Mary found her father, unconscious, on the floor of the shed.  Dropping to her knees, she shook his shoulder as hard as she could, frightened by his lack of reaction.  She tried to pull him to the door, but she wasn’t strong enough, and his body wouldn’t move.  Even though he wasn’t dead – she could see his chest moving up and down as he breathed – his body was limp – a dead weight.

Tears choked her.  Mary looked frantically around to see if there was something – anything – she could use to awaken him or move him.  She could see nothing on his workbench, among his tools, or along the walls that she could reach that would help her.  Then she turned her attention to the floor.  Two glass syringes with metal needles and plungers lay on the plank floor on the side opposite where she tugged on his arm.  One, with its plunger pushed all the way to the base of the needle, had obviously been used.  The other, out of reach of the unconscious man, sat crushed, the glass fragments ground flat by someone’s foot.  A dark liquid, now mostly absorbed by the wooden planking, lay under the glass fragments on the floor.

Mary stood up and moved to and through the door, the sounds of her booted feet the only ones she made.  Just outside the threshold of the shed, she ran into Hero, nearly knocking him over.

Hero regained his own balance and grabbed the agitated blonde girl by the shoulders.  “Mary?!” he exclaimed, “what’s troublin’ you, Miss?”

Mary pointed at the shed behind her in quick frenzied motions, her breath coming in gasps.

Hero took one look inside the shed, saw the man on the floor, and shouted at the top of his voice.  “Angel!” he hollered.  “Angel!  You get Mrs. Patterson and Mr. Hewitt out here right now!  Mr. John done taken ill!”

A muffled acknowledgement of Hero’s yell and the sound of several pairs of feet running across hard dirt came as several other slaves ran up to the shed to see what could be done.

Mary clung on to Hero, sobbing.

“There, there, child,” Hero said, pulling the girl away from him.  “Come on inside the shed, now, and tell me what you seen, won’tcha, Miss?”

Mary nodded quickly, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and entered the shed with the old slave.  She did a quick pantomime, showing him how she came in the shed, and tried to rouse the unconscious John.  She pointed at the used syringe near the man’s hand, and the other, crushed one further from him.

Hero knelt beside Mr. John, placing his hand on the man’s chest to check he was breathing.  “He’s alive – I can feel him breathin’.  Did’ya see who gave him the injection?  Did he give it to hisself?” Hero asked, brow furrowed as he looked back at Mary.

Mary shook her head quickly, then ran over and threw herself at Hero, hugging him tightly as she wept.

Hero put one hand on her blonde head, and patted her shoulder with the other.

“Don’t worry, child,” Hero soothed.  “Once the doctor gets here we’ll have all this business sorted.  He’ll fix up your father jus’ fine.  Wait and see.”

“I’ve never heard of this musician you want to meet,” Donna said, waiting by the TARDIS doors as the Doctor made final adjustments to the time console.

“Wouldn’t expect you to,” the Doctor replied, taking one last look at the TARDIS computer screen  and brushing off the jacket of his suit before he moved down the ramp to join his companion.  “Robbie ‘Mad Cat’ Shifflett doesn’t become famous until …ooooh….50 years after your time.  He was part of an antique retro-folk sort of movement.”  He looked Donna over – a pair of long khaki trousers, a sleeveless v-necked light blue sweater, a khaki silk scarf around her neck, and a pair of brown loafers.  “Nice outfit.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Donna chided.  She looked his brown suit up and down.  “Honestly, though, you could wear something different every once and a while.”  She sniffed.  “What’s a retro-folk movement?”

The Doctor ignored Donna’s criticism and pushed open the TARDIS door.  He indicated Donna precede him, which she did, looking around with interest as the Doctor continued his explanation.  He stepped out behind her and shut the TARDIS door with a click. “It’s old-time country music – you know, moonshine jugs, washtub bass, washboard percussion sort of thing. Kind of a back to basics movement, really. Mad Cat refused to use digital technology, and insisted on recording his songs on very old equipment so the antique nature of the sound became part of the performance.”

“Hisses and scratches as part of the performance? In my time, technology was all about pure sound – high def all the way,” Donna said, looking up the tree-covered high hills that surrounded the TARDIS.  “We’re way out in the country, then.  I’ve not seen trees like this back home.  They’re huge.”

