Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [13]
The Doctor shot her a glance. ‘I just don’t like running away,’ she said.
The Time Lord put his hand on her shoulder, looked into her eyes. ‘Hey!’ she protested. ‘What are you doing?’
‘There’s a word you want to say, Ace,’ said the Doctor firmly. ‘What’s the word?’
She tried to pull away, but she couldn’t unlock herself from his eyes. ‘No way,’ she snarled.
‘Say the word, Ace.’
Her lips twisted, and she gagged, as though there were something inside her throat that was choking her. Her face tried to move in three directions at once.
‘Spit it out,’ said the Doctor.
With a convulsive shudder, she said, ‘Tlax – urgh! Tlaxcaliliztli!’
The Doctor let go of her shoulder. ‘Here,’ he said, giving her his handkerchief Ace realized that her nose was bleeding.
Now,’ said the Doctor, ‘where would a nice girl like Ace learn a word like that?’
* * *
The pesero smelt exactly like every other taxi in the world: cigarettes and vinyl and people. Ace relaxed into the mundaneness of the VW wagon. The seat was soft and cool against her back. In the rear vision mirror, the Doctor looked extremely serious.
‘Whatever the Blue touches,’ said Cristián from the back seat, ‘it leaves fingerprints behind.’
Benny took a deep breath and said, ‘Why did those two others die, and not you?’
The Doctor folded his arms tightly. ‘If someone swung a punch at you, what would you do?’
‘Duck?’
‘I ducked. Mentally. They didn’t.’
‘The booby‐trap,’ said Ace. ‘All that energy – it came looking for you.’
‘That’s why you survived,’ said the Doctor. ‘But it left its fingerprints behind.’
Ace wiped cold sweat from her forehead. Fingerprints in her brain. She looked sideways at the driver. The chilango was dutifully ignoring them.
‘Enough of this,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think it’s time we left Mexico City behind.’
Benny sat up. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Tenochtitlan,’ said the Doctor.
‘This thing, this Blue thing,’ said Cristián. ‘It’s bigger than Mexico. It’s everywhere. It was in London and New York. It’s bigger than places or times. If you’re running to Tenochtitlan to get away from it –’
‘But I’m not running away from it. I want to look it in the eye.’
* * *
The pesero pulled up at the mouth of an alley. The TARDIS was half‐hidden under the awning of a disused building. The Doctor paid the driver while Ace and Bernice and Cristián stood looking at the police box.
‘The Aztecs,’ said Ace. ‘They were the ones who did a lot of open‐heart surgery, right?’ Cristián said nothing. In his pyjamas, he looked like a sleepwalking child.
The Doctor discovered the TARDIS key in his hat and unlocked the vehicle, whistling. ‘Come along.’ They followed him in.
A moment later, Cristián came running back out, breathing hard. He leaned his back on the blue box, clutching his good hand to his chest.
‘Cristián?’ The Doctor put his head outside the TARDIS. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t handle any more.’
Bernice pushed past the Doctor. ‘Haven’t you been in the TARDIS before?’
Cristián shook his head, eyes firmly closed. ‘It’s – it’s –’
‘Don’t say it,’ said the Doctor.
‘But it’s –’
‘Don’t say it,’ said Benny.
It’s bigger on the inside!’ Abruptly, Cristián burst into tears. ‘I’m scared of travelling through time. I’ve read stuff I know what happens if you tread on a butterfly, if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person. What if I kill my great‐great‐grandfather or something? I can’t go. I can’t.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ said the Doctor, but Cristián had collapsed into Bernice’s arms, a sobbing, exhausted wreck.
‘We can’t take him with us, Doctor,’ said Benny gently, stroking the man’s hair. ‘He’s been through too much already.’
The Doctor screwed up his face in irritation, but he nodded. ‘All right, everyone. Conference.’
* * *
‘You’ve got visitors, Prof,’ said Robin, putting his head around the door. The honours student vanished again. Professor Fitzgerald put down the Journal of Mesoamerican Antiquities and pushed an enormous pile of papers into his top desk drawer.
‘Good morning,’ said the