Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, April 01, 2004
 | More allegations against an IFB preacher
A new report on the Fighting Fundamentalist Forums alleges more misconduct in an IFB pulpit regarding Andy Briner, currently pastoring in Hebron Indiana. The post generated an entire thread on the corruption in Briner's first church. Briner was named, but no victims were named, so the report remains shakey at best. If you know anybody who came from the Merrywoods Baptist Church (now Haughton Baptist Temple) of Louisiana, send them to the link. One person is talking about contacting a lawyer and having affadavits drawn up. |
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Jeri and Kevin Do Boston! (United Fan Con East)
 | Thursday
In Raleigh, temperatures were mild and the sky clear. I woke up at 3:35 a.m., shut off both alarm clocks, and briskly followed my routine: Check e-mail, make coffee, shower, don travel clothes (anything with lots of pockets) dry hair, pack car, etc. I arrived at the Raleigh station 30 minutes in advance. At the desk, the clerk told me that the train would be at least two hours late. Uh-oh: First complication. |
I returned home and goofed around for a while. When I returned to the station at 7:30, the train was predicted to be another hour late. Several of us in the waiting area got acquainted. A Christian school was sending a dozen or so middle school kids and their chaperones up to DC for a field trip. Another woman was returning home to New Jersey from vacation, a young girl was heading to New York to see her family, and a woman a few years older than I was going to DC to visit her elderly parents. Her name was Donna, and yes, she had watched Dr. Who with her husband all through the '80s.
 | Finally, three hours late, the train pulled in. Dawn had passed, and we had a clear, sunny day of early spring. We lined up on the platform and boarded the train. People aboard were still sleeping, exhausted after the numerous delays. I called my friend Bruce on my cellphone and cancelled our lunch plans in DC. What bothered me most was that it was now certain I would miss my 2:00 connector in DC and thus would miss meeting my convention buddy Kevin, who has a lot of big city savvy (like knowing how to read train and subway schedules). |
The thought of getting into Boston at around midnight, getting on a subway (after finding it first), then catching a taxi, intimidated me. I tried not to worry as I sat on the train and watched the brick churches and rows of tidy houses slip by on the North Carolina landscape. But even more delays followed, as we had to wait for CSX freight trains to clear the tracks for us at various intervals.
I decided to pray and ask the Lord to get me on a train with Kevin, but I did so with a sinking heart. I realized that it was probably already too late.
But two thirds of the way into the trip, I checked my voice mail on my cellphone. Kevin had left a message. He'd checked the Amtrack website, knew I'd never make the connector, and offered to meet me on the 4:00 train. He even told me the train number, as several were leaving for the Boston area at that time. I was very grateful to him and realized that God had answered my prayer.
| We pulled in to DC, four hours late, at 3:00 p.m. The group of us who had gotten acquainted at the Raleigh station was still chatting away. Donna offered to show me around the DC station so that I could find the ticket desk and switch my ticket and then get to the right gate. With no difficulty, thanks to her assistance, I switched to the 4:00 train and then found lunch at the Sbarro gourmet food bar. While in Sbarro, I struck up a conversation with a young woman from England who had just finished a job interview in DC at the British embassy. She thought it delightful that I was going to a Doctor Who convention! I wished her every success and then hurried off to find my gate. |  |
I was going Business Class (to assure that I got a seat), so I moved to the head of the line and boarded with my two carry-on bags. The seats in Business class are slightly roomier but other than that I found them less comfortable than the seats in coach. But in business class you get free soft drinks and bottled water from the train's snack bar, as much as you want. I am supposed to drink 10 glasses of water a day, but on the trip from DC to Boston, I think I made my quota!
| Just outside of DC, in New Carrollton, Kevin came aboard. And yes, I had every reason to be thankful to travel with him. Aside from being likeable and considerate (he gave me his jacket when I got cold), he knew how to find subways, what token machines are, how to get a Pullman suitcase through a turnstyle, and how to read a subway schedule. He navigated us to the Red line on the Boston "T", selected the right track, and explained how crucial it is to know the difference between "inbound" and "outbound".
By this time, I had been traveling for over 15 hours and was really, really, weary. At the Quincy Adams station, we called a taxi. The driver sped us up the steep hill where the Quincy Marriott sits like the king of the hill. We got to the hotel at 12:30 a.m. |  |
We checked in, and I bid him good night at his door, then found my own room. After a 21 hour day, that king sized bed sure looked great! But just to get myself settled down, I took about ten minutes to unpack and hang up my clothes. Then I made up the bed with my own flannel top sheet and flannel pillowcases. I've found when I travel that I sleep better on my own sheets.
I washed up, got into my pajamas (which felt wonderfully clean after clothing grubby from travel), and tumbled into bed at 1:10 a.m.
Friday
In spite of a long day on Thursday, my eyes snapped open at 6:30 on Friday morning. The rising sun brightened the room, even with the night curtain drawn. I got up and made coffee, wrote in my journal (a spiral bound notebook, as I had left the laptop at home), and then wandered downstairs to meet Kevin at 9:00.
Kevin, however, had already eaten. So while he went back to his room, I breakfasted alone on the Marriott's fresh fruit and hot cereal bar. Everything tasted great, and after the hectic schedule of the day before, I was content to simply rest and eat.
Kevin and I trekked out on foot and descended the great spiraling drive that ran down the steep hill. Just below the Marriott on the huge, rugged hill was a vast parking garage that looked completely deserted. I named it the haunted garage, but I noticed that if you used the stairs inside that dark building (which were partly visible even from a distance on the outside), you'd get up the hill as quickly as climbing a ladder straight up instead of taking the long, steep walk on the drive. But it really made me nervous to see that silent, dark, deserted building.
At the foot of the hill we navigated our way to the subway station of the Boston T. We unconsciously picked up the Doctor-Companion mode of journey, with Kevin doing most of the navigating while I observed details around us and occasionally pointed them out so he could consider the finer points of finding the main entrance, crossing the least busy street, etc.
We got inside and he once again got us through the maze of finding the Inbound track. Shortly thereafter, we were skimming along in a subway car. We reached Boston Commons about 30 minutes later.
It was getting ridiculous to be so amazed at everything, but I was amazed. Wonder, fear, and dismay came by turns. As we walked along the narrow, steep, brick sidewalks of Beacon Hill, I pointed out "a narrow alley" to Kevin, as well as "a dark doorway". Oh, Doctor Who stories are made of things like these! For a short while the century-old architecture of the cramped lanes fascinated me. But after ten or twenty minutes of hiking thoroughfares no wider than a kitchen able, I felt too closed in.
"How can people live like this?" I demanded of nobody in particular.
We'd been walking the hill of Boston for four hours. I was limping slightly as we hurried back to the subway station. I promised Kevin that when we got back to our station near the hotel I would hail a cab and pay for it (in return for the long jaunt to Cheers). The subway ride was surely welcome, and now more people crowded into the cars. A few had to stand while we traveled along, and everybody kept the deadpan, bored expressions that signal close quarters among strangers. Kevin and I were also pretty quiet, tired out from the day.
But inside, everything was cool and dark. I would not take the elevator up, for if it got stuck, we'd be in real trouble. Kevin was agreeable to my preferences, and we took the steps. In a moment or two we emerged onto the top deck, crossed a covered walkway, and came out in front of the hotel.
I felt ready for a shower and a nap. But once I'd gotten cleaned up and into cool pajamas and was ready to sleep, Kevin called to tell me the dealers were setting up their tables. So I got up, put on clean clothes, and went down to the dealer room.
By the time I got there, Kevin had set up the small table. I counted inventory for him and logged it on the sheet. One ambitious fan came in and bought up one each of the news letters and fanzines. He plopped down $100 on the spot. Ten minutes later, another fan bought up $50 worth of stuff. One that cheerful note, we closed up the table and went to dinner.
After dinner in the small Kilroys pub, Kevin and I split up to go to our rooms and get ready for the Insiders party. If you have any experience with cons, you know that most events open 20 minutes late. Yet at eight o'clock sharp we were both downstairs at the doors.
So we waited for the standard twenty minutes for the hotel people to get set up properly inside. The celebrity guests went in before us. Kevin and I both had come especially to see Lis Sladen of Sarah Jane Smith (companion to both the Third Doctor and the Fourth Doctor. She came down just as the doors open. I saw a figure that looked like her, but I wasn't sure. But as she got into clear sight of the doors to the party (and the line of guests), she took on the bobbing stride of her character: Sarah Jane's bouncing, upbeat walk.
After the celebs had gone in, the doors opened and we entered. Everything was still really hanging fire and a couple of the guests wanted to get something better to drink than water or soft drinks, so I showed them the way to Kilroy's.
When I returned with a Bass Ale, Lis---who already knows Kevin from the fan club, was sitting by him, and he asked me to sit on his other side. He introduced us, and typical of gallant Kevin, he mentioned the Always the Third Doctor web page.
I gave Lis a small book on the Chinese astrology of the Rat, for I had seen some where on the net that her birthday was in a Rat year. She thanked me very kindly but told me that the net date is wrong. I shrugged it off with a laugh (for the possibility had occurred to me). But she asked about her daughter's year of birth. And for a couple minutes I told her a little bit about Chinese astrology.
But the others wanted to talk to her, so I joined Terry Molloy (Davros from Doctor Who) and Erin Gray (from Buck Rogers). We spent nearly thirty minutes talking about books, religion, and history. It was terrific. They are both tremendously well read people. I think a discussion outside of fandom was the last thing they expected. I also told them briefly about documenting the abuse and lack of accountability in the IFB movement. One big reason I went to the convention is that my doctors have told me to get away from the mess periodically and relax.
Then I went back to Lis and asked her about the character of Sarah Jane Smith. Of course, she gets that question a lot, so she gave me a thorough but standard answer. Kevin chimed in to help, and then Lis thought a little and talked about the need to make each episode have a real hook in it. There has to be enough there to catch the reader or viewer.
Even if the viewer never sees the next episode, that one episode should be enough to make him think it was good---that was her opinion, and it was a very good one. "Of course," I told her with a smile. "I want my readers to come back for the next episode."
She took my hand when I said this.
"So thank you---" I began.
"But dear, we were paid---"
I realized the burden I had just put on her. "Yes," I said right away. "It wasn't a ministry. I know that. It was a job. But thank you for doing it so well and working so hard at it. Because you made something that worked. And it helped me."
"You know," she told me. "We get a lot of letters similar to that" [to my experience of Doctor Who].
I nodded. I did know that. In fact, caregivers of autistic children in Britain noted that many of the children responded to the Third Doctor's face when he came on the telly. In some places of child care, putting on the Doctor at 5:00 on Saturday evening was part of the routine.
She spoke then about the moral goodness of the show, and the efforts of Barry Letts and others to keep it on a firm moral footing, to keep it effective for young viewers.
Then talk turned to lighter things. I'd said my part, and so I stood after a few minutes and said good night. My feet were aching and I was quite ready for bed, and I was glad that I had found the courage to say it out loud to one of the people from Doctor Who.
In spite of a long day on Thursday, my eyes snapped open at 6:30 on Friday morning. The rising sun brightened the room, even with the night curtain drawn. I got up and made coffee, wrote in my journal (a spiral bound notebook, as I had left the laptop at home), and then wandered downstairs to meet Kevin at 9:00.
Kevin, however, had already eaten. So while he went back to his room, I breakfasted alone on the Marriott's fresh fruit and hot cereal bar. Everything tasted great, and after the hectic schedule of the day before, I was content to simply rest and eat.
 | I spent several minutes in the hotel store, where Harvard shirts and Boston sweat shirts abounded. It had been chilly in the lobby earlier, and I worried that I had not brought along anything truly warm. Apparently, "mild" in a local Boston weather forecast was about 20 degrees cooler than "mild" in a Raleigh NC weather forecast. The young lady at the register, Marguelina, was so cheerful and affable that we chatted away until Kevin came down to meet me for our big day out. I decided to put off purchasing a shirt for the time being, but I Marguelina and I parted friends, and we spoke to each other every morning of my stay. |
Kevin and I trekked out on foot and descended the great spiraling drive that ran down the steep hill. Just below the Marriott on the huge, rugged hill was a vast parking garage that looked completely deserted. I named it the haunted garage, but I noticed that if you used the stairs inside that dark building (which were partly visible even from a distance on the outside), you'd get up the hill as quickly as climbing a ladder straight up instead of taking the long, steep walk on the drive. But it really made me nervous to see that silent, dark, deserted building.
At the foot of the hill we navigated our way to the subway station of the Boston T. We unconsciously picked up the Doctor-Companion mode of journey, with Kevin doing most of the navigating while I observed details around us and occasionally pointed them out so he could consider the finer points of finding the main entrance, crossing the least busy street, etc.
We got inside and he once again got us through the maze of finding the Inbound track. Shortly thereafter, we were skimming along in a subway car. We reached Boston Commons about 30 minutes later.
| Our goal was to walk Boston's Freedom Trail, which is a narrow brick path that leads tourists right through the city to Boston's many historic sites. I bought a tour book to help us along. After getting our photo snapped with a colonial gentleman, Kevin and I started out. We wuickly made our way to the site of the monument to the famous 54th regiment, the "negro regiment," that set out as the first black regiment of the US army. They fought for the Union in the Civil War. Other highlights of the journey included a cemetery where Ben Franklin and the victims of the Boston Massacre had been laid to rest. We walked up Beacon Hill as we followed the brick trail. |  |
 | Boston amazes the eyes of a North Carolina girl. Vast, skyscraping structures of girders, concrete, and greenish glass loom right over the rooftops of narrow, immaculate brick homes that line narrow lines with brick sidewalks. The everyday life of simply being in upscale, tightly-packed Boston rubs shoulders with the treasured memories and sacred realities of our nation's history. A corner fruit market abuts the meeting house where Sam Adams and the Sons of the Revolution declaimed against the tyrannies of King George. A few buildings away, harried office workers rush back and forth in front of a round subway vent. Behind the circular, enclosed vent lies the tombstone of the woman on whom Nathaniel Hawthorne modeled Hester Prynne.
