Doctor Who BBCN14 - The Last Dodo Read online

  The Doctor and Martha go in search of a real live dodo, and are transported by the TARDIS to the mysterious Museum of the Last Ones. There, in the Earth section, they discover every extinct creature up to the present day, all still alive and in suspended animation.

  Preservation is the museum’s only job – collecting the last one of every endangered species from all over the universe. But exhibits are going missing...

  Can the Doctor solve the mystery before the museum’s curator adds the last of the Time Lords to her collection?

  Featuring the Doctor and Martha as played by David Tennant and Freema Agyeman in the hit series from BBC Television.

  The Last Dodo

  BY JACQUELINE RAYNER

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Published in 2007 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

  Ebury Publishing is a division of the Random House Group Ltd.

  © Jacqueline Rayner, 2007

  Jacqueline Rayner has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Producer: Phil Collinson

  Original series broadcast on BBC Television.

  Format © BBC 1963.

  ‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 84607 2246

  The Random House Group Ltd makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in our books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed credibly certified forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found at www.randomhouse.co.uk.

  Creative Director: Justin Richards

  Project Editor: Steve Tribe

  Production Controller: Alenka Oblak

  Typeset in Albertina, Deviant Strain and Trade Gothic Cover design by Henry Steadman © BBC 2007

  Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH

  For Mum and Dad, and Helen

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  ONE

  5

  TWO

  15

  THREE

  25

  FOUR

  35

  FIVE

  45

  SIX

  55

  SEVEN

  65

  EIGHT

  75

  NINE

  85

  TEN

  97

  ELEVEN

  109

  TWELVE

  119

  THIRTEEN

  127

  FOURTEEN

  135

  FIFTEEN

  143

  SIXTEEN

  151

  SEVENTEEN

  161

  EIGHTEEN

  171

  NINETEEN

  177

  Epilogue

  185

  Mauritius, 1681

  The grunting things had killed her baby. It wasn’t the first time: they’d killed her first baby, too, thirty moons earlier, before it had even been born. Their trampling feet destroyed everything in their paths, and babies all around had succumbed to the same casually cruel fate.

  She couldn’t remember a time before the grunting things had come to her home, but even over her own relatively short life they had become greater and greater in number, while her own kind had become fewer and fewer. The grunting things ate their food and had many, many babies of their own, which would grow up to kill more babies and eat more food. Now, in desperation, her kind had left the home that she somehow knew had once been theirs alone, and travelled to a small, sandy spot which was separated from the grunting things by water.

  They thought they were safe. But still, they were all old. There were no more babies.

  And one day, death visited again. Not the grunting things; this time death was taller, more colourful, more varied in its shrieks and shouts.

  Death waited till the water was low, as it sometimes was, and came at them from their old home. At first, she stood around watching, not knowing what was happening, not knowing what these new creatures were. Then suddenly the death-bringing animals ran at them and, too late, she realised that she must run too. She ran, they all ran, but more of the tall things appeared behind them. One of the creatures grabbed her mate and he cried out in fear; she hurried towards him, desperate to help but not knowing how. Others came forward to help, too.

  The colourful creatures took them all, all but her. Her escape was sheer luck: the tall things near her grabbed her fellows and none had 1

  room left to take her; she was the only one who slipped away.

  Still she lingered, for a second, thinking of the mate with whom she had stayed for so many moons, always hoping that more children would come, eventually. But once more she detected his cry, and knew it was the last she would ever hear of him. All around, the tall things were hitting her fellows with boughs from the dark trees, and the noises they made were like those of her baby as it fell beneath the feet of the grunting things. She was so scared. She ran.

  She ran and ran, past the tall things, past the places that she knew well, till there was nothing but water before her and she could run no longer. Slowing, she took another step or two forward, but retreated quickly as the brine washed her feet. She turned, hoping against hope to see a companion, but there was nothing but sand, stretching out all around, and the occasional pigeon fluttering round the occasional tree. Had her kind been able to fly like that pigeon, perhaps death would not have claimed them. She felt a hollow resentment at what might have been.

  For a few minutes she waited, then she raised her head. Caution battled for a moment with the terrible fear of being alone, and then finally she let out a cry of desperation, a plea for any other of her kind to find her, save her from this fear, this dreadful isolation. But there were no others to hear.

  And then more tall ones arrived: two of them, their bodies the colour of the leaves behind which the pigeon was now perching. She had not seen them approach – perhaps they too had swooped down from the sky.

  She was tired, so tired, and scared, and hopeless, but still she tried to run. It was no good. The leaf-animals were both calm and fast, and seemed to be in front of her whatever way she turned. Suddenly she felt pressure round her waist, and she was raised from the ground.

