Doctor Who_ Original Sin - Andy Lane [10]
He smiled, remembering some of his holidays. ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I had a tooth removed in the Old West?’
‘Yes,’ Bernice said levelly.
‘Oh. What about the effervescent oceans of Florana?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. What about –’ He saw her face, and stopped.
‘Doctor,’ she blurted suddenly, ‘Homeless Forsaken told me something just before he died – something that’s been worrying me. He said I shouldn’t go back to Earth for the next few years. He said it wasn’t safe – that something terrible was going to happen and he didn’t want it to happen to me.’ She sighed. ‘He said even though the Hith are notorious for being loners, he liked me too much to want to see me die.’
‘Earth,’ the Doctor mused. ‘Thirtieth century in Homeless Forsaken’s time.
A time of peace and prosperity: well, for the peaceful and prosperous, at least.
Run by the full panoply of an Imperial Court – earls, viscounts and the rest –
and divided up into areas called spaceports. Just like the old countries, except that they better reflect the socio-economic realities of life in the future. Not a pleasant place, as places go, but I wouldn’t want to lose it just yet.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Does this have anything to do with our adventures on Oolis?’ he said finally.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘That was something else that he had got mixed up in.’
17
The Doctor was silent for a few moments, remembering their time on Oolis.
Homeless Forsaken, Hith warrior, had been a drifter: a rootless, homeless member of a downtrodden race. He hadn’t talked about himself very much, but he had a sense of honour, and the Doctor had not known him to lie.
‘The Hith,’ he mused. ‘As I recall, they lost a short but very nasty war with the Earth Empire –’ He took his gold hunter watch out of his pocket and consulted it. ‘– four years or so ago. Their home world was terraformed, and the remnants of the Hith were left wandering around the galaxy in whatever spaceships they could beg, borrow or run off with without paying spaceport fees. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were intending to take some terrible revenge.’
Bernice nodded. ‘I’ll never forget what Homeless Forsaken said about the despair of knowing that somebody had taken your planet away and wouldn’t give it back. Did he tell you about his name? Apparently all of the Hith have renounced their original names and taken new ones to remind them and the rest of the galaxy what happened to them. His full name was Homeless Forsaken Betrayed And Alone.’
‘You can imagine it, can’t you?’ the Doctor said. ‘Some human security guard asks him who he is. “I’m Homeless Forsaken Betrayed And Alone,”
he replies. Passive resistance. Gandhi would have been proud.’ He sighed, gazing out across the sea of shoes. ‘But getting back to this threat, we haven’t got much to go on. Is that all he said?’
‘That’s it. Oh, he mentioned somewhere called Spaceport Five Overcity. He said that if I ever did go to Earth, to avoid going there.’
The Doctor handed the tumbler back to her and stood up, feeling suddenly shaky. That amber liquid certainly packed a punch. ‘Then that’s where we go,’
he said. ‘My interest has been piqued.’
Bernice sighed. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. I wasn’t sure whether to tell you or not, but I guess I had to in the end. I’d have felt guilty as hell if we’d pitched up in thirtieth-century Earth in a few years’ time, only to find it wasn’t there any more.’
‘Coming?’
She looked into the tumbler, and rolled the last few drops of amber fluid around. ‘Why not?’ she said, frowning.
‘Moping in the dark is a fruitless occupation, Bernice.’ He nodded towards the tumbler. ‘And besides, you drink too much already.’
‘Er, Doctor,’ she said carefully, ‘I think I should break some bad news to you.
I was looking for something to do, and I found this place, so I decided to clean some of your shoes. Trouble is, you’ve gone and drunk the polish.’
∗ ∗ ∗
18
Waiting For Justice And Dreaming Of Home slithered through the waist-high canal, dreaming of past glories.
The dank,