“Doctor Azam!” The nurse opened the door to her office breathlessly. “Doctor, can you come. There’s a patient… he’s speaking some kind of foreign and we thought you might…”
The nurse stopped. Doctor Jasmin Azam was glaring at her with an expression somewhere between anger and amusement.
“I was BORN in Salford,” she pointed out. “The only ‘foreign’ I know amounts to school French, the menu at our favourite Italian restaurant and a few Arabic nursery rhymes that my mother used to sing to me as a baby.”
“Please come,” the nurse insisted. “Somebody has to do something. I don’t know what he’s saying but the tone of it would break your heart.”
“Oh all right,” she said, closing the file she was writing up and following the nurse out to A&E. In a curtained off cubicle a man was crying out loudly as the nursing staff tried to calm him down.
“That’s not ‘foreign’,” Doctor Azam said. “It’s English.”
She stopped. No, she thought. It WAS a foreign language. But she could understand it as English.
She’d almost forgotten.
The gift of the TARDIS. She could understand any language, written or spoken. Even after nearly six years, it still worked.
Six years since she travelled in the TARDIS, since the most amazing time of her life.
Not that it hadn’t been great since. University, marriage to Alec, and working here in the hospital, all her ambitions falling together perfectly as she had hoped.
Working in casualty was almost as unpredictable as travelling in time and space with The Doctor. She wondered if that was why she CHOSE it rather than any other department, because it gave her that constant challenge that life with HIM used to give her.
“Doctor?” The nurse’s questioning voice brought her back to the present. Despite the degree proudly displayed on her office wall, it always took her by surprise to be addressed as ‘Doctor’. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was only one person that nomenclature really belonged to.
He wore a pinstripe suit and canvas shoes and had a smile that could fill you with hope even when it looked as if the world was going to fall apart under your feet.
He had the power to hold the world together and stop it falling apart.
She shook her head and held a hand up to tell the nurse not to interrupt and she gave her attention to the words the patient was saying.
“Lost,” he said. “I am lost. I cannot go home.”
“What is he in for?” Doctor Azam asked. “There’s nothing obvious wrong with him, other than confusion.”
“He was found unconscious in the Arndale Centre,” the nurse answered. “No obvious injuries, but unconscious. He came around just now and started screaming.”
“I am lost!” he cried out again.
“It’s all right,” she told the patient gently. “Don’t worry about that just now. You’re not going home or anywhere until we’re sure you’re all right.”
The effect her voice had on him was startling. He reached out and touched her face and he smiled widely. It was a beautiful smile. She looked at his eyes now that they were calmer. The irises were black as coal. It was almost impossible to see the pupil. And yet his skin was paler than most English people she had ever met.
While she was taking that in, his hand touched her again. This time under her throat. No, he wasn’t touching her - it was her pendant that he was reaching for. His long, slender fingers traced the golden representation of the Seal of Rassilon. At the same time, his other hand reached for a chain around his own neck and Jasmin gasped when she saw what was on it.
A TARDIS key! She recognised it straight away. She still had her own. She kept it in the drawer of her bedside cabinet. Alec kept his, too. When they parted, they had offered them back, but The Doctor had smiled his smile and told them to keep them - in case they ever needed them again.
She leaned closer to him. He lifted the key with the representation of The Doctor’s lost home, the constellation of Kasterborus, on the fob and pressed it against her pendant.
And both glowed as if there was a power within them.
“Ali!” she whispered as the glow died and she stood straight again. “Ali, my little boy. Do you remember? When you were little, we looked after you. Me and Alec and Wyn, and The Doctor. Do you remember us? I looked after you, cuddled you, fed you. I helped you to walk. We played in the snow. Do you remember, Ali? That wonderful Christmas when you came to us?”
The nurse looked at Doctor Azam and wondered what it was she was saying to the patient in his own language. It seemed very emotional. Almost as if they knew each other.
“I can take this from here, nurse,” Jasmin said, turning to her before giving her attention fully to Ali. “What brought you here, sweetheart?” she asked him.
“Lost now,” he said. “Don’t know where I am. Don’t know….” He put out his hand to her face again. “Jasmin?”
“That’s right,” she said to him. “You remember. My little Ali. But… that’s not really your name, is it? That was the name I gave you.”
“I remember.”
“You’re grown up now. But it is lovely to see you. I’m glad you came here. You had the whole world to explore, and you came to see Manchester.”
“Looking for you, for The Doctor. Help….”
“I’m afraid The Doctor – THAT Doctor - doesn’t live here,” she told him. “I don’t know HOW to contact him. I wish I did. There are so many times I have wished….”
Outside the cubicle she heard a scream, then a sound like an energy weapon being discharged, and then even more screams. Ali squealed in fright and tried to get up from the bed. Jasmin pressed him down again and went to the curtain. She peered out and saw two men with weapons she knew had no business being on Earth in this time. They were searching all of the cubicles while shouting, in a strangely rasping, almost mechanical voice and in what to everyone else would be a foreign language. Only she understood what they were demanding to know.
“Where is the Tagnan? Where is the key?”
They were after Ali.
“Stay there, sweetheart,” she said as she reached into a cupboard and found a sharp pair of surgical scissors. She stood facing the curtain, waiting. She didn’t know if she could fight them, but she had to try. She had to protect Ali just as she had done when he was a baby.
She could hear their footsteps coming closer. She heard the patient and nurse in the next cubicle screaming and protesting. It was a matter of seconds before they would reach her. She gripped the scissors tightly and prepared for the deadly confrontation.
It never came. Instead she heard a sound that gladdened her heart and felt a breeze ruffle her hair. The entrance to the cubicle was suddenly filled with a blue police public call box. As the sound died away the door opened. She turned and reached to help Ali stand and ran with him into the safety of the TARDIS.
“Doctor!” she cried joyfully as he grinned at her and pressed the door control before reaching for the dematerialisation switch. Jasmin felt that increase in the faint vibration that told her the TARDIS was moving.
“Doctor yourself,” he replied. “Is that… who I think it is?”
“It’s Ali,” she told him. “He’s not very well and he’s lost and there are people trying to kill him, and we are both SO glad to see you.”
“Doc…tor!” Ali said and then collapsed in a dead faint.
“Ok,” The Doctor said as he crossed the floor and caught him even before he hit the floor. He lifted him into his arms and looked at Jasmin. “You know the way to the medical room. Lead the way.”
Jasmin nodded and took the lead, opening the doors for The Doctor until they reached the TARDIS’s own well equipped medical room. She watched as he put Ali down gently on the examination table and made a cursory examination of him before turning and reaching for her.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“I’m… I’m scared, I’m… I’m relieved. I’m… confused. Doctor, why is he here? Why are people trying to kill him? Why are YOU here?”
“Those lovely Human multi-part questions again!” The Doctor laughed softly. “The last question I CAN answer. You called me.”
“No I didn’t. I wouldn’t even know how.”
“The pendant is made of Gallifreyan gold and diamonds. Ali touched it… while holding the TARDIS key… made of Gallifreyan pewter. It sent out a signal to me. I knew you both needed me.”
Jasmin touched her pendant. The Doctor gave it to her for Christmas, not long before they parted. She had worn it ever since. Most people assumed it was some sort of Arabic design. She knew there had been no point in trying to explain.
