3

They were in the TARDIS control room, going home.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Amy was saying. ‘Why were the Skeleton People so angry with you in the first place? I thought they wanted to get free from the rule of the Toad-King.’

‘They weren’t angry with me about that,’ said the young man in the tweed jacket and the bow-tie. He pushed a hand impatiently through his hair. ‘I think they were quite pleased to be free, actually.’ He ran his hands across the TARDIS control panel, patting levers, stroking dials. ‘They were just a bit upset with me because I’d walked off with their squiggly whatsit.’

‘Squiggly whatsit?’

‘It’s on the –’ he gestured vaguely with arms that seemed to be mostly elbows and joints – ‘the tabley thing over there. I confiscated it.’

Amy looked irritated. She wasn’t irritated, but she sometimes liked to give him the impression she was, just to show him who was boss. ‘Why don’t you ever call things by their proper names? The tabley thing over there? It’s called “a table”.’

She walked over to the table. The squiggly whatsit was glittery and elegant: it was the size and general shape of a bracelet, but it twisted in ways that made it hard for the eye to follow.

‘Really? Oh good.’ He seemed pleased. ‘I’ll remember that.’

Amy picked up the squiggly whatsit. It was cold and much heavier than it looked. ‘Why did you confiscate it? And why are you saying “confiscate” anyway? That’s like what teachers do, when you bring something you shouldn’t to school. My friend Mels set a record at school for the number of things she got confiscated. One night she got me and Rory to make a disturbance while she broke in to the teachers’ supply cupboard, which was where her stuff was. She had to go over the roof and through the teachers’ loo window –’

But the Doctor was not interested in Amy’s old schoolfriend’s exploits. He never was. He said, ‘Confiscated. For their own safety. Technology they shouldn’t have had. Probably stolen. Time looper and booster. Could have made a nasty mess of things.’ He pulled a lever. ‘And we’re here. All change.’

There was a rhythmic grinding sound, as if the engines of the universe itself were protesting, a rush of displaced air, and a large blue police box materialised in the back garden of Amy Pond’s house. It was the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The Doctor opened the TARDIS door. Then he said, ‘That’s odd.’

He stood in the doorway, made no attempt to walk outside. Amy came over to him. He put out an arm to prevent her from leaving the TARDIS. It was a perfect sunny day, almost cloudless.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Can’t you feel it?’

Amy looked at her garden. It was overgrown and neglected, but then it always had been, as long as she could remember.

‘No,’ said Amy. And then she said, ‘It’s quiet. No cars. No birds. Nothing.’

‘No radio waves,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not even Radio Four.’

‘You can hear radio waves?’

‘Of course not. Nobody can hear radio waves,’ he said unconvincingly.

And that was when a gentle voice said, Attention, visitor. You are now entering Kin space. This world is the property of the Kin. You are trespassing. It was a strange voice, whispery and mostly, Amy suspected, in her head.

‘This is Earth,’ called Amy. ‘It doesn’t belong to you.’ And then she said, ‘What have you done with the people?’

We bought it from them. They died out naturally shortly afterwards. It was a pity.

‘I don’t believe you,’ shouted Amy.

No galactic laws were violated. The planet was purchased legally and legitimately. A thorough investigation by the Shadow Proclamation vindicated our ownership in full.

‘It’s not yours! Where’s Rory?’

‘Amy? Who are you talking to?’ asked the Doctor.

‘The voice. The one in my head. Can’t you hear it?’

To whom are you talking? asked the Voice.

Amy closed the TARDIS door.

‘Why did you do that?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Weird whispery voice in my head. Said they’d bought the planet. And that the … the Shadow Proclamation said it was all OK. It told me all the people died out naturally. You couldn’t hear it. It didn’t know you were here. Element of surprise. Closed the door.’ Amy Pond could be astonishingly efficient when she was under stress. Right now, she was under stress, but you wouldn’t have known it, if it wasn’t for the squiggly whatsit, which she was holding between her hands and was bending and twisting into shapes that defied the imagination and seemed to be wandering off into peculiar dimensions.

‘Did they say who they were?’

She thought for a moment. ‘“You are now entering Kin space. This world is the property of the Kin.”’

He said, ‘Could be anyone. The Kin. I mean … it’s like calling yourselves the People. It’s what pretty much every race-name means. Except for Dalek. That means Metal-Cased Hatey Death Machines in Skaronian.’ And then he was running to the control panel. ‘Something like this. It can’t occur overnight. People don’t just die off. And this is 2010. Which means …’

‘It means they’ve done something to Rory.’

