Doctor Who_ Father Time Part 13

Debbie wondered what the Doctor could be running from.

'As their palaces and fortresses fell, some members of the Imperial Family fled into time. With her dying breath, my mother declared a blood feud on the Emperor and all his line...'

The Prefect drew a knife from his belt. It had a six-inch blade, slightly curved, with an ebony handle. The blade was rusted. It looked very old, but also very sharp.

'A ceremonial weapon,' the Doctor guessed. 'You've tracked the Imperial Family. Hunted them down.'

There was a glint in the Prefect's eye. 'It was a system instigated by the Imperial Family themselves. The terms of the feud and the rules of engagement are clear everyone of his blood is to die by that knife. Miranda is the Last One. The last of her race.'

Debbie gasped. 'You want to kill her? You want to kill Miranda?'

'I will cut her hearts from her chest as I did with the others. And then it will be over.' There was a hint of regret in his voice, but not a flicker of doubt. He would do it, given the chance.

'Hearts?' the Doctor echoed.

'Members of the Imperial Family have two hearts,' the Deputy explained. 'It's how you tell their kind apart.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'She's a girl.'

'Now, yes. But she will be a tyrant. It is inevitable, as inevitable as an acorn becoming an oak. You must help me find her and stop her.'

'You're asking me to tell you how to find a ten-yearold girl so you can go round and butcher her?'

The Prefect nodded earnestly. 'For the sake of the universe. To put things right.'

'Whatever crimes her family committed, whatever wrong they did you, Miranda is innocent.'

'I remember her starting school,' Debbie told him. 'I've watched her grow up. She's never harmed anyone. She's kind, and funny and clever and...'

'She is evil,' the Deputy stated simply.

The Doctor stood. 'Can we have our coats back, please? This discussion is over. I will not be party to the death of a ten-yearold girl, whatever her destiny, however inevitable it is.' The Doctor hesitated. 'I will do everything in my power to stop you,' he vowed.

The Prefect nodded. But not at the Doctor's request he was giving a signal to his Deputy. Debbie glanced over her shoulder, and saw that the bald man had moved behind the Doctor. There was something in his hand. Something metal. He raised his arm.

'Doctor!' she screamed. 'Look out!'

But it was too late. The Deputy stabbed down at the Doctor's head, slapping something to it.

The Doctor's legs buckled and he fell over, a glistening metal slug attached to his scalp. It wriggled into his hair.

He scrambled, trying to get it off. He fell to his knees, his arms swiping spastically.

When it started to bury itself in his head, the Doctor started to scream.

Chapter Eight.

Prefect Timing The Doctor's body lay on the floor.

Debbie tried to revive him, but the Deputy pushed her away, then bent down to recover the metal thing that was attached to the Doctor's head. He pulled it free of the long hair.

'What have you done?' she asked. She was shaking.

The Prefect was calm, clinical. He held up the metal slug, which wriggled. 'This device is a mindeater. It extracts memories. If the Doctor knows where the Last One is, now we do, too.'

'Extracts memories?'

The Deputy looked over at her. She could tell what this military man was thinking: that he wasn't impressed by her: why should he be? She was young, but overweight and unfit, pretty much his exact opposite. 'It is far beyond your technology,' he said.

He activated the device. The Doctor's memories appeared in the air in front of him in a ghostly bubble, one after the other, arranged into a semblance of order. Fire and madness and bombing and cobbled streets, and colour and a succession of faces. Debbie saw herself as the Doctor saw her. She was surprised how pretty she looked.

The Prefect was behind him, impatient for the answer.

'The Doctor didn't offer any defence to the mindeater,' the Prefect said, a little surprised. 'Not like last time.'

Once again the Prefect was ignoring her.

'I don't think he has been to Falkus yet,' the Deputy said. 'He has clearly not mastered the psychic defence techniques he demonstrated there or he would have used them.'

'Then...' The Prefect leaned over the Doctor's inert body. 'Then we have destroyed him before our first meeting?' He looked up. 'Is that possible?'

The Deputy nodded. 'Most temporal theory was lost, but such things appear in some of the apocryphal records.'

She understood the words they were saying, but found it difficult to piece everything together. She knew what 'destroyed' meant, though. 'The Doctor's dead?'

The Prefect shook his head. 'Merely braindead. His memory has been wiped.'

'Is that... is that what happened to him before?' she asked.

'Before?' the Deputy asked, checking the data.

'A hundred years ago. He lost his memory.'

'No... oh, I see.' The Deputy stared at the display for a moment. 'That was quite a different process.'

'But he'll be all right?' Debbie asked.

'No,' the Prefect told her, pulling himself away. 'He will remain like this ' he tapped the Doctor with his foot again 'for the rest of his life. If you don't feed him, that shouldn't be more than a few weeks.'

Debbie was too shocked to reply.

The Deputy turned to the Prefect. 'I have the information.' He squeezed a control on the device and the image of a typed form appeared. 'He consulted her medical record yesterday. The address appears on it. Note that it confirms she has two hearts.' The Doctor had been in a storeroom, Debbie saw. With a pretty nurse who was making eyes at him.

