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Human Nature - Chapter Seven

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Friends and Other Lovers

Rocastle stood in the middle of the rear playing field, his back straight, his chest proudly inflated, his swagger stick tucked under his arm. He wore his old uniform, the one he'd worn in the Transvaal, his campaign medal ribbons on the breast.

The boys stood before him in a square, at attention. Hutchinson, Merryweather and the other Captains stood at the front, their OTC uniforms neatly pressed and clean. The outfits were a light tan. Nobody would mistake them for the real thing, but they did give the lads a soldierly air. 'All present and correct, Captain Merryweather?' he asked.

'One absentee, sir. Dean, sir.'

'Does anybody have a reason for Dean's absence?'

Inwardly, Anand flinched, but he kept his gaze straight forward, not saying a word. When the house had woken that morning, there had been no sign of Tim. He suspected that he'd run away, which was jolly well the right thing to do in the circumstances. If it wasn't so far, he'd have gone, too. He had written to his father explaining the circumstances of his misery last night, and expected him to arrive next week to take him away.

After a moment's silence, Phipps blurted out, 'He's still ill, Sir!

'Very well then. He's going to miss out on having a go at the Vickers gun then, isn't he?' Rocastle was pleased at the smiles of anticipation from the boys. 'The Regiment has kindly lent us one such weapon for the next month. Now, stand by for inspection.'

Rocastle slowly walked along the rows, noting an undone button here and an unpolished rifle there. This was the part he enjoyed most.

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Timothy had spent most of the night in the tree in the orchard, the one he'd been sitting under when he'd got the Pod. He thought he knew why that had happened, now, because he'd actually been up this particular tree quite a few times before, tapping the wood with his fingers, getting a rhythm going, trying to be a ragtime drummer. The tree knew who he was, and had trusted him with what it contained. Or at least, that was what the Pod said. Since he'd died and come back to life, Tim had been even more certain that his prize talked to him, told him things. Told him he could do things.

It was with him while he sat in the crown of the tree that night. As the hours went by, he watched snails unfold and struggle across the grass and bats flicker through the trees. He heard the distant rustle of badgers in the darkness and the sharp cries of foxes mating.

He wasn't cold. The burns on his neck had healed and vanished. As well as watching the world around him, he was watching himself and trying to understand all he was. He kept looking at his hands, marvelling at what complex things they were, how much time was inscribed on them. Every now and then, he felt a burning desire to find a mirror and see his face. He knew that it was the same, but he also knew that it would seem different.

He wasn't just here in the tree, either. He was wandering over the fields and watching the others in their beds, walking down the aisle between them. He was a baby lying in the arms of a woman who was the nearest thing he had to a mother, with stubby limbs that he could barely move. He was a slender enchanted sword, he was the rain in the air, the light of the stars, a word on a page in a book that he also was.

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He found himself speaking words that he had both read and invented: 'I lived as a warrior before I was a man of letters. I wandered, I encircled, I slept in a hundred islands, I dwelt in a hundred forts.'

The words seemed good to him. Definitive. He put his hands to his chest and felt the beat of his hearts.

Timothy twice born. Timothy two heart. Dead and then recovered.'

He had stepped down from the tree towards dawn, shaking the dew off of his shoulders.

There was a whole world to explore.

'Charge!' bellowed Rocastle, and the boys set off across the field, bayonets fixed on the end of their (fortunately unloaded, because at least five of them were squeezing the trigger as they ran) rifles.

They impacted the stuffed sack targets, each tied into the shape of a man. Most of them carried through very well. A few made a cursory stab then ran off again, and a few got carried away, attacking the stuffing again and again. That wouldn't do in battle. While that was going on, another man would be on them.

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Alton, for some reason, had spun his rifle and slashed his target across the head. Remarkably agile, but still not quite the thing. He'd have to take him down a peg for that.

He took a moment to glance at his watch. Where had Smith got to? The man had made a promise to be here. Do his standing in the eyes of the boys a power of good.

'And halt!' he shouted. 'Now then, let's see what we can do with that Vickers gun, shall we?'

Smith and Joan were lying back in the sunshine, elbow to elbow, looking into each other's eyes.

