• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Chris watched him stand up and walk across to the console. His fingers hovered over the wide array of controls.

Then he seemed to change his mind. He walked backward to his chair and sat down again. He stil hadn't looked at Chris. The all-purpose solution that the young man needed was not going to materialize. He turned to go.

'Christopher, have you touched the coordinate selector?'

Chris stopped where he stood. 'No.'

'What about the time vector generation unit?' The Doctor's tone was as prickly as an Academy tutor looking for a fight with an errant rookie.

'The time vector what? Why? What's happened to Extans Superior? I thought we were...'

'Never mind.' The Doctor shifted his gaze to the floor. 'What sort of dreams, Chris? Different or the same?'

Chris stood in the doorway. His hand gripped Roz's towel tightly. He couldn't say anything. It didn't matter.

'That bad,' said the Doctor. 'You'd better put some clothes on and tell me.'

***

Ace was clapping. A slow, steady, jeering clap as Dorothée downed the contents of the flask. The brandy was burning her throat, but she tilted the flask higher and higher. She almost choked and sat down on the floor with a thud. 'Dare complete,' she announced and wiped her mouth.

27

They'd both been drinking while they compared identical experiences. Dorothée remembered plenty, but Ace recalled events with photographic precision, even recent things that she looked too young to remember. They'd been rambling for an hour now over subjects ranging from explosives and places they'd visited to the best way to handle uppity servants and men (not much difference). They'd compared scars, conquests and deaths. Dorothée had lost her Harley and won it back. Ace had won the bed and a holiday in Paris in the year of her choice. She was flopped on her back across the bed, leaning her head over the side, watching Dorothée upside down. Al the time, she kept a tight hold on her gun.

'I thought...' slurred Dorothée, rolling her head. 'I thought that the two of us couldn't meet. . . couldn't ever meet. It's the Brontosaurus Effect. . . or something.'

Ace grinned. 'The Blini-vichyssoise Effect.'

'No, no, the Doctor told me... no listen, listen, he said that he warned Rassilon and that they'd had a lot of trouble with the prototype of the Hand...'

'That's right. The Hand of Omega. And you remember what Lady Peinforte said? About knowing who he real y was?'

'Yeah, and the Cyber-Leader didn't even want to know. You should have seen his face.' Dorothée grimaced a metallic scowl and Ace grimaced back.

'Her face too,' she sniggered.

But, Dorothée noted, her eyes weren't laughing. They were still like ice.

'You don't believe all that, do you?' Ace went on.

Dorothée was on all fours, shaking her head as she crawled towards the bed. 'Who cares? I'm crukking paralytic.'

'But what d'you think. . . what did he mean?'

'Dunno. Never know half of what he means. He just makes it happen.' She put her head on the floor and closed her eyes.

Ace's voice came nearer her ear. 'He keeps bloody strange company, doesn't he? What about the Master and the Daleks? And Rassilon.'

'And Adolf Hitler,' murmured Dorothée woozily. 'And Leonardo.'

'And President Romanadvoratrelundar. What the freak is he up to, eh? Social climbing?'

'And Lethbridge-Stewart,' Dorothée whispered. 'And good old Skoda Birianivitch.'

'What?' Ace said in sudden earnest. She leant closer. 'Skoda who? Never heard of him. Who's he?'

Dorothée lurched up with a sudden cut from her fist that sent Ace spinning across the grey room. Before Ace could recover, she was looking along the barrel of her own gun.

'Don't know me that wel , do you?' snapped Dorothée. 'You thought I was wel past it.'

Ace said nothing, so Dorothée pointed at a badge on the front of her interrogator's bomber jacket. 'See that one.

That's a continuity error. It shouldn't be there.'

Ace nodded. ' Blue Peter badge. Lost it on the Watch Tower in the city of the inside out