It was small: small and quiet. At least it was small enough, and quiet enough, at the moment when it needed to be so, to find its way into the Tardis without detection (well, not by anyone who would've been interested, anyway).
"What's with the control thingie?" demanded Captain Jack Harkness, or rather, the man who called himself that. "Is it supposed to be blinking that fast?" After a closer look he added, "and that color?" The Doctor frowned briefly. It is true that the Tardis had rarely, if ever, pulsed deep purple with fringes of ochre aura swirling in rapid asynchrony. He poked a few buttons, flipped a couple switches, made adjustments -- some delicate, some otherwise -- to some levers. The ochre aura intensified to burnt orange.
"Not good," admitted the Doctor, although he really didn't know if it was good, bad or... well, it wasn't exactly ugly. It was certainly different. Different wasn't usually a problem for the Doctor but he felt understandably protective of his Tardis, even if it had got itself stuck in the form of a vintage British police box instead of camouflaging itself properly according to circumstance. "Oh look," he declared, not showing Jack anything at which to look; Jack tried to peek over his shoulder, to no avail. "Another message on the psychic paper!"
"Let me guess," said Jack. "'Enjoy the light show.'"
"Nope," overploded the Doctor. "It says 'Go home.' Well, that's a fine thing, after calling us here in the first place!"
Jack laughed, then choked as the Tardis jolted into action. "What do you mean us? I just came to say hi...."
Then neither man spoke for 92 seconds, which is how long the bone-rattling, small-object-flinging trip from wherever (and whenever) they had briefly been (they'd never even left the Tardis to find out) to where-/whenever they were now that the time machine had settled and was still.
The Captain broke the silence: "That's what I get for stopping by to be neighborly. You fill 'er up at the Rift every couple millennia or so; it's not as if I can catch up daily on whatever worlds you've been saving...."
"You know you love it. Anyway you should talk! You're the one who can count his age in millennia!"
The two men stood looking at the door, It didn't open on its own so the Doctor walked boldly over and opened it. He peered out. Then he stepped out. He breathed deeply. "Ahhh," he began, then coughed. "Ugh. What is that smell?"
Jack stood beside him now. Clumps of tiny white, blue, violet, purple, mauve and pink wildflowers punctuated the much larger, bright green leaves and the moist, reddish-brown earth of the extensive woods in which they found themselves. Behind them, verdant mountains were barely visible in the mist. It was quite early of a late spring morning, barely light but already gorgeous. "Death," he said. "That's the smell of death."
ONE
"Speedwell," murmured the Doctor, not looking at the flowers.
"What?"
"The blue-violet ones. They're speedwell. The purply-pinky ones are violets. The violet ones aren't violets. Over there," the Doctor pointed. "That's barbed wire. A whole lotta barbed wire. The mountains are the Vosges. We're in Alsace. Must be Schirmeck. Jack, I'd get rid of that RAF coat."
"What... oh, Doctor, if this is what I think it is, I'd get rid of us, and fast!" Then he realized the Doctor had called him "Jack," and his heart skipped a beat. This was a first.
"The Tardis brought us here for a reason," said the Doctor. "I'm clever, but she's cleverer."
"I'm fainting."
"Shut up. Anyway, we're not leaving until I find out what this is all about. But... lose the coat. Oh, come on." The Doctor helped Jack out of the dangerous coat and flung it back into the Tardis.
"Too warm for it anyway," agreed Jack, eyeing the Doctor's own long coat. The Doctor ignored him. "But have we been brought here or sent here, and either way... oh what the hell, my people can handle things for a while. I wasn't doing anything important today, or however far in the future today is. Was thinking about washing my hair. Maybe order a pizza. Did I ever tell you how we met Gwen?" He babbled as he strode toward the narrow road at the edge of the woods, and the barbed wire beyond that.
"Wait!" Jack stopped and waited for the Doctor to catch up with him. "Someone's coming."
A truck groaned up the road and stopped some distance from the two men, who, in turn, crept through the woods toward it to get a better look. They saw uniformed German soldiers dumping male prisoners of all ages off the back of the truck like so many bags of grain, except these bags of grain cried out, picked themselves up, even straightened their rags, and stood awaiting the next humiliation. They didn't have to wait long; the truck had stopped in front of a gateway made of huge crisscrossed beams, with a strong wire-meshed gate, above which a large plaque read: KONZENTRATIONSLAGER NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF. "This all looks brand new," whispered Jack.
"Well it would be," the Doctor whispered back.
No, really really new. Like maybe it wasn't here last week.
"Then," concluded the Doctor, "I was right. This is Schirmeck. The camp is either about to be finished or has just been finished, built by the prisoners themselves. That makes this..." (he rolled his eyes up, calculating) "... April or May, nineteen forty-one."
The massive gate was opened and the prisoners were shoved through, en masse. To Jack's horror, he found that suddenly the Doctor had slipped in among them and into the camp. "Damn it," he muttered, "if you get yourself gassed here, I'll kill you!" He would've ranted on, but a rustling of leaves not a yard from him stopped all such thoughts at once.... but no, he hadn't been seen. The rustling stopped, soon replaced by a steady hissing sound. The transport driver was taking a nice, leisurely leak in the woods. He started to fall into the leaves he had watered, but Jack pulled him aside (having caused the fall with the chop of one hand), not out of pity or even delicacy, but in order not to soil the uniform he was about to appropriate. As he shed his trousers, something slipped out of a back pocket, plopping softly into the chest of the unconscious man. Jack picked it up and almost cried out when he saw what it was: the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
TWO
The Doctor stood up straight and smiled winningly. Incredibly, the officer, short, somewhat tubby and middle-aged, with dank dark hair -- not much of an Aryan for all that, thought the Doctor -- smiled back at him and waved him off to the right. The Doctor followed the last man to have been waved off in that direction, and barely stumbled when he heard the gunshots that dispatched those who had been waved to the left. "This is what they send us?" he heard the exasperated officer exclaim. Be calm, he thought. You're here to find someone. You don't know who, yet, but you're here to find him, and you mustn't call attention to yourself, even though, let's face it, that's what you do best. Eat humble pie. Stiff upper lip. Wait, those don't really go together. You can't eat much of anything with a stiff upper lip.... He and his companions were lined up in between a few piles of earthen bricks and wooden boards, as well as a few rows of foundations, some with frames, all made of the sorts of materials that were piled about -- there were no completed barracks, and the frames ran up the side of a steep hill; a few more men and boys, mostly barefoot -- some with wooden flipflops and at least one with but a single wooden flipflop --stopped working on them, as they had been until now, and formed a square. As soon as the Doctor noticed that the loudspeaker was blaring for everyone to come out, line up, hurry, raus, raus, the noise stopped. Amazingly, there were suddenly SS men everywhere. The prisoners were standing at attention, as best they could, so the Doctor did too. An official, surrounded by staff, strode slowly into view, fairly dripping with insignia on his lapel and chest (not to mention the huge swastika on his armband), and by his erect bearing and burning dark eyes, obviously in charge; the Doctor guessed he was the camp commandant and wondered what was up; surely the commandant and his entourage didn't wake up early to harangue the prisoners personally every morning? Well, perhaps he did, after all. The man was bareheaded, with dark hair combed almost straight back (then parted) off a high brow, low jutting eyebrow ridges and a chin to match. Then the Doctor had to stifle a grin. There was Jack, not quite with the SS men, certainly not with the commandant, not quite loitering between the gate and the barracks. Looks good in his uniform and knows it. How can anyone look good in a German army uniform? He'd bloody well manage in a Dalek shell if he had to. Above him rose a 10-meter-high watchtower, one of eight all around, each manned by a machine-gun-wielding sentinel.
Then two more SS men appeared in the center of the square with handsome German Shepherds on leashes and a frail boy between them, a teenager with wide, terrified eyes and an inverted pink triangle marking his shirt and cap. The man to the Doctor's right gasped out a name: "Jo!" The Doctor stole a glance at him and saw that he was just a teen himself, wearing a blue bar instead of a pink triangle. His hands were battered; he had no fingernails. "I'm so sorry," murmured the Doctor. Clearly the boy with the battered hands knew the hapless one whose death sentence was now being read in such strident tones that it was hard to follow. The Doctor scanned the square and saw very few more blue bars, here a purple triangle, there a black one; the rest of the prisoners wore either pink triangles or yellow stars. A small group wearing green triangles stood apart from the others. Most of the faces were young; all were thin and haggard. The Doctor, who wore no cap, had found a pin in his pocket and was wearing psychic paper; people would see a star, or a triangle, or, for that matter, SS insignia. He wasn't terribly worried on his own behalf, but he did have to keep reminding himself that he wasn't going to change history; he was here to find someone....
The sudden jovial blast, over the loudspeaker, of music even more strident than the reading of the sentence had been -- Wagner, he realized -- snapped him out of his reverie and brought his attention immediately back to the boy, whom the SS now swiftly stripped of his rags. Laughing, they slammed a metal bucket over his head and unleashed the dogs, who, upon a single command, leapt for the lad's groin, then ripped him to shreds. His shrieks blended with the music until they came rapidly to a halr as the dogs reached his jugular; the other prisoners shrieked too, and wept. The Doctor put out a hand to steady the boy next to him, who had briefly slumped against him. No one must fall down. It would not do. He wanted to look at Jack and see how he was taking this; he wanted to look anywhere in the universe except at the murder taking place before his eyes. He couldn't look away. He knew it was important not to look away. He'd seen worse... but not much worse. (And how, anyway, was one person's pain, one person's death, worse than another's?) Every time he saw such things, he was changed in ways even he couldn't comprehend, and he was pretty sure he didn't want to be so changed, but he knew it was inevitable.
