Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 36

'Meet me at Heathrow as soon as you can,' he told Debbie over the crackle of the line. Glancing down at the petrol gauge, he realised there wasn't going to be enough petrol to get him there.

'Heathrow?'

'You know, the big airpor'

'OK, OK, I'll be there in an hour.' He could hear her moving around, opening up the wardrobe.

'We're going to India. Bring your pa.s.sport.'

'But the saucer's long gone from there. It's pointless. And don't we need visas, or at least some jabs?'

The Doctor looked down at the phone, angry that Debbie, of all people, didn't understand.

When he looked up again, Miranda was in the road ahead of him. Standing there in the fast lane.

He slammed the brakes on, but there wasn't enough time.

No.

The car screeched through her. He hadn't stopped in time, but neither had he hit her.

He looked back in the mirror she was still there.

'Doctor, Doctor!' Debbie was calling. He killed the phone.

The Doctor yanked on the handbrake and got out of the car. Miranda stayed where she was, facing away from him. There were headlights coming towards her.

He called out to her, then, when she didn't hear, he ran up to her, tried to grab her, tried to s.h.i.+eld her.

A car swerved into the middle lane, honking furiously, barely missing him.

This wasn't the safest place to stay. But for the moment there was nothing else coming.

She wasn't here, not really. The light was wrong like a crude fake photo, she was in good light, everything around her was in darkness.

Another car swerved, the driver shouting obscenities.

'Miranda?' the Doctor asked, trying to touch her. She was older. Her hair was straight, and so long. She was more beautiful than he remembered. She was wearing... It wasn't clear what she was wearing. It kept changing.

The carphone was ringing.

Her lips were moving. He tried to read them.

Concentrate.

He did, closing his eyes, clearing his mind, not even seeing or hearing the lorry until it had gone past. Her lips weren't moving, now. Whole concepts were flooding into his mind at once, and unravelling, blossoming like flowers.

I can't be long/(Jodie-Foster's-daughter/me/Cate) eyes squeezed closed, mouth wide open/I'm (secretly) using (telepathic circuits) to find (you-father)/(Tiny part of mind) only/(Ferran-Ferdy) found me and captured me/Till receipt (Sh.e.l.l station) (Junction 19 of the M25)/Deputy Cate looks familiar/He must have married late (Princess Diana) only twenty-eight/(Three days)/The time engines will take three days/He's tracking you (knows you buy petrol) how I found you/I love you/I don't know what he's going to do to me/(Safe for the moment)/I won't see you again/Goodbye And she was gone.

'I love you,' the Doctor called after her, but there was nothing there.

The carphone was ringing.

'Maniac,' someone shouted as they sped past him.

The Doctor hurried back to the car, started the engine and answered the phone.

'Change of plan,' he said, without waiting for Debbie to start speaking. 'We're getting the next Concorde to New York, then Florida.'

'Why Flo'

'Because the saucer's in s.p.a.ce. Because my daughter's up there, but only until they've repaired their time engines. We've got three days to get to them. The Atlantis Atlantis is due to launch tomorrow evening, and it's the only way I can reach her in time.' is due to launch tomorrow evening, and it's the only way I can reach her in time.'

'The s.p.a.ce shuttle?'

'That's right.'

'Doctor, they won't just let us. .h.i.tch a ride on the s.p.a.ce shuttle.'

The Doctor smiled, and slammed his foot on the Trabant's accelerator, astonis.h.i.+ng the owners of the Audi he cruised past.

'Then we'll just have to steal it.'

Chapter Twenty-two.

Today America, Tomorrow the World Debbie had accompanied the Doctor on American business trips a few times: a couple of trips to Berkeley, a weekend in New York, a week in Texas. But it was still enough of a novelty to have some value. She was never going to persuade the Doctor to give up his window seat, but she got occasional glimpses of the sea beneath them, patches of land that may or, indeed, may not have been the coast of Greenland or Newfoundland.

The Doctor kept asking for napkins. It had got to the stage where the stewardess had one in her hand as she came over, instead of having to ask what he wanted.

Concorde was far smaller than Debbie had expected, and in first cla.s.s at least rather overcrowded with all the stewardesses and their trolleys. But it was phenomenally fast. They would be in New York in less time than it took getting from the Doctor's house to Greyfrith by British Rail. There was no sense of that in the plane itself: they weren't pinned to their seats, despite the fact they could outrun a bullet, despite the fact that no air force in the world had an interceptor fast enough to intercept them.

Their problem was not of this world, anyway. Neither was their eventual destination.

'How much faster is the s.p.a.ce shuttle than Concorde?' she asked the Doctor.

He smiled and, without hesitating, replied. 'Concorde can cross the Atlantic in three hours; the shuttle orbits the Earth in ninety minutes. Concorde can fly just over twice the speed of sound ' He pointed at the digital display at the front of the first-cla.s.s compartment, which indicated that was precisely what they were doing 'during launch, the shuttle peaks at about Mach fifteen.'

'We're really going to steal it?'

'Borrow it,' he a.s.sured her. The Doctor handed her one of the napkins, with his spidery handwriting and incomprehensible doodles over it. At the top of the napkin, neatly underlined, was HOW TO TO S STEAL A A S s.p.a.cE S SHUTTLE: PART 1. 'Tell me when you've read it. I'll hand you the rest.' 1. 'Tell me when you've read it. I'll hand you the rest.'

Around then, the stewardesses brought round the customs forms and immigration cards. Debbie leaned over to see what the Doctor was putting under 'Purpose of Visit'.