The tourists, wearing bright clothing and walking shoes, with cameras hung round their necks, lumber and amble along. But the residents stride swiftly, with an agility that comes from years of zipping around hordes of awe-struck strangers. And every now and then---babbling and declaiming---a person afflicted with insanity goes by. We passed beggars who held out empty cups. Kevin commended me for giving a few dollars, but he told me I wouldn't have enough money for all the beggars I would meet, and he was right. |
It was getting ridiculous to be so amazed at everything, but I was amazed. Wonder, fear, and dismay came by turns. As we walked along the narrow, steep, brick sidewalks of Beacon Hill, I pointed out "a narrow alley" to Kevin, as well as "a dark doorway". Oh, Doctor Who stories are made of things like these! For a short while the century-old architecture of the cramped lanes fascinated me. But after ten or twenty minutes of hiking thoroughfares no wider than a kitchen able, I felt too closed in.
"How can people live like this?" I demanded of nobody in particular.
 | We lunched in the Quincy Market and then visited Paul Revere's House (the outside of it---going inside cost money), and we followed the trail to the Old North Church (which still has services). Then Kevin wanted to see the new suspension bridge for I-93. It took about 20 minutes to navigate our way to it, but we found another bridge that admitted pedestrian traffic, and this afforded a good view of the new bridge. Kevin got his pictures. The day, to my surprise, had warmed up quite a bit and had a touch of mugginess to it. |
| Against Kevin's wishes we then back tracked our entire journey and found the Cheers bar and restaurant (The Bull and Finch, in real life). By the time we got there, we were both hot and sweaty. So I bought us something cold to drink inside. The Bull and Finch, by the way, is the Cheers exterior, but the inside looks nothing like the interior on the television show. However the proprietor's have made the most of their sudden fame. The menu fronted simple meals that were actually nicer than what you would normally get in such a place. They are well beyond mere sandwiches and burgers. And the bar space is minimal compared to the table space and booths. But everything is pretty cramped inside: partly because the place is not all that big, and partly because so many people come to see it. You can also buy shirts, glasses, mugs, caps, photos, pamphlets, etc of the place "where everybody knows your name" from the tiny gift shop inside. I wanted to make a purchase, but the tiny store area was so crammed with people that I decided against standing in line. |  |
We'd been walking the hill of Boston for four hours. I was limping slightly as we hurried back to the subway station. I promised Kevin that when we got back to our station near the hotel I would hail a cab and pay for it (in return for the long jaunt to Cheers). The subway ride was surely welcome, and now more people crowded into the cars. A few had to stand while we traveled along, and everybody kept the deadpan, bored expressions that signal close quarters among strangers. Kevin and I were also pretty quiet, tired out from the day.
 | There were no cabs at the Quincy Adams station, so we had to take the hike back to the hotel, and that long, steep hill was so daunting that when we got to the haunted parking garage, Kevin said he was going to check it out to find a faster way to the top of the hill. I was truly a little afraid of the place. It was after three in the afternoon, and there were still no cars inside the big structure. But I followed him. This is how Doctor Who stories start, I thought. The weary travelers go into a huge, dark, empty building and get disintegrated by daleks hiding inside, or whisked off through a time portal that opens up unexpectedly, or changed into horrific monsters by some viral sludge spread on one of the walls. It'd be a heck of a way to end a day in Boston. |
But inside, everything was cool and dark. I would not take the elevator up, for if it got stuck, we'd be in real trouble. Kevin was agreeable to my preferences, and we took the steps. In a moment or two we emerged onto the top deck, crossed a covered walkway, and came out in front of the hotel.
I felt ready for a shower and a nap. But once I'd gotten cleaned up and into cool pajamas and was ready to sleep, Kevin called to tell me the dealers were setting up their tables. So I got up, put on clean clothes, and went down to the dealer room.
By the time I got there, Kevin had set up the small table. I counted inventory for him and logged it on the sheet. One ambitious fan came in and bought up one each of the news letters and fanzines. He plopped down $100 on the spot. Ten minutes later, another fan bought up $50 worth of stuff. One that cheerful note, we closed up the table and went to dinner.
After dinner in the small Kilroys pub, Kevin and I split up to go to our rooms and get ready for the Insiders party. If you have any experience with cons, you know that most events open 20 minutes late. Yet at eight o'clock sharp we were both downstairs at the doors.
So we waited for the standard twenty minutes for the hotel people to get set up properly inside. The celebrity guests went in before us. Kevin and I both had come especially to see Lis Sladen of Sarah Jane Smith (companion to both the Third Doctor and the Fourth Doctor. She came down just as the doors open. I saw a figure that looked like her, but I wasn't sure. But as she got into clear sight of the doors to the party (and the line of guests), she took on the bobbing stride of her character: Sarah Jane's bouncing, upbeat walk.
 | It made me smile. It was a mark of the hard work ethic that the British actors always put into these conventions. They treat a con with the same respect as a theatrical role, and they put everything into it. But I also noted that for her, this is very much an acting role---a task that requires her (and all of them) to put on a public face rather than allow her to be herself. As I have considered the promotion side of VALKYRIES, it's this aspect that has held me back. Already people ask me if I am Tracey Jacamuzzi. How much harder to distinguish Lis Sladen from Sarah Jane Smith. |  |
After the celebs had gone in, the doors opened and we entered. Everything was still really hanging fire and a couple of the guests wanted to get something better to drink than water or soft drinks, so I showed them the way to Kilroy's.
When I returned with a Bass Ale, Lis---who already knows Kevin from the fan club, was sitting by him, and he asked me to sit on his other side. He introduced us, and typical of gallant Kevin, he mentioned the Always the Third Doctor web page.
I gave Lis a small book on the Chinese astrology of the Rat, for I had seen some where on the net that her birthday was in a Rat year. She thanked me very kindly but told me that the net date is wrong. I shrugged it off with a laugh (for the possibility had occurred to me). But she asked about her daughter's year of birth. And for a couple minutes I told her a little bit about Chinese astrology.
But the others wanted to talk to her, so I joined Terry Molloy (Davros from Doctor Who) and Erin Gray (from Buck Rogers). We spent nearly thirty minutes talking about books, religion, and history. It was terrific. They are both tremendously well read people. I think a discussion outside of fandom was the last thing they expected. I also told them briefly about documenting the abuse and lack of accountability in the IFB movement. One big reason I went to the convention is that my doctors have told me to get away from the mess periodically and relax.
Then I went back to Lis and asked her about the character of Sarah Jane Smith. Of course, she gets that question a lot, so she gave me a thorough but standard answer. Kevin chimed in to help, and then Lis thought a little and talked about the need to make each episode have a real hook in it. There has to be enough there to catch the reader or viewer.
Even if the viewer never sees the next episode, that one episode should be enough to make him think it was good---that was her opinion, and it was a very good one. "Of course," I told her with a smile. "I want my readers to come back for the next episode."
| And then I told her what was a bit more difficult for me---that I'd gotten so attached to Doctor Who because, when I was 12, my father mistreated me. I'd gone numb in the inside, just doing all the things that I was supposed to do, but numb. Until I walked into the family TV room and saw this odd show about this old guy with white hair and tremendous energy battling hideous creatures called "primords" (from the story Inferno).
"I'm sure it had to do with my father and what I was going through," I told her, "But I was hooked from that point on. It was just what I needed. It took me away, and it opened up a new world to me." |  |
She took my hand when I said this.
"So thank you---" I began.
"But dear, we were paid---"
I realized the burden I had just put on her. "Yes," I said right away. "It wasn't a ministry. I know that. It was a job. But thank you for doing it so well and working so hard at it. Because you made something that worked. And it helped me."
"You know," she told me. "We get a lot of letters similar to that" [to my experience of Doctor Who].
I nodded. I did know that. In fact, caregivers of autistic children in Britain noted that many of the children responded to the Third Doctor's face when he came on the telly. In some places of child care, putting on the Doctor at 5:00 on Saturday evening was part of the routine.
She spoke then about the moral goodness of the show, and the efforts of Barry Letts and others to keep it on a firm moral footing, to keep it effective for young viewers.
Then talk turned to lighter things. I'd said my part, and so I stood after a few minutes and said good night. My feet were aching and I was quite ready for bed, and I was glad that I had found the courage to say it out loud to one of the people from Doctor Who.
Saturday
Much to my annoyance, my eyes snapped open at 3:45 a.m. It wasn't excitement. United Fan Con East is my fifth convention. I am old and I like to sleep. But my body was having none of it. Whatever the reason, I was wide awake. I doggedly stayed in bed until about quarter to five; then I gave up and decided to write up some notes based on what Lis Sladen had said about Sarah Jane and what makes a good story.
This task actually got pretty interesting, and I figured out the ending for Death and Chocolate and jotted it down in note form. (Now all I have to do is write the middle!)
I showered and got into clothes for the day. Down the hall, Kevin had a DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door so I went down to breakfast alone. The fruit and hot cereal bar was just as good as the day before. I gave myself a longer time to enjoy the fresh pineapple and strawberries, followed by the oatmeal with maple syrup, raisins, and cranberries. The coffee at the Boston Marriott is terrific. I hadn't had such a good cup in a long time.
Fans started drifting in. The people running the convention remained cheerful, kind, and helpful for the entire weekend, by the way. In spite of consistent late starts on most events, they were good about accommodating to the fans and ensuring that everybody had a good time.
After I left breakfast I saw a suitably long registration line. But people were moving through it quickly. We still had a few minutes until the dealer's room opened, so I just wandered for a bit.
You do get all kinds at a sci-fi convention, and I tried not to stare at the people in costume, the kids dressed goth style with black lipstick, and the overweight, middle-aged people dressed like teenagers.
I ran the shirt back up to my room. When I got back, Kevin was setting up the table (which meant he pulled back the drape from the newsletters and fanzines and set up the money box). He presented me with a couple of buttons of Sarah Jane and the Third Doctor. Then we settled down to work, but business was slow. However we worked out a system of marking off inventory as we sold things, and I would straighten out the bills after each sale. And there was certainly plenty of local color.
You do see all kinds at a sci-fi convention, and I am one of them, so I ought not point fingers too much. But the corker was a a fat, bald, middle-aged guy, wearing black platform shoes that laced up his shins, a black mini-skirt, black netting over a black leather corset (laced up so tightly it made his chest look like female breasts), with devil horns sprouting from the top of his forehead, and a silver prong coming up from the center of his head. He entered as naturally as though he were wearing jeans. I clutched Kevin's arm and almost climbed into his lap when I saw this guy.
Fortunately, the guy moved quickly. Unfortunately, he was also wearing a thong, and his mini-skirt was so low you could see the thong in his butt-crack.
Kevin has an incredibly deep voice, and he prefers to use a monotone. As the guy went past us, Kevin caught sight of the thong and slowly said in his dead pan, non-inflected way, "Now that's an image I wish I hadn't seen."
I was certain the guy was violating some decency law or other. But even though a lot of people snickered outright as he went by and a few shot knowing looks back and forth, he was not accosted or harassed.
Terry Molloy gave a great discussion: organized, clear, enthusiastic, and packed with information. He explained a lot of the technical methods at work in any story that includes Davros. He also filled us in on the backstage high-jinks and mishaps that he's experienced. He was charismatic and professional. In fact, by the end of the weekend, I came away deeply impressed by his vast experience (of which Davros is actually only a small part) and very high professionalism.
After her panel, Kevin and I went back to the table to sell. We took a break in the mid-afternoon to snatch up lunch in the hotel's pub---chicken strips for me while Kevin had fish and chips.
Then shortly before 5:00 I went back to the main room to line up for autographs. Marina Sirtis was still speaking, and I got there in time to hear her trash her co-stars from Star Trek and the Trek movie. I was shocked and disgusted, and so were the two guys who sat behind me. Some of the fans laughed right along with her, but as a person who has survived the gossip and character assassination of an abusive work place, I found it right on the edge of horrific. The one nice thing was that though she spoke well of nobody, it seemed from her side references that Patrick Stewart is a man of integrity and sterling professional behavior. Not that she respects this.
She went about five minutes over and then left. We were marshaled into the autograph line by badge number (in lots of about 20). I'd purchased a terrific color photo of Sarah Jane and the Third Doctor. They called for my section and I was ushered first through the door to join the line that formed up a long hallway where the celebs sat at tables on one side. As I bounded past one of the pillars I saw the end of the line. There was a hugely fat blue guy ahead of me. No kidding. All blue: his face, his hands, everything. He wore a white stocking cap. He looked hideous, and as he saw me bound forward, his face broke into a delighted grin of welcome. Oh no! Yes indeed, he really wanted to have a chat with me.
To my surprise, a big good-looking guy ambled right between us like he didn't know where he was going. He touched my shoulder and with one glance told me to let him handle this. The blue guy started to draw him into conversation, and the good-looking guy had to put his back to me to answer him. He said something I didn't catch. But then for some reason the blue guy nodded abruptly, smiled even more widely, and hurriedly moved forward. The handsome guy let him get a few paces ahead of us and then we followed.
"Thank you!" I exclaimed softly. And I glanced around him. "Thank you so much!"
He tapped my shoulder and pointed to his ears. "I am hearing impaired," he said in that airless voice of severely hearing impaired people. "I have to read your lips."
"Oh!" I exclaimed. I looked him full in the face. "Thank you," I said again.
Then I asked, without using my voice at all, as it didn't matter, "Why is he blue?"
"Smurf," he said, and a faint smile flickered across his face.
Great horny toads! Pappa Smurf, Mamma Smurf, and Godzilla Smurf. But that's what the blue guy was: white pants, blue shirt, blue skin, white cap---a smurf.
My rescuer pointed at my notebook, where I had intended to write in my journal as I stood in line. "Are you writing a story?" he asked.
"A web log," I told him. He wasn't familiar with the term, and I didn't pursue it. We chatted very amiably about small matters. Then I asked him if I could ask about his hearing loss, and he said yes. So I asked how he had learned to read lips so well. He told me that he had learned lip reading first, before sign language. And yes, he told me, he had been born severely hearing impaired. With hearing aids in place, (which he showed me), he had some slight hearing. Without them, he is totally deaf. He works a full time job for the post office.
We got to Lis Sladen next, and she remembered me from the party and greeted me warmly. My autograph friend liked all the sci-fi shows that were close-captioned, he told me. I noticed he especially liked the ones with pretty girls. But after we'd said goodbye and I thanked him again, I was really sobered. To be honest, he'd re-introduced me to the idea of living in silence and missing the majority of stories that are told or dramatized. They all hinge on sound. And fandom is also built on sound: audio adventures, guest panels, chatting, doing skits and parodies. And there are never any services for the hearing impaired at the cons.
Much to my annoyance, my eyes snapped open at 3:45 a.m. It wasn't excitement. United Fan Con East is my fifth convention. I am old and I like to sleep. But my body was having none of it. Whatever the reason, I was wide awake. I doggedly stayed in bed until about quarter to five; then I gave up and decided to write up some notes based on what Lis Sladen had said about Sarah Jane and what makes a good story.
This task actually got pretty interesting, and I figured out the ending for Death and Chocolate and jotted it down in note form. (Now all I have to do is write the middle!)
I showered and got into clothes for the day. Down the hall, Kevin had a DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door so I went down to breakfast alone. The fruit and hot cereal bar was just as good as the day before. I gave myself a longer time to enjoy the fresh pineapple and strawberries, followed by the oatmeal with maple syrup, raisins, and cranberries. The coffee at the Boston Marriott is terrific. I hadn't had such a good cup in a long time.
Fans started drifting in. The people running the convention remained cheerful, kind, and helpful for the entire weekend, by the way. In spite of consistent late starts on most events, they were good about accommodating to the fans and ensuring that everybody had a good time.
After I left breakfast I saw a suitably long registration line. But people were moving through it quickly. We still had a few minutes until the dealer's room opened, so I just wandered for a bit.
You do get all kinds at a sci-fi convention, and I tried not to stare at the people in costume, the kids dressed goth style with black lipstick, and the overweight, middle-aged people dressed like teenagers.
| The dealer's room, now well stocked with over flowing tables of merchandise, beckoned invitingly. As a dealer I could come and go as I liked, and the dealers sell to each other before the doors officially open. One lady had all kinds of new Dr. Who t-shirts, all with embroidered logos. They were a lot more tasteful than the usual kind, which are screen printed across the entire front of the t-shirt with collage-type images. I bought a red shirt with the diamond shaped logo in place where the shirt pocket would be. I also picked out another shirt that had the Seal of Rassilon as a logo. Down at the other end of the room, Gene (from Chicago TARDIS) had set up a table. I promised him I would buy something. I wanted a dalek for my desk at work. |  |
I ran the shirt back up to my room. When I got back, Kevin was setting up the table (which meant he pulled back the drape from the newsletters and fanzines and set up the money box). He presented me with a couple of buttons of Sarah Jane and the Third Doctor. Then we settled down to work, but business was slow. However we worked out a system of marking off inventory as we sold things, and I would straighten out the bills after each sale. And there was certainly plenty of local color.
 | One thing I saw that I really wanted was a cardboard stand-up of the Third Doctor at one of the fanclub tables. I had never seen one of him before. I ran over to Gene's table to ask Gene if he had one. Gene laughed and told me no, even though such standups of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) can still be found, the Third Doctor stand-ups are extremely rare. Such an item would be worth a lot to a collector. Gene told me he had one in his own collection, but he would never sell it.
I hoped maybe the gentleman who owned this one would not be as possessive. I went to the table and told him about my website (Always the Third Doctor). I asked him if he would sell the stand-up to me, but he said no. I reconnoitered to Gene's table to see if I could get something worth trading for it. I went back to him and asked if he would trade it for a Fourth Doctor stand-up, but he said no. My wheeling and dealing was starting to annoy him, so I said okay and let it go. But I felt regret. |
You do see all kinds at a sci-fi convention, and I am one of them, so I ought not point fingers too much. But the corker was a a fat, bald, middle-aged guy, wearing black platform shoes that laced up his shins, a black mini-skirt, black netting over a black leather corset (laced up so tightly it made his chest look like female breasts), with devil horns sprouting from the top of his forehead, and a silver prong coming up from the center of his head. He entered as naturally as though he were wearing jeans. I clutched Kevin's arm and almost climbed into his lap when I saw this guy.
Fortunately, the guy moved quickly. Unfortunately, he was also wearing a thong, and his mini-skirt was so low you could see the thong in his butt-crack.
Kevin has an incredibly deep voice, and he prefers to use a monotone. As the guy went past us, Kevin caught sight of the thong and slowly said in his dead pan, non-inflected way, "Now that's an image I wish I hadn't seen."
I was certain the guy was violating some decency law or other. But even though a lot of people snickered outright as he went by and a few shot knowing looks back and forth, he was not accosted or harassed.
 | At 11:00 we closed down to go hear Terry Molloy in the main room. I had chatted with him the night before at the Insiders party, and he'd been engaging to talk to, though we had barely touched on Doctor Who. He's a pretty well known actor in the UK, performing radio work (which is far more abundant over there than here in the USA). But for Doctor Who fans, he is the third person to play the evil Davros, creator of the feared Daleks. Apparently, playing Davros is pretty intense, as the actor has to wear a full rubber mask and be encased in an enclosed "cab" from the waist down. The cab is supposed to be a mechanized, enclosed sort of wheelchair for Davros, but of course it is actually just a heavy, covered frame. It sits on rollers not visible to the television viewer, and the actor moves it forward on his toes. |
Terry Molloy gave a great discussion: organized, clear, enthusiastic, and packed with information. He explained a lot of the technical methods at work in any story that includes Davros. He also filled us in on the backstage high-jinks and mishaps that he's experienced. He was charismatic and professional. In fact, by the end of the weekend, I came away deeply impressed by his vast experience (of which Davros is actually only a small part) and very high professionalism.
| Next, Lis Sladen came on with her personal assistant, Andrew, who interviewed her. She took questions from the audience as well. She spoke articulately and thoughtfully. I can't say I heard anything I had not already read in the interviews of her (or heard in accounts of her from others). After all, I was helping Kevin run the Elisabeth Sladen Information Network table. We had 20 newsletters filled with information about her spread out before us.
She hasn't done a US con in over 10 years, so her session was mostly a catch up for fans who lost touch with her. Besides, I'd asked my questions of her the night before at the party. The fans were charmed with her (of course!). |  |
After her panel, Kevin and I went back to the table to sell. We took a break in the mid-afternoon to snatch up lunch in the hotel's pub---chicken strips for me while Kevin had fish and chips.
Then shortly before 5:00 I went back to the main room to line up for autographs. Marina Sirtis was still speaking, and I got there in time to hear her trash her co-stars from Star Trek and the Trek movie. I was shocked and disgusted, and so were the two guys who sat behind me. Some of the fans laughed right along with her, but as a person who has survived the gossip and character assassination of an abusive work place, I found it right on the edge of horrific. The one nice thing was that though she spoke well of nobody, it seemed from her side references that Patrick Stewart is a man of integrity and sterling professional behavior. Not that she respects this.
She went about five minutes over and then left. We were marshaled into the autograph line by badge number (in lots of about 20). I'd purchased a terrific color photo of Sarah Jane and the Third Doctor. They called for my section and I was ushered first through the door to join the line that formed up a long hallway where the celebs sat at tables on one side. As I bounded past one of the pillars I saw the end of the line. There was a hugely fat blue guy ahead of me. No kidding. All blue: his face, his hands, everything. He wore a white stocking cap. He looked hideous, and as he saw me bound forward, his face broke into a delighted grin of welcome. Oh no! Yes indeed, he really wanted to have a chat with me.
To my surprise, a big good-looking guy ambled right between us like he didn't know where he was going. He touched my shoulder and with one glance told me to let him handle this. The blue guy started to draw him into conversation, and the good-looking guy had to put his back to me to answer him. He said something I didn't catch. But then for some reason the blue guy nodded abruptly, smiled even more widely, and hurriedly moved forward. The handsome guy let him get a few paces ahead of us and then we followed.
"Thank you!" I exclaimed softly. And I glanced around him. "Thank you so much!"
He tapped my shoulder and pointed to his ears. "I am hearing impaired," he said in that airless voice of severely hearing impaired people. "I have to read your lips."
"Oh!" I exclaimed. I looked him full in the face. "Thank you," I said again.
Then I asked, without using my voice at all, as it didn't matter, "Why is he blue?"
"Smurf," he said, and a faint smile flickered across his face.
Great horny toads! Pappa Smurf, Mamma Smurf, and Godzilla Smurf. But that's what the blue guy was: white pants, blue shirt, blue skin, white cap---a smurf.
My rescuer pointed at my notebook, where I had intended to write in my journal as I stood in line. "Are you writing a story?" he asked.
"A web log," I told him. He wasn't familiar with the term, and I didn't pursue it. We chatted very amiably about small matters. Then I asked him if I could ask about his hearing loss, and he said yes. So I asked how he had learned to read lips so well. He told me that he had learned lip reading first, before sign language. And yes, he told me, he had been born severely hearing impaired. With hearing aids in place, (which he showed me), he had some slight hearing. Without them, he is totally deaf. He works a full time job for the post office.
 | Regrettably, Doctor Who is not close captioned in the USA, so he had never watched it. I thought this a truly tragic loss. By then we had gotten up to Terry Molloy, and Terry actually signed a few words to him and told him that the series is close captioned in Britain but not here in the USA. My respect for him went up another notch. (After the autograph session, in fact, I went to Terry's table and bought a CD of the audio adventure DAVROS from him. I also had our picture taken together.) |
We got to Lis Sladen next, and she remembered me from the party and greeted me warmly. My autograph friend liked all the sci-fi shows that were close-captioned, he told me. I noticed he especially liked the ones with pretty girls. But after we'd said goodbye and I thanked him again, I was really sobered. To be honest, he'd re-introduced me to the idea of living in silence and missing the majority of stories that are told or dramatized. They all hinge on sound. And fandom is also built on sound: audio adventures, guest panels, chatting, doing skits and parodies. And there are never any services for the hearing impaired at the cons.
| I had to hurry back to Kevin. Sales at the table had been minimal, but we did some business, especially around autograph time, as we had a few pictures of Lis to sell, smaller ones, for the most part. We had a good time together. Kevin told me I talk to everybody. First I thought he was teasing me, but he told me he thought he got too caught up in where he was going or what he was doing. So I realized it was a compliment. I like those a lot. I started a running joke about the two of us being the Table Lord and his companion. We got along very well and I really had a better time at the convention by having a good con buddy. |  |
Sunday
Sunday morning I went to the breakfast, which started about 40 minutes late. After NOT getting Lis Sladen at our table the night before, the Lis fans staked out a table for ourselves and made sure everybody knew this was her table. She and Andrew came in after we were all seated and joined us. She looked great but said she was tired from jet lag catching up with her.
We laughed about the guy in the corset and horns and the talk stayed pretty light. I commented on the outstanding professionalism that the Doctor Who actors always show at the conventions and asked if over in England they take classes on professionalism when they train. She burst out laughing. Andrew, her personal assistant, said no. He explained that Doctor Who comes from an older generation and joining the cast is really like joining an ongoing tradition that has its values in place.
Everybody was tucking in to the bacon and eggs (except me; I can't digest bacon or eggs). There were breakfast potatoes, which I had, and pastries and croissants. The coffee was also great, and Andrew and I kept passing the pot back and forth to each other.
I had to duck out early to get in line for a photo with Liz. Kevin wanted to meet a friend in the city, so I needed to get back to the dealer's table as soon as possible to relieve him. And the way to do that was to get at the front of the line. And the only way to do that was to be there first.
After a few minutes, which I spent editing a manuscript, Lis and Andrew rushed inside the photo room. After another few minutes, as the line began to form behind me, they opened the door to start. I rushed in, got into position next to Lis, bent my knees as far as they could go without being too obvious (as she is REALLY short), and posed.
We got the picture taken and as the next guy in line was still coming in, I turned and took her hand and told her thank you. Kevin had told me that when she'd had a convention lined up after 9/11 she had canceled from concern over the safety of flying. So I told her I would pray for her to have a safe trip home. She brightened up and thanked me. But she said she would see me later, at the dealer table.
I ran down and relieved Kevin, then ran the table for the next few hours. At about five until two, Lis came down, but Kevin was gone, so she said she would try to get back later. She had two hours of singing autographs ahead of her. Not long after, I took my lunch break and used the time to use the hotel's free computer to write up a report on the Chinese year of her daughter's birth, as she had been very interested in that. When I got back to the table, I saw Andrew scouting the dealer tables for bargains, so I gave him the report and asked him to give it to Lis.
To my complete and utter amazement, the fellow from the Knights fan club table came up to me. He had a friend with him. He also had the Third Doctor stand-up that I had wanted to much. "This guy's my friend," he told me. "And he's got a stand-up of the Third Doctor that he said I could have. So I want to give you this."
I stood up, amazed. "You're giving it to me?"
He nodded. "Yeah, because you really wanted it. So you can have it." I was floored at his offhand generosity. A hardcore Doctor Who fan would have paid for it. (In fact, I would have paid for it.) But I didn't want to insult him by offering money now that he had so clearly stated it was a gift, just becuase I like the Third Doctor so much.
Then later, as I rushed out to put my loot in my room, I ran into Lis again. I told her I'd given the report to Andrew, and she brightened up. "Oh, I wanted to ask you if you would write something. Thank you," she said. She had some questions about the stars, but I didn't have enough information from her to give her an answer. She was hesitant about revealing anything of her real life to me, and I told her she should maintain a safety zone of her privacy. Having to maintain a private life shielded from her public life is a fact of life for her, and she has to feel safe. I told her that I agree with this for her. (As a martial artist, I would because I view her life as one of "exposure".)
