Thainig na Cait

	“Take it off.”
	The Doctor blanched. “What?”
	“Doctor.” Amy dropped her knapsack on the TARDIS console. “Some men can get away with wearing a kilt. Trust me: you are not one of those men.”
	The Doctor looked at her sulkily. “I thought it suited me.”
	“You don’t have the legs.” Amy was emphatic, and now she was pacing with her fingers loosely curled, halfway to a fist: this was never a good sign. “Now please. In the name of common decency, and out of consideration for my people, change. You can’t pull this off.”
	“So you want me to take it off because I can’t pull it off.” The Doctor tossed the sentence around like a prospector tossing a pan of gravel. Then he grinned. “Oh, English. The unbridled nonsense of your peculiar language.”
	“You speak English!”
	“I speak Gallifreyan.”
	“Whatever.” Amy seethed in exasperation. “I mean, you’re speaking English now.”
	“Well, maybe.” The Doctor clapped his hands and strode over to the console, flicking the first lever his fingers brushed against without even looking at it. “Right! Edinburgh. New Year’s Eve, 1999. Fireworks! Haggis! Aaaand…” He span on his heels, and the bottom of the kilt billowed. “Texas!”
	“And you’re sure it’s safe?” said Amy
	The Doctor gave her an incredulous look. “Since when were you worried about safe, Miss Oh-Let’s-Press-The-Abdicate-Button?”
	“No, but - you know.” Amy rummaged in the knapsack. “Riots. Edinburgh. They’re like peas in a pod.”
	“I checked.” The Doctor was punching buttons near the telephone. “Last serious incident was three years ago, and that was more of a crush than anything else. This one - ” Punch, flip, twirl - “should go without a hitch.”
	“Hmm.” Amy looked at the TARDIS doors. “Famous last words.”

	They landed not far from the Honeycomb, the battered old police box materialising with a wheezing, groaning noise that sounded both tired and arguably overused. The door was only a foot and a half from a lamp post, and the Doctor had to squeeze his way through: being comparatively thin, this didn’t pose an enormous problem for either of them, although it didn’t stop Amy from complaining.
	“Couldn’t you just.” Amy pushed her way past the cold metal. “I don’t know, repark?”
	The Doctor shook his head. “Tight space manoeuvring is tricky.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Between you and me, the TARDIS isn’t very good at three point turns.”
	“When you say ‘the TARDIS’, you mean you, right?”
	The Doctor scowled, and straightened his Christmas hat. “Well, I can’t be a genius at everything.”
	He marched up the street, past the club - shuttered and boarded and looking rather sorry for itself - and the hordes of people, making their way up toward the Royal Mile in various states of perambulation that ranged from the well-heeled dash to the crawl, by way of the drunken stagger. There were black bags and fly tipped donations outside the charity shops, chip cartons and pizza boxes piled high against overstuffed bins, and the remnants of spilled / vomited food splattered across the wet pavements like the most provocative kinds of modern art. 
	“Niddry Street,” said Amy. “Weren’t there some underground vaults here or something?”
	“It was a hive of disease, prostitution and villainy,” said the Doctor. “A hopeless, dispiriting place. A bit like Swindon, only with more of an atmosphere. Burke and Hare used to go hunting not twenty feet below where you’re standing.”
	“Burke and Hare? As in the body snatchers?”
	“Mm-hmm. Met them once. Lovely people, actually.” The Doctor mused, remembering. “Played a decent game of canasta.”
	There was a bang from up the street. The Doctor looked at his watch, annoyed. “The fireworks aren’t supposed to start for three hours!”
	Amy was peering off into the distance, where the edge of Niddry met the Royal Mile. “I think that might have been a car backfiring.”
	“Oh well, that’s all right then. Is the chip shop open?”

	The Mile thronged with activity. The shops were open late, plying their wares - rows of London phone boxes, squashed boxes of rattly fudge (packaged in Maidstone), postcards that curled at the edges. Couples canoodled and men in their fifties sang filthy rugby songs outside the pubs. And yet there was a curious symmetry to the layout of the area, a pattern that started to emerge, as they passed street artists and glow stick stands and a piper on every corner, and the shops began to subdivide into almost identical colonnades, each home to the same souvenirs and woollen gloves and overpriced cappuccinos. It was, Amy felt, rather like the endlessly repeating scenery she’d witnessed in childhood episodes of Scooby Doo, where doorways and paintings and suited knights had flashed past in an endless loop. Some days, when they had done a lot of running, life with the Doctor felt a little like that.
	They bought chips and battered Mars Bars from a two-starred establishment three hundred yards from the Castle; the queue was out the door but the Doctor had waved his psychic paper and the owner, a disgruntled-looking man in his forties, had fobbed them off with complimentary portions and then shuffled away muttering something about “bloody hygiene inspectors with all the timing o’ a Good Friday lunch date wit’ Jesus”. And now they stood outside on the pavement, watching the revellers dance and drink and meander in and out of gift emporiums with tablet and tartan, burning their mouths on the caramelised chocolate.
