Trenchcoat 0: Shepherd Moons - Part 4
? ? ?
Ace tapped the counter next to the control circuit the Doctor was working on. He winced and moved it away. “Be careful.”
Just as she’d thought he would. Good, she was starting to understand the way he thought again. Or was it just that there were some things which stayed the same, whatever the face looked like on the outside?
Which could be a problem. A big problem. One she didn’t want to think about too much, not with the most powerful telepath in the world just a few rooms away.
Mark was standing inside a makeshift portable control booth that looked like a music synthesiser stand, peering into the innards of the machine, trying to trace the workings of it. She wished him luck. “So,” she asked casually. “What’s this thing supposed to do, exactly?”
“You’re asking me?” Mark asked absently, gaze glued to the machine taking shape before him. “I just helped build the thing, is all. I didn’t think you could even fit electronics together like this. I mean, I helped put it together and I keep expecting it to dispense slices of lightly buttered toast.”
“Ahem,” the Doctor said. “This is a wide-band general empathic transmitter. If it works properly it should broadcast a calming alpha wave throughout the crowd. When the sheep arrives, we activate the machine, and in effect throw a net out over the crowd, catch the sheep in the net, and fling it out into deep space again. With luck the predators will follow its trail, and that’s the last we’ll hear of this particular problem.”
“If,” said Ace. “In effect. With luck.”
The Doctor sighed. “Yes, I thought those were the words you were going to fixate on. Why not ‘calming’ or ‘activate’ or ‘fling’ or ‘last’? Your faith is overwhelming.”
“Oh, don’t mind me, Professor. I just can’t help but notice that there doesn’t seem to be a job for me in this little scenario of yours.”
“Isn’t there,” the Doctor said neutrally. “Well, that’s all right then. You can stay here. Have a little lie down.”
“You don’t have to protect me, you know. I’m over it.” She picked up the screwdriver on the table, played about with it, affecting a light tone. “People get hurt. I’ve seen it before.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor.
“We deal with it. That’s our job. You don’t have to put me out of the way, you know. I can take care of myself.”
The Doctor looked her in the eyes. “And do you think I can’t?”
Ace put down the screwdriver. “I didn’t say that.”
“No. You didn’t. You’re not entirely sure I can deal with this, are you? You still don’t trust me completely. Still don’t think I’m really the Doctor you knew.” His eyes narrowed. “Or is it that you do?”
Ace met his gaze. “I just don’t want anybody to get hurt again,” she said flatly. “Anybody. You read me?”
The Doctor sighed, suddenly weary. “Like an open book,” he muttered. “I can hardly stop you from coming, can I? Will you tell Beatrice we’re almost finished?”
Ace nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
The Doctor watched her go, drumming his fingers on the table. Mark, he noted sourly, didn’t even seem to have noticed the turn the conversation had taken. The student was turning the transmitter circuit around in his hands, as if he could divine its secrets by holding it upside-down. The Doctor placed a hand on it, gently but firmly forcing it back down to the table. “Do you mind?”
Mark looked up at him. “WIDE-band General Empathic Transmitter…” he said, carefully pronouncing the capitals. “WIDG… Doctor, you’ve just built a widget.”
“If you like.”
“We’re taking C-Major to fight a misunderstood killer invisible alien telepathic sheep with a widget. Is that about it?”
“Oh, very good,” the Doctor snapped. “Very amusing. We must give you a gold star for excellence in irony.”
Mark frowned. “What’s eating you?”
The Doctor stood up abruptly and crossed over to the transmitter platform. “Dinosaurs,” he snapped. “Big, placid, stupid and dead, along with someone I’d just argued with, someone I took along with me because I was happy to have company and my friend thought he could take care of himself.”
“And you’re talking the hell about what?”
The Doctor shook his head impatiently and plugged the circuit into the machine. “How much longer?” he muttered. “How much longer do I keep putting her in danger?”
? ? ?
“This isn’t going away,” Trish snapped. “Not until you explain this to me. Explain it so I can understand.”
“What’s to explain? Trish, I can read minds. I can read minds. Everybody’s! I feel everything! All their frustration, everything they leave unsaid, everything they’re afraid to admit to themselves! All the anger that builds up in them over the course of a day, every time they lash out at another human being, I can see it — the cause, the effect, it’s all so small! Trish, some people walk around this city in constant rage just because they’re short of breath, because the air’s not clean enough! They feel the tightness in their chest, it gets hard for them to breathe, hard for them to concentrate, they lose track of what they’re thinking and get headaches and blame other people for that because they know they’re not stupid, it can’t be them, it has to be the others—” John slumped onto the bed. “I can’t let you into this life, Trish, it’s all so small.”