I wanted to explain to her that the real purpose of looking at the stars is to see the handiwork of God, and she is His handiwork. But for once I got tied up in my words and didn't say it clearly. But I did tell her that God in mercy laid out the heavens. And God has mercy for her. She suddenly took my hand. "You know, I see in your eyes that you've been through a lot," she said suddenly. The remark caught me off guard. "And in your voice, that you're strong. You have a strong voice. You've been through a lot, and you have confidence."
Her remarks halted me. I was so surprised that I didn't catch the rest of her sentence. I think she told me I have strong eyes---like a direct gaze. I just found myself looking at her, a human being like me, who felt a certain weight because something she had done merely for a living had been a comfort for another human being.
"Well, I serve a good God," I told her. And then because suddenly we were really talking to each other and it was only going to last until the next person tugged on her sleeve or tapped her shoulder, I told her that I'd posted a book on the web, and now it had sold and it's been nominated for an award, and I don't know how to promote it or if I should. I dread the very idea. "But this is easy," she said. "This is nothing."
"For you," I agreed. "And you're good at it, but I don't know how to be the real me to a lot of people. I deal with people one at a time."
She gave me a very wise answer, which I am not going to write here. But it was so wise that I knew I am not ready to do what she does to promote my book or any book, not yet. And that's okay. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. All of those people: Lis Sladen, Terry Molloy, Erin Gray, they have acquired skills to promote what they've done. But I don't have those skills and I won't pretend I do.
But after she said that, I told her that I believe it was God's mercy that had me see Doctor Who that first day. And I know that's unusual to say or believe. And people in Bible college were annoyed when I would say it. "All mercy is God's mercy," I told her. "And God gives us mercy."
She was holding onto my hand (and I to hers) like swimmers do, as though in a moment the eddies of our different lives would take us back to our different places. But for one moment I saw the person on whom God is willing to bestow mercy, the person (one of them) that He used to keep me hopeful as a young person that there was more to life than a brutal father and adulterous mother. I just looked down at her, because I had to. Because God did this. He made her, just like He made me. And to her credit as a gracious person, when I looked at her, for a moment both the 12 year old again and myself, she didn't leave or walk away or anything. She just looked back up at me so that I could sort it out for a moment.
Then somebody tapped her, and she had to hurry to the next thing. I told her I would be praying for her to have a safe trip, and to take care of herself.
It had been a great convention, a real event for me. And later, after I had packed up and cleaned up and was lying in bed, I thought about that moment of seeing somebody as a human being, and realizing that she also suddenly saw through the veils we create, and she saw me, a human being, a person made by God. Mercy, where it comes and whatever vehicle it uses, always comes to us from God.
Sunday morning I went to the breakfast, which started about 40 minutes late. After NOT getting Lis Sladen at our table the night before, the Lis fans staked out a table for ourselves and made sure everybody knew this was her table. She and Andrew came in after we were all seated and joined us. She looked great but said she was tired from jet lag catching up with her.
We laughed about the guy in the corset and horns and the talk stayed pretty light. I commented on the outstanding professionalism that the Doctor Who actors always show at the conventions and asked if over in England they take classes on professionalism when they train. She burst out laughing. Andrew, her personal assistant, said no. He explained that Doctor Who comes from an older generation and joining the cast is really like joining an ongoing tradition that has its values in place.
 | The topic turned back to the series, and I was amazed that Lis did not remember the very charming and sweet beginning to DEATH TO THE DALEKS, in which the Third Doctor and Liz are assembling a beach ball, beach umbrella, water wings, etc., for a day at a beach on a distant planet. I think it's one of the best beginnings of any of the stories in the series. She wasn't quite keen on the story itself, but the memory of that first scene had completely escaped her, and Kevin and I told it back to her. |
| The happy prospects of a grand day out are extinguished when the TARDIS completely loses power, and they have to figure out a way to get the doors open and get out in order to explore. At that point, of course, the real story begins, but the intro reminds me of the Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs tunnels out to the middle of no where and pops out of his hole clad in a swimsuit and sunglasses only to find himself in the middle of a desert. |  |
Everybody was tucking in to the bacon and eggs (except me; I can't digest bacon or eggs). There were breakfast potatoes, which I had, and pastries and croissants. The coffee was also great, and Andrew and I kept passing the pot back and forth to each other.
I had to duck out early to get in line for a photo with Liz. Kevin wanted to meet a friend in the city, so I needed to get back to the dealer's table as soon as possible to relieve him. And the way to do that was to get at the front of the line. And the only way to do that was to be there first.
After a few minutes, which I spent editing a manuscript, Lis and Andrew rushed inside the photo room. After another few minutes, as the line began to form behind me, they opened the door to start. I rushed in, got into position next to Lis, bent my knees as far as they could go without being too obvious (as she is REALLY short), and posed.
We got the picture taken and as the next guy in line was still coming in, I turned and took her hand and told her thank you. Kevin had told me that when she'd had a convention lined up after 9/11 she had canceled from concern over the safety of flying. So I told her I would pray for her to have a safe trip home. She brightened up and thanked me. But she said she would see me later, at the dealer table.
I ran down and relieved Kevin, then ran the table for the next few hours. At about five until two, Lis came down, but Kevin was gone, so she said she would try to get back later. She had two hours of singing autographs ahead of her. Not long after, I took my lunch break and used the time to use the hotel's free computer to write up a report on the Chinese year of her daughter's birth, as she had been very interested in that. When I got back to the table, I saw Andrew scouting the dealer tables for bargains, so I gave him the report and asked him to give it to Lis.
 | I ran down to Gene's table while keeping an eye on my own and asked Gene how he'd done. We chatted for several minutes. At Chicago TARDIS Gene is always on the run, always busy. So it was nice just to chat with him. Overall, the convention had not seen the attendance that we would have liked. But this was the first spring convention for the United Fan Con group. Normally UFC has just one con a year, and that's held in early November. We could hope for better things. Next year, when the new Doctor Who series starts, everything may change drastically---for better, and perhaps in some ways for worse as the series may go headlong into marketing. I bought a talking dalek from Gene for my desk at work and ran back my own table. |
To my complete and utter amazement, the fellow from the Knights fan club table came up to me. He had a friend with him. He also had the Third Doctor stand-up that I had wanted to much. "This guy's my friend," he told me. "And he's got a stand-up of the Third Doctor that he said I could have. So I want to give you this."
I stood up, amazed. "You're giving it to me?"
He nodded. "Yeah, because you really wanted it. So you can have it." I was floored at his offhand generosity. A hardcore Doctor Who fan would have paid for it. (In fact, I would have paid for it.) But I didn't want to insult him by offering money now that he had so clearly stated it was a gift, just becuase I like the Third Doctor so much.
| I did the best I could. "Look," I told him. "I'm a writer. With a published book. It's up for a big award in Christian publishing. I knwo it's not the type of book most people here are interested in, but how about if I send you a signed copy? Then if it wins, you'd have a signed first edition." I shrugged. "That's the best I can give you."
"Sure," he said. He handed me a fan club newsletter with his address on it. I thanked him again. What kindness he'd showed, and to a stranger. He walked away. I stared at the little stand up in wonder. The Third Doctor grinned back at me, one hand pointing at me and the other open and outstretched towards the universe: an invitation to come and see more than I had ever seen before. |  |
Then later, as I rushed out to put my loot in my room, I ran into Lis again. I told her I'd given the report to Andrew, and she brightened up. "Oh, I wanted to ask you if you would write something. Thank you," she said. She had some questions about the stars, but I didn't have enough information from her to give her an answer. She was hesitant about revealing anything of her real life to me, and I told her she should maintain a safety zone of her privacy. Having to maintain a private life shielded from her public life is a fact of life for her, and she has to feel safe. I told her that I agree with this for her. (As a martial artist, I would because I view her life as one of "exposure".)
I wanted to explain to her that the real purpose of looking at the stars is to see the handiwork of God, and she is His handiwork. But for once I got tied up in my words and didn't say it clearly. But I did tell her that God in mercy laid out the heavens. And God has mercy for her. She suddenly took my hand. "You know, I see in your eyes that you've been through a lot," she said suddenly. The remark caught me off guard. "And in your voice, that you're strong. You have a strong voice. You've been through a lot, and you have confidence."
Her remarks halted me. I was so surprised that I didn't catch the rest of her sentence. I think she told me I have strong eyes---like a direct gaze. I just found myself looking at her, a human being like me, who felt a certain weight because something she had done merely for a living had been a comfort for another human being.
"Well, I serve a good God," I told her. And then because suddenly we were really talking to each other and it was only going to last until the next person tugged on her sleeve or tapped her shoulder, I told her that I'd posted a book on the web, and now it had sold and it's been nominated for an award, and I don't know how to promote it or if I should. I dread the very idea. "But this is easy," she said. "This is nothing."
"For you," I agreed. "And you're good at it, but I don't know how to be the real me to a lot of people. I deal with people one at a time."
She gave me a very wise answer, which I am not going to write here. But it was so wise that I knew I am not ready to do what she does to promote my book or any book, not yet. And that's okay. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. All of those people: Lis Sladen, Terry Molloy, Erin Gray, they have acquired skills to promote what they've done. But I don't have those skills and I won't pretend I do.
But after she said that, I told her that I believe it was God's mercy that had me see Doctor Who that first day. And I know that's unusual to say or believe. And people in Bible college were annoyed when I would say it. "All mercy is God's mercy," I told her. "And God gives us mercy."
She was holding onto my hand (and I to hers) like swimmers do, as though in a moment the eddies of our different lives would take us back to our different places. But for one moment I saw the person on whom God is willing to bestow mercy, the person (one of them) that He used to keep me hopeful as a young person that there was more to life than a brutal father and adulterous mother. I just looked down at her, because I had to. Because God did this. He made her, just like He made me. And to her credit as a gracious person, when I looked at her, for a moment both the 12 year old again and myself, she didn't leave or walk away or anything. She just looked back up at me so that I could sort it out for a moment.
Then somebody tapped her, and she had to hurry to the next thing. I told her I would be praying for her to have a safe trip, and to take care of herself.
 | Kevin came back soon, and I told him she had come down but missed him. The day was wrapping up, winding down. Lis had the last panel, and this one was more spontaneous than the first had been. There were a lot more questions from the audience, and we were able to sit closer: everybody moved up into Reserved Seating. She was able to talk more about herself and her wider background in theater, so the topics were a bit fresher. But I was winding down too.
After the panel, I helped Kevin as much as he would let me, and after everything was packed up we wandered around for a bit. I was fading fast, with a four a.m. morning ahead of me. So we said good night and good bye (as I would be traveling back by myself). |
It had been a great convention, a real event for me. And later, after I had packed up and cleaned up and was lying in bed, I thought about that moment of seeing somebody as a human being, and realizing that she also suddenly saw through the veils we create, and she saw me, a human being, a person made by God. Mercy, where it comes and whatever vehicle it uses, always comes to us from God.
Back at the Office: DALEK vs. NUN
I got back to my office on Tuesday. My co-workers were interested in the talking black dalek I brought back with me as a desk ornament. They have never heard of Doctor Who. So I explained to them that the daleks, in spite of an inability to go up steps, are the most evil, ruthless, and powerful creatures in the cosmos.
Carol, the woman who sits in the cube across the way, wasn't sure about this. She has a toy marching nun on her desk, and she had always thought that nuns were pretty powerful in their own right. So we put the Dalek against the Nun, and this is what happened:
I got back to my office on Tuesday. My co-workers were interested in the talking black dalek I brought back with me as a desk ornament. They have never heard of Doctor Who. So I explained to them that the daleks, in spite of an inability to go up steps, are the most evil, ruthless, and powerful creatures in the cosmos.
Carol, the woman who sits in the cube across the way, wasn't sure about this. She has a toy marching nun on her desk, and she had always thought that nuns were pretty powerful in their own right. So we put the Dalek against the Nun, and this is what happened:
 |  |  |
 | ||
 | Death and Chocolate, Episode Six
by Jeri Massi Episode Five Episode Four Episode Three Episode Two Episode One |
As Mr. Evans removed the reel of film from the machine and turned it round to take up the leader tape, he continued to talk about Jack Highlers. The training film had acted as a tonic to him, animating him to talk about his beloved chief financial officer. Sarah Jane didn’t interrupt.
"You see it's all in determination, Miss Smith," he said. "And a good company like this one requires loyalty. That's a virtue that's become quite temporary out in the world---"
"Out in the world?" she asked.
He waved a hand outward, indicating everything away from Royalty House. "Where people are weak, self-serving, self centered----"
"But surely the selling of anything requires a certain degree of self centeredness," she said. "Or at least, self interest."
"No, that's precisely my point." He slipped the reel into the canister and sealed the lid over it. "That's why corporations come and go. Strength of character comes from working for the common good. Do you have any idea of what this company has been able to do for the St. Nicholas hospital?" he asked. "Donations from Jack Highlers practically built that place---a model of health care for underprivileged children. And how did Mr. Highlers achieve so much good?"
She had lost the point. But he filled in the answer for her. "By the determination and loyalty of the Royalty House sales force. We never quit. You heard him say that on the film."
"Yes," she said. "And yet, well, you’re not in sales any more, Mr. Evans."
"Ah! Promoted," he said. "I have people skills. I have managerial qualities--"
"And so you were made a tour guide?"
He missed the irony in the question. "Giving tours is only a fraction of my duties, Miss Smith. I dispense training materials and offer counseling to our sales people."
He mails out the film canisters and fills out the training records, she thought. He was, in short, a clerk.
"And does your wife work here as well?" she asked.
"Oh yes, she is a technician on the processing floor. Quite skilled."
"And what does the rest of your family think of this place?"
His eyes became sober. "My family originally supported my enthusiasm for working here," he said. "I was a directionless young man. Jack Highlers worked a great change in me. Made me see all the good I can do. At first they were quite impressed. I even persuaded my sister to join the sales force---"
"And has she been as successful as you?"
"No she has not." He clipped the words.
She made her voice sympathetic. "What a shame. I wonder---well, I wonder why not."
