Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [2]
‘Master!’ said Ace in disgust.
‘Yes, Ace. Nineteenth-century America, remember? The Civil War isn’t for another fifteen –’
The Doctor stopped. Suddenly, smoothly, the scene in front of them had shifted, as if a wave swelled beneath its surface, and now Poe was once more alone in the gutter.
The Doctor said something terse in a language Ace didn’t understand. She knew why. He never liked it when time went wobbly.
‘Is it going to happen again?’ she whispered. ‘Are we in a loop?’
‘Look.’ He pointed. ‘The boy holding the horse is gone.’
‘Then things are different. But –’
‘Wait,’ he ordered.
They waited. Ace shivered slightly. It was the damp, she thought, seeping through her jacket. Leather wasn’t really that good against the cold. What the man in the gutter was feeling she didn’t want to imagine. At least he was unconscious. Or was he this time? She peered across the cobblestoned street but couldn’t tell.
‘Professor, we can’t just –’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We can.’
Ace knew he was right, she always trusted him to be right, but she was still upset. She walked away from him a few steps down the alley. It was filthy and stank like a loo, so she stopped and went back. The Doctor hadn’t moved.
He was watching Poe as if he were afraid that looking away would make him 10
The Algebra of Ice
vanish. She shoved her hands deep in her jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders. She didn’t think she could stand here and watch Poe dying over and over and over. She tried to recall what of his she’d read in school; he was one of the few writers she’d enjoyed. Oh yeah, ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’. And that well weird one about the house. And the raven poem: ‘Once upon a midnight dreary’. Like it was now.
The Doctor’s head turned abruptly, like a dog’s at a scent. Ace looked over his shoulder. A drunk had stumbled from the tavern and was reeling happily down the street. He’ll see Poe, she thought with relief, and the next minute the drunk tripped over him. After some cursing and confusion, he realised what he was lying on and, considerably sobered, jumped up and raced back to the tavern for help. Ace was momentarily elated, then her heart sank.
‘That’s not how it happened, is it?’ she whispered. ‘Not how it’s ever going to happen.’
‘Except that now it has happened,’ said the Doctor. He sounded worried.
‘Maybe it’s one of those blips you’ve told me about that are so small they don’t mess up time.’
‘Poe isn’t a small blip. He was a writer of enormous influence. If he’d lived and written another twenty years, the whole history of American and European literature would be different.’
‘But it’s not anything really important, like a vaccine or something. It’s just books.’
‘Literature is an integral part of Earth culture,’ he said tightly. ‘I’m not going to argue with you now about the place of art in –’
He cut off. Once again, the wave swelled the surface of reality, and Poe was back in the gutter.
‘I don’t like watching this,’ Ace said in a small voice. ‘I know,’ he said gently.
‘Just once more.’
But she didn’t look this time. She stared down at her feet. A thin, watery crust of ice was forming on her shoes and she felt droplets melting lightly in her hair. Why hadn’t the Doctor brought his silly umbrella? She stomped, knocking the ice away. ‘Is it getting colder?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘As the night goes on.’ He leaned forward, squinting. Ace couldn’t see anything different. As far as she could tell Poe hadn’t moved. At all. She took a deep breath. ‘Professor –’
But he was already hurrying across the street. Ace glanced nervously toward the tavern, but there was no one outside to see them. She ran to join him. The Chapter One
11
Doctor knelt on the dirty, wet cobblestones, a hand on Poe