Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [9]
Ace glanced back over at the young mother. The baby was sleeping now. Ace wondered what would become of that child, where fate would take it. Her gaze wandered around the tube station. There were no teenagers. It was all adults or the very young. Everyone else had been evacuated or called up. She had been used to her evenings in Perivale being filled with people of her own age. Been used to cinemas and amusement arcades, to evenings spent trying to get served in pubs, to clubbing with the old crowd Shreela, Midge, Ange, Flo, Stevie and Manisha.
Ace scowled. Every time she tried to think about her past, something bad had to come floating to the surface.
Manisha; burnt to death in her flat. Killed because she wasn't white. Murdered by... Nazis. NeoNazis, for God's sake. There shouldn't be any neoNazis. This was supposed to be the war that put paid to fascism. Except it wouldn't. Creeps would still be peddling the same old prejudices in half a century she'd met them herself. Maybe they would always be there, always have to be fought and guarded against. The Doctor would never stop fighting, she knew and neither would she.
She craned her neck to see where the Doctor was. He was at the far end of the platform leading a group of octogenarians in a rousing singsong of musichall favourites.
The man who had fought some of the most heinous terrors of the universe was conducting an offkey choir with a stick of rhubarb. Ace didn't dare to think where he'd found that.
Someone pulled out a harmonica and began to play, and Ace groaned as the Doctor hauled his spoons from his pocket and began to provide a clattering accompaniment.
Within minutes the entire station had fallen under the spell of the little time traveller and the devastation that was going on overhead was temporarily forgotten. Ace settled back on to the blanket that she had been given. To the sound of bombs overhead and the tune of 'My Old Man', she felt her eyes closing, and within minutes, and against all her expectations, she had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER 3
Ace was woken by the Doctor gently shaking her arm. She pulled herself upright, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The Doctor thrust a halfeaten stick of rhubarb towards her.
'Breakfast?'
She shook her head at him. 'I think I'll skip it, thanks.' The Doctor folded the remains of the stick in half with a snap, and stuck it in the pocket of his duffel coat. His eyes were shining with glee. 'I've remembered who that businessman is. He's an electrical entrepreneur by the name of Peddler, head of Peddler Electronics: 'So what?' 'I'm not sure yet.' He grabbed her hand. 'Come on. Let's go and say good morning to Mr McBride.'
He led her through the mass of sleeping people and out into the early morning light. It was grey and cold. The air was hazy with fog, and the clouds overhead threatened rain. All around, Ace could see firemen and soldiers clearing away the debris of the night before. Fires burnt in the street and a thick pall of smoke hung like a shroud over the distant East End.
Ace stopped and looked around her. This used to be quite a regular haunt of hers, particularly when she had been working at the McDonald's on Tottenham Court Road. She used to browse for hours in the Virgin Megastore, then head over to Darth Vader's flat in Stepney. Darth was a plumber, Flo's boyfriend. God, she still couldn't believe that those two had got married.
'Come on, Ace!' The Doctor was waiting for her down the street. She hurried to catch him up passing several buildings that she recognised, and dozens more that she didn't.
Presumably, these were ones that wouldn't survive the bombs. It was all far more elegant than the city she knew. By the time the rebuilding was over, London would be ugly and modern.
The Doctor was on the move again. She had to jog to keep up with him.
'How long does this go on for, Professor?'
'Until the end of July next year. Almost nightly attacks.
It's incredible so much of the city survived it. Then there were the VI and V2 attacks in 1944. After that