Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 20

The Deputy took the key from his pocket, opened the door.

Joel was in the front room with Kirst, his woman, on his knee, both of them in a haze of narcotic smoke. The television sat in the corner, hypnotically relaying pictures of a brighter, more beautiful planet quite unlike this one.

'Get what you want?' Kirst asked, getting up to make a drink for them all.

'I did.'

He handed her most of the money he'd taken from the youths. The look on her face suggested she thought this was the end to all her problems.

'I like your friend,' Kirst told Joel. 'Pays his rent.'

The Deputy opened up the bag, took out the components he had bought one after the other, laying them out on the table. That done, he went into his room to retrieve the device.

'It's a radio?' Joel asked as he returned.

'It's the only way of contacting my people.'

Joel had shown little curiosity about who the Deputy's people were. After sharing a cell for a few months, Joel knew he wasn't 'working for the police', and that seemed to be the only possibility that he would find unacceptable.

The Deputy fitted the new parts into place.

'It's just bits of old carpet on a turntable,' Joel said, not for the first time.

'It's a static-electricity generator,' the Deputy told him. He pointed at a small plastic vial. 'The static charge is stored here in that mercury, which converts it into magnetic energy.'

Kirst had come back with mugs of coffee. 'I did science at school, you know,' she said. 'This is all a load of rubbish.'

The Deputy spun the turntable, flicked a switch, and the device began to hum. The turntable picked up speed as it began creating energy.

'How's it doing that?' Kirst asked.

Joel was looking proud. 'Hey, this man turned my Walkman into a mind-control thing,' he said. 'This is no problem.'

'I need silence,' the Deputy told them. 'I need to concentrate.'

He stared into the spinning disc, let himself be mesmerised, brought the mantra up from within himself and focused it at the device. Kirst found herself shaking her head. She was getting dizzy. What was going on?

'Miranda, are you OK?'

Dinah was bent over her.

'You fainted,' Miss Andrews told her.

Miranda shook her head to clear away the fuzziness in there. 'I'm fine,' she said.

Dinah handed Miranda her Swatch. Miranda was relieved that she'd finished getting dressed before it had happened. She scolded herself: her main concern should be why she had fainted.

'Get some fresh air,' Miss Andrews suggested. 'See the nurse if you need to.'

Miranda nodded, a little worried.

The Doctor screwed his eyes shut, then snapped them open to clear his head.

He'd fainted. He couldn't remember ever fainting before. He hadn't been overcome by fumes that was difficult, because of the way he was made, and anyway the air in his laboratory was clear and clean. He went over to the window and opened it, just in case.

There was something around him. Like a stone being dropped in a pond. Like ripples.

But ripples in what?

He struggled to put what he was thinking into words. He paced over to the blackboard, wiped clean one of the corners and started to scratch in a few equations he thought might express it.

He looked at his work, but it still felt not quite right. 'No...' he murmured. 'No. No.'

The Doctor pulled aside a framed copy of the periodic table, revealing a safe with a combination lock. He twisted the dial a couple of times.

There had been precious little evidence left by the Prefect's people. The saucer was completely atomised. Mr Gibson must have had some sort of self-destruct mechanism, too there was nothing useful left of him. All the Doctor had were these trinkets.

He lifted down a tray containing odds and ends: the communicator he'd adapted to track the Hunters, a futuristic-looking wrist.w.a.tch, a dead mindeater. There were also components that looked like fancy silicon chips. Pride of place was given to a large instrument he'd found in the Dawkinses' house.

He'd seen straight away that it wasn't just part of John Dawkins's electrician's gear. It had taken a while for him to work it out, but finally he'd realised it was an early-warning system. These time machines moved by warping s.p.a.ce, and this device registered that warping effect. The Dawkinses must have had it so they'd know if anyone was coming for them.

Much good it did them, the Doctor thought.

There had been no activity for the last five years. He'd checked it every day. Every day, he reviewed the last twenty-four hours of activity, and found that there was nothing to review.

The Doctor flicked a switch on the detector. It began beeping.

A screen on the side lit up, like an oscilloscope.

'There's a source,' the Doctor told himself.

An object travelling through time or rather the ripples of that object. But it wasn't as large as a saucer. And it was happening now.

The Doctor peered into the display, adjusted settings like a radio ham desperate not to lose a signal.

The screen flared.

It's coming this way, the Doctor realised.

He couldn't stop himself looking up at the ceiling.

Kirst shook her head. Joel was staring open-mouthed at his friend Sallak, in exactly the same way he'd just been staring open-mouthed at Anne and Nick Anne and Nick on the telly. on the telly.

There were veins pulsing on the old man's bald head. It looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel.

