TIME AND TIDE: Bourach

This is part of the TIDERAKER series, which will be completely in 6B and draws in EACH CELL THAT BEATS, THE POWERS OF TWO, BETWEEN THE WALLS OF THE WORLDS, EACH CELL THAT BEATS and ANAM CARA.

Summary: The Two Doctors have parted ways in Seville; The Second and Third Doctors have survived an accidental temporal encounter in the Wooden Console Room. BUT...The Sontarans are still in Space. The Time Lords are planning. The Third Zone is about to be very unhappy about the slaughter of civilians on Space Station Chimera.

Guess who has to clean up the mess?

Characters: Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon, unspecified Time Lords.

Warning: A mercifully brief but very ugly scene of violence. If you've listened to Shockeye talk about food, you probably won't be surprised. Also, there is an explanation for the Androgums and the Doctors' out-of-character racist reactions to the brutes.

"Oh, Doctair." Jamie said without thinking. "It's a bourach!" (mess)

"Yes, Jamie." The Doctor agreed tiredly. His dulled green eyes barely moved from the viewing screen. "It is a big one."

They had been bracing themselves for the inevitable horror of what they would see once they neared Space Station Chimera.

Sometimes even their imagination wasn't up to the task.

The Piper could only stare, stricken and a little sick at heart, at what he had first seen as a shining city-a beacon of light and hope.

Now Chimera sat dead and dark and hopeless-another dead thing in the deadness of space. It had no more spark to it than the occasional glint of light reflected off a passing comet or chunk of volcanic glass.

Jamie tasted ash in his mouth. The Sontarans had done much more than destroy the lives on Space Station Chimera. They wrecked something even more precious: the pursuit of knowledge for the betterment of other lives besides their own. Chimera, despite its being named for a ferocious beast, had been an emblem for the Galaxy's soul-a soul seeking enlightenment and evolution.

It was a poignant irony that this soul had been laid waste by one of its own attempts for enlightenment: the self-absorbed but dangerously advanced Chessene.

"An Eden had been the goal," The Doctor's Sixth Self had proclaimed to Jamie and Peri, low and melodic. "But this time there was no Serpent in the garden. They made that all their own."

That Doctor and Peri were long gone in space and time; back in their own rightful Timelines, but Jamie thought of the tall, colorful poet often. There was something harder about him, his eyes shouting out deep wounds carried even deeper below his skin. He wondered if this was the legacy the CIA was leaving on his Doctor with their dirty missions and dirtier motives.

And yet, he reminded himself, this Doctor still had something of his childlike innocence, his simple joy of being. It was a great comfort to the Piper to know the CIA had not been able to crush this quality out of existence.

For this was the Doctor's most precious gift. It was a rare being who could keep a childlike heart when they grew up; rarer still when they saw the true horrors of the world. And this little man, for all his bluff and clowning, had destroyed entire races in the name of necessity. He killed, personally, with weapons of his own hand and mind and he mourned the necessity each and every time...and he never hesitated. That a little child that loved to play still existed in those crystal-clear eyes to carry a healthy spark still in his future self four lives in the future was a gem of knowledge rarer than any material wealth the Piper could dream of.

He slipped his gaze to the little man, but the Doctor for once didn't notice. He looked shrunken inside his too-large clothes, his button-bright eyes tarnished like silver left too long in seawater. But his hands worried the Piper the most: they were always moving about the Console with some purpose, some calculation either absent or conscious-not unlike a composer's fingers as they stroked ivory keys. For one of the few times in Jamie's experience, the Doctor was not doing anything with his hands. They were lifeless.

Because he didn't know what else to do, Jamie moved closer so they could stand, side by side, and watch the metal tomb grow ever closer.

"Thank God Victoria didn't come with us." He said at last.

"Yes." The little Time Lord agreed quietly. When they thought of what would have happened to her...it was actually a lot of comfort.

"We'll put her in an outside orbit, Jamie." The Doctor said at last. "I want full readings of the entire Station before we go in this time." Finally, his hands moved, slow and steady across the scanning tools.

"How long will that take, Doctair?"

"Full scan-at least ten minutes." His mouth set, the Doctor looked down as he worked, though he didn't need to see a single thing to operate the TARDIS. He knew the Timeship now, better than he ever did, but the sight beyond the TARDIS was just too awful to study. Jamie sighed and went to the old wooden chair closeby, feeling every inch of his years.

And to think he'd wanted Victoria to come with them on this one.

Guilt washed him. He was being selfish, he knew. He just wanted her back in his life as if it were the old days-but it wasn't the old days, and it couldn't be the old days again.

He didn't know that the Doctor was thinking of Victoria just as acutely as he was just now; it wouldn't have surprised them. For all their differences, they thought alike in matters of the heart.

