Doctor Who_ The Tomorrow Windows Part 5

All over London, there were dozens of small, flittering phantoms. Each one floating over the streets, the parks, the towers. Fitz spotted one about a hundred yards away. It was another of the pallbearers, its body a wash of static, its face a misshapen smear. It spun as it ascended, as though scanning its surroundings.

Fitz watched the creatures drift across the city, each one strangely unreal, like a poorly superimposed special effect.

'What are they?' said Fitz, shaken.

'This isn't really the time,' muttered Charlton, holding a door handle in his right hand. He pressed a b.u.t.ton on the handle and pulled to the right, and a doorway slid out of thin air. Opening on to what appeared to be a s.p.a.ceship corridor.

Charlton gestured that they should step through. The Doctor approached the door, and hopped through it. 'How clever.' He grinned back from the other side of the doorway.

'Fitz, your turn,' said Charlton, and Fitz apprehensively circled the doorway.

From side-on, it was so thin it was invisible. A rectangle sliced into reality.

Hands in pockets, Fitz stepped through the door.

It was some sort of s.p.a.cecraft. Hexagonal struts covered the walls of a long, straight pa.s.sage that curved uphill in both directions. Portholes looked out on to the swirling clouds of a gas giant.

Looking back through the tele-door he watched as one of the funeral creatures drifted into the office, its smudge-face searching to the left and right Then Charlton stepped through the door and swung it shut. The office remained visible through the gla.s.s door, the image wobbling as though underwater. As the creature approached the door the office faded to nothing.

Charlton stepped back from the tele-door and wiped his face down with his handkerchief. He clutched his chest with relief and announced, 'Welcome to my secret base!'

'You all right?' I feel a wool blanket against my cheek and a dryness in the corners of my eyes. As I struggle upright, a hangover stabs me in the back of the head.

Sod sod soddington.

'I'm alive,' I say. 'Everything else is To Be Confirmed. Where am I?' My sight clears to reveal a widescreen TV set and Des and Mel. I take the coffee mug from Martin and clasp it. 'I didn't realise I was so drunk last night.'

31.'Don't worry, you didn't do anything shocking.'

'I remember. . . ' A sequence of images tumble through my mind. The party at Tate Modern. Martin. The tele-door. In fact, I can remember everything except getting drunk.

'Sleep OK?'

'I suppose I must've done.' The coffee tastes bitter instant, probably su-permarket's own brand and I return it to the table. 'Bathroom?'

Martin indicates a side door. 'Through there.'

I swing my legs forward and drag myself upright. My bra clasp is digging into my back. Steadying myself against a bookshelf, I stumble to the bathroom, tug on the light cord and bolt the door.

Who am I today? My reflection in the mirror peers back at me. Her nose is too pointy, as always, her lipstick has cracked and her eyebrows need pluck-ing.

Today I am Beatrix MacMillan. Companion of the Doctor, renowned do-er of good.

After going to the loo, I scrub my face, brush my teeth and locate some aspirin in the bathroom cabinet, which I gulp down with a handful of water.

All the time I'm thinking about the Doctor and Fitz, and how they'll be worried about me. Well, Fitz will, because he spends his whole time failing to not stare at my bottom. The Doctor, though, will be too busy being Bohemian. Too busy caring about everybody but me.

'You look. . . better,' says Martin when I return. He's flicking through a Mutters Spinal (West) AZ Mutters Spinal (West) AZ.

'Checking stuff?'

'Sort of. I'm trying to work out where Mackerel will go next.'

'Sorry?'

'Earth's not the only vulnerable planet.' Martin smiles up at me. 'You want to get back to the Doctor and Fitz?'

I nod. 'They worry.'

Martin leads me to the hallway and unlocks the front door. It's a short walk to the landing and the tele-door. Martin taps a sequence into the keypad. 'You found the aspirin?'

'Don't seem to be having much effect.' I examine the gla.s.s of the tele-door where an image is bobbing to the surface. A gloomy, medieval village, the street a ma.s.s of churned mud.

'Where are we going?' I ask.

'I'm taking you to the Doctor.'

Fitz marmaladed his toast and popped it into his mouth. After a night's sleep, a dean shave and shower, he'd joined the Doctor and Charlton for breakfast.

32.They sat around a table in what appeared to be the dining lounge of a forties hotel, all bra.s.s piping and Art Deco lamps. Only the window overlooking the gas giant spoiled the illusion.

On the way from Fitz's cabin, Charlton had given him a brief tour of the station. He'd explained that it resembled a spinning top, about a mile in diameter. The centrifugal effect created the 'gravity'. Apparently it had been built as a research station several centuries ago, but had since been abandoned. Charlton had purchased it and paid for it to be renovated, for use as his 'secret Bond villain lair', as Fitz had put it.

'So, Mr Mackerel,' said the Doctor, draining his orange juice. 'What are you up to?'

'I'm not only interested in Earth,' said Charlton. This morning he was decked out in a mustard-coloured safari suit and a floral waistcoat. 'There are other worlds at a similar point of crisis. On the brink of destruction. On the very. . . '

' edge of disaster?' The Doctor dipped a toast soldier into his egg. 'And you're giving them a nudge in the right direction?'

'A small, helpful proddy-proddington,' admitted Charlton.

'I didn't notice Earth being at a moment of crisis,' said Fitz.

That's rather, um, the point. Nevertheless, it probably won't survive the next century.'

'Really?'

