Nothing O’Clock
I
The Time Lords built a prison. They built it in a time and place that are equally as unimaginable to any entity who has never left the solar system in which it was spawned, or who has only experienced the journey into the future one second at a time, and that going forward. It was built solely for the Kin. It was impregnable: a complex of small, nicely appointed rooms (for they were not monsters, the Time Lords. They could be merciful, when it suited them), out of temporal phase with the rest of the Universe.
There were, in that place, only those rooms: the gulf between microseconds was one that could not be crossed. In effect, those rooms became a Universe in themselves, one that borrowed light and heat and gravity from the rest of creation, always a fraction of a moment away.
The Kin prowled its rooms, patient and deathless, and always waiting.
It was waiting for a question. It could wait until the end of time. (But even then, when Time Ended, the Kin would never perceive it, imprisoned in the micro-moment away from time.)
The Time Lords maintained the prison with huge engines they built in the hearts of black holes, unreachable: no one would be able to get to the engines, save the Time Lords themselves. The multiple engines were a fail-safe. Nothing could ever go wrong.
As long as the Time Lords existed, the Kin would be in their prison, and the rest of the Universe would be safe. That was how it was, and how it always would be.
And if anything went wrong, then the Time Lords would know. Even if, unthinkably, any of the engines failed, then emergency signals would sound on Gallifrey long before the prison of the Kin returned to our time and our Universe. The Time Lords had planned for everything.
They had planned for everything except the possibility that one day there would be no Time Lords, and no Gallifrey. No Time Lords in the Universe, except for one.
So when the prison shook and crashed, as if in an earthquake, throwing the Kin down, and when the Kin looked up from its prison to see the light of galaxies and suns above it, unmediated and unfiltered, and it knew that it had returned to the Universe, it knew it would only be a matter of time until the question would be asked once more.
And, because the Kin was careful, it took stock of the Universe they found themselves in. It did not think of revenge: that was not in its nature. It wanted what it had always wanted. And besides . . .
There was still a Time Lord in the Universe.
The Kin needed to do something about that.
II
On Wednesday, eleven-year-old Polly Browning put her head around her father’s office door. ‘Dad. There’s a man at the front door in a rabbit mask who says he wants to buy the house.’
‘Don’t be silly, Polly.’ Mr Browning was sitting in the corner of the room he liked to call his office, and which the estate agent had optimistically listed as a third bedroom, although it was scarcely big enough for a filing cabinet and a card table, upon which rested a brand-new Amstrad computer. Mr Browning was carefully entering the numbers from a pile of receipts onto the computer, and wincing. Every half an hour he would save the work he’d done so far, and the computer would make a grinding noise for a few minutes as it saved everything onto a floppy disk.
‘I’m not being silly. He says he’ll give you seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds for it.’
‘Now you’re really being silly. It’s on sale for a hundred and fifty thousand.’ And we’d be lucky to get that in today’s market, he thought, but did not say. It was the summer of 1984, and Mr Browning despaired of finding a buyer for the little house at the end of Claversham Row.
Polly nodded thoughtfully. ‘I think you should go and talk to him.’
Mr Browning shrugged. He needed to save the work he’d done so far anyway. As the computer made its grumbling sound, Mr Browning went downstairs. Polly, who had planned to go up to her bedroom to write in her diary, decided to sit on the stairs and find out what was going to happen next.
Standing in the front garden was a tall man in a rabbit mask. It was not a particularly convincing mask. It covered his entire face, and two long ears rose above his head. He held a large, leather, brown bag, which reminded Mr Browning of the doctors’ bags of his childhood.
‘Now, see here,’ began Mr Browning, but the man in the rabbit mask put a gloved finger to his painted bunny lips, and Mr Browning fell silent.
‘Ask me what time it is,’ said a quiet voice that came from behind the unmoving muzzle of the rabbit mask.
Mr Browning said, ‘I understand you’re interested in the house.’ The FOR SALE sign by the front gate was grimy and streaked by the rain.
‘Perhaps. You can call me Mister Rabbit. Ask me what time it is.’
Mr Browning knew that he ought to call the police. Ought to do something to make the man go away. What kind of crazy person wears a rabbit mask anyway?
‘Why are you wearing a rabbit mask?’
‘That was not the correct question. But I am wearing the rabbit mask because I am representing an extremely famous and important person who values his or her privacy. Ask me what time it is.’
Mr Browning sighed. ‘What time is it, Mister Rabbit?’ he asked.
The man in the rabbit mask stood up straighter. His body language was one of joy and delight. ‘Time for you to be the richest man on Claversham Row,’ he said. ‘I’m buying your house, for cash, and for more than ten times what it’s worth, because it’s just perfect for me now.’ He opened the brown leather bag, and produced blocks of money, each block containing five hundred – ‘count them, go on, count them’ – crisp fifty-pound notes, and two plastic supermarket shopping bags, into which he placed the blocks of currency.
Mr Browning inspected the money. It appeared to be real.
‘I . . .’ He hesitated. What did he need to do? ‘I’ll need a few days. To bank it. Make sure it’s real. And we’ll need to draw up contracts, obviously.’
‘Contract’s already drawn up,’ said the man in the rabbit mask. ‘Sign here. If the bank says there’s anything funny about the money, you can keep it and the house. I’ll be back on Saturday to take vacant possession. You can get everything out by then, can’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mr Browning. Then: ‘I’m sure I can. I mean, of course.’
‘I’ll be here on Saturday,’ said the man in the rabbit mask.
‘This is a very unusual way of doing business,’ said Mr Browning. He was standing at his front door holding two shopping bags, containing ￡750,000.
‘Yes,’ agreed the man in the rabbit mask. ‘It is. See you on Saturday, then.’
He walked away. Mr Browning was relieved to see him go. He had been seized by the irrational conviction that, were he to remove the rabbit mask, there would be nothing underneath.
Polly went upstairs to tell her diary everything she had seen and heard.