Doctor Who_ So Vile A Sin Part 44

303.

Epilogue.

Transcript of the Eulogy presented by Adjudicator Christopher Cwej at the Funeral of the Honourable Roslyn Christopher Cwej at the Funeral of the Honourable Roslyn Sarah Inyathi Forrester Sarah Inyathi Forrester The first... the first time I ever heard of Roz Forrester was when I was at the Academy. There was a famous story about her. I later found out it was true.

Roz was on patrol one day, with her partner, when they saw a man throw a ditz off a walkway. He'd gotten bored with his alien pet. When they confronted him, he said he'd never owned a ditz, and even if he did, what kind of lunatic would do that to their own pet?

There was no way to prove what the man had done. But Roz demanded to see his ident. He didn't have an implant, but a plastic ident. When he handed it to Roz, she ate it. Then she arrested him for not carrying any identification. ( Murmurs Murmurs) When he told the judge what she'd done, the judge wanted to know what kind of lunatic would go around eating idents. ( Murmurs, Murmurs, laughter laughter) When Roz told me that story, she said she'd done it because she liked animals. But I don't think that was the underlying reason. I think it was because she loved justice. She couldn't let him get away with it. It wouldn't be fair fair.

304.

For Roz, justice wasn't an abstract concept, some kind of ideal.

It was her job, day in, day out, whatever we did, wherever we went.

I don't know whether there's a place where we go when we die. I don't know if Roz believed there was one. But if... if there is a place like that, and it isn't a fair place... it d.a.m.n well will be once she's done with it. Thank you.

Extract from the Diary of Bernice Summerfield-Kane Dear diary, I'm afraid I've neglected you for a few days. It's been very busy here. Roz Forrester is dead. Dear diary, I'm afraid I've neglected you for a few days. It's been very busy here. Roz Forrester is dead.

Coming to visit Jason and I, was exactly the right thing for Chris and the Doctor. They both desperately needed a rest, in mundane surroundings, and you can't get much more mundane than our current residence a rental academic house on Youkali, one of the Inst.i.tute's new residences.

It's pleasant and airy always lots of room on newly colonized worlds, especially one that's been declared a no-go zone for development while we archaeologists pick over it. A considerable improvement over the tent Jason and I were previously stationed in. The romance of roughing it fades in the memory after a few good soaks in a real bath.

Ostensibly they came here to let us know about Roz. They really came here because they need to sit around somewhere safe while someone cooks them dinner and listens when they need to talk. They need looking after.

Chris gave me one of the recordings of Roz's funeral. I don't know why the Doctor didn't invite me and Jason. I suppose he had other things on his mind. (The Doctor always always has other things on his mind, of course, but this time he was actually has other things on his mind, of course, but this time he was actually distracted distracted by them.) by them.) Jason could have watched the recording, too, but when I slipped the left playback lens into my eye he decided he'd rather let me tell him about it later. He took Chris down to the pub (well, the Tent of Ill Repute, run by a bunch of Lalandian pirates from the Rim).

In the mirror, I had one brown eye and one green one.

305.

Chris says most people from his time period have a tailor-made viewing lens which matches their eye colour. Maybe Jason thinks the one I've got in is a public-access lens, or something.

Characteristic late-twentieth-century squeamishness about bodily fluids.

Yellow stick-on note: I suppose it's terrible to think about your husband that way, as though he's a subject in an anthropological study. I seem to be thinking about this whole thing, Roz's death, the funeral, everything, as though I'm observing from outside. I suppose I am. I wasn't there when it was all going on, when she died or when they buried her. I left that kind of adventure behind a long time ago. Now I just watch recordings. I suppose it's terrible to think about your husband that way, as though he's a subject in an anthropological study. I seem to be thinking about this whole thing, Roz's death, the funeral, everything, as though I'm observing from outside. I suppose I am. I wasn't there when it was all going on, when she died or when they buried her. I left that kind of adventure behind a long time ago. Now I just watch recordings.

I put in the other playback lens and sat down in one of the beanbags in the lounge. I thought I'd be confused, try to walk into a wall or something, but I was still aware of the room around me even though I could see the funeral. Like watching television, I suppose, my brain had no trouble sorting out which image I was focusing on.

All those people, all that colour and noise... I wonder if Roz would have been proud, or annoyed, or faintly embarra.s.sed. Of course, the funeral is more for the survivors than the deceased, a release of emotion, the chance to acknowledge death and move on.

The voice-over (it was only later I realized I was hearing it through my eyes) says that Roz was being buried near her nephew and niece. Sixteen and fourteen. That's unspeakable. At least Roz chose to be part of the violence, instead of just being caught up in it and spat out again.

The end result is no different.

There's a hole in the ground, in the middle of a patch of bare soil. Chris and the other pallbearers put the bier down in front of it.

