Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 9

Was she? Anji didn't know. She'd been fine a few minutes ago, but now felt jet lagged, woozy... her vision was blurred, she'd got a headache.

Deep breaths.

She just wanted things to be like they were before.

Think about real, solid things, things that really existed like men with clocks for faces and giant cyborgs at the end of time and tigers that talked and poodles with hands and aliens, always aliens, with bulbous black eyes and insect*like claws, and fur and sharp teeth.

When she said 'before', she didn't mean 'before she met the Doctor'. She and Dave had been in trouble. There was no doubt about it. At first, yes, it had been wonderful. Not perfect, never say perfect, but as close as she'd got. Someone she could trust, someone she could confide in, talk to, learn from, share a bed with. It had been wonderful, perfect... there's that word again. But it had gone wrong, somewhere along the line. It wasn't something he'd done, and she didn't think it was anything she'd done, but it stopped firing on all cylinders. The reason they'd come to Brussels in the first place was to find that spark again. But her heart wasn't in it G.o.d, the fact she was talking about what they had like it was some knackered old car should have been enough to prove that. She'd thought it was over, that she'd stopped feeling anything for him, but then he'd died and it had been her fault, and she'd cloned him, and come back here; all the time it was Dave that represented everything she'd left behind and so she'd clung to Dave. Clung to him, like that Christmas at her parents' house, when they'd snuck upstairs, only planning a quick cuddle, then they'd ended up with her on top of him, and she had her hand over his mouth because they had to be quiet, and he wasn't being quiet, and then she'd screamed so loud her dad had shouted upstairs to make sure she was all right... and it had all gone wrong, and she didn't know when, and she didn't know why, but she just wanted things to be like they were before. But even that, even there, her memory was cheating on her. Dave and...

'How many spheres are there?' she asked.

'Pardon?' Baskerville asked, a little disconcerted.

She was staring at the Atomium. It was back in place, everything was normal. No s.p.a.ce rockets. Just a wet Brussels afternoon.

'How many spheres? I'm trying to count them, but... there're seven. No six, if you count the one in the middle. But that doesn't make sense.'

'There are '

'Guh,' Anji said. She didn't want to say it, she was thinking... she was thinking guh. Guh. guh. Guh. Her tongue felt stiff, swollen, her eyes didn't seem to be working, either. There was blood in her mouth. 'Eeg, gak, wach, fug, gugh, whuh!' Her tongue felt stiff, swollen, her eyes didn't seem to be working, either. There was blood in her mouth. 'Eeg, gak, wach, fug, gugh, whuh!'

She felt calm, she was clinging to Dave, everything was going to be all right.

Dee rushed into the room, first*aid kit in hand. Malady was lying flat on the floor, convulsing, jaw clenched.

'What the h.e.l.l happened?'

'I don't know,' Baskerville admitted. 'Where's the Doctor?'

'Once you set off, he got bored at staring at the shutter. I sent him back to the office with a printout. It'll keep him quiet.'

'Good.' Baskerville leaned over Malady, prised the mobile phone from her fingers and turned it off.

'Malady,' he said softly, into the Asian girl's ear. 'Malady. It's all right. You are back in the sending room. Do you understand? You are in Athens, back in the sending room.'

'Guh.'

'Epilepsy?' Dee suggested, 'There wasn't a trigger,' Baskerville murmured. 'She's an intelligence field agent, she'll have been tested for that. Screened. Or they should have done. Help me restrain her. Be careful.'

He had removed his silk handkerchief. He slid it into the girl's mouth, dabbing away the spittle and the blood. Dee opened her eyelid. The eyes were back to normal, the pupils dilated.

'She's settling down.'

Malady's eyes snapped open. She looked panicked.

'You bit your tongue,' Baskerville whispered in her ear. 'You have a handkerchief in your mouth to stop you doing that again.'

Malady nodded, relaxing a little.

'We don't know what happened,' Dee told her.

'You are safe,' Baskerville a.s.sured her. 'You are out of danger.'

Those words relaxed her, as he knew they would. He checked his watch.

'When the ten minutes are up, she should be fine. See to the Doctor.'

Dee Gordon found the Doctor sitting behind Baskerville's desk, the printout unspooled all around him.

'Is everything all right?' he asked.

She smiled rea.s.suringly. 'Of course.'

'It's a lovely place you've got here.'

'Yes, it will be a shame to see it go.'

'You're relocating?'

'Well... yes. This afternoon.'

The Doctor was frowning.

'The Third Prophecy?' Dee prompted.

The Doctor shrugged.

'They didn't tell you? They sent you to Athens today and didn't tell you?'

'Ah. The security service works on a need to know basis. I clearly didn't need to know.' The Doctor's mouth twitched, as though he was trying to stop himself smirking. 'Are you going to tell me?'

Dee checked her watch. 'In two hours, Athens will be devastated by an unexpected tidal wave. We're powerless to prevent it it's already history. We'll be killed if we're in the area. The loss of life will be immense.'

