Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [0]
by Kate Orman
He took up a firing stance, holding the
thirty‐eight out in front of him.
‘Mr Lennon?’ he said.
1968: Cristian Alvarez meets the Doctor in London.
1978: The great temple of the Aztecs is discovered in Mexico.
1980: John Lennon is murdered in New York.
1994: A gunman runs amok in Mexico City.
Each time, Cristian is there. Each time, he experiences the Blue, a traumatic psychic shock. Only the Doctor can help him – but the Doctor has problems of his own. Following the events of Blood Heat and The Dimension Riders, the Doctor knows that someone of something has been tinkering with time. Now he finds that events in his own past have been altered – and a lethal force from South America’s prehistory has been released.
The Doctor, Ace and Bernice travel to the Aztec Empire in 1487, to London in the Swinging Sixties, and to the sinking of the Titanic as they attempt to rectify the temporal faults – and survive the attacks of the living god Huitzilin.
Full‐length, original novels based on the longest running science‐fiction television series of all time, the BBC’s Doctor Who. The New Adventures take the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time.
Kate Orman lives in Australia. The Left‐Handed Hummingbird is a triple first: Kate’s first novel, the first New Adventure written by a woman, and the first written by an Antipodean.
* * *
Prologue: New York City, December 1980
First Slice
1: Mexico (Not Tenochtitlan)
2: Nine‐tenths Below the Surface
3: Sun King
4: Pronounced Weet‐Zeelo‐Potch‐Tlee
5: Into the Fire
6: Instant Zen
Second Slice
7: And the Smile on the Face of the Tiger
8: The Cat in the Hat
9: Number Nine
10: The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
Third Slice
11: Jingle‐Jangle Morning
Interlude 1
12: You’ve Got Him Just Where He Wants You
Interlude 2
13: Because He Doesn’t Know the Words
Interlude 3
14: Futility
15: Epiphany
16: Tomorrow Never Knows
* * *
For David, for Kyla, for Glenn,
for Sarah, for Stephen, for Antony,
for listening
The author wishes to thank the University of Oklahoma Press for kind permission to reprint Aztec poetry from Pre‐Columbian Literatures of Mexico, by Miguel Leon‐Portilla. Copyright © 1969 by the University of Oklahoma Press.
* * *
Oh no, I think I’m turning into a god.
Suetonius, Divus Vespasianus
* * *
Prologue
New York City, December 1980
He had come such a long way.
Such a long way from the teenager who loved the Beatles and who had grown his hair long, Beatle‐long, to the despair of his parents.
Such a long way from the young man who had tried every psychedelic drug he could get his hands on, unable to find the big trip, the best trip.
Such a long way from the religious fanatic who hated the Beatles because John Lennon had said they were more popular than Jesus.
Such a long way from the irascible, ordinary little man with the interest in lithographs and firearms.
Such a long way from Hawaii.
There were cassettes of the Beatles’ songs in his pockets. There was a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Tomorrow everyone in the world would know what had been in Mark’s pockets.
And deep inside him, something Blue was itching, something Blue was wrapping itself around him like a shroud. It was possible, even probable, that he was not aware of it. But the Blue was there, an unnatural colour, a spreading stain in the soft greyness of his brain.
It was a warm evening, a warm evening in New York. He looked at his watch. Nearly eleven o’clock. Surely they would be back soon? In their limousine, their sell‐out stretch. They’d be back.
They were back.
She came first, walking past Mark, not even seeing him in the New York darkness. But she was not the object of his interest.
The air was warm. He took up a firing stance, holding the .38 revolver out in front of him. It was a line between them, a connection. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Mark and John.
‘Mr Lennon?’ he said.
* * *
First Slice
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.