	“I mean, on paper,” the Doctor was saying (with his mouth full) “it just doesn’t work. And at the same time, it does. It’s one of those oddities of the universe that just fits.”
	“Kind of like you, then,” Amy had been about to say, when she was drowned out by the noise of a dozen snares, all beating out the same roll. And now here they came: a full complement of drummers and pipers, playing ‘Crags of Tumbledown’ as they marched up the Mile toward the castle’s looming entrance, some four-and-twenty men in all, marking time to the thud of the bass, walking in perfect unison, eyes fixed firmly frontward.
	Amy thought: It’s almost enough to make you feel patriotic. And swallowed the lump in her throat.
	The pipers and drums were followed by a platoon of Viking raiders (Danes, they would have had you call them) and then a quartet of fire-eaters, blowing jets of hot flame seemingly from their mouths. Other floats followed, trundling up the cobbled street in the direction of the gatehouse, as ahead of them the music blared before succumbing to the Doppler effect. Amy took it all in. She felt giddy, excited and yet somehow incomplete. It was as if she’d left a part of her behind, perhaps in the TARDIS. No. Not the TARDIS. Somewhere.
	“You’re quiet,” said the Doctor.
	“Just enjoying the spectacle,” she said, realising this was uncharacteristically glib, although thankfully the Doctor let it slide.
	“It’s no’ as good as it used to be, mind,” said a new voice.
	Amy turned her head. The man next to her was in full clan dress and had to be six foot four, with arms like steamed hams, and a bright ginger beard that hung almost to his waist. He was sipping from a plastic pint cup.
	“No?” said Amy, wryly.
	“Aye, well. Back in the day they’d have had twice this number. Stretchin’ all the way back to the lights and beyond. Made a noise that’d wake the dead.”
	“Back in the day? This festival’s only seven years old.”
	“Och, you know what I mean. Afore all this. Afore all the lights and the razzle dazzle and the overpriced tat. Back when it was all aboot celebratin’ the New Year. They’d have had dozens more pipers, real men an’ all, ‘stead o’ this lairy bunch.”
	Amy regarded him quizzically. “Are you a piper?”
	“That I am, lassie. Just no’ allowed to play, least no more. The drink did for me.”
	“Amy?” said the Doctor. “Who’s your friend?”
	“Sorry.” Amy coughed. “This is - this is…”
	“Name’s Angus,” said the stranger, with a hint of suspicion and without extending his hand. “Angus McThistle.”
	The Doctor’s mouth dropped open. “Serious?”
	“And why wouldnae it be?” the bigger man replied, contemptuously. “Summat wrong tae you, that name?”
	“Not at all, it’s just - ”
	“It’s just a bit unlikely,” interrupted Amy, who was anxious to avoid the fight that was brewing, and aware that her Scottish heritage probably gave her a tactical advantage when it came to defusing it. “You have tae admit, it’s a name worthy of a laird. And ye look more like a towerin’ chieftain than a wet sugg livin’ off the fat o’the land.”
	The Doctor’s brow furrowed and his nose wrinkled just a little. “Is it me, or is your accent getting…thicker?”
	But the trick seemed to have worked. Angus McThistle roared with laughter and clapped Amy on the back, hard enough to knock the wind out from her. “Aye, you’re a feisty one all right!” he bellowed, taking another swig from his plastic glass. “Come. Let’s stroll up the Mile and follow the parade.”
	He led Amy by the arm, turning to the Doctor by way of afterthought. “And you, ye ruddy Sassenach? Ye can come, but mind yer manners and keep yer distance.”

	It was hard to hear Angus over the blast of the pipers, but Amy got the gist. His story involved alcohol and sibling jealousy and the love and loss of a good woman. He’d found his way back from the gutter of addiction and depression, but the dark times had left their mark, and it was unlikely that he’d ever be allowed to play with the pipe corps again.
	“ - and I’ve been sober for nigh on six years now. Nae touched a drop.”
	“So what’s that, then?” Amy said, pointing to his glass.
	“Shandy.” Angus looked almost affronted, but not for long. Instead he looked puzzled.
	“Maybe I’m gettin’ a touch o’ the shivers,” he said, “but I could swear that bagpipe just wriggled.”
	Amy stared at him. “What do you mean, wriggled?”
	“Exactly what I said. The pipes. The pipes were wiggling aboot. And not in a natural way.”
	The Doctor, who was graced with excellent hearing and who had heard the entire conversation, even the parts Amy had missed, took a step forward, peering between their shoulders. “Which one?”
	“That one.” Angus pointed, although as it turned out he needn’t have bothered. Because it was at that precise moment that the set of pipes jumped clear out of the arms of its owner, sailing three feet in the air and then descending, attaching themselves to his face.
