Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [18]
Two minutes since the clock had struck nine, and Roz hadn’t breathed out since. She knew the routine by now.
Samuel Lincoln would appear in the drawing-room window every night at around this time, cross the room, sit at his desk...
But if Samuel Lincoln was going to die, then little Abraham would never exist. No more Civil War, whatever it had been about. No more Presidents with warts, no more simcord dramas. One bullet, one careful shot. Thick black marker-pen over the pages of history. ‘Roz Forrester was here.’
Killing time. A mystic ritual to summon a Time Lord, involving the sacrifice of an innocent on the altar of history.
Four-dimensional voodoo. The same method the Hellenic Atlanteans used to summon the Chronovores, but how the Sheol do you know a thing like that, Roslyn Forrester? What are you, psychic or something?
She unexpectedly remembered her botched attempt to kill SLEEPY on Yemaya 4, and wondered what her subconscious could possibly be trying to tell her.
A shadow appeared behind the drawing-room curtain, a human shape framed against the orange lamplight. Sitting target, she thought. Practice, she thought. She checked that everything was in place, that the ammunition was loaded properly, that there was no safety-catch she hadn’t noticed.
One shot. No different from any other. She’d shot at people before. Mostly she’d missed, but this was different. Sitting target. Practice. No problem.
The shadow of Samuel Lincoln moved across to his desk, and – presumably – opened one of the drawers. Roz levelled the gun. The American Way; remember when the Empire terraformed Mogar and Murtaugh and the Prion system? How they wanted everyone to remember the spirit of the frontier, showing westerns where the cowboys looked suspiciously multi-cultural and the Indians looked suspiciously non-terrestrial? The ghost of the Wild West, the spirit of liberty and gun-law nesting down in the foundations of the USA. Just another killing, just one of many.
One bullet.
One careful shot.
Samuel Lincoln sat down at his desk, putting his head directly in her line of fire.
Roz Forrester’s second-to-last thought before she pulled the trigger was: shoot first and ask questions later.
Roz Forrester’s last thought before she pulled the trigger was: shoot first and don’t ask questions.
Then her vision was filled with something huge and white, bigger than the flash of the gun-barrel, bigger than she could even imagine, filling up the whole universe and blotting out every sense she had.
It was –
It was just –
Erskine Morris closed his eyes, and his vision was filled with a dozen fluorescent scratches and swirls that danced across the insides of his eyelids. He could feel something wrapping itself around his shoulders, and it was warm to the touch. He closed his eyes tighter, making the shapes leap and crackle like straws in a fire.
A word was growing in his belly, like a magical incantation that would send the damned monster back to Hell, but however hard he strained he couldn’t force it up into his mouth. Astonishingly, he began to walk forward, feeling his face push against the beast’s soft underbelly. Trying to prove that it couldn’t possibly be there, perhaps. He felt liquid skin ripple in front of him, and heard the sound of gently tearing flesh, the layers of the thing’s body opening up for him Revolting notion. Ridiculous notion.
It was just –
It was just that –
And he could have sworn that the flesh was closing up again behind him, the creature sealing him into its carcass.
Absurdly, it was only now that he truly began to panic, and the whispering flooded into his ears. Music, like carnival music. A voice?