Doctor Who_ Return Of The Living Dad Part 25

She had to check one more time. 'Do you remember me?' she asked.

He peered at her above the gla.s.ses. Slowly, he shook his head. 'I'm sorry. I really don't.' He looked at the gun.

'Obviously, I ought to.'

'You killed my baby.'

He stared at her.

'I was at that house,' she said. 'Where we went today.

Some kind of big telepathic explosion came out of you. And it killed my baby, inside my stomach.'

His mouth opened in an expression of horror. 'I don't - I didn't -'

The gun had drifted down a little in her grip. She straightened it back up again. 'Do you remember killing my baby?'

He closed his eyes. 'I can't,' he whispered. 'I'm sorry.'

'Why can't you remember?'

'It wasn't me,' he said. 'I was possessed. Fighting for my life.'

'You told me to get out.'

'Were you one of the experimental subjects?'

Jacqui nodded. 'They wouldn't let me leave.'

'Have you been looking for me for all these years?' he said softly.

'Yes,' she said. 'When I found out about Little Caldwell, I came to live here, because I knew one day you'd show up.'

He opened his eyes. They were so sad. It was a big sadness, as though he had seen everything sad that had ever happened, and was remembering it all.

It was even bigger than hers.

'Do you want to kill me?' he said.

'No,' she said. 'I wanted you to remember.'

She put the gun down on the end of the bed.

He held out a hand to her. But she picked up her handbag and went back down the stairs to call a taxi.

If he wept, she didn't see it.

Benny had been crying for a quarter of an hour when Albinex found her. She had been sitting in the coffee shop with only a big box of tissues for company. She had been sobbing silently, the way children can, partly hoping that no one can hear them and partly hoping that someone will come and see what the matter is.

'I'm all right,' she said nasally.

'Of course you're not all right.' He sat down opposite her, careful not to intrude into her s.p.a.ce. 'Your husband is missing. You've found your long-lost father, only to have everything turn sour.'

She smiled ruefully. 'It's just like the old days.'

'When you travelled with the Doctor?' She nodded. 'But it wasn't always bad, was it?'

'Oh, no,' said Benny. 'We had such fun. When we weren't being shot or tortured.' He returned her smile. 'It was never boring. I loved it. We did a lot of good.'

'It's just the same living here,' said Albinex. 'We've had some harrowing times. We've lost friends. But we've saved a lot of lives. It's very serious work, Benny. It's important. We're lucky, because we have a chance to change the world.'

Benny sniffled. 'I just hope Jason isn't trying to change his world. If he kills his father, he'll never be born. Even if he just frightens the b.a.s.t.a.r.d into never beating his kids, Jason will never leave home, and I'll never meet him.' She looked up at Albinex. 'Am I being selfish?'

'Of course not. Jason mustn't change the timelines. Don't worry, Ms Summerfield.'

'Please,' she said. 'Call me Benny.'

He smiled. 'We'll find Jason, Benny. And the TARDIS too.'

His watch started beeping. 'It's a quarter to one,' he said.

'Almost time for the pick-up.'

Benny stood up and collected her used tissues. 'Let's go and save another life,' she said.

He was sleeping, breathing softly, his head turned so that his hair fell against the pillow.

Roz hovered in the doorway, telling herself to go to bed.

Telling herself she just wanted to double-check he was okay, after his weird dream or whatever the other night, after everything he'd been through. Remembering his serious eyes, his frightened eyes.

s.h.i.+t. He couldn't get serious on her now. She needed someone to be more cynical than.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

She started, palm slapping against the doorframe. 'Didn't mean to wake you up,' she said.

'It's all right.' He sat up. 'Is everything okay?'

'They've gone to send the Lacaillan home.' She picked at a splinter in the wood. 'I tried watching the television, but the jokes don't make any sense.'

'That's not surprising. Like, they're a millennium old.'

She wandered over to the window. 'No more bees?' she said.

'No.' She could feel his eyes on her back. 'Nothing like that. I don't know what that was all about. Roz?'

'Yes?'

'Nothing.'

She looked at him over her shoulder. 'You'd better get some sleep.'

'Yeah.'

She went back to the doorway. 'Um...' said Chris.

She waited. But he didn't say anything more.

Benny was holding the Doctor's divining rod, turning it around in her hands. It didn't move, she didn't feel any tingling. It was just a stick.

The Doctor came out onto the verandah. He smiled at her, taking the rod away. 'More sensitive than the ghost-detector,' he murmured, 'in the right hands. Benny...'

'Yes?' She looked up at the sky, at the few stars peeping through the clouds.

'Why did Chris kiss Roz?'

She looked at him in surprise. He was serious, puzzled.

'Don't you remember?' she began, but he shook his head sharply.

'I remember it all. Being human. But I don't understand it.'

It struck her how much he was being left out. What she and Jason had, what Roz and Chris were beginning to feel, even what she felt for her father... all of it, so simple, so alien to him. The things she took for granted were beyond his comprehension.

Maybe that was why he'd fight so hard to save those things - being alive, being free, being in love.

She gathered him up into a hug, feeling suddenly very protective. 'Don't you disappear as well,' she whispered.

20 Watch the Skies

The wheat field was like the ocean in the dark. Benny felt her brain freezing in the wind, and fumbled with her scarf, trying to tie it around her face.

Myn Jareshth was a lonely, elfin figure, waiting patiently at the edge of the crops. As Benny watched, he reached out a slender hand, touching one of the stalks. Strange, alien plants, growing in a strange season, on a strange, hostile planet. What would he have to say about Earth when he reached his home, alone?

Joel and Ms Randrianasolo came crunching out of the winter wheat, walking carefully between the rows. They were carrying boards and a big ball of string. 'The circle looks fine,'

Joel told Isaac. 'We touched up the edges a bit.' The Admiral absently rumpled Joel's hair.

The Doctor was standing a little distance away, holding his divining stick, looking up into the sky. Benny wondered if he could see anything through the thickness of the clouds.

He seemed so quiet and sad after the day's events. It made her feel slightly off-centre. How much did she need him to be the all-powerful, all-knowing hero? Was that why it shook her so much to see him injured, or even just confused?

The first lights erupted inside the clouds, silent lightning.

Joel shouted something out, his voice lost in the wind, pointing up at the sky as the s.h.i.+p descended.

It hovered high above them for long seconds, its shape indistinct in the darkness. Globes or smears of pearly luminescence moved around it. Benny strained to make out whether they were windows or external lights.

'Ready to go home?' Isaac said to Myn Jareshth, putting his hand on the alien's arm.

The Doctor was holding up his divining rod. At first, Benny thought the stick was moving in the wind.

With a yell, he ran into the wheat.

Something made her run after him, stumbling through the grain. 'Doctor!' she shouted, but suddenly everything was glaring light and rus.h.i.+ng sound.

She arrived at the crop circle to see him standing in the middle, gazing up into the burning, green-tinged light.

Benny fell to her knees in the chaff and mud. There was a flash of light above her, and suddenly darkness so thick that for a moment she thought she'd gone blind.

When she could see again, the Doctor had vanished.

'Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r,' she said.