The key to Earth’s destruction lies buried in its past.
Visiting Paris in 1979, the Doctor and Romana’s hopes for a holiday are soon shattered by armed thugs, a suave and dangerous Count, a plot to steal the Mona Lisa and a world-threatening experiment with time.
Teaming up with a British detective, the Time Lord discovers that a ruthless alien plot hatched in Earth’s pre-history has reached its final stage. If Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, cannot be stopped then the human race is history, along with all life on Earth …
James Goss has adapted three Doctor Who stories by Douglas Adams for BBC Books (City of Death, The Pirate Planet, and The Krikkitmen). He’s also written several original Doctor Who and Torchwood books. His novel #Haterz is in development as a motion picture. He’s also written for the stage and the radio.
It was Tuesday and life didn’t happen.
Wednesday would be quite a different matter.
Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, was in for a surprise. For one thing, he had no idea he was about to become the last of the Jagaroth.
If you’d asked him about the Jagaroth a mere, say, twenty soneds ago, he’d have shrugged and told you they were a savage and warlike race and that if you weren’t happy about that, you should meet the other guys.
By and large, all life in the universe was pretty savage and warlike. Show me a race of philosophers and poets, said Scaroth, and I’ll show you lunch. It would, however, be unfair to say the Jagaroth were completely without accomplishments. They did build formidable spaceships. There was a lot to recommend the Sephiroth. A vast sphere rested on three claws.
One thing that did not recommend it was that the Sephiroth had stopped working. Something had gone very badly wrong in the drive unit almost as soon as they’d landed on this desolation. The Jagaroth had devoted themselves to killing. There was nothing else they’d leave behind them. No history, no literature, and no statues. As a species they’d never achieved anything other than wiping out life.
The problem was that every other life form was equally dedicated to the same goal. The Jagaroth were one of the last ones standing and, even then, not by much. When the Jagaroth talked about their fearsome battle fleet, the Sephiroth was pretty much it. Or, actually, just it.
Scaroth, pilot of the Sephiroth, battle fleet of the Jagaroth, worried about this. Nice-looking spaceships, mediocre drive systems, rhyming names, and, oh yes, a frankly lunatic determination to keep going.
Hence the voices of his shipmates that filled his command pod from across the ship.
‘Twenty soneds to warp thrust.’ Someone was counting down.
‘Thrust against planet surface set to power three.’ And someone down in engineering was really keen on getting off this rock.
‘Negative,’ Scaroth snapped back quickly. ‘Power three too severe.’ Warp thrust from a planet’s surface had not been tested. ‘At power three this is suicide.’
The voices urging him on fell silent at that. Of course they would.
‘Please advise,’ he said curtly.
Eventually that keen voice in engineering came on the line. ‘Scaroth, it must be power three. It must be.’
Scaroth twisted his face into a cynical expression. Well, as cynical an expression as could be conveyed by a face that was a mass of writhing green tentacles grouped around a single eye.
As pilot, Scaroth was in charge. The one to push the button. If history remembered this at all, history would say that it was all Scaroth’s fault.
‘Ten soneds to warp thrust,’ prompted the countdown. Scaroth ran his green hands dubiously over the terminal. Would this really work? The rest of the crew seemed happy to leave it up to him.
‘Advise!’ he repeated, hoping to hear someone speaking sense.
The response that came was weary. ‘Scaroth, the Jagaroth are in your hands. Without secondary engines we must use our main warp thrust. You know this. It is our only hope. You are our only hope.’
Thanks for that, thought Scaroth. ‘And I’m the only one directly in the warp field!’ he said. ‘I know the dangers.’ That was as close as a Jagaroth had ever come to asking for a rethink. Once they committed to an idea, no matter how lethal or ludicrous, the Jagaroth stuck to it.
Confirming his thoughts, the countdown came back on, sounding quite determined. ‘Three soneds… two… one…’ went the voice, unaware that the soned’s days as a unit of measurement were about to be very firmly over.
Scaroth had a last attempt. ‘What will happen if… ?’
If it all goes wrong?
If the atmosphere and gravity combine with the warp thrust to do something really unexpected and horrible—to me?
Ah well. What was the use?
Arguing with the Jagaroth had only ever ended in death.
Scaroth pressed the button.
At full power, the Sephiroth glided majestically up from the surface of the desolation. The omens were good. A tiny fluctuation caused by a fuel leakage seemed to right itself. As the sphere rose, the claw-like legs tucked themselves neatly up underneath. For a moment the sphere hovered there, glowing with energy, magnificent, expectant. Then it shattered.
Directly inside the warp field, Scaroth was both intimately aware of the ship falling into itself and also strangely removed from the experience. The voices of the Jagaroth were still filling warp control.