When the dogs were finally called off, there wasn't much left of their victim. (Not their victim, the Doctor reminded himself. They were just the instruments.) Truth be told, there hadn't been much to him beforehand. He'd been alive, though. Now he was more of a carcass than a corpse. All that was intact was his head, beneath the pail; his throat was gone.
The commandant was the first to leave. Some of his staff members grinned at the shocked survivors as they withdrew. The Doctor grinned mirthlessly back, then stopped himself. That ruse worked in other situations; here, being thought an idiot could get him shot, or worse. The remaining SS men gave no orders; they were content to let the horror sink in. No one knew what to do. Should someone go take the pail off the lad's head? Should they let him lie there or bring him into the barracks? Would they be ordered, soon enough, to bring him to the crematorium? The Doctor looked out at the mountains surrounding the camp and saw, rising up out of a valley, a crenelated castle tower, topped by a statue of the Virgin Mary. Had she, too, been forced to witness the execution? He turned his eyes toward the gate. Jack was gone.
THREE
"That was some show," suggested Jack. "Don't see much of that just driving around, you know."
"You liked it?" The SS guard looked skeptical as he stubbed out his cigarette. "Not everyone has the stomach."
"Maybe not the heart," said Jack. "They don't understand."
"And you do."
Jack was running out of time. At any moment his fellow soldiers would come looking for their driver, find him instead and... and the Doctor would be on his own. "I think I do, yes. It is unpleasant, to be sure, but necessary."
The SS man turned abruptly and left Jack standing alone between the closed gate and the barracks frames. He wanted to go take a closer look at the latter but was pretty sure that would be ill received. The soldiers who had dumped the prisoners off the truck were standing just inside the gate, waiting for it to be opened so they -- and he -- could leave. He didn't want to leave. Well, every part of his being wanted to flee, except the part that wanted to bomb this dreadful place, and every other place like it, to oblivion, and then bomb the oblivion too. As he deliberated, the SS man returned and patted him on the back. "You can stay," he grinned. "We need more like you. I'm Runckhaus, by the way. Our new commandant, in case you haven't heard, is Kramer. Don't get in his way." When Jack had no answer to this, he added, "And your name might be?" Jack fumbled in his pockets and luckily pulled out the right papers, which his new friend took, glanced at and returned, slapping Jack once more on the back. "All right, Schuler. Welcome to Natzweiler."
FOUR
The Doctor had no particular objection to quarrying rocks without proper tools... but then, he had eaten recently, and was shod, and had all his fingernails; he rubbed them unconsciously. He was under no illusions that he could do any good here; all he knew was that the Tardis had brought him here, and the Tardis was not likely to do so spuriously or against his better interest. Someone had brought him to a location he hadn't even had time to visit, and then the Tardis had whisked him away to occupied France. He could only assume both trips were part of the same cry for help, the same rescue mission.
How could the Doctor even begin to think of this trip in terms of a rescue mission? Whom could he rescue? He wasn't quite sure how he was going to rescue himself and Jack, though he wasn't terribly worried about it. The Tardis was parked in the vicinity; he hoped Jack would know what to do with the sonic screwdriver. For now, all the Doctor had to do was keep an eye out for anomalies, wait to be approached, survive....
He'd walked, with the other men and boys, about a mile and a half on half-finished roadway, past some men he hadn't seen before (wearing green badges -- one wore a green bar over the triangle; they were building the road) to the quarry where they were all to work with hands as bare as their feet. Their guards had followed in a truck that could have carried them all, but its space was needed for something more valuable than human life: rocks. Not all the rocks were to be trucked back to the camp; some were already being carried there by prisoners on foot; the Doctor had passed them, too, on his way. Still others were dragging or hefting rough beams. The Doctor now carried a large chunk of pink granite; he couldn't see around it and with it progressed step by step, blindly, toward a waiting truck, already knowing that Jack was not among those attending it. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, an SS guard eying him from a few yards away. He smiled. The guard immediately closed the distance between them and shoved the butt end of his rifle into the Doctor's stomach. The Doctor crumpled to the ground and the granite hit his leg before thudding down beside him. "Next time it'll be this side," said the guard, showing the Doctor his bayonet. Then he prodded him with the side of it, eliciting a sharp cry from the Doctor, who nonetheless wasted no time picking himself up, then bending to retrieve the heavy chunk of granite. His stomach was sore, the side of his nose was gravel-scratched and even a gentle prod with a bayonet can break skin; he felt a warm wet trickle near the base of his spine. Another prisoner cried out, perhaps receiving similar treatment. The Doctor staggered, with his burden, toward the truck.
Maybe it wouldn't be so difficult after all to remember not to smile.
FIVE
Jack, to whom smiles came easily, laughed heartily as he slapped down a flush; Runckhaus had but a pair of sixes, and their companion, Captain Orgelburg, had been bluffing with absolutely nothing. Not far from the granite quarry was a small hotel, and from inside its bar, dark even in mid-day, the SS men, doctors and newly assigned regular army Sergeant Schuler (no less his name than Captain Harkness, really) couldn't see the spot nearby where the prisoners who worked in the quarry until nightfall made their poor camp, unless their labors brought them back to Natzweiler, in which case they slept out in the open by their barely built barracks. "Is the Doctor coming tonight or tomorrow?" asked Runckhaus, startling Jack into dropping the small pile of French cigarettes he was collecting. Schuler was a smoker -- Jack had found an engraved lighter in one pocket and a hip flask in another -- and while Jack was not, he knew the trading value of smokes.
"Tomorrow morning," said Orgelburg. "Get the kapos to round up some fags. Make sure some are Juden and some are not."
"Why?"
"How should I know? That's what the Commandant said. Hirt wants both kinds. He can have them all as far as I am concerned.
Jack forced himself to laugh again and dealt another hand. Orgelburg picked up his cards and snorted. Runckhaus held his gingerly, as if they might bite him. Jack feinted with his, as if he were going to show them, and at the last minute, didn't.
Suddenly Orgelburg asked, "Has either of you ever seen a ghost?"
"Not I," said Runckhaus.
"Me neither," lied Jack. I've been a ghost.
"I saw a ghost once," said Orgelburg.
"In a dream?" asked Runckhaus.
"No, a real ghost. I was awake and it was broad daylight. I saw my father, my late father. I seventeen. was going to meet my girlfriend of that time, her name was Utta, at the cinema, and my father came up to me and said, 'Don't go, stay home.' I was frightened and didn't go. There was a fire in the cinema and many people died!"
"Wow," said Runckhaus, drawing two cards.
Jack asked, "What about Utta?"
"Oh," said Orgelburg, "she was so mad, she went home before the picture started. She was okay. But she never spoke to me again."
"Get up, you lazy bums!" shouted Major Kunst, from the doorway of the bar, and the three men rose hastily and stood at attention. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Lunch, sir," said Orgelburg. "Then back to work. Now," he added, starting to leave, followed by Runckhaus and Jack. When they reached the door, Kunst still stood in their way, glaring at them. If this is how he looks at us, how does he look at the prisoners? thought Jack.
"Since you've had such a relaxing lunch," snapped Kunst, "you will have the energy to work through the night as well." Runckhaus and Orgelburg opened their mouths to protest, Kunst raised an eyebrow and the open mouths uttered no sound. Kunst stepped aside and the three men left and walked out into the hotel lobby, then into the sunlit day.
Now Jack could see where the prisoners had slept; they had dared not leave their jackets, on which they'd slept, lying about for the Germans to snatch, so despite the warm weather, and perhaps because even in the springtime they hadn't enough meat on their bones to keep them warm, they were wearing those jackets now, carrying granite and beams in a way that must have made sense to somebody. The kapos, all with green badges, barked orders, and even had sticks with which to hit anyone who moved too slowly. Off in the distance, Jack saw and heard a truck rumbling slowly up the half-built road, prisoners stepping or falling out of its way. Behind it marched more prisoners, among them a decidely weary-looking Doctor, with a huge chunk of pink granite in his arms. Other prisoners bore beams, or had (apparently) piled smaller pieces of granite into each other's arms. They passed right by the hotel and continued toward the camp. That's a mile away, thought Jack. Some of them aren't going to make it.
In fact -- and Jack knew (and had lived through) enough history to be aware of this, and can be forgiven for its not occurring to him at that moment because he was understandably distracted -- some of them hadn't.
