Big Bang Generation (9 page)

‘Was it you? The postcards? All that stuff that dragged me here? To this dead-end part of the universe?'

‘Yeah. Well no. Well, sort of. It was future-me.'

‘Well, next time you see future-you, slap her for me. In the meantime, when I next see you-you, I'm slapping you in case I don't get a chance to slap future-you.'

‘Why. Are. You. There?'

‘I. Don't. Know. You dragged me here.'

‘Why did I do that? Rather, why will I do that?'

‘I. Don't. Know! How many times do I have to say that? Where's the Doctor?'

‘I'm here.' The Doctor leaned towards the phone, trying to take it from Bernice's hand, but she kept moving away, because she wasn't going to let go.

‘And how is he calling you in the twenty-seventh century from here in the twenty-first?'

‘Is that where you are? Oh, how exciting.'

‘It's not exciting, it's alarming.'

‘I thought you liked the twenty-first century,' the Doctor said.

Bernice shot him a look. ‘I love it. Just not when it and the whole universe is in danger of becoming part of the Big Bang generation, permanently!'

‘I thought you loved it, too,' Keri said. ‘So what are you calling me for, Benny? Other than to apologise for all this, I hope.'

Bernice wasn't sure whether to throw the phone away.
Instead she opted to pass it back to him, muttering, ‘So, Keri gets one of your universal roaming phones. I travelled with you in the TARDIS for ages. I introduced you to Keri. I made sure your friends stopped wanting to shoot you. Do I get a phone?'

‘No,' Keri interrupted, ‘I got it instead.'

‘He has more than one phone,' Bernice snapped. ‘And lots of people he gives them to. Except me, it seems.'

‘Moving on,' the Doctor said, finally able to prise the phone from Bernice's hand, ‘Keri, I need you to spring into action.'

‘What do you need?'

‘Everything you can find out about the world known as Aztec Moon and a man called Horace Jaanson who I recall being an expert on the Pyramid Eternia – which was the photo I sent you, by the way.'

‘Narrow the field, Doctor, those are very big fields.'

‘The key, then. Try, Glamour. Rock of Ages. Stone of Destiny. Lodestone. Anything.'

‘All right, all right,' snapped Keri. ‘God, Benny, this one's more impatient than any of the others, yeah?'

‘And grumpier.'

‘I noticed that,' Keri agreed.

‘The universe is about to end, and you're nattering rather than researching,' the Doctor said. ‘I'm entitled to be grumpy.'

‘Yeah but don't take it out on us,' Keri said. ‘Benny has got her work cut out trying to stop you annoying and insulting people.'

‘Yeah,' Benny echoed. ‘And Keri has her work cut out trying to do this research while you're nagging at her.'

The Doctor sighed. ‘One minute you're at one another's throats…'

‘OK,' Keri said. ‘So all that I can find here is that at some point in the future – this phone's GalWiki search function is truly multidimensional, that's cool. Can I keep it, Doctor, yeah?'

‘Focus.'

‘Oh right, yeah. So in the future, as far as I can tell, somewhere around 5064, the world called Aztec Moon explodes for unknown reasons. The Pyramid Eternia is assumed lost for ever, but some kind of causal nexus opens up and huge shards of the planet vanish into it and no one knows where they went because even by then, the average schmuck doesn't have access to space-time vortexes. End of.'

‘OK,' Bernice said. ‘So that ties into what we already guessed. So let's make an assumption here, because that's pretty much all we have time for. This causal nexus thing shoots rocks at Earth, including the Glamour, its lodestone. It lands here somewhere, in 2015 and that's why the Pyramid Eternia is here – it wasn't destroyed on Aztec Moon, it came here.'

‘All good,' Keri said, ‘except there are absolutely no reports of anything as major as that hitting Earth in 2015.'

‘I could have told you that,' the Doctor said. ‘We'd know about it historically. Truth is, 2015 is a pretty uninteresting year, universally speaking.'

Bernice nodded. ‘OK, so it didn't arrive here, it arrived in the past.'

