Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [40]
‘More than the average number of deaths,’ Trix said quietly.
‘Yeah. But it’s not that with Anji, it’s that she’s somehow ashamed of her time with the Doctor.’
‘She’s got a new life now. Come back down to Earth, to coin a phrase.’
‘Does she really think that – what was it they were talking about? – offshore unit trusts and the European Declaration of Human Rights are more interesting subjects than giant robots and pyramids on Mars? We ended up talking about what colour to paint a kitchen at one point.’
‘Isn’t that the life we’ve just chosen? Normality?’
‘No. We’re not pretending it didn’t happen. We talk about it. And I like to think we’ll go places and, y’know, do stuff.’
‘We both went through it,’ Trix said. ‘All that outer space and monsters and stuff. Could you explain what it’s like to anyone else?’
‘I could see how it would be difficult to share with anyone who wasn’t there,’ Fitz agreed, ‘Like all those Hollywood stars who have to marry other Hollywood stars.’
‘And is she happy?’
‘Anji’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her,’ Fitz admitted. ‘I don’t understand why he calls her “cap”, though.’
‘I imagine it’s short for “Kapoor”,’ Trix explained patiently.
‘But that’s her. . . Hang on, he calls her by her surname? That’s just screwy.’
‘I thought Fitz was your surname for ages. Never mind about them. How about you? Are you happy?’
Fitz shifted on the mattress, dislodging Trix a little. ‘I think I will be. It’s a big adjustment. I know this is the right thing to do.’ He looked into her eyes.
‘It’s a good start, from where I’m lying.’
It had been an hour or two.
The door to the cellar opened, then whoever opened it went straight back upstairs rather than showing themselves. Then Marnal and Rachel both came down the stairs, slowly and carefully, bringing an extraordinary contraption with them.
It was the big glass bottle he’d seen in the library, now connected up to a variety of electronic pieces, most of which were everyday items. Two things caught the Doctor’s eye. The first was a small metal tube that was humming to itself and had cables pouring out of its top and bottom. The other was a component from the TARDIS scanner.
86
Marnal had managed to get into the TARDIS. The Doctor tried, and failed, not to panic at the thought.
Rachel helped Marnal set up the apparatus about five feet in front of the Doctor.
‘I thought you said we couldn’t use it to look at this,’ Rachel said.
‘I can use this image processor to help resolve the picture,’ Marnal told her, plugging it into his contraption. ‘It won’t be perfect, but it should be enough to at least get a sense of it.’
‘If this is The War of the Worlds, I’ve seen it,’ the Doctor said, trying to sound cheerful.
‘You’ve seen this too,’ Marnal told him.
The bottle grew dark. Then it resolved into the blackness of space, with a few stars and the wisps of a nebula. Filling the sky, though, was something utterly alien. It looked like a six-leafed orchid, the colour of bone, or perhaps some bizarre six-winged moth.
‘What is that?’ Rachel asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor and Marnal both replied.
Marnal was working the controls. He wasn’t getting a very good signal.
‘The coordinates are slightly off.’
Then there was a star, much like Earth’s sun. The picture moved away, to one of its planets. The world had an atmosphere, three vestiges of oceans and tiny ice caps at its poles, but the large continents seemed to be mostly desert or broken mountain ranges. The Doctor knew from this glimpse that what he was looking at was an immensely old place, practically fossilised. The wide river beds were dry, there were fields of rubble. Scratched in the rock were marks of abandoned roadways and settlements. He also thought he saw the glints of crystal domes and metal spires.
‘Gallifrey, Doctor. Our home planet.’
The Doctor looked at the image again, with new interest. This time, he saw countless dots of light massed in orbit above the ancient world.
‘This,’ Marnal continued, ‘is the