Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani (2 page)

It would save missus hauling tin bath into kitchen. Save stoking t’fire to heat water.’ In summer he could dowse himself under the pump in the yard. But this was not summer and the only warmth in Sam’s scanty cottage was from an all-purpose grate where his wife baked the bread and cooked the stews that formed the mainstay of their diet. ‘Wasted? Nay, t’were money well spent.’

Was it?

None of them noticed a small pipe in the corner... or the jet of crimson steam infiltrating the atmosphere ...

‘Eh, this feels grand!’ Green, clothes dumped in a jumble on a reed mat, was immersing himself in the soothing water.

The jet puffed into a fluffy cloud.

‘Hey up! What’s this? Fireworks?’ said Rudge, stifling a yawn.

‘Well, ’tis not smoke from fire, I’ll tell thee that.’

‘Dost know where’s coming from, Jack?’ Green, dripping suds, clambered out of the bath.

‘Pipe in’t corner, looks like.’

‘’appen us could stuff it up.’

‘Aye.’ Rolling a sock into a ball, Rudge plunged into a crimson mist. ‘Best call old woman. ‘Tis her –’

A strangled sigh.

‘Can’t breathe –’ He slumped to the floor.

‘Sam!’

Before the dumbfounded Ward and Green could render assistance to their friend, the spreading cloud enveloped them. Lungs polluted, they succumbed to the contaminating steam.

But the miners’ ordeal had only just begun.

A crack appeared in the solid granite wall... widened...

the halves separated... and glided apart.

Poised in the gap were two bizarre shapes. Muscular humans, their heads were encased in begoggled alloy masks with serpentine nozzled filters.

In automated accord, they converged on Jack Ward and carried him into the secret cavity...

2

‘Some substitute for Kew Gardens!’

Peri’s disgust was justified. The TARDIS had materialised at the foot of a slag heap.

A slag heap!

She eyed the mountain of waste from a coalmine with displeasure as the black sludge stained her new red shoes.

‘Try looking on the bright side.’ Endeavouring to be conciliatory, the Doctor was nevertheless concentrating on a hand-sized, oblong meter he held. ‘After all, isn’t coal fossilized plant life?’ He was methodically sweeping all points of the compass with the device.

‘What’ve you got there?’ Curiosity overcame disappointment.

‘Tracking device. Nifty gadget. Unique. Invented it myself.’

‘That I can believe!’

‘Registers time distortion. Should indicate the source of the power that interfered with our co-ordinates – aaaaah!’

The gadget began bleeping. Obviously this was the signal the Doctor had been seeking. ‘Hoist up your skirts, Peri, we’re off!’

Holding the bleeping tracking device aloft, he sloshed through the slurry.

Aware that every step was making her shoes even messier, Peri trailed reluctantly in his wake.

There was no mess or dirt on Jack Ward, Edwin Green or Sam Rudge. Nor were they unconscious any longer. The cloud of steam had evaporated and the wall was restored to normal.

Indeed, the bath chamber was just as it had been when they first entered: the baths, the fireplace, the rush mats on the floor. Nothing had changed... except the men themselves.

The tiredness had disappeared. So had the friend-ship.

They were fighting. Boisterous. Hyperactive. Flicking each other with towels.

A particularly vicious swipe stung Edwin Green. He raised his fists, sparring up to Rudge. Only too willing to join combat, Rudge accepted the challenge. The fight was no horseplay. The blows drew blood.

Bored with their antics, Jack Ward elbowed them out of his way and made for the door. Glaring pugnaciously, irritably, he chafed a sore place on the left side of his neck where a round, crimson mark now glowed...

Separated by his aggressive departure, Ward and Green abandoned their fight and followed after him. They, too, were rubbing their necks.

On the left side.

Where similar round, crimson marks glowed...

Outside the bath house, completely unaware that anything alien had happened to them, their aggression focused on a crippled street-vendor who was selling a bag of muffins to a boy.

With a snarl of rage, Green booted the boy aside, Ward knocked the vendor to the ground and Rudge upended the serving tray.

Incited by the havoc they had created, kicking the scattered muffins, they stormed through the village, whooping and yelling.

It was unnaturally quiet in the field where Peri and the Doctor walked. Not that Peri had registered this. She was studying the hedgerows.

‘Most of these hedgerows won’t exist soon,’ she said.

Neither Peri nor the tracking device occupied the Doctor. The finely tuned sixth sense that every Time Lord has was troubling him.

