Part 17 (1/2)

Jaxa was reaching for a silver tube at her belt. 'Doctor, you must be removed from this continuum and taken '

'Wait a moment,' the Doctor interrupted. 'Make up your mind. If you're right and this isn't a time machine, then what, exactly, am I guilty of? Supplying light bulbs?'

Roja was looking confused. 'He's right, Jaxa. If this isn't a time machine, then no crime has been committed.'

'But the Doctor himself claims that it is is a time machine.' a time machine.'

The Doctor smiled smugly. 'If you're going to put me on trial, you'll need better evidence than that. It'll be my word against mine.'

Jaxa was having none of it. 'You'll be taken to a place where your actions can be a.s.sessed and punished.'

As she unclipped the tube, Malady made her move she swept down with her hand, chopping Jaxa's gun out of her hand. She then swung round, kicking Roja hard in the face. He fell down, grabbing at his nose.

Malady grabbed the Doctor's sleeve. 'Time to go,' she told him.

The Doctor looked back over his shoulder. 'Who are are they?' they?'

Jaxa's Story Let me tell you how they did it (how they did it back in history, I mean).

Before it was done to me, I was an historian, so I ought to have known. I did know. On the threat of war, the Admiralty issued press warrants to their officers. Gangs of marines were sent out, led by some old, worn-out lieutenant, and all the merchant s.h.i.+ps were prevented from leaving port.

Everyone's heard of the press gangs. The common image is that they roamed the streets, grabbed drunks from the benches of the taverns and dragged them back to their s.h.i.+p. That happened, but not as often as you've been led to believe from old films. It didn't have to.

The press gangs did most of their work in the harbours, going on board the s.h.i.+ps. The crew of an English s.h.i.+p in an English port didn't get sh.o.r.e leave if they did, the captain would never see half of them again. Trusted men were granted it, in small groups, but you could spend ten years on your s.h.i.+p and never set foot on dry land. The mountain came to Mohammed every s.h.i.+p arriving in port was boarded by travelling salesmen, tobacconists, minstrels, barrels of beer, and women, of course. Plenty of women. More often than not, there were more 'Blue Sallys' on board a s.h.i.+p in port than there were crewmen.

And that's where the press gangs went first the lower decks of the big merchant s.h.i.+ps. They gave you a choice about it, too, contrary to what you might have heard. They told you if you volunteered, you got paid a bounty. If you didn't volunteer, of course, you were pressed into service anyway.

It's no coincidence that the phrase catch-22 was coined about a war. Every time there's a war, people make claims about the first casualty, and it's always an abstract truth, freedom, reason. No one ever talks about the first recruit, but that's an abstract, too logic. The Admiralty became a bastion of inescapable logic, the sort that confused Alice and kept Kafka up at night.

But there was something attractive about it, too. Suddenly, everything became maths, a straightforward proposition, the world became much easier to understand. You're either with us or against us. Everyone's in uniform, everyone knows their place. There are regulations, rules of engagement, there are orders. What was happening might not make much sense fighting for peace was always, at best, a problematic concept but why it was happening is perfectly straightforward. Everyone knew how they would be spending their days, what they had to do, what the reward would be. If it was a choice between death or glory... well, not many people volunteered for option (a).

But that didn't stop some people from running. I would have, when he came for me, if I'd had the choice.

The gangs caused chaos, of course the press gangs had regulations, but they weren't regulated. They were ruffians half the gang would only just have been captured themselves, and didn't see why anyone else should get away. Anyone they found got beaten to the ground, checked to see if they wore sailor's clothes underneath their coat, or had tar on their hands. Dead giveaways.

There were ways to avoid the press gang, ways more imaginative than just hiding or running. Get your friends to accuse you of some crime, get locked up for the night by the magistrate, then have them drop charges in the morning, when the gang had gone. That was a good one.

The best way, traditionally, was not to be physically present in the eighteenth century, to exist on a world with no sea, to live in the forty-ninth century, a far distant era of unparalleled peace and prosperity.

That was my way of avoiding the gangs. Extreme, I know, and imagine my surprise when it didn't work.

He was from the eighteenth century, you see. was from the eighteenth century, you see. He He was at war, looking for recruits. He also had a s.h.i.+p, which he rather fancifully sailed in the Mare Tranquillitatis. In his day, he would explain later, the astronomer-astrologers knew beyond any doubt that the dark patches on the Moon's surface really were seas, hence the names. That they weren't actually bodies of water wasn't important, it was the idea that was, it was their absolute faith that made his voyage possible. When I suggested to him that such a sentiment made no sense, he merely smiled. was at war, looking for recruits. He also had a s.h.i.+p, which he rather fancifully sailed in the Mare Tranquillitatis. In his day, he would explain later, the astronomer-astrologers knew beyond any doubt that the dark patches on the Moon's surface really were seas, hence the names. That they weren't actually bodies of water wasn't important, it was the idea that was, it was their absolute faith that made his voyage possible. When I suggested to him that such a sentiment made no sense, he merely smiled.

He looked... well, I'm a film scholar and archivist. My job is to return to the primitive times, and to go back and recover all the films and television programmes that were withdrawn, deaccessioned and junked. And to me, he looked like the middle-period Orson Welles, that is, after he started putting on weight but before he grew the beard. He might not have literally looked like that, you understand, and might not have appreciated the description, but I really didn't care.

I was dying.

A time jump had gone wrong placed me in the wrong century, before the Moon had an atmosphere, before the terraforming. I was barely three decades away from safety, I could reach out with my band, almost touch it.

The radiation was intense, and more than enough to destroy the fragile ubertronics of my time machine. The heat burned at my skin, toyed with me. In the circ.u.mstances, the total vacuum was a mild inconvenience.

Sabbath stood there, his coat-tails flapping in a non-existent sea breeze. His moon had an atmosphere, as well as men with umbrellas for noses, kittens the size of elephants, and rocks that sang shanties in fluent French.

He offered me a choice. If I didn't come with him, he'd... take me anyway. He needed timefarers for a great enterprise he was undertaking, and he was having difficulty finding a workforce. He said something about paying peanuts and only getting monkeys, which I took to be a private joke.

So I took his hand, and as I did, I felt the sea breeze on my face, and knew I'd never be able to go back.

Chapter Eleven.

Bankruptcy The Doctor and Malady were running out of the lift before the doors were even fully open.

They were out of reception, splas.h.i.+ng towards the Land Rover in seconds. The Doctor had the keys in his hand. He pointed them at the car, pressed the control to activate the central locking.

The Land Rover exploded.

While the Doctor examined the keychain, puzzled, Malady looked up. Jaxa was at a window, far above them, pointing a gun.

A second shot scored the air, but exploded harmlessly twenty feet from them.

'They've got us pinned down,' the Doctor said.

'She has we don't know where the boy is,' Malady corrected him.

'Come on!' the Doctor started running close along the side of the building.

Malady followed, one eye looking back, trying to spot the boy.

She almost missed the helicopter in front of them.

It was a Raven, a stealth guns.h.i.+p, a stalwart of the European air force. Malady had never seen one up close. It was larger, more solid, than she had imagined. The rotor blades were angled down a little, and were kicking up waves of spray.

The helicopter turned, almost lazily. The door at the side was open, an old man was crouched there, a rifle in his lap.

'Do you recognise him?' the Doctor asked.

She did. 'Jonah Cosgrove.'

'Give me your gun.'

'It doesn't have the range.'

'The gun gun,' the Doctor hissed.