Youth is Wasted on the Young p.5
I wasn’t as far to the plantation house as Rory expected. It was the perspective illusion kicking in again, he realized. As he followed the Doctor up the shallow front stairs he had that odd feeling of being a giant again. The house was probably palatial by the standards of the child-sized Feyanorans, but he and the Doctor had to duck to enter the front door.
The entranceway was a large hall with a grand staircase. Meeting rooms, offices, and what looked like a conference room led off of the foyer, an open gallery above led off to different rooms and hallways.
One of the tripods joined them. “We’ve already searched the house, all the doors were open, but we found no one.” His skin vibrated as he spoke. “I’m going to try the dispatch room again. Perhaps someone is still out in the far fields.”
The Doctor nodded. “A good idea.”
They watched as the tripod spun off across the grand entrance hall. Rory had noticed that they tended to twirl when they walked, swinging around one foot after the other. It was amazing they didn’t get dizzy. It was sort of strange to watch the tripod whirling up the stairs.
The Doctor poked his nose into each of the downstairs rooms, but quickly made his way to the back of the house, past the large stairway, into the service areas of the house.
If the front was for business, then this was where the farmers lived. A back staircase led down to the ground floor kitchen. There they found the first evidence of disorder.
One of the kitchen chairs had been knocked over. The kitchen table was askew. A baby’s high chair sat at the head of the table. There was no baby.
Rory swallowed at the realization that it wasn’t just employees that had gone missing, but entire families. “What happened here, Doctor?” he asked helplessly.
“I don’t know, Rory. I’d say the place was attacked, but there’s no signs of a fight.”
“Well, someone threw something,” Rory said, pointing at a bowl of porridge that had splattered against the wall, leaving a globy trail of oatmeal sliding down to the floor.
“Not thrown,” the Doctor corrected absently, “flipped.”
“Huh?”
The Doctor pointed at the high-chair tray lying against the wall at an angle near the bowl. “Something knocked the tray over.”
“Maybe they threw the tray too,” Rory suggested. “A mother protecting her child.”
The Doctor shook his head. “Something knocked over the tray, flipping it toward the wall.”
“How can you tell that?” Rory said.
“The trajectory.” His long finger traced a line from the high chair to the wall. “And look here,” he pointed at the ceiling six inches above their heads.
Rory craned his neck to look. “Why would there be scuff marks on the ceiling?”
“I don’t know, but it’s interesting.” He gazed around the kitchen, his eyes missing nothing. Rory could practically hear his brain working. He held his breath. “Let’s check the rest of the rooms,” the Doctor finally said.
They toured the entire house but found nothing more. As the tripod had said, all the doors were open. They looked in each of the rooms, Rory was surprised to see that the Doctor kept his hands in his pockets, not touching anything, as the sheriff had requested. They found evidence of people in the middle of different tasks, and more of the strange scuff marks, but no farmers.
Eventually they worked their way outside. They stood at the back of the mansion, Rory breathed in great gulps of fresh air, there was something oppressive about being in the abandoned house, even though the air inside had been just as fresh, with the windows open to the spring breeze.
Rory narrowed his eyes. “Is that a corral?”
-----
Amy followed the deputy into the shadow of the industrial complex.
The silos were vast. Covered gantries formed huge roofed control rooms between the silos where trucks and transports could pull in and be loaded out of the weather.
Metal walkways ringed each of the booster rocket sized silos, control panels plugged in beside each inspection hatch allowing the farmers to monitor the contents.
The air smelled of concrete, engine oil, and wheat chaff. Their footsteps echoed oddly off of the curved cliff walls of the silos all around them.
“How many people does it take to run a place like this?” Amy asked the deputy.
He turned his deceptively little-boy face up to her. “Depending on the season, anywhere from six to a couple of dozen. According to the work clock, there were eight people on duty when the hauler arrived.” He nodded to a digital clock set by the massive outer door. Even in this day and age it was easily recognizable as a punch in timeclock, with the requisite coats and boots and outer gear clustered on the wall beside it.
The main floor was clear, showing no more evidence of use than old oil patches from equipment.
They climbed the gantry of the nearest tower. The first three silos were shut down, registering full. The next one was still running, apparently still trying to siphon grain out of a now empty farm transport sitting below. Jeff flicked off the siphon and the courtyard fell silent, except for a low level hum.
“Oh, good god!” Jeff said. He ran down the stairs and to the large vehicle. It was still running. The door stood open.
Jeff jumped in and shut it down. It settled to the pavement off of its impeller drive.
Amy watched from above, unnerved. Who would leave a vehicle that size running? And why? What had happened here?
She turned back to look at the controls behind her. To see if she could find some clue.
And saw it. A child’s shoe. Lying on its side. As if its owner had been snatched out of it.
-----
"You mean they actually have horses?" Rory asked, surprised as they approached the corral fence, the stables were beyond, backed by the forest. "I thought that was just an expression."
"Horses are very useful, vital on a new world," Doctor said. "There are places a skimmer just can't go. And a horse is alive, it has instincts and free will. It can warn its rider of danger, or find its own way home of its rider is hurt." The Doctor followed Rory to the corral and leaned against the metal railing. "Many a frontiersman has owed his life to a good horse."
"There’s none here now," Rory commented, looking around the deserted corral. Although there were fresh piles indicating that there had been, not long ago.
"Hmm..." The Doctor stared at the ground inside the paddock. He suddenly frowned and ducked between the rails into the corral. He walked around in an intense crouch, studying the dirt.
"Doctor," Rory protested. "You're going to get your boots filthy!"
The Doctor waved him off and brushed his fingers along above the dry ground as if measuring something. He looked up, across the corral, staring at the dirt, checking something. His eyes were drawn to a half-squashed horse pat.
“What is it?” Rory asked, knowing that look.
