Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [23]
No, she’d known the Doctor only a very short time, but she didn’t believe he’d leave without her. But he was still in the palace – as far as she knew –
and so were the men who had sentenced him to death. And while she might be sure he wouldn’t deliberately abandon her, she was less certain that the Doctor was immortal.
Fitz had told her all sorts of stories about the Doctor. He’d hinted that he was virtually indestructible. Anji really hoped he wasn’t exaggerating. What she wouldn’t give to hear Fitz telling one of his tales right now. And that was something that she never thought she’d say.
Fitz had been sitting in a locked room for about twelve hours. Admittedly, his watch thought it was considerably less than that, but it was probably slow. Very slow.
The door was controlled electronically, and despite vast exposure to strange futuristic devices and having picked up a rudimentary working knowledge of video recorders, mobile phones and time machines, he still didn’t have the first clue about how to deal with this sort of thing. He’d met a guy in 2001 who’d had a set of lockpicks, and Fitz had been impressed. Apparently this guy had had to get someone to send them from America, and Fitz decided that next time they went to Earth he’d have to persuade the Doctor to stay in one place long enough for Fitz to get some lockpicks sent from America too. Or just go to America and find the lockpick shop, that would do. Fitz knew that in spy thrillers a simple hair grip worked just as well as any professionally crafted instrument, but unfortunately he didn’t have any of those, either. Maybe something else to shop for. That and a homing device to stop him continually losing the Doctor. Though the Doctor would be bound to find him soon, anyway.
Wouldn’t he?
Killing Queens
45
One minute Fitz was staring at the wall, counting the seconds until the Doctor turned up to rescue him. The next he was staring at the hole in the wall where one of those blooming great six-and-three-quarter-foot golden humanoid robots had punched its way in. Fitz suddenly realised – and it rather shocked him – that he was so used to this sort of thing these days that instead of becoming a quivering wreck hiding in a corner, his first thought was a weary, Oh, what now?
The robot spoke in perfect – if slightly slow – BBC received pronunciation.
‘You will accompany me to my mistresses. They wish to see you.’
‘More than one mistress? Lucky old you,’ said Fitz. ‘You must be exhausted.’
‘You will accompany me to my mistresses. They wish to see you.’
‘No sense of humour,’ said Fitz. ‘All right, I’ll accompany you, then. You’ve probably got orders to kill me if I don’t or something like that, haven’t you?’
‘I am authorised to use necessary force,’ the robot confirmed.
Fitz sighed. ‘Fair enough, Robbie. Lead the way.’
The robot walked back through the jagged hole it’d made. Fitz scrambled after it, catching his coat on a sharp piece of masonry, which irritated him considerably. ‘This is brand new!’ he complained to the uninterested robot. ‘It cost loads! I don’t suppose we could stop off in that twentieth-century zone and see if there’s a decent clothes shop in the High Street?’
The robot clamped a metal hand round Fitz’s arm, but otherwise ignored him.
‘How about getting me one of those mending kits like you get in hotels, then?’
The robot kept ignoring him and kept striding jerkily forwards, dragging Fitz after him. Fitz, reflecting that he wouldn’t know how to thread a needle anyway, stumbled miserably on.
Anji was standing by a cross-link fence that looked more appropriate for keeping stray dogs off an allotment than saboteurs out of a hi-tech theme park.
They were apparently near the spot where the Doctor and Anji had exited, but had decided not to go to that exact place – it was an official gate, the boys had said, and they didn’t want to risk their luck any further. Zequathon was system-atically chopping at the fence