She knew it was a unique and valuable gift.
But she didn’t know it could help save her life and bring The Doctor back to her.
“He’s not too good,” The Doctor said as he continued to examine Ali. “Somebody has attacked him once already. His body is riddled with Bering Particles.” Jasmin looked at him questioningly. He smiled indulgently. “No, they wouldn’t be in your medical books. The energy weapon you heard being discharged - Bering Particles. They don’t kill straight away. They slowly attack the body, over several days, breaking down the cell structure.”
“He’s dying!” Jasmin cried softly. “Oh Doctor, no.”
“He’ll be all right. We got to him in time. It must have happened within the last couple of hours and no more. I’m going to give him what he needs to counter it. Then we need to get to the bottom of this.”
“You mean why alien terrorists came to the hospital to get him?” Jasmin asked. “They were alien, I suppose. That’s an alien weapon they attacked him with.”
“Good logic. You keep thinking that way. Well done. Yes, it is an alien weapon. It comes from Ali’s own planet. And that is VERY worrying.”
“One of his own people attacked him?”
“Yes.”
“That’s horrible,” she said. Then she thought about it. “Mind you, I suppose, Earth people attack each other. It’s no different, is it?”
“It depends on WHY he was attacked.” The Doctor inserted a syringe into Ali’s arm and injected a serum into him. He held a piece of cotton wool over the place and fixed it with tape. “We’ll find out,” he promised. “Meanwhile, you’re safe here, my boy.” He stroked Ali’s face gently, and Jasmin saw it change from an anxious, frightened, haunted expression to a peaceful one as he went from unconscious to peacefully sleeping.
That was The Doctor. Kindness itself to the innocent, but ruthless to those who caused suffering in others.
And with moods as unpredictable as Manchester weather. He turned from attending to Ali and grinned widely as he reached out and hugged Jasmin.
“Wonderful to see you again. Is everything fantastic in your life?”
“It WAS until today. Now I’m in the middle of something terrible and frightening again. And you’re here, like you can’t have the one without the other. It’s… it’s fantastic to SEE you, Doctor, but did we have to have the scary stuff? Couldn’t you just come around for supper like our normal friends?”
“I’ll try that some day,” he promised. “But first, let’s look after Ali. I dare say you won’t want to leave him alone in here, in case he wakes up frightened. So you hold his hand there while I patch in all the exposition on this computer.” He turned and began to type rapidly at the medical room computer. Information scrolled onto the screen faster than the eye could see. Well, Jasmin’s eye, anyway. The Doctor’s eyes dilated rapidly as he took in the information.
“I’m surprised there isn’t a way the TARDIS could download information directly to your brain,” she said as she watched him.
“Symbiotic is one thing,” he answered, shaking his head. “But there has to be a difference between living beings and machines, even living, sentient machines. When that line gets crossed you get soulless things that don’t know if they are one thing or the other, like cybermen.”
“Like what?” But his thought processes had moved on again.
“Strange,” he murmured. “Very strange. And very, very unusual.”
“What is?” she asked.
“Ali… he IS Ali. He is the little boy we looked after. There is no doubt about that. But he has been genetically and surgically altered. He has been turned HUMAN.”
“He’s… is that possible?”
“It’s possible.” The Doctor turned back to look at his patient. He examined his mouth and throat with a magnifying light instrument. “His people have a special filter in their throats that allows them to breath the toxic air of their planet. It has been surgically removed and his DNA altered so that in any examination of his body he would appear to be a Human being. He has even had vocal chords grafted in. That’s why he can talk now, except that he probably hasn’t really got the hang of it yet.”
“He wasn’t really making a lot of sense,” she admitted. “But WHY?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see if I can find out.” He returned to the computer and keyed in a videophone code. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the keyboard as he waited for it to connect. Except it WASN’T connecting. Under his breath Jasmin heard him say something that, if she remembered correctly, was a very profound swear word in Low Gallifreyan.
“I can’t contact Ali’s homeworld,” he said. “Something is very wrong there.”
“The planet is there isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s not… GONE.”
“It’s there,” he said. “It’s like the phones are ringing but nobody is answering.”
“And that means…”
“I have no idea.”
“Exile.…” They both turned as Ali spoke. He was sitting up. “Jasmin, Doctor….”
“Ali,” The Doctor reached him first, but it was a near thing. “How are you feeling?”
“I am.…” He put his hand to his throat and seemed surprised at how it felt. His eyes blinked rapidly as he spoke. His people communicated with eyeblinks. Now he was learning to speak through the use of vocal chords he never even had until somebody grafted them into his body.
“It’s all right,” The Doctor answered him. “You don’t have to answer the question. I can see how you’re feeling. You’re lost, confused, you’re a long way from home. And you’re hurting because you’re brimful of Bering particles and that’s a rotten, painful, horrible thing. But you’re going to be all right. The particles are breaking down. You’ll be clear of them in a few hours. And the rest.… The other things done to you, I think they were done to keep you safe, weren’t they?”
“Exile,” he said again. “Sent me here. Can’t go back.”
“Something has happened on your planet? Something bad?”
Ali nodded.
“Ok.”
“Doctor,” Jasmin said. “Ali isn’t the only one in trouble. There are alien terrorists in the hospital still.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Let’s go ask THEM what’s going on.”
“Asking them questions wasn’t EXACTLY what I had in mind,” she said as she and Ali both followed him back to the console room. “I was sort of hoping you had some way of zapping them and putting them out of action.”
“Zapping them?” He grinned as he programmed their re-materialisation. “When have you EVER seen me zap anyone?”
“These people were firing weapons at friends and colleagues of mine, and at sick people in a casualty ward. Just this once if you want to shoot first and ask questions later, I’ll look the other way.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” he replied. “But that’s never been my style. My trusty sonic screwdriver gets me out of trouble ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
“I hope this isn’t the hundredth time then,” she answered.
The Doctor grinned. “Trust me, I’m The Doctor,” he said as he led the way back to the console room, Jasmin and the still worried but slowly recovering Ali following behind. She made Ali sit on the command chair while the TARDIS materialised in the same place it had been before, except the other way around so that the door faced outside.
“That’s what I LOVE about the TARDIS,” he said with a laugh in his voice. “Sometimes she can’t tell the difference between Sheffield in 1979 and Balmoral in 1879 and other times she can pinpoint a postage stamp in space… or return to the exact same place exactly 30 seconds after we left.
He opened the door and stepped back smartly as two rays of Bering Particles narrowly missed him and bounced off the roundels on the interior wall.
“You two might want to get behind the console just in case,” he warned. He looked back and grinned as he noted that they already WERE crouched down there, then he stepped out of the TARDIS, his sonic screwdriver held high.
This time the rays got him full square. His body glowed for a moment but he didn’t even so much as wobble.
“Is that REALLY the best you can do?” he asked. “For the record, Time Lords are immune to Bering particles. You can shoot me all day and it won’t even give me a headache. And since my friend Jasmin doesn’t want you shooting her colleagues and patients it would make her happy.”
He looked at the two assailants as they hesitated, their weapons still pointed at him but not firing. They looked humanoid but they had tubes affixed to their noses and mouths that he guessed fed them the mix of gases their species required.
