Doctor Who_ The Blue Angel Part 5

There are always animals in the winter.

Creatures who, needing to survive, take their chances and creep closer to the town and its bewildered, unwary inhabitants.

The townspeople sit by meagre fires, burning anything expendable that they can lay their chilled fingers on.

At the Doctor's house Compa.s.sion urges the burning of the Doctor's books.

His library will keep them warm through many days. He has so many thick, dry volumes they might feed the flames through the whole festive period.

Compa.s.sion claims quite modestly that she has an infallible photographic memory she has illimitable recall and she will gladly remember everything they consign to the grate.

Fitz is appalled by her att.i.tude. He won't hear of it. He carries on reading his way through the Doctor's books. He carries on with his reading of the arcane Aja'ib Aja'ib.

It is the sensible thing to do. You can't get fuel anywhere. We will freeze.

It's barbaric, Compa.s.sion. It's ridiculous.

Have you seen the attic, Fitz? It's crammed full with dusty old things. He never looks at these things. He never will. He says he will, but have you ever seen him sit down and read anything?

Maybe he doesn't have to. Maybe it's all in his head. Maybe he has illimitable recall, too.

I don't think so. I think he's even forgotten how to read. He doesn't know what books and papers he's got up there. It's as if they belong to someone else. He wouldn't miss anything.

I would. I'm telling you, if you touch anything of the Doctor's...

What, Fitz? Are you threatening me?

You've not known him or me, not really long. You're still new around here.

That doesn't mean I have to freeze to death.

You're not going to touch any of the Doctor's stuff. Look, he's having a hard time of it just now. You can see even you you can see he isn't a full s.h.i.+lling. Don't take advantage. can see he isn't a full s.h.i.+lling. Don't take advantage.

How would you ever know, Fitz? I could be up in that attic at any time. Any time you're not paying attention, or you've braved the cold outside. I could be up that silver ladder, poking my nose in anywhere. I could burn anything from his messy old library just to keep my feet warm and you'd never know, would you?

I'll just have to trust you, Compa.s.sion. Won't I?

Think about it. I might already have burned things. This fire now could have come from the Doctor's precious volumes...

His living room was deep violet, so it was dark, too dark for reading in. It was here that the Doctor and his lodgers came to sit by the fire and talk through the long evenings. It was here he described his lunch with Sally and his subsequent funny turn. His companions made concerned noises about this and he waved their compa.s.sion aside.

There were two fish tanks in here. One was stocked with angel fish, lit baleful blue from beneath. The fish were languid, silver, haughty, swis.h.i.+ng about and watching the human inhabitants of the room as if they were the specimens to be kept an eye on. The other gla.s.s case contained lizards, which crept across and across their small s.p.a.ce of sandy rubble and stopped every now and then to sigh. The largest was a green, spined creature that Fitz couldn't put a name to at all. The Doctor, however, could, and he called this lizard Gila. Its eyes shone with what Fitz thought was a malevolent pink.

This living room was quiet; only a golden clock ticked on the mantle above the fitfully burning fire.

The Doctor talked quietly that night about Sally and how she had given him her book to read and how he would take it to bed with him that night.

He also said he had invited Sally for dinner, one night soon, and his current lodgers might meet this long-time friend of his. They acted pleased at this. The Doctor was in a strange, pensive mood, however, and soon he drifted off to bed.

He's acting strangely.

I told you. He's not himself.

Neither are you, Fitz.

How would you know? How long have you known me?

Not long. I can't remember.

No. I can't either, Compa.s.sion. Isn't that odd?

Probably.

And I can't remember coming here. I don't know how any of us came here.

No.

Doesn't that make you worry, Compa.s.sion?

I'm going out.

Compa.s.sion was full of energy. She was restless and bored. Her limbs tingled and stung with potential, with a kind of bristling irritation that she knew would be a.s.suaged only by exercise.

She walked, she ran, she tore around the town.

It was deserted outside. The streets were laminated with a terrible black frost. All the trees were sealed in ice.

There was hardly a sound and, above, the stars were invisible, as if they were no longer there.

It made Compa.s.sion want to scream.

