Doctor Who_ Timeless Part 19

'"If the form vanishes, its root is eternal",' mused the Doctor, seeming not to hear her. 'I wonder...'

'Maybe...' Anji was still reasoning it out. 'Maybe so the likes of Daniel Basalt can take a life with no comeback, or else auction off the rights to others?'

The Doctor shrugged and slipped his little gizmo in his pocket. 'I don't know. But Chloe does.'

A shiver ran lightly down Anji's back. 'The little girl who was waiting outside. You've seen her, haven't you? You've spoken to her.'

'She spoke to me,' said the Doctor. 'As the TARDIS punched through into this universe, as I was about to lose all control... she came to me. Her... companion, the animal, helped stabilise the TARDIS, saved all our lives.'

'An interdimensional time-travelling dog?' Anji looked at him dubiously. 'How does that work?'

He paused for a second. 'Supposing some great disaster occurred on a world with time-travel capability. Temporal fallout could contaminate other planets. It would mean certain death for almost every living thing, but against all odds...' The Doctor shrugged. 'Well, he's here, isn't he? The result of exposure of living flesh to raw time, improbable as it may seem. That animal's able to consume the energy of time itself, and uses the distortion created to transcend spatio-temporal distance.'

'Gotcha,' said Anji, feeling her head start to throb. 'But even if all that's so, how did Chloe find you? Why would she even bother to help?'

'She was close by when we broke through into the fledgling universe.'

'Coincidence?'

He ignored her. 'And she helped because she knew I would do something for her in exchange.'

Realisation dawned on Anji. 'Look after Guy?'

'The most special man in the universe,' he murmured. 'And then she came to me again.' He smiled wanly. 'In your home. Wanted more help. Told me about Basalt, how he was evil, how he had to be stopped...'

'But not the reasons why? Why not tell you the whole story?'

'She couldn't tell me much. It said as much in her book.'

Anji was getting exasperated. 'What the h.e.l.l is this book?'

'Yes, that's what I'd like to know... This book of hers that dictates what can and cannot be... Just exactly where did she find it?' The Doctor turned and looked gloomily out over the dark stripe of the Arno, thick with reflections of the colourful flats that banked it. 'A small girl of uncertain origin has the power to glimpse the way time and s.p.a.ce will unfold but in s.n.a.t.c.hes, only in s.n.a.t.c.hes...'

'Edits,' breathed Anji. 'Doctor, that could be it, couldn't it? If this weird book carries an edited version of what's going on... It's like someone has chosen what Chloe can and can't tell you ordered the information and held some back completely in order to lead her and you to specific conclusions.'

'And specific encounters, specific destinations.' The Doctor nodded excitedly. 'Bias! Editorial bias... She knew about Stacy before I even met her, her picture was in the book. And she knew Guy was special but she didn't know why...'

'But why Guy?' Anji pushed up next to him. 'Who's trying to guide events along?' He opened his mouth and she got there first: 'You don't know yet.'

'Chloe is a sensitive,' said the Doctor, 'but more than that, I believe she's an anchor.'

'A metaphorical one, I take it.'

'She's a traveller, able to flit through the dimensions like you might flit in and out of a parade of shops, right? And she's able to link many disparate people and places together. She's been travelling at random.' His face darkened. 'But suppose someone's looked back and charted her journeys. Suppose someone's been ensuring that the right people turn up at the right time. A force that cannot be seen to interfere directly, using her as a hook upon which they can hang certain events?'

'OK,' said Anji, 'that's a bit scary.'

'Isn't it?'

'And this girl, she must have her own kind of TARDIS,' Anji reasoned.

The Doctor looked at her worriedly. 'Must she?'

'Well, yours can't be the only one in existence, can it?'

'I suppose not,' said the Doctor quietly. 'But unique or not, come on. Let's get back to her.'

They set off along the narrow bustling streets that would lead them back to the TARDIS.

Basalt wasn't scared, sat down now at his own meeting table. He'd readied it for Sabbath as if to do so with a chimp holding a gun to his head was a regular occurrence.

It was, he told himself, only a matter of time before he was back in control. He would not go back to those long stupid days of wondering why things happened. If something bad happened to you, you just had to turn it round and round until it fitted in your life, like you wanted things to turn out that way all along.