If they were Ali’s species, then in fact they WERE oxygen breathers, but ironically their bodies were adapted to take the oxygen from a mix of toxic gases and they couldn’t actually tolerate it in the Earth atmosphere.
“Give us the Tagnan and nobody will be hurt,” one of them said with a voice that was rasping and harsh, as might be expected.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. He held his sonic screwdriver up and when they fired again the rays rebounded off it. The guns apparently became very hot. The two aliens dropped them with yelps of pain. The Doctor moved forward while they were still nursing their sore hands and grabbed them both by the neck, applying a certain exotic pinch to the nerves that caused them just enough paralysis for him to bend and pick up the rapidly cooling guns.
“Ok,” he said, brandishing the weapons. “You two are coming on a trip in my space ship. You’ve caused these good people enough trouble.” He glanced around at the nervous staff and patients of the casualty department. “We’ll be off now. Don’t you worry. Keep up the good work.”
He marched the two men into the TARDIS. Jasmin and Ali both stared in surprise as The Doctor calmly closed the door behind him.
“You brought them in here?” Jasmin queried.
“I got them away from innocent people. Now we’re going to find out what’s happening. Here, you two take the guns and keep them trained on our new chums while I dematerialise the TARDIS.”
Both Jasmin and Ali took the guns reluctantly. The Doctor smiled wryly as he watched them. He called himself a pacifist, but he was one who COULD use weapons competently if he had to. Neither Ali nor Jasmin seriously looked as if they would fire. The two men knelt on the floor miserably though and seemed to make no attempt at escaping their captors.
The Doctor set the co-ordinates and initialised their journey into the vortex then turned back to them. He took the weapon out of Ali’s hands and aimed it at the two men.
“Doctor!” Jasmin screamed as his finger tightened on the trigger. “No, you can’t. They’re prisoners.”
“They won’t be killed. They’ll just feel very sick. I’ll give them the antidote later, if I feel generous. If they’ve been co-operative. If I feel like it.”
Jasmin looked at him. She was about 99% sure he was bluffing. She knew he valued life as highly as she did and in any case they WERE prisoners. He would never consider firing on unarmed men who were already at his mercy.
Or would he. There was a look in his eyes that made her less certain. A cold hardness in those usually soft brown eyes..
“No, please!” The two Tagnan assassins protested loudly. They held up their arms in protest.
He squeezed the trigger
The weapon failed. Nothing happened. The two prisoners sagged miserably. The Doctor laughed coldly.
“Jasmin, do you remember where the trash compactor is?” He handed her the weapon along with her own. She nodded and silently went to do his bidding. The sound of metal grinding in the compactor was briefly heard and then cut off as she came back through the interior door.
“Jasmin is wondering if I knew that the weapons were disabled when I super-heated them,” The Doctor said to the two men. “I’m a bit disappointed in her for thinking the question. She knows me well enough. But you two don’t know me. You don’t know if I’m a steady, predictable sort of person or an irrational one who could fly off the handle at any moment. And you don’t know what the other functions of my sonic screwdriver could do to your heads. So let’s start getting the truth. What’s going on and why were you stalking Ali?”
“He is the key,” one of them said in a voice that was meant to sound defiant, and would have succeeded if it was on the radio. The bravado was completely ruined visually by the frightened, darting eyes that followed The Doctor’s hand, as he waved the sonic screwdriver back and forwards. “We seek the key to the Tagnan race. With control of the key comes the power over Tagnan destiny.”
“What does that mean? Ali isn’t a key, he’s.…”
Ali was looking at them and blinking rapidly. He was trying to speak but only a few odd, disjointed words came out. The rest of it he was saying in his own language, in a sort of “semaphore” code.
“Ali, look at me,” The Doctor said, taking hold of him by the shoulders. “That’s it. Now, slowly. Tell me what this is all about.”
Ali blinked a little slower. The Doctor read his words carefully. They seemed to go on for a very long time.
“Ok,” he said at last. “Some of it makes sense. I don’t get THESE two, and what their game is, but I at least understand why Ali was on Earth and why his body was modified.”
“Are you going to share with the rest of us?” Jasmin asked.
“When we reach Tagna,” he answered. “These two need to go back anyway. I’m saving them a long journey. Meanwhile, Jasmin, can you go to the medical room and get Ali’s medicine. The stuff I injected him with before, and a couple of syringes.”
Again, Jasmin did his bidding. She reminded herself that she WAS a fully qualified doctor and didn’t do fetching and carrying. Then she reminded herself that HE was The Doctor and he knew what he was doing.
And he HAD known that the guns wouldn’t work. He was just scaring the two men.
For a brief moment of uncertainty, she had looked into his eyes and she HADN’T recognised the man she had known and respected and loved. She thought she had lost the man she had always thought she could trust her life with.
But it was all right. He was still there.
He was just a VERY good actor on top of all his other talents.
She found the medicine and brought it back to the console room. To her surprise, he didn’t give it to Ali. He began to roll his own sleeve up and prepare to inject himself.
“You lied,” she said as she came forward and took the syringe from him. “You said the particles didn’t affect you and they could shoot you all day. You… stood your ground and let them shoot you rather than innocent people in the hospital.”
The Doctor said nothing. his eyes betrayed nothing as he watched her inject the life-saving drug into his bloodstream.
“You are the bravest man I have ever known. And the maddest.”
“Nothing changed there then,” he said with a grin and his eyes flashing merrily. He kissed her on the cheek gently and bounded back to the console as an alarm sounded. “Ah, here we are. Y’Essia Tagna-Tannan’ga’nya is first left after the roundabout.”
Ali stood up very straight and looked very serious as they came out of the vortex and into the sector of space where his homeworld was. The two would-be assassins were equally alert, though wary still of the sonic screwdriver that The Doctor remembered to wave in their direction every so often just to remind them that they were his prisoners.
“That’s his planet? Tagna?” Jasmin asked in astonishment. “What’s wrong with it?”
It was obvious that something WAS wrong with it. Planets weren’t supposed to GLOW. They weren’t supposed to have atmospheres that roiled and boiled and spat globules of chemical compounds out into space.
“Technically, I suppose there is nothing wrong with the planet. This happens once every five hundred years. The chemicals in the atmosphere reach saturation point and it liquefies. Instead of a gas atmosphere the planet is engulfed in a highly active liquid. It takes about a century for the atmosphere to stabilise again.”
“But where are the people in the meantime? Are they dead? Is Ali the only survivor?”
“No,” The Doctor said. “Ali is the key. Look.” The TARDIS revolved slowly to reveal something in orbit around the planet.
“Space ship?” Jasmin asked. “Big one.”
“Space station more like. And it is HUGE. Greater Manchester in your day would fit into one floor. Ali, your people are great ones for technology. It beats me why they don’t ship out and find a less inconvenient planet to live on rather than looking for ways to get around all these problems with their environment.”
“Because Tagna is the richest source of Lutanium in the galaxy,” one of the prisoners said. “And it belongs to us. We will not leave it to be grabbed by any passing &$£@#.”
“Any passing what?” Jasmin queried.
