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- 1. -
The Doctor did not feel at all well. His head throbbed, his throat was sore and, despite wearing an extra jumper and one of the long scarves he had favoured in his previous regeneration, he still shivered, chilled to the bone. He wondered what had happened to the other scarf that he had unravelled – a rather clever trick, that, one that he had learned from a very bright young Cretan lady – during his regenerative crisis. It was something of a shame that in all these years he had never got around to learning to knit, he now thought. Knitting must have much to do with mathematics. He began to imagine the yarn, passing over and under itself, creating all sorts of intricate patterns, over and under and around and behind and backward and forward, just like the threads in the web of time. He saw them, past, present, future, the definite and the possible, all weaving themselves together in the air in front of his eyes… and then he came to himself again with a start, realising that he was drifting into delirium and must try to find somewhere he could rest until his fever broke and he was on the way to recovery. Somewhere, ideally, with soft sheets and blankets, plenty of hot cups of tea and sympathetic company.
He might have known this would happen. There had been an outbreak of space flu on the planet Mintaka-VIII, which was inhabited by a race of technologically advanced, but physically somewhat susceptible, lizardlike beings. The ruler of the lizards, Zorg, had contacted the Doctor in some desperation, asking him for any help he could provide. Concerned about the possible effect of space flu on his Trion companion – the TARDIS Data Bank entry on the subject made alarming reading and he had no wish to watch Turlough twitching and frothing at the mouth a second time – he had left him for safety on the Eye of Orion, travelling alone to Mintaka-VIII. His analyses had identified a particular type of crystal that could act as a febrifuge for the Mintakans’ ruthenium-based metabolisms and, the crystals not being available locally, he had set off in his TARDIS to a mineral-rich moon in another star’s system to obtain them. However, even before leaving Mintaka-VIII, he had started to feel distinctly shaky, and reluctantly had to admit that he was in the grips of space flu himself – not fatal for Time Lords, but unpleasant and, for a day or two, very debilitating, leaving one in no fit state to be able to conduct trade negotiations on moons with only rudimentary facilities.
Where should he go to recuperate? His fevered brain felt full of fog, but he remembered that Earth in the late 20th century was a pleasant enough place, if a little technologically backward. He was delighted to read in the Data Bank that space flu had no ill-effects on humans beyond minor snuffles and sneezing. Perfect! He set the time and space coordinates for Brendon School in 1983; the Brigadier would surely be happy to let him sleep on the sofa-bed in his secluded little house for a day or so until he was well again, and then he must take the Mintakans their medicine.
It seemed that the TARDIS had other plans, or perhaps it was just that with his woolly head and shaking hands, the Doctor had entered the wrong data. The TARDIS landed in a field at the back of a large, grey stone house in a green, hilly landscape. It was clearly part of Earth and looked to be England, but was certainly not the grounds of Brendon. He picked up a haversack that he had packed with a few essentials, opened the TARDIS door and walked unsteadily (oh, how his head ached, and how heavy his legs felt!) towards the house, rapping on the glass in the back door and hoping very much that some kind person was inside.
A middle-aged woman, wearing an apron and with her greying hair tied back in a bun, answered the door. “Oh, Master Tristan! What have you been doing with yourself? I suppose you went to the pub after your cricket match, and then somehow ended up waking up this morning under a hedge with someone else’s clothes on. You get yourself into some right scrapes! Whatever are we going to do with you?” she chuckled. “You do look peaky, though,” she added in a more serious tone, when the Doctor failed to reply.
“’M not… M-m-mas-t-t-ter-” stuttered the Doctor, but he couldn’t seem to get his words out. He staggered a little and began to sway. Mrs Hall was quick-witted enough to realise what was happening, and caught him as he fell limply into her arms.
“Eh, poor lad, you’re shivering,” she said, as she picked up the haversack, put the Doctor’s arm around her shoulder and helped him up the stairs. “Let’s get you up to bed. That’s the best place for you.”
The bed, with its silky green quilt and piles of pillows, looked wonderfully inviting.
Mrs Hall went downstairs, promising to return with tea. The Doctor unpacked shakily and changed into his white flannelette pyjamas with their red question-mark motif, then wrapped himself up in the paisley-patterned dressing-gown that Lady Cranleigh had given him by way of apology for the events that took place at her home. By the time that Mrs Hall returned with tea and a very welcome hot-water bottle, the Doctor was tucked up under the covers. He swallowed down the tea while it was still hot, then drifted off into somewhat feverish sleep.
- 2. -
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my bed?”
