Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25 (17 page)

‘How do you
propose
to rescue me?’

‘I will lead you away from here along the safest route. I will defend you if necessary.’

‘I will not allow anyone to raise their hand in anger in my name,’ Gandhi said.

‘I will not raise my hand,’ Ranjit said. ‘I will shield you.’ He paused, then added, ‘We need you, Bapu. These enemies we face, they are not living enemies. They are like
men, but they are not men. They are… demons, from another world. They are a threat to us all, and I believe that the only way to defeat them is to stand against them.

But to do that we need you and the Doctor to find a way.

You are both very wise, and together I know that you can help us. Please, Bapu, come with me.’

Gandhi looked long and hard at the boy, his eyes unblinking behind his spectacles. Finally he raised his hands, palms up, as if placing the matter in the lap of the gods.

‘How can I refuse?’ he said.

The Doctor was furious. ‘Take off your hat,’ he snapped at Donna.

‘You what?’

‘Just do it. Take it off and turn it upside down.’

She glared at him. ‘A “please” wouldn’t go amiss, y’know.’

He gritted his teeth. ‘
Please
take off your hat, Donna.’

‘Certainly,’ she said, removing her wide-brimmed hat and shaking out her long red hair. She held the hat upside down, then her eyes narrowed and she drew it back. ‘Hang on, you’re not gonna throw up in it, are you?’

He glared at her.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to me.’

He opened his mouth, and then shook his head. ‘No, on

second thoughts, I don’t think I wanna know.’

He started delving into his jacket pockets, scooping out great handfuls of stuff and dumping them in the hat.

Among all the alien bits and pieces were dusty sweets, a bouncy pink ball with Donald Duck’s face on it, a rubber spider with three legs missing, an old creased postcard of Brighton Pier, a mass of linked paperclips, weird shells, variously coloured chunks of stone, a cocktail umbrella…

‘Is this a general clearout or are you actually looking for something?’ she said.

‘Tracking device,’ he muttered.

‘What, to track the TARDIS with?’

‘Not
my
tracking device,
their
tracking device.’

She shook her head. ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’

He pulled a scratched old cassette box out of his pocket and his face brightened. ‘Aw, I wondered where that had gone.’

‘What is it?’ asked Donna.

‘Recording of me and Elvis singing “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?” We were gonna release it as a single, but Colonel Tom wouldn’t let us, grumpy old so and so. Probably just as well, really.’ He slipped the cassette into the breast pocket of his jacket and said, ‘It wasn’t just a coincidence, the gelem warriors appearing like that and nicking the TARDIS. The only way they can have found it was by monitoring my movements. Which means someone, somewhere, must’ve planted a tracker on me. Unless…’

His head snapped up and he peered intently at Donna.

Discomfited, she said, ‘What you staring at me for?’

He didn’t reply. Instead he whipped out his sonic, pointed it at her face and turned it on.

Donna flinched, but immediately realised he wasn’t actually pointing the sonic
at
her – he was pointing it at something above her head. She looked up, and was just in time to see one of the circling flies shimmer and change into a little whizzing metal object. She jumped back as the thing fizzed and sparked, then dropped out of the air, like a tiny warplane disabled by enemy fire. The Doctor switched off the sonic, stretched out his other hand and caught the thing in his palm. He and Donna leaned forward to have a look at it.

It was a disc of brushed metal about the size of a Smartie. Donna could see a tiny inset propeller and a miniscule lens on the front, like a black dot of an eye.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured.

Impressed, Donna said, ‘That thing was disguised as a fly?’

The Doctor flipped the disc into the air and caught it again. ‘Glamour technology,’ he said.

‘That’s well devious.’ She straightened up. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Mohandas was gonna call a meeting, address the people. We’ll have to use it to spread the word, get everyone looking for the ship.’

‘That could take ages.’

A scowl flashed across his face. ‘Got any better ideas?’

‘No,’ she sighed.

‘Come on then.’ He spun on his heels, and then stopped. ‘Oh,’ he said.

Donna turned to see what had taken him by surprise, and her eyes widened.

Gopal was standing at the entrance to the alleyway, pointing a gun at them.

There was a moment of silence, then the Doctor said conversationally, ‘That’s a Mezon disintegrator 7.5, isn’t it?’

Gopal licked his lips. He looked sweaty and nervous.

Donna saw that his upraised hand was trembling.

The Doctor shoved his own hands into his pockets and said in the same casual tone, ‘You wanna be careful with that. The settings aren’t designed for big fat human fingers like yours. Ideally you need to be on 13-85 for close work like this, but I’ve seen people stick it on 13-89, thinking it won’t make a difference. Trouble is, the 89s are the span settings. One false move and Calcutta’ll become a big rubble pancake. Course, you’re probably not bothered about that, being a ruthless intergalactic warlord and all.’

‘I am not a warlord,’ muttered Gopal.

‘Nah, course you’re not,’ said the Doctor dismissively.

‘I’ll bet you’re just creating all those gelem warriors to hire out as butlers. Butlers R Us – dinner served, enemies annihilated. You can use that in the brochure if you like.

Just give me a credit in the small print.’

Gopal shook his head quickly. ‘The gelem warriors are not mine, Doctor. As you well know.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Donna butted in before the Doctor could respond. ‘Can I just ask before I get totally confused – is Gopal human or alien?’

The Doctor tilted his head back. Despite having a gun pointed at him, he looked not just relaxed but positively cocky. ‘He’s a Jal Karath,’ he said, ‘and his name’s not Gopal, it’s Veec-Elic-Savareen-Jal-9.’

‘And he’s been using this glamour technology thingy to disguise himself as a human?’

‘Yep.’

‘So… what does he look like really?’

