Ficathon Entry: Transience
Title: Transience
Author: lost_spook
Prompt: What happened to the Governor after Vengeance on Varos?
Characters: Peri Brown, the Governor, Maldak
Rating: All ages / PG
Word count: 4348
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Peri belong to the BBC; the other characters to Philip Martin.
Notes: The presence of Peri makes it possibly AU. Unlike the TV serial, there’s very little in the way of violence, torture, acid baths and other video recordings of a graphic nature. I hope this, & the inclusion of Peri and the more introspective nature doesn’t disappoint too much whoever it was included the prompt. (I’d like to thank that Anonymous Person: I had a version of this scribbled out, but assumed no one would want to read it).
Summary: Peri wonders where have all the good guys gone, and the Governor of Varos tries to find a new way forward for his people.
Thanks to persiflage_1 for the very helpful and last-minute beta.
***
Varos was a dead planet, more or less. All that was worthwhile was what had long ago been buried under the surface. That was why they had sent prisoners there: trapped under domes with only one inaccessible space port, there was no escape.
What sort of civilisation had arisen from that was understandable (maybe): everyone still prisoners in fundamentals, even some of the officer-class, the people’s only escape in viewing televised acts of brutality, or if they were unlucky, featuring as the star performer in that entertainment.
Still, thought Peri, as she hitched and blagged her way back, it had to be better than what she’d left behind her.
*
What to do with a planet like Varos was a question that occupied one man more than any other; naturally, since he was its Governor. That was a surprise, as he’d confidently expected to be dead by now and these issues only an exercise in futility for another. To have a bargaining tool available to him, money, and less brutal fellow officers was an improvement, but it wasn’t what Varos was used to, and he was aware that many people preferred what they were used to.
Ending the constant Punishment Dome transmissions had left a gaping hole in the lives of the workers, the officer elite, too, and it should be replaced. At least, now he could promise better wages at last. That was never going to be unpopular, but a people with money to spend were a novelty and no one knew what they were to spend it on - other than food and illegal remaining recordings of violence. Or zeiton-7, but Varosians seemed to be the only people who didn’t need the mineral ore.
There were other pressing problems: nearly all food had to be shipped in from neighbouring worlds. He could better afford to do that now, but it was a serious weakness and must be remedied.
It was imperative that progress be made before the wilder element seized control. There had already been riots, and they had been put down with the usual brutality. They simply had not been filmed or broadcast. Was that, he asked himself, indeed a step forward?
An insight into what other worlds did would be invaluable, but he hesitated to ask. Off-worlders might look down on a former prison planet, but they showed all the same base instincts in their dealings with them. They were harsh, and greedy for profits, and there was an audience out there for their recordings. What excuse did they have? Clearly, power was a corrupting force, and he should be wary of that, since for the first time, he owned to some.
It was fortunate, then, he decided with a certain wry humour, that he was, after all, only a transient Governor in the twilight of his reign.
*
Peri didn’t think much of men who hit her. That was why she was standing in the corridor, glaring at the guard captain. She’d have complained more, but the good guys were scarce on Varos, and Maldak was technically one of them. Peri understood the madness of this planet’s system, but she didn’t like guys who slapped her round the face, never mind their harsh upbringing, or how many changes of heart they had after. Especially if they never apologised.
It seemed to Peri that there were a lot of people out there who didn’t want to say sorry.
“I’ll see if he can spare you a few minutes,” said Maldak, who had the advantage of height to look down at her from. “He is very busy, obviously.”
She folded her arms. “Yeah, well, I can wait. I’m not going anywhere.”
Varos had stayed a prison planet in point of fact, until the officer in front of her had fired a shot out of pity and broken the rules. At least, she thought, feeling ever more nervous, she was hoping it had stopped being a prison in all the ways that counted.
*
Her idea hadn’t been as stupid as it might seem on the surface. She’d wanted to get back to the only planet where she knew anyone in this time and place (if it wasn’t quite the right time, then there were enough time-ships in need of Varos’s zeiton-7 to make that possible). She’d remembered Jondar and Areta, who’d seemed friendly at least. She hadn’t expected to arrive and find that they were off-world, helping with negotiations, and she’d have to deal with the Governor.
That wasn’t so bad: last time she’d seen him, he’d asked if there was any way he could repay her and the Doctor. It was only when it came to bad guys and good guys, she wasn’t sure where she’d put him. She wanted to say Good Guy, but there was other stuff. Like trying to execute the Doctor, being technically a sort of totalitarian leader, and creepy on the subject of death.
“Peri,” he said, on seeing her enter, poking her head around the door before emerging fully. “What brings you back to Varos?”
She ought to have known that he’d start with the awkward questions. “It’s a long story.”
“The Doctor -?”
“Isn’t here,” she cut in, shortly. “Just me. I thought maybe I could… I don’t know… help out?”
He looked much the same as she remembered, as he turned away from her, walking up and down briefly before glancing back. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was hard to remember the Bad Guy stuff when she was talking to him - at least, until he came out with something that made her blood turn cold. He hadn’t yet, but then this was as far as the conversation had gotten. “I’ve no right to pry, of course, but I hadn’t thought we would see either of you again.”
