Youth is Wasted on the Young p.3
Outside, the Doctor turned away from the spaceport and headed deeper into the city.
"Uhm..." Rory said, craning his neck to look back over his shoulder. "Aren't we going to look in there?" he asked, pointing over his shoulder at the spaceport.
"Oh, you've seen one spaceport, you've seen them all," the Doctor said, flicking his wrists, galumping along in his usual ground eating stride.
"Yeah," Amy said, grabbing his coat tail, and jerking him to a surprised stop, "but we haven't."
The Doctor straightened his bow tie to regain his dignity and shot his cuffs. "Well, all right, but just along the outer walls, mind," he said, shaking a finger at them like an old grandpa. "Everything in a spaceport is regulated. We don't want them asking a lot of questions."
The spaceport was a fantasy in white permacrete. Low, flowing terminal buildings, looking slightly alien, were fronted by the huge flowing control tower, looking like an alien minaret calling all the spaceships to prayer.
A huge expanse of tarmac spread out for a mile in both directions. A white plastercrete wall separated the spaceport from the more normal everyday streets.
The wall was more a safety barricade than a security measure. The wall was only about 6 1/2 feet tall, more than tall enough to block out the 4 1/2 foot tall locals. But Amy and Rory could see over it if they stood back a bit and stood on tiptoe.
It was amazingly quiet.
Amy had always assumed a spaceport would be a hugely noisy place with rockets going off everywhere. But the ships here, largely contoured white craft, with a few huge, army green pickles and one small pink disc, rose up as silently and gracefully as swans.
"It's beautiful!" Amy said, hanging by her fingertips and stretching up on tiptoe, peering over the wall. Rory, in the same pose, beside her, nodded.
The Doctor smiled indulgently, thinking they looked like a couple of kids sneaking a peek at a football game.
"So they're not at war anymore?" Rory asked, turning to look at the Doctor who was waiting patiently for them.
"No. That was centuries ago."
Amy jumped down, having looked her fill. She dusted her hands off. "So they're advanced enough to have a spaceport and artificial creches but the sheriff still drives an SUV?"
The Doctor started sauntering off down the street. "Yes. It's a matter of resources. They still have the technology, but it takes a lot more manpower and raw materials to make a spaceship than it does to make a wheeled vehicle. They can get rubber and metal and silica here, some of the more esoteric elements have to be imported. It makes more financial sense to use their own resources for day-to-day things."
"Like bricks for buildings," Rory said, as they turned a corner and found themselves in a market square bounded on all sides by red, brown, and gray brick buildings.
Jaunty checkered awnings arched over wide display windows, a fountain bubbled in the center of the square, showing a naked 12-year-old boy holding up a Trident, while various oddly shaped sea creatures spouted water all around them.
Amy turned her face away, and Rory blushed a bit, uncertain why he was so uncomfortable when he'd seen fully grown Poseidon statues plenty of times before.
The square was thronged with morning shoppers, a couple of eight-year-old boys zoomed by on maglev skates, nearly knocking into them, while a shopkeeper standing in a nearby doorway with a broom yelled after them to, "Watch it!"
"You folks all right?" The 12-year-old boy asked as he tucked his broom behind the shop door. He apparently ran a knickknacks shop, going by the collection in his window. He was wearing a long white apron like an old-fashioned butcher and his hands were covered with nicks and scars.
Are these your work?" the Doctor asked, picking up a small wooden carving of what looked like a cute little zebra-striped mouse.
"No, I bought these on consignment from some of the local artists. I only do commissioned work nowadays."
The Doctor absently handed the mouse to Amy.
"I'd love to see some of it," he suggested eagerly, lifting his almost nonexistent eyebrows endearingly at the young artist.
The boy nodded back into the shop. "This way."
While the Doctor was in the knickknack shop, Amy and Rory looked around outside.
“It’s like an amusement park,“ Rory said. “All these kids playing dress up, pretending to be adults, even the buildings are scaled down, like playhouses, or a set,” he explained.
