Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 26

'You keep hearing this. . . ?'

'Yeah, you told me the same thing, the last couple times it came through. I remember.' Slowly she opened her watery eyes, almost looking at him. ''Cept that didn't really happen, did it?'

'Maybe it did,' he said with a faint shrug. 'Somewhere.'

'Yeah. Maybe I'm not the one who's changing. Maybe you all keep moving.'

'I dunno.'

He just sat there, feeling as if he could vanish at any moment.

She finally raised her eyes to him. Her voice had got smaller. 'Where do you think I'm gonna go? When it happens?'

'I don't know,' he murmured.

He felt her curling up inward, as if she was disappearing already.

If this Sam was just a temporary twist of Sam's biodata, then the question of where she was before or after meant nothing, in this universe anyway. Just a blip, and she'd be gone. A pa.s.sing lifetime of sickness and anger. But if she was 161.

a glimpse of some other universe out there, or something. . . He couldn't look at her and convince himself she wasn't real.

'Look,' he said, trying to be firm. 'Maybe you're going to vanish in a puff of blue smoke in a few minutes' time, but you might as well live like you're going to make it. And the symptoms will pa.s.s too they won't go on for ever. You can even kick this.'

He dabbed briskly at her forehead with the face cloth, trying to keep moving.

'Just try to believe it, all right? You can change.'

'Change?' It was almost a laugh. 'Got no choice, have I?'

'I mean you. Not the Wild Hunt. You You can change you.' He couldn't believe how tinny the words sounded coming out of his mouth. He'd never believe this stuff himself. Right at the moment, though, he wanted to. can change you.' He couldn't believe how tinny the words sounded coming out of his mouth. He'd never believe this stuff himself. Right at the moment, though, he wanted to.

She leaned up to look at him, with a battered corner of a smile. 'Thanks for trying. I must say, you're the best you I've run into yet.'

'Shh,' he said. 'I think it's coming.'

'I'm scared,' she whispered.

He felt the tremor as she gripped his hand, and as the pressure built up he couldn't help but blink And she was still lying there, a bewildered look on her face, trying to focus on him.

He looked down from the hand he was holding. The scars on her forearm had retreated to something close to their usual pattern.

He sagged forward. 'What?' she asked as his forehead came to rest on her shoulder. He felt her arms reach around him, hesitant and bewildered, but there.

'So who was I this time?' she asked.

'Jesus. Jesus Jesus Christ.' Sam's face looked almost as gla.s.sy and stunned as the other one had. 'I never thought I would, I mean I knew I could, but I didn't, so I thought. . . ' Christ.' Sam's face looked almost as gla.s.sy and stunned as the other one had. 'I never thought I would, I mean I knew I could, but I didn't, so I thought. . . '

He watched her, one hand resting on hers. She'd sipped at the leftover soup, picked up the pack of cigarettes from the tray and was now fiddling with it.

Fortunately her irony sensors were sufficiently developed that she didn't light up. He thanked any pa.s.sing G.o.ds for that if she'd opened the packet, he'd have inhaled one whole in a heartbeat.

'Least it wasn't very likely,' she said. 'I mean, if it was easy to twist my life so I got hooked, we probably would have had one turn up before. . . '

162.

'I dunno about that.' He stood up, looking down at the bed. 'It only turns you into a different you that was in the same time and place, right? But most of the times it's. .h.i.t you you've been out of this room, and none of those Sams would have been let out of here. We don't know how many. . . '

He trailed off, because she was shaking again. This time he was back on the bed giving her a hug before he had to kick himself into doing it. They just held on for a while.

'Y'know, the worst of it was, the b.i.t.c.h was right.' Her voice shook in his ear.

'What you told me, about me not having anything to get up and look for. Christ.

She couldn't have known better how to hurt me if '

' If she was you?' He felt her nod. 'Well she was a fine one to talk,' he muttered.

She let go of him and brought her hands up to the sides of his face. Looking him straight in the eye, she kissed him firmly. He raised a mildly stunned eyebrow at her when she let go.

'For taking care of her,' she said.

Eventually they got dressed again. Fitz was still realising that this was his his Sam back, dark hair and all, or someone very close to her. As though he'd made himself accept the other one, as though she'd always been, always would be. Sam back, dark hair and all, or someone very close to her. As though he'd made himself accept the other one, as though she'd always been, always would be.