‘In the twentieth century, I mean. They’re being chopped down to improve farming efficiency,’ Peri continued.

Again no reply from the Doctor whose unease was increasing. Whatever was unsettling him had a familiar and disagreeable echo.

‘My generation’s already worried about the effect on wildlife. Some species of butterfly are almost extinct. Birds too.’

‘Talking of birds – have you noticed anything strange?’

Peri resisted the obvious retort that everything about and connected with the Doctor was strange. ‘Strange?’

‘No birdsong... and no birds.’

Becoming conscious of the eerie silence, she pointed to a scarecrow mounted on a frame in mid-field. ‘Could be the scarecrow.’

‘They’re not usually this effective.’ Would a solitary, straw-filled effigy so frighten the birds that none of them dared come near?

Peri broke into his thoughts. ‘Well, if the place gives you the creeps, let’s get out of it!’ She strode to a gate giving onto a copse. The Doctor tagged behind, still vaguely perturbed.

Had he glanced back he would have had even more reason to feel perturbed. The scarecrow’s inclined head, in its floppy-brimmed hat, slowly began to lift...

Hungry for strife, Jack Ward and his aggressive cohorts checked their rowdy progress along a leafy country lane.

Coming towards them, at a steady trot, was a horse drawn dray. The drayman recognised Jack.

‘Finished for t’day, Jack?’

Jack did not respond. Instead, three abreast, the men formed a solid barrier.

Ignorant of the degeneration that had transformed the miners, the drayman chivvied them. ‘Come on, lads. Out of road. Got to deliver this lot to pit!’ This ‘lot’ was a crateload of machinery.

His words fell on deaf ears. Jack Ward unsheathed a thin, razor-sharp knife.

Disquieted, the drayman cracked his whip, an action that met with unflinching contempt from Rudge, who grabbed the snapping thong and yanked the drayman from his seat. Recklessly indifferent to the neighing, rearing horse, Ward severed the lead rein before joining in the attack – but not on the drayman. The target was the cargo.

With unbridled fury, the three assailants levered the crate from the dray, sending it crashing to the ground.

Recovering, wielding a shovel, the drayman entered the fray and thwacked Jack Ward, knocking him out. Reprisal came immediately; a savage blow from Green felled him.

The ungovernable aggression continued unabated, venting its fury upon the heavy machinery; reducing the thick cast-iron mouldings to unusable fragments.

The distant hubbub of splintering metal and the terrified neighing of the horse shattered the peace of the copse. The Doctor’s pace quickened as he hastened towards a stile.

Vandalism completed, without bothering to check whether their wounded comrade was alive or dead, the elated Ward and Green decamped. They passed the stile fractionally before the Doctor vaulted the crossbar.

He hurried to the horse, soothing and calming it.

‘Ow-w-ch!’ The groan came from beneath the jumble of broken timber and packing straw. Extricating himself from the debris, the drayman sagged to his knees.

‘Here, let me help.’ Peri’s well-meant offer earned a rebuke.

‘No, don’t move him.’ The Doctor’s swift but adept examination showed the man’s injuries to be superficial.

‘They’d got no cause to behave like that,’ he complained.

‘Why did they attack you?’ Peri’s question was addressed to the drayman but the Doctor answered.

‘They didn’t. They attacked the machinery.’

‘That’s right, Miss. That’s what they was after.’

‘I’m lost. Why would anyone want to smash machinery?’

‘They’re scared it’ll rob them of their jobs.’ That was the drayman’s explanation. The Doctor failed to agree.

‘You suspect another motive, Doctor?’

‘Let’s say I’m keeping an open mind.’

Before Peri could query the ambiguity of this remark, they heard a moan from the ditch.

‘Jack Ward. I clouted him wi’ shovel.’

Avoiding a tuft of stinging nettles, the Doctor clambered into the ditch.

‘Odd that,’ the drayman continued to Peri. ‘Leaving him behind. The three of them’s always been such mates.’

The Doctor, too, had found something odd – the crimson mark on Ward’s neck.

‘Unusual sort of mark. Any idea how you got it –’

A belligerent shove sent the Doctor sprawling. Then, flourishing a piece of timber from the broken crate, Ward rose and began backing away.

‘Steady now. Only trying to help.’ The Doctor’s reassurance was futile. Having gained several metres, Ward turned and hared off.

