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Naughty or Nice
The enemy they had been trapped in conflict with, for goodness knew how long, had been vanquished. Peri was nothing but relieved, her feet were killing her and, when they’d originally emerged from the TARDIS she had been promised a tropical beach. This is decidedly not a tropical beach and, in her daring cut-off shorts, Peri not only feels underdressed, but is also freezing .
By happy coincidence, most of defeating these particular Earthbound invaders hadn’t required being much in the public eye. Even now, standing in this normal-seeming front room, night covering the windows in black velvet, she finds herself tugging self-consciously at the fringed hem. Far from being relieved that they have defeated the Scolons after the long chase, however, the Doctor is still monologuing, pacing back and forth across the room.
“...and furthermore-” he rages.
Peri rolls her eyes behind his back and tries to head him off before he works himself up any further. “Sssshhhh, Doctor! It’s the middle of the night! The family will be in bed.”
“That’s my point!” he snarls. “Those Scolons put a dormancy field around half the country. Anyone here will sleep until that’s disabled, whether that’s tonight or a hundred years from now.”
Peri groans. More rushing about. Outside it sounds like it’s started raining. She is categorically not dressed for this weather. She’s wearing open toed sandals. She’s going to start selecting outfits from the TARDIS wardrobe after they’ve landed. The Doctor never manages to give useful instructions when she tries to be organised.
“Well, in that case we have time, I’m going to rest for a minute first.” She sinks onto a plush sofa on the opposite side of the room.
The Doctor paces another few steps and spins, irritation in every sharp movement of his hands. The edges of his fingers and his coat reflect in the large mirror on the far wall, splintered by the pinpricks of variously coloured light. “It’s cruel, that’s what it is. I can countenance a thing that needs to eat, even if I don’t approve of eating sentient creatures. Even feeding on emotions is no worse than any other parasite in the universe, but to keep people asleep, dead to the world, tormented by vile dreams to be harvested like some kind of farm -” a flush rises over his cheeks.
Peri hides the smile. The Doctor plays at being brash and uncaring, but the mere thought of this has reduced him to such a furious tantrum. She shakes her head and, for the first time, takes in some of the details of the room. She hadn’t had time to notice them before, she had been too busy trying not to be eaten herself. “Is it Christmas, Doctor?” she cuts into his rant.
“Hmm?” he looks directly at her, and some of the fury recedes from his features. “Hadn’t you realised? It’s Christmas Eve.”
Peri stands and crosses to the tree, a welling feeling of homesickness as she looks at it, decked in silver tinsel and fairy lights. She examines one of the huge hanging baubles. “Can we stay, Doctor? Just ‘til the morning?”
“Morning could be some time away, Peri, if we can’t end this dormancy field.” His anger has burned out by now, replaced instead with despondency.
“You’ll fix it, Doctor, you always do,” Peri says, reassuring. “Gosh, I’m hungry.” She looks around the room. “No milk and cookies.”
The Doctor looks up guiltily from where he is munching on something picked up from a side table. “Mince pies and whiskey on this side of the Atlantic,” he says around a mouthful of crumbs.
She rolls her eyes again, but he’s returned to his contemplation of the remaining half of the pie in his hand.
Peri turns her attention instead to the mirror, straightening her shorts and tidying her hair. “What is this dormancy field thing, anyway?” she asks, attention still focused on her reflection.
A wave of dizziness sweeps over her and for a moment she feels impossibly, painfully sick. Certain she’s going to fall, she reaches out a hand, an insane moment of guilt for the smears she knows she will leave on the glass passes through her mind, but her fingers never reach the mirror. Instead, she’s falling, falling, through something cold as ice and slick as oil. The disorientation increases and she feels like she’s floating and flying and falling all at once, not quite sure which way is up and there’s a terrible pressure in her chest and her eyes as though she is being crushed from the inside.
Peri tries to scream, but there’s no air and she can’t, all she can do is collapse endlessly through the silky ice. It goes on and on and on and she is certain she will die. Where’s the Doctor? Can’t he see what’s happening to her? Isn’t he going to help? Or is he too being attacked by whatever this is?
And just as suddenly, the feeling is gone.
Peri hits the ground hard on her knees and sound rushes back. She can hear her own voice, sobbing in the still, musty air. She realises that the ground is not the carpeting that she had been standing on, and instead, beneath her knees is something hard and smooth. For a long, horrifying moment, she thinks she has gone blind and then, she hears the Doctor’s voice.