The small Time Lord had paused in the middle of his own murky ruminations, feeling his pulse beat gently through his palms to the smooth, warm controls that wired him directly to the brain of the TARDIS. He watched the young human ponder in the gloom of his own thoughts, and kept his own to himself. It was better to spare Jamie from this.

Even when it had been the old days, it hadn't been particularly good for Victoria. But what, they wondered privately, would they tell her when she asked of their mission? She would be concerned; she would want to know and she knew when they were padding out the truth with nonsense...but..? Victoria was always their reluctant adventurer; she had been orphaned and the Doctor had taken her into his life without a thought; her father had died saving the Doctor though she didn't know the full details.

The Doctor had done his best to do right by Victoria-He'd raised up his own granddaughter, after all-and Susan's artistry and fragility of spirit had much in common with the human child. The difference was, Susan would have never left him willingly. The Universe would have dripped blood and she wouldn't have ran away; she would have clung to him all the harder. And Victoria would have easily been like Susan in that respect, if he had been more like the late Professor Waterfield: inquisitive, protective, and yet idealistically naive.

But try as he might, the Doctor could not be the father Victoria needed him to be-not and still be himself. Victoria had known this long before any of them. His failure had been no one's fault, but it was still a failure and one felt as keenly as watching Jamie and Zoe leaving him for (as he'd believed) forever.

Finding her directly after the Great Intelligence's attempted coup with the Brigadier and his daughter had been...fortuitous timing if not a crafty calculation on part of his TARDIS. They were starting over in many ways, and this time, the Doctor vowed for the sake of Jamie and Victoria, he wouldn't fail this time. Victoria would find what she needed: safety and purpose. He just had to make certain the opportunity would be there.

Not that that time would be near in the future, he thought sourly. Not with her in quarantine with Zoe deep in the heart of the CIA's private portion of the Citadel!

Just think of something, he reminded himself. More than anything else, they'll want to know that the two of you came back safe and sound. The rest should take care of itself...

Six hours later, they were only a little closer to finding the information the Time Lords needed.

The Doctor was deep in Dastari's office, yanking cluttered bits out of an inset wall-locker. A dead technician sprawled next to it decently covered by a plastic cloth.

The little man's silver hair glowed like smooth metal in the changing lights of the Station and his face set in tight, controlled lines of concentration. Jamie had seen this expression often on the Doctor and Zoe. It always meant the same thing: the big brains behind the eyes were cataloging information as fast as they were getting it, stuffing it in mind-shelves and boxes and letters to take out and examine later, while at the same time making notes of anything out of the ordinary. The Piper sighed to himself, mourning the passing of the Doctor's initial giddy mood once his freedom had finally been hard-won from Chessene.

Chessene. The Doctor might have room in his hearts to feel pity for that Devil Woman, now that it was over and they'd won the game of survival, but Jamie could not. Would not. She had known the harm she was causing; she hadn't cared. They would be cleaning up her mess for years, the way things looked.

With Chessene's subterfuge, they had not only framed the Time Lords for the Doctor's and Dastari's faked murder, they had also tampered with the vast memory banks that held such vital knowledge for the Galaxies. Finding Dastari's false journal entries had almost been "anti-climactic" after that, though Jamie noted the Doctor was careful to stuff the damning book deep into his pocket.

"Dastari had not been exaggerating when he'd said she was "sucking up knowledge." The Doctor said quietly, and barely moving his lips as he did so. He was that annoyed. Bluster and bellow all he chose-mostly at Daleks-Jamie found the Doctor was at his angriest and most dangerous when he was in a state of what Polly had described as "tranquil rage."

"And if you think he's scary like this now, he was a lot more frightening when he wore his old body. You could believe he would murder someone in cold blood when he wore that face!"

A warning crackle sputtered from the mostly-deactivated Chimera's Computer, and the Time Lord whirled to face his nemesis, eyes glittering like Roman glass as his teeth gnashed.

"Is that stupid thing trying to come back?" He demanded hotly.

"It looks like it..." Jamie was already backing to the cork-lined carpet, hand fruitlessly upon the handle of his new sgian dhu.

Spppp-p-ZzzzZZZZZZZZt! (crackle) "Innnnnntruuuuuuuuuudddd...(pop)...rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..."

His temper finally activated, the Doctor stalked his way to the remains of the stubborn machine, hand yanking out a brass-headed hammer from the depths of his coat pocket.

Jamie hovered behind the desk for safety, his hands and toolkit on the ready. Getting into the station again had been but half the problem; the other half had been getting to the Computer in one piece as the daft machine had recovered in Jamie's absence—enough that it had thrown a repeat of its attack against the Doctor's Sixth self and Peri. The Doctor's already frail mood had thoroughly rotted out by the time they'd reached the right floor.

Jamie was keeping track of the increasingly vexed language coming out of his mouth for future reference.

"Confounded, idiotic..."

