Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 16

began. 'D'you think these attacks on your mind might have to do with the ley lines, or something?'

'I've believed sillier things before breakfast,' said the Doctor. 'Why?'

Fitz pointed in the direction of the clouds. 'Well, it's just that's what happened when Kyra was doing her ceremony last night ' The words. .h.i.t the Doctor like a lightning bolt. He spun round almost in midair to stare at Fitz. Fitz sped up to get it all out before the Doctor talked all over him. ' when you had your first attack, but this time it seems to be staying around, like it's been pinned '

'Fitz, that's. . . it's. . . yes yes! You may have just saved if that's that's you've ' you've '

He gave up on the logjam of words and grabbed Fitz.

'Ohh no,' said Fitz, and turned his mouth away. The Doctor just nearly lifted him off his feet with enthusiasm. Then he turned on his heel and bolted for the Bug. 'Come on!'

In the car she heard the hooves approaching.

'Oh G.o.d, not again.' She reached out towards the front seat. The Doctor was driving no hands free so she grabbed Fitz's hands again, and held on.

Just let me remember who I am, she thought as the Wild Hunt closed in, shrieking pounding clattering drowning out the engine, and her head split second later it was gone, like a blink, leaving just a lingering sense of sweat and stampede.

Fitz was exhaling with relief, in time with her. 'And remember,' he said.

'Always wear your safety belt, in case an extradimensional force tries to drag you screaming through the streets of San Francisco.'

She grinned, nearly laughed. Two minutes ago maybe his jokes would have been grounds for justifiable homicide, but for who she was right now they were just what she needed.

What were the odds of getting a really freaky roll of the dice? One where they'd be able to tell there was a difference?

'Are you all right?' asked the Doctor from the front seat.

'My name's still Sam Jones,' she said. 'And I still want a cigarette.' She fumbled in her pocket for her Benson and Hedges. 'Anything beyond that, I'll worry about later.'

'This is very wrong,' said the Doctor.

They were in a clearing in Golden Gate Park. The Bug was parked in a street somewhere nearby it had been easy to slip into the park, despite the 104 curfew. Fitz had rummaged in the Bug's boot until he'd found a torch. He'd kept switching it on to check where they were, off again in case they were seen.

Despite that, it hadn't taken him long to find the place where Kyra had gone all mystical, and now the Doctor was standing there, staring worriedly at nothing they could see.

He raised a finger. 'Look. There.'

Now she could just make out the thread in the moonlight. It was just a faint reflection, maybe a foot or two long, about a metre off the ground. A taut strand of spiderweb hanging in the air, not attached to anything.

'What is it?' Fitz asked.

'It's only partially rotated into three dimensions,' he said. He pushed his finger right through the glimmering line, without affecting it. 'That's why it looks one-or two-dimensional. The rest is still perpendicular to what we can see woven into higher s.p.a.ce, or the time vortex. . . '

'Yes,' said Fitz, 'but what is it?'

'It's what your friend mistook for a ley line.' The Doctor was scuttling around the silver thread, peering at it from every angle, getting more and more agi-tated. 'It's part of the fabric of s.p.a.ce-time itself. What DNA is to your genetic code, this stuff is to biodata. And it's all just exposed here now. Personality, history, memory, perception, all vulnerable. . . '

'I'm going to have to ask you again, aren't I?' said Fitz.

The Doctor said, 'It's me.'

And Sam felt the answers burst in her head. It all made sense she couldn't believe it and the wave of connections was spreading outward through her brain faster than she could give voice to them. 'Christ! Yeah! Y'see?' she blurted. 'This biodata it's the stuff of mine that got rearranged to turn me into the other me. And this is the Doctor's, and it's been pulled into real s.p.a.ce where anyone can have a go at it.'

'So it's his timeline?'

'Nah, more than that it's also connected to who he is right now. It's wired straight into his brain. That's how they can mess with what he sees.'

