Doctor Who: Paradise Towers (6 page)

The Chief was a man of middle height dressed in a once grand, grey uniform and cap, decorated with braid and insignia, now somewhat faded and dusty. The Chief was not a vain man and there were more important things than sartorial elegance.

His sallow complexion and drooping black moustache showed signs of neglect too. The Chief was not keen on fresh air or healthy exercise. He regarded such activities as futile, even actively harmful.

As his bloodshot but alert eyes scanned the screens, the Chief began to feel calmer. Everything was proceeding just as normal. What had he got to worry about?

And then the screen that covered the approach to the Headquarters itself flickered into life. That meant someone was approaching. The Deputy, of course, returning from his raid on Fountain of Happiness Square. The Chief Caretaker leant forward to see more clearly whether the Deputy had taken any Kangs prisoners. Kangs, after all, were tasty snacks for the Chief’s pet. Smaller than Caretakers but less fatty.

There was a figure with the Deputy. The Chief could see that much. But it wasn’t a Kang or a Rezzie. It was a man, oddly attired, carrying an umbrella. A sudden tremor went through the Chief as the man came more clearly into view.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

He passed a hand over his brow thoughtfully. It could be.

The journey in the lift had not been a pleasant experience for the Doctor. There was barely room to breathe, clamped between the sweating and obese Caretakers. And the lift itself juddered so much that he expected it to stop completely at any moment. All in all, he was extremely relieved to be out of it and walking down another street, however ill-lit and dirty, on what was obviously the final leg of his journey with the Deputy.

They arrived at a very solid-looking metal door. The Deputy produced a small square from his pocket and inserted it in a tiny slot so well concealed that the Doctor would never have noticed it of its own accord.

The door slid open and the Doctor was bundled inside.

Soon he was in a large room whose walls were covered in screens relaying pictures from every part of the Towers. The multiplying and constantly changing images were dazzling at first.

A figure seated studying these screens turned as the Doctor was hustled in by the Deputy, who was full of the importance of the occasion. The figure rose and the Doctor came face to face with a man whose very presence breathed an air of authority for all the seediness of his appearance.

The Deputy’s self-important explanations were brushed aside. The Doctor’s release was ordered and the Caretakers took a step back leaving their leader confronting the Doctor with an odd, unexplained gleam in his eye.

‘Greetings,’ the Doctor began, simply in order to break the silence.

‘Greetings,’ the other man’s face cracked into a less than pleasant smile. ‘I am the Chief Caretaker.

‘And I am –’ the Doctor began. But he didn’t get any further in his introduction. To his surprise he found his speech cut off by the Chief Caretaker exclaiming enthusiastically, ‘No need to tell me. I know who you are.’

The Doctor stared. He had not realised his name was already known here. But before he could ask more, the Chief was off again, an enthusiastic torrent of words, addressed as much to the waiting Caretakers as to the Doctor himself.

‘Oh yes, we have been waiting for this momentous visit for so many years,’ he began, his bloodshot eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. He patted the Doctor warmly on the back. ‘You are the man who brought Paradise Towers to life. The visionary who dreamed up its pools and lifts and squares. And now you have returned to your creation.’

He pressed his face closer to the Doctor’s, eyes agleam. ‘You will make all those dilapidated lifts rise and fall as they have never done before. All signs of wallscrawl will disappear from the corridors of Paradise Towers. The floors will gleam. The fountains will tinkle. The windows will shine. The grass will grow. And all will be made as new.’

The Doctor was so mesmerised by the ardour of this speech that he found it impossible to interrupt it. But there was an obvious misapprehension here and he had better put it right before things got out of hand. He didn’t want to start on the wrong foot. Now seemed the appropriate moment and he opened his mouth to speak.

But the Chief, oblivious of this, had now turned to the attendant Caretakers. ‘Fellow Caretakers,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you know who this is?’ Their silence showed all too clearly that they didn’t. ‘This is the Great Architect returned to Paradise Towers.

Bid him welcome. All hail the Great Architect! All hail!’

The Great Architect! Now the Doctor understood what the mistake was. It was crucial that as soon as possible he explained that he was not the Architect responsible for the Towers. Before they asked him to make the lifts work or clean out the fountains.

