O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
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clocketpatchEnjoy random fic.
(and I was trying so very, very hard to avoid the 'vengeful religious type' stereotype, but then it just sort of happened anyways. Sorry.)
(and yes, I know there are other things that I ought to be working on. Again, I'm sorry. I'm SO sorry.)
The landing was smooth, by TARDIS standards – no one fell down and nothing exploded. Donna still ended up clinging to the console for dear life, but that was only to be expected. One day, she thought, she’d get the Doctor to resume teaching her how to drive. Given how often they crashed it would be difficult for her to do worse.
“So, where are we then?” Donna asked, releasing her white-knuckle grip. She felt a bit cranky, probably a result of a hyperactive Time Lord shaking her out of bed far too early that morning, nattering on something about tortoises. She’d hit him with a pillow, but he hadn’t let up, yammering that, “time is relative in the TARDIS, so you see, it’s not actually morning and…”
Donna had attempted to roll back over and fall asleep, but had failed in the attempt. Again, probably due to a certain hyperactive Time Lord. She had half a mind to switch out all of the tea in the TARDIS kitchens with decafe. She could keep a stash for herself in her room, and then maybe she’d get some rest from the over-caffeinated alien weasel.
And now she was in the console room. Typical. Waiting for the Doctor to tell her the name of the latest planet, and if it wasn’t a spa she’d smack him upside the head; seeing the universe was wonderful and the time of her life and nothing else she’d rather be doing etc. etc. But one day or another Mr. Time Lord had to realise that humans required a solid eight a night to function properly.
“Dunno,” said the Doctor. He grinned and winked at Donna in a way that she supposed was supposed to be smooth. “I, set the randomizer on. Wanted to make it an adventure.”
“Oi, with you it’s all an adventure. You just have to step outside and people start shooting at you.”
“They do not.”
“Do you want another smack spaceman?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Then where are we then? And was it really so desperate that I couldn’t continue my lay-in?”
“You humans spend a third of your lives on your backs, it’s so dull. Sleep, sleep, sleep.”
“And we end up cranky without it, so watch it Martian. It’s not my fault you sit and drink fifty cuppas and then run around like a bored toddler when you can’t settled down for your nappies.”
The Doctor pulled up the scanner and examined it for an infuriatingly long time. Donna was sure he was delaying his response intentionally. Git. He was waiting for it.
“So?” she urged, feeling even more annoyed at having given into him.
The Doctor promptly swung the scanner back into position before grinning at her.
“Begalit 5.7, local name of Calloo. Isn’t that a brilliant name Donna? Calloo! Calloo! Calloo callay! Anyways, they’ve got these cave temples, beautiful, famous the galaxy over, gilded everythings, and they run tours. I’ve never been, but oh, you’re going to love it.”
“Temples? I got out of bed for temples? If someone tries to sacrifice me again –”
“What would they do that for?”
“I don’t bloody well know, but every second planet we go to someone is calling me the flipping flame-headed goddess of the whatsits and tying me to a slab.”
The Doctor paused for a moment, and then continued breathlessly, as if she’d never interrupted him. “And shopping Donna! These dusty little markets filled with nick-knacks, and home crafts, there’s this whole cottage industry around it, and –”
“Shut it, are we going to see it or what?”
“Right, yes, right out the doors.”
“You first spaceman.”
“Oi, Donna, nobody is going to be pointing guns at us.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
The Doctor muttered something under his breath about how nobody ever trusted him. Donna countered with her own muttered “wonder why?”
He went first through the doors, made a show of looking in all directions, and pivoted on his foot to face back into the ship.
“You can come out Donna. No guns.”
“Not yet anyway.”
“I resent that.”
She stepped out. They were inside one of the temples he’d been nattering about. There were, indeed, gilded everythings. Donna just about had to shield her eyes from the shine. Gold and silver and a strangely iridescent purple metal she couldn’t identify covered all of the pews and alters. Murals and statues and mosaics covered every other available surface, all of them equally decorated with precious metals and gem stones. Donna had to admit it was a bit impressive.
The TARDIS’s dented wood and chipping paint looked more than a bit shabby in comparison.
“Bligh me,” said Donna, mentally calculating how many years of temp wages it would take to equal one inch of the place. “They’re a bit gaudy aren’t they?”