“You don’t think I’ve ever felt like that? John, it’s not all like that. If you can read minds you have to know that it’s not all…”
John pressed his hands into his eyes. “But there’s so much of it, Trish. So much selfishness, so much hate, so much more than you can imagine…”
“And you tried to hold it all yourself?” Trish clenched her fists. “You didn’t ever think I could understand this, you never even let me try. John, I know why I never told you how I felt about you. I was afraid you wouldn’t feel the same way. But you knew all along. You knew. And you didn’t do anything about it. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” John protested, but it seemed weak even to him. Something else was filling the room now, something else he’d done, something else he’d never felt from Trish before now — rage.
“Oh, you didn’t,” she said bitterly. “So this is what it comes down to? I actually feel something for you, I actually care, and this is the person I’ve been caring for? You care so much for me that you don’t want to treat me as a human being. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it? It’s not about me getting hurt, John. It’s about you putting me on a pedestal and trying to keep me out of anything messy, anything hurtful, anything real.”
John looked away, tight-lipped. “You should be going.”
“Yes. I should.” She stood, furious. “Good luck with your alien thing.”
John shook his head. “Trish, you should go home. This thing could be hunting you too. It could show up anywhere there’s a crowd, we don’t know what—”
“I’m sorry, John, I can’t do that.” She was bundling up her belongings now, the few things she’d brought with her from the Underground City ( was that only yesterday? Seems like we’ve been here for months ) to Downsview. “You do what you want. Go play soldiers, go play God. I’ve got friends who actually care about things other than themselves, and it’s time I started doing something with them. And all this time I thought you really were too scared to go to the rally when you were just—”
“Oh my God,” said John.
? ? ?
Mark walked into the Major’s office with the Doctor and sketched off a salute. “Widget complete, C-Major,” he said. “God, I need a drink.”
Ace lifted an eyebrow. “Succinct,” she said.
The Major shook her head. “Students,” she said. “So are you ready to put this into operation?”
The Doctor plunged his hands into his pockets. “Yes and no. The machine’s ready. All we have to do is take it out to the site of the next herd incident and set it up.”
The Major sat back in her chair. “And it’s all over, as easy as that? Where exactly are you planning to take it?”
The Doctor sighed and sank into a chair. “That’s the problem. We don’t know where the sheep is going to strike next. It’s most likely going to be centrally located. First the Underground City, then the street outside the hospital, then the call centre — it thinks it’s found the person it’s looking for downtown, so that’s where it’s going to concentrate. But the details? This is a Saturday in a big city in the summertime. The streets will be thronging. With John we can control the herd, but we’ve got to find the herd first, and set up beforehand. And I’ve no way of tracking this creature before another herd incident happens. And by then it could be too late.”
The Major sighed. “So we’re no closer to a solution?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Oh, we have a solution. Just one insurmountable problem stands in the way of our actually implementing it.” He stared into space, or possibly at the map of the city on the wall of the Major’s office. “It could strike anywhere. Anywhere at all. We just don’t know where.”
There was a knock at the door.
Trish was standing in the doorway, her eyes puffy and red. She looked as though she’d been crying, or as if she was about to cry, or as if she was ready to hit something, and she glared at the Doctor as if it was all his fault. “We know,” she said. “We know where the sheep’s going to be next.”
Mark glared at the Doctor. “How do you do that?”
The Doctor shrugged. “It’s a knack.”
? ? ?
Saturday (afternoon)
Sharp didn’t know which was worse; the crowd or the sun, the one beating down on the other in Lastman Square, both baking her troops in different kinds of heat. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck as a young student glared from the sidelines of the crowd and muttered something just a little too deliberately under her breath.
She could feel the mistrust coming off them in waves, and so could her people. Oh, they were far too well-trained to show it, but she knew that the gazes were getting under their skins, itching and twitching and building to something. Not good, not fair. She remembered the streets of Rafhā, children spitting at her as she passed, hatred in their eyes; interloper, intruder, unwanted, unclean. Leave us alone, protector. How could she feel like that, now, in her own country?
“It’s not so different,” the Doctor murmured.
He wasn’t looking at her, but somehow, even with only a day and a half’s personal experience with the man, that didn’t even remotely surprise her. When the trucks had pulled up to the square and spilled out rivers of khaki, the rally’s organizer had started forward, hands waving angrily, but before he could get out a word of protest the Doctor had pulled a bouquet of carnations out of his sleeve, handed them over, and started to set up the widget, leaving Sharp to explain herself as best she could while the bemused man stared at the flowers in his hand. They’d had no problems after that.
No overt problems. But the heat was pressing down on them and she could feel the people shifting around the square, glaring at the surrounding soldiers without making eye contact. She could almost feel the potential for mob in the air, waiting like a presence hovering over them all.
“They care,” the Doctor said. “They care deeply. They feel betrayed by their government. Voiceless. They want to make their feelings known. They think we’re here to keep them silent. To ‘keep the peace,’ as if they can’t do that themselves. They feel they’re being treated like children.” He looked up then, teeth flashing in a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “Or herded like sheep.”