SIX
The Doctor knew what fear was and, in fact, experienced it regularly, but he rarely feared for himself. He feared for worlds, for universes. More than once he had offered his freedom or even his life in exchange for the freedom or lives of other individuals. Yes, he feared for individuals. Right now, fear was not foremost in his heart or mind; he was physically exhausted, which was also unusual for him. He had walked a mile and a half carrying stone in his bare hands, clutched against his aching ribs, while those around him, attempting to do likewise, stumbled, occasionally dropping to the road like the stones they bore. Anyone who dared to put down granite to pick up a friend risked what the friend risked: a beating, or being shot outright. The Doctor witnessed both as he trudged after the truck, seeing, in fact, little else out of the corner of his eye, besides the small hotel, set in the middle of nowhere, about half a mile from the mine. Almost as soon as he had noticed it he heard a loud voice shouting "You!" and, recognizing the voice, stopped and laboriously turned toward it. "You! Stop!" roared Jack. The Doctor stopped obediently. Jack, frowning fiercely, took the huge chunk of granite from his arms, which he gratefully stretched without seeming to move them. "What is this?"
"Granite, sir," said the Doctor, too tired to feel foolish. He knew his friend would only be able to give him this tiny bit of relief; it would have to be enough. In fact it was enough.
Jack shoved his face belligerantly into the Doctor's and said, Sotte voce, "Any clue yet why we're here?" and then bellowed, "Carry on!" He thrust the boulder back into the Doctor's arms.
"Not a smidgen of an iota of a fragment oof of a clue," whispered the Doctor. "Somebody called us for a reason and somebody brought us...." He stopped whispering as he spotted an SS guard approaching. Without looking behind him, Jack repeated,
"Carry on!"
The truck was way ahead of him now; the Doctor hurried after it as best he could. Jack turned to Runckhaus and smiled. "What are we going to do with these dumbkopfs, eh Sergeant?"
"Was he giving you any trouble?" Runckhaus ' eyes followed the Doctor's back.
"Not at all! In fact," he added thoughtfully, "he would probably be useful as a capo. Anyway, I just wanted to see that granite. I have never seen any like that. Why is it that color?"
"Geology," said Runckhaus, wisely. He glanced back, worried. "We'd better get going." He started to walk along the side of the road, eyes scanning back and forth for slackers. Jack fell into step beside him, doing likewise. They walked in silence for a few minutes. Then Runckhaus sighed. A prisoner had fallen. Runckhaus walked to the fallen man and somewhat listlessly prodded him with the butt of his rifle. "Hey, get up." The prisoner got to his knees, then used his chunk of granite to prop himself as he rose to his feet. When he hefted it, it covered the yellow star patched onto his shirt. He never made eye contact with Runckhaus, who didn't touch him again, but turned and wandered back to where Jack was still marching forward. "It's better when we get to ride in the truck," he complained.
"Why is some of the rock in the truck?" asked Jack.
"If we wait for these Schwanzlutscher to get what we need where we need it, we'll be here forever!" Jack flinched; the Tardis was an uncannily intuitive and accurate translator. "The Doctor will take care of them." It took Jack a moment to realize Runckhaus meant a different doctor, Doctor Hirt, not the right kind of Doctor at all. Then he saw something that gave him a real start.
"I'll see you at, um...." He wasn't sure where they were sleeping tonight, so he began to trot ahead without finishing his sentence. Someone in civilian clothes -- 21st-century civilian clothes -- was coming out of the woods and walking straight toward the Doctor. Jack didn't exactly run but he hustled. The civilian reached the Doctor first. The Doctor didn't stop walking. The civilian walked companionably beside him.
"Hey" shouted an SS guard, alarmed at this intrusion.
Jack waved him off; "I've got this," he mouthed. The guard retreated, shrugging. He took the civilian by the shoulder, the shoulder of his, Jack's shirt, and looked into the face of a man whose neck he had recently broken. The face smiles from atop a completely unbroken neck and said,
"Please, it is very dangerous here. I need to speak to the Time Lord.
At this the Doctor stopped in his tracks. Jack's hand fell from the shoulder of... he didn't know whom, or of what. He took the heavy chunk of granite from the Doctor and half-ran the few yards with it to the slow-moving truck ahead of them, plunked it down next to two surprised soldiers sitting with their legs dangling down over the flap. Before they could react he was back with the Doctor and the stranger, and he had his Ruger pulled and aimed at the latter. Then he waggled it in the Doctor's general direction too, just for appearances. "Keep walking," he said. They walked.
"What are you?" growled Jack, "some kind of cosmic hijacker?"
"Not now," said the Doctor, quietly. "Not here." Then he added, "When we get back to the camp, they'll take him away and shoot him... or just shoot him."
"Then I'd better do it first," said Jack. He motioned the stranger toward the woods, and marched him out there, nodding curtly to the guard he'd stopped from interfering. As soon as they were well out of view of the sad parade, Jack stopped. The stranger stopped and turned toward him. Jack fired his Ruger into a clump of flowers. "There," he said, noting the bruises on the stranger's neck. "I've killed you twice."
SEVEN
The Doctor looked at the revolting mixture that everyone was calling "soup." He had been found by the entity he'd sought; he likely wouldn't be staying here long enough for missing a meal to make a difference, and those around him were starving. He didn't need to force himself to consume this stuff. Spit, grass and a fragment of turnip or potato. On the advice of one of his "bunkmates" (there was no bunk; he had slept on the ground, snuggled up with a heap of pathetically bony prisoners who needed the warmth of his body far more than he needed the warmth of theirs in the cool May night air) he had held onto half his morning bread; he tentatively dipped an edge of it into the liquid. He tasted it. It was foul. He swallowed it.
What disturbed the Doctor the most was the silence. Everyone in the "canteen" was so quiet. True, the "Night and Fog" prisoners, of whom there were a few, were forbidden to speak; others were just plain exhausted. Besides, what was there to say?
The Doctor gently pushed his bowl in front of the haggard young man sitting to his left. "I'm not hungry," he said, softly. His beneficiary didn't have to be convinced; with his chipped wooden spoon he dipped, slurped, savored, as if consuming caviar and rolling each delicate egg upon his tongue. He wasn't delusional; he did spit out the occasional bit of gravel. He licked the bottom of the bowl. He licked the spoon. He licked his fingers. He nodded his thanks to the Doctor, but he still looked hungry. The Doctor thought, He will always look hungry. He doesn't remember what it's like not to be hungry.
After dinner everyone lined up for a head count, which of course was inaccurate because prisoners would persist in dropping dead along the road, and the guards didn't keep the best track of that; they were more interested in preventing anyone from running off into the woods -- as if anyone had the strength to run! So there was a recount, and a rerecount, and finally the guards got tired of it too and let everyone go to bed, or rather, ground. The Doctor lay awake, despite having put in a day of exhausting work. Patience both was and was not his strong suit; anyone who has lived nearly a thousand years will have acquired a modicum, at least, of that virtue, and yet it was contrary to his lively nature, which craved action, and to his sense of compassion, which craved activism. If anything, the passivity around him made him want more than anything to do something, anything. He still wasn't worried on his own behalf; he had, after all, managed to avoid being shot... so far. Now that whoever was looking for him had found him, and was presumably in Jack's care, he was eager to find out exactly why he had been sent for, but he was not impervious to the suffering around him, and his hearts ached that there was no way he could change history to the extent that changing their plight in any meaningful way would entail. He was sure, if not actually stopped, Jack could and would blow the camp sky high; what good would it do? The Nazis would rebuild it, and take revenge on whichever escaped prisoners they caught, or on the next transport, and the other camps scattered across Europe would meanwhile remain untouched. I'd feel better if I could save even one person, he ruminated, but it's not about my feeling better! I wish I knew what it was about! Well, in the morning. He really was tired, and drifted off to sleep, mindless of the searchlights' constant invasive sweep or the sharp incline of his bed (Mother Earth herself), with a boy's head on his stomach and his own head on someone else's ankles.
EIGHT
Jack slept less well. He lay awake, albeit indoors, in a bunk that had a mattress, and more or less clean sheets, and a moderately fluffy pillow (not bad, for a recently promoted regularly army grunt). He'd had a meal -- soup without gravel, some quite lovely French bread and real butter (he'd expected olive oil, for dipping, but no matter), a hunk of local cheese (Munster, he thought, although it was surprisingly tangy, causing Runckhaus to spit his out), choucroute, which he recognized as sauerkraut, half a large Morteau sausage and a not one, but two glasses of clear, golden Kanterbrau (which Orgelburg eschewed, preferring the local Schnapps) -- in the relatively privacy of the SS quarters, with Orgelburg, Runckhaus and a stone-faced Major Kunst, who'd already had steak with the Commandant and now sat silently drinking Schnapps as well. They'd all wanted to know who the nutjob was who'd just walked right into the parade like that. He laughed it off and brandished his gun to indicate what they already knew, having heard the gunshot. No more was made of it. Since the poor fellow hadn't even been a prisoner, he didn't even need to be factored into the head count, which was endless, and afforded an opportunity for the counter (whose name Jack didn't know) to strike out at a few prisoners, but at least this time no one had been murdered. (Jack had been shown the gallows in the center of the camp; he knew the Commandant enjoyed a good hanging.) After that, Commandant Kramer, arriving from his villa down the road (it even had a swimming pool, Runchaus told him, his eyes gleaming with envy) reminded all the guards to be on their best behavior tomorrow for Doctor Hirt, who was to obeyed in all respects. Then, at last, those who had done day duty were sent off to bed, the rest now being on night watch. Jack could hear the dogs barking nearby, but they were only saying good night to their trainer. He knew the Doctor was sleeping on the still-cold ground elsewhere in the camp. He knew that an extraterrestrial named Oya was waiting for him in the woods. He mentally replayed their conversation again and again, trying to determine what, if anything, he had missed. The situation made no sense.
