Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [0]
A D V E N T U R E S
RETURN OF THE
LIVING DAD
KATE ORMAN
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © Kate Orman 1996
The right of Kate Orman to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1996
Cover illustration by Mark Wilkinson
ISBN 0 426 20482 4
Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any Resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For Jon Blum
Prologue
Once upon a time there was a hermit.
He never talked much about why he was one, but he was. Some people said there was a woman... or a whole bunch of weird sisters, depending on who you believe. But no matter who or what brought it on, he knew he didn’t want to live the life he was meant to. The life his name and address had laid out for him long before he was born.
All he really wanted to do was wander the world, and forget the responsibilities his name carried, and meet all the people he could never get to see otherwise.
Well all right, he was a very social hermit.
But before he left home, he broke his name. Broke it into thirty-eight tiny pieces. It made a lovely shattering sound, like a wineglass tossed into a fireplace.
He swept up all the pieces of who he was and tucked them away in an inside pocket. And over the years, as he met people who ended up sharing the road with him, travelling with him for a while, he would quietly give each of them a piece of his name.
And once they went their separate ways, his name continued to grow within them, and made them into something better, something bigger, than they were before.
Or just something different.
Most of the time he didn’t think about what grew as he passed. Most of the time he didn’t know. But he did know that, with all the jigsaw pieces of his name scattered about, they wouldn’t be able to get all of him when they came to take him away.
PART ONE
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CALDWELL
The point of archaeology is to carefully recover the past —
not disintegrate it.
The Doctor, Battlefield
1 Find
The planet Youkali, 2587
‘Death has no name.’
Jason Summerfield-Kane looked up at his wife. She was lying on the step above him, face pressed to the ancient stone. ‘What?’
‘It says here, Death has no name. Very suggestive.’
Bernice Kane-Summerfield sat up, brushing the dust off her denim jacket. Jason leant up and kissed her. She smiled at him, hugging him awkwardly, her hands full of pen and paper. He plucked a cobweb out of her long dark hair.
‘Look.’ Benny pointed with her stylus at the complex hieroglyphs carved into the stone. Jason hunched, put his face close to the ancient words. ‘ Name not has Death,’
translated Benny, running the pen along under the words.
‘ Therefore steals She ours. Death was a female figure on this world. Also very suggestive.’
‘Are you just going to sit there making suggestive remarks?’ asked Jason. ‘Or do you want to tell me what it means?’
Benny sat up on the step and looked around the site.
The sun had come out from behind the clouds, poking orange fingers down through the canopy, a mix of native and Earth trees. Archaeologists and students buzzed around each staircase or crumbled building.
‘Youkali witnessed the battle between the Osirans and Sutekh,’ she said. ‘Over five and a half thousand years ago.
The planet was laid waste. Cities burned, economies