“Very comforting,” Sharp muttered. She glared at Mark, who’d wandered away from the widget to chat up a dark-haired woman in the crowd, seemingly utterly oblivious to the building tension. “So can we trust that they won’t turn on us when we try to save their lives?”
The Doctor rested his hands on the widget, an expression of great weariness crossing his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Can you trust?”
“I’m going to make sure my men are ready,” Sharp said.
The Doctor nodded. “You do that.”
He reached out and flicked a switch on the widget. Red and green and yellow lights flickered into life on the machine, and perhaps some of the people nearby relaxed a little. Or perhaps Sharp just wanted to think that.
? ? ?
Isabel lifted an eyebrow sceptically. “Deeply concerned?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Mark said solemnly. “Very much so. I can’t tell you how terrible it makes me feel, the thought of all that wildlife under threat. We should get together over a coffee to discuss it.”
Isabel nodded. “I can tell you’re deeply committed. Oh, no, wait. Should be. Excuse me, I have to meet a friend.”
“No, wait,” Mark protested as she turned away. “I’m really serious. It’s terrible what we’re doing to our world! Um, overpopulation’s the key to it, don’t you think? Too many people in the world, consuming finite resources, spreading our attention too thin…”
“Good thing I’ve no intention of breeding, then,” Isabel tossed back as she walked off.
Mark watched her disappear into the crowd. “Yes,” he muttered. “Thanks. Very nice. Pardon your zinger. Just here to save the world, that’s all.”
He sighed and strolled back into the widget. “These two losers walk into a bar,” he said to the Doctor, “and say ‘ouch.’ You’d think the second would have noticed it was there. Why do they all say they like men with a sense of humour?”
The Doctor ignored him, hands playing over the controls like a musician tuning up a recalcitrant instrument. “Put a hat down in front of it,” Mark suggested. “Make a few bucks while we’re waiting. Hello? No, never mind. I’m superfluous now. I’ll just sit down here, shall I?”
He sat on the ground, lip twisting bitterly, and rested his head against the widget. The sun-warmed concrete tried to bake him through his jeans, but he ignored it. No, never mind me, Doctor. Just helped you build this thing, that’s all. Don’t bother to explain. Don’t bother to invite me into the team. Just leave me here on the outside, on the sidelines.
“I’m lost and I’m found…” he sang quietly, and despite it all he looked up anyway. But the Doctor’s eyes were closed, his gaze fixed on some imaginary landscape.
“Where are you?” the Doctor muttered. “Where?”
Right in front of you, thought Mark, but just looked away and shut the hell up.
? ? ?
So this is the great man himself?
They’d brought a wheelchair for him, which was almost considerate of them. He sat huddled up in the heat, eyes staring glassily ahead, thinking about the tides. You don’t swim against them, he knew that much, but how do you swim? With them or parallel to the shore? Go with the flow until they lose their grip on you, or slip sideways out of their grasp? How did that apply?
His thoughts were wandering. Perhaps that was the danger they were facing here, if that was the enemy they were fighting. Perhaps if he thought more about it he could get rid of the voices in his head, separate what was being spoken out loud from what was being thought, and who was doing the thinking from who was doing the speaking.
Thoughts and words jumbled together and through each other, simmering with resentment. What’s wrong with him? — More than you know. — He’s just a little sick. — Why him more than me, why are these soldiers here? — What’s wrong with you? — With me? — With the world? — With everyone?
Someone on the other side of the crowd saw his ex-girlfriend with her new beau and thought a word John had never even imagined could have existed. Rich, clear anger burning bright for a moment before it was swamped back into the fullness of the crowd.
He’s not good enough for you. — I’m not good enough for him. — They’re not…
“You don’t like me,” he said out loud.
Surprise — shock — anger — resentment.
“You don’t think I’m good enough for her?” John looked up at the woman who’d stepped out of the crowd, the woman who had been arguing with Trish for the last five minutes. Her name was Isabel, and she liked cheese Danishes. On the stage, a man walked up to the mic, raised his hands for silence, realized he was still holding a bouquet of carnations in one of them, and lowered them again, embarrassed.
“It doesn’t matter,” John said calmly, riding it all out. “There are things we do, and nobody knows why. Nobody. It’s all moments, hardwired instincts, the smog and the things we eat. So few real decisions. We’re just swept along.”
I think he’s really sick, God, Trish, what you nearly —
The man on the stage raised his arms. “The police tell me there are 40,000 people here today…”
A roar of approval and anger, so many people here with so many different thoughts, and nobody could stop them, not even the riot cops in the circle around them, eyeing them, waiting for the crowd to break, they’d rise up and break the backs of those who stood atop them and bring it all down!
