Doctor Who: The Blood Cell (15 page)

There was another blast from the Defence Array. The fence melted along with the wall behind us.

‘One thing,’ said the Doctor. ‘Right now everything in this prison wants to kill us. The external defences. The internal defences. And something deep inside that’s very large and mysterious. Someone wants to make very sure that we die.’

‘Well, I must say, I’ve missed you,’ said Clara.

The Defence Array fired again, and we started to run before we were atomised.

As the corridor behind us was burned away, we were running for our lives.

Or rather, Clara and I were running, and the Doctor was hobbling.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Clara.

The Doctor appeared to be cursing under his breath. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered, wincing as he placed his weight on his foot.

‘Doesn’t look like nothing. Have you been shot in the leg or something?’

The Doctor shook his head, sheepish. ‘Nothing. Carry on, let’s keep going.’ He lurched on at a strange sort of leaping limp.

‘So, what’s happened to your foot?’

‘I, uh …’ The Doctor glared at me for support.

‘He was saving my life,’ I put in.

‘How?’

The Doctor muttered again.

Clara’s eyes narrowed. ‘Did you just say you
stubbed your toe?’

The Doctor nodded and whispered something else. ‘I think I’ve broken it.’

‘Your toe?’

‘Is broken, yes.’

‘That’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it?’

‘No.’ A pause. ‘It’s the big toe.’

‘Can’t you, you know … do the thing?’

The Doctor glared at her, an angry owl zeroing in on a shrew. ‘You’re suggesting I regenerate simply because I’ve stubbed my toe?’

‘Can’t you?’

‘Well, I could, but it seems a bit of a waste of a life.’

‘Can’t you just do the toe?’

‘Regeneration is a prized miracle of Time Lord physiognomy and you’re saying I use it to renew my toe?’

‘It was just a suggestion.’

‘Well, no. I can’t. Since you ask.’

‘That’s a bit of a limitation.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll write them a letter.’

‘Do so.’

They carried on in this baffling way for a bit, bickering fondly as they ran.

‘Is this sort of thing going to happen more often now that you’re—’

‘Don’t say it,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘No, actually, do go on. Now that I’m what?’

‘Distinguished. As in old.’

‘No. I hope not. And anyway, I’m only in my early thousands. That’s nothing.’

‘It’s just we could look at getting you one of those mobility scooter things. My nan has one.’

‘No.’

‘She swears by it. You can fit the shopping in it.’

‘No.’ The Doctor limped on. ‘And anyway. I already have a trolley somewhere.’

We rounded a corner. I was completely out of breath, Clara was grinning, and the Doctor seemed to be insisting on his unusual wobbling gait.

‘I dunno,’ announced Clara. ‘Last time I saw you, you were the valiant saviour of worlds. Now you have a magic spoon and a dodgy toe. Back home, you’d be hanging around outside the supermarket bins.’

The Doctor looked at me for reassurance. ‘This! This is what I have to put up with. Honestly, prison has been, in some ways, a lovely break.’

The entire floor shuddered and tipped. We all slid and fell.

‘What’s happening?’ I yelled, holding on to a support strut as the world spun around me.

‘Well, I dunno,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Perhaps the Defence Array’s hit one of the support struts, or it could be the artificial gravity failing.’

The floor gave another creak and then twisted sideways. The Doctor scrambled back to his feet and
started limping rapidly off.

‘What are you doing?’

‘We need to be in a small space while the systems stabilise. Like a really tiny room. Luckily, this is a prison. There’s not a shortage of tiny rooms. Come on.’

We followed him.

Three was a crowd in a cell.

‘Cosy?’ suggested the Doctor.

‘Snug?’ mused Clara.

The Doctor flung himself down on the bed, stretching out to fill it. Which left Clara and me squashed together by the door. Arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, the Doctor seemed to be ignoring us. ‘
Cells I Have Known
. That’s what I’d call it. Or
My Life Behind Bars
. But I’ll definitely find time to write some kind of guide to the various prisons I’ve been held in one of these days. I’d give them stars – I love stars. Don’t you love stars?’

‘I love stars,’ agreed Clara.

‘Categories. That’s the other thing. Location? Ambience? Ease of Escape?’ He paused. ‘Sense of Hopelessness? Screams of Other Prisoners? Inventiveness of Torture?’

