Doctor Who_ Happiness Patrol Part 16

'What!' shouted Helen A, astonished at what she saw.

For sure enough, there was Priscilla P. But far from being ready and willing to rid Helen A of this turbulent Doctor, she was quite helpless, gagged and bound at the hands and feet. As the automatic security camera swept across the rest of the waiting zone, it revealed the figure of Susan Q standing over Priscilla P, guarding her with her own fun gun. And finally, to complete their mortification, Earl Sigma came into view, a stream of melancholy notes issuing from the harmonica pressed to his mouth. Helen A had seen enough. She stormed over to the console and slammed down her hand. The picture disappeared.

'Get me the Kandy Man!' Helen A ordered Daisy K.

For the first time she seemed worried.

'You're not unhappy about something,' asked Daisy K smugly.

'I said get me the Kandy Man!' screamed Helen A.

Daisy K obediently lifted a receiver from the console, pressed some b.u.t.tons and waited for the ringing tone of the Kandy Kitchen's telephone before handing the receiver to Helen A.

The Kandy Man hated telephone calls. They invariably led to orders which in turn led to him having to postpone whatever he was doing. So he contemplated the curling, twisty pink and blue telephone for some time before he finally decided to answer it. 'Kandy Man,' he said morosely.

Helen A, annoyed at being kept waiting, dispensed with the niceties of telephone technique. 'I want the Doctor,'

she snapped, when she heard the Kandy Man's voice, 'and I want him now. I don't care what you have to do. I don't care how far you have to go.'

The Kandy Man, who had been holding the telephone away from his head to protect his eardrums, spoke into the mouthpiece again. 'That won't be necessary,' he said.

'Why not?'

'Because he's just popped in,' said the Kandy Man, and replaced the receiver. During the conversation he had been watching with interest as the manhole cover in the corner of the kitchen had been slid aside. Then he saw the tip of the Doctor's umbrella come out of the hole, and, attached to the other end, the Doctor himself. Finally he watched the Doctor put the umbrella back into the hole and haul up a human girl.

'Kandy Man,' said the Doctor, doffing his hat, 'I don't believe you've had the pleasure of meeting my friend Ace.'

Ace smiled weakly. The Doctor had told her about the Kandy Man, but she still wasn't prepared for the immensely powerful and sinister figure she saw before her.

'She's an expert in calorification, incineration, carbonization and inflammation,' explained the Doctor.

'I beg your pardon,' said the Kandy Man, wiping his hands on his stained lab coat.

'She's come to look at your oven.'

Ace scanned the ma.s.sive bank of ovens occupying the whole length of one wall of the Kandy Kitchen. Only one of them, right at the end, behind the Kandy Man, seemed to be in use. She made a run for it, ducking under the Kandy Man's outstretched arm, and struggled to open the huge furnace door.

The Kandy Man was unperturbed by her actions. 'Has she indeed?' he said, still talking to the Doctor. 'Then she should wait to be asked. Impolite guests get to feel the back of my Kandy hand.' He turned to face Ace, still wrestling with the oven door, and slowly moved towards her, his feet making soft sucking noises with each step he took.

'That may be, Kandy Man,' shouted the Doctor. 'But I've come here to conclude our unfinished business, and I don't like to be kept waiting.' The Kandy Man stopped.

The Doctor had interested him. 'Last time you saw me,'

continued the Doctor, 'you said you were going to kill me.'

The Kandy Man always found invitations like this hard to resist. 'Really, Doctor?' he said, turning away from Ace and back towards him. 'Thank you for reminding me.'

Ace waited until the Doctor was almost within the Kandy Man's reach. 'I wouldn't give that pimplehead a hundred to one against you, Professor,' she cried, taunting the Kandy Man.

The Kandy Man stopped in his tracks and spoke, quite pleasantly, to the Doctor. 'Pimplehead indeed. I'm disappointed in you, Doctor. I would have expected you to choose your friends more carefully. Still,' he smiled, 'she won't be a friend much longer, will she.' He turned his attentions back to Ace.

'But I think you're a pimplehead too,' said the Doctor.

The Kandy Man was getting irritated. 'I'm finding this all rather tiresome,' he said. He glanced from one to another, and reached into his lab coat pocket for a coin.

'Heads or tails, Doctor?'

'Tails.'

The Kandy Man tossed the coin into the air, caught it and slapped it on to his wrist. Ace, using the time bought for her by the Doctor, finally managed to prise open the great oven door. The Kandy Man examined the coin, and peeled it off his wrist before it stuck fast.

'Well?' said the Doctor.

But the Kandy Man gave nothing away. 'That would be telling,' he said. And then, showing a surprising turn of speed for a creature of his size he lunged towards Ace. But Ace had been watching him and was ready. She pulled a poker out of the oven and brandished it at the Kandy Man.