“It doesn’t matter any more,” John repeated. “Not after this is over.”
Sharp worry. Concern. What do you mean? John, what do you mean?
He smiled at Trish, almost happily. “It’s all over now.”
“I hope you can hear me on Yonge Street!” shouted the man on the podium.
The crowd roared with what sounded like approval.
They can’t, John could have told him, but it doesn’t matter. They can’t really hear you hear either.
? ? ?
“Forty thousand people in one place, meeting on one issue. Forty thousand minds, with but a single thought. Can you picture that? And I know that those forty thousand come from all across this great province. I have spoken to the people from Hamilton, Oshawa, and even from as far as Barrie and Muskoka, who braved the two-hour trip to be here today. I have spoken to the representatives of the United Nations who have come out today to lend their support to our cause.
“And how worthy a cause that is. Forty thousand people have gathered here today to tell their elected representatives that they, their families, their friends and their loved ones refuse to bow down to the tyranny of the automobile any longer. That our neighbourhoods will not be used as traffic sewers, and that our conservation areas will not be used as parking lots!”
Mustafa pauses, acknowledging the applause. He grips the podium, leans forward, eyes fixed on the middle of the crowd, as if trying to pull them up on stage with him by the power of his words.
“We’ve fought this fight before. Fifty years ago, the residents of Toronto stood up to its car-loving politicians and said, no more. Stop the expressways into our downtown core. Our city is not a rush-hour abode. It is a place to live and play as well as work. We demanded this understanding. We demanded a transit-based alternative.
“And we won!”
More applause; even cheering, this time.
“Twenty-five years later, our former suburbs stood side by side with us and said to the provincial government, ‘We are not your cash cow! We are citizens of this province, who live and work and pay taxes and elect you to office.’ We demanded control over how those taxes would be spent. And we won!”
They’re cheering wildly now. Some part of him is a little concerned; it’s too hot to get them worked up like this. This is supposed to be a peaceful rally, and he doesn’t want people to start dropping of sunstroke. But…
“Today, we are here to fight the fight again! We say no to the destruction of our wildlife sanctuaries in the misguided name of expressway development! And we will win again!”
…but it’s a very little voice, drowned out by the rush of pride he feels as the crowd cheers along with what he’s saying to them. It’s as if he’s right down in there with them, watching himself speak.
“We’ve been here before, but what has changed is the depth of our voice. In the 1970s, we were two million strong. In 2005, we were six million. Today, eight million of us stand together, to say, no more!”
The joy of crowd control is feeding into him, rushing out of him, circling around like a… he has no words to describe it, only thoughts. His voice tumbles towards the end of the speech like a car rushing headlong towards a cliff, the end in sight…
“We live in the greatest city in the world, and we will fight to protect our homes, to protect our trees, and to protect the air we breathe! We are here together, and we will speak together! One city, one voice!”
A bouquet of flowers lies forgotten on the stage as he lifts his hands proudly into the air, shouting it aloud. “One city, one voice!” He can hear the people shouting it with him. This is the proudest moment of Mustafa’s life.
He can’t even hear his own voice amongst the multitude. He’s a part of them. They’re a part of him. He’s shouting out with them, they’re shouting out with him. He’s forgotten the doubts, he’s forgotten the fears, the worries, the anxieties…
“One city, one voice!”
He’s forgotten his own name.
? ? ?
The Doctor looked up.
“It’s here,” he said.
? ? ?
John twitched in his chair, feeling the silence crash into the crowd like a boulder into a pond. It had happened so much faster this time.
Thousands of thoughts suddenly stilled. The square rang with hollow chanting, sound without speech. Eighty thousand eyes stared emptily at nothing, and hands formed into fists, punching wildly at the air. One city, one voice!
“I’m here!” he shouted. He closed his eyes, trying to reach out with his mind, but he didn’t know how, he didn’t know what he was doing. His left hand rose up and grasped his right shoulder, clutching blindly for Trish’s hand like a drowning man grasping for a straw, except of course that her hand was in the air, punching wildly at nothing.
“No!” he screamed. “No, not her! It’s me you want! It’s me!”
He could feel it all around him now, panic rushing through the crowd like a wave washing around a pool, like soap slipping on the shower floor, like a word on the tip of his tongue; a feeling as frustratingly real and ungraspable as a metaphor.
“I’m here!” he screamed, “I’m here!” But his voice was lost in the crowd and he could feel the cold outside closing in, the teeth rushing in from the emptiness, ready to bite.
? ? ?
“One city, one — oh, crap,” said Mark, and nearly broke his leg leaping to his feet. He steadied himself against the widget, suddenly giddy and light-headed. You stood up too quickly, that’s all, he told himself; you just stood up too quickly. You just stood up too quickly. You just — stop that!!!