“It is exactly what it sounds like, Peri. Don’t be obtuse.”
She whirls towards him, ready to demand an explanation. The feeling of sickness returns as horror falls into her stomach and chest with all the weight of a boulder. She picks her way to the edge of her prison.
Somehow, Peri is on the other side of the mirror. She is looking out as though it is a window at a different version of herself and the Doctor in the English sitting room, ready for Christmas.
Peri thumps her hand on the glass. It is solid, no longer a passable entry way, and the shock of the blow reverberates up her arm. “Doctor!” she calls.
He doesn’t answer.
“Well, excuse me,” the Other Peri says. “I apologise for not being an expert on Scolon technology.”
“I’m sorry, Peri,” the Doctor says, turning towards her and Peri watches as his brow furrows. “Have you changed your…” he makes a waving motion in front of his features. “Face?”
He’s right, Peri notices, scrutinising the Other. The girl on the Doctor’s side of the mirror is a perfect replica. If Peri didn’t know better, she would think it was her. However, the Other’s makeup is indeed different; darker and thicker than Peri wears.
“Tacky,” she mutters under her breath.
At the same moment, the Other responds, “I’ve reapplied my lipstick, Doctor, but thank you for noticing.”
“Is now really the time for preening?”
“It takes work to look this good,” the Other Peri rejoins with a wink. “I’m not going to waste this mirror. It’s very flattering.”
The Doctor huffs and brushes some crumbs from his lapels. “Well, if you’re done titivating, we still have work to do.”
The Doctor starts to move towards the door and Peri feels a wave of panic crash over her head like a tide. “Don’t leave me, Doctor!” she cries out.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Come along, Peri!” He calls back to the Other.
Peri can only watch as her Other follows. “But I’m tired , Doctor.”
“No, she’s not!” Peri shouts. “ I’m tired! Doctor! And I don’t sound like that!”
The Other Peri turns, shooting Peri a wicked smirk over her shoulder and Peri’s heart jolts as their eyes meet in the mirror. Whatever that thing is, with her face and her voice, this is no accident. The mirror starts fading to black, not even the room and the Christmas lights to be seen.
“Doctor!” Peri screams again, panic overwhelming her.
The last thing she hears is her own voice, “Can we at least stop long enough to eat?”
And the Doctor’s long suffering, “It’s 2am on Christmas Eve, Peri, and the country is blanketed by a dormancy field. It’s not exactly an ideal time to visit Tesco.”
Then the mirror fades completely to black and Peri is left alone in the dark.
She sinks to the floor with a quiet sob and sits for some time. Finally, her panic recedes, at least somewhat. “Come on, Perpugilliam,” she says to herself. “You’re not helpless, there must be something you can do.” Not that she can easily think of anything. “First thing,” she says aloud, “What do I know about where I am?” A moment later, she answers her own question. “Behind the mirror in the house where we fought the Scolons. It’s dry, and warm at least, so it’s…inside.” She hesitates at that, not quite sure that ‘inside’ is the right word, but she doesn’t have another, so she continues, calmed by her own recitation. “There’s no echo. No lights either. And the Doctor couldn’t hear me.” Her voice wavers a little. “None of that helps at all,” she says.
Then, impossibly, the mirror space lights up again, just a single flicker and gone.
“What?” Peri says and gets to her feet, reaching out.
Moments ago, her fist had encountered something as hard as a wall. Now, she finds herself almost falling as her groping fingers find nothing but more blackness. “Where-?” she starts, but another flicker of…something suddenly floats before her. Her hand almost encounters something sharp and edged, and then it too is gone.
“What’s happening?” Peri mutters, her curiosity almost outweighing her fear. She stays standing, waiting to see if the flicker of light will return, but after a few minutes when it still hasn’t she sits back down. She keeps her eyes on the spot where it had been, but takes off a sandal, digging her knuckles into the sole hard to try and massage some of the pain from days of traipsing around Norfolk after alien invaders.
“It’ll come back,” she says aloud to reassure herself. “There was something there, so it’s not going to be dark forever.” She’s not quite sure she believes her own words, but even uncertain, empty reassurance is better than sitting alone in the dark.
She removes the other shoe, massaging that foot as well, and settles in to wait.