‘Or the future, yeah?' Keri suggested.

‘If it was in the future, the Pyramid Eternia would have dragged us to there. I reckon it has to be in the past.'

The Doctor thought about this. ‘Earth isn't exactly free from meteor showers over its history – most go unrecorded.'

Bernice nodded. ‘Can't be Tunguska – you and I both know what that was about.'

‘Possibly Qingyang,' the Doctor said. He clicked his fingers. ‘Murchison, that was in Australia!'

‘Too recent,' Keri reported over the phone. ‘We know what came from that, it's well reported. Oh, hang on, yeah.'

‘Well?'

‘Patience. Grumpy and impatient. I liked the other one with a Scots accent far better,' Keri said.

‘I still do,' said Bernice. ‘In fact, just the other week I said to h—' And she stopped. ‘No, never mind.'

The Doctor took another one of those deep breaths he was taking a lot of recently and tried to get everyone back on topic.

‘You said it's known as the Glamour, right?' asked Keri.

‘Yeah,' said Bernice, before getting a stern look from the Doctor.

‘Why?' he asked.

‘Explorer in Australia, about a hundred years back, found something he referred to as the Glamour.'

‘We could go back in time and grab it before he does,' Bernice suggested, but the Doctor shook his head.

‘No, that'll just cause another temporal echo. We have to know where to find it here.'

‘We don't actually know what we're looking for,' Bernice reminded him. ‘I mean I have a chip of it and saw it in a blurry time eddy kind of thing, but put me in a room of moon rocks and I can't guarantee I could pick it out.'

‘There's another problem,' Keri said quietly. ‘The reference just vanished from GalWiki.'

‘What does that mean?' Bernice asked.

‘It means,' the Doctor said seriously, ‘that time has already started changing.' He leaned in closer to the hone. ‘Keri, I need you to tell me whatever you can find about this explorer, who he was and what connections he has to 2015. Benny and I will have to nip back and make sure he does what history needs him to, if you can recall what GalWiki said before it changed.'

‘And if we don't?'

The Doctor grimaced. ‘Then the destruction of the universe will take a massive step closer to now because time is already unravelling. That Pyramid is going to take the universe out like you blowing out a candle. Very, very soon.'

Peter Summerfield was looking for his mother, trying not to draw Jaanson or Globb's attention whilst he did so, hoping that they were still swept up by the sight of the Pyramid Eternia standing exactly where it shouldn't be.
There was also the possibility they were taken in a bit by just how nice Sydney looked in the sunshine. He was, and wished he could get his hoodie off, but suspected the humans of 2015 weren't quite ready for his appearance.

‘Where is she?'

Peter swung around.

Kik the Assassin was standing there, ignoring the looks of the locals who really weren't that used to turquoise humans. Maybe they thought she was part of whatever exhibition / film premiere most people were putting this event down to.

‘Who? Ruth – probably inside, trying to stop Jack accidentally breaking things. He does that a lot.'

‘Your mother, puplet. Where is she and her leader, Doc?'

Resisting the urge to point out how much his mum would not have appreciated that delineation, he just shrugged. ‘She was here a second ago. Maybe they went to the back of the building for a better look?'

Kik the Assassin smiled. ‘You are a good liar, Peter. A good soldier, too. In another life, we could be coupled, mate and have amazing offspring. We should do that when this is over.'

Peter smiled. ‘You're not my type, lady – and I think I'd be pretty disappointing as a result.'

Kik the Assassin nodded. ‘How parochial and typically human.' She turned and walked away.

Which troubled Peter. Why was she no longer wondering where his mum and the Doctor had got to? It meant either she was playing some other game, or she
already knew. And that meant Kik the Assassin knew more than Peter did, which was more troubling.

One of the advantages that Peter had over other teenagers was that his Killoran heritage meant that, like most canine species, his hearing was very good, way better than an average human's. So when the TARDIS dematerialisation sound occurred, he heard it.

He sighed. More covering up to do while the Doctor took his mum to God knows where…

It was 22 December 1934, and Tomas G. Schneidter was not having a great day. Truth was, he wasn't even having a good one.