The Doctor struck the computer in the middle of the console with the hammer, causing a fountain of purple sparks to shoot up almost to the acoustical tiles. "Well, would you look at that," he said in satisfaction.

Jamie too had noted the color of the sparks. "Nitre?" He wondered. It was a common enough "toy" from his childhood to throw gunpowder chemicals into a roaring bonfire.

"IN-teresting..." The small man agreed. "Now why would he layer oxidizers into his computer..." He set back on his heels and tugged hard upon a casing made of some odd-looking material, a mixture of plastic and metal.

"Stupid...I'm going to find that thing's laughable excuse for a brain and-"

Jamie's neck prickled from his own spate of nerves. This Chimera had been his tomb for a fortnight and he didn't want to come back, but his own sense of duty forbade his complaint. The dead needed proper respect before their ghosts made a permanent home of this Station.

Crackle-pop!

"Plenum-brained..!"

Jamie only knew what plenum meant thanks to years of exposure to the Doctor and Zoe. He thought it was rather fitting.

"There-!"

The Doctor went flying backwards, barely rescued by Jamie's waiting hand, and the casing hit the wall with a trail of loose wires and things that looked like oblong silver beads, magnetized upon each other. The Computer squealed like a high-pitched pig and gabbled before making a sound not unlike a badly-patched and broken set of pipes tossed into a corner and left to deflate, one pipe at a time. A thin plume of smoke drifted sadly upwards.

"That's a sound that'll never catch on." Jamie said in satisfaction, wishing for more of a funeral pyre than that little puff of smoke.

"Wretched machine." The Doctor proclaimed. His silver hair fluffed up from the collected static charge of Dastari's antique carpet. He grimaced, braced himself, and deliberately touched an odd metal art sculpture on the desk. With a POP the charge dissipated, and he shook his hand with a fresh layer of scowl on his face. He spared the leaking pieces a final condemnation. "If you were sentient-!" He shouted.

"Feel better yet?"

"Much."

Jamie patted him on the back.

The wee chappie's body was nothing near as quick and flexible as it had been back in what he was starting to catalog as "the old days," and "the good days." With a huff he rolled his head, rubbing at a neck grown stiff from his struggles. "There. Completely disconnected from the Station. No more worrying about getting killed."

"At least nae by that thing." Jamie reminded him.

"My word you can be a pessimist."

"I learnt from the best."

The Doctor padded soundlessly on the cork and carpeted floor, held up the string of silver beads, and hummed a directionless melody as he detached them, one by one, and stuffed them into a small white box labeled with Gallifreyan words.

"What's that for, Doctor?"

"Information for the Time Lords." The Doctor smiled. They had been pretending for years that Jamie could barely read and write his own language, and the deception worked well enough that the Time Lords (so far) had no idea he was quite good at reading and writing in Gallifreyan. Being unable to refrain himself from rebelling against stupidity, the Doctor first grounded him in the Old language, feeling that a form his own people avoided meant a double advantage. Jamie was an excellent student, needing only a brief immersion to grasp the patterns. He was a rare gift of a being regardless of his species, but above all he was an excellent dissembler.

As good as his mentor, but being human, had to work less at seeming stupid. Especially around other Time Lords.

"Well! That's that." The Doctor dusted his hands free of metallic matter and took a deep breath. "Now to have a peek at the Environmental controls...no sense making it safe for boarding if we run out of air."

"I'll be glad just to get the stench gone." Jamie said glumly.

"Not a problem, Jamie. Just a moment..." The Doctor found what he was looking for, and tapped out a quick command. Without warning, invisible machines inside the walls activated and the stench of death and decay almost instantly dissipated. Jamie was so relieved he blinked back tears.

"Oh, my." The Doctor murmured. "That is an improvement." He kept poking about, his face set and grimly curious as he pulled up image after image of the dead upon the Station. "Oh, that should do it."

"What are ye doing?"

"Saving the images." The Doctor pulled a thin, flat square out of the console and stuffed it in his pocket. "I'm not going to delay this any longer than I have to, Jamie. You get yourself some rest-"

"I'll noo leave you." Jamie managed not to shout, but it was a close thing.

The Doctor froze, stopping short of flinching. "Quite right, Jamie." He said quietly. It wasn't an apology; it went deeper. The Doctor was still aware of possible eavesdropping and not just by Time Lords. He was assuring Jamie that he knew how he felt. They were both terrified of being separated again. "It's just that this will be...unpleasant and I didn't want you to think you had to do this, because you don't have to."

"You're going tae see tae the dead, aren't ye?" Jamie lifted his eyebrows. "That's noo job for a single man, and seein' as how we're the only survivors o' the massacre, 'tis fitting we both do it."

"Of course." The Doctor agreed softly. "We'll have to start at the morgue. Although I'm sure they don't have much of one...more like a place to store specimens for research."

Jamie shuddered. "How'd they keep 'em out of the Androgums' hands?"

