Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication (8 page)

The Dr bowed to the Time Chairgentleman, seated at apex of the many curving rows of seats, behind the sumptuous Time Table of Garlicfree. We both followed suit. Then we made our way to the side of the chamber and slid onto one of the benches.

‘You’re
quite
sure?’ I pressed. ‘I mean . . . convenance. It doesn’t have the . . .’

‘It is a meeting
convened
by the Time Gentlemen. Therefore it is a Time Gentlemen’s
Convenance
.’

‘It’s just that I’ve never,’ I said, a little nervously. ‘I mean, in all my years as a tailor of prose, I can say that—’

‘Shhhpshh!’ hushed the Dr crossly. ‘Tsschh! Czsch!’

The Chair had got to his feet. Which is to say, the Time Gentleman chairing the meeting, who had been sitting in a chair, was now standing. The chair itself remained standing throughout the whole proceedings. ‘Time Gentlemen and honoured guests!’ he commenced.

‘It is with enormous, Gentlemen’s,
relish
that I welcome the Doctor to our proceedings.’

‘Too kind,’ murmured the Dr, bowing his head to the gathering.

‘As many of you know,’ said the Chair. ‘The Doctor has been engaged on a certain secret mission - the nature of which I cannot, in the present company, disclose. This mission is of the
utmost importance
. It is, in other words,
more
than most important. There is an
ut
involved too.’ A murmur went through the room. ‘Suffice to say,’ boomed the Chair. ‘That his mission has been more than a standard Time Gentlemen mission - more than going about painting-in the missing apostrophes from shop-signs, and more than correcting complete strangers on their failure to use the subjunctive mode.’

‘If I
were
,’ murmured the entire room. ‘If I
were
. . .’

‘No. Our intelligence informs us that a TGV has been purchased by a mysterious and malefactoral figure in Le Bar Sexy in sector Parsec-“C” out by the Giffin Head Nebula.’

‘A TGV!’ whispered the assembled Time Gentlemen.

‘I need not tell you how serious this matter is,’ said the Chair. ‘The one thing that can destroy the life of a Time Gentleman . . . and it could be used again and again, perhaps to wipe out the entire race of the Time Gentlemen.’

‘Blime-crikey!’ said the Dr.

‘Our intelligence reports,’ said the Chair, ‘that . . . and I ask you all to prepare for a shock . . . but that the gun is now in the possession of . . . Stavros.’

The whole room fell silent with shock.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Chair, sombrely. ‘I hardly need to tell you how serious a development this is. If Stavros is able to arm his evil cyborg army with TGVs, then the whole future of Time Gentlemanliness is in danger. We could all be wiped out!’

‘What can we do!’

‘For now,’ said the Chair, ‘continue with your various missions. We have breaches of time-grammar that need clearing up in every sector of the Galaxy. Meanwhile the Council of Time Gentlemen will ponder our options. We may be compelled to take the most drastic course of action of all - going back in time to before Stavros was able to create his monstrosities, and eliminating them before they are even created!’

There was only one item of ‘any other business’, relating to the washrooms. After that the meeting was adjourned.

The TARDY rematerialised on the patch of green lawn just outside the Houses of Parliament in London, England, Europe, the World, Solar System. The date was 1960. It was a bright sunny day.

‘So what’s the problem here?’ Linn was asking as we stepped from the TARDY. Red Routemaster double-decker buses rolled past. Beefeaters walked arm-in-arm with soldiers in busbies. Everybody was wearing miniskirts, driving mini-cars, and laughing with mini-hahas.

‘It’s like a history lesson!’ I exclaimed.

‘Lesson in ahistory,’ Linn said darkly. ‘More like.’

I smiled at this, and even forced out a chuckle, but then I gave up. ‘No, I don’t get that at all.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Come along,’ said the Dr. ‘We’ve a job to do. The government here has been infiltrated,’ the Dr said. ‘An alien race called the Sluttyteens. They look on the outside like obese teenagers. But that’s just a prosthetic skin-suit. Underneath that skin, gleaming as it is with the oil of sebum, are pure Slutties, from the planet Slut.’ The Dr shook his head. ‘Very nasty types. No class or style at all.’

‘They shouldn’t be here?’

‘Indeed not. That’s a clear violation of the law of temporal enclitic participles, right there. They shouldn’t be on this planet at all. They should just go back to the planet Slut, and grow up. If we were to do nothing they’d use their hidden positions to pass a series of laws liberalising sexual behaviour, turning nineteen-sixties Britain into a louche and swinging place with no respect of any kind for order, grammar, sequentiality or anything at all. They must be stopped!’

‘How?’

‘Should be easy enough. I’ll slip into the main chamber of Parliament, whilst a governmental debate is going on. I’ll walk up to the Minister for Swinging Affairs, and yank off her skin-suit - in full view of everybody. Once they’re exposed, it’ll be a simple matter to chase them back to their homeworld.’

‘Shall we come with you?’ I asked.

‘Nah,’ said the Dr. ‘I’ll be fine by myself. It should only take me a minute.’ He marched off for the main entrance of the House of Commons.

 
It was a warm and sunshiny day, and it was pleasant to sit on the grass with Linn at my side.

‘Linn,’ I said, plucking strands of grass and twirling them between my fingertips. ‘Now that the Dr’s away for a moment, can I confess something to you?’

