Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25 (13 page)

‘Is it a disease?’

‘No, there’s a sort of… invisible poison in the air.’

Wilkins looked around fearfully, as if he might catch a glimpse of it, swirling like fog. ‘Is that going to happen to all of us?’ he asked.

‘Not if I can help it,’ said the Doctor. ‘At the moment the leakage is minimal. Those affected must either have been close to the source or are particularly susceptible to zytron waves.’

‘I think this is what’s happening to Major Daker,’ said Wilkins bleakly.

‘Major Daker?’ Donna had mentioned a Major Daker when she’d been filling him in on what had happened to her yesterday.

‘He’s my commanding officer. He’s not himself. And he’s got these lumps on his head.’

‘He needs to be isolated and restrained,’ the Doctor said. ‘Zytron waves affect the mind, turn people violent.’

Suddenly he was up on his toes, eager to be off. ‘I’ll leave you to sort that, shall I?’

‘Where are
you
going?’ Wilkins asked, out of his depth.

‘Packed day ahead. Aliens to track down, disasters to avert. Busy, busy, busy. See ya.’ And with that he was gone.

Donna was taking Tiffin in the garden with Mary, Adelaide and Cameron. It was all very genteel: wicker chairs, a white linen tablecloth, a proper china tea service like her gran used to have. There was even a lace doily over the sugar bowl to keep the flies off, and a three-tiered silver thingy with cakes on it like you got in posh tea shops.

Adelaide and her mother were sipping tea out of dainty cups, but Donna and Cameron had gone for the home-made lemonade, a big jug of which was sitting in the centre of the table, filled with rapidly melting ice cubes and chunks of real lemon. If it hadn’t been for the exotic blooms in the flowerbeds edging the immaculately clipped lawn, Donna could almost have believed she was sitting in an English country garden on a baking summer’s day.

Before coming out, she had asked Adelaide if she’d got any factor 40, but Adelaide hadn’t known what she was talking about. Donna had therefore been careful to position herself in the expansive shadow of the large, tasselled parasol above their table.

For the last few minutes, Adelaide had been telling

Donna about her work at the camp. Suddenly she yawned.

‘Now that the excitement has died down, I really ought to get some sleep,’ she said, ‘otherwise I shall be all fingers and thumbs tonight.’

Mary Campbell pursed her lips. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go to that awful place,’ she said. ‘You’ll end up with some ghastly disease.’

Donna could tell from the look on Adelaide’s face that this was an old argument.

‘The people there need our help, Mother,’ she said. ‘We can’t simply abandon them.’

Mary Campbell sniffed. ‘I don’t see why not. They managed perfectly well before we arrived. I mean, it’s not even as if they’re grateful.’

Donna felt her hackles rising. ‘How do you know?’ she said.

Mary blinked at her. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘How do you know they’re not grateful when you’ve never even been there?’

Mary reddened. Both Adelaide and Cameron looked at their mother to see how she would respond. When she placed her teacup back in its saucer, it chinked and rattled.

‘I’ve lived in India for twenty years,’ she said haughtily. ‘I know perfectly well what the people are like.

And I know that when you try to offer them help, they simply throw it back in your face.’

‘And you offer them help… how?’ asked Donna.

‘By attempting to instil them with the correct values, of course. By bringing civilisation and stability to the country.’

Donna shook her head. ‘Yeah, well, maybe they don’t want your values. Maybe they’ve got their own values and their own way of doing things.’

Mary’s face was flushed. Her hands were trembling as they gripped the arms of her chair. ‘I refuse to be harangued like this in my own home!’ she exclaimed.

Adelaide said softly, ‘Mother
has
had rather a trying morning, Donna. Perhaps it might be best to drop the subject.’

Donna was silent a moment longer, then she said, ‘Yeah, sorry.’

Mary gave a stiff nod, and for a moment no one said anything. The awkward atmosphere was broken by an excitable voice from the direction of the house.

‘Miss Adelaide! Miss Donna!’

They turned to see Ranjit running across the lawn towards them, waving something in the air. Behind Ranjit, on the porch, Gopal appeared to be attempting to placate a clearly agitated Becharji. He raised his hands, as if to indicate that he would deal with the situation, and then he hurried across the lawn in Ranjit’s wake.

