Doctor Who_ Byzantium! Part 2

Barbara towered over him, elongated. Bent out of shape by gravity's pull and seemingly at an angle of 60 degrees.

Don't get me started on Pythagoras, Ian thought angrily.

Another right silly-sausage with his hypotenuse and his theorem. theorem. Barbara's hands rested on her hips and she had a concerned look on her face, of the sort that she normally reserved for tending to a second-former with a grazed knee in the playground. 'Have you hit your head?' she asked, maternally. Ian just smiled, stupidly, and tried to get back to Barbara's hands rested on her hips and she had a concerned look on her face, of the sort that she normally reserved for tending to a second-former with a grazed knee in the playground. 'Have you hit your head?' she asked, maternally. Ian just smiled, stupidly, and tried to get back to for every action there is always opposed an equal reaction. for every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Somewhere nearby Vicki was still sobbing. 'Look to the girl, Miss Wright,' Ian murmured and then slumped into unconsciousness to dream, happily, of sitting in a tree and throwing apples at that clever-d.i.c.k Newton's head.

'Good gracious, child, stop that snivelling. It's only a flesh wound.'

Ian had always found that particular phrase a little ludicrous. A flesh wound means, surely, that one's own flesh has been wounded? Which is, let's be fair, pretty painful.

Therefore, he saw no reason to quantify this as somehow less dramatic than any other type of non-flesh wound.

Considerably more than some, in fact. He opened his eyes and saw the Doctor and Barbara struggling to apply a cotton bandage to Vicki who had, seemingly, cut her arm on the rim of the console. Feeling dizzy and sluggish, Ian closed his eyes again and swam happily back to his warm and cosy dreamworld until a sharp poking in his ribs brought him out again.

'...And as for you, Chesterton,' the Doctor said, prodding Ian with his stick, 'they would call this malingering in the army.'

A scowling face and a shock of white hair greeted Ian as he reopened his eyes.

I did two years' national service in the RAF, Doctor,' Ian replied, pus.h.i.+ng the walking stick away. 'You know know that. that.

Honourably discharged. I can still remember my rank and serial number if you want?'

The Doctor seemed to spend an age considering this before he chuckled and patted Ian on the back. 'You'll live, my boy,' he noted and returned his attention to the still-complaining Vicki. Oh, do stop making such a fuss...'

Barbara joined Ian and knelt beside the wicker chair in which he was resting. 'How do you feel?' she asked.

'How do I look?'

'Like you've just gone fifteen rounds with Henry Cooper,'

she replied, truthfully, and held up a mirror to Ian. One side of his face was swollen and an ugly purple bruise was beginning to manifest itself around his right eye.

'Sort of feels like it too,' Ian admitted as he stood, gripping the arms of the chair for support. 'You ought to see the other fellah...'

'... but it hurts,' shouted Vicki from across the room.

Of course it does,' replied the Doctor, in exasperation. 'It's supposed supposed to.' to.'

Barbara rolled her eyes. 'We'll have to get her toughened up a bit,' she said, glancing at their newest travelling companion. Ian followed her gaze at the girl who, with the bandage applied to her arm, was now discovering other b.u.mps and bruises. And complaining, loudly, about them.

'She's got a chip on her shoulder the size of Big Ben,'

continued Barbara. 'I told her to act her age and she asked how she was supposed to "act fourteen". You'd never have heard impertinence like that from Susan.'

'You've got a short memory!' Ian noted with a wry smile.

'Susan could be a right scallywag when the mood took her.

Vicki's no different'

'Perhaps,' Barbara replied, 'but I can't see the Doctor putting up with too many lead-swinging performances like this, look-alike replacement or whatsoever...'

Ian was amused by this. 'If she'd gone to Coal Hill, you'd have sent her to Mrs McGregor, no doubt?'

Barbara winced at the thought of the eighteen-stone Scottish form mistress who not only terrified all of the pupils, but a fair percentage of the staff as well. 'I can't see Vicki at Coal Hill, somehow,' she noted.

'Come to that, I can't see you or I returning to a life of registers, dinner money and log tables,' said Ian flatly. That he had given a lot of thought to the possibility of returning home didn't surprise Barbara in the slightest. She, herself, spent a portion of every day pondering on when and if it would ever happen.

'Do you think we ever will get back?' she asked. 'To our own time, I mean?'

'In the lap of the G.o.ds,' Ian noted with a fatalistic shrug of his shoulders. 'Or, should I say, in the hands of the Doctor?'

Is it always like this? asked Vicki as she flexed her bandaged arm.

