Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [72]
The Doctor racked his brain. Panic attacks, irrational fear. That wasn’t like him. What if there was a logic at work? He tried to think back and the dread came, sharp and clinical. He shook it away, then he realised: thinking 147
back was what scared him. That’s what the dread was stopping him doing.
It didn’t want him getting to all those old memories. He’d always assumed he was being protected from the nasty memories, but perhaps his memories were being protected from nasty old him. Why, though?
The Doctor didn’t feel any sudden sense he’d got it right. A moment later he’d worked out why. He’d decided that he didn’t have any old memories because he’d deleted them all.
The Doctor deflated.
Something was tugging at him, telling him to get back to Earth. A seventh sense, or a twenty-eighth, or however many it was he had. He ignored it.
Earth would have to look after itself for a little while. He was so close. This had to be his priority; there couldn’t be any distractions, not until he had the answers. What could be more important than settling this? Now he was sure he could work things out for himself. Take the facts, apply logic, take his time.
Think it through.
The police had all gone.
Rachel turned, to see Marnal sitting hunched in the back corner of the garage.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, kneeling beside him.
He was rocking back and forth. ‘They’re here. How?’
‘The police? They’ve gone.’
‘We need to get into my TARDIS.’
‘You have a TARDIS here?’ Rachel asked.
Marnal pointed shakily over her shoulder.
‘That was the Doctor’s TARDIS. That’s gone too.’
‘It’s not important. Not now.’ Marnal suddenly seemed very old again.
Rachel looked around. Well, she was supposed to be his carer.
‘Let’s get you back into the house,’ she said. ‘It’s warmer in there, more comfortable.’
She helped him to his feet. The garage door was slightly ajar.
‘Four hours,’ Marnal said. ‘All it took them to find us was four hours.’
Rachel couldn’t understand why it was so bright outside. It was like someone had put on a searchlight, but the quality of light wasn’t as it should be.
She checked her watch. It was three in the morning – it should be as dark as it got.
‘Moths to a flame,’ Marnal whispered, grabbing Rachel’s arm. He looked pale, worried.
Rachel led him out of the garage. The air was cool. It was always quiet at this time of night, but there was almost a negative amount of noise, as though it had been sucked from the air. Marnal looked around. The surroundings 148
were all there, the air smelled right. There was no sign of the police, but the road remained coned off. If the residents hadn’t been allowed back, that would explain the silence.
‘What is it?’ Rachel asked Marnal.
He pointed up.
Above them in the night’s sky there was a second moon. It was larger than the first, and partially eclipsed it.
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The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
‘ To —, One Word is Too Often Profaned’
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Chapter Nine
The Sphere of Our Sorrow
Fitz was woken by the sound of helicopters beneath him. It was twenty past six on Wednesday morning, EST.
Trix was still asleep, her head on his chest, pressed against him. A little too heavily for him to be entirely comfortable, but nothing would make him move her away. Fitz lay there, feeling how warm she was, how smooth. Her hair smelled of hotel shampoo. She looked so peaceful, unguarded, when she was asleep.
They’d not closed the curtains properly last night. Outside, there was a two-foot chink of the Manhattan skyline. Vertical strips of skyscrapers, smaller buildings that would dwarf anything in London nestling among them, and the river and the New Jersey shoreline