Doctor Who_ Trading Futures Part 20

The Doctor was getting to his feet. Malady pulled him down.

'No. Stay put.'

They were half hidden here, able to get a good look at anyone coming up the stairs without being immediately obvious to them. A moment later, her instincts were proved right. Roja came running up the stairs. His face was covered in a balaclava*like hood. He was carrying another raygun. He was clearly in retreat.

Malady waited a moment, until she was sure that Jaxa wasn't right behind him. As she moved to stand, this time, the Doctor pulled her down.

She thought he was trying to stop her shooting, but he was just waiting until the boy was nearer. Roja wasn't looking for them he'd obviously forgotten his mission. Something had distracted him. Given the gunfire a moment before, and the absence of Jaxa, it wasn't too hard to guess what.

The boy stumbled straight past them.

Malady and the Doctor leaped out, as if they'd practised the move together. Malady grabbed the boy, the Doctor twisted the gun out of his hand.

The Doctor yanked the hood off.

The boy's eyes were red with crying, his nose was running.

'Get off me!' he shouted, but he just wasn't strong enough to put up much of a struggle.

They could hear clattering footsteps coming up the stairs.

'Cosgrove's men,' the Doctor said, lifting something from the boy's belt, a silver tube.

He examined it, then twisted the end. A control panel unfolded, Malady wasn't quite sure how.

'Simple enough controls.' The Doctor grabbed his lapels. Now, Roja, what was your mission?'

'I'm to take you back to Sabbath.'

'Ah... Sabbath. You're one of his, are you? What's your story, then?'

'I'm his Cabin Boy.'

'Yes, of course you are. Just his style. You do realise you don't exist, don't you? It was Tom Tom the cabin boy. There was no one on the Black Pig called Staines or Bates. There was a Barnabas, and a first mate who didn't have a name, but ' the cabin boy. There was no one on the Black Pig called Staines or Bates. There was a Barnabas, and a first mate who didn't have a name, but '

'Doctor, what are you talking about?' Malady asked.

'If you don't exist,' the Doctor said, 'you make the perfect agent, don't you? Not so easy to catch. Impossible to kill.'

'I exist. Let me go and I'll show you I exist.'

'And how would you do that?'

'I'd hit you. Then I'd show you.'

'Is that how we're to justify our existence in the new order? By how hard we can hit people?'

'You can see me,' Roja said. 'So I exist.'

'People see all sorts of things, don't they?'

'I exist. I exist. People remember me.'

'They think so therefore you are?' The Doctor shook his head. 'I'm sorry, but it doesn't work like that.'

Malady was shaking her head. 'I don't understand a word of this.'

The Doctor smiled. 'English pop culture, Malady, don't worry about it. Just another bit of misplaced self*aware seventies nostalgia with no place in the twenty*first century.' He twisted the top of the silver tube and the controls furled up and slotted themselves back in place.

'Time to go.' He squeezed the end of the time machine, just remembering to grab Malady's hand at the last moment.

Cosgrove and Stevens arrived a moment later to find Roja yelling into thin air.

'I exist! I do! Come back! I exist!'

Cosgrove blew the back of his head off with a single shot.

'No need to shout about it,' Cosgrove told him quietly.

Chapter Thirteen.

Tomorrow Never Lies Malady watched the boy, Cosgrove and the other British special forces soldier fade away.

She wasn't sure what the Doctor had done.

'You killed them?' she asked. But the helicopters had gone, too.

'I moved us in time, but not in s.p.a.ce.'

'How far?' The sunlight was in the same place it had just been.

'Exactly a day.'

'We're in the future?'

The Doctor grinned. 'Yeah. But here they call it "the present".'

He handed her the gun he'd taken from the boy.

'Cosgrove didn't work it out,' the Doctor said, relieved. 'He must have thought we'd travelled in s.p.a.ce s.p.a.ce. By the lack of helicopters, it sounds like he scaled down the search. If he'd just waited here, he'd have got us.'

