Doctor How and the Deadly Anemones (7 page)

Doctor How had opened the package lying on his desk and examined the black mandible. He’d recognised it immediately as belonging to one of the giant beetles which had left a trail of destruction in the Dagenham area before he and Kevin had destroyed the last of them the previous day. It was about eighteen inches long, with serrations on the cutting edge. It was lightweight but tough, and the end closest to the joint with the mouth had been burnt. He knew it could only have come from the assault on the secret service bunker. He was delighted to have something that he could at last run a few tests on.

His heart sank as he heard the familiar clump of Dolt’s footsteps coming down the corridor. There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” he said, already feeling his blood pressure rise.

“Good morning, Doctor. How are you?” His Humpty-Dumpty-like supervisor entered the room and closed the door behind himself.

“Fine, all things considered, Dolt. Is this a social call?”

“You know we Dolts don’t make social calls, but you always ask me this question.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor. “What do you want?”

“The Galactic Council is concerned,” said Dolt.

“No change there.”

“You haven’t heard me out. They are concerned that these illegal aliens are still on the loose on planet Earth.”

“Join the club. They’ve not tried to kill anyone from the Galactic Council – just me and my cousin.”

“But you have no explanation. No identity. And yesterday’s job became very messy. You risked compromising our collective secrecy.” Dolt’s eyes finally rested on the giant mandible on How’s desk. As a species, Dolts were not known for their powers of observation. Or, rather they were known for their lack of observation – unless it was a minor mistake in a lengthy piece of paperwork, in which case there were none so expert. “What is this?”

“A piece of one of the beetles. The ones that tried to kill me, my assistant and one of my cousins – Where. The ones that were rather a big threat and that we wiped out, with no help from anyone else, or a word of thanks or congratulation either. But please don’t let that bother you.”

“This can’t fall into human hands.”

“What a good job I have sentient systems in place to prevent that from happening. It was submitted to the university and, as Head of Technology Transmission, it came to me first. An email went out automatically explaining that it was worthless.”

“It is priceless.”

The Doctor grasped it by the joint end and swung it. “Chops like a hot sword through butter. Lovely. I’d wager the cutting edge of this is from the height of Tsk’s last civilisation, only someone’s been able to bioengineer it. Nice work.”

“And you have no idea who?”

“My Spectrel is analysing a piece of metal my new assistant retrieved yesterday.”

“Ah, your new assistant, Kevin. Very rough around the edges, I hear.”

“He did very well. Analysis of his brain shows he could get a human Ph.D. The Cleaners offered him a job this morning, as it happens.” The Doctor regretted that last sentence as soon as it had left his lips.

“The Cleaners. That was another thing we needed to talk about. The Rindan consulate isn’t too happy to be picking up a cleaning bill for the deaths of their consul and his wife.

“Well, I’m not happy to be in the position of having to claim it. Nor am I happy at having had to arrange for a cleaning in the first place.”

“They’re saying that it’s your fault for having let the Plenscas grow their own polyps for holy week.”

“There would have been no end of a fuss if I’d followed procedure and not let them do it.”

“And that is the problem, Doctor How. You did not follow procedure.”

“It was a risk the Plenscas knew, and they took it.”

“You’re not making any friends. I suggest you drop the claim for expenses.”

“Certainly
not
. If someone is stupid enough to be eaten by their own lunch, why should I foot the bill? They should be grateful I had some good Cleaners who could perform the correct death rites.”

“The Rindan consul pays you about the same each month in rent that you spent on expenses. It seems only fair.”

“Fair? Since when did fair come into it? You’re a bureaucrat rather than a diplomat. They didn’t follow procedure, so they got killed. There are scores – probably even hundreds –  of such deaths amongst the Rindan diaspora each year. Tradition dictates that the relatives pay.”

“You broke procedure. Those are the rules. More importantly, I need to know what you are doing about the polyps that ate them. They are on the loose in human society.”

“I have beings on it,” said How. “I’m clearing up that part of their mess too. I’ve a good mind to send them a bill for that as well.”

“Your problem is that you never do yourself any favours, Doctor. You never take the easy route of compromise.”

“You mean
appeasement
,” said the Doctor. “You’re right. Compromise is an ugly word, Dolt. Once something has been compromised, it is no longer of any use. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get this analysed.”

“But I understand you have even lost your Spectrel, Doctor. This is why the Council are so concerned. A Time Keeper without his Spectrel… It is unheard of.”

“She’s not
lost
,” said the Doctor hotly. “I just don’t know quite where she is at the moment.”

“But –” protested Dolt.