The Doctor pondered the terrain, noting the slight incline of the TARDIS.  “Looks like we set down in some sort of cove.  This is ancient woodland on top of worn down granite…essentially.  Not something you see in Old London Town.  Nice selection of trees here, though – very eclectic.”  He indicated the hills around them.  “These mountains started forming 400 million years ago, and flora and weather have battered them down ever since.”

Donna nodded, and flapped her silk scarf in an attempt to cool off.  “So, this is obviously Earth, and it’s definitely hot and humid enough to be summer….but what year is it?”

“This is Custis County, southwestern Virginia, slightly left of the Appalachian Mountains…and the year is 2058.”  The Doctor licked an index finger and held it in the air.  “I’d call it July,” he said.

“Right then,” Donna said.  “Is there a road around here somewhere, or do the mid-21^st Century types all travel by hover car?”

“That way,” the Doctor said, pointing directly ahead at a thicket of bushes.  “We should be right beside Patterson Mill Road, and up the hill to our right is Mad Cat’s farmhouse.”  He stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and started walking forward.

“Is he at home?” Donna asked, following him, grateful she’d decided against wearing heels.  The terrain was leafy, covered with downed branches and twigs, and uneven.  Bugs swirled about her head.  “Please tell me he has air conditioning.”

“He should.  Watch your step though – leaves of three, leave it be, and all that.”

Donna stopped, waving the gnats away and looking about suspiciously. “There’re a lot of green things with three leaves.  Which ones am I supposed to avoid?”

The Doctor stopped and turned to her.  “Poison ivy,” he explained.  “You’ve never seen poison ivy?”

Donna pointed at herself, face registering her annoyance as she swatted the air in front of her with her other hand.  “I’m from Chiswick,” she declared.  “Poison ivy isn’t something we thought to include in the back garden, so no, I don’t know what it looks like.”

He indicated a large tree with a vine clinging to the outer bark, with leaf bunches sticking out of the vine as it wound its way up the tree’s trunk.  “There,” he told her.  “See the leaves?  They don’t have regular edges like…oh… a maple or an oak leaf does.  If you see irregular leaves like this, growing in a group of three, don’t touch it.”

“So I avoid big vines.  Easy enough.”  She slapped at her arm.  “The bugs seem to be the bigger menace.”

One of the Doctor’s eyebrows went up in surprise.  “Really?  They don’t seem to be bothering me.”

“Course they aren’t,” Donna muttered.  “Time Lords are probably naturally immune to mosquitoes.”

He smiled.  “We are – well, Earth mosquitoes, anyway…well, mostly.  I don’t get poison ivy either.  It doesn’t always grow like a vine, by the way – but you’re wearing long trousers and closed shoes, so you’ll be fine.” He turned back in the direction of the road. “Come on – if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get a private performance.”

“I’d be happy just to get away from these bugs,” Donna declared, following him.

It took a few minutes to push upward through the thicket of bushes to the muddy road, potholed and washed out from a recent heavy rainstorm.  They stood in the middle of a hill.  To their right the red clay road rose up and then curved to the left, both sides of it covered in trees and bushes, while the road on the their left curved downhill to the right, and seemed to be less forested.  Tree branches hung over them, obscuring the road from the sun. The Doctor looked about and frowned.

“Fifty years ahead of my time, and they don’t pave roads, or properly maintain them?” Donna said, incredulous.  She slapped her right arm, then flicked away the mosquito she’d killed.  “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”

“Yup.  Right place,” he affirmed, studying the road carefully.  “It just may not be the right time.”  He indicated thin trails running up and down the road, with horseshoe indentations in the midst of them.  “Those aren’t tracks an automobile would make…..more like a horse drawn carriage or cart.”

“Which puts us when, then?” Donna inquired, waving her arms to keep the insects from settling on her.

“Well, not 2058 by a long shot….well, in a galactic sense it’s not a big gap, but so far as Earth technology goes…..” his voice trailed off.

“How about a number, spaceman,” Donna stated.  “Not interested in the galactic scale here. I’m too busy being devoured by mosquitoes.”

“Oooh,” the Doctor said, rubbing the back of his head, “pre-industrial, for sure…but it could be anywhere from the early days of colonization and revolution right through the late 19^th Century.”  He frowned.  “Hmmm.  Obviously, adding the square root of three to that last time coordinate had more of an effect than I thought.”