“No,” said Peri, staring downward, because she didn’t want to cry this time. “I’d have said you were right, but then he went and stranded me on Thoros Beta and I thought - well, I thought -.”
There was the faintest gleam of humour that lightened his fair features at that. “Ah,” he said. “Thoros Beta. I can see that compared to a world full of creatures such as Sil even Varos might have its appeal.”
“Yes,” she said, tentatively smiling back. She hated Sil. There were a lot of men and monsters she wasn’t keen on, and in many ways, he wasn’t as bad as some, but he’d had her mutated into a bird-human hybrid. She didn’t like being hit, but she’d rather that than be turned into something stupid, fearful and feathered. The Governor seemed to feel the same, although presumably not for that reason. “Is that okay?”
“Of course,” he said, more seriously. “We need to find a way forward and someone who has experience of other worlds and their ways could be of considerable help.”
Peri nodded. She hesitated, because she wanted to be clear on some things. “You’ve stopped all the executions and the torture? You don’t make anyone watch it any more?”
“Of course,” he said. “My concern now is how to stop people watching.”
She frowned.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Strange as it may seem, there are many who miss the old broadcasts, and, though I have disposed of most of the recordings, some are circulated in secret, for a high price. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Peri swallowed. She’d known all along this was a stupid planet to try and find refuge on, but most of her other options hadn’t exactly been sane either. Then she picked up on part of that speech and looked at him. “You said ‘most’. You mean, you kept some?”
“Yes,” the Governor said again, a lift of surprise in his tone that she had needed to ask. “Only the actual executions, of course.”
Why were there no good guys left in her world?
*
Peri took a seat in what was now her room, and the sort enjoyed by the officer elite, not the general rabble. It wasn’t locked, of course, but it had about as much character as some of the cells she’d been in. In fact, she’d been in nicer cells.
However, she’d decided to do this, so she heaved a large sigh, and then picked up the pen and pencil she’d asked for, and started writing ideas for the Governor. Firstly, she thought, was a bit of lighter paint here and there too much to ask? Secondly, she was a botanist, or would-be botanist, and she could help Varos that way. She wasn’t stupid, whatever some people liked to claim.
Plus, she thought, if the Governor could get her more information, and she wasn’t thinking of something she’d seen a few millennia from now, there were plants you could use to terraform a planet, and Varos wasn’t totally inhospitable. There was some sort of atmosphere out there, even if you wouldn’t survive for long.
Thirdly, she was probably the only person here who’d have an idea what the alternative viewing options were to live execution and torture. If the Doctor caught her encouraging these people into watching some dumb soap opera, he’d kill her with a scathing look, but he wasn’t here, and he wasn’t going to be, so she’d do this her way. With all the so-called tacky American attitude she could muster, and if he ever found out, he’d have to lump it. She could hardly expect them to start with Shakespeare, could she?
Then she thought about that some more, and added: ‘Find copies of Shakespeare’ to the list, because, now she thought about it, Shakespeare was bloody enough to appeal to the Varosians.
*
“I thought we’d dismantled all of the Punishment Dome’s traps?” said the Governor, as he walked along the corridor with Maldak. “I gave explicit orders -.”
Maldak said, “Yes, sir, and we did. However, it appears that Garber must have found something we missed.”
“Close down the section,” he said. “Make cautious investigations, but try not to lose anyone else. Was that all?”
He paused. “I have had reports of another plot among the officers -. Shall I keep you informed?”
“You had better,” he returned with dry amusement. “Otherwise, I shall find myself disposed of in some interesting fashion, I imagine.”
Maldak nodded. “Yes, sir. They don’t seem to be that organised this time.”
“Is that still not all?”
He hesitated. “Sir, there's that girl -.”
“You mean Peri?”
He thought about it. “Am I to authorise these request of hers?”
“Yes, you are.” He walked away, and then turned back. “She is trying to help us find a future. She wishes to use the cleared section of the Punishment Dome for a new experiment in growing produce. You must see the usefulness of that. While I think of it, do ensure she keeps to the cleared area if there is trouble.”
“Yes, sir. Except, she has also asked for - well, she’s asked for some books, sir.”
He paused. “Books?”
*
There had never been many books on Varos. The few volumes he had ever seen had been ancient personal copies, handed down from the earliest prisoners, or their gaolers, having thought to take something with which to while away the hours on such a remote and lifeless planet.
There had been two such in his own family’s quarters, largely forgotten, but not thrown away, because any remnant of the original officer elite’s belongings conferred a certain status, in their rarity. An irrelevant memory fluttered through his mind: his mother’s hands shaking when she straightened out the pages, both hearing the heavy footsteps in the outer corridor as she read.
Where they were now, he had no idea, but they had been windows into an unrecognisable world where violence and corruption were not the only laws; where villains such as the Chief and Sil were defeated, laid low in their arrogance by heroes not unlike the Doctor.
He had forgotten that there had been books.
*
“Peri,” he said, seeking her out. “Allow me to explain something.”
She lifted her head. “Shoot.”
“I’m sorry?”
Peri laughed, despite herself. “I mean, go ahead. Definitely don’t shoot anything.” Here, she thought, that needed spelling out.
“When I said that I kept certain recordings, I don’t think you understood. I forget that you are not familiar with Varos.”
