Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [44]
So not one of them thought for a second that Tommy was in danger. And it took a second to realise what was happening, as he raised the pendant, as nothing happened. As the tiger sank its enormous canines into his side.
Tommy collapsed to the pavement and the Doctor leapt forwards, fumbling for his sonic screwdriver, Martha at his heels, her medical instincts having kicked in immediately. As they got close, the Doctor waved his little metal device at the tiger like a magic wand. Snarling resentfully, the beast pulled its head back. The Doctor held his position, keeping the creature at bay.
Martha threw herself down on the pavement beside Tommy. To her enormous relief, a few checks showed he was still alive, although he was bleeding heavily. Nervously aware of the fearsome creature towering over her – and remembering that the ultrasonics of the screwdriver hadn’t kept it quiet for that long before – she set to work, staunching the bleeding and making Tommy comfortable.
‘He’ll be OK,’ she said to the Doctor after a few minutes, still concentrating on her patient. ‘But he should get to a hospital. I mean, he’ll need a tetanus shot at the very least. Who knows what sort of bacteria there might be on the teeth of a ten‐thousand‐year‐old tiger?’
The Doctor didn’t reply, and she looked up then. He was still holding out the sonic screwdriver, still keeping the tiger away from Tommy, but his head was turned away, staring in the other direction.
Martha stared too.
‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with M,’ the Doctor said after a second.
‘You mean D,’ said Martha, in a flat, puzzled voice as she saw what he was looking at.
‘No no no. M. I’m talking about one great big mmm‐mystery.’
And Martha couldn’t help but agree. Because there in a shop doorway was another dodo.
I looked back over my shoulder. Dorothea was still in the shopping trolley, happily shredding stray carrier bags with the point of her mad beak to form a sort of nest.
I turned the other way again. There, scrabbling through a pile of abandoned Big Issues, was what could have been her twin.
Two dodos. Which wasn’t possible. One specimen of everything, the museum had. Just the one.
Except…
There was another sabre‐toothed tiger coming down the high street.
Mystery upon mystery. The evidence was mounting up that something dodgy was going on. Two dodos when the museum only had one. Two tigers when the museum only had one. Tommy had thought there was only one ‘specimen’ in the area. His pendant didn’t freeze the tiger. So, yes, lots of evidence, lots of ooh‐er‐it’s‐a‐mystery – but, quite frankly, just at that moment I wanted to deal with the not‐dying first and do the detective thing later.
We couldn’t just run, not with an unconscious and injured man at our feet. We couldn’t get back to the TARDIS, because the second sabre‐tooth was between it and us. At the moment the sonic screwdriver was keeping it at a distance, but it was making tentative steps forward and it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t keep working for long.
And then I saw something even more bizarre. I grabbed the Doctor’s arm and pointed.
‘Mm, interesting,’ said the Doctor, responding to my ‘ooh ooh ooh’ and frantic indications in the direction of the dodo. He whipped his glasses out of his pocket and balanced them on his nose, peering distantly at the bird and what it was doing. ‘Yes, I’d definitely say that was interesting.’
Actually, this was all turning into interesting overload. Because just then, as I gazed over the Doctor’s shoulder, I spotted something else. I’ll try to explain our position, because it’s probably getting a bit complicated for you to follow: imagine a nice high street lined with shops. In the middle of the street see three people, a supermarket trolley with a dodo in it, and an angrily trapped sabre‐toothed tiger. The Doctor is waving his sonic screwdriver between that tiger and another one that