	The pandemonium unfolded in several stages. First, the unfortunate piper lurched from side to side, his apparent physical pain manifesting in a scream that went largely unheard over the noise. Those either side of him were knocked, and their own piping ceased, as disgruntled Scotsmen expressed annoyance and then - a second or two later - sudden alarm. The afflicted piper was still thrashing, trying desperately to prise the instrument away from his jaws. He staggered forward, headbutting (actually it was more like pipe-butting) the man in front, which started a domino effect, as several men stumbled.
	But there were more of the pipes wriggling now, further up in the ranks of assembled musicians, only this time there was an awareness, a sense that things weren’t right, and most of the men dropped their instruments in time. Most, but not all. A few sets of pipes managed the leap and dive, soaring momentarily into space as if spontaneously infused with life, before plummeting as if suddenly deprived of it. And each one of those sets that had managed a leap also managed to affix itself to a face upon its descent.
	The first piper screamed one last time and then collapsed to the floor in a dead faint or something far worse.
	The Doctor was on him in a second. He poked and prodded at the pipes, which seemed to have become limp, although they were stuck fast to the face of their unfortunate owner. The Doctor pulled out his screwdriver; it fizzed as he flicked switches and pointed. Meanwhile, Angus clambered up on a nearby table and yelled to the bandmaster at the top of his lungs. “WE HAVE A PIPER DOON! REPEAT, A PIPER IS DOON!”
	“Doctor!” said Amy, rushing to his side. “Is he - ”
	“No,” said the Doctor.
	“You had no idea what I was about to say.”
	“You were about to say ‘Is he dead’, weren’t you?”
	“Well, no, actually, I was going to say ‘alive’.”
	“Were you?”
	“Why wouldn’t I?”
	“You just never struck me as a glass half full person, that’s all, and - ”
	“Doctor! Can we focus?”
	“He’s alive but his vitals are failing. We’ve got minutes, and that’s a stretch.”
	“Can we move him? Is it safe?”
	The Doctor shuffled off his knees. “Only one way to find out.”
	Together, they lifted the fallen piper and began to carry him to the edge of the street, while around them the pipes leaped and snarled, going for passers by. Angus was ducking in and out of the parade, helping where he could. There was nothing to be done about the pipers who’d been smothered, but he could at least assist with crowd control.
	“Keep people safe and out of the way!” the Doctor called out to him. “We’ll be back!”
	As he was crossing the street he almost collided with an anoraked passer-by, holding a placard.
	“Bugs!” he cried. “We knew, and they denied! The bugs are on their way!”
	“Sorry.” The Time Lord fought to hold onto the injured piper. “What did you say?”
	“THE BUG! THE COMING OF THE BUG!”
	“What bug?” asked the Doctor urgently.
	“The Millennium Bug, you fool! Ah’ve been sayin’ it for years and naebody listened! And now it’s here! And it’ll destroy us all!”
	The Doctor shook his head in disgust.

	They rested the injured piper on the pub table. The Doctor listened to his heart, while Amy placated the anxious landlady. She had seen her fair share of oddities over the years, but this was a new one. 
	“What the hell’s that thing on his face?”
	“It’s a set of bagpipes,” explained Amy, although there really was no need.
	“What on earth happened? Was it a stag night? Or some kind of student prank gone wrong?”
	“Neither,” said Amy, and turned her attention back to the Doctor. He was feeling all around the edge of the pipes, in an attempt to loosen the bond.
	“Are they eating his face?” said Amy.
	“No, they’re slowly asphyxiating him. The good news is we have a small window to get them off. And that’s the bad news.”
	“Isn’t there a way?”
	“There is, but it’s dangerous. I can oscillate the sonic to artificially stop his heart, just for a moment. And there’s a chance that the thing will assume its work is done and cut him loose.”
	“You can’t do that!”
	“The alternative is he dies a slow and painful death, Pond,” the Doctor snapped. “Now what would you have me do?”
	Amy seethed. Aside from the endless corridors, these impossible dilemmas were the worst thing about travelling with him. 
	“Fine,” she said. “Do it.”
	Grimly, the Doctor nodded. He held the screwdriver against the piper’s chest. Flicked three switches and then hummed a strange, atonal melody that seemed to act as a key, because the screwdriver suddenly went red, its pitch dropping.
	The piper began to shudder and convulse and then stopped, as cold and stiff as death. Instantly the pipes attached to his face went limp, their bonds cut. Amy grabbed them and the ends began to wriggle, thrashing dangerously - 
	She held them with both hands and smashed the instrument on the edge of the table. Once, twice, three times, and then it was still.
	The Doctor flicked another switch. He pounded on the piper’s chest. He pounded again. The man coughed and heaved a huge groan. He was pale, and bright red marks bordered his sweat-encrusted face, but he was alive.
	“Well done,” said the Doctor to Amy, with a weak smile.
	“I’m sorry I killed it.”
