Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [25]
‘You are safe,’ Baskerville assured her. ‘You are out of danger.’
Those words relaxed her, as he knew they would. He checked his watch.
‘When the ten minutes are up, she should be fine. See to the Doctor.’
* * *
Dee Gordon found the Doctor sitting behind Baskerville’s desk, the printout unspooled all around him.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.
She smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course.’
‘It’s a lovely place you’ve got here.’
‘Yes, it will be a shame to see it go.’
‘You’re relocating?’
‘Well… yes. This afternoon.’
The Doctor was frowning.
‘The Third Prophecy?’ Dee prompted.
The Doctor shrugged.
‘They didn’t tell you? They sent you to Athens today and didn’t tell you?’
‘Ah. The security service works on a need to know basis. I clearly didn’t need to know.’ The Doctor’s mouth twitched, as though he was trying to stop himself smirking. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
Dee checked her watch. ‘In two hours, Athens will be devastated by an unexpected tidal wave. We’re powerless to prevent it – it’s already history. We’ll be killed if we’re in the area. The loss of life will be immense.’
The Doctor shifted a little uncomfortably. ‘It will? And you’re happy to –’
‘Of course I’m not happy,’ Dee snapped. ‘But we can’t warn people. History would change. We can’t change history.’
‘I thought that was rather the point of Baskerville’s plan.’
Dee paused. ‘That’s different,’ she asserted, unsure why. ‘This has to happen, to prove to you that Baskerville’s from the future. He knows about the disaster because –’
‘– because he read about it in the historical records.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Which are fragmentary, and history can be changed.’
The Doctor was over at the window, looking down at the city, taking his last chance to.
‘Two hours?’
‘At midday.’
He looked lost in thought. Finally, he turned back to her. ‘So what were the First and Second Prophecies? And, more importantly, what’s the Fourth?’
* * *
Anji was fully conscious and had been for some time, but it still felt like she was just waking up. That was the first thing she had to deal with.
She felt like she was hung over. Anji was aware that Baskerville was sitting nearby. She was sitting up, which was also a little disorientating.
Should she tell him?
She’d had an adverse reaction to time travel. Something had gone wrong, and it wasn’t something Baskerville had been expecting or was prepared for.
Anji had worked it out. It was her. She didn’t pretend to know everything about how time travel worked. Hell, she didn’t pretend to know anything very much. But when she’d seen herself in the past – met herself, to all intents and purposes – it must have caused some sort of time‐travel equivalent of a short circuit.
And she couldn’t tell Baskerville, because then she’d have to explain exactly why her 2001 self only looked about three months younger, and was wearing the same jacket. She’d have to tell him she was already a time traveller.
‘Malady, my dear, are you all right?’ Baskerville seemed genuinely concerned.
‘Yes. I feel a lot better.’ She did, too.
‘That has never happened before,’ he told her. ‘I’m afraid I’m at a loss to explain what did happen. But before your… attack, you did get a chance to see that the time machine works?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It works, I guess it’s me that doesn’t.’
Baskerville gave a small chuckle. ‘You’ll tell your government that it works? That it’s worth taking a risk for?’
‘I need to consult the Doctor.’
‘Of course? Shall we go through now?’
* * *
Fitz was quite capable of simultaneously thinking that he was seriously out of condition and in need of a cigarette.
The old bloke probably didn’t smoke. He definitely wasn’t out of condition. It was a bit embarrassing, actually, to be caught up by a pensioner, when Fitz had a pretty good head start.
At least, the old guy was a bit out of breath, Fitz reflected, between wheezes.
He’d chased him all the way up Katherine Street, then down alongside a half‐scale train line – there weren’t any trains, of course, that would be too easy.
Cosgrove caught