'The Fall!'
Chapter 13
Bingo's Bit of a Bloomer
SEEING SHE WAS STILL mystified, the Doctor looked at her in delight.
'We've started the Fall,' he said again. ' The Fall!'
And then she remembered being warned about what was
happening.
The nukes now damped off, they quickly achieved 'deep
fall'. That meant they had positioned themselves above a so-
called gravity well, a dangerous manoeuvre but commonly
made by commercial ships. It would allow them to gather
momentum from what these spacers called Little Rock, the
local black hole, so small it was invisible to the naked eye, yet
so dense as to be the gravitational core of the galaxy.
Gravity remained the most mysterious power in the
multiverse but they used it as casually as their ancestors
had used electricity. Now Little Rock drew them
downdowndowndowndowndowndown drew them down, drew
them down towards its almost inconceivable mass. 'A glitch.
he felt pinned. 'Can you feel it? Is it?f He felt sick. What was that?
A glitch. Scritch the glitch? His memory was wrong His senses...
Had he fallen asleep Why was he getting so much wrong?
The Doctor's head cleared. What had happened in those
few seconds?
The red-brown and yellowish tanker had not been built to
run on colour, that mysterious energy leaking through from
the Second Aether. But she would repower long before she
came anywhere near the Schwarzschild Radius. Meanwhile
she used the latent and most mysterious energy in this
universe to drag them 'down' to their next port, turning
slowly, end over end to preserve her interior stability and
keep her auxiliaries powered.
Now their only vision of the great vastness of interstellar
space came to them framed by their Vs. Hard experience
had told them what happened if you did not lock down the
portholes on an old ship (new ships lacked observation domes
altogether). Most sentient creatures who tried to use an open
observation dome, housing the majority of the ship's 'eyes',
their viewing and registering instruments, found themselves
staring into the near-infinite and going irredeemably mad.
The Doctor yawned. The chances of being attacked in the
space lanes were gone for the time being and everybody
could relax. Or almost everybody.
For a while he wrote calculations in tiny print in a little
black notebook, his face twisting with the exertions of his
massive brain. Drawing on life experiences denied most
sentient creatures, he concentrated on the many complicated
layers of existence, intratemporally occupying the same
space, nesting one within the other, each generally invisible
to the other.
Only a few were blessed or damned with the Doctor's
power to see the multiverse in all its vast, beautiful, bountiful,
exotically coloured aspects, its glamouring glory. Those few
knew how many truths could exist at once: the countless
alternatives, the infinity of paradoxes, the billion twists of
fate. That power only came with an understanding of how
space could be a dimension of time, still hard for the average
head to handle.
That was why the Doctor could be so apparently nonchalant
on occasions, frustratingly enjoying his insouciance, when
other people were going mad with terror. The ancestors of
the first interstellar human voyagers had been called Guide
Sensors. They'd had the same talent as the Doctor. Sensors
could plot courses through the cosmos others could not even
detect. These were the people who had once mapped the
multiverse and discovered another kind of space altogether.
This 'other' space was known as the Second Aether. There
were stories that the Doctor had actually named the region,
but he always denied it.
Of those who travelled on that tiny splinter of red and
yellow turning gently end over end through space, only the
Doctor could sense all the alternatives, weigh all the odds
and therefore make decisions impossible for anyone else. But
he, better than anyone, knew that he was not infallible. The
risks were horrible.
He slipped his notebook back into his pocket and seemed
to be sleeping with a look of astonishing serenity on his
face.
Watching him, Amy found herself imagining him as a speck
of glowing indigo, locked in a single stitch at the centre of a
swirling, glittering, multicoloured tapestry representing all
possible versions of all possible events, the alternate planes of
the multiverse, beginning and ending in dimensions too vast
or too tiny for the human senses to comprehend. How was it,
wondered Amy, that ordinary creatures like herself could be
aware of such vastness, almost beyond comprehension, and
still remain sane, still be concerned about their fate?
How could you take yourself and your own desires and ambitions
seriously? Amy wanted to know. How could you expect to have any effect at all on major events? Then she shrugged as she
had often shrugged before. The answer was, of course, very
simple: in spite of your being so apparently insignificant,
every action you or any other being took in the multiverse
had meaning and effect, and was echoed in every other
version of reality. Everyone was their own multiverse, just
as the peak of Everest contained fragments that were models
of the whole.
A spec of indigo. A distant horn.
In that wash of brilliantly coloured near-infinite geometry,
reflecting on all the dangers which might threaten humanity,
whose actions were mirrored and echoed almost to infinity,
the Doctor, that twin-hearted, generous alien, had entered a
world of near-infinite possibility. Amy did her best to imagine
what he saw and all the possibilities of which he was aware.