	“It makes my job harder. But you probably didn’t have a choice, Amy. It’s acting on instinct. I don’t know if you could have reasoned with it.”
	He placed the bagpipes on the table and prodded. “Looks organic. And carbon-based, which rules out at least a dozen galaxies. In fact I’d go so far as to suggest it might even be from Earth.”
	“But how is that possible?”
	“I don’t know. There’s something else.” The Doctor ran his screwdriver up and forth along the creature, which lay splayed in a most undignified fashion at the long trestle table’s edge: at the other end, the piper was starting to get up, with the assistance of the landlady. “Something I’m missing.”
	He said it in that low, muttery voice he used when his eyes got intense and he started biting his lower lip. It would have been a perfect moment for a theatrical pause, which was why it came as a surprise to Amy when the Doctor added, quite brightly, “And, something familiar. Seriously, I haven’t had this much deja vu since I watched The Force Awakens.”
	“Since you watched what?”
	“Spoilers,” said the Doctor inanely. And at that moment the pub door flew open, and in marched Angus McThistle, his arms grimy with blood and grease.
	“I think we took care of the last of ‘em,” he said. “It’s all gone quiet oot there. Well, for a New Year’s Eve.”
	Amy stared at him, aghast. “You killed them all?”
	“No, just one. And that was self-defence. It was me or it. Then the rest just sort of…scattered. Peeled themselves from the faces of the men they’d attacked, and just ran off.”
	“Were they frightened?” said the Doctor.
	“No,” said Angus, his face thoughtful. “It was like watching a pack of wolves. Almost like they were being summoned.”
	“That can’t be good,” murmured the Doctor, back in intense lower lip mode. And this time, there was no lighthearted afterthought.
	The door banged again. This time it was a small, balding man of sixty, in full highland dress and the insignia of an officer. He carried a captain’s baton under his arm and had a tidy white beard. He looked out of breath, but his uniform was immaculate.
	“Saints preserve us!” he cried. “What shenanigans is this?”
	“Captain Campbell,” said the landlady by way of greeting. “Will ye be havin’ a dram?”
	“I’ll be needin’ the cask, Mary, at this rate! What in Satan’s name is that mess out there? Why is one of my pipers spread-eagled in that armchair? And how have thirteen perfectly good sets of pipes wound up smashed or stolen, ruining what is the most important night of my year?”
	He turned to face Angus, and his angry mouth curled into a sneer. “Well, well. Angus Mc-ruddy-Thistle. Might have known that where there’s trouble, you’d be crawlin’ along in its wake.”
	“Hello, Peter,” said Angus, without smiling. “Nice to see you too.”
	“It’s Captain Campbell to you, laddy.”
	“Not any more,” said Angus. “Ye had me drummed out, remember?”
	“Aye, well, you brought that on yerself. I couldn’t have a piper wit’ no self-control.” Campbell indicated the mess on the table. “I take it you’re responsible for this?”
	“Actually, that was me,” interrupted Amy, stepping forward with a hand raised, half in greeting, half in confession. “I mean, it was trying to kill me, so…”
	“Kill you?!?” The little man’s eyes looked as if they were about to pop out. “What sort of nonsense are you blathering on about? You’ve ruined this parade! This celebration! My career!”
	“They’re not bagpipes,” said the Doctor, by way of interjection. “They’re sentient life forms that look like bagpipes, and they were attacking your musicians.”
	“So you say,” Campbell snorted. “I saw nothing.”
	“Yes, well, you were at the front. But!” said the Doctor, marching over to the armchair and placing his hands on the shoulders of the unfortunate piper, in the process of recovering with the aid of a large bottle of Glen Morangie, “this man almost had his face sucked off by one set of pipes, and it was only thanks to the intervention of this man - ” and he indicated Angus - “and this woman - ” and he indicated Amy - “that he’s still alive. I think that deserves at least a modicum of thanks, don’t you?”
	“The last I was aware,” replied Campbell, fully indignant, “we were halfway up the Mile and halfway through ‘Flower of Scotland’ and all of a sudden the damned parade is falling apart and half my men are running riot!”
	“Your men are lucky to be alive!” shouted Angus. 
	“Poppycock!” Campbell may have been a foot shorter, but he made up for it with the venom in his voice and the hate in his eyes. “You may be able to fool this doe-eyed lass and her effeminate friend with your charm, Angus McThistle, but some of us see you for who you are. A useless lump of a man, a knuckle-dragging ape with all the finesse of a damp squib, a mediocre piper and an embarrassing liability to respectable musicians and their kin. Oh, drumming out was too good for you. In another time and place I’d have seen you shot for SHEER BRAZEN INSUBORDINATION!”
	It was lucky for Campbell that the window shattered, because Angus had been about to strangle him. Instead, they were beset upon by three dozen sets of sentient bagpipes, scampering through the doors and leaping through the windows. The noise they made was a strange fusion of wheezing and growling, half mechanical and half organic; it sounded like a dog being fed through a shredder.