Tristan had come home, tired and dirty, from a long day spent out on cold, exposed hillsides, and was looking forward to a hot bath before dinner. He whistled as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom to collect a change of clothes. Pushing open his bedroom door, he was astonished to find his bed occupied. The mysterious person was snuggled deep under the covers, with only a little blond hair showing. Tristan didn’t remember any college friends having invited themselves to stay, and in any case, surely Mrs Hall would have put up someone of that kind in the spare room. So who was this? Unless… it couldn’t be one of the nurses, could it? Perhaps one of them had finally been kicked out of her accommodation for breaking the curfew too many times, and had thought to presume on his kind heart. He would be in tremendous trouble with Siegfried if a nurse was found in his bed. Siegfried would imagine all sorts of things had been going on that had not, in fact, been going on.
“I say,” said Tristan. “What do you think you’re doing, sleeping in my bed?” He went over to the sleeping figure and gave what he supposed must be its shoulder a gentle shake. If it was a nurse, or any other visitor whose presence had not been approved by Siegfried, then the sooner this person was out of his bed, down the stairs and out of the house, the better.
The Doctor woke, turned over, pushed back the covers and peered groggily at the person who had been speaking to him in such an indignant tone.
Tristan and the Doctor stared at one another in surprise. The Doctor’s surprise was tinged with trepidation. Could Omega have come back once more? Had he somehow managed to escape his pitiful antimatter existence and to re-emerge into this world?
The Doctor propped himself up into a seated position, put out his hand and said “Hello, how do you do? I’m the Doctor.” The greeting didn’t really seem equal to the occasion, and perhaps a handshake wasn’t the best idea if one was dealing with one’s antimatter double, but he was feeling too ill and muzzy-headed for such considerations of originality and caution to play any great part in his thinking.
Tristan, unperturbed by concerns about renegade Time Lords, just stared at the stranger in bemusement, before realising that his manners were wanting, shaking the Doctor’s hand and introducing himself.
“So, let me get this straight,” said Tristan, some time later. “You travel through time and space in that blue box thing that’s sitting out there in the paddock at the moment, trying to put things right, and you just happened to turn up on our doorstep this morning, suffering from some sort of influenza. I have to say that it feels as if I have landed in the middle of a novel by Mr. Wells.” He had extracted the story from the Doctor amid much coughing and many cups of tea.
“Yes. The blue box, as you call her, has something akin to a mind of her own. The old girl does her best by me. I think she must have known that in this house, at this time, there would be someone who would let me in and put me to bed without even asking any questions.” The tea and the sleep had given him a lucidity that he had lacked previously. “I’m terribly sorry for sleeping in your bed without asking, but when I arrived I was feeling so giddy that I didn’t really know what was going on, and was just grateful for somewhere to rest.” He broke off as another coughing fit overtook him. “The lady who let me in was most tremendously kind to me. I really ought to thank her properly.”
James and Siegfried had arrived home by this point, and were gathered around the bed with Tristan, listening to the Doctor’s story.
“Well, little brother, I’ve got to hand it to you,” said Siegfried. “You really do know how to cause a stir. I leave the house in the morning and when I get back in the evening you have a sick time-traveller in your bed.”
“But – but – but – it wasn’t anything to do with me,” said Tristan, with an air of injured dignity.
“Are you quite sure this isn’t all a college prank, Tristan? All smoke and mirrors and stage make-up? You do have rather a regrettable flair for the theatrical. There was all that business with the ghostly monk not too long ago, after all.”
“Who told you about the monk?” said Tristan. Siegfried wasn’t supposed to know anything about that.
“No one,” said Siegfried. “It was just, let us say, educated guesswork. In any case, assuming our visitor is indeed a time-traveller rather than one of your more disreputable college associates, I would be very unwilling to let him fend for himself with such a nasty case of flu. You can’t put a chap out on the street when he’s in that sort of state, particularly when he looks so much like family.” Siegfried realised that he had been talking over the Doctor’s head, and made amends by addressing him directly. “I’m very sorry, my dear chap. My little brother does play so many pranks that I suspected that he had been up to something. Would it suit you to stay here for a while? And could you worry down some soup? We’ve got to keep your strength up, and Mrs Hall makes a most excellent cream of celery.”
The Doctor, exhausted from giving so many explanations and from listening to the exchanges between the brothers, weakly croaked out a grateful “oh yes, please, and cream of celery would be splendid”.
- 3. -
The Doctor was not recovering as quickly as he had hoped. At present, he was sitting up in bed, eating a bowl of porridge. Tristan was in a chair beside the bed, reading out extracts from the newspaper. He had developed a fondness for his Time Lord lookalike over the past few days, which was not due entirely to vanity (“He’d be really rather good-looking with that pleasant, open face of his if his nose weren’t so red and he didn’t look so pale and peaky, and he looks just like me, so that must mean that I’m quite decent-looking, too. I shall remember that the next time I’m trying to make a good impression on a girl. Courage, mon brave, and imitate the action of a Time Lord.”). It also owed much to the Doctor’s courteous and cheerful demeanour and the exciting tales he told of his adventures (unfortunately still too often cut short by coughing fits and exhaustion). It really was like having the hero of a novel by Jules Verne or H G Wells novel as one’s houseguest, albeit one who lay in bed all day alternately sleeping and drinking tea. Tristan did wonder whether he could claim to have space flu the next time he wished to get out of early morning calls.
