Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 16

It would take them no more than thirty seconds to land, get out, and come and get him.

He kicked open the door and ran for the line of trees a hundred feet away. Some part of his hyperactive brain was waiting for the bullets. They never came.

He didn't look back as he reached the trees. There was no shouting, just the sound of running feet, the whine of the helicopter's engines as they slowed down.

He sprinted at random through the forest. The mist was still heavy on the ground. It wrapped itself around him, obscuring logs and rocks. He barked his shins, tripped, got up and kept running. It was deadly quiet.

There was a fallen tree, its leaves hanging down, heavy with moisture. He got on his hands and knees and crawled under it, turning instinctively to face back the way he'd come, flattening himself against the frozen ground.

He couldn't stop shaking. But it was the cold. The fear hadn't hit him yet, not in any way he could process. He pushed his head down against his arms and listened as the soldiers came through the forest towards him.

They had slowed down, which meant they'd lost sight of him and were trying to work out which way to go. Possibly they'd realized he'd hidden. By the sound of it, there were only two or three of them, crunching about in their heavy boots.

There was nothing for it but to lie very still and hope they didn't see him. Fear not, Ranger! he told himself.

The walking sounds came closer. He caught a glimpse of one of them, a big uniformed man. British Army. s.h.i.t. If this was just because of Greenham, he was going to strangle Ms Randrianasolo.

They walked around him and past him, deeper into the forest.

He waited ten minutes, counting the seconds in his head, and dying for a cigarette.

It was absolutely still. He was still shaking inside his anorak, wishing to G.o.d he'd worn something warmer.

It had always been summer when he and his role-playing friends had headed out into the park to play war games, 'shooting' one another by calling out one another's name.

The aim of the game was to get back to the base without being seen.

Once, he'd hidden between a couple of bushes, wriggling into the leaves with his eyes closed to avoid a poke in the pupil. Instead of running around looking for people, he'd let them come to him, saying their names very quietly as they walked past his invisible hidey-hole.

In the end he'd 'shot' four of the other players. They'd all gone grumbling back to Morgue Rock to wait out the rest of the game.

After twenty minutes, he'd become bored waiting for the fifth player to stumble past. With only one other player still in the woods, it'd be easy to slip back to base without being seen.

And then he'd stood up.

And player number five, who'd been standing right behind him for ten minutes, said, 'Joel.'

There was a hard bulge in one of his anorak pockets, sticking into his ribs. He slid his hand carefully down and pulled out the communicator.

He could get up and run, but he was between the soldiers and their helicopter. He could wait for them to come back, on their way back to the chopper, but they might find him - or radio for more soldiers to help in the search.

There was only one thing for it. Slowly and carefully, he brought the communicator up to his frozen face, and hoped to G.o.d that player number five wasn't standing right behind him.

12 Interrogation Blues

'Come along, granddad,' said the Caxtarid.

He half-dragged the small man across the landing. Indigo gave an embarra.s.sed smile to a couple heading for the stairs. They sniffed and pushed past the two young men and their inebriated grandfather.

Indigo unlocked the narrow wooden door. Roze pulled the small man up, then walked forward, pushing him through the door into their room. With a sigh of relief, Roze dropped him face first onto the bed.

'He's not that heavy,' said Indigo, locking the door.

'Yeah, but he's a dead weight.'

Indigo reached down and rolled the little man over. 'I don't see what all the fuss is about,' he said, looking down at their prisoner.

Roze sat on the bed. The embroidered cover was a strange texture under his fingers. No stranger than anything else here, he thought, shivering in the thin, cold air. He rubbed his eyes. The little man blinked up at them, sleepily.

'Caxtarids,' he murmured.

Roze started back. 'How'd he know that?'

'He knows a lot of things,' said Indigo. He reached down beside the bed and picked up his rucksack.

'I've got to get these contact lenses out,' said Roze, as Indigo rummaged in the bag for his tape recorder. He wandered into the tiny bathroom, with its smell of lavender and mould. 'Can you hang on a minute?'

'We need to get on with it before he wakes up,' said Indigo. He blew into the microphone, puffs from his cheeks, watching the sound levels. 'Okay,' he said, sliding up next to their captive. 'What's your name?'

Dreamily, the Doctor told him.