“The closest POLITE word in your language would be claim jumpers,” The Doctor explained. “Like in the ‘Gold Rush’ in the Klondike, that sort of thing. But Ali has another view of the matter.” Jasmin turned and looked as Ali blinked rapidly and managed a few spoken words about pride, heritage, belonging.
“He’s telling us it’s not about Lutanium, whatever that is, it’s about the fact that it’s their planet and they don’t want to leave?” Jasmin asked The Doctor.
“In a nutshell, yes,” he answered. He put his hand on Ali’s shoulder. “I can understand that sentiment. I would have died for my planet. If I could have….” He blinked rather rapidly himself for a few moments before the mood lifted and he became busy with the TARDIS controls. “We’re going to take a close look on board the station. Just to be sure these two aren’t part of a bigger problem.” He ducked down below the console and pulled out three strange looking helmets. “The air on board is Tagnan. We’ll need these.” He gave one to Jasmin and one to Ali. “Your body has been modified. Your own natural environment is hostile to you now. Sorry about that, but the helmet will protect you.” He put one on his own head. “It works by taking the chemicals in the atmosphere around you and filtering them into whatever combination is best suited to your species.”
“What about them?” Jasmin asked as The Doctor reached again into an apparently bottomless cupboard and found a pair of plasicuffs to restrain the prisoners with.
“They’re Tagnans. When we step out into the station they will be able to breath normally without the tubes.” He looked at Ali. “You lead the way. These are your people.”
Ali stepped out of the TARDIS first, followed by Jasmin. She took a deep breath from the air that was created around her face by the helmet. Beyond its mini-atmosphere the air was a greyish-yellow that tinted everything a burnt-umber shade. Once her eyes adjusted to the colour scheme, though, she was perfectly fine with it. At least as fine as it was possible to be. She glanced at her watch. It was only an hour ago that she was sitting in her office writing notes and contemplating the end of her shift. Now she was thirty five million light years away from Manchester in…
…In a space borne mortuary. She stared as they passed through an archway into a control room with databanks and consoles all in low-maintenance, low power mode but clearly working away. One side of the room was a balcony rather than a wall. Jasmin stood by the rail and stared up and down and across the wide chasm at tier upon tier of cabinets with bodies inside. There must have been thousands of people on each layer and it went on for miles in both directions.
“No,” The Doctor told her in answer to the question that hadn’t even formed in her mind yet. “They’re not dead. They’re just in suspended animation. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. There was a magnificent one from Earth in your future with some very fine people aboard. But it was only a fraction of the scale of this. The entire population of the planet, to a man, is here. Along with zoological sections and seed banks for regrowing the vegetation of the planet when they return. They really have done well. Ali, again, I have to applaud your people.”
“But then why is Ali left?” Jasmin asked.
“He’s the key,” The Doctor answered. “Aren’t you, Ali? You were sent away, to Earth, with your body modified so you could live there. You were meant to find the friends who had looked after you when you were a baby. And they would help you to adjust, to get used to living a Human life.”
“And then what?”
“After a hundred years, when the atmospheric problems are resolved, Ali will still only be a middle aged man by his own standards. He will return here and initialise the reanimation of the others. He will rejoin his people.”
“Oh, Ali,” Jasmin said, touching his hand gently. “Oh that’s such a responsibility to put on you.”
“Proud,” he answered her. “For my people… for my mother, father….”
“Of course you are,” The Doctor told him. “Proud and brave, taking on the task. Going into exile on another world in order to be there for your own people when they return to their world.” He paused and then he turned from Ali to the two prisoners. “But you weren’t satisfied with that. I suppose it was the thought of the Lutanium. Greed! It always comes down to that. So… let me guess, kill the key, wake your own people first. Stage a coup. Either leave the others sleeping or what, kill them when they wake?”
“My father… mother,” Ali protested distressfully. “Friends.”
“That’s right,” The Doctor continued. “Anyone not in on this greedy plot. Am I right?”
“Not greed. A people’s revolution. The people of Tagna will benefit from the sale of Lutanium to the new allies we will forge.”
Ali again blinked rapidly, and managed a few more coherent words. Jasmin put her hand on his arm to calm him. He was very distressed.
“It’s all right, Ali,” The Doctor said. “I believe you. I believe your government is a perfectly adequate one that ensures the best for all its people. I don’t believe selling Lutanium to the highest bidder is necessarily progress. And I don’t believe in a People’s Front that begins its revolution with the cynical murder of an innocent teenager. If you ever hoped to have my sympathy for your cause after that.…”
“What are you going to do, Doctor?” Jasmin asked.
“Me, nothing. Ali is the key. The future of his people is in his hands. Ali… What do you want to do?”
Ali replied. The Doctor nodded.
“Take the chair,” he said. Ali sat at the computer bank. He pressed several buttons and pulled levers that reminded Jasmin of The Doctor at the TARDIS console. He looked around as a panel opened in one wall. Two of the glass containers in which the population of Tagna slept were revealed. The Doctor turned to the two would-be revolutionaries.
“I don’t think I want you spending the next century in suspended animation with your hands tied behind your back,” he said to them. So if I release you, are you going to get in there without any trouble?”
“I will not surrender,” one of them said, again with the defiance in his voice that faded when The Doctor waved his sonic screwdriver. The Doctor cut their bonds anyway and let them climb into the containers with something like dignity. Ali continued the process. The lids closed. There was a hiss as the suspended animation began and then the two containers slowly moved on gravity pads to a gap somewhere high in the great bank of sleeping citizens.
“When you come to wake everyone up, it's your choice, Ali,” The Doctor told him. “You can wake your police first and have them arrested and questioned and their movement rounded up, or you can leave them be. Or over the next century you can work out another plan. But if you need me to tell you, then you weren’t the right choice for the key. And I think you were.”
Ali nodded and set the computer bank into sleep mode again.
“What now?” Jasmin asked. “What happens to Ali?”
“What do you think?” The Doctor asked her as they headed back to the TARDIS. “His people prepared him to live on Earth, but he needs a friend. He needs somebody to help him with his speech problems and guide him through ordinary Earth life so that he can fit in. Somebody with patience, who cares about him.”
“Me?”
“When he was a baby nobody could have given him more love. You missed him when he went home. And I am sure you have thought about him often.”
“Yes,” she said. “I have. We… Alec and I planned to have children of our own in a few more years. When I’ve got my career settled and can take time out for it.”
“And Ali would be a wonderful uncle to them, don’t you think?”
Jasmin looked at The Doctor. She looked at Ali. She reached out and hugged The Doctor quickly and turned to Ali. She hugged him even tighter.
“They sent us to you once before, knowing we would look after you. Is that what they meant to do again?” She smiled. “Doctor, you’re not going to just run off. You’re coming to our house, and you’re going to stay to tea and talk to Alec about all the things he’d like to share with you. And all of that.”
“I have things to do,” he protested. “I’ve got to find the ship Ali arrived in and make sure it doesn’t fall into the hands of Torchwood. And find the one his chums came in and make sure that DOES fall into their hands. Then I have to…”
He stopped. He saw Jasmin’s face. There was something in her expression that he knew he couldn’t dare refuse.
He grinned widely.
“Tea sounds fantastic.”