The appearance of Sabbath was unexpected, as was his talk of a takeover bid. But he'd thought things through and decided that these details were irrelevancies to the simple truth he was going to get out of here, and Erasmus and Chloe were going to disappear him whether they wanted to or not. They were soft, strange, impractical people, with no idea of methods. That was why they needed a guy like Basalt. He knew plenty of methods and got his way. He had a knife strapped to his wrist even now. All he needed was the right opening and he would use it.

He wasn't scared.

'You talk of taking a.s.sets,' he said to Sabbath abruptly. 'Am I one of them?'

'You?' Sabbath snorted. 'A transparent hoodlum?'

'I make stuff happen.'

'Ah.' Sabbath seemed amused. 'You wish to join my employ?'

'I just want to know why I'm not dead yet.'

'I don't underestimate my opponents. Especially those versed in the time lores. Those whose number I thought all but wiped out.' Sabbath's frame was squeezed into the chair opposite, and he shifted in his seat uncomfortably. 'No, Erasmus and the child, and her animal I dare say, are coming here for a meeting with you, Mr Basalt. You shall greet them. You shall make sure they are seated at your table and put at their ease.'

'And then you take them, right?' Basalt eyed the two guns pointed at his head. 'So what happens to me?'

Sabbath seemed to choose his words carefully. 'Do as I say and I don't have to harm you.'

'Oh yeah?'

'You've not seen the child's book, I take it.'

'I've seen it. So?'

'It's a history, Mr Basalt. And an almanac of sorts.'

Basalt stared at him in disbelief. 'You trying to tell me that little freak child knows the future?'

Sabbath considered. 'She knows of it, right enough.'

'Well if she's got a book that tells the future, why's she going to come walking straight into your trap?'

Sabbath laughed good-humouredly. 'The child holds the book, Mr Basalt... but certain embellishments and omissions were made by the publishers at my behest.'

'You're crazy,' muttered Basalt. Crazy people don't matter I'll get past you, one way or another. Crazy people don't matter I'll get past you, one way or another.

'This isn't a good day for you, is it?' Sabbath slapped a ma.s.sive hand down on Basalt's shoulder. 'But you should be of good cheer, man. The future is looking bright indeed. Blindingly bright.'

A sudden groaning noise across the wide s.p.a.ce signalled Chong's unhappy return to the land of the living.

'Kalic.u.m!' Sabbath called.

A few minutes later, a scrawny, skinny figure came loping out from the shadows to join them. He was dressed in tight-fitting black coveralls and a lab coat as white as his skin. His forehead was high and broad, like a surfeit of brains had inflated his head. But despite the intelligence sparking in his dark eyes his expression was oddly obsequious.

'I've primed the surgical transference software, Sabbath.' Kalic.u.m's voice was unexpectedly high. It had an edge to it like nails down a chalkboard. 'Now all we need is the subject.'

Sabbath nodded. 'The subject will be collected shortly.'

Kalic.u.m's thick red lips were pursed expectantly as if ready to receive instruction. 'Something you'd like me to do?'

'There's a man in pain over there,' said Sabbath. 'You're a doctor. Perhaps you'd like to take care of him.'

A smile squirmed on to Kalic.u.m's face. 'Indeed so.' He held something bright and pointed in his hand up to the glare of the bare bulb burning above the table for brief inspection. 'I'm not sure if this is sharp enough,' he muttered, and marched over to where Chong lay in a pool of congealed blood. He crouched over the body, blocking it from view.

Chong screamed again, louder than before, then the noise cut off.

Kalic.u.m spun round to face them. 'It is is sharp enough!' he said happily. Then he hooked his long fingers round Chong's neckline and hauled him away, back into the shadows. The butchered body left a thick, b.l.o.o.d.y snail's trail across the dirty floor. sharp enough!' he said happily. Then he hooked his long fingers round Chong's neckline and hauled him away, back into the shadows. The butchered body left a thick, b.l.o.o.d.y snail's trail across the dirty floor.

'Kalic.u.m craves distraction, so do behave, won't you? His intellect is prodigal, but his mind has been so trammelled by our purpose these years past...' Sabbath tutted. 'I believe it's the simple barbarity of this day and age's surgery that fascinates him so. The past is like a foreign country, I believe it's been said. They do things differently there.' He smiled. 'And so they do in the future.'