The Doctor scrunched up his face. ‘Well, he’s a kind of… black weed. With eyes. Lots of eyes.’

Now it was Donna’s turn to pull a face. ‘No wonder he’s wearing a disguise.’ Raising her voice, she shouted, ‘Think you’re clever, do you, killing all those people?

Turning ’em into these gelem things.’

Gopal swung the gun in her direction. The Doctor took a deliberate sideways step into its path, shielding her.

‘I have killed nobody,’ Gopal protested.

‘Course you haven’t,’ said the Doctor airily. ‘Wouldn’t harm a fly, you. That’s why you’re pointing a gun at my noggin.’

‘I resort to such measures only because you leave me no choice, Doctor.’

‘Really?’ the Doctor replied. ‘And how do you work that one out?’

Gopal licked his lips. He still looked nervous. Donna saw a line of sweat trickle down his face. ‘I know you are in league with Darac-Poul-Caparrel-Jal-7.’

Donna blinked. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’

‘He’s the other Jal Karath I was telling you about,’ the Doctor explained.

‘The space policeman, you mean?’

Gopal laughed. The sound was hard and bitter. ‘Is that what he told you? That he was a Hive 7 Enforcer?’

The Doctor glanced at Donna and raised his eyebrows.

‘Might have done. You inferring he was telling porkies?’

‘Darac-7 is an opportunist, Doctor. He’s a bounty hunter, a mercenary, a slave trader, an arms dealer and a pirate. He makes money however and wherever he can, and he doesn’t care who he hurts in the process.’

‘Is that right?’ the Doctor said, as if he didn’t believe a word.

‘Is he telling the truth?’ Donna hissed.

The Doctor gave a non-committal shrug.

Addressing Gopal, she said, ‘If that’s true, then what makes you think
we’d
be involved with a scumbag like that? I’m a bit insulted, as it goes. Do I
look
like the sort of person who hangs around with gangsters?’

‘I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes,’ Gopal replied.

‘What, all seven million of ‘em?’ Donna snapped back.

The Doctor gave her a mildly reproving look and asked, ‘What evidence is that?’

‘At the temple this morning you claimed that Darac-7’s ship relocated when you attempted to penetrate its glamour with your sonic device. But I believe you used your sonic device to divert the ship to a location where the humans would not discover it. And this afternoon, at the Campbells’ residence, you used your sonic device to summon Darac-7’s gelem warriors. And now here you are, safely returned from your meeting with Darac-7. Why would he let you go unless you were in league with him?’

The Doctor shook his head, a half-smile on his face. ‘I can see where you’re coming from, Veec-9, me old chum, but you’re wrong. First off, Darac-7 told me the ship in the temple was yours, not his. And second, this lovely little sonic of mine is brilliant at opening doors and detecting energy emissions and putting up shelves, but I can’t relocate great big spaceships with it or whistle up my own personal posse of gelem warriors. Here, have a look if you don’t believe me.’

The Doctor flicked his arm up and suddenly the sonic was flipping end over end towards Gopal. Reacting instinctively, Gopal raised his left hand to catch it - but was distracted enough to lower his gun arm in order to do so. Immediately something flew out of nowhere and struck the back of his gun hand. Gopal cried out and his fingers sprang open. As soon as the gun started to fall, the Doctor was running towards the alien. He had reached Gopal and scooped the gun up from the dusty ground before Gopal had time to react.

It all happened so fast that Donna just stood there, dazed. She couldn’t work out how the Doctor had made Gopal drop the gun until she saw Cameron appear round the corner of the wall at the end of the alleyway, holding his catapult.

‘Where did you spring from?’ she said.

Cameron looked a little shamefaced. ‘I was in the house when the Doctor came back with those horrible ghost-men. I saw it all from an upstairs window. I wanted to know what was going on, so… I followed you.’

Donna shook her head. ‘Your mum and dad aren’t half gonna kill you, you know.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ agreed Cameron. ‘But I saved you and the Doctor from being shot. I reckon that’s worth a beating.’

‘Sorry to burst your bubble, but old Veec-9 here wouldn’t have shot us,’ said the Doctor airily. ‘As an evil intergalactic warlord, he’s… well, a bit rubbish. Not that we’re not grateful to you,’ he added, winking at Cameron.

Donna looked at Gopal, who was rubbing the back of his hand and looking sorry for himself.

‘Please, Doctor,’ he whimpered, ‘if you have an ounce of decency in your soul, kill me now.’

He looked so wretched that Donna couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. ‘Why do you want us to kill you?’

she asked.

‘I don’t,’ said Gopal, ‘but a quick death is preferable to the slow torture that awaits me back on Jal Paloor.’

‘Well, if you
will
build up an army and try to overthrow the government,’ Donna said, rolling her eyes. ‘We’ve got

a saying here on Earth, chum – if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’

‘Ooh, harsh,’ said the Doctor.

‘My only crime was to speak out against the tyrants of the Hive Council,’ Gopal replied. ‘I made public my disapproval of the current regime, as a result of which my nucleus colony was destroyed and the Council placed a bounty on my head. I have been running for eleven quadrants. I made landfall here three cycles ago. I thought I was safe, I thought I had finally shaken off my pursuers.

But once again Darac-7 has found me. After observing your actions today, I could only conclude that you were working in conjunction with him.’

‘Yeah, well, we’re not,’ said the Doctor, ‘and if you want my opinion, which most people do, I’d say we’ve all been hoodwinked. Not that I didn’t have my suspicions, of course. Soon as I met Darac-7, I thought his eyes were too close together.’ He held out his hand. ‘Pass me my sonic, would you, Veec-9?’

Gopal looked down at his left hand, and seemed surprised to find he was still holding the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Meekly he handed it over.