'I have to ask you,' said Smith, 'about Rocastle. You said there was some other problem with him. What was it?'

'Oh, nothing terrible. He only asked me to marry him.'

'What?'

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'Yes, early in our acquaintance, he thought that he would take the burden of widowhood from my shoulders. I told him that it was a very charitable thought, but that I could never love another.'

'Do you still feel the same way?'

'Of course.'

'Oh...'

Joan looked at him seriously for a moment. Then she burst out laughing. 'Your face!'

Smith's frown left him and he returned a nervous smile. 'So you were lying to Rocastle?'

'Of course. He's hardly love's young dream, is he? And I had to let him down very gently, because he could have declared that it was too embarrassing for both of us and sacked me on the spot. As it turned out, he became very noble and left with a terribly brave and tragic look on his face. You could have cut butter with his chin. He turned at the door and told me that he thought my love for a departed hero was quite admirable, and that he would gladly sacrifice his own happiness for it. I do believe the man is looking to sacrifice himself for something continuously. I had to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to stop myself giggling until he was out of earshot.'

Smith had been staring at her. 'You're brave.'

'They say that about people who are dying. Like them, I do not see that I've ever had any choice to make.'

Smith folded her into his arms and kissed her.

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A shadow fell over them. Joan opened her eyes, then suddenly jerked away from Smith, frantically brushing down her blouse. Smith looked up.

Timothy was standing there, smiling down at them.

'Ah, Timothy, we were just' - Smith looked at Joan, who was looking away, quickly munching at a sandwich again - 'having a picnic...' he finished weakly.

'I saw you here. I wanted to ask you something,' said the dishevelled boy. 'They're learning how to be soldiers, back at the school.'

'Shouldn't you be there?' Joan asked, relieved that the boy seemed not to have noticed the kiss.

Timothy sat down, his legs crossed, on the edge of the rug. 'That's what I wanted to ask about. I wanted to ask, don't most soldiers get killed? Especially when there are machine-guns involved? Isn't this a bad thing to teach them, in that case?' His blue eyes stared at Smith, who fumbled with his tie awkwardly.

'Questions like that, they're too big for us...' he muttered.

'You see, my father said I would be a soldier, but I think that means I shall die. Or worse, that I shall kill other people. I don't want to do it. What should I do?'

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'There's a passage in Henry V that I could recommend. It's not a sin to kill people if your sovereign's ordered you to do it, because the decisions of war are between him and God. It's not your fault if you're obeying orders.'

'So the murders are his fault?'

'Well, in war it's not exactly murder. There are bigger things involved. King and country, duty to your fellows. That sort of thing.' Smith glanced at Joan, only to find that she was looking at the sheep in the next field, ignoring him. 'Perhaps you could ask the vicar for some more help?'

'Perhaps,' sighed Timothy. 'I think I know what he'll say, though. He'll say I have to be a soldier.'

'Well, that's not true, is it?' Joan interrupted, her voice sharp. 'There are lots of things you could do. You don't have to be a soldier.'

'I don't have to be a soldier.' Tim rose to his feet, nodding. 'Good. Thank you.' He turned and wandered off again, vanishing back into the forest. Smith stared after him, impotently raising a hand with a half-formed intention of telling him to go back to school. Finally, he turned back to Joan. She was still avoiding his gaze. 'That might have been the wrong thing to say.'

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'Oh, might it?' There came a distant rumble. Then another, a moment later. 'That sounds like thunder. Perhaps we should pack up and go, Dr Smith.'

'There aren't any clouds. Perhaps it's Rocastle playing soldiers.'

'Playing soldiers?' Joan hadn't yet made any move to begin packing. 'Well, that is a fine turn of phrase from somebody who seems so fond of the military. Or perhaps you have one word for me and another for the rest of the world?'

'What? No...' Smith bit his lip in frustration. 'What else could I tell him?'

'The truth? That being a soldier is all about being killed and being afraid of being killed? It seems that you and Arthur share some of the same illusions.'

