Doctor Who: Paradise Towers (7 page)

She walked off down the street but Pex was soon following after her. His persistence made her decide to be brutally frank.

As he caught up again, she found herself getting very angry.

‘Just tell me one thing, Pex,’ she began, ‘if you’re so marvellous, why doesn’t anybody else in Paradise Towers want your help? I should have thought there are plenty of wrongs to put right here without bothering me. Or is everybody else so fed up with you knocking down their doors and smashing their street lights that they don’t want to have anything to do with you?’

Her anger had made her go too far. Pex’s square-jawed face had started to crumple. She had guessed correctly. Pex was an outcast. She should have guessed that from the contempt with which the Rezzies had treated him. But the realisation actually made her position more difficult. If he had simply been brutal and stupid, she could have ditched him with an easy heart. But instead, despite her exasperation, she kept feeling sorry for him.

And that was fatal for her plans of going it alone.

‘Shall I tell you what puzzles me most?’ The Doctor asked the question brightly but knew there would be no reply.

The Deputy on his right and the burly Caretaker on his left sat there stolidly and impassively, repeatedly refusing to rise to the bait. The Doctor, however, persisted. Perhaps, sooner or later, he would touch the right chord and one or other of his jailers would open up. Besides, he wanted very much to get to the bottom of what was going on even if he was to suffer a 327

Appendix 3 Subsection 9 Death afterwards.

‘It’s those robotic cleaners we had such a nasty time with,’ he continued, answering his own question. ‘Presumably they’re part of the organisation of Paradise Towers like you Caretakers. They clean it up and you look after law and order. So why did they attack you?’

Another question met with stony silence. ‘And another thing,’ he persisted, ‘I don’t understand why you’re all so keen to kill off the Great Architect. I’d’ve thought you’d be delighted to have him here to put Paradise Towers back in good repair.

It’s peculiar, isn’t it?’

The Deputy Chief’s only reply was to shift slightly on the bench. The Doctor decided he had to try another tack. He assumed a pitying expression. ‘I’d hate to have to live my whole life by some boring old rule book as you do. You must get very bored.’ He paused. ‘Well, do you?’

‘No.’ Not much of a speech, the Doctor thought, but it was a start.

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

Two replies to questions in a row. The Doctor was beginning to have the germ of an idea, which, with luck on his side, might just work. He decided to follow this more fruitful vein of conversation. ‘I suppose how you guard me is in the rule book too?’

‘Yes,’ the Deputy could not resist replying, ‘Regulation 47b subsection 2.’

‘You know,’ the Doctor began, casually, ‘I’d be most interested in taking a look at that rule book. If it’s not against the rules.’ The Deputy pursed his lips. ‘After all I am a condemned man.’

A lengthy examination of certain sections of the well-thumbed rule book now ensued. To the Doctor, it seemed interminable. But he knew the Deputy Chief would do nothing without the rule book and he had to be patient. Finally, the Deputy looked up with grim satisfaction and announced, ‘We’ll count it as your last request. You’re entitled to one if you’re going to undergo a 327 Appendix 3 Subsection 9 Death.’ He smirked as he ceremoniously handed the book over. ‘It’s not a pretty way to go.’

The Doctor took the rule book eagerly. He started to flick through the pages, crammed with tiny printed columns of rules and regulations to cover every conceivable eventuality from AIR

INTAKE to ZYGOPHYTES, but his mind was already racing on to the next stage of his plan. He selected a page at random – it seemed to concern mainly WINDOWCLEANING – and studied it with apparent rapt attention. After a few minutes, he exclaimed in amazed tones, ‘How extraordinary. It can’t be true.’ The Deputy Chief was all attention at once but the Doctor pretended not to notice. ‘No, no, it’s so unlikely, you couldn’t possibly –’ he continued, shaking his head.

The Deputy Chief was nettled by the implied criticism. ‘If it’s there then it’s true. Rules are rules and orders are orders.’

‘If you say so,’ the Doctor returned, shaking his head, ‘I don’t want to make a fool of you.’

‘Just read out what it says.’

Here was the crux of the Doctor’s gamble. He just had to hope that even the Deputy Chief could not memorise the entire contents of such a tome. But by now the Deputy was so angry with the Doctor for daring to question the book by which he ordered his entire life that the Doctor could not put off the attempt any longer.