"I'd tell you, but you wouldn't like it." The Doctor warned him, flat serious.

"Then I'll noo ask. Ever."

The Doctor plugged into the databases, reluctantly re-confirmed there were no other signs of life, and sealed off all but their central portion of Chimera. He expressed worry about the available capacity of the station for storing the bodies, but for now they had to concentrate on one thing at a time. The Time Lords would be concentrating on the brain of the station and saving the extraneous departments for their actual workers. Past experience with them—as well as being them—the Doctor wanted to clean things up a bit first.

Sealing off all the outer compartments did much to conserve Chimera's vital power reserves. The Doctor then slowed the decay on their section by sealing off the floors and suspending the oxygen, putting the temperature down as low as possible without actually flash-freezing the bodies. Things were hard enough without struggling to enshroud a frozen, sprawled-everywhere was grisly work. They donned filtered masks against the brunt of the stench, and protective suits. There had been more than the 39 scientists on the station: each were leaders of their own teams of assistants, technicians, and environmental controllers, guests, and ambassadors and of course, the kitchen and wait staff and traffickers.

Two men, even dedicated ones motivated in some part by Survivor's Guilt, can't be expected to do that much on their own, but by the end of the first day they'd managed to find, identify, bag up and store twenty of the nearest dead into an increasingly crowded laboratory freezer.

Jamie had by now learned more of forensics than he'd ever dreamed or wanted, and asked the Doctor would it be better to leave the dead simply covered until the Time Lords could examine the crimes personally. The Doctor's sad answer was that the Time Lords could easily pull the particulars out of their minds and prove the data genuine. Jamie blanched, swallowed and concentrated on wrapping a severed humanoid limb in a plastic casing.

"For what it's worth, Jamie," the Doctor had paused to stand upright a moment, hands pressing upon his lower back. "The only important question will be who killed them—and Sontaran proofs are all over this sad place."

"Aye." Jamie bowed his head under the chilly lights. It was awful how much worse the station had become now that he'd escaped it for barely a day. "But if Chessene wanted to frame the Time Lords for this massacre, couldn't the Time Lords' Temporal Screens show what really happened?"

"The Time Lords are going to be on trial before the Third Zone, Jamie. Only the Third Zone's equipment and investigations will count—or would you trust someone like the War Chief to produce evidence in his own innocence?"

"And they're not sae powerful as tae bow tae this?"

"There are a few things in the Universe that the Time Lords still fear, Jamie...and these things can always collect more allies. Who better to be an ally than those with mutual enemies?"

"Aye...Are we ready to move these to the cold rooms?"

"Almost." The Doctor puffed slightly as they moved the latest corpse to the top of the anti-gravity gurney. Careful movement on their part allowed them the luxury of moving three at a time. This time they had four: a child-sized alien was on top of the pile, which disturbed Jamie even though the Doctor had assured him the being had been fully grown and well mature: "You can tell by the curve of the tusks she was probably a great-grandmother." Maybe so, but it still made him sad.

"Oh, bother."

"What is it?"

"I think the last cart filled up the first freezer. Can you check the other one? We might have to take out a few things but it is a walk-in freezer and it ought to be sufficient for a few more remains." He gnawed on his bottom lip in a sudden thought. "I might have to convert the cafeteria to another morgue," he muttered. "They weren't prepared for anything like this...stupid of them, really. Space epidemics and plagues happen all the time..."

"I couldnae' open the freezers when I was here." Jamie reminded him patiently.

"Mn? Oh. Here." The Doctor crunched across a floor thickened with frost crystals and thumbed open the front casing of a fancy looking electrically coded lock before the Freezer's double doors. He tossed the case over his shoulder and poked at the insides with the tip of a copper paperclip.

The lock whined at its treatment, protested, whined some more and finally showed its surrender by falling apart. The Doctor winced slightly (he'd grown to hate certain pitches between sound and steel).

"Aye, Doctor." Lost in his thoughts and thinking of a warm bath and a cup of something even warmer, Jamie tilted his head back, yawned and tugged open the door to the freezer in question. A wall of cold air washed over his face-mask, tickling his lashes with floating frost-grains. Jamie finished yawning, and lowered his head level even as his eyes opened.

"Doctor!" He shrieked.

The Doctor came running, slipping on the frosty floor.

"Oh!" He exclaimed. Large plastic bags sealed against freezer-burn hung from ceiling-hooks and supports. "Oh, Jamie, get back! Get away from there!"

Jamie was already doing so. Half-sobbing for air, he whirled and slammed the door behind him, He hadn't clutched at the doctor since he was a boy, but the little man's strong grip had never been so welcome. He gasped with lungs shrunken from horror, tears trembling in his eyes.

"Oh, Jamie..." The Doctor was mourning, pulling his head down and running his gloves across the top of Jamie's protective hood. "Jamie, I'm so sorry...I'm so, so sorry...let's get you away from that thing. I didn't...I didn't think, Jamie..!"

