Season Thirteen - Part Three

 

Season Thirteen – Part Three

 

The Doctor and Dusty started taking their morning’s exercise hour together. They went round and round the prison yard, deep in conversation.

            Bianca’s nose was pushed out of joint a bit, but she didn’t say anything. She was used to people having their favourites. And those two had really hit it off, she thought. Let them get on with it.

            ‘I’m not going to call you ‘Doctor’, just like everyone else does,’ Dusty laughed.

            ‘What are you gonna call me?’

            Dusty glanced at her sideways. ‘I’m going to give you your full title and call you ‘The Doctor’ all the time.’

            ‘What..?’ the Doctor started laughing.

            ‘I think it’ll sound very distinguished. ‘What is it, The Doctor?’, ‘Quickly, run away, The Doctor!’ And ‘What planet have we landed on, The Doctor?’’

            ‘I think it sounds daft,’ said the Doctor. ‘Anyway, who says I even want to sound distinguished? That kind of thing has never really bothered me.’

            ‘Oh, but it should,’ Dusty said, sounding serious. ‘If even half of the things you’ve told me are true, then you should be proud of yourself. You’ve lived an amazing life.’

            ‘Maybe,’ the Doctor sighed, feeling a bit ambivalent about it all.

            ‘Here,’ said Dusty shiftily, fiddling with her beehive and hiding herself from the guards. ‘Have a ciggy.’ From deep within her golden locks she produced a packet of cigarettes. When the Doctor waved them away she added, ‘They’re candy ones.’

            ‘Oh!’ The Doctor grinned at her. ‘You keep everything inside that hairdo of yours.’

            ‘It’s bigger on the inside than the out..!’

            This made the Doctor feel glum. Just hearing that favourite phrase of hers. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll never see my TARDIS again. Never get out of here. Never get back to my normal life.’

            ‘Hm,’ said Dusty, chewing on her sweet cigarette. ‘You know, that’s always a possibility, and we must all be prepared for those kinds of disappointments.’

            ‘Very philosophical of you.’

            Dusty shrugged and gave a strange little skip. The ashes beneath their feet puffed up in slow clouds. ‘That’s exactly what I am. All of my song titles were very philosophical, don’t you think? ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself.’

            ‘Me neither,’ the Doctor sighed.

            Bianca came shuffling over to interrupt them. Clearly she thought the pair were starting to get far too cosy. ‘So what about it? Are you in?’ she grinned at the Doctor.

            ‘Is this about this band of yours again?’ the Doctor asked, feeling mithered.

            ‘It is!’ grinned Bianca. ‘Dusty’s the singer. I’m on trombone…’

            ‘Trombone..?’ the Doctor started laughing.

            ‘And we’ve got a lovely electric piano thing for you to play. I just know you can do it.’

            ‘Oh, I can play anything,’ the Doctor said, immodestly.

            ‘Go on then, The Doctor,’ Dusty goaded her.

            ‘All right,’ she smiled.

            ‘That’s great,’ said Bianca. ‘But why are you calling her that?’

            ‘It’s just our little thing,’ Dusty said, winking.

 

*

 

Hiya Fam,

 

Well, I’ve got a new best friend, which is something I wasn’t expecting. I’m not sure what Dusty’s in prison for, but I’m sure it can’t be anything bad.

            She’s such a gentle soul. But there’s something challenging about her. She really takes the mickey out of me, sometimes when I don’t even realise!

            We talk for hours. Well, during the hours that we’re allowed to mingle in this place. The rest of the time we have to stay in our cells and flippin’ well contemplate our sins.

            I don’t even know where to start on mine.

            I spend my time writing to you lot. My Fam. And all my previous Fams, too. At least this period of being locked up is letting me catch up with my correspondence…

            When it’s lights out I lie down and all the noise of all the other women rises up through the endless levels of this prison satellite. Sometimes it’s almost frightening. Hearing all that pent-up rage and frustration and fear and grief. Everyone here has her own story. Very few of them are happy ones.

            The guards go banging on bars with their nightsticks. Yelling at everyone to calm down. It’s really not very nice, Fam. I found myself blubbing a few times. Overcome by it all.

I know, that’s not like me at all.

