Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [85]
Cris sat down on the bed, next to a dresser, keeping the Gideon’s Bible between them. The Doctor went to a chair next to the window and peered out through the bars. Ace leaned on the wall next to the door, as though she were expecting someone to break in.
‘Long time no see,’ said Cris sourly. ‘Why now?’
Benny looked at the Doctor. The Time Lord just stared out the window. Cristián looked at his hair and whispered, ‘Jesus.’
‘We need your help,’ she said gently.
‘Help,’ Cris laughed. ‘Help. I’ve had nothing but help. Pills and tests and therapy, and all of it useless. I’ve had more help than I know what to do with –’
He tugged open the dresser drawer and extracted a pistol. Bernice felt Ace’s sudden attention between her shoulder‐blades, the change from disinterested slouch to combat‐ready tension. Was she armed? ‘In North America, everyone has to have a gun, for protection, because everyone else has a gun.’
Suddenly he was pointing the thing at the Doctor. He was holding it all wrong, but it didn’t take expertise, not at a range of two feet. ‘I bought this to scare off the big bad monster,’ said Cris hysterically. ‘Do you think it’ll frighten him? Hey? Do you think it’ll stop him in his tracks?’
‘Ace,’ said the Doctor, ‘disarm him.’
There was motion too quick for Benny to follow. When it resolved itself, Cris was lying on the floor behind the bed, looking terrified. Ace was holding his pistol. Bernice found that she had put herself between Cris and the Doctor.
The Time Lord was still staring out the window. ‘Don’t kill him,’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
Ace tossed the pistol back into the drawer and shut it. She sat down on top of the dresser, crossing her legs.
Cris started crying. It looked pathetic. ‘I came here to get away from it,’ he sobbed. ‘But it followed me. It’s coming to get me. What’s it want? What’s it here for?’
‘Perhaps you’re following it,’ said the Doctor. ‘You followed it to London.’
Cristián shook his head. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘Handkerchief,’ Benny told the Doctor. He didn’t respond. She pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to Cris. He blew his nose loudly.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ said the Doctor.
‘Oh,’ said Benny. ‘Anywhere in particular?’
The reply was a moment in coming, as though they were communicating by satellite. ‘I’m just going to wander the streets aimlessly.’
He handed Ace something and went out the door. ‘Oh fine,’ said Benny. ‘And why not? It’s not as though we have anything important to do.’
Cris said, ‘It’s all going to happen again, isn’t it?’
Ace handed Benny the palmtop computer. ‘Stay here.’
* * *
Ace couldn’t make herself believe that the Doctor didn’t know she was following him So she knew that he knew. Did he know that she knew that he knew? Smeg!
She stayed perhaps a block behind him. He did not turn to look at her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching her.
His path through New York was erratic, elaborately purposeless. He stopped at a hot dog stand and had a long chat with the vendor. He went up one street, changed his mind, and walked back down it against the flow of the crowd.
He stopped on a corner and hovered as if lost, then abruptly went into a sidewalk café thick with jazz music and cigarette smoke.
He sat with a bag lady on the steps of a tenement house, watching two boys graffiti‐ing the wall and the street signs, while the starlight tried to push its way through the pollution. Ace watched them from the shadows, two odd figures in a pool of yellow light.
What was he looking for? What was he trying to find? Or was he trying to get away from something?
* * *
Professor Summerfield sat at the writing desk with the complimentary pen clamped between her teeth. The Doctor’s palmtop was attached by electric spaghetti to the phone, which beeped occasionally, as though irritated by the