'You're playing a dangerous game, Kandy Man,' said the Doctor. 'The tip of that poker is white hot. It would slice through you like a knife through b.u.t.terscotch.'

The Kandy Man sighed. This was all turning out to be rather more strenuous than he had hoped. 'I have to bow, however reluctantly, to your logic, Doctor,' he said. 'Which leaves me only one choice.' He roared and charged at the Doctor.

'Ace! shouted the Doctor.

She knew what to do. She hurled the poker to the Doctor. It spun through the air, turning over and over, until the Doctor caught it by the cool end.

'Get down, Ace,' he yelled, and slammed down a lever, which supplied gas to the bank of ovens. He thrust the poker into the nearest of them and a great wave of fire sprang from the wall. The Kandy Man yelled as the blast of heat swept him across the kitchen. He crashed to the floor beside the open manhole.

'Time to cool off,' he observed drolly, and slipped down into the pipes.

The Doctor hit the lever again, starving the ovens of gas; the fireball disappeared. 'Ace?' he said, mopping his brow.

'Yes?' she replied, gazing at the manhole.

'How did you know I wouldn't catch the red-hot end?'

'You wouldn't do that, Professor,' she grinned.

The Doctor laughed, and then saw the Kandy Man's coin glinting on the floor where it had fallen. He picked it up, showed it to Ace, wrapped his fingers round it, opened his palm again and it had vanished. Ace was unimpressed; she was more interested in what had happened to the Kandy Man.

The Doctor held out his arm to stop her from peering into the manhole. And then he realized something strange had happened. 'Listen, Ace,' he said.

Ace tried to listen to whatever it was that had caught the Doctor's attention but all she could hear was the sound of her own breathing. 'I can't hear anything.'

'Exactly,' said the Doctor, triumphantly.

'What do you mean?'

'I can't hear anything either,' said the Doctor, leading her upstairs to the street door. 'Come on.'

'What about the Kandy Man?'

The Doctor looked back down at the empty kitchen.

'He'll keep. He's full of colouring, flavouring.' He paused.

'And preservative,' he added, pus.h.i.+ng the door open and making his way out into the street.

What the Doctor had heard, or rather hadn't heard, was the sound of muzak, which was so universally present on Terra Alpha, that after a while the only time the inhabitants of the planet noticed it was when it stopped. In the silence following the Kandy Man's abrupt departure from the Kandy Kitchen the Doctor realized that on the previous occasions he had.visited the Kandy Kitchen he had always been able to hear muzak filtering down into the kitchen from the speakers in the street outside.

As they came through the door into the street, the reason for the mysterious silence was immediately apparent. Earl and Susan Q were in the street to greet them, standing beneath a loudspeaker dangling from the wall. Susan Q was holding Priscilla P's fun gun. It was obvious that they had been celebrating their victory over Priscilla by using her gun to destroy the muzak machines, symbols of all that they hated about Terra Alpha.

'Blissful, isn't it, Doctor,' said Earl, cheerfully. He nodded at the defunct speaker. 'Silence.'

'Not quite, Earl,' smiled the Doctor. 'I can hear the sound of empires toppling.'

Earl put his arm round Susan Q's shoulders. 'And all thanks to this lady and her fun gun. She can take out a loudspeaker at a hundred paces.'

'Not quite, Earl,' said Susan Q, blus.h.i.+ng. But she raised the gun and shot a bullet through the last wire attaching the speaker to the bracket on the wall. The speaker crashed into the street.

Ace watched this with admiration and a certain amount of envy. 'Can I have a go, Professor?'

'Certainly not,' said the Doctor. 'Wanton destruction of public property.' He thought for a moment. 'But in this case, yes,' he said, winking at Ace.

14.

The Pipe People had waited in the pipes while Ace and the Doctor confronted the Kandy Man. And they were still waiting when the ma.s.sive figure of the Kandy Man fell through the open manhole into the pipes. Panicking, they tried to scramble into hiding places. But it was unnecessary. The Kandy Man hurried past them, seeing nothing but the pipe in front of him.

The Pipe People rea.s.sembled, brushed themselves down, and unanimously agreed that now the Kandy Man was gone they should take a look around the kitchen. One by one, they followed Wences up through the manhole.

Their attention was caught by a large chart on the wall facing the bank of ovens, which Wulfric quickly identified as a map of the pipes under the city. Traced in pink on the map was the route taken by the fondant surprise on its way to the execution yard. Wences compared this with the direction of the Kandy Man's flight. After some excited exchanges the Pipe People gathered round the wheel used to activate an execution. At a signal given by Wences, they all heaved until the wheel slowly started to move.