‘Well, he began slowly, taking a surreptitious glance at his watch in preparation, ‘according to what I’ve just read here, it seems that after you’ve been guarding your condemned prisoner for thirty-five minutes, you must all stand up.’

‘But –’ The Deputy was puzzled but did not appear to doubt the authenticity of what he heard. Nor notice the coincidence of the time period specified being exactly the same as had elapsed since the Chief had left.

‘I know it sounds silly,’ the Doctor agreed sympathetically,

‘and of course, I’m not expecting you to do it. But it is in the rule book.’

The Doctor got to his feet. The Deputy Chief hesitated for a moment. And then to the Doctor’s intense relief, he rose too, and the other Caretakers with him. Rules, after all, were rules.

Pushing his advantage, the Doctor continued. ‘The Caretakers present must then move five paces away from the prisoner...’ The Caretakers did this unhesitatingly, the Doctor noted happily. Now for it.

‘Close their eyes and put their hands above their heads...’

Just when he thought they were bound to smell a rat, the Caretakers obeyed. Eyes closed, hands on heads, five paces away.

It was time now to carefully put down the rule book on the bench and tiptoe stealthily towards the Deputy. He had noted on their first arrival where the Deputy kept the small square he used to unlock the door of the Headquarters. In his back pocket.

It would be a matter of moments to pull it out.

‘How long does the book say we do this?’ Eyes still closed, the Deputy was starting to get impatient. But even as he spoke, the Doctor’s nimble fingers had found the small square and were in the process of drawing it out of his pocket. Just a little more time needed.

‘Oh, about a minute and a half,’ the Doctor improvised, the key-card now firmly in his hand. He was already on his way to the exit door. ‘That’s how long the prisoner needs...’

‘Needs? To do what?’

The Doctor had found where the key-square should be inserted and was pushing the card into place. The door slid silently open. ‘To find the key-card to the door and escape,’ he explained cheekily.

‘Sorry?’

‘To find the key-card to the door and escape.’ The Doctor was through the door now and it was starting to close again. The Deputy would surely be opening his eyes any second now.

‘But that doesn’t make sense. Why should we –’

But the door was shut now and the rest of the Deputy Chief’s sentence was cut off from the Doctor’s ears. He was outside the Headquarters again and with a short start on his jailors. There was no time to lose. He started to run back the only way he knew, the way he had come. Somehow, he didn’t want to stay around to hear the rest of the Deputy’s comments.

Or the Chief’s, for that matter.

Bin Liner was waiting anxiously. The Red Kangs were re-assembling after the Caretakers’ attack at the pre-arranged spot on Floor 12 close to talkiphone 4. But they were not all there yet. She could not stand the thought that more Red Kangs might be unalive.

Finally Fire Escape arrived. ‘Build High for Happiness.’

‘Build High for Happiness.’

The two leaders exchanged the Kang salute. But Fire Escape saw Bin Liner’s unease.

‘All sound and safe?’

‘The unyoung Doctor and the girl who is no Kang are lost for now.’

Fire Escape shrugged. It was not a great loss. But she looked anxiously about the assembled familiar faces and failed to find one of them. ‘Where is No Exit?’

‘Was on talkiphone 3 before the Caretakers’ attack...’ Bin Liner’s voice trailed away.

‘Not now?’ Fire Escape pressed.

But all Bin Liner could do was shake her head glumly.

‘Mayhaps No Exit’s returned to Red Kang Brainquarters,’

Fire Escape argued but without much conviction. Both of them instinctively knew that the chances were that No Exit, their companion since childhood, a redder than red Kang, was unalive. They were used to loss but it still hurt them every time.

All Kangs knew what happened to the unalive. They were taken to the Cleaners. It was not part of the Kang game but still it happened. What they didn’t know, what no-one knew, not even the Chief Caretaker, complacently providing little snacks for his pet, was what was happening in the Basement of Paradise Towers. No Exit was taken to the Cleaners but where would the Cleaners take her after that?

The Red Kangs went back to their Brainquarters dejectedly, an isolated and dejected piece of the puzzle that was Paradise Towers.