The Doctor was even now trying to work out the specifics
of the threat against all the millions of worlds inhabited by
intelligent species. He was doing what no computer could
do. Not for the first time her heart went out to him, the last of
his kind. He no longer had a single equal he could talk to.
Yet she was pretty sure he relished his life more than he
mourned it. If only she could follow him into those rich and
solitary places. She could probably help him to help himself.
But she knew much of her motive was to do with how she
envied him and almost resented the fact that he would never
be able to share his vision of the multiverse. Suddenly she
felt shut out and alone. Would she ever see her old, ordinary,
normal, shabby home world again?
At that point she saw the captain galloping past, his hoofs
muffled in huge, soft slippers. 'Anything wrong, captain?'
He glanced back at her, his voice quiet and controlled.
'Oh, we're falling faster than normal. Can't work it out. We
need to slow her down a touch, that's all. No danger, Miss.
Nothing for you to worry about'
She was about to sneak o
ff to her hammock in her own
quarters when she bumped into Bingo Lockesley whose
effect on her self-esteem had, she was forced to tell herself,
been putting her ego into double digits of late. Just the sight
of him cheered her up.
He had come in quietly. 'Is the Doctor snoozing?' he
whispered.
'Resting the mighty brain,' she told him.
'Apparently that fireworks display wasn't anything to
worry about,' Bingo informed her reassuringly. 'The ship
has switched into what the captain calls "Fall mode". I keep
thinking he's talking about girls' frocks. You know - "Spring
fashions"?' He was clearly cheered by her response. 'It was
almost like dreaming while awake. Felt like that to me,
anyway! Nice to see you smiling again, what? Mind if I join
you for a few minutes?'
'Not at all.' She had to stop herself flirting with him to take
their minds off all that had happened to them since they had
boarded the water tanker. 'Have you had your tea?'
His happy, innocent face cheered her up. 'Rather!' he
declared.
'Ah. I haven't.'
'Oh, gosh. Neither have I. Or rather I mean. Tea! Sounds
gripping.' He paused. 'Um, shouldn't we - I mean - you
know, pop the Doctor into his hammock?'
'He's hard to lift up,' she said. 'He tends to bend in the
middle.'
'Right-o. Leave him, then, shall we?'
'Probably best,' she said. Amy suspected the Doctor had
not picked that odd posture at random.
They were halfway up the corridor when she found herself
saying: 'So what do you think was in that hat?' And cursed
herself for an idiot. She had planned to stay away from any
serious conversation for a bit.
'Contraband?'
'Sure, that'll be it,' she said.
'It would have to have been something very valuable,
don't you think, eh? I mean, I can't see that General Force
and his gang taking all those risks just for a bit of canny-
canny or Jhivan honey.'
'Oh, yes,' she said, reaching the battered TeezUp and
selecting an Assam no milk/no sugar. She loved these retro-
nouveaux gadgets. They had the strangest appeal. She held
the big china cup in both hands and sipped while Bingo went
off to look for tokens so that he could buy her a bun.
She was wondering if the Doctor knew more than he was
telling. There were still a few mysteries to be solved.
Bingo returned in triumph, buns in hand. And before he
could sit down she had a question for him.
'Flapper's ma still has her hat with her, doesn't she?'
'Oh, of course, of course. Got it from Uncle - from the IM
- almost as soon as it was found.'
'Nothing was missing?'
'Mrs Banning-Cannon checked all that out and was
satisfied. It was messed up, that's all. I know. And Mr
Banning-Cannon said it was just as hideous and stomach
churning as it had always been.'
'He hated it that much?'
'Absolutely. Loathed it. Gave him the willies.'
'Something about it?'
'Said it reminded him of spiders.'
'But there weren't any spiders on it, surely? I mean, did
Diana of Loondoon have a Hat of the Arachne line?' Why, why,
why didn't she have the common sense to stop asking questions?
Bingo found this amusing. He laughed a little too long
and hard for his own ears and began to wonder if he was in
danger of giving himself away. He was relieved when Mr
Banning-Cannon turned up.
'Ah, there you are, sir!' Bingo cried. 'Everything tickety-
boo?'
'Eh? Oh, certainly. Never been ticketier or more boo.' The
great patriarch was in high spirits. The return of his wife's
hat and the fact that all suspicion was now focused on Frank/
Freddie Force had relieved him of most of his worries. He
was humming to himself, pottering about in a bit of a reverie.
His wife was no longer, as he put it, 'on his case' and his
daughter was in love with his wife's choice - hang on!
'Hang on,' he said. 'Aren't you the young chap our
Flapper's got her eye on?'
'Oh, gosh, no, sir. You must be thinking of Hari Agincourt.