For a start, it was raining. All the time he had spent aboard the ship that had brought him here, all he heard from the British and Americans aboard was ‘Oh, you're gonna love Australia, it's sunshine all the way' and ‘I say, Australia's a jolly marvellous place, awfully warm and green. One can never understand why, when Captain Cook arrived, he didn't just send the convicts back to small, dirty, cold Britain and move the upper classes to Australia instead, what?' But no one had pointed out that when it rains in New South Wales, it really rains. And in the famous Blue Mountains, the rain runs down into all the gullies and valleys, turning everything into quite a mess of mud and sludge with very little cover. The trees seemed to have evolved leaves that, rather than keeping the rain off you, actually bent down at an angle guaranteed to ensure the water poured down the back of your collar.

The other reason his day wasn't turning out the way he had anticipated was the presence of his wife. He loved his wife. Absolutely. No, really, he did. After all, she was charming, attractive, witty, elegant and above all incredibly rich. Which was great for parties, fundraising events and getting into the best restaurants in Dachau and Munich.

She was also demanding, spoiled, and utterly useless on a fact-finding expedition into untamed terrain. If she talked about complaining to her father just once more, Tomas knew he'd snap and send her packing back to him. Probably in a crate. Nailed down. With a note to have it stored in the deepest archives of the
Pinakothek
as an example of Aboriginal artwork, not to be opened until he returned. Which, if he had any sense, wouldn't be for another few years.

Rain or nagging?

Poverty or
Papi
's money?

Tomas wasn't proud of this, but the old Graf Feldner's money went a long way, so Roderika had to be tolerated.

Her didn't love her that much, after all. And he was pretty certain the (lack of) feeling was reciprocated.

Certainly today they were.

She had moaned at two of their workers for not covering her hair, and shouted at their long-suffering
Diener
for not supplying her with sensible footwear (the poor man had actually tried that morning but she had been adamant that going out in flat soles was unbecoming of a lady). Now she had a broken heel, her feet were caked in dirt and her
hair was no longer fashionably up, but hanging damply down her shoulders and covering one eye. In any other situation, Tomas might have found this funny, but he had learned not to laugh at his wife's misfortunes.

The trouble was he had made the mistake back at the Colby Hotel of telling their son that he was going to find treasure in the mountains. He was looking for a rock that many years of research, poring through ancient texts, the aboriginal writings (such as they were, being mostly modern transcriptions of generational folk tales) and studying the ancient texts both at the Neues Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London had confirmed was somewhere in the Katoomba area. Echo Point, in the shadow of the legendary Three Sisters to be specific. There were ancient stories that there had been a Fourth Sister once, another colossal prong-like rock formation, but that it had been destroyed by the arrival of the object Tomas sought.

On hearing the word ‘treasure', Roderika had immediately cancelled her plans for a day in the salon, left Josef in the care of his tutor and insisted on coming with him to find the treasure.

‘My darling, I'm not talking jewellery, or precious stones. Not that kind of treasure. No, this is something plainer. Legend calls it
die Glanz.'

‘Treasure is treasure,' Roderika had replied. ‘If it is important enough to have come halfway around the world to this wretched wet place, then it will be a triumph for us to share in.'

‘Our new Chancellor would be very excited if we could bring this back,' conceded Tomas. ‘I was contacted by the Party—'

‘Did they fund this then? Save my poor
Papi
from doing so?'

Tomas shook his head. ‘But hopefully they may pay us something if we take
die Glanz
back to them.'

‘What is it, then? Why would the Party be so interested?'

‘They are rumoured to be interested in the occult and—'

Roderika had just let out a long, slightly cruel, laugh. ‘You believe that? You believe that the Chancellor really believes in that nonsense?'

‘Your father does,' Tomas replied. ‘That's why we are here. He could see this coming, all those months ago, when we set off on this trip. He was getting us, getting you and Josef out of Dachau, just in case.'

‘In case what?'