‘Go on.’

‘Promise not to tell him?’

‘Alright.’

‘I know how important grammar and everything is to you. And I know I’m a prose tailor and everything. But the thing is . . . ’

‘What?’

‘I can never remember when to use
who
and when to use
whom
,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I can’t understand why we have both those words. We could just make do with
who
and everybody would still understand everybody.’

‘Maybe they would,’ Linn agreed. ‘But then we could probably understand one another if we did away with all grammatical tense, all distinction between subject and object . . . why, we could probably point and grunt and get our message across. But it wouldn’t be a very elegant or sophisticated universe, then, would it?’

‘No need to be snarky,’ I said.

‘Tell me, Prose. Do you understand the difference between
he
and
him
?’

‘Um,’ I said.

‘She punched
he
in the face? Or: she punched
him
in the face?’

‘The second one.’

‘And you know the difference between
she
and
her
.’ Linn pressed. ‘It’s just like
he
and
him
, after all. He disappointed
she
? Or: he disappointed
her
?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, in that case you already understand the difference between
who
and
whom
,’ she said. ‘It’s exactly the same thing. I really don’t understand why people have such a problem with it. You wouldn’t say
I gave the book to he
, would you! You wouldn’t say
he kissed she
. No. You wouldn’t. In exactly the same way you wouldn’t ask
to who did he give the book
? Of course not. To
whom
did he give the book. He was the one to
whom
the book was given.’

‘Is it really as simple as that?’

‘It really is.’

‘I feel like I’ve learned something here today,’ I said.

‘Here comes the Doctor,’ said Linn, getting to her feet. ‘And he’s walking funny.’

 
He was indeed walking in a most peculiar manner, taking strides with his right foot and them making little hoppy-draggy motions with his left to catch up. He was clutching his gut. ‘Something’s wrong,’ Linn said, hurrying over to him.

‘Help me inside the TARDY,’ he said, in a strangulated voice.

‘What happened?’ I asked, taking some of his weight as he struggled over the grass. ‘Did you expose the overweight minister as a Sluttyteen in a skin-suit?’

‘Not exactly,’ gasped the Dr.

‘Then what?’

‘Well - I managed to get in the chamber alright, and sidle up to the Minister. But no matter how vigorously I tugged away at her fat-suit it wouldn’t come off. It was only when she was rolling around on the floor shouting, with me on top of her, and an enormous commotion all around us, that I realised she wasn’t a Sluttyteen at all. Just an amply-proportioned middle-aged woman. I think I’d picked the wrong one.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘What happened then,’ said the Dr, as we opened the door of the TARDY, ‘was that special branch shot me.’

‘Shot you?’ I gasped.

‘That’s right. Shot me in the gut. Can’t say I blame them. We’d better get out of here before the army turns up.’

He staggered inside the TARDY, fell against the console, pressed buttons to dematerialise us, and then, with a gasp, he fell to the floor.

‘Doctor!’ I cried, running over to him. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Not so much alright’ he said, ‘as
dying
.’ And on that last word, he passed out.

‘For the
last
time,’ said the Dr, tetchily. ‘It was an
accident
. Come come
come
, how was I to know? It could have happened to anybody!’

‘Dead! Dead!’ I wailed. ‘The woman of my dreams!’

‘There’s no point in getting so wound-up about it,’ said the Dr. ‘I can’t believe you’re blaming me for that . . . can’t you see how irrational that is? Can’t you see that I really had nothing to do with it?’

‘He does have a point,’ said Linn.

But my grief was making me blind.

‘You have to understand that everybody dies,’ the Dr said. ‘It’s the way of things.’

‘It’s all very well for
you
to say that!’ I said. ‘If you die you just pop back to life with nothing but an upset tummy. It’s not so easy for the likes of
us
.’

‘Well,’ said the Dr, looking around him in a faintly senile manner. ‘I wouldn’t describe re-un-de as easy. My dear fellow,’ he added, kindly. ‘You do look upset!’

‘Can you blame me?’ I cried.

‘Of course not. Nobody blames you. Why don’t you take a seat, maybe have a cup of tea? You’ll feel better in a moment.’

‘My heart is shattered into a googolplex of pieces!’ I snapped.

‘There there,’ he offered, vaguely.

‘Doctor,’ said Linn. ‘Not to ignore Prose’s sufferings, but: we still have our mission, don’t we. And if we can’t go
outside
. . .’

‘It’s a puzzler,’ agreed the Dr.

‘There must be a solution.’

‘Hey, I’m in emotional
pain
over here,’ I cried.

‘Have you any ideas?’

‘I was thinking,’ said the Dr. ‘I
could
send out my robot dog, K2. He could fetch the device, and suffer no ill-effects. ’

‘You have a robot dog?’

‘Yes! Well, sort of. Or, to speak absolutely accurately—’

‘Yes?’

‘In
absolutely
accurate terms, no not really. He’s a little less a robot dog, and a little more, strictly speaking, the second-highest mountain peak on Earth.’

‘You keep the second-highest mountain peak on Earth aboard the TARDY?’

‘I put it in the dog kennel.’

‘The TARDY has a dog kennel?’

‘From the outside it’s kennel-sized. On the inside it’s large enough to accommodate - well, the entire mountain. ’

‘I don’t understand why you’d detach the Earth’s second highest mountain and put it inside the TARDY.’