Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [129]
Fitz fell silent as Tain prepared to shuffle around the fragments of their psyches.
As Tain began the process, he realised that clearing out his own memories and keeping just his ‘core’ was actually a relief – and he began to understand 234
some of what the Doctor had gone through to arrive where he was now. Centuries of slavery to the Makers’ war-machine, centuries of battle, centuries of killing – all gone. Not the general idea, but all the specifics, all the individual deaths, the soldiers and worlds and wars. All gone. He’d never forget what he’d done, but now he didn’t have to face the prospect of running across those memories by accident, seeing the faces, the burning planets, the desolation.
He didn’t have to fight a constant battle to keep them from his dreams. He was a new person, he supposed. Born again. He remembered a quotation from somewhere: if you don’t know where you’ve been, how can you know where you’re going?
That’s the whole point, Tain realised with a sudden, painful joy that sent ripples around the chamber. You can’t.
235
Chapter 29
‘The past is never gonna catch up with me.’
Saiarossa woke the next morning, rubbed its eyes, and wondered whether the events of the night before had been nothing more than a vaguely baffling dream. The rumours – which veered between a forest fire, a freak flood, an electrical storm and a swarm of insects – of impending disaster had materialised into nothing, and although many people claimed to have seen a strange wall of glowing, grey smoke, they were dismissed as having got into the party spirit a little too deeply.
Televised across the planet, Imperator Tannalis, standing alongside his daughter on the stage in the Palace courtyard, amazed everyone by dissolving the Imperatorship (the fact that, miraculously, he looked twenty years younger went uncommented upon). The Imperatrix, it seemed, had vanished during the night: search parties were combing the city for her, and rumours abounded that she’d been the victim of one of the night beasts while out of the Palace visiting one of her ‘gentleman friends’. Prince Javill had been struck down with a mystery virus the night before, and was recuperating in bed.
The Doctor, Fitz and Calamee watched the Imperator’s speech from a balcony.
Nessus sat on Fitz’s shoulder, fiddling with his ears.
‘How does it feel,’ said the Doctor quietly to Fitz, ‘to be back in one piece?’
‘Good,’ was all Fitz could say. He still couldn’t quite meet the Doctor’s eye, and was glad of Nessus’s attentions – something to distract him from thinking about the stuff he’d remembered. The weird thing was that it still didn’t feel like his stuff. Not yet. He hadn’t worked out quite why he’d forgotten it all in the first place, or how having bits of the Doctor’s psyche in his head had brought it all back. But there it was.
The worst thing, of course, was that he couldn’t talk to the Doctor about it. It was like having the biggest, bestest, most juiciest secret in the world and being unable to tell anyone. That would take some getting used to. He just hoped he wouldn’t let any of it slip out. The Doctor had made his own choice: he didn’t want to remember. And, all things considered, Fitz couldn’t blame him. It had occurred to him that maybe he could tell Trix about it – but on second thoughts, that didn’t seem wise. There was still something of an 237
atmosphere between her and the Doctor: it hardly seemed right, blabbing to her when he couldn’t tell his best mate. He wished Anji were still around. He could have told her.
They listened to Tannalis for a few moments.
‘Are you sure Javill will be all right?’ asked Calamee.
It had been as though the prince had been born again – an irony that hadn’t been lost on Fitz. A newborn baby in the body of a 23-year-old man. The Doctor had reassured Tannalis that, eventually, Javill would be fine. Just a little ‘behind’. If Trove’s mind-rubber had been properly calibrated for humans instead