There was no sense that they realised they had made a terrible mistake. Simply that they now expected him to do something about it.
‘Help us Scaroth! Help us!’ they pleaded. As if there was anything he could do now. ‘The fate of the Jagaroth is with you! Help us! You are our only hope!’
The screaming voices cut off and, for a brief moment, Scaroth could enjoy his agony in relative silence.
I’m the last of the Jagaroth, he thought. For as long as that lasts.
The warp field finally, mercifully collapsed. The fragments of the ship, squeezed into place by impossible forces, finally felt free to fling themselves in burning splendour far and wide across the surface of the dead planet.
Scaroth died. And then the surprising thing happened.
A man and a woman stood on top of the Eiffel Tower, every inch in love, if not with each other then certainly with life itself. They were both grinning like schoolchildren. Actually, the woman was dressed exactly like a schoolgirl, with a short navy skirt, silk blouse tied with a red ribbon, and a neat straw hat perched on golden hair that was on very good terms with the breeze. The man was the kind of man you could only meet in Paris, with a long coat, an even longer scarf, and a lot of curling hair. The overall impression was of someone who had been completely knitted. Apart from the teeth. You could see a lot of the teeth because the man was always laughing.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ the Doctor said, waiting for a reaction from Romana.
The Doctor spent a lot of time waiting for a reaction from Romana. Sometimes even K-9, his robot dog, could be more enthusiastic (although upon landing he’d heard talk of cobbled streets and refused to come out of the TARDIS—their time and space machine). Romana and the Doctor were both Time Lords from the planet Gallifrey. He’d long ago left behind that world of august domes and hushed cloisters, running away to see the universe, accidentally saving most of it as he went. Romana had joined him fairly recently. A mere stripling of 125, she had come to him fresh out of the Time Lord Academy. She still had a lot of unlearning to do, and there was one problem with Romana. One big, nagging problem. Suddenly, for the first time in his many lives, the Doctor rather feared that he was no longer the cool one.
Which was why he’d been hoping to land somewhere impressive. He’d felt a tiny bit of a thrill when they’d landed in Paris. The city never failed.
‘Well, I think it’s nice,’ the Doctor repeated, hopefully.
Romana looked around and nodded. The Doctor’s hearts sank towards his boots.
‘Well, it’s not quite as you described it,’ Romana said politely.
‘Oh?’ the Doctor said carefully. The TARDIS was parked around the corner. With a bit of luck they could be back there in ten minutes and on their way somewhere else. Yes, that was it. Call it a misfire. Paris. Bad idea.
Romana looked around again, sniffing the air, and her cautious smile broadened. ‘No. It’s so much better.’
That was a relief. ‘It’s the only place in the universe where you can truly relax,’ said the Doctor, truly relaxing.
‘It’s marvellous!’ Romana sniffed the air again, getting a lot from it. Petrol fumes, wood smoke, rain on pavements, and, more than that, animals and vegetables being roasted over minerals. She exhaled. ‘Ah, that bouquet!’
‘What Paris has,’ the Doctor said, warming to his subject, ‘is an ethos, a life, a…’
‘Bouquet?’ suggested Romana, being genuinely helpful.
‘A spirit all of its own that must be savoured. Like a wine, it has a…’
‘Bouquet?’
‘It has a bouquet.’ Having failed to find a better word, the Doctor borrowed hers and pronounced it definitively. ‘A bouquet. Exactly. Just like a good wine. Of course, you have to pick one of the vintage years…’
‘What year is this?’ asked Romana, a suspicion forming.
‘Ah yes, well… It’s 1979 actually. More of a table wine, shall we say? The randomiser is a useful device but it lacks true discrimination.’ He grinned, a broad welcome mat of a grin. ‘Shall we sip it and see?’
‘I’d be delighted.’
Turning away from the view, Romana couldn’t help smiling, partly with relief. The Doctor’s definition of a ‘vintage year’ undoubtedly meant alien invasion, several bloodbaths and an exploding stately home. Just for once she could do without all that. Just for once, it would be nice to land somewhere and just have fun. What was it that humans called it? A holiday. Yes, that was it. ‘Shall we take the lift or fly?’
The Doctor glanced around at the tourists they were sharing the viewing platform with. ‘Let’s not be ostentatious.’
‘All right, then,’ she nodded. ‘Let’s fly.’
‘That would look silly. We’ll take the lift.’
So, they went and stood inside a box that was, for once, exactly the same size inside as outside.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Romana.
‘Are you speaking philosophically or geographically?’ The Doctor watched as the ground, that lovely exciting ground of Paris slid gently closer.
‘Philosophically.’
‘Then we’re going to lunch,’ he said firmly.
