Doctor Who_ Time Zero Part 13

'I gathered,' she stuttered through her clenched teeth.

'We'll always find you.'

'I know. With your watch*thing.' It was getting easier to talk now. The coffee, if it was coffee, was thawing her throat. She might even be able to taste it or smell it soon.

Hartford nodded. 'You know about that?'

'Lucky guess,' she told him.

'"Has anyone supposed it lucky to be born?"' Hartford said quietly. 'It detects chronic radiation. A useful little gadget.'

She said nothing, and wondered what he was talking about. No doubt he'd tell her if it was important. Right now she just wanted to curl up warm and sleep.

'You'd never have made it to the Inst.i.tute, you know,' he was saying.

'The castle?' she wondered.

He nodded again, refilled the cup from a flask. 'You'd have been dead in a few minutes more.'

'Are you fis.h.i.+ng for grat.i.tude?' She hoped it was plain from her tone that he wouldn't get it. But even to Anji her voice sounded like a weak croak.

A tap on the window by her head startled Anji. Through the frosting, she could see Thorpe giving Hartford a thumbs*up. 'All set,' he mouthed.

Hartford nodded. 'Move out in five,' he shouted. 'I want it all over in an hour so we can report in on schedule.'

Thorpe waved to show he had heard and understood, then disappeared back into the white landscape.

'Since the plane was at its lowest over this sector, and the communications lag started from here, we know the Inst.i.tute is the source. It's the only thing here.' Hartford smiled at her, as if he had worked out her darkest secret. 'So you see there's no point in lying.'

'Obviously not,' Anji said slowly. 'Wouldn't dream of it. Just one thing, though.'

'Yes?'

'What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?'

Hartford's smile froze. 'There's no point denying it,' he sald sharply. 'We know the Naryshkin Inst.i.tute is experimenting with time technology it has to be. And we know you are involved.'

Anji huddled into her coat. 'Do you? I've never been here before in my life.'

In answer Hartford held out his arm, the watch*like device on his wrist flas.h.i.+ng and bleeping frantically. 'Chronic radiation,' he said. 'That's how we tracked you to London. Even in the States we got a strong enough signal to triangulate.' He smiled with evident satisfaction. 'There's no point in lying, you see We know you're connected to the experiments they're doing here. Because we know you've travelled in time.'

For the first time he seemed disconcerted when Anji started to laugh.

28: Body of Evidence

Architecturally, it was a mess. The Doctor clicked his tongue and tutted to himself as he walked round the building. Somewhere in the middle of it he was pretty sure there was an Elizabethan manor house. But the Victorians, Edwardians and various other bastions of architectural design had added to the original until it was unrecognisable. As well as that, the external sh.e.l.l of the house seemed to have bracing struts and heavy wooden beams added at many points, without any apparent regard for aesthetics.

But despite his interest in the architecture, the Doctor reminded himself that he was there for a reason. He found a side door well away from the lighted windows and set to work. There did not appear to be an alarm system, and the lock was easy enough. Before long he was making his way down uneven darkened pa.s.sages towards the centre of the house.

The building's inside was as haphazard as the exterior. Walls and ceilings seemed to be bent into strange angles. Doors failed to fit properly. The paintwork was faded and peeling. Whoever lived here seemed to have no interest in the upkeep of the property, the Doctor decided.

He paused in what was evidently a library, reading along the t.i.tles on the shelves by the moonlight that shone in through the cas.e.m.e.nt. Now that he was inside it was turning into a lovely clear night, he decided ruefully. Most of the shelves were dusty, the books obviously not moved for years. But close to the door he found several rows of books that were newer, not dusty, arranged neatly and purposefully. Many of them had dog*eared post*it notes sticking out of them.

