Doctor Who_ Trading Futures - Lance Parkin [46]
But that didn’t stop some people from running. I would have, when he came for me, if I’d had the choice.
The gangs caused chaos, of course – the press gangs had regulations, but they weren’t regulated. They were ruffians – half the gang would only just have been captured themselves, and didn’t see why anyone else should get away. Anyone they found got beaten to the ground, checked to see if they wore sailor’s clothes underneath their coat, or had tar on their hands. Dead giveaways.
There were ways to avoid the press gang, ways more imaginative than just hiding or running. Get your friends to accuse you of some crime, get locked up for the night by the magistrate, then have them drop charges in the morning, when the gang had gone. That was a good one.
The best way, traditionally, was not to be physically present in the eighteenth century, to exist on a world with no sea, to live in the forty-ninth century, a far distant era of unparalleled peace and prosperity.
That was my way of avoiding the gangs. Extreme, I know, and imagine my surprise when it didn’t work.
He was from the eighteenth century, you see. He was at war, looking for recruits. He also had a ship, which he rather fancifully sailed in the Mare Tranquillitatis. In his day, he would explain later, the astronomer-astrologers knew beyond any doubt that the dark patches on the Moon’s surface really were seas, hence the names. That they weren’t actually bodies of water wasn’t important, it was the idea that was, it was their absolute faith that made his voyage possible. When I suggested to him that such a sentiment made no sense, he merely smiled.
He looked… well, I’m a film scholar and archivist. My job is to return to the primitive times, and to go back and recover all the films and television programmes that were withdrawn, deaccessioned and junked. And to me, he looked like the middle-period Orson Welles, that is, after he started putting on weight but before he grew the beard. He might not have literally looked like that, you understand, and might not have appreciated the description, but I really didn’t care.
I was dying.
A time jump had gone wrong – placed me in the wrong century, before the Moon had an atmosphere, before the terraforming. I was barely three decades away from safety, I could reach out with my band, almost touch it.
The radiation was intense, and more than enough to destroy the fragile ubertronics of my time machine. The heat burned at my skin, toyed with me. In the circumstances, the total vacuum was a mild inconvenience.
Sabbath stood there, his coat-tails flapping in a non-existent sea breeze. His moon had an atmosphere, as well as men with umbrellas for noses, kittens the size of elephants, and rocks that sang shanties in fluent French.
He offered me a choice. If I didn’t come with him, he’d… take me anyway. He needed timefarers for a great enterprise he was undertaking, and he was having difficulty finding a workforce. He said something about paying peanuts and only getting monkeys, which I took to be a private joke.
So I took his hand, and as I did, I felt the sea breeze on my face, and knew I’d never be able to go back.
* * *
Chapter Eleven
Bankruptcy
The Doctor and Malady were running out of the lift before the doors were even fully open.
They were out of reception, splashing towards the Land Rover in seconds. The Doctor had the keys in his hand. He pointed them at the car, pressed the control to activate the central locking.
The Land Rover exploded.
While the Doctor examined the keychain, puzzled, Malady looked up. Jaxa was at a window, far above them, pointing a gun.
A second shot scored the air, but exploded harmlessly twenty feet from them.
‘They’ve got us pinned down,’ the Doctor said.
‘She has – we don’t know where the boy is,’ Malady corrected him.
‘Come on!’ the Doctor started running close along the side of the building.
Malady followed,