He sat up, trying the weight on his toe, and winced. ‘Thing is, what’s the point? A prison cell is just a bare minimum. The littlest amount of space you need to let
life continue. A confinement, but also an awareness of everything you’re missing. Wouldn’t you agree, Governor?’ He stared right at me.

‘Yes,’ I said, my mouth suddenly dry. There were so many other things we could be doing now, but for some reason, this felt very important. ‘Are you complaining? I’ve tried my best here. To be humane. Within the Protocols.’

I really had. I mean, if you ignored the little exceptions. The people I enjoyed punishing. Because of what they’d done.

‘You know what? I don’t care any more.’ The Doctor yawned. ‘You can justify yourself as much as you want. Boring. It’s not why I’m here.’

‘Can I remind you, Doctor, you’re here because you committed dreadful crimes.’

‘Did I?’

‘Oh please,’ I grunted. ‘Everyone’s innocent.’

‘Ah yes.’ The Doctor clapped his hands together and the noise was sharp and loud. ‘But what if I really was? What if I’d been stitched up, grassed up and banged up?’

‘No, don’t do that,’ whispered Clara, embarrassed.

‘But I can.’ The Doctor beamed. ‘I’m an old lag. A vicious criminal. Apparently. Unless, of course, I’m totally innocent. And you’ve just been told I’m a criminal. The one lie you’d believe.’

I can’t remember crossing the room. I really can’t.
But there I was. Suddenly, shouting in his face. All of the careful training, the instructions to hide as much of yourself as possible, all of that. Gone.

‘I don’t care, Doctor. I really don’t. You want to lie to yourself to get through the day? Fine. But don’t bother with me. I know what you’ve really done. Why they sent you here. And you’re going to pay for that some day, I’ll make sure of it. I know, no one’s all good. Or all evil. You’ve done great good here – but I know what you did before. And that’s why you’re never getting out of this place. I’ll make sure of it. This prison can tear itself apart and you’ll never leave it. Until there’s nothing left. You’ll stay here. And I’ll be here with you.’

‘Why?’ asked the Doctor. ‘What have I done?’

‘Don’t bother,’ I snapped.

Clara stood between us. The uncertainty on her face told me all I needed to know. She didn’t quite believe in his innocence either. His best friend. His champion. And she was worried.

The Doctor turned away, dismissing us both. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he snapped. ‘Clara, did you bring the papers with you?’ He flapped a hand, ‘Oh, I know, it’s smuggling. Get her, she’s quite the criminal. But it’s important.’

Clara reached into her jacket and produced a plastic wallet with printouts from TransNet newscasts. ‘You don’t get much news here, do you?’ she asked gently.

‘Not really,’ I said, ‘We don’t have the bandwidth. And, at this distance, it seems trivial. The squabbles and sadnesses of people I will never see again.’

‘Well, you should read this.’

I flicked through the folder. The headlines made my heart flicker, just a little. The HomeWorld Government was in trouble. The new president was increasingly unpopular. There were protests and riots. Good, I thought. I tried not to gloat. But GOOD.

‘Ah well, what does it matter?’ I sighed. ‘They’ll find someone else to rule them. Someone even worse.’ The Doctor was staring at me again, measuring my reaction. ‘Really? Who?’ he asked.

‘Someone weak. Someone who gets out of his depth and makes the wrong decision. Who does something unforgiveable. Someone human.’

A silence settled over us. Clara was watching me as well.

‘It doesn’t matter, not really,’ I said.

More awkward silence.

‘Sure?’ said the Doctor eventually.

‘I think we’re all agreed that, whatever my failings as a prison governor,’ I sighed, ‘that I was an even worse HomeWorld president.’

Turns out, it’s really easy to rig an election. First you just murder my wife.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Clara
.

But that wasn’t good enough for the Doctor. ‘Nice soundbite, but no. It wasn’t that simple, was it?’

Well, it wasn’t quite that simple. But it was fairly easy.

My re-election should have been reasonably straightforward, but then someone on the opposition … well, no, that’s unfair. Perhaps I should say ‘someone with interests not unallied to those of my political opponents’ … Someone realised that the weak spot was in the outer colonies. Specifically that it was just a matter of flipping the voting habits of one or two.

