Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [129]
‘So you can lead us into a war?’ someone shouted. ‘How’s that different from what we have now?’
Ferran shook his head. ‘I’ve spent all my life killing, or planning to kill. I don’t want to do that, not any more. We don’t have to. I don’t have to.’
‘There will be opposition,’ Miranda said. ‘There are vested interests, there are evil men. But we can build our utopia, all our utopias, and we can defend them with this ship. It doesn’t have to be like it has been. We are the Children of the Revolution. We’re not bound by the past, and the future can be whatever we want it to be.’
The crowds roared their approval.
* * *
Miranda eased herself into her seat, nominally the command station, but just one of six facing in towards Computer and the centre of the flight deck.
The chair was high-backed, a little too hard for her liking, but she could always get a cushion.
‘Empress?’ Graltor asked.
‘Prefect?’ Cate asked at exactly the same time.
The three of them chuckled.
Miranda shook her head. ‘Miranda,’ she said firmly. ‘Take your positions, please.’
They took the last two chairs.
Miranda understood the controls and displays on the arms of her chair. The symbols and readouts flickering in front of her made perfect – instinctive – sense. She twisted some of the dials, changed the settings of some of the slide controls.
‘Computer, what is the Ship’s status?’
The pyramid hanging in front of them began crackling with activity. ‘All systems at maximum capacity. The time engines are fully repaired.’
She nodded, pleased. ‘And Atlantis?’
A sphere opened up in the centre of the room, full of an image of the space shuttle sitting in the hangar.
‘The human spacecraft is fuelled and ready.’
‘Father,’ she said quietly.
The Doctor was standing behind her chair, a proud grin on his face. ‘You’ve not done badly for a girl without any O-levels,’ he told her.
‘I’ll walk back to the shuttle with you,’ she told him.
* * *
Atlantis sat in the hangar bay, looking absurdly quaint.
‘It’s not as impressive as the Supremacy, is it?’ the Doctor asked.
‘It’s not called the Supremacy,’ Miranda said. ‘That was Ferran’s name for it, and it... sends out the wrong signals. From now on, it’s just the Ship – that’s how it likes to be known.’
The flight crew were shaking hands, making their goodbyes. Commander Fairchild was already inside, running pre-flight checks.
Miranda and her father had passed through the corridors, past clean-up crews – slaves and guards working together. There wasn’t a hierarchy, not yet. There would have to be one, of course. At the very least there would have to be co-ordination. Anarchy was possible, she thought – and not in the tabloid definition of riots and looting, nor the naive student political sense of hoping everyone got along and assuming someone else was growing all the food and washing all the dishes, but in the truest sense: an abolition of law and property, because such things weren’t needed any more. But it would not be an easy option: there was a lot of hard work ahead, and once people realised that...
She wasn’t so arrogant as to think that she had all the answers. These were questions for the future, and there were still a few left from today.
‘Mrs Castle...’ Miranda began. ‘Ferran killed her. Can you really forgive him for that?’
The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘You don’t make peace with your friends, do you? I killed his brother. We’ve all done things to hurt others. We can draw a line or we can destroy one another. We’ve made our choice. I talked to him. He wants to start a garden. He wants to go home and keep bees and grow roses. I gave him some tips.’
‘Mrs Castle’s body... I’ll take it with me,’ she told him, ‘bury her with full honours.’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Bury Debbie somewhere quiet, somewhere where the first snow of winter is always falling.’
Miranda offered him a handkerchief, which he accepted gratefully.
The Doctor looked her up and down. ‘You