Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [14]
He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well, let’s work on the basis that you aren’t? Calamee looked thoughtful.
‘If they’re still after you, we can’t take you to a hospital or anything obvious like that.’ She fell silent for a moment, and the Doctor wondered whether he should really be trusting himself to a girl who couldn’t be more than sixteen, even though she acted more like she was twenty-six. Calamee, the Doctor imagined, was probably very pretty – slim with a delicate oval face, cropped brown hair with just a dusting of gold. The shape of her eyes and her lips spoke of a mixed heritage: African, perhaps, with a hint of Indonesian or Chinese. He wished he could tell her more about himself. It was frustrating enough remembering little other than his own name – assuming that ‘Doctor’
was his own name, which, the more he thought about it, seemed rather unlikely. Maybe he’d made a mistake in escaping from the Palace: maybe he’d have learned more by hanging around. Calamee let out a triumphant noise and grabbed his arm.
‘It’s obvious!’ she grinned. ‘You want sanctuary, don’t you?’
‘I’d rather have my memory back.’
24
‘First things first. We can worry about that later. We need to get you somewhere safe, somewhere the Palace Guard and the police won’t be able to get at you. Come on!’
She tugged at him, and Nessus – who’d fallen asleep on her shoulder, while watching her conversation with the Doctor – nearly fell off.
‘Wherever we’re going,’ the Doctor said, following along in her wake and pulling a face at the mokey, ‘I hope they do food. I’m starving.’
‘Are you sure this is wise?’ asked Trix as she and Fitz stepped from the TARDIS.
The evening air was cool, the sky a dark orangey pink, like a huge peach hanging above them, and the wood seemed remarkably still and quiet.
‘Wise is as wise does,’ said Fitz cryptically – and, Trix imagined, quite mean-inglessly, ‘but if the Doctor’s out here somewhere we have to find him.’
She remembered the rustling she’d heard in the bushes, and had ghastly visions of their poking around and finding the Doctor’s body. Fitz still hadn’t remembered what had happened to him and the Doctor – and still had no explanation for the bare, pink patch on his head (and, it transpired, the numerous other patches of tender skin all over his body) – but at least he now recalled who Trix was. After pushing her away inside the entrance to the TARDIS, he’d tried, unsuccessfully, to get to his feet, and after two attempts had reluctantly accepted her offer of help. She’d taken him through to her bathroom and told him to strip off and get in. And to her amazement (and probably to Fitz’s eventual embarrassment) he’d peeled off his clothes there and then and clambered in. It was then that she’d noticed the raw skin in ragged, mismatched patches all over his body. It didn’t seem tender, though –
Fitz had made no complaints, unless she’d misinterpreted the occasional soft moan, as he’d slid under the water. Trix had considered making him a cup of coffee, but hadn’t relished the thought of coming back to find that he’d passed out and drowned. So she sat in irritated silence as Fitz soaked and scrubbed.
After about ten minutes, he’d suddenly turned to her, his hair all foamy and stuck up, and declared that she must be Trix.
‘Who did you think I was?’
He’d just shaken his head vaguely and winced.
‘I knew who you were,’ he’d insisted, ‘I just couldn’t remember your name.’
Trix had doubted that, but pointing out the fact that he’d shoved her away from him didn’t seem a very constructive step on the road to getting him well again, so she’d said nothing. When she’d been convinced that he wasn’t going to faint and drown himself, she’d padded off to make a cuppa, and had come back to find him climbing back into his blood-and grass-stained clothes.
‘You could put something clean on,’ she’d said, guardedly, as she handed him his coffee.
25
‘No time,’ Fitz had said briskly, fluffing around with his hair. ‘We’ve got a Doctor to find.’
Despite the fact that Fitz still