“Doctor Azam!” The nurse opened the door to her office breathlessly. “Doctor, can you come. There’s a patient… he’s speaking some kind of foreign and we thought you might…”
The nurse stopped. Doctor Jasmin Azam was glaring at her with an expression somewhere between anger and amusement.
“I was BORN in Salford,” she pointed out. “The only ‘foreign’ I know amounts to school French, the menu at our favourite Italian restaurant and a few Arabic nursery rhymes that my mother used to sing to me as a baby.”
“Please come,” the nurse insisted. “Somebody has to do something. I don’t know what he’s saying but the tone of it would break your heart.”
“Oh all right,” she said, closing the file she was writing up and following the nurse out to A&E. In a curtained off cubicle a man was crying out loudly as the nursing staff tried to calm him down.
“That’s not ‘foreign’,” Doctor Azam said. “It’s English.”
She stopped. No, she thought. It WAS a foreign language. But she could understand it as English.
She’d almost forgotten.
The gift of the TARDIS. She could understand any language, written or spoken. Even after nearly six years, it still worked.
Six years since she travelled in the TARDIS, since the most amazing time of her life.
Not that it hadn’t been great since. University, marriage to Alec, and working here in the hospital, all her ambitions falling together perfectly as she had hoped.
Working in casualty was almost as unpredictable as travelling in time and space with The Doctor. She wondered if that was why she CHOSE it rather than any other department, because it gave her that constant challenge that life with HIM used to give her.
“Doctor?” The nurse’s questioning voice brought her back to the present. Despite the degree proudly displayed on her office wall, it always took her by surprise to be addressed as ‘Doctor’. Somewhere in the back of her mind there was only one person that nomenclature really belonged to.
He wore a pinstripe suit and canvas shoes and had a smile that could fill you with hope even when it looked as if the world was going to fall apart under your feet.
He had the power to hold the world together and stop it falling apart.
She shook her head and held a hand up to tell the nurse not to interrupt and she gave her attention to the words the patient was saying.
“Lost,” he said. “I am lost. I cannot go home.”
“What is he in for?” Doctor Azam asked. “There’s nothing obvious wrong with him, other than confusion.”
“He was found unconscious in the Arndale Centre,” the nurse answered. “No obvious injuries, but unconscious. He came around just now and started screaming.”
“I am lost!” he cried out again.
“It’s all right,” she told the patient gently. “Don’t worry about that just now. You’re not going home or anywhere until we’re sure you’re all right.”
The effect her voice had on him was startling. He reached out and touched her face and he smiled widely. It was a beautiful smile. She looked at his eyes now that they were calmer. The irises were black as coal. It was almost impossible to see the pupil. And yet his skin was paler than most English people she had ever met.
While she was taking that in, his hand touched her again. This time under her throat. No, he wasn’t touching her - it was her pendant that he was reaching for. His long, slender fingers traced the golden representation of the Seal of Rassilon. At the same time, his other hand reached for a chain around his own neck and Jasmin gasped when she saw what was on it.
A TARDIS key! She recognised it straight away. She still had her own. She kept it in the drawer of her bedside cabinet. Alec kept his, too. When they parted, they had offered them back, but The Doctor had smiled his smile and told them to keep them - in case they ever needed them again.
She leaned closer to him. He lifted the key with the representation of The Doctor’s lost home, the constellation of Kasterborus, on the fob and pressed it against her pendant.
And both glowed as if there was a power within them.
“Ali!” she whispered as the glow died and she stood straight again. “Ali, my little boy. Do you remember? When you were little, we looked after you. Me and Alec and Wyn, and The Doctor. Do you remember us? I looked after you, cuddled you, fed you. I helped you to walk. We played in the snow. Do you remember, Ali? That wonderful Christmas when you came to us?”
The nurse looked at Doctor Azam and wondered what it was she was saying to the patient in his own language. It seemed very emotional. Almost as if they knew each other.
“I can take this from here, nurse,” Jasmin said, turning to her before giving her attention fully to Ali. “What brought you here, sweetheart?” she asked him.
“Lost now,” he said. “Don’t know where I am. Don’t know….” He put out his hand to her face again. “Jasmin?”
“That’s right,” she said to him. “You remember. My little Ali. But… that’s not really your name, is it? That was the name I gave you.”
“I remember.”
“You’re grown up now. But it is lovely to see you. I’m glad you came here. You had the whole world to explore, and you came to see Manchester.”
“Looking for you, for The Doctor. Help….”
“I’m afraid The Doctor – THAT Doctor - doesn’t live here,” she told him. “I don’t know HOW to contact him. I wish I did. There are so many times I have wished….”
Outside the cubicle she heard a scream, then a sound like an energy weapon being discharged, and then even more screams. Ali squealed in fright and tried to get up from the bed. Jasmin pressed him down again and went to the curtain. She peered out and saw two men with weapons she knew had no business being on Earth in this time. They were searching all of the cubicles while shouting, in a strangely rasping, almost mechanical voice and in what to everyone else would be a foreign language. Only she understood what they were demanding to know.
“Where is the Tagnan? Where is the key?”
They were after Ali.
“Stay there, sweetheart,” she said as she reached into a cupboard and found a sharp pair of surgical scissors. She stood facing the curtain, waiting. She didn’t know if she could fight them, but she had to try. She had to protect Ali just as she had done when he was a baby.
She could hear their footsteps coming closer. She heard the patient and nurse in the next cubicle screaming and protesting. It was a matter of seconds before they would reach her. She gripped the scissors tightly and prepared for the deadly confrontation.
It never came. Instead she heard a sound that gladdened her heart and felt a breeze ruffle her hair. The entrance to the cubicle was suddenly filled with a blue police public call box. As the sound died away the door opened. She turned and reached to help Ali stand and ran with him into the safety of the TARDIS.
“Doctor!” she cried joyfully as he grinned at her and pressed the door control before reaching for the dematerialisation switch. Jasmin felt that increase in the faint vibration that told her the TARDIS was moving.
“Doctor yourself,” he replied. “Is that… who I think it is?”
“It’s Ali,” she told him. “He’s not very well and he’s lost and there are people trying to kill him, and we are both SO glad to see you.”
“Doc…tor!” Ali said and then collapsed in a dead faint.
“Ok,” The Doctor said as he crossed the floor and caught him even before he hit the floor. He lifted him into his arms and looked at Jasmin. “You know the way to the medical room. Lead the way.”
Jasmin nodded and took the lead, opening the doors for The Doctor until they reached the TARDIS’s own well equipped medical room. She watched as he put Ali down gently on the examination table and made a cursory examination of him before turning and reaching for her.
“Are you all right?” he asked her.
“I’m… I’m scared, I’m… I’m relieved. I’m… confused. Doctor, why is he here? Why are people trying to kill him? Why are YOU here?”
“Those lovely Human multi-part questions again!” The Doctor laughed softly. “The last question I CAN answer. You called me.”
“No I didn’t. I wouldn’t even know how.”
“The pendant is made of Gallifreyan gold and diamonds. Ali touched it… while holding the TARDIS key… made of Gallifreyan pewter. It sent out a signal to me. I knew you both needed me.”