'Family Reunion', he'd written.

She began studying her napkin.

Ferran looked at the hologlobe, leaned forward, peered through the steam coming from his bathwater, watched Miranda pacing around her stateroom.

'She's magnificent. Like her father. They are like the tigers of Earth... superb creatures, beautiful and powerful. But when man came along, they were suddenly nothing but trophies for hunters.'

'Do you love her?' Cate asked, leaning over, slos.h.i.+ng water, but not daring to block his view.

Ferran looked his Deputy in the eye.

'Once I did. But now I have you.' He sponged her collarbone.

'She doesn't suspect, does she?'

'About us?'

Cate was suddenly self-conscious, almost shy. 'About me me.'

Ferran dabbed at her neck. His hand was lobster-red, almost scalded by the hot water. Cate's skin stayed as milky-pale as ever, just as it had been designed to.

'No.'

She stood, let the water run off her, then stepped from the bath.

As she started to towel herself down. Ferran turned back to the hologlobe. He leaned back, letting the hot water soak away the pain in his shoulder and into the welts on his back.

'Will you marry her?'

He smiled. 'I thought you were above jealousy, my dear.'

'And when you need an heir?'

Ferran looked into the globe. 'Miranda and I will come to an arrangement. If she will not bear me one, there are other ways of going about it. You would make the perfect surrogate.'

She looked at him levelly.

'Is that emotion, Cate?' he asked, 'I thought your kind were above such things.'

'As your Deputy, I have to raise my concerns about your strategy. I am just doing my job.'

Ferran smiled. 'Of course you are. Now get dressed and go to our guest.'

Miranda thought about her father, and the message she had sent. She thought thought she had seen him standing in the road, looking just the same except for a few grey hairs but she had no way of knowing whether she'd just imagined it. Ferran had taken the circlet away with him, ushered the Deputy out and left Miranda alone for several hours. she had seen him standing in the road, looking just the same except for a few grey hairs but she had no way of knowing whether she'd just imagined it. Ferran had taken the circlet away with him, ushered the Deputy out and left Miranda alone for several hours.

She'd paced the room, discovered a bathroom (and worked out, she hoped, which one was the toilet and which one was the shower), the wardrobes full of clothes that had been tailored to fit her, and which items mounted on the walls were functional and which were decorative.

And she still didn't have a plan.

She had three days. Three days minus however many hours it had been. She'd left her watch a fifteenth birthday present from her father on the bedside table of her German friend's hotel room. Normally she had a good sense of what the time was, even without a watch, but she was obviously suffering from s.p.a.ce lag, or whatever.

The sense of the time machine getting ready to depart was almost palpable to her. She could feel it, somewhere deep within the s.h.i.+p. A weird sense, vaguely familiar to her, comforting and primal as being held in a mother's arms. Salmon must feel like this when they start swimming home.

What was Ferran planning?

He hadn't said. He wasn't planning to kill her, at least not just just that he could have done that hours ago. Or on the balcony of the hotel. Perhaps there was a state execution planned at the other end. A public occasion with ceremony and baying crowds. But that hadn't been his style last time they'd met. Last time they'd met, of course, he'd gone from being Gold Blend bloke to intergalactic n.a.z.i a.s.sa.s.sin and back again in the s.p.a.ce of a day. that he could have done that hours ago. Or on the balcony of the hotel. Perhaps there was a state execution planned at the other end. A public occasion with ceremony and baying crowds. But that hadn't been his style last time they'd met. Last time they'd met, of course, he'd gone from being Gold Blend bloke to intergalactic n.a.z.i a.s.sa.s.sin and back again in the s.p.a.ce of a day.

Finding herself. As the stock-market boom and property boom and credit boom all came to an end with the decade, a lot of the City types had been forced to give up their excesses and ambitions and optimism and to look within. Miranda had met a few of them in India, following the brand name and designer label as always, looking for the hippie trail and trying to pay for everything with a Gold Amex.

But she'd been looking within for over three years for some answers.

In a cave in Greece, a mystic had told her for five dollars that she was her father's daughter and the answers lay within her.

That hadn't helped in the slightest.

And she'd gone to India and found nothing. Now, of course, she'd been reminded exactly what she was that she had two hearts, a blood type that wasn't even blood, and one of the two highest IQs on the planet.

Miranda sat on the edge of the bed, trying to form a plan. But she couldn't escape even if she could reach a flying saucer, she couldn't fly one. For the moment, her fate was in Ferran's hands. The door hissed open without warning, and the Deputy, Cate, entered.

'You are rested?' she asked, with all the concern of a speak-yourweight machine.

'What will happen to me?'

'It is not my place to say.'

'Well, what can can you tell me?' Miranda asked. 'Are there just the three of us on this s.h.i.+p?' you tell me?' Miranda asked. 'Are there just the three of us on this s.h.i.+p?'

Cate glared at her, with a loathing it took a moment for Miranda to rationalise. Three's a crowd, Miranda realised.

'Prefect Ferran has a whole legion on this s.h.i.+p, and support staff and slaves. But, even then, we've not explored the whole s.h.i.+p.'

'Explored the s.h.i.+p? Didn't you build it?'

'No, My Lady. It was a s.h.i.+pwreck.'

'And it's big. How big?' Miranda asked.

'The size of a city.'

Miranda shrugged. 'What does that mean?'

'Four kilometres long, a kilometre in diameter at either end. A thousand levels.'

'Levels?'