Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 29

'He wanted to show he trusted me. Told me everything the other Sam knew.

And she knew a lot.' She was losing him. 'About Gallifrey. The Time Lords. And the real real old days.' old days.'

He paused, considering.

Sam could just see over his shoulder. The Doctor had the pliers out, and was frantically twisting his wrist to turn the invisible blade. Almost reaching The unnaturalist stepped up close to her, blocking her view, and she almost screamed with frustration.

'Go on,' he said.

179 'Sure. He's the one foretold in the ancient prophecies of his world. The One who will lead his people out of the Time of Darkness, and unite them against the great evil that will face the universe. . . '

'Undoubtedly. That doesn't tell me about his pedigree.' He lowered his face to the rack, his eyes fixed on her from beside her head. 'Tell me something useful,' he murmured insistently. 'How can I cla.s.sify him?'

'Well he's a hybrid, you know that. A Gallifreyan not born of Gallifreyan, the one who unites the two races and brings good old human niceness into their alien society. Aliens need that, y'know.'

'A human hybrid.' She saw the contempt in his curling lip. 'Pseudoscientific nonsense. There's no evidence,' he repeated.

'He's allowed to be different. He's got a prophecy and everything.'

'Is he?'

'Yeah,' she said, her eyes wide. 'He's cosmic, man. And he's got a wise old spirit who guides him '

She regretted that last bit before it even made it out of her mouth, but the unnaturalist was already lost in thought. 'Hybridisation could explain certain biodata irregularities. . . Not that I'm saying it's possible, you understand. But half-human on which side?'

'His mother's,' she guessed.

'But there's more to him than that.' His face was closing in, and she couldn't twist away: the pins kept her locked there as he stared. 'What is he on his father's father's side?' side?'

'A Time Lord, of course.'

'Is that all?'

'I suppose. . . '

'No. Not good enough,' he said hotly. She had a sudden image of him taking a bite out of her cheek. 'There's still room for ambiguity. I don't care which answer it is, but I need to know. . . '

'No,' said the Doctor. 'The story ends here.'

His voice was low, raspy, defiant. The unnaturalist turned, and she could see the Doctor standing in the far corner, leaning heavily on the bank of Gothic clockwork. Neither of them had seen him move.

Already amber and red lights were starting to flicker on the Doctor's face, as the machine went out of kilter. 'I don't know what you were doing with our biodata samples,' he said flatly. 'But if you don't get over here and fix what I've done right now, they'll be well and truly cooked.'

180.

And he smiled. And Sam felt a hot shivery feeling building in her, as the Doctor ducked out of the panicked unnaturalist's way and ran towards her, loosening the fasteners that held her down.

Now she was running with him, keeping pace with his every step, leaving the unnaturalist working frantically at his console behind them. She was running, the way he'd run after the unicorn, charging past the tubas and guitars and through the door. Within moments they'd piled into the Bug, and the Doctor had kicked it into gear, and she could feel the laughter bubbling up 'cause she never thought it would happen but she'd made it out alive alive.

'You did it,' she started to say, but he cut her off with a look.

'Thank you,' he said.

And the words that made it out of her mouth and worked their way back to her brain were, Jesus, ' We We did it. Whoa. Not bad.' did it. Whoa. Not bad.'

He grinned and shifted gears for the hill. 'Well I was impressed. That was a textbook number eleven, Sam. Death by exposition. And where did you learn all that?'

She didn't answer. When she'd sat down in the pa.s.senger seat, she'd felt something jammed in the pocket of her jeans. Now she'd finally got it out, and unfolded the wadded piece of paper. She just stared at the return ticket voucher, trembling in her hands.

So she'd had a choice all along. And if she'd known that she'd never have chosen to rescue him, would she?

She'd never chosen anything. She'd just sort of come across things, her job, her friends, where to get p.i.s.sed on a Sat.u.r.day night. She would have got on the plane, telling herself the whole way back to London that she had no other choice.

That Sam had never chosen to start shooting up every day. She would've just sort of drifted into it. Sam had never chosen to start shooting up every day. She would've just sort of drifted into it.

'I said, where did you learn all that?'

She jumped. 'All what?'

'About the prophecy. What you told him in there.'

'Oh, that. Babylon 5 Babylon 5.' He looked blank. 'I pinched it from an episode I saw a while back.'

'Oh.' For a moment he looked relieved. 'Never mind, then.'

'Wait a minute '

'We've got to get to Berkeley immediately!' said the Doctor. 'We lost a lot of time while we were in there. My TARDIS is getting close to breaking point.'

181 'But Fitz '

'Is in no more danger in there than he would be outside. There's no more time for another rescue attempt right now. We can free him properly once we've dealt with the scar.'

And it was true, she realised. Those little twinges she'd been feeling every half-hour or so lately were the Hunt, moving through her more quickly than ever before. The pendulum was swinging faster, and she had to accept he knew what he had to do.

What they they had to do. had to do.

Overhead the clouds were a solid wall, moving inexorably from all sides towards a single point ahead of them.

Chapter Seventeen.

What Lies, Behind Us.

Eldin woke with a start. The phone was trilling in his ear and his arm had gone to sleep.