'Hey, cool it, Sallak,' Kirst said, putting a soothing hand on his shoulder.

The air in front of them burst open like a water balloon.

As it sloshed back into place, there was a silver figure in the middle of the room. A slim shape in a gleaming silver metal s.p.a.ce suit. Its head was covered with a black insectile helmet. It seemed to be glowing.

Kirst saw her own astonished face reflected in the s.h.i.+ning metal. It was like an angel, it was like a knight in s.h.i.+ning armour.

'Help!' it cried, its voice a harsh electronic bark.

The figure collapsed.

There was a park behind the school, one that you could sneak out to during lunchtime. It was frowned on, but on a warm day like this over a hundred pupils made their way out on to the gra.s.s to sunbathe and chat. As long as they didn't smoke, or stray from the park, or the girls didn't try to tan too much of themselves, no one seemed to mind. A couple of teachers sat around the gra.s.s, trying so very hard not to look like playground monitors.

Dinah and Miranda met Bob and Alex there.

Alex was Dinah's current boyfriend. They gave each other a chaste kiss, acutely conscious that they were being watched. Miranda knew far more than she needed to about what they got up to when they had some privacy. As it was, all they did here was share a can of Quattro and a bit of furtive hair-stroking.

Bob was Bob. Alex's friend, brought along as Miranda was because girls weren't meant to go out to meet boys on their own. As Dinah and Alex nuzzled together and started discreet snogging and whispering, Miranda opened up her book, A Tale of Two Cities A Tale of Two Cities, one of her O-level set texts. Bob had the latest Batman Batman comic. comic.

Bob smiled weakly at her. 'You've been swimming,' he told her.

'I know.'

'I can tell from your hair. It's wet.'

'Thanks.' Miranda s.h.i.+fted her legs, just in case Bob could see up her skirt.

'She fainted,' Dinah said. 'You OK now?'

'I was then,' Miranda said. 'I don't know what came over me.'

Alex and Dinah started sn.i.g.g.e.ring.

Bob was embarra.s.sed, too. He decided to change the subject and started looking around. 'It's spring,' he said finally.

Miranda saw what had attracted his attention a couple of white b.u.t.terflies, circling round each other, completely oblivious to the human world, or indeed anything but each other. There was an ant clambering over her hand. There were far more insects in this park than people, she thought, trying to imagine the park as the vast jungle the ant must see it as. The whole world was different to the ant: it would see it as chemicals and vibration, not colours and sound. Ants didn't worry about money, or falling in love, or how big their car was or how much more their house was worth this month. Their senses were entirely different, and of course everything operated on a different scale.

'There's a planet where the moths and the ants are at war,' she said absently.

'What?' Bob asked.

'She gets like this, Bob,' Dinah a.s.sured him, taking a break from Alex's attentions. 'She's weird.'

'It's something my dad told me, once,' Miranda said, turning her hand over to make it easier for the ant. 'When I was little, he used to tell me stories. About places where the anthills were the size of mountains, there were men made of Liquorice Allsorts and there was an empress who lived in a big jam jar.'

'Science fiction?' said Bob, his interest piqued.

'I suppose.'

'Cool. Is he a writer or something?'

'No. He's a business consultant.'

Bob was clearly a little disappointed. 'What's your mum do?'

Miranda took a deep breath. 'My mum died. So did my real dad.'

'Oh, wow. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...'

She saw his embarra.s.sment. 'In a car accident when I was ten. Don't worry. I know people don't really know what to say.'

Bob's mouth flickered. 'My mum died when I was six. It's OK, I understand.'

Miranda smiled back at him.

The boy lay on Joel and Kirst's bed, wearing a pair of Joel's old pyjamas. He was eighteen, nineteen at most, and although he obviously worked out, he wasn't Kirst's type and he was far too young.

His armour lay spread out on the bedroom floor, and Kirst and Joel were staying away from it, just like Sallak had told them.

'Who is he?' Joel asked.

'His name is Ferran. He is the younger brother of my employer, Prefect Zevron. As Zevron is dead, Ferran should have inherited his rank and t.i.tle. We have not been in contact for some time.'

It wasn't much of an explanation. Kirst tried again. 'And... and why did he beam down into our living room?'

'The device I built was a distress signal. He came to rescue me.'

'This is a rescue?'

'Sallak?' the boy said weakly.

'I'm here.'

The boy sat upright. 'This is Earth?'

'It is.'

'The time journey... without a transmat at this end, it was difficult.'

'We will need to build one,' Sallak agreed. 'Get a trans.m.u.ter here, and more men. Why didn't you send a saucer?'

Kirst looked over at Joel for some rea.s.surance that this was insane. But he was lapping up every word, with that same zeal on his face he had when they rented a sci-fi film.