Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 31

'Why is it a yacht?' Ms Randrianasolo wanted to know.

'It's a conversion job,' said the Doctor. Navarino tourist s.p.a.cecraft are always disguised. I expect he stole it.'

'Well, he's not running a travel agency,' said Isaac dryly.

'Do you know what he plans to do?'

Not exactly,' said the Doctor. 'But if it involves throwing nuclear missiles about -'

'Greenham Common,' gasped Ms Randrianasolo.

'Exactly,' said the Doctor.

'Are you the only one who knows these codes?' said Joel'

The Doctor said, 'My guess is that he's tried to get them from more mundane sources than the back of my mind. And then I arrived. Just at the right time.'

There was a moment's silence.

'What do we do?' said Benny.

'Wait for him to give himself away,' said the Doctor. 'The only bargaining chip he has is the TARDIS. He'll contact us and offer a swap.'

'Do you think he and Woodworth had anything to do with one another?' said Jason.

'I doubt it,' said the Doctor. 'Though I wonder if Albinex didn't do something that attracted her attention, contacted the wrong person or peeked into the wrong file...'

'And then there's the ghost,' said Roz stiffly.

'Ah yes,' said the Doctor. 'She's looking for someone to help her.' He suddenly ran both hands through his hair, as though exasperated. 'I can't do anything for her until I get the TARDIS back.'

Half an hour later Benny was still wrapped around her husband. He was snoring and he needed a shave. She hugged him tighter, prompting a series of comfortable muttering noises.

'I never had a chance to miss you before,' she whispered.

She hoped Dad and the Doctor were okay. Oh, the Doctor looked fine - he could breeze through almost anything. And Roz and Chris would look after him. She felt an odd pang of jealousy. She didn't occupy the privileged position of companion companion any more. any more.

Or perhaps you never stopped being a companion.

She closed her eyes.

The flames had jumped into the night, searing colours against the blackness. The Doctor had insisted on staying, even after the fire engines had arrived, much too late. He'd been holding one of the handscans, supposedly double and triple checking that no one was endangered by the fire. But she knew he wanted to see that building burn burn.

And it wasn't because he'd been hurt there. It was because someone he loved had been hurt there.

What must it be like to be so old? To keep on living, and see the people around you hurt and killed, over and over?

'I'm getting old,' she murmured to Jason. Being a companion meant risking things. Sometimes your sanity, sometimes your life. She didn't want to risk him him.

Dad had been holding in a lot of emotions when he'd learnt the truth about Albinex. It was awful. They'd been working together for two decades. And now her father would be wondering whether Albinex had always been planning this. Whether they had ever really been friends. Jason. Dad.

The Doctor. She was still juggling the three of them.

For a moment something cold in her insides said that one of them was going to have to die. And, whichever one it was, it would be because of her.

She held onto Jason for a few more minutes. Then she carefully slid out of bed and rummaged for her clothes.

The Doctor had disappeared almost entirely into the van's engine. He was nearly upside down, with his legs sticking up, revealing one navy-blue sock and one Rocky and Bullwinkle Rocky and Bullwinkle Christmas sock. Christmas sock.

Joel had never actually seen someone work on a car by climbing into its innards before. He just hoped nothing started up accidentally. Mind you, by this stage, something like half of the engine was scattered over the garage floor.

'So,' he said, 'about this ghost.'

The Doctor said something, his voice m.u.f.fled. He hauled himself backwards out of the engine. Somehow, there wasn't a speck of grease on him.

He planted his feet on the ground and leant on the van.

'She's stranded,' he repeated. 'Trapped in the future. Just a tiny fraction of a second, but enough to have severe effects.

It's only through a sort of temporal paradox that she's still alive.'

He stooped down and started picking over the engine pads he'd removed, turning them around in his hands as though , they were geometric puzzles. 'So what's she doing?'

said Joel. 'Why does she keep attacking us?'

'I don't think she sees it as an attack,' said the Doctor.

'She's trying to make contact, to communicate. That's why she's been concentrating her efforts on time travellers.'

'Benny told you,' said Joel.

The Doctor glanced up at him. 'So I was right,' he said, and grinned.

'D'oh!' said Joel.

The Doctor selected a piece of van and stood up, gazing down into the engine as though he was working on a particularly tricky jigsaw puzzle and was holding a piece of sky.

'Before you disappear back down there,' said Joel, 'there's something I want to ask you.'

'All right,' said the Time Lord.