"Because she failed to develop her character. She wanted a soft life, a self centered life of making money. Get herself a flat of her own, have boyfriends over, spend weekend nights at the cinema---"
"Is she happy?"
"I have no idea if my sister Victoria is happy or not, Miss Smith. She has a flat in London, just as she had wished, and she works as a secretary for some electronics firm----"
"Not Sparks Limited?"
"No, the other one, General Industries." He let out a breath as a sound of contempt. "Grand name, isn’t it? I assure you, Royalty House Chocolates takes in more profit in one day than General Industries makes in a year. It's a silly little business that's found a niche and won't grow any further. Working there is just a job for her and everybody else in there. No future!"
* * * *
"What are you doing back there?" Jack Highlers demanded. He had two uniformed men with him: personal security.
"We're looking at your secret room, Mr. Highlers," the Doctor said. "Or should I say, secret lab?"
"It's a sample room, sir. For quality control, such as any processing executive might have close at hand. Come out of there!"
The Doctor and Brigadier withdrew. Highlers strode to the back wall and slid the door back into position. It slipped back into the wall and closed seamlessly.
"Mr. Highlers, this is the Doctor," the Brigadier began.
"I know who he is!" Highlers barked.
"And how do you know that?" the Doctor asked. "Get a report from the two men who tried to brain me last night?"
"I don’t know what you’re talking about. Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, you have abused your authority here. I want you off these premises immediately, and take this man with you!"
The two security guards stepped forward.
"Mr. Highlers, we do have the matter of a graveyard of children suddenly appearing on these grounds," the Brigadier said.
"Then you will confine yourself to that strip of trees along the right of way!" Highlers snapped. "But you are not welcome in these buildings. Now get out of here! Tell your friend here to pack his things and go!" He threw a nod to the two uniformed men. "My men will see you to your vehicles!"
* * * *
Sarah Jane, having finished with her tour, zipped up her suitcase and surveyed her room for any item she may have overlooked in packing up. She strode out to the front room and picked up the telephone receiver. She gave her room number and asked for a porter to come and take her bags.
As she cradled the receiver, she sensed a motion behind her and turned. Dave Highlers stood in the doorway to the Doctor's half-suite.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded.
"I have keys to everything," he told her. "After all, I'm Dave Highlers."
"There's a porter on his way up here right now!" Her voice was frightened and defiant.
He smiled and made no move to come closer. "I'm not here to hurt you, Miss Smith. Did you get the box of the exclusive line of chocolates I left for you?"
"Yes."
He glanced around the room and noted the empty glass dishes. "Yes, you've emptied out the less exclusive stuff. Shows good foresight, but the exclusive chocolates are better." Then he looked at her, his eyes large and calm. "When will you be back?"
"I'm not coming back."
"Oh yes," and he nodded, unoffended. "You'll want to come back. And when you do, you'll need to see me." He withdrew a chit of paper from his shirt pocket. "Here's my contact information. Don't lose it."
He stepped up to her and would have pushed the note down into the breast pocket of her blazer, but her hand stopped him. Her eyes blazed. "Don’t touch me!"
He stopped and fixed his eyes on her for a long moment. Sarah Jane swallowed and slowly withdrew her hand. But then he seized it with his other hand and turned it palm up. He inspected it for a moment. "You're shaking already."
Then he released her and fixed his eyes on her. She lowered her hand. But she kept her eyes on his.
"Good," he said. "You’re starting to come around." He pushed the note down into the pocket of the blazer. She didn’t move at the overly familiar touch, but she tensed with stone-like rigidity. "You have several things to learn yet," he said. "You're like the hard little beans that the harvesters bring in for processing. There's a lot of bitterness and acid still in there. Resistance."
He put his arm around her shoulders as though to draw her in, but she remained rigid. He didn’t struggle with her but brought his face close to hers. "Listen to me, Sarah Jane Smith. Do you hear me?"
"Yes," she said.
"There are some hard truths I'll grind into you before I bring you to my craft table. You're not intelligent. And you’re not pretty. And you're not really anything except what is given to you. Do you understand?"
"No," she said quietly, her voice subdued and yet adamant.
"I know all about you. You became a journalist because your aunt got you in a good berth. And you’re the prize of that old man's eye because he's an old man who needs a young girl for his vanity. But you're going to find out that you're nothing. And that's for the best." He held her, eye to eye, his lips at her lips.
"No it isn't," she said.
"Yes, and you'll know it soon. I'm going to put you through the necessary process to make you something. I'm going to make you suffer, and I'll force all the resistance and bitterness and acid out of you. And when you're reduced to nothing and know it, I'll make you what I say you will be. I'll give you sweetness or beauty, or nothing at all, as I see fit."
"No," she whispered.
"You'll come to me and beg me for it. There's nothing special about you. You’re just a woman. And when you’re ready for the next step in the processing, you come find me. That note will get you to me." And then he leaned closer as though to kiss her. "I'm going to make you suffer, Sarah Jane." She didn’t move, but he thought better of it and let her go. A knocking on the door told her that the porter had come. Highlers opened the door, nodded at the young man who came in to get her bags, and strode out.
* * * *
"Actually, I'm sure we've been thrown out of much nicer places than Royalty House," the Doctor said as he and the Brigadier sat down to plates of country ham and slices of pale cheese at the small pub they'd found.
"Not over anything as ridiculous as an empty and cleaned out old sample room!" the Brigadier barked. "It was madness to let you in there with me. Highlers had a perfect right to throw us out!"
"Oh? And you think he would have opened up that secret door for us at our request?" the Doctor asked. "Tell me, why would a sample room, a quality testing room if you like, for chocolate samples require a blood spinning machine and several powerful microscopes?"
The Brigadier was already doggedly working his way through the enormous slice of ham before him with the doggedness of a man who has had a bad morning and believes that food will comfort him. He glanced up. "I don’t know. To check for allergies, maybe?"
"Maybe. Maybe something very like allergies but not quite allergies."
"Some people are severely allergic to chocolates, Doctor. May be necessary."
"Not if they were doing quality testing," the Doctor said. "Safety and allergy testing of foods are done when a new product is being introduced. At the start. But sample testing---or quality testing, as it's sometimes called----is not meant to bio-analyze foods. It's meant to assure that retail product samples meet the manufacturing requirements for taste, purity, appeal, etcetera. You check the taste, texture, and purity of the end product."
"I don’t follow."
"A business executive who insists on his own sample testing lab does so because he personally assures that his workers are following all the processing specifications: conching sufficiently, keeping temperatures at the mandated levels, observing sanitary conditions, like that."
Lethbridge Stewart nodded, still chewing. It was good ham. He swallowed and said, "So a sample lab wouldn’t need equipment to run on human beings, like blood spinning machines and those small tubes we saw."
"Precisely." At last remembering to eat, the Doctor started in on his own meal.
"Well what do you think?" the Brigadier asked.
"The lab we found hadn’t been used in a while----"
"Perhaps it was once part of an initial testing process for allergens, but Highlers doesn’t want us to know how they develop chocolate products. Would it matter? It's abandoned, after all."
"Well, the room was fully equipped with shelves of blood work tubes, gloves, cotton sponges and swabs, antiseptic wipes. It's in a scrubbed and ready state," the Doctor said. "Not being used at the moment, but not abandoned, Brigadier. It's in a state of readiness. Waiting."
Lethbridge Stewart cocked an eyebrow. "Waiting for what?"
The Doctor shook his head. "I don’t know."
* * * *
"Miss Smith, the Brig wanted me to make sure you got away safely," Warrant Officer Benton said as he approached the Doctor's gleaming yellow roadster. Sarah Jane was just climbing in. He offered her his hand to help her.
Startled, she looked down at his hand and then at him. And then she rested her hand in his and climbed in. He closed the door for her.
"You all right, Miss?"
"Yes, a bit shaken---" She forced her voice to sound more steady, but the trembling quality in it did not escape him. "I was a bit sick," she said hurriedly. "Probably too much to eat and drink---all those chocolates."
"Are you certain that you're well enough to dr---" He stopped himself. "Are you crying, Miss?"
"No!" she exclaimed and looked straight at him, but two tears gave her away as she met his eye. "Not at all, Mr. Benton. I'm not crying."
His eyes became concerned and alarmed. "You certainly are crying! Has something happened to you?"
And Benton put his foot on the running board as she started the engine. Bessy roared into life.
"Did that Dave Highlers do anything to you?" he asked.
"No---don’t be ridiculous. Just leave him alone." And she stepped on the accelerator, giving him just enough time to step back. She roared away in the Edwardian auto. The wind in the open car whipped her hat off her head, but she didn't stop to retrieve it.
Benton watched the car as she hurtled toward the entrance gate and passed through. He walked up to the hat where it had rolled to the side of the paving and picked it up.
* * * *
"Back to UNIT HQ?" the Brigadier asked as he and the Doctor strolled to the waiting UNIT staff car. "Or back to the pathologist?"
"The pathologist, I think," the Doctor said. "That information about the incidence of strokes shooting up once Highlers and company got here. That's interesting."
"This brings us back to the question of the two suicides," the Brigadier said. "Is there a link to the chocolates, or isn’t there?"
The Doctor leaned against the warm hood of the black car and rested his chin in his hand for a moment, his eyes thoughtful. "I couldn't find anything wrong with the chocolates found in their rooms," he said. "Well, the one fellow had only opened the box and not eaten any before he did himself in. There's no link to say that either of them ate a Royalty House chocolate and was thereby caused to destroy himself."
"Could there have been some sort of hallucinogenic powder or spray that hit them when they opened the boxes?" the Brigadier asked. "Something in the actual box of chocolates that was a mechanism, rather than in the chocolates themselves?"
"I can test for that, but if that's true, then you may be dealing with a killer who simply hijacks parcels going to wealthy investors and doctors them to release some type of agent when they are opened. We would have no direct link to Royalty House."
"Yet you don’t trust Royalty House," the Brigadier said.
"No, I do not." The timelord glanced at him.
"What are your reasons?"
"That secret lab for one thing. The absolutely beastly behavior of Dave Highlers for another---"
"I told you, his father---"
The Doctor's piercing eyes arrested the Brigadier's protests. "Do you really think Jack Highlers is taken by surprise by such beastliness from his son, Brigadier?"
The Brigadier was caught off guard.
"Don’t measure Jack Highlers by your yardstick of personal decency," the Doctor told him. "Jack Highlers took a man's wife from him, and when he got tired of her, he exiled her out to some remote cottage. Do you really think he had no idea until today what kind of bounder his son is?"
"Well he seemed quite sincere, but then, the best liars always do."
"Everything about him strikes me as a lie," the Doctor said. "The rags to riches story, the front of quality he puts forward---everything."
At a familiar sound, they both looked up. Bessy, the Doctor's bright yellow roadster, was speeding down the narrow lane towards the pub.
"That must be Sarah Jane," the Doctor said. "Let's check in with her." They strolled from the staff car to the side of the lane. But Bessy hurtled onward. The Doctor had one glimpse of Sarah Jane's face, her eyes large and frightened and yet set with some fixed purpose of her own, and then the car passed them and was soon a mere dot down the long lane.
"I don’t think she even saw us," the Brigadier said. "Do you think she's all right?"
"I don’t know. Come on, let's see what the pathologist has found. And then there is someplace else we should check."
They strode around to either side of the car as the Brigadier's driver, a corporal named Sanders, quickly exited the front seat and opened the door for the Brigadier.
"Where is that?" the Brigadier asked.
"Jack Highlers' number one charity, the hospital for children---St. Nicholas."
* * * *
By the time that Sarah Jane reached one of the many crowded suburban areas outside London, the afternoon was past its height. In an ordinary car, of course, she would never have made such good time. But in spite of the comparatively shorter drive in Bessy, she felt weary and windblown. She stopped in at a chemist's shop to purchase aspirin, and in the restroom she combed her hair and freshened her make-up. From the pay phone out front, she checked with her stringer and jotted down a number. Then she placed another call, spoke for a few moments, and hung up.
Twenty minutes later, she presented herself at the front door of the flat of Victoria Evans, sister of her tour guide from Royalty House.
"I do want thank you for seeing me, Miss Evans," Sarah Jane said in her best journalism interview voice.
"Not at all, do come in," and Victoria Evans ushered her inside a small but elegant and tastefully arranged flat. It was not, Sarah Jane thought, an expensively furnished flat. But it was tasteful: beautiful. Only on close inspection did one realize that the furniture and accents were all quite ordinary.
"I suppose that my poor brother has not been speaking highly of me," she said as she followed Sarah Jane to a matching sofa and chair. She gestured that Sarah should sit on the sofa.
As Sarah did, the other woman gestured at a tea arrangement.
Sarah shook her head. "No, I couldn't, but you go ahead."
"Well, I will, then. Talking about Harbor Chocolates---or Royalty House, as it's called now---requires a certain strength of nerve," she said. She sat in the chair and poured a cup of tea for herself. She was thirtyish, Sarah Jane thought, perhaps a year or two older than that.
"Your brother did express rather sharp disappointment in your decision to leave the sales force, Miss Evans," Sarah said.
She let out a snort. A real snort of derision. "Sales force? I work for a sales force now, Miss Smith, and do well enough. Royalty House has never had a sales force. They have a stable of slaves. A very large stable and quite a lot of slaves."
Sarah Jane pulled out her notebook and started writing.
"There's a fellow you should talk to---Ischink," she said. "He wrote a book about it---"
"Yes, we've spoken briefly, but Mr. Ischink actually rose pretty quickly in the ranks. I wanted to speak to somebody with more experience on the front line----"
"Yes, the infantry. The disposable force. Well, I was, for just over two years. You can't earn enough to live on the Highlers commissions. And he creates such an atmosphere of dedication: loyalty and determination. That was our motto. Loyalty and determination."
"But some people do get ahead---"
"Men," she said briefly. "Men are selected at times for higher level positions. Their wives go with them of course and get staff jobs as well. But don’t let the magnificence of the main house of the headquarters fool you. The housing for the staff is wretched: small, cramped studio flats where some of the people even have to share washrooms on a common hall."
