Doctor Who_ Peacemaker - James Swallow [23]
‘Dekkerville, Blaine said.’ The Doctor’s hands hovered over the controls of the TARDIS. ‘It’s tricky, but we could try a sideways shunt in space with the same temporal coordinates.’
Martha’s frown deepened. ‘No offence, but we might draw a lot of attention if you materialise a police box in the middle of the town square.’
He nodded again. ‘You could be right. Kutter said I was different. I think he might have been able to sense who I am, just a little. And if there’s aliens involved, they might spot a moving time capsule like a flare on a dark night.’
‘We’ll find another way to get to Dekkerville, then.’
‘No,’ said a weak voice. They both turned and found Jenny reaching up from the chair. ‘That’s. . . wrong. . . ’
Martha knelt beside her. ‘Don’t try to talk. Just rest. You’ll be fine, I promise, but you have to rest.’
Jenny shook her head. ‘No, listen to me. . . ’ She coughed. ‘I heard you. Dekkerville That was a lie. Blaine lied to those men. . . Godlove Didn’t go south. North. He went northwards.’
‘Well, well. Clever sheriff,’ said the Doctor. ‘He sent them on a wild goose chase.’
‘So where is Alvin Godlove’s medicine show now, then?’ asked Martha.
‘Ironhill,’ husked the woman.
A sudden, warm tightness at her shoulder sent small thrills of pain down Jenny’s arm and she hissed, clutching at it. The schoolteacher had woken up in her own bed, rolled the bedclothes off and sat up, peering into the morning light that filtered through her window. Her first thoughts were that the whole frightful experience had been a night terror of her own.
Now, she gingerly pulled her nightgown an inch down her arm to reveal the site of the pain. A poultice was secured in place there with 58
a bandage, and the skin either side was tender and livid, as if she had been too long in the sun. Jenny’s mouth was dry and she took a sip of water from the glass on her nightstand.
In fits and starts, pieces of the night before returned to her. Taking the Doctor and Martha to see young Nathan; the boy’s peculiar stories, told to them in his mournful trance; and then the horror of the long riders in the main street.
A gasp escaped her lips. The memory of incredible, heart-stopping pain flooded through her and for a moment she felt it again. The wash of murderous heat as the white flash of light struck her. The agony, greater than anything she had ever experienced before, smashing her into a dark, rumbling blackness. She had been shot. She should have been dead.
Jenny struggled out of bed and doggedly dressed herself, her face twisting in frustration as she attempted to remember. ‘There was a room,’ she said aloud, ‘the walls honey-yellow and warm, like beaten gold.’ A domed space, or so it had seemed, with a strange device at the centre. A thing of brass and crystal, delicate and yet powerful.
Something about it made her think of an engine, but she could not fathom why. ‘But where?’ she asked herself. She knew Redwater, having lived there for these past five years, and she knew full well that no building such as the one she had been in existed there.
‘The Doctor.’ She remembered him carrying her, carrying her towards the blue box. He had been talking to her all the way, whispering. Telling her to hold on, to stay awake. ‘And Martha.’ Jenny recalled the girl’s face with perfect clarity, hovering close to her, breathing life back into her lungs. There was something else, as well, something on the tip her tongue. She’d told them. . . Told them what?
A delicate knock sounded at the door, and Mrs Toomey entered with a tray of breakfast things. The elderly woman gawked at her. ‘Good grief, Miss Forrest, but you shouldn’t ought to be up and about! You took a dreadful injury! You were dead to the world when that young Doctor fella brought you back here!’
She shook her head. ‘Thank you kindly for your concern, but I feel well enough to be about the day.’ She glanced out of the window and 59
frowned, the light of the morning showing the blackened ruins among the undamaged buildings, where before stores and homes