‘Lunch!’ Romana repeated, giggling happily. Her last meal had been what the TARDIS food machine had sworn blind wasn’t a British Rail cheese and pickle sandwich, but Romana had remained unconvinced.
‘I know a place that does a bouillabaisse that’ll curl your hair.’ That is, thought the Doctor, if it was still there. Hmm. It had been one of the few sensible recommendations Catherine de Medici had ever given him.
‘Bouillabaisse.’ Romana lit up. ‘Yum yum.’
The Doctor and Romana were very firmly on holiday. Most people agreed that Count Scarlioni was the most charming man they’d ever met. Even those who didn’t survive the encounter.
The one person who did not find Count Scarlioni charming was the Count himself. Sometimes he’d wander the vast corridors of his château, among the ancient art treasures, and he’d pause in front of a mirror and look at himself. At his almost perfectly handsome face. At that smile. And he’d pause. Wondering. Like most Parisians, the Count was a born philosopher. His problem was that he’d thought long and hard about the meaning of life, and rather worried that the answer was ‘Me’.
Right now, the Count was in the cellars. The clutter of bottles and leftovers from the Inquisition had been cleared to one side. The space was now taken up by a computer. It sang to itself, reels of computer tape taking up the melody while pinwheel printers handled the chorus and an oscilloscope chipped in with a merry descant.
Slumped somewhere in the middle of it was Professor Kerensky. The Professor was thin and frail and almost at breaking point. Count Carlos Scarlioni himself provided a glorious contrast. He always did. He was a man for whom the words suave and louche had been invented. His face was handsome, thin and quite excitingly cruel. Almost like a mask, it was set in a permanent smile. Kerensky had at first found that smile charming. Now he found it terrifying.
The worst thing about the Count’s smile was that it never ever reached the eyes. Today, that smile said that it was thoroughly bored.
‘But…’ These days Kerensky began most sentences with but. ‘I can proceed no further, Count! Research costs money. If you want results we must have money.’
Money? Ah yes, thought the Count. Who had invented money in the first place? Well, that had been a mistake. How utterly dull.
‘I assure you, Professor… Money is no problem.’
‘Money is no problem?’ The Professor waved several sheets of paper at him. ‘What do you want me to do about all these bills? Write “money is no problem” across them and send them back?’
Would that work? wondered the Count briefly. Languidly he reached into his jacket pocket, removing a bundle of banknotes. ‘Will a million francs ease the situation?’
The tiny fool’s face lit up as if the Count had done something not boring. ‘But yes, Count! Yes! That will help admirably!’ Kerensky waggled a finger at him. The Count toyed with biting it off. ‘But I will shortly need a great deal more.’
‘Of course, Professor, of course.’ He twitched his smile up a notch. ‘Nothing must stand in the way of the Work!’
Yawning, Count Scarlioni reached a rope pull set into the wall and tugged it. The door at the top of the stone staircase creaked open and Hermann, the Count’s heavily framed, darkly suited butler descended.
‘Your Excellency?’
The Count patted the slimmed-down bulge in his jacket as though it were a regrettably empty cigarette case. ‘The Gainsborough didn’t fetch enough,’ he murmured. ‘I think we’ll have to sell one of the bibles.’
‘Sir?’ Hermann queried.
‘Yes, the Gutenberg.’ The Count clucked sadly.
‘I think we should tread carefully.’ Hermann was one of the few people who ever spoke plainly to the Count. ‘It would not be in our interests to draw too much attention to ourselves. Another rash of priceless art treasures on the market…’
Hermann was the only man the Count would take such criticism from. ‘Yes. I know Hermann, I know. Sell it…’ He flicked his smile into a grin. ‘Discreetly.’
Hermann raised both eyebrows. ‘Sell a Gutenberg Bible discreetly?’
Hermann had a point. The Gutenberg Bible was the first printed bible in history. Only twenty-one complete copies were still known to exist. Nestling next to the teasmade on the Count’s bedside table was a twenty-second.
‘Well, sell it as discreetly as possible, Hermann. Just do it, will you?’
Knowing better than to argue, Hermann bowed, and climbed the stairs.
‘There,’ the Count turned back to Kerensky. ‘I do hope we are now ready to perform the next stage of the experiment.’
Kerensky entirely missed the threat. ‘In two minutes, Count. Just two minutes,’ he muttered.
The Count drummed his fingers against a workbench. He had long ago run out of patience.
They never did find that place that did the bouillabaisse, but Romana didn’t mind. The Doctor claimed that the streets of Paris were like the rooms of the TARDIS, always rearranging themselves when you weren’t looking. Romana wasn’t convinced about the analogy. The boulevards were clogged with motorcars honking to each other. Only Paris, marvelled Romana, could make a traffic jam look festive.