The Doctor’s hands flitted from panel to panel, twisting controls. He stared at the lights in panic. “It’s moving too quickly!” he shouted. “They’re ordinary humans, not natural telepaths! That’s why I couldn’t track it myself! They’re all thinking the same thing at the same time, but not together! The core idea is moving from person to person!”
Mark gripped the console. “What about John? Can’t you get it into him? Isn’t that why C-Major brought him here?”
He looked at the Major, and wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want to see her clenched fist pumping in the air, eyes staring glassily ahead as she chanted along with the crowd and her own soldiers, all circling the square, shouting and punching the air. But some part of him was secretly glad, like he’d known it all along. Typical military mind! I knew they’d never resist!
Just in time he caught himself from punching his fist into the air in triumph.
“John,” the Doctor shouted. “You’re right. I need John here. I need his help to net this thing! I can’t do this myself! Ace, where’s John? Ace?”
He looked up wildly. “Where’s Ace?”
? ? ?
She could see John twisting in his chair, grabbing at his girlfriend as she stood next to him, her fist punching the air like all the others — and her hair like flame in the sunshine, her face suddenly deathly familiar. Suddenly Ace had been here before, and it was all happening again. Suddenly she could feel the predators closing in, eyes like lights, growing brighter and larger in the dark opening of an ancient underground cave as wind howled through the tunnels and people started to scream.
It wouldn’t happen again. She wouldn’t let it happen.
She forced her way into the crowd, heading for John. Trish was the beacon guiding her to the one who could save the crowd. She could pull him out, save the one and this time save them all. But the crowd was around her, all around her, waves of sound rushing back and forth across the square, the chanting sweeping her off her feet as she staggered blindly between students, contract workers, activists and government employees, mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, secretaries and sales clerks, receptionists and transcriptionists, men and women and children shouting at her, voices echoing in her ears and in her mind, drowning everything out. Drowning her out. Drowning her.
She kept her gaze fixed on John, on the one solid island in the sea of lost selves, and was there faster than she thought possible. Her hand sought out his shoulder and gripped it so hard her knuckles turned white. “John! Hold on!”
“It won’t listen!” he screamed. “I can’t make it listen!”
“Yes, you can! You can do it! The Doctor says you can do it! You have to believe him, John! You have to believe in yourself! He’s relying on you!”
“I can’t! I can’t do this by myself!”
“You have to!” she screamed, trying not to believe that she needed to convince herself as much as him. Trying, not doing — if only she could trust the Doctor, if only she knew whether he was the Doctor she knew, if only she could trust him even if he was, if only the sound of the crowd wasn’t making it impossible to concentrate, with their punching and shouting, shouting and punching, one city, one voice, one city, one voice, one city —
“Ace? Ace! Ace!”
One voice!
? ? ?
“No!” the Doctor shouted uselessly as Ace punched her fist into the air, again and again.
Eyes wide, he leapt off the widget platform. Mark grabbed his arm, holding him back. “Stop it! Doctor, you have to work this thing! You’re the only one who knows how!”
“She needs me!” the Doctor howled, his voice barely a whisper against the shouts of the crowd. It was all noise now, voice and echo pummelling at Mark’s mind, trying to beat him down into submission. “You can work it!” the Doctor insisted. “You saw me put it together, you helped me! You were with me every step of the way!”
“I’m just a grad student, Doctor! Just a student! I was there to pass you a screwdriver when you asked for it! You know what that thing does, not me! You!”
“That’s enough,” the Doctor shouted, and somehow he was past Mark, pushing into the crowd.
“Doctor!” Mark shouted. “Doctor, she’s just one person! You can’t leave me here! There are thousands out there! She’s just one person!”
“And if I leave one person behind, what kind of doctor does that make me?”
The Doctor vanished into the seething crowd. For a moment Mark seriously considered leaping in and trying to drag him back out, before he turned into a zombie like the rest of them, punching the air and shouting one city, one voice, one city, one — He slapped himself, hard, and reached out for the widget, clutching it as if it was anchoring his sanity. Perhaps it was. If it worked that way. Which it might not.
Oh, God, what did he have to lose except the lives of every man, woman and child in the crowd? All he had left to hold onto was this: even if they all died, at least they weren’t him. He reached out and pushed one of the widget’s controls, going entirely on instinct.
What did that do? Did that do anything?
“Damn it, Doctor, get back here!”
He peered through the crowd, his hands clutching into fists. There was the Doctor, out there, standing by Ace, his hand on John’s shoulder, eyes closed, mouthing something silently or screaming at the top of his voice, Mark couldn’t tell. He punched the air in frustration. And then punched it again.
One city, one voice!
He could feel them coming. He could taste his own terror. Something was closing in, looking for the weak ones on the outskirts of the crowd. Mark shuddered with a primal fear of oblivion. Goosebumps prickled his arms, his hair bristling at the thought of something invisible stalking him, the shifting movement of grass against the wind on the veldt, a ripple in the water, just the thought, the thought of being eaten alive.