'No! I mean -' Smith knelt up, gesturing frantically. 'I don't know anything about the army. I learnt all this from other people. I wouldn't know what to do with a gun. I used to lose every fight in the playground. There was a boy with an early beard, and you know how bad they are. He used to put me in a headlock and upset my experiments. But Tim's in my class. When he asks his teacher a question, he has to tell him something or... or the world breaks down; the art and the science and the society have no meaning.' He gazed around him, as if seeing the countryside for the first time. 'We'd be so alone, without the thoughts of past people. Making the world. Making this place for us to inhabit. We'd be... meaningless.'

Suddenly he stood up, turning away from Joan. He clutched his wounded fist with his other hand and stared at it. 'No. That's wrong,' he whispered. 'Those aren't my lines. What am I missing?'

'John?' Joan had got to her feet also. 'John, please don't be so upset. Are you all right?'

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Smith stared at her, clutching his hand as if it were the last plank of the ship he'd been wrecked with. 'If you said "fly", I'd grow wings.'

'I know. I'm sorry. Would you have me change my ideals?'

'No.' Smith let his hand drop to his side. Whatever he'd been trying to remember, it had been swept away. 'I'd rather I changed mine.'

Benny and Alexander were being manacled by the wrists to a pair of upright metal sheets in the aliens' dome. The metal was stained with old blood and showed the signs of heat and hard impacts. Benny took the chance to look around the dome. A central woven green mat, presumably where these people slept, lay in front of a metal frame covered by a sheet. Bags of equipment and ordnance lay scattered about on the leafy soil floor and sensor equipment stood around everywhere. The dome itself was obviously some kind of a field; there must be a generator somewhere. The place had an offhand aura of violence and the smell of a slaughterhouse.

'You can ask me to talk if you like,' she told the occupants. 'It's one of my things. The trouble is, as you've fortunately discovered, I won't be able to tell you anything useful.'

'Yes, I'm aware of that,' August told her. 'You thought we had the Pod, we thought you had it. Since Dr Smith doesn't seem to have it either, what we've got to find out is: who has got it?'

'Beats me. Don't take that as a hint. Who are you lot, anyway? Why do you want the Pod?'

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'Typical Interventionist training.' Greeneye stepped out from behind a screen, back in his normal form again. Aphasia, similarly transformed, followed him. 'We tie you up, you get us to explain the plot.'

'Well,' Benny glanced at her boots, 'I haven't been trained by anybody, as I have to remind myself at intervals, and I had in mind a sort of a deal. I rather like it here. The Doctor's fallen in love and is blissfully happy. I don't call all that a fate worse than death, to be honest. If you can find this bloody Pod, you're welcome to it. I'll even help you find it. But I do like to know who I'm dealing with.'

'Now she's pretending to side with us!' laughed Greeneye. 'This is classic!'

'Yes, but I think we should observe the formalities.' August indicated the others. 'We are Aubertides, Professor Summerfield, from the planet Aubis. We're shape-changers, as you may have gathered. We can eat anything organic and can duplicate the appearance of anything that we take in that has its genetic material reasonably intact. If we have so much as one complete cell, we can take on the memory of what we eat, also.'

'Wonderful, isn't it?' Greeneye took a pinch of Bernice's hair in his fingers and sniffed it. 'We are what we eat, as I'm sure you were about to observe. Haven't you ever looked in the mirror and wished to be different: thinner, stronger, more beautiful? Or met somebody and wanted to be whatever they needed, old or young, man or woman?'

Benny looked at him cheerfully. 'Sounds like hard work. I wouldn't change one lovely inch of me.' She glanced at the strand of hair in his fingers. 'You know, if you eat that, you'll have terrible trouble with split ends.'

Greeneye let go.

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Benny glanced at Alexander standing beside her. He had a solid look of anger about his face, his gaze fixed ahead, as if he were waiting for a chance to express his rage. It might not be a good time to ask this next question, but she wanted to know.

'Did I ever meet the real Constance?'

Greeneye concentrated, then nodded. 'Yes. In the tea-shop, that was her.' He licked his lips. 'She was delicious.'

'You bastard!' shouted Alexander suddenly, his face reddening.

'Hardly,' said Greeneye. 'August's my father.'