Jasmin touched her pendant. The Doctor gave it to her for Christmas, not long before they parted. She had worn it ever since. Most people assumed it was some sort of Arabic design. She knew there had been no point in trying to explain.
She knew it was a unique and valuable gift.
But she didn’t know it could help save her life and bring The Doctor back to her.
“He’s not too good,” The Doctor said as he continued to examine Ali. “Somebody has attacked him once already. His body is riddled with Bering Particles.” Jasmin looked at him questioningly. He smiled indulgently. “No, they wouldn’t be in your medical books. The energy weapon you heard being discharged - Bering Particles. They don’t kill straight away. They slowly attack the body, over several days, breaking down the cell structure.”
“He’s dying!” Jasmin cried softly. “Oh Doctor, no.”
“He’ll be all right. We got to him in time. It must have happened within the last couple of hours and no more. I’m going to give him what he needs to counter it. Then we need to get to the bottom of this.”
“You mean why alien terrorists came to the hospital to get him?” Jasmin asked. “They were alien, I suppose. That’s an alien weapon they attacked him with.”
“Good logic. You keep thinking that way. Well done. Yes, it is an alien weapon. It comes from Ali’s own planet. And that is VERY worrying.”
“One of his own people attacked him?”
“Yes.”
“That’s horrible,” she said. Then she thought about it. “Mind you, I suppose, Earth people attack each other. It’s no different, is it?”
“It depends on WHY he was attacked.” The Doctor inserted a syringe into Ali’s arm and injected a serum into him. He held a piece of cotton wool over the place and fixed it with tape. “We’ll find out,” he promised. “Meanwhile, you’re safe here, my boy.” He stroked Ali’s face gently, and Jasmin saw it change from an anxious, frightened, haunted expression to a peaceful one as he went from unconscious to peacefully sleeping.
That was The Doctor. Kindness itself to the innocent, but ruthless to those who caused suffering in others.
And with moods as unpredictable as Manchester weather. He turned from attending to Ali and grinned widely as he reached out and hugged Jasmin.
“Wonderful to see you again. Is everything fantastic in your life?”
“It WAS until today. Now I’m in the middle of something terrible and frightening again. And you’re here, like you can’t have the one without the other. It’s… it’s fantastic to SEE you, Doctor, but did we have to have the scary stuff? Couldn’t you just come around for supper like our normal friends?”
“I’ll try that some day,” he promised. “But first, let’s look after Ali. I dare say you won’t want to leave him alone in here, in case he wakes up frightened. So you hold his hand there while I patch in all the exposition on this computer.” He turned and began to type rapidly at the medical room computer. Information scrolled onto the screen faster than the eye could see. Well, Jasmin’s eye, anyway. The Doctor’s eyes dilated rapidly as he took in the information.
“I’m surprised there isn’t a way the TARDIS could download information directly to your brain,” she said as she watched him.
“Symbiotic is one thing,” he answered, shaking his head. “But there has to be a difference between living beings and machines, even living, sentient machines. When that line gets crossed you get soulless things that don’t know if they are one thing or the other, like cybermen.”
“Like what?” But his thought processes had moved on again.
“Strange,” he murmured. “Very strange. And very, very unusual.”
“What is?” she asked.
“Ali… he IS Ali. He is the little boy we looked after. There is no doubt about that. But he has been genetically and surgically altered. He has been turned HUMAN.”
“He’s… is that possible?”
“It’s possible.” The Doctor turned back to look at his patient. He examined his mouth and throat with a magnifying light instrument. “His people have a special filter in their throats that allows them to breath the toxic air of their planet. It has been surgically removed and his DNA altered so that in any examination of his body he would appear to be a Human being. He has even had vocal chords grafted in. That’s why he can talk now, except that he probably hasn’t really got the hang of it yet.”
“He wasn’t really making a lot of sense,” she admitted. “But WHY?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see if I can find out.” He returned to the computer and keyed in a videophone code. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the keyboard as he waited for it to connect. Except it WASN’T connecting. Under his breath Jasmin heard him say something that, if she remembered correctly, was a very profound swear word in Low Gallifreyan.
“I can’t contact Ali’s homeworld,” he said. “Something is very wrong there.”
“The planet is there isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s not… GONE.”
“It’s there,” he said. “It’s like the phones are ringing but nobody is answering.”
“And that means…”
“I have no idea.”
“Exile.…” They both turned as Ali spoke. He was sitting up. “Jasmin, Doctor….”
“Ali,” The Doctor reached him first, but it was a near thing. “How are you feeling?”
“I am.…” He put his hand to his throat and seemed surprised at how it felt. His eyes blinked rapidly as he spoke. His people communicated with eyeblinks. Now he was learning to speak through the use of vocal chords he never even had until somebody grafted them into his body.
“It’s all right,” The Doctor answered him. “You don’t have to answer the question. I can see how you’re feeling. You’re lost, confused, you’re a long way from home. And you’re hurting because you’re brimful of Bering particles and that’s a rotten, painful, horrible thing. But you’re going to be all right. The particles are breaking down. You’ll be clear of them in a few hours. And the rest.… The other things done to you, I think they were done to keep you safe, weren’t they?”
“Exile,” he said again. “Sent me here. Can’t go back.”
“Something has happened on your planet? Something bad?”
Ali nodded.
“Ok.”
“Doctor,” Jasmin said. “Ali isn’t the only one in trouble. There are alien terrorists in the hospital still.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Let’s go ask THEM what’s going on.”
“Asking them questions wasn’t EXACTLY what I had in mind,” she said as she and Ali both followed him back to the console room. “I was sort of hoping you had some way of zapping them and putting them out of action.”
“Zapping them?” He grinned as he programmed their re-materialisation. “When have you EVER seen me zap anyone?”
“These people were firing weapons at friends and colleagues of mine, and at sick people in a casualty ward. Just this once if you want to shoot first and ask questions later, I’ll look the other way.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” he replied. “But that’s never been my style. My trusty sonic screwdriver gets me out of trouble ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
“I hope this isn’t the hundredth time then,” she answered.
The Doctor grinned. “Trust me, I’m The Doctor,” he said as he led the way back to the console room, Jasmin and the still worried but slowly recovering Ali following behind. She made Ali sit on the command chair while the TARDIS materialised in the same place it had been before, except the other way around so that the door faced outside.
“That’s what I LOVE about the TARDIS,” he said with a laugh in his voice. “Sometimes she can’t tell the difference between Sheffield in 1979 and Balmoral in 1879 and other times she can pinpoint a postage stamp in space… or return to the exact same place exactly 30 seconds after we left.
He opened the door and stepped back smartly as two rays of Bering Particles narrowly missed him and bounced off the roundels on the interior wall.
“You two might want to get behind the console just in case,” he warned. He looked back and grinned as he noted that they already WERE crouched down there, then he stepped out of the TARDIS, his sonic screwdriver held high.
This time the rays got him full square. His body glowed for a moment but he didn’t even so much as wobble.
“Is that REALLY the best you can do?” he asked. “For the record, Time Lords are immune to Bering particles. You can shoot me all day and it won’t even give me a headache. And since my friend Jasmin doesn’t want you shooting her colleagues and patients it would make her happy.”