"I am sorry to have diverted you from your obligations," Oya had apologize, "but we truly didn't know whom else to ask. We have had good experience of Time Lords." Time Lords, plural? Jack didn't ask. "It was kind of you to come so quickly, too."
"Yeah, yeah, fast service. So you needed a lift to the Holocaust? Don't you have time-taxi service on your planet?"
"When I called the Time Lord," explained Oya, "I was not on my home planet. I was stranded, just as my sister is stranded here. But no, she could as easily hitch a ride somewhere and somewhen else as I could. We would eventually be reunited."
"What, then? You go about borrowing bodies, you drift like dandelion fluff, whatever. Why do you need us?" Jack was hardly xenophobic but had some aversion to spending the day with bona fide Nazis, pretending to participate in torture-as-sport while some of the prey randomly, uncooperatively, expired on its own -- and a good portion of it was in its current predicament by virtue of practicing, in secret, what Jack and Ianto pursued fearlessly: their mutual attraction and, yes, call it what it was: love. Nor had he enjoyed ending the life of the human whose body now stood and calmly, politely addressed him, Nazi though that human may have been, simply because his apolitical bladder had been full in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably a regular army grunt who thought he'd gotten lucky, being promoted to sergeant. Probably drafted. Kissed his mom goodbye, thinking maybe he'd see her on... whatever the next holiday would be. Now he'll never see her again. And what did she do to deserve to lose a son, anyway? Abruptly Jack remembered that both mother and son had names. Schuler. Sergeant Hark Schuler of Aachen. Son of Mrs. Schuler. Frau Schuler. Mom. Mutter. So he wasn't in the most hospitable of humors. Still, the entity now reanimating Hark Schuler's body also imbued it with a humble sincerity Jack couldn't ignore. A little less hostilely, he added, "We'll help if we can."
"She has found a wrongness and asked me to find help. We are powerless to repair the wrongness."
Jack was incredulous. "You want us to stop the Holocaust? From your lips to any random god's ears, but what makes you think anyone could do that? I mean your heart is definitely in the right place. I'm with you one hundred percent. But... how?"
"I need to speak to the Time Lord."
"Okay, okay, well you can't just waltz over and have a chat; you'll endanger him and you'll just be shot on the spot... or would that hurt you? Well, we can't let any of Schuler's friends see your face anyway! And I have to get back or I'll be... I don't know what. I'm the new kid on the block. I have to watch my step too. I just shot you and I'm taking the time to cover you up with brush. Now I'd better get back. Will you be okay waiting one more night?" Oya nodded, awkwardly, unused to the functioning of the human body, and Jack realized that the requisitioned face had not moved a muscle except to permit speech; Oya didn't know how to smile.
NINE
The doctor arrived in the morning but the Doctor at first knew nothing of it. He received a cup of weak coffee with a fresh morsel of bread, which he finished despite the good advice he'd followed the day before. He wasn't expecting to stay. He was a bit surprised, and irked, not to be leaving the camp, though. After another series of head counts, he was put to work, with the others, building barracks on the hillside. He did notice Jack walking around with another SS guard and a youngish ununiformed man, pointing to certain prisoners, whom the capos then took away. The Doctor heard no gunshots, and there were no gas chambers on the premises (they would be built two years later, next to the hotel). The prisoners who were taken away all wore pink triangles, some with and some without the golden star of David. Jack made eye contact only once, and didn't smile. The Doctor didn't smile, right back at him. The stranger who'd found him was nowhere to be seen, which was probably good. The Doctor trusted Jack hadn't really shot him. (The acoustics had been all wrong anyway.)
Then the whispering started. The doctor was here; the doctor had selected some prisoners. The doctor had only visited once before; no one selected by the doctor had ever been seen again. The Doctor felt a bit irrationally resentful that someone called "the doctor" was responsible for selecting people who vanished; he knew what SS "doctors" did to prisoners. On the other hand, he was actually rather enjoying the work. The prisoners had been given hammer and nails, and were constructing the wooden barracks (most of the lovely pink granite was sitting in huge piles waiting to be taken elsewhere, but some was being used to contruct steps, or terraces, as foundations for the barracks-to-be). An unopened can of green paint, a brush lying on its lid, awaited the completion of the first building; this would not happen today.
Because the tools could be used as weapons, the guards were especially attentive. He wished Jack were among them. But the air was cool, the sun wasn't overly strong (it even drizzled for half a minute, and this was refreshing) and the repetitive work, along with the ring of the hammers, oddly pleasant (he was aware that for people on the verge of collapse this might not be true). He felt guilty for feeling good, and he was also determined, regardless of his purpose in this evil place, to thwart the doctor somehow. In his gut he knew he had to change at least that smidgeon of history.
In the afternoon, after the workers had more coffee and even a scrap of sausage, more prisoners arrived, all men and boys, on foot. The huge gate opened, and in they trudged, allowing themselves to be herded into a single line, from which they were sent to the right or to the left. Those who turned left only took a few steps before being shot dead. One young man broke and ran for the barbed wire, leaping onto it, perhaps intending to climb it somehow, perhaps knowing he would be fried, which, of course, he was. He hung there, convulsing, then dropped to the ground. The guards laughed. The other prisoners, some weeping, some seeming to sleepwalk, continued to turn left and be shot or turn right and be counted. But wait, there was a reaction, after all, to the electrocution of the rebel. The doctor came out, and so did Jack. The working prisoners had stopped to look but been quick to turn away, back to their work. What could they do? The Doctor kept his eye on Jack, hoping for a signal; he got one, of a sort. A familiar silver cylinder rose as if by magic from Jack's side, and the barbed wire gave an extra little sizzle -- nothing big, just an afterspurt, if anyone cared to notice. The Doctor noticed and although he tried hard not to smile, his lips turned upwards. The electric fence was toothless now -- for how long, he could not guess. He wondered if Jack had been practicing with the sonic screwdriver or had been extraordinarily lucky just now. He wondered, too, of what use this new development would be with machine guns pointing down from each tower, armed and alert guards on the ground, a gate that was always locked.... Wait a minute. That gate is open. It may only be open for another half-minute, while the last stragglers enter this hell, but it's open now.
The Doctor looked at Jack, who, miraculously, was looking at him. The Doctor did a crazy thing: he flashed Jack the biggest smile in the world, waved his arms above his head, waggled his tongue and rolled his eyes. He dropped his hammer and fell down, imitating the electrocuted prisoner as best he could. An older prisoner took the Doctor's shoes and placed them under his head, as a pillow, and picked up the fallen hammer and placed its handle under the Doctor's tongue. Two guards were running toward them but Jack got there first. He snatched the hammer from the Doctor's mouth, almost flung it away and at the last moment had the foresight to stuff it, handle down, into a pocket, and the further foresight to pluck the shoes from under his head (nice, heavy shoes, too!) and, grabbing the Doctor by the collar of his striped shirt, hauled him up off the ground and smacked him soundly across each of his now-stubbly cheeks. The seizure stopped as suddenly (and mysteriously) as it had started. Jack hauled his prisoner across the camp toward the gate; everyone had stopped, even the sorry parade, to watch these goings on, and the gate gaped open yet.
"Halt!" The Commandant strode toward them. They were a meter from the gate, maybe less. The Doctor could see its huge metal latch hanging, unclasped. They stopped in their tracks. "What have we here?" He reached out a gloved hand and placed it under the Doctor's chin, lifting his head to get a better look. Then he looked at Jack. "Don't be shy, Sergeant..."
"Schuler, Commandant." Jack saluted as best he could, still clutching the Doctor.
"... Schuler. You can shoot him here."
The Doctor, barefoot and half-strangled by Jack's efforts to be convincingly brutal, snaked a hand toward Jack's pocket and closed his fingers around the hammerhead.
"Please," interrupted Doctor Hirt, who had joined them. "May I?" The Commandant nodded and stepped back, letting go the Doctor's chin. Doctor Hirt looked him up and down, quite slowly; his eyes gleamed with approval and even a bit of excitement. "Oh yes, this is a very interesting skull. I will want it. But I think, too, he will also make a good candidate for today's project. Please bring him along."
"Run!" shouted Jack, pushing the Doctor toward the gate, lifting his Ruger and pressing it to Doctor Hirt's temple. "Let him go or I'll shoot your precious doctor."
Unimpressed, the Commandant drew his Walther P-38 and shot Jack between the eyes. As Jack fell, the Commandant replaced the Walther in its leather holster, turned and walked off as if nothing had happened; he didn't even wait to see that two guards now had the Doctor restrained (one took the hammer from him and clucked his tongue in mock disapproval) and were dragging him off to the infirmary, where Doctor Hirt had almost everything he could want at his disposal, and which he now intended to use, too, upon his most newly selected patient.
