Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [107]
* * *
2.20 am
Then the screaming started.
It was the people in the water, shouting for help in a dozen languages. There were children’s voices in that Babel, and the high‐pitched screams of men.
In the row‐boats, the women shivered and clung together. Some of them wanted to go back, imagining husbands and friends amongst the howling hundreds. But they were cold and frightened, and the ship might drag them down with it, and the swimmers might crowd on board and sink their little boats.
So they waited, bobbing up and down, listening to the screaming until each of the screams went out, one by one, like little candles going out, each snuffed flame dampening the bonfire of the screaming, until they were left in the darkness, alone, alone under the stars.
* * *
Chapter 16
Tomorrow Never Knows
* * *
New York City, December 15, 1980
There was something deeply comforting about the crowd. Perhaps it was the silence, tens of thousands of people all sharing the same space, speaking in whispers, holding flowers or holding hands. Many of them were crying, and lips moved in silent prayers.
Perhaps it was the chance to be off centre stage. In a crowd, you can’t be the main players, you can be quiet, keep still, be anonymous. The universe isn’t depending on you.
The vigil ended but the crowd stayed on, singing Imagine in hoarse voices and milling in tiny circles. The time travellers found themselves separated for a time.
Bernice and Cristián walked slowly through the crowd, not going anywhere. From time to time Cris would check the little bundle he was carrying, in one of those reverse harnesses that let you haul the baby around on your chest, as though he couldn’t quite believe it was there.
‘Have you decided what to call him?’ Benny asked. She waved a finger in front of the baby’s eyes, curiously, watching as it followed the movement.
‘I thought I would name him after the Doctor,’ said Cristián, ‘and then I realized that I don’t know his name.’
‘No,’ said Bernice. ‘I wonder if anyone does.’
‘I don’t think I’m ever going to understand all of this,’ sighed the Mexican. ‘Like John Lennon dying. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s, what’s the word, gratuitous. We don’t need it. We don’t need it.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘Will anything change?’
‘Reagan won’t budge. Even after he gets shot next year,’ said Bernice. Cris raised both his eyebrows, and she put a finger to her lips, conspiratorially.
Cris rearranged the nameless baby’s woollen cap. ‘But I’ll never have to face the Blue again. Never, never again. Have you ever seen a bit of grass that a box or a table has been sitting on, and when you take the weight of the box away, the grass is all brown and dead? But it grows back once it’s back in the light. I have a chance to grow back.’
‘That’s very poetic, Sefior Alvarez.’
‘Thank you, Professor Summerfield.’
Benny kicked a puff of snow into the air. ‘What are you planning to do?’
‘I’ll decide sometime.’ Cris shrugged. ‘Mañana.’
There were hot dog carts working the edge of the crowd. Benny thought she ought to be annoyed with the little vendors, but she decided to take it as a good omen instead. Life went on, and that was its big secret, like Cristián’s patch of withered grass. You couldn’t ever crush it completely.
They bought hot dogs with sauerkraut and mustard, and stood at the fringe, watching the crowd slowly disperse. ‘I wish,’ Cris said, ‘you would tell me what is going to happen to me.’
Benny smiled at him. ‘The time streams are so muddled up I don’t want to tell you something that’s probably going to be wrong. I don’t even know what I’m going to do next.’
‘Are you going to leave the Doctor?’
She swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm sauerkraut. ‘I missed Tenochtitlan, and the Titanic – I’m not getting to do any archaeology, I’m just getting dragged from one muddle to the next.’ She shrugged, ‘I might stay. I might not. But whatever I do, it’ll be what I’ve chosen to do.’
‘Like the man says,’ Cristián said, ‘life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.’
* * *
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