Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 2

Chris had sighted down the arrow, trying not to squint at the straw target. 'Tell me anyway,' he said.

The Doctor hesitated, as though appraising the young man's stance and aim. 'Should I go back and put a stop to the Black Death?' he said.

Chris let the arrow go. It sliced through the air, thudded into the TARDIS wall behind the target, clattered to the floor.

He made a face. 'That'd be easy,' he said. 'You'd just work out where and when to be with a bottle of penicillin, right?'

'But then Europe's population would rise instead of falling dramatically. Labour would become cheaper instead of scarce and precious. Feudalism might continue for centuries.'

'So it's too big to stop. Too much a part of history.'

'And changing that history would mean erasing the thirtieth century you and Roz come from.'

Chris nodded to himself, flicked his yellow hair out of his eyes, and nocked another arrow.

The Doctor said, 'This is a well-worn discussion.'

'It helps to hear it from you,' Chris had said. 'If you're certain, then I'm certain.' The arrow had bounced off the wall.

'This is really starting to bug me!'

The Doctor emptied his bucket into the laundry sink. He couldn't change history on such a ma.s.sive scale. Not Earth's history. His voyages through time and s.p.a.ce had taken him from one end of the little blue planet's story to the other, from the beginnings of life to long after its destruction. But he always ended up back here, in a narrow band of time stretching from the middle of the nineteenth century to around the end of the twentieth. His home away from home.

He sighed, putting the mop away in the cupboard. He couldn't rebuild the house, but he could do a little cleaning.

Christopher Cwej was playing chess with Roslyn Forrester in Hyde Park. Roz's (genuine 1996) watch made a dull electronic noise. 'Time to go,' she said, standing up.

Chris looked at her, face level with hers. 'Just when I'm winning!' he said.

She grimaced in annoyance until she saw that he was joking. He grinned at her, tumbling the pieces into a bag and stuffing them into his backpack.

They walked along in silence, enjoying the sunshine.

Yesterday they'd gone to the Three Sisters and walked down the side of a mountain. The day before that they'd gone to a film festival.

They had seriously chilled out over the last couple of months. Not that there hadn't been enough excitement, between the bungee jumping and sneaking on board the Greenpeace mission. But not once in the last month had his life been at risk, or had a whole planet depended on him or Roz or the Doctor.

He felt alive again. Very alive.

He risked a glance at Roz. Her deep brown skin glowed with health; her dark eyes flashed in the sunlight. She was wearing a denim jacket over a tight T-shirt and jeans. She was old enough to be his mother, and she'd probably shoot his head off if he so much as contemplated holding her hand, but...

A bus sounded its horn as he almost stepped in front of it. Chris jumped back onto the pavement with an embarra.s.sed yelp.

He looked around, feeling his ears turn red, but Roz hadn't noticed. She was staring up at a building. 'This is it,'

she said, nodding at a sign.

Chris looked around. 'I don't see the Doctor.'

'Do you want to go in and see if he's there?'

'Okay.' Chris paused in the doorway, but Roz was pretending to read a billboard. He frowned and went inside.

The Doctor was waiting for him, sitting at the end of a row of orange plastic chairs. He held his one-of-a-kind white fedora in his lap. He was wearing one of his old shirts and a pair of oversized, worn trousers. Work clothes.

Chris glanced at the receptionist, busy with paperwork, and went over to the Time Lord.

The Doctor stood up. 'h.e.l.lo, Chris,' he said, peering up at the Adjudicator. 'How have you been?'

'Oh, fine.' Chris glanced at the door. Outside, Roz looked away quickly. 'We've been down in Sydney for the last couple of days. We spent some time at a seminar on law enforcement. It was fascinating, really primitive stuff...'

The Doctor jammed his hat on his head. 'You'll have to tell me all about it.' He nodded at the receptionist, moved towards the door.

'Er,' said Chris.

The Doctor stopped with his hand on the door handle, looking out at Roz, who was watching the traffic.

'When you phoned,' said Chris, 'you said there was someone you wanted us to meet.'

'There was,' sighed the Doctor. 'There was. Come on.'

It took a couple of hours on the train, and a half-hour walk, to get to the beach house. Chris had wanted to rent a car, but, given what had happened to the last two, they'd decided against it.

At last they wound their way through the scrub to the house. It was miles from civilization, surrounded by an overgrown garden that segued into the bush. The sun was going down behind the mountains as the Doctor pushed open the front door. He never seemed to lock the place up.

'Whose turn is it in the kitchen?' said Chris. Roz and the Doctor both smiled at him. 'Oh...' he murmured, heading inside.

Roz pulled her boots off, shook the sand out of them.

The ocean was a dark, gla.s.sy ma.s.s. A single white smear appeared down the centre as the moon's reflection brightened. She sat down on a foldup chair, put her bare feet up on the railing and closed her eyes, listening to the white noise of the surf.