TEN
Death wasn't fun. Nor was it boring. It was horrific, or at least horrific to be wrenched up out of it like a man just coming to terms with drowning, then conscious once more with a lungful of broken glass and the bends to boot. Something dragged Jack, gasping, back out of nothingness, through the pain, into somethingness, and that somethingness turned out to be as suffocating as the theoretical lungful, since Jack awoke to find himself buried under a heap of corpses awaiting cremation. They were new; they didn't smell but they were heavy in aggregate. Jack took as deep a breath as he could, coughed, gagged on a mouthful of hair, took another half-breath and pushed, hard. Something shifted but he was still pinned. He wiggled as hard as he could and shook himself free enough to push usefully; the sound of the dead sliding off him, and off each other, then thumping to the ground, was sickening. He struggled out of the pile, then fell a short distance; it seems he had been among a wagonload of bodies. He looked cautiously around to make sure he hadn't been observed. In fact, though, he had. Two frightened prisoners were still holding a murdered peer, having been about to add him to the now-scattered stack.
Jack stood up and brushed himself off. "Don't tell," he whispered. Then he felt quickly in his pants pockets (his coat was gone, and wasn't he glad now he hadn't been wearing his own). Empty. "Give it back," he said. The prisoners put their burden down, and one produced a French franc but was afraid to approach. Jack came and looked but it wasn't the sonic screwdriver; he wished the Doctor had it; surely the Time Lord could use it to effect an escape, or at least avoid being Doctor Hirt's guinea pig. The other man offered a wooden spoon with a long handle and a metal one with no handle. Jack took the metal one. "I won't hurt you," he said, "unless you tell." He studied their faces and realized that he couldn't tell whether they were young or old, nor easily tell them apart except that the man with the spoon was somewhat shorter than the man who'd had a disappointing franc instead of the sonic screwdriver, and had a cap, which he now held in his hand. Their heads were shaven; they wore identical striped pajamas, although not everyone in the camp did; they were rail-thin. Jack looked around again. He saw by the position of the sun, as it poked out from behind black clouds and then vanished again behind them, that he hadn't been dead for long at all. He saw no one else near enough to have seen his resurrection, as the spot was slightly isolated; he also saw no crematorium, and yet the smell of burnt flesh was overpowering. There was, nearby, a small field, or pit, of ashes, and behind that the barbed wire.
"Usually they bring the crematorium here," explained the shorter man. "It has wheels. They keep it down by the farm. But something's wrong and they can't bring it, so they bring us there." Jack was puzzled, then realized that the man hadn't mean that he and his companion were to travel; he was simply already identifying with the dead. He would, in time, be brought to the crematorium if the crematorium wasn't brought to him.
Jack held up the metal spoonhead and the men watched as he tossed it gently against the barbed wire. Nothing happened. His observers' eyes widened. He grinned and retrieved his spoon. He began to dig in the soft ash. Light drizzle fell. Although they were afraid, the two men shielded him, first by standing in front of him and then, realizing their inactivity would eventually be noted, by blocking him with the wagon. They began to put the fallen bodies back into it; that shielded Jack further and justified their continued presence. The drizzle turned to rain and still Jack dug with his spoon, and with his hands. At last he was able to roll in the now muddy ash, under the wire. He stood, hair slicked to his forehead, feeling somewhat disoriented. The two men stared at him. "Come on, then," he said, gesturing vaguely at them. The taller man backed away. The shorter man looked back at his friend, then in a flash was under the fence and out. When he looked back again, his friend was gone. "Which way is the entrance?" asked Jack, adding, in response to the man's shocked expression, "no, I'm not going back in! But I need to meet someone in the woods.
His new friend pointed, then bolted in the opposite direction, down the mountain to a fate he could not anticipate and which Jack could neither guess nor learn.
Jack opened his mouth to ask the man's name, and shut it again. Silently, he wished him luck. Then he wished, with some fervency, the same luck, doubled, to the Doctor. Keeping low, he hurried around the perimeter of the sprawling camp.
ELEVEN
The Doctor sat on a rough wooden bench and waited. Seems like all I've been doing, waiting, he grumbled silently. He wasn't especially pleased, either, about being handcuffed to a dark wooden rail that had been nailed clumsily to the sparkling white infirmary wall. The wooden floorboards were whitewashed but slightly scuffed; some people walked here and some were dragged. The Doctor knew Jack would be alive again, and hoped he hadn't revived just to be rekilled. Now he wished he'd saved a bit of bread. He wasn't hungry but munching on it would've been something to do; he was always at his best multitasking. The truth was, he was still shaken from his near-escape and its consequences, and mentally he was rattling his chain and screaming "Hey!" It took all the strength he had to sit quietly, which he did for one reason and one alone: to buy Jack time.
For once, it didn't matter if anyone discovered his second heart, or what would be considered other anomalies. The Doctor knew he could be 100 percent human and if he landed on the examination table he would be violated, one way or another, ending up dead, or with a third arm sewn on, or both.
The prisoners he'd seen selected earlier that afternoon were not handcuffed; they sat or lay on chairs or cots in unlocked rooms nearby, and those chairs and cots were luxurious compared to where they'd been. But then, they had not recently made a run for freedom. Doctor Hirt had not emerged from his office for a while but once in a while a prisoner from one of the rooms was brought to him by a tall young assistant named Beck, himself a prisoner who had been allowed to keep his bright blond hair, and didn't look hungry, and smiled reassuringly at the prisoners he escorted, even though he knew their fate would not be enviable; indeed, they knew it too, yet often smiled back, not reassuredly but reassuringly, forgiving the assistant for his coerced collaboration. Once Beck walked by without a prisoner and surreptitiously slipped a crust of bread into the Doctor's hand. The Doctor nodded without speaking, not wanting to get Beck into trouble. He nibbled distractedly, for the short time the crust lasted. No one spoke to him, or bothered him. It was as if he weren't there.
Then someone did. "They will measure you." He looked up. Beck was helping a prisoner back to his room, and the prisoner was looking at the floor, giving no indication he had spoken, but the Doctor had heard what he had heard.
The Doctor did, as it happened, have a thin wrist. He had no intention of slipping free quite yet, but it would be nice to know if he could. He relaxed his hand and slowly rotated it, pulling gently downward, to no avail. With sinking hearts he realized that by now, everyone in this place had thin wrists; the handcuffs would have been made with that in mind. He sighed. Then he started; Doctor Hirt had chosen that moment to come out and was smiling at him pretty much as a doting parent smiles at a child who has just produced his first fart. The Doctor, not easily rattled, blushed, and then felt a surge of anger, well beyond the anger at himself for blushing. It was a hurricane of anger that had been building for days. He willed his hand to slip through the cuff; it did. He rose to his feet, somewhat gratified to see Doctor Hirt's expression change from patronizing to alarmed, and punched the doctor squarely in the nose. Clutching that appendage, the doctor dropped like a chunk of pink granite. Before he could fully appreciate that, though, the Doctor felt a sharp stab in his left buttock, then Beck's arm catching him as his legs buckled. His mind whirled. His stomach whirled a bit too. He threw up; he had the presence of mind to hope he'd thrown up on the doctor. Then his mind was no longer present.
TWELVE
Until the dogs started barking, Jack had no worse difficulty than a few hip-high milk thistles that scraped him ruthlessly right through his trouser legs; the aggressive plants hadn't bloomed yet but he wouldn't have enjoyed their light purple flowers at any rate, nor even seen them. He was focused on not being seen, himself. The woods were sparse just here (which perhaps accounted for the height of the thistles), affording virtually no cover, and he had to get to the roadway, cross it safely without being spotted, and find Oya. The ruckus the dogs made stopped him cold. There is no way he'd be missed; he was dead. What, then, would the guards make of the alarm? Perhaps they would attribute it to the thunder and lightning; he was well soaked and had long since stopped minding the relentless downpour.
He knew he couldn't wait until dark; he had to brass his way through -- the rain helped in that regard, though lightning continually cracked open the sky -- or who knew what would become of the Doctor. Gwen, bless her, had once sworn to Jack her devotion to Rhys, and in the next breath admitted her love for Jack, albeit declaring it different. Different how? Jack knew what she meant, though. Jack loved Ianto with all his heart, and had enough heart left over that it would break irreparably if the Doctor were no longer in this or any other world, or indeed if any harm at all befell him. He crouched among the nasty weeds, trying not to breathe too loudly.
The guards shouted at the dogs, who eventually settled down. Jack moved quietly once more; one dog growled, a guard snapped, and all was quiet again. He had to stay close to the fence or he would get himself turned around; it was raining hard now and the thunder and lightning (maybe the guards could chalk the dogs' activity up to that) reminded him that eventually the fence's disability would be discovered. They still wouldn't be looking for a dead man, but a live one wandering through the woods would cause quite a stir!
When he reached the road it was, to his relief, empty. It was too early for the miners to be marching "home" and there were no more new prisoners arriving. It was a narrow road, barely a road at all, and the woods on the other side were thick. He dashed across, stumbled, fell into foliage, lay panting for a split second, then leapt up and high-tailed it, mindless of the dogs' renewed racket, toward the Tardis.
THIRTEEN
"You don't want to do this," said the Doctor. The white-coated doctor he addressed smiled cordially. "No, really. Your experiment would be invalid. I'm... different.