Donna grinned at the little Indian boy, taking a secret delight in Mary Campbell’s outraged expression as he ran barefoot towards them. ‘Hello, Ranjit,’ she said, and then she noticed what he was holding in his hand. ‘Blimey, where did you get that from?’

Ranjit thumped to a stop and stood there, panting. All at once he seemed to realise that he had broken any number of unwritten social rules by bursting in on them like this. He looked at Mary Campbell’s imperious

expression and hunched his shoulders, as if he expected to be punished for his insolence.

‘It … it is Mr Doctor’s,’ he mumbled, fixing his gaze on the sonic screwdriver in his hand.

‘Yeah, I know that,’ said Donna. ‘I just wondered what you were doing with it?’

‘I didn’t steal it, Miss Donna,’ Ranjit said in alarm.

‘Never thought you did, sweetheart,’ she said soothingly. ‘Look, why don’t you sit down and have some lemonade?’

Ranjit looked at her in astonishment.

‘Come on,’ she said, reaching for the jug. ‘Tell us all about it. Hutch up, Cameron. There’s room for both of you on there.’

With a dazed look on his face, Ranjit came forward to share Cameron’s chair. Cameron grinned at his friend, and Adelaide too looked amused by Ranjit’s reaction. Only Mary Campbell’s expression remained frosty.

‘Begging your pardon, ladies,’ said Gopal, who had now reached the table and was wringing his hands in embarrassment. ‘I am so terribly sorry to burst in on you like this.’

‘No problem, Gopal,’ Donna said, as if it was her house. ‘Come and have a cup of tea and a bit of cake.’

She poured him a cup of tea. He looked bemused, but accepted it gratefully.

‘Right then, Ranjit,’ she said, nodding at the sonic, ‘tell me what you’re doing with that.’

In the study, the discussion between Gandhi and Sir Edgar

was nearing its end. In truth, very little had been achieved.

Sir Edgar was standing in front of the fireplace, his meaty hands clasped behind his back. Gandhi was perched on a fat leather armchair, looking out of place among the plush furnishings and the wall-mounted glass cases filled with stuffed birds.

‘I sympathise with your position, of course, Mr Gandhi,’ Sir Edgar said blithely, ‘but I’m afraid there is very little that I can do. Frankly, within a month my colleagues and I will be leaving India for good. How you and your fellow countrymen run things after we’ve gone is your own concern.’

Gandhi remained as serene as ever. He nodded sagely and said, ‘In that case, Mr Campbell, I see only one course of action open to me. I must undertake another fast, a fast unto death, in the hope that it will bring my countrymen to their senses.’

Sir Edgar raised his bristling eyebrows. ‘Is that a threat, Mr Gandhi?’

‘Only to myself,’ Gandhi said with a smile.

Sir Edgar scowled, as though the little man was employing some underhand tactic that he couldn’t quite work out. ‘But look here, Mr Gandhi, what on Earth do you hope to achieve by starving yourself?’

Gandhi was silent for a moment, as though wondering how best to explain his actions. Finally he said, ‘What you must understand, Mr Campbell, is that my relationship with the people of my country is not a political one, but spiritual and emotional. Although I consider myself unworthy of the honour, I know that to them I am

“Mahatma” – the Great Soul. When I fast, therefore, politics becomes unimportant and disputes become trivial.

The only thing that matters to the people is that my life is saved.’ He said all this with no trace of smugness or self-satisfaction.

Sir Edgar said, ‘That’s quite a power you wield there.’

Gandhi shrugged. ‘I don’t see it as power. I see it merely as my most effective means of persuasion. And if it fails, at least I am the only one who truly suffers by it.’

Their conversation was interrupted by what sounded like a scuffle in the corridor outside. Sir Edgar heard a voice he didn’t recognise say, ‘Don’t you worry about it.

You just go and polish the family silver or something.’