The Prefect nodded, pleased. 'Let us end this,' he said.

The Deputy followed his leader from the room, the door swis.h.i.+ng shut behind them.

Debbie knelt over the Doctor. He looked peaceful.

She wondered what would happen to her. The Prefect seemed utterly indifferent to her. If they were going to kill her, they had just missed the perfect opportunity. Perhaps they'd take her back to their time, make her a servant, give her the veil and the long skirt.

Or perhaps they'd just push her down the ramp and abandon her to Barry.

One thing was for certain the Doctor wasn't going to help her escape.

The Doctor's eyes snapped open.

'I thought they'd never go,' he said cheerfully. 'Shall we escape?'

The Prefect watched the Deputy making his preparations.

He was a craftsman, a connoisseur. Every weapon he selected was a replica of a human device from this century, reconstructed from historical records and stored here in the s.h.i.+p's armoury. They would do this properly: they wouldn't dishonour the warriors of this time by using weapons a million years more advanced than those of their enemies.

The Deputy meticulously removed the weapons from their storage compartments and found a place for them on his body. A spring-loaded knife concealed up his sleeve, a larger blade in a sheath in his boot, a pair of throwing knives on his belt, alongside a samurai sword. Knuckledusters, a garrotte, a cosh, half a dozen grenades, all finding places in pouches on his flak jacket. Then the guns: a pair of automatic pistols on his belt, one on a leg holster, one tucked into the small of his back, and spare clips for each of them. Finally, a stubby machine pistol, which hung from its shoulder strap, and a bandoleer that contained the rounds of ammunition. That done, the Deputy put his gloves on, and stood to attention.

The Prefect took a smaller pistol and a shoulder holster the Deputy helped him strap it on, then pa.s.sed him his greatcoat and gloves.

They each took a mindeater, in case they needed to extract further information from the populace.

The Prefect drew his knife, held it up.

'Tonight,' he vowed.

The Doctor tapped another combination into the door controls. Once again, it squawked back at him, but the door didn't open.

'How many potential combinations are there?' Debbie asked.

He sighed. 'I thought you were a teacher. Each digit can be one of ten, there are eight digits. Ten times ten times ten times ten times ten times ten times ten times ten. One hundred million combinations. Who knows? I may live long enough to try them all.'

Squawk.

'You've really been alive for the whole twentieth century.' Debbie didn't doubt it any more. It seemed straightforward compared with the rest of her day.

Squawk.

'Yes.'

'That is so... incredible,' Debbie told him. 'Where were you when Kennedy died?'

'Pardon?'

'President Kennedy 1963. I was eight, and it was snowing, and the radio was on.'

Squawk.

'I didn't know he was dead,' the Doctor admitted. 'I spent most of the sixties and seventies travelling.'

Debbie wasn't sure whether he was joking. 'So where were you on the twenty-eighth of May 1976?'

'An odd date to pick.'

Squawk.

'My wedding day,' Debbie said. 'It seemed like the best day of my life at the time. It seemed like everything was going to work out.'

The Doctor stopped what he was doing and grinned to himself. 'I was in England. Spending some time with a... friend. A young widow named Claudia.'

Debbie looked away. 'So, what do do you know about yourself?' she asked him, changing the subject, half hoping that the mindeater had shaken a few of his memories to the surface. 'Before you woke up on that train? Anything at all?' you know about yourself?' she asked him, changing the subject, half hoping that the mindeater had shaken a few of his memories to the surface. 'Before you woke up on that train? Anything at all?'

'Nothing,' the Doctor said, frowning as the door squawked at him again. 'There was the police box... well, it didn't look like a police box then, that's a more recent development. I've really no idea what's going on with that, but I wish it would hurry up. And there was a note.'

Squawk.

'A note?'

'Yes. Yellow paper, of a type common in this century. Handwritten, but not by me. "Meet me in St Louis', February 8th 2001. Fitz." If it was meant to be helpful it's been more than a little counterproductive.'

Squawk.

'Someone arranged to meet you, but gave you over a hundred years' notice?'

'Yes. Perhaps this Fitz thought it would take me a hundred years to work out what on Earth he was talking about. He may well be right. It's already the nineteen eighties and I'm no nearer. A phone number would have been nice.'

'How do you know it's a "he"?'

'I don't. In fact, one graphologist I showed it to says it's a woman's handwriting.'

'Isn't there a place in America called '

Squawk.

'Yes,' the Doctor said wearily. 'In Missouri. I've been there. I've been there three times, in three different decades, looking for some hint. The note says "St Louis'" anyway. I've also looked for as many people called Fitz as I could. I've tried to work out the significance of the date February the eighth. Once fingerprinting had been developed I checked for fingerprints, but only found mine. I once spent two years trying to see if it was in code or there was some hidden meaning in there.'

Squawk.

'You must have come to some conclusions.'

'I'm trying not to. I don't have enough evidence.'