Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 2

The blade of the knife gleamed as he advanced towards her.

'Let her go.'

They both looked up.

The Doctor stayed outside the light of the street lamp, all the colours of his clothes lost in the shadow. He was keeping his distance, but closing in, wary and confident. As if he did this sort of thing all the time.

'I said, let her go.' His voice was strong and cool and angry.

'Back off,' said the boy. He took a step back from Sam, pointing at her with the knife. 'She's ours, you know that? Marked.'

'I don't care,' said the Doctor. He stepped into the light, closing on the boy.

Suddenly he was standing between them, filling up the doorway, looming over the boy, arms folded. Sam was frozen, pressed against the door, staring at his back.

'Now,' said the Doctor. His voice had been made for grabbing people by the collar and shaking them. 'I don't know who you are, or what you want with her, but you are not going to harm her. You're just not. Do you understand that?'

Sam held her breath. The little boy was looking around, as if he was getting ready to run. It was going to be OK.

19.But the boy's arm swung back and shot out, and the Doctor was yelling, voice echoing hard from the empty buildings. The boy didn't stop to see. His footsteps were slapping away down the block, and Sam was clutching the Doctor as he sank to his knees in the doorway. Her fingers closed over his as he grabbed at his left side, at the darkening tear in his shirt.

'Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, just hold on, I'll phone for an ambulance.'

'No. No doctors.' He shook his head violently, his face bent away from her.

Somehow he'd flung an arm over her shoulder. His weight fell on her. 'No hospital. Not that bad.' Blood was running down her fingers.

'All right, then, whatever you say. We'll get you back to my flat. I'll get a taxi.'

He looked at her. His eyes were wide with pain and surprise. 'Are you all right?' he asked.

'Am I. . . ? Yeah, fine. Thanks. Let's get you home.'

Slowly she clambered to her feet, pulling him up. He leaned on her hard, his face angry as he pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket and pressed it to the wound.

'Is it OK? You're sure you don't want '

'It's just the surface, nothing vital.' He let out a shaky breath. 'Just first blood.'

'I wasn't expecting that,' said the Doctor.

'You tried to stare out a crazy kid with a knife and you didn't think he might. . . You're a frigging headcase!'

'Well, I try.'

The Doctor was sitting on the corner of her bed, his shirt and coat balled up on the milk crate Sam used as a bedside table. She applied the last of her sticking plasters to the wad of gauze over the six-inch cut in his side.

'You need st.i.tches,' she said. He shook his head, smiling. His skin was so perfect, milky and soft, as though he was new. Just out of the packet, she thought. He looked too good for this dump, this cramped and badly lit bedsit reeking of Benson and Hedges and vanilla-scented room freshener. There were little spots of mould on the bottom of the fridge. She'd have to get that, later; she didn't want that in her home.

'Thanks,' she said again. 'You saved my a.r.s.e. I mean, I think you saved my life.'

'It was nothing.'

'This isn't nothing,' she said, pressing down a loose plaster.

'Ouch! To be honest, Sam, I was surprised you hadn't taken care of him yourself.'

20.She felt a profound kick of embarra.s.sment in her guts, and looked away.

A twelve-year-old kid. Maybe she should have tried to get the knife, or just kicked the c.r.a.p out of the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. She would have known what to do, that other Sam.

Maybe she'd have known how to get the knife if she'd done that self-defence course, or gone to karate with Marilyn. If she'd done anything for the last couple of years besides watch movies and get stoned.

If she'd taken the self-defence course, or the first-aid course.

If she'd gone to Africa with Habitat for Humanity, building houses.

If she'd run off to see the universe.

'So,' she said at length. 'How do we get to San Francisco?'

Chapter Two.

If You Can Remember the Future, You Weren't Really There San Francisco was not quite feeling like itself.

There was word of a herd in Golden Gate Park, white horses that no one could catch. In the Haight a wandering tribe had spread its carpets outside the music stores and eateries. A huge bird was seen perched atop the Transamerica pyramid at dawn, golden wings scattering the sunlight.

There were alligators in the BART system, and wild Mandelbrot turtles slithered down gutters like forgotten leaves. Even the Bay was uneasy, strange waves boiling across the water like something turning in its sleep.

Down these surreal streets went a man who was not himself surreal though he was making a pretty good stab at it nonetheless.

'So,' said Fitz Kreiner from beneath his fedora, 'I understand you know a few things.'

The small man from large Appliances twitched. 'About what?'

'Oh,' said Fitz, 'all sorts of things.' He leaned across the counter, pinning the glossy brochures with his elbows and the little man with a shadowy smirk. 'The kind of things that are going on in the city at the moment. The things no one will talk about. They say you know a lot, Walter. . . '

'Look, who are you?'