The door opened and a man entered, a skinny man in a tight-fitting blue suit. He looked around and said,
Nice place you’ve got here. Yeah, lovely. Little colonial bolt-hole, away from the hoi polloi. And I see you’re a birdwatcher – or maybe you just like killing ’em? Don’t agree with it myself, big blokes armed to the teeth, taking it out on small, defenceless creatures which have just as much right to breathe the planet’s air as they do. But hey ho, each to his own. Anyway, I’m the Doctor, and you must be Sir Edgar. Hello, Mohandas. Always a pleasure to see you. Hope you’ve recovered from this morning’s little escapade.’

All of this was delivered at a rattling pace, the Doctor interspersing his chatter with grins, winks and waves at the appropriate moments. What made it difficult for him was that while he was talking, Becharji was trying to position his body in front of him, in a bid to prevent him

from entering the study without resorting to actual physical contact.

Outraged, Sir Edgar said, ‘How dare you, sir! What is the meaning of this?’

‘Oh yeah, sorry for bursting in,’ said the Doctor, as if the etiquette of the situation had only just occurred to him, ‘but we’re talking biiiig crisis here, fellers. National emergency. No time to waste. Immediate action required.

Look, I’m not gonna snog you and that’s final.’

This last remark was directed at Becharji, who was still bobbing about in front of the Doctor, trying to block his progress.

‘I’ll have you know, sir, that Mr Gandhi and I are involved in very important talks,’ Sir Edgar spluttered. ‘If you wish to see me, I suggest you make an appointment.

Though I don’t—’

‘No time for appointments,’ the Doctor cut in. ‘Action is needed now. Like I say, sorry to butt in, but I really, really
need you to use all your contacts to organise a thorough search of the area asap.’

‘Oh?’ said Sir Edgar dismissively. ‘To what end?’

‘There’s a… an individual who’s using a dangerous energy source that’s causing increasingly widespread genetic mutation. If we don’t stop it – well, if
I
don’t stop it, because, to be honest, you lot wouldn’t have the first clue – the results will be cataclysmic. No one will remain unaffected. And believe me, Sir Edgar, when I say no one, I mean no one.’

Suddenly the strange man who called himself the Doctor had become very still. His eyes blazed with such

dark and terrible intensity that Sir Edgar found he had to look away. A shadow seemed to pass across his mind, a shadow of awful foreboding. Then he looked out through the French windows at the reassuring sight of his family taking tea on the sunlit lawn, the well-watered grass lush and healthy, the neatly ordered flowerbeds blazing with colour, and the shadow passed.

Without meeting the Doctor’s gaze, he said, ‘I have no idea what you’re blathering about, sir.’

‘Then let me explain in very simple words,’ said the Doctor quietly. ‘If we don’t find the source of the poison that is affecting the local population, everyone will die.

Everyone. Not just the poor and the sick and the homeless, but you, Sir Edgar, and your wife, and your children. You will all die horrible, violent, miserable deaths.’

For several seconds no one moved or spoke. Even Becharji had stepped back from the Doctor, as if he had suddenly revealed himself to be some terrible avenging angel.

Finally Sir Edgar shuddered, as if he had stepped from the comfort of a fire-warmed room into the icy bleakness of a winter’s night. ‘How dare you, sir,’ he said again.

‘How dare you enter my home and speak to me in this manner. Who the blazes are you, anyway? You’re nothing but a… a madman come in off the streets, full of wild stories and ridiculous ideas.’

The Doctor stared long and hard at Sir Edgar, and then he said dismissively, ‘Oh, you’re just an idiot.’ He turned his attention to Gandhi, who was still sitting quietly in the plump, shiny armchair.

‘Mohandas,’ he said, ‘will
you
help me?’

Gandhi was already nodding, as though for him the Doctor’s credentials and the truth of his words had never been in doubt.

‘Of course, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I will call a meeting to address the people, and I will ask them to listen to you.’

‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said, pressing his palms together.

Sir Edgar snorted. ‘Mr Gandhi, surely you’re not going to take this nonsense seriously? The man’s clearly a charlatan.’

The Doctor shot him a glance that was both casual and annoyed. ‘Oh, put a sock in it, Eddie. You’re not worth talking to.’ Without even bothering to wait for Sir Edgar’s apoplectic response, he stepped past Becharji and across the room to the French windows. Throwing them open he yelled, ‘Oi, Donna!’ and waved as she turned her head.

‘Doctor!’ she exclaimed gleefully, rising to her feet.