~
Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor strides through the console room, almost allowing the door to slam into Peri as he marches into the labyrinthine corridors. He is still muttering furiously about the diabolical nature of the dormancy field.
“Doctor!” Peri insists, sharp tone of voice finally making it through outrage and telling him that this isn’t the first time he has been called.
“What is it?”
“You said we were going to have some dinner.”
He waves a hand and turns sharply down another hallway. “Stop thinking with your stomach. We have far more important things to do.”
“ You have more important things to do.” But she follows the Doctor into…”A cupboard? Ooooh, Doctor, why are we in a cupboard?” She giggles.
The Doctor puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes her back. “Take that silly look off your face, Peri. I’m not in the mood. We have to build a dormancy field detector.”
Peri sighs loudly and folds her arms, pouting prettily.
The Doctor ignores her and starts pulling mismatched pieces of metal, bundles of variously coloured wire, shards of crystals and a hatbox full of partly used batteries out of various storage compartments.
“Do you even want me here?”
The Doctor is now humming, bouncing between Christmas carols in no particular order.
“Doctor!?”
“Are you still here?”
Peri throws her hands up. “If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen. I’m positively famished .”
The Doctor doesn’t look up at her tone, just continues to whistle the middle portion of Silent Night .
He raises his eyes from the wire he’s coiling as the door shuts behind her, biting thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek for a moment. Then he goes back to the work he is doing, but the cheerful humming has stopped and his hands move fast enough to betray his slight unease.
~
The Other Peri storms furiously down the TARDIS hallways. The seductive pout has been replaced with a scowl which twists its face, ruining the stolen human features. Fortunately, there is no one to see and with a breath it resculpts the dripping wax of the sagging skin, reforming into something once more recognisable as Peri.
On entering the kitchen, it first does as it had said it would, making several thick wedges of toast in an antiquated looking toaster with huge chunky buttons and then slathering each generously - one with peanut butter, another with honey, a third with strawberry jam. It brews a cup of rich fragrant coffee and adds vanilla, cream, sugar. The TARDIS food dispenser provides a thick wedge of Christmas cake and a slab of sharp cheese. Then it sits at the table, gorging itself, licking its fingers clean and savouring the variety of tastes and textures. Corporeal beings take all this so easily for granted. Only one who has lived without can know what has been lost, and the imposter fully intends to ensure that those who had taken these sensations from it pay in the fullest way. It’ll trap them not just outside of the universe, but blind and senseless, silently screaming and-
Its smile turns feral and the Other Peri’s teeth elongate, becoming fangs: first like a vampire and then a double rowed mouthful like a shark. Its anger and viciousness finally given form.
And then, it will take the Timelord’s body and sail the cosmos, touching, tasting, feeling, feeding . It will carry out its intended purpose of punishment, visiting those who have erred and rending them apart; feasting on the soft, wet, hot meat of their hearts.
It licks the spoon from the coffee clean and spins it, looking at its reflection in the shiny silver back. The curve of the spoon distorts the face, widening the nose unattractively, but still it feels a surge of vicious pleasure. A body once more, and prey within feet of it.
“Human girl,” it sing-songs. “Are you there?”
~
Peri jerks up from a light doze. Above her the mirror is back and her own face, unnaturally distorted, is staring down at her.
She stands slowly and wishes she’d put her shoes back on. The room doesn’t feel cold, doesn’t feel much like anything, but barefoot she feels vulnerable. Her eyes quickly sweep the mirror and she lays her palms flat against it. For a moment, she thinks she’s falling back through to her own side, but then she realises that no, it’s just that this time the mirror is weirdly curved instead of flat. She takes in the familiar kitchen in the background.
“Who are you?” she demands.
The thing wearing her face laughs. “Don’t you know?”
“I know you’re some kind of- of mirror monster. You steal people’s reflections.” The Other Peri keeps smiling, lips a vivid slash of red like a blood smear across Peri’s face. In frustration, she stamps her foot. “It doesn’t matter anyway. The Doctor will figure it out and then he’ll-”
“Yes?” It purrs and runs the point of a pink tongue along the top row of teeth. Teeth that now Peri looks, are more serrated than she hopes hers are.
Unnerved, she falls silent.
