Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication by Adam Roberts Page B

least it will be, as soon as my lower bowel catches up with the more immediate negative reaction of the stomach and intestinal changes. But we don’t want to worry about that now. We need to get on .’

Chapter Three
    THE TIME GENTLEMEN’S CONVENANCE
    We stepped through into the meeting chamber. It was a splendidly appointed and decorated chamber; every surface was either gilded, silvered or bronzed: except for the floor which was decorated with verdigris, or ‘verdigreased’ as the phrase goes. On tiered platforms arranged in a horseshoe shape about the central podium as many as a hundred Time Gentlemen were sitting on their official benches. When I say ‘as many as a hundred’ I mean ‘as few as a hundred’, which is to say, a hundred. There was a distinctly pompous and official air.
    ‘Right, you two,’ the Dr said to us. ‘Best behaviour, alright? This is an official Time Gentlemen’s Convenance. It’s not a place for mucking-about-in. Not,’ he corrected himself, glancing about himself nervously as if conscious that the grammatical exactitude expected of all Time Gentlemen applied most particularly in this space, ‘not an environment in which mucking can be allowed about.’ He looked at the floor and tried one more time. ‘Not about in of which , there can, now, be allowed, any mucking. ’
    ‘We understand,’ said Linn.
    ‘Convenance?’ I queried.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You sure that’s a word?’
    ‘Of course I am.’
    The Dr bowed to the Time Chairgentleman, seated at apex of the many curving rows of seats, behind the sumptuous Time Table of Garlicfree. We both followed suit. Then we made our way to the side of the chamber and slid onto one of the benches.
    ‘You’re quite sure?’ I pressed. ‘I mean . . . convenance. It doesn’t have the . . .’
    ‘It is a meeting convened by the Time Gentlemen. Therefore it is a Time Gentlemen’s Convenance .’
    ‘It’s just that I’ve never,’ I said, a little nervously. ‘I mean, in all my years as a tailor of prose, I can say that—’
    ‘Shhhpshh!’ hushed the Dr crossly. ‘Tsschh! Czsch!’
    The Chair had got to his feet. Which is to say, the Time Gentleman chairing the meeting, who had been sitting in a chair, was now standing. The chair itself remained standing throughout the whole proceedings. ‘Time Gentlemen and honoured guests!’ he commenced.
    ‘It is with enormous, Gentlemen’s, relish that I welcome the Doctor to our proceedings.’
    ‘Too kind,’ murmured the Dr, bowing his head to the gathering.
    ‘As many of you know,’ said the Chair. ‘The Doctor has been engaged on a certain secret mission - the nature of which I cannot, in the present company, disclose. This mission is of the utmost importance . It is, in other words, more than most important. There is an ut involved too.’ A murmur went through the room. ‘Suffice to say,’ boomed the Chair. ‘That his mission has been more than a standard Time Gentlemen mission - more than going about painting-in the missing apostrophes from shop-signs, and more than correcting complete strangers on their failure to use the subjunctive mode.’
    ‘If I were ,’ murmured the entire room. ‘If I were . . .’
    ‘No. Our intelligence informs us that a TGV has been purchased by a mysterious and malefactoral figure in Le Bar Sexy in sector Parsec-“C” out by the Giffin Head Nebula.’
    ‘A TGV!’ whispered the assembled Time Gentlemen.
    ‘I need not tell you how serious this matter is,’ said the Chair. ‘The one thing that can destroy the life of a Time Gentleman . . . and it could be used again and again, perhaps to wipe out the entire race of the Time Gentlemen.’
    ‘Blime-crikey!’ said the Dr.
    ‘Our intelligence reports,’ said the Chair, ‘that . . . and I ask you all to prepare for a shock . . . but that the gun is now in the possession of . . . Stavros.’
    The whole room fell silent with shock.
    ‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Chair, sombrely. ‘I hardly