Doctor Who (10 page)

As they entered the building, walking down a long, echoing corridor towards a distant reception desk on a raised plinth at the end, Hellic moved closer to the Doctor.

‘You’ll only have about ten minutes with them,’ he said, blankly.

‘Today?’ asked the Doctor.

‘No, that’ll be it,’ said Hellic. ‘Once sentence has been passed, all your guardian rights will be revoked and
you’ll be incarcerated.’

‘Oh, you’re all heart on this planet, aren’t you?’ said the Doctor. ‘And when will sentence be passed?’

‘It’s probably happening right now, back in the courtroom.’

‘Great,’ said the Doctor, not meaning it at all. ‘So you bringing me here is just sort of scoring professional points, isn’t it? Building up your CV for a more senior post?’

Hellic ignored this and turned his attention to the reception desk they were now rapidly approaching. He pulled out another of his pieces of waxy paper from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to the rather squat, bald, bespectacled receptionist.

‘Court order 5/679-4 relating to the Blakely children,’ said Hellic.

‘Oh yes,’ mumbled the receptionist, typing something onto a flat screen on his desk. ‘I remember them. One of them cried all night. Most annoying. Will they be staying long?’

‘Probably until they come of age,’ said Hellic.

‘Hang on,’ said the Doctor. ‘Surely Terrin and Alyst left some provision for them in their will.’

Hellic turned to the Doctor, with a rather pitying look on his face. Pitying, but distinctly unsympathetic.

‘You heard the Dalek Litigator. Maximum punitive damages. Total seizure of assets,’ he said.

‘I haven’t got any assets,’ said the Doctor. ‘Well, apart from the TARDIS – oh, I see, you’ve seized that, have you? Of course you have. The Daleks would love to get their hands on the TARDIS.’

Hellic sighed. ‘When I get the call through from the courtroom, you will be confirmed as a hate criminal. Your visiting rights will be revoked and all assets connected with the case will be seized by the Dalek Foundation.’

‘You mean …’ the Doctor felt naive for not anticipating the full heartlessness of the State of Carthedia. ‘They’re seizing the Blakelys’ financial estate as well?’

‘Of course,’ said Hellic. ‘And when questioned, the children did not denounce you.’

‘Denounce? But … I was just honest about the Daleks,’ said the Doctor.

‘I’d advise you not to compound your crime. If you make your assertion about the Daleks again, I will be forced to report it and your sentence will most likely be increased,’ said Hellic, as if this were all just a matter of course.

‘Great defence council you turned out to be,’ said the Doctor. ‘Right. Where are the children? I want to see them now!’

Having been given instructions on how to find the room where the children were being kept, the Doctor quickened his pace, with Hellic scuttling after him to catch up. The two policemen did not hurry, but they were certainly making sure the Doctor was in range at all times.

As he walked along, the Doctor’s mind was working overtime. He looked all around him. The metal walls, the rust everywhere. Paint peeling. Water dripping down. And this was where those poor children were
expected to live until they were … what? Sixteen? Or older? He couldn’t stand for that. But what could he do to get them and himself out of this hybrid futuristic-Dickensian nightmare?

The Doctor was thankful that a combination of fatigued officers and possibly inferior scanning technology had meant he still had his sonic screwdriver with him. Surreptitiously fiddling with its controls in his pocket, the Doctor was trying to fathom a way of using the rusting metal structure of the building to his advantage. But even if they were able to escape, where would they go?

One problem at a time, he decided. Get away first. Find a way back to the TARDIS later.

The tall door to a narrow little room was unlocked and opened in front of him. It revealed the pathetic sight of Sabel, Jenibeth and Ollus huddled on a bed, wrapped in a blanket, seemingly fearing the worst. The Doctor wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d get. They had been rather distrustful of him, but when they had been taken away, their appeals to him had told a different story.

Sabel leapt forward, dragging her brother and sister with her. ‘We knew you’d come back!’ she said joyously.

Jenibeth and Ollus let out little uncontrolled yelps of delight.

‘Did you?’ said the Doctor, smiling and rushing to them.

‘Well … no,’ said Ollus, bluntly. ‘We thought the policemen might have killed you.’

‘But we are glad to see you!’ said Jenibeth, throwing
herself around the Doctor’s neck, sobbing with delight.

