Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [61]
Peri slammed on the brakes. The campervan rolled onto the side of the road and stopped there, engine grumbling. We all looked at the Doctor.
‘Not out here,’ he said. ‘Inside the world of the computer.’
‘Well what would have been wrong with Bob’s motel room?’ she said.
‘Peri. If it’s at all possible, I’d like to be somewhere that no-one knows we are.’
She took a moment. ‘You’re not thinking of breaking into a house or something, are you?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘I know electrical power isn’t a problem, but we are going to need a phone line. And I think somebody might notice if you shimmy up a pole in the middle of town.’
‘Hmmm, yes. I’m afraid that publicly accessible computers are some years away yet.’
‘God forbid,’ Bob sniffed.
‘Ah! Stop!’ Peri startled and braked rather suddenly, jumbling us about. ‘Shangri-la!’ he declared. ‘Utopia! Solla Sollew!’
We stared out the campervan’s windows at the damp grey wreckage of a gas station. It looked like it had been abandoned for months, maybe years – long enough for weeds to carpet the concrete and a ragged forest of shrubs and shaggy trees to have sprung up in the wasteland around it. Patches of snow lay around, mostly melted by the cold rain.
Peri piloted the campervan around a pile of rusting rubbish and parked it in back of the building. With the engine off, the silence was deafening.
‘Some Shangri-La,’ said Peri.
‘There should be a phone line somewhere inside.’
‘Come on, Doctor. There’s not going to be a working phone.’
‘We only need the line,’ said the Doctor. ‘Bob, your task will be to use a public telephone in the town to bring our borrowed line back to life.’
We hopped out of the campervan, stretching our legs. The back door of the gas station was shut with a padlock and chain. The Doctor fiddled with it for a few minutes, using an unbent paperclip and then a knitting needle. Then he sighed, stood back, and stiff-armed the door. It popped neatly off its hinges. He caught it by the handle before it could fall backwards into the station, and laid it neatly beside the dobrway. ‘A somewhat unorthodox entry. Remind me to repair that before we leave.’
Peri looked around the inside of the station. ‘Honestly, Doctor, I don’t think anyone’s going to care.’ It was mostly empty, but trash was piled against the walls, yellowed newspaper plastered over the windows. An entire car engine had been left sitting where the cash register once must have been. The place had a rich smell of mouldy rags and oil.
We carried the computer equipment into the place in cardboard boxes while the Doctor ran a cable from the campervan’s generator. ‘You know what would be cool to have,’ said Bob, hefting a box onto the counter. ‘One of those computers you can fold up into a suitcase.’
The Doctor began to unpack the computer equipment, giving the deceased engine a look of annoyance. ‘Phone jack’s right here,’ said Bob, crouched on the floor behind him.
‘Very well. Young Bob, make me a miracle.’
Bob gave him one of his serious, frowning nods, and scooted out of the station. We were maybe ten or fifteen minutes’ walk out of town. Privacy, just as the Doctor had ordered.
The Doctor fussed over the computer. Peri got bored and wandered out, and I followed her, in hopes of an uninterrupted smoke.
Behind the station, Peri sat scrunched in the open door of the Travco. She held the camp stove in her lap. ‘All right?’ I said.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, with an attempt at a smile.
‘I bet you kick a police officer in the garbanzo beans and torch some house every day of the week.’ I pulled out my ciggies. ‘Got a light?’
Peri had to laugh at that. ‘I was kind of thinking of making some coffee,’ she said, turning the camp stove around. ‘Or maybe a cup of soup.’
‘Do we have any coffee?’ I said.
‘No, and we don’t have any cup of soups, either.’ She turned and dropped the stove back inside the campervan.
‘What are we doing out here?’
‘Staying invisible, I guess,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter