Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [120]
But what really worried him, still, were the memories that Sooal’s array had triggered. The one with Leela in the snow was fine, he remembered that one. But the other. He’d thought and thought and thought about it, but had got nowhere. He tried to write it off as something purely external, delusional, created by the probe’s intrusion into his head. But he couldn’t be sure. It had the taste of a memory, the scent of something real.
For the hundredth time, he closed his eyes and tried to take himself back there...
Away across the water, incongruously perched on the pebbled shore, was the familiar blue shape of the TARDIS.
Ace hadn’t been able to resist the temptation, after all. With the Doctor waiting for her in the other TARDIS, she watched from the boat through binoculars – and smiled. He’d taken the TARDIS back in time a short while, when they’d come from Graystairs, to make sure that the signal from the control sphere overlapped itself and didn’t make Scotland go boom. But his choice of exactly the right amount for her to witness her own departure from Kelsay seemed more than just a vague, temporal whim. Had the Doctor brought them to this point in time deliberately, just so she could see herself? It wouldn’t surprise her.
A stunningly attractive young girl, Ace thought – despite her obvious limp – was hitching her rucksack onto her shoulder and stepping through the open door of the blue box. As she entered, she paused and looked back, straight at Ace. At herself. And then, as if she’d been ordered inside, she disappeared. Seconds later, the TARDIS faded away.
For once, thought Ace with a certain degree of smugness, I know more about where we’re going than the Doctor does.
It was a rather nice feeling.
Epilogue
The rain poured down, forming glistening, smokey cones beneath the amber street lamps. Rivulets streamed down the walls of the buildings, overflowing from gutters and washing over windows.
In a Portakabin somewhere off the Mile End Road, surrounded by long-unopened lockup garages and scrap yards, a small, middle-aged woman was leafing through a card index, muttering to herself as she listened to what sounded like pebbles battering against the roof. As the thunder cracked overhead and rolled across the city, she gave a little shudder. With a tut, she closed the lid of the card index box and took out a huge bunch of keys from the pocket of her Chanel trouser suit.With the caution of six months’ living and working in the less-than-salubrious environs of the Portakabin, she glanced round, checking that the blinds were down. Then she found one particular key, inserted it into a keyhole on the underside of the desk and turned it.
Above the surface of the desk, above the clutter of coffee-cups and paper-clips, bills and old envelopes, and a desk calendar that read November 4th 1976, a shimmering blue virtual display sprang up. With deft, practised strokes, she stabbed at the air, bringing up a stream of records. Quickly cross-referencing them, she set up a couple of new accounts for two clients had contacted her earlier that day. In a few minutes, she’d finished, and reached for her mug – when she heard a gentle tapping on the door.
Visitors at all hours of the day and night weren’t unusual, so she wasn’t unduly worried. She quickly turned off the display, pocketed the keys and crossed to the door. With a casual wave of her hand, she activated a concealed sensor in the doorframe, and the one-way door rippled to transparency. Outside, in the darkness and rain, there was only... well, darkness and rain. No, wait: at the foot of the door, rapidly darkening in the downpour, was a cardboard box.
She deactivated the shield and cautiously unlocked the door.
Rain and wind lashed against her as she quickly stooped and lifted the box. For a moment, something inside it seemed to move, and she almost dropped it. But she managed to hold onto it and brought it inside, where