'Father to all of them, actually,' August explained, clicking a button on the wall. Alexander opened his mouth to shout again and found that he couldn't. 'Aubertides bud. I produced Greeneye from a pouch that had grown on my back. He then gave birth to one of our family who didn't come with us, who in turn produced Serif. Serif produced Aphasia - '

'With certain... improvisations of my own,' whispered Serif.

'And Aphasia produced Hoff, the baby of the family. That was a difficult birth, I can tell you.'

'It was yucky!' Aphasia spat.

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'Now, normally, that would be it for an Aubertide. The genetic material gets drawn too thin, and six family members is all you get. The Grand Circle on Aubis was made up of thirty-six members, for example, six complete families. That's not really enough for us, which is why we're here. We've devoted our lives to the pursuit of power and pleasure - '

'Thrown off of Aubis, conquered six solar systems in the local area using biological weapons, used the proceeds of their economies to fuel new weapons research and conquered several more,' Greeneye explained, as if reeling off an old story. 'The trouble is, a sort of lethargy sets in.'

'We have no political or sociological goals beyond our own pleasure,' Serif hissed. 'Which means that we swiftly reached a point where we had no goals left at all. There are only six of us. We have already returned to Aubis to conquer it and slaughter our former tormentors. It does not take a dozen planets to serve our greatest desires - even Greeneye's perverted sexual appetites.'

'Oh yes?' Benny raised an eyebrow.

'I have... an attraction to other species,' Greeneye told her.

'So I noticed. I suppose budding must get boring. Especially when you can't do it any more.'

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'Well, that's just the point,' said August. 'We encountered a Time Lord on the planet Apertsu, which we were contemplating as our next acquisition. The Apertsians are a race of flying rodents, and he was acting as a security consultant for them, setting up various defence barriers which would have presented us with considerable problems. Now, you hear a lot of rubbish about the Capitol not interfering in the affairs of other races, and at the time we were rather surprised to see him there, but it seems they do this sort of thing quite often when they feel that they might eventually come under threat. They're quite keen on interbreeding the humanoid races, for one thing, directing genetic drift by introducing genetic material from one biosystem into another. One surmises that they're looking for a way to ease their periodic infertility.'

'We kidnapped this Time Lord,' Serif hissed, 'intending to see if I, who have gained mastery over the depths of the mind, could pry any of the secrets of regeneration from him. I could not. His consciousness was as labyrinthine as any of the barriers he planned to set. So we took a biological sample and consumed it between us, intending to take on the ability to regenerate genetically. Nothing happened save a fever that nearly killed us. While we were in this weakened state, our subject was able to escape and return to his TARDIS. Moments later, we were time-looped.'

'It was horrible!' Aphasia added. 'Like being on a roundabout all the time!'

'He must have returned to the Citadel and convinced the Interventionists to take us on,' August continued. 'We were only saved by Greeneye's intuition that you could outrun a time loop by completing the action spiral faster and faster. Time Loops are creatures, after all, and any creature can be fooled. We fled the planet as quickly as we could, but the whole adventure had given us a new aim in life, a plan that would provide us with ambition and future purpose. We want to take on the attributes of a Time Lord, the ability to regenerate included. As our research proved, our genetic matrices are similar enough to theirs so that each of the thirteen incarnations of an Aubertide Time Lord would be able to bud, and each newly budded descendant would be able to regenerate twelve times itself and have a child each time. So an individual Aubertide would be able to have thirteen children, and each of those thirteen, also.'

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'You should be careful,' Benny mused. 'You're trying to reinvent the Grandparent. Christmas will never be the same again.'

'We're extending our family to the size of an army. With Serif's skills at influencing a child as it develops in its parent, we'll be able to create individuals suited to particular tasks. The Aubertides, once ignored as a race, will become a major force in galactic affairs.'

Greeneye saw the piteous look on Bernice's face and shrugged. 'Don't knock it, it's something to do.'

'So,' Serif continued, 'we set up one of our family as a bodysmith. He turned out to have a natural affinity for the job, restructuring the bodies of the rich to suit their desires.'

'It was nearly as lucrative as looting and enslaving,' Hoff muttered.

