Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Dr Who – Martha and Ten The Inbetweens and Backstories ❯ Chapter Twenty Two ( Chapter 22 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

As they walked down the neon-lit boulevard, Martha looked up to see the hazy, glowing arc that bisected the night sky over their heads, twinkling against the alien starscape beyond it. It reminded her of a snowfall, but suspended in the air like a freeze-frame image. She blinked and laughed in delight as she realised that there were actually letters imposed on the shimmering band. She picked out a `W', an `O' and then another.

`Woo!' she said, reading it aloud. `Ha! Doctor, look! It says “woo” up there! That's funny.'

The Doctor halted and gave her a lightly mocking can't-I-take-you-anywhere? sort of look. `Actually, we're only just seeing the end bit of it. The whole thing says “Hollywood”, but the letters are a hundred odd kilometres high and you have to be in polar orbit to read it all at once.' He made a circling gesture with his index finger. `Rings, you know? Like Saturn has in your solar system. Made of ice and rock dust. The owners use photomolecular field generators to hold the letters in place. It certainly makes the planet easier to find.'

She smirked at him, raising an eyebrow. `There's a planet called Hollywood? Planet Hollywood?'

`Yup,' He started walking again, hands in the pockets of his big brown coat, skirting through the thronging mass of variant life forms who were also out enjoying the warm evening.

Martha was still looking upwards. `Oh yeah, the letters are moving, I can see it. Now it says `Ood”.'

`That's an entirely different planet,' he said offhandedly. `This one was terra formed in the late twenty-fifth century by a consortium of entertainment businesses, right after the Incorporated Nation of Neo-California was finally destroyed by a super-volcano.' He pointed up into the sky. `There's also BollyWorld in the next orbit over, a bunch of Celebra-Stations . . .'

`What happens there?'

`It's like a safari park, except you get to chase no-talent android celebrities around instead of wild animals.'

Martha made a face. `Things haven't changed much in 400 years, then.'

He went on. `This place is the movie capital of the Milky Way, and it's got the best cinema anywhere, anywhen . . .'

She nodded, taking it all in. `When you said we could go to the movies, I had thought, y'know, we'd stop off at my local multiplex or something . . .' Martha dodged to one side, to allow a pack of cheetah girls in opulent holographic dresses to pass them.

The Doctor turned to face her, walking backwards. `Well, we could. But this place has really smart seats.' He moved seamlessly, never once bumping into anybody despite the fact he wasn't looking where he was going. `And I mean really smart, as in intelligent. They mould to all your comfort zones, but not so much that you doze off during the good bits. And there's no sticky floors or people talking during the film. Free popcorn as well.'

`Choc ices?'

He nodded. `Oh yeah. All the trimmings.'

Martha gave him a sly smile. `Ooh, cosy. It's almost like a date,' she said hopefully.

For a second, the Doctor was slightly wrong-footed. `No, not really. Just, uh, two mates, going to see a flick . . .' I mean, he liked Martha, he liked her a lot. She was good company . . . a good mate, but she wasn't Rose.

He cleared his throat and pointed in the direction of a low dome made of hexagons a short distance away, changing the subject. `They copied the design from a place on Earth, the Cinerama on Sunset Boulevard.' He waved at the roof. `I've had a soft spot for it for ages. Defeated an incursion of Geomatide Macros there back in the 1970s. Nasty things, they used the angles of the ceiling tiles as a mathematical hyperspace vector generator . . .' He trailed off and then clapped his hands. `Right! What do you want to see? They've got everything. Pirates of the Caribbean VI? The Starship Brilliant Story? Casablanca?'

She sighed. `I'm in the mood for a Western.' The words popped out of her mouth without her thinking about it. `I haven't seen one in ages.' And suddenly, Martha felt a little bit sad. `When we were kids, me and Leo and Tish, we'd watch a cowboy film every Sunday afternoon. There was always one on, just before lunchtime. Mum would be cooking a joint and making these great roast potatoes, and we could smell it from the living room. We'd all get together, the three of us and Mum and Dad, and eat during the last half.'

She sighed. `Funny. It seems like that was a very long time ago. A very long way away.' Martha thought of her family and if felt like there was a vast, yawning distance between her and them. A pang of homesickness tightened in her chest, and her eyes drifted up to the alien sky again.

`A Western it is, then,' said the Doctor gently. `Rio Bravo. A Fistful of Dollars. Dances With Wolves . . .' He fell silent as they approached the box office. The kiosk was dark and lifeless. `Hang on. This doesn't look right.' He fished in his pocket and aimed his sonic screwdriver at the booth. The slender device buzzed, and the door hissed open.

He glanced inside and gave a pained groan, returning with a moment later with a sheet of electronic paper in his hand.

`What's wrong?'

`Cinema's closed,' he replied, showing her the paper. `It seems that last week they were having a disaster film festival, using virtual environment simulators. Apparently, someone set the dial too high when they were screening Earthquake! And, well . . . the floor caved in.' He Sighed. `Still. Better that than The Towering Inferno.'

