Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 27

There were bees on the windowsill.

Chris jumped back as they lazily droned into the air. He ducked his head, tucking his arms instinctively under his armpits so the insects didn't go into his sleeves. 'Hey, um, Roz?' he called.

There was a face at the window.

No, it was in the window, in the gla.s.s itself. As though a face-shaped ripple was moving through the stuff towards him.

There was a sudden, rushing movement, into the morn.

Chris had the momentary impression of a hundred wings, a million feathers, exploding past him, whirling around him.

He felt himself uncurl, as though his life were a long, long line, spiralling backwards into the past, a silver cord that stretched back to his mother.

And the rushing motion was along the line of his life now, from his birth to his first kiss to the time he burnt to the time he could hear Roz's thoughts to the last person he had killed to his last kiss.

Into the future.

Where Roz smiled at him and they were together in some dark place, with wet, soft gra.s.s against the skin of his back and the feel of her scars under his fingers.

And he was standing alone in the frozen air of the bedroom, hands flung out as though to ward off whatever was storming in through his closed window.

The bees settled onto the bedclothes, buzzing with satisfaction.

22 The name of the Roz

'If all you needed was a sort of galactic road repair service,'

said the Doctor, 'you could have just asked.'

Albinex was sitting on a counter in the laboratory, a toolkit and some spare parts pushed to one side to accommodate him. He held the gun in his lap.

'You know,' he said, 'you're right: I am new at this. But I can already see why you always defeat the villains. You must annoy them to death.'

'I'm quite serious.' The Doctor took the jeweller's lens out of his eye and rolled his sleeves back down. 'If all you wanted was to get back home, I'd have been pleased to help. No fees, no questions asked.'

'But that's not all I want,' said Albinex.

The engine was a glittering ma.s.s six feet wide, with a central core like a ma.s.sive salt crystal surrounded by extrusions and barbs. It looked as though it ought to crumble into powder at a touch, but the Doctor had been prodding and poking at it with a ballpoint pen for twenty minutes, making some sections light up and others chime.

'What do you think?' said Albinex.

'Well,' said the Doctor, 'the entire dimensional interfacing array has collapsed, which isn't surprising, given that it was stuck back on with model aeroplane glue.' He traced the fracture across the crystal with his pen. 'It must have been a nasty accident.'

'The ship was lucky to survive,' said his captor. 'And so was I. Can you make it work?' 'Possibly,' said the Doctor.

'But what if I refuse to help you? 'What? Then I'll shoot you.'

'While I'm standing behind your time engine?'

'It's not a projectile weapon,' said Albinex. 'It won't damage the engine.'

The Doctor stepped out from behind the crystal. 'There's one thing I would like to know.'

'Yes?' grated Albinex.

'This is a Navarino time engine,' said the Time Lord. 'So where did you get it?'

'I'm a Navarino,' said Albinex.

'They have a saying on this world: pull the other one, it's got bells on.'

Albinex got down from the bench. 'I am a Navarino,' he repeated, slowly, hoping it would sink in this time.

The Doctor grinned. 'A Navarino with a gun and an evil plan?'

'If you like.'

'The whole Navarino culture is based on frivolity and recreation,' said the Doctor, as though he was lecturing a dull pupil. 'They're so harmless the Time Lords even let them have limited time travel so that they can go on holidays.'

'And you tax us mercilessly for it,' said Albinex.

'Good grief,' said the Doctor. 'And I thought Navarinos just wanted to have fun.'

'I'm the exception,' said Albinex dryly. 'You've been to Navarro, then?'

'A while ago,' said the Doctor. 'For some much needed R and R. It was all we could do to get Chris back into the TARDIS. I think Benny still had the hangover three weeks later.'

'That's what they do,' said Albinex. 'That's all they do.

The only people who ever do anything constructive are the children, and all they do is fix the machines that run the planet and let the adults get on with partying.'

'But what about your artists? And your writers? Navarino literature and art are all the rage in this sector.'

'Adventure stories and comic books,' said Albinex.

'There's no art on my world. You can't have art without suffering. There's no conflict. There's no striving. The Navarinos are soft, fluffy, empty things.' He set his jaw. 'We weren't meant to live like that.'

'I seem to recall,' said the Doctor, 'that the Navarinos were the only nation who survived the war on your planet, precisely because they couldn't be bothered to join in the fighting.'

'And they let the other nations tear one another apart,'

said Albinex. He almost smiled, realizing. The Time Lord had got him talking, just as the stories said. 'Will you fix my engine?'

'Well,' said the Doctor, 'no.'

'It's not much to ask,' said the Navarino. 'Especially in exchange for your life.'