5

Mel felt she should be getting better at knowing her way round Paradise Towers by now but it didn’t seem to be turning out that way. So many corridors looked the same. So many broken-down lifts with control panels giving totally contradictory indications as to what floor they were on. So many grimy, indistinguishable, winding staircases to be climbed between floors. It was hard not to get depressed. And harder still to believe that she would ever find the Doctor. They could pass so close to each other in this concrete jungle, one going up, one going down, one going left, one going right, without even knowing. It was only the distant hope that they would both be able, by some means or other, to make it to the swimming pool that sustained her.

And then that hope almost faded. After seemingly hours of trying to work their way up the building, they were back at Fountain of Happiness Square. Right where they started. Mel realised she should have known better than to leave any of the decisions about which turning to take to Pex. She was certainly paying the price now.

‘I’ve been trying to confuse anybody who might be following,’ Pex explained lamely as they dispiritedly scanned the all-too-familiar square. ‘It’s part of my training.’

‘Does your training include confusing yourself at the same time?’ Mel couldn’t help enquiring.

‘I’m not confused,’ Pex returned defensively.

‘So you do know how to get us up to the pool then, do you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well then?’

There was no reply. Pex looked around hopelessly at all the ways that led from the square. Mel was not surprised, of course, but she was tired and she had had enough. ‘Pex,’ she began, ‘can I ask you something?’

‘What?’

‘Why are you here?’

Pex stared.

‘I mean, there’s no one else like you here, is there?’ Pex looked quite flattered by this remark and struck a heroic pose but Mel persisted. ‘Tabby and Tilda talked about a war. They said only the oldsters and the youngsters were brought to Paradise Towers and the rest – the in-betweens – were sent off to fight and never came back. So how does it happen that you’re here?’

Pex was defiant. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No,’ Mel countered, ‘it isn’t obvious at all. Pex, you say you want to help me get up to the pool and find my friend, the Doctor, so I have to know.’

Pex was thoughtful. ‘I was sent here,’ he announced. ‘The power to protect has been invested in me.’

The words were powerful and impressive and Pex’s conviction as he spoke them made Mel almost believe him.

Maybe he had been sent. Anything was possible in a set-up as crazy as Paradise Towers. ‘Who by, Pex?’

‘By those who I am not allowed to name.’ Pex’s tone was mysterious now, hinting at forces behind Mel’s comprehension.

She was still uncertain.

‘And that’s the truth, Pex? Really the truth?’ He nodded solemnly. Mel knew that she had no real choice but to believe him. There was certainly no time to waste arguing. They had been hanging around in the square too long for comfort already.

‘You’re in no danger with me around,’ Pex assured her. Her trust in him seemed to give him new strength and he started to walk across the square towards the one way out of the square they hadn’t tried. Mel followed.

As did two Blue Kangs who had overheard every word that had been said.

*

‘Now the main thing, fellow Caretakers, is not to panic –’

The Chief was into his stride now, pacing up and down the section of Potassium Street where the young Caretaker had met his fate. A group of frightened Caretakers listened attentively, one of them clutching the deceased’s standard issue QY6 cap, stained now, unfortunately, with non-standard issue blood.

‘Just because it appears that something unfortunate may have happened to Caretaker number 345 stroke 12 subsection 3, we must not go leaping to conclusions.’ The Chiefs eyes scanned his attentive subordinates. ‘Careless chat about the Robotic Self-Activating Megapodic Mark 7Z Cleaners having got out of control is not going to help anyone and may needlessly upset other Caretakers.’

The assembled Caretakers shifted uneasily. Conversations on the subject were commonplace back in the HQ and they all secretly hoped that the Chief would not guess how many of them had been involved in so-called careless chat.

‘Everything in the whole of Paradise Towers is perfectly in order as always and running exactly according to the rules set down in the rule book,’ the Chief insisted grandly. ‘You will ignore any evidence to the contrary.’

Internally, however, he wondered if the same unease that he had felt might be shared by his docile crew. If it was, he must act quickly to stifle discontent. ‘You may rest assured that I will undertake a thorough investigation of what has happened and prepare a full and detailed report as demanded by Emergency Regulation 9P2.’ He paused. ‘In the meantime, all Caretakers will patrol their assigned streets as before. I am sure you will be quite safe.’