Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [47]
‘But nearly everyone in la Republica has some Indian blood.’
Ace shrugged. ‘It’s just the luck of the draw. Most human beings have latent psychic powers. They don’t usually work. In the future – in the future more people have learned how to use them. They can bring them out with drugs.’
There was something sharp in her voice, as though she were remembering something from the future, and Cristián didn’t ask her anything more about it. Instead he toyed with the new idea, that he might be normal, that he might not be alone.
After a bit, Ace said, ‘So, about your sixth sense.’
‘You’re clean,’ he said.
Their eyes met over the board. ‘I can’t sense the Blue coming from you. I think. If that’s what you’re asking. Bernice too.’
Ace nodded coolly. ‘Cheers, Cristián. What about the Doctor?’
‘Oh,’ said Cristián. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘Good,’ said Ace, taking his last draught. Cristián looked blankly at the empty square.
In the kitchen, the Doctor had drawn a little blue X on the map. ‘Here there be TARDISes,’ he said. ‘That puts us next to the Special Documents Section.’
‘What exactly will we be looking for?’
‘Anything. Everything. Things Fitzgerald might have been hiding from you. Cristián can be our bloodhound, sniffing out the Blue…’
‘Doctor,’ said Bernice, ‘do you think we’re all right?’
He carefully smoothed the paper of the map. ‘What are you asking?’
She sat back in the wooden chair. ‘I keep thinking about this book I read once, about the people of a country town, knocked out for twenty‐four hours –’
‘– and when they woke up, the women were carrying The Midwich Cuckoos,’ said the Doctor.
Bernice shuddered, really shuddered. ‘Cuckoos. What if we’re the nests? Did something leave a message while we were out?’
The Doctor reached out and spread the fingertips of his right hand on her forehead. They stayed like that for a few seconds, their eyes locked together.
He snatched his hand away, as though he’d touched something hot. ‘Nothing that shouldn’t be there,’ he murmured.
‘And what about you?’
‘I am perfectly all right,’ he said. ‘There is nothing wrong with me. Believe me, I’ve looked, I’ve checked, and I can’t see anything out of place.’
‘When I first met you,’ she said quietly, ‘you were playing a game.’
‘I’m not playing one now,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Bernice, I’m not.’
But he’d just been in her mind, and he knew she didn’t trust him.
* * *
The Special Documents Section was suddenly filled with a noise: the arrogant music of equations shoving aside the particles of the air, of engines grinding unhealthily as they dragged the TARDIS into reality.
There were eight guards in the building, as well as four postgraduate students and an academic working late. Of these, two guards and one of the students heard the noise of the TARDIS’s arrival. The student put it down to the noisy plumbing. The guards did what they had been told and stayed put in their little glass booth. Waiting.
Out of the TARDIS came Ace, in black, Bernice, in black, Cristián, in dark purple, and the Doctor, still in his white clothes. Bernice eyed him in irritation – he virtually glowed in the dark. He grinned back at her, as though to say, ‘Which of us looks least like a thief?’
They were in a long hall, as much a display area as a library. Glass cases, softly lit by fluorescent bulbs, lined the walls of the room. There were more of the giant filing cabinets that Bernice had seen earlier, plus reading desks and bookshelves and a neon SALIDA sign dotting and dashing in a meaningless red morse.
The Doctor strolled up to one of the glass cabinets and peered into it. It contained two fragile Aztec books, long screens of yellow paper unfolded to expose the illustrations. Purple handwriting meandered down the sides of the Aztec drawings, ran between pictures of kings and gods. The conquerors trying to make sense of the conquered.
Cristián stood in the middle of the room, head turning slowly one way and then another. ‘Something,’ he said. ‘Something locked away.’ Ace came and