Chris's eulogy has me in tears. It doesn't seem to affect the viewing lens.

306.

Chris lifts Roz up from the bier, wrapped up in a prepared animal skin the voice-over calls it a kaross kaross. She looks tiny in his arms.

There's a moment where he hesitates at the edge of the hole. I wonder what he's thinking. That there must be some last-minute reprieve, that the woman in his arms will suddenly struggle and curse? Is he thinking about the augmented soil of the Reclamation Zone going to work on her, turning her into itself, the healthy gra.s.s growing out of her transformed body?

Maybe he's thinking about the time he and Roz huddled together next to the fire, beside a Berks.h.i.+re lake on a freezing winter night.

Maybe he's thinking about how hot it is in his armour.

He looks up, suddenly. The POV swivels after a moment, following his alarmed gaze.

Chris warned me about the Doctor's collapse, but it didn't soften the shock. Even the last few days, getting used to the pale figure in the wheelchair, didn't stop me from jumping out of my chair, ready to run to him as he folded up and fell to his knees.

Maybe my brain wasn't as good at sorting out the real from the recording as I'd thought.

They'd edited in some close-ups from another POV, which only adds to my disorientation. Chris is trying to help him up, gripping one of his arms, while he clutches at his chest with the other hand and insists on talking to someone who isn't there. You can't make out what he's saying, the POV couldn't get close enough.

Some medical staff arrive after a couple of minutes. Chris lifts him up on to a stretcher, and follows as he's carried out of shot.

He looks dead. The voice-over a.s.sures you that he later recovers.

After that, the funeral rolls on like a juggernaut. One of the pallbearers kneels down and puts Roz into the hole.

There's a pile of loam next to the grave. The other pallbearers pick up shovels and fill in the hole.

The voice-over tells me that the area will be sown with seeds; within a week, Roz's grave will be indistinguishable from the rest of the savanna, just like the graves of Somezi and Mantsebo. And 307 I wonder how she'd feel about that, and I realize I didn't know her nearly as well as I thought I did.

I took out the playback lens, and decided that I needed a drink.

The Doctor and Chris have been here for a week, since Monday. I watched the POV recording on Tuesday morning, not brave enough to face it on that first night. I spent the rest of Tuesday having little weeps and baking scones with currants in them.

Apparently there were lots of happy endings as well. The Empire's in good hands with Leabie, he reckons: she's going to do a lot for the Ogrons and the Earth Reptiles and Jeopards and all the other oppressed peoples. Genevieve was rescued by one of the rebels, Simon Frederson, and Vincenzi and Sokolovsky are generals or something now.

Chris's mood changes a lot, especially as he tells all the little stories from their adventure. G.o.ds, diary, I had forgotten how young young that young man is. He was terribly stiff-upper-lip when he first arrived, then later on he was crying his heart out while Jason fidgeted and I sat next to him and held his hand, and the next morning he was almost cheerful. that young man is. He was terribly stiff-upper-lip when he first arrived, then later on he was crying his heart out while Jason fidgeted and I sat next to him and held his hand, and the next morning he was almost cheerful.

He's not going to get over this for a long time. He's going to think he's got over it, and find out he hasn't.

The Doctor... I don't mind admitting it, diary, the Doctor scares the h.e.l.l out of me.

Chris says he seemed OK for a little while after the heart attack. He spent some time in the TARDIS infirmary, waving little medical machines over himself. He spent some time in the conservatory, sitting among the plants.

He slept. A lot. That in itself is worrying.

After a while he spent all his time sleeping.

He wakes up from time to time. He said h.e.l.lo when they first arrived. Then he just dozed off on a sofa while we were eating cuc.u.mber sandwiches and talking. Chris carried him up to the guest room and put him to bed.

308.

Jason wandered over to the tents and found a Caprisian dealer who had a battered wheelchair for sale. We spent the morning fixing it up.

Each morning and afternoon we've wheeled the Doctor out into the sunlight. I hope it does him some good. There's a sort of back yard, a half-hearted garden which Jason and I tinker with from time to time. There's a lovely view, looking down the slope across a stream and into the jungle. The weather is cool, so we tuck a soft blanket over his legs.

I can see him from the window as I write this. He looks positively ancient.

I've tried talking to him. Sometimes he comes out of it for a while, says h.e.l.lo. He knows who I am, and where he is, but he just isn't interested interested.

Diary, it's as though he's run out of steam. He's got nothing left he wants to do, and no energy left to do it. He's just waiting to die.

It's unbearable. He is was is the most alive person I've ever met.

Later. Chris and I spent the afternoon cleaning out Roz's room aboard the TARDIS. Chris did the guns, I did the frocks.

There was a surprising amount of stuff in there; I'd expected something more Spartan, more along the lines of Ace's room. A soldier's room.

