Table of Contents

Prelude

Prologue

Chapter One: Don’t Forget to Catch Me

Chapter Two: Maius Intra Qua Extra

Chapter Three: Boudiccan Destruction Layer

Chapter Four: Good and Bad at Games

Chapter Five: Hurt⁠ / Comfort

Chapter Six: A Deal with God

Chapter Seven: Friends and Other Lovers

Chapter Eight: Everything Changes

Chapter Nine: The Fine Purple, the Purest Gold, the Red of the Sacred Heart, the Grey of a Ghost

Chapter Ten: What’s Bigger on the Inside than on the Outside?

Chapter Eleven: Castling

Chapter Twelve: Knock Knock

Chapter Thirteen: Let Me Tell You Something That’s True

Chapter Fourteen: Cat Heaven

Epilogue

Author’s Notes

Adapting the Novel for the Screen

Editor’s Note

The original novel of Human Nature, as presented here, features the Seventh Doctor as played on television by Sylvester McCoy.

Coincidentally, it also features someone pretending to be the Tenth Doctor, in a scene that didn’t make it into the televised version.

If you’re not familiar with this version, written with a slighter older readership in mind, expect a few deviations from the adventure as seen on TV.

Prelude

Alexander Shuttleworth leaned back in the easy chair and drummed his fingers rhythmically on his stomach. ‘You may call it cake,’ he told his small audience, regarding the small saucer with the last few crumbs that sat on his lap, ‘but it goes beyond cake. Call it Ultrasponge, Victoria Maximus, empress of icing sugar.’

The ladies of Joan Redfern’s WI group looked at him and then at each other nervously. A few giggled or laughed in a more civilised fashion. Alexander felt as if he was addressing a flock of sheep in hatpins.

‘Well, Mr. Shuttleworth,’ Joan began, replacing her own plate delicately on the table, ‘may we move on to the subject of our talk for today, The Archaeology of the Bronze Age?’

One of the ladies leaned over to her friend and whispered in her ear. ‘I can’t imagine what Joan was thinking of, inviting that man into our circle. One might as well call upon the Serbs to come and ravage us all.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the younger woman replied. ‘I think he’s quite sweet.’

‘That’s what all his conquests think, all those young girls ruined in their prime. His reputation should preclude him from the Institute.’

‘Reputations!’ roared Alexander, causing the two ladies to jump guiltily from each other’s ear. ‘Reputations are made and broken in British archaeology on the matter of Bronze Age burials. Are we looking at a matriarchal culture, the kind of thing that led to Boadicea’s easy assumption of the reins of power… or do we deal with chieftains?’ He had stood up now, pacing back and forth before the curtains of the little front room in the sunshine.

‘Perhaps the inhabitants of long barrows are not even warriors, but priests… Oh, hullo, Wolsey.’

He bent to smooth back the ears of the tabby cat that was rubbing itself against his ankles.

‘She’s quite infra dig herself, of course.’ The older woman had quietly resumed her conversation with her fellow. ‘Mrs. Redfern, I mean. A thoroughly decent sort.’

‘Mrs?’ The younger woman was surprised.

‘Widow. Her husband died in the campaign against the Boer.’

‘And do you think that she has plans to civilise the notorious Mr. Shuttleworth?’

‘Goodness, no! I hope not, anyhow. If she aims to remarry then I’m sure she must pick a more honourable soul. I have heard that she is linked to Mr. Rocastle, her employer.’

‘The headmaster? He’s a bit stiff.’

‘He doesn’t go up in flying machines carrying piglets, if that’s what you mean.’

The younger woman stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘How did you come to hear of that? I was ever so slightly squiffy, but⁠ —’

‘Piglets!’ called Shuttleworth, standing to his full height once more. ‘Sheep! And even horse skulls have been found in burial mounds. Now, were these animals owned by the incumbents?’

Joan was following his gestures politely sipping at her tea, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Last night she had had a dream. She taught science at Hulton College and she disliked it, all those chemical mixtures, and no idea of anything behind it. Like the world was reductable to simple elements. She wasn’t tremendously fond of the open declamation of ethics and, while watching all those young boys destined to be military officers mixing chemicals, she often associated the two. Two parts this to one part that, God and country and a straight back. No inner knowledge of what made these things elements, no questioning of how God’s goodness translated into things like patriotism and bravery.

Maybe when she met Arthur again in heaven she’d gain an understanding of the greater things, but for now she hated honour and sacrifice, the things that had made him die proudly. She knew the other women linked her and Rocastle. He’d proposed, the foolish man. That had made her life harder. But she had her dream. She’d dreamt of the constellations, of Orion hunting the animals. Amongst them was a new one, a group made up of stars from here and there, with two red nebulous hearts. A man had stood looking, staring up at Orion with a mixture of awe and whimsy on his face; a very British expression. He seemed also to be looking down at the spring of 1914.

