Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [70]
But still. . . a dragon. Like out of a fairy tale. It was like he brought it with him.
Not the bad part, just the magic. He needs me.’ She looked Ethan straight in the eyes. ‘Because there’s only so much magic can do. And I’m not magic.’
‘You’re wrong.’
‘You know what I mean.’
He nodded and brushed snow from her hair. ‘What shall we do, then?’
‘Not wait in the TARDIS. Not nothing.’
‘All right.’ He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘We’ll go down to the village, and if we can’t find him we can at least have a drink.’
They started walking.
‘And if we run into this Brett,’ she said, ‘he’s for it.’
But Brett was still standing at the edge of the glacier. He’d donned gloves and a dark fedora, but otherwise hadn’t moved. The Doctor could just see him from inside his improvised shelter, into which he’d retreated after knocking snow off his hat for the fifth time. Why the man hadn’t frozen, he had no idea. Ice in his veins. The Doctor bore cold easily, and even he was uncomfortable.
And bored. The vigil looked to go on into the night, and he hadn’t even brought a pack of cards. He played with his yo-yo for a while.
Chapter Seventeen
145
When it grew dark, how would Brett know what was happening? How would he, for that matter? The phenomenon was lightless. Soundless. Like the depths of the ocean.
The Doctor was a bit worried about his experience in the field in Kent. Without anyone to hold him down, he’d be plucked up like a weed. But that had been when he was in the middle of the scars of ice, right under the entry. This time he was at the edge, not even on the glacier itself but crouched on the gravelly till.
To be frank, he wasn’t entirely sure why he was there. One circle had blocked the invaders in Kent; a few dozen ought to really banjax them. Still, this was the sort of thing one ought to keep an eye on. Life was full of surprises, and so many of them were nasty.
The Doctor cocked his head: what was suddenly different? Yes. The wind had stopped. He stood up and peered through the greying light at the sheet of ice. Nothing appeared to have changed. Brett, he noticed, was rigid, keenly alert. Without the wind, the silence was profound, almost unearthly. Well, the Doctor thought, it is unearthly, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever not heard anything like it. He narrowed his eyes. Was there movement above the ice, like the rippling swell of a curtain? In the dimness, he couldn’t be sure. Yes. No.
Yes.
The Doctor took a step forward. The air had definitely gone wrong. It was clear, yet he couldn’t see through it. A little, soundless thrill ran round the glacier’s edge; it passed through the Doctor like an electric shock. What was happening? He sensed an awful heaviness, as if the atmosphere had remembered its massive weight and was falling, falling. . .
Then he saw something terrible.
Under the invisible pressure, the ice was melting. The Doctor flinched back onto the till. The surface of the glacier was becoming slick as glass. As he watched, his circles filled with their own melting water and sloshed to nothing.
The Doctor shot out onto the wet ice, almost falling in his haste. They probably wouldn’t make it through anyway, a small part of his brain reminded him.
He thought the small part of his brain had gone round the twist. Probably the Chernobyl nuclear plant wouldn’t melt down. Probably the pile of mine de-bris wouldn’t slide down and destroy the village. The edge of the disruption billowed towards him and he fell back and grabbed at his pocket and sent the round lid of a soup tin flying across the ice.
Then Brett landed on him.
He’d forgotten Brett,