Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [32]
Martha held her hands to her head, trying to think or a way of articulating the thoughts swimming around in it, ‘But surely, sometimes you’re not gonna make it in time.’ She remembered a story the Doctor had told her earlier in the day. ‘Like – the Great Auk, right? There was only one pair left in the whole world, and their egg. Then this collector sends a couple of blokes to get him a skin, and they club the birds to death and trample on their egg.’ She stopped for a second, feeling slightly sick. ‘All dead in moments, not much time for you to swoop in and carry off the last one to its new space home. And he said he didn’t see one listed in the museum. But if you’d gone years earlier, picked up a few when they were all swimming around in the sea, taken them somewhere safe… It wouldn’t have to be a museum at all any more.’ She unconsciously echoed the Doctor’s earlier thoughts. ‘It’d be a sort of Noah’s Ark! Wouldn’t that be better?’
Celia narrowed her eyes. ‘Look, it’s Eve’s museum, and it’s her decision. At least we’re doing something. I mean, this is your planet, isn’t it? I’ve not noticed you dashing around saving two of every kind.’
Martha was about to respond – not that she was entirely sure what she was going to say – when she noticed that the stallholder, who had fished out the turtle and was holding it up by a leg, had picked up a cleaver in his other hand. The little creature was struggling, fighting against gravity and the man’s grasp to try to draw its limbs and head into the safety of its shell. ‘No!’ she yelped. ‘Don’t kill it!’ She grabbed the animal from the man and he shrugged, unconcerned. The turtle, placid again, twisted its stripy head round and regarded Martha calmly, not knowing the deadly fate from which it had been saved; not knowing the just‐as‐final fate for which it was now destined.
Celia handed over a small piece of plastic, the size and shape of a credit card but with a tiny display screen on the front. The trader pushed it into a reader on his stall and an amount flashed green on the screen as the transaction went through.
Martha was feeling restless and dissatisfied. She hadn’t wanted to do this, certainly hadn’t wanted to hang around with Celia, but she’d assumed that there was a sort of nobility in the work, a passion that inspired the collection agents. She expected them to be Indiana Jones types, facing down big‐game hunters and ruthless rainforest destroyers, engaged in battles to the death to rescue animals small and furry or tall and proud. While she’d sympathised with the Doctor’s anti‐MOTLO stance, she had felt admiration for the Earthers, risking their lives to preserve these precious creatures – and to save the human race from the catastrophic consequences of their actions.
Instead… they’d popped down to Earth, bought the Last One for a few dong and would be back in time for breakfast.
The two women weren’t looking at each other as they walked back towards the alleyway, but if either one had turned she would have seen a mirror image of her own mulish expression on the other’s face. And each was concentrating so hard on ignoring the other that they failed at first to notice that something was happening to their pendants. But it was soon impossible to ignore. ‘Hey!’ Martha held hers up. ‘It’s glowing! Why’s it doing that?’ she asked the air in front of her.
But realisation had swept away Celia’s mood. She looked at Martha’s pendant, then her own. ‘It’s like an alarm,’ she said, puzzled and anxious. ‘It’s telling us to get a move on…’
‘What, to get back to the museum?’
‘No! To rescue the Last One…’
Martha looked down at the little turtle. ‘But we have.’
Celia looked at the turtle too. Then she bent down to look at it more closely. Then she straightened up, took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she opened them, looked at the