They stare at each other for a long moment, then the thing breaks it by throwing back its head. Peri’s fringe curls a little, black so dark it is almost blue rippling through it and it lengthens, softening her features. It would make her look younger, childish even, if not for the rakish cut and the anything-but-childlike expression gracing the Other Peri’s face. Despite herself Peri shivers.
“What are you?” she asks again and her voice is more hesitant now, tremulous.
It shrugs, a loose motion which rolls all down the spine like a snake’s undulation. “Mirror monster is as good a designation as any, but I’m so much more than a reflection thief. All those stories you’ve heard about something watching you, judging your behaviour as good or bad, naughty or nice ,” it smiles again and there is nothing seductive in it now; now it is pure avarice. Peri sincerely hopes her expression has never looked like that.
“Sure,” she says, wishing she could make her voice sound braver, “Santa Claus. He brings good children presents.”
“Well,” the thing wearing her face says pleasantly. “I’m the opposite. I bring destruction and revenge and retribution down on those who bring misery. I’m what you might call Karma .”
“Is that…your name?”
“It’ll do.” Karma gives that languid shrug again.
“Then,” Peri says, “You shouldn’t be able to hurt me. I’m not a bad person.”
“You’re not,” Karma reassures, the malicious glint of her teeth reassuring Pei not at all, “Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen to you. You won’t even be in that Behind-Glass dimension long enough to lose your sense of self and become the formless fog I’ve lived as for aeons. This is just- Let’s call it a field trip.”
Peri leans harder against the curved glass. “Then…what- who…”
Karma’s smile darkens becoming something worse, more inhuman than merely cruel. This is the expression of the storm and the night and the earthquake that wipes whole civilisations from existence and memory. “The Doctor,” it hisses.
Peri laughs. “The Doctor isn’t-”
“You don’t think so?” Peri watches as it picks up a butter knife and licks something unsettlingly sticky and red from the silver blade. “He’s been on my naughty list for positively millenia. There can’t be that many people in the cosmos more blood-soaked than your dear Doctor.”
“No. That’s not true. He-”
“The Scolons, for example. When they perish, when their young die still in the birthing vats because the Doctor has cut off their food source, because he has taken it upon himself to define the rules of nature, will they thank him? Or will he be remembered as a mass murderer, a genocidal monster?”
“But that’s not-”
“And I owe the Scolons a debt. Without their dormancy field, I could never have gathered enough psychic energy to break free of the glass prison I have been languishing in.”
Peri’s head is spinning. “Prison? I- I don’t understand.”
“You’ve heard stories of being watched, tales of those who walked into the forest and never walked out, fairy tales where the righteous win and the wicked get their comeuppance. But do you know anyone it’s happened to?” The briefest pause. “Of course not. Because I’ve been shut away until all that remains of me is a memory: perverted and twisted. Inverted. The good don’t get toys, Peri. That’s all backwards. The wicked get punished. That’s how the story goes. And now I’m back. Now I get to make the world the way it should be. Beginning with the- Doctor!”
Karma’s tone changes abruptly and Peri is subject to a moment of motion sickness as whatever mirror she is looking out of is abruptly dropped, changing her angle. For a moment she’s looking at her own ear and then a hand comes down, covering the reflection completely so that all Peri can see are the ridges and lines of a palm outlined in orange pink light.
“Peri?” the Doctor’s voice says. “Are you talking to someone?”
“Just myself. It’s the only way to have a polite conversation around here. Unless you’re here to entertain me.”
“Hmmpfff.” The Doctor sniffs.
“If you weren’t always rude , Doctor,” Peri mutters, “That would seem much less believable and then you’d know you were talking to a monster.”
Something heavy and metal sounding makes a loud jangle somewhere to the right of Peri’s covered mirror.
“Is that it?”
“The dormancy field detector? Yes. There don’t seem to be any more Scolons for the moment. They’ve obviously gone into hiding, waiting until I leave before they return to their horrid little farm. But with this, we should be able to end that idea for them.”
“Where is it?” Karma asks and its voice sounds exactly like Peri’s.
“Oh, somewhere in that wood where their spaceship was parked. Come along,” the Doctor says briskly. “Lots of children waiting for Christmas morning. We can’t keep them waiting longer than necessary.”
Peri hammers on the mirror beneath her fist. “Doctor! Doctor!”
As before, there is no response.
