Doctor Who_ Toy Soldiers Part 18

Then the enemy soldier picked up the rifle and put it across her knee. As Gabrielle watched in astonishment which rapidly turned to disbelief, she unloaded the rifle and then, with the stock still hinged back, pulled at the stock and the barrel until the hinge twisted out of shape, rendering the rifle unusable. Breathing hard, she then planted the broken weapon in the mud, before slowly collapsing sideways to lie beside it, unconscious.

Gabrielle stared at the body, then reached down to the revolver at her waist and swiftly drew it from its holster.

Her duty was clear.

Manda Sutton woke up with a headache. It was a really bad one, as if someone had drilled into her skull. She felt feverish, too, and she could hardly make out the familiar shape of her wardrobe in the dim light.

She called out: 'Mummy! I've got a headache!'

'Ah! That's a good sign,' said an unfamiliar voice.

Manda wanted to protest that it was not not a good sign, that on the contrary it meant that she definitely didn't want to go to school today, but the unfamiliarity of the voice stopped her. a good sign, that on the contrary it meant that she definitely didn't want to go to school today, but the unfamiliarity of the voice stopped her.

She remembered something now - something about a doctor -.

Then she remembered it all, realized that the shape wasn't her wardrobe, that the room wasn't her bedroom. She started to scream.

Two hands took hold of her shoulders, gently but firmly, and to her astonishment Manda felt herself being pulled upright and hugged.

It's all right now,' said the voice. 'It's really all right.

You're going to get better.'

Manda sobbed a couple of times, then managed to control her breathing enough to stutter. 'Am I going home?'

The soothing grip slackened, and the voice said, 'Eventually. It's a possibility.' The man let her go, but kept his hands on her shoulders. Her eyes were working better now, or perhaps the light had got brighter: she could see the sergeant's uniform, the white hat, the level blue eyes staring into hers. 'I'm the Doctor, and you're my friend Manda,' he explained, adding apologetically, 'You're going to have to be my friend, because I seem to have mislaid all my other friends at the moment.'

Manda swallowed, looked around the room, saw bare plaster, a bloodstained floor. She became aware of a smell: a smell of sweat and fear. She became aware that it was hers.

'Where are we?'

'The Recruiter's territory,' said the Doctor solemnly.

'Underground, I think.'

Manda shuddered. 'Are we going to have to escape?'

She tried to imagine running along tunnels, like the London Underground, and men with guns running after her. Bullets flying. Hitting her. What happened when bullets. .h.i.t you?

What did it feel like? She decided to revise her question: 'Can we escape?'

'Probably.' The Doctor seemed irritated by the question.

His eyes flicked away, towards the metal door opposite the bunk where Manda was sitting. She looked down at her legs, saw mannish trousers, in green and brown. A uniform. She shuddered again, gazed at the Doctor with suspicion. He had hugged her, true, and told her she might be able to go home, but - He was looking at the door, frowning. He cast her a rapid glance, said in a low voice, 'You know how to play "Let's Pretend"?'

Manda heard the footsteps then, the booming sound of a knock at the door. She nodded quickly.

The Doctor pulled the door open, and a heavy brown-furred figure stepped through. Manda recognized one of the bearlike things that had taken her from her cell. She noticed the sergeant's stripes on the thing's shoulders, managed a shaky salute, aware that her legs were trembling.

'Has the treatment been successful?' asked the furry thing. She couldn't think of it as a person.

The Doctor nodded. 'But she needs a day of light duties to recover physically. The Recruiter has a.s.signed her to me.'

The wide, bearlike head turned to face Manda. It was impossible to tell if the flat green eyes were really looking at her, but she a.s.sumed that they were. Her legs began trembling more violently and a humming noise started in her head. She knew she was going to have to sit down in a minute, or she would faint.

For what purpose?' asked the booming voice.

'Disinfection,' snapped the Doctor, sounding impatient.

'She's going to scrub the floors and the bunks. We've been losing too many recruits to bacterial infections, you know.'

'I know,' said the bearlike thing. It turned away and left the room, closing the door behind it.

The Doctor's eyes met hers and he smiled. Manda tried to smile back, then sat down suddenly on the bunk, shaking, her body covered in a cold sweat.

'What are we going to do?' she asked the Doctor. Her head wasn't humming so loudly now, and she could feel the p.r.i.c.kle of blood returning to her cheeks.

He didn't reply for a moment: he had his hat in front of his face, and was staring into the inside of it, head c.o.c.ked on one side as if he were watching a magic lantern show.