'The Caxtarids were your agents, weren't they?'

'Yes, they were.'

'You see,' said the Doctor, 'they asked me some very worrying questions.' He took a step towards Albinex, who raised the gun. 'Now, if you're after the sort of information I think you're after, it's the sort of information I don't want you to have, and that means that, whatever the rest of your plan is, it's probably the sort of thing I'm not going to be too keen on either. If you see what I mean.'

Albinex blinked. 'What?'

The Doctor came another step closer. His eyes were open, honest, vast and bluer than the sky. 'If you ask me,' he said, 'you ought to just tell me what you have in mind. I want to help you. Why don't you put down the gun, and we'll see what we can work out?'

Albinex shot him.

Ms Randrianasolo found herself at a loose end.

Jacqui was gone, but presumably she was back at the peace camp, not spirited away like Chris or the Doctor.

She wondered if Zak was right to wait, if they'd be safer clearing out. It was very seldom that he misjudged a situation - which was why they were still here, in Little Caldwell, after all these years. There had been a dozen times when they'd almost bugged out, and only his determination had saved them. And kept them here. Home.

If you couldn't get home, you had to make a home. She'd been standing outside this door for fifteen minutes.

The Admiral and his daughter were deep in discussion in the bookshop - heated discussion, by the sound of it. Joel was down at the garage, 'pumping gas' and working over the exhausted van after its return appearance last night.

Forrester was still looking after Cwej, but by all accounts he'd pull through without difficulty.

And both the Doctor and Jason were still missing. Not to mention the Doctor's time machine. They were under attack from some unknown direction.

Or was it unknown? The Doctor had seemed to know what he was doing when he let himself be captured by that s.p.a.cecraft. And he'd known all about the house Woodworth and her agents had been using.

It was strange, given the stories, but the Doctor hadn't struck her as a manipulative or cunning sort of person. More of an improviser - someone who came up with brilliant things when in a state of panic. Or perhaps that was just one aspect of his personality.

She put her hand on the doork.n.o.b, took it away again.

Her mother hadn't wanted her to join s.p.a.cefleet. She had memories of her mother only as an old woman; it had taken her most of her adult life to get out of the Fleet.

She remembered her mother at work in the rainforest, Part of the Reclamation Project. Reaching out into the soil with her wiry mind, finding seedlings and landmines with equal ease, directing the workers. She never used the mental powers at home. But now she wanted her daughter to see what they had done to her, forced her to become, with their pills and injections.

'But mother,' she had said, 'what you do is wonderful. No one could do this with implants or AIs.'

'This is not what I did when I was in s.p.a.cefleet,' the old woman had said.

Madagascar was half a millennium away.

She pushed open the door.

The room was a study, most of the time. There were bookshelves, a painting, a big wooden desk and chair.

There were books all over the floor, and the painting had been smashed, a web of lines radiating from a circular hole in the gla.s.s. M'Kabel sat on the chair on the right side of the room, hologram off, holding his wand in his lap.

Woodworth was sitting as far away from him as she could manage, which meant on the desk, in the corner, knees drawn up to her chest and arms wrapped around them. Her hair and eyes were wild. 'You're human, aren't you?' she stammered. 'Get me the h.e.l.l out of here!'

'How's it going?' Ms Randrianasolo asked.

'Slowly,' said M'Kabel.

'You're human - you're not one of this army of monsters!'

'Army?' laughed Ms R. 'You can count us on the fingers of your hands.'

'An army,' repeated Woodworth, 'covering the countryside. How can you leave me in here with that thing?'

'Don't mind M'Kabel,' said Ms Randrianasolo. 'He's a big softy.'

'He's been doing things to my mind!' Woodworth scratched at her forehead, compulsively. 'I've told him everything I can, everything I can think of. He made me. He made me.'

'So you want to get out?' asked Ms Randrianasolo.

'Yes!'

'I don't know. I think maybe we should cut you up when we're finished.'

Woodworth just stared at her, the sc.r.a.ped stare of someone who's been panicking for hours.

'It was people like you who forced my mother to become a psychokinetic,' said Ms Randrianasolo. 'The drugs were still in her system twenty years later when she conceived me.'

'What are you talking about?'

'I joined the military because I thought I could do some good. But it was all about making money. For the weapons companies, or the drug companies. And I was an a.s.set. With a credit value. They weren't going to let me leave any more than they were going to let Mum leave. Except when her powers started failing. Then they threw her out, threw her all the way back home.'

Woodworth just shook her head.

'So I think we should cut you up. When we're finished with you, and you're not worth anything anymore.'