Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication (4 page)

‘Afternoon? But it’s the middle of the night!’

‘Really? It’s awfully bright.’

‘Of course it’s bright in
here
,’ said the man. ‘The corridors are illuminated. With electricity, you know.’ A certain pride was audible in his voice as he said this last thing. ‘There’s a mirror system beaming light down all the . . . but, wait a mo, you haven’t answered my question.’

‘Question?’

‘Are you English?’

‘I am,’ I said. ‘My name is Prose Tailor. And this is Linn.’

‘How do you do?’ asked Linn.

‘And this,’ I concluded, ‘is the Doctor.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ drawled the fellow. ‘My name is Captain Antenealle.’

‘Antenealle?’ repeated Linn, with the very
slightest
of disbelieving intonations.

‘It’s a perfectly common Wiltshire surname I assure you,’ said Antenealle, blushing slightly. Or perhaps it was the cold.

‘If I might
say
so,’ said the Dr, ‘you don’t seem all that surprised to see us all here, in Antarctica.’

‘Were we in Antarctica,’ said Antenealle, ‘I might be. Surprised, I mean.’

‘So we’re
not
in Antarctica?’ said Linn.

‘We are not.’

‘In which case,’ she pressed, ‘where
are
we?’

‘Where else but aboard a secret Habakkuk-style British Navy Warship in the middle of the North Atlantic in the winter of nineteen-twelve?’

‘I knew it!’ cried the Dr, eurekaishly.

Both Linn and I looked at him. ‘You knew what?’

‘The North Atlantic. I
knew
that’s where we were!’

‘Well, no you didn’t,’ pointed out Linn. ‘You said we were in Antarctica.’

The Dr looked pained. ‘Atlantic—
a
,’ he said, after a short pause. ‘Is what I said -
Atlantica
, which is as everybody knows, or at least everybody
should
know, is the official Latin name of the, um.’ He paused for a moment, then added ‘of, Atlantica is, um.’

He seemed to dry up. He dropped his gaze to the floor for a while. Nobody said anything for long seconds.

‘Anyway,’ said Linn, turning back to Captain Antenealle. ‘Whether we’re in Antarctica, or aboard a secret HMS warship in the North Atlantic, either way I think I would expect to be just a
little
surprised to see us.’

‘Well the truth is,’ said the Captain, with a little chivalrous bow, ‘that after all this strange business with the chanting knights in silver armour nothing surprises me any more.’

‘Chanting knights?’ repeated the Dr.

‘In silver armour, yes.’

‘Is that with a k?’

‘Is the armour with a k? Wouldn’t that be karmour?’

‘The knights - are they ker-nights, or just nights?’

‘The former. It’s most peculiar. They seem to be overrunning us. We try our best to fight them off, but bullets don’t seem to stop them - they’re
ghosts
from the
crusades
, some of the men say. The men are simple Tommies, of course, not officer class. So whilst they’re brave as lions in the face of physical danger, supernatural danger unnerves them.
They
say we should all abandon ship.’

‘Ghosts from the crusades, you say?’

‘That’s what the men think.’

‘And you don’t agree?’

‘Not in the least,’ said the Captain, matter-of-factly. ‘I ask myself: why should ghosts from the crusades come dressed up in shiny silver armour to visit a secret Navy ship sculpted from a solid block of ice sailing in the North Atlantic in nineteen-twelve, whilst war with the Germans seems imminent?’

‘You’re awfully free with your secret information,’ I observed.

‘But you’re English,’ said Antenealle, in a
there you go!
sort of voice.

‘Nineteen-twelve,’ said the Dr. ‘Seems to me that date should be familiar to me. Nineteen-twelve, nineteen-twelve, can’t think why.’

‘You lot had better come with me,’ said the Captain Antenealle. ‘See if we can’t scrounge a cup of tea. If there’s one problem with these Habakkuk craft it’s keeping the tea nice and hot.’

 
We fell into step behind this young military man, and marched up the corridor.

‘Project Habakkuk,’ said the Dr. ‘I always thought it was just a rumour. But here we are, actually aboard one of their craft! Very exciting. Officially, of course, it never got off the drawing board.’

‘You’ve
heard
of this Habakkuk Project?’ Linn asked.

