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Chapter Fourteen - Chapter Fourteen

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Cat Heaven

The Doctor stepped into the circle of boys. 'Hello. I'm the Doctor.'

'Are you?' Bernice leapt to her feet and grabbed him, looking joyfully into his eyes. 'So- '

'I used the Pod before I got to the dome. August didn't know that. He was prepared to fight off Time Lord biodata, not human nature. Smith took over his body. August and Hoff are now in the Pod themselves, off to safekeeping.'

'And what about Joan?'

The Doctor's face clouded. 'Smith died saving her. I think he was fond of her. I sent her back to her house.'

Tim ran forward and beamed up at the Doctor. 'So you beat them?'

'Yes. And I didn't kill them. So I won. Talking of which...' He wandered around the tree and smiled gawkily up at the naked Greeneye. 'What are we going to do with you?'

'I don't care. You can torture me -'

'No. I think I'll have you locked up. I did that once to an immensely powerful other-dimensional sorceress. She got out immediately, but the experience left her feeling sheepish.'

'But we can't have him getting away,' Hutchinson objected. 'He ought to be bloody well hung!'

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Bernice raised an eyebrow and Alexander burst out laughing.

Alton wandered up. 'I appreciate how you feel, but don't you think that this man's powers go beyond the army's ability to hold him? We could just shoot him and bury him here.'

'Don't be barbarous. Oh, he might get away' - the Doctor tapped his umbrella handle against his chin - 'but what will he do? He's got no weapons, no technology, and a life span of, what, ten more years at the most? That's the thing about such powerful biosystems. They burn themselves out.' His face darkened. 'I think killing him would be far too merciful.'

'You dog!' Greeneye spat. 'You took away our last chance!'

'Did I? I only just got here.'

Hadleman tapped the Doctor's shoulder. 'Erm, Doctor?'

The Doctor turned, suddenly beamed and pumped Hadleman's hand with two of his. 'Richard Hadleman! Pleased to meet you!'

'We've, ah, already met.'

'Yes.' The Doctor's face fell. 'But you shouldn't know about that. Oh, you mean Smith. He wasn't me. Much. If at all. What?'

Hadleman laughed, bombarded by the Doctor's swift collection of thoughts and postures. 'I just wanted to tell you, there's an army convoy outside the village. We could give him to them.'

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'Yes, now the barrier's down, that's very apt. Very neat.'

Hutchinson had been watching the conversation, his hands on his hips. 'I'm just wondering, Smith, or Doctor, or whatever you're calling yourself, how you're going to answer to that same convoy for what you did to the school.'

'Me? I'm going to answer in the same way I answer every message that I don't want to hear. I'm not going to be at home.' He flipped up a finger and pressed a spot above the boy's nose. 'Now fall over.'

Hutchinson did, out cold. Anand and Merryweather looked down at the body, then shook hands.

Smith glanced around the group. 'Well, I'll leave it to you two' - he indicated Alexander and Hadleman - 'to hand our villain over to the authorities; tell them he mustn't eat meat, by the way. And you boys can take yourselves down to the bakery in town.' He threw a bagful of coins on to the ground. 'That's a train fare home, a bun and probably a hug each... Then we can go home.'

Bernice peered at him, but decided not to mention it at the moment. She went to Alexander and Hadleman. 'I hope you'll be very happy,' she told them. 'If Alex's womanising doesn't get in the way.'

'Your what?' Hadleman frowned.

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'My protestations...' the bearded man muttered. 'They may have been a little too successful.'

'And have you considered an American holiday?' asked Bernice. 'Very soon?'

Alexander kissed her cheek. 'We won't run away, loved one. Give my regards to the future.'

Hadleman shook her by the hand. 'Am I going to understand any of this?' he asked.

'Quite possibly.'

Merryweather approached Bernice cautiously. 'Will we meet again?' he asked hopefully.

Bernice framed an uneasy smile. 'Time will tell.'

The Doctor was shaking Tim's hand earnestly. 'Thank you for keeping things safe for me.'

'Thank you for being brave. I've decided that I'm going to be brave too.'

'So what are you going to be when you grow up?'

Tim glanced down at Hutchinson's body. 'Not a soldier.'

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They finished their goodbyes, and Benny handed the Doctor the TARDIS key. She wasn't sure just what his intentions were, but, when he began twirling it around his finger and whistling as they walked away, she thought she had a pretty good idea.

When they'd walked far enough from the clearing not to be heard, she disengaged herself from the Doctor's arm. 'Right,' she said.

'What?' The Doctor stopped. 'Is there one thing you don't understand?'

