Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [1]
‘Same direction?’
‘Not exactly. That’s what’s odd. I think,’ he mused, ‘I’ll simply let her veer.’
‘We were just here, Professor.’
‘Not exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘We will be here.’
‘When?’
He checked his pocket watch. ‘Eighteen minutes.’
Ace shifted from foot to foot, looking around. She and the Doctor were in an alley ending at a pair of sagging, chained-together junkyard gates bearing the weathered letters “I M Forman”. The Doctor went to the gates and peered between them.
‘Same as it ever was,’ she said. ‘If we’re coming in 18 minutes, that means that there are already Daleks here. So we ought to go.’
He remained at the gate. ‘There aren’t any Daleks here,’ he said. ‘In this alley at this moment, and there won’t be for a few hours.’
‘Yeah, well, we don’t want to meet ourselves, do we? Doesn’t that mess everything up?’ He didn’t answer. ‘What’s so interesting in there, anyway?’
‘Nothing.’ The Doctor sighed and stepped back. ‘I’m just indulging in nostal-gia.’
‘For this place?’
Again, he didn’t answer. He was reading the letters on the gates, frowning.
He read them again. ‘That’s not right.’ he muttered. ‘Ace – was the name like this before?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, try to remember. It’s important.’
She slouched over to join him. ‘Why?’
8
The Algebra of Ice
‘Try, please.’
Boring. Ace ran her eyes over the gates. ‘Yeah, it was like this.’
‘Not “Foreman”, with an “e”.’
‘No. I remember ’cos when I looked at it, it was like it read “I am for man”.’
He tapped his chin with the handle of his umbrella. ‘That’s wrong.’
‘No, it isn’t. I remember –’
‘Not “you’re wrong”. The sign’s wrong.’
He wasn’t making sense. Again. ‘You mean it’s not the right name? How could –’
‘It’s the right name, but it’s spelled incorrectly.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know,’ the Doctor said softly. His eyes remained on the letters. ‘Ace, did you ever hear the saying that all the things you do in life are a mirror – that when you look at them, you see your face.’
She smiled. ‘You must be well beautiful then – all the times you’ve helped people. Not to mention saving the universe.’
He gazed for another minute at the sign, then he spun and took Ace’s arm.
‘Come along, then. Back to the TARDIS. As you said, we mustn’t run into ourselves.’
A man lay unconscious in a gutter. Though it was only early autumn, the night was cold, and the fog occasionally thickened into hard little bits of ice. The man was about forty. He had somehow retained his hat, and still clutched a fine malacca cane. A half a block away, drinkers staggered in and out of a noisy, well-lit tavern. But the streetlamp near the man had burned low and he lay unnoticed. Being in either a stupor or a coma, he didn’t hear a groaning, grinding two-note bray, like a police siren gone hoarse, nor did he see a small man of indeterminate age, with sharp blue eyes and dark hair gone to tuft, step out of an alley, followed by a teenaged girl in a leather jacket. The girl started forward.
‘No, Ace!’ The Doctor held his arm in front of her.
‘But he’s sick.’
‘He’s dying,’ said the Doctor. ‘Stay here.’
‘You mean this has already happened? Why’d you bring us to something terrible that we can’t do anything about?’
‘I didn’t. The TARDIS did.’
She looked helplessly at the man. ‘How do you know this has happened before? You can’t be sure. We could get help and –’
Chapter One
9
‘That’s Edgar Allan Poe,’ said the Doctor. ‘And this is 3 October, 1849. We’re in Baltimore on election night, and, as was the practice, a group of poll-workers have got Poe drunk and dragged him from voting place to voting place in an effort to highjack the election. In a little while Joseph Walker, a printer, will find him, and he’ll be taken to the Washington Medical College hospital. He’ll die three days from now, after calling one name over and over.’
‘What name?’
‘ “Reynolds”.’
‘Who –’
‘Ssh.’ He pushed her gently back into the shadows. ‘Here comes Mr Walker.’
A man in