There was something out there, calling to her. Something that belonged to her, or that she belonged to. It would tell her what her future would be.

This town was keeping her down. These people she was living with were constricting her.

The winter that encroached all around them was the epitome of the stifling sense of frustration that imposed itself upon her. She could feel her anger mounting as each day went by, and so she went running out into the night.

If anyone had observed her, they wouldn't have thought she was exercising. Nor would they have thought she was running into the grateful arms of whatever destiny beckoned her.

They would have imagined that she was fleeing something. As she ran, skidding on the thickening ice in the North Park, Compa.s.sion looked stricken.

Late that night she paused for breath by the bandstand in the park. It was wrecked seemingly held together by the rime of ice that coated its ceiling and struts.

The park was pitch black. Not the best place to stop for a rest. She leaned to catch her breath.

There was a slight rustle in the trees beside her. Just the breeze. But there was no breeze tonight.

There was the call of an owl.

And then it was upon her.

Something the size and weight of a large dog hurled itself upon her, barrelling into her chest and knocking her flat on to the hard path.

She grunted and fell, winded.

The creature stank. A rancid, foxy smell.

It slavered and drooled and she could see its teeth as it wrestled with her.

She felt those teeth nipping, almost playfully, at her coat. It didn't bite hard. It didn't bite into her skin.

It was playing with her. It had wanted to frighten her.

They had fallen on to the black and white squares of the giant chessboard by the bandstand.

As they rolled and struggled they knocked the giant chess pieces aside, sent them scattering across the paving stones.

Toddler-sized p.a.w.ns were sent sprawling as Compa.s.sion clasped the stinking creature, pulling and ripping at its matted coa.r.s.e fur.

There was a yell then, cutting through the night.

A man's voice, hoa.r.s.e, commanding, speaking some weird foreign-sounding language.

Instantly the dog thing stopped toying with her and jumped back.

Compa.s.sion sat up and watched it scamper back off into the bushes.

She was left alone with whoever had shouted.

She stilled her breathing and listened.

Someone sc.r.a.ped a match somewhere on bricks. The sc.r.a.pe of the sulphur on stone was the most sinister thing Compa.s.sion could imagine. She tensed.

There was a flicker of soft yellow flame nearby. She could almost feel the heat from it. It wavered and approached.

In the slight glare of the flame there was the deeply lined face of a man. He had silver hair and wore an expression of concern as he hurried up to her.

He was in some kind of cloak, old-fas.h.i.+oned, velvety stuff. He said, helping her on to her feet, 'This is a foolish time for a young woman to be out in the park.'

Compa.s.sion merely grunted.

'That creature wouldn't have harmed you. I think you scared it as much as it scared you.'

'What was it?'

'Something rather like a fox. Something halfway between a fox and a rabbit. Didn't you see?'

The man blew out the match and promptly lit another. 'Poor things. They are being driven into the town from the country. They're feeling the winter far worse than we are.'

'Thank you for...'

'That's quite all right. I suggest you get yourself home. No bites? No twisted ankle?'

'I'm surprisingly resilient, thank you.'

Compa.s.sion was already moving away across the park, leaving the man in the opera cloak. His face seemed to hover in the match light, receding behind.

'Goodbye, my dear,' he called.

Compa.s.sion hurried on wordlessly.

She found herself negotiating a kind of maze of box trees before she was out of the park. Here there was a scant, brief glare of moonlight and she could see that the bushes were all holly, studded with the ripest of scarlet berries.

Enough roaming around for one night.

She thought about crawling under the duvet back at home.

Suddenly the Doctor's house didn't seem quite so unalluring.

Chapter Ten.

The City of Gla.s.s Was Raised Up...

The City of Gla.s.s was raised up on a bed of stone.

It was only as the small party who'd beamed down from the Nepotist Nepotist came within a mile of the place that they realised this. came within a mile of the place that they realised this.

The black rock was riddled with caves, each of them lined with ice blistered and cracked like mouths and throats plagued with ulcers.

The team were spoilt for choice... which cave to take?

Captain Blandish picked one of the hazardous apertures quite at random and determined this would be the one.

'But how do you know?' the Doctor teased.