Sarah Jane was writing steadily. "You say men are treated with preference---"
"Treated with preference? Miss Smith, let me show you something."
She stood and walked out, down the flat's short hallway. Sarah Jane heard a closet door open, and Victoria Evans returned with a large pasteboard box. Sarah pushed the tea things aside, and her hostess set the box down on the coffee table.
"Here it is, right on top." And Victoria Evans handed a large blue notebook to Sarah Jane. The young journalist flipped it open.
"Looks like a dress code," Sarah Jane murmured. "Quite extensive."
She nodded and said, "Women were required to wear knee length skirts, nylons, full slips, padded bras, plain shirting materials with no design on the front and with coverage for our shoulders, no cleavage showing, no jewelry on bare skin, pale lipstick only, no eye makeup---shall I go on?"
Sarah scanned the list of regulations. "No shoes with open backs," she read. "It does seem quite extensive---"
"And this was not just when we were selling chocolates, Miss Smith. That was our dress code for the way we lived," she added. "I couldn't go to the market dressed in slacks, or wearing open sandals."
"But how did Highlers enforce such a dress code? The sales force was spread out everywhere."
"We had an honor system. We turned each other in," she said. "That was part of our loyalty." She nodded at the notebook. "Go on, turn to the tab on personal conduct. Read what it says about the expected behavior of women."
Sarah Jane flipped through to the correct tab. Then she read aloud:
People respond to women who are ladylike and feminine. Women who serve in the Royalty House/Harbor Chocolates Sales Division must appear feminine. They are encouraged to have long hair and to wear lace and ribbons. Customers respond to women who allow them to feel like they are in charge; therefore women in the sales force must adhere to proper, demure, behavior. When dealing with in-house directives, women employees must obey immediately, without question, and without argument. Appeals may be made in writing, but women employees who display resentment or dominating behavior shall be terminated.
Women who excel in sports develop innate leadership qualities that run contrary to a good sales representation. Therefore, women employees shall not be retained who participate in organized athletic programs or events. Male customers do not respond to masculine women, and little boys and little girls alike respond best to maternal figures who maintain a gentle and feminine demeanor.
For a small percentage of her earnings, the Royalty House headquarters requires a mandatory semi-monthly review of manners and deportment for all female employees. Female employees are expected to be graceful in sitting, walking, etc., and must exhibit propriety and grace in her manners. They must be good listeners.
Because of the propensity for female employees to marry and leave the company (or else marry into the company and join her husband's career), women are encouraged to develop excellent sales skills but shall not be considered for management positions except in extreme circumstances. Losing trained women to marriage and child bearing is too costly for any company, and so the policy of this company is to promote men in order to retain them.
There was more, but Sarah stopped and looked up in amazement. "Do they really run that company along these lines?" she asked.
Her hostess nodded. "Yes, and of course if you complained, you were removed."
Sarah Jane put down the notebook in amazement. "So you were worked to death, underpaid, forced to pay for classes you were required to take, prevented from promotion except through marriage---"
"And more than half of those ended in divorce," the other woman added. "Just ask my brother, except I doubt he would answer honestly."
"Why so much divorce?" Sarah asked.
"Women from the real world who married into the Royalty House system couldn’t take it. All of those rules--" and she nodded to the notebook, "also apply to the wives of sales men. A sales man would be dismissed if his wife refused to live by the dress code and behavior code. And the men!' she gave a shudder.
"What?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Well, you never saw so many women who had been hit by the edge of doors or fallen down the steps, Miss Smith. Some of them took tumbles a few times a week when things were bad---"
"Are you saying that Royalty House men beat their wives?"
"Not all of them. Perhaps not even most of them. But some of them. And quite regularly."
"And the women left them?"
"Once they'd had enough. It takes a bit of courage when between the two of you there's not enough to survive. But I suppose when she's lost enough teeth or had to go out one time too many with sunglasses in the evening, she decides to make the break."
Sarah Jane sat for a moment and stared at the blue notebook. "May I take that with me?" she asked.
"With my blessing," her hostess said. "You same very shaken up, Miss Smith. Wouldn’t a cup of tea help you?"
"I'm not sure what will help me," Sarah said softly, almost to herself. Then she quickly collected herself. "I will take the notebook and continue my research. Do you know anything about this?" And she opened her purse and pulled out the paperback book she had stolen.
"Oh that!" Victoria Evans was dismissive. "You might find some good material in here, but this is probably what you really want. She rummaged in the box. "For a few years Jack Highlers regarded himself as the Savior of the family unit, Miss Smith. Sales were going great. And he kept his people on an emotional high. You wouldn’t believe those training classes of his. I'll tell you, Adolph Hitler could have taken lessons from Jack Highlers when it comes to crowd control. But he self-published a line of books on family improvement. Here they are." She withdrew three slim paperbacks from the box. "Borrow these if you like."
Sarah Jane glanced at them. The titles were similar: EFFECTIVE WOMANHOOD and EFFECTIVE MANHOOD and RAISING EFFECTIVE CHILDREN.
"Thank you," she said. "I must go. But thank you so much. I'll be in touch." And she stood.
* * * *
"Well that wasn't worth much," the Brigadier said as the staff car sped them away from the pathologist's office and out towards the open road. "Not much progress."
"It’s only been a few hours since the exhumations started," the Doctor said. "The tally is high. Too high for one man."
"I know. Two dozen bodies or more. I jolly well hope we can keep the press out of this until families are located and notified. How far did he say that hospital is?"
"Thirty minutes."
They dropped into silence. The Brigadier removed a post-prandial cigarette from his gold case and thoughtfully smoked it while the Doctor stared out at the rough countryside. The fair weather had held beautifully. It had an almost hypnotic quality to it: a wildness in the empty stretches, and yet a tenderness in the sunlight that flickered through the side windows as the car shot past telephone poles and fence posts.
Within twenty minutes, they were pulling up before a majestic courtyard of buildings. The centerpiece was the tall hospital itself, flanked by office buildings and other medical service buildings. The Brigadier and Doctor exited the car and strode up to the main doors.
Inside, a hushed and yet comfortable atmosphere prevailed: paneling on the walls and framed, pastel colored pictures of scenes from Winnie the Pooh and Beatrice Potter.
The Brigadier and Doctor instantly subdued their energy. Nurses passed by, guiding children on crutches or walkers, or wheeling them in wheel chairs. In a room warmed by a wall of windows that faced the sun, women sat in rocking chairs reading to children.
"Can I help you, gentlemen?" a woman, all business in a neatly tailored, navy blue outfit, approached.
"Good day madam, I am Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, and this is my scientific advisor, the Doctor." The Doctor nodded to her. "We are investigating a very sensitive matter regarding two unfortunate suicides---"
"Do you mean Mr. Morales?" she asked. "And you say there was another?"
Her question caught the Doctor by surprise. "You knew Mr. Morales?"
She threw her glance down the long hallway. "Gentlemen, we owe Mr. Morales most of that wing and the new equipment for kidney dialysis," she said. "We were all quite stunned and most dismayed at the news that he had taken his own life. To be man of such conscience and kindness, and yet to kill himself---well." Her manner became resolute. "Frankly, I have suspected foul play ever since I got the news."
The Brigadier frowned. "I was under the impression that Royalty House Chocolates underwrote most of your building and expansion costs."
"Yes. Mr. Morales was a part of the donation drive for Royalty House. His gifts came to use because Mr. Highlers recruited his interest in St. Nicholas', and Mr. Morales joined the Royalty House Donation Society. I met him only once or twice, but I understood that the young man had been quite generous with his personal fortune."
"Would you have a list of the members of this donation society?" the Brigadier asked.
"Oh, I'm sorry, no," she said. "I have nothing to do with who joins or who leaves the society. That's a Royalty House affair. But once a year at Christmas, we have a tea with the members of the society and present to them a report of our use of their funds."
The two men glanced at each other. "You hold the tea?" the Doctor asked. "It's a social event given by the hospital administration?"
She nodded. "Yes, and it’s for everybody who has an interest. But of course we have an invitation list supplied to us by all of our patrons, and the Royalty House list is the most extensive."
"May we have a copy of that list?" the Brigadier asked.
"Yes, of course. I'll have my secretary get it. Come this way gentlemen." She led them down the hallway toward the offices.
"I think we may have found our connection," the Brigadier said.
"But what made them kill themselves?" the Doctor asked.
* * * *
Night had fallen by the time Sarah Jane reached her flat. She parked, switched on the alarm system in Bessy, and lugged her suitcases upstairs. An early spring chill had descended with the decline of the sun. The flat itself, dim and too cool for comfort, smelled faintly of last week's leftovers. She had forgotten to empty the kitchen scraps into the sealed bins outside.
But in spite of the chill and the odor, Sarah Jane hurriedly lugged her largest case down the hallway to the bedroom. She dragged it onto the bed, closed the blinds, and flipped on the light. Hands trembling, she unzipped it and pulled out clothing and shoes until her fingers contacted the hard surface of the box of chocolates. She pulled it out and opened it.
For a moment she nearly snatched up a handful to cram it into her mouth, But better sense caught her. She quickly ate one, swallowing it without bothering to taste it. And then as she felt more agitated, she ate another. She timed herself, desperate not to eat them all at once. She fixed her eyes on the clock radio by the bed. As a full minute ticked by, she ate a third one, more slowly and with a greater effort to roll it in her mouth and savor it.
She let another full minute tick by, and then with an effort to steel herself, she went to the mirror in the room. She tried to look at herself but could not endure her own gaze for more than a few seconds. She went back to the box and ate a fourth piece. Now as she rolled it in her mouth and watched the clock, she was calmer. She threw her glance to the mirror and studied herself at a short distance from her reflection. She saw the look in her own eyes that betrayed her, but she could bear the scrutiny.
She looked down at the box and arranged the remaining chocolates. "Oh, he ate one!" she whispered to herself in resentment as she recalled the Doctor helping himself. She counted them out in groups of four. And then she dug out the bag of the loose chocolates she had gathered. She counted them as well, in groups of eight, for she knew they were not as effective as the exclusive line.
Her hands began to tremble again, from dread, as she saw that she had four allotments of the exclusive line and three of the loose chocolates. "Enough for a few days," she gasped. "That's all." She turned away from them and sat on the edge of the bed, not seeing the expression of despair and dread in her reflection across the room.
* * * *
In the cool darkness, the staff car sped on its way back to London. The twin beams from the head lamps did not pierce far into the darkness under the trees that lined the narrow country road.
"That's an astounding medical facility," the Brigadier said as he closed one of the many files that had been copied for him. "But it does bring to mind the question regarding the children we've found. We’ve got to look for any ties between them and St. Nicholas' hospital."
"And from there, we would deduce a tie to Royalty House," the Doctor said. "Except that you heard for yourself from several of the hospital staff that there has never been a complaint made against any Royalty House personnel. In the history of the relationship between the hospital and the chocolate headquarters, there is not the slightest whisper of any charge of molestation."
Lethbridge Stewart closed up the folders and slipped them into his briefcase. "Yet who would have more opportunity to harm children than a candy salesman?"
"And yet drag them all the way up here to bury them?" the Doctor asked. "The management staff live here. The sales staff are all over England. Why come here to bury them if they weren't killed here?"
UNIT's commanding officer let out a breath of both contempt and helpless incomprehension. "I don’t think that either of us is that well equipped to understand the compulsions and obsessions that drive a man who would do such things to a little boy or little girl, Doctor. That's what it's got to be. Compulsion. To kill a child requires a safe place to hide the body. A man who would do such a thing would take a long journey to hide his crimes, if he could figure out a way to do it."
"Hide the body in a large suitcase then," the Doctor said. "Travel with it. And bury it at night."
"The sales people do come up here for semi-monthly training," the Brigadier added. "And they volunteer to spend their holidays assisting at the hospital. It could have been done that way."
"I don’t think--" the Doctor began.
"Look out!" their driver shouted. He slammed on the brakes. The staff car skidded, went off the road between the trees, burst out into an open field at the foot of a rise and slewed sideways. It came to a halt.
The Doctor and Brig had been thrown forward and then into the sides of the car. As they sat up, the Doctor exclaimed, "What happened?"
"Tree down right across the road sir!" the driver said, and then he suddenly shouted, arched up and pulled at his throat, and fell against the door. He gasped once and was still.
"Sanders! Somebody's shooting at us! Get down Doctor!" The Brigadier pulled the Doctor down to the floor. He drew his sidearm.
"Fat lot of good that's going to do," the Doctor snapped.
"He got it right through the throat. There's a marksman out there. Let's get out this way."
Lethbridge Stewart got the door open crawled out. The Doctor followed. A rifle slug smacked into the soft earth just in front of the Brigadier. They flattened down into the grass.
"Whoever is shooting at us has got an infrared scope," the Brigadier hissed. "He's up on that rise!"
"Stay in the lee of the car. We'll have to make him move if we want to get a look at him," the Doctor said. They both inched along on the grass into the shelter of the car. But a marksman above would site on them through the side windows. They dared not lift their heads.
"I told you that the next chaps to come after me would be experts, Brigadier," the Doctor said. "We're trapped!"
| Death and Chocolate
Episode Five By Jeri Massi Click here for Episode One Click here for Episode Two Click here for Episode Three Click here for Episode Four |
The ringing of the telephone roused the Doctor from his doze. The fire had burned low, and Sarah Jane remained deeply asleep, curled up against him. For a moment, even with the annoying distraction of the telephone shrilling at him, he gazed at her with a helpless, troubled tenderness. Then he slipped out from her and strode across the room to take the call.
She whimpered and looked around. He'd never heard her whimper before.
"Oh who's calling now?" she asked nobody in particular. And then as he picked up the receiver and hesitated, she curled up on the sofa like a cat resettling itself and immediately dropped into sleep.
"Hallo!" he snapped into the phone.
"I need you out here," the Brigadier barked at him.
"What, right now?" He looked around and then tried to think. "It's about two a.m. isn’t it?"
"Yes. Do you know where the UNIT vehicles are parked?"
