Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 36

The boy stumbled away backward, but the Doctor's words were relentless.

'You're from somewhere poor. Doesn't matter where probably South America. You cut yourself off from your family, if they could even be bothered with you. You had a gang of people who you called your friends, but when it came down to it they just cared about themselves, really. You lived a lone-wolf life, with no one who really cared if you were alive or dead. A throwaway throwaway.'

The boy looked as though the Doctor had grabbed and shaken him.

'And you liked it. Never thought about the future or the past, never thought about getting out of that life. Didn't try. Didn't care. You just played the wild child. Never showed anyone any other sides of you. Never had had any other sides. any other sides.

And that's why a man in black with a really scary skull mask turned up in your bedroom one night and offered to make you just like him.'

The Doctor was drowning out the thunder. He pushed onward, backing the boy up towards the chain fence, and the drop to the black churning water beyond it.

221.

' That's That's why the Faction wanted you. Not because you're anything special. why the Faction wanted you. Not because you're anything special.

Just because you're a type type that's easy for them to recruit. Just another boy from a barrio who figures he'll never live to see a future. Why should you care about time and history when you don't think you've got any part in it? It was a perfectly that's easy for them to recruit. Just another boy from a barrio who figures he'll never live to see a future. Why should you care about time and history when you don't think you've got any part in it? It was a perfectly ordinary ordinary recruitment for them.' recruitment for them.'

'Nuh-uh,' shouted the boy, his voice cracking. 'It wasn't '

'Oh, it was. There are lots and lots of people just like you. Exactly Exactly like you.' like you.'

The kid grabbed for his knife, but the Doctor wrenched his hand away. His arm stayed pressed against his side, shielding his scar. The knife flashed, tumbling towards the raging water, then it was gone. The kid screeched, twisted, tried to bite, but the Doctor pinned him against the chain and leaned in close, firing a final barrage of words.

'There's nothing to you. Nothing beyond the simple explanation. You think you're special because you're a monster, but that just makes you no different from every other monster out there. That's all you are. That's all you are. ' '

The boy howled.

Sam saw him fold up, sliding down the railing into a heap at the Doctor's feet, sitting in the water. His cry had broken into sobbing gasps, desperate bits of is-nots and not-trues trying to form between the tears.

The Doctor stood over him, calm and certain again. 'Sam Jones is more than that. And that's why I will not not let you have her.' let you have her.'

Fitz put an arm around her, steadying her. G.o.d. She was shaking.

The Doctor wants me, she thought. I mean, he wants me to go with him, he'll take me with him. If I want. If I decide.

'I'll be back soon,' said the Doctor, looking down at the boy. 'If you want to talk.' He turned on his heel and started back towards the road.

Sam looked down at the damp heap of boy. Now was when she was supposed to feel sympathy for him, and give him a hug and make everything better.

The boy grabbed for her. Sam jumped back, splashing, nearly losing her balance. She planted the toe of her boot in his chest and pushed. The boy sat down in the water, hard.

The little b.a.s.t.a.r.d was actually smiling up at her, lip curled. 'Not always so pretty, is he?' he snarled. 'When's it gonna be your turn?'

She turned her back on him and, hand in hand with Fitz, followed the Doctor's coat through the dark.

By the time they caught up with the Doctor, Sam had got used to the heavy walk she had to use. On every sloshing step she felt the force of the Hunt, 222 trying to pull her up and along, dragging her who knew where and bending her into who knew who.

The Doctor was braving the storm upright. Fitz was bent into a question-mark shape against the wind, clutching his fedora to his head. 'We've still got a problem,' he was shouting over the din. 'How do we get back to the scar in time?'

'That's where Sam comes in,' said the Doctor.

She stumbled and nearly lost her grip. The Doctor was looking at her with his serious face. 'Oh come on, you can't mean '

'It's our only chance.' The Doctor reached for her hand. 'If we hold on to you when you start out, we should be swept into the Hunt with you. Then all we need to do is pull ourselves out just before we hit the scar.'

'Is it safe?' Fitz asked.

'Of course not,' said the Doctor. 'Come on.'

Her legs were going rubbery. They'll all be waiting for me in there, she thought. Spend enough time in there and I could come out the addict, or someone who'd snapped Don't give yourself time to think about it. Catch a wave. Go ego-surfing. Go Go on, Jump. on, Jump.