Her gaze hardened, contempt in her eyes. “Oh, I got it. Just for a warning, I suppose, in case -.”
“For some of these unfortunates, there are no other records of their demise,” he said. “We need to ensure that each is recorded. As a warning, perhaps, yes, but not in the way you imply.”
Peri closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she muttered. She wondered about him again: should she despise him for what he’d done, or consider that, raised as one of the elite in a totalitarian society, brought up on a diet of violence and greed, it was impressive that he was trying to do the right thing at all.
She wanted the good guys to be good. Was that too much to ask?
*
The voting system remained in place, though mercifully no longer linked to a killing device. No future leaders would have to die in office as a matter of course. He was still working out a more sensible set of guidelines for how the voting should be carried out. (Every decision? Surely not. Then which? And, presumably, they should be able to vote him out of office, which brought him back to the thorny problem of a successor. There didn’t seem to be one, not yet, and there must be.)
“Can I come in?”
He stood, too late to get the door, as Peri entered the office, yet again forgetting the formality so alien to her. This time she had an unfamiliar item in her hands - a plant of some kind? - and a proud smile on her face.
“There,” she said, setting it down on the desk. “It’s about time you had something to brighten this place up. It’s not as if it isn’t gloomy enough, sitting in here - well.”
He raised an eyebrow in query.
“It’s a flower,” she said, pouting that he had to be told. “It’ll need watering, or it’ll die, like everything else.”
“Generous of you.”
She laughed. “Not really,” she said. “You paid for it.”
“Ah,” he said, surveying the pink and green plant in front of him warily. “I see.”
*
She decided that he definitely could be one of the good guys, if it wasn’t too late. It might be.
Peri wasn’t exactly old, but she’d seen all sorts, travelling with the Doctor, and she knew when things weren’t right. You grieve, he’d said. I’d forgotten people do. Well, people did, and here on Varos, too. Were they only the words of a man pushed to his limits, exhausted after his own ordeals, or was he really that far gone? It reminded her of her ongoing struggle in trying to wrest life out of the barren ground here, and both might be a losing battle. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.
*
“I don’t even know what your name is,” she told him. “You must have one, right?”
He shrugged. “It feels like the name of someone else these days.”
“People can’t always have called you Governor.”
He swung around. “No. Is it important?”
“Hey, I’m trying to make conversation here,” she said, trying to lighten the tone. It didn’t work for long, but she was putting the effort in.
He shrugged. “You needn’t.”
“Is that a polite ‘go away’?” she retorted.
Rueful amusement crossed his face again. “No. If I wanted you to go, I could have you marched out by the guards.”
“Great,” said Peri. “Do I really have to explain that I’m only trying to be friendly, and to do that, it helps to find out stuff. You know my name.”
He got to his feet; and she had to look up as he used his height to put her in her place, or so it seemed. (The Doctor had been as tall, but he’d never turned that against her.) “It’s unfair, I see. Was there anything you wished to know?”
“It’s not meant to be a formal interview,” she said, unable to help rolling her eyes. “I don’t know: home, parents, hobbies, anything. And then I can nod and tell you how I argued with my Mom all the time, and now -.”
He withdrew, both by a backwards movement and a slight darkening of his eyes. “It would be best if you didn’t have to learn the details of life on Varos.”
“Oh, would it?” she burst out. She was fed up of being patronised, left, right and centre. “Well, yeah, I don’t come from this sick - I mean, I don’t know; you’re right. But I’ve been everywhere with the Doctor and if you don’t think I ever saw worse than here, you don’t know anything about me, either. You wouldn’t believe how many of the people I’ve met have died horribly, usually right in front of me.”
“Even so, there’s not very much point -.”
She glared back, a stubborn tilt to her chin that would have brought an alarmed look into the Doctor’s eyes. “I think there is. So, tell me: how come you weren’t on the side of Sil and that lot? You were the leader. Shouldn’t you have been?”
He gave her a searching glance, a stillness in him as he weighed up what she meant.
“I know you weren’t,” she added, since that seemed to need saying.
He smiled. “You saw how little being Governor was worth.”
Peri had. He’d had to ask permission of the guards just to leave his rooms, even aside from the lethal voting sessions. “That’s not it, though, is it?”
“There’s little to tell. I was one of the fortunate few; a member of the officer elite,” he said. “You know that much already. From sitting in front of the education screen to guards’ training, it was a smooth path. Eventually, as with so many, my turn came to be Governor and I could see at first hand how hopeless the situation was - certainly nothing that could be answered by broadcasting torture and death.”
Including his own, thought Peri. There were times at home when plenty of people would have liked to deal with politicians like that, but it wasn’t a solution, and, of course, the real leaders weren’t being done to death on TV. “That’s it?”
He turned his head, smiling. “Oh, I tried one or two foolish things to try and change matters when I was younger, as one does.” He crossed back to the desk, glancing down at the papers. “My first proper posting was guard duty down the mines,” he paused, as if to think how to explain it, opening in hands in a gesture of inadequacy. “You recall the cell bombardment -.”
“Sometimes I still dream I can fly.”