Roze called out, 'Must be hard getting that on the front of an envelope.' He plucked out the second contact lens, trying not to flinch, and slipped it into its little wet container.

'Very funny,' Indigo was saying. 'And what's today's date?'

'The eleventh of December, nineteen eighty-three.'

Roze tilted his head, looking at himself in the mirror.

Were his roots starting to show? Indigo might be able to get away with his metallic red hair, but two people with the same dye job... it was a shame about the contacts. The sparkling red and gold of his irises looked good with the black hair.

'How many fingers am I holding up?'

'Three.'

'All right. Looks as though it's working.' Indigo glanced up as Roze came back out of the bathroom. 'If we have to leave in a hurry, you're in trouble.'

Roze felt in his shirt pocket for a pair of sungla.s.ses, just in case. 'It's not like he's a big threat...' He sat down on the bed, and started emptying the man's pockets in case there was anything useful there.

'Okay, Doctor,' said Indigo. The little man's eyelids fluttered, and Indigo gave him a shove to wake him up a bit.

'Let's move on to the harder questions. Where are we from?'

'Lalande 21185 in Ursa Major,' said the Doctor. 'At least, that's what they call it here.'

Keys, coins from a dozen different planets, bits of technology held together with gaffer tape. Roze picked up a little black box with flashing lights, turned it around in his hands. Didn't do anything. It was all just junk.

'When did you visit our planet?'

'Eight Lalandan years ago.'

'What did you do there?'

The Doctor's eyes grew cloudy with remembering.

'Stopped the virus.'

'Can you tell me more about that?'

Roze said, 'I thought you said we had to get on with it.'

Indigo snapped his fingers at him, and Roze shut up.

'There was a virus,' said the Doctor. 'Killed everything with DNA. They were going to have a war...'

'No, we weren't,' said Indigo. 'We were trying to stop one. But the rebels couldn't understand that. They left us without any defences!'

Roze gave a little sigh. Indigo always had to bring politics into everything. He picked up his own bag, checking the vitamin supplements in their little brown bottle for the third time that day. There was still only a week's worth left. Will you stop fidgeting?' said Indigo. Roze grimaced and put the pills away.

'The virus was no defence,' the Doctor was muttering.

'One mistake and you...'

Indigo put a finger across the little man's mouth, silencing him. 'We had a mandate to create and deploy the virus,' he said. 'Who did you think you were, coming from outside and interfering in our democratic decisions?'

The little man looked shaken, even through the haze of the drug. Roze ventured, 'Indigo, you'd better get on with it.'

Indigo pulled a piece of paper out of his rucksack. He peered at it for a few seconds. 'True or false,' he said. 'You were on Earth in nineteen seventy-three.'

The Doctor frowned. 'True.'

'You were involved with UNIT at that time.'

'I -'

'True or false.'

'True.'

'You had access to top secret information about nuclear weaponry during that time.'

'True,' said the Doctor sleepily.

'All right,' said Indigo. 'This is your chance to make up for what you did to our planet.'

'I didn't save it,' murmured the Doctor. His eyes were closed now. 'I didn't save your planet.'

'No. You just messed around in our internal politics. A lot of people died in that rebellion. Roze and I just barely escaped. Look at him, Doctor.' The Time Lord rolled his head loosely to the side, frowned up at Roze. 'Look at him. He was just a junior clerk, but they would have torn him limb from limb.'

'I didn't save you,' muttered the Doctor. Roze was hooked on his eyes.

'And the rebels just deployed the viral weapons anyway.

How can you sleep at night?'

'Don't,' said the Doctor. 'I don't sleep.'

'What do you mean, you don't sleep?'

'I try not to sleep... two years from now one of the viral caches is triggered by the government.'

'What?' said Roze.

'Two years from now,' repeated the Doctor. 'Another rebellion. The virus gets out and chews up everything living.'

'This won't work,' said Indigo. 'You can't lie to me.'

'I can't lie,' said the Doctor. 'I'm full of truth serum, remember?'

Roze breathed, 'How do you know?'

'I've been back to Lalande,' said the little man. 'But by then it was too late. History was locked in place. It had taken another five years for the virus to spread across the entire planet.'

'But the emergency evacuations,' said Roze. He realized he was standing up, hands pressed to his mouth. 'But they planned... they have the evacuations planned.'