Someone crumpled and fell on the edge of the crowd, finally succumbing to heat prostration or to something worse, something terrible, something hungry, something here. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my; do not stray off the path to Grandma’s house, little one. Shapes in the dark, outside the firelight. A woman fell, her head striking the concrete, blood scrawling dark designs in the hot light of the afternoon sun.
“I can’t do this myself!” Mark screamed. “Jesus Christ, Doctor, do something!”
? ? ?
Saturday (dream time)
John closes his eyes.
Failure is like falling into the dark. He’s saved nobody, least of all himself. But he always knew it would end like this.
The abyss opens beneath him, its teeth flashing like knives in the night, cold and eternal and so much better than the effort of staying alive for one second longer in this world of pain. One quick flash, and it will all be over, the pain torn out of him and the rest cast into oblivion. All over for him.
For everyone. For Trish. That’s the thought that keeps him holding onto the now, clutching knucklewhite-tight to the present moment — the thought that when he falls, he’ll be letting her drop as well.
Letting her down?
That was a strange, fleeting thought, too warm and soft to be one of his. He’d forgotten how to have thoughts like that, if ever he knew. For one dangerous moment, he nearly relaxes in the compassion of it. As sharp as can be, he has a vision of his cat stretching in a patch of afternoon sunlight.
Your image, your memory.
Of course. Who else could it have come from? Strange that he can think such things with the screaming in his mind so loud — but thinking about it is a mistake, for that reminds him that it’s there, and suddenly it’s back, as powerful as ever, the weight of it pushing him back over the edge.
Your image, your thoughts. Sound weighs nothing.
Of course it doesn’t, it’s just a…
Your?
Who’s thinking these thoughts? Who’s talking to him, whispering these things into his mind?
Someone’s trying to help him.
He grabs that thought like a drowning man grasping a metaphor. Suddenly it’s as if he’s been given the opportunity to see things through another pair of eyes, as if he’s borrowing a perspective that is not his own. Or is having it lent to him.
Look at it this way…
John opens his eyes.
The crowd stands silent on the veldt, eyes turned up to the sun, the light so bright it’s blinding. Things are circling them. Even here, in the land of imagination, his eyes shy away from them. They’re dream shapes, born of the subconscious, and all that registers — all that really matters here — are the fears and impressions the things engender in him. Sleek and deadly, tooth and claw, bite and slash.
He stands up and turns to the woman next to him. In the land of imagination, she’s always been there. Flame-red hair, compassion and hurt, and other things he can’t describe; love and frustration bound together so tightly he needs a new word to describe it, and glowing.
The sun whose rays are all ablaze in ever-living glory…
She turns to him, light blazing from her face, so bright he can’t look directly at her. But isn’t that always the way? The tangle of emotions is beyond language, but no less real for that. Sense without communication. Unspoken.
Teeth flash in the sunlight as the fears close in, but the Doctor is there, his trenchcoat flapping, larger than life. In the veldt he towers above the crowd, yet wherever he stands his shadow is cast away from them. The teeth withdraw with a snarl of frustrated rage.
Where the ragged edge of the crowd threatens to break into chaos, individuals fall into the darkness to be chewed up by the bad things that wait there. But in the imagination, the Doctor is there, stalking the edge to drive the monsters back. There are those who fall away from the crowd, and he lets them go, letting them find their own way. He’s not always there in time, and John can hear him cry out in despair as another innocent victim falls to the gnashing forces of unfair. But he remains, endlessly circling, endlessly fighting, endlessly trying.
Somewhere outside the crowd, John feels a lone voice crying out, furious, refusing to be drawn into the surge, fists thrusting out against infinity, standing alone and winning the fight on his own terms.
Endlessly trying.
Red flame burns beside him, and he can see the dark at its centre now, what he’d always turned away from before. Somewhere in the heart of the flame, what she is remains intact, unspoken from fear and eating her up inside. So much herself, so unlike anyone else in the world, just like everyone else. All the people standing still in the crowd, deafened by the noise of those around them, eyes turned to the sky, waiting to be told where to go; waiting to be herded. And what can he say to them? What thoughts can he give them?
He can give them his own.
Ah, pray make no mistake, we are not shy; We’re very wide awake, the moon and I…
The veldt is a minefield of metaphors, but he has a vision to guide him through it now. Whether it’s real or not, he has the thoughts and hopes and fears and frustrations and dreams and petty, lovely, lonely bright lives of every single person in the crowd, all the people who need someone to save them but are too terrified to reach out and ask for help. And he has to answer them now, reach out and touch the things he’s been hiding from all his life because he doesn’t want to admit he feels the same terrible things they do.
John turns his gaze to the sun, and closes his eyes.
