Doctor Who_ The Scarlet Empress Part 2

She squeezed past the rails of the clothes, pulling them aside on their casters, and fighting through a particularly heavy ma.s.s of fur coats. One from every kind of exotic cat, it seemed, and none of them fake.

At the front of the bus, lying doubled up on the floor in the securest of chains, lay a man.

'You're just a girl,' he spat. 'And I don't suppose you brought a hacksaw?'

Sam didn't say a word. She reached into her bag and drew out a fine-toothed blade. She had kept this with her these past few weeks, deciding that the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was useless on anything heavy-duty. They seemed to have been thrown into cellars quite a lot just lately. She thought she ought to check who this bloke was before she freed him.

He was impatient. 'Forget the introductions, sweetheart. Just get me out.'

She couldn't see an awful lot of him in the murky light. She decided what was required was a bargain. 'If I let you out, you owe me one. I'm Sam.'

He glowered at her. His eyes were narrow, baleful, green. His flesh, now that she looked closely, was thick and scaled, a bland, anaemic white.

His whole body was covered. He wore a pair of ruined overalls and his sinuous body, with that cracked skin, was curled almost into a ball.'I'm Gila,' he muttered.

'You've been like this for three days?'

He sighed.'An awful old witch trapped me like this. I don't know what for.'

He tried to sound more pleading. 'Won't you free me?' Yet he couldn't keep that arrogance out of his voice. He had a slight lisp, too, which sounded mocking to Sam.

She thought about getting to work on freeing him, then thought better of it. 'I've got a friend who can help,' she said, straightening up. She pushed the small, broken saw blade into his more flexible hand.'See if you can make a start...' Then she backed away from him.

He moaned.'Come back! Just free me yourself!'

Sam shook her head.'I don't think so.'

'Don't go! What's your name?'

'Sam. I told you. Look... I'm going for the Doctor.'

'I don't need a doctor, Sam!' he called, and started to break up into horrible laughter. 'I just need you!' As Sam hurried back down the staircase his laughter turned to a coughing fit and racking sobs.

Now she had to hurry back and find the Doctor.

What was she going to tell him? In a graveyard she'd found a double-decker bus and aboard there was a lizard man held captive. The Doctor would despair of her.

She trod carefully back through the graves and into the temple. She didn't want to meet the old man, Brewis, again.

As she went by, however, she could see him lying by the light of his failing fire. He must be asleep. That black sheep was nuzzling at his chin. When it looked up at her approach, the creature gave a warning bleat, then it shot off into the dark. That was when Sam saw it had been gobbling down the thin, slippery innards of the old man's throat. She turned away with a cry and hurried out of the temple.

Now to reverse her steps through the streets.

The streets were busier. They teemed with entertainers, storytellers, jugglers, fire-walkers, bandits, wh.o.r.es, cobblers, astrologers, beggars and bear tamers. They seemed to be different streets from those she had walked not an hour since. It was as if, at a predetermined time, someone had opened a box and this rabble had emerged. There were more offworlders in the crowd after dark, too, as if they found it safer all of a sudden to be in this remoter part of town. There were a few alien race-types she recognised, all of them, she was certain, up to no good.

And yet, now, she hardly felt there was time to take it all in.

And then, abruptly, she was at the sheer wall down which she had slithered. Funny, but it wasn't exactly where she thought it had been.

But this was it, all right. When she drew back and looked up at the ragged silhouette of the city walls, there was the Doctor. He sat in exactly the same position, with the book against his knees. She watched him run one distracted hand through his hair and quickly turn a page.

She whistled at him. 'Come on down, Doctor! You're missing everything!'

She heard him give a rueful laugh. He stood and yawned and stretched, sliding theAja'ib into one of his capacious coat pockets.

'Tell me, Sam,' his dark silhouette asked. 'Would you by any chance have embroiled the pair of us in something rather dangerous?'

She grinned. 'What would you say if I had?'

'I'd say well done! There's only so long I can read about people having adventures without wanting to get up to some malarkey myself...' He slid off the roof and down the wall in one apparently easy movement. But he twisted his ankle when he hit the densely packed earth in the alley. Sam had to support him as he howled.

'What is it, then?' he said at last, crossly.'What have you found for me?'

'Can you walk?'

