bulky armour casing.

Twitching impatiently on the spot, the Supreme dared to speak. ‘We should intervene now!’

Its words echoed around the time chamber and spiralled out into the Vortex, evaporating into nothing.

The silence was ominous. The other Daleks edged back, instinctively nervous.

Then, the Dalek Time Controller spoke. Its voice purred quietly, hardly vocalised at all.

‘No,’ it said.

The Dalek Supreme was not used to being contradicted. ‘We must proceed to activate the Cradle of the Gods and—’

‘No!’ the Time Controller suddenly screeched. The Supreme edged backwards at this.

The Time Controller continued, quietly now. ‘An infinite number of factors must be taken into account. The Doctor’s course is set. Set by
me
.’

For the first time in a long while, the Dalek Time Controller turned away from the Vortex and faced the other Daleks. The swirling, blurring rings across its grating increased their rotation as if in excitement. The other Daleks swayed, almost mesmerised by this motion.

‘We must not intervene. Any intervention now
would create disturbances in the flow of time that would ultimately harm the Daleks,’ it said. ‘This is my purpose. That which I have been engineered for … the ultimate victory of the Daleks through pure strategy.’

Then the Dalek Time Controller suddenly shot forwards, moving so that it was almost touching the Dalek Supreme. The Controller’s words were almost inaudible, but the power of them was devastating.

‘And …

‘You …

‘Will …

‘Obey.’

The Dalek Supreme stared back at the Controller’s blue, glaring eye lens and uttered two words it was not accustomed to saying.

‘I … obey.’

When the Doctor, Sabel and Ollus arrived with Lillian Belle at her apartment, it didn’t take the Doctor long to spot the incredible technology that had been installed here. He immediately bombarded Lillian with questions. He found out that she was a journalist, that she was suspicious about the Daleks. She told him how she had discovered that the drivers from the train crash had probably been killed by Daleks. She told him everything she knew about the secret resistance who, like her, knew that the Daleks were planning something. Something terrible.

For the first time, the Doctor noticed that Sabel was joining in with Ollus in his toy spaceship adventures. She was looking after Ollus, the Doctor realised. She was
taking on the role of parent, very probably mimicking things she had heard her late mother and father say. The tragedy she had experienced was forcing her to grow up faster.

After glancing affectionately at the children, the Doctor turned his attention back to Lillian. He saw her looking warmly at Sabel and Ollus.

‘How did they lose their sister?’ Lillian asked quietly.

‘The Daleks took her,’ said the Doctor. ‘But we’re going to get her back.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I have to be. She’s alive. She has to be. It’s my number one objective, and nobody gets in the way of my number one objective – not even the Daleks.’

The Doctor sprang off the sofa he had been reclining on and moved close to the large window overlooking the small garden.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Fascinating memory-cell technology. Very advanced. Very advanced for a small resistance group working undercover and doing so little to topple the rule of the Daleks.’

‘How do you topple an occupying force that everyone trusts?’ asked Lillian pointedly.

‘Fair point,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘Fair point. Still … does seem rather over-elaborate to me.’

‘It has to be,’ said Lillian. ‘We can’t risk anyone finding out.’

‘And yet
you
gave yourself away pretty easily,’ the Doctor snapped back at her, raising an admonishing finger.

Lillian seemed a little stung and couldn’t think of
anything to say. She looked ashamed.

The Doctor breezed on. ‘So, what happens now? I’ll tell you what happens now. You take me to these underground resistance people. I want to meet them. I want to help them. I want to find out what the Daleks are up to. Well, actually, I know what they’re up to, they want to get their protruberances on the Cradle of the Gods.’

‘The Cradle—’ Lillian started to ask.

‘But,’ the Doctor ploughed straight on, ‘I want to find out what these Sunlight Worlds have got to do with it all. How could four hundred nice, nice,
nice
little worlds for
nice
people to live on feature in a plan to harness some kind of ancient, destructive force?’

‘I …’ began Lillian. ‘I didn’t know … Is that what they’re doing?’

‘Oh, they’re always doing things like this,’ the Doctor said, peering more closely at the window and the remnants of the faded, orange blob. ‘Activating weapons, invading planets, trying to destroy everything for no apparent reason …’ His nose touched the window. ‘My job is to stop them.’

‘No!’ called out Lillian in alarm. ‘The resistance will know you’ve touched it!’

Sabel and Ollus stopped playing, looking over at the Doctor worriedly.

The Doctor staggered back from the window, rubbing his stomach.

‘Yes, does make you feel a little unsettled in the tummy, doesn’t it?’ he said, managing a smile to the children. The nausea passed. ‘Interesting,’ he continued.
His mind was flooding with ideas … all about him. ‘Very interesting.’

In his mind’s eye, he could see an image of himself and the children on Gethria. An image of himself in court on Carthedia. Then he was running with the children away from the orphanage, heading to escape in the skimmer.

‘Your resistance people seem remarkably well informed,’ he said.

‘They have someone inside the government offices,’ Lillian explained. ‘They’re able to tap into top-secret Dalek files.’

‘I see,’ said the Doctor, moving closer and closer to her and staring right into her eyes. ‘I see, I see, I see … So! How do we get to see them?’

‘You don’t,’ said Lillian. ‘They get to see you.’

Ollus wanted his sister Jenibeth back.

It hurt so much inside. But he couldn’t help thinking back to when he had shouted out. He could see her, surrounded by the Daleks on Gethria. He could hear his words, calling out to her, promising that they would come back for her.

When he thought of this, it made him screw up his face and make a moaning sound.

Sabel would see this and put her arm around him or give him a little kiss or say, ‘Do you want to play spaceships?’

He knew she didn’t really like playing spaceships, but it was Sabel’s way of making him feel better, and he was glad of it.

He loved his little spaceship toy. He remembered the day his Daddy had given it to him.

‘You take good care of that, Ollus.’

He would. It was all that he had left of his Daddy.

He was playing with it now, as he ran along the
streets of this Sunlight World. It was the kind of thing that his Mummy and Daddy used to tell him not to do back home on Carthedia.

‘Don’t run on the pavements,’ they would say. ‘It’s dangerous.’

But now that the Doctor was looking after them, it was OK to run along the pavements. In fact, the Doctor had told him to run around as much as he liked, make lots of noise and enjoy himself … On the pavements … In the shops … Anywhere they went on this planet.

And they had certainly been to a lot of places. Every day for really quite a long time. He couldn’t remember how long. They had been to lots of places. And all of them looked the same. The same streets, the same shops, the same skimmer cars hovering around.

The Doctor and Sabel would walk around, chatting, and Ollus would run around and play, all day.

There was only one special thing he had to do in return. Just like he’d done when Lillian had been watching the Doctor. He had to watch out for people who were watching the Doctor, and if he found someone watching the Doctor, someone who had dark glasses and a funny sort of face, he was to go up to them and distract them, so that the Doctor could sneak up on them and surprise them, just as he had done with Lillian.

Lillian was at work, being a journalist, so she wasn’t with them this time.

So far, over all the days of playing around in the streets and bumping into people and being told off by strangers for treading on their feet, Ollus hadn’t seen a single person really watching the Doctor the way Lillian
had done.

Then the day finally came when Ollus spotted someone. A man in a plain, dark coat with the hood pulled up, and wearing plain, dark trousers. He was also wearing dark glasses and he had been standing, watching the Doctor from across the street for a long, long time – much longer than people normally watched. Ollus was sure that this was it.

Time for him to distract the man.

‘Do you want to play with me and my spaceship?’ Ollus asked the man.

‘Go away,’ the man had said. But Ollus knew he must keep on trying. And he did. He tried and tried and tried, jumping up and down in front of the man until the man seemed to get quite cross.

But just when he did get cross and started to shout, the Doctor was suddenly standing in front of the man. He had sneaked round while Ollus had been doing his distracting job.

‘Hello!’ the Doctor said to the man. The Doctor had a big smile on his face. ‘You took your time. No point running away now, I’ve spotted you. Right, come on. Take me to your leader.’

The Doctor carried Ollus and held Sabel close to him as the man from the resistance, who had been shamefully flushed out by a 4-year-old, ushered them down some steps into what seemed to be a disused underground train terminus. It was dark, with damp walls dripping, and a few, widely spaced electric lamps which flickered and buzzed, emitting a pale, yellowish light. The air
smelt dead and musty. Rusting train tracks led off into the darkness. Battered and abandoned carriages glimmered in the half-light like fading fragments of history.

‘This a secret rendezvous place, then?’ asked the Doctor in hushed tones. ‘The unmentioned underbelly of Sunlight 349, eh?’ He was rather excited at this. He felt as though he was in some kind of spy novel. Despite the seriousness of the threat from the Daleks, he couldn’t help feeling there was something a little self-consciously ‘cloak and dagger’ about this resistance business. As they reached the bottom of the steps, he moved round across the grimy platform area, still holding on to Ollus tightly and pulling Sabel with him. He was trying to manoeuvre to get another look at this resistance man’s face.

Lillian had been right. There was something odd about it, if indeed this was the same man. Was it a disguise? He wasn’t sure. At first glance, it had looked like a normal face. But the Doctor had got a brief, closer look … and it was …

Odd.

‘Hope you don’t mind my asking,’ ventured the Doctor. ‘But what exactly have you done to disguise your face?’

‘It is no concern of yours,’ said the man, keeping in the shadows. ‘You cannot know any of our true identities. It’s safer that way.’

‘You mean, if the Daleks catch me, I won’t be able to give you away?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Exactly,’ said the man.

‘Oh, believe you me,’ said the Doctor. ‘If the Daleks capture me, they won’t give tuppence about who you are or what you’re up to. I’m their biggest problem. But you know that, don’t you? Because you’re remarkably well informed, so I gather, from your ingenious memory-cell technology. You seem to know as much about me as the Daleks do.’

At that moment, other figures emerged from the darkness, some way off, walking up the tracks. Ollus noticed them first, poking the Doctor rather painfully in the ear to get his attention. Sabel retreated, pressing against his tweed jacket.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ breathed the Doctor to the children in his best, reassuring voice. He didn’t really believe that, but he hoped they would.