She turned and walked back the way they had come, back toward the TARDIS. `It's OK. Never mind.' It was odd; after all, it wasn't as if they were talking about anything serious, right? It was just a movie, wasn't it? And yet Martha felt cheerless, as if something as simple as being able to watch some creaky old Wild West film was the only way she could feel close to her family, out here in the depths of space-time, so far away from all she knew.

The Doctor trailed behind her, stepping up to unlock the door of the police box as they returned to the alley where it had materialised. He seemed to sense her change of mood. `I'm sorry, Martha.'

She tried to make light of it. `Oh, who wants stale popcorn and runny ice cream anyway?' But she couldn't keep the disappointment from her voice. They entered the wide, domed chamber of the control room, stepping into the thrumming heart of the TARDIS.

All at once, the Doctor's expression changed. He grinned. `You know what? You're right. And I have a much better idea.'

He bounded past her to the console that ringed the crystalline central column. Without any apparent order to his actions, the Doctor skipped from panel to panel, nipping switches and spinning dials.

He paused, chewing his lip, and then worked a crank handle. Martha's momentary melancholy faded before his burst of excitement. She had to smile; the Doctor had a way about him, as if he took each piece of sadness in the universe personally, like he had sole responsibility to banish the gloom from things.

`What are you up to now?'

He peeked at her from around the column. `Why bother watching the Wild West?' he asked her. `Why bother watching it when we can, well . . .'

`Go there?' Her smile widened.

The Doctor grabbed the TARDIS's dematerialisation control. `Martha Jones,' he said, slamming the lever down, `Saddle up!'

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The Doctor, Martha, and the sheriff's son Nathan Blaine rode into the town of Redwood from the town of Ironhills and headed for the alleyway behind the Assay Office. They were in 1880's Colorado, not the place they had expected to find intelligent, alien weapons of mass destruction.

Two of the handguns had been found by a couple of gunslingers, and they had immediately been converted into Clade soldiers by the weapons. The third and most important weapon had been found by the travelling "quack" doctor Alvin Godlove, who had used the battlefield repair setting to cure people (for a reasonable remuneration of course).

Martha had been mortally wounded by one of the Clade to force the Doctor to find the controller weapon being used by Godlove. When he had found it, he then had no choice but to take the weapon and let it control him.

After saving Martha, he had then had a battle of wills with the Clade weapon, and very nearly lost. Unlike a certain Time Lord weapon of mass destruction that had a conscience, and had made him justify his actions, the Clade weapon had no such restrictions, and just wanted to kill.

The Clade had been bombarding him with his memories of loss for Rose, Sarah Jane, and all his other companions in an attempt to wear down his resistance. It tempted him with the promise of destroying the Daleks for good. Drowning in the darkness of these thoughts, he had been guided to the light of his goodness by Martha in the only way she could think of . . . She had kissed him.

That kiss had focussed his mind and he had been able to impose his own executive command protocols into the Clade weapons. That had caused a feedback loop which caused the weapons to self destruct, taking an old iron mine, and half the hill with them.

And now, they approached the welcoming blue box, hidden between the clapboard buildings, accompanied by Jenny Forrest, the town's school teacher. `And now you're both going to leave us,' she said.

Martha nodded, trying to keep a light tone to her voice. `Places to go, people to see.'

`Best this way,' said the Doctor. `I hate long goodbyes, don't you?'

`Hey, Doc!' As the three of them approached the police box, Nathan came bounding up to them. `Hey, uh, listen. Mr Hawkes tells me my pa left the house to me and all . . .'

Nathan's father had been shot and killed by the Clade when they came looking for Godlove. Nathan chewed his lip. `I was thinkin', you and Miss Martha might want to stay a while?' He nodded at the TARDIS. `A lot more room than in there, I'd reckon.'

`You'd be surprised,' Martha smiled.

`That's a kind offer, but we've got to move on.' The Doctor had his borrowed Stetson in his hand, and he flipped it around his wrist and placed it on Nathan's head. `Look after this for me, will you?'

`Sure,' said the youth, nodding reluctantly.

As Martha unlocked the TARDIS door, the Doctor gave Jenny a hopeful look. `One last thing. Just for the sake of propriety, could you do me a favour and make sure Mr Hawkes back there keeps us out of his newspaper? I think history can roll on just fine without us cropping up where we shouldn't be.'

`I'll do that,' Jenny promised, `but I'd beg to differ. History needs all the help it can get.'

The Doctor gave her a final nod and followed Martha into the TARDIS and shut the door behind him, closing off an all-too-brief glimpse of a strange, impossible room ranged inside.

For a long moment, Jenny and Nathan stood watching in silence; then the youth spoke. `So, uh, what happens now? Is that shack there gonna sprout wheels and roll away?'

Jenny smiled ruefully. `Given what I've seen of the Doctor, anything is possible.'