“Lovely.  We’ve landed in a Last of the Mohicans theme park equivalent, then? Shall I expect a bunch of Indians to leap out of the bushes and take our scalps…. or will the Redcoats shoot us by mistake?”

The Doctor pursed his lips and shook his head.  “Doubt it,” he told her.  “This part of Virginia wasn’t as involved in the Revolutionary War as the more northern and eastern parts of the state were – the mountains were a bit of a barrier.  Besides, we’d hear Redcoats from a mile away.  Noisy bunch, they were, and ridiculously easy to pick out in this environment.  Part of why they lost – poor fellows showed up for a proper war in lovely bright red jackets - and instead of orderly killing, many of them ran smack dab into guerilla fighting instead.  Not sporting, y’see, shooting chaps from behind trees and rocks.”

“Alright then - if there’s no chance of Redcoats,” Donna said, waving her hands about her face and head, “Please tell me they have bug repellant, at least.  If we stay here much longer, I’m going to end up as one big bug bite.”

“Once we get away from the heavy woods, the bug concentration should go down,” he reassured her.  “As to the specific year?  No idea.  Let’s do a bit of a wander and find out, shall we?”

“Which direction?”

“Down the hill.  I bet there’s a flat bit down there, and we might meet up with someone who can tell us the time, so to speak.”

It only took a few moments for them to reach the bottom of the hill, where they found a grey wooden split rail fence and gate to the right of the road, with a long dirt path behind the fence that wound along the bottom of a steep wooded hill.  Two thin wheel tracks with horseshoe prints wound down the path.  A large field of tobacco, tended by what were clearly African American slaves, extended in the valley from the left side of the dirt path for several hundred yards to the edge of another wooded hill.  Down the path the tobacco field widened even further, and at the end of the path they could make out two red-brown barns, a yellow plantation house behind a huge old oak tree, a carriage in the path by the tree, and in the far distance, brownish-grey structures that were obviously slave quarters.

“Definitely not Last of the Mohicans,” the Doctor remarked with distaste, indicating the slaves.  “More like Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  We’re in the 19^th century, clearly before the American Civil War.”

Donna frowned.  “Blimey,” she muttered.  “So this is a plantation, like Gone with the Wind? That’s horrible.”

“It is,” the Doctor agreed. “Though unlike the slaves at Tara, here they’re growing tobacco rather than cotton.”

Donna walked up to the split rail fence and peered into the field, grateful the bugs seemed to have lost interest in her.  “I’ve seen pictures of tobacco growing, but I’ve never seen it up close.  Looks bigger than I thought.”

The Doctor joined her at the fence.  “It’ll get bigger still – harvest time isn’t for another month at least.”  He nudged Donna.  “Why don’t we pay a social call, get our bearings, maybe snag a cup of tea?  We’ll head back to the TARDIS after, and try again to see ‘Mad Cat’.”

“We’re not going to…I dunno…free these slaves?”

The Doctor grimaced and inhaled through his teeth.  “Much as I’d like to….I’m afraid not, Donna.  These slaves we can’t free.  Encourage their owners to treat them better, sure.  Pack up the lot and take them elsewhere?  Not so much.”

Donna crossed her arms, clearly troubled.  “And why not?  We helped the Ood.”

The Doctor scratched his head.  “We got lucky with the Ood. They had a home planet and a lifestyle to return to – these people don’t.  This is their home, and has been, for many of them, for their entire lives.”

“So we’re going to do nothing?”  Donna indicated the field in front of them.  “Just leave them?”

“I didn’t say that,” the Doctor pointed out.  “History takes care of itself here – the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement…both fixed events in history.  Takes a long time, mind you….but eventually it gets the job done.  We can’t go mucking about much here and now, but we can…. Well, make some well placed suggestions….seeds planted about freedom, equality, education….that sort of thing…we could do that.”

“And in the end, they stay slaves.”  Donna sniffed derisively.  “So much for making a difference.”

The Doctor gripped the fence with both hands.  “Only until 1863,” he pointed out.  “Besides, if we were to free them, where would we take them?”