'I'll say. You said that you "sent Mrs Redfern home". Are you leaving it at that?'

The Doctor frowned. 'I thought we'd slip away. It's usually best.'

'Usually, but not when you've promised to go and see somebody and explain everything to her.'

The Doctor stared at her. 'How did you know that?'

'Because if you hadn't, she wouldn't have let you out of her sight.'

He glared down at the ground, his hands describing awkward little circles. 'She doesn't know... She thinks I'm... It'd be difficult.'

'Not half as much for you as for her. Doctor, you owe her an explanation. Your experiment in being human has hurt-'

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'Hurt? I'm a Time Lord. Smith was a human.' He gazed at Bernice vacantly. 'I can't love her. I don't feel that way about her.'

'So she's lost the man she loved.'

'Then how can I help her?'

Bernice looked at him sadly. Distantly, she thought that she might have felt angry, but he looked so lost. 'What, you didn't find that out? What was this all for, then, this holiday in the human condition?'

'I thought it would be peaceful.'

'I'm not talking about the aliens. You're not responsible for them. I'm talking about the heart that you would have broken, battle or no battle. Doctor, please, go and talk to her.'

He looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded. 'Yes.'

Joan was tidying her house as the sun rose over the battered town. The military had arrived in force in the market square and fire brigades from the whole county had been going from house to house, helping to repair the damage. All that had happened to her own place, thankfully, was that a few pictures needed straightening and a bit of that silver dust that was everywhere needed brushing out of the carpet.

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She glanced at the ring on her finger and smiled. It was quite a motif, that the sign of his love had spared her. And now he would be a hero, when the story got round, the schoolteacher who had saved everybody. It was quite a shock to discover that there were hostile creatures from other worlds. But there was also her own fallen angel. And he was, perhaps, representative of a gentler humanity that existed in the stars.

She sat down and let Wolsey leap into her lap. 'You're going to have to get used to a new householder,' she told him. 'But you like him, don't you?'

There was a knock on the door. She leapt up, much to Wolsey's disgust, and ran to it.

Her fianc\xE9 stood there, wearing a hat and a jacket that she'd never seen him in before.

Joan folded him into her arms and kissed him.

Then she withdrew, staring at him in surprise.

She picked her way back through the hall and into the sitting room, supporting herself on the furniture as she went. She finally sat down. 'John...' she murmured. 'Do come in. I'm sorry to be so...forward.'

'It's not that.' The Doctor closed the door and stepped into the centre of the sitting room, not quite looking at her. 'You know what's happened, don't you?'

'No.' She looked up at him, terrified. 'Please tell me.'

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'I had to change back. To save you. You asked Smith not to give August the Pod. He didn't. I did. I'm the Doctor.'

'Oh...' Joan closed her eyes for a long, hard, instant. Then she opened them. 'I'm very pleased to meet you. Doctor. Is there nothing about you that's like the man to whom I've become engaged?'

'I think we believed in the same things. In the end. We're the same shape of person, using different memories. You made him more like me. He was willing to give his life.'

'Don't tell me that, I didn't want him to give his life. I didn't want to go through that again! My God, I don't think I can go through -'

She forcibly stopped herself. 'You don't love me then? You have his form, his habits - and you move like him. But you don't love me?'

'No. I can't.'

'Why? Is he not a part of you? The human part?'

'There is no human part. I'm a Time Lord. A different species. He was a character I created, a fiction.'

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'Rubbish. I don't give my heart to fictions. When his spirit inhabited you, you were not so different to the way you are now. John, if you're simply lying to me, there's no need, you can take my heart and go- '

'No!' The Doctor grabbed her forearms and made her rise. 'He loved you, he loved you so much that he was willing to become me again to save you. Feel.'

He took her hands and put them over one of his hearts. Then the other.

'And is one of them his?'

For the first time since he'd come here, he allowed himself a moment's uncertainty. 'I think that both my hearts are mine. That was one of the things I wanted to learn, where one part of me ends, where the next begins. Many of his attitudes and ideas, his ways of acting, were mine. But he's a different person, a role I created in order to learn things.'

'So you remember everything?'

The Doctor paused, then decided to tell the truth. 'Yes. What would be the point otherwise?'

Joan gave a short, bitter, laugh. 'You haven't learned how to love.'

'A fish can't learn to -'

'Walk?'

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'Not that. A better metaphor. Whatever it is, I'm incapable of it.'

'Could you not become John Smith again?'

'If I could find another Pod. But such horror followed me. Such - ' He dropped his head. 'That's not true. I might become a man again, but it wouldn't be John. And I wouldn't want to do it. I know everything I am, and that includes the knowledge that I want to be me.'