"Yes, far end of the visitor parking area."
"Meet me there."
"All right, give me fifteen minutes."
"Say nothing, Doctor. Not to anybody. Not to Miss Smith."
The Doctor was surprised. "Look, what the devil is wrong? What's happened?"
"I'll tell you when I see you, but I mean this. Not a word."
"Well I have to tell her that I'm leaving--at least leave a note. She'll be worried if she gets up in the morning and finds me gone."
"Tell her I've sent you into the town to work on a leak in the power station."
"What leak?"
"Just tell her that."
"Very well. I'll see you shortly." He cradled the receiver. Muttering something about "thick headed military thinking and all that secrecy nonsense," he patted his pockets to make sure he had his key, and then he crossed back to Sarah Jane. She had her face to the back of the sofa and was sleeping deeply.
"Sarah Jane," he said quietly. She didn’t respond. Her breathing was slow and deep. He frowned and used his thumb to peel back her eyelid. The corneal reflex was low normal. As though she were in a natural deep sleep or perhaps had been sedated. He couldn't decide.
At last he retreated to his room, to the writing desk, found a piece of note paper, and quickly jotted a note to her. Then he rummaged in his pocket until he produced a safety pin. He came back into the front room and pinned the note to the sleeve of her robe.
His eyes still pensive, he brushed her hair back from her forehead, but she didn't react. "This is not right," he said to himself, but she remained peacefully asleep. She was slightly pale, but people often did lose a bit of color in deep sleep. At last he made the decision to leave. He could not define a provable problem. She was as deeply asleep as any young woman might be after a long day, a great scare, some stomach upset, and too many chocolates.
He went into her room, retrieved her blanket, and spread it over her. Then at last he threw one look at the fire, which had gone to coals, and he went out. He made sure that the door was securely locked behind him. To avoid being seen by the staff at the entry, he chose a side door in a back hallway downstairs and let himself out.
There was no moon, and under a velvet and clear sky, he hurried from the comparative brightness of the lights around the building, across the grounds towards the car park. The UNIT vehicles had commandeered the far end.
Still muttering in annoyance, the Doctor brushed heedlessly past one of the tiny information booths where, during daylight hours, a helpful guide sat behind the glass and dispensed directions to travelers. Just as he strode past, he sensed a slight motion, as though part of the booth were detaching from itself.
He realized his danger and leaped sideways. A crowbar glanced off the top of his shoulder.
He shouted and sidestepped again as two figures rushed him. The crowbar arced through the air again in a smooth curve, and he heard desperate breathing. He dropped under the swing and then leaped to the side. His two assailants nearly bumped into each other and then charged him.
As the crowbar arced again in a wide swing towards him, the Doctor ducked under the swing, closed the distance, and grasped the crowbar right at his attacker's grip. He meant to throw the man over, but the other man cried out in amazement and dropped the weapon. It nearly slipped from the Doctor's hand, but he caught his grip, continued the curve of the swing, and would have brought it around to smash into both men, but they rammed into him with their shoulders. He fell backwards to the wet grass and rolled to his feet, the crowbar ready. They didn’t say a word but apparently reached the same decision, for as he came up, they started to run in the other direction.
"Oh no you don't!" he shouted. He chased them. But he was wearing shoes designed for hallways and carpets. And he was unfamiliar with the terrain. Just as he slipped and would have fallen forward, he swung the crowbar desperately. It smacked the nearer man in the upper leg, and the fugitive let out a howl of pain and fear, and then the Doctor hit the dewy grass. His would-be attackers disappeared into the night, away from the lights of the building.
* * * *
"What kept you?" Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart asked as the Doctor limped up to the small caravan of jeeps and lone military truck.
The Doctor held up the crowbar with his good hand. "This kept me, Brigadier. Very nearly brained me, might I add."
The Brigadier took it in amazement. "You're joking!" He looked it over. "Somebody came at you from behind?"
"Yes. Somebody rather desperate to keep me from this rendezvous. I want you to send a man up to watch the door to my suite. Tell him not to disturb or frighten Sarah Jane, but I have a bad feeling about his place."
"Oh, you think so?" And the Brigadier made the irony in his voice apparent. But he turned and called, "Mr. Benton!"
Leaning against the hood of a jeep with a map in the beam of the headlight, Benton and a group of soldiers straightened up. Benton hurried over. "Yes sir?"
"Get a man up tot he main building to watch over the Doctor's suite. He was attacked on his way over here. I want to assure that Miss Smith is kept safe."
"Right sir!"
As he hurried back to the jeep to make the assignment, the Brigadier looked at the timelord. "It's a good thing you're fast on your feet, Doctor. This would have killed you if it had landed."
The Doctor glanced at the crowbar ruefully. "It’s a good thing the men who tried to brain me didn't know what they were about, Brigadier. Or they would have succeeded."
"Amateurs, you mean?"
"Yes, luckily for me. But if Royalty House sent them after me in a panicked attempt to stop me, then I'm certain the next attempt will not be from amateurs."
"They've got the phones bugged then," the Brigadier said.
The Doctor nodded. "Obviously." He glanced at Lethbridge Stewart. "What's it all about, then? What's happened?"
Lethbridge Stewart set the crowbar into the back seat of his jeep. He glanced at the timelord. "I'm not certain of the number even now, but in their search for more forensic evidence about the lad's body that was found earlier, the police have uncovered a positive boneyard up in the fringe of trees."
"Oh no!" and the Doctor's words were genuine. Then he asked, "Frozen as the first had been?"
"No, not this lot, not so far. These were handled with more---expertise, it seems. Quicklimed. The pathologist chap can’t give me a range yet. He says that one or more have been up there for over a year, possibly two, and others are more recent."
"The same---the same--" the Doctor searched for words. "Abuse before death?"
"He cannot say for certain. He thinks it very possible. There are certain forensic indicators present that they associate with perverted crimes against young people."
The Doctor let out his breath. "Clearly the police have a sociopath, or a band of sociopaths on their hands." He looked over the dark, rolling terrain. "I'm not sure they're equipped to deal with it"
"That's where UNIT comes into it."
"Is there anything unusual or inexplicable about the crime scene?"
"Not so far as I know. But we did stumble into the middle of it, and the facilities up here are hardly adequate to the task."
The Doctor spoke judiciously but made his point. "Brigadier, I want whoever has done such things brought to justice. But if you swing open the doors to UNIT's science lab because of the horrific nature of a current unsolved crime, you'll never get the police out of your business. You do have a charter and a purpose, and if you sidetrack yourself, you may fail in the purpose assigned to you."
"Look, if there are thirty children buried on that hill, then Britain is on the verge of a national calamity," the Brigadier told him. "Geneva has been in contact with me. They will make the final decision. But as UNIT has a history of pushing aside British military and civil authority when we are on a case, it has been decided that we can boost our ratings here if we help with the forensic evidence."
"I hate to bring this up now, but what about the chocolates, then? I originally came up here because of two suicides possibly linked to the chocolates produced here."
Lethbridge Stewart let out a breath, an expression of mild scorn. "You came up here on a lark to get into the wine cellars of his place. Last I knew, you were just about convinced it was all coincidence. So what have you found? Any indications of tampering?"
"I can’t lay my finger on anything, but I'm a lot more concerned now than I was."
The Brigadier's voice was quick. "Why is that?"
"Something not right about a lot of it. Look, have you eaten any of the chocolates?"
He nodded. "Maybe eight to ten pieces over the last two days. They're actually not very good."
"Any vomiting, any drowsiness?"
"What? No."
"No effects at all?"
Lethbridge Stewart shook his head. He hesitated. "You know, Benton's pretty keen on them. I think he's been through a couple of boxes. Mr. Benton!"
Benton approached again. "Are we ready to go back to the site sir?"
"Momentarily, Mr. Benton. The Doctor has a few questions for you."
The young Warrant Officer looked at the Doctor. "Yes Doctor?"
"You've been eating the chocolates, Benton?"
"Yes sir. About as much as I can hold. They're all free."
"Any ill effects?"
He shook his head.
"Have you been ill at all since coming here?"
"No, Doctor. I feel fine."
"No tiredness? Languor?"
"It would be perfectly natural for him to be tired," Lethbridge Stewart cut in. "He's running the men."
"But I haven’t been that tired, sir," he said. "Physically, I feel fine."
"Physically?" the Doctor asked. "What about emotionally?"
"Oh really, Doctor!" And now sarcasm was evident in the Brigadier's tone. "He's not our great aunt Nancy."
"I want to know!" the Doctor insisted.
"Well I don’t like this place, Doctor," Benton said. "I mean, there's been the shock of the first body, and now this---all those deaths. And what that Dave Highlers did to Miss Smith. And the workers here---if you get to talk to them---the ones that came on staff from door-to-door sales. There's an oddness---almost a bizarre--well, culture here."
"What sort of bizarre culture?" the Doctor asked.
"Some of them seem to think that Jack Highlers isn’t just their boss. It’s like he's their god."
"This place is clearly designed to overawe," the Brigadier said. "Highlers has succeeded with some of his weaker willed work force. Come on, let's get up to that burial site. We've got more urgent things to worry about."
* * * *
The sun was high and the late morning unseasonably warm. Yet a fresh breeze still blew, and birds, delighted with the warmth and a landscape bursting with life, darted from tree to tree, singing and chasing each other. The Doctor trudged up the flagstone walkway alongside the palatial office suite of the main building. As he walked, he glanced up at the great window of Jack Highler's office.
Reduced to a silhouette by the angle of the Doctor's gaze and the comparatively dimmer light inside, Highler's head leaned forward and then bobbed for a moment. He was conducting a meeting. The Doctor stopped and watched, and his eyes narrowed. His gaze measured the distance from the silhouette of the man to the end of the building. He stepped off the flagstone path, backed up to get a better view, and thrust his hands in his pockets, his eyes taking the measure. For just a moment he pursed his lips, and then as though making a sudden decision, he abruptly turned and strode down the flagstone walk.
When he reached the familiar hallway that led to his suite, he saw the UNIT soldier standing at the ready, just across from the door.
"Well, what did Miss Smith say when she saw you?" the Doctor asked.
"Miss Smith hasn't left the room yet, Doctor," the soldier said. "I don’t think she knows I'm here."
"What?" Surprise and sudden concern cross the Doctor's eyes. "It’s after ten!" He found his key and quickly unlocked the door. Leaving the soldier in the hallway, he rushed into the sitting room and found Sarah Jane, still in her robe and pyjamas, just sitting up and shaking her head at the noise he'd made in unlocking the door.
"Sarah Jane, are you all right?" he asked.
She sat up and managed a smile at him. "I'm fine. What are you striding about for? Is that mud on your jacket?"
"It's after ten. You've been sleeping for 14 hours!"
"Oh, and it felt grand," she said. "Have you ordered coffee?"
"Let me tell the soldier that it's all right." And he hurried back to the door and opened it.
"Soldier?" she asked. She swung her feet onto the floor.
He closed the door and returned to her. She looked up at him. "What's a soldier doing at my door? And did you order coffee?"
"I'll order coffee in a minute," he said. He sat next to her. "We have to leave. Right away. Right now."
This decree woke her up instantly. "Whatever for? I've hardly looked into anything! I've got plans for today: talk to the staff, get the latest gossip--" She narrowed her eyes. "And find out some more about that Dave Highlers! There's something not right about him!"
"Sarah Jane, we cannot stay here. It may be dangerous."
"Not with all the soldiers here." She suddenly realized that there was a note pinned to her sleeve. She pulled it free and glanced at it. Then she looked up at him. "Say, where did you go? Why have you got mud on your jacket?" And she looked at his shoes. "And all over your shoes. What have you been doing?"
"I honestly cannot tell you. I've got orders to keep silent. But I will tell you that I was attacked last night. Two fellows with a crow bar who tried to brain me."
"What? Are you all right?" And now her eyes widened.
"Yes, perfectly. But they got away and I didn’t get a look at them."
"But where did you go?"
He shook his head and returned to his point. "We have to leave."
She took in her breath. "I don’t want to leave until I dig up some more information. You're right when you say there's something wrong about this place. I should have gotten right to it yesterday. But I won’t let the opportunity pass today."
"I have to get back to the lab at UNIT," he said. "I can’t leave you here."
"Are the UNIT soldiers still going to hang about?"
He paused and then nodded. "Then I can stay," she said. "They'll look out for me, especially if you put a word in the Brig's ear."
"It isn’t safe. And how will you get back to London?"
She shrugged. "Oh, I can hire a car." But she pushed her point. "Where did you go? Were you up at the site where they found that poor boy?"
"I really cannot discuss it, Sarah Jane. There's a question of human dignity involved, an order of appropriate people being told matters before I can say anything."
Her eyes suddenly searched his. He caught himself as he realized he'd said to much. As a journalist, Sarah Jane knew exactly what sort of situations demanded a protocol of notifications.
"All right," she said after a moment. "I won’t ask any more."
"And you'll come with me?"
She shook her head. "I still want to do my digging. I'll be careful. And if you like, I'll leave before dark tonight. Perhaps if any of the UNIT men go back tonight I can arrange to caravan with them."
He stood and went to the telephone. "Well, I'll order up some coffee and breakfast." He picked up the receiver and found her at his elbow. Her eyes were enormous and worried. "You’re not angry with me are you?" she asked.
"What? Of course not." And as she was clearly fearful of having angered him, he set down the receiver and put his arms around her. "I'm never angry with you. Even when I ought to be!" And then he smiled at her and tweaked her nose.
Satisfied, she left him to make the call while she went back to the room to find clothes for the day. She missed his concerned look after her.
No sooner had he cradled the receiver than somebody knocked at the door. The Doctor crossed the room and opened it.
"Are you and Miss Smith packing up?" the Brigadier demanded.
"She wants to stay until tonight. I cannot persuade her otherwise. But I'll be ready within half an hour. I'll go down to London with you if I may and leave Bessy for her."
He expected the Brigadier to be annoyed about Sarah Jane's obstinacy, but instead UNIT's commander strode into the room and said, "Well we've got another problem. The blasted police won’t initiate a search of the facility."