'Which is bright,' said Basalt curtly. 'I know. Blindingly bright.'

He wasn't scared. He definitely wasn't scared.

Twenty-three Leads Guy shrugged off the funny looks Bill the security man was giving him, entering the building with a lift maintenance man and an old crone from the catering division at nine o'clock in the evening. His new friends' forged ID pa.s.ses had checked out and got them on site before whoever Trix got to provide her with this stuff, they were clearly professionals.

'Got to fix the lifts now, mate, fourth floor, before everyone starts using them again tomorrow,' Fitz explained when pressed by the puzzled guard.

'And I have to make his tea,' added Trix. 'Very particular, he is.'

'Is he?' said Bill, unimpressed with her rationale. 'No one told me about any work tonight.'

Fitz sighed noisily. 'Call the guvnor then.'

Bill looked at his phone without much enthusiasm. 'This time of night everyone'll be home.'

'And that's where I want to be!' said Fitz. 'So if you could just...?'

'Fourth floor, is it?' called Guy. 'I'll take them there, Bill. Don't worry.' He ushered his incongruous party into the lift, and breathed a sigh of relief as the doors hummed shut.

'These days it seems I'm either cheating death or rummaging through boring files,' sighed Guy.

'Which do you prefer?' Trix enquired, her clear, youthful voice at odds with her wizened appearance.

'Is lying in bed an option?'

They soon reached the office. It looked much the same as when they'd been here yesterday. Two recent additions were a bottle of aspirin and an industrial-sized bottle of Milk of Magnesia. Guy smiled with satisfaction.

'Where do we start?' grumped Fitz.

'For coffin info...' Guy looked round and eventually gestured to some box files. 'Suppliers for FEPA licence stuff should be in that lot there. I'll take the computer, see if there's anything on names to go with those licences.'

Trix looked dubiously at the pile of files. 'How come so much paper for so few burials?'

'It's not just burials at sea that need a licence,' he said, booting up Mike's machine. 'Any organisation hoping to deposit anything in the sea or under the seabed needs one of them.'

There were five files. Fitz deliberated, then gave three to Trix and kept two for himself. She rolled her eyes but didn't complain.

Guy soon found the folder Anji had found. Yes, here were the form letters, each one on a single page within the same doc.u.ment. He'd flicked through the list of Basalt's alleged victims that Stacy had written out for him on the bus over here. Now he pulled it out again and checked through the names given on the deceased forms.

'No matches here,' he reported.

'It was the longest of long shots,' said Trix, leafing through wads of dull doc.u.mentation. 'I'll bet he just made up the names and the addresses. Or he took them out of the phone book at random.'

'I guess that's what a lot of people would do,' said Guy, 'but Mike reckons he's cleverer than that. Thinks he's funny. I'd be surprised if he'd managed to resist getting some c.r.a.p joke in there somewhere.'

Fitz shrugged. 'Maybe we should find Mike, confront him, make him talk?'

Guy sucked in a breath, shook his head with feeling. 'I'm not going near that t.o.s.s.e.r again in a hurry.' He put on a throaty voice 'When we met, it was... moider.'

Fitz looked at him uncertainly.

'I think we've got our fingers in enough pies right now, chasing after people and places left, right and centre.' Trix seemed more than a little p.i.s.sed off, picking through the papers with her immaculate nails. 'The licences hardly matter much in the great scheme of things, except to prove to Stacy she's not been fed a pack of bulls.h.i.t by Basalt.'

'Suppose so,' said Fitz.

Trix was on a roll. 'Know so. They're there as a contingency, in case any of the bodies came to light. And that's not likely to happen for years the police might make a token stab at contacting the relatives at the bogus address, they'd fail, reach a dead end, give up. Who cares? Mike made up some fake names, funny or not. End of story. Move on.'

Guy gave a wry smile. 'Life's too short, huh?' But regardless, he kept flicking through the different names, checking them against the dark scrawl of Stacy's list.

'We should be getting answers from Daniel Basalt,' muttered Trix, giving up on one of the box files and cracking open another.

Fitz yawned and rubbed his eyes. 'Wonder how Stacy's getting on tracking him down. Shall I give her a call?'

'A transparent attempt to bunk off,' complained Trix, but Guy handed Fitz his mobile with a conspiratorial grin.