            Last night I was having a good old wail about everything. My sobs indistinguishable from all the others’ hullaballoo. But when it started to die down… I could hear, faintly, a very sweet, smoky voice. Somewhere deep inside the metal complex of Season 13. It was Dusty. Singing to herself. Singing all by herself. Getting louder and louder. Belting it out in her splendid isolation. And I knew she was doing it just to cheer me up.

            Because earlier today I was confiding in her. I said, ‘I don’t even know how many lives I’ve lived before, Dusty. I don’t even know how many women I’ve previously been.’

            She gave a sad little laugh and said, ‘But isn’t that true of all of us, The Doctor..? Aren’t we all the sum total of all our previous selves? All the many women we’ve been before..?’

            ‘Yes, but…’ I began, and then I stopped. She was looking at me with those huge black-painted eyes. I thought, yes, she’s right.

I guess, in a way, she’s right…

 

*

 

Doc!!!

Ravio wasn’t amused when I tried to make a joke about her name sounding like ‘ravioli’ and then telling her about how many spaghetti hoops we’ve been eating. But I think it was probably a cultural thing. She’s from the far future, isn’t she, and gawd knows what they had to eat there.

            It was strange and a bit nice, really, to walk into her house and find it was a TARDIS inside. I mean, I knew it was already. I should have expected it. But it still struck me as nice and strange. That smell. That humming. I think I’d started to think I’d made everything up and imagined it all. But there it was. Blue and white with circles all up the walls and Ravio looking quite at home in the middle of it all.

All that blue and white made me think I was in a kind of space supermarket. I much prefer our… I mean your more familiar TARDIS, with the crystals and everything.

            ‘Graham, the Doctor’s dead. She went back and sacrificed herself to save everyone.  You know that’s true.’

            Well! Ravio wasn’t taking any prisoners, was she? She was straight down to brass tacks.

            ‘I don’t believe it,’ I was firm. ‘We’ve been through this a dozen times before. There were four of us travelling together and almost every episode we were all thinking one of us had karked it. It was hardly ever true.’

            The woman from the future shook her head. ‘You people. Talking about episodes and adventures. Treating it all like one big game. Do you realise how silly and irresponsible you sound?’

            I frowned. ‘Do we? Do I?’

            Ravio nodded. ‘Look. I’m from the end of the world. The last great Cyber war. I know how to face facts.’

            I didn’t like to point out to her that what she calls the end of the world and time isn’t anything of the sort. You told us, Doc, didn’t you?

The human race survives. The world survives. It survives the Cyber wars.

It survives this bloody pandemic, too.

And we ourselves have been far in the future, long after Ravio’s time.

So I actually know a bit more about it than she does. Her being all gloomy and sultry and butch there, standing in her TARDIS front room.

            But I don’t weigh in and start telling her all about the future. I don’t think she’d appreciate it. I think she’d make mincemeat out of me.

            ‘Where are the boys?’ I’ve forgotten the names of her two younger friends from the future. I’m hopeless with names. Especially futuristic, made-up ones.

            ‘Still sleeping,’ she says. ‘What’s to get up for? What’s there to do? Without the Cybermen to fight and our very existence to defend, they’re both a bit fed up, to be honest. Life on Earth is a bit soft and easy and dull, they say.’

            ‘Here, it’s not always like this,’ I tell her. ‘2020 is a bit unusual…’

            ‘So I gather,’ she smiles. ‘I’ve been reading this ship’s Information Files.’

            ‘Oh, yeah? You want to watch out… messing out with the controls. The Doctor used to go spare if she caught us touching anything in her TARDIS…’

            ‘She’s not here now, Graham. She never will be. You have to get used to that.’

            ‘I know, I know…’

            ‘And I think we ought to learn everything we can about this… this amazing machine that she’s brought us here in.’

            ‘Yeah, well… just you watch out for blowing yourself sky high, Ravio.’

            ‘You’d care, would you?’

            ‘Of course I would!’

            ‘Hm. Good to know.’

            It was a bit awkward, the silence then. We looked at each other. Her in her towel and her dressing gown.

            Then she said, ‘Graham… I’ve found the Fast Return Switch.’

 

*