Doctor Who_ Remembrance of the Daleks - Ben Aaronovitch [61]
‘Ashes to ashes,’ said the Doctor, ‘dust to dust.’
May you rest in pieces forever.
23
Thursday, 11:30
Dear Julian,
How are you? Just dropping a note to say I’m all right.
It’s been five days since the excitement stopped and I suppose things are getting back to normal.
The Doctor disappeared with that creepy little girl shortly after we found her and Ace at Mike’s house. He brought her back yesterday and Gilmore’s got people looking for her parents now.
When I asked him what he’d been doing, all he said was
‘rewiring’. I didn’t ask him to elaborate – to be honest I’m not sure I wanted to know.
Rachel and Gilmore have been in each other’s company a lot. He calls her Rachel and she calls him Ian. I think they might have something going, but their faces seem so melancholy now.
Ace and I have been left to twiddle our thumbs here at Maybury Hall. Sometimes when she talks I don’t understand half the things she says. It frightens me a little.
If she really is from twenty-five years in the future then our children could grow up to be like her.
Must dash – we’re burying poor old Mike Smith today.
He won’t get military honours, but Gilmore said we all had to go anyway. The funeral is at the same cemetery where the Doctor buried the Hand of Omega, which I think is a bit of a coincidence, but the Doctor says it’s just the stitching in the fabric of reality showing at the seams.
Hope to see you soon.
Love Allison.
This letter has been censored by order of the D-notice committee.
Six professional bearers carried Mike’s coffin up the path to the church. Mrs Smith clung to Gilmore’s arm, she was the only one crying. Behind them walked an elderly couple, introduced to Rachel as Mike’s uncle and aunt.
Rachel and Allison walked behind them; Ace and the Doctor brought up the rear. Nobody else came.
Mrs Smith seemed to have trouble walking.
She lost her husband and now her only son, thought Rachel. All she has are her memories. On Remembrance Sunday will she sit by the radio and remember her son, who died on the wrong side of a war that never officially happened? What will I remember in twenty years’ time? As I watch the world rush headlong into the future, the world of the young, Ace’s world. A silver sea in 1940, the Dalek at Totters Lane, the spaceship landing in the playground perhaps? Or will it be Turing stammering out his theories or Ian’s warm hand on mine while we watched the Doctor engineer an act of genocide?
In the end that’s all we have: our memories –
electrochemical impulses stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge. In the end they define our lives.
The Doctor put his hand on Ace’s shoulder before they went into the church. ‘Time to leave,’ he said.
Ace looked into the Doctor’s grey eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Doctor?’
‘Yes?’
‘We did good, didn’t we?’
‘Perhaps,’ said the Doctor. ‘Time will tell – it always does.’
Document Outline
Front cover
Rear cover
Title page
Copyright
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Tweny-Three
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23