It just hit him, he wasn't feeling cynical or angst-ridden about anything at the moment. Anything at all. And that was so profoundly weird that he had to snog her again to stop thinking about it.

They smiled, foreheads leaning together. They were all just as real as one another, thought Fitz.

She disappeared into the loo, and he leaned against the wall, savouring the fact that that b.l.o.o.d.y little voice of doom in his head had finally shut up.

The doork.n.o.b clunked.

He froze up all over again. Go to the peephole, idiot. Go to the peephole, idiot. He pushed himself to the door, looked through, and there was a hallway full of Henches, the unnaturalist looming up in front of the fish-eye view, his fingers moving methodically down near the doork.n.o.b, and he heard the bolt sliding back so he must be reaching He pushed himself to the door, looked through, and there was a hallway full of Henches, the unnaturalist looming up in front of the fish-eye view, his fingers moving methodically down near the doork.n.o.b, and he heard the bolt sliding back so he must be reaching through through The chain. He fumbled with the slider, slipped it into place and the door was pus.h.i.+ng open, pulling the chain taut but stopping. But the shakes kept running through him. 'Sam! They're here! The Henches '

The door clicked back shut. Something unseen began to push the chain slider back and out.163.

He bolted towards the window 'Come on, they'll be in '

no fire escape He turned in mid-step, tangled his feet and nearly fell. Back to the door. He tried to hold the chain slider where it was, but the hand on the other side was too strong. Grab the doork.n.o.b but the bolt could move on its own.

And the door from the bathroom was opening.

'No! Stay in there, lock the '

they'll just open it 'Just stay where you are! Keep quiet and they won't '

they can hear you shouting to her The chain tumbled loose. He grabbed it, tried to push it back in place, but he could feel the hand blocking its rails. Hear fingers scrabbling at the bolt again.

got to keep them away, lead them away from Sam Sam The phone on the desk right near him. He leapt for it and kept shouting, into the receiver now, screaming at the dial tone.

' they won't track you down! I mean it, stay where you are if you come in here they'll get you!'

The door crashed open and the Henches piled in.

He kept shouting, 'cause they could definitely hear him now. 'I mean it, Doctor, take Sam and run! Don't either of you come back to the room, there's too many of them, you two just go '

They heard him. They barged right past the bog without checking. He kept shouting down the phone line, Doctor this, Sam that, till he hit the disconnect b.u.t.ton just before they got close enough to grab the phone. And then he kept shouting help, kidnap, somebody as they picked him up and m.u.f.fled him, with a Hench arm shoved across his mouth. Already he could hear curious voices, doors opening across the hall, and they dragged him past the loo again and out as fast as they could my G.o.d, they'd bought it, they thought there was no one else there and as they carried him down the fire stairs at the end of the hall he felt a surge of elation that she was safe, she was safe safe.

And then it sank in that he he wasn't. wasn't.

Night Zero 'Cause being half-and-half makes you lesser, you know. You can't just be happy living that way. Even on Star Trek Star Trek, you gotta fight to keep one side or the other under control.

(Usually the alien side, too, 'cause it's the human one that makes you better.)You ask a guy who's half-Chinese how he keeps his inscrutability under control, see how fast he decks you.

People can't figure out how having a mixed background could be anything but a defining trauma either you're angsty, or you're a slavering hybrid mutant on The X-Files The X-Files. They figure that's the natural order the price you gotta pay for blurring the racial boundaries.

But for me, in my real life, it's no biggie. Even though every seven years I gotta eat a burrito or die.

Eldin Sanchez, Interesting Times Interesting Times, 31 October 2002

Chapter Fifteen.

Anything Not Nailed Down is Mine.

They might still be there.

Sam sat on the bathroom floor in the dark, curled up against the door, trying not to breathe too much.

There wasn't any sound out there, not since Fitz's voice had faded into the distance, but they could still have left someone waiting in the room. Waiting for her and the Doctor to come back. Springing the trap that she was already sitting in the middle of.

She'd have to run.

She gathered herself off the floor, fighting to keep her breath under control.

Christ, her legs were shaking, she could hardly stand. She gritted her teeth in frustration stop being such a wimp, you're one of the Sams who have it easy.

