Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 8

'You'll really have to ask him.'

'So, Ms Gordon, you're not from the future?'

'No. I'm from this time zone.'

'So how did you and Baskerville meet?'

'He contacted me when he arrived in this time. He had access to historical records, and he knew from them that we were destined to meet.'

'That must be quite rea.s.suring.'

She c.o.c.ked her head. 'How so?'

'To know you make your mark in history. Did he tell you how your adventures together ended?'

'No.' She hesitated. 'The records are fragmentary, and history can be changed.'

'I see.'

She turned her attention back to the control box. 'We're ready for the demonstration.'

Anji mulled it over. With the whole of history to choose from, where would you go? She'd had this conversation before, back at school, then at university. Then again with Dave. Her boyfriend had wanted to go a few years in the future, but when pressed why, he'd mumbled something about wanting to buy all six Star Wars Star Wars films on DVD in the sales. And here she was a few years in her future, an experienced time traveller. Ironically, as soon as she'd stepped into a time machine, the only place she wanted to go was back home. films on DVD in the sales. And here she was a few years in her future, an experienced time traveller. Ironically, as soon as she'd stepped into a time machine, the only place she wanted to go was back home.

'This is a precise process? You could take me anywhere?'

Baskerville nodded. 'To the square metre and the second. But I think you've got somewhere in mind.'

'I have,' she admitted.

Anji realised she could go home. Proper home. February 2001. Or perhaps a day or two earlier. Turn back the clock. Go back to Dave. She needn't change the course of history, she realised. When she'd met the Doctor he'd been fighting some monsters called the Kulan well, she could help him out, tell him how to win.

'The turn of the millennium, Europe,' Baskerville guessed.

'How did you know?'

'Your clothing. Millennium retro. It must have cost you a fortune.'

'Looking at those old TV shows, I'm sure I'd feel right at home there,' Anji told her.

'Malady, are you sure?' the Doctor asked. She could hear the anger in his voice.

'It's what we agreed, remember?' Anji said quickly. 'There's no catch?' she asked Baskerville.

'This is the demo, of course,' Baskerville told her. 'It only works for ten minutes at a time.'

'All right,' she heard the Doctor say. 'Ten minutes. No more. I don't see the harm in that.'

She could still send Dave a warning. She had her mobile. No, wait don't send Dave anything. Send herself herself a text message. But what? She wouldn't believe it. More than that wouldn't she remember getting the message, if she'd sent herself one? a text message. But what? She wouldn't believe it. More than that wouldn't she remember getting the message, if she'd sent herself one?

'Er... sorry, hang on.' Anji found her phone.

'We have as much time as you need,' Dee chuckled, pleased with her pun. Then she saw the phone. 'Excuse me, what are you doing?'

'Just checking something.'

'That's a phone.'

Yeah, well done, Anji thought then she realised that by now mobile phones were probably the size of matchsticks.

'You're not to make phone calls from here.'

Anji had a plan.

'I want to make one from there there. It's a pre*arranged signal, to prove your machine is genuine.'

'Explain.'

'In the past, I will use this, er, antique phone to send a text message to a prearranged number. Then, when I get back to this time, I can check the records to see if the message really was sent.'

On the other side of the gla.s.s, she could see Dee and the Doctor mulling it over.

'I don't think that will count as interfering in history or anything,' Anji added quickly. 'It's just a simple code phrase. It's a dead letter number. Otherwise well, this could all be a fake, couldn't it?'

She'd come up with the ideal message to keep Dave out of harm's way.

DAVE, GO TO HMV, THEY'VE GOT CHEAP STAR WARS DVDS Dee nodded. 'OK. So what are the exact co*ordinates?'

'Brussels, February 2001.' She gave the precise time and date.

'Brussels? You've got the whole of history to choose from, and you'd go to Brussels in February? According to this, it's raining there.'

Anji shrugged and smiled. 'It's probably raining in Paris, too.'

Chapter Six.

Time Trip 'So, how do you steer a time machine?' the Doctor asked, looking for pointers.

Dee indicated the control panel. 'It will take a few minutes to align the four dimensional vectors.'