He gave a small quirk of his mouth in acknowledgement and what might be sympathy. “Then you will understand that in some cases, I saw miners -.” He glanced down at his hands again. “They grew claws - fur - became little better than animals. The need for ever more zeiton at the low prices it sold for even then made the supervisors careless of the workers, and they were desperate. Zeiton is of no value here to us. A man cannot eat it, though I have seen some who were reduced to trying. Yes, I tried to intervene, usually to no avail, and merely earned myself a period in solitary confinement when it was discovered. I was more careful after that. The next reprimand would undoubtedly be more cruel - and public.”
“Bet your parents weren’t pleased about that, huh?” she said.
“My father never mentioned it,” he said, evenly. “As for my mother, she might well have been part of some resistance group herself, although, of course, it could have been a mistake, or the efforts of a malicious informant.”
She sat down on the steps. “Oh, no. That was a dumb thing to say.”
“I wasn’t there when the execution took place,” he returned. “However, the recording proved unhappily popular.”
She leant her chin on her knees. He’d made her blood run cold again, as she thought about the implications of having to watch that over and over. “That’s sick.”
He gave a shrug. “I can’t claim it as anything unusual. Hopefully, in the future it will become all but unheard of.”
“Yeah,” she said, and couldn’t resist pushing her luck further. “And your Dad, then?”
The Governor said, “He was a member of the officer elite. Like so many of us, he had his turn here, in this office.”
“You mean -?” Peri lost whatever she had been going to say, as she took that in. She glanced about her, as if he’d woken a ghost. So he’d died right in this room, in the same way as the man in front of her nearly had. No wonder he’d said all that stuff about death. She swallowed.
He glanced down at her, and when he spoke his voice was as measured, his movements as controlled as ever, but there was a certain steeliness in both. “You need not waste your pity. If ever any of us deserved that fate, it was him.”
Peri looked down again, because suddenly her dysfunctional family were looking a whole lot more normal than they had before.
*
“I’m not sure I understand your purpose,” the Governor said, before she left, after weighing things up. She was alien to his world, and unpredictable, but he felt confident he could trust her. “However, I think you intend to help.”
She made a face to herself.
“In which case, I’m grateful, but you may as well be acquainted with a further fact,” he said, and lowered his head to say in her ear: “I’m dying.”
Peri lifted her head sharply; denial dark in her eyes. “No. No, that can’t be true!”
“Call it a postponed execution, if you like. The after effects of the cell disintegration process,” he murmured. “After all, what other Governor has lived long enough to discover any other consequences?”
“Can’t you do something?”
He smiled, finding amusement in the thought. “I don’t think it would be wise to draw attention to that, do you?”
“This is all just more crazy, sick thinking,” she shot back. “You’re in love with death and, what, now you can’t even see a doctor?”
She hadn’t explained where her Doctor was, and now her eyes widened as she took in what she’d said, but she only glared back at him harder.
“I don’t think it should trouble you,” he pointed out. “Consider how many executions I oversaw, and you will see nothing unjust in it. However, Varos must not return to what it was. Perhaps you will have some ideas about a suitable successor?”
Peri left at a run.
*
She leant against the wall of the corridor, and blinked back tears. She supposed he was right, but she hated to give up, and the universe seemed too short of good guys to lose even a maybe-one, especially not now, not for this planet.
(Not now the Doctor had run away and left her. She closed her eyes at the thought. He’d have had a reason; she knew he’d have had a reason, but she didn’t know what it was, and how he could just leave her like that.)
Far too many people had run off, or disappeared, or died, and she was fighting mad now about there not being another.
“Are you all right?” asked Maldak, on passing. He sounded as if the question came reluctantly, without much real concern, but he did ask.
She looked at him. “You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
Peri thought about that. “Uh. The Governor.”
“What?”
She bit her lip. “Okay, I know you must know. You’re his right-hand man these days, so if I said about a technical hitch with that machine you shot to pieces -.”
Without warning, he pulled her out of sight, round the corner. “Shut up,” he ordered.
Peri flinched back, out of his reach. “Keep your hands off me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said; again, as if it didn’t come naturally. He glanced at his hands and had the grace to colour. “You needn’t fear. I won’t hurt you.”
She said, “Don’t you want to do something about it?”
“He has forbidden that,” he said, but not as if it was out of the question. He lowered his head, and his tone. “You are from another world. Do you know something that can be done?”
Peri was startled, and made a move to shake her head, but then she thought about it, and she leant forward. “Yes, I can. That thing worked both ways, didn’t it? And don’t tell me nobody ever had to mend it. There must be something here that could help - and if there isn’t, well, I’m just a crazy alien girl. I’m not a proper citizen of Varos. I can go anywhere I like and ask anything, if I choose. This is the future, isn’t it? There’ll be stuff out there nobody bothered sending here.”
“He has ordered me to authorise any request you may have for your projects,” he agreed thoughtfully.
Peri smiled, and held out her hand.
Maldak frowned for a while, and then recalled what she meant. He took it in return, shaking it firmly.
“After all,” said Peri, her smile widening, “it’s for the good of Varos, right?”
He nodded.
She still didn’t like guys who hit her, but she might - might - forgive him one day, if only because working together meant there would be a couple less bad guys in her universe.
It was the sort of thing the Doctor did and while he might have left her, and though they'd argued till kingdom come and beyond when they'd travelled together, she knew that he’d say that where there was life there was hope. And, possibly, where there was hope, there was life.
She believed that, too..
