Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [7]
"Did I see?"
Of course it had seen. Why else should it ask? He had been wrong. There was no escape from the future, and as the future came closer, he saw it clearer too.
Again the blue box . . . a TARDIS, whatever that was, tumbled. Again he was held; they were all held by the malignant eye. The eye of the Sphinx; the eye of the Pythia.
The flow of people and time on Ealing Broadway had settled into a smooth drift that was slower than was natural, but it intensified Ace's vision too. She was aware of matter shifting under the force of time's currents, little swirls of microscopic particles that eddied away from so-called solid or animate objects, much as mud slowly shifts in the flow of a river. Ace could have stopped to watch the diaphanous colours of the molecules around her for ever.
The structure of the whole street, the buildings and pavements, was seethingly alive, and the people moving through it were participants in a slow, graceful dance. But Time's currents, unlike a river, flow in many directions at once. At its centre, Ace was untouched. She found that she could move quickly between the slow-motion people she encountered. The sky still flared repeatedly with the beacon light, but the Doctor was nowhere to be seen.
He must have moved fast, but it was easy to guess where he was going. Ace had only to retrace their journey from Perivale and head towards the source of the beacon.
It was obvious what that was too. The TARDIS was somehow warning of impending crisis. The effects of it were already all around them, although the local inhabitants seemed oblivious of the fact. But then what did you expect of Perivale? Ace knew it had been a mistake to come back. She had grown up here, but the place made her uneasy with its memories. The TARDIS was her home now; like its owner, a source of endless excitement and change. And she didn't want to lose it.
She could hear a distant noise, maybe even miles away, like something scrabbling against a hard surface. And then a splintering sound, followed by more scrabbling. Around her, the surge of dimensional currents intensified. She could sense it outside and in, like a tingle of electricity in her nerves. In her haste to catch up with the Doctor, she was already running faster than the slow-motion traffic on the main road. But she was still going to be too late.
Then she stopped short. A figure was moving slowly along the pavement towards her, emerging through the drifting molecular haze. A shortish woman, wearing a striped T-shirt and red trousers that would have looked better on someone ten years younger. Her hair was bunched up over her head and held by a mauve scarf. She was wearing too much make-up, as usual.
Ace didn't know whether to stay or hide. She turned her back and waited, trying to catch her breath, half-hoping that the figure would vanish or turn away. But despite the slow motion, the woman soon reached her.
Ace's throat had dried, but she forced herself to turn, look straight at the figure and say, "Mum?"
Her mother moved slowly past as if she hadn't even noticed Ace; her every slowed movement deliberately emphasized its detail like a ghostly ballet. She looked a bit older, but she was even still wearing Ace's dad's wedding ring. Her bag swung slowly back and forth from her shoulder with her arms, achieving a grace she had never had before. Ace hadn't seen her for three years.
"Mum!"
But the woman never stopped.
"Why do you always look like that!" Ace yelled after her. "Soon forgot I'd disappeared, didn't you!"
The apparition would soon be gone. Ace wanted to run after her. To pull her back and talk things over, but she didn't dare touch.
"Mum!"
Was Ace so much an outsider that they couldn't even see her now? The past was all raked up with plenty of places to go. She stared after it as it vanished on its dreamlike way. She and her mum were worlds apart already. Yet her