"Of course you're different. You're a Jewish homosexual. I will have a lovely time dissecting your skull. But for now, you're going to help humanity."
"Oh, well, I always enjoy helping humanity. Didn't quite figure that for your specialty, though." The Doctor twisted slightly, testing his restraints. He was a bit cold, secured with two strong leather straps, one over his chest and one across his thighs, to a metal table not quite long enough for him; his bare feet stuck out over the end. He wiggled his toes, just to see if he could. Then he realized he was barefoot all over.
Doctor Hirt lay a measuring tape against the Doctor's nose (the Doctor couldn't help noticing, with some satisfaction, that Doctor Hirt's own nose looked a bit red), then scribbled into a small notebook. He measured the breadth of the Doctor's forehead, the distance between his ears, the circumferance of his neck amd even the length of his lips. "Smile," ordered Doctor Hirt. The Doctor frowned. "Beck!" The tall prisoner appeared as if he had been waiting just out of sight, which, the Doctor realized, may well have been the case. Beck stretched the Doctor's mouth into a smile, and Doctor Hirt measured that. Then he worked his way down the Doctor's body, alternating lengths and girths, occasionally calling upon Beck for assistance. He stopped and frowned, seeing no tattoo on the Doctor's forearm, but proceeded nonetheless.
The Doctor covered his humiliation and rage after recovering from a strenuous set of measurements by gasping out, "Does this mean we're engaged?" Doctor Hirt roared with laughter but Beck was silent. While Hirt was measuring each of the Doctor's toes, Beck turned away, then turned back with a hypodermic in his hand. He smiled sadly at the Doctor as he squirted some liquid out of the hypo. He tapped on an inner elbow, seeking a vein.
"You don't have to do this," whispered the Doctor. "You can fake it. You can save people. There's a lot you can do." With practiced hands, Beck slipped the needle, as gently as he could, into the vein he'd found. "At least tell me what you're giving me!"
"It's Mediterranean spotted fever," said Doctor Hirt, who of course had heard everything. "I don't mind your knowing. You will also be glad to know we are working on a cure. This is how you will help humanity. Beck has no need to be ashamed. He is helping humanity too, isn't that right, Beck?" He laughed. "Beck is a Jewish homosexual, too. Yes, I know, he doesn't look the least bit Jewish!" He ran his fingers through Beck's golden hair; Beck flinched. "Would I ever love to have his skull in my collection! Still, he is of great use to me. Aren't you, Beck?" Beck nodded. "Beck is my little helper. When I take his skull, I will hang it in a place of honor! All of Strasbourg will come to see it!"
"You're an idiot," said the Doctor. "There is no difference between a Jewish skull and a Christian one; there is no difference between a gay skull and a straight one. Your collection is of no interest to anyone with a brain, and... and...." He forgot what he was going to say. "Your skull is on backwards," he concluded. "And strawberry."
"Interesting," mused Doctor Hirt. "It's never done that before. In fact, it usually doesn't do anything for at least twenty-four hours. Beck, what did you give him?"
"Spotted fever, Professor, just as you told me!"
Hirt smacked the prisoner on his left temple. "Dumbkopf!" Beck staggered as he fell against the metal cartful of instruments he'd placed there earlier for the doctor's convenience. He dropped the hypo but caught himself on the edge of the cart and dragged himself upright again. When he staggered from the room, the cart bore one fewer instrument than it had moments ago.
"Now, then," said Doctor Hirt, regaining his previous composure. "How do you feel, my little fiancée?"
"Extremely strawberry," admitted the Doctor, "and elven."
"Interesting," repeated Doctor Hirt. "Well, now, what can we make of this?" He bent to retrieve the fallen hypodermic. He wrapped its tip in paper from his notebook and secured it with a bit of string. "I must find out what you were given. It may be significant." He left the Doctor alone for a moment, then returned, having exchanged his white lab coat for a shiny brown leather jacket; he now wore a sharp leather cap and had a brown leather case and a plain black umbrella together under one arm. "You will be in good hands, my friend. Beck!" Beck reappeared and waited impassively for instructions. "See our friend here to his accommodations. I must return to the University immediately. If Kramer wants me he can find me there. Write down anything he says or does. I don't care if it's only a cough; write it down!" He withdrew the umbrella from under his arm and pointed it at Beck, for emphasis.
"Yes, sir," said Beck, moving to undo the Doctor's restraints, but Doctor Hirt stopped him to stroke his hair admiringly. Beck didn't flinch. "You look so Aryan, I think you are fooling us all, pretending to be a Jew. Nonetheless, I will have your skull, and paint it pink!" His laughter reverberated as he left the room, and even echoed back to them from outside the building.
"He is laughing too French," said the Doctor, crossly, and began to sing: "There's... a... place... for us.... a time and place... for us..."
Beck bent to free him, then helped him into a sitting position. The Doctor dangled his legs over the edge of the table, swinging them one at a time, as if making sure they still worked.
"... hold... my hand and we're half... way there..."
Beck obediently took the Doctor's hand and helped him off the table. He then helped him off the floor.
"... hold... my hand and I'll take... you there..."
Rather, Beck took the Doctor out of the examination room and into the hallway in which he had been shackled before. He sat the Doctor down on the same bench but did not handcuff him.
At the top of his lungs, the Doctor warbled, "Somehow! Some day! Somewhere!" Beck had, in fact, gone somewhere, and the Doctor sat and sang a selection of personal favorites from a selection of centuries, some of which, linearly speaking, had yet to occur. (When he screamed "Are we not men? WE ARE DEVO! for the thirty-second time, some of the other prisoners called out from their rooms for him to shut up. There is torture and then there is torture.) Beck returned eventually with a pair of clean woolen trousers ("They itch!" protested the Doctor, who had no underwear), a stained shirt and the very coat in which Jack had been shot dead. The Doctor didn't recognize the coat and slipped it on over the shirt without protest, albeit with a lot of help, as he was now trying to dance as well, but he did suddenly realize that Beck had a large cut across his neck. In fact, it appeared his throat had been slashed quite thoroughly with a scalpel. The Doctor reached out and touched the wound. It was dry. "You remind me very little..." he said, then collapsed with laughter, snorted, recovered, assumed a straight face and continued, "... of a friend of mine."
Beck nodded. "I am your friend." He handed the Doctor a pair of boots. The Doctor dropped them and shook his head, then waited for his head to stop shaking.
"No, I mean... different friend." He narrowed his eyes. "I'm not right. I'm a little crazy right now."
Beck agreed. "A human would still be all right, then become quite ill. You're not human."
The Doctor's eyes widened. "I think... I think...." He pointed shakily at Beck. "You're not human too!" His eyes narrowed. "Where's Beck?"
"Beck committed suicide."
"With your help.
"No, I would never do that. It is distressing to me that he died, but convenient for you that I was able to inhabit his body before it was discovered and destroyed. But I am being rude. I meant to thank you for coming."
"Oh, any time," said the Doctor, breathlessly, falling back onto the bench. "Time is my thing." He pondered. "Did I say I was elven?" Receiving no answer, he asked, "What's your name, then?"
"Rill," said the very small, usually very quiet being in Beck's body. "You will need to stand up. I am still very clumsy in human form and you are not safe."
"You're not safe too," the Doctor pointed out.
"Oh, I am quite safe. Thanks to your kind help, quite a few other people are safe as well."
"I haven't done anything," grimaced the Doctor. "All I did was get Jack shot and get myself... strawberry." He brightened. "I like strawberry. In fact I could do with a banana. A banana is never out of place. But I wish I was celery. I think celery is called for." At least, he thought, I am not a pear. I'd be allergic to myself. "I'm hungry," he added, rather plaintively.
"You sent the doctor home in the rain. He will catch a cold; there will be no experiments tomorrow or the day after. Many people will be saved."
"They're not saved," replied the Doctor, soberly. "There are a million ways to suffer here, and a million ways to die. No one is saved."
Rill disagreed, expressionlessly. "You are wrong, Time Lord. Every day they take another breath is another day they are saved."
FOURTEEN
"I can't believe it," said Jack. "Nobody noticed?" He touched the barbed wire with his fingers. "I doubt even in the rain anyone could make it to this spot without being seen and stopped. But where I came through, that's at least a little bit isolated, and unless they've moved the wagon, the gap is hidden. I think it's our only chance."
"I can enter unseen anywhere," said Oya, "but not in this body. If you need my physical help I would need a form that could manipulate elements in this world. My own form is very well suited for my personal purposes but would be of no use to you."
"Last time I looked, there was a whole stack of available bodies. What... what happens to the one you're in now?"
Oya came as close to sighing as Jack had yet seen. "He will resume his deadness."
"Could you take one that was alive and use that?"
"I would not like to do so." They crept together around the side of the camp Jack had not traversed (he had figured out, ruefully, that he'd taken the long way around). They didn't want to alarm the dogs as Jack had, and the cover was slightly better, enhanced by the fact that the lightning was less frequent even though the rain had not let up an iota. The plan, insofar as they had formulated one, was for the two of them to crawl back under the fence, into the camp, whereupon Oya would disengage from Schuler's body and reanimate one from the cart. And then.... And then? Jack looked at Oya and wondered if he -- she? -- had a plan. He sure didn't. Let's cross that tee when we get to it.