They started by picking the world of Birling and an almost extinct disease. It was called Lopo, which is a stupid little name for a disease. Centuries ago it
was lethal, now it was almost unheard of. Children on Birling were immunised against Lopo as a matter of course, but all of a sudden there weren’t enough supplies of vaccine. Just a tiny hiccup at a HomeWorld production facility. Then the smallest of delays over the shipping of those supplies across the System as they went through Customs.

Luckily, the private sector stepped in to help out Birling. Only it turned out that some of the vaccines they supplied were out of date, or watered down.

From out of nowhere a crank without even a proper medical degree – a Professor of Acupuncture and Astrology (you can work out who that was for yourselves) – started giving media interviews on Birling, saying that the vaccine caused growth deficiency. It was completely unsupported by fact. But the fraud made compelling television. All of a sudden, parents on Birling were holding up their toddlers and saying to each other ‘She does, you know, look a little small, don’t you think … Perhaps we’d better not vaccinate her little brother …’ It was utter nonsense, but we had a free and fair press, so when MedAuth put up a doctor to explain the facts, up would pop the Professor of Acupuncture and Nonsense as well. To establish balance. And people thought ‘Well, there must be something in it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be talking about it on the TransNet.’

It took a while for the MedAuth on HomeWorld to
realise the size of the problem. There weren’t enough Lopo vaccines for the children of Birling. And parents weren’t bringing their children in to be immunised to receive the few ampoules that had cleared customs. It wasn’t long before the first cases of Lopo started to be reported. My wife held the position of Honorary Chair of MedAuth. Because she looked very good hugging babies. We’d never had children of our own, but Helen held a stranger’s infant like it was a diamond of joy.

So my wife went to Birling, to try and reassure the population about the vaccine and the dangers of Lopo. The virus was still there on the planet, but, she’d been vaccinated as an infant. However, denied a proper chance to feed, Lopo had been mutating. First the children caught it. Then it jumped to adults who had been immunised against it.

My opponents had merely intended to create a situation where enough people on Birling were dealing with their sick children to not bother voting. Instead they’d caused a lethal epidemic. My wife was caught up in the quarantine. Helen made the best of it, travelling across Birling, trying her best to sort out the situation. Of course she got sick.

Suddenly, the impending election really was the last thing on my mind. I’d talk to her on TransNet every day. That was all my advisers would allow me to do. I was all for jumping on board a shuttle to Birling and
going to her, spending all the time that Helen had left. But ‘No, sir,’ they said. ‘We forbid it. You have to think about the election. You owe your wife a great deal, of course, but you owe the people of the HomeWorld even more.’

What a fatuous, pompous idiot I must have been to have even listened to them. But I did. I looked noble. I suffered in public. And, when the time came, I wore black very sombrely.

The problem about the epidemic on Birling was that the causes for it were reasonably simple. But it was even easier to blame me. Worse, at exactly the same time as I was being attacked for not supplying enough Lopo vaccine, parents on other worlds were looking at their children and saying, ‘He does, you know, look a little small, don’t you think …? Perhaps we’d better not vaccinate his sister …’

Sickeningly, the death of my wife provided me with what my advisers called a ‘Sympathy Bump’ in the opinion polls. But my increased popularity wasn’t going to be enough for me to win the election. I could see that, and I was prepared to admit defeat. I didn’t, to be truthful, want to carry on any more.

But then my Chief Adviser came to see me. Her name was Marianne Globus. My wife had always suspected us of … I’m not sure. Of having an affair? Certainly we flirted, but Marianne was like one of those flowers you went to see in an arboretum. When
lavishly cared for, she flourished with rare beauty, but you couldn’t imagine taking one home.

Marianne talked me out of not contesting the election. She also pointed out that the opposition had, in effect, cheated me out of votes. A lot of votes. And what she was proposing was not rigging the election, not at all. It was simply a slight statistical correction. That was the phrase she used. When I protested, she reassured me: ‘Don’t worry, it’s just the little people. They don’t count.’

The plan was simple. Identify a few outlying polling stations that were too remote to have observers posted there. If they were manual, simply ensure an extra box of statistically corrected ballots were posted. It they had voting machines, ensure that the software worked to assist the undecided to vote in our favour.