Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [78]
A second later, they were charging, swinging broken timbers and broken bottles, ploughing into the carnival.
Erskine Morris ploughed with the best of them.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
They were still marching. Even without the guidance of Mr Monroe – or Brother Monroe, as they’d come to know him –
they still remained resolute, determined that good, clean, decent, rational order would be imposed on Woodwicke before the dawn came. Most of the prisoners had stopped struggling now, their strength worn away by the slaps and the kicks until they looked like patchwork dolls made of caked blood and bruised flesh.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
‘Morality police. Freeze.’
Witnesses later said that the witch-woman had appeared ‘as if from nowhere’, and that her bearing was so confident that she could almost have been an aristocrat. They also said that there was a boy with her, sandy-haired and cloaked in cinders; some said he looked nervous, others claimed he looked like he just didn’t care any more.
All reports agreed on one thing. There was a pause, of embarrassment as well as surprise, before the Renewalists came to their senses and began advancing on the witch-woman, fists and clubs at the ready.
But that was nothing to the surprise they felt when the woman dropped a little golden ball to the ground, and it began to spin, scratching new and frightening patterns into the dust.
Marielle Duquesne was sitting in a restaurant in Imaginary Paris, watching the common people – the aristocrats had all been executed, of course, except for her – eating their cake, but it was hard to tell where their faces ended and the food began. There was a clock sitting on the other side of her table, drumming its fingers patiently. Duquesne recognized it as the machine from her dream, the one whose face she’d cracked.
Now the mechanism looked to be on the verge of falling apart.
‘I quite like the decor,’ the clock said. ‘The eighteenth century isn’t really my favourite period, though.’
Duquesne regarded the machine quizzically. ‘Answer me a question, Mademoiselle Horloge,’ she said. ‘Have I become mad, or is all of this an illusion?’
The clock chuckled with a click-tong-click-tong sound.
‘Neither. This is the world as you made it, Mlle Duquesne.’
‘I? I am not in the business of making worlds.’
The clock sounded surprised. ‘There are an infinite number of ways you can perceive this place, Marielle. May I call you Marielle? Thank you. You’re still in the dark, still in my little realm, where you’ve been ever since the TARDIS lost its grip on itself. But of all the possibilities in the darkness, this is the one you wished for the most, the one you’ve chosen to live with. You see? All this... all this is yours.’
Outside on the street, Cwej ran past, yelling her name. A few seconds later a horde of Revolutionaries in ragged blue uniforms ran after him. Their faces were blank except for their oversized mouths, each one a miniature guillotine.
‘Your world,’ hummed the clock. ‘Not mine.’
‘Before you get too carried away with your work, may I ask a question?’
The Doctor’s face was still pressed against the road. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his assassin nod. ‘Of course.
There is no hurry. I appreciate this chance to talk. In my line of work, there’s very little opportunity for conversation of a professional nature.’
‘I can imagine. Who do you think I am?’
‘A caillou. An element of disruption. Such creatures bring uncertainty to the world order, and therefore must be expunged.’ The Doctor briefly wondered what it would feel like to be ‘expunged’, then forced himself to concentrate on Raphael’s words: ‘Furthermore, it seems likely that your origin is of the aether, not terrestrial. Professor Hulot in Orléans believes your kind hail from the far-off planet Astra, though the matter is in dispute. We are not as skilled at probing the memories of a caillou as we are at exploring the physical shell, regrettably.