Abruptly the door opened a crack and the Doctor leaned out with a book in his hand. `Jenny! Almost forgot, I have something for you. You liked Jules Verne, right? You're going to love this guy, then. Bit political at times, but some brilliant stories.'

He pressed the book into her hand and the teacher opened it at the first page. `The Time Machine,' she read aloud, `An Invention. By H.G. Wells.' Jenny saw something in the text and frowned. `How odd. That must be a misprint. The publication date is ten years hence.'

`Yes, must be,' agreed the Doctor. `I wouldn't go lending it to anyone else, though. Well, maybe Nathan . . . But when you've read it, things will make a bit more sense, I promise.' He smiled again. `Bye!'

He left them there in silence; then the sound of mighty engines of infinity wheezed into action, and the TARDIS vanished into the fading light of the sunset.

Inside the time ship, the Doctor circled the central console and fiddled with the controls, patting and tapping the machine as one might stroke a cat, while the central column rose and fell, rose and fell.

Martha jerked her head in the direction of the doors. `Was that a sensible thing to do, giving Jenny a copy of a book that hasn't even been written yet?'

`Ah, it's OK,' he said airily. `I mean, what's she going to do? It's not like she can post spoilers on the internet, is it?'

`Good point,' she agreed. Martha's fingers strayed to the hem of her leather jacket and she suddenly realised she was toying with the spot where the gunslinger's energy blast had hit her. She drew in a sharp breath, and from the corner of her eye she saw the Doctor pause.

`I'm glad you're all right,' he told her, the mirth fading for a moment. `I'm only sorry it wasn't enough. There's always some who slip away . . . The Sheriff, Walking Crow, Alvin Godlove . . .'

`Him?' Martha blinked. `But he was a scumbag!'

`Really?' The Doctor eyed her. `Have you forgotten about all the people that man cured of smallpox, and who knows what other illnesses while he was carrying the Clade? I know he was motivated by greed, but a life saved is still a life saved.'

Martha paused, mulling it over. Perhaps the Doctor was right. Godlove had just been a quack con-artist with loose morals; she shuddered to think what could have happened if someone really dangerous, a true killer, had found the Clade in the woods that night.

`In his own warped sort of way, Alvin Godlove was trying to do the right thing. He was just . . . too weak to stand up to it.' She heard him sigh. `The Clades have the power to heal or to kill.' He looked at the holster still belted around his waist and with a frown; he took it off and put it aside. `Any kind of technology, it's always the same. It's not black or white, good or evil. It's how you use it, the intention behind it, that's the important thing.'

`Peacemakers,' said Martha, thinking.

`Yes,' replied the Doctor. After a moment, he crossed to where he'd dumped his brown coat in a heap on the chair and dipped into a pocket, his hand returning with her cell phone. His expression was troubled. `I . . . I thought you might want this back.' He tossed it and Martha caught it out of the air. `Just in case, y'know, if you wanted to call home.'

Martha opened the phone and her finger hovered over the keys. Whenever she had a bad experience in the past, it was Tish that she called, Tish who she moaned to, Tish that listened to her cry when she was dumped or just emotional over something. Martha thought about those moments after she had been injured, thinking of her family and wanting to see them again.

But what could she tell her sister if she called her? I'm just phoning from the Wild West to tell you how I got zapped by a space alien super gun with a mind of its own. She gave a slight shake of her head and snapped the phone shut again.

The Doctor was still watching her. `After what happened, I wouldn't mind if you wanted to, you know . . . call it a day.'

`Call it a day?' Martha repeated. `You mean, go home?' She nodded at the door again. `Are you throwing me out?'

`What?' The Doctor was abashed. `No, never. You're a brilliant house guest. You do your share of the washing up and you don't leave dirty kilts everywhere, not like some people.'

He paused, taking a breath. `It's not that at all. I meant go home if you want to,' he said, without weight. `It's not all fun and games, is it? It's risky, being a wanderer in the fourth dimension. I'd totally understand if you'd had enough, if all that was too much for you.'

He sighed. `It's not every day you stare death in the face. I'm sorry that had to happen to you, Martha, I really am.'

`It's not the first time I've been there recently. And if I stay, it could happen again, couldn't it?'

`Yes,' he admitted, careful and serious. `It could. And the next time you might not be so lucky.'

A slow smile crossed her face, turning into a grin as the Doctor's expression became one of mild confusion. `You know what? I lived through that. Me, Martha Jones, Medical Student. I lived through it and I was never afraid, not even for a second. Do you know why?'

He was starting to smile again. `Tell me,' he said.

`Because I trust you. You're the Doctor.'

He shook his head and chuckled. `And you're a rare one, Martha Jones.'

`I am,' she agreed, walking across to lean over his shoulder and study the monitor screen. `So,' she asked, `where next?'

The Doctor matched her grin. `Let's follow the trails of time, and see where that takes us . . .'