Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [7]
I remember standing next to my mother, smelling her perfume; my dad shielding his eyes against the glare, saying, 'Here he comes!' In that one moment, everything crystallised: the happiness of my childhood, the comfort of being part of a loving family, of being in the right place, of seeing a future that reached to the horizon.
I think, perhaps, that was the last happy time. Though I couldn't see it while I was walking it, from then on, it was a long, declining road to the place I am now.
I was murdered at the same time as the President, though that's probably that stupid poetic side of me. Certainly, something bigger than the man died that day. I remember Jackie scrambling to the back of the car to recover a piece of blood and brain-stained skull. Sickening, but somehow so very sad, capturing in one image the sheer futility of that moment.
Poor Jackie.
Poor me.
The Oracle office was at the exact corner of Haight and Ashbury, the symbolic heart of that place. And beneath it was the symbolic head – The Psychedelic Shop that had opened the previous year. Everyone just called it The Head Shop. Ron and Jay Thelin, the owners, were the high priests of the new religion of LSD. To them, acid provided a profound, mystical experience and they wanted a place that would offer anything required by other seekers of mind expansion. The Head Shop had information, certainly, but also whatever you needed to smoke your drug of choice, and bells, and posters, and comix and books, and anything else necessary for the journey to someplace else. The Thelins also funded the Oracle, two visionaries with their hearts in the right place.
I was surprised to see the Doctor inside, curiously examining various bongs and pipes as if they were alien artefacts. He was wearing a long black cloak against the cold and as he moved around the displays it billowed behind him in a manner that clearly transfixed a girl tripping near the door.
Ben almost knocked her over when he rushed in anxiously. 'Doctor! Did you find anything?'
'Do you know,' the Doctor said, tapping an ornately carved bong, that hallucinogenic drugs have been used by cultures as diverse as Neolithic man, the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs and the Sumerians to engender a
religious experience? Drugs as sacrament.'
Wow!' the girl by the door said dreamily, staring at the Doctor in admiration. 'The High Priest of Trips!'
'Doctor, why are you here?' Polly asked.
'Oh, just browsing,' he said vaguely, replacing the bong. 'And I wanted to have a little chat with the owners.'
'Doctor, the Cybermen,' Ben pressed.
'Oh, I don't think they'd have much use for a place like this,' the Doctor said.
Ben could barely contain his exasperation. 'I meant,' he said through gritted teeth, 'have you got anywhere yet with your "poking around"?'
'Well, not really. But remember, Ben: things aren't always what they seem.
Ben would clearly have pressed him further, but Polly interjected: 'There's something very strange going on here, Doctor. We were just in a cafe where somebody disappeared right in front of everybody.'
'Really?' The Doctor gave a faintly absent-minded smile. 'Did you see it?'
'Well, no, but –'
The Doctor waved a finger to silence her, and then used it to indicate his eyes. 'There's nothing like the evidence of one's own eyes, Polly.'
'Oh, right,' Ben exclaimed, drily. 'So you're saying that everything's hunky-dory here, are you?' He glanced worriedly out into the mist drifting up against the windows.
I could see the Doctor choosing his words carefully. 'I wouldn't say that, exactly. But we shouldn't take things at face value. I think that Cyberman head was a sort of message. A warning, perhaps. Intended