'Okay,' said Joel. 'When I was growing up, my family had a nuclear shelter in the backyard. It was built in the fifties, long before we moved in. When I was a little kid I used to play around in it. Then Reagan got elected, and my dad decided it was time to fix the shelter up for real.'

The Doctor waited, patiently. By now Joel's dad would've been asking whether this was a question or a speech. 'He used to make Mom and me do drills, getting into the shelter in under a minute from anywhere in the house. If we blew it, we had to do it again. And again.

'I kept asking him if we could stop, because the drills used to scare me to death. I used to lie awake at night, if there was a storm, waiting for the thunder after every flash of lightning. I used to turn on the radio just to hear that the stations were still broadcasting and the world was still there.

'But listen... the ghost showed me... I saw the future, and I saw myself dying. And it wasn't from nukes.'

'You saw yourself die?'

Joel nodded. His eyes were almost as round as his gla.s.ses.

The future isn't fixed,' said the Doctor gently. 'Whatever the ghost showed you is just one possible future. So if say, You saw yourself die in a plane crash tomorrow, you might avoid taking that flight now...'

'Yeah, so, anyway, the point of all of this is that I'm b.l.o.o.d.y terrified about Albinex. What if he starts a nuclear war? Could he change history like that?'

'I'm afraid he could' said the Doctor. 'Doing irreparable damage to the entire universe, let alone the planet Earth.

Just as your future isn't immutable, neither is the world's.'

'Great,' quavered Joel. 'I already had to grow up underneath the radar. I don't want to have to do it again.'

'Are you okay?' said Benny.

Isaac looked up from the sheaf of mail. He had spread it over one of the tables in the coffee shop, and was sorting it into piles. bills, magazines, letters from contacts, a couple of packages.

'Yeh,' he told her. 'I'm keeping busy while we wait for Albinex to contact us.'

She sat down opposite him. 'I feel as though this is my fault,' she said. 'If we hadn't come here, Albinex would never have started on his evil plan.'

Isaac opened an envelope and took out the invoice inside. 'It can't be helped,' he said.

'I wonder how long he's been planning this,' said Benny.

'I've known him for a long time,' said Isaac. 'I thought I knew him. He saved our lives when we were stranded here.'

'It's not an easy thing, to be stranded,' said his daughter.

'After I escaped from the ship I'd been shanghaied onto, my pod crash-landed on Olundrun Seven. If it hadn't been for the monks... poor Joel had it worse, though. And Ace.'

'She told us a little about Iceworld,' he said. 'It's a good thing she was already angry when she arrived. I don't think she would have survived otherwise.'

'Um,' said Benny. 'Actually, about Dorothee. I was wondering something.'

He picked up another envelope. 'Yes?'

'You said she'd visited here a couple of times.'

'That's right. Twice.'

'I don't want to pry. But bearing in mind her reputation, and the fact that as a man more or less single, in practice at least, you would have motive, means and presumably opportunity, and considering the fact that if she were inclined to do so, she would...'

She threw up her hands. 'Oh, h.e.l.l. You didn't s.h.a.g her, did you?'

Isaac put the invoice into the right pile. 'Why?'

Her mouth opened and closed a few times. 'Why what?'

she asked, at length. 'Why would you want to? Why do I want to know? Why do I -'

Why do you want to know?' he said dryly. 'I think I could work the rest out for myself.'

'Er,' said Benny. 'I'm sorry. I suppose I was just curious.'

'You're fidgeting,' he told her. 'Your eyes are jumping around all over the place. It's more than just curiosity about a friend. Why?'

Benny leant forward and rested her head on her arms.

'Because then she'd be two out of three with the men in my life. Minimum. And I really don't want to think about the third.'

'I see see,' said Isaac. He sorted the sales letters into a manila folder and stacked them on the seat beside him.

She tilted her head to look at him. 'The suspense is killing me.'

'The answer is no,' he said.

Benny puffed out her cheeks. 'Whew,' she said.

Isaac allowed himself a smile.

Joel breezed past. 'Oh cool,' he said' picking up one of the packages. 'A videotape. That's one of mine.' He tucked it under his arm and went upstairs.

'Allow me to change the subject completely,' Isaac said.

'What do you expect the Doctor will do about Albinex?'

Benny sat up again. 'Whatever needs to be done,' she said.

'That sounds very grim.'

'You haven't seen him at work,' she said. 'For him, the solution isn't blowing away the bad guy. He'll talk Albinex out of it. And if he can't talk him out of it, he'll throw a wrench into his plans. And if he can't throw a wrench in, he'll improvise madly at the last possible moment.'