Bill squinted at the the street sign again.
‘Why does it say “Bouchout Avenue” twice?’ she asked.
Bill and the Doctor were in Brussels. There had been beer and chips and chocolate and that had been nice but soon there would be aliens. Aliens that were going to steal the Atomium. Now the time travellers were stood on the road leading up to the famous Belgian monument, hatching a plan under the glare of the lights that illuminated the towering structure on this warm summer night. At least Bill thought that’s what they were there for, though she was becoming less and less sure.
The Doctor had been trying to weave a selection of different coloured wires into a very specific cat’s cradle pattern for the past ten minutes. The Paracorporeal Tilt-Shifter he was attempting to construct was a common enough sight in school playgrounds on Third Bandarat, a world on the far side of the Galaxy. But on Earth they hadn’t really caught on, not least because, unlike the Bandarati, most people living here didn’t have the four arms needed to hold all the threads in the correct position. The Doctor was making a good fist of it – two in fact – but his mouth, ears and chin weren’t quite up to the job. When half the wires clattered to the ground for the umpteenth time, he pretended it was Bill’s distraction that had caused his latest failure.
‘Why does it say what, where?’ said the Doctor, before realising he still had a wire in his mouth and repeating himself more intelligibly.
‘All these signs,’ said Bill. ‘They have the exact same thing written on them twice. I noticed it earlier too - and not just street signs. Almost everything is written twice.’
‘There are two official languages in Brussels,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s why there’s two of everything. It’s French and Dutch.’
‘No it’s not. It’s English and English,’ replied Bill and as she did so an Atomium sized lightbulb went on above her head. ‘Ahhh…’ she said, pointing at the Doctor.
‘Ahhh...’ he replied, pointing back at her.
Bill was au fait with the TARDIS’ translation abilities. She was familiar with them too. But somehow the effect always seemed odder when it happened with a language she recognised. Especially if…
‘I can speak French,’ she announced casually. ‘So how come it doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to look like when I look at it?’
The Doctor had clearly thought the conversation was over and had picked his wires up again. He looped them over his neck like a scarf. His eyebrows had become interested and so the rest of him had no choice but to follow suit.
‘Tu peux parler Français?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Un petit peu,’ replied Bill. ‘Shouldn’t it look French to a French speaker?’
‘Only if they’re a French thinker too,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not that we necessarily think in a particular language. The specific cognitive centres of the brain that are stimulated by the TARDIS’ telepathic matrices are analogous to –‘
“Only it is quite literally doing my head in,’ interrupted Bill. ‘It's like having the autocorrect on when I don't need it. I know how to spell fromage.’
‘So you want me to turn it off?’ asked the Doctor.
‘For French, yes. You can keep it on on other planets and stuff. I haven’t got time to learn Cybermannish.’
The Doctor sighed. He knew from experience just giving in to Bill would be the quickest way to get back to what he needed to do.
‘Close your eyes,’ he instructed. The moment they were shut he tapped her gently in the middle of her forehead. By the time Bill had opened them again, the Doctor had returned to his work leaving a clear view of the street sign once more.
‘Avenue de Bouchon,’ read Bill with exaggerated precision. ‘Quelle surprise…’
The message had been received at UNIT’s Brussels headquarters three days ago. A Thoughtship of the Jusp Exploratory Commission was due to phase through Earth’s native dimension on Tuesday. The message had come through with a long list of demands, mostly technical in nature, stemming from the ship’s need to refuel. Various alien defence initiatives were in the early stages of deployment when a second message arrived, correcting the spelling errors of the first and apologising for the fact that it would now be Wednesday before they arrived as they’d missed the turning for Earth’s plane of existence.. The extra information also aided UNIT’s translation programs and revealed that what had originally been taken for target coordinates were in fact a quantum mathematical rendition of the thumbs-up and taco emojis.
When an off duty UNIT Adjutant texted a selfie of himself and the Doctor at the Centre de la Bande Dessinée to his husband, the Code Douze monitoring protocols immediately factored the presence in Brussels of their Scientific Advisor into the strategy for engaging with the Jusp. So it was that outside a fritkot in Ixelles that the Doctor and Bill learned of the Jusp’s intention to steal the Atomium while having chips bought for them by the Director of the Belgian wing of UNIT.
‘Can you help us, Doctor?’ said Generaal Aakster, helping herself to some mussels.
‘Pass us the mayonnaise,’ said Bill.
‘I’m going to need a big idea,’ said the Doctor.
‘So what’s the big idea?’ asked Bill.
‘It’s what thoughtships run on,’ said the Doctor. ‘Big ideas, massive ideas, ideas above your station.’
'Like a big atom for instance?'
The Doctor smiled. ‘Like a massive representation of part of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.’ He gestured awkwardly toward the Atomium, his arms bound up with the wires of his would-be Tilt-Shifter.
‘But nicking it’s a bit much. You’d think they’d at least ask.’
‘Who knows what they think? These are creatures from an entirely different plane of reality, Bill. They’re about as alien as an alien can get. It’d be foolish to assign our values and beliefs to their actions.’
‘They ended their last message with a cat smiley.’
‘See! Utterly unfathomable! Have you got the souvenir?’