“Yeah,” she said, looking out across the miniature square. They were standing under the awning, they’d have to duck to get out under the lip. “It makes me feel like a giant,” she said.
“Well, you are very tall,” he said.
She glared at him and chucked him not quite gently on the nose. “So are you.”
He wiggled his nose and rubbed it.
“Look, mama, grown-ups!” a piping little voice yelled.
They turned to see three girls walking by on the sidewalk. A curly haired little blond moppet, three years old, stared up at them and pointed.
“Yes, honey. They’re very large aren’t they? It’s not polite to point,” the dusky-blond 12 year old girl beside her said. The tot curled her finger down, as if to prove she hadn’t been pointing, then waved gaily at them.
Amy waved back.
The two blond girls caught up with the other 12 year old girl who was pushing a stroller with a one year old little boy in it. He wore little blue overalls and a striped shirt and tiny white sneakers.
“Look, Jeffy,” the three year old said in a loud stage whisper and quickly “didn’t point” at them. “Grown-ups.”
Amy and Rory shared a grin as the boy continued sucking his pacifier but stared at them with wide, intrigued eyes. The children, Amy noticed, were both normal sized children, but compared with the 12 year old “adults” they looked twice the size of normal kids.
Amy looked from the three year old who had gotten distracted and was studying something in the grass to the 12 year olds, they all shared the same blond hair, bright yellow on the toddler and the girl pushing the stroller, more muted on the other girl.
And that’s when Amy realized. The third girl’s hair wasn’t just a darker blond. It was going gray.
Amy looked at Rory in consternation. He gave her a confused look, not having noticed what she did.
Amy leaned backward and shouted into the dark confines of the Art shop, “Doctor!”
His voice came back, bright with excitement. “Amy! You’ve got to come see this!”
Amy grabbed Rory’s hand and dragged him into the dark depths of the shop, ducking her head under the lintel.
She followed the Doctor’s voice to a workroom in the back. It was brightly lit by skylights, and smelled sweetly of sawdust. It was scattered with wood chips, files, planes and other woodworking tools, along with various sized chain saws and half finished wooden sculptures. There was a large walk in freezer in the back wall.
“Amy, look at this!” The Doctor dragged her over and pointed excitedly to a sculpture on the table. It looked like a pudgy young dragon, curled up into exactly the shape of an egg shell, one eye was opened and staring at her, in a haughty, disgruntled fashion. It was almost comical, as if someone had stolen his shell while he was sleeping and he was still deciding whether to be annoyed, or go back to sleep.
At first glance it was funny, like a comic strip made in wood, until she started to notice the details. Every scale was individually carved and polished, bringing out the natural iridescence of the green-purple wood grain. The eye was originally a burl, now protruding slightly but with a deep slit pupil, the edges of the burl recast into eyelids. The detail was so perfect she wouldn’t have been surprised to see it start breathing.
The Doctor was wringing his hands in excitement. “Isn’t it fantastic?” he said. “It’s a perfect replica of a Darsheen dragon, it’s even the right size, and they’ve been extinct for centuries. There aren’t even any pictures of them!”
He so obviously wanted her to share his excitement that she patted his wringing hands. “It’s beautiful.”
Rory drew a finger down the line of the dragon’s spine, not quite daring to touch the wood. “That is amazing,” he said with heartfelt sincerity, his nurse’s eye picking out the faithful reproduction of muscles and form.
“Thank you,” the boy said, turning around from something he’d been fiddling with at the far workbench.
That’s when Amy saw what she’d missed before in the shade of the awning. Lines, tiny thread thin lines in his forehead and around his eyes and mouth.
“Mr. Wilkerson is a cultural artist, paid by the state to keep the old art styles alive,” the Doctor said. “And he also,” he pointed delightedly at the semicircle of ice chips surrounding the mouth of the freezer, “carves ice sculptures for special occasions. He just finished a mermaid centerpiece for a wedding this afternoon. He’s agreed to let me help carve the fish pillars for the end tables,” he said excitedly, pointing to the chain saws hanging in a rack by the freezer door.