This was heartbreaking for the Doctor. By being here, he had raised the children’s hopes, but he knew he now probably had less than ten minutes with them before they would be locked away in this ghastly orphanage for the foreseeable future – and
he
was about to be imprisoned for hate crimes against the Daleks.

He realised he must act straight away. Hoping he had selected the right level of sonic vibration, he hastily whispered to the children.

‘Put your fingers in your ears,’ he hissed. Astonishingly, the children instantly obeyed him. Bright kids, he thought.

He flicked on the sonic screwdriver. The noise emitted was just about the most piercing sound he had ever managed to produce with the device, and the frequency at which it was bouncing off the metal walls of the room produced a vibration far in excess of the Doctor’s expectations. The policemen instantly started gasping in pain, putting their hands to their ears. The shock actually knocked Hellic unconscious. He just crumpled as if his entire body had been made of the waxy paper he had stuffed in his pockets.

Then the Doctor focused the vibration on one of the outer walls with a window in it. Firstly, the glass shattered and the window frames fell out. Then, the ancient, rusted welding which held the walls together ruptured and three walls simply toppled outwards, leaving a whole section of the building exposed to the elements.

There, before them in the rain-pelted courtyard, was
the police skimmer.

‘Run!’ cried the Doctor.

As he launched himself across the bed, Jenibeth gripped the Doctor’s neck tightly, clamping on to his chest by wrapping her legs around him. Ollus had seized a lapel and was holding on as hard as he could. Sabel started running and grabbed hold of the hand the Doctor shot out for her.

Staggering and flailing, they reached the skimmer and the Doctor tried the doors. Locked.

Sabel shouted, ‘Oh no!’

‘Don’t worry,’ smiled the Doctor, adjusting his sonic screwdriver.

‘Is that your magic wand?’ asked Ollus.

‘Er … Sort of. Not always,’ said the Doctor. And with a more controlled, buzzing vibration, it easily opened the skimmer door … Which was just as well.

From behind them, the voices of the policemen rang out. They had just recovered from their sonic ear-bashing.

‘Stop! Stay where you are, or we fire!’ they were shouting.

The Doctor was already entering the skimmer, throwing Jenibeth and Ollus over the front seats into the back and swinging Sabel into the front passenger seat, when he glanced back to see the policemen taking aim. He slammed the door shut behind them as shots rang out. Chunks of the courtyard exploded on impact and slammed against the skimmer doors.

The Doctor looked at the controls on the dashboard in front of him.

‘Right!’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘How difficult can this be?’

‘Quick!’ shouted Sabel. The Doctor saw she had noticed the policemen running full pelt towards them. He quickly flipped a few controls. Power throbbed through the chassis of the skimmer.

‘Good start!’ the Doctor proclaimed, beaming.

‘Hurry up!’ squealed Jenibeth in a voice so high that for a moment the Doctor thought he had accidentally switched his sonic screwdriver back to maximum.

Suddenly, the policeman impacted with the skimmer, both of them grabbing at the doors with their hands.

‘Um …’ declared the Doctor, and quickly located another switch on the dashboard. There was a deep ‘thunk-thunk’ noise. ‘Central locking!’

The policemen hammered on the doors in frustration. Then one of them stepped back and plunged a hand into his leathery pocket.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was still, rapidly poring over the other controls. Nothing was labelled very helpfully. He grunted in frustration.

Sabel started tugging at his arm and shouting, ‘Come on-come on-come on!’ Her brother and sister joined in.

‘All right-all right-all right!’ the Doctor shouted back at them. ‘Don’t rush me.’

Then … ‘thunk-thunk’, the central locking had been unlocked by the policemen.

The children looked at the Doctor in horror. He gave them an ‘oh dear’ look, then backed it up by actually saying, ‘Oh dear.’

Through the windows, they could see the policemen
smiling, suddenly taking their time about everything, smug in their victory. One of them slowly aimed his gun, the other beckoned with a wiggling finger for them all to exit the skimmer. The Doctor could see Hellic staggering up behind them, having recovered from his sonic-induced fainting. He did not look pleased.

The Doctor and the children sat tight, almost as if they were pretending the policemen were not there.