	They landed on the floor, pacing back and forth, aggressively but clumsily, snapping and wheezing at the assembled gathering, who stood, frozen in terror - even the Doctor, Amy noticed, seemed unsure of what to do. She looked at the nearest set of bagpipes. It flashed what looked like teeth. But the creatures did not attack. It seemed as if they were waiting for something. Or someone. 
	As it turned out, it was a something. It was bigger than the others - if the bagpipes had been violins, this would have been a cello - and strode through the door unhurriedly, in the manner of a military general arriving at an inspection. It seemed to possess a greater sense of self-control and command over its own faculties, like a walking child in the midst of a sea of crawling toddlers. Moreover there was something about its gait that absolutely reeked of malicious intent, mixed up with not inconsiderable intelligence. The invading pipes all carried an air of menace: this one looked positively lethal.
	It was looking at the Doctor. As if singling him out. Unfortunately the Doctor happened to be standing quite close to Campbell, who assumed that the pipes were looking at him, having chosen him as the dominant alpha male, the one who would be challenged. He rose to the challenge by dissolving into a gibbering wreck.
	“NOOO!” he yelled, hiding behind the Doctor. “Leave me be! Take him! Take him!”
	And he ran behind the bar and dropped to his knees out of sight. There was a clatter, followed by a yelp of pain.
	The Doctor turned to Mary with a one-word question. “Cellar?”
	Mary pointed to the back, and the Doctor stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled at the approaching bagpipes. “Hey! Catch me if you can!”
	And off he went. With a wheeze and a snarl, the alpha leaped the nearest table and made for him. The bagpipes followed, scrambling over and under tables and between the legs of chairs, bypassing the others, relentless in pursuit of their chosen quarry - 
	- who was already lifting the hatch and receding into darkness.
	The last of the pipes was through and heading down the stairs. Amy rushed to the hatch, desperate to follow, fearing it would ruin whatever plan he had made.
	…he did have a plan, didn’t he?
	“Doctor!” she called into the darkness, willing him to reappear, and then there was the sound of snarling and wheezing and then the clatter of boots on stone. And he was up and out and slamming the hatch shut behind him.
	“Get me something heavy,” he said, but Angus was already on the case - quite literally, as he and Amy tipped the heavy bookcase on its side so that it covered the hatch, as Mills and Boons and walking tour guides and phone books (how long, Amy thought to herself, had it been since she’d looked at a phone book?) spilled out, creating an almighty mess through which the Doctor was now stepping and striding.
	“Thanks,” he said, wandering through into the bar. “That’ll hold them for a bit.”
	Inside, the scene was one of mute devastation, although mercifully no one was injured. Mary stood, staring at the windows in a mixture of dismay and fear. Campbell could be heard behind the bar, quietly sobbing in terror.
	“It was the knuckle-dragging ape that did it,” the Doctor went on, looking at Angus and Amy. “Your Mr Campbell actually did me a favour, even if it was an incredibly rude one. Bang! Lightbulb moment.”
	“What do you mean?” said Amy.
	“Apes! Apes and evolution. Listen.” The Doctor sat down in a dining chair, one leg crossed over his knee. “Mary, come over here and stop fretting. There won’t be any more for a while, if at all.”
	Obediently, Mary did as she was bidden. Amy had been travelling with the Doctor for some time and was still amazed at the effect he had on some people. Not everyone. Some just wanted to deck him. But others, the ones he could reach, found a quiet solace in that pleasant, open face. It invited trust. Some people, she realised, would move heaven and earth for this man, even if they scarcely knew him.
	That, in itself, was a worrying thought.
	“Story time,” said the Doctor. “Many years ago, when I was much younger and also much older, which shouldn’t make sense but would if you were there…I took a holiday in Scotland with a couple of friends. We walked around the countryside, visited the pubs, had a gander at Loch Ness.”
	He smiled at Amy. “I wore a kilt.”
	Amy’s eyebrow went up, but that was about as far as the interaction went - and undaunted, the Doctor continued. “While we were there we discovered that an alien shapeshifting race called the Zygons had started a hostile takeover. Had a bit of a scuffle. Nearly turned very nasty, thankfully didn’t. Still: several people died. You know that thing in Loch Ness? That was them.”
	Angus scoffed. “That’s a legend!”
	“Angus, you’re handy in a scrap but you’re naive. Most legends are based in fact and this one is very, very real.” The Doctor was monologuing rapidly and his voice was becoming more and more intense, borderline snappy, the way it did when he had a tremendous amount of information to impart and next to no time in which to do it. “The Loch Ness monster? Them. Also them: the Biasd Bheulach. The Blue Men of the Minch: Probably not them, unless there was a problem with the colour settings.”
