Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [3]
Now they were getting bored and restless in the heat. It hadn’t taken long for one of them to suggest that Ricky do his trick.
‘This will be a real challenge. If you can manage to conjure one up out here it will be the ultimate example of your skill.’
‘Haven’t you horny idiots ogled enough women for one day?’
‘No.’
So eventually Ricky gave in. He concentrated and did the thing he did in his head. The thing that always caused girls to appear.
And nothing happened.
Ricky’s friends gradually grew restless and, though nothing was said, Ricky knew they were disappointed with him. They squinted into the shimmering heat-haze but the flat concrete landscape around them remained devoid of beautiful women.
When their bus finally pulled up Ricky’s friends had sunk into a glum, defeated silence. The last boy to climb on board turned back to Ricky and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll come over and help you work on the car later,’ he said. Then he added in a low voice, ‘Don’t worry about it, man. Nothing works every time.’
Ricky remained sitting at the bus-stop. His friends waved to him from the wide back window of the bus, good-naturedly giving him the finger and making other obscene gestures. As he watched them go he felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach. It was strange to no longer be catching the same bus as his friends. But Ricky didn’t live in the same neighbourhood any more.
He wished his family hadn’t moved. Ricky wished they were still living on the other side of town. His family had had a house by the river with cool shady trees when they’d lived on the other side of town. All his friends lived there.
Now he didn’t have any friends. And he couldn’t even work the one damned trick which made him an interesting guy.
The bus drew away, dwindling down the highway, glinting in the hot sunlight. It was almost out of sight when a car pulled in beside the bus-stop. It was a small yellow Fiat.
The window hummed down and the driver smiled through it.
‘Hello, Ricky,’ said the driver. ‘You don’t know me, but I work with your dad. I’m looking for him.’
Ricky smiled back at the driver, his spirits lifting. She was blonde and very beautiful, with eyes of a bright indeterminate colour, somewhere between blue and green.
‘Have you seen him anywhere?’ she said.
‘Is this the way to the car park, daddy?’
‘Yes it is,’ said Creed. But it wasn’t. His encounter with Stanmer had left him so angry he was still a little disorientated, like some enraged animal blundering blindly through the jungle undergrowth.
Creed took another turn through the sports complex and brushed through a crowd of giggling towel-wrapped teenage girls as they emerged from the sauna in a cloud of moist steam and clean shampoo smells. ‘Is this the way?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Creed as he led Eve towards the wide glass doors opening on to the car park.
‘Where are we going now, daddy?’
‘School.’
‘School! But school doesn’t start till next week.’ Although she was still too young to go herself, Eve regarded the idea of school with a mixture of fascination and horror. She knew in a year’s time she would have to begin going. Not kindergarten any more, thought Creed. Real school. Grade one.
‘Then the gloves’ll be off,’ murmured Eve.
‘What?’ Creed grinned. Eve said the oddest things.
‘You’ll love school, baby. You’ll be so excited you won’t want to come home. It’s an adventure.’
‘I’ll always want to come home.’
‘Until one day, dear, until one day,’ said Creed quietly.
Eve looked up at her father. He was a tall man with dark hair and deeply carved smile-lines in his angular face. He had the high cheek-bones and dark eyes of a Cherokee Indian. Eve didn’t like it when her father sounded sad. Like he did now, or when he’d hurt the nasty man’s hand. But he smiled at her then and Eve knew everything was all right again in her small warm world. She looked happily away from her daddy, down at her small feet, toes of shoes cleverly walking, as she strolled along beside him.
They walked