“Oh, no.” Amy said in denial. She grabbed the Doctor’s arm and started dragging him away against his protests. “Thank you, Mr. Wilkerson,” she said to the boy who was wiping his hands on a shop towel. “But you really don't want to let him loose with a chain saw. God knows what could happen.” Rory nodded and turned faintly green.
“But, Amy,” the Doctor protested. “I’ve always wanted to make an ice sculpture,” he almost whined. Mr. Wilkerson wisely just watched them go.
Amy dragged the Doctor back out onto the sidewalk and stood him straight.
“You said they didn’t get old!” she hissed in a whisper. She flung a hand back toward the workshop. “He has wrinkles. There was a lady out her a while ago with gray hair!”
The Doctor rubbed his arm where she’d grabbed him. “I said they never “grew up,” I never said they didn't get old. Everything wears out eventually.”
“So the cure for their anageria was progeria?” Rory asked aggressively.
“No! They have a healthy, human lifespan. They live about 100 years, but living leaves its mark, and humans aren’t designed to live forever. Not even Feyanorans.”
-----
“Oh, this is surreal,” Amy said as she leaned back on the too-small bench and watched the construction site across the road. “I didn’t know kids could build a skyscraper,” she said with disbelief.
“First of all,” the Doctor said, leaning forward beside her, “They’re not kids. Second of all, kids are proportionately stronger than adults anyway.“
“I just think she’s annoyed because it’s the first time she’s walked by a construction site and not gotten whistled at,” Rory said.
Amy punched him in the shoulder and knocked him off the arm of the bench.
But he had a point. Half the small adults in the hardhats across from them were girls.
“Why so many women?” Amy asked as Rory righted himself and sat back down on the bench arm. “Isn’t that sort of unusual for construction work?”
The girls across the street were running claw cranes, carrying timber, and swarming up the metal infrastructure just as agilely as the boys.
“At twelve years old there’s not a lot of difference in body mass and strength between girls and boys. With the responsibility for reproduction removed from the females the society just naturally became more egalitarian,” the Doctor said.
“What?” Rory asked, “Girls no longer have cooties?”
He dodged when Amy tried to hit him again.
A police car pulled around the corner and rolled to a stop beside them. It was the sheriff's SUV. The burly blond sheriff jumped out and waved at them.
“Hello, I'm glad to find you again,” he called trotting up to them.
“How did you find us again?” Amy asked, standing up.
He shrugged. “You're grown-ups, you don't exactly blend in.”
Rory nodded ruefully at that.
“I'm sorry about this,” the sheriff said, turning to the Doctor, who'd also stood up. “Janet's got a bit of a problem,” her father said. “She tends to take things when she's stressed. She didn't mean anything by it. She didn't even realize she'd taken it until we found it in her effects at the hospital.”
He held out the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor goggled, then hastily patted down his pockets. He opened his jacket and stared accusingly at his inside pocket, as if it had failed him somehow. “Thank you,” he said, taking the screwdriver from the sheriff. He suddenly grinned. “I'm impressed!”
“What, because she picked your pocket?” Amy said, rolling her eyes, she knew how easy that was.
“No, because she picked my pocket while wearing heavy lineman's gloves!” the Doctor said enthusiastically.
"What a minute," Amy said, turning back to the boy. "Let me get this straight. You're a sheriff, and your daughter's a kleptomaniac?" she asked incredulously, a smirk peeking through.
He scratched his forehead, "Yeah, I never said it made sense."
Rory giggled. The sheriff's car radio beeped. He went back to his cruiser to answer it.
“Sheriff?” the dispatcher asked uneasily.
“Yeah, Janine.”
“Jeff told me to call you. We've got a missing person's report.” she said uneasily.
He was immediately all business, he pulled up the display on the dashboard computer. “Give me the description.”
“That's just it, boss. It's not one person.”
The Doctor, Amy, and Rory could hear the conversation clearly through the open window.
“Well?” the sheriff asked.
“It's the Kitterang Farm,” she said. "The regular hauler went out to pick up their load, but said they found the place deserted." Her voice quavered. ”More than 300 men, women, and children.
Gone.”
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