Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [13]
– what did she say? – zone. Twentieth-Century Zone, So that would have been the Egyptian Zone. And the Prehistoric Zone? Some kind of futuristic museum; no dusty cases required, no signs saying DO NOT TOUCH?
There was a sign, though, a big standing sign that read WELCOME TO LONDON
– CITY OF SWINGS! So. . . this was how the people of the future viewed his time, his place, then. He looked around him. On the street corner in front of him was a Coca-Cola vending machine. Oh well, at least he wouldn’t dehydrate to death. And you had to admire an advertising campaign that could ensure the product was remembered however far into the future this was. And there were a number of the little rocket-ship things dotted about: maybe he could escape in one of those and hope there wasn’t a barrier across the sky. He started walking down the street (ducking down behind a strangely pink pillar box as a giant furry creature wandered past – and what the hell was that all about?
What was it, some sort of abominable snowman? What had that got to do with twentieth-century London?), turned the corner, and. . .
Yee hah! There was the TARDIS! The Doc must have got back to it and managed to do a short hop to pick Fitz up! Brief dark thoughts about the risk the Doctor’d taken, seeing that he didn’t seem to know quite what was going on with the TARDIS at the moment – what if it hadn’t worked and Fitz had been abandoned here for ever? Mind you, knowing the Doctor, he might have been History’s What You Make It
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flying around the universe for hundreds of years trying to get back to Fitz. He might have lost that stuck-up Anji girl and got a host of new attractive female companions, all dying to meet the legendary ‘Fitz’ that the Doctor was always talking about. He might have. . . Oh heck, let’s just find out.
Fitz jogged over to the TARDIS. He waved up at the light wherein the scanner eye was located, in a ‘hey, it’s me, Fitz – let me in!’ kind of way.
The TARDIS doors failed to open. Fitz gave them a shove, just in case.
And stumbled forward into a four-foot-square wooden box. Sod it.
He slammed the door shut and banged on it with his fist, frustrated. Might have known it was too good to be true; no easy way out for Fitz. Only half an hour back with the Doctor and he was right in the thick of things already.
‘Stop it at once! You’re damaging the exhibit!’ He spun round. The woman who’d given the Nefertiti girl a shock had managed to sneak right up behind Fitz without him noticing – which just showed how distracted he must have been because they were still on a cobbled street and she was wearing stiletto heels. Sod it times two.
‘Who exactly are you?’
Well, it’d worked once, it might work again. ‘I’m Fitz Fortune, baby. Obviously. You know, “Groovy Weekend” (da da da da da da dum), “You Broke My Heart, Bikini Girl”?’
‘No, I don’t know.’ Scraped-back grey hair and a snotty manner; this woman reminded Fitz of his old maths teacher. One of the ones who used to say things like, ‘that may be how you used to do things in Germany’ really sarcastically, knowing Fitz’d never been further than the other end of Southend pier in his life. ‘What I do know is you’re not designated for this section, and judging by your clothing I sincerely hope you’re not intended for another zone. Whatever were the designers thinking of?’ She took Fitz’s lapel in one hand and sniffed in disapproval. ‘I don’t think even a primitive twentieth-centurion would have worn a coat like this.’
Fitz had spent a long time choosing this coat in London in AD 2001 while waiting to meet up with the Doctor, and was firmly of the opinion that it was (a) the height of style, (b) tiptop quality, and (c) really him. But he supposed that, technically, it was a twenty- first-century coat, so he decided not to mention it.
But then the woman sniffed at him again, even more loudly, so he