Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 28

'It's a very versatile tool,' the Doctor noted.

Behind them, the humming of the trans.m.u.tation machinery was reaching a crescendo.

'Run!' he ordered.

'G.o.d, Alex is going to punch that bloke if Dinah doesn't cool off a bit.'

'Oh, you know what Dinah's like: "Ooh, look at his muscles. He looks like a n.a.z.i. I want to s.h.a.g him."'

Bob looked at Miranda.

'That's brilliant,' Bob told her.

'What?'

'That impersonation. It sounded just like Dinah.'

'Oh, yeah, it's a trick my dad taught me.'

'Your dad taught you to do impressions?'

'Well, yes. "h.e.l.lo, I'm Bob."'

'I don't sound like that.'

'You do.'

'Oh. You should be on Spitting Image Spitting Image.'

'Why, thanks.'

'As a voice, I mean, not a puppet. Can you do Maggie Thatcher?'

'Yes, I can,' Miranda said, then, in her best Thatcher voice: 'It's not that difficult to mimic someone.'

'I can only do Rik Mayall,' Bob confessed. 'Right on, Vyv. Oh wonderful. Give money to tramps, Thatcher out, anarchy rules.'

Miranda smiled generously.

The Doctor threw himself down the stairs, two, three, even four at a time. His hand was clamped around Debbie's. She was already out of breath, her feet barely touching the steps as they went. Joel and Kirst were behind them, right at their backs.

The guards they pa.s.sed were far more worried by the wave of roses that was surging after them than the escapees themselves. The guards seemed unsure what to do most seemed to think the best strategy was to fire their rifles at the ma.s.s of rose petals and wait for the trans.m.u.tation effect to wash over them.

So the Doctor and his companions hadn't had to worry too much about the guards.

Now, though, the tidal wave of roses had almost caught up with them.

'Don't look back!' the Doctor shouted.

They piled down another set of stairs, stray roses falling down ahead of them.

Dinah's front room was full of people, smoke and sound. Only five or six people were up on their feet, the others sitting back, trying to talk and pull. There were a lot of boys here about two boys to each girl. It meant that a lot of hopeful glances were aimed Miranda's way.

Miranda tried to teach Bob how to dance, but early on she realised it was a lost cause. Instead, she just pulled him in close, let them be alone together in the crowd. The song was about a group of people building a city on rock and roll, but Miranda couldn't identify it.

'Lager?' Bob asked.

Miranda shook her head. 'Alcohol doesn't affect me,' she said.

'Yeah, yeah,' Bob said drunkenly.

'It's true, I just don't metabolise it.'

Dinah was talking to Ferdy, who had been sitting all on his own nursing a fruit juice. Alex was at Dinah's side, impatient.

When Phil Collins came on and started singing about his two hearts, it reminded Bob of something.

'Dinah says you've got two hearts.'

Miranda glared over at Dinah, but she was still too busy with Ferdy. 'It's meant to be a secret. Dinah only found out accidentally.'

'It's true? I thought it was a joke.'

'It's true.'

'Nah. Prove it.'

There was a discreet way she could have done so if he'd touched her wrist, Bob would have felt a double pulse. But she'd thought of a better way.

Miranda gently led Bob out of the back door, into the garden, round the side of the house where no one could see them.

'It's cold,' he noted.

Miranda leaned against the wall, pulled her s.h.i.+rt up and took Bob's hands in hers.

'Here,' she said, guiding him up beneath her s.h.i.+rt. She let go of his wrists.

'Put your hands on my ribcage and I mean mean my ribcage,' she warned him. my ribcage,' she warned him.

Bob gulped, his hands sliding up her stomach. They were warm, a little ticklish. He stopped with his first fingers brus.h.i.+ng the base of her bra, his thumbs between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He was trying his luck just a little. It was a nice sensation, so Miranda let it pa.s.s.

Bob was grinning like a kid with a new toy. 'Two hearts!' he whispered. And, gentleman that he was, he withdrew his hands, slipped them easily into place around her waist.

The moment where Miranda realised they were about to kiss elided with the kiss itself.

Her first kiss, not his. Miranda was surprised how pleasant she found an experience she'd had down as just another thing she ought to have done by her age.