Again, he tried to speak.

‘All hail! All hail the Great Architect!’

The Caretakers had all taken up the Chief’s cry now, completely drowning out the Doctor’s explanations. Obedient to their Chief as ever, the Caretakers were putting their hearts into it and considering what an unfit, ill-matched and shambolic bunch they really were, the effect was remarkably stirring. What a pity, the Doctor thought, they’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

‘What shall we do with him now then, Chief?’ The cheering had subsided and the Deputy Chief had stepped forward deferentially to receive the Chief’s orders.

There was a brief pause while the Chief examined the Doctor with the same disturbing gleam in his eye and a smile on his lips. He patted the Doctor on the back amicably and then gave the order, short, sharp and savage.

‘Kill him!’

The contrast was so startling that the Doctor could scarcely believe his ears. The misunderstanding had gone far enough.

‘Just a moment,’ he protested as loudly as he could. ‘Listen.’

‘Why?’ There was silence now and the Chief was icy cool.

‘I’m not the Great Architect. I’m the Doctor.’ Surely the Chief wasn’t going to persist in this charade, the Doctor assured himself.

But he was. Now he was turning to the Caretakers and bringing them into the debate. ‘He was always very artful, the Great Architect,’ he explained, almost as an aside. And then as casually as he had beckoned to the Deputy. ‘Make the preparations will you?’

‘Yes Chief.’ There was no point in trying to convince the Deputy that there had been a mistake. He waited for further instructions from his boss.

‘The 327 Appendix Subsection 9 Death, I think,’ the Chief announced judiciously, after some thought.

‘Very good, Chief.’ The Deputy was half way across the room to grab hold of the Doctor again when a loud bleeping sound started up. It was coming from the elaborate control panel that stretched across one wall beneath the screens. When he heard it, the Deputy stopped. It was the first hopeful sound the Doctor had heard since entering the Caretakers’

Headquarters.

‘It would happen just now.’ With a weary sigh, the Chief flicked up a switch on the panel and listened attentively to the voice at the other end, inaudible to all but him. His face assumed a concerned air though the Doctor, more observant in such cases than the Caretakers, strongly suspected the concern was less than sincere.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ the Chief kept on exclaiming intermittently as the distant voice babbled on. ‘Poor Caretaker number 345, stroke 12, subsection 3.’ He listened some more.

‘You want me to come now? But I’m in the middle of something rather important.’ The voice became agitated and the Chief more testy. ‘All right, all right,’ he conceded eventually, ‘there’s no need to quote the rule book at me, Caretaker number 569, stroke 14, subsection 8. I’ll come.’

He flicked the switch back up again and turned pensively back to the waiting room, all too obviously irritated by the interruption.

‘Anything the matter?’ the Doctor enquired innocently.

‘Nothing that isn’t under control, thank you, Great Architect,’ was the tart reply. The Chief called the Deputy over and again there was that look of concern in his face that the Doctor did not quite believe. The Deputy Chief, however, obviously did.

‘An unfortunate accident has occurred to Caretaker number 345 stroke 12 subsection 3,’ the Chief announced gravely. ‘I am required by the rulebook to go and investigate it. The 327

Appendix 3 Subsection 9 Death will be postponed until I return.

In the meantime, you will guard the Great Architect here with your lives. Understand?’

‘Yes Chief,’ the Deputy nodded. ‘No problem.’

A few moments later and the Chief Caretaker was gone. The threat of the 327 Apendix 3 Subsection 9 Death, however, had not. So thought the Doctor as he was led away to a bench and seated on it between the Deputy and one of the biggest and burliest of the other Caretakers. He had only his brain power to rely on to help him out of this sticky situation. If the Chief had remained, he would not have fancied his chances one bit. But sandwiched between two large but not remarkably intelligent dogsbodies of the Chief there might just be a chance. He certainly hoped so.

‘Hail the Kang. Hail the unalive Kang. Yellow of colour but brave and bold as a Kang should be.’

The words of the lone Blue Kang were taken up and repeated by the others.