He looked at the two assailants as they hesitated, their weapons still pointed at him but not firing. They looked humanoid but they had tubes affixed to their noses and mouths that he guessed fed them the mix of gases their species required.
If they were Ali’s species, then in fact they WERE oxygen breathers, but ironically their bodies were adapted to take the oxygen from a mix of toxic gases and they couldn’t actually tolerate it in the Earth atmosphere.
“Give us the Tagnan and nobody will be hurt,” one of them said with a voice that was rasping and harsh, as might be expected.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. He held his sonic screwdriver up and when they fired again the rays rebounded off it. The guns apparently became very hot. The two aliens dropped them with yelps of pain. The Doctor moved forward while they were still nursing their sore hands and grabbed them both by the neck, applying a certain exotic pinch to the nerves that caused them just enough paralysis for him to bend and pick up the rapidly cooling guns.
“Ok,” he said, brandishing the weapons. “You two are coming on a trip in my space ship. You’ve caused these good people enough trouble.” He glanced around at the nervous staff and patients of the casualty department. “We’ll be off now. Don’t you worry. Keep up the good work.”
He marched the two men into the TARDIS. Jasmin and Ali both stared in surprise as The Doctor calmly closed the door behind him.
“You brought them in here?” Jasmin queried.
“I got them away from innocent people. Now we’re going to find out what’s happening. Here, you two take the guns and keep them trained on our new chums while I dematerialise the TARDIS.”
Both Jasmin and Ali took the guns reluctantly. The Doctor smiled wryly as he watched them. He called himself a pacifist, but he was one who COULD use weapons competently if he had to. Neither Ali nor Jasmin seriously looked as if they would fire. The two men knelt on the floor miserably though and seemed to make no attempt at escaping their captors.
The Doctor set the co-ordinates and initialised their journey into the vortex then turned back to them. He took the weapon out of Ali’s hands and aimed it at the two men.
“Doctor!” Jasmin screamed as his finger tightened on the trigger. “No, you can’t. They’re prisoners.”
“They won’t be killed. They’ll just feel very sick. I’ll give them the antidote later, if I feel generous. If they’ve been co-operative. If I feel like it.”
Jasmin looked at him. She was about 99% sure he was bluffing. She knew he valued life as highly as she did and in any case they WERE prisoners. He would never consider firing on unarmed men who were already at his mercy.
Or would he. There was a look in his eyes that made her less certain. A cold hardness in those usually soft brown eyes..
“No, please!” The two Tagnan assassins protested loudly. They held up their arms in protest.
He squeezed the trigger
The weapon failed. Nothing happened. The two prisoners sagged miserably. The Doctor laughed coldly.
“Jasmin, do you remember where the trash compactor is?” He handed her the weapon along with her own. She nodded and silently went to do his bidding. The sound of metal grinding in the compactor was briefly heard and then cut off as she came back through the interior door.
“Jasmin is wondering if I knew that the weapons were disabled when I super-heated them,” The Doctor said to the two men. “I’m a bit disappointed in her for thinking the question. She knows me well enough. But you two don’t know me. You don’t know if I’m a steady, predictable sort of person or an irrational one who could fly off the handle at any moment. And you don’t know what the other functions of my sonic screwdriver could do to your heads. So let’s start getting the truth. What’s going on and why were you stalking Ali?”
“He is the key,” one of them said in a voice that was meant to sound defiant, and would have succeeded if it was on the radio. The bravado was completely ruined visually by the frightened, darting eyes that followed The Doctor’s hand, as he waved the sonic screwdriver back and forwards. “We seek the key to the Tagnan race. With control of the key comes the power over Tagnan destiny.”
“What does that mean? Ali isn’t a key, he’s.…”
Ali was looking at them and blinking rapidly. He was trying to speak but only a few odd, disjointed words came out. The rest of it he was saying in his own language, in a sort of “semaphore” code.
“Ali, look at me,” The Doctor said, taking hold of him by the shoulders. “That’s it. Now, slowly. Tell me what this is all about.”
Ali blinked a little slower. The Doctor read his words carefully. They seemed to go on for a very long time.
“Ok,” he said at last. “Some of it makes sense. I don’t get THESE two, and what their game is, but I at least understand why Ali was on Earth and why his body was modified.”
“Are you going to share with the rest of us?” Jasmin asked.
“When we reach Tagna,” he answered. “These two need to go back anyway. I’m saving them a long journey. Meanwhile, Jasmin, can you go to the medical room and get Ali’s medicine. The stuff I injected him with before, and a couple of syringes.”
Again, Jasmin did his bidding. She reminded herself that she WAS a fully qualified doctor and didn’t do fetching and carrying. Then she reminded herself that HE was The Doctor and he knew what he was doing.
And he HAD known that the guns wouldn’t work. He was just scaring the two men.
For a brief moment of uncertainty, she had looked into his eyes and she HADN’T recognised the man she had known and respected and loved. She thought she had lost the man she had always thought she could trust her life with.
But it was all right. He was still there.
He was just a VERY good actor on top of all his other talents.
She found the medicine and brought it back to the console room. To her surprise, he didn’t give it to Ali. He began to roll his own sleeve up and prepare to inject himself.
“You lied,” she said as she came forward and took the syringe from him. “You said the particles didn’t affect you and they could shoot you all day. You… stood your ground and let them shoot you rather than innocent people in the hospital.”
The Doctor said nothing. his eyes betrayed nothing as he watched her inject the life-saving drug into his bloodstream.
“You are the bravest man I have ever known. And the maddest.”
“Nothing changed there then,” he said with a grin and his eyes flashing merrily. He kissed her on the cheek gently and bounded back to the console as an alarm sounded. “Ah, here we are. Y’Essia Tagna-Tannan’ga’nya is first left after the roundabout.”
Ali stood up very straight and looked very serious as they came out of the vortex and into the sector of space where his homeworld was. The two would-be assassins were equally alert, though wary still of the sonic screwdriver that The Doctor remembered to wave in their direction every so often just to remind them that they were his prisoners.
“That’s his planet? Tagna?” Jasmin asked in astonishment. “What’s wrong with it?”
It was obvious that something WAS wrong with it. Planets weren’t supposed to GLOW. They weren’t supposed to have atmospheres that roiled and boiled and spat globules of chemical compounds out into space.
“Technically, I suppose there is nothing wrong with the planet. This happens once every five hundred years. The chemicals in the atmosphere reach saturation point and it liquefies. Instead of a gas atmosphere the planet is engulfed in a highly active liquid. It takes about a century for the atmosphere to stabilise again.”
“But where are the people in the meantime? Are they dead? Is Ali the only survivor?”
“No,” The Doctor said. “Ali is the key. Look.” The TARDIS revolved slowly to reveal something in orbit around the planet.
“Space ship?” Jasmin asked. “Big one.”
“Space station more like. And it is HUGE. Greater Manchester in your day would fit into one floor. Ali, your people are great ones for technology. It beats me why they don’t ship out and find a less inconvenient planet to live on rather than looking for ways to get around all these problems with their environment.”
“Because Tagna is the richest source of Lutanium in the galaxy,” one of the prisoners said. “And it belongs to us. We will not leave it to be grabbed by any passing &$£@#.”
“Any passing what?” Jasmin queried.