Eventually, with the hat still in place, he said, 'I've got some thinking to do. And you're going to scrub the floor.'

Manda stared at him. 'I'm not a serving-maid,' she protested. Scrubbing the floor felt like a punishment, the sort of thing the prefects had made her do at school when she'd been younger. And her hands were still shaking: she wasn't sure if she was strong enough.

The Doctor lowered his hat so that it was upside-down in front of his chest and stared at her levelly. 'I'll remind you that I'm your commanding officer and that you've been a.s.signed to me by the Recruiter to help with disinfection.'

For the second time Manda felt a lurch of panic: had all the friendship, all the hugs and rea.s.surance, been some kind of act?

Then she saw the Doctor's left eye twitch in the ghost of a wink. She nodded, then thought better of it and saluted.

This was 'Let's Pretend', and she was going to have to practise.

'Other hand,' said the Doctor quietly, adding, 'Fortunately, you got it right last time.'

Manda nodded again, repeated the salute with her right hand.

'That's better. Now, clean the floor! At the double!'

Manda looked around her. The room contained the two bunks, a wooden table, a single wooden chair on the seat of which rested a bowl-shaped helmet, which she imagined was the Doctor's when he wasn't wearing his hat.

'Er - what do I clean the floor with?' she asked. The Doctor looked at the ceiling and whistled softly. After a moment Manda remembered and added, 'Sir.'

The Doctor frowned, then looked into his hat which he still held upturned in front of his chest. He ferreted around in it for a moment, then pulled out a bright orange washcloth and an equally bright yellow bottle with the word 'Jif' written on the side. He handed them to her with a brilliant smile, as if he'd just performed a successful conjuring trick, which Manda supposed he had. She got up, took the cleaning materials, struggled with the unfamiliar green cap on the bottle until the Doctor showed her how to pop it open. She glanced at him once more, then squirted some of the stuff on the bare boards around her feet, got down on her knees and began to scrub.

Josef stared out across the white haze of no man's land and realized he was thirsty. Very thirsty. Thirstier than he could ever remember being. His throat felt sore and swollen, his tongue felt like a dry rag stuffed into his mouth.

He was going to have to move soon. To move and find some water.

He peered up over the top of the pile of mud and rubble he was hiding behind to take another look at the crashed plane and at the two figures by it. The enemy woman, apparently unconscious, and the pilot, sitting propped up against the engine cowling with a revolver in her hand.

Why didn't the pilot kill the enemy? thought Josef. She was certainly helpless, but he could see her breathing. That meant she was still alive, and had to be killed. She was the enemy.

He remembered the sound Ingrid had made when she died, remembered looking over his shoulder and seeing the enemy Ogrons licking her blood off their lips, and his heart thudded with anger. He hefted the useless handgun, aimed it at the enemy woman, but stopped short of pulling the trigger.

The click of the empty weapon would attract the pilot's attention, and Josef wasn't sure he wanted that. He wasn't sure he could trust someone who didn't kill the enemy.

He shifted his position slowly, trying to get into the shadow of the wall. The back of his neck was itching where the sun had burned it. He wished he could get back to the ground-engine. The boiler was irreparably damaged this time, of course: the rifle shot must have caught it on the temporary patch that had been welded on that morning. But at least there would be shelter, and possibly water. And if the enemy returned to salvage the parts, he might get lucky and be able to kill one of them.

Perhaps if he crawled slowly enough, they wouldn't notice.

'Who's there?' snapped a voice suddenly. A human girl, he realized: obviously the pilot. Josef knew he had to identify himself as a friend, or be shot as an enemy.

'Engineer Josef Tannenbaum,' he said.

There was a pause, then the voice said, 'Pilot Gabrielle Govier. I need your help with something, Engineer.'

Josef stood up. The pilot was also standing, her gun still in her hand. She beckoned, and Josef trotted around the pile of rubble and across the dry mud towards her.

Clear brown eyes looked into his. 'I want you to help me carry the enemy sergeant to the trench.' She gestured behind her to where the remains of sandbagged fortifications stood, perhaps a hundred metres away.

Josef stared. 'Why don't you kill her?'

Gabrielle lowered her eyes. 'I - can't,' she said awkwardly.

'Why can't you?' Josef felt a growing anger. What was the matter with this pilot? Had the crash damaged her brain in some way? 'She's the enemy. She has to be killed.'

Gabrielle shook her head. 'Help me to carry her.'

