Doctor Who: Rags (23 page)

‘Could the royals have gone too far?’ he echoed, turning The Clash’s ‘I Fought the Law’ up on the dash player. ‘I fought the parasites, and the parasites won. Well maybe not this time, eh, Nick? Maybe this time they have gone too far, and all those stupid sheep they call soddin’ subjects will finally realise the bastards have gottago!’ He cackled with wild enthusiasm, tailgating the Beetle crammed with travellers in front of them, his energy levels kicked into top gear and impatient with the crawl of the convoy.

They were on the move again. Nobody knew why; nobody knew where to. But hell, they were on the move again, and that was good enough for Jimmy.

Nick didn’t answer his friend. He was staring out of the window as the last of Bristol’s suburbs dragged by. ‘She can’t remember,’

he said finally, as if to himself.

‘You what?’ shouted Jimmy over the riot of guitar.

‘The papers say she can’t remember what happened,’ Nick continued dreamily.

‘Conveniently lost her memory for five minutes, yeah right,’

scoffed Jimmy, sparking up a cigarette, his face a mass of bristles and sneers. He had always struck Nick as looking like someone 167

who had once had a violent past but had since become a reformed character. Lately, the reformation had been kicked out of him. Now he wanted bloodlust like all of them, Nick pondered bleakly, and then amended the thought: just like all of us.

Jo spoke up: ‘It says in the Communist Worker that the

‘possessed for five minutes’ statement is just an excuse, and that the princess was most definitely consciously acting out the royal family’s blatant disgust and hatred of the lower classes. Basically, that she let herself get a bit carried away with it all.’

‘And now she will be carried away for good,’ Jimmy bleated.

‘Lock the bitch up in Broadmoor, that’s what they should do.’

Nick said nothing. He was thinking about the Country Life demonstration and the almost complete lack of trouble on that day; and the subsequent events that had so massively eclipsed the protest. It troubled him. It was almost as if the spirit of mayhem had drifted away from the travellers for a fleeting moment and settled elsewhere. He caught Sin glaring at him and returned her cold stare with a growing disgust he could no longer hide. He was becoming as infected as all of them. He wanted blood too; but somehow he’d kept his conscience, even if he could do nothing about it. Every time he tried to speak out he quailed inside, as if something were reining him in. He could express himself only in passive loathing for what he had become and for those he had once loved.

He stared out of the window as the countryside opened up around them. He wondered if UNIT were still tailing them, and knew without needing to check that they were, and that they would be making no moves to interfere with the convoy’s progress; still following the same non-engagement rules they had been adhering to all along.

He knew that was the case, but what he didn’t understand was...

Why?

Kane bought his ticket and took his place in the village-hall stalls.

168

In the first row of course. He was very drunk now. Had been pursuing the art all day. No one had attempted to prevent his entry into the hall, but that was understandable. He’d kill any sod who tried, and that readiness for violence showed in his wild and sleep-deprived appearance. His eyes were bloodshot, his long hair was a tangled mess. He hadn’t spoken a word to anybody in days. He gazed up at the curtain as the villagers settled themselves in their seats around him and waited to enjoy the show.

Kane shifted his bleary attention to the programme in his hands, as if it would make some sense out of his life. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest recorded work of fiction, it said. The tale was originally carved on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. The programme gave a brief summation of the plot: the egocentric King Gilgamesh ruled his people with an arrogant will, dominating their lives and allowing none their individual liberties or freedom of expression. He was a lonely tyrant, however, and longed for a companion in arms.

Kane lit a cigarette.

‘Excuse me, it’s a no-smoking venue, I’m afraid.’

Kane turned slowly to face the speaker. It was a young man in a shirt and tie, balding prematurely, who was showing people to their seats. Kane stared at him, cigarette poised at his lips.

‘Sir?’ the man prompted again nervously.

Kane dragged slowly on the cigarette, not taking his eyes off him.

‘Please, we have to think of the fire regulations’ The man was beginning to sweat.

Kane turned back to face the stage and took another drag. ‘Let the show begin,’ he said in a strange voice. As if on cue, the lights dimmed.

‘Grandfather?’

‘Grandfather?’

Someone was calling for him. Someone he hadn’t seen for such a long time.

169

‘Grandfather, is that you?’

No. Not her. It wasn’t time for him to meet her again. He’d left her. Abandoned her, hadn’t he? Running away from his responsibilities, just like he’d always done.

Run, rabbit, run.

Across the universe, along the yellow asteroid road.Always chasing the rainbow.And finding a pot of blood at the end of it.

‘Grandfather? Are you coming out to play?’

He could see her now she was walking across the insane trace of the reality-wound (because that was all it was that was all it was that -) and she was dragging behind her something like a big stuffed doll. No, not a stuffed doll.A stuffed man.Her husband.0f course. He died, didn’t he? Old and diseased in a hospital bed while she was still young. Nice fate: to watch the person you love (grow older and older, to see the sorrow and yearning in their eye: as they stare back realising that it was the truth after all - that you will stay young for ever. Or so it must have seemed to him.

And maybe there would be bitterness too. Resentment, at the trick of fate.

Never marry an alien.

Didn’t I tell you that one, Susan. Didn’t I?

She was still dragging the corpse after her, and yes, it was old and white-haired and wearing hospital pyjamas.

Go away. It wasn’t my fault. Love kills, didn’t you know? Even if you don’t actually die.

The curtains swished apart. The Epic of Gilgamesh was commencing. Simon was the first on the stage, and Kane stared a him. He hadn’t seen him for years, but the young man, slightly portly with chubby cheeks and weak chin, was still the boy who had tortured him on the school playing field. Just across the road in fact. Kane thought abstractly about the distance in yards an the distance in time, and it didn’t make much sense, but the perhaps it wasn’t supposed to. Life was all a matter of absurdities he found himself thinking about his grandfather’s corpse.