What had made this dream memorable was that the constellation was in some way associated⁠ — this was the unique thing about dreams, that they could suggest the feeling of association without any real connection⁠ — with Dr. John Smith, Joan’s new colleague at the school, the history teacher. Joan had woken up from that sleep feeling quite flushed but refreshed, as if something pure and distant had come to her like a falling star.

Inspiration, in its most literal sense had filled her, and the notion it brought that morning was that, for the first time in several years, she no longer felt quite so alone.

Dr. Smith was small and Scottish, from Aberdeen as a matter of fact, and he had a charmingly mobile face. Full of laughter. If it ever stayed still, it would present a truly terrible image, a frightening strength. But it never did stop moving. That would be bad, if it stopped. Like a tiger. As it stood he was the sort of man that one wanted to mother. Very vulnerable, but with that potential to be exceedingly strong. A tiger cub, then.

‘Cubs, and their master⁠ —’ Alexander stopped, turned a fraction, and looked down at Joan, puzzled. ‘I say, I haven’t said anything too risqué, have I?’

‘No…’ Joan flinched, broken out of her daydream. ‘Why do you say that, Mr. Shuttleworth?’

‘Because, my dear, you’re blushing.’

‘Oh.’ Joan picked up Wolsey, and smoothed his fur, aware of the eyes of the other women on her. ‘It’s a medical condition.’

Prologue

‘they seem, in places, to address me so directly it’s almost uncomfortable’

‘either the wallow in the sudden realization that every single sad song in the world is written for me alone or the overwhelming, distracting power of a lot of very loud noise’

From the diary of Prof Bernice Summerfield

Long ago and far away. That’s one way of looking at it. But I still sat on the edge of the bathtub and bit my knuckles.

I’m trying to ignore it, and I hope you are as well. An unfortunate episode. If Ace was here, I could say to her: ‘Yes, I understand it now, once again. I remember that grief is like having somebody sit on your chest and punch you in the face.’ Pain is always forgotten. That’s what allows us to have babies. It is a pity she’s not here, actually, because now we have so much more in common.

Post-It note covering the above

I will not become maudlin. This is all meaningless. I met someone called Guy, he took on overwhelming odds and then he happened to die. May have died. Did die.

Perhaps.

Post-It note covering the above

‘These words are not my own they only come when I’m alone’

Post-It note covering the above

Those five minutes… I remember seeing the look on Clive’s face when he heard that a dear friend of his had hanged himself. The most frightening thing I’ve ever seen. Because it was so different. I didn’t think that I could make that face if I tried.

What was so bad was that Clive had suddenly, in that moment, discovered how to.

Now I can do it too.

From the diary of Prof Bernice Summerfield

‘Aren’t there any alien monsters we can go and destroy?’ I asked the Doctor, on one of the few occasions when I met him in the TARDIS corridors. I mean, granted, I’d been hiding away for a few weeks, and I looked so white that you could put a tail on me and call me Flopsy, but he’d been hiding too. He hadn’t followed up on his pledge to take me to Blackpool, or somewhere else exciting. He’d just become sad, at exactly the time I needed him to be happy. Whenever I’d gone into the console room, he’d been absent, and at night I’d just hear the occasional cry from one of those terrible nightmares of his.

‘Alien monsters…’ he mused now, tapping his finger on the tip of his nose. ‘No. They’re all gone. Little Johnny Piper⁠ — no, sorry, different train of thought. No alien monsters, I’m afraid.’ He had that troubled look about his eyes, and wouldn’t quite look at me.

I wanted rather desperately to touch him, hug him or something, but everything about him said that that wouldn’t be a good idea. He seemed embarrassed about seeing me, which wasn’t really him at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that he was thinking as hard about the last five minutes of Guy’s life as I was.

Post-It note covering the above

Summerfield, B.S. Subject: Human Nature: 3/10, must try harder. (The ‘Human’ is crossed out and then replaced. There is evidence of correcting fluid.)

From the diary of Prof Bernice Summerfield

We wandered into the console room, me still trying to think of some way to break the ice. One of the many trivial things I’d been doing over the last few days was to try and repair my portable history unit. It’s a little screen that lets you access archives while in the field. Or, in my case, while in the bath. Normally you’d need an account with whatever library you’re accessing, but, with a bit of help from one of those beardie-weirdie computer experts you trip over in spaceports, I’d put together a program that makes the library think you’re a member. The thing broke down, of course, just before Heaven, and I’d been carrying it in my luggage ever since. So, as part of my great campaign to do things, I had hefted one of the Doctor’s folding work-tables into the console room and set about dismantling the thing, on and off, with gaps for tea and crying.

