Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 2

'Have you been able to track their course?'

'Of course not.'

'Find Cosgrove. Find out what he was doing here. He's not left his desk in London for nearly twenty years. Jonah is one of the most shadowy of the European shadow government. He's involved in something big. Find out what, Malady.'

'Understood.'

The eyephone screen faded.

'Problem?' Garvin asked.

'Not the sort of thing a techie can deal with. How's that image?'

'It's kinda difficult to concentrate.'

The back axle buckled.

It had been hit, Malady realised. As she struggled with the wheel, she could tell the axle had been sliced apart. She couldn't think of a weapon that could do that, and she was d.a.m.n sure it wasn't something she'd hit on the road.

She also knew that she had other priorities.

She quickly brought the car under control, slowing it, managing to swerve it so that the rear driver door was facing the Saab. There wasn't time to get out, though.

Malady braced herself, turned to watch the Saab hit her. The driver and pa.s.senger sat impa.s.sive, letting it happen.

Her car was shunted along, spun a couple of degrees.

Garvin had hit his head on the dashboard. He was unconscious, possibly worse.

Malady grabbed his laptop, and was out of the driver's door. She kept low, using the car as cover. The computer was the important thing here.

She heard the Saab's doors open. Both doors she'd hoped one of them would have been incapacitated, or at least trapped in the car.

One of them pulled open the pa.s.senger door, she heard him moving in to get a look at Garvin.

Her pistol was in her hand. She popped up, fired two shots, dropped back to a crouch. The larger man fell, blood sprayed from his head, he twisted slightly, looked surprised.

And then there was the light.

A pencil*thin beam of light sizzled past her. A thin white line, perfectly straight.

The other one was firing some sort of ray gun.

She barely registered the sound of the felled tree behind her. The second beam was even closer, it scored a line in the tarmac of the road.

Her side had nothing like that nothing handheld, anyway.

A cutting beam. Something that could slice through anything. It must have been what had smashed her axle. A deadly weapon.

But it had a disadvantage. With a bullet, you could get only a rough bearing on the man firing on you from the sound, or you might spot the muzzle flashing. This weapon drew a straight line back to the person holding it, and even lit up the surroundings. Every time he fired, it was as if he was pointing a giant luminous arrow at himself.

Malady stood, fired three shots, watched one of them catch his shoulder, one catch his chest, the last catch the gun itself.

He didn't make a sound.

The gun exploded, a burst of white light, like it had been loaded full of rays. She saw him in silhouette, pure black against pure white. The blast took his arm off, at the elbow. As he fell, he seemed to grow larger, became twisted. His head seemed to grow longer.

He grew horns.

Malady watched, as he fell apart.

A moment later, it was dark again. And there was no sign of either of the bodies.

Malady picked up the laptop, silently scolding herself for dropping it in the first place. She stepped hack over to the cars. The men had disintegrated, there was no trace of them.

And so had their Saab. There was the wreck of her Panther, Garvin was dead, but there was no sign of the car that had hit it.

Those people weren't EZ.

Malady wasn't convinced they'd been people.

The laptop bleeped at her. She looked at the display. The computer had finished enhancing the image of the man who'd blown up the EZ Manta, and possibly a.s.sa.s.sinated the head of the EZ secret service.

His long face was oval, with an aristocratic nose and a full mouth. He had a high forehead, framed with long brown hair. He wore a long, dark coat. He had blue eyes, with traces of crow's*feet around them.

Malady had no idea who he was, but he'd triggered a diplomatic incident, possibly a World War.

She couldn't wait to meet him.

The morning before, it had become obvious that the TARDIS was up to something.

The air was full of bad mood. At first, Fitz a.s.sumed the Doctor and Anji had had a row. He'd heard them together in the control room, discussing something, and had stayed out of their way for an hour or two. In the end, he'd gone in and was bemused to find them smiling, puzzling over some problem. The Doctor was standing over the control console, tapping his lip thoughtfully. Anji stood opposite, studying his expression. Neither of them had noticed Fitz arrive.

'Look!' the Doctor said suddenly, waving a finger at one of the displays.

'It's moving again.'

'Yes.'

'And you didn't touch it?'

'No. You were watching me. We've changed course again.'

'Could you have started a pre*set sequence running or something like that? Like a washing machine?'

The Doctor scowled at her. 'A washing machine? You're comparing the TARDIS to a washing machine?'

'Yes,' Anji insisted. 'Look, it's possible, isn't it? You could have switched on the autopilot, or the cruise control, or accidentally programmed it to do whatever it's doing at a set time. I mean you don't really understand how the TARDIS -'

A glare from the Doctor had shut her up. He didn't like to admit that his piloting of his time machine was essentially a series of educated guesses. And Fitz and Anji certainly didn't like to think about that. So there was an unspoken pact that no one ever said it out loud.

The Doctor turned to see Fitz, noticing him for the first time. 'You've not touched the controls?'

'No,' Fitz told them.

'Neither have I,' the Doctor said thoughtfully.

'So where are we heading now?' Fitz asked.

The Doctor studied the readings, appeared to do some mental arithmetic. 'We're heading out,' he said.

'Out?'

'The far future?' Anji asked. 'Or out of the galaxy?'

'Both,' the Doctor said, after a moment's consideration. 'I'm sorry Anji, but I won't be taking you home to the twenty*first century today. We are travelling into unknown realms. We have already left the universe with which we are familiar. The journey will be a long one. Hours at least, maybe days. We should all get some sleep while we have the chance.'

The TARDIS had landed on a beach full of sunbathing tourists before they'd reached their bedrooms.