They never got to it. When they found themselves near the infirmary, Oya stopped short. Jack was ahead and didn't at first realize his companion was no longer with him. "Oya?" he whispered. He turned back. There was no response from Oya. He retraced his steps and shortly stumbled over the lifeless body of Sergeant Hark Schuler. "Crap," said Jack. He thought about getting out the spoonhead and digging on the spot, then instead dragged the corpse through the mud and thistle and dropped it just a few feet away from the fence so at least it wouldn't be seen by accident from inside the camp. He waited almost a whole minute, shook his head in exasperation and proceeded back around the camp. I must be nuts. I have no plan, the crazy alien who brought me here has bolted and the crazy alien I love... how the hell am I ever going to get us out of here?
He was dismayed to find the wagonful of corpses gone. The hole gaped for anyone to see! Apparently, though, no one had seen it, or no one who was likely to tell, anyway. Jack rolled through, then quickly obscured the gap by piling wet ashes in front of it; he tried not to think about what he was handling. (He'd handled worse.) The nearest building was not near at all; at any moment a guard would catch him out of place and either shoot him (again!) on the spot or hustle him off somewhere he didn't want to be, and from which he couldn't easily escape. Then he noticed that the gallows that stood in the center of the camp was occupied. He'd just missed a hanging. Oh, goodie. He shuffled across the camp to the gallows as if he had business there.
"You! And you!" A capo was pointing at him; a prisoner was moving toward the hanged man. Other prisoners were dispersing: back to work in the rain. Commandant Kramer was standing nearby, fortunately with his back turned to Jack, who ducked his head and tried not to call attention to himself as he held the dead man, from whose neck the prisoner slipped the noose. The dead man fell into Jack's arms. The prisoner picked up the limp legs and nodded for Jack to move backwards. Then the prisoner did a strange thing: he smiled. He gently let the legs drag on the ground, looked around to be sure he wasn't being observed, then barely withdrew from his pocket a French franc. Jack recognized him then, nodded and barely smiled back. The prisoner picked up the dead man's legs and off they went, Jack walking backwards, sometimes glancing behind him and sometimes guided by a head or shoulder gesture from his newfound friend, but they did not return to the ash pile; they carried the corpse to the wagon, which had not left the camp but was now parked, as it were, in front of the infirmary: still full. This was a bit of luck! Then he was overwhelmed with a thought so horrible he could feel himself flush. He quickly scanned the faces of the top layer of dead, then rolled some over, and dug deeper, desperate not to find what he sought. He was stopped by a hand on his shoulder; he turned to look into a face he had just examined: not the Doctor's, but a face that had a moment ago been dead. "Oya?" The face nodded. The two of them slipped off the cart Jack gracefully and Oya stiffly, and dusted themselves off. The man with the coin was backing away from them. Jack put a finger to his lips and the man repeated the gesture, raising a finger to his own lips. He didn't look as shocked as he had the first time. He's seen stranger stuff, and he'll see stranger yet if he sticks around. He followed Oya into the infirmary, where he would have been surprised to see this newly risen corpse embrace a tall blond man with a slit throat, had he not suddenly found himself also clutched in an unexpected embrace. The Doctor had leapt up from a wooden bench and hurled himself at Jack, half-choking him with hugs and even a kiss that half missed Jack's mouth. Inaccurate though it may have been it was welcome, and Jack was loathe to let him go, but the Time Lord suddenly slipped from his arms and sank to the whitewashed floor. Jack sank likewise to his knees and tried to revive the Doctor, but Oya and Rill gently pushed him aside. Oya took the Doctor by the shoulders and Rill grasped his shins; they carried him out into the rain and placed him gently atop the heap on the wagon. Jack ran after them and bade them wait; h turned to look for the prisoner with the French franc but he was nowhere to be found. Jack raced back into the infirmary and opened every door. The prisoners in the rooms sat or lay staring at him. "Come on!" he cried. One or two followed him. "Play dead," he ordered them. Oya and Rill carried each one to the wagon, then went back and carried out the ones who in their bemusement had not followed. They cooperated, though, and the heap got higher. Some were too ill to move. Rill and Oya wanted to carry them out too, but Jack shook his head. "How are they going to get down the hill, much less wherever they have to go after that? Believe it or not, they're safer here." The aliens had to agree. Jack thought, And what about the Doctor? How will he make it down the hill, much less wherever we have to go after that?
Three corpse-carriers being one too many, Jack lay down again among the dead, face down, one arm flung protectively across the unconscious Doctor. "Don't worry," he whispered. "I'm here." Walking corpses pushed and pulled the wagon across the camp, past guards, past capos, past ordinary prisoners, through the driving rain. It was darker now. They would not have another chance; the curfew would find them huddled together for the night on wet pink granite, unsheltered and unprepared for the next day's horrors. It was now or never.
They rolled the wagon right up to the hole in the barbed wire fence. The mound Jack had left was no longer there; the rain had washed away every ash. Jack rolled off the hidden side of the wagon and helped Oya and Rill to get the weak, amazed, living prisoners down too. He pushed them, one by one, through the hole. "Run!" They disappeared into the night. Oya and Rill lowered the Doctor to the ash pit and Jack knelt to revive him. "Come on, Doctor! Wake up! We've gotta get out of here!"
Oya said, "Thank you, sir, for all your help. My sister is grateful."
Rill said, "Yes, you have helped so many people."
Jack frowned. "Is that all, then? You just wanted us to get a few prisoners out of here? What about the ones who can't escape? There's a whole campful of them and more coming, and camps all over the place, and... and...." He was too angry and frustrated to go on. As long as he was changing history, why couldn't he just go kill Hitler and get it over with? He knew that the horror wouldn't be "over with" even if Hitler were gone... not even if all of Hitler's elite were gone, not even if all the camps were gone. The world was a place where such things could happen, so such things had happened, and would continue to happen. He'd never been so disheartened in his life, and Jack was no stranger to horror, nor to cruelty.
Rill said, "It must suffice. It must. I came upon this time and place by accident. You must understand... we do not feel as you feel. But we feel. The pain in this place is overwhelming. The pain of leaving it as it was would be unbearable. I called to my sister. I told her we needed help."
Ah, they are both sisters, thought Jack, irrelevantly. "So we were just a taxi service after all?"
"No, no," insisted Oya. "There is so little we can do in these shells, and our own forms... well, I have explained this to you, yes? Oh... here." Oya reached down with one closed hand and slowly opened it. "The Time Lord has lost his; he will need this." Jack took the proffered psychic paper, then handed it back up to Oya.
"Give this to someone who needs it. Maybe one more can walk out, maybe out the front gate! Who knows?"
Oya closed Jack's fist around the paper. "We will be leaving these bodies and going home. This is too much to bear. But we just could not leave without doing anything at all."
Jack stood, pocketed the paper, then embraced first Oya, then Rill. He saluted. "Ladies." He knelt and slipped through the hole in the fence. He reached in and carefully took ahold of the Doctor's bare feet and dragged him through the hole. Something else came through the hole as well: Rill's hand, with a small vial of liquid. "What's this?"
"The Doctor has been injected with Mediterranean spotted fever. There is no known cure. This is a possible antidote; it might help him. It might kill him. Nobody knows. That was to be the experiment. The Time Lord sent the doctor home."
Jack had to sort that statement out before asking, "So what are you saying; should I give this to the Doctor, then?"
"I don't know," said Rill. "It might only work if injected; oral ingestion may or may not be effective. In addition, I cannot predict the effect. Please, I am desolate that I cannot advise you. You must decide."
"Hey, you don't need a lift, do you?" Rill and Oya climbed up onto the wagon and lay down, and were still. "Guess not." Jack bent to the Doctor, lifted his head, lay his head back down in the mud, lifted his wrist, felt for a pulse, realized he had no idea what the Doctor's pulse should feel like or whether there should be one pulse or two, lay the wrist down again, then, grunting, lifted the Doctor into his arms and started blindly down the mountain.
They hadn't gotten far before Jack heard "Was ist dieses? Oh scheißen Sie!"
"Ging jemand hinaus? Wir sollten gehen Blick! Angegangen!"
"Warum arbeitet die Elektrizität nicht? Was geschah?"
"Sollten wir die Hunde nicht erhalten?"
"Sie gehen erhalten die Hunde. Ich folge ihnen."
Jack knew that if he kept carrying the Doctor through the brush he would make enough noise to be found, and that if he stopped and hoped the SS missed them, the dogs would find them. Well, the dogs weren't after them yet; he set down his limp burden and fumbled in his pocket for the vial Rill had given him. He could not loosen its stopper with his wet, muddy fingers, so he used his teeth. "I'm sorry, Doctor," he whispered. "Forgive me. I have no choice! It's our only chance!" And a piss-poor chance, too! He lifted the Doctor's head and forced the vial to his lips. The Doctor sputtered, choked. "All of it." Most of it went down; only a little dribbled from the corner of the Doctor's mouth. Hearing the dogs begin to keen not far away, Jack hastily flung the vial as far as he could, hoping to mislead the nearer guard. He slung the Doctor over one shoulder, clasping him firmly under his buttocks, and ran for it.
"Hier! Auf diese Weise!"