The leafy pavements were a delightful muddle of trees, dogs, cobbles and footworn steps that wound up to other streets, to cathedrals, or simply to a door with a cat cleaning itself slowly in the sun. The Doctor told Romana that they’d arrived at that blissful point between the invention of drains and wheelie luggage, so the streets of Paris would be at their best, and for once, he wasn’t even fibbing slightly.
All in all, she was enjoying their holiday enormously. They dashed down the Champs-Élysées, for once running somewhere without deadly robots in pursuit. They considered taking in an exhibition (‘Three million years of human history’ declared the over-dramatic poster. ‘Poppycock,’ said the Doctor).
Finally they found themselves climbing the steps to Montmartre. The domes of the Sacré-Cœur smiled down on an impossibly quaint square filled with impossibly quaint cafés. Somehow they picked one and Romana found herself, for the first time in her life, forming the thought: ‘Quick bite to eat and then a spot of shopping later?’
The Doctor was in similarly joyous mood. He’d settled down in a quiet corner of the café, banging his legs up onto a chair and leaning far, far back in his own. The Doctor pulled the book he’d just bought from his pocket, cut the leaves with a butter knife and flicked idly through it.
‘Any good?’ asked Romana, doing the crossword.
‘Not bad, bit boring in the middle.’ The Doctor dropped the book back in his pocket and peered at Romana’s crossword. He suggested a couple of answers, and, when they turned out to be wrong, helped himself to some bread, and made a loud harrumph. Normally this was the prelude to a pronouncement of doom, or to a confession about a small rewiring disaster. But, just this once, it was the terribly happy harrumph of a truly contented man, contemplating a nap. The café itself, like much of Paris, felt like an old friend who hadn’t bothered tidying up when you’d popped round. Warm, welcoming and a slight smell of wet dog in the air.
The Doctor tried out a gentle snore, seemed satisfied with the results, and produced another one. A waiter brought a carafe of wine. Romana smiled and poured herself a glass. She’d heard so much about wine. She wondered what it would be like.
‘Don’t move,’ muttered the Doctor from underneath his hat.
Romana froze. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘You might destroy a priceless work of art,’ was the Doctor’s puzzling response.
‘What?’
The Doctor slid the hat from his face, speaking urgently to her from the corner of his mouth. ‘That man over there. No! Don’t look!’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Sketching you.’
Romana couldn’t stop herself from turning around. As she did so, her sleeve caught her glass, knocking wine over the table. Springing to her feet to try to sort out the mess, she caught a brief glimpse of a studious man sat across from them in the café, scribbling furiously with charcoal on a sheet of thick paper.
The man noticed that Romana, instead of sitting serenely in her chair, was now scrubbing the floor with a napkin. Angrily, he tore the sheet from his pad, and threw it at Romana’s feet as he stomped from the café in disgust, without paying his bill.
‘I told you not to look round.’
Romana decided she’d not missed the Doctor’s I-told-you-so tone. ‘But I just wanted to see!’ Staring down at her dirty wet napkin, she felt suddenly miserable.
‘Well, it’s too late, he’s gone now.’ Squinting, the Doctor tossed a handful of coins expertly onto the artist’s table.
‘Pity. I wonder what he thought I looked like,’ mused Romana.
She and the Doctor had the same thought at the same time. ‘Well, he threw the drawing over there, so we can see how far he—’
‘—got.’ The Doctor finished the sentence, feeling that he’d missed something.
Well, for one thing, the artist was sat back at his table, sketching away. Romana’s glass of wine was also resolutely not spilt. She was staring at it in puzzled alarm.
‘What?’ she said as the Doctor spoke in a gabble.
‘Romana, he’s there again. The artist! We just saw him walk out but he’s still there.’
Startled Romana spun round in her chair, knocking over her glass again as she did so. The artist glanced up from his pad and noticed that Romana was staring at him, mouth agape. A scowl crossed his face. He jumped to his feet, tore the sheet out of his pad, crumpled it up and threw it at Romana’s feet as he stomped from the café in disgust, without paying his bill.
Romana let the wine get on with spilling itself while she stared at where the artist had been. ‘Doctor, what’s happening?’ she asked. His answer would probably be wrong, but it would at least be somewhere to start.
‘I don’t know.’ The Doctor was shaking his head, trying to clear it. ‘It was as if time slipped a groove for a second.’
‘Hmm,’ Romana said. ‘I’m going to have a look,’ she unfolded the crumpled drawing. ‘Oh.’
The Doctor stared at the sheet of paper.
Romana stared at the sheet of paper.
‘Well,’ said the Doctor after a bit too much of a pause, ‘for a portrait of a Time Lady, that’s not at all a bad likeness.’