  This was it; this was when she went the same way as her babies and her mate – but she didn’t give up, she desperately tried to turn her head, knowing her giant beak, hooked and sharp, was her greatest weapon against these soft, fleshy creatures.

  Had she been less scared, she might have realised the difference 2

  between the gentle, soothing noises these creatures made and, the harsh, cruel cries of the death-dealers. But fear had consumed her now.

  One creature said: There’s no need to be scared.

  The other creature said: We’re not going to hurt you.

  The first said: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about what’s happened. But at least we can save you.

  He lifted a small, square device that was like nothing she had ever seen b
efore, and held it before her.

  And the last of the dodos knew nothing else for 400 years.

  3

  Hello, Martha here! Question time for you. Tell me, do you have someone who’s your best friend? Someone you thought was great from the minute you met? Someone you have such fun with? I mean, I’m not saying they have to be perfect. But they’re pretty much everything you want in a friend. You laugh a lot when you’re together

  – good laughter: laughing with, not laughing at. He’s not mean, you see, never mean. And he cares about you, that’s important. (By the way, I’m not saying your friend has to be a he. A she will do. Or, as I’m learning as I travel the universe, an it. But my friend, the one I’m going to be talking about when I get on to specifics in a minute, he’s a he.)

  Where was I? Oh yes, do you have someone, blah de blah de blah etc. Because, as I just revealed (although you’d probably guessed already), I do. I haven’t known him very long, actually, not that that’s important. But this is the real question: have you ever upset your friend, someone you thought was unupsetable (that’s not really a word, but you know what I mean), not in the middle of a row or anything like that (even the best of friends have rows sometimes) but totally out of the blue? Because I just did that. And I wondered what you did to make it up to your friend, especially if you’re not even sure 5

  what you did wrong.

  It might help if I told you what happened. Don’t get too excited, it’s not like it’s a huge drama. In fact, it’s a tiny, tiny little thing. Maybe that’s the point. Sometimes it’s the little things that are worse.

  He’s a smiley sort of person, my friend (he’s called the Doctor, by the way – yes, I know that’s not really a name. But you get used to it), and like I say, we laugh a lot. And enthusiastic! He loves everything.

  He gets excited at all sorts of things, and what’s brilliant is he makes you see how exciting they are, too.

  Oh, I have to tell you something else, or none of the rest of it will make sense. The Doctor and I, we travel together in a ship called the TARDIS. It’s bigger on the inside than the outside, and can go anywhere in time and space. Anywhere. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me, but, well, it’s true and that’s all there is to it.

  ‘Anywhere’ is such an enormous concept, though. Sometimes it can be a bit too much. Try to imagine this: your mum says to you, would you like an apple or a Milky Way? I’d usually say ‘an apple, please’

  (no, really, I love apples), but some days I might say, ‘Ooh, a Milky Way, thank you’, because I felt in a bit of a chocolatey mood.

  Now imagine this: your mum says to you: would you like an apple, or an orange, or a pear, or a peach, or a plum, or a pomegranate –and she goes on to name every sort of fruit in the world. And then she says, or a Milky Way or a Bounty – and she goes on to name every sort of chocolate bar in the world. And then she says, or maybe a piece of Cheddar, or Caerphilly, or Stilton, or some toast, or a bowl of porridge, or some blancmange, or some pickled-onion-flavour crisps

  – and she goes on to name every sort of food in the world. (Yes, I know that would take days. But we’re imagining here.) And you have to pick just one and you have to pick it now. Your brain would explode with the choice!

  I don’t know what you’d do, but in an effort to stop the explosion I’d probably grasp at the most familiar, easiest option there was – and say, ‘an apple, please’.

  The Doctor didn’t offer me a choice between every food in the world (actually, for some reason he keeps trying to feed me chips – healthy 6

  way to go, Doctor’), what he said to me was, ‘Where would you like to go now? I can take you anywhere! Anywhere at all!’ There he was, poised over the controls, grinning at me, fingers itching to press the switches that would take me to the place I wanted to go.

  I could choose to go anywhere at all. Any house, city, county, country, continent, planet, solar system, or galaxy in the universe. At any time, from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.

  As my brain exploded, I found myself seeking solace in the comfort of childhood, and as if from a distance I heard myself saying the same thing that I always said when I was little and it was the summer holidays and Mum asked me ‘Where would you like to go?’ I said, ‘Let’s go to the zoo.’

  And the Doctor looked at me as if I’d just kicked his puppy.

  No, really, his face kind of fell. Disappointed, but hard at the same time, like he was angry with me. Then his expression relaxed and he just said, in his normal voice, ‘Nah, gotta be somewhere better than that. I’m offering you anywhere in the universe!’

  So I said, ‘Can I think about it?’ and he nodded but told me not to take too long, because he didn’t want to be wasting time when we could be having fun.

