Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 18

The Doctor prised his fingers apart, took the knife from him.

'Fighting isn't the answer. And even if it was, this isn't your fight. Save your strength.'

'Blood feud on you and all your kin,' the Deputy spat.

'No,' the Doctor said. 'Not today, thank you.'

The Deputy glared at him, but then his eyes glazed over, as if just staring was too much effort. The Deputy's head lolled.

Debbie helped the Doctor to his feet. He squeezed her hand.

'I'm OK,' she told him. 'Barry's...'

The Doctor nodded. 'This one is unconscious, but he'll live.'

They heard Miranda groan.

'Check her,' the Doctor ordered, searching the pockets on the Deputy's flak jacket. He found what he was looking for in a side pouch simple wrist restraints, which he used to bind the Deputy's hands behind his back. There was no anachronistic technology that the Doctor could find, apart from a wrist communicator, which he removed.

'Miranda's OK,' Debbie called over. She was doing up Miranda's pyjama top.

The girl was rubbing her eyes. 'What's happened? Why am I outside?'

The Doctor moved over to her and knelt down, so he could make better eye contact.

'Something terrible has happened,' Debbie said calmly, as her teacher training said she should.

There were police and ambulance sirens now, but they seemed so distant. Like the fire and the snow, they seemed to be happening elsewhere.

The Doctor clutched Miranda's hand. It was warm, tiny next to his own.

'I'll protect you,' he told her, tears in his eyes. 'I'll look after you.'

Part Two

'Masters of the Universe'

The Mid-1980s

Chapter Ten.

Eighties' Child.

Rex saw the young woman on the way to pick up a fax.

She was sitting on the leather sofa outside the interview room. She was a teenager, penned blonde, with long legs. She was wearing Levi 501s, a baggy white shirt and a tapestry waistcoat. If she was here for an interview, she wasn't dressed for it. But if Rex had been doing the interview, she'd definitely have got the job.

Rex straightened his tie and went over.

'Hi,' he said. 'Are you OK there?'

'There's nothing to read,' she complained. Her accent was difficult to place, but vaguely northern. She sounded younger than she looked.

'Can't help you there,' Rex replied. 'Do you want a drink?'

'Water?' she suggested.

Rex smiled and pointed to the fridge. 'No one ever sees it,' he rea.s.sured her, opening up the panel on the wall. 'Good, eh? This whole reception area was designed by Imojagi.'

She nodded, but clearly hadn't heard of Imojagi. Well, that was good: not many people had yet.

He handed her a bottle of Dragonwater. 'Nothing but the best here,' he a.s.sured her.

'Wow! Dragon,' she said, and Rex was exhilarated by her enthusiasm. 'I come from Greyfrith, where this is bottled. Do you have a gla.s.s?'

Rex sat down beside her. 'Drink it from the bottle,' he told her.

The young woman did, a little awkwardly at first. She had to lower the bottle for a moment to giggle at herself. Rex laughed along with her.

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Miranda,' the young woman said.

'Miranda. Miranda Who?'

She laughed, a lovely, musical sound.

'I'm Rex,' he said, although she hadn't asked.

'And what do you do, Rex?'

'I'm on the board,' he said, although that wasn't enough to impress her. 'I'm here today because...' He lowered his voice. 'Because in there,' Rex began, 'is the genius behind Dragonwater. Five years ago, hardly anyone drank bottled water. Since then, there have been a couple of safety scares. People don't trust what comes out of a tap. And nowadays people like labels. They don't want to settle for second best: they want designer stuff. He saw all that. Legend has it, he was in a pub and he told the barman to sell his pub and buy a bottling plant, start selling water from a local spring for five quid a bottle. Now Dragonwater's worth twenty mil a year.'

The girl raised an eyebrow and took another swig from the bottle.

Rex pointed to the door. 'He's the best. He charges ten K a day, and he's worth every penny. He's a genius. He's been here three days and he's already completely restructured this company. I was in one of his meetings this morning. Incredible speaker, cuts through the c.r.a.p. He's Thatcherism personified.'

The door to the boardroom opened and a man emerged. A young forty-something, his long light-brown hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an Armani frock coat, had bright-red braces and was carrying a leather briefcase.

'Doctor!' Rex said, delighted.

The Doctor smiled. 'I'm done here. It was good to meet you, Rex. I've tinkered a little with the company structure, but it should be right as rain now.'

'Any redundancies?'

The Doctor looked at him as though he'd never heard the word before. 'No,' he said, puzzled. 'Why would there be?'

'Well, you know: cutting out the fat.'

'You're businessmen, Rex, not butchers.'

' "Businessmen not butchers", I'll remember that.' Rex turned to the girl. 'I told you he was good.'

She grinned. 'You did.'

'Are you drinking that from the bottle?' the Doctor asked the girl sternly.