***
Author: lost_spook
Prompt: What happened to the Governor after Vengeance on Varos?
Characters: Peri Brown, the Governor, Maldak
Rating: All ages / PG
Word count: 4348
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Peri belong to the BBC; the other characters to Philip Martin.
Notes: The presence of Peri makes it possibly AU. Unlike the TV serial, there’s very little in the way of violence, torture, acid baths and other video recordings of a graphic nature. I hope this, & the inclusion of Peri and the more introspective nature doesn’t disappoint too much whoever it was included the prompt. (I’d like to thank that Anonymous Person: I had a version of this scribbled out, but assumed no one would want to read it).
Summary: Peri wonders where have all the good guys gone, and the Governor of Varos tries to find a new way forward for his people.
Thanks to persiflage_1 for the very helpful and last-minute beta.
***
Varos was a dead planet, more or less. All that was worthwhile was what had long ago been buried under the surface. That was why they had sent prisoners there: trapped under domes with only one inaccessible space port, there was no escape.
What sort of civilisation had arisen from that was understandable (maybe): everyone still prisoners in fundamentals, even some of the officer-class, the people’s only escape in viewing televised acts of brutality, or if they were unlucky, featuring as the star performer in that entertainment.
Still, thought Peri, as she hitched and blagged her way back, it had to be better than what she’d left behind her.
*
What to do with a planet like Varos was a question that occupied one man more than any other; naturally, since he was its Governor. That was a surprise, as he’d confidently expected to be dead by now and these issues only an exercise in futility for another. To have a bargaining tool available to him, money, and less brutal fellow officers was an improvement, but it wasn’t what Varos was used to, and he was aware that many people preferred what they were used to.
Ending the constant Punishment Dome transmissions had left a gaping hole in the lives of the workers, the officer elite, too, and it should be replaced. At least, now he could promise better wages at last. That was never going to be unpopular, but a people with money to spend were a novelty and no one knew what they were to spend it on - other than food and illegal remaining recordings of violence. Or zeiton-7, but Varosians seemed to be the only people who didn’t need the mineral ore.
There were other pressing problems: nearly all food had to be shipped in from neighbouring worlds. He could better afford to do that now, but it was a serious weakness and must be remedied.
It was imperative that progress be made before the wilder element seized control. There had already been riots, and they had been put down with the usual brutality. They simply had not been filmed or broadcast. Was that, he asked himself, indeed a step forward?
An insight into what other worlds did would be invaluable, but he hesitated to ask. Off-worlders might look down on a former prison planet, but they showed all the same base instincts in their dealings with them. They were harsh, and greedy for profits, and there was an audience out there for their recordings. What excuse did they have? Clearly, power was a corrupting force, and he should be wary of that, since for the first time, he owned to some.
It was fortunate, then, he decided with a certain wry humour, that he was, after all, only a transient Governor in the twilight of his reign.
*
Peri didn’t think much of men who hit her. That was why she was standing in the corridor, glaring at the guard captain. She’d have complained more, but the good guys were scarce on Varos, and Maldak was technically one of them. Peri understood the madness of this planet’s system, but she didn’t like guys who slapped her round the face, never mind their harsh upbringing, or how many changes of heart they had after. Especially if they never apologised.
It seemed to Peri that there were a lot of people out there who didn’t want to say sorry.
“I’ll see if he can spare you a few minutes,” said Maldak, who had the advantage of height to look down at her from. “He is very busy, obviously.”
She folded her arms. “Yeah, well, I can wait. I’m not going anywhere.”
Varos had stayed a prison planet in point of fact, until the officer in front of her had fired a shot out of pity and broken the rules. At least, she thought, feeling ever more nervous, she was hoping it had stopped being a prison in all the ways that counted.
*
Her idea hadn’t been as stupid as it might seem on the surface. She’d wanted to get back to the only planet where she knew anyone in this time and place (if it wasn’t quite the right time, then there were enough time-ships in need of Varos’s zeiton-7 to make that possible). She’d remembered Jondar and Areta, who’d seemed friendly at least. She hadn’t expected to arrive and find that they were off-world, helping with negotiations, and she’d have to deal with the Governor.
That wasn’t so bad: last time she’d seen him, he’d asked if there was any way he could repay her and the Doctor. It was only when it came to bad guys and good guys, she wasn’t sure where she’d put him. She wanted to say Good Guy, but there was other stuff. Like trying to execute the Doctor, being technically a sort of totalitarian leader, and creepy on the subject of death.
“Peri,” he said, on seeing her enter, poking her head around the door before emerging fully. “What brings you back to Varos?”
She ought to have known that he’d start with the awkward questions. “It’s a long story.”
“The Doctor -?”
“Isn’t here,” she cut in, shortly. “Just me. I thought maybe I could… I don’t know… help out?”
He looked much the same as she remembered, as he turned away from her, walking up and down briefly before glancing back. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was hard to remember the Bad Guy stuff when she was talking to him - at least, until he came out with something that made her blood turn cold. He hadn’t yet, but then this was as far as the conversation had gotten. “I’ve no right to pry, of course, but I hadn’t thought we would see either of you again.”
“No,” said Peri, staring downward, because she didn’t want to cry this time. “I’d have said you were right, but then he went and stranded me on Thoros Beta and I thought - well, I thought -.”