The Doctor shifted a little uncomfortably. 'It will? And you're happy to '

'Of course I'm not happy,' Dee snapped. 'But we can't warn people. History would change. We can't change history.'

'I thought that was rather the point of Baskerville's plan.'

Dee paused. 'That's different,' she a.s.serted, unsure why. 'This has to happen, to prove to you that Baskerville's from the future. He knows about the disaster because '

' because he read about it in the historical records.'

'Precisely.'

'Which are fragmentary, and history can be changed.'

The Doctor was over at the window, looking down at the city, taking his last chance to.

'Two hours?'

'At midday.'

He looked lost in thought. Finally, he turned back to her. 'So what were the First and Second Prophecies? And, more importantly, what's the Fourth?'

Anji was fully conscious and had been for some time, but it still felt like she was just waking up. That was the first thing she had to deal with.

She felt like she was hung over. Anji was aware that Baskerville was sitting nearby. She was sitting up, which was also a little disorientating.

Should she tell him?

She'd had an adverse reaction to time travel. Something had gone wrong, and it wasn't something Baskerville had been expecting or was prepared for.

Anji had worked it out. It was her. She didn't pretend to know everything about how time travel worked. h.e.l.l, she didn't pretend to know anything very much. But when she'd seen herself in the past met herself, to all intents and purposes it must have caused some sort of time*travel equivalent of a short circuit.

And she couldn't tell Baskerville, because then she'd have to explain exactly why her 2001 self only looked about three months younger, and was wearing the same jacket. She'd have to tell him she was already a time traveller.

'Malady, my dear, are you all right?' Baskerville seemed genuinely concerned.

'Yes. I feel a lot better.' She did, too.

'That has never happened before,' he told her. 'I'm afraid I'm at a loss to explain what did happen. But before your... attack, you did get a chance to see that the time machine works?'

'Yes,' she said. 'It works, I guess it's me that doesn't.'

Baskerville gave a small chuckle. 'You'll tell your government that it works? That it's worth taking a risk for?'

'I need to consult the Doctor.'

'Of course? Shall we go through now?'

Fitz was quite capable of simultaneously thinking that he was seriously out of condition and in need of a cigarette.

The old bloke probably didn't smoke. He definitely wasn't out of condition. It was a bit embarra.s.sing, actually, to be caught up by a pensioner, when Fitz had a pretty good head start.

At least, the old guy was a bit out of breath, Fitz reflected, between wheezes.

He'd chased him all the way up Katherine Street, then down alongside a half*scale train line there weren't any trains, of course, that would be too easy.

Cosgrove caught up with him by a big circus tent. He had big hands, and a good firm grip. He managed to grab Fitz's shoulder and pull him down to the gra.s.s.

The good*looking girl he was with caught up with them by the time Cosgrove had given Fitz a couple of good kicks to the ribs. 'Oh no,' Fitz said, 'I bet you know martial arts, don't you? Go on, then, get on with it.'

'I'm a quantum physicist,' she a.s.sured him, in an impossibly posh accent. 'Who is he?' she asked Cosgrove.

'Good question.' Together they dragged Fitz back up to his feet. 'Who are you? Why were you watching us?'

'I'm just a touris' He didn't get a chance to finish, because Cosgrove punched him in the stomach.

'No you aren't. Now, lad, tell me who you are, and I'll stop hurting you. That's not too complicated for you to grasp, is it?'

'No,' Fitz agreed.

'It's not here, is it?' Cosgrove growled. 'The rendezvous isn't here. So where is it?'

He grabbed hold of Fitz, started shaking him.

'Athens,' Fitz admitted.

'Athens? Athens, Greece?'

'No Athens the fourth stop down from Kings Cross on the Northern Line. Of course Athens Gree'

Cosgrove punched him in the stomach again.

'Leave him, Jonah,' the blonde said. 'You're really hurting him.'

'Leave him to me, Penny.'

Cosgrove let him drop back down. Fitz stood, glad that his ribs seemed to be roughly where he expected them to be.

'There's no need to worry,' the old man told the young woman, turning to rea.s.sure her.

While he was looking the other way, Fitz scarpered.

It wasn't the best plan in the world, in all probability, but it was the best plan he could come up with, and at least it delayed him being punched again.

Cosgrove twisted back round, tried to grab him, but slipped on the gra.s.s and fell over.

Fitz would have laughed out loud if he could spare the breath.

The girl was helping him up, rather than coming after him. He hadn't bought much time, but his luck had definitely changed. He could get lost here at the circus it was full of visitors and performers, and was a maze of tents and caravans.

He rounded the corner of the main tent, and came face to face with the two blokes in trenchcoats.

They looked very familiar. It was then that Fitz remembered seeing them back in the Mediterranean. They'd been after Malady. They were doing well to get here so quickly.

'Halt. You are the time traveller. You are the one known as the Doctor.'

'Er...'