Tomas sighed. If only Roderika had half the political savvy of her father. ‘Your father, me, you – we're just
Parteigenosse
, but if Von Hindenburg goes, and your father believes that will happen very soon, there is no telling what the Party will do. This way, we can keep on the right side of the
Reichsleitung
by giving them something they can examine, keep, lock away, and do whatever it is they do with objects such as this. I don't know. But your father wanted us safely over here, that's why he put me on to this mystery.'

Roderika was going to laugh again, but she could see there was something in Tomas's urgent delivery,
something in his eyes, that said he might be right.
‘Papi
was concerned for the
Sturmabteilung
– he said that we needed to protect Strasser. I thought he meant politically but…'

‘Strasser, Rohm, they could fall if Von Hindenburg goes. We are safe here; Josef is safe here. For now. We should find this treasure and decide afterwards if we let the Party have it.'

‘If the Party want it, the Party will get it,' Roderika said. ‘How could you do a deal with them if you knew how unstable home is?'

Tomas's rage flared up. ‘I did it to save us all. It will be better to have them on side than to become a victim.'

‘
Papi
…?'

Tomas took a deep breath. ‘By now he should be safe in Denmark or Sweden. A lot of the old families are heading there, hoping to find a haven.'

Roderika closed her eyes, and then smiled. ‘Darling, you are talking nonsense. You make it sound as if people like my father have something to fear from the Party. We should go find this ridiculous treasure of yours and carry it back victorious to the Chancellor and his
Reichsleitung
, and we shall be rewarded handsomely. Come on, I won't have you fill Josef's head with your paranoid ramblings.'

And Roderika had yelled for Tomas's
Diener
to prepare her aforementioned shoes, coat and hat, as she escorted Josef to his tutor.

Thus it was that the Schneidter party was pushing its way through the wind and rain to the base of Echo Point,
directly below the Three Sisters in the Jamieson Valley.

Tomas had to acknowledge just how impressive the area was. It was like a massive horseshoe-shaped enclave, enclosed on three edges by incredibly high rock walls packed with trees, waterfalls and other amazing sights. To the ‘front', the open part of the horseshoe, the valley spread out as a massive rainforest, as far as the eye could see. They had started at the top of Echo Point, come down the treacherous Giant Stairway, pausing at the top to take in the breathtaking vista ahead of them. Even Roderika had commented on how beautiful it was – and as it stretched miles and miles away into the distance, the trees created a fantastic canopy over the ground, and the distant mountains seemed to shimmer with a blue in the haze. She asked if that was what gave the region its distinctive name.

One of their party, an Aboriginal walker called Lue that Tomas had engaged earlier in the week, explained that it was eucalyptus oil rising from the trees because of the sun's heat that caused the haze.

Roderika thanked him. At which point the heavens had opened, and her mood evaporated with their shelter as they began the long dangerously steep descent down the Giant Stairway.

Tomas was just glad Josef wasn't with them, to give Roderika more angst and excuses to moan.

Halfway down, Tomas's
Diener
tapped him on the shoulder and pointed back at their Aboriginal guide.

‘Lue?'

But Lue was shaking his head. ‘I cannot go further,' he said. ‘This is our land, our heritage and you seek to disturb it.'

Tomas shook his head. ‘I'm looking for one item, one object. I promise nothing else will be taken or disturbed.'

‘Just one pebble taken is wrong,' Lue insisted. He hugged his open-necked white shirt tighter around him, like a chill had suddenly run through him, although the wind was no greater here than anywhere else.

‘What's the silly little man on about now?' Roderika called up, and Tomas gave her a look that implored her to shut up and not insult Lue.

When he turned back, Lue was gone. By rights, even if he'd just turned around to walk back up, he should still be visible, but it was like he'd just vanished. Swearing at the loss, Tomas carried on down, weighing up the pros and cons if Roderika were to ‘slip'.

His
Diener
caught his eye and smiled momentarily. Ordinarily, Tomas could dismiss him for such a breach of protocol, but frankly, he understood the poor man's frustrations at Roderika only too well.