  Now I’m wondering what to do, because I know I upset him, but I don’t know why. Not only have I still got to choose between the Milky Way and the porridge and the crisps and the other billion options (minus apple), but I have to decide whether to talk to him about it or not. I don’t want to upset him again.

  If it’s ever happened to you, what did you do?

  And really, what on Earth is wrong with going to the zoo?

  Martha walked into the control room, and found the Doctor sitting in a chair, reading some book with a picture of a rocket on the cover.

  How he could bear science fiction when he knew what it was really like out there she didn’t know – perhaps it amused him, like the way she had begun to find medical dramas hilarious after she started at the hospital. Not that she’d caught the Doctor hanging around reading very often; he wasn’t really the sitting type, manic movement was 7

  more his sort of thing – she guessed he was waiting for her to tell him her choice, her golden ticket destination, and the instant she did he’d spring into action, pulling levers and pumping pumps and pressing buttons and darting all over the place like he’d got ants in his pants.

  Fleas on his knees. Eels at his heels.

  ‘Aha! Martha! Excellent!’ he said. ‘Decided yet?’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said.

  He blinked, pretend-baffled. ‘You didn’t upset me.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But I didn’t mean to. Just tell me, so I don’t do it again, what’s wrong with going to the zoo?’

  He frowned at that, seeming to weigh up the options. Finally he simply said, ‘Just not really me.’

  ‘Come on, I can tell it’s more than that.’

  The Doctor sighed and drew in a deep breath. ‘OK. It. . . hurts. The thought of anything being caged hurts me.’

  Martha perched on the edge of his chair. ‘Oh, but there’re plenty of places without cages these days. My these days, I mean, where I come from. They give the animals loads of freedom.’

  ‘Cages don’t always have bars, Martha,’ he said. ‘Just because you call something freedom, doesn’t mean it is.’ He looked at her, a bit pityingly. For a second she felt angry, patronised, and then something in his eyes suddenly made her understand.

  ‘You couldn’t live on only apples and Milky Ways,’ she said, slowly.

  ‘You might not starve, but it’d still be cruel.’

  The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Hungry? I can offer you a thirty-course banquet in Imperial Japan, a kronkburger on Reblais Beta, de-hydrated protein tablets on a shuttle to Mars – or there’s always chips, nice little chippie in south London. . . ’

  He reached forwards, angling for a feather lying on top of the huge central console, but his fingers only skimmed it. She jumped up to get it for him. It was just a feather, grey and white, nothing to look at twice.

  ‘Seagull?’ she asked.

  ‘Bookmark,’ he replied, slipping it in place and slamming his book shut with a ringing thud. ‘Oh, right, see what you mean. No, dodo.’

  8

  Martha stared at him for a second. Sometimes the ‘anywhere in time and space’ bit took her by surprise in the most unexpected ways. Reblais
Beta in the 150th century, fine, animal extinct for three hundred-odd years, her time, unbelievable.

  ‘That’s where I choose!’ she said, suddenly excited. ‘Please? To see a dodo! In its natural habitat,’ she added hurriedly.

  The Doctor seemed happy enough with her choice. ‘Okey dokey, all aboard the good ship TARDIS for a trip to the island of Mauritius –let’s say sometime in the sixteenth century, before human discovery, back when the dodo was as alive as. . . as a dodo.’ He was at the controls now, twiddling dials – then suddenly he nipped back over to his chair, picked up the book and opened it again, extracting the dodo feather. He looked hard at his place, said, ‘Oh, I expect I’ll remember where I was. Can’t bear it when people turn over the page corners, just can’t bear it,’ shut the book again, and then was back at the console, inserting the feather into a little hole Martha could have sworn hadn’t been there before. The feather stuck out at a jaunty angle like it was on a Robin Hood hat, anomalous but still somehow completely at home among the alien technology.

  ‘That,’ said the Doctor, ‘will tune us in. Land us right at their big scaly feet. Sort of automatic dodo detector.’ He paused. ‘Automatic dodo detector. I ought to patent that, next time we go somewhere with a. . . what d’you call it? Place where you patent things.’

  ‘Patent office?’ Martha offered.

  ‘Good name, like it. You should trademark it. Next time we go somewhere with a. . . what d’you call it? Place where you trademark things.’

  ‘I don’t think there is an actual place –’ Martha began, but the Doctor wasn’t paying attention.

  ‘Here we go!’ he cried. With a final flick of a switch, the TARDIS

  sprang to life, as excited as its owner to get going once more. Martha fell back into the Doctor’s chair as the room began to vibrate. Good job she didn’t get seasick.

  The Doctor, as usual, seemed oblivious to his ship’s eccentricities.

  He picked up the book once again and swayed over to an inner door, 9

  calling, ‘Going to put this back in the library. Can’t bear books lying around all over the place, just can’t bear it.’