There was the usual odd collection of furniture you find in TARDIS rooms, an expensive Shaker chair and a locked writing desk. It took me almost ten minutes to pick the lock, feeling guilty all the time. There was nothing in there but a couple of old issues of Badge and Bust Badge and Bust.

The guns were in a huge metal cabinet, also locked. There were a lot of them, from a standard Adjudicator-issue blaster to a flintlock rifle to something big and chunky and very twentieth century. Chris probably knew their names; I had no idea.

He took each gun out, carefully, checking it over. 'We could just move the cabinet,' I suggested.

309.

'No,' said Chris. He sat down on her bed, a creaky old bra.s.s affair, and unzipped the bag he'd brought. 'We should take this room apart.'

Roz kept her clothes in a big wooden cupboard against the wall. I knew she had quite a few outfits, though nothing like the number I'd acc.u.mulated in my travels aboard the TARDIS... but I was surprised by the number of slacks and jeans and s.h.i.+rts. And boots, half a dozen pairs, carefully cleaned. And dresses. I couldn't ever remember seeing Roz in a dress, except for the wedding on Yemaya... She must have worn them a few times.

Why couldn't I remember?

'I wonder if it would be OK if I looked after these,' I said.

'Go ahead,' said Chris. He was carefully disa.s.sembling the guns, putting them into the little boxes stacked on one of the cabinet's shelves. 'It's not like the Doctor's going to wear them.'

Right at the back there was a white dress, carefully hung inside a plastic sheath. Like a c.o.c.ktail dress. Matching white gloves and a film-noir hat, complete with veil, were attached on the outside of the bag.

'Chris,' I said, 'look at this.'

It took a moment to get the dress out of the cupboard, cradling it as I unhooked the coat hanger. I laid it down on the bed next to him. He hastily s.h.i.+fted the oily rags he was using to clean the guns.

Chris looked at it. 'When's it from?' he said.

'The forties,' I said. 'The nineteen forties.' I was rummaging in the bottom of the cupboard, among the boots. 'Look at these.'

White high-heels.

He looked at the dress some more.

'It's a wedding dress, isn't it?'

I sat down with my back to the cupboard. 'You didn't know about this, did you?'

Chris just shook his head. 'I wonder when she she knew about it,' knew about it,'

he said. 'When she decided. She never talked about George. I thought she just left him behind.'

I don't think we ever leave them behind, diary.

Why didn't she ever say anything to us?

310.

I'm sitting here writing, up alone in my room. The Doctor's probably still lying on his bed, where we left him. Chris is watching sims downstairs and Jason's doing the was.h.i.+ng up.

Why didn't she ever tell us? Maybe she hadn't made up her mind whether to go back to 1941, to take George Reed up on his offer of marriage, a home, a life of relative comfort and normality. Maybe the dress was just in case. But she could have said something.

Look what she's done to the Doctor and Chris. Did she even think about them, before running up that hill? Bear with me, I'm aware this makes no sense, diary, bear with me. What about George? What about all of us? If she could see Chris slumped in front of the 3D and the Doctor half catatonic on the guest bed and me sitting here with tears in my eyes, trying to write, would she regret her decision?

What the h.e.l.l was she thinking?

Yellow stick-on note: I'm glad I got that out of my system. I still want to know, though, Roz. What were you thinking? I'm glad I got that out of my system. I still want to know, though, Roz. What were you thinking?

Kadiatu got here on Sat.u.r.day.

How she found out we were here, I don't know. Maybe Chris sent her a message, I'll have to ask. Maybe the People found something about Roz's death while they were paging through human history.

She descended from the sky in a b.l.o.o.d.y great fighter jet. It looked a bit old-fas.h.i.+oned I reckoned I'd have to look it up in Jane's Ostentatious Aerial Combat Vehicles Jane's Ostentatious Aerial Combat Vehicles.

Jason and I were in the kitchen at the time. I was was.h.i.+ng up, peering at the Doctor, safely snoozing in his wheelchair out on the back lawn. I'd just made an especially witty comment about the Doctor becoming part of the shrubbery when the sky started to rumble, cutting across my punchline.

'There aren't any clouds,' pointed out my observant husband, drying a dish.

'That'll be a flying saucer landing,' I said. I headed for the back door.

'The Inst.i.tute is going to love this,' said Jason.

311.

Chris almost flattened me, careening down the stairs. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. I threw myself against the wall.

Fortunately, he stopped before he could make a large cartoon hole in the flyscreen.

We could see the s.h.i.+p, now, a heavy thing lowering itself on to the tennis court behind the house. I hoped it was advanced enough to have AG lifters, preferably ones which would stop its landing struts from wrecking the playing surface.

'Triangulum Swift 400 series,' said Chris.

'You just made that up.'

He shook his head, yellow hair in disarray. 'Twenty-first century.'