‘Of course! It’s famous. It was a British Naval plan to sculpt huge ships out of ice. The advantage of
ice
as a raw-material for shipbuilding is that it is quite unsinkable. Unlike the iron out of which, say, dreadnoughts are built. Iron - and I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this - but iron
sinks
. Sinks pretty comprehensively, really. Down it goes! But ice . . . well, let me put it this way. If you’ve ever dunked a battleship-shaped chunk of ice-cream into a milkshake, you’ll know that—’

‘Are you
sure
?’ I said. ‘It sounds daft to me.’

‘Nonsense. It was a brilliant idea; one of the few brilliant ideas the Royal Navy ever had. A very large ice battleship would be a superb weapon of naval warfare. The main drawback would be a
certain amount
of difficulty in manoeuvre; but on the plus side it would be near-enough impossible for enemy ships to sink the craft ... even if they knocked big chunks off it with artillery shells the remainder would still float along. I just hadn’t realised that the Navy got as far as actually building a prototype ship.’

‘Well we did,’ said Antenealle over his shoulder. ‘We built it, crewed it, and assigned it a complement of marines . . . my men, in fact. We’re on secret manoeuvres here right now. Things were going swimmingly until—’

‘The ghosts from the crusades?’

‘Well I’m a sceptic,’ said Antenealle cheerily. ‘For instance, one thing that makes me doubt the whole
ghost
theory is the way they bump into things. Slip over, crash into walls, that sort of thing.’

‘Maybe they’re slapstick ghosts?’

‘Never heard of that sort. And the
other
thing worth mentioning is that they’re
pretty
heavily armed. I never heard of ghosts going about carrying artillery. Some chains to rattle, maybe. But not, you know, rifles and hand-cannons. And woo-oo-
oo
! Wooooooo! That’s what you’d expect, isn’t it? An owl-like woo-ooing. Woooooooooooooooo! But that’s not the noise these chaps make
at all
.’

‘What noise
do
they make?’ asked Linn.

‘It’s a sort of oo-aah noise. Oo-aah. Very strange.’

 
We finally came through into the carved-out ice-chamber that functioned as the ship’s bridge. A man dressed as an able-seaman was at the big spokey wheel thing (I’ve temporarily forgotten the technical term for this piece of equipment; but you know the thing I mean; the wagon-wheel shaped thing that does the ship’s steery-steery). Next to him was a man in a blue officer’s uniform. Panels and consoles of teak inlaid with brightly polished brass were ranged around the space. An electrical light dangled from the low roof. Straight ahead there was a very narrow window, a slit no more than a couple of inches high, through which the sailor was looking. Outside the night was pitchy black.

‘Ah, Captain!’ declared the officer as we came onto the bridge. ‘Good to see you again. And who are these?’

‘A Doctor and his friends, Commodore Sthree-Tymsa-Lady, ’ said Antenealle. ‘They’re English, don’t worry.’

‘Splendid,’ said Tymsa-Lady. ‘Welcome to the HMS
Icetanic
! I say, would you three mind awfully
pitching in
, ma’am, gentlemen? We’re having a touch of bother with these silver fellows. All hands would be
much
appreciated at the pumps, don’t you know.’

‘Glad to help,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s an interesting surname, by the way. Are you related to the Hampshire Tymsa-Ladies?’

‘Different branch of the family,’ said the Commodore brightly. ‘My grandmother married Henry Sthree, one of the Middlesex Sthrees. They moved to Surrey. I didn’t catch
your
name, I’m afraid?’

‘I’m called Whom,’ said the Dr.

‘Now that
is
an interesting surname!’ said the Commodore, clearly impressed. ‘Very distinctive! And your friends?’

‘This is Miss Trout. And this young man is Prose Tailor.’

The Commodore turned to face me. ‘Any relation of Pinny Tailor?’ he asked.

‘Um,’ I said.

The Commodore seemed to take this as a yes. ‘Pinny Tailor! The old donkey! How is he? Still Secretary of State for Imperial Affairs?’

‘I wonder, Commodore,’ the Dr put in, ‘if you could tell me a little about these ghosts supposedly haunting your secret ice-built Habakkuk-project ship. You see, I’m here on a . . . um, government mission to undertake certain . . . secret activities, for the secret services of . . . you know. Government stuff.’

‘Government mission?’ repeated the Commodore.

‘We were dropped onto the ship by, er, hot-air balloon,’ said the Dr. ‘That’s how we’ve suddenly appeared, as if by the magic of matter-transference and rematerialisation, on your ship in the middle of the ocean, without any advance warning. I mean, obviously we
haven’t
appeared by matter-transference. That would be silly. It’s most definitely, you know. Balloons.’

‘I assumed it would be something like that,’ said the Commodore.