"Ah, Doctor!" Jamie choked, trying his best to breathe. "Their own people! Their own people!"

"Jamie..." Spent as he was, the Doctor was still stronger than Jamie, but it was a trial to get him away from the Androgum's food locker without hurting him. Jamie had simply seen and endured too much. "I didn't think," he muttered. "That old fool! He probably took Chessene at her word when she said they were following the Covenants of the Station!" But his face wrenched as he said it; Dastari had been a friend at one time, even if a corrupted one.

"How could they?" Jamie was panting, trying to hold a full-fledged panic at bay. "Eating their own people?"

"They're Androgums, Jamie! They think cannibalism is just another privilege of living at the top of their food chain!" He shook the Piper gently, hoping to restore his senses. "That's enough for now." He said firmly.

"We're nae finished."

"We're finished for now, listen to me!" The Doctor tried again. "We can finish later, but...let's get out of this place for a bit."

"But the others..."

"Jamie." The Doctor swallowed hard and put his gloves on the sides of the Piper's face. He stared through the cold air, boring into his bloodshot eyes. "This can wait. Right now, I'm more worried about you, alive, than I am about a cart of dead folk."

Jamie struggled to breathe in without falling apart. "I wasn't ready to see that." He stammered.

"That's because you're a good person, Jamie." The Doctor's eyes were flat and bleak.

After that, they were quite exhausted. They peeled off the filthy coveralls outside the TARDIS before walking in, and managed to get through the motions of washing up and eating before (as the plan had it), falling into an exhausted sleep for a few hours before starting again. It was doubtful if any amount of scrubbing could get the feel of the work off their hands, or the images out of their eyes. Jamie was disturbed that he was getting thick-skinned against all of this death, and sat in a passive daze until the Doctor pressed a cup of steaming crowberry tea brewed from the Highlander's hills into his hands. He sipped it absently as the Doctor slid a bowl of milk and bread and tiny wild bilberries to his elbow.

"Aye, thanks." Jamie said quietly. He was fairly certain he didn't have the nerve to eat any flesh, or anything brightly colored, or even a bowl of porridge after all the exposure to the dead. The Doctor had figured that out by himself.

"Not at all, Jamie." The Doctor's head was down as he busied himself with peeling a banana. His own cup of tea smelled like bog myrtle. His breakfast bowl was half-filled with cloudberries.

The Piper smiled to himself, recalling their too-brief vacation.

"Now what's got you smiling?" The Doctor smiled gently back across the table.

Jamie didn't reply at first. He didn't have to. The Doctor was content to get an answer in the person's own time, their own way. He sipped more of his tea in silence for a minute. "Thinking back to when we picked those berries for Victoria and Zoe," he said at last. "It was a perfect day, wasna? Sky clear as glass, an' the tide pools full o'white foam and oysters."

"And the birds," The Doctor's eyes slipped to a faraway expression, watching something in his mind. "All of those birds, just carrying away, singing and diving into the water or flying headfirst into the stormclouds coming off the mainland." He stirred his cup without tasting it. "Finding all of those agate fossils for Zoe..."

"And ye went swimmin' in that freezing water."

"Freezing to you."

"Ugh. We had fun."

"Yes..." The Doctor agreed, but his careworn face gentled into a very faraway expression indeed, as something crossed his thoughts. His green eyes rested upon the Piper, all of him, and what Jamie thought of as "that look" was in the bottom of those two brilliant little wells into the soul.

The Doctor was committing him to memory, wanting to stop Time for just a moment, and create something that would carry on through his long lives.

Jamie was long used to this phenomenon with the Doctor, though he didn't know it for what it was until recently, when the full potential of the man's life span became clear. But...why now?

Ah.

"Are ye thinking o' The Guide Neighbors again?" He asked quietly.

The expression shuttered, stilled for a moment. The Green eyes flickered and the Doctor moved, breaking the spell of Time and drinking his tea. "Just a bit, yes."

"All's well that ends well, Doctair." Jamie reminded him.

"It very nearly didn't end well at all, you know." Disgruntled, the little man leaned his chin into his free hand as the other held his wisping cup below his throat. Steam licked up the sides of his face as though he was some sort of Oracle. "Of all the places to find you, Jamie..! Of all the Companions I've ever travelled with, the one that would know to avoid the Sidhe just happens to be the one to fall in their world!" Exasperation ruled the old man's face as he glared reproachfully-not directed as Jamie as much as the strange pitfalls in life itself.

"I didnae mean tae fall anywhere, and we got out." Jamie grinned. His grin softened to a rueful smile. "And ye know, someday, we'll have tae go back for the Brigadier."