“Lost is another ugly word. A ship is lost if it is sunk. A battle is only lost if you give up hope. I have never ‘lost’ anything, Dolt, and I don’t intend to start losing by making absurd compromises. I have work to do. Good day to you.” He rose from behind his desk, glaring at Dolt and compelling him to rise in tandem.

“I shall need regular reports, Doctor How. Detailed reports. And I can’t stop the Rindans taking this further, you know. They’re already making a bit of a fuss.”

Doctor How held the door open for Dolt, who stomped through on legs that had never made the adjustment to Earth’s lower gravity. He turned to face the Doctor.

“I suggest you –”

“Thank you, Mr Dolt. Operational emergency procedures dictate that I must get on with the task in hand. If the Galactic Council considers that the illegal aliens are still a threat then the emergency status still stands, does it not?”

Dolt made silent movements with his mouth like a goldfish.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Thank you so much for your input.” He shut the door firmly and went back to his desk. He took out his Tsk Army Ultraknife and thought at it for a fraction of a second. He held it against the end of the mandible that was scorched. It took a few seconds longer than he had thought it would, but the Ultraknife cut through it, leaving a fresh edge. He took a few more seconds to cut a sample from that, then put them both in his pocket. He didn’t know exactly where his Spectrel was, but he could still give her samples to analyse.

The mandible itself had arrived carefully packaged by Peterson to prevent it from cutting itself loose. She’d used wedges of polystyrene to hold it in place inside a piece of folded cardboard. He carefully wrapped it again. “One for the trophy cabinet,” he said under his breath, and set off back home.

Kevin had taken a Tube to Stockwell and then a bus up to Tulse Hill. A seat on the upper deck gave him a bird’s eye view of his estate as the bus climbed the hill. It was the first time he’d been back in days. Up until a week ago he’d been the go-to guy if you needed your stolen laptop or computer unlocked. Then it had all gone wrong for his clients. Stolen devices had been traced by the police; key boys in the Tulse Hill Crew had been arrested, and the blame pinned on his ineptitude for not having deleted tracking software. Someone – an out-of-towner it transpired – had taken over his computer and sabotaged his handiwork. They’d used his computer to try to hack into Doctor How’s Spectrel via David Where’s. The Doctor had saved him from a certain beating, and possibly something worse, by using his Tsk Army Ultraknife to addle their brains. In the days immediately afterwards the remaining Crew members had stayed away from him, like dazed and scalded cats – but he wasn’t sure how long the effects would last.

So much water under the bridge. He’d seen things the Crew wouldn’t even believe were possible. Kevin had left the estate a nerd, but felt like he was returning a battle-hardened warrior. He had new clothes, and a deeper feeling of confidence than he’d ever had. Still, as he got off at his regular stop he couldn’t help feeling a little naked and vulnerable without the power-assisted combat suit and the Con-Bat he’d used to help Doctor How and Trinity defeat giant killer beetles the day before.

He looked around the neighbourhood he’d grown up in and saw what a small world it was he’d inhabited. Boys a decade younger than him could be stabbed for crossing the road from one postcode to another, yet they lived in an almost infinitely large universe. Unknown numbers of aliens –
out-of-towners
– were living amongst them in ordinary dwellings. He looked around again.

When they’d visited the Plenscas he’d thought the Rindan consul and her husband had lived in a nice flat in a good area and had assumed that the whole out-of-town community would live as comfortably. Indeed, he assumed that the Plenscas, being religious and pious, would be living a relatively humble life compared to some of the others. Most of the rest, he’d assumed, would be living in the finest areas of London – Mayfair, Westminster and Kensington. That morning’s visit to the… he struggled to find a name for it… the
slime
– there was no other word for it, for
them
, he corrected himself – in Tooting had put paid to that. There was a being which was perfectly happy to live in a dank and dark basement and do nothing but exist in solitude. And the Cleaners had proved that out-of-towners could take on the appearance of anyone.

Then he wondered about all the Eastern Europeans who’d flocked to London – how many of those he took to be Eastern European were not actually from Eastern Europe, but from out of town? How long had they been here? As long as the Doctor? How many of the people in the Establishment weren’t human? Now that he thought about it, he didn’t know whether Doctor How was all he appeared to be either. The two cousins he’d met looked very human, but then the Time Keepers were masters of technology beyond any human’s comprehension. Were the Time Lords hideously ugly creatures underneath a biomask veneer? Tulse Hill had a considerable variety of housing, both social and private, and the proportion of immigrants was very high – how many of the dwellings he’d seen on his short bus journey were occupied by non-humans?

More importantly: what did they
want
? What brought them to Earth, and to London specifically? It didn’t seem that the Doctor had business elsewhere on the planet.

But here he was, back in the small corner of London he’d grown up in. With his mixed-race heritage and out-of-place blue eyes, he’d always felt alien himself.

