Doctor Who_ Return of the Living Dad - Kate Orman [7]
He noticed that she’d noticed him, and handed her a tiny T mail datacube, the sort the TARDIS console spat out. She thumbed the switch on the base. A tiny Bernice appeared on top of the cube.
Hi! I’m on the planet Youkali Six, in the jungle not ten kilometres from the Archaeological Institute, with Jason. It’s the year twenty-five eighty-seven. The precise time and coordinates are appended.
Roz twiddled a dial to make the image a little larger.
Benny’s face was cool as a cucumber, her eyes glittering with cheerfulness, like a suspect who was sweating on the inside.
I’ve just found someone who was with my father during his last battle. She is, effectively, the last person to see him alive.
Doctor, if it’s possible, I want to go back to the battle. I’ve thought about this a lot. I know we can’t change anything, but even if we just watch from the distance, I need to find out what happened to Dad.
Please drop in when you have a moment spare from saving the universe. Hope everyone is well.
The holographic Benny laughed.
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.
She vanished, replaced by a string of digits.
‘We’ll leave tomorrow morning,’ said the Doctor. He sat down in one of the other chairs. ‘You disapproved.’
‘Sorry?’ said Roz.
‘You disapproved of my spending that week working in the hospice.’ He didn’t look at her, but gazed out over the ocean.
‘I don’t know about “disapproved”,’ said Roz. She put her hands in her pockets. ‘It just seemed tokenistic.’
‘Tokenistic?’
‘Self-indulgent,’ said Roz. ‘You were only doing it to make yourself feel better.’
The Doctor’s face took on a thoughtful expression. ‘I suppose we all do that, from time to time.’
Silence for a bit. ‘So, did they work you hard?’ said Roz.
‘No, it was very ordinary work — cleaning, mostly. A little cooking. A great deal of talking and a great deal more of listening. There was a young woman...’
‘Chris said something about your wanting us to meet someone.’
‘Quite young. I had hoped to say goodbye to her this morning.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Roz. Did you get to know her well?’
‘As well as two strangers can come to know one another in the space of a week. I told her rather more about the future than she probably should have known. She would have loved to have met you. Human beings from the future... it helped her, I think, to know that there was a future.’ The lines around the Doctor’s eyes stood out in the dim light.
You couldn’t understand, could you? thought Roz. She was dying, a dying human being, and you couldn’t understand her.
There was something about it that made her feel oddly proud.
As if reading her mind, the Doctor turned to her and said,
‘Why does Benny want to find her father?’
Roz said, ‘Good grief.’
The Doctor made an agitated movement with his hands.
‘People growing up together, living together, yes, I can understand how that would create a bond, but this seems...’
‘Arbitrary?’
‘She hardly knows him,’ said the Time Lord.
‘If it was your father,’ said Roz, ‘what would you do?’
‘On Gallifrey —’
An aproned Chris wandered out onto the verandah, completely missed the atmosphere, and gave them a cheery smile. ‘I’ve decided to make tofu surprise,’ he said.
‘Oh yes,’ Roz smiled back, despite herself. ‘What’s the surprise?’
‘We’re out of tofu,’ said Chris.
3 On Youkali, a cold wind was blowing It blew through the forest, making the leaves hiss like the surf. It found the camps at the edge of the trees, and snuffed out an ancient kerosene lamp, making an elderly xenobiologist curse and fumble for the matches.
It curled around the base of the staircase Benny had been excavating that morning. It blew across the clearing and stopped to ruffle the hair of a late-working trio of trainees, sending chills down their backs.
It tugged at the Doctor’s hat, but couldn’t lift it. He was standing at the base of the steps, leaning on his umbrella, reading the hieroglyphs. The wind bit through his silk shirt.
He’d taken off the tweed