"And we will." The Doctor leaned over and gripped the young human's forearm. "Right now he's busy fixing up all those...er...problems, But when the Time is right, we'll go back and ask if he wants to stay or leave. He does have grandchildren he'd like to see, you know!"

But Jamie's thoughts were moored not to the Otherworld, but to what was outside the TARDIS, and thinking of children yanked him back to that terrible place. He felt his cheeks cool as they paled, and he put his cup down to stare through the golden liquid.

"Jamie?"

"How can people eat people? Their own people even?"

The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment. "They're Androgums, Jamie. You've heard me complain about them...and heard Dastari defend Chessene's Androgum portion often enough!" He rubbed his fingertips along the smooth teacup. "Most people don't know...Androgums are...a created race."

"They're manufactured? Like in a machine? Like Cybermen and Daleks?"

"Not quite, but that's how they began. They were created by a very powerful race a long time ago—long ago even by my standards—and by people who really ought to have known better. They were..." He stopped and cleared his throat, said something in a low, gutteral tongue that sounded somewhat German without a scrap of its music within vowel and consonant.

"Did ye just call em 'Mud Groaners?"

"Yes...very nasty name. The host species for the bulk of their genetic coding translates to "Groan in the Mud" or "Mud Groan"...a primitive people living in a barely hospitable planet! Androgum is an anagram of Mud-Groan. Not a very good one if you ask me..." He paused to shudder. "They were given enough cranial enhancement to make them very different from their forefathers...different enough that they only see them as another source of food." He sipped his tea quickly. "They were created to have boundless energy and focus on their tasks."

"Slaves?"

"Precisely. In this era...there were...rumblings...about the moral position of slavery. Even people that you might ordinarily admire were in support of it, whilst there could be people you would have loathed and perhaps killed on sight were against it! The time was just troubled, Jamie. Creating Androgums was a simple solution in a complicated time: A manufactured race of self-perpetuating savages that actually need to be enslaved because of their limitless physical resource and single-minded focus, with an endless potential for violence...it's very easy to enslave people who are themselves enslaved by their own desires, Jamie. Androgums are very proud that their purest rule is the gratification of pleasure."

"That's awful." Jamie breathed.

"As you might imagine, they make excellent slaves so long as one keeps them under the tightest possible reign and control their urges. Over time they developed a highly intricate system of clans and that made them a little more...interactive...with other species but they've never achieved a higher level than that of chatelaine or chef or circus strongman. Dastari was just one of the many people who, blinded by the light of his own intellect, thought he knew and understood the lessor ones and I daresay he thought his higher intelligence as well as the age of his race made him morally responsible to lift the Androgums to a higher level."

That meant Dastari's people might have had a hand in the Androgum's making. "He was very protective of her, wasn't he?" Jamie mused. "He thought she was better than Androgum...would some day be better than Minyan."

"He thought to re-write history...make the wheel better. It's a common mistake of arrogance. Androgums can't change, Jamie. That was the first law written into their genetic coding. They're in an evolutionary box canyon. They bow and scrape to races like mine and think yours are beneath theirs."

"Aye, but we're good enough to eat." Jamie muttered.

"Jamie, if I'd known the mission would turn this bad I never would have brought you."

"And ye'd be dead fer a fact." Jamie told him.

"I'd be fine with that." Sometimes the little man could be utterly frightening.

"I wouldn't be."

"I won't ever happily put your life at risk, Jamie. I'll do it, and I can and have done so, but I will never once look at your life like a score in a game."

Jamie's cheeks burned at the intensity in the Doctor's soft words. "Doctair..."

"Yes, Jamie?"

"Ye were worried about this mission from the get-go, weren't ye?"

The Doctor finally nodded. "I'm afraid so."

"Thought'sa. The way ye were acting in front of Dastari..." It had taken almost a lifetime for Jamie to mention the dead by name and not flinch. It was a heady freedom, but in this case he also didn't want to think of the man. "It isn't like ye to send the TARDIS off wi'out us..."

"Oh, that wasn't me. That was the Time Lords. You might say that confirmed my suspicions. They told me precious little to begin with, and normally they like to give me too much information (most of it useless). But this..." He shook his head. "The Third Zoners will be absolutely furious when this gets out." He rubbed at his forehead, eyes closing in fatigue. "Two weeks, Jamie. There should have been some sort of rescue or intelligence group by now. The fact that my future self in the TARDIS was the only one who could board means more than I want to know about Sontaran activity!"

Jamie was still nervous about thinking of the future Doctor. "Ye think the Sontarans're still around?"

"I know they're still around. They're hard-headed to a fault and patient as the rock they've got for a brain. They'll wait at least another two weeks before the lack of a report will force them to change their plans and I've no doubt they've been holding back and attacking anyone trying to get into the Station." He caught Jamie's growing alarm. "As long as we do nothing to alert their suspicions we should be safe enough. The Time Lords will get here soon and then they'll really back off." He snorted darkly.

