The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [40]
She shrugged. "You look like a man, you talk like a man, but you're not. There's something about the way you watch people sometimes, like I used to look at Sandy."
"Sandy?" he prompted.
"My sand monster, back on Dido. I loved him, but not in the same way I loved my mother and my father. And that's the way you love us, isn't it? Like we're pets."
She waited, feeling as if she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and it was too dark to see where the bottom was. The Doctor's face didn't change, but she could sense a certain re-evaluation going on underneath the surface.
"You're very... sensitive," he said finally. "That is your greatest strength. That, and your ability to play up to the image that people have of you."
"Then ...?"
He smiled. "Then what am I? A wanderer, my dear. A wanderer and a survivor. I am not of your race. I am not of your Earth. I am a wanderer in the fourth dimension of space and time, a refugee from an ancient civilization, cut off from my own people by aeons of time and universes far beyond human understanding."
"And was Susan a wanderer too?"
His face suddenly clouded over. "Susan? Who told you about Susan?"
"Barbara did." Vicki suddenly felt as if she had been thrown on the defensive. "She said that Susan was your granddaughter, and she left the TARDIS to get married."
The Doctor stood. "Yes, Susan was my granddaughter, if such terms can be applied to beings like us. I loved Susan. I loved her very much. And now that she has gone, I miss her more than you will ever know. I feel that I am..."
"Alone?" Vicki suggested gently.
The Doctor nodded. "Alone," he confirmed. "When I left, she came with me. She could have stayed, but she felt that I needed looking after." The Doctor's face was suddenly haggard. "Although she was sweet, and guileless, and innocent, she was the closest thing to a conversational partner of my own level. There were things that we could talk about that would be meaningless babble to..." He shot Vicki a guilty glance."...to anybody else. She was the only person who understood."
"Understood what?" Vicki whispered.
"Who I am," the Doctor said, not meeting her gaze. "Why I left.
Where I was going. And now..."
Vicki was about to say something trivial and comforting when there was a flurry of wings outside the window. For a moment she thought that a flock of pigeons were landing on the ledge outside, but when the shadow of a huge pair of wings blotted out the firelight from the square below she gestured to the Doctor to back away, out of the line of sight of the window. He did so, quickly and silently. The windowsill creaked as something heavy settled upon it. The bright light of the moon cast a squat shadow across the carpet.
"Vicki?" The voice was as musical and calming as she remembered.
"Yes?" she said, her throat suddenly dry.
"Alarmed do not be. Albrellian it is. Souls briefly last night touched did ours."
"I thought you were a dream."
Albrellian laughed: a high-pitched trilling. "Happy a nightmare not considered am I. Afraid that forgotten might have you me."
"How could I forget," she said, "a charming alien perched outside my window."
There was a pause. "That not of this Earth am I know you. So, one of the Doctor's companions are you. That means..." Albrellian trailed off, as if it was thinking things through.
"Yes," the Doctor said, stepping forward into the light. "And I am the Doctor. The definitive article, so to speak. Might I ask you to step into the room, sir, and show yourself to us, rather than skulk outside the window like a common Lothario." Albrellian drew his breath in sharply. For a moment, nothing happened, then the bulky shadow on the windowsill moved forward into the light of the torches. The