'Well...' Joan let go of his hands, and moved off a little way. 'I believe that you're a good man. You didn't know that your human self would fall in love.'

'It seems obvious now. What else do humans do?'

'Go to war.'

'I did both, then. And I was half successful.'

She smiled, sadly. 'Oh, more than half.' She plucked the ring from her finger. 'Do you want this back?'

'No. Keep it. Please.'

Wolsey, oblivious to what was happening, was rubbing himself up against the Doctor's legs. Joan glanced down at the cat. 'I shall have to move, of course. There's no school here for me to work at, now. I gained Wolsey through chance, when I arrived here, and I doubt that he would want to follow me to some other earthly destination.' She paused and took a sharp breath. 'I would like to think that you have a companion to guard you, besides Miss Summerfield. Would you be willing to take him on?'

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The Doctor bent and picked up the cat, who curled up in his arms. 'Won't you miss him?'

'Miss him? I'll miss - No, no I'll get myself a litter of kittens and teach them all how to be good cats for good homes. May I keep those stories that you - that John wrote?'

The Doctor felt a heavy weight in his chest. 'If you wish.'

'Very well, then,' she said brightly. 'It's all decided. Was there anything else?'

'Joan... don't...'

'Don't what?'

'Don't...' The Doctor stared down at the cat in his arms. It jerked about, wanting to move, and then hopped up to lie along his shoulders. 'No. You must do what you have to.'

'Of course.' She quickly walked to the door and held it open for him. 'We both must. It was good of you to come and tell me. Thank you for saving us all.'

He paused for a moment at the door and gazed at her face. 'I hope that one day, when I'm old, when my travels are over, and history has no more need of me, then I can be just a man again. And then, perhaps I'll find those things in me that I'd need to love, also. Not love like I do, a big love for big things, but that more dangerous love. The one that makes and kills human beings.' He stretched out a finger to touch her face, but suspended it, an inch from her skin. 'It's a dream I have.'

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He turned away and walked down the road.

He didn't look back.

Joan closed the door and sat down, not feeling anything. 'I should go to bed,' she said. Then she stood up suddenly, seized by the idea that she should run after him and grab Wolsey back.

She made herself stand by the door, not opening it.

And she stayed there for a very long time.

Laylock looked up at a sound from outside the tent. It was night, but he'd been pacing for hours, checking to see if the signal had been picked up by the vortex cabinet again.

The sound wasn't repeated, so he glanced at the dial once more.

'Good evening, Laylock.'

He spun round.

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Alton was standing there, in a black robe now, rather than his school uniform. The robe carried no seal or insignia, but the cut of it suggested, as it was meant to, that the wearer was equally used to the darkened corridors of the Capitol as to alien fields and foxholes. Besides, an owl sat on his shoulder. Alton was pointing a gun at Laylock.

'Are they - did they- ' The old Aubertide took a step back.

Alton reached into a pouch at his belt. He produced a small bag of coins and handed it to the alien. 'Greetings from Aberdeen.'

He turned and left.

Laylock held the bag in his hand and sighed in relief. Then he went and switched off the vortex cabinet.

That night, Major Wrightson, who'd set up a detail of his men in the market square, was surprised to take custody of a prisoner. Hadleman and Alexander handed Greeneye over, together with statements about Rocastle and the hospital. They gave lengthy warnings about the prisoner, but still they seemed to want to be away. Alexander finally led Richard from all the camouflage and khaki, the younger man still calling things to Wrightson.

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The major put his prisoner in a police station cell, to be transferred to a military lock-up first thing. Greeneye was quite passive. As Wrightson bid him goodnight he gave a wink and asked: 'Any chance of a corned-beef sandwich?'

Wolsey licked at the butter they'd put on his paws.

This new place was huge, with big white corridors leading off everywhere and an amazing range of interesting smells to follow. There had been another cat here, once, but it had gone now, so the territory was his. He'd already been shown a whole roomful of cat litter, and another with sunshine, climbing bars and a lot of different and challenging cushions to lie on. Cat heaven.

The two new people were sitting in chairs in the room with the thing that moved up and down. It was warm, so Wolsey was curled on top of it. The two people were drinking from cups. Every once in a while the woman would reach out and hold the man's hand. She'd held on to him for ages when he'd first come through the door, then they'd made the drink together, hardly letting go of each other.

Odd things, people. Still, Wolsey thought that he was going to like it here. It already felt like home.

Then the smooth motion lulled him to sleep.

He was woken only once that night, as his new owner reached down, late and alone, to gently smooth the fur on his head.

The cat could see that the man was weeping... But there was nobody he could tell.

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