He fumbled for the receiver with his left hand, dragging his right arm around like a dead weight, and knocked the alarm clock off the bedside table. It glared 23:11 at him from the floor. ' Bueno? Bueno? ' '

'It's Sam Jones,' said the phone. 'I've got a message from the Doctor.'

'Wha Oh, the Doctor! OK, I'm awake.'

'You could be in danger,' said Sam. 'We think someone's after the creatures.

I just called the Basardi and no one answered. We need you to '

'Whoa, wait, hold on,' said Eldin. 'If something's going down, I want to talk to you about it face to face, you know? I gotta meet up with you.'

'We don't have time '

'Look, just tell me, where are you? Where can I find you?'

Sam hesitated. 'We're at Kyra Skye's. Bye.'

She hung up.

Eldin fell back on the bed, ma.s.saging his tingling arm.

She'd known, somehow. She'd sounded scared. Not panicked, but hurried, angry. There was no way they were at Kyra's: that had been a brush-off.

No point in phoning it in, then.

He closed his eyes, lying diagonally across the bed. It had sounded like a simple favour for a useful source, the sort he did every day. Let him know where he could find someone. First point him to the Basardi, then this Doctor.

But that voice on the phone just now had sounded far too serious about it for comfort.

He pulled himself back upright and groped for the phone, figuring he could call her back, find out what was happening. But he slowed to a halt, as it sank in that he didn't have any way of reaching them. He didn't know. He couldn't know.

183.

What would have happened if he'd got their location? Would he have followed Mr Griffin when he went to find them, tried to sniff out a story? Or would he not have given it a second thought?

Slowly he sank back into the bed, his thoughts becoming muddy again, feeling more and more lost as he drifted back to sleep. Something big was happening, and he didn't have the first clue what it was.

Or what he'd done.

'Another Griffin in sheep's clothing?' asked the Doctor from the next payphone over. Sam nodded and fumbled for more change, craning her neck to watch for Hench silhouettes.

She was running out of people from Fitz's notebook to call. Her first call had been to some bloke called Carl, who'd hung up in fear after hearing the Doctor's name. When she'd called the Basardi safe house, the phone had just rung and rung.

'I think he blew the Basardi network,' she said. 'They knew where to find the other creatures '

'So they've been rolled up,' said the Doctor, almost dancing with impatience at his phone. 'Probably literally.'

Finally she heard someone answer on the other end of the Doctor's phone line. 'Is it ready?' he asked without preamble. A two-second pause, and he hung up and threw back his head in frustration. 'Gaaaaargh!'

'I guess the stabiliser's not fixed yet,' she said.

With a sharp sigh the Doctor turned and headed for the Bug. 'We've got the time now we might as well go and warn the unicorns ourselves.'

'I ought to drive,' she said, matching his pace. 'In case he starts pulling your strings again.'

He shook his head. 'If he was going to, he would have started long before now. Which is rather worrying, because if he's not using such a direct weapon his attention must be focused on something else. Something worse.'

'Worse?' said Sam. The Doctor nodded. 'I don't want to know how he's going to top that. . . '

The unnaturalist sat at his desk, writing in his journal in the thin electric light of the storeroom. The distorted gramophone was warbling through a song in several directions at once.

His scientific machines were also at work, grinding and clicking on the workbench. One mechanism was at work a.n.a.lysing the Doctor's biodata. Once he 184 fully understood it, Griffin would be able to use it to control him. There would be no more tricks, no more escapes. And no risk of damage to a valuable specimen.

Another device was linked to the first. Its crystal tubing was lit up from within as it produced drop after gradual drop of a golden fluid.

It had only been recently Griffin thought, that he had realised how his brother had struggled to support the pair of them. After the collapse of their father's business ventures, they had been thrown on to their own resources.

Fortunately, Griffin had enjoyed their surveying work thoroughly. And in between their sessions of measuring and mapping there was plenty of time for him to ramble at random, collecting specimens or simply observing them.

Just think. If they had been well off, content, he would never have turned to the study of the lower life forms, never have made his expedition to the lesser regions. He would never have had this chance to impress the Society.

Indeed, he might never have detected the unusual damage to s.p.a.ce-time without his experience of surveying the lower dimensions. He had this realm pretty much to himself, and plenty of time in which to collect the specimens that would help restore his family's status.

For now, all he had to do was meticulously write up his field notes, while his loyal Henches took care of the next step.

'Right,' said Sam as they hurried through the park. 'So what's number seven, then?'

'Oh, that's frying an electronic brain with the Epimenides paradox, or the square root of two, or something,' said the Doctor. He fished in his pockets, handed her a torch. 'Never works. I'm sure it was this clearing. Or the next one over.'

Sam jumped back violently. One of the grey men had stepped out from behind a tree. She froze, not knowing whether to fight or run for it.

'Bob,' said the Doctor, strolling up.

'Hi,' said Bob. He held a long, slender rod in his hands, pointed at both ends, flickering with electrical energy trapped inside. Like lightning, thought Sam, like he's holding a piece of lightning.

'Unicorn hunting?' said the Doctor.

'Uh-huh,' said Bob. 'Only, we're supposed to get you as well, if we see you.'

The Doctor nodded, folding his hands behind his back. 'Fair enough,' he said.

'What!' said Sam.

185.

Bob shrugged. A silvery net was rolled up and thrown over his shoulder.