Fitz tilted his fedora. 'Call me Fitzwilliam Fort,' he said, fighting to keep his accent from sliding across the Atlantic and colliding with Sam Spade. He had to admit that the trench coat was a bit much, even if it did keep out the San Francisco chill. 'Professional investigator.'

Walter eyed him. 'Oh yeah? Investigator of what?'

'Phenomena,' said Fitz. 'Lights in the sky. Mysterious animals. Lost civilisa-tions. Spontaneous human combustion. Subliminal messages in Disney films.'

Walter's eyes dashed around. 'Look, keep it down, all right? I just made a.s.sistant manager.' He motioned Fitz towards an isolated corner behind the fridges.

22.Fitz slouched after him. He'd been perfecting his San Francisco 2002 slouch for the past few days. You had to keep an eye out when trying to fit into a new time and place, how to walk and talk and dress. Was it a swaggering or a slouching or a sidling kind of time? Get the moves right, and no one would notice you were just visiting the planet.

Walter cast a furtive glance at a middle-aged couple studying a nearby Kelv-inator. 'I'm just into the UFO side of things, you know?' he murmured. 'But I've noticed all the stuff that's been happening lately. Everyone's noticed. Even the ones too mundane to admit it.'

'That's why I need your help,' said Fitz, giving him a conspiratorial smile. 'We both know the papers are keeping a lid on it, the telly '

'They can't stop us from seeing it.' Walter was nodding enthusiastically. 'But they don't want us to think about it. We've got everything from green lightning to mutes. Sightings are up by three hundred per cent. Planes have been forced down at SFO. I can get you profiles, raw visuals, anything you want.'

'I knew I'd come to the right man,' said Fitz. Walter smiled up at him. 'What about last Sat.u.r.day?'

'Oh,' said Walter. 'Sat.u.r.day. That was a dragon. Not really my field, you know?'

Fitz bought a bag of doughnuts and swung himself up into a cable car, squeezing on to one of the wooden seats. When the cable car went the wrong way and deposited him near the aquatic park, he lurked around until he found one going back up the hill.

You got a great view on one of these trips. The city had been built right over the hills around the water, flat streets crisscrossing roads that undulated up and down like ski jumps. Long streets swept down to the Bay, giving you sudden views of the sea and the sky as the cable car rolled past. The buildings were old-fashioned, painted in clean colours, purple and blue and brown. Here and there, trees were flashing with autumn colours.

So this was the Future. This was the world that made Sam Jones, in all its hi-tech, remixed-and-sampled glory. Oh, he'd had a taste of it for a day or two, back in Sweden, but this was it.

It wasn't 1984 1984, not even 2001 2001 (b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, both of those were the past now). (b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, both of those were the past now).

This was more like the past sped up to 78 r.p.m. The Bakelite touch-tone phone in his hotel room wouldn't have looked out of place in his 1963 flat. A fashion statement, not a way of life. Hmm, that ought to be his slogan.

23 It made his job so much easier. If the world still dug beatniks and Beatles, film noir and Stranger in a Strange Land Stranger in a Strange Land, he already had the cultural know-how to pull off any role he liked.

His squiggly hair blew around his face as he watched the city go past, catching flashes of detail every time the cable car pa.s.sed a cross-street. For the most part, San Francisco looked pretty much normal. Not ordinary, thought Fitz happily, as he jumped out again at the edge of Chinatown.

There! A pair of stately nomads, arguing vociferously as they led their three-humped camel along Powell Street. They wore long, embroidered robes and ragged sandals. They didn't notice as a tourist took half a roll of snaps.

In the days since the Doctor had left, Fitz had gone to meetings in cafes and school halls, read underground 'zines run off on wilting photocopiers, sat through a slide show on Atlantis, rung unlisted numbers, meditated on top of Mount Tamalpais, browsed through thick infestations of fliers and posters in bookshops and second-hand-record shops, and filled half of his little black notebook with names and places and numbers.

In the end, the list had boiled down to three individuals. The three people likely to know the most about what was happening to San Francisco, and to tell him all about it. Or, rather, to tell Fitzwilliam Fort, fearless finder of freakish phenomena.

The rain had stopped for a bit, and he was carrying the trench coat over his arm. He had on black jeans and a black yin-yang T-shirt. Little round sungla.s.ses like the ones John Lennon was still wearing in the posters in the record shops.

Funny how all the Lennon and Hendrix memorabilia carried the exact same images he'd seen a few months ago in 1968. Gordon Bennett, hadn't they done anything else else in the past thirty-four years? in the past thirty-four years?