The Doctor opened up the time machine again, started checking the settings.

Malady looked around. 'OK... we made it. I really didn't think we were going to. But we got away.'

'I don't think this has much charge left,' he said, waving the time machine. 'Two journeys at most. We should conserve energy, find some other way to get about. I need to find my companions, too. Anji's probably with Baskerville, Fitz could be anywhere on Earth by now.'

Malady nodded. 'And whatever it is Baskerville has planned, he's a day closer to it, now.'

The Onihr leader studied the latest status reports.

Fitz watched him, wondering what the Doctor would do in his place. He suspected it wouldn't be to hang around for a day and a half, hoping something would come up, but that was the best Fitz had managed so far.

'So... what are you planning?' he asked. There was always a chance the Onihr leader would tell him.

'First we fire our EMP cannon, disabling all electronic devices on Earth, then we introduce the metal* and plastic*eating megaviruses, that will reduce all metal alloys and plastics to biodegradable sludge. Then we will invade, dragging all their world leaders from their places of safety and decapitating them. The fifth minute of the invasion will begin with '

'It's OK, I get the idea.'

The control gallery was facing the Earth, now.

Sending a message to Earth seemed entirely futile. What would Fitz say? 'Don't make any plans for this evening'? Locating the Doctor and getting a message to him him was a possibility, but the only way Fitz could think of doing it was to ask the Onihrs and they still thought he was a possibility, but the only way Fitz could think of doing it was to ask the Onihrs and they still thought he was was the Doctor. the Doctor.

'Time travel detected, leader,' one of the Onihrs growled.

'Where?'

'On the surface of the Earth.'

The air filled with the smell of fresh hay. It had been a while before Fitz had realised that the Onihrs were almost blind, but had a highly developed sense of smell. He'd been quite proud when he'd worked it out. It explained the flowers growing from the walls of some of the rooms decoration.

He was sure there was probably a way to turn their blindness to his advantage, or to cunningly contrive a disguise using different scents.

b.u.g.g.e.red if he could think of how, though.

'It is located here, leader.'

The leader picked up Fitz and lowered him in front of the console.

'Explain.'

'Er... can you show me a picture?' he asked.

A picture of Greece from s.p.a.ce appeared.

'Greece,' he explained. 'Er... Athens?' That was a guess, but he thought Athens was around there somewhere.

'Human communications have used that word many times during the last day, leader. There has been a tidal wave there, and significant loss of life.'

The Onihr considered this information, clearly not sure how to proceed.

'Rather than invade the Earth,' Fitz suggested, 'you should perhaps concentrate on that.'

The Onihr leader and his technician sniffed the air, curiously.

'Explain.'

'Well, instead of using all this technology to just conquer the Earth, why not use it to track that time machine?'

The Onihrs hesitated.

'I mean, you can do that, can't you?' Fitz asked. 'You keep going on about how advanced you are.'

The Onihr leader grabbed Fitz's collar. 'We can do that, Doctor. It will take time, but we can do it.'

He lowered Fitz back to the floor, checking his anger.

The technician was looking a little concerned. 'It may take some time, leader.'

'Proceed.'

The Doctor and Malady found themselves a quiet spot.

The helicopters had gone, most of the floodwater had subsided, although everywhere was still damp, there were great puddles in the street.

The bodies had been removed.

Malady put her eyephones on. 'I'm going to call the President.'

The Doctor seemed more interested in the eyephones than what she'd just said.

She made the call.

'Malady,' the President said warmly. 'I was speaking to a Malady Chang yesterday, but it wasn't you.'

Malady had no idea what he was talking about.

'A young Englishwoman?' the Doctor asked.

'Who's that, Malady? You didn't say you were with someone.'

No she hadn't, and she chided herself for that.

'It's the Doctor,' she explained.

'Is it?' the President said. 'I knew I'd heard that voice somewhere.'

'You've met the President?' Malady asked.