Donna opened her mouth to answer him, then shut it, realizing she didn’t know where they could take the men and women she saw working the tobacco field in front of her.

“There have to be…ooooh….over 30 slaves here – that’s a whole lot of relocations to make, even if we don’t include their families.” he continued.  “And then, if we managed to get them elsewhere, what would they do after we left? They’d have no manumission papers, and few skills, other than farming.  Most of them are illiterate, since it’s against the law to educate them.  They’d need money, jobs, and safe places to live before the advent of war…and that’s assuming they’d not get dragged back into slavery again, or found to be runaways and punished for it…..” he paused, thoughtful.  “As much as I wish we could do all that – much as I wish we could save them…..we can’t.  Sadly, that’s both too much interference and too little of an impact.”  He frowned.  “As distasteful as this slavery is to me – or rather, us - we can’t change a whole society ourselves, Donna….nor are we supposed to.”  He looked across the field at the slaves, his face grim.  “The people living here and now - slave and master alike -  have to be the instruments of the change themselves for it to stick.  We can’t do that for them.”

“So we go in there,” Donna rumbled, obviously frustrated.  “Have our bit of tea, encourage them to be…I dunno…nicer to these people, and then we’re off? Doesn’t seem like enough.”

“I know,” the Doctor agreed, “but at the moment, that’s the best we’ve got.”  He stepped away from the fence.  “Come on.  Let’s meet the neighbors.”

The red dirt path to the house wasn’t in any better shape than the road, but the potholes and mud puddles were easy to avoid.  Unfortunately, the humid breeze that blew across the field every so often did nothing to keep them cool.  Donna fanned herself in a vain attempt to cool off, but the heat didn’t seem to bother the Doctor.  As they walked, the features of the plantation house became clearer, as did the buildings around it.  The slaves in the tobacco field looked up at them as they passed, but made no move to intercept the visitors.  Instead, they turned their attention back to their work.

“This is awful,” Donna said, looking at the slaves.  “Keeping people like this.  It’s like a sick zoo.”

The Doctor nodded absently, his attention on the path in front of them.  “Notice anything odd about the plantation house?” he asked, without looking up.

Donna flapped her scarf, trying to generate a mini personal breeze, and peered ahead of them at the house.  “Um….yellow wood paneling, looks like, with a big white front porch.  Carriage looks a bit swank.  Oak tree in front is huge, but the bench is a nice touch.  The columns aren’t as big as the ones at Tara in Gone With the Wind….and why does the back wall of the porch look so dark?”

“There’s only one set of carriage tracks here since the rain,” the Doctor said, pointing down the path.  “Not many visitors recently, well, in the past day or so, anyway.”

“Why’d you want me to look at the house if all you’re looking at is the path?” Donna asked. “What difference does it make if there’s only been one carriage here since the rain ended?”

The Doctor looked up at her.  “It makes a difference if the visitor is the local doctor, come to treat someone…. or the local parson, come to offer condolence,” he said, indicating the house ahead of them.  “The ‘swank’ carriage probably isn’t from a neighbor – it’s owned by someone more official.  And, the porch looks dark because they’ve draped the windows and doors with black cloth.”  He squinted down the path.  “Someone died in that house – and recently, too.”

“So if it’s the parson –“

“We’re here to pay our respects,” the Doctor finished.  “They probably have a family burial plot here somewhere, and the parson has come to officiate a funeral, or offer solace in the aftermath of one.”

“What if it’s the local doctor?” Donna asked.

“There may have been a bad accident, or some kind of illness….which would explain the recent  death….and perhaps mean more are to come.”

Donna stopped.  “So, will we be helping them, then?” she asked, a little bitterness and sarcasm in her voice.  “If it’s something we’re allowed to help with, that is?”

“If they want the help, I suppose,” he responded, ignoring her tone.  “Even if they don’t want it…well, I’ve never let that sort of thing get in my way.”  He sniffed.  “Charge right in and get on with the helping, that’s me.”

Donna shook her head.  “So I’ve noticed, Doctor,” she said.

“Doctor?” said a male voice.  As Donna and the Doctor turned toward the sound, a short grey  haired black man stood up on the edge of the field from in between rows of tobacco.  He wore a tan shirt and dark trousers on his lean frame, which were well-mended, but dirty with red dirt from his work in the field.  He had the rugged look of someone who had spent most of his life outside.