For that matter, hadn't anyone anyone? Nice to think 'his' decade was now looked back on as some kind of golden age, but they'd been a bit slack in building the Future. Where were the robots? The jumpsuits? The jetpacks?

He'd spent enough of his childhood in that Future. Rocket ships with k.n.o.bbly control levers, roadways in the sky. It had got him through more tedious maths cla.s.ses than he could remember. It deserved deserved to be real. to be real.

Ah well. Maybe some things were just too good for this world.

'Sat.u.r.day, right,' said Eldin. 'The papers said it was a freak occurrence, of course. All the other papers. We covered every theory we could think up. Ball lightning, secret navy experiments. n.o.body thought of a dragon, though.'

24.'Not my idea,' said Fitz. He took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it away. 'One of my contacts.'

Eldin Sanchez was almost as tall as Fitz. His receding hairline was balanced by a glossy black pigtail that reached the small of his back.

They were strolling along the waterfront. A bunch of sea lions were sunning themselves down on the pier, fat slugs honking like slowed-down geese. A little boy in a home-made robot costume stood on the street corner, face painted silver, buzzing a noisemaker in his mouth in time with each mechanical movement. Fitz tossed him a quarter or maybe a nickel, he never could work out these American coins.

'Next issue we'll be covering all of the San Francisco stuff, plus this great theory that Elvis was rescued from death by a vampire gang. It explains all those sightings.' Fitz never knew whether Eldin's lopsided grin meant he was a true believer or thought it was all hilarious. 'The Interesting Times Interesting Times can always use more writers music, arts, opinion, visitors from outer s.p.a.ce, whatever can always use more writers music, arts, opinion, visitors from outer s.p.a.ce, whatever if you're up for it.'

'Maybe, possibly.' Fitz scribbled some more in his little black book.

'Lemme give you something for a start,' Eldin said. He gestured to a small shopfront across the street. A sign above the newspapered windows was hand-painted in curling foreign script. 'What language is that?'

'Arabic,' guessed Fitz.

Eldin grinned again. 'Nope. I've been checking. Not Tamil, not Burmese, not anything. n.o.body's ever seen writing like that. Except them, I guess.'

He nodded in the direction of two tall men in overcoats and fezzes who were rounding the corner. As Fitz watched, they disappeared into the shop.

'Have you tried asking them?' he said.

'The guy behind the counter said something about a travel agency,' said Eldin.

'None of them speak much English. Whoever they are, they're not telling.'

Fitz stared at the sign. ' "Humans need not apply"?'

' "If you can read this, you're on the wrong planet"? I'll tell you something else. Since I noticed that one, I've spotted a couple of other places round the city with those same signs. There's a bunch of those guys around. . . it'd make one h.e.l.l of a story for the paper.'

'I'll see what I can find out,' promised Fitz.

They'd reached the pier where Eldin worked his day job, making bookings for a water taxi. They stopped to buy ice cream from a push-cart on the corner.

Mountain Blast? What the h.e.l.l flavour was that? Ben and Jerry's had been the same. The Doctor had insisted they go there as soon as they'd landed.

25 Sam had groaned when she saw the shop sitting on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, but she'd liked the ice cream anyway, and when she Say something about something else, now.

'Umm,' he said, as one of the Mandelbrots slithered over his foot. There was a little flock of them, flat turtle bodies glissandoing with colour as they munched on rubbish. 'Anybody got any idea of where these things come from?

What are they?'

Eldin shrugged. 'Digital pigeons, I guess.'

Fitz had the sneaking feeling that what the Doctor really wanted him to do was to be exposed to as many of the Things Happening here as possible. In the vain hope that something bizarre and wonderful would leap out and dazzle him.

And then his cynical sh.e.l.l of Fitzness would shatter, and he'd be overwhelmed with that particularly fluffy Doctorish kind of awe.

Well, sorry, Herr Doktor Herr Doktor, but I've managed to keep my cool in the face of the miracles. Even when I looked up to the horizon and saw one of those weighty, fluttering blurs that might just possibly be a dragon, and the cigarette fell out of my mouth. All I felt was sorry for any poor sod who might be standing under the thing.

He got off the electric trolley bus at the corner of Market and Powell, and stared at the arcane mantra 'www.yahoo.com' printed on the rear advert panel as it pulled away. Just the third contact left, less than a block from his hotel.

He pa.s.sed the street juggler in his usual place by the creaking cable-car turntable, performing his silent, mysterious tricks with the gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s. He cut a dignified figure in his top hat and white face, the rainbow braces his only concession to s...o...b..z garishness.