The voices were too close, way too close, and the dogs were shrilling, practically on top of them. Jack didn't worry about making noise now; nothing he did could be as loud as the dogs, who were following scent, anyway. Then the worst thing happened: he tripped over a branch and went spinning head over heels into the brush, banging his forehead against a tree; the Doctor went flying backwards out of his arms, but backwards by now was downhill, and the Doctor crashed and rolled. Jack sat, stunned, then leapt up, saw the open jaws of a charging dog, and scrambled up the tree that had clobbered him. Three dogs screamed at him, jumping as high as they could, and lightning lit their eyes like torches.
"Sie! Unten gekommen!"
The guards had stopped just below him and were looking up. He didn't know if they could see him. "Er ist im Baum."
"Solch ein Idiot! said a deeper voice." Jack had to agree; he felt like an idiot. He deserved what was coming, but what had the Doctor done? He could cry. If they shot the Doctor while he was unconscious, or let the dogs have him, he would be unable to regenerate and that would be that.
"I'm sorry, Doctor," mouthed Jack, silently, and was about to continue when he heard a third voice, a young one, trembling with eagerness:
"Sollten wir ihn schießen?" asked the young voice.
"Nein. Der Kommandant wünscht dieses sicher hängen."
"Es gibt jemand anderes unten hier.!" Deep-voice had found the Doctor. It was all over.
"Leave him alone!" cried Jack, climbing down. "Take me! Leave him alone!" Mercifully, the dogs were restrained, as, of course, was Jack.
"Er ist eins von uns! Ich erkenne ihn nicht. Woher kam er?" Jack remembered, with what might almost be a glimmer of hope, that the Doctor was wearing a German regular army Sergeant's coat.
"I did it," said Jack. "I overpowered him. He fought me, but I was stronger!" Realizing how unlikely this was, he added, "Desperation made me stronger."
His captors laughed at this. The one who had found the Doctor now appeared, carrying him almost as tenderly as Jack had. The other guards each had Jack firmly by one arm; the younger guard lifted his gun to strike him with its butt, but the older one stopped him. "Do you want to carry him? Let him walk!" The younger one holstered his gun and gave Jack a shove.
"Get moving!!" Jack let himself be dragged back up the mountainside. "The Commandant will be pleased; two hangings in one day!"
"What a miserable day," said the guard carrying the Doctor. "Still, we're already wet, so what will it hurt us to stand a little more in the rain?"
With a shock, Jack realized that the guards had been speaking English. Of course they hadn't; the Tardis was translating, as she always did. Well, not always. When her connection with the Doctor was broken, she didn't function quite properly.
Jack turned, trying to see the Doctor. He was rewarded with a smack upside the head... and with a wink from a Time Lord. Jack burst out laughing.
"What the hell are you laughing about?" grumbled the young guard.
"I know something you don't know," said Jack.
"Yeah? What's that?"
"I know which Doctor has a sonic screwdriver in his coat pocket."
The Doctor yawned loudly and sat up gracefully in the arms of his ertswhile benefactor. The latter was alarmed enough to step back, and the Doctor was quickly on his feet, waving the screwdriver threateningly from him to the other guards and back again. "Why don't you join your friends?" suggested the Doctor. Deep-voice followed the suggestion. "Now let him go."
"I don't think that's a weapon," said the older guard, hanging onto Jack. "It doesn't look like a weapon."
The younger one asked, "Do you think anyone will mind if I shoot him?"
"Oh all right," said the Doctor. "It was worth a try." He turned the screwdriver aside. It whirred. In response came a much deeper whir, followed by some truly wretched creaks and groans. The Tardis blinked into being and stood still; she had narrowly missed impalement on the tree up which the dogs had chased Jack. (The dogs were whining in fear; so was the young guard.) "Captain? You coming?"
The Tardis door popped open. The Doctor stepped into the doorway; he glowed green there, backlit by the Tardis' interior, his hair and fingertips shooting rays through the rain. He looked like... well, he looked like a Time Lord. The three guards fell to their knees before him. Jack stepped over them, started to go to the Doctor, then turned back, bent and disarmed them. He stood and observed them coldly. "If we kill them," he said, "they won't be able to kill anyone else."
"Do you know who I am?" asked the Doctor, in as booming a voice as he could muster. "I am a Jew! I am a homosexual! I am Romany! I am a Jehovah's Witness! I am a communist! I am a Pole! I am all the people you have killed, and you cannot kill me! Do you understand?" The guards did not. "Okay," said the Doctor, in a normal voice, "let me put it another way. I'm a Time Lord. Well, in point of fact, I'm the Time Lord. Never mind, Time Lord, that's what I am, and you have been very naughty boys indeed, and you need to go home to your mothers now. You!" He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the youngest guard, extending it for effect. "Come here!" The guard crawled to him on his knees. "Give me your arm. No, the other one. That's right." He removed the swastika armband from the sleeve presented to him, and waved him back to his friends. "Theirs too." The young guard helped the others to remove their swastikas. "Silly, nasty symbol, all angles and edges. Throw them here." He threw down the one he held, to show them where. "Anyone got a match?"
"Actually," said Jack, "you've got a lighter in your pocket."
"Ooh, and whiskey, too! The world is full of naughty boys!" The Doctor handed Jack the flask and the lighter. Jack poured whiskey over the armbands, then set them ablaze. As if in response, lightning briefly but brilliantly illuminated the woods. Amazingly, the rain had suddenly ceased, but it was quite late now, and the fire slowly burned in darkness otherwise broken only by glow of the Doctor in the doorway. The Doctor whistled to the dogs and they crawled to him as the young guard had. He placed his hands on each of their heads, his fingers splayed on either side of their ears. His mind sought theirs, one by one, and gentled them, nourished them, restored them to the noble beings they were always meant to be. He shuddered as he absorbed and dissolved every kick, every lash of the whip, every electric shock. The abuse that had turned them into monsters was overpowered by the boundless love of the Doctor.
"I wish I could retcon these jokers," said Jack, ruefully.
"No," said the Doctor. "I want them to remember." He slipped into the Tardis, followed by Jack. The door closed behind them. They were safe. They were not, however, alone.
Their passengers were small, very small and quiet. But when Jack remembered the psychic paper Oya had given him, and dutifully turned it over to the Doctor, there was a message on it. The Doctor didn't read the message aloud, but nodded, then smiled. "I don't suppose we can go back to twenty-first-century Cardiff now?" complained Jack, despite his joy at being reunited with his abandoned RAF coat. He began to slip it on, then realized how muddy he was. "I don't suppose there's a shower in this thing?"
"Third door on the right," mumbled the Doctor, without indicating which passageway held the door in question. "Not quite yet, Cardiff, no, not quite yet. Have to make a little stop. Just a little one." Suddenly animated, he raced around the Tardis console, flipping switches and pulling levers; the Tardis responded with a groan and pitched the two men as mercilessly as a raft in a typhoon.
"Where are we going?" yelled Jack, above the roar.
"Just have to drop off a couple of friends," shouted the Doctor. "Then home. I promise!"
"Where's home?" wondered Jack, aloud, thinking, maybe Cardiff is, now. Yes, it must be. He couldn't wait to see Ianto and Gwen, though he knew he couldn't share with them a single instant of his last few days. Oh, how he longed to share it with them! He didn't realize the Doctor had heard him, nor hear the Doctor's soft response:
"I wish I knew, my dear friend. I wish I knew."
Do you have a comment or question about this story? I have posted in my BLOG, Random Ramblings, so that you may respond to that post with your comments. I do not require lavish praise (though if that's what you happen to have, bring it on!) and constructive criticism is welcome but, of course, please be nice!
AFTERNOTES: The Doctor, Captain Jack Harkness, the Tardis and the special reality that permits them to exist are not of my creation, nor my creative property, and I use them with no intention of taking credit for them, infringing anyone's copyright, stepping on anyone's toes or pretending my interpretations are canon. However, I have set them, in this story, in a reality which belongs, alas, to human history, which, while the plot, action and dialogue are mine and mine alone, I also did not create, and to which I tried to be true, in the face of some lack of available information (and some conflicting data, too). Natzweiler is real and I have seen pictures of what remains of it (a lot; it is now a memorial site). Commandant Kramer and Doctor (sometimes called Professor) Hirt were real, and while I of necessity put words in their mouths, I believe I have portrayed them as I have learned they really were, to the extent possible. The Natzweiler crematorium was not built until November 1941; a mobile crematorium was used, meanwhile. Once the permanent building had been built, it also housed the prisoners selected for experimentation, and those experiments were done there so that the bodies did not have to be hauled across the camp for cremation. In the meantime, experiments were performed in workshops build at the farmhouse, but, not knowing when those were completed, I took the liberty of assuming they did not yet exist, and placing Doctor Hirt and his works in the camp's infirmary. Other details of the camp are as accurate as I could make them, but I filled in gaps when I had to. The incident in which German Shepherds tear a boy to shreds is real, and the boy standing to the Doctor's right during that incident is also real, and the latter survived to testify.
The lyrics to "Somewhere," from West Side Story, are by the inimitable Stephen Sondheim and my use of them here, again, reflects absolutely no intention to infringe on any copyrights or make untoward claims regarding authorship.