	He sprang to his feet. “Anyway! Point is this: they work by impersonation. Steal their victims, copy the template, generate a bit of aggro, Robert’s your uncle. I thought the incident at Forgill was the first time they’d been on this part of the mainland.” He paused for breath. “Turns out I was wrong.”
	“Wait a minute.” Amy - the only person in the room with any hope of reaching the same chapter of the Doctor’s thought process, if not necessarily the same page - got up. “You’re saying the bagpipes are…shapeshifting aliens?”
	“Of course not, Amy. That’d be completely ridiculous. No, I’m saying that the bagpipes evolved from them. They’re an experiment gone hideously wrong.” He whipped out the sonic screwdriver: it now glowed orange. “I had it on the wrong setting. Managed to do a minor bit of calibration while I had them in the cellar, enough to get a new reading. They’re the original copies. Well, descendants anyway.”
	Mary had her head in her hands. “None of this is making any sense. Not a drop of it.”
	“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mary, it’s only just started making sense to me. Try and think of it like this: the Zygons land, and the first thing they see is a piper. And the pipes are wriggling and bellowing, probably ‘Amazing Grace’ or something suitably cliched like that. What do they assume?”
	There was a sea of blank looks.
	“They assume that bagpipes are the dominant life form. That bipedal thing carrying them, he’s just a means of perambulation, like a car. No, not a car, a horse.” The Doctor did a bit of clip-clopping for effect. “So they copy the pipes, not realising that they’re simply copying the puppet. And eventually they figure out the piper was the puppeteer, and the invasion begins in earnest. But by that point, it’s too late.”
	“What do you mean?” said Angus, sharply.
	“Zygon lab security is notoriously slapdash. I managed to escape their detention block by twisting a couple of wires and holding my breath for a minute. At some point - no idea when, no idea how - a few of these things broke away from the pods. Came to life, got minds of their own.”
	“How?” said Amy.
	“Programming error. Twitch in the algorithm. Maybe a stray bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm. Doesn’t matter. The readings I got from the sonic are consistent with that turn of events. Which means…” The Doctor sat back on his dining chair. “You’ve had sentient bagpipes out there in the fields for decades. And they’ve been breeding.”
	For a moment, the quartet reflected in a solemn silence. It was a lot to take in, but it also made a curious sense, once their brains had had the requisite time to process the facts. Amy got there first. Angus and Mary were still playing catch-up when suddenly, somewhere behind the counter, they heard the clinking of glasses.
	“Peter!” barked Mary, her mind suddenly businesslike. “Anything you take, it’s going on your tab!”
	“Assuming that any of this absolute nonsense is true,” said Angus, “why are they here? Now? On New Year’s Eve?”
	“No idea,” said the Doctor. “But I’ve got a theory. Mary, you’re a local. How’s Edinburgh’s property market these days? Any new developments? As in, you know, literal developments?”
	Mary thought. “There’s Collingwood’s. That completed in September. Aboot three miles away.”
	The Doctor snapped his fingers. “That’s it! The great and bountiful human race strikes again!”
	Miss Pond, always keen to defend her people in the presence of an uppity Time Lord, gave him a hard stare. “What do you mean?”
	“You lot! You see a humongous green space in the middle of the countryside, glorious views, plenty of fresh air, you think ‘Oh, what a lovely spot. I know - LET’S BUILD SOME HOUSES!’”
	Amy conceded the point. Silently, of course.
	“Only thing is, it never occurs to you that there might be wildlife living in that area. And that the wildlife, whatever sort of wildlife it is, has to go somewhere. Rats, or mice. Saints alive, Pond, did none of you ever read Watership Down?”
	“So what?” Amy turned on him hotly. “What are you saying, we can’t - we just can’t build houses? Or shouldn’t?”
	“Oh, nothing so patronising.” The Doctor smiled, suddenly quite calm. “This isn’t Social Commentary 101. No, people need places to live, I’d be the last person to criticise you all for that. I’m just saying there are consequences.”
	“They’re here, then,” said Angus. “Marching across Edinburgh. What happened? Did they ingratiate themselves into the pipe band? What do they want?”
	“They’re animals.” A new - but familiar - voice had joined the conversation, as Campbell popped up from behind the bar, getting shakily to his feet with a whisky glass in hand. The ice clinked and made melody in the bottom. “They’re acting like savages.”
	“As much as it pains me to agree with you, I fear you may be on to something,” the Doctor admitted. “But no, I’d say they’re confused. The desire to attack you all is a race memory. That doesn’t mean it’s their prevailing mindset.”
	“So how do we discover that?” asked Amy.
	The Doctor shot her a smile. “I’m going to talk to them.”

	A few feet below, the creatures amassed in the dark, plotting their next move. There was talk of ransacking the town. Currently they were in the middle of an argument as to whether they should eat the women and children first, or save them for later, or not eat them at all. There was some debate as to the protocol of things, and as this was uncharted territory for all of them absolutely no one could decide on the correct etiquette. The creatures were still arguing when the door to the cellar creaked ominously open, sending an acute patch of light down the stairs, and casting into sharp relief the silhouette of the Doctor, standing at the top.