The Doctor was glowing with excitement. 'Yes, yes, exactly! When it's exposed like that, the biodata can be disturbed by certain psi phenomena. Or by someone who can reach into the higher dimensions. Like our friend back there.' He mimed plucking the thread, like a guitar string.

'He could change your past past the same way,' added Sam. the same way,' added Sam.

'Well, it'd be a little more tricky, but '105.

The rush of thoughts kept coming. ''Cause it's all the same moment, really the past, the present, they're all. . . ' She pressed her hands to her forehead.

There was more, more that made sense, but she couldn't reach the words.

'Easy,' said Fitz, putting a hand on her shoulder. 'You'll pull a neuron.'

Less than a minute, and she'd had more real thoughts than she had in four years of sorting video boxes. And she hadn't even found the limit of how much this made sense yet.

The Doctor exhaled. 'So, Fitz, does that answer your question? Mine is: how did it get out here?'

And she had an answer for that, too. 'It broke into real s.p.a.ce when you regenerated. Like you said.'

'Yes, but only at an infinitesimal point. It shouldn't affect the rest of the world. . . '

'Except in really weird circ.u.mstances, you said. So something '

She saw the light bulb go on in his eyes. 'Such as having a black hole open up right next door. Of course! It must have stretched my biodata like like cheese on a pizza.' He mimed wildly. 'Who knows how far.'

'And it might even have to do with why Blondie turned into me,' she went on. 'I mean, if it was touching your biodata that created her in the first place, then no wonder she got changed again when she ran into a big clump of it. It makes sense. There must be a lot of those strands in the '

'Stop!' the Doctor shouted. Sam flinched.

'Don't say it. Don't even think think it. We don't know if he can read our thoughts, remember!' His hand poked frantically at the metal stud at the back of his neck. it. We don't know if he can read our thoughts, remember!' His hand poked frantically at the metal stud at the back of his neck.

'That's what he wants wants.'

'To know what your biodata is?'

'No. To know where it is. Imagine if he found the anomaly itself all those threads in the one place the whole ball of string. He could turn me into whatever he wanted. Past or present.'

Sam couldn't help it. 'Looks like the shoe is on the other foot,' she told the Doctor.

His shoulders slumped. He said nothing.

Chapter Ten.

Somewhere, Just Out of Sight, the Unicorns Are Being Gathered.

'A little lower and to the left,' said the Doctor. 'Yes, right there, that's it!'

I feel, thought Sam as she squatted on her haunches, like an utter prat.

She arched her back, trying to keep her balance as she leaned left. Somehow expecting to feel that intangible string when it touched the back of her neck.

'Good. Down just a hair more. . . '

She hunched and stopped. The sharp tug started inside her spine. It wouldn't let her go any lower.

'That's it,' she said. 'I've got it.'

'So have I,' said Fitz, crouched next to her. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt. Out of the corner of her eye she could just see the silver thread running between them, under his hair, lodged between the back of his neck and the b.u.t.ton of his implant.

'Good,' said the Doctor again. 'Now start rocking your heads from side to side. Gently!'

She did. He swayed dizzily in front of her. The wrenching feeling in her nerves tightened. Somewhere behind her, at right angles to the s.p.a.ce she could see, the hidden connection between the b.u.t.ton and its spinal anchor was sc.r.a.ping across the knife edge of the biodata strand.

'What if the thread breaks?' she gritted.

'It can't,' the Doctor declared. 'It's a philosophical impossibility.'

'Couldn't it be a scientific impossibility instead?'

muttered Fitz through clenched teeth. 'I've got more confidence in those.'

She could feel the disc pulling. The more she filed through, the more it was bent out of place, the more her back and neck were catching on fire. Maybe this thing has pain capabilities, maybe he knows what we're trying to do because he can read our minds, maybe he can Her head jerked forward. The b.u.t.ton hit the gra.s.s with a muted thump.