'No,' replied Ian. 'Now and again we actually arrive somewhere and don't get thrown headfirst into peril, danger and mayhem, Isn't that right, Doctor?'

The Doctor raised his head from a complex piece of TARDIS equipment, clasped the lapels of his Edwardian waistcoat and strode purposefully towards Ian who was standing by the console.' What's that, eh? Had enough, have you, hmm? Care to get off? I'm sure that could be arranged.'

He peered at the schoolteacher across the rim of the half-moon spectacles that rested on the bridge of his nose, his blue-grey eyes resembling a raging sea in the middle of a force-ten gale.

Vicki stared, aghast. This was to be her new home? A surrogate family of squabbling, loud, authority figures.

'Stop fighting, you two,' said Barbara, clearly embarra.s.sed that their new companion was being introduced to such a confrontational aspect of TARDIS life, 'We're safe now... For the time being, anyway. Shouldn't we find out exactly where we've landed?'

The Doctor gave a m.u.f.fled humph of bellicose indifference and moved to the console, edging Ian out of the way with a terse 'excuse me'.

'A vexed question, clearly,' Ian observed as he followed.

'Earth,' the Doctor said, grandly, pus.h.i.+ng a few random b.u.t.tons until the TARDIS scanner spluttered into life. He noted the joyous expressions on Ian and Barbara's face with clear disdain. There was an entire universe to explore out there. Whilst he waited for the picture to clear, the Doctor read from the gauges in front of him. 'The Yearometer tells us that the date is, using a calendar that you would be familiar with, 14 March. In the year 64.'

'AD or BC?' asked Ian.

'The former,' replied the Doctor. 'We appear to be somewhere close to the peninsular between the Bosphorus straits and the Black Sea.'

'Turkey?'

'Thrace during this period,' corrected Barbara. 'More of a Greek and Macedonian influence than Middle Eastern, though it's likely to be under Roman rule. It consisted of a series of free city-states until circa AD73. Before that they were all a Roman protectorate.' She seemed genuinely excited by the prospect of where they had landed. 'This is a real chance to have a close look at a fascinating collection of cultures.'

'You said that about the Aztecs once, remember?' replied Ian with a sly chuckle. The Doctor shot him a reproachful look.

and I learned my lesson well,' added Barbara with barely a tinge of regret in her voice, as she continued to look at the clearing monochrome image on the scanner screen. The TARDIS had landed at an angle on an outcrop of sand and stone, beside a rock crevice and a steep incline. Beyond, in the s.h.i.+mmering middle-distance of a lengthy stretch of barren scrubland, was the glistening, pale azure majesty of the river meeting the sea. And beside it, a large settlement of towering domed roofs and spires and minarets - a town of white sandstone that rose vertically out of the desert like a mirage.

'Istanbul?' offered Vicki.

'Constantinople, not Istanbul!' replied Ian, reflecting that the girl's history could do with a bit of revision.

'Byzantium, actually,' concluded Barbara with a wink to a crestfallen Ian. It won't be Constantinople for another two hundred-odd years. The Imperial City. Gateway to the East.' actually,' concluded Barbara with a wink to a crestfallen Ian. It won't be Constantinople for another two hundred-odd years. The Imperial City. Gateway to the East.'

'Very educational. I'm sure,' noted the Doctor with seeming disinterest. and now, I suppose, you want to go and have a look at it, do you, hmm?'

Barbara was suddenly thirteen again and trying to persuade her father to take her to the Tower of London. 'Oh Doctor,'

she said, almost pleadingly, 'we must. When the Greeks talked about stin polis, stin polis, Byzantium was the model on which all others were based, including Athens. There's so much history...' Byzantium was the model on which all others were based, including Athens. There's so much history...'

The Doctor's face was a picture. 'It is always like this whenever we land in Earth's past. I am lectured on matters of which I am already aware'

I apologise,' said Barbara, genuinely, clasping her hands over the Doctor's own, 'I know I can be a bit academic at times, but...'

'Yes, we can go,' sighed the Doctor. 'And, no doubt, some terrible fate will befall us. It usually does.'

'Where's your spirit of adventure, Doctor?' asked Ian.

This brought a scowl to the old man's face. 'It seems to have suffered a rather severe dent from all of the trouble you two keep getting me into,' he growled. 'I don't know why I continually allow you to persuade me to blunder into such hair-brained adventures.'

And, with that, he shuffled out of the console room, muttering to himself.

'He is joking, isn't he?' asked Vicki.