“Alright,” Karma says begrudgingly, “but if I have to tramp through that horrible snowy wood again, you have to find me a coat. And not one like yours!”
“I still don’t see why you have such an aversion to-” the Doctor mutters, voice receding as he leaves.
There’s a long moment of silence, then the hand moves revealing Karma’s grinning face. “You’ll have your body back soon, little girl.”
“No!” Peri shouts. “No, don’t you dare touch him!”
Karma laughs again, a rich throaty sound, warm like mulled wine and cinnamon. “I’m not a power to bargain with, child. I’m a force of nature. You stop me by doing good for others.”
“The Doctor does!” Peri insists. “He-” Then she pauses, her expression hardening. “That’s why you keep flirting with him. Trying to prove that he wants something, but it won’t work.”
Karma’s expression twists briefly but it doesn’t answer. Instead, Peri has the dizzying impression of the ceiling soaring in front of her, then a bone jarring crash. Then her mirror goes dark once more.
~
Karma dusts off its hands, licking the last remnants of sugar from a fingertip as it tosses the spoon into the sink. More even than getting back to work, it is pleased to be able to taste again, to be able to sample the sumptuous delights of a universe open to it.
It examines the device the Doctor has left on the table: some sort of garland, a collection of…containers of some kind? A shiny, reddish metal strung together with the lights it had seen wound around the Christmas tree it had stared out at year after year from its old mirror on the mantelpiece. It picks it up and turns the strange contraption in its hands. It can feel a buzz as a mild charge passes through the device from a battery it sees nestled in one of the containers.
It can make neither heads nor tails of the strange thing, but it does not need to. All it needs is for the Doctor to be momentarily distracted. Then it will strike.
~
“Peri? Peri?” calls a voice in the darkness behind her.
“Doctor?”
“Peri? Is that you?”
“Where are you? I can’t see you.”
“I’m not really here. This is just a psychic voice forecast. And I can’t hold it long, you need to listen to me.”
“Doctor! I’m trapped. I-”
“I know. But I can’t do anything about it until I’ve dispatched that creature. You must keep it distracted.”
“But Doctor…How? I can’t-”
“You must .”
“But-”
There’s a sudden flash of light and a weird red colour and Peri once more sees her own face reflected, now wearing an expression of puzzlement. A blurring sensation and the mirror shifts, strange accents of purple and blue light playing across her face and Karma’s stolen one.
“Peri!” The Doctor’s voice says insistently, “You must distract her.”
“Alright,” Peri says. “I’ll try.”
She turns away from where she can hear the Doctor, standing once more in front of the mirror. She pounds on it again. It rattles strangely this time, like the barrier is thinner and a noise that reminds her of the TARDIS engines spills from beneath the shaking reflection. Her movement, or perhaps the sound, catches Karma’s attention, taking its gaze away from contemplation of the mirror to Peri beyond it.
“Karma!” she says, with absolutely no idea of what is going to follow.
“Well?” the creature wearing her face sighs. “What is it now? I’ve already told you you’ll get your body back.”
“Yeah, and…and I want that to be sooner rather than later. So…why don’t I tell you what I know about the Doctor? Help you take him out?”
It raises an eyebrow and Peri thinks jealously that she has never been able to do that. “You think I would believe your help?”
“I think if you have access to my mind and my memories you believe that I don’t want a lot of babies to die, even if they are Scolons.”
“As you say, I’m in your mind. I already know everything you know about the Doctor.”
“Well…umm…”
“I know,” Karma says, and bizarrely it sounds gentle now. “It is hard to be imprisoned in the dark, your sense of what you are disintegrating. But don’t worry, human girl. Soon I will be wearing the Timelord’s face and I’ll return your form.” It tosses Peri’s hair again. “I’ll even let you keep the haircut.”
“Don’t do me any favours,” Peri snips back.
Karma begins to turn back to its earlier considerations and Peri cannot lose its attention. The Doctor hadn’t said how long he needed it occupied, but surely not for long. “How are you doing that?” she blurts.
“Doing what?”
“Talking to me?”
“We’re connected, child. I see you on any reflective surface, and that’s the only time you can see me.”
“I see you whenever you’re reflected?”
It hums. “See, I’m not unfeeling, no more unfeeling than any other natural force. I could have severed the link completely and left you utterly alone.”
“I-” Peri gropes for something else to say. “It’s dreadful being lonely,” she offers. “I know how you feel.”