"What?"
"Local magistrate says there's no link to Royalty House itself and refuses to issue a warrant. And the police here are backing him up. Insist there's no likely tie."
"What do you think?"
"I think when two dozen bodies are dug up on anybody's property that there ought to be a full-scale investigation! I've called down to the Met to find out what my options are. But as of this moment, Royalty House insists that UNIT's business here is strictly the suicides and nothing else."
"You'd better keep your voice down if you want that matter kept secret," the Doctor warned with a nod at Sarah Jane's door. "The problem is, there may be no tie to Royalty House itself, as an entity."
"Are you forgetting that two men tried to brain you last night?"
"Not at all. Come in and sit down." The Doctor led him inside. "If only one or two people here have been behind these deaths, it stands to reason that they would have easily gotten wind of the discovery and then kept an eye on me to stop me from helping the investigation. They all know I'm with UNIT and that I'm the scientific advisor."
"Is that what you think?" The Brigadier pushed his hat back and looked at him as the timelord threw himself into the easy chair.
"There are several possibilities and that's one of them," the Doctor said. "What's likely, if that is the situation, is that Royalty House will try to cover itself from any unfavorable exposure. In other words---"
"In other words even if Royalty House as an entity had no hand in those deaths, they may still obstruct us." And the Brigadier finally doffed his hat and threw it onto the cushion alongside him. "And that's the world of corporation morality."
"So what do you plan to do?"
Lethbridge Stewart let out a breath of exasperation. "I put in a call to see Jack Highlers. I'll try to negotiate with him to open the place up for searches if the police will just conduct them."
"You're working on this harder than the police---"
But Lethbridge Stewart shook his head. "The police are working on it, but not this angle. They just don’t believe that Highlers or his company could have any knowledge of it."
Somebody knocked on the door, and at the same moment Sarah Jane emerged from her room, dressed for the day.
"Good morning, Brigadier, come for breakfast?" she asked as she swung open the suite's door and let the attendant wheel in the breakfast cart.
"Well, I don’t mind a bite to eat, now I'm here," he said, standing. She looked fresh and pretty and business-like.
"And I'm going to have a good look round this place today," she said. The attendant left them, and she closed the door after him. She glanced at the Brigadier, and she made her voice pert, "And I'm not leaving until tonight!"
Unruffled, the Brigadier started removing covers from the dishes. "As you like. The Doctor is going to leave you his car, aren’t you Doctor?"
"Yes, certainly," the Doctor said.
Sarah Jane calmed down. "Well that's all right then. Let's have breakfast!"
* * * *
An hour later, wearing her "charming tourist" face, Sarah Jane wandered down to the entry area and the massive reception desk where the room clerks manned their posts and the liveried porters awaited.
"Hello Miss!" one of the clerks said instantly as she approached. "Checking out already?"
"No, I was hoping for a tour actually," she said. "I saw the processing area yesterday and was hoping for a bit more."
"Well, we don’t normally run the grounds tours on Sundays, but I'll see what I can do." He picked up an intercom receiver, spoke a few words, and nodded. As he set it down again, he said, "Somebody will be here shortly."
Sarah Jane knew full well how to be fascinated with every detail of the place. As a man of her own age, wearing a coat and tie, hurried across the floor to meet her, she greeted him at once with a question: "Hello! You know, those chandeliers are so lovely; were they made for Royalty House?" And she pointed upward.
He beamed, at once on familiar ground. "Actually Miss, three of them came from an estate sale of a grand old house about thirty miles from here. Mr. Highlers purchased them at a very low price and then had the others made as imitations."
"All that crystal!" she exclaimed. "It must have cost a fortune!"
"Actually, the imitations are made from a special Plexiglas," he told her. "But can you tell which three are the crystal chandeliers and which are not?"
She gazed attentively at the high ceiling and realized that the yellowish light, the distance from the floor, and the intersecting light from other lamps and the high windows would all work to reduce the clarity of the reflection of the chandeliers. Even an expert would have difficulty determining which were genuine and which were not from this distance.
But she played along. "I'll guess the very center one and that one and that one," she said.
He laughed. "Actually it's that one over there, and those two," he told her, pointing them out.
He liked talking about the décor. As she had noticed on the first night with the porters, there was a genuine, almost child-like pride in him about the place, as though he were a part owner. "Now what about this lovely floor?" she asked.
* * * *
"So you've got an appointment to see Highlers?" the Doctor asked as he and the Brigadier sipped coffee.
The Brigadier glanced at his watch. "Yes, not for over an hour. And if it's anything like last time, he'll keep me waiting."
"Standard operation to put nosey visitors in their place," the Doctor said. "I think I'll come with you."
"Well it delays your return to UNIT, but very well." And then the Brigadier lifted an eyebrow and his glance became suspicious. "You on to something?"
"Maybe. What do we actually know about Highlers?"
"Rags to riches story, allegations of adultery, definitely markets his products based on a grand appearance. He's ambitious, a risk taker---"
The Doctor glanced around the magnificent room and nodded. "And more of a business man and marketer of goods than a chocolatier."
"He can buy expertise in chocolate making. He's done very well."
"Yes, started with a version of chocolate so cheap that according to modern market guidelines, it wasn't chocolate at all. Rather, it was a chocolate-flavored confection---"
"The Harbor Chocolates, you mean? He built the whole business on those bars."
"And even now, his stuff is not all that good, not compared to the real thing that Clarence Lawman puts out."
"Well you've been getting your nose wrapped around chocolate, haven’t you?" the Brigadier asked. He stood, carrying his coffee cup, and crossed to one of the filled glass bowls. He popped first one chocolate and then another into his mouth. He shook his head. "Tastes all right to me. Frankly, I would like a Cadbury better than this, but it’s not bad."
"But you don’t really care for chocolates," the Doctor added.
The Brigadier returned to the sofa and sat down. "Not really. Never saw the allure."
* * * *
"And these are your news archives?" Sarah Jane asked as the young man, whose name was Mr. Evans, led her into a large but cramped room filled with shelves of cuttings archives, reel-to-reel canisters, advertising posters, and numerous copies of a single paperback book. She took up one of the books and glanced at the title: THE BEST CHOCOLATE IN THE WORLD, AND HOW I FOUND IT. She flipped it over. "Mr. Highlers himself wrote this?"
"Oh yes miss," said the youthful and eager Mr. Evans. "He knows everything about chocolate!"
"You know, I used to live in a village with a confectioner who swore to me that Mr. Highler's was really a businessman," she said. "He spoke very disparagingly of Mr. Highlers." As she saw Evans' face fall, she added, "But the more I see here, and the more I taste those delicious chocolates, the more I think he may have resented the success of Royalty House."
The young man brightened. "And those are right thoughts, Miss Smith! Oh, you wouldn't think there'd be such rivalry and bitterness in a business as sweet as chocolate, but it's very nearly cut throat, I assure you. We're very lucky to have Mr. Highler piloting our great ship!"
This statement puzzled her so much that it showed. "I'm sorry?"
"Leading us to our rightful place in the industry," he told her. "Now people think that Hershey---Milton Hershey over in the States---that he did a great thing with chocolate---"
"Yes, he built a town for his workers, established an excellent orphanage and school, endowed libraries, hospitals, and churches---"
"A drop in the bucket. Milton Hershey was hardly able to keep the place going! A pittance here and a pittance there!" he exclaimed.
"Well, he believed in a moderate lifestyle," she began.
"Of course! He had to, didn’t he?"
She decided to keep her mouth closed. Evans continued: "Milton Hershey had some good ideas, but he didn’t know what to do with them. Now Jack Highlers, he's the man with the plan for the future, and the future is chocolate!"
"Say," she asked suddenly. "Could I watch some of these reel to reel films? What are they?"
"Training films," he told her. "For our sales people."
"Were you in sales?"
He nodded, and for just a moment Sarah Jane thought that a wince crossed his features, but then it was gone. "That was a long time ago," he said.
"But that's how Jack Highlers won his place in the chocolate world, wasn't it?" she asked. "Convincing consumers one at a time to buy his chocolates? I'd love to understand how he did it."
"Well, I could show you the introduction to the company that we used for new sales people. We used to show that all the time on tours. Let me set up the equipment."
* * * *
Twenty minutes later found Sarah and Evans seated on folding chairs in the cramped room, the film projector between them. She stood and dimmed the lights as he got the reels turning. After the leader tape ran through, she saw a large auditorium filled with young people, mostly male, all in white shirts and narrow blue ties. They carried large blue notebooks.
At first it seemed like an ordinary sales training film, and as she watched a thirtyish version of Jack Highlers take the podium to speak, Sarah Jane wondered if, in her curiosity, she had sentenced herself to an hour of sheer boredom. But as Highlers spoke, she became more attentive.
"We have a way in this company of expressing approval," he told them. "Now when I say something you fellows---and ladies---like, you hold up that blue training notebook of yours in one hand, and you say, 'That's right!' Let's all try it." There were nervous giggles throughout the crowded room.. Highlers took in a great breath and yelled, "Come tomorrow, the sun is going to shine!"
"That's right!" a few of them called, and they thrust the notebooks halfway into the air and then ducked them down again.
"What? Wait a minute, that's not how a salesman gets a sale," he told them. But his voice was kind. More embarrassed tittering, and one person dared call, "That's right!"
Highlers burst out with a laugh. "Now look young people. Let me help you with a little quality I call determination," he said. "You see that door way back there? Way in the back?"
About four hundred heads turned to see the back double doors. They turned back to him and nodded.
"Now this room is packed wall to wall," he said. "But I'm determined to get back to that door, so here I go. On nothing but determination!" He came around the podium, leaped to the floor, and then started climbing directly over the seated young men. The entire crowd burst out laughing.
"Here I go! I’m a third of the way!" he shouted.
"That's right!" several emboldened people called from the edges.
Instead of shrinking away in surprise as they had done at first, the young men and the few young ladies started to help him climb over them, and he rapidly crossed the crowded seats that way. "Halfway!" he yelled.
"That's right!" more of them shouted.
He finished the odd journey and stood at the doors. "Well? Don’t all of you want that determination?" he asked.
"That's right!" most of them yelled.
The film cut back to the podium to show that he had returned. "Now what you need is determination!" he yelled at them. "You've got a fine product, and a low price, and all it takes to make a living with these chocolates is determination!"
"That's right!" they all shouted, and they held up their blue notebooks.
"And you make a four percent commission on everything you sell, and that's plenty!" he shouted at them.
"Is that even legal?" Sarah Jane asked aloud.
Evans had been staring in rapt attention at the projection. He started at her question. "I'm sure it is, Miss."
"You know it's all so fascinating," she added.
"This is the best part, when he talks about his father. His father was a drunkard you know, who abandoned him."
She nodded and became silent. As the film displayed Highlers talking about his drunkard father, she did some rapid calculations in her head. The highest priced bars at that time, if they had been all that a salesman sold in a single day, would have brought in less than ten pounds commission value if he had sold an entire case of them.
She frowned and recalculated. But the first calculation was correct. Nobody could have earned an income above poverty level if he had sold Highlers' chocolates full time. The low price that had undercut competitors had also kept the sales force on starvation wages.
"What else was provided to the sales people?" she asked.
Evans turned shocked eyes to her. "Don’t you want to hear the rest about his father?"
"Yes, absolutely. I apologize," she said. He nodded and looked back at the projection. She cast a glance at him. Surely he had seen this film dozens of times if they had once shown it to tourists as part of the tour. Yet here he sat, as attentive as though he had never seen it at all.
She glanced away without turning her head. A collection of stacks of the sales paperbacks sat alongside her where she had re-stacked them to make room for the projector and the chairs. Evans had his eyes fixed on the film, and she carefully took up one of the books and slipped it into her purse. It barely fit, and even so, anybody looking closely would see that she had something large and rectangular shoved in there, but she doubted that Evans would notice. She closed the purse and fastened it, then folded her arms and watched the film.
* * * *
"Well here we are," the Brigadier said as he and the Doctor stood in Highlers' magnificent office. The executive secretary went out and closed the door. The Brigadier was fuming. "He's determined to keep us waiting. Twenty minutes, last time."
The Doctor didn’t hesitate and strode across the plush carpet. "If it's twenty minutes this time, we shall be very lucky," he said.
"Doctor, you’re not going to search his desk? I absolutely forbid it!" Lethbridge Stewart exclaimed. "Come away from there!"
"I'm not going to search his desk, Brigadier," the Doctor said. He went to the wall behind Highler's desk and lightly rapped on it with his knuckles. "Hmm, sounds solid enough."
"Oh really! As though he needed secret passages in a place like this!" the Brigadier exclaimed.
"Haven't you noticed that this room is far smaller in here than it appears from outside?" the timelord asked. "There's a good twenty feet of clearance not accounted for."
"It could be a maintenance room."
"Not behind the executive office." Disappointed, the Doctor rapped across the wall in several places, working his way behind the massive desk. But he could not distinguish any echo in the wall. He changed direction and rapped downwards. "Very solid, to judge by the sound, but of course, a good layer of batting in the wall would muffle any hollow echo." He tapped just below waste level and stopped, arrested.
"What is it?" the Brigadier asked.
"Shh." The Doctor went to his knees and rapped, his ear the wood. "Yes, batting can’t quite hide that. Something metal but very hollow on the other side of this wall. Very likely a sink."
"Well he may have a private washroom back there."
The Doctor was behind the desk. He turned and peered under the center drawer. "What's this. I wonder?"
He pressed a button. Then he stumbled backwards as a door-sized panel in the wall suddenly moved towards him. It stopped. He stood up.
"Like a door" the Brigadier exclaimed.
"It is a door." He Doctor grasped it one either side, and it slid to the right enough to allow him to move past it. He glanced at the Brigadier. "You coming?"
The Brigadier crossed the room and joined him. The Doctor entered far enough to let the Brigadier peer inside.
"Is it a passageway or a room?" the Brigadier asked.
But just then the door across the room rattled and swung open. Jack Highlers, followed by two men, entered the office.