I can’t do this alone, he thinks, and it’s no longer a cry of weakness. He reaches out for Trish’s hand, thrusting his hand into the flames, letting himself burn. I NEED HELP!
The roar echoes across the veldt, and something responds.
? ? ?
Saturday (afternoon again, still)
A shadow fell across the square, darkness creeping across the face of the crowd like the world’s largest sundial striking midnight. Something like nothing, only more so, huge and not there and blotting out the sun.
Mark threw his hands over his head and huddled under the widget, desperate not to be seen, unsure what was happening but knowing This can’t be good.
John gasped and stood up. Solar eclipse was his one and only thought before the shadowlight touched his mind and he realized that his cry for help had been answered.
The Doctor stood where he was, gazing unflinchingly at the sky, his lips moving without speech, as if reading silently to himself, or thinking something through in his mind.
Trish dropped to her knees and, literally without thinking, caught John as he toppled out of his wheelchair.
Everyone else just fell over.
? ? ?
Dimly, Mark became aware that the roaring in his ears had ceased. He stretched out a trembling hand and grasped the edge of the widget, but then let it flop back into his lap. Give me a minute, he thought. What was that?
All the lights on the widget had gone off. He wondered if it was going to explode. Probably not. All the same, he should probably try to get up now.
Okay, now. Now. Now— one, two, three, now. Yes, there.
His legs shook beneath him, as if he’d been drinking too much coffee too fast after riding a bicycle for a month. Nevertheless, they supported him as he stumbled away from the widget, skirting the heap of humanity sprawling on the square. He could hear vaguely bewildered moans coming from the crowd, but he ignored them, heading straight for the one person who just might be able to make sense of things.
The Doctor was sitting cross-legged, next to Trish and John, gently stroking Ace’s hair, a strange smile on his face. John’s face was pale and white in the afternoon sunlight, and Trish was lying next to him, her eyes closed, his hand clutched tightly in hers.
Mark stood before them for a second, questions fighting to get out of his mouth. “What was that?” he sputtered. “That was something alien, wasn’t it? You were communicating with it. I saw your lips moving.”
“I’ve never been all that good with ventriloquism,” the Doctor said sadly. “Or ventriloquist’s dummies, for that matter. Remind me to tell you a funny story one day.” He sighed. “It was beyond description. Straight communication of concepts, thought without language. Like a tall glass of purple on the warmest month of the week, or the smell of ice cream when the one you love is driving past a field of Brahms.”
The Doctor gently lowered Ace’s head to the concrete and stood, stretching. For the first time he seemed to take in the vast crowd of sleeping people. “Hm,” he said. “Someone’s going to have a job explaining this.”
“Yeah,” Mark said bitterly. “Leave it to C-Major. God knows it’s not what you’re best at.”
The Doctor lifted an eyebrow, sighed and set off towards the widget. “Major Beatrice Sharp,” he said. “B. Sharp, Major. It’s not as clever as you think it is, you know.”
Mark snorted. “Fine. Be like that. At least I didn’t get my ontology sucked out through my nostrils. At least I’m not a smug, self-righteous git who won’t answer a straight question. You won’t even tell me how that thing we built worked.”
The Doctor shrugged. “You helped put it together. Weren’t you watching?” He looked at Mark, an infuriatingly compassionate expression on his face. “Not listening isn’t quite the strength you think it is.”
“That’s not fair,” said Mark.
“No,” said the Doctor. “Very little is.” He smiled again. “But thank you for your help, anyway.”
? ? ?
John’s eyes opened, the surf rushing in his ears. Everything was blinding bright again, but a silhouette stood over him, a patch of healing shadow cast over him.
“When did the sun come back out?” he whispered.
“It always was,” the shadow said back, in the Doctor’s voice. “You just couldn’t see it.”
John considered this. “Fair enough,” he said, and passed out again.
? ? ?
Saturday (evening)
Sharp looked more relaxed than Ace had ever seen her. “And that’s it?” she asked, arm resting lightly on the desk, tipped back lightly in her chair. “No more death from the skies?”
“And that’s it,” the Doctor confirmed. “Ca, c’est ca. La commedia est finita. The fat lady has sung, all’s well that ends well, and that nice young man from Memphis has left the building.” He leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face. “Quite an equitable conclusion, if I do say so myself. Even if I had very little to do with it in the end. Still, there are worse things than being a good example.”
Sharp smiled. “And this alien you spoke to, the thing that took the sheep away… this shepherd. Do we have its word that the wolves will never trouble us again?”
“Alien?” The Doctor shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s the right word. If a shepherd didn’t exist, it would have become necessary to invent one. Honestly, I’d prefer to think the crowd drove off the wolves themselves.” His teeth flashed white in a sudden bright grin. “If nothing else, it saves me the trouble of coming back and doing it for you all the time.”