"Aye, but why haven't they shown up by now?" Jamie asked. "When ye summoned them from the War Planet...it didnae take 'em time at all!"

"Don't remind me. No, you're right, but temporal interference of the level of the War Lord is most unusual, Jamie. To be honest, it's practically unheard of in recent history."

"How recent?"

"About 20,000 years." The Doctor shrugged. "Not so long in the scheme of things."

"Oh, aye..."

The Doctor's look was fond and rueful. "Now, Jamie. When we're talking about time travel, the most important thing to remember is, one can't invent something they don't believe in. Necessity is the monkey wrench of invasion."

"Ye mean a man who doesn't need a hammer will never make one."

"Very good. Yes. And even more importantly, after the need comes a concept. No one ever accidentally made a Time Machine because they were making a rubber duck."

"I can see that. So ye'r saying that the Time Lords are waiting tae show up because what happened isn't as important."

"If I must guess as to their opaque and labyrinthine motives," The Doctor sucked in his cheeks, rolling the situation around with a mouthful of tea, "they're more concerned with damage control to the Third Zone, assessing the Sontaran presence, and figuring out how they can deal with both as neatly and as invisibly as possible. A quick solution is as loud as a shout, and they simply do not like to bring attention to themselves." His face darkened. "If they follow the usual Third Zone protocols, they'll have their meeting here on the Station since this is where the massacre happened. They won't like it, but they'll want to be politic about the Third Zone's feelings and that will be a step in the right direction."

"Aye." Jamie drank his tea and ate a few berries. The food settled lightly in his stomach, and he began to feel better. "Glad that we're cleaning this part of it up..." They both had survivor's guilt, he thought gloomily. The Doctor because he was part of the reason why everyone had been slaughtered in the first place. And himself because he had been clever enough to hide from the Sontarans when no one else, with all their intelligence, could.

"If we keep it up, we should have it all taken care of in a few days." The Doctor assured him. "Just remember to pace yourself and not overdo it."

"I will if ye will. Ye're no more recovered than I am, and I think ye were going through a lot more than I was."

"If we argued about that, we'd be stuck in the TARDIS for years. Is that all that's on your mind?" The Doctor snapped just a bit, but he didn't push, which was a relief to them both. Jamie was glad. His maroonment with the dead had scarred him deeply, but the Doctor was affected too. He was quakey and paled too easily. Being unconscious for two weeks surely hadn't done his body good.

And Time Lord or not, Jamie refused to believe that he could just throw off Androgum DNA like an unwanted sock.

"Well." Jamie cleared his throat, staring down at his hands for a moment. "All this aboot the Third Zone. It sounds like it's important, but I'm a little confused as to how important."

"Oh, my word, you do like to ask questions, don't you?" The Doctor waved away Jamie's rising apology. "No, no, I don't mean what you think I mean, Jamie. It's just...it's a loaded question." He finished his bowl and, clearly still hungry, went rummaging for something else. Jamie waited patiently until he returned with a bag of what the Highlander thought was one of his more bizarre notions of food: dried gooseberries (which were gloriously tasty), sprinkled with chile powder (which was not). The Doctor insisted this was a common treat on Earth, but it wasn't in Jamie's lands.

"The Third Zone," the Doctor said as he finished chewing, "Is part of Mutter's Spiral, only not close enough for Earth to be interfered with much by their doings. Thank goodness. Level 5 Planets have enough to worry about from outside influences." He frowned at a large berry and popped it in his mouth with a crunch. "It's a loose term for nine planetary systems—in the old days there were more. They've been technologically advanced for a long time."

"Dastari acted like he knew a lot of what was going on wi' the Time Lords, but he didn't look or act like one of 'em."

"Dastari's people are Gallifreyan Colonists. They left the homeworld anywhen from a half million to one million years ago. The last I looked into things, Gallifrey had the official list of 'recognized colonial species' to some three dozen. The legal definitions used to depend on people from Gallifrey who settled with permission of the government, but for most purposes today it means anyone who fits the anatomical spectrum and, who can claim with some truth, an ancestry back to Gallifrey." The Doctor sipped his tea. "Dastari's a Minyan. They tend to avoid a higher level of computer technology, but they embrace what they find useful, like transmats and hyperdrive craft. Gallifrey's a bit of a stick when it comes to interacting with most races, but they know it's a bad idea to completely ignore the offshoots of their stock race."

"Aye, you were talking to him like you would a really hard-headed Time Lord." Jamie nodded. "All that talk about race and nature." Jamie fidgeted. "I'm not used tae that. Normally I'm hearin' you defend other peoples...especially mine. Everyone says we're primitive and...well, not worthy of even lookin' at."

"You know that's not true. I've defended humans to more than just the Time Lords, Jamie. It's a popular myth that humans are the most destructive race in the Universe. A good one, yes, but it's still a myth. Humans rarely kill their own planets off."