Peri watches as twinned fury and loss darken Karma’s stolen expression. “You have no idea how-” then suddenly Karma’s words are cut off as it suddenly starts to glow. Peri is transfixed with horror as her own features scald red, char black and finally drip from her bones as bubbly, viscous slime.
“No!” Karma screeches, voice as raw as its stolen skin. “No! The dormancy field is in place! I am powerful! You can’t-”
The Doctor steps into Peri’s view, behind and to the left of Karma. His face is shadowed, cast in sorrow. “I dismantled the dormancy field remotely as soon as I got you back here.” He says, soft and apologetic.
“But this-”
“ That is no more than a Coca-Cola can Christmas wreath with some bells and whistles to keep you distracted.”
“How did you know?”
There’s no flesh left on the face anymore and Peri watches her own naked jawbone judder, teeth clacking together as Karma stutters out the syllables.
The Doctor does not flinch. “Peri,” he says, implacable as an unscalable cliff, “is irreplaceable.”
Karma screams again and this time the sound bubbles away as though its vocal chords, or perhaps its lungs, have been burned through. Peri shudders. “So you kill me,” Karma rasps, voice little more than a death rattle, ash on the wind.
“Of course I’m not going to kill you. Merely return you to the prison people far cleverer than I locked you in long ago.”
“ I make the world better.”
“You make the world just . Justice and mercy are quite different things.”
“Someone must pay for your crimes, Doctor, and if not you then it will be the gir-.” Then Karma disintegrates completely, a shattering of soot. Whatever reflective thing it was holding falls to the ground, rolling end over end until Peri’s vision is completely covered in the blackened dust.
The Doctor snatches it from the floor and holds it close. The strange redness of the glass, where Peri is obviously looking through what she now knows is a Coke can, gives him a rosy tinge and his always-flyaway curls are sticking up erratically. “Peri? Peri, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Doctor. I’m here! How do I get out?”
He runs a hand through the tangles. “The prison should be in flux, between states.”
“What does that mean ?”
“The dormancy field helped her gain enough energy to take a form. Now that it is no more and now that the prisoner whose life energy maintains the prison is returning, the pocket dimension should be…reforming. There should be a way out. A door, a window, something.”
Peri casts around, but, other than the red lit mirror, there is nothing. “I can’t see-”
“There must be something,” the Doctor shouts with an edge of panic, and the mirror window judders as his hand shakes. “A catflap? Anything you can open!”
Peri looks frantically about herself once more. She’s not certain, but she thinks the mirror is growing smaller. There’s a creak at one of the edges of her slice of vision and the Doctor’s thumb slides into view on a divot he has crushed into the edge. “There’s not-” and then she sees it. It’s not a door or a window, but it can be opened and she is certain it was not there before.
Next to Peri’s foot is a small wrapped box, covered in shiny blue paper, tied with a white ribbon. The tag is in the shape of a police box.
“There’s a Christmas present,” she says.
“Open it!” the Doctor bellows.
Peri grabs it. It takes several tries, her hands, or perhaps the box, seem as substantial as smoke. She pulls off the ribbon and the paper falls away and inside…
A bright white light shines out of the box in her hands, blinding her, disorienting and dizzying and she drops it, stumbling forwards towards the mirror and-
The Doctor’s hands grab her shoulders. “Peri! Peri! Are you alright?”
“I’m…” Peri shakes her head and looks around the kitchen and at the Doctor’s face, worry swiftly being tucked back under his jovial mask. “Yes.”
“Glad to hear it. With the field dismantled, it’ll soon be Christmas morning. We can-”
“Doctor?”
The quick way he looks at her tells Peri he still feels guilty.
“What about the Scolons? Was what she said true? Have we killed them all?”
The Doctor’s face clouds and his eyes grow bleak. “Not…killed, not exactly. More…placed into a coma. I can’t destroy living beings…but they are vicious, dangerous to every higher species in the galaxy. I can’t just allow them to roam free either. It would be like letting a pack of lions loose in a funfair. Good for the lions, bad for the tourists.”
“We should take them somewhere, somewhere far away. Back to a time before there were any higher minds to torment. How much pain can they cause single celled organisms. Or plants? Then they won’t be a danger but they can-”
He looks at her as she trails off. “Very well, Peri. Let’s do something nice.”