Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [37]
And so I went a little mad. I did everything I could think of, all at once, and to this day I’ve no idea what bit of it actually worked, what bit of it saved the Doctor but put in motion a series of events that might have killed so many more. It’s still on my conscience, you see, and I guess it always will be, although the Doctor says that events were moving inexorably in that direction, and as I wasn’t the one who put them in motion in the first place, and I certainly didn’t do any of it deliberately, I mustn’t blame myself. I get the feeling that he’s had to do a lot of justifying to his own conscience over the centuries.
Anyway, I took my collection agent’s pendant, and I took the sonic screwdriver, and I put them together, and stuck them in the little keypad, and I pressed every key and threw every likely‐looking switch into reverse, and zapped everything with what I imagined to be the screwdriver’s ‘undoing things’ setting.
And everything undid. I mean, everything.
The front of the Doctor’s cage shimmered away, and he fell over backwards. The first word he said was ‘ouch’, and the first thing he did was rub his elbow. Then he climbed to his feet, and the look in his eyes – well, that was enough for me. I knew, knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I’d done the right thing.
Well, for that one second I knew that. And then I realised that I’d done the wrong thing. The totally wrong thing.
There were yells of shock and surprise and alarm from all around. I dragged my gaze from the Doctor, and I saw…
Every creature had disappeared.
Every single one. Every cage had opened, and every creature was gone!
My knees buckled under me, and the Doctor jumped forward to catch me.
‘What have I done?’ I gasped. ‘Where’ve they all gone?’
My knees buckled under me, and the Doctor jumped forward to catch me.
‘What have I done?’ I gasped. ‘What’s happened to them?’
But he just shook his head, as wide‐eyed as me. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
I didn’t want to let go of him, feeling irrationally that, if I stayed close enough, the bad things would somehow unhappen, like the way your mum proved there had never been monsters under the bed. But I saw security guards stumbling towards us, and knew there were monsters after all.
We began to run through the hordes of headless‐chicken visitors, and I realised after a few moments that the Doctor had a destination in mind: the TARDIS. Thank goodness it was still where we’d left it. The Doctor turned the key in the lock and we both fell inside.
I stumbled out an explanation, telling the Doctor what I’d done. ‘So – what’s happened to all the animals?’ I asked again.
He took the pendant from around his neck and began to examine it.
‘Oh,’ I said in realisation. ‘If they’re out of suspended animation we can track them, like the rhino.’ The Doctor nodded.
‘But we don’t have Eve’s computer…’
‘What’s better, Eve’s computer or the TARDIS?’
Well, I didn’t know how powerful Eve’s computer was, but I supposed the TARDIS was a pretty safe bet.
‘All the information we need should be in this.’ The Doctor plucked the dodo feather out of the console and put his pendant in its place. His fingers twirled across control panels and the column in the centre began to rise and fall. A screen flickered into life and the Doctor perched his glasses on his nose to examine it. ‘Ah.’
It didn’t sound like a good ‘ah’ to me. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘We’re on our way to Earth.’ He sighed.
‘And that’s bad? Come on, you’ve got to tell me,’ I added, as he hesitated.
‘I have a theory about what happened,’ he said at last. ‘Well, I say theory, I’m fairly sure, what with me being, you know, clever and all that. And that destination pretty much confirms it.’
I held my breath, waiting for the worst. But I hadn’t suspected quite how bad the worst could be.
‘Each specimen is put into suspended animation and teleported directly into a