Serif continued the story. 'We let it be known that he was in a position to give a Time Lord whatever form or mind they wanted. That's a particular dream of Gallifreyans, as I knew from wandering through that young Interventionist's mind. They regenerate and find themselves to be much the same, and every now and then they dream how wonderful it would be to be able to fly or be of the opposite sex or have a child. That last is a very common dream, for children on Gallifrey are very rare.'

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August twirled on his heel. He seemed to be enjoying telling the tale. 'We sent out a call along the subtler back streets of electronic dispatch, the frequencies listened to by Interventionists and assassins. After months of waiting, stuck on one planet while... our brother... went about his work, finally the call came. It was your friend the Doctor, with a great sadness about his shoulders. He wanted to be human, had even written a fictional human memory print for himself. Now, this was ideal for our purposes. Had a Time Lord arrived wanting wings, we would have attached our Biodatapod to his forehead, and he would have found himself with said appendages, but without the genetic information that made him a Time Lord. That would be contained, carefully edited and programmed, and then made ready for our use, by the most complex nanite processors ever designed, in the Pod. He'd be rather surprised by that, so a degree of force would have been necessary, particularly if he was on a mission from the Capitol.'

Greeneye nodded. 'Interventionists have several back-ups. We were ready, when we thought up this plan, to fight our way to the vortex gate, ready for the double-cross. Since the Pod takes days to make the genetic information usable by an Aubertide, we thought we'd have to run somewhere quickly with it.'

'We didn't have to go through all that, thanks to the Doctor,' said August. 'His offer seemed so perfect that we spent days checking the incoming path of his TARDIS, watching for others around it, scanning the market area for other Gallifreyans. But there were none. We thought he would take the Pod off to a primitive civilization, forget he was a Time Lord and probably just leave it lying around somewhere for us to pick up. There was no need for any large-scale action of the kind that those with Time- Space Visualizers tend to notice, no need for any violence at all. Of course we said yes, and he arrived several days later. Everything was going as planned until-'

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'You arrived here and couldn't find the Pod anywhere.'

'Precisely. It's not in his house, it's not in his clothes or baggage. We've even searched the schoolroom where he teaches. Tell me, why did you think we had it?'

Benny shrugged. 'Because it's gone from the place where I was told to hide it.'

'A tree?' Serif asked.

'As a matter of fact, yes.'

'Yes, that's clever of him. Time Lord biodata can hang on to organic matter quite invisibly, though the data can start to affect the host form.'

'Good thought.' August clicked his fingers in Hoff's direction. 'Scan for any unusual vegetation in the area. Now, Professor Summerfield, do you have any other ideas as to who might have taken the Pod?'

'Not one. As you know, I'm as in the dark as you are. Which is great, incidentally, because you've got absolutely no reason to torture me.'

'Very true,' August agreed. 'We'll kill you both quite humanely before we eat you. Oh, and, Greeneye, do you want to - '

Greeneye nodded.

'It seems he does. So that's something to look forward to at least.'

Benny kept her tone level. 'I thought we had an agreement.'

'You have absolutely nothing to bargain with.' August gestured to his family. 'All right, we'll do a sweep for unusual bioactivity right across the area.' He glanced at the two captives. 'And be back in time for tea.'

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Smith and Joan had finished their picnic and had walked idly with the hamper for a while, crossing from one field to another. Smith suspected that they were both trying to get out of range of the military noises which had been coming from the direction of the school. They largely walked in silence, him glancing at his hand from time to time and wondering if he'd scared her with that sudden outburst.

How odd. The large things inside him shouldn't come bursting out at awkward times like that. He didn't want to scare her. 'I'm not like that,' he said.

'Like what?'

'Like you think I am.'

'And how's that?' At least she was smiling.

'I don't know. But I'm not like it. You make me lose the ability to communicate. Like there's sometimes a huge gap between us.'

'I feel the same way, and that is rather frightening. Odd to find that one's sweetheart disagrees with one on something so central.'

'But I don't!' He was about to start on another huge explanation when she put a finger to his lips.

'Hush. I don't know why, but it seems to me that you are just discovering what you think, like a little boy being influenced by great men and heroic stories. That makes me feel like I'm being romanced by a young swain, and I suppose I quite like that, but I do wonder if it's good that you should be such a blank slate. Any other woman, I suspect, would want to feel that she would be the one growing wings if asked to fly.'

