Doctor Who_ Match of the Day - Chris Boucher [5]
Most of the Zone Three mid-evening newscast was devoted to an obituary of Starvil taken straight and unedited from the interplanetary network. Considering the short notice it was a good solid presentation. A brief biography was followed by reruns of his best kills and a nicely restrained eulogy by one of the more dignified network frontmen. If the actual details of his death were a little sketchy it was surely understandable since it had happened without benefit of tri-dee coverage.
After the network linkup, Zone Three’s local news carried, amongst other things, a brief item about an accident on the R4 southbound in which three people were killed. Keefer was not mentioned, in fact no names were given at all. This could have been an editorial foul-up, since at the time Zone Three had a small drama of its own.
On the very night when the main news story was the death of a legendary sports personality, the duty sports editor, one Jon ‘Mickey’ Michaelson, was found dead. Within three hours of the discovery of the body, Jerro Fanson, an independent promotions agent with a reputation as a hustler, had been arrested and charged with his murder.
Leela clenched her teeth and closed her eyes but the sudden silence made her open them again immediately. The Doctor was standing peering down at her. ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.
‘I was asleep?’
‘Yes.’ The Doctor smiled encouragingly. ‘You were snoring.’
‘How long?’
‘How long were you snoring?’
‘How long was I sleeping?’ She stood up easily and without any sign of the stiffness she might have expected from falling asleep on her knees on a hard floor.
The Doctor pulled his battered hat from the pocket of his long coat and jammed it on his head. ‘That depends on which watch you think is more reliable.’
‘I do not think I was asleep,’ Leela said.
‘Are you sure?’ the Doctor said. ‘It can be hard to tell, some dreams are very vivid.’ He headed for the door. ‘Shall we go?
Yes I think so.’ And without saying anything else he was gone.
Leela noticed that, as had happened before, he made almost no effort to check on what might be waiting outside the TARDIS. She tried to see if anything was showing up on the screen above the door but the only movement she could make out was the Doctor wandering forward into who-knows-what danger. She tightened the strings on her hide boots.
‘Wait for me,’ she called as she set out after him.
Chapter Two
The Doctor looked around at the concrete culvert and found himself wondering why it was that the TARDIS seemed to favour materialising in unobtrusive alleyways in industrial complexes, obscure corners of underground labyrinths, half-hidden woodland copses, or anywhere really that was not immediately identifiable. Perhaps it was easier for her to slip in unobserved. Or perhaps such anonymous places had fewer existential links to be severed and temporal resonances to be tuned out. ‘Or of course,’ he said aloud, ‘it could simply be a coincidence, a matter of statistical probability. It could be what most places in most worlds are like.’ He strolled on through what he assumed was a service duct of some sort, regretting vaguely that he had skipped the class in transdimensional locus attraction dynamics in favour of the theory and practice of yo-yos and juggling for beginners. ‘The trouble with juggling is that you forget how to do it,’ he said.
‘It’s not at all like riding a bicycle.’
Leela trotted up beside him. ‘Doctor? Why did you not wait for me?’
‘I did wait for you.’ The Doctor did not break his stride. ‘I am waiting for you. Try to keep up, there’s a good girl.’
‘You were talking to yourself,’ Leela said.
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Everyone talks to themselves.’
Leela shook her head emphatically. ‘I do not talk to myself.
Warriors do not talk to themselves.’
‘They just don’t do it out loud,’ the Doctor said smiling, but he was abruptly aware that the lumpy landing had left him more disorientated than he had realised. He hoped the TARDIS was