Confident now, Bob slid his hands up a little, under her s.h.i.+rt, and was stroking bare skin at the small of her back. She put her arms around his neck, stroking it. They were still kissing, and Miranda felt strange: not entirely in control of herself. She brought her heartsrate back under control, started tinkering with her hormone and pheromone production.

'What's wrong?' Bob asked.

'Nothing.'

'You tensed up a bit. Was that your first kiss?'

'You could tell?'

'Well, yes, you know, I'm not the world expert, but I could tell.' She must have looked distraught, because he immediately continued. 'It was great. It's just, y'know, the first time's always going to be a bit awkward.'

There was silence, broken only by the Communards.

Bob stroked Miranda's face, but the spell was broken. It was a cold night, and Bob was a drunk sixteen-yearold lad with too much of his dad's aftershave on.

'I'm sorry it wasn't what you were expecting.' She wondered about his first kiss. Had it been Dinah? She couldn't remember what her friend had told her.

'Miranda,' Bob pleaded.

She toyed with the idea of raising her pulse and the supply of blood to the skin surface, and wondered if it would be cheating. Judging by his blushes, Bob's blood supply was working without conscious help. She looked at him. She was different. He had only one heart, he was beginning to get tired, he was s.h.i.+vering a little in the spring night air.

It all seemed so unreal.

Chapter Seventeen.

Urban Regeneration 'The door's been barricaded!' Joel said as they reached the ground floor.

Their way was blocked. Rose blossom was drifting down. Above them it sounded as if a tidal wave was about to break. Debbie saw the Doctor glance up nervously, knowing they hadn't got long before the trans.m.u.tation wave caught up with them.

The Doctor kicked the plywood board down, grabbed Debbie's hand and pulled her after him, out into the night. Joel and Kirst were right behind.

'Keep going!' he shouted.

It was dangerous ground to run over, tiny potholes and fragments threatening unwary feet and ankles. Behind them, there was a sound unlike anything Debbie had ever heard a cracking and rustling, getting louder and louder. It sounded like a tree being felled, she decided.

Halfway across the wasteland, the Doctor stopped running and turned.

'We're safe, now,' he told them.

Debbie looked back. The light streaming from the floors at the top of the Tower were blood-red. Rose petals, filtering the light from the windows.

Then, the windows became roses. Some petals drifted away, but most were caught in waves that poured down the side of the building like waterfalls. The window frames followed, the walls after that. The whole building became a cascade of roses, floor after floor bursting and throwing out a plume of red petals.

They saw one of the guards leaping from a twenty-somethingstorey window. But it was too late: he was already changing. As he hit the ground, he billowed out into a cloud of flowers.

'Will it stop?' Kirst asked, and the way she asked it suggested she wouldn't mind if it never did.

'I'm afraid so,' the Doctor said. 'The trans.m.u.ter will burn itself out.'

It happened before it ran out of building. The noise died down and it was obvious the pile of roses wasn't getting any larger. It was impossible to tell how many floors had survived. Everything was under the heap, which was a rough pyramid, around a hundred feet high.

The scent began to drift over. Beautiful, but almost overpowering.

'Never say I don't get you flowers,' Joel said.

'Are they dead?' Kirst asked.

The Doctor nodded. 'All but Ferran. Which reminds me: we have to be going, Debbie.'

Joel grabbed his hand. 'You promised us money.'

'Would it surprise you to learn that I don't have a million pounds in cash on my person?'

'We'll go to a cash machine,' Joel suggested.

The Doctor laughed. 'I'll write you a cheque.'

Joel looked unconvinced. Kirst stepped between them. 'That will do nicely,' she said.

The Doctor laid his briefcase on the ground and opened it up. He rummaged through the stuff and found his chequebook and a pen.

A moment later he rose and handed a cheque to Kirst. 'Don't spend it all at once,' he advised, as they stared at it, scarcely believing what they were looking at. Then the Doctor grabbed Debbie's hand. 'Come on!'

Ferran looked around the room, and realised that he hadn't seen the Last One for several minutes. The crowd was thinning a little; a few of the weak-hearted had bowed out for the night. Was she one of them?

'Where is Miranda?' he asked Dinah, as casually as he could.

'Gone outside with Bob, I think.'

'Her boyfriend?'

'That's right.'

He tried to get up, but Dinah stopped him. 'I don't think they want to be disturbed, you know what I mean?'

Before she had finished saying it, the Last One had entered the room. She came over, looming over them in their armchair.