‘It means they’ve done something to everyone.’ He pressed several keys on an ancient typewriter keyboard, and patterns flowed across the screen that hung above the TARDIS console. ‘I couldn’t hear them … they couldn’t hear me. You could hear both of us. Limited telepathic broadcast, but only on human frequencies. Hmm. Aha! Summer of 1984! That’s the divergence point …’ His hands began turning, twiddling and pushing levers, pumps, switches and something small that went ding.

‘Where’s Rory? I want him, right now,’ demanded Amy as the TARDIS lurched away into space and time. The Doctor had only briefly met her fiancé, Rory Williams, once before. She didn’t think the Doctor understood what she saw in Rory. Some days, she was not entirely sure what she saw in Rory. But she was certain of this: nobody took her fiancé away from her.

‘Good question. Where’s Rory? Also, where’s seven billion other people?’ he asked.

‘I want my Rory.’

‘Well, wherever the rest of them are, he’s there too. And you ought to have been with them. At a guess, neither of you were ever born.’

Amy looked down at herself, checking her feet, her legs, her elbows, her hands (the squiggly whatsit glittered like an Escher nightmare on her wrist; she dropped it on to the control panel). She reached up and grasped a handful of auburn hair. ‘If I wasn’t born, what am I doing here?’

‘You’re an independent temporal nexus, chronosynclastically established as an inverse …’ He saw her expression, and stopped.

‘You’re telling me it’s timey-wimey, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said seriously. ‘I suppose I am. Right. We’re here.’

He adjusted his bow-tie with precise fingers, tipping it to one side rakishly.

‘But, Doctor. The human race didn’t die out in 1984.’

‘New timeline. It’s a paradox.’

‘And you’re the paradoctor?’

‘Just the Doctor.’ He adjusted his bow-tie back to its earlier alignment and stood up a little straighter. ‘There’s something familiar about all this.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t know. Hmm. Kin. Kin. Kin … I keep thinking of masks. Who wears masks?’

‘Bank robbers?’

‘No.’

‘Really ugly people?’

‘No.’

‘Halloween? People wear masks at Halloween.’

‘Yes! They do!’ He flung his arms wide in delight.

‘So that’s important?’

‘Not even a little bit. But it’s true. Right. Big divergence in time stream. And it’s not actually possible to take over a Level 5 planet in a way that would satisfy the Shadow Proclamation unless …’

‘Unless what?’

The Doctor stopped moving. He bit his lower lip. Then: ‘Oh. They wouldn’t.’

‘Wouldn’t what?’

‘They couldn’t. I mean, that would be completely …’

Amy tossed her hair, and did her best to keep her temper. Shouting at the Doctor never worked, unless it did. ‘Completely what?’

‘Completely impossible. You can’t take over a Level 5 planet. Unless you do it legitimately.’ On the TARDIS control panel something whirled and something else went ding. ‘We’re here. It’s the nexus. Come on! Let’s explore 1984.’

‘You’re enjoying this,’ said Amy. ‘My whole world has been taken over by a mysterious voice. All the people are extinct. Rory’s gone. And you’re enjoying this.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said the Doctor, trying hard not to show how much he was enjoying it.

The Brownings stayed in the hotel while Mr Browning looked for a new house. The hotel was completely full. Coincidentally, the Brownings learned, in conversation with other hotel guests over breakfast, they had also sold their houses and flats. None of them seemed particularly forthcoming about who had bought their houses.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ he said after ten days. ‘There’s nothing for sale in the town. Or anywhere around here. They’ve all been snapped up.’

‘There must be something,’ said Mrs Browning.

‘Not in this part of the country,’ said Mr Browning.

‘What does the estate agent say?’

‘Not answering the phone,’ said Mr Browning.

‘Well, let’s go and talk to her,’ said Mrs Browning. ‘You coming with, Polly?’

Polly shook her head. ‘I’m reading my book,’ she said.

Mr and Mrs Browning walked into town, and they met the estate agent outside the door of the shop, putting up a notice saying ‘Under New Management’. There were no properties for sale in the window, only a lot of houses and flats with Sold on them.

‘Shutting up shop?’ asked Mr Browning.

‘Someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,’ said the estate agent. She was carrying a heavy-looking plastic shopping bag. The Brownings could guess what was in it.

‘Someone in a rabbit mask?’ asked Mrs Browning.

When they got back to the hotel, the manager was waiting in the lobby for them, to tell them they wouldn’t be living there much longer.

‘It’s the new owners,’ she explained. ‘They’re closing the hotel for refurbishing.’

‘New owners?’

‘They just bought it. Paid a lot of money for it, I was told.’

Somehow, this did not surprise the Brownings one little bit. They were not surprised until they got up to their hotel room, and Polly was nowhere to be seen.