170

He’d broken into the morgue the night before the funeral to see if they’d tampered with the old bastard’s body. He’d only been ten, but he’d heard tales and he wanted to see if they put makeup and shit on him. Didn’t give a toss about him being dead of course. He’d found the coffin, unopened, against one wall. His grandfather was inside it, miserable-looking as he’d always been in life. Kane had thought they might have tried to pinch his cheeks into a macabre smile, but what he’d found had been funnier still: to lift the pillow on which his grandfather’s rotten old head was lying and give him a more dignified air, the funeral assistants had stuffed magazines behind it. Pornographic magazines.

Now that was bloody funny. The young Kane had thought so.

So did the old Kane. He began barking with loud laughter and his distracted, drunken, crazy thoughts meandered away from his childhood visions to the bastard who had evoked them, who was standing a mere ten yards away, tall and proud in flowing robes.

And suddenly they locked eyes.

Simon froze in midsentence. His eyes widened, his fey poise wilted. Then he recovered his composure and snapped back into his role. ‘I am the strongest here!’ he bellowed, deliberately staring at Kane, lifting up his pudgy arms and vaingloriously blind to any irony. The chorus kicked in with:

‘Is there none to challenge Gilgamesh?’

Kane lit another cigarette and noticed from the corner of his eye that someone was moving into one of the empty seats two down from him. He didn’t need to look round to know it was Cassandra, Simon’s sister, and that she was watching him worriedly.

‘I am the strongest here!’ bawled simon again, surveying the audience with petulant bravado.

And again, Kane barked with raucous laughter.

The chorus twittered on with their story, ignoring the dishevelled drunk in the front row. As wind instruments accompanied their melodramatic posturing, they spoke of a meteor falling from the heavens and bursting open to reveal an 171

antidote to the megalomaniac king: a leveller, the wild man Enkidu, who will supposedly oppose Gilgamesh but in fact will inevitably accompany the king on his journey through ego. This much Kane knew from the programme, even though he had only dimly assimilated it in his drunken stupor. The actor playing Enkidu, the challenger, was in the wings about to make his grand entrance - Kane could see him fidgeting in the darkness.

‘Is there none to challenge Gilgamesh?’ wailed the chorus again.

Kane stood up, ground his cigarette out, and vaulted on to the stage. He staggered slightly as he moved forward. He could see the amazement on the face of Enkidu as the actor waddled on stage. He could see the horror on Simon’s as his old enemy bore down on him.

Simon opened his mouth to speak, but his lips merely flapped pitifully. His callow cheeks whitened. The village hall was silent, silent as a funeral home. Kane seized ‘the king’ by his toga and spun him round so that his back was to the audience. Blank-faced, he gave Simon a massive shove that sent him flailing off the stage and into the audience, just missing his stunned sister who let out a little shriek of alarm.

Kane stood there for a moment in the spotlight, unshaven, shabby, drunk. His eyes were locked and strange.

‘He’s coming,’ was all he said. Then he jumped down from the stage and strode out of the auditorium as the villagers erupted into excited chatter.

‘Stonehenge, Prime Minister,’ the Brigadier said into his RT as the jeep crawled several hundred yards behind the last vehicle in the convoy. It’s the only logical destination for them, considering we’re now travelling through Wiltshire. Mystical home for travellers, and all that.

A chalk white horse was visible on the hillside to their right.

The Brigadier glared at it disapprovingly. ‘Yes, sir. We can throw a cordon around the monument, but wouldn’t it be better to contain them within the circle? I see...’ He frowned at his staff 172

sergeant who was steering the jeep. ‘Public outrage about the possibility of the stones being defaced? But sir, what about public outrage at what has already taken place? Surely -’ The Brigadier sighed. ‘We’ll keep them out of the stone circle. Yes, sir.’ He broke the connection and stared ahead thoughtfully.

‘Trouble, sir?’ asked the staff, braving the Brigadier’s obvious bad mood.

‘Hmm?’ The Brigadier gazed blankly at his sergeant for a moment. One of the hippies in the back of a filthy Renault was making lewd hand gestures at him. He watched the offender with a weary expression. ‘Trouble, Staff,’ he confirmed. ‘We’ve been ordered to protect a bunch of stones. It seems the powers that be cannot take any more assaults on the public domain. Elections are In the air, I’m afraid, and our English Heritage being damaged really would be the final straw.’

He sighed again and pressed a button on his RT. ‘Sergeant Benton,’ he barked as soon as a connection was made. ‘Deploy every UNIT vehicle towards Salisbury Plain. Stonehenge, to be precise, Sergeant; and we’ve got to get there before the convoy.’

He signed off, and turned to the staff. ‘Right, let’s find a short cut, and fast.’ He cocked an eye at the white horse. Its wide mouth seemed to be braying with laughter.

At the head of the convoy, the chief roadie led the way on a battered Vincent. Directly behind him, the cattle truck growled through the country lanes like a grimy dinosaur searching for prey. The windscreen was practically opaque with dried mud. The roadie pulled up at a crossroads where a signpost pointed schizophrenically in three directions. Without hesitation, the roadie steered his motorcycle along the road leading towards Salisbury, then pulled into a lay-by. The cattle truck swung slowly In another direction, exhaust blatting out clouds of black fumes.

Then something very odd and very precise occurred: the first half of the convoy followed the cattle truck; the latter half peeled off after the roadie, who veered his bike on to the road again and 173

roared off into the gathering dusk as his obedient portion of vehicles crossed the junction.

Not a word had been spoken to any of the convoy drivers. They just knew which route to take. It was that simple.