He walked into the open space in front of the huddle of low-rise apartment blocks and felt familiar eyes on him. He was pretty sure he’d have been spotted getting on the bus in Brixton. That was the way in this corner of the metropolis. Sure enough, he saw a window swing open on the third floor of one of the buildings. Jabba the Hutt leaned out and took a long look at him. Jabba had got his nickname from the apparent stream of Pizza Hut deliveries to his flat. He’d since changed to Domino’s but the name had stuck. A week ago Kevin wouldn’t have stared back, but now he did. If you have a dog spooked, you let it know you’re still not afraid. His heartbeat quickened with the thrill and fear of defying the thug’s authority.

He smiled and waved, then turned away to put his key fob against the security reader and tapped in the code. The door to the stairwell opened and he trotted up the stairs. He unlocked the front door and went in to the familiar smell of home.

“Kevin?” called his mother from the kitchen.

“Hi Mum,” he said as she stormed into the living room. He braced himself for a barrage for having been out of touch.

“Thanks for the voicemail. That was very considerate of you.”

“Uh?” He was lost – he’d not even texted his mother, let alone left her any voicemails. Then he remembered that the Doctor had said he’d had a bot leave a voicemail for him. “Yeah, no problem.”

“And thanks to you and Doctor How for bringing in those casualties yesterday. They weren’t my patients but I heard only good things through the grapevine about what he achieved.”

“Right.” He decided to test the deeper water. “It wasn’t a problem that we just rocked up with them like that?”

“Not at all. It’s an emergency department, Kevin. For the life of me I have no idea why the police were there either.” Her face took on an uncharacteristically puzzled look.

“Whassup, Mum?”

“Nothing. It’s all a bit confused, to be honest. I just know you did yourself proud, young man. That Doctor How – he’s a good influence on you. Is he feeding you right?”

“Yeah, I’m doing well.”

“Oh!” his mother said. “The time! I’m gonna be late for my shift. My alarm went all funny. If I’d not been on a two-to-ten shift I might not have woken up in time at all. There’s stuff in the fridge for you if you get hungry. Friday night – don’t be doing anything stupid.”

“Sure. See you later.”

She gave him a kiss and locked the door behind her.

Kevin wandered through to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. There was a Tupperware box of something Afro-Caribbean – fish and rice, it looked like. He took it out and plucked a fork from a drawer. He went over to the kitchen window and looked outside. On the windowsill there was a new piece of bric-a-brac: a white plastic flower with a yellow centre. It bobbed up and down on a bulbous blue plastic pot which was about three inches in diameter. It had two green plastic leaves that seemed to act as a counterweight to the stem and the flower. He picked it up and looked at it. On the top of the pot were a couple of small solar cells, of the type he’d seen on pocket calculators at school. His mother was always buying tacky rubbish like this. She would have been taken with the way it responded to the sun. He shook his head and took the Tupperware bowl out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.

If the estate he’d grown up on now appeared small, his room was miniscule. It was risible for a man of his experience, he thought. But he recognised it as his own time capsule. It was not just a moment frozen in time from his previous life – his pre-Doctor How life – it was a museum exhibit. It was a diorama of the low expectations and limited horizons of his South London upbringing. The teenage posters of singers could go, for a start. He fired up his computer, which was probably the best on the estate, having been cobbled together from the latest cannibalised and stolen parts.

The time on the computer was way out.
Faulty motherboard?
he wondered. He ran a few checks. There was nothing wrong with any part of the software or hardware that he could detect, so he corrected the clock and began researching the news from the previous twenty-four hours. Apparently there was a rise in absenteeism in London. There was a bit of a scare about a virus affecting the internal clocks on computers across the capital, as well as on mobile phones. However, no virus could be found, and it was intermittent. A software glitch was thought to be the culprit.

The only thing related to his and the Doctor’s exploits that he could find was a story about a small tremor under Essex related to fracking. It was as if the whole series of spectacular events hadn’t happened. He leaned back in his chair and whistled. The world really was as he’d suspected it to be before any of this kicked off. Conspiracies and cover-ups were everywhere. It wasn’t exactly as he’d believed, but even his wildest beliefs hadn’t been too far-reaching.

An evening of nothingness yawned before him. He turned his attention back to his computer, donned his headset and joined a game of
Rorrim
. He gave a few lame excuses for his absence to the other people in his gaming posse as they prepared for a virtual assault on an alien citadel. As he blasted his way through a doorway and took out a couple of bug-eyed monsters, he wished he could tell them he’d played this game for real.

“Great shot, Kev!” shouted one of his team.

“Yeah, your play’s slick,” said another. “You’ve been away practising man.”

“For real,” said Kevin.