'Of course I can walk!'He tested his weight on his foot and grimaced.

'Don't go haring ahead, though. Well?'

She started to lead the way. 'I found someone held captive. But he looks a bit dangerous. I didn't want to free him by myself.'

'Where is he?'

'In a graveyard.'

'Delightful. Ow!'

'Doctor, do you believe in evil spirits?'

'Of course I do. Why?'

'Nothing. Listen, he's trapped in a double-decker bus, on the top deck, and it's -'

'He's on a what?' The Doctor stopped in his tracks.

'A bus. And the sign on the front says it's the number twenty-two to Putney Common.'

The Doctor let out a low, hissing breath. 'Iris, you old devil.'

'Who?'

More interference. This camera cost a fortune.You'd think it would have neater edits than this. Between every shot there are crackles and bangs and flashes of white lightning. Cut to: the Lizard Man, the Alligator Man, the scabrous-hided Gila reclining on a sola at the back of the bus.

Behind him the dusty road spools away endlessly. He looks tired and cross and tries to hide his face behind a cus.h.i.+on.

'Iris, I don't want to be filmed now, all right? What do you expect me to say? That I'm having a lovely time? I'm here under duress! I'd never be here if it wasn't for you. I've left a whole life behind in Hyspero. All my...

business interests, my schemes and plans - 'I'll be losing a fortune coming out here on this crack-brained scheme. I've retired from the whole business of running about the place and rescuing people. And you've ruined my retirement. I had my life sorted out. I was comfortable.

It's all gone to the dogs now, I bet, and it's all because of you.'

Off screen there is a raucous cackle.'Good!' somebody laughs, before the screen goes dark.

Chapter Three.

She Was Never Without Her Enchantments

Maybe he had mellowed, but when he thought about Iris these days, he didn't feel quite so hostile. Once upon a time she had seemed to him a meddlesome, foolish, prattling old woman. And he had told her so on numerous occasions. Their paths had continued to cross over the years and some of the Doctors of old had lost their patience with her. Yet now - only now - the Doctor looked back at Iris with something approaching fondness.

It had been a long time. So perhaps he had mellowed after all. Or maybe the intervening years had been so fraught he was able to see Iris for what she had always been: harmless, funny, a dilettante and shameless philanderer.

All the way to the graveyard the Doctor refused to answer Sam's questions. He found that he was starting to relish the thought of seeing Iris again. He couldn't even remember what the last encounter had been.

Unhappy, at any rate. He seemed to recall their parting under a cloud.

He wished his memory wasn't so poor. Sometimes when he tried to reach back into previous lives it was like recalling something told to him, a dream, or a book he once read. It made him feel very young. Dwarfed by the magnitude of his life. Sometimes it wasn't worth the mental effort, trying to drag his waking thoughts to a point before Skaro, London, San Francisco, Lungbarrow... Just let the past come to you when it will, he thought. That's the best way. Because, in the end, it always will.

Strange that it should come in the form of Iris Wildthyme. his the itinerant journal-keeper and dogger of the Doctor's footsteps. She had known all of his incarnations, known them all. His past would be more real to her than it was to him. She loved to reminisce. Perhaps that was why he was glad she was here on Hyspero.

'I was in love with you, you fool!' he remembered her yelling once. For years she had kept that tight little secret down, exploding once and yelling at him in a forest in the middle of the night. She knew it was all impossible, however. No matter how many outbursts and revelations she made. Since that particular admission the Doctor had been warier of her than ever before. Sometimes she overpowered him with her raffish brio.

He came away from each of their intermittent encounters somewhat shaken. Here was the bus.

'Charming spot, Sam,' he smiled. 'You bring me to the nicest places.'

The lights on the bus were blazing now. It looked almost cosy aboard.

He remembered being on board that bus and felt a flash of what was almost nostalgia. Christmas dinner with Iris, Tegan and Turlough. One of their happier meetings.

The Doctor asked, 'You say there was no sign of an oldish woman, a bit dressed up, about so high?'