'You humans create dreadful, appalling weapons, right? It's really annoying. More and more of you die in more and more unpleasant wars.' Charlton teaspooned some milk into his coffee. 'You know why these conflicts arise?

Diminishing resources, political differences, racial differences, religious differences. . . how trivial can you get? And there is disease, and starvation, and the environment falling to bits. . . '

'I don't disagree.' The Doctor sipped his orange juice. 'But humans are ingenious. They will find solutions.'

'On past form, Doctor, humans are more interested in hitting each other painfully with rocks.'

'If they fail, then so be it. They gave it their best shot.'

'Their best shot?' Charlton laughed. 'Come on, Doctor, they couldn't do much worse!'

'In which case,' the Doctor observed, 'why save them?'

'Because of all that potential potential,' Charlton said. 'Humans can can be great when they put their minds to it! d.i.c.kens, Bach, Michelangelo, Shikibu, Newton, Marie ' be great when they put their minds to it! d.i.c.kens, Bach, Michelangelo, Shikibu, Newton, Marie '

'Who?' said Fitz.

33.'. . . Curie, Chekhov, Darwin, Adams. . . ' Charlton reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a leaflet. Its cover read, Galactic Heritage Foundation.

'Earth, right, has been designated a Galactic Heritage site!'

'A Galactic Heritage site?' The Doctor almost choked on the last of his boiled egg.

Charlton nodded. 'For worlds of particular scientific or historic interest.'

'Ah.' The Doctor glanced through the leaflet, reading the list of names.

'Varb, Vidow, Kootanoot, Gidi, Earth, Arkmic, Shardybarn, Ulclar, Biblios, Ter-jowar, Wabbab, Dido, Phoenix, Prum, Gallifr'

' and these planets are all under threat?' interrupted Fitz.

'I'm afraid so, yes. Gutting, isn't it?'

'And it's your mission to save them?'

'Seemed like a good idea at the time.'

The Doctor patted a napkin across his lips and stood up. 'So, how many worlds have you saved so far?'

'How many?'

'Yes, with your Tomorrow Windows. Come on, Charlton Mackerel. How many worlds have you saved?'

'You want actual figures?'

'You can round up.'

Charlton coughed with embarra.s.sment. 'None.'

Fitz laughed. 'None!'

'Earth was my first go!' protested Charlton.

'I see,' smiled the Doctor.

'Saving planets is trickier than I'd thought,' admitted Charlton. 'Which is why I want your help.'

'Speaking as someone who's done a bit of planet-saving, I think the problem with your approach is, on the whole, that it's rubbish,' said Fitz as they strode along the station corridor. Storms whirled through he windows on one side, while on the other side lay blackness tippled with stars.

'I considered just telling them what they should do, but they wouldn't listen to me,' said Charlton.

'I know what you mean.' Fitz wasn't sure whether the Doctor was sympathising with Charlton or humouring him. 'Take Earth. Humanity has a pretty good idea of what the future holds, but that knowledge rarely. . . informs their actions.'

'Yes,' said Charlton. 'That's it! That's why I'm using the Tomorrow Windows, because '

' they add a certain. . . immediacy!' grinned the Doctor.

'Exactly!' Charlton waved a hand over a sensor, and a door swished open.

34.They entered a workshop, the floor strewn with loops of cable, the air pun-gent with solder. A dozen or so men and women in baggy orange overalls sat at benches working on sheets of flat, clear gla.s.s. They smoothed the gla.s.s, polished it, pa.s.sed beams of light through it and scrutinised it under microscopes.

Fitz peered over a technician's shoulder at a computer screen filled with green numbers. 'So, on all these threatened planets, you're going to set up galleries?'

'Sometimes something more. . . portable is required.' He pa.s.sed Fitz the oval of gla.s.s. Fitz studied its foggy depths before handing it back. 'A mini-Tomorrow Window.'

'So what do you need me for?' said the Doctor.

'It seems someone's trying to stop me.'

'We noticed,' said Fitz. 'What were those things that came after us, again?'

'Ceccecs.'

Fitz narrowed his eyes. 'You seem to know an awful lot about them.'

'You think I'd kill my own people as a ruse to get your trust?'

'Well, it's been done before,' said Fitz.

They left the laboratory and went to an area with six tele-doors. Charlton tapped a sequence of numbers into the keypad beside one door and an image formed in the gla.s.s. Thunderclouds loomed over bleak moorland, the scrub bristling in a savage wind.

The Doctor said, 'So where are we off to now, Mr Mackerel?'

'Another. . . endangered world. I hope it will persuade you to join me in my quest.' Charlton collected a duffel coat and scarf from a nearby locker. He pulled on the coat, wound on the scarf and swung the tele-door open.

'When you say endangered,' said Fitz, 'how endangered?'

'Oh, in about four hours it'll be completely destroyed.'

35.Valuensis The camels stamped their feet as though impatient for the coming conflict.

The tribes had convened within the ferns and waterpines of the oasis and sat, huddled, around their spitting fires.

The outer rings of the sun submerged themselves beneath the horizon and Tydran returned to drink Fyrwater with his fathers. The Fyrwater burned his throat but caused his blood to pound in antic.i.p.ation of the trials ahead.

A hand pressed upon his shoulder. Tydran took a last gulp, gathered up his robes and tramped to the central clearing.

The Jhander tribe stood in wait, their eyes glinting in the flame-light.

'Who will be your champion?' barked their chief.