He's the bloke sweet on Flapper. I'm - I mean - she's - that is
- Oh, cripes!' And Bingo again gave his celebrated impression
of a stop light. He had forgotten that Hari had specifically
asked him to say nothing until he had his promised job back
on Knots nee Peer™.
Mr Banning-Cannon couldn't face another drama.
'This chap any sort of Lord or such, like yourself?'
'You mean a member of the Peer Age, sir?'
'If that's what you are?'
'No, sir.'
'No? Oh, Lor',' Mr Banning-Cannon's eyes took on their
old hunted look. 'Not an aristo?'
'He will be, sir. Now the planet's mine, I intend to make a
few changes, and one of the first is to restore the monarchy
and the peerage. I could do it now, I suppose, but it would
be nicer to have a ceremony of some sort. Hari, for services
to his planet, will definitely be knighted, sir, but my guess is
hell receive an earldom before Yule.'
'Is that what you've got?'
'An earldom? Yes, sir.'
'And what's this "Yule"?'
'Yule's a kind of log, sir.'
'Really? Then everything will be fine. Bit o' money goes
with that, eh?'
enactment rights. All of that, sir.'
'Splendid. So all's well that ends well, it looks like, right?'
'Spot on, sir.' Beaming, Bingo let his hand be shaken
chirpily by Mr Banning-Cannon.
He turned to share his pleasure with Amy.
But she had gone, hotfooting it back to her quarters.
Bingo frowned. 'Must have been something I said,' he
opined. And returned, a little fuddled, to the cabin he shared
with Hari and Co.
Chapter 14
All Changed
THE SPACEPORT ON DESIREE was so vast it occupied half the land
surface of the planet. Coming to rest on the very edge of Left
Field, as it was called, the passengers eagerly unstrapped
themselves from their harnesses and, while they waited for
Customs and Immigration, crowded up to the observation
dome, no longer out of bounds.
The Doctor hadn't been to Desiree for many years and he
remained deeply impressed. The spaceport offered an endless
landscape of ships. Ships stood beside fuelling and repair
derricks, their prows pointing proudly into the loud and
glaring sky. Ships lay at anchor above and below the clouds,
or within the clouds, their hulls sparkling with unnameable
radiations, or pouring blue, purple and green smoke into the
disturbed atmosphere, coiling to mix with the subtler shades
of lavender, dove grey, pale green and liquid blue torn by
constant lightning storms in its upper reaches.
The huge yellow moon with its silvery red rings was
clearly visible on the horizon, silhouetting the slender golden
snub-nosed Graham-White superfast interceptor ro
ckets of
the IPC, sporting beautifully tapered stabilising wings and
festooned with bulbous gun turrets. These were dwarfed by
tall, asymmetrical djonkers ships, flown by bots and crewed
by Ramimeds, capable of surviving without air for hours at
a time and needing little sleep. The long-run spacers could
cross from one galaxy to another but were unable to carry
living creatures other than Ramimeds, whose home planet
spun about a sunless region of the galaxy and was essentially
a giant comet. Between these flew buzzing tenders, loading
and unloading, bringing passengers off or putting them on.
Hari Agincourt, with Flapper beside him, pointed excitedly
at ships he recognised.
'Look, Flapper, that's a giant De Havilland! And there's
a Dumont F-22! That's a modified Farnsworth Wright and
Wright. Gosh, that's a Judoon interceptor. A double-hulled
Ban'sh star cruiser. An old Comer ring-rider. An M-type
Galinax. A Vickers 12-30M. This is amazing. I never thought
I'd see any of these in real life. I have the I-Spy Vs, of course.
Oh, wow!'
Flapper did her best to seem interested but she was
beginning to long for a few hours' solitude and a nice bit
of good escapist V-fiction. Love covered many a well-earned
yawn.
She had to admit the sight was stunning, though. There
were squat ships and circular ships, brightly coloured ships
and severe black, white and grey ships, ships made to
resemble birds or giant fish; there were ships which seemed
spun from spiders' webs and hung with silvery droplets of
dew, ships so massive they looked as if they would sink into
the super-reinforced concrete of their pads. A million shades
of metal flashed and clashed in the crowded port. Peoples of
every race and manufacture walked between the gantries or
sailed above them in open air-cars leaking colour. And when
the atmosphere testers came on, the new arrivals were hit by
a sea of scents out of which it was possible to detect burning
metal, fuels of every kind, plants, bodies, cooking food, the
life-gasses of a thousand worlds.
'Atrocious!' Flapper's mother put a handkerchief to her
mouth and nose. 'Why do the authorities permit this stink?'
'Believe it or not,' Captain N'hn stopped at the open door,
swinging a bag over his shoulder, 'it used to be worse. They
have planetary deodorisers on full blast and air conditioning