There was the faintest gleam of humour that lightened his fair features at that. “Ah,” he said. “Thoros Beta. I can see that compared to a world full of creatures such as Sil even Varos might have its appeal.”
“Yes,” she said, tentatively smiling back. She hated Sil. There were a lot of men and monsters she wasn’t keen on, and in many ways, he wasn’t as bad as some, but he’d had her mutated into a bird-human hybrid. She didn’t like being hit, but she’d rather that than be turned into something stupid, fearful and feathered. The Governor seemed to feel the same, although presumably not for that reason. “Is that okay?”
“Of course,” he said, more seriously. “We need to find a way forward and someone who has experience of other worlds and their ways could be of considerable help.”
Peri nodded. She hesitated, because she wanted to be clear on some things. “You’ve stopped all the executions and the torture? You don’t make anyone watch it any more?”
“Of course,” he said. “My concern now is how to stop people watching.”
She frowned.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Strange as it may seem, there are many who miss the old broadcasts, and, though I have disposed of most of the recordings, some are circulated in secret, for a high price. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Peri swallowed. She’d known all along this was a stupid planet to try and find refuge on, but most of her other options hadn’t exactly been sane either. Then she picked up on part of that speech and looked at him. “You said ‘most’. You mean, you kept some?”
“Yes,” the Governor said again, a lift of surprise in his tone that she had needed to ask. “Only the actual executions, of course.”
Why were there no good guys left in her world?
*
Peri took a seat in what was now her room, and the sort enjoyed by the officer elite, not the general rabble. It wasn’t locked, of course, but it had about as much character as some of the cells she’d been in. In fact, she’d been in nicer cells.
However, she’d decided to do this, so she heaved a large sigh, and then picked up the pen and pencil she’d asked for, and started writing ideas for the Governor. Firstly, she thought, was a bit of lighter paint here and there too much to ask? Secondly, she was a botanist, or would-be botanist, and she could help Varos that way. She wasn’t stupid, whatever some people liked to claim.
Plus, she thought, if the Governor could get her more information, and she wasn’t thinking of something she’d seen a few millennia from now, there were plants you could use to terraform a planet, and Varos wasn’t totally inhospitable. There was some sort of atmosphere out there, even if you wouldn’t survive for long.
Thirdly, she was probably the only person here who’d have an idea what the alternative viewing options were to live execution and torture. If the Doctor caught her encouraging these people into watching some dumb soap opera, he’d kill her with a scathing look, but he wasn’t here, and he wasn’t going to be, so she’d do this her way. With all the so-called tacky American attitude she could muster, and if he ever found out, he’d have to lump it. She could hardly expect them to start with Shakespeare, could she?
Then she thought about that some more, and added: ‘Find copies of Shakespeare’ to the list, because, now she thought about it, Shakespeare was bloody enough to appeal to the Varosians.
*
“I thought we’d dismantled all of the Punishment Dome’s traps?” said the Governor, as he walked along the corridor with Maldak. “I gave explicit orders -.”
Maldak said, “Yes, sir, and we did. However, it appears that Garber must have found something we missed.”
“Close down the section,” he said. “Make cautious investigations, but try not to lose anyone else. Was that all?”
He paused. “I have had reports of another plot among the officers -. Shall I keep you informed?”
“You had better,” he returned with dry amusement. “Otherwise, I shall find myself disposed of in some interesting fashion, I imagine.”
Maldak nodded. “Yes, sir. They don’t seem to be that organised this time.”
“Is that still not all?”
He hesitated. “Sir, there's that girl -.”
“You mean Peri?”
He thought about it. “Am I to authorise these request of hers?”
“Yes, you are.” He walked away, and then turned back. “She is trying to help us find a future. She wishes to use the cleared section of the Punishment Dome for a new experiment in growing produce. You must see the usefulness of that. While I think of it, do ensure she keeps to the cleared area if there is trouble.”
“Yes, sir. Except, she has also asked for - well, she’s asked for some books, sir.”
He paused. “Books?”
*
There had never been many books on Varos. The few volumes he had ever seen had been ancient personal copies, handed down from the earliest prisoners, or their gaolers, having thought to take something with which to while away the hours on such a remote and lifeless planet.
There had been two such in his own family’s quarters, largely forgotten, but not thrown away, because any remnant of the original officer elite’s belongings conferred a certain status, in their rarity. An irrelevant memory fluttered through his mind: his mother’s hands shaking when she straightened out the pages, both hearing the heavy footsteps in the outer corridor as she read.
Where they were now, he had no idea, but they had been windows into an unrecognisable world where violence and corruption were not the only laws; where villains such as the Chief and Sil were defeated, laid low in their arrogance by heroes not unlike the Doctor.
He had forgotten that there had been books.
*
“Peri,” he said, seeking her out. “Allow me to explain something.”
She lifted her head. “Shoot.”
“I’m sorry?”
Peri laughed, despite herself. “I mean, go ahead. Definitely don’t shoot anything.” Here, she thought, that needed spelling out.
“When I said that I kept certain recordings, I don’t think you understood. I forget that you are not familiar with Varos.”
Her gaze hardened, contempt in her eyes. “Oh, I got it. Just for a warning, I suppose, in case -.”