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'That's not because I'm special. It's because you are.'

'Thank you, sir.' She put her arms round his neck. 'I dislike it when you're very manly, yet I wonder who else but me leads you.'

'Another woman?' He frowned.

'Rocastle. Or some other general.'

'Ah, but he was just as led by you. You're my general's general, so I owe you ultimate allegiance.'

'But is that good?'

He put an unwounded finger under her chin. 'Is that important?' And kissed her again.

She pulled away after a moment. 'Very manly.'

'Too manly?'

'No.'

'Will you marry me?'

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Joan froze, staring at him. 'I... Could you give me... a few days to think about it?'

'Of course.'

Joan grinned, looking happy and lost. 'I hate to be so conventional, but could I have a ring or something? Then if I say yes, you could... see that I've said yes.'

'Oh, yes.' Smith fumbled in his pockets, putting the hamper down on the grass. 'I hadn't anticipated this.'

'You mean you hadn't planned it?'

'No.' He switched pockets, searching in his waistcoat. 'But I mean it. Completely. Utterly. Ah... ' He pulled out a ring with a purple jewel set on it. 'A little gaudy. Don't know where I got it. Perhaps I wore it once. Will it do?'

'Yes.' She took the ring and stared into the jewel. 'And I was complaining of you being easily led. Goodness, I can hardly catch my breath.' She grabbed his hand and held the ring up to his finger. 'Wait a moment - this doesn't fit you! Heartbreaker!' She laughed, trying to fit the ring over his finger, much to Smith's discomfort. He started to hop, holding his wounded hand to his head and looking away as if to ignore the pain.

'It was mine, I'm sure. Maybe I changed? Ow!'

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They fell into a pile of limbs, Joan's legs tumbling round his very immodestly, and kissed excitedly in such a jumble. Finally, they unwrapped themselves, Joan blushing thoroughly again. 'We're not married yet, John Smith. Do you like blackberry jam?'

'Jam? I don't know. I wonder if I've tried it?'

'Well, I make some every summer, so let us keep our hands to ourselves and see if we can find any early blackberries.' She hopped up and picked up her hat from where it had fallen. Instead of replacing it on her head, she upturned it and headed off for the hedgerow.

Smith followed, his hands in his pockets, whistling a jaunty tune. He bent to pick a poppy and fixed it to his buttonhole.

'That's good!' she called, wandering along the hedge and plucking at the occasional early berry. 'What is it?'

'I'm not sure.' Smith tried to remember the lyrics. 'This old heart of mine... is weak for you... That's the title, but I don't know who sings it.'

'A n- band, probably. We must go to London and see one, if we save up, and have a meal in some terribly precious cafe.'

'Yes.' Smith winced. His hand had contracted again for a moment then, as if something else had jarred. 'I'll just walk to the fence...' He set off up the field, wishing that he could identify what it was that was curling him up inside. Perhaps it would get in the way of his marriage. Marriage! What a leap! How had he done that?

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Ahead the field broadened out into a meadow with a few trees. At its end, up a light slope, was a wooden fence. And around the fence wheeled a flock of swallows. That was an odd sight at this time of day, there'd be no big concentration of insects for them to catch. And they were very low.

Something was shimmering in the air, a heat haze on a day too cool for one. It was actually getting closer, too, as he approached it, which was as impossible as walking through a rainbow.

He reached his wounded hand out to touch the phantom.

The shock rushed up his arm and thumped straight into his head.

A cat pinned down on a table, its skull open to show its brain. The folds of its head were pinned back and bloody white, like the skin on a roast chicken.

It was alive.

'Who's going to intervene?' a woman shouted. 'Who can save them now?'

He stepped back in fear and lost the vision. His hand plucked the poppy from his lapel and he sniffed it absently, his mind racing. There was a wall here. A real wall. Walls meant a prison. A prison meant guards. But what did the vision mean?

Joan wandered up to his shoulder, her hat full of blackberries, and he bounced the poppy off her nose, still frowning.

'Tell me,' he said. 'When you first met me, did I have an umbrella?'