'You can work the machine on your own?'

'Baskerville taught me. The operating principles are very simple.'

'I can hear my ears burning,' Baskerville said, his voice relayed by a tinny speaker. 'I taught Dee everything she knows.'

'You could teach me?' the Doctor asked.

'For the right price.' He turned his attention to Anji. 'Are you ready?'

Anji nodded.

'Lower the screen,' he told Dee.

Dee touched a control and a shutter slid smoothly over the window.

'Hang on,' the Doctor said, 'I thought I was here to watch this demonstration. I can't very well do that with a metal wall in the way.'

'You can still hear us, though?' he heard Anji ask.

'I can.'

'The time energies need to be carefully contained,' Baskerville explained.

'I see,' the Doctor said thoughtfully.

Anji looked around the room. 'I still don't see the time machine.'

'That's because we're in Brussels.'

The whole room was gone.

The sky was grey, it was just as cold as Anji remembered.

'I didn't even... I mean, that was so smooth.'

Baskerville smiled. 'Your phone is beeping,' he told her.

It was finding a network. 'Excuse me,' she told Baskerville. He nodded, looking a little irritated.

Anji had never enjoyed sending text messages. She'd had an email account since university, SMS was an absurd backward step from that. She tapped away at the phone, trying to get the right letters up she was out of practice, and hadn't realised what a knack was needed. It took her a full minute to select the right message and send it to Dave.

MESSAGE SENT.

Only then did she look around.

'It's just like I remember it. There's meant to be a statue,' she told Baskerville. 'A little boy... it was over there.'

'It still is,' Baskerville said, pointing it out.

A dark bronze statue, less than two feet tall. Anji frowned. 'Wait, it wasn't there before. It was...' she turned through one hundred and eighty degrees, feeling disorientated. 'There.'

A dark bronze statue, less than two feet tall. Anji frowned. 'How can it...?'

Baskerville hurried to her side. 'Nothing's the matter,' he rea.s.sured her. 'The time transfer process has made you a little dizzy. It's deja vu, that's all. You need to concentrate. The statue is over there, just where it should be.'

'Yes... yes.' Anji nodded. That made sense. 'We can walk around?'

'Of course. Do whatever you need to do to satisfy yourself that the process is genuine.'

Now she was here, now she'd sent the message, Anji wasn't sure what else she could do. She couldn't think of anything to do the first time she'd come here. She wondered whether she should try to track herself down. After all, her earlier self wouldn't be that far away.

'You've been here before?' Baskerville asked.

'Yes...' The dizziness came back.

She saw herself standing in front of the Mannikin Pis, with Dave.

'I'm really not sure Brussels was quite the right choice to be a wild and spontaneous thing,' her earlier self said. It was odd everyone always said that you didn't look or sound like you thought you did. Anji was a little disappointed to see she was exactly the same as she'd always pictured herself. A little smarter dressed, perhaps.

'Are you all right?' Baskerville asked.

'You tell me,' she said. That That voice sounded distant and unfamiliar. voice sounded distant and unfamiliar.

'Malady, concentrate.'

'I'm Malady,' she said, reminding herself. She mustn't forget her a.s.signment.

'You are Malady Chang.'

Of course she was. Why was he telling her?

'Take a deep breath,' Baskerville suggested. 'Look at the skyline. What do you see?'

'That Atom thing.'

'The Atomium,' Baskerville said. 'Take a good look. Concentrate on that. Steel spheres, connected with thick metal tubes.'

She saw it. It really was quite striking, she had to admit it. There were escalators and stairs in those tubes. Yes. Anji stared at it. The solidity of it was rea.s.suring. It looked faintly ridiculous, of course it had been built to represent the future in a generation before she'd been born. It looked like a relic from an abandoned future.

'I half expect Thunderbird Three to launch out of the middle of it,' she laughed.

'Thunderbird Three?' Baskerville asked, puzzled.

Anji felt dizzy. Ever since she'd arrived, she'd felt disorientated.

'I need to sit down,' she told Baskerville.

'Are you ill?' he asked, his voice full of concern.