Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [65]
‘You’ve known a lot of soldiers.’
‘Rather too many, for an aging hippy like me,’ said the Doctor, with a rueful smile. ‘I can’t seem to avoid you.’
‘I’m not a soldier,’ said Kadiatu, around a mouthful of bread.
‘You’ll be surprised,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’ll be surprised. It happens to you.
It comes with the job. The healer and the warrior.’
‘What happened with Sun Tzu?’
‘It was the little matter of his killing two of the Emperor’s wives. He only did it to win an argument.’
‘What’d the King do?’
‘He banished Sun Tzu for a few years, but as soon as the country’s borders were threatened again, he called the old general back. I wasn’t much of a military adviser – I kept holding conflict resolution seminars.’ Kadiatu laughed.
‘I can’t spend all my time putting flowers down gun barrels.’
‘What about this war, then?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘The usual combination of bad timing, bad planning, breakdowns in communication, and naked greed. Genuine injustices being exploited for the sake of power. The Commune could have righted many wrongs, but it lost its chance in poor organisation and casual violence.’
‘I feel paralysed,’ said Kadiatu. ‘As though I could wreck history if I breathe the wrong molecule of air.’
‘The forces that drive history are as complicated as the forces that move the air. A butterfly’s wings cause a hurricane, which causes a drought, which causes the starving farmers to work together to use what water they do have, and to count and keep records. That was how Egyptian civilisation started.
But it doesn’t matter which butterfly’s wings start the hurricane.’
‘There must be individuals who change history. What if someone got in a time machine and killed Hitler?’
The Doctor had made a pile of tiny fragments of cheese. ‘Much of history is cast in concrete, but there are disequilibrium points – assassinate the wrong individual at the wrong moment, and history could unravel like a scarf.’
He raised his hands, as though looking for the right place to start a complex lecture. ‘Have you ever seen a flock of birds, waiting to migrate?’ Kadiatu nodded, chewing. ‘Imagine the riot at Montmartre. One person is jostled in the crowd, shouts in anger. Someone else hears, shouts out a slogan. More people start to yell, move about. And once a certain initial peak of energy has been passed –’
‘– the crowd turns into a mob and shoots those two generals from Versailles.’
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‘The war coalesces from small events like that. It’s so difficult to predict just where the disequilibrium point is. You and I have a special responsibility, Kadiatu.’
She was frowning. ‘I was just wondering how many Hitlers you’ve disposed of over the years.’
The Doctor shook his head, yawned suddenly. ‘I put things right. When someone comes from outside history and tries to derail it, I put it back on the right course.’
‘That’s not entirely true.’
The Time Lord looked at his hands. ‘It’s very difficult to keep the human race on the straight and narrow,’ he conceded. ‘And the more changes I make, the more changes I have to make.’
‘Round and round like a hamster in a cage.’
‘That’s a horrible simile.’
‘Listen, while I’m asking lots of questions . . . The Earth would have moved between my arrival and yours – and the Ants’. How could we have appeared at the same place?’
‘Perhaps someone glued the exit point in place.’
Visions of warp equations danced in her head. ‘That’s nonsense.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Just one more.’
‘Mmm?’
‘After the Ant tried to read your mind, why did you curl up like that?’ His eyelids were flickering now, and he dragged a hand across his forehead. ‘You thought I was going to beat you up. Didn’t you? Is that what they did to you?
Punished you because they couldn’t read your mind?’
‘They’re not interested in punishment,’ he slurred. ‘They’re all brute force and no elegance, they’d knock down a wall instead of opening a door. I want the pieces of that Ant. And your handscan. Bring me the pieces. Excuse me, I think I’m going to go to sleep now.’
He managed to fold his arms under his head before