'I think so,' replied Barbara. 'With the Doctor, you can never tell'

Correctly dressed in suitable clothing for the period, Barbara stood beside the TARDIS food machine considering whether or not to give it a thump with the flat of her hand as the Doctor emerged from one of the numerous changing rooms adjusting his tunic and toga robe. 'I wish you would get this contraption fixed,' Barbara offered. 'This morning I wanted porridge and it gave me boiled eggs and toast.'

'Unreliability is a sincere virtue,' replied the Doctor, convivially. 'What would life be without a surprise every now and then?'

I'll remember that the next time you get a curry instead of chicken soup,' noted Barbara. Then she returned her attention to the scanner and the city 'I can't tell you how excited I am about this.'

'So I've noticed,' replied the Doctor, flatly. He wore a worried look and drew Barbara closer, as if what he was about to say was a secret never to be repeated. 'Please, be careful,' he said at last.

aren't I always?' asked Barbara, offended. 'I mean, since Mexico I've...'

The Doctor impatiently cut into her by now well-rehea.r.s.ed mantra. 'Yes, yes. That is not the issue, don't you see?' he asked, strongly. 'I know how much first-hand knowledge means to you, my child. I know, too, that you would never willingly endanger the safety of any of us.'

Barbara was both touched and surprised by this revelation. 'Thank you,' she said, a little fl.u.s.tered. 'So, why the headmaster's lecture? Don't you think you should be giving Vicki a crash course in how time looks after itself?

You've drummed that lesson into me often enough.'

'I shall take care of the girl,' the Doctor said quickly. 'Her destiny was mapped for her thousands of years before she was ever born.' He stopped, as if feeling that he had said too much. 'There will be grave danger during this stay,' he continued. 'I sense it.'

With a caring hand on the old man's shoulder, Barbara tried to look concerned as if she really meant it, while all the time her mind was screaming at her to just leave the Doctor to his paranoia and get out there and experience the moment. 'I've never seen you like this,' she said. Which was true. 'It's normally you that's desperate for us to explore whatever is on offer. We have a chance to see the glory of the Roman Empire...'

'Gracious,' said the Doctor with a really sarcastic sneer. 'I admire your intellect, Miss Wright, genuinely I do, but I never took you for a romantic fool.' The scorn in his voice was marbled with disbelief. 'Do you really believe everything you read in those history books of yours, child? Do you think it was all that simple?'

'No,' replied Barbara, shocked that the Doctor was being so deliberately offensive to her on all sorts of levels. 'The history of ancient Rome is the tale of a community of nomadic shepherds in central Italy growing into one of the most powerful empires the world has ever known. And then collapsing. That, in itself, is one of the greatest stories ever told, But I'm a complete realist when it comes to history.'

'Are you indeed?' asked the Doctor with a fatalistic shake of the head. 'There are none so deaf as those who will not hear...'

and there are none so dumb as those that will not speak,'

replied Barbara, angrily. 'What are you talking about? Please tell me what I've done wrong...'

The Doctor shook his head again. 'Your excitement at seeing a glimpse of the Romans, my dear - it's infectious.

Chesterton and young Vicki are simply agog with all of your stories of the Caesars and the gladiators and the glorious battles. You expect to go out there and find bread and circuses and opulence in the streets, don't you?'

'Yes, frankly,' replied Barbara. 'I know it won't be Cecil B.

DeMille, or Spartacus Spartacus exactly, but I've a pretty good idea of what it exactly, but I've a pretty good idea of what it will will be like. Are you telling me it won't be that way? be like. Are you telling me it won't be that way?

Because, historically...'

'I visited Rome with Susan,' the Doctor said quickly. 'And Antioch. And Jerusalem. All before we came to your time. I found them to be brutal and murderous places.' He stammered over the word 'murderous' and gave Barbara a grave look. 'Dear me, it was terrible. Slavery, crime in the streets, everybody stabbing everyone else in the back. You and Chesterton come from an era of political complexity, where saying the wrong thing does not automatically make you a target, or an outcast, my child. Things were much more black and white in these dark days.' The Doctor was aware that his voice was becoming raised and deliberately lowered his tone to a whisper. 'Added to which, the Roman Empire stands for all of the things that I left...' He stopped himself and sighed deeply. 'When I left my people, it was because of their ambivalence to just these kind of issues.'

Again, Barbara found it necessary to hold the Doctor's hands. She gave him a little smile as she squeezed them together. 'I'll go and get the others. They're just outside. We can depart immediately if you're not comfortable with our staying here.'

With another sigh, the Doctor opened the TARDIS doors and indicated that they should go outside. 'I am a foolish and tired old man,' he said simply. 'An adventure of some description awaits us'

But suddenly, Barbara didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic for what was to come.