Free Doctor Who: The Ark by Paul Erickson Page B

thirsty.’
    Mellium offered him a cup and he sipped some water, then leaned back.
    ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘What is happening? Have there been any more deaths?’
    ‘No. The Doctor and Rhos are passing on the same treatment to others that they gave you.’
    ‘Good!’ He nodded with satisfaction. ‘I’m sure that the Doctor means well and will do everything he can.’
    In a farmhouse in the cultivated zone the Doctor and his assistants attended to a Guardian and his wife who had been attacked by the fever.
    The Guardian’s mother stood in the background, watching their careful ministrations. Then the Doctor stepped back. ‘That’s all we can do for the moment,’ he announced. ‘We’ll just have to wait a little while and see what happens.’
    ‘In that case, perhaps you would care for refreshments?’
    the mother suggested.
    ‘That would be welcome!’ the Doctor exclaimed. He and the others followed the mother downstairs.
    The Doctor looked around. ‘Interesting,’ he remarked.
    ‘I’ve been in some farmhouses before, but never one quite like this.’
    It was totally functional in design. There were no pictures on the walls, no ornaments anywhere, nothing that gave it life or individuality. It obviously served merely as a shelter for the people who lived there.
    The mother served up plates of fruit and glasses of juice.
    ‘Thank you,’ the Doctor said. ‘I am sure this is very healthy for one.’
    While the others remained seated to eat their food, the Doctor wandered out of the living room onto a porch.
    Before him stretched rolling agricultural land. In the fields he could see Monoids working, harvesting the ripe crops and planting seeds. The mother joined him on the porch.
    ‘You’re the one they call the Doctor, aren’t you?’
    ‘I have that singular honour.’
    ‘And you and your companions travelled from the Earth... but the Earth of many years ago?’
    ‘Most aboard this spaceship are slow to believe in the fact that we can travel through time,’ said the Doctor.
    ‘I am an old woman. I have seen much in my life... and I have learned that anything is possible.’ Her eyes took on a faraway look as she stood for a while, lost in her memories.
    ‘For the others, my son and his wife and the other young people, there was really no choice. They had no future unless they took the long voyage in this spaceship.’
    ‘And you? Did you have a choice?’
    ‘Oh, yes. Many of my generation chose to stay on Earth and take their chance, living out their lives in the place where they had always been.’
     
    ‘Do you regret leaving?’ the Doctor asked her.
    ‘This is an artificial place,’ she reflected. ‘Oh, it has its purpose... but everything about it is manmade. Nothing...
    natural.’ She sighed. ‘The real Earth is coming to an end...
    but at least it was an Earth one could smell and feel and touch, knowing it had a real history.’
    ‘Where did you live on Earth? In what country?’
    ‘Oh, we didn’t have separate names for any part of it,’
    the mother replied. ‘Those went out a long time ago. But I lived in farmland where there were mountains behind us and a large ocean in front.’
    ‘It sounds attractive.’
    ‘It was the place where I was born and grew up. And the place where I was married.’ She sighed. ‘But my husband died and that’s why I felt that I didn’t want to go on living there any more.’
    ‘What did your husband do?’
    ‘He was a farmer like myself. He came from the other side of those mountains to court me, giving up the lands that belonged to his family. Now he is buried in the field behind our old farmhouse there.’ She looked around. ‘You won’t tell the others that I told you that, will you?’
    ‘Of course not... but why not, especially?’
    ‘Because burial had been prohibited by Earth Law for many Segments. Only cremation was allowed; but I chose to bury my man when he died. I... I considered it my right.’
    ‘Of course it