Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [68]
Jason blinked. ‘Oh great. You’ve invented television.’
The Doctor took off his hat, smiled his best magician’s smile, and stepped through the archway.
Jason gaped at him.
‘I’d come through right now if I were you,’ said the Time Lord. ‘I don’t think that loop is going to survive for more than another —’
Jason hurled himself through the archway, colliding with the counter and winding himself.
‘— twenty seconds,’ said the Doctor.
Jason turned. There was a hole in the air looking back into Albinex’s engine room. As he watched, it folded itself up and slammed away into nothing.
‘Or less,’ added the Doctor.
Alekto
And in the end Roz got fed up with chess and with waiting for the phone to ring, and had pulled on her coat and gone out into the freezing morning, leaving him in the lounge.
Chris had got hold of the Doctor’s ghost-detector. The Time Lord had dropped it in the mud when the spaceship’s beam had caught him; he must have been trying to take some kind of reading. Bit more precise than a divining rod.
Chris had dampened a tea towel and wiped off the worst of the mud and bits of wheat. The thing was making little humming noises, so it must still be working a bit. He could see a couple of batteries taped into the mechanism just behind the tea-strainer.
There was a roll with times printed on it and a long, slow line drawn by a needle. Mostly the line was flat. He gently lifted the needle and wound the roll back.
At about noon that day, the needle had gone berserk.
As he was staring at the roll, the pen jumped in his hand.
He quickly pulled his hand out of the machine, and the needle started hopping and scratching all over the paper, faster and faster.
‘Oh frag,’ he said.
He bolted out of the cottage. She was just about to go inside the coffee shop. ‘Roz!’ he shouted. ‘Wait!’
She turned, as he ran up the road towards her, the rough surface biting his feet and he could see that feathered horror descending on her, rushing from all sides like a hurricane with her in its eye —
Roz batted at the thing as it battered at her, waving her hands wildly and shouting. Chris knew that no one else could see it.
She could see it because it was attacking her, and he could see it because he’d already seen it twice.
He saw her mouth open as he sprinted the last few metres between them. He knew she was being taken back to the beginning, that her life was being read like a book that someone was flipping through, fast, uncaring, looking for a particular paragraph or picture.
He grabbed hold of her as she was catapulted into her own future.
And suddenly they were married, living on a lush green world where he surfed and fought villains and she danced and wrote laser-sharp political commentary. And from time to time the Doctor visited them, sometimes wearing a different face, but always with that conjurer’s twinkle in his eye.
And suddenly they were lying on a road in 1983, free of the ghost storm, and it was so cold that he could feel his bare toes turning blue.
Roz was shaking in his grip, outraged, still struggling. He jerked backwards, letting her go, giving her space. ‘Did you see it?’ he asked her, as they sat up. ‘Did you see it?’
‘I didn’t see anything!’ she shouted wildly. ‘Christ! I didn’t see anything, all right?’
24 Plan B
Albinex pressed his palm against the engine room lock. The door slid open.
Inside, his time engine was lying in disrepair, little puffs of burnt stuff scattered over its surface like black flowers. His transformation arch had been dragged away from the wall, and was lying flat on the floor, sizzling softly.
The Doctor, not surprisingly, was gone.
‘Never mind,’ said Albinex. ‘Never you mind.’
He turned on his heel and walked the short distance to his larder. The door slid open at his touch. He stepped into the room, found the canisters he wanted, brushing away the condensation to read the labels.
‘I knew you would come in handy,’ he breathed. ‘The both of you.’
It’s surprising what you can think of in an hour.
25 Conference
Someone