Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [29]
'I wish them luck!' said Ben, cynically.
'The thing is, they meet everybody. They might have some idea where Mathilda's gone.'
Ben stopped suddenly and looked behind us.
'They'll be there at this time of night?' Polly asked.
'There's somebody around all the time.'
'I thought I saw someone behind us ... following,' Ben said.
Strands of pearly mist drifted across the street. We watched for a while, but nothing moved.
'You're just spooking yourself,' I said.
Ben shrugged, but he didn't look convinced.
There were lamps along the main paths through the park, but they barely made a mark on the darkness that turned the trees into an inky pool. Along the skyline, though, I could see the glittering lights of the city. It was funny; I rarely thought of the rest of San Francisco, the streetcars and the hills, the rich suburbs and the bay. To me, the Haight was everything; 'the first psychedelic city-state' like all the hipsters called it.
Ben had been unusually jumpy for most of the journey, but there hadn't been any sign of anything out of the ordinary. He calmed a little when he heard the sound of workers doing last-minute construction on the stage for the Human Be-In in the distance, and there were still people milling around in a state of anticipation of the next day. A few tents were scattered here and there among the trees. For once the cops were leaving them alone, instead of giving them a help along with their nightsticks or busting freaks for vagrancy.
A few Diggers hung around a trestle table where they offered hot vegetable soup to anyone who passed. We took up their suggestion – it'd been a long time since breakfast – and started chatting to a guy called Spooner. He was in his early twenties with long brown hair tied back with a stars and stripes bandana. After a while we got the conversation round to Mathilda.
'Yeah, I saw her earlier. Crazy chick,' he said.
'Any idea where she might have gone?' Polly asked.
He shrugged. 'She was hanging out with these clydes. They took off in some limo. I don't know, they looked like the Combine, you dig?'
I nodded, and tried to ignore Ben's blank expression.
'Maybe she's cutting and running. This Summer of Love crap is going to be the end of the Haight.'
'You don't like it?'
'It's all hype, man. It'll get out of hand. They'll be coming from all over to get a piece of what we've got going here, and they'll wreck it: He stared off into the shadows dismally. 'I don't know, man – I always thought that Mathilda was a one-percenter, but these days too many people are giving up and going for the green.'
We drifted away until we were out of earshot, and then I explained to Ben and Polly that Spooner thought Mathilda had sold out.
'So she's gone off to spend her cash from the drug deals,' Ben said. 'And we've got no idea where she might be.'
Our mood wasn't good as we wandered off the path to take a shortcut
through the trees, heading in the direction of the Doctor's police box. I had an awful sense that things were slipping away from me, that I really was as useless as I feared that day in Dealey Plaza. 'This is a nightmare,' I said. 'Nothing makes any sense any more.'
'You should see some of the things that we've seen with the Doctor,' Ben said, distracted. 'Nothing ever makes sense.'
Polly noticed Ben's wandering concentration. 'What's wrong?' she asked.
He shook his head, forced a smile, but continued to cast furtive glances into the dark among the trees. A prickling sensation tingled up and down my spine. We continued in silence for a few yards until I caught movement away to my left. 'There's someone following us,' I hissed.
Before Ben or Polly could respond, several figures burst out of the undergrowth. I let out a scream and tried to run, but they were on us in an instant. I smelled sweat and dirt as they roughly grabbed my hands and forced them behind my back. Somebody