Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [15]
‘The reactor’s gone flat,’ she told him.
‘No, it’s still working at full power. He saw us and boosted the force fields protecting him.’
‘But you know where he is?’
‘He will have moved, and he’ll have obscured his trail,’ Marnal scolded himself. ‘He was 3.35 parsecs away. That’s practically next door.’
Rachel glanced out of the window at the side of the neighbouring house, the Winfields’. Marnal was shaking his head. Something was troubling him.
Something was troubling Rachel too, but it was ridiculous. She decided to ask Marnal what he was worried about instead.
‘Do you know who it was?’ she asked.
‘I never thought it. . . I never. . . ’
Rachel gave him a moment.
‘The background,’ he asked, ‘did you see it?’
‘It was like a flight deck. There was a control panel on a podium with a big column rising up out of the middle of it.’
‘Yes. It was the control room of a TARDIS.’
‘TARDIS? You said that word before. That was the name of your time machine.’
‘Yes.’
‘So the man who destroyed Gallifrey was a Time Lord?’
‘No. . . How could it be?’
‘So he must have stolen a TARDIS?’
32
‘All the TARDISes would have been lost when Gallifrey was destroyed. They draw their power from Gallifrey itself.’ But Marnal clearly wasn’t comfortable.
‘If they’re time machines, could it be from a time before your planet was –’
Marnal gave her a withering look. ‘Time travel occurs in relative dimensions. Weren’t you listening before? A TARDIS can travel into the past and future, but not its own past and future. That would be a theoretical absurdity.’
Rachel glowered at him, but he was completely oblivious.
‘Would every single one of your people have been on the planet when it blew up?’ she asked instead. ‘We know the answer to that: you weren’t. So there could have been others.’
Marnal wasn’t happy with this line of inquiry. ‘There were always renegades and exiles,’ he said. ‘Right from the earliest days. But not one of. . . them was capable of this. Not one of them would, well, would dare.’
‘Perhaps the Doctor wanted revenge on the Time Lords.’
‘Perhaps,’ Marnal muttered. He turned to Rachel, looking at her properly for the first time since he’d changed his appearance. ‘What did you just call him?’
‘Forget it.’
‘No. What did you just call him?’
‘It’s silly, OK? But he reminds me of someone I knew, once.’
Marnal was watching her.
‘It’s not him,’ Rachel said, uncertainly. ‘How could it be?’
‘Where did you see this man?’ he asked.
Rachel took a deep breath. She might as well say what had been on her mind.
‘There was a girl in my class, back in primary school. We were both on the chess team. She was really clever – she moved away, down south and we lost touch. Anyway, I think that’s her dad. It looks just like him. And her dad called himself “the Doctor”.’
Marnal had returned to his book. ‘Coincidence,’ he said sharply.
‘That’s what I think. It’s just. . . Well, he did have a police box in his garden.’
Marnal looked up.
‘Give me the exact time and location,’ he ordered, heading back over to the glass bottle.
Rachel swallowed. ‘Well, I’ll do my best.’
33
Interlude
The Girl Who Was Different
A snowy winter’s night, in a back street on the edge of the Derbyshire village of Greyfrith.
A tall shape loomed up out of darkness – the helmeted figure of a policeman, trudging from his panda car. He moved along the little street to where it ended in a brick wall. He shone his torch onto the barrier. He paused for a moment, listening – there seemed to be some kind of electronic hum, like a generator.
It was very faint. Perhaps he was imagining it.
Now, though, he definitely heard something behind him. He turned, and caught the young girl in the torch beam.
She was about ten years old, a very slight figure. She wore a woollen bobble hat, with red curls snaking out from underneath it, but other than that she was in her school uniform – a blouse and knee-length