	He was wearing, of all things, a set of bagpipes.
	Amy had asked him if he knew how to play, to which the Doctor had replied that he certainly hoped so, although there was a good chance that he would be a little rusty after all these years, and that this wouldn’t be the end of the world except that it might, in this case, actually lead to it. But here they were.
	The creatures snarled and immediately made for the staircase, but a burst from the Doctor stopped them in their tracks.
	“What did you say to them?” asked Amy.
	The Doctor took his mouth away from the blowstick. “Hello, I think.”
	He gave another burst, and the alpha creature - the large one that apparently led the others - gave a long, low rumble in reply. To Amy, it started like the beginnings of a drone.
	The Doctor responded with a melismatic series of higher notes, stopping occasionally to translate. “We’re just opening a dialogue. They’re telling me to get out of the way, puny human, which is normally the sort of thing I’d take as an insult only it’s really not the time. I’m demanding my rights to parley as per article 3.1572 of the Shadow Proclamation.”
	“That’s your go-to for just about everything, isn’t it?”
	But the Doctor had already begun to play again, answering the alpha’s arpeggios with a strange, almost atonal counterpoint, as the two of them went back and forth. And now something else was happening - other sets of pipes could be heard joining the conversation from the bottom of the staircase, as the attempts to thrash out a peace treaty reached a feverish crescendo with at least six or seven different melodies all jostling for attention.
	Amy remembered the uncle who’d tried to get her into Ornette Coleman and how this was basically like that, only slightly more tuneful. And it seemed to be working. There was a sense of harmony in play now, with the tunes from the creatures in the cellar working almost in tandem with the Doctor, and making a noise that had moved back from unbearable and which was now skating the borders between grating and pleasant.
	All except one. The alpha didn’t seem to be on board. You could literally hear it in its voice. Moreover the Doctor was running out of breath, his face reddening by the second. Angus noticed, and stepped forward.
	“Should I take over, Doctor?”
	The Doctor shook his head no. Amy said “Leave him. He knows what he’s doing.”
	All of a sudden the Doctor pulled his mouth away from the blowstick and leaned against the door brace, his hands on the bagpipes, taking in great lungfuls of air. “We’re almost there. I’ve offered them safe passage to a safe place, and everyone’s in agreement except - ”
	The alpha flew through the air at the speed of a freshly-tossed caber, heading for the Doctor’s throat. He ducked with a microsecond to spare, but it managed to grab onto the top of his head, pulling the pair of them to the floor. The Doctor rolled around helplessly, wrenching with both hands in a desperate attempt to free himself, while all the while the enormous bag was heading across his forehead and in the direction of his face. It was snarling and blowing and wheezing at the same time; it sounded unholy and foul.
	“No!” the Doctor was yelling, even through his cries of pain. “No, we can talk about thi-”
	The pipes wriggled and shook and then attached themselves squarely onto his face.
	But only for a moment. For here was Angus, charging forward with the battle-hardened anger of William Wallace at Stirling Bridge. With a great cry and surge of almost superhuman strength he pulled the bagpipes from the head of the Doctor and ran for the door, holding the alpha at arm’s length as it thrashed and snarled all the way.
	Amy set off in pursuit, the Doctor following not far behind. They reached the street just in time to see Angus heading through the open door of the chip shop.
	“Angus!” the Doctor called out, but there was no answer.
	“We’ve got to stop him,” said Amy as they headed across the street. “He’ll get himself - ”
	From inside: the clattering of metal, a hot sizzling sound, barely audible over the sound of screeching and thrashing, and then silence.
	And then the piper emerged, bruised, bloodied and oil-splattered, but otherwise unharmed.
	“Done,” he said. “But they’ll probably need a bit of deep cleaning.”

	It was some hours later. The Doctor had herded the remainder of the bagpipe tribe into the TARDIS, having promised to take them somewhere safe, warm and with little to no risk of impudent colonists showing up and desecrating the landscape. He had been met with absolutely no resistance, with even the most bloodthirsty of the group falling abruptly and politely into line after discovering the fate of their leader. Angus McThistle, it seemed, was a man not to be trifled with.
	It had made for quite the spectacle: the Doctor, herding the pipes down the Mile in the direction of Niddry Street, as gobsmacked locals gaped and wondered whether their drinks had been spiked. Several made resolutions, then and there and well in advance of midnight, to lay off the sauce entirely during the next year. This being Scotland, most of those promises had been broken within minutes.
	Right now they were waiting to watch the fireworks from the seclusion of an exclusive private function room at Edinburgh Castle, which the Doctor had secured by means of the psychic paper, as footmen dashed back and forth with trays of drinks for the new Laird of Dunans and his entourage. Said entourage included Angus, Mary the pub landlady and also Captain Campbell, who had been invited up at the Doctor’s whim and Amy’s annoyance. 