Blonde Sam's a runner, she thought. Well this would outdo even her.

She stepped The i Doctors into the surge of animal and human bodies, all dragged along by the wave, a stampede of impossibility. Sandwiched between the foaming snout of a white hound with red ears and the oily sweat of a half-horse, half-steam-engine. All the things she'd never thought she could imagine were here, pushing her along.

Making her keep up or be trampled.

It's just your mind, Sam. It's just your mind trying to put some kind of understandable face on the force trampling through your lifeline. A face for the force. All these animals were just a metaphor somehow, but they were overwhelming, filling every sense till any other thoughts were squeezed out.

She'd already lost her grip on Fitz and the Doctor. They could be anywhere in the crush of creatures. Her body strained to keep up, even as the ground flew by beneath her faster than she could ever run. Caroming off buildings, channelled along the streets, hoping to G.o.d there wasn't a cliff between her and the end of the road.

And she was vibrating like a tuning fork inside. She could feel it battering at her biodata, bending detail after detail back and forth. Her guts were twisting with the nausea of withdrawal, now they hadn't been, now she couldn't even remember what she'd just been feeling a moment ago. Any sense of who she was beyond this moment was being drowned out by the hooves, the running, the endless roar.

Even the things around her were becoming less distinct. Glimpses of faces, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, arms, wings, hooves. Flashes of building and pavement. Pushing.

Stumbling. Running. A body, her own, somewhere. A faint idea that she was here to do something, something, but it was lost under the rising tide.

And the Doctor.

He was there, just ahead of her. Half clambered on a unicorn, clinging to its mane to keep from falling any further off. That mad coat flapping behind him.

She could see his eyes ablaze with the fun of it all. Not just being swept along by the Hunt, but riding with it, leading it, celebrating it.

She kept her eyes (her eyes eyes, she still had them) locked on him. It was hard to focus he was a dazzling blur. Where he was, even his face and body, nothing 224 stayed fixed long enough for her to be sure of it. The possibilities and the details of his past must be thrashing around like mad, shifting and overlapping. He was every single Doctor you could ever imagine at once.

But he was still there. Even without a fixed face or name or body, even if his past contradicted itself from moment to moment, that didn't matter. There was still something there, not just unpinned-down but impossible to pin down.

Something that even revelled revelled in the fact that he couldn't be easily understood. in the fact that he couldn't be easily understood.

That said more things were possible than a simple explanation would allow.

Something laughing.

She followed it. She ran with the laughter. The rest of the animals faded even further, but that was all right 'cause they were just different ways of looking at the same thing. Still a face for the force. But this whole force from the scar was just the Doctor leaving his mark on this city. Just the Doctor.

All this was him, this was what he did, charge through and leave everything overthrown and different as he pa.s.sed. He changes everything he touches, and he's touched me me.

More and more of the impossible creatures were joining the Hunt, converging from all sides, following the Doctor. The race was sweeping downhill to its final destination, into the alleyway with the great jagged tear in the sky ahead, and Sam grabbed for something, anything, to stop

Chapter Twenty-One.

Impossible Creatures.

Fitz was holding on to her by two handfuls of her jacket, his eyes squeezed shut. He'd stopped himself by holding on to her. He'd lost his hat somewhere in the chase, and his hair was a tangled mess.

Sam discovered she had stopped by holding on to the Doctor. She was gripping his arm with both hands, so tightly it must hurt. But he smiled at her as she let go.

'You OK?' she asked Fitz. His hands slid over her until he was holding on to her properly. She returned the hug. ''S OK. Get your breath back. We're here.'

'Bits of us are, anyway,' he gasped. She could feel his heart hammering against her side. His eyes were still screwed tight.

Ahead of them the scarred s.p.a.ce filled their view. The light from the tear pulsed, soft one moment and searing the next. It was beautiful, but it made your eyes water, left a huge black blur hanging in front of you as you blinked.

'I've been waiting for you,' said the unnaturalist.

'Oh, no,' said Sam softly.

'Oh, good,' said the Doctor.

Here we are again, she thought. He'd just come right back for another go, and what was it the Doctor had said? Relying on his single-mindedness Griffin was holding his wooden box. He flicked it outward like a man unfurl-ing a handkerchief, and suddenly it was full-size.