The Doctor had spent a little while insisting that this was merely a simulacrum of Earth, like EarthWorld had been. He stayed in the TARDIS to calibrate the instruments, to work out their exact location in time and s.p.a.ce. Fitz and Anji had popped out to buy ice creams.

They'd worked out roughly where and when they were almost before they'd stepped from the ship. The hotels and shops were in familiar styles, give or take, but the fashions what there were of them on the beach the electric buses and the animated billboards all provided evidence that they were a few years after Anji's time.

When they'd got back to the TARDIS, they handed the Doctor a copy of The Times The Times, with the date on it, which they'd found at a small newsstand. The Doctor had held up his notebook, and told them that the equations he'd scrawled down led him to the exact same conclusion, although he'd flipped it closed when Anji asked to see that for herself. The Doctor had gone on to say that there was a time machine in operation in the area. He produced some sort of portable oscilloscope as evidence. He'd seen the same patterns before, and it meant displacement in the time field, which, in his experience, invariably meant trouble.

The Doctor headed for the door, suggesting they explore and try to find the time machine. His plans didn't extend past that. Anji had tried to pin him down, to focus a bit more on specific objectives. She'd got it into her head that there was a pattern to their travels, that there was a bigger picture they were all missing. She didn't go on about it this time, but she'd mentioned her theory to Fitz a few times, and from the glazed look in the Doctor's eye, he'd copped for the same conversation, too.

Fitz had his own theory, and he was the last to leave.

Something was nagging at him.

He told the others he'd left his red suede jacket in his room. Once he was sure he was alone, he went to the back of the TARDIS, the point furthest from the door. It was through a couple of doors, at the end of the corridor that didn't lead anywhere.

He'd heard something scratching against the other side of this wall once, like a wild animal trying to get out. The TARDIS had once been bigger than this. Infinite, according to the Doctor. Perhaps the rest of the ship was still there, trapped behind doorless walls. Perhaps there were other things trapped there, too.

'They didn't like people time travelling, did they?' he asked the wall. didn't like people time travelling, did they?' he asked the wall.

No answer.

'The people that created you? The Doctor's people? I... think I remember what happened to them. If it ever happened. It happened to me, it happened to the Doctor. So it's got to count. Hasn't it? Just because I don't remember all of it doesn't mean it doesn't count.'

No answer.

'They didn't like other people time travelling. They tracked them down, punished them. Probably for all the right reasons, don't get me wrong. I do get it, you know I do understand that if those... laws... hadn't been enforced, then everything we know could have come crashing down. There would be anarchy. We got a glimpse of it, remember. It was madness. But now they they've gone. Everything they stood for is gone. Their time has pa.s.sed. You do know that? There's no law, no order, not now. You're a police box, but there aren't any policemen left.'

There was a rumble, something echoing deep, deep below his feet.

'I wish that I was wrong,' Fitz said softly. 'But I'm not. It's just us, now.'

Fitz had left the ship to consider that, emerging into the sunshine and joining his friends.

Twenty four hours later, they were back on the beach. The TARDIS stood there as if it always had. The Doctor, Fitz and Anji sat nearby.

'Aren't you hot in that coat?'

Anji was hot in her bikini, even covered in the cooling suncream she'd bought ('Now with telomere fray protection', according to the bottle). The Doctor hadn't even taken off his jacket. The three of them sat on a large beach towel in the shade of the TARDIS, the Doctor intently examining the briefcase, Anji watching the Doctor, Fitz trying so hard not to look like he was ogling the sunbathing women.

'I suppose you're just trying to blend in. All the teenagers are wearing suits.'

'So?' Fitz and the Doctor asked.

'It's just odd.'

'Not particularly. Teddy boys wore suits, the mods wore suits,' Fitz reminded her. Anji hadn't really thought of it like that, but it was true. The ska bands, or whatever they'd been called, wore suits, too. It was one of those things that came around.

'The Beatles started off in suits,' she said.

'Well, they didn't start off like that,' the Doctor said, taking a small black box out of his pocket. 'But they took the suggestion well, I have to say.'

The fashion seemed to be unis.e.x, and it was almost an eighties look baggy and with shoulder pads. None of the natives, men or women, were wearing anything underneath their jackets, but they were wearing ties. Most had a metal lapel badge, a stylised monogram R:C.

'Rebel: Conform,' the Doctor said. 'The children of this generation realised that the best way to worry their parents was to pa.s.s exams, become teetotal and settle down in a steady job.'

'It doesn't sound much fun.'

'Precisely. Their parents, who are your generation, after all, don't understand it, so it really worries them.'

Anji wondered how someone who'd lived for over a hundred years could make her feel so old.

'You still look worried, Anji,' the Doctor noticed.

'You're waving a Geiger counter around. If you're doing it to rea.s.sure me, then there are better ways.'

'This?' The Doctor pa.s.sed her the device, a featureless black box the size of a audio ca.s.sette. 'This registers disturbances on the Bocca Scale.'

'And that means?'

'It can tell whether an object has pa.s.sed through different time fields. Here ' He pointed the device at her, it squawked, then started bleeping excitedly. Then pa.s.sed it over the sand, and it almost stopped bleeping. He pointed it at himself, and the bleeping quickly became a constant high*pitched tone. Finally, he aimed the device at the briefcase. The reading settled to a new rhythm bleeping more than it had for the beach, less than it had for her.

'You're saying the case has travelled through time?'

The Doctor hesitated. 'Well... it might have done. I think, to be honest, that I might have contaminated the case by touching it.'

Anji rolled her eyes.