After a while she opened them again. The Doctor had come out onto the porch, silently. He had changed into his more usual outfit - the linen suit and the silk shirt - though he hadn't bothered to put on a tie. His feet were bare. The sea breeze ruffled his dark hair.

He noticed that she'd noticed him, and handed her a tiny T mail datacube, the sort the TARDIS console spat out. She thumbed the switch on the base. A tiny Bernice appeared on top of the cube.

Hi! I'm on the planet Youkali Six, in the jungle not ten kilometres from the Archaeological Inst.i.tute, with Jason. It's kilometres from the Archaeological Inst.i.tute, with Jason. It's the year twenty-five eighty-seven. The precise time and the year twenty-five eighty-seven. The precise time and coordinates are appended. coordinates are appended.

Roz twiddled a dial to make the image a little larger.

Benny's face was cool as a cuc.u.mber, her eyes glittering with cheerfulness, like a suspect who was sweating on the inside.

I've just found someone who was with my father during his last battle. She is, effectively, the last person to see him his last battle. She is, effectively, the last person to see him alive. alive.

Doctor, if it's possible, I want to go back to the battle. I've thought about this a lot. I know we can't change anything, but thought about this a lot. I know we can't change anything, but even if we just watch from the distance, I need to find out even if we just watch from the distance, I need to find out what happened to Dad. what happened to Dad.

Please drop in when you have a moment spare from saving the universe. Hope everyone is well. saving the universe. Hope everyone is well.

The holographic Benny laughed.

Help me, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi, you're my only hope.

She vanished, replaced by a string of digits.

'We'll leave tomorrow morning,' said the Doctor. He sat down in one of the other chairs. 'You disapproved.'

'Sorry?' said Roz.

'You disapproved of my spending that week working in the hospice.' He didn't look at her, but gazed out over the ocean.

'I don't know about "disapproved",' said Roz. She put her hands in her pockets. 'It just seemed tokenistic.'

'Tokenistic?'

'Self-indulgent,' said Roz. 'You were only doing it to make yourself feel better.'

The Doctor's face took on a thoughtful expression. 'I suppose we all do that, from time to time.'

Silence for a bit. 'So, did they work you hard?' said Roz.

'No, it was very ordinary work - cleaning, mostly. A little cooking. A great deal of talking and a great deal more of listening. There was a young woman...'

'Chris said something about your wanting us to meet someone.'

'Quite young. I had hoped to say goodbye to her this morning.'

'I'm sorry,' said Roz. Did you get to know her well?'

'As well as two strangers can come to know one another in the s.p.a.ce of a week. I told her rather more about the future than she probably should have known. She would have loved to have met you. Human beings from the future... it helped her, I think, to know that there was a future.' The lines around the Doctor's eyes stood out in the dim light.

You couldn't understand, could you? thought Roz. She was dying, a dying human being, and you couldn't understand her.

There was something about it that made her feel oddly proud.

As if reading her mind, the Doctor turned to her and said, 'Why does Benny want to find her father?'

Roz said, 'Good grief.'

The Doctor made an agitated movement with his hands.

'People growing up together, living together, yes, I can understand how that would create a bond, but this seems...'

'Arbitrary?'

'She hardly knows him,' said the Time Lord.

'If it was your father,' said Roz, 'what would you do?'

'On Gallifrey -'

An ap.r.o.ned Chris wandered out onto the verandah, completely missed the atmosphere, and gave them a cheery smile. 'I've decided to make tofu surprise,' he said.

'Oh yes,' Roz smiled back, despite herself. 'What's the surprise?'

'We're out of tofu,' said Chris.

3 On Youkali, a cold wind was blowing It blew through the forest, making the leaves hiss like the surf. It found the camps at the edge of the trees, and snuffed out an ancient kerosene lamp, making an elderly xen.o.biologist curse and fumble for the matches. It blew through the forest, making the leaves hiss like the surf. It found the camps at the edge of the trees, and snuffed out an ancient kerosene lamp, making an elderly xen.o.biologist curse and fumble for the matches.

It curled around the base of the staircase Benny had been excavating that morning. It blew across the clearing and stopped to ruffle the hair of a late-working trio of trainees, sending chills down their backs.

It tugged at the Doctor's hat, but couldn't lift it. He was standing at the base of the steps, leaning on his umbrella, reading the hieroglyphs. The wind bit through his silk shirt.

He'd taken off the tweed jacket in the afternoon warmth. Now he shrugged it back on, not taking his eyes off the glyphs.

'One day,' he read out loud, 'she will find the person who was given her name. And then there will be no more dying.'

'Oh, you don't want to worry about her,' said a voice nearby. 'She's only a ghost.'

The Time Lord turned. An elderly woman was watching him. By her bearing, she had once been a soldier. 'She was an archaeologist. Or, properly, she was one of the students.

She Wandered off into the jungle about three years ago, and didn't come back. Now they say she roams the planet, looking for her cla.s.smates. I expect she gobbles up little first-year students who don't finish their reading lists.'