If they'd come before the last Wild Hunt, she would never even have been able to try to run for it. Even if Fitz had still pulled that Fitz. They'd got Fitz. She'd let let them get them get She grabbed the doork.n.o.b better run before you think any more.

Quietly she began to turn the No, hang on, you've got to think. Where in h.e.l.l are you running to to? You've got a moment here before they know you're around, better use it 'cause you won't get another.

Can't run out of the main door of the hotel even if they're not in the room, they'd have to be watching the front. The fire stairs, then. At least that had a chance of being unguarded.

And then? Head for the garage down the street, hope the Doctor parked there again when he got back from wherever he was.

And then?

Her head wouldn't stand still long enough for her to think any further than that. Her legs were starting to shake, again. What if she froze up? What if she couldn't run?

She yanked the door open and ran.

166.

And she couldn't hear anything over her own noise, as she charged towards the door to the room, banging into the wall on the way, rattling the k.n.o.b open as fast as she could. Maybe that sound behind her was a startled Hench she didn't take time to turn around. She was through the door and belting down the plush beige-carpeted hall, and the end of the hall was moving so slowly towards her, they had to be catching up.

She crashed into the concrete stairwell, almost pitching face first down the stairs. Her breath was rasping already after the first flight down. She exploded into the alley, sprinting on asphalt, bursting into the crowd on Powell Street. In the jostle, no one really noticed her.

No one came running out after her. She wound down the hill, letting the crowd carry her. She saw the juggler in his spot at the bottom of the hill.

She made herself look back, twice, three times. The third time she spotted a pair of Henches, lurking across the road from the hotel, eating bagels out of paper bags.

Her whole body jumped with panic like a snapped guitar string. But they couldn't see her, they couldn't see her. She continued down the hill, one head of dark hair bobbing among dozens of heads, invisible.

The thunderstorm feeling that accompanied the Wild Hunt was still lingering. She could feel it in the crowd, things were on edge, something big was just about to happen, around the corner, just out of view.

The crowd around the juggler gasped and started chattering in rising panic.

Sam craned her neck to see. The juggler's face was contorting, as he fought to turn his look of horror into one of pantomime bewilderment, convince them it was a part of his act.

In his hand the gla.s.s ball softened and spread, and oozed through his fingers like melting ice cream.

She hid in the garage until the Doctor drove in, a million years later.

She was sitting against a concrete pillar, her back aching with its cold. He saw her the moment he stepped out of the Bug, his young face terribly serious in the fluorescent light.

He strode across to her and picked her up off the floor. Her whole body was shaking and stiff. She leaned on him, heavily.

'Fitz,' she gasped, and it hadn't been a million years: it had been less than ten minutes, because she still hadn't caught her breath. 'They've got Fitz.'

His arms tightened around her. 'It's all right,' he said firmly. 'We'll get him back.'

167.

OK, so he'd done it. For once in his misbegotten life he'd pulled off being a hero. Just as long as that didn't mean he was now expected to die happy.

Fitz was standing blindfolded, feeling Henches jostling him. They'd stopped herding him along, and were waiting (somewhere) for he had no idea what.

He scrunched up his nose until his blindfold inched up. Now he could just make out a dark brick storage room, patchily lit by a motley collection of bare-bulbed lamps. Three wrought-iron hulks probably the racks he and the Doctor and Sam had been pinned to stood half-shadowed against one wall, and the distance was filled with uncertain glimpses of humming and whirring alien machines. And two or three silver glinting threads of the Doctor's biodata, crisscrossing the room.

The unnaturalist was standing in the midst of it, his fingers playing over a small wooden box from his pocket. He opened it and extracted an identical box from inside. Except that the other box was the same size as the one that contained it: they were two halves of the same whole, fitting together without a join. And now the unnaturalist was sliding another another drawer out of the side of that box, doubling its size again, and again. drawer out of the side of that box, doubling its size again, and again.

When it got too big to hold he laid it on the floor, and continued to unfold it until it was the size of a big old-fas.h.i.+oned wardrobe.

It stood there, shuffling slightly. Two dark wooden doors on the front of this mahogany elephant, like haunted-house doors, the kind of doors boys would dare one another to open.