“I met Gaudi once,” said the Doctor, missing the point as per usual. “Very strange man, I took him to see his finished cathedral, it would have been too tragic otherwise. Hullo, what’s this?”
He broke away from Donna and strode towards an alter hidden away in a wall nook. It was plain stone, which was a bit strange considering the rest of the temple, but probably, Donna thought, it was marble or something equally pricey. It was a jet black block, smoothed into a perfect rectangle. It came up to about the Doctor’s waist when he stood next to it. On top of the alter there was a collection of silver statues.
Very strange statues. They looked like bits of gear, and poles spanned with wire spirals. In fact, they didn’t really look like statues at all.
“What is it?” asked Donna, walking over.
“What does it look like to you?”
Donna put her hand on the black rock, it was strangely cool and a bit… buzzing, that was the only word to describe it, and there were lights inside. It she looked carefully she could see them blinking on and off in fast, uneven rhythm. It made her dizzy.
“It’s a machine,” she said. “A computer?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor. He rubbed his chin before letting his hands migrate into his hair. “It is, I think. It looks familiar, but it can’t be. Calloo is a devolved colony world, they don’t even have electricity. They’re against technology, I mean, they allow it from outsiders, and in their hospitals, but not in their temples. This is sacrilegious for them. Why is it here?”
“Not going to be upsetting them by landing the TARDIS in their sacred space then?” asked Donna.
“I hadn’t though of that,” said the Doctor.
“Oh, he hadn’t thought of that.”
The Doctor went back to staring at the alter, gnawing at his lip.
“But you don’t understand Donna, this <i>shouldn’t</i> be here.”
She did understand, mostly; she understood that the Doctor had found trouble, and if she’d been less sleep deprived she would have thought of a witty comeback quicker. She was mulling possibilities when he hear a clicking noise had become far too familiar over her travels with the Doctor.
Donna turned, and sure enough the men with guns had shown up, right on cue. There were four of them. They looked human, and they were wearing bright green jumpers with a red starburst pattern down the front, like they’d dribbled juice on themselves.
“Doctor,” Donna said, trying for his attention.
He waved her off. “Donna, this is important.”
“Doctor,” she said, more sternly, clenching her teeth.
He turned around.
“Oh. Sorry Donna, I guess you win after all. Is it after hours? I’m so, so sorry. We can come back later.”
One of the guard promptly shouted at the Doctor in a language that Donna couldn’t even begin to comprehend. It was all loud rolling vowels with a bit of ape-like hooting thrown in for good measure.
“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor, “could you repeat that?”
The guard shouted again, this time poking the Doctor in the chest none to gently with the business end of his gun. The Doctor staggered back a few steps into the arms of another guard, who immediately grabbed the Doctor’s arms and restrained him. Bulky black iron hand cuffs click-clacked into place.
“Let him go!” said Donna. A guard came up from behind and grabbed her. “Let me go! Doctor, what’s going on, why isn’t the translator working?”
She looked at him. His expression had gone very grave.
“Stop talking,” he said.
Donna was about to open her mouth asking for more explanation when the Doctor cut her off –
“No, seriously Donna, stop talking, not another word. Zip, nothing. I’ll explain later, but for now please be very, very, very quiet.”
He stopped talking abruptly. Donna had the strong urge to yell something vaguely insulting at the guards for pointing guns and handcuffing her, or at the Doctor, for being infuriatingly non-informative. She didn’t. His tone had been too urgent, and something about his eyes said that he really was dead serious about not talking, and she wasn’t about to risk her life disobeying that look.
Further more, he’d stopped talking, and that was practically a miracle knowing how his mouth went off.
The guards frog-marched Donna and the Doctor efficiently out of the temple, holding them at the shoulders and moving too quickly for Donna to really get her feet under her. They slowed down to a more normal speed once they were outside.
The temple had been in a cave, as the Doctor said, not that you would have known from the lush interior and lighting. Outside it was dark and the sky was dotted with stars and alien moons. Donna and the Doctor were forcibly guided, first across a dusty plaza, and then through a maze of wooden alley ways. Mountains rose at their back and the whole settlement dipped sharply against the slop towards a black and roiling sea.
As they approached closer and closer to the water’s edge, Donna began to fear that their captors meant to chuck them into the ocean and let them drown. With the heavy iron handcuffs, she probably would.