'You know her?' Rex asked, already knowing the answer. Of course ten thou a day and the Doctor would have blonde teenagers all over him. G.o.d only knew what he drove a different 924 for every day of the week, probably.

The girl stood up and pecked him on the cheek. 'Rex told me it was the in thing, Dad.'

The Doctor smiled down at Rex. 'Is it? Interesting.'

But all Rex could answer was: 'Dad!?'

The Deputy sat in his cell, reading the newspaper.

He'd learned a lot about Earth in the last five years. Living among their criminally insane was an education in itself. There were men like this in his own time, but the Factions used them, they had a part to play. Rum and Thelash would have been locked away but how much better to utilise their talents. The whole system here was wasteful mines and shipyards and steelyards closing every day. Resources wasted in compet.i.tion and 'advertising' and holding elections only to see the same leader returned, time after time.

His cellmate slept on the top bunk. Joel was a man of little conversation, a thief with a penchant for arson, but he'd taught the Deputy some useful techniques for dealing with the mechanical locks and crude security systems of this time.

The Deputy coughed. The medical facilities on this planet or at least in this inst.i.tution were primitive. Hygiene was a matter of crude disinfectants and chemical compounds. But he was being better treated than the prisoners he had taken in his time, and the humans of this island didn't have the death penalty.

The Deputy started to read the financial section, a story about corporate restructuring. The people of Earth were obsessed with money. One man was causing a stir in the business world, his consultations leading to what the paper called 'a revolution'. These humans had never seen a real revolution.

He saw the man in the photograph, he saw that his company's phone number was listed.

The Doctor.

'I knew you'd show your face sooner or later, Doctor.'

He woke Joel, and asked to borrow his Walkman.

Debbie Castle held Barry's hand.

'Eileen Lewis has started school. She's got your eyes. You probably don't even remember Julie, do you? Her husband doesn't suspect a thing, but I know. They got married very quickly when Julie got pregnant. Sound familiar?'

Barry didn't respond. He lay there, the machine at the side of the bed beeping away to itself. Thinking about it, he probably would remember Julie. If he woke up now, the events of five years ago would just be like yesterday to him. Not that he would be waking up. The doctors insisted that there was no point talking to him, he couldn't hear. It had been four years now since they'd decided to call his condition a 'persistent vegetative state' instead of a 'coma'. Debbie had read up on the subject, but still couldn't tell the difference.

The mindeater had lived up to its name. Barry was still alive, still breathing without help, his body doing all the things you didn't need to think about. But there was nothing in his mind. He'd been asleep for five years. He looked peaceful. After all this time without exercise, his muscles had atrophied; he had lost several stone.

Well, Debbie thought, she'd lost weight, too.

She loved him. It was ridiculous, but she still wore her wedding ring, and Barry still wore his. She couldn't even think of looking for someone else. She dreaded the day that they withdrew treatment. The law seemed so inadequate here. They couldn't give him a quick injection to put him down, but they could stop feeding him and let him starve to death over a few weeks. He wouldn't feel it, but it seemed cruel.

But a long time ago Debbie had realised she wanted him to stay like this. She wanted to visit him twice a week, tell him her news. She wanted to be stronger and healthier than he was, she wanted to have the upper hand. She finally had him where she wanted him.

She thought about her life. Still teaching Cla.s.s Six, still living in the same house, still playing chess on Tuesdays and attending the local poetry group. What had changed? She didn't drive any more; she hadn't gone to the Dragon since it was renamed the Flying Saucer. She'd cut down on smoking; she'd started doing aerobics.

She'd met a time traveller, she'd been aboard a UFO, run away from a giant robot, nearly been killed by an alien king.

And it hadn't changed her life.

She looked down at Barry's pale, wasted face.

Living death.

'So how did he escape?' Anderson asked. Sallak's cell was empty, except for a couple of telltale signs on the table tiny screws and clipped lengths of wire.

'One of the warders let him and his cellmate out.'

Anderson looked up. 'What?'

'He doesn't know what happened. He led them straight to the car park and handed over the keys to his Rover. He thinks he was hypnotised.'

'You believe that?'

'It was Sutherland, Dr Anderson, he's got ten years' experience. He says Sallak had a device in his hand.'

'A hypnotic ray?' Anderson laughed. 'Check out Sutherland. Sallak paid him off, blackmailed him, threatened him.'

The prison officer was shaking his head.

'Do it!' Anderson insisted.

Dr Anderson had the psychiatric report on Sallak in his hand, but he didn't need to refer to it.

'John Sallak,' he said out loud. The subject that had taken up so much of his time in the last five years.

Sallak was a genuine mystery. He'd appeared one day, killed a married couple the husband by beheading him with a samurai sword, the woman with a machine gun. He'd had a colleague whom a member of the public had shot and killed. The police also suspected he was linked to two big explosions in the area that night, but had been unable to prove anything.