‘So much for playing the Good Samaritan!’ Peri quipped.

‘Don’t know what’s got into him. Can’t fathom it. Never seen him like this afore.’ The drayman indicated the demolished machinery. ‘Mister Stephenson’s not going to be well pleased when he sees this!’

‘Stephenson?’ the Doctor asked.

The drayman nodded. ‘Waiting for them parts, he is.’

‘George Stephenson?’

‘Aye, sir. Dost know him?’

‘Know of him. Peri, how d’you like to meet a genius?’

She could not resist. ‘I thought I already had!’

‘No, Peri. I’ve never changed the course of history.

Indeed, I’m forbidden to do so, But George Stephenson will!’

Suddenly serious, Peri ventured a thought. ‘Could that be what this is all about?’

‘An astute observation.’

This was not sarcastic; the compliment was sincere.

George Stephenson was important. His impact on earth’s development was fundamental. He invented the railway train. Indeed, without the train, it is doubtful that Peri’s own country, the United States of America, would have become one nation.

Then, with a customary, infuriating switch of mood, the Doctor decided he must meet the inventor.

‘Can you give us a lift?’

To Peri’s chagrin, the drayman was willing to oblige.

‘Dare I question your sense of priorities?’ she asked.

‘You’ve done so before. Hop aboard!’

If the Time Lord had been concentrating less on George Stephenson, he might have noticed a weird apparition at the stile.

As the clip-clop of the horse’s hoofs began, the ragged scarecrow, exuding a pernicious aura of evil, climbed the stile to follow the dray.

3

Hobbling from the bath house, the old crone beckoned to a boy hooting a muffin along the gutter.

‘Here! Run to tavern. Tell men who want bath to come right now!’ He accepted the proffered coin. ‘Warn them us won’t be keeping water hot much longer,’ she called.

Lingering to welcome the next batch of customers, she was startled by a high frequency bleeping from a dray rumbling past.

The electronic discord came from the Doctor’s tracking device. Hanging on as the wheels jolted over the cobbled street of the village, the Doctor and Peri stared as the broadcasting bleeps grew more shrill.

‘Doctor!’ Peri muffled her ears and the dappled horse whinnied and shied. Frantically, the Doctor tried to subdue his errant invention and the drayman to subdue his bucking horse. Both succeeded.

‘Was that significant? Or just a hiccup?’

The Doctor was not sure. They had hit a nasty bump as they reached the bath house; that could have destabilised the delicate mechanism.

Something, too, had profoundly disturbed the old crone.

Suspiciously, she watched the dray clatter out of sight.

‘Whoa, Daisy! Whoa!’ The drayman tugged on the reins.

Coming from the tavern, Tim Bass gave a weary but friendly nod. He was accompanied by the old crone’s messenger boy and two mates.

‘Why are we stopping here?’ The tavern had no attraction for the Doctor.

‘I still feel a bit shook up. Need a Toby afore I tell them at pit about attack.’

The Doctor disembarked. ‘Where will I find George Stephenson?’

‘In’t pit.’ Nervous, taking the opportunity of using this oddly garbed but apparently benevolent individual to plead his cause, the drayman begged a favour. ‘’Appen tha’d put in word for me. They’ll be none too pleased. ’Bout machinery.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Impatient to be on his way, the Doctor left the drayman to assist Peri down.

‘In’t mighty hurry, isn’t he, Miss? Dost mean summat’s wrong? More than attack on machinery?’

‘It does, I’m afraid. But don’t ask me what.’

Nothing seemed to be wrong at the bath house as the tired but cheery Tim Bass, a scarf jauntily wound about his forehead, paid the old crone.

‘We’re not last, Granma. T’others’ll be along when emptied Tobys.’

Ushering the three miners inside, she looked again in the direction the dray took... then peered along the street in the opposite direction. A moment’s consideration...

before following Tim Bass in.

What was she looking for? And why? The expression on her wrinkled face boded more than idle curiosity.

The answer did not come until the door slammed firmly shut. A floppy-brimmed hat was cast onto the mud. Wisps of discarded straw floated on the breeze. From the shelter of an adjacent alley came the scarecrow. Gone were the ragged labourer’s jacket, tattered trousers and dirt-stained shirt. Now he wore a black velvet frock-coat with a silver encrusted collar and velvet trousers to match. His hair was carefully combed, his black beard and moustache elegantly trimmed. For this was the Master, the Doctor’s implacable enemy.