Other wheels suddenly began to turn and lights began to flash. A loud rus.h.i.+ng noise filled the air. The Pipe People watched the liquid foam as it travelled sluggishly along transparent pipes on its inexorable way towards its victim. The rus.h.i.+ng sound increased until it was almost deafening.

'Wicked!' shrieked Wences, unable to contain his excitement.

At that moment Gilbert M came running down the stairs into the kitchen. He had been making out a report of his version of events in Forum Square when suddenly he had felt in his bones that the Kandy Man was in danger.

He saw the Pipe People scampering around the kitchen as they enjoyed the progress of the fondant surprise, and noted the absence of the Kandy Man. It didn't take a genius to work out what had happened.

'Kandy Man,' he said softly. Then he shouted. 'Kandy Man! What have you done to him.' He stared at them, feeling as if a limb had been ripped from his body.

Sobbing, he ran up the stairs and out into the open air.

When the Kandy Man had first heard the familiar rumblings in the pipes behind him, he had tried to go faster, to scramble to safety. But then he recalled that he had devised the fondant surprise himself and how ingenious and foolproof he had made it. He stopped and sat down with a certain amount of pride, listening to the rus.h.i.+ng sounds getting louder and nearer. 'Ah well,' he said happily, 'I gave it my best shot.' He waited for the end.

The Doctor and Ace had seen Gilbert M rush out of the Kandy Kitchen and head off in the direction of the execution yard, and dashed back into the kitchen to see what had happened. The Pipe People were still celebrating.'Wulfric,' said the Doctor. 'Wences. What did you do?'

Wulfric pointed rather shamefacedly to the chart on the wall.

'I thought so,' frowned the Doctor, walking over to the chart and examining it. Next to it was a list of ingredients.

'Now let's see,' he said. 'Citric acid, benzoic acid and salicylic acid.' He sighed. 'The Kandy Man won't get very far with that lot following down the pipe.' He considered the Pipe People, wis.h.i.+ng they hadn't taken justice into their own hands. 'Come on, Ace,' he said. The Pipe People looked devastated. 'And you, pipe pilots,' said the Doctor, softening.

'Where to now, Professor?' asked Ace.

'Our next port of call.'

Reports of fierce battles around the sugar factories had been flooding into the Happiness Patrol's headquarters, and Helen A, responding to them by deploying the troops which had remained loyal to her, had missed the drama in the Kandy Kitchen. When there was a lull in the fighting, and she told Daisy K to reestablish contact with the Kandy Kitchen, the monitor showed them that it was deserted.

Daisy was now at the control console, trying to reach the Kandy Man at other likely locations in the city.

'No reply,' said Daisy K, replacing the receiver.

'He must still be in the Kandy Kitchen,' said Helen A.

'I've already tried there.'

'Then try it again.'

Daisy K punched a b.u.t.ton on the console. Once again they saw the familiar picture of the Kandy Kitchen. They watched as the automatic camera roved over the room, ,eeking out even the darkest corners, and proving that it was quite deserted.

'I wonder where he can be,' said Helen A, trying to make it sound casual. But now that the Happiness Patrol were defecting in their hundreds, she knew that the Kandy Man was her last hope. She took a decision, and headed for the connecting door to her suite. Daisy K got up to follow her.

'Stay where you are, Daisy K,' said Helen. 'I need you in here to keep an eye on things.' She then slipped through the doorway.

Gilbert M had never been down in the pipes, and in truth he was rather scared of them. So when he had worked out what the Pipe People had done to the Kandy Man, he quickly ruled out the possibility of pursuing him under ground. Instead he hurried to the execution yard, hoping that he might be able to patch up the Kandy Man when the fondant surprise finally spewed him out.

But he was too late. When he arrived, the remains of the Kandy Man were already littered across the platform normally reserved for the last moments of Helen A's victims. His robotic metal skeleton was almost intact, lying in a pool of viscous substances, the sugar-based components that had made up the flesh of the Kandy Man, in various stages of decomposition.

Joseph C was bending over the platform when Gilbert stumbled in, exhausted by his run from the Kandy Kitchen. Joseph waved at the mess that used to be the Kandy Man. 'It came down the pipe,' he said helpfully.

Gilbert M took one look at the platform and knew that the Kandy Man was finished. He stepped back and looked down, remembering his friend. Joseph C, wrapping round his hand the leash that he was inexplicably carrying Gilbert looked round the yard but could see no animal did the same.

After a long period of silence, Joseph turned to Gilbert.

Perhaps the fellow would like to talk about it, he thought.

'Close, were you?' he asked Gilbert sympathetically.

Gilbert M summoned up a smile. 'I made him.'

Joseph C was surprised. Only Helen A and Gilbert M had known the true origin of the Kandy Man. 'Really?'

said Joseph. 'How very interesting.'