Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [12]
Anji shut her eyes. She was a main character. They couldn’t execute her just because they didn’t like her jewellery. Could they?
To: cybertron@xprof.net
From: anji kapoor@MWFutures.co.uk
Date: 14/2/01 12:47
Subject: Teen Terrorists
Hi darling
Wow, what a morning. You’ll never believe it, some aliens are going to execute me because I have the same name as a terrorist organisation consisting of three teenage boys. How’s that for bad luck?!
And ironically, the people who are going to kill me (led by a man named John F Hoover, believe it or not) revere Earth, and so they think that I must hate it. Hate Earth! The place where I want to be more than anywhere else in the entire universe!
Funny, the ‘terrorist’ kids have all given themselves different names to distance themselves from the culture they were brought up in.
Did I ever tell you, when I first started school I tried to pretend my name was Angela, so I’d fit in. They’re trying to fit out. If they were even the slightest bit efficient, I might be jealous of their integrity.
Oh, and my feet hurt. A lot.
Anyway, must go. Bit busy atm.
Love
Anji xxx
Send now/send later: send later
Chapter Two
History’s What You Make It
To Fitz’s half-relief, half-disappointment, the girl didn’t whisk him off in a TARDIS-type timeship.
She led him down a couple of sandy streets, and then fiddled with something at her belt and a shimmering wall appeared in front of them. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You just walk through. You must have done it before – there was a report of a temporary barrier breach. I suppose that’s when you got out of your zone.’
She stepped through the barrier, and Fitz followed. ‘Oh,’ he said, looking at the cobbled streets in front of him, ‘this sort of twentieth century. Right. It’s not real, is it?’
‘This is where you come from?’ the girl said. ‘Let me check your serial number. I know you’re not one of mine.’
‘No, no,’ Fitz said hurriedly, ‘this is where I come from. No checking required.
Twentieth century is me, definitely.’
‘You must just be a pleb, then,’ the girl continued. ‘Not one of the important characters. I mean, I don’t recognise you.’
The enormity of this insult took Fitz aback for a moment. He, the legendary Fitz Fortune, star of the sixties (or at least he would have been, if he hadn’t been unexpectedly forced to go on the run through being wanted for murder, and then taken away in a space-time machine), accused of being a ‘pleb’. Worse still, ‘just’ a pleb.
On a nearby wall there was a poster of Elvis Presley. The King. King of Fitz’s heart when he was on stage, anyway. He could have been as big as Elvis. (He’d said that to his one-time fellow companion Sam once and she’d made some joke about hamburgers that he hadn’t got, so she’d taken him to the TARDIS’s film library and shown him. But he preferred not to think about that. Heroes should always remain heroic, in his eyes.) But anyway. If they wanted twentieth-century ‘important characters’, he’d give them one. He gave the girl a scornful look. ‘You think I’m “just a pleb”?
25
26
EarthWorld
You haven’t done your research, darling. I’m Fitz Fortune, of course. Just as big as that guy –’ he gestured at Elvis – ‘back in the old twentieth century. The printing department must be a bit behind; I expect there’ll-be posters of me up there any day now.’
‘Fitz Fortune?’
‘The one and only, baby!’ He gave her a few bars of ‘Groovy Weekend’ on air guitar to prove it.
She seemed stunned with admiration. Then he realised she was staring over his shoulder at a middle-aged woman in the distance, who was inspecting what appeared to be a miniature rocket ship.
‘There’s the curator,’ she said, ‘Gotta dash. Not supposed to be able to cross zones; don’t want any questions. She’ll stick you back in your right place – Fitz Fortune.’
And then, with a shimmer of – whatever – she was gone through the barrier again. Back with the mummies and the pyramids. And the barrier vanished, but Fitz tried to follow