"P-planets?" Jamie repeated.

"Oh, yes. There will be thousands of them in the galaxies before you know it." The Doctor smiled at the notion. Then his smile faded. "It's your age, Jamie. Compared to so many other peoples out there, Humans are one of the youngest of races out there, and despite the fact that your natural development has been arrested by other parties more times than even I can count-you just bounce right back! The Time Lords aren't the only ones who don't like the fact that you learn so fast."

"Hah. At least I can claim I don't do that."

"You do sell yourself short." The Doctor said patiently. "Jamie..." He chased a dried gooseberry in the bottom of his bowl for a moment, then gave up. "Being overtired will make anyone lose control. Is there anything you'd like to do that would...help unwind before we try to sleep?"

"Oh, I dinnae. Something where I wouldn't have to think." He caught himself. "None o' those number games!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," The Doctor protested with an almost believable face. "Come on. Let's see if the mosses have finished taking in the Swimming Room."

"Yer wantin' us to go watch the moss grow? That'll relax me for sair!" But Jamie's grumble was half-hearted. He'd almost forgotten the Swimming Room, which the Doctor had made at great personal effort to look like a protected little sea-pool off the coast off the Western Isles.

Jamie hadn't seen the Room since they'd left Earth the last time, and he remembered it as a half-finished mess of rock, earth, and something to do with lining the walls with a special glass. Either he'd been away longer than he'd thought, or the TARDIS liked the room and was doing things to it in their absence. The old swimming pool had been sculpted into an old-style "bathing hole" of sea-rock and cliff. A spur of sand slipped down the lowest edge until it ran into the glass wall. The higher end blended with the illusion of a ragged cliff wall. Sea-kales and glassworts clung in bare clutches in the saltier portions while the aforementioned mosses made a determined climb up the still-exposed cliff.

"Oh, excellent!" The Doctor didn't clap his hands together (somehow he didn't seem to be that happy lately), but he did bounce up and down on his toes a few times. "Look at that, Jamie! A perfect little microcosm!"

"I feel like I'm in a fish—I mean terrarium." Jamie blinked up at the ceiling, but the artificial sunlight was too much and he looked down. Now he knew what the glass was all about: it made the room look as though it wasn't even there. Jamie had lived on the TARDIS long enough not to be fooled at fake air currents and sunlight, but the Doctor wasn't trying to copy Scotland, just honor it. He sniffed at a sudden sea spray appreciatively, and smiled as a sudden flock of birds slipped past their heads to vanish into the ocean on the other side of a rock-spill. "What would happen if I touched them?"

"Nothing that I know...the TARDIS came up with that one, not me. She really got into the spirit of things, didn't you, Old Girl." The Doctor beamed with deep fondness and gave a rough boulder a pat. "With luck she didn't collect any living beings this time...but you can never really be sure." He looked uncertain and cleared his throat. "Well! Good enough for a sit-down, eh? Interesting Neolithic oyster farm." The Doctor commented. "I wonder what made her replicate that?"

"What? The bathing pool?"

"They're bathing-pools in your time; your geographic ancestors built these low walls for their own purposes: Oysters Rockerfeller." The Doctor rocked on the balls of his feet again, hooking his thumbs into his braces. "Interesting! Hmn!"

Jamie grinned at the little fellow's antics. Sometimes he sounded just like a stuffy old man. "It's as perfect as it'll get." Jamie said with feeling, and promptly pulled off his coat, used it for a blanket, and sprawled on the grazzy hummock with his ears barely an ell from a tiny trickling freshet. Before he knew it he was asleep.

The Doctor continued standing where he was some time more, taking in the minute details of the changed room. The TARDIS rarely took initiative like this; he wondered if he dared take it as a hopeful sign that she was finally recovering from the transplant-shock of all the new parts from Gallifrey. Sometimes, a timeship couldn't adjust and like a human given the wrong replacement organ, rejected the change violently and fatally. It was but one of the many reasons why her module was obsolete and an embarrassment to the technicians.

Perhaps he was hanging on too long to his paranoia. The symbiotic bond with the Old Girl was something he now couldn't live without and the Agency was not exactly pleased about the extra complication this posed in their plans. From a strategic stand they were quite sensible to de-materialize the TARDIS off the Chimera when they first landed to meet with Dastari. Anyone who held his TARDIS would in effect have pinned him, more surely and tightly as Chessene had with her drugs.

And didn't the Time Lords know that.

He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, pondering wearily the problem of being the Time Lords' bondsman, with slight hopes of winning his freedom, or falling victim to whoever would have the horrid idea of holding his TARDIS hostage.

"What do you think?" He asked quietly. And he remained that way for a long time, while Jamie slept. If he heard a response to his question, no one else heard; he merely tilted his head to one side with an odd little smile, as if in communication with something too subtle to be detected by outside means.