‘Anyway, I was wondering about these apparitions. I’ve a suspicion that they might have a part to play in the ... mission of which I was speaking. Did you say they were
silver
men?’

‘They’ve practically over-run the ship,’ said the Commodore. ‘The Captain has been down on the lower decks fighting them off. Haven’t you, Antenealle? Down there with all your men?’

‘They’re all dead,’ said the Captain. ‘I’m sorry to say. Every last man-jack marine of them. Is there any tea? I’m parching for a cup.’

‘
Oh
dear,’ said the Commodore. ‘
All
of them?’

‘Young Witherspoon was twitching a little when I left,’ said Antenealle, filling a tin mug from a large brass urn. ‘But I daresay he’s a goner now. What with the size of the wound in his head. And also the three missing . . ..’ The Captain paused to slurp his tea and go ‘ahhh!,’ before concluding, ‘limbs.’

‘
Oh
dear,’ said the Commodore again. ‘So, with all the able seamen gone too, that leaves . . .?’

‘Just us three,’ said Antenealle. ‘And, of course, our new friends.’

‘Ah well,’ said the Commodore. ‘I suppose we’ll just have to do our best.’

‘They’re all
dead
?’ cried Linn in a horrified tone.

‘Hmm’ said the Captain.

‘How can you be so extraordinarily blasé,’ Linn demanded, ‘in the face of such terrible loss of life?’

‘Stiff upper lip,’ said the Commodore. ‘Or do I mean swift upper lip? I always get those confused.’

‘Swift upper
cut
, I think it is, Commodore,’ said Antenealle, taking another slurp of tea.

There was a distant explosion: muffled but unmistakeable. The ship shuddered. I could not contain a little yelp of terror.

‘Don’t worry ma’am,’ said Antenealle, without looking at me. ‘Those explosions might be worrying on a
regular
ship, but, you see, a Habakkuk-line vessel is literally unsinkable.’

‘Oh the
Icetanic
is
quite
unsinkable,’ agreed the Commodore. ‘It’s a miracle of modern design.’

‘Perfectly unsinkable,’ agreed the Captain. ‘Can’t be sunk.’

‘No sinkee-sinkee,’ declared the Commodore.

‘Everything can happen
except
the kitchen sinking. By kitchen I mean the galley. And all the other parts of the ship too. None of them can sink.’

‘So we’ve nothing to worry about then!’ exclaimed the Dr, cheerfully.

‘Well, there
is
one tiny little worry,’ admitted the Commodore. ‘My slight worry has to do with these silver men, the ones who’ve now slaughtered the entire crew and whom are now marching about shooting and blowing up everything in sight . . . the worry is that they might be
German
agents, dressed up in some odd silver armour. They may be trying to seize the ship, to get hold of our military technology for the good of the Kaiser you see. We really can’t allow that to happen. Our
problem
,’ he went on, a little sorrowfully, ‘is that I can’t scuttle this ship. Normally of course I’d scuttle my ship to prevent her falling into enemy hands. But this ship is unscuttleabubble. I mean, of course, unscutable. Un,’ he said, moving slowly through the syllables, ‘Scut. Tle. A. Ble.’

‘I see your dilemma,’ said the Dr.

There was another explosion, somewhere below us. ‘We’d better get down there,’ said Antenealle, finishing his tea and plonking the mug back next to the brass urn. ‘Come on!’

The Dr made as if to follow, but Linn grabbed his elbow. ‘You’re not going
after
him are you?’ she hissed. ‘Didn’t you hear what happened to his men?’

‘Of course,’ the Dr hissed back. ‘I feel certain that these strange silver men represent a pretty major grammatical error in the fabric of spacetime. Don’t you? Do you really think that nineteen-twelve Earth should have creatures like that running around?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Linn, sulkily.

He walked smartly off the bridge; and, after exchanging a wary look, Linn and I followed.

 
The four of us went down some ice-carved staircases, and into a long corridor. The sound of explosions continued. These were not long-drawn out explosions, but short snappy blasts: not
bo-oo-oom
! Not even
boom
!
boom
!, but more like
bom
!
bom
!, or perhaps
bum-bum-bum
!

No. On second thoughts, that last one looks rather stupid, written down.

Anyway, let’s just say that we could hear explosions. Interspersed amongst those percussive noises was the sound of gunfire, sharp and abrupt as the breaking of old bones:
rat
,
rat-tat
,
rat-tat
. Yes, that’s good. That’s exactly what the gunfire sounded like.