As we entered the console room, then, I was surprised to see the unit sitting atop the folding table, complete and repaired. I picked it up and switched it on, while the Doctor glanced offhandedly at various monitors on the console. He’d repaired the unit’s hardware, but the programming was all over the place. Travelling through the time vortex isn’t the best place to deal in electronic media, of course. It’s like trying to follow a soap opera that’s being performed on a series of trains as they speed by, while other trains with different stories… well, it’s difficult, all right? Anyhow, the Doctor had succeeded in creating some weird protocols, with new files half set-up all over the place, and error messages demanding attention everywhere.

I pressed a few buttons and cleared everything, discovering, to my relief, that the Doctor had got the thing functioning correctly at least. I turned to him, grateful to have something to ask him about. ‘Thanks for fixing this up.’

He glanced up from the console. ‘I just wanted to work out what it was… how it worked. I reversed the polarity of the communications coil, by the way, so you can write into archives too, but to do that I had to connect it through the TARDIS information processors, because I know how to work with those. So you might get information from the past. Or the future. Which in some cases wouldn’t be a good idea, so don’t use it when we land anywhere. Please.’

I sighed. ‘So you repaired it so well that I can’t use it?’

‘Repaired? Oh, did it need repairing?’

I smiled, which was good. I got the feeling that the module was a sort of present.

‘What have you been doing in the last few days, then?’

‘Jigsaws. Chinese cookery. I made clay models. Of the Zygons. I did what I normally do when I’m investigating something… with your unit, I mean. I dived in and messed it up. Threw away the manual, ignored the notes and laughed in the face of Balloon Help.’ He left the console, and perched in the wicker chair, his hands folded into a spire. ‘That’s what I did with the TARDIS when I first got her. You can’t do everything for a long time. In the case of the TARDIS, for far too long. But when you do get where you want to go, you’ve learnt all sorts of useful stuff about the system you’re investigating.’

‘No wonder your cakes are so awful.’ I grabbed a cushion and sat down facing him.

‘The ducks like them.’

‘The ducks are programmed to like them. Besides, it all sounds rather dangerous to me. You can get terribly hurt, mucking around like that. I prefer to read the manual from cover to cover, hopefully in the bath with a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.’

‘Mmmm…’ The Doctor frowned again, and jumped up. He started to pace around the console once more, tapping controls seemingly at random. Maybe it was me using the words ‘terribly hurt’ that had set him off again.

God, I was being careful of his feelings!

His glance fastened on a monitor and an uneasy grin spread over his features.

‘Found it. Good girl.’ He tapped a few buttons and straightened up. ‘There’s a planet called Crex in the Augon system. They have a market there. Would you like to go?’

I had the feeling that saying no would invalidate several days’ worth of hovering in the vortex. ‘A sort of spacecraft boot sale? Is there something particular you’re after?’

‘A white elephant. Maybe a pink one.’

‘Is this an item or an acquaintance?’

He paused for a moment, and then smiled one of his more dangerous secret smiles.

‘Both.’

The TARDIS materialised with that noise it has (sorry, I’ve never been able to come up with a good description) amidst a tight little knot of stalls, under the shade of purple silks and great canopies of striped fabric. The first thing that caught my attention as the Doctor locked the door behind us was the smell, a wonderfully jumbled mixture of spices and cooking scents, a hundred different cultures in one place.

Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid at the TARDIS landing. They must have been fairly used to materialisations. The Doctor raised his umbrella like an aerial, and turned it and his nose until he’d settled on a direction. ‘This way.’ He walked off in a straight line, tossing a memory module from the TARDIS databanks in his hand thoughtfully.

I followed him through the masses of alien species, both humanoid and otherwise, their bargainings and gestures and laughter merging in one great shout. Felt odd to be out and about, a bit vulnerable. Shrugged it off. The Doctor led the way to a little hillock, its surface once grassy, but now a churned patch of mud. He pulled me after him up to the top of it, and from there we got a good look at the whole market.

It went on for miles, all the way to one cloudy horizon, a brilliant jumble of tents and awnings. The other way, it petered out a bit in the direction of some mountains, and a big dark square with some buildings indicated a rough spaceport.

‘It’s wonderful,’ I opined. ‘How did it start?’

‘Tax concessions.’ The Doctor was still turning like a weather vane. His eyes suddenly focused on something in the distance. He nodded, and then turned to me.

‘I’ll be gone for an hour. Maybe two. I’ll find you.’

‘What, in that lot?’

‘Back at the TARDIS then.’ He seemed eager to get away, flustered and impatient.

In the middle distance I glimpsed the solution to our problem. ‘Tell you what,’ I said, pointing. ‘I’ll meet you over there.