“For some of these unfortunates, there are no other records of their demise,” he said. “We need to ensure that each is recorded. As a warning, perhaps, yes, but not in the way you imply.”
Peri closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she muttered. She wondered about him again: should she despise him for what he’d done, or consider that, raised as one of the elite in a totalitarian society, brought up on a diet of violence and greed, it was impressive that he was trying to do the right thing at all.
She wanted the good guys to be good. Was that too much to ask?
*
The voting system remained in place, though mercifully no longer linked to a killing device. No future leaders would have to die in office as a matter of course. He was still working out a more sensible set of guidelines for how the voting should be carried out. (Every decision? Surely not. Then which? And, presumably, they should be able to vote him out of office, which brought him back to the thorny problem of a successor. There didn’t seem to be one, not yet, and there must be.)
“Can I come in?”
He stood, too late to get the door, as Peri entered the office, yet again forgetting the formality so alien to her. This time she had an unfamiliar item in her hands - a plant of some kind? - and a proud smile on her face.
“There,” she said, setting it down on the desk. “It’s about time you had something to brighten this place up. It’s not as if it isn’t gloomy enough, sitting in here - well.”
He raised an eyebrow in query.
“It’s a flower,” she said, pouting that he had to be told. “It’ll need watering, or it’ll die, like everything else.”
“Generous of you.”
She laughed. “Not really,” she said. “You paid for it.”
“Ah,” he said, surveying the pink and green plant in front of him warily. “I see.”
*
She decided that he definitely could be one of the good guys, if it wasn’t too late. It might be.
Peri wasn’t exactly old, but she’d seen all sorts, travelling with the Doctor, and she knew when things weren’t right. You grieve, he’d said. I’d forgotten people do. Well, people did, and here on Varos, too. Were they only the words of a man pushed to his limits, exhausted after his own ordeals, or was he really that far gone? It reminded her of her ongoing struggle in trying to wrest life out of the barren ground here, and both might be a losing battle. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.
*
“I don’t even know what your name is,” she told him. “You must have one, right?”
He shrugged. “It feels like the name of someone else these days.”
“People can’t always have called you Governor.”
He swung around. “No. Is it important?”
“Hey, I’m trying to make conversation here,” she said, trying to lighten the tone. It didn’t work for long, but she was putting the effort in.
He shrugged. “You needn’t.”
“Is that a polite ‘go away’?” she retorted.
Rueful amusement crossed his face again. “No. If I wanted you to go, I could have you marched out by the guards.”
“Great,” said Peri. “Do I really have to explain that I’m only trying to be friendly, and to do that, it helps to find out stuff. You know my name.”
He got to his feet; and she had to look up as he used his height to put her in her place, or so it seemed. (The Doctor had been as tall, but he’d never turned that against her.) “It’s unfair, I see. Was there anything you wished to know?”
“It’s not meant to be a formal interview,” she said, unable to help rolling her eyes. “I don’t know: home, parents, hobbies, anything. And then I can nod and tell you how I argued with my Mom all the time, and now -.”
He withdrew, both by a backwards movement and a slight darkening of his eyes. “It would be best if you didn’t have to learn the details of life on Varos.”
“Oh, would it?” she burst out. She was fed up of being patronised, left, right and centre. “Well, yeah, I don’t come from this sick - I mean, I don’t know; you’re right. But I’ve been everywhere with the Doctor and if you don’t think I ever saw worse than here, you don’t know anything about me, either. You wouldn’t believe how many of the people I’ve met have died horribly, usually right in front of me.”
“Even so, there’s not very much point -.”
She glared back, a stubborn tilt to her chin that would have brought an alarmed look into the Doctor’s eyes. “I think there is. So, tell me: how come you weren’t on the side of Sil and that lot? You were the leader. Shouldn’t you have been?”
He gave her a searching glance, a stillness in him as he weighed up what she meant.
“I know you weren’t,” she added, since that seemed to need saying.
He smiled. “You saw how little being Governor was worth.”
Peri had. He’d had to ask permission of the guards just to leave his rooms, even aside from the lethal voting sessions. “That’s not it, though, is it?”
“There’s little to tell. I was one of the fortunate few; a member of the officer elite,” he said. “You know that much already. From sitting in front of the education screen to guards’ training, it was a smooth path. Eventually, as with so many, my turn came to be Governor and I could see at first hand how hopeless the situation was - certainly nothing that could be answered by broadcasting torture and death.”
Including his own, thought Peri. There were times at home when plenty of people would have liked to deal with politicians like that, but it wasn’t a solution, and, of course, the real leaders weren’t being done to death on TV. “That’s it?”
He turned his head, smiling. “Oh, I tried one or two foolish things to try and change matters when I was younger, as one does.” He crossed back to the desk, glancing down at the papers. “My first proper posting was guard duty down the mines,” he paused, as if to think how to explain it, opening in hands in a gesture of inadequacy. “You recall the cell bombardment -.”
“Sometimes I still dream I can fly.”