Bill reached into her bag. ‘It’s a bit tacky, but I couldn’t resist.’’ She retrieved a small plastic model of the Mannekin Pis. When she pushed down on its head it squirted a stream of water. Bill snorted with laughter. The Doctor shook his head in despair.
‘Not that one. The Atomium. You know, the one I specifically said to get so that I could cleverly fool the Jusp into taking something that although it was 2000 times smaller would give them enough fuel to get them away from Earth before they realised their mistake.’
‘You just said get ‘a’ souvenir! When did you say ‘2000 times smaller?’ When did you even mention that?’
‘Now, when I say ‘specifically’, I mean it in the sense of ‘it goes without saying’. That sense.’
Bill squirted the Doctor. Stuck among his wires he was a sitting target.
‘Right, you stay right there. I’ll get you your tiny Atomium.’ Bill stormed off down the Avenue. The Doctor dripped, his arms aloft, not daring to move for fear of coming undone. That was when the light coming from the Atomium started to turn green.
‘Bill, hurry up!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘They’re almost here!’
A couple of blocks away, Bill found what she was looking for. By the side of the road was a grubby old man she’d spotted earlier selling tatty gifts out of an old suitcase on the pavement. He was just about to close it up and Bill could see why. There was only a single model of the Atomium left, modelled out of cheap translucent red plastic. Somehow, the man had managed to offload most of his shoddy stock and was now done for the day.
‘Attendez, M’sieur!’ shouted Bill, running up to him. He turned with a irritated grunt, causing Bill to pull up short. He was intimidating up close, in boots and combats, with a vest that showed off sunburned arms covered in amateurish tattoos. He was actually younger than Bill was expecting, but had the sort of gnarled face that made her think he enjoyed his ciggies. She realised she was right when he opened his mouth and released a furious stream of stale tobacco flavoured words that she barely recognised.
‘Hold on a minute, mate. Je desire acheter – ‘
The man shouted Bill down with another tirade, only one word in five making any sense to her. Realising she might have been a bit premature in refusing the TARDIS’ translation she resorted to the traditional communication method of the English abroad: pointing and talking slowly.
‘I – want – to – buy – your – rubbish – Atomium – souvenir,’ she said, jabbing a finger toward the tatty knick-knack. She waved a five euro note by way of sealing the deal. It was no good. The man picked up the model and launched into another unintelligible monologue. Clearly there was some reason he didn’t want to part with this last item.
Bill noticed everything had started to take on a sickly green hue even if the street hawker hadn’t. They were running out of time. Oh well. No point hanging around.
‘Regardez!’ she yelled and pointed behind the hawker. He didn’t react. ‘Ah, zut!’ she sighed, snatching the tiny Atomium and pelting it back toward the Doctor. As soon as the shock had subsided, the hawker set off in pursuit.
'Bill! Are you there? I’m starting to dangle – hurry up!’
The Doctor had his arms aloft, the network of wires held taut between various parts of his anatomy. From his perspective the huge bulk of the Atomium was framed within. Against the sickly green aurora that hung low in the sky he cast a long and spindly shadow. He didn’t dare move for fear of losing alignment with the Atomium. That ruckus behind him had to be Bill, hadn’t it?
Of course it was. Bill had managed to shake off her pursuer – or more accurately her pursuer had decided he had more important things to worry about when the green lights in the sky coalesced into something resembling a enormous crystal butterfly. This was the Jusp Thoughtship, hovering on angular wing-like structures that filled the air with a shrill wail as they vibrated.
Bill drew up to the Doctor and waved the stolen souvenir at him.
‘I’ve got it! What do I do with it?’
'Attach it to the Tilt-Shifter!’ said the Doctor.
‘Attach it? Where? How?’
‘Tie the control wire around it in a knot.’
‘Which one’s that?’
The Doctor and Bill were shouting now. The noise of the Thoughtship’s ‘wings’ had been steadily increasing, but had levelled out as a higher pitched version of a jet engine’s scream. The ship’s refuelling – the absorption of the Atomium – was about to commence.
The Doctor couldn’t even nod toward the correct one. A kink in a wire now would be disastrous.
‘The green one!,’ he yelled. ‘Tie it to the green one!’
‘They all look green in this light!’ replied Bill.
‘The one between my ear and my belly button. That one!’
Bill twisted the plastic Atomium into the wire as instructed. Immediately, its cheap red plastic pulsed with a weak glow, like an odd Christmas tree light.
‘It’s working!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Dimensional perspective is shifting. The model Atomium will be much more impressive to the Jusp. They won’t even notice the real one!’
Abruptly, the noise stopped.
‘See!’ beamed the Doctor.
Then the Atomium vanished.
'Although,’ said the Doctor, ‘if they were only after a small one to begin with we’ve got a problem.’
The plastic souvenir clattered to the ground as the Doctor relaxed the tension in the wires of the Tilt-Shifter. It broke easily and a detached hollow ‘atom’ rolled away apologetically.
The Doctor’s shoulders drooped, weighed down under the wires.
Bill stuffed her five euro note into his jacket pocket.
‘We’re going to have to get a new one, aren’t we?’
More soonliest.