107 She nearly fell face first to the ground, but the Doctor caught her shoulder.

He retrieved the disc, flipped it like a coin. She held out her hand automatically, and it landed in her palm. 'One transmitter down, two to go,' he said.

She reached for the back of her neck. It felt like there ought to be a bit of mangled circuitry sticking out. But the skin was untouched, the damage must have all happened in dimension seven or something.

Fitz was still sawing away. 'This isn't doing anything bad to you, is it?' he asked the Doctor, grimacing.

The Doctor waved irritably. 'I'm fine. It's not affecting me at all. So long as you keep the rhododendrons away.'

A tearing rasp of metal, fingernails down the blackboard of her eardrums.

Fitz's b.u.t.ton fell away. He groped for it in the dark, while the Doctor took up his position on the thread, kneeling in the gra.s.s and stretching his neck backward.

'Interesting,' he breathed, as he moved his head softly from side to side.

'Hitting different points on the strand seems to have different effects. Like stimulating different areas of the brain during surgery. . . This time I'm getting sudden, vivid memories of being ten years old. Getting caught skinny-dipping with a pretty female cousin of my acquaintance.'

He frowned. 'Except that I don't think I ever was.'

'What?' said Sam. 'Skinny-dipping, or getting caught?'

'Or ten years old?' put in Fitz.

The Doctor flashed a smile from an odd angle. 'Well, my people do frown on all three. . . '

Fitz was comparing their implants. 'Look,' he said, squinting in the moonlight. 'Yours is more complicated.'

Hers did seem to have a lot more fiddly electronic bits etched across the surface and somehow she knew the Doctor's would be at least as complicated as hers.

'I wonder how much he knows about my biodata,' she muttered.

'Probably quite a lot,' said the Doctor. He didn't seem to care about looking daft as he shimmied against the thread. 'He probably came here knowing all about the biodata. If he can perceive and manipulate higher spatial dimensions, then he's uniquely suited to studying it.'

The b.u.t.ton tore off. He pitched over backward. Somehow, his dignity remained unscathed.

Fitz said quietly, 'Kyra said she'd been mapping these ley lines all over the city.'

108.

The Doctor slowly gathered himself up, instantly serious. His eyes searched through the still darkness of the park. 'The whole city must be a web of vulnerable points. . . '

Sam found herself looking out over the landscape, thinking of the skyline beyond, all those tiny, glittering points of light.

When she looked back, something else was glittering in the forest. The Doctor and Fitz were staring at something, a shape emerging from the trees. She caught a hint of pale movement, a glimmer as the moonlight reflected from something long and sharp.

The Doctor was suddenly running right at the creature as though he had known it was about to turn, to bolt back into the trees. Fitz switched on the flashlight and waved the tiny circle of light across the forest, uselessly, picking out the vanishing unicorn, the Doctor plunging into the woods after it.

A is for Ant.

The man known as Griffin was in a library, just before closing time. A fine thread of biodata ran through the back wall of the building, an n-dimensional line of information spun out finer than the finest skein. It ran at an angle, crossing the car park, pa.s.sing harmlessly through trees and light poles and a snuffling dog, puncturing the building.

Griffin sat at a table in one corner of the library, a children's picture book clutched in his lap, an arm's length from the thread. When he chose to, he could look through the wall, see the dog shiver, nosing around at something mysterious in the empty s.p.a.ce. The lower species did have some capacity to sense the higher reality, the real world of which they were a tiny, flattened outpost. But not much capacity. The dog went on its way, its encounter with the thread already leaking from its three-dimensional brain.

B is for Bear.

Four-dimensional, if you thought in terms of s.p.a.ce-time.

C is for Cat.

He had come here to tie off the string.

That would be all it would take. A single knot in the biodata. One continuous stimulus, jolting the Doctor's nervous system till he was unable to function. It would have to be a proper n-dimensional knot, but Griffin could tie one of those as easily as tying his shoelace.