Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [112]
Home?
‘Responsibilities,’ said Daniel.
Christopher Cwej hadn’t really meant to do anything. He’d just let himself drift off into a kind of half-sleep, a state where he wasn’t sure whether he was one thing or another, in this world or the next, and where was the Doctor now and did it matter and what about the TARDIS and where have all the flowers gone and where do you go to my lovely when you’re alone in your bed...
Then he’d looked up, and there’d been a city looming over him. Or was it an un-city? He could imagine the gynoids living in the whispering tower-blocks, poking their hollow heads out of the cracks and the orifices. It was like an Overcity, with huge buildings supported by spiralling columns, but the logic of it seemed to have been surgically removed.
‘Did I do all that?’ he asked.
There was no answer. He looked around. The Carnival Queen was gone. Chris vaguely remembered her voice, telling him something while he’d been half-awake, something about having to see a man about a god, which was apparently an old Watchmaker joke. So, he was alone. Apart from the gynoids, of course, lurking on the edges of his vision, as if they were amazed that anyone could exist with a stable number of limbs in the way that he did, and wanted to keep an eye on him.
Alone? He could do all of this... alone?
Christopher Cwej found himself suddenly and unexpectedly excited. He closed his eyes and let himself dream again.
When the TARDIS had taken off – Roz still thought of it as
‘taking off, despite having suffered a year of the Doctor shouting ‘dematerialize!’ at her – it hadn’t made the usual noises. The wheezing rhythm had still been there, but the sound had been turned on its side, as if the ship were scuttling around the edges of the vortex instead of wading right through it. It had still landed with the usual whump, though.
Daniel was no longer aboard the ship. He’d wanted to stay in Woodwicke. Insisted on it, in fact. At first, Roz had thought he’d just wanted to get out of the TARDIS, or get away from Catcher, or get back to skulking in the cracks of the world he knew, but as he’d spoken to the Doctor, Roz had begun to understand. The way he was talking, it was like he thought he had a duty to be there.
In fact, Roz was sure she’d detected something unusual in the way that Daniel and the Doctor had talked. Some deep understanding, even though they’d never met before. Finally, and alarmingly, the Doctor had given Daniel the amaranth.
Just given it away, like it was a Christmas present.
Now Roz looked up at the scanner, watching the new world outside the TARDIS. A dark sun in the sky, sand the same colour as the ghost-space under a five-year-old’s bed. In the corner, Catcher opened his mouth to say something, but all he could manage was a series of disconnected clicking noises. If the sounds had been arranged into the right order, they might have made a message about being damned and sent to rationalists’ Hell.
‘I’ve been here before,’ said Roz.
The Doctor nodded. ‘But you only visited the suburbs. And this is the heartland.’
A figure stepped into view on the scanner, strolling casually across the dunes towards the TARDIS. The shape was feminine, Roz could tell that much, but the face was vague.
She got the impression that the scanner couldn’t get a proper fix on the features, and was filling the screen with fuzzy random pixels to make up for it.
Before Roz could even ask what was happening, the Doctor was heading for the door, stepping over a sofa that looked like it had belonged to Napoleon III.
‘Stay here,’ he said over his shoulder.
Roz pointed at Catcher. ‘With him?’
‘XXPuniS?hed,’ said Catcher.
‘Would you rather come outside?’ said the Doctor.
‘Rrrrrrrr,’ growled Roz. The Time Lord stepped out through the doors.
12
Infinity, Shut Up
Outside the TARDIS, the Carnival Queen was kicking at pebbles in the