The Doctor had realised with delight that he had landed in a part of England that was very fond of cricket, and when he felt too weak to talk very much, he asked Tristan to read him the cricket match reports. Tristan was happy to acquiesce, and soon progressed to reading out articles that he thought the Doctor might find amusing – while he did not possess Tristan’s very highly developed sense of humour, the Doctor was certainly capable of a chuckle at a funny anecdote – and items of general interest. On his third day at Skeldale, when his mind had regained much of its clarity, the Doctor found out that the year was 1938. Of course, Time Lord policy forbade him from letting his new friends know what was in their future, and he realised sadly that Tristan and James, and even the somewhat older Siegfried, would probably have to serve in the upcoming war. He was not party to their individual destinies, but he thought that he would like to thank them and offer them an experience to which that they could look back in the dark days ahead – a trip to the stars in his TARDIS. But first, he must deal with the problem of the Mintakans. He was still too weak and ill to make the trip to the mining moon and then to Mintaka. Yesterday he had tried to walk over to the window to take a look at the view, but he had only gone a few steps before his head began to spin alarmingly and he had to abandon his attempt. He would try again today and every day until he managed it. Meanwhile, he worried about the Mintakans. How would they manage without their medicine, and did they think he had abandoned them?
Tristan put down the newspaper. An idea had occurred to him.
An idea had also occurred to the Doctor.
James came in, with his arm in a sling. “That wound that I picked up at Bentley’s has become infected,” he said “I’ve got to wear this for the next few days until it has healed, so I won’t be able to drive.”
“I was meaning to ask you -” said Tristan and the Doctor, simultaneously.
“Would you show me how to fly your TARDIS?” asked Tristan.
“Would you two run an errand for me?” asked the Doctor.
- 4. -
“This is the life!” exclaimed Tristan. “Whizzing through space and time!” He pushed a few buttons on the TARDIS console, just for the pleasure of hearing the bleeping noises they made(*). “Do you think this Time Lord garb suits me?” He strutted backwards and forwards in the console room. Unknown to James, who had been asleep at the time, he had spent several hours the previous evening practising how to make his frock-coat flap behind him in the most satisfying way.
“It does, oddly enough,” said James, who had no wish at all to flatter Tristan’s vanity but did feel the compulsion to be honest. “It’s a strange collection of garments, and it seems to be the Doctor’s own idea of what Earth people wore a couple of decades ago, but it does look as if it was designed for you.”
They both, separately, imagined Tristan arriving at a dance in the Doctor’s outfit and seeing heads turn. James’ imaginings focused on the embarrassment associated with being in Tristan’s company when he was dressed thus, and on ways of avoiding this eventuality. Tristan, for his part, daydreamed hopefully of the female hearts that might be set fluttering by an appropriate flick of his dashing coat-tails. “Oh, you look just like Prince Charming in that coat” an attractive young admirer was sighing, gazing adoringly up at him with big blue eyes. “Yes, and you know what Prince Charming wants to do to his pretty little princess,” he imagined himself saying, leaning down to kiss her rosebud lips…
“Why did he ask you to wear his outfit?” asked James, interrupting this gratifying fantasy.
“I think he thought it would make it easier for me to negotiate with the moon miners if they believed they were dealing with him. He obviously does have a certain amount of clout in some corners despite his odd taste in trousers. Or perhaps he just thought it would be a jolly wheeze, which of course it is! It’s just like ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ that we saw at the pictures!”
“Who’s the Prince and who’s the Pauper?” laughed James.
“Anyway, our errand is accomplished and everything’s tickety-boo! I thought that after studying Vet. Med., I knew most of what there was to know about strange creatures. Never did I thought I’d see lizards in trousers… which, now I come to think of it, looked remarkably like the Doctor’s. Perhaps this sort of get-up is considered quite the thing on certain planets. Don’t you think it was remarkable how similar the space lizards’ constitution was to that of felis catus? Perhaps I should write a paper on it for the Veterinary Record. Do you think Zorg and co. appreciated that little speech I made to them: ‘We love you, that’s why we’re here’ and all that? I thought they seemed rather moved.”
“And now it’s time to get back to Skeldale” said the voice of common sense. He looked through the viewing screen and then down at the console. “Wait a second! This isn’t the way back to Earth!”
“Yes it is,” said Tristan, grinning. “It’s the scenic route! You do know that this machine travels through time and space, don’t you? We can go on a nice little detour through a few galaxies and still be back in time for tea! You know, I think I have an instinctive feeling for space-travel. I could have been a pilot for a living, looping the loop and all that. Flying this thing is just like driving the Austin, only with a few extra gears. The Doctor is a nice enough chap, thoroughly decent and all that, but he can be a bit of a stuffy old fusspot. Anyone would think he was hundreds of years old, the way he talks. All these instructions and watch-out-for-this and don’t-press-that-please and you-know-you-really-need-to-be-careful. He seems to think it’s his job to worry about the whole universe.”
“Perhaps it is.”
“I thought I would have to sit through hours and hours of lectures on how to fly this thing before I could get the key out of him. Worse than old Jenkins on Parasitology. Fortunately he got tired and drifted off halfway through.”
“Possibly the only person who has fallen asleep in his own lecture,” said James, laughing nervously.
“Oh, that’s happened plenty of times at Edinburgh. When he woke up, he didn’t seem to realise that he’d been asleep. Must have been giving me flying instructions in his dreams. He gave me the key and just said ‘Please do try not to damage my TARDIS. She’s rather delicate,’ then just sort of flopped down and went back to sleep”.
“Imagine if it had been Siegfried and his Rover!” said James. “‘One scratch,’ he would have said, ‘just one scratch, and I’ll kill you with my bare hands’”.
Tristan laughed merrily and pressed a few more buttons.
“Don’t you think we’re going rather fast?” asked James. They did seem to be hurtling through space and time far too quickly, if that makes any sense when you consider Einstein’s theories of relativity and whatnot, which Tristan didn’t.
“Calm down, Jim, as I said, I have an instinct for these kinds of things and -” Tristan broke off with a yelp of horror as he saw, on the viewscreen, a phalanx of spacecraft flying directly toward the TARDIS. In panic, he pressed anything within reach on the console. The TARDIS made a nauseating lurch and swerved off in a different direction. It was not long before it crashed into something with an unpleasant, splintering crunch. Looking out of the viewscreen, the two young men saw that they had crashed into a rocky planet.
Remembering at least some of the Doctor’s warnings about planets without breathable atmospheres (perhaps the old bird did have a point with all his warnings after all, now he came to think of it), Tristan passed a shiny silver space helmet with an oxygen supply to James then took one for himself. Stepping out onto the planet’s surface, James picked up a chunk of space-rock off the mangled outside of the TARDIS and threw it down. Tristan, coming out to survey the damage, clutched his head in anguish (through his space helmet) and imagined how angry the Doctor would be after discovering what a mess he had made of his precious TARDIS.
***
The Doctor was propped up comfortably against the pillows, still feeling a little weak but in excellent spirits. His health had finally taken a turn for the better and he could convalesce at leisure, relieved of worry about the Mintakans thanks to those thoroughly decent young people who had made the trip in his place. After he had fully recovered his wits he had realised that there was, of course, no great hurry to get back to the Mintakans after all; after he had recovered, he could simply have set the coordinates of the TARDIS to arrive in Mintaka not long after he had left. That was the problem with space flu – it did addle the brain so. By the time this had occurred to him, the young men had already left. He just hoped that they had properly assimilated his instructions on how to fly the TARDIS. The people of this era were still very primitive when it came to space- and time-travel, and while James was a very sensible fellow, he sensed that Tristan, on whom he had had to rely to do the piloting with James’s arm out of action, tended towards excessive high spirits and recklessness.
“Thank you, Mrs Hall. It’s very kind of you to take care of me and bring me these most excellent cups of tea. I’ve been enjoying doing the crossword immensely. Ah, here are young Tristan and James. How did you get on with the errand I sent you on? Did you manage to get the healing crystals to Zorg and his lizards?”
“Yes,” said Tristan, who looked a little uneasy. “The lizards are now, er, basking in good health. But I’m afraid I took a bit of a detour and there was this flock, er, convoy of spaceships…”
The Doctor was overtaken by a coughing fit. He began to wonder whether he was about to regret having handed Tristan the keys to his TARDIS.
“I’m afraid the nearside wing of the TARDIS is rather mangled,” said Tristan, attempting to marshal his features into an expression of sweet, choirboyish innocence.
The Doctor made various expressions of polite, Edwardian-sounding indignation before managing to compose himself. “Crashing a chap’s ship! That really isn’t cricket, you know!”
- The End -
(*) “Do you mind?” grumbled one of the sound technicians. “Every time you press one of those buttons, we have to make a bleeping noise to go with it.”
“Yes, I know,” said Tristan, “that’s why I’m doing it.”