Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [43]
He was sure there was no way the police could have spotted him. But he was pulled over not five minutes after leaving the building. The police car and his car were sitting on the shoulder of the Beltway, the rest of the traffic shooting past in Dopplered spurts.
‘Can I see your licence? Please? Sir?’ said the cop. He and his partner, sitting back in the patrol car, were a pair of grim blond body-builders who looked like they’d been stamped out of the same mould, like Smurfs.
‘Of course, officer. ‘ The Doctor fished around in his jacket pockets, pulling out all sorts of identity cards, spare change, and junk, until he found a wallet containing four American dollars, ten Scottish pounds, an autographed picture of Grace Murray Hopper and a current Maryland driver’s licence. The policeman wordlessly wandered back to his car and handed the piece of plastic to his clone.
In that moment when their eyes were off him, the Doctor reached over and opened the glovebox. He knew it was a dangerous thing to do; if they noticed the movement, they would assume he was reaching for a weapon, getting it ready to use.
He was.
The cop was back. ‘You don’t mind if we search the vehicle, sir?’ he said.
‘Of course not, officer. Always more than happy to co-operate with the authorities in pursuit of their duty.’ The Doctor got out of the car and stood near the bonnet while the pair of patrolmen sniffed around the trunk and then the glovebox.
The cop straightened up and showed his partner the Eridani device over the roof of the car. ‘What do we have here?’ he said.
‘Seems like we found what we were looking for,’ said the other cop. ‘I’m going to ask you to come for a ride with us, sir.’
The kids were so raddled that I offered to drive. Bob dozed in the passenger seat, occasionally emitting directions, until we arrived at a post office. ‘Pull over, pull over.’ His slurred speech sounded like backmasking.
Bob jumped out of the campervan while I kept the motor running, dashed up to the post office boxes, fumbled with the keys, and pushed a postcard into one of the boxes. He looked up and down the street once, startled, as if suddenly remembering we were supposed to be on the run. Then he collapsed back into the passenger seat and erupted into mighty snores.
Somewhere around here, I realised I’d forgotten all about Trina’s birthday. I slapped my hand against the car door and cussed. I’d promised to take her out for surf ‘n’ turf. There was nothing I could do about it now – I couldn’t even phone her.
We headed out along 270, past the tatty yellow ribbons still tied to telephone poles, until the strip malls tapered out into houses and then into nothing, just the highway.
Two
By midnight we felt safe enough to stop and sleep.
Peri and Bob had got so used to my quiet presence that they talked as if I wasn’t there. I sat in the passenger seat of the Travco, trying to make myself comfortable, while they lay in the sleeping bags in the back, muttering about whether the Doctor was OK and if he could find us. Centre of their world.
Boy, it was brown back there in the Travco. Brown brown brown. The national colour of the Seventies. Bob had chivalrously taken the sofa under the mangled venetians, while Pert got the ‘bedroom’. They had the heater on full, running off the generator. I suppose I could have stretched out on the floor, but I didn’t fancy being trodden on.
We were pulled over in a scenic lookout. Other than their murmuring, it was deadly quiet. I had a view of pine trees standing like dark giants, rearing up from the hillside and staring down at the gravel arc of the lookout. There was no moon. If I ducked my head a little, I could see a skyful of burning stars.
Oh yeah. I stretched out my legs on the driver’s side, my jacket pillowed under my head. The dark is good. It’s always good. I remember burning out of Los Angeles in a little Citröen I later crashed in a ditch and left for dead. The California emptiness looked like a video game, looked like Night Driver, just lights in the sky and