Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [124]
'Yes.'
Lethbridge-Stewart was reaching into his jacket pocket. He handed Oswald a small card.
110
'Mr Oswald, could you do me a favour? This is my wife's business card. It has her email address. Could you send her a message? Tell her that I love her. Thank you.'
Oswald took the card and nodded. Lethbridge-Stewart shook his hand and hurried into his staff car.
***
Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield
The doorway at the front of the shuttlecraft gave a pneumatic sigh and parted. The shuttle had landed on Tower Green, right in the centre of the Tower of the London. It was a flat lawn, surrounded by two towered curtain walls.
Beyond the millennium-old defences, I could hear chaos: shouting, even sporadic gunfire.
I began to step down the ramp. My wrists had been tied together with steel wire. It would have been an uncomfortable binding for an Ice Warrior but to me, without the benefit of chitinous wristguards, it was agonising.
Vrgnur, my captor, wasn't following me down.
As I made my way down into the afternoon sun, I could see Xznaal waiting, standing alone in the middle of the green. He had just stepped from that magnetic disc of his. Provisional Government troops, wearing their ordinary Army uniforms were manning the battlements. There were snipers on the ramparts, ducked behind the merlons.
Beyond the walls I could hear sporadic gunfire. Down on Tower Green I was sheltered from the bullets. Medics scurried along into place, ready for casualties. It wasn't a battlefield yet, but it would be. It was reverse-archaeology: instead of scraping away the layers of history, these people would soon be adding to them and centuries from now, someone would be cataloguing the bul etholes in the walls, unearthing cartridges and dropped jewellery. Becoming excited when they found an intact skull. But the archaeologist wouldn't be human, or Martian, and they wouldn't be studying a living race.
The warship hung above it all. It was the first time I had seen it in daylight. This was a Warbringer, used in former times as flying fortresses during the longest and most bloody crusades and military campaigns. Although its gunports were open, there was no sign that the sonic cannons had been used or that they were about to be.
'Good afternoon, Professssor,' Xznaal gasped.
'Good afternoon. I am sorry to hear of your loss.' I uttered a short Martian prayer of lamentation. The original had been carved in the wal of a deep shelter during the Thousand-Day War, probably with the tip of a Martian claw.
Xznaal exhaled slowly, a sound like a sigh. 'I ssensse that you mean what you ssay.' He sounded weary, but not broken. He spoke in English.
'Is there any more news from Mars?' I asked him.
'None.'
I couldn't feel sorry for him. I pictured the gal eries and tunnels shattering, fragments of rock the size of houses raining on the subterranean cities of the Argyre. I could hear a whole planet screaming as the ground began to tremble. Crystal statues splintering, women and eggs being crushed, a population running and screaming and dying, million-year old temples flattened. But I couldn't feel sorry for Xznaal himself. I tried to rub my wrists where they were particularly sore.
As I reached the lawn, the shuttle's door hissed shut, sealing Vrgnur inside.
'Take tea with me,' Xznaal ordered. I nodded, taking my position at the side of the Martian Lord as he lumbered away from the shuttle. I've always been tall for a human, particularly a woman, but my eyes only came level with Xznaal's chest. I looked down at the Martian's legs. Great box-like sections of dark shel parted and drew together as his feet lifted and fell. My own body seemed frail and withered by comparison. I felt like a child walking beside a grown-up.
We walked up the Green towards a low stone plinth. It was almost certainly all that remained of a long-demolished building, or a monument to an otherwise forgotten hero. A very large, flat tray sat atop it, jostling with a silver tea service. Iced tea, naturally.
'Shall I be mother?' I asked, climbing