3

The Doctor and the Soul Pirate faced each other across an expanse of slick grey slate. The wind churned the mist into maelstroms and the great expanse of space yawned overhead. The Doctor’s hat was snatched from his head and sent spinning over the hotchpotch of pitched roofs into a coal bunker ten metres below.

Where I shall probably soon follow, the Doctor realised, but he had no alternative but to engage this pirate fellow. After all, the grotesque creature stood between him and his granddaughter.

‘Igby kill white-hair,’ said the foul creature from between clenched teeth. He was presumably referring to himself in the third person, and referring to the Doctor according to his hair colour, not randomly informing the Doctor of the existence of a man called Igby who had something against white hair.

‘Release your prisoners,’ the Doctor shouted into the wind. ‘You don’t have to live this way. You can be at peace.’

And even though the Doctor had always abhorred weapons, he wished he had something a little more substantial than a walking stick to fend off the blows that were coming his way.

‘I like white hair. He funny,’ shouted Igby, his own booming voice penetrating the elements. ‘Come die, old man.’

There is an excellent chance that I will do just that, thought the Doctor grimly. But despite the odds I simply must not lose. Sometimes there is more to life than the odds.

The orange anti-grav beam pulsed, scorching a cylinder through the London fog, silhouettes of brainwashed abductees floating in its depths, dreamily certain that they were flying to their own tailor-made heavens.

Jolly adventures, trees to climb, heroes all.

How long would that fantasy sustain them before the reality of the Soul Pirates’ ship manifested?

The Doctor advanced cautiously, picking his way along the slick ridge, keeping his cane extended all the while. As soon as he stepped out from behind the chimney, the full force of the elements battered him with sideswipes of wind and tacks of icy rain. He struggled to keep his balance on the treacherous slating, and each time a loose tile slipped from its moorings and smashed on the cobbles below the Doctor remembered the danger he was in.

Though one is hardly likely to forget.

Igby waited for him, his eyes ablaze with bloodlust, twirling his sword in complicated patterns that deflated the Doctor’s optimism with every revolution.

This alien is an expert killer. A mercenary. How can I, a pacifist with a stick, hope to defeat him?

The answer was obvious.

Igby was a beam jockey, that much was clear from the faint orange tinge to his skin, which reminded the Doctor (if one can be reminded of the future) of the pungent, toxic goo twenty-first-century ladies chose to slather on their skin in the name of tan. Beam jockeys were impervious to the soporific agent inside the anti-grav beam but long-term exposure did give their IQs a bit of a battering.

So, Igby appeared to be strong and fast, but maybe a little dim.

So, thought the Doctor, I use tactics.

Do the unexpected.

Closer they drew. On the face of it, the Doctor was totally outmatched. The pirate Igby was in his prime and packed solid with muscle. Igby’s teeth were golden and the heavy slab of his naked chest bore a tattoo of the Soul Pirates’ motto: We Never Land.

The Doctor noticed Igby’s shadow flicker and shift, and realised the anti-grav beam was retracting towards the ship. If that happened, all hope would be lost. Even if Susan survived and he did find her again, she would be a different person – her wonderful spirit broken.

‘No!’ he cried. ‘I will not permit it.’

Igby laughed, jerking his head at the Doctor as if informing an invisible friend that this old man was crazy. Then he too noticed the beam retracting, and realised that he had better finish up here or he could find himself stranded on Earth.

‘Sorry, old man. No play now, just kill dead with sword.’

Igby rushed the Doctor, covering the space between them in two strides. The Doctor held his cane in front of him protectively, but Igby bashed it away with his silver wrist-guard.

‘Fool,’ spat Igby, spittle spattering through layers of teeth, craggy as a mountain range.

He lifted his blade high and brought it down with terrific force towards the Doctor’s head. No time for subtleties. The pirate obviously intended to cleave one of the greatest frontal lobes in the universe with an almighty blow. Though the Doctor could not know it, this particular move was a favourite of Igby’s, and the tattooed lines on his arms did not represent a record of days spent in prison, but rather the number of heads he had split, properly witnessed by a minimum of two crewmates.

As he swung, it occurred to Igby that none of his mates was present to credit the killing, so he turned his head towards the ship just to check if any of the camera stalks at the ship’s front were focused on him, and to give the camera a clear shot of his face so there would be no cause for debate.

‘Look,’ he shouted in the direction of the camera stalks. ‘I kill white hair. No problem.’

Igby felt a thunk as expected, but it was somehow different from the signature skull-splitting thunk that generally followed a fatal blow to the noggin.

Igby turned his gaze to the Doctor, and was more than surprised to find that the old man had caught Igby’s sword in his left hand.

‘Igby,’ said Igby. It was the only word that would come to him.

The pirate yanked the sword, but it was trapped in the grip of the Doctor’s bio-hybrid hand, so Igby tugged again, this time with all of his considerable strength. The Doctor was lifted off the ground for a moment, then the temporary binding polymer, which secured the bio-hybrid glove to the Doctor’s wrist and was never meant for rooftop shenanigans, simply split with a noise like the twang of a rubber band. Igby’s yank sent him past the point of correction and over backwards.

The Doctor reached out the exposed curved ceramic digits to save the pirate, but Igby was beyond his reach. All he could do was blink at the appendage stretched out towards him and utter the last word of his despicable life.

‘Hook,’ he groaned and slid on all fours down the roof and tumbled into the darkness below.

The Doctor regretted the loss of any life, however vile, but there was no time to mourn Igby’s death. The orange tractor beam was withdrawing into the cloud and in mere seconds it would be beyond his reach. Perhaps it already was.

Oh, how I wish I had already regenerated to become the tall one with the dicky bow, thought the Doctor, who occasionally had visions of his future selves. He is always so fit and agile. I suppose all that incessant running down corridors that he does . . . will do . . . may do, in one of my possible futures . . . is good for something.

‘Stupid blasted sequence of events,’ he shouted at the heartless elements. ‘Isn’t a person supposed to have a reasonable option?’

If the elements did have the answer, they kept it to themselves.

‘S’pose not,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Better take the unreasonable option then.’

He trotted along the ridge to the nearest chimney, going as quickly as he could before his subconscious caught on to his lunatic plan and tried to stop him. Up on to the chimney he scrambled, dislodging two clay pots and a bird’s nest from its perch. And from there he dived out and was lifted up into the fading glow of the pirates’ tractor beam.