‘Hail the Kang... Yellow of Colour but brave and bold as a Kang should be... Brave and bold as a Kang should be...’

Mel watched fascinated. In a corner of one of the squares of Paradise Towers, a structure of metal scrap had been built, improvised, no doubt, by scouring through the rubbish that littered the surrounding corridors. The Blue Kangs were circling it now, their eerie words building into a chant. From where she was concealed, Mel had difficulty in making out what they were saying. She strained her ears.

‘Yellow of colour but brave and bold as a Kang should be..

And then she noticed right on top of the pile of scrap, so carefully and lovingly assembled, a yellow banner. Bloodstained, she thought. Was this a ceremony then for a Yellow Kang? The Red Kangs had told Mel and the Doctor that they were all

‘unalive’ so was this some sort of funeral celebration? It was the only explanation that made sense.

She could have asked Pex, who was by her side, also flattened against the wall to evade detection. But she had already begun to suspect that her own common sense would tell her as much as he could. His attempts to guide her through the streets of the Towers had not been encouraging. They had already negotiated several dead ends and come across the same fountain in the same square four times. At least they were now in a different square. And the Blue Kangs’ ceremony had a seriousness and even sadness that was impressive. They seemed so young to have such a grasp of the need for mourning and ritual.

They were laying their metal crossbows around the Yellow Kang’s funeral shrine now as a gesture of respect. The chanting continued.

‘Brave and bold...’

Pex coughed nervously. He had a point. They shouldn’t stay here too long. Discovery would almost certainly lead to another arrest and there was no guarantee that she would be as lucky in evading the Blue Kangs as she had been with the Reds. Besides, she had to find the Doctor.

Stealthily she crept away. Inevitably Pex followed. The chanting faded as they moved off down one of the streets that led off the square. Mel had chosen it at random but she didn’t feel she could do any worse in this than by following Pex’s examples.

They soon came to a new street, rather brighter and cleaner than most. An unusually ornate type of streetlamp jutted from its walls, spreading a softer, warmer light. Mel started to feel more relaxed. The ceremony had brought home to her how common death seemed to be in the Towers and the words of the Blue Kang chant had lodged in her brain. She was glad to be in a more cheerful environment.

Unfortunately the ornate lamps with their wrought-iron holders gave Pex a new confidence as well. He had been quite subdued when they were in the Square but now he stopped and called on Mel to stop too. Reluctantly Mel turned. From the complacent expression on Pex’s face, she strongly suspected that he was about to give her a demonstration of his talents. She had already been delayed by several exhibitions of prowess and she was in no mood for another. She had just got to hope it wouldn’t waste too much time.

‘Mel – watch this!’ Pex sensed her impatience and added. ‘It won’t take a moment.’ But, of course, it did. First there were the physical preparations. Much flexing of arm muscles and rhythmic deep breathing. Then there was a long pause while Pex simply grasped the streetlamp he had selected and stood there gathering his concentration. And then there was the strenuous effort as he snapped the holder off from the wall. And then there was even more strenuous and protracted effort of bending and twisting the lamp with his bare hands. And finally the triumphant throwing down of the stout, once-elegant fitment now turned into a fantastic corkscrew of twisted metal.

Once it was all over Pex assumed an air of casual nonchalance as if it had cost him no effort at all.

‘Well?’ Mel had watched this display with increasing impatience at its futility.

‘You have to be strong to do that,’ Pex protested. ‘And fit.

And trained. There aren’t many people who could do that.’

‘I can’t think of many who’d want to,’ Mel returned tartly.

‘But, Mel,’ Pex continued indignantly, ‘you don’t realise. I’m a finely tuned fighting machine. I work out every day. Practise martial arts. Run the length of seventeen carrydoors each morning. I –’

‘Pex –’ Mel cut in, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘If you could bend that back into shape and put it back where it came from, that might be more useful. But you can’t, can you?’

‘That’s not my job. I’m Pex and –’

Mel had heard this refrain countless times already. ‘I know, you’re Pex and “you’re here to put the world of Paradise Towers to rights”. Well, go ahead. I’ve got to find my friend. And I can’t waste any more time.’