“…Right.” Sharp sighed. “And I suppose that’s all the explanation we’re going to get from you.”
Ace smiled. “Get used to it, Major.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll have to,” Sharp said. She looked back at the Doctor, smiling. “Business concluded, and off like a summer breeze? See, I paid attention in the seminar.” She smiled. “Just don’t wait another thirty years until your next visit,” she said. “And call me Beatrice.”
? ? ?
“Don’t say you didn’t notice,” Ace laughed as she and the Doctor strolled towards the subway.
The Doctor lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t think she was making a pass at me.”
“She was making a pass at you.”
“I don’t think she was making a pass at me.”
“She was making a pass at you, Professor.”
The corners of the Doctor’s mouth quirked upwards. “Hmm. It’s amazing what a little co-operation will do for the soul, isn’t it? And the fact that her soldiers collapsed as well seems to have convinced everyone else at the rally that they weren’t responsible for what happened.”
He paused, rocking back on his heels, sniffing the air. “There are a few hundred people in this city who won’t walk through crowds with quite the same antipathy again. And a few who will, of course. Life’s like that. But being a part of an event like that leaves its mark.” He frowned. “Sometimes.”
Ace rested her hand on his arm. “You can’t save everybody.”
The Doctor’s frown deepened. “You’ve learned that?” He paused, staring ahead at the subway station. “It’s a nice night,” he whispered. “We could always walk.”
Ace reached out and took his chin, gently forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Doctor. I’m not used to it. I never will be. But you don’t have to sideline me.”
The Doctor looked at her for a moment without speaking. “You could have gotten yourself killed, you know.”
“At least I’d have been doing it myself. Doctor, you don’t give me anything to do, I’ll find something. You know that. You don’t have to protect me.”
“Or you me,” the Doctor murmured. “That’s the problem. Do you think I’m still not my new self yet?” He frowned. “Or do you think I’m my old self? Setting the trap with live bait? Were you out there for me, or for John?”
This time it was Ace’s turn to look away. “Maybe a little of both,” she admitted.
The Doctor smiled again. “Honesty,” he sighed. “Where would we be without it?”
“So…” Ace casually shrugged her hands back into her jacket pockets. “Back to the TARDIS?”
“Not yet,” the Doctor said. He rested his arm around her shoulders, and together, they strolled to the subway. “Tonight, I feel the need to be around people. Let’s go downtown.”
So they did.
? ? ?
Next Saturday (night)
John’s cat sat atop the television, its tail flicking nervously like a fisherman preparing to cast into a lake of piranha. Every so often he stopped setting the table and looked at it, just to make sure it was still there.
He wondered what the cat was feeling. It had always been a creature of routine, when it had been the only one sharing his life. The sight of silverware on the other side of the table must be filling it with unease.
It was going to have to get used to it, he hoped.
He brushed his hands against his shirt; showered twice and they felt clammy again already, but it was a good kind of nervous, not the old kind. He repeated the mantra the Doctor had taught him, and it seemed to fill the comfortable void he’d felt in his head for the past week.
The shepherd had been and gone, and something had been pulled out of him as the sheep tore itself free. The Doctor had said something about empathic overload numbing the sensitive parts of his brain, but he’d ignored the medical babble; he knew what had happened. He’d seen what people could do when they worked together, and he didn’t feel lonely any more.
This was the good kind of nervous, the kind that came from being unsure of the outcome, not the frantic jangling anticipation of things going wrong. From now on the cat’s tail would have to twitch for the two of them.
The doorbell rang, and the cat leapt from the television and vanished into the bedroom, knocking the rabbit ears onto the floor as it went.
John closed his eyes and breathed deeply. His stomach was aflutter, but he could calm it now, this time. He didn’t answer the door right away. He looked at the table, set out for two, a bowl of potato salad in the centre, fresh out of the fridge. He wondered if she liked potato salad, realised he didn’t know. The subject had never arisen.
Only one way to find out.
As he walked to the door he felt a sense of déjà vu. No, not that — a sense of shared experience. There was a thought in his head, like a dream, or an image so strong it could get to him even now that the connections had shorted out of his head, now that the thoughts of others no longer sliced into him and cut his soul away. It was an impression more than anything else, an image, a dream, or an idea of something flying…
His hand rested on the doorknob. Make or break time, he thought. What if it’s all just temporary? What if the shouting starts to come back? What if, on some level, you really know what she’s thinking? What if you’re prepared for her? What if you’re still reading her, instead of communicating with her?
He took another deep breath, and opened the door.
“I brought potato salad,” said Trish.
“Oh, thank God,” said John. “Please, come in.”
An image, a dream, or an idea, of something flying out beyond the solar wind, as fleet as a passing thought; something back where it should be, after so long alone, back amongst its own kind. Back where it belongs.
“Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.”
— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