Josef heard again the hollow snap of Ingrid's neck, the choking gurgle of her death. He grabbed the pilot's gun arm, twisted the weapon towards the enemy soldier. 'You have to kill her!' he shouted. 'You have to kill!'

'I -' began Gabrielle, but she was interrupted by a distant, terribly familiar, thud, followed a second later by a whistling sound. They both fell silent, staring at each other.

Josef felt rather than heard the shock of the explosion.

Mud splattered his body; he looked up, saw a new crater and a haze of smoke less than fifty metres away. He looked back at Gabrielle, who was struggling to free her arm from his grip.

'We have to get her to the trench!' she shouted, the words barely audible over the ringing in Josef s ears.

'You're mad!' he shouted back, letting go of her. 'Kill her and run for it!'

But the pilot only holstered her gun, lifted the unconscious enemy's shoulders off the ground and began to drag her across the mud.

'Run!' shouted Josef again, uncomprehending. He could hear the whistle of another sh.e.l.l approaching: it was quickly followed by the shudder and thud of a slightly more distant explosion. He himself began to run, heading for the trench, slipping and sliding in the sticky mud. As he reached the sandbagged parapet, he heard the whistle of a third sh.e.l.l, then a bright light flared and a shockwave knocked him flat.

He cowered against the sandbags for a moment, his body trembling with shock, then slowly got up. The wreck of the plane was gone, replaced by a cloud of black smoke. As Josef watched, the smoke rose into the air, revealing a ball of orange flame and a broken fragment of the fuselage.

So much for the pilot and the enemy soldier, he thought.

He wondered again why she'd been so stupid. She could easily have got away.

He heard the whistle and crump of another sh.e.l.l, felt the ground shudder beneath him. Quickly he scrambled over the parapet, then half slid, half fell down the steep side of the trench. Inside, the air was mercifully cool and damp.

The ground shook again, and a rain of fragments clattered down around him. Josef wondered how long the bombardment would continue. When it was over, he decided, he would go back to the wreck of the plane and see if he could find the pilot's gun. It might not be damaged. Then he would be able to kill the enemy, if she was still alive. Or if not, kill some more enemy somewhere else.

Josef licked his dry lips, tasted the dust there. Ingrid was dead. Blood covering their fur. The enemy sergeant standing there, aiming her gun, ready to finish the job. I'll kill all of them, thought Josef. I'll kill all of them.

Chapter 11.

Slow and dirty, thought Roz.

She stared out of the window of the railway carriage at the countryside crawling past behind ragged clouds of s.m.u.tty grey steam. Yes: slow and dirty. That was a pretty good way of describing all twentieth-century systems of transport; certainly all the ones she'd met so far, with the exception of the bicycle, which was just slow, and the motor car, which was just dirty. It was hard to believe that on this 'express'

train, the fastest form of transport available, it was going to take the rest of the day for the three of them to travel from Lyons to Paris, a distance of less than four hundred klicks.

When she'd asked if they could take the maglev, Martineau had looked at her blankly and Chris had whispered that it hadn't been invented yet.

Roz was beginning to get tired of finding out that things hadn't been invented yet. She wanted to get back to a place and a time where things had been invented, where things actually worked. She wanted to be able to watch the holovids, to ride a flitter over the parkland tops of the Overcity, to sit in her s...o...b.. apartment drinking a couple of three-packs of Ice Warrior. In short, she wanted to go home.

Or, failing that (and she knew it was impossible), the TARDIS would do. In fact, just the sight of the Doctor would make her feel better at the moment. She'd persuaded Martineau to send some men to check out the hilltop above Larochepot - she'd told him, almost truthfully, that their employer was supposed to be meeting them there, and that he would be able to help if they found him - but the place had been deserted. No trace of a blue box, no trace of a man in a cream linen suit answering to the name of 'Doctor'.

Roz didn't like it. The Doctor could be irritating, mysterious and evasive at times, but it wasn't like him not to turn up at all. It wasn't just that something was wrong: something was very wrong. She remembered what she'd said to Chris yesterday: 'How can you be late in a time machine?' The words didn't seem even slightly funny now She watched the French countryside drifting slowly past and wondered if she would ever see anything familiar, anything of her own time, anything that moved quickly, ever again.

'Hey! This is great stuff!'

Roz turned away from the window to find out what her partner thought was so great now. He was sitting opposite her, his head bowed under the low metal luggage-rack of the second-cla.s.s compartment. He was holding a bottle of black fluid in his hand, sucking gleefully through a straw. Roz read aloud the label on the bottle: '"Coca-Cola"? What's that, the local cure for acne?'