And now, finally, here they were, at the base of the mountain, staring at, well, rock. Lots and lots of rock.

‘Well?' a wet, angry, dishevelled Roderika finally said. ‘Treasure?'

Tomas swung around and snapped back ‘I don't think there's going to be a big red X with “Treasure Here” carved into the wall!'

Roderika, not used to hearing her husband talk that
way to her stood and stared opened-mouthed at him.

No, not at him,
past
him.

Tomas turned to follow her eye line.

‘Oh, don't mind us,' said a man. Tall, mid-fifties, greying hair, long dark coat with a red lining, leaning casually against a tree, arms folded.

Next to him, a slightly younger woman, dark hair, black jacket and trousers, stunning dark blue eyes that twinkled with mischief.

‘Wotcha,' she said.

Despite the rain, they seemed dry as a bone. OK, so the trees might be giving them some shelter now, but to get down here they had to have been exposed to the elements.

‘Who are you?' Tomas frowned.

‘I'm a friend, and this is my friend, Bernice.'

‘I'm an archaeologist. Somehow being his friend rates a higher mention in my CV than what I actually do.'

‘Sorry,' the man said. ‘Touchy today, aren't we?'

Bernice just smiled at Tomas. ‘You're looking for the lodestone, yes?'

‘The what?'

The strange man and Bernice exchanged a look. ‘Not the response I was expecting,' the man said.

‘No, I thought it'd be more “Oh yes the lodestone for the Ancients of the Universe, can you help me find it, seeing as you're a brilliant archaeologist, amazing scholar of ancient artefacts and all-round genius at things involving trowels, little fluffy brushes and dirt under the fingernails.” But I guess not.'

Tomas just shook his head, looking back at Roderika and the rest of their party. All of them were similarly staring gape-mouthed.

‘I don't think he was impressed by your credentials, Benny,' the man said.

‘I missed off the thing too about being a pretty good reader of human body language. I don't think Herr Schneidter and Frau Schneidter are getting along today. She's not sure which of us to give the more poisonous looks to.'

Roderika stepped forward, her angst and ill-humour about rain, mud, everything, gone. In her place was an imperious but powerful woman, the woman Tomas had first met and been impressed by all those years ago.

‘I don't know who you are, or what you are doing here,' she said slowly and pointedly, ‘but this expedition is my husband's. We are here to find the treasure and when we do it belongs to him. To us. To our family. It is not, and never will be yours.'

The strange man widened his arms as if to say ‘No problem'. ‘I assure you, Frau Schneidter, we are not here to take the treasure away with us. We want your husband to find it and do exactly what you say. Nothing more. We're just, oh, I don't know, call us observers.'

Bernice nodded. ‘Making sure it all goes to plan and everything works out as it should. Oh, and your treasure's roughly over there, embedded deep into the lower strata,' she added helpfully.

Tomas, now oblivious to the weather himself, waved
his people over and started digging where the soil met the rock, as Bernice had indicated.

‘Why do you believe these
Verrückte
?' Roderika called over.

‘Because, my dearest,' Tomas replied, ‘I have nothing to lose by doing so.'

Roderika Schneidter looked back at the newcomer and his friend Bernice. Bernice was examining her nails, whistling. The man was tossing a clod of earth from one hand to the other, getting dirtier by the second.

‘And why should I not have you shot right now where you stand?'

The man looked up. ‘Well, that's not very friendly.'

‘Not at all,' agreed Bernice.

‘Firstly, shooting us is probably illegal in Australia. I mean, it's probably illegal in Germany too, but it is 1934, so anything's possible, I imagine. And secondly, why shoot us? I mean all we're doing is helping.'

‘Making sure history stays on the right track,' Bernice smiled.

‘Oh, why did you have to go and say that,' the man sighed. ‘Look at her now.'

And indeed Roderika was giving them her darkest stare.

‘Last time I got a stare like that,' the man said, ‘was from a talking bear from darkest Peru called Paddington. He gave good stares. Yours is pretty impressive on the Paddington scale. Eight or nine out of ten.'