'All ready,' said the unnaturalist, his voice a worn cackle. 'Ready for you. All of this is going to end. Now.'

'Delighted to see you again,' said the Doctor, bowing suddenly. He'd tucked an arm behind him as he bent, and Sam could see the stabiliser in his hand, his thumb frantically fiddling with the settings. He was waving it at her, offering it to her. She stepped up behind him, palming it.

He straightened up, whispered to her, a frantic aside. 'You know how to '

'Yeah.'

226.

'Good, good,' he said, casting her a distracted glance, not daring to take his eyes off the unnaturalist. 'Number eighteen.'

And he walked away from her, towards the unnaturalist. She stood there, frozen.

Griffin waited. His silhouette was like an immense, patient spider.

'Well come on,' Fitz stage-whispered. 'Go on and '

'He never taught me number eighteen,' she said.

Pier 39 was already partly underwater as wave after fat wave spilled out of the Bay, running along the Embarcadero, turning it into a new river.

At their moors, boats were disappearing, held under the water by their own anchor chains, or disintegrating in the seething water. The bodies of sea lions and seagulls peppered the dark waves, drifting around the half-sunk buildings on the pier. Seaweed was stuck in treetops and wrapped around flagpoles.

All over the city, in homes and restaurant kitchens and cinema toilets, water exploded up and out of sinks in spurting, gurgling jets. Showers misfired, bathtubs began to fill. People yelled and jumped backward as their plumb-ing coughed out water, as though the water, all the water, was displaced by something, was trying to escape something.

The few people who were still outside, the emergency workers and the police, the ones trapped in the traffic jams and the ones with nowhere to go, saw the Kraken as it began to pull itself up and out of the Bay.

To some of them, it looked like a tidal wave. To some of them, it looked like a giant, ghostly monster, tentacles spiralling out from its ethereal bulk.

A sodden bag lady who had crawled into an abandoned Mercedes saw it as the grim reaper, standing over the city and looking at them all with empty eye sockets.

The submerged tip of the pier crumbled as something weighty touched it.

'You've got to listen to me,' said the Doctor, stepping up to the unnaturalist. His hands were spread in a gesture of peace.

Desperately Sam aimed the stabiliser at Griffin and pressed the b.u.t.ton. Nothing happened, the Doctor had changed the settings.

The Doctor ducked under Griffin's grasp. The unnaturalist reached out to trip him, casually, and the Doctor tumbled on to the ground.

'For Christ's sake, what do I do?'

'I don't know, we ' Fitz was as panicked as she was.

227.

Griffin lifted the Doctor with invisible hands. The Doctor's back arched as the unnaturalist twisted his body. He grabbed at Griffin, but couldn't reach.

Sam saw a bright patch of blood spreading across the Doctor's shirt. The wound, she thought, the cut in his side. Griffin has opened it up. He's tearing him apart.

The silent air of the alley echoed with the Doctor's m.u.f.fled cries. There's only one person who knows what a number eighteen is. But she doesn't exist.

Time should be slowing down, she thought wildly. There should be a long moment where everything hung in the balance and she had to actually think about making a choice. But there was no time for that: he was getting torn apart right in front of her. Right this moment.

It's not fair.

She grabbed Fitz's arm. 'Tell him,' she said. 'Make him feel like h.e.l.l for this.'

She ran straight at the scar.

Like running in a nightmare. Time stretching, covering the distance in slow bounds, lifting up from the asphalt in heavy arcs.

The scar, opening up to swallow her, opening up to embrace her. It was a crack to squeeze through, a doorway to step through. It was a library, crammed to the brim with lives, pages fluttering around her in an explosion of possibilities. It was a computer program, lines of code scrolling past, ready for editing.

It was her mother, her father, her grandparents, all that genetic material in one body after another, like Russian dolls. It was the Doctor, opening his hands to let the cobblemouse skitter down the length of the table.

He was stretched thin as wire, his biodata reaching every corner of the city.

The unnaturalist was twisting him, tearing him, the lines of his being taut with agony.

He was woven through every building, every street. He was woven through every part of her. He was there when she shot up for the first time, he was there when she made love for the first time, he was there when she emerged into the light for the first time and screamed with shock.