Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [108]
She tried to imagine peace, closing her eyes. She couldn’t feel the cold of the snow. Her combat suit was hidden under boots and jeans and wind‐cheater, insulating her from the world.
There was an old joke about a church bell that was rung every morning at seven for a hundred years. Then one night the bell was sent away for repairs, and the whole village woke up at seven, shouting ‘What was that?’ That was peace.
She looked at the Doctor, who was eating an ice‐cream cone with intense concentration.
He’d slept for a week in the sick‐bay; they’d taken turns watching over him, sitting next to the little bed and reading books in the dim light. From time to time his hands had clutched the covers, the way that she had clutched her plank in the ocean, and he had mumbled alien words that the TARDIS declined to translate. Sometimes she wondered about his nightmares. But not too often.
‘Where’d you pick up that wound?’ she murmured.
He was looking out over the crowd, his face part way between concentration and dreaming. He didn’t turn to her when she spoke. ‘What was that?’
‘A cut or a deep bruise on your left side. Over the lung. I can tell by the way you’re breathing.’
He didn’t answer, and Ace wrinkled her forehead. At last he said, ‘I see you have the suit back on.’
‘I’m ending our agreement,’ she said. ‘We tried it and it didn’t work.’
‘Mmmm.’
Ace watched a couple who must once have been hippies embrace, probably feeling their childhood slide away from them. John Lennon was dead, and they had mourned him, and now the whole world was different.
‘It’s not the suit,’ she said. ‘It’s me. I can’t pretend I’m something I’m not. Even when I take off the armour and weapons, I’m still wearing them.’
He didn’t answer, but his old face seemed terribly sad, and she could guess what he was thinking: he’d destroyed one killer, only to find another waiting by his side.
I don’t see what the problem is, she thought. You used to work with UNIT, happily work with soldiers and weapons. And she had found Benny sobbing by the side of the pool, clutching that little typewritten list of the survivors. When Ace had asked her what was up she’d just handed her the list, muttering a name. The name wasn’t on the list, but it was luck, just luck, like one of the radio operators drowning and one surviving to tell the tale. The world still had to be saved. It was just luck whether you got saved too.
The Doctor’s meddling was like her suit: dangerous, but ultimately useful.
Or maybe that was it. He was still trying to walk the fine line between being the healer and the warrior. It frightened him that he might be both. He couldn’t accept it.
‘I am who I am,’ she said, ‘and you can’t change it. You can’t tell me what to do. So we’re just going to have to make room for one another, aren’t we?’
He didn’t answer, and after a moment she turned away. Something between them was falling apart. Not broken yet, but slowly disintegrating. She could feel it.
She really wished she knew how he’d got that wound.
* * *
July 1986
‘What about bodies? Did you find any bodies?’
‘Did you really find an intact chandelier?’
‘Did you find the Renault?’
‘Are you planning another expedition?’
‘What about other valuables?’
‘What things did you bring back to the surface?’
‘We didn’t bring anything back to the surface. There just wouldn’t be anything on the Titanic that would be worth salvaging.’
‘But you could make a mint –’
‘What about the mummy?’
‘Private collectors –’
‘Treasure –’
‘Artefacts –’
‘Let me tell you what we did when the video cameras picked up that shape in the sand. We all shouted and cheered for joy. And then we realized we’d found the unmarked grave of a thousand and a half souls. When we saw that little girl’s doll… Well, everybody just stopped work for a quarter of an hour.