He gave a small quirk of his mouth in acknowledgement and what might be sympathy. “Then you will understand that in some cases, I saw miners -.” He glanced down at his hands again. “They grew claws - fur - became little better than animals. The need for ever more zeiton at the low prices it sold for even then made the supervisors careless of the workers, and they were desperate. Zeiton is of no value here to us. A man cannot eat it, though I have seen some who were reduced to trying. Yes, I tried to intervene, usually to no avail, and merely earned myself a period in solitary confinement when it was discovered. I was more careful after that. The next reprimand would undoubtedly be more cruel - and public.”
“Bet your parents weren’t pleased about that, huh?” she said.
“My father never mentioned it,” he said, evenly. “As for my mother, she might well have been part of some resistance group herself, although, of course, it could have been a mistake, or the efforts of a malicious informant.”
She sat down on the steps. “Oh, no. That was a dumb thing to say.”
“I wasn’t there when the execution took place,” he returned. “However, the recording proved unhappily popular.”
She leant her chin on her knees. He’d made her blood run cold again, as she thought about the implications of having to watch that over and over. “That’s sick.”
He gave a shrug. “I can’t claim it as anything unusual. Hopefully, in the future it will become all but unheard of.”
“Yeah,” she said, and couldn’t resist pushing her luck further. “And your Dad, then?”
The Governor said, “He was a member of the officer elite. Like so many of us, he had his turn here, in this office.”
“You mean -?” Peri lost whatever she had been going to say, as she took that in. She glanced about her, as if he’d woken a ghost. So he’d died right in this room, in the same way as the man in front of her nearly had. No wonder he’d said all that stuff about death. She swallowed.
He glanced down at her, and when he spoke his voice was as measured, his movements as controlled as ever, but there was a certain steeliness in both. “You need not waste your pity. If ever any of us deserved that fate, it was him.”
Peri looked down again, because suddenly her dysfunctional family were looking a whole lot more normal than they had before.
*
“I’m not sure I understand your purpose,” the Governor said, before she left, after weighing things up. She was alien to his world, and unpredictable, but he felt confident he could trust her. “However, I think you intend to help.”
She made a face to herself.
“In which case, I’m grateful, but you may as well be acquainted with a further fact,” he said, and lowered his head to say in her ear: “I’m dying.”
Peri lifted her head sharply; denial dark in her eyes. “No. No, that can’t be true!”
“Call it a postponed execution, if you like. The after effects of the cell disintegration process,” he murmured. “After all, what other Governor has lived long enough to discover any other consequences?”
“Can’t you do something?”
He smiled, finding amusement in the thought. “I don’t think it would be wise to draw attention to that, do you?”
“This is all just more crazy, sick thinking,” she shot back. “You’re in love with death and, what, now you can’t even see a doctor?”
She hadn’t explained where her Doctor was, and now her eyes widened as she took in what she’d said, but she only glared back at him harder.
“I don’t think it should trouble you,” he pointed out. “Consider how many executions I oversaw, and you will see nothing unjust in it. However, Varos must not return to what it was. Perhaps you will have some ideas about a suitable successor?”
Peri left at a run.
*
She leant against the wall of the corridor, and blinked back tears. She supposed he was right, but she hated to give up, and the universe seemed too short of good guys to lose even a maybe-one, especially not now, not for this planet.
(Not now the Doctor had run away and left her. She closed her eyes at the thought. He’d have had a reason; she knew he’d have had a reason, but she didn’t know what it was, and how he could just leave her like that.)
Far too many people had run off, or disappeared, or died, and she was fighting mad now about there not being another.
“Are you all right?” asked Maldak, on passing. He sounded as if the question came reluctantly, without much real concern, but he did ask.
She looked at him. “You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
Peri thought about that. “Uh. The Governor.”
“What?”
She bit her lip. “Okay, I know you must know. You’re his right-hand man these days, so if I said about a technical hitch with that machine you shot to pieces -.”
Without warning, he pulled her out of sight, round the corner. “Shut up,” he ordered.
Peri flinched back, out of his reach. “Keep your hands off me!”
“I’m sorry,” he said; again, as if it didn’t come naturally. He glanced at his hands and had the grace to colour. “You needn’t fear. I won’t hurt you.”
She said, “Don’t you want to do something about it?”
“He has forbidden that,” he said, but not as if it was out of the question. He lowered his head, and his tone. “You are from another world. Do you know something that can be done?”
Peri was startled, and made a move to shake her head, but then she thought about it, and she leant forward. “Yes, I can. That thing worked both ways, didn’t it? And don’t tell me nobody ever had to mend it. There must be something here that could help - and if there isn’t, well, I’m just a crazy alien girl. I’m not a proper citizen of Varos. I can go anywhere I like and ask anything, if I choose. This is the future, isn’t it? There’ll be stuff out there nobody bothered sending here.”
“He has ordered me to authorise any request you may have for your projects,” he agreed thoughtfully.
Peri smiled, and held out her hand.
Maldak frowned for a while, and then recalled what she meant. He took it in return, shaking it firmly.
“After all,” said Peri, her smile widening, “it’s for the good of Varos, right?”
He nodded.
She still didn’t like guys who hit her, but she might - might - forgive him one day, if only because working together meant there would be a couple less bad guys in her universe.
It was the sort of thing the Doctor did and while he might have left her, and though they'd argued till kingdom come and beyond when they'd travelled together, she knew that he’d say that where there was life there was hope. And, possibly, where there was hope, there was life.
She believed that, too..
***