“Beggin’ your pardon, miss,” he said, painfully polite, “but did you call that gentleman a doctor?”

The Doctor stepped off the path to meet the man.  “Hello,” the Doctor said cheerily, extending a hand.  “I’m called the Doctor, and I am ….one, more or less.  This is my friend Donna Noble.”

Donna waved.  “Hello,” she said.

“Do you need medical help?” the Doctor asked.

The black man looked uncertainly at the Doctor’s proffered right hand.  “No, sir,” he said.  He  quickly wiped his dirty right hand on his trousers and reached out and shook the Time Lord’s hand.  The Doctor grinned widely in response.

“No, sir,” the man said again, pulling back his hand.  “I don’t need medicine, but thank you kindly for askin’.”

“Someone….else…. needs medical help?” the Doctor suggested.

The slave looked nervously up the path toward the house.  “Somethin’ odd’s goin’ on here, sir,” he said. “Mister John, he passed on three days ago, and they just lost Miss Eliza yesterday.”

“I see,” the Doctor said.  “I’m sorry to hear that, but if they’ve already died….” The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the man.  “You don’t think this is the end of the deaths… do you?”

The slave nodded.  “Somethin’s not right, and Mrs. Patterson’s so torn with grief, she can’t hardly think straight.”

“Patterson?  Of Patterson’s Mill fame?” the Doctor asked, intrigued.

“Yes sir,” the slave confirmed.  “Mill’s down the road a piece, straddlin’ the creek.”

“I see,” the Doctor said.  “So the family’s been here a while?  Known in the community, then?”

“Yes sir, which is why this seems so funny to me.  Mrs. Patterson sent for Doc Randall, but he ain’t come, and he usually makes his way here quick like if the Mrs. needs somethin’.”  He looked back down the path, then at the Doctor and Donna.  “If you could help, I know the Mistress’d be grateful.”

The Doctor looked back at Donna, who shrugged. “Charge right in,” she told him.

“We’ll head up to the house, pay our respects, and see if we can be of any assistance,” the Doctor said.  “Can you tell me who lives there?  And what’s your name, so we can tell them who sent us?”

“Everybody just calls me Hero,” the man explained with a self-deprecating shrug.  “It’s Mrs. Patterson’s brother and youngest daughter that’s died.”

“You liked them,” Donna said, her tone sympathetic.

Hero nodded.  “Mister John was a good man, always thinkin’ and fiddlin’ about matters, wantin’ to try new things and improve the place.  Some of the neighbors thought he was strange – chalked it up to his European schoolin’.  Miss Eliza wasn’t but eight years old, and a sweet child….and now they’re fixin’ to put her in the ground.  The mistress is so sad she don’t know what to do with herself.”  Hero shook his head. “Now there’s just her, her other daughter Miss Caroline, and Mister John’s daughter Mary.”

A bell rang up near the house, a doleful, slow knell.  The slaves in the field stopped their work.

“That’ll be the call to attend the funeral,” Hero said.  He bowed slightly to Donna and the Doctor.  “If you’ll be excusin’ me?”

“Of course,” Donna said.  “We’ll follow you up in a few minutes.”

Hero bowed slightly, and joined the other slaves as they headed for the plantation house.

“You didn’t ask if it was an accident or an illness that caused the deaths,” Donna pointed out, standing beside the Doctor and watching the slaves walk down the path in front of them.

The Doctor chewed on his lower lip.  “You’re right,” he admitted,  “because it’s either both of those things, or something else entirely.”

Donna sighed.  “Sometimes, you make no sense.”

“Oh, I dunno.  I like to think I have a fresh perspective on things, is all.”  He looked at Donna, scanning her features for signs of distress.  “You going to be all right, up at the – “ he indicated the path – “burial….and all?”

“I think so,” she told him, warily. She remembered the pain of losing her own computer generated children, back when she’d been part of The Library’s mainframe.  Her marriage…and the children as a result of the marriage…. hadn’t been real – she knew that….she told herself that over and over, in fact – but the pain of their loss still lingered within her. She hoped it didn’t show on her face.

The Doctor took her by the hand, seeming to sense her sadness.  “Let’s go,” he said gently, and guided her back onto the path.

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