Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [46]
The troopers started walking, one to the right, one to the left.
Roz blew out a sigh and headed for the mountain.
She seriously did not want to go inside. They’d seen the structures half buried in the mountain on their approach, and she had no doubt that it was the real goal of Martinique’s expedition.
But whatever was in there had screwed up reality to the point where there were Goddess knew how many extra Doctors walking about, appearing like sad ghosts in a Chinese fairy tale.
Another one had appeared to her in her cabin en route, furiously scribbling coordinates on the wall with a stick of crayon. A short guy in an oversized dark suit. ‘Don’t tell the Time Lords I was here,’ he insisted. ‘I keep to myself, one step ahead of them. But only one step.’ Then he’d vanished.
At least out here it was just rocks and empty space. You knew where you were with rocks and empty space.
The scream nearly burst her eardrum. ‘– sake, wait! Don’t leave without us! Don’t go! Can you hear us?’
‘Shut the cruk up!’ Roz yelled into her suit mike. ‘Turn your bloody gain down!’
‘Roz, can you hear me?’
‘Doctor!’ She tried not to sound as delighted as she was. And damn, he’d used her name. Now they knew he knew her. ‘What’s the sitrep?’
‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
‘Oh, thanks. I came to rescue you.’
‘But I thought you were living in Hampstead.’
‘What?’
‘With George.’
Roz felt something cold worm its way down her back. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ she said.
‘We’ve just this moment got out of the mountain complex. It’s just me and Iaomnet Wszola – we think the others left us for dead. We’re tired, but unhurt.’
‘Oh yeah, you sound just fine.’
‘Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus,’ Iaomnet was whispering.
‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
‘I’m afraid Iaomnet is understandably upset.’
‘Stay put. We’ll come up and get you.’
109
‘Roz –’
‘Captain Sekeris, are you getting all of this?’ said Roz quickly.
‘Yes, ma’am. We’ve got the medical team on standby for your return.’
‘We’ll talk soon,’ said Roz. Will we ever? ‘Save your strength for now.’
The medical team took one look at Iaomnet and tranquillized her. It was mostly exhaustion, the nurses said, as much from fear as from the marathon walk to escape the mountain. They put her to bed in sickbay, over her feeble protests.
The Doctor took one look at the medical team and they left him the hell alone. He looked distinctly unsteady to Roz, sitting on a bed in sickbay with his head tipped back against the wall. He looked thinner, not as though he’d lost weight, more as though he’d somehow lost substance.
She went into the sickbay, and he snapped back in an instant.
‘Roz,’ he said. ‘We have to get to Cassandra.’
‘Is that where Chris is heading?’ asked Roz.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Possibly, it doesn’t matter – we have to go there.’
‘No problem. Sekeris is waiting for my instructions. But we’ll be flying through a war zone without authorization. I’ll have to come up with a good story.’ He didn’t answer, his head tilted and his eyes half closed, as though he was listening to something far away. ‘A very good story, Doctor.’
‘Tell him civilization as we know it is in danger.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Tell him whatever you like.’
‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘what was that about my being married to George Reed? Because if it was a joke it wasn’t bloody funny.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m still remembering a lot of timelines. It’s hard to sort them out. I wasn’t expecting you. I thought I’d left you behind in 1941. Or that you were killed by yourself in Woodwicke. Or that you were the head of the Order of Adjudicators.’
‘How many timelines do you remember?’
110
He thought about it. ‘About fifty,’ he said. ‘That’s not so bad. I started with two thousand and three.’
‘Hold it right there.’
They both looked up. Iaomnet stood in the doorway, wielding a hypospray filled with something unpleasant and purple.
‘I don’t know what you two are up to,’ she said, slowly and carefully around the sedative, ‘but it’s going to stop right now.
I’m taking you both into