Sam shook her head.'You know who this belongs to, don't you?' He bit his lip and nodded.'But the Iris I knew would never leave her bus unlocked like this.' He sighed. 'Something dreadful must have happened; Iris had always been so ridiculously proud of her TARDIS. It had amused him, her pleasure and pride. He remembered the first time he had been allowed to come aboard. And that had happened only because she was so drunk she couldn't see herself home. He had carried her home through a forest and, when he at last climbed aboard her bus, he burst out laughing. Her TARDIS was exactly the same size inside as out. That was why she was reluctant to let him aboard. Sam asked him,'Who is she?'

'She's a menace,' he said. 'How long have you known her?'

'I can't tell. She keeps popping up through all my lives. It's very confusing and she knows a lot more about me than I know about her.'

Sam was none the wiser. She led the way on to the bus. 'Everything is the same here,' he said thoughtfully. Hardly a thing had been moved since the last time he encountered Iris. There were a few extra ornaments: a Spanish lady twirling her skirts on the minibar, and a lava lamp, which burbled picturesquely to itself. So her taste hadn't improved, he thought. Old Iris was the same, and look at all the things that had happened to him in recent years!

He turned to the driver's cab, peering into the instrument panels and popping on his gla.s.ses. The controls were similar to those in his own TARDIS - the same mixture of teak, bra.s.s and Formica. Bulbous lights blinked on and off, dials flickered and nudged. A glaring display read, HYSPERO.ABBASID ERA. THIRD DECADE.

Sam was peering over his shoulder. "This is a TARDIS!' she gasped.

'She's a Time Lord!'

He smirked. 'Well, Iris would never thank you for calling her a Time Lady, at any rate. That sounds much too genteel for her. Let's say that she claims to come from my world. She's very, very evasive.'

"That's the pot calling the kettle -'

He riddled with a few switches. 'I wonder if her s.h.i.+p can find her... They home, you know. Like pigeons.'

The driver's cab looked particularly abandoned. There was a ca.s.sette player set into the dashboard, squeezed into a gap where the dimensional stabilisers ought to be. A few old tapes were scattered: Motown, Abba, s.h.i.+rley Ba.s.sey. He could picture Iris sitting at the wheel, having to pilot her s.h.i.+p manually through the s.p.a.ce-time vortex. What a faff all that would be. He didn't envy her. In his s.h.i.+p it was quite enough work, just setting coordinates and sitting back to wait with a cup of tea.

At least he didn't have to drive. He could see Iris here, with music blaring out, wearing her thickest, rattiest fur coat, its collar pulled right up around her neck, because the chilling Time Winds would come creeping and shus.h.i.+ng aboard, through the gaps round windows and under the bus's hydraulic doors. This s.h.i.+p wasn't very safe at all. Bless her heart - grimly clutching her steering wheel, juddering and s.h.i.+vering on the slippery upholstery, prey to the dizzying horrors of the vortex. Poor old thing. No wonder she liked to have a house in every port, every world, every time zone she visited. She collected homes like the Doctor collected companions. 'She proposed to me once, you know,' he said. 'She did?'

'In Venice. It was very romantic. I can't remember what stage I was at just then, what face I was wearing - but I was flabbergasted. She proposed at dawn, on the Bridge of Sighs. She was vast then, a huge woman in her late sixties, with a rope of white hair that trailed along behind her. When people tripped on it she would turn and shout at them.'

'She sounds amazing.'

'I suppose she is. She scared the living daylights out of me.'

'You should have said yes.'

'She was like Collette,' he mused. 'You could see that she had been very beautiful in her youth, and she couldn't let go of that. She was caked in white pan-stick and rouge and the purplest lipstick. Terribly glamorous, as if she'd spent years upon the stage. And because she still carried herself like a great beauty, she was.'

'What was that?' Sam pointed to something out of the window.

'Hm?'

'Something's moving out there.'

'Oh dear. It's a graveyard, isn't it?'

'Some old beggar was telling me about evil spirits among the graves.'

She shuddered.

The Doctor peered through the window. There was definitely movement out there, between the dark slabs of stone and the tortured-looking trees.

'Djinn,' said the Doctor.

'That's what the old man said.You mean it's true?'

'You get them all over this world. Not spirits, exactly. Ghouls who come out to eat the flesh of the dead.'

Sam drew back from the window. I'll shut the doors.'

'Tickets, please!' called the Doctor.'I wouldn't have minded being a bus conductor. You get to see the world. No monsters, no megalomaniacs...'