“What do you see here, Rory?” the Doctor asked, waving toward the enclosure.
Rory shrugged. “A deserted field. Do you suppose it was rustlers?” he asked, suddenly excited to have a theory. “You said horses were valuable here.”
The Doctor shook his head, “No tracks, no indication the horses were herded anywhere. Look closer. What do you see right here?” He pointed down at a wide indentation in the dirt.
Rory shrugged and shook his head. “Uneven ground. A depression in the dirt. Does it mean anything?”
“These horses were lying down,” the Doctor said. “You can see it here, and there, and there,” he pointed to more wide indentations, including one by the squashed horse pat.
Now that he’d pointed it out, Rory could see it, wide shallow depressions scattered all across the paddock. “So?”
The Doctor looked up at him, “Horses don’t lie down. They even sleep standing up. They only lie down if they’re deathly ill.”
“So,” Rory drawled, working it out in his own mind, “something happened to the horses? An epidemic? They all got sick and had to be moved?”
The Doctor shook his head. “There’s no indication that they were moved. No tracks, no drag marks, they just all laid down.”
“I’m still not getting it,” Rory said in frustration.
“Rory, if all these horses lay down sick. Where are they?”
-----
The Doctor urged Rory into the corral and they carefully quartered the whole field. They didn’t find anything else. Even inspecting the stables turned up nothing new, just more interrupted work when the farmers disappeared.
Rory stood at the opening of the stables and scowled at the bare paddock. He reached up to run a hand through his hair and stopped when his sleeve caught on a splinter on the stable doorframe. He worked it free, then ran his fingers over the spot, another of the odd scuffmarks.
Suddenly his eyes snapped back to the paddock. They locked on one of the depressions. His eyes widened and he ran over and knelt down, checking that he saw what he thought he saw. He jumped up and checked another of the depressions, then another on the far edge of the paddock to make sure.
“Doctor!” he yelled. He heard a metal bucket crashing as he apparently startled the Doctor. The Time Lord rushed to the stable opening. His eyebrows up in eagerness.
“Look at this,” Rory pointed down at the depression at his feet. He knelt and traced his fingers over a set of scratches in the dirt, right on the edge of the depression. The Doctor knelt down and looked. “They’ve all got them. Identical. Like the scuff marks in the house,” Rory said.
The Doctor stood up, and looked leerily around the stableyard. “Rory, go and find Amy. Meet me at the corner of the airfield.”
“What...?” Rory cut off his desire for an explanation. “Where will you be?”
“I need to think.” The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, looking worried. He saw Rory still standing there, he gave him a shove, “Go!”
-----
“Did you find anything?” Rory asked eagerly, meeting Amy as she walked back toward the house.
“Just a kid’s shoe.” Amy rubbed her arms. “This is so creepy. It’s like they all just vanished. We even had to turn off some equipment because it had been left running,” she waved behind her at the silos.
“Any signs of violence?” Rory asked.
She shook her head. “That would have made it seem more normal somehow. If they were attacked there’d be signs, survivors, wouldn’t there?” she asked with an unusual need for reassurance. He took her hand. She gripped tight. “But it’s like they just walked away from what they were doing.”
She looked at him. “Do you think they were possessed?”
Not long ago that would have sounded ridiculous, but they’d seen too much of the Doctor’s world, now. It was all too possible.
“What did you find?” Amy asked, getting hold of herself, her normal indomitable spirit reasserting itself. She dropped his hand and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her arms.
Rory didn’t take it as a rejection, she’d always been like that, searing brilliance and the bravery of dragons most of the time, but with occasional moments of vulnerability where she’d cling to him. He’d put up with a lot for those moments.
“Same thing,” he answered. “The place is just abandoned, like they walked off. There was something weird with the horses though, the Doctor wouldn’t tell me what. Come on. He sent me to find you.” He took her hand and pulled her back to the airfield.
-----
The Doctor wandered off into the edge of the wheat field, thinking furiously. He stopped, hip high in waving golden wheat. He took a deep breath of the sweet spring air, trying to clear his mind. He calmed his thoughts, this should all make sense, there was a pattern here that he knew he wasn’t seeing.
He trolled his hands through the heavy heads of grain, enjoying the light pattering of it on his skin. He pinched off one of the heads and rubbed it between his fingers. He brought it to his nose.
-----
“So where is he?” Amy asked.
“I don’t know. He said to bring you back here.” They were standing on the corner of the tarmac between the plantation house and the silos.
“Doctor!” Rory yelled, hands cupped around his mouth.
Jeff popped his head out of the one of the silos at the shout, and one of the tripods suddenly stood up in the wheat fields, and “looked” toward them.
No Doctor.
“Doctor!” Amy yelled in her best “you better answer me” voice.
Dutch appeared in the doorway of the flight control tower. They all listened and looked around. A breeze soughed through the wheat field. A distant bird cried.
No Doctor.
Dutch jogged up to them. Jeff and the tripods converged on the spot.
The sheriff was consulting a handheld device. “I’m not picking up his tracker,” he said as they all converged on Rory and Amy.
Rory hit himself in the head. “He doesn’t have one!”
“Typical,” Amy groused. “He makes us get tracers, then he gets lost.”
Dutch was looking dire. “Where was the last place you saw him?”
“At the corral.” Rory pointed beyond the house. “But he said to meet him here. Don’t worry. He’s always doing this, wandering off.”
“Maybe so,” Dutch said. “But I’ve got a whole settlement that’s disappeared. And now one of my search team has gone missing.” He loosened his pistol in its holster and carefully eyed the surrounding terrain for any sign of a grown-up. No sign.
“Form a line,” he told them all. “Keep in visual contact at all times. We’re going to do a sweep.”
-----
They found the Doctor lying unconscious in the wheat field.
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