The beer tent seems to be a universal icon, and one, to paraphrase a recent acquaintance, about which I may write a short monograph one day. The atmosphere’s always different to a pub or a bar, slightly edgy and hot under the canvas, relaxed and cool outside. You see more undone buttons and exposed podge outside a beer tent than anywhere short of the Flaborama on Boojus 5. I bought a pint of The Admiral’s Old Antisocial at the, thankfully currency-unspecific, bar, and wandered out to the plastic tables.

Now, you may well be thinking: ‘Beer? What a terrible idea. That’s no solution.’ I would reply that you’re wrong. It’s a solution of hops, barley and yeast, and it is so transcendently wonderful that I long ago made the decision to sacrifice any chance of trim thighs in favour of it.

Company is always an issue at this juncture. There’s no point, in my view, in being a solitary drinker. You can do that at home, given a certain degree of sadness which I wouldn’t dream of sinking to. Usually. Well, three out of ten times. And it’s been a difficult time for me lately. Anyway, there were the usual tables of dangerous-looking space pirates, penniless backpackers with their glasses of iced water, and traders waving their hands and complaining that business wasn’t what it once was. Most of them were aliens of some sort.

Therefore, it was with a rather xenophobic sort of glee that I came across a table whose occupants were doubly interesting. They were A: human and B: female.

They looked like they all came from different places, and had clustered together out of the familiar realisation that internal gonads are best, actually. So I sat down and introduced myself. Professor Bernice Summerfield, FRAS (Fairly Rotten At Scrabble), current occupier of the Proxima University Chair Of Archaeology (it’s in my room, by the begonias), holder of the Martian Gallantry Medal (I found one and thought I thoroughly deserved it). They were suitably impressed. They laughed out loud.

‘Jac,’ said a young woman with short hair and interesting earrings. ‘I’m here researching the origins of the market for Ellerycorp. They’re thinking of doing something similar.’ She introduced the others. There was another short-haired woman with the eyes of a Traveller Priestess, who was called Sarah. I don’t think I ever found out why she was there. And there was a feisty-looking woman with tanned olive skin, wearing an assortment of charity shop relics that she somehow made stylish. She was looking at me with a world-weary expression that I found instantly charming, her head propped up on one hand.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked. For a moment I thought of telling her. But no. ‘Fine.’

‘Your round, Lucy,’ Sarah told her, placing her empty glass definitively down on the table.

‘You’re not exactly svelte either,’ Lucy replied, reaching for the glasses and winking.

I smiled at that, too. ‘Same again, please,’ I said. As soon as Lucy had departed, Jac told Sarah that the woman was a Psychology tutor, who’d been here for a month, waiting for an interplanetary lift that never seemed to arrive.

Well, that was a familiar story, and I went on to tell them some of my own history.

As regular readers of my diary (if that’s you, Doctor, put it down now) know, there are certain portions of my life that I can’t readily account for. I tend to gloss over these with a post-it note, but on this occasion I have enough recollections to fill a page, disconnected as they may be. I said all these things, but some of the words may be in the wrong order.

Pint two: I’m arguing with them. ‘But that’s ridiculous. You can’t expect an internal market to operate for any extended period of time⁠ —’

Pint three: They’re laughing at me. ‘There is not a God! Listen, if this coin lands on the same side… several times… then⁠ —’

Pint four: They’re falling over themselves, holding up their hands like anglers talking about the fish that got away. ‘Short and stubby. Well, I’ve only ever encountered five of them, but⁠ — what are you laughing at? Did I say something funny?’

Pint five: They’re listening intently, nodding every now and then. ‘So we had to go away. There were so many of them. I think… I hope it was quick for him.’

Pint six: Sarah is looking at me, concerned and sweet.

‘It’s not far from here, really. Just a quick hopper ride over the hill. I’ve got this really great Alcorian wine that you ought to try. And we could, you know, just hang around for a while. Play tennis. What do you think?’

The next thing I knew, a familiar hand was tapping me on the shoulder, and something cold attached itself to my cheek. I was thinking about Sarah’s offer, and I tried to swat the hand away like a fly, but then, suddenly-I was utterly sober.

I unpeeled the medi-patch that the Doctor had slapped on to my cheek and looked up at him. ‘What⁠ —?’

‘Alcohol dispersion pad. We haven’t got much time, and there’s a lot you need to know.’ He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.

‘Hey…’ Sarah said foggily, gazing up at me. ‘Wait a minute…’

‘Leave her alone!’ Jac was halfway to her feet. ‘Who is this guy?’

‘It’s all right,’ I reassured them. ‘He’s a friend.’ I felt suddenly rather foolish, as if my dad had arrived to pick me up. Rather awkwardly, I shook Sarah’s hand.

‘Thanks for being so nice. I appreciated the offer.’

She shrugged. ‘No problem. I hope it all works out.’ ‘It will,’ I told her. But then I glanced at the Doctor.

‘Quickly,’ he said.

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