Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [20]
‘It varies; somewhere between twenty and twentyfive thousand.’
The Doctor seemed to work something out with his fingers. He chuckled. ‘More per square mile than in Germany!
What are they doing here?’
‘Most are just barracked here. The islands are being heavily fortified. The sea defences at St Peter Port have been improved, there’s some sort of underground hospital complex being built and there’s unusual activity, and very high security, up at the airstrip.’
She peeked at him to check his reaction.
‘Good.’ He nodded absentmindedly, as if he already knew the answers. ‘Did you know that Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables in St Peter Port? I told him to change the title, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘There’s a statue of him in the Candie Gardens. Doctor, I may be talking out of turn, but what are we doing here?’ She had waited long enough, and now the Doctor was here she wanted some answers.
‘It’s all to do with that explosion.’
Benny rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t say. I won’t ask how you knew where and when it would happen. I take it it’s alien?’
‘Um?’ The Doctor was checking his pocket watch. He was annoying her again now.
‘The piece of metal. It’s from a spacecraft. The same spacecraft that I saw this time last week.’
With a magician’s flourish, the chunk of metal appeared in the Doctor’s hand. He tossed it to her. ‘You’re the archaeologist. See for yourself.’
Benny turned it over, peering at it. It was black, twisted.
She couldn’t make anything of it, she couldn’t tell what type of metal it was, what that weird stuff it was coated with was or how it had been manufactured. She told the Doctor as much.
He took the fragment back and it vanished with a flick of his wrist.
‘Is it alien? Well, that’s a very subjective question, isn’t it?
I think it’s chronistic, though. I know for a fact that it was manufactured near here.’
She was puzzled. ‘Then our work here is done, surely?’
‘Um?’
‘Concentrate, Doctor. We’ve finished here. If this is man-made and from this time period — I don’t think “chronistic” is a word, by the way, and the archaeologist in me would prefer
“concurrent” — then no one’s changing history. Therefore, the Doctor and Benny leave in the TARDIS, pausing only to pick up any policemen from a thousand years in the future that they may have left lying around.’
The Doctor stopped in his tracks and laid his hand on her shoulder. ‘Take a deep breath, Benny.’
‘I’m perfectly calm, I just...’
‘Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Do you feel the air surging into your body? Your lungs inflating? New oxygen pumping around your body and into your brain?’
Benny nodded, her eyes still closed. The Doctor’s voice was almost hypnotic. ‘By breathing in those air molecules you’ve changed history. You’ve left footprints that wouldn’t have been left, eaten food that someone else could have eaten.’
She shifted uncomfortably. For the last couple of months she’d lived under rationing. Last night, she’d only allowed herself two inches of water for her bath, and felt guilty about that.
‘Yes, well, I couldn’t help it.’ She paused, then stamped her foot. ‘Hang on a minute, your hypocritical old fraud! You told Ma the outcome of the war, so don’t blame me for breathing.’
‘I wasn’t. There are billions of humans on this planet, all of them eat, all of them breathe. All of them, some more than others, are changing history every second of their existence.
So many choices, so many possibilities. Something is wrong here. That piece of metal is a clue.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Not only evil aliens change history, Benny. It’s more subtle than that sometimes. That piece of metal should not be here. That is why we’re here. Pinpoint the problem, and remove it before it has a chance to alter history.’
‘The Doctor on a surgical strike,’ whispered Bernice.
‘What was that?’
Benny looked down at the little man. How long had she been travelling with him now? She had been thirty when she had met him, and she’d thought that she’d seen it all She didn’t know for certain how old she was now.