“The closest POLITE word in your language would be claim jumpers,” The Doctor explained. “Like in the ‘Gold Rush’ in the Klondike, that sort of thing. But Ali has another view of the matter.” Jasmin turned and looked as Ali blinked rapidly and managed a few spoken words about pride, heritage, belonging.
“He’s telling us it’s not about Lutanium, whatever that is, it’s about the fact that it’s their planet and they don’t want to leave?” Jasmin asked The Doctor.
“In a nutshell, yes,” he answered. He put his hand on Ali’s shoulder. “I can understand that sentiment. I would have died for my planet. If I could have….” He blinked rather rapidly himself for a few moments before the mood lifted and he became busy with the TARDIS controls. “We’re going to take a close look on board the station. Just to be sure these two aren’t part of a bigger problem.” He ducked down below the console and pulled out three strange looking helmets. “The air on board is Tagnan. We’ll need these.” He gave one to Jasmin and one to Ali. “Your body has been modified. Your own natural environment is hostile to you now. Sorry about that, but the helmet will protect you.” He put one on his own head. “It works by taking the chemicals in the atmosphere around you and filtering them into whatever combination is best suited to your species.”
“What about them?” Jasmin asked as The Doctor reached again into an apparently bottomless cupboard and found a pair of plasicuffs to restrain the prisoners with.
“They’re Tagnans. When we step out into the station they will be able to breath normally without the tubes.” He looked at Ali. “You lead the way. These are your people.”
Ali stepped out of the TARDIS first, followed by Jasmin. She took a deep breath from the air that was created around her face by the helmet. Beyond its mini-atmosphere the air was a greyish-yellow that tinted everything a burnt-umber shade. Once her eyes adjusted to the colour scheme, though, she was perfectly fine with it. At least as fine as it was possible to be. She glanced at her watch. It was only an hour ago that she was sitting in her office writing notes and contemplating the end of her shift. Now she was thirty five million light years away from Manchester in…
…In a space borne mortuary. She stared as they passed through an archway into a control room with databanks and consoles all in low-maintenance, low power mode but clearly working away. One side of the room was a balcony rather than a wall. Jasmin stood by the rail and stared up and down and across the wide chasm at tier upon tier of cabinets with bodies inside. There must have been thousands of people on each layer and it went on for miles in both directions.
“No,” The Doctor told her in answer to the question that hadn’t even formed in her mind yet. “They’re not dead. They’re just in suspended animation. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. There was a magnificent one from Earth in your future with some very fine people aboard. But it was only a fraction of the scale of this. The entire population of the planet, to a man, is here. Along with zoological sections and seed banks for regrowing the vegetation of the planet when they return. They really have done well. Ali, again, I have to applaud your people.”
“But then why is Ali left?” Jasmin asked.
“He’s the key,” The Doctor answered. “Aren’t you, Ali? You were sent away, to Earth, with your body modified so you could live there. You were meant to find the friends who had looked after you when you were a baby. And they would help you to adjust, to get used to living a Human life.”
“And then what?”
“After a hundred years, when the atmospheric problems are resolved, Ali will still only be a middle aged man by his own standards. He will return here and initialise the reanimation of the others. He will rejoin his people.”
“Oh, Ali,” Jasmin said, touching his hand gently. “Oh that’s such a responsibility to put on you.”
“Proud,” he answered her. “For my people… for my mother, father….”
“Of course you are,” The Doctor told him. “Proud and brave, taking on the task. Going into exile on another world in order to be there for your own people when they return to their world.” He paused and then he turned from Ali to the two prisoners. “But you weren’t satisfied with that. I suppose it was the thought of the Lutanium. Greed! It always comes down to that. So… let me guess, kill the key, wake your own people first. Stage a coup. Either leave the others sleeping or what, kill them when they wake?”
“My father… mother,” Ali protested distressfully. “Friends.”
“That’s right,” The Doctor continued. “Anyone not in on this greedy plot. Am I right?”
“Not greed. A people’s revolution. The people of Tagna will benefit from the sale of Lutanium to the new allies we will forge.”
Ali again blinked rapidly, and managed a few more coherent words. Jasmin put her hand on his arm to calm him. He was very distressed.
“It’s all right, Ali,” The Doctor said. “I believe you. I believe your government is a perfectly adequate one that ensures the best for all its people. I don’t believe selling Lutanium to the highest bidder is necessarily progress. And I don’t believe in a People’s Front that begins its revolution with the cynical murder of an innocent teenager. If you ever hoped to have my sympathy for your cause after that.…”
“What are you going to do, Doctor?” Jasmin asked.
“Me, nothing. Ali is the key. The future of his people is in his hands. Ali… What do you want to do?”
Ali replied. The Doctor nodded.
“Take the chair,” he said. Ali sat at the computer bank. He pressed several buttons and pulled levers that reminded Jasmin of The Doctor at the TARDIS console. He looked around as a panel opened in one wall. Two of the glass containers in which the population of Tagna slept were revealed. The Doctor turned to the two would-be revolutionaries.
“I don’t think I want you spending the next century in suspended animation with your hands tied behind your back,” he said to them. So if I release you, are you going to get in there without any trouble?”
“I will not surrender,” one of them said, again with the defiance in his voice that faded when The Doctor waved his sonic screwdriver. The Doctor cut their bonds anyway and let them climb into the containers with something like dignity. Ali continued the process. The lids closed. There was a hiss as the suspended animation began and then the two containers slowly moved on gravity pads to a gap somewhere high in the great bank of sleeping citizens.
“When you come to wake everyone up, it's your choice, Ali,” The Doctor told him. “You can wake your police first and have them arrested and questioned and their movement rounded up, or you can leave them be. Or over the next century you can work out another plan. But if you need me to tell you, then you weren’t the right choice for the key. And I think you were.”
Ali nodded and set the computer bank into sleep mode again.
“What now?” Jasmin asked. “What happens to Ali?”
“What do you think?” The Doctor asked her as they headed back to the TARDIS. “His people prepared him to live on Earth, but he needs a friend. He needs somebody to help him with his speech problems and guide him through ordinary Earth life so that he can fit in. Somebody with patience, who cares about him.”
“Me?”
“When he was a baby nobody could have given him more love. You missed him when he went home. And I am sure you have thought about him often.”
“Yes,” she said. “I have. We… Alec and I planned to have children of our own in a few more years. When I’ve got my career settled and can take time out for it.”
“And Ali would be a wonderful uncle to them, don’t you think?”
Jasmin looked at The Doctor. She looked at Ali. She reached out and hugged The Doctor quickly and turned to Ali. She hugged him even tighter.
“They sent us to you once before, knowing we would look after you. Is that what they meant to do again?” She smiled. “Doctor, you’re not going to just run off. You’re coming to our house, and you’re going to stay to tea and talk to Alec about all the things he’d like to share with you. And all of that.”
“I have things to do,” he protested. “I’ve got to find the ship Ali arrived in and make sure it doesn’t fall into the hands of Torchwood. And find the one his chums came in and make sure that DOES fall into their hands. Then I have to…”
He stopped. He saw Jasmin’s face. There was something in her expression that he knew he couldn’t dare refuse.
He grinned widely.
“Tea sounds fantastic.”
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