	“I still don’t understand why you brought him.” Amy looked across at where Campbell was involved in a heated argument with Angus about something.
	“Bear with me. Captain? Could we have a word in your shell?”
	Campbell came across the balcony, wine glass in hand. Some of his earlier anger had evaporated, but that scornful front remained. “You know, I’m very grateful for the invitation,” he said. “But you’ll still not convince me that that little incident down at the parade this evening wasn’t a lot of smoke and mirrors.”
	“Ah, yes, well, smoke and mirrors explain just about everything,” replied the Doctor. “But no, you see, I was thinking about our friend Angus here. Because it strikes me that he did us all a colossal favour today, without once thinking about himself or the danger to his own life. And it strikes me that a man of that calibre might just be someone you want to have in your piping unit.”
	Campbell was already shaking his head. “No. No, absolutely not. It’s completely out of the question. He was drummed out and I’m not about to drum him back in again just because of a sudden spurt of so-called heroics.”
	“Right, yes, understood.” The Doctor paused before adding “Of course, we could just tell everyone about your heroics instead.”
	An eyebrow went up sharply. “What do you mean?”
	“Well, it’s all a bit of a blur, but to my recollection, when the creatures attacked in the pub earlier, you screamed like a marmoset in heat and then hid behind the counter, using several members of the party as human shields while you were doing it.”
	“It’d be a terrible shame if that got out,” said Amy. “Especially here, in such prestigious company.”
	Campbell went pale. “You wouldn’t.”
	“Oh, I think you’ll find we would,” said the Doctor. “But perhaps it needn’t come to that. Now come on, what do you say?”
	The captain looked to be on the verge of hyperventilation. After a moment or two he had recovered enough of his composure to give a squirrely nod. “Yes. Well. I suppose we could come to some sort of arrangement.”
	“That’s the spirit!” The Doctor clapped him on the back, and called over to the other side of the room. “Angus! You’ve got your old job back.”
	Campbell disappeared into the rest of the party, looking deflated. Angus joined them on the balcony. “You really mean that?”
	“I do. Go and see the captain over there, and he’ll thrash out the details. You’ll be back in the platoon before you can say ‘Flower of Scotland’.”
	Amy concurred. “Mm-hmm. I’d give it a few minutes, though. Let him have a drink to recover first.”
	Angus gripped the two of them by the shoulders with his big, brawny, bandaged hands. “I can’t thank you enough. Both of you.”
	“Well, it was the least we could do. You did save our bacon back there.”
	“I confess to a bit of guilt. Drownin’ it in oil like that.”
	“Don’t worry. I’d rather have had it another way, but I think the alpha was too far gone, too animalistic, to be convinced.”
	“And the others?”
	“Oh, the Zygon hybrids will be fine. They want what everybody wants, which is just to be left alone. Right now they’re having a whale of a time in the TARDIS swimming pool. When we’re done here, Amy and I will take them somewhere quiet.” He took another sip. “Somewhere they can live in peace.”
	“You’re a decent sort, Doctor. Ah’m sorry I called ye a Sassenach.”
	The Doctor gave an enigmatic smile. “I’m not even from Earth.”
	Angus nodded and drained his glass. “Funny thing is, I believe you.”
	He left them to it and went off to find Campbell. The Doctor and Amy were left to themselves for a moment - but not for long. From outside they could hear the sound of chanting. “Ten! Nine! Eight!”
	And then the count reached zero and there was an explosion in the sky, and just for a change it wasn’t a dangerous supernova or an exploding battle cruiser. The fireworks were bright, glorious and expensive, and quite marvellous to watch.
	“Look at it,” said the Doctor as the rockets sizzled and burst, leaving glittering trails across the dark green sky. “The end of the millennium. Well, not really, that’s next year, but the year everyone celebrated the changing of the clock. Mankind with all its hopes and dreams and ambitions.”
	“And building plans,” mused Amy.
	The Doctor smiled. “And that.”
	They could hear singing now, strains of a familiar melody that echoed through the function room and the crowds in the courtyard outside.
	“Should auld acquaintance be forgot 
	 And never brought to mind…”
	The Doctor thought about the persistence of memory and the things we forget: because we choose to, because we must, or because they are taken from us. He gave half a glance at his companion and sighed. “Oh, Rory,” he muttered to himself.
	“Who?” said Amy.
	“Nobody. It doesn’t matter.”
	Amy gave a slight frown but let the moment pass. “Anyway. Happy New Year, Doctor.”
	“Likewise, Miss Pond. For the sake of Auld Lang Zygon.”
	“That - ” Amy prodded him in the chest - “is a terrible, terrible pun.”
	The Doctor’s grin was unapologetic. “If you can’t make terrible jokes in the holiday season, when can you?”
	“Well,” said Amy. “I’ll drink to that.”
	And so they did.