Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [92]
to forgive me.’
‘That’s all you seem to do,’ said the Doctor. ‘But it wouldn’t be her. There were broad sweeps of her personality in there, a few memories, but not enough.’
‘It would be enough!’ cried Hoover. ‘I want her back! Please, I need her!
Give me back my wife! Give the children back their mother!’
The Doctor looked over to where Antarctica and Africa were still keening over the body of their sister. Fitz thought they looked more animal than human.
‘She won’t be the same,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I’ll try. Not for you, for them.
They need someone to love them. They’re still children.’
The Doctor was staring at the girls so hard that Fitz was worried. ‘Doctor, they’ve killed people!’
‘I know,’ he said, turning now to Fitz and freezing him with a flash of those ice-blue eyes. ‘Do you want them to kill more? It’s not all their fault!’
As the Doctor turned away, he said something else under his breath. Fitz couldn’t make out what it was, but it started with ‘M’.
The Doctor knelt down beside the trips’ Memory Machine. ‘It’s burnt out, isn’t it?’ asked Fitz. ‘Can you fix it?’ He was hoping the answer was no.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. Phew. ‘But I know an old girl who can.’ Bum. ‘That is, I think that if I link this up to the TARDIS, she’ll be able to fill in the missing connections for me. I think she’ll know what to do.’
Fitz was on the verge of saying, Well, she did it for me. He caught himself just in time. Keeping secrets was difficult.
168
EarthWorld
***
Before they left, Fitz had asked the Doctor to wait for five minutes, and, after checking something with Anji, had made his way to the boxing ring. There he found Princess Leia happily sniffing around the puddles of blood. Elvis’s blood. Fitz scooped up the creature and took it back. He thought it might help Antarctica to have her pet around. He wasn’t sure why he cared. But, somehow, he did.
They took the bus back to the EarthWorld reception. The Doctor let Fitz drive, which turned out to be a mistake, as he managed to plough straight into a stationary triceratops while distracted by a frozen female android in a miniskirt.
They had to walk the rest of the way. The Doctor carried Antarctica in his arms, and Hoover carried Africa. Anji was carrying Princess Leia. Fitz had to push the trolley with the Memory Machine on it.
They couldn’t all fit in the ground-car, so the Doctor, Fitz, Anji and Xernic were going to wait behind in the reception centre while Hoover and the guards took the girls back to the palace, and brought back Elizabethan. Fitz took back Princess Leia from Anji, and handed the crocodile over to Antarctica. The girl said nothing, but hugged the little reptile tight to her chest. Fitz was still spooked that this bothered him. He stood and watched as the girls were put in the back of the ground-cat He thought he could still hear a faint ticking from Princess Leia, even after the car door had been shut; even after they were driven away.
The four who remained stood silently for a moment. No one had anything to say.
‘So, you’re a terrorist?’ said Fitz after a while, to break the silence.
‘I don’t think I am any more,’ replied Xernic. ‘I wasn’t really one in the first place, anyway. The others are probably. . . well, I don’t know what they’ll be doing now. I don’t expect I’ll see them again.’
Fitz couldn’t think of a way of carrying on that conversation. He turned to Anji, and was startled to see that she was crying. ‘Anji!’ he said, alarmed.
‘Distract me!’ she cried. ‘I don’t have any distractions any more! Please!’
The Doctor dived at a gift display, grabbed a snowstorm of the Eiffel Tower and a can of Coca-Cola, and took an apple out of his pocket. He began to juggle them, higher and higher. Closer and closer to the ceiling – and then they vanished. Fitz shook his head. The Doctor sure was clever.
Dear TARDIS...
169
Anji was almost smiling, though the tears still shone on her cheeks. The Doctor