‘What are we going to do?’ asked Ollus, not daring to look out of the windows.

‘Sssh,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m thinking.’

He heard the click of the door mechanism start to open. One of the policemen had lost patience and was coming in.

‘I … think it’s this one,’ said the Doctor, his finger hovering over a button on the dashboard.

‘What’s this one?’ asked Sabel.

‘At least … I’m pretty sure,’ said the Doctor. And he pressed it.

He and the children jerked back violently as the skimmer shot straight up into the sky, a perfect, emergency, vertical lift-off as if it had been propelled upwards by a massive, hidden spring underneath it.

‘Geron​imooo​ooooo!’ hollered the Doctor, his voice bumping and vibrating as the skimmer engines surged at full power. When he stopped hollering and decided to look at the dashboard controls again, the children were, he discovered, still screaming.

The policeman who had started to open the door of the skimmer had been thrown clear by the vehicle’s sudden upward exit. He was lying on his back, groaning.

His comrade finished staring up at the rapidly diminishing shape of the skimmer in the sky and made what seemed like a reluctant attempt to pull the other policeman to his feet.

Hellic Dansard could not quite believe what he had witnessed. He had thought that his pedantic assigning of child visitation rights to this strange Doctor man would win him favour with the court judge. But now that this astute bit of legal manoeuvring had ended in his client escaping, the prospects for his future career were looking distinctly poor.

‘How could you let them get away?’ he asked the policemen, venting his frustration.

Both policemen were now standing. They both gave a look to Hellic that said, ‘Don’t push it, mate,’ and then one of them spoke into a lapel transmitter.

‘We need back-up,’ he said. ‘And fast.’

Meanwhile, the skimmer was still heading upwards. The Doctor had already noticed from the tone of the engine that the systems were straining to continue climbing. The thinness and cooling temperature of the air meant that they were very probably reaching the point of no return. Or rather, fast return – streaking back down to the surface of Carthedia with nothing to stop them but wishful thinking.

If only he could work out how to switch off the ascent thrusters and just drive this thing sensibly. He tried a few more controls, but they only made the interior lights come on and off and the windscreen wipers work.

Then a little voice came from behind his left ear.

‘Shall I drive?’

It was Ollus. The Doctor smiled, determined not to scare the little boy by saying something like, ‘Don’t be stupid, you’re only 4 years old!’

Then he caught Sabel’s eye. She nodded enthusiastically.

‘What? Seriously?’ the Doctor mouthed to her.

‘Daddy used to let him drive our skimmer all the time. Ever since he was two and a half,’ she whispered in reply.

This little Ollus fellow was a living marvel, the Doctor decided – either that or they were all going to die horribly; and given that they were all about to die horribly anyway, he might as well take a risk on a little marvel of a 4-year-old. So, without pausing, he pulled Ollus over into the front seat, onto his lap.

‘You’re in command!’ said the Doctor.

Ollus gave a confident little smile, popping his spaceship into his pocket. He then leaned forward, flicked a few switches and a semi-circular steering wheel unfolded from a hidden compartment in front of him.

‘Oh, that’s where it was,’ said the Doctor.

A few more adjustments and Ollus had arrested their ascent. Grasping the wheel, the little boy effortlessly steered them down several thousand, breath-restoring feet. The temperature in the skimmer immediately rose to a more comfortable level and the air thickened up with oxygen.

‘You’re good!’ said the Doctor, patting Ollus on the back heartily, before remembering he was only a little boy and should perhaps not be patted quite so heartily. Ollus gave a little surprised cough, but smiled nevertheless.

‘I don’t suppose you could find the spaceport, could you?’ asked the Doctor.

Without speaking, Ollus tapped another control and a heads-up-display depicting a map of the city appeared on the windscreen. The Doctor started scrolling it by brushing his fingers over it. Fairly quickly, he located a large red square on the screen, labelled ‘Spaceport’. Ollus leaned forward and pressed his finger firmly on this red square.

A muffled, disjointed, electronic voice burbled up from somewhere behind the dashboard. ‘Location selected. Carthedia City Spaceport Terminal. Auto-pilot engaged.’

‘An intelligent, onboard computer system!’ cheered the Doctor, then leaned over to Sabel as if confiding something vastly important. ‘Now
that
could come in handy.’