She was highly relieved when the guards took a turn off and, instead of depositing them to the mercies of the tide, opened a door on a large, wood and brick building and forced them inside. Once in, there was a branching hallway, another door, and a flight of uneven stairs down to a stone-lined cellar. Donna made it the whole way down without incident, but the Doctor stumbled and was pushed the last few steps, landing in a crumple at the bottom.
The guards went back up the stairs and, without a word, locked the door. The cellar was left in near total darkness.
Donna made her way cautiously to the Doctor. The lack of light was made more disorienting by her inability to stretch her arms out and feel for obstacles. She dropped to an awkward crouch by his side.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he gritted, and Donna didn’t press it.
“Donna,” he said, after squirming ineffectually for a few minutes. “Do you think you can get your hands into my left coat pocket?”
“The sonic?”
“Setting 14,” he confirmed.
Donna fished around. It was an awkward procedure, backwards in the dark, made worse by the Doctor’s disorganized pockets. No normal person kept over-ripe bananas in their coat.
Finally her fingers closed over the metallic tube of the screwdriver. It was even more awkward figuring out the settings in the dark, and she managed to nearly deafen them both with a sonic blast before she eventually got it done. She freed the Doctor and then he returned the favour.
As they sat, massaging their wrists and adjusting their eyes to the dark, Donna fixed the Doctor with a glare that he may or may not have been able to see.
“So,” she said, her tone refusing argument, changes of subject, or inane babbling. “Explain.”
The Doctor took a deep breath.
“We broke the silence taboo.”
“The silence taboo?”
“Yes, in some of temples there’s a law against speaking, and well, we spoke, so we’re going to be punished, I think. It will probably just be a wrist slap, the Calloo people aren’t noted for big displays of violence or prison camps or anything. I mean, we’re in the mayor’s basement; they don’t even have a proper jail.”
“They have handcuffs,” Donna pointed out.
“Yes, they do,” said the Doctor. “that’s bizarre. But I’d guess they’re relics, rusty, rusty relics, not put to much use. They didn’t half chafe though.”
“Did you know about this taboo?” asked Donna.
“Well, vaguely, but it’s only certain temples, and I didn’t think – hey, what was that for?”
Donna rubbed her hand. It hadn’t been a strong slap, but her wrist wasn’t feeling so good from the handcuffs. It had been needed though.
“That,” she said, “was for knowing the culture and then not following it. You idiot. We could have just landed outside the temple and not upset the locals.”
“I’m sorry Donna,” he said, not sounding particularly sorry. “but it’s a good thing you know.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, you noticed that the translator was off. And you saw that machine in the temple?”
“The big black rock?”
“That’s a psychic disruptor. It was right scrambling the TARDIS’s translators, actually, now that I’ve been around for awhile it’s giving me a nasty headache as well. Anyways, that’s not good. That shouldn’t be on Calloo. And we wouldn’t have got entrance to that temple if we’d landed outside; it’s guarded around the clock, well, the Calloo clock, which is actually a water wheel. But point is; no one is being allowed in.
“And they shouldn’t have that technology Donna, they really, really shouldn’t. It’s illegal under the Shadow Proclamation for one thing, and last thing I’d like is to see angry rhinos go rampaging across this lovely settleme–”
“So we have to find out why, escape, and get rid of it,” Donna recited.
“Something like that,” said the Doctor.
“And the TARDIS?” said Donna.
“Get her out of the immediate vicinity of the disruptor and she should be able to over-ride its signal…” he trailed off, punctuating the sentence with an involuntary hiss.
Donna’s eyes were getting better at pieces images through the dark. She could see that the Doctor had his right palm pressed against his forehead in a gesture that she recognised from her mother’s migraines.
“It’s the link,” he said, and his voice was far too small for a nine hundred year old time traveller. “Donna, I can’t feel her. I should have noticed right away, but I was too interested in…” He used his open palm to punctuate his words with smacks. “Stupid, stupid Doctor, I should have…”
He stopped, dropping his hand limply into his lap.
“I’m sorry Donna.”
“Hey,” she said, edging around to put a hand on his too-narrow shoulder. He stiffened at the touch. “It’s okay, we’ll get her back.”
“Yes,” he said, his tone shifting from scared child to oncoming storm: “We will.”
He didn’t need to say ‘or else’.