'Hawking, Feynman...' The Doctor brushed his finger along the spines as he read. They were books on cosmology. The origins of the universe. Black holes and nebulae... The next shelf was a collection of books about conjuring and stage magic. Christopher Priest's The Prestige The Prestige was lodged amongst the text books and histories. was lodged amongst the text books and histories. Carter Beats the Devil Carter Beats the Devil was pushed to one side. was pushed to one side.

The Doctor was about to open the door and move on, when a thought occurred to him. This was an old house. He had been picking his way carefully through it, desperate not to be heard. Yet not once had he grimaced at a creaking floorboard, not once had the house attempted to betray him. On the one hand, of course, that was a good thing. But on the other, it was decidedly odd. He sucked in his cheeks, thought for a moment, then jumped up and down.

The only sound was the soft soles of his shoes as they landed on the wooden boards. There was no give in the floor at all. The Doctor kept bouncing, jumping, moving round the room like a demented kangeroo, increasingly desperate to find a single floorboard that creaked or groaned. But there was none.

He sat down on the floor to get his breath back. 'How very odd,' he murmured to the dusty air.

In the centre of the library was a large reading table. Arranged around it were several upright chairs. From where he was sitting, the Doctor could see the legs of the chairs and table silhouetted against the moonlit lawn outside. A skeletal structure of wood and metal. Bracing struts and cross*beams. He turned his head slightly to one side as he surveyed tile tangled ma.s.s. 'Very odd indeed.'

In an instant he was on his feet and bouncing across the room, hopeful even now of catching out the floor. Then he bent down and examined one of the chairs more closely.

It was heavy almost impossible to move. The whole of the chair's structure had been strengthened and braced with heavy metal scaffolding. The other chairs were the same. And the table. 'Perhaps some of the books make for heavy reading,' the Doctor mused quietly. He shrugged a mystery for another day.

There was light in the corridor outside the library. It came from an open door further along. The Doctor could hear voices coming from the room, and made his way carefully along the corridor. Especially careful now as he was quite sure there was a universal law of irony that meant the one floorboard in the entire house that did creak would do so under his foot at the most unfortunate moment.

Peering round the doorframe, the Doctor could see a heavy armchair beside a flickering fire. The back of the chair was reinforced with iron struts, he noticed. Even the low coffee table beside it was held together with a cat's cradle of ironmongery. Sitting in the chair was a man. The firelight seemed to gather on his face, illuminating it. The Doctor saw the slightly pinched features of Maxwell Curtis, recognising them from one of the magazine articles he had read that afternoon.

On the table in front of Curtis was a small monitor screen. The picture was snowed over with static, but the Doctor could make out a man's face amid the blizzard.

'But you found it,' Curtis was saying, his voice loud and excited. 'You found the ice cavern, just as the journal said.'

Journal. The Doctor's eyes flickered round the room, and now he saw the leather*bound book lying on the coffee table. He recognised it at once from the auction.

'Yes, yes, that is right. It was there exactly as you said, exactly as the map showed.' The man on the screen was also talking loudly, his voice almost as distorted and broken up as his face.

'And the material, the ice?' Curtis was leaning forward, his hand gripping the arm of the chair so that his knuckles were white in the gloom of the room. Surely there should be more light?

But the man on the screen had his own agenda. 'Never mind the ice,' he shouted. 'Ice is hardly a rare commodity here.'

'But this ice '

The man cut him off, and the Doctor saw Curtis's look of surprise and anger.

'It is what we found inside inside the ice. That is what is so exciting. You will see it yourself when you come!' the ice. That is what is so exciting. You will see it yourself when you come!'

'Inside?' Curtis seemed unsure about this. He looked over towards the door as if for rea.s.surance, and the Doctor whipped his head back out of sight. 'Something inside inside the ice? The journal made no mention of that what is it?' the ice? The journal made no mention of that what is it?'

The Doctor risked another look. Curtis was once more intent on the screen.

'A body,' the other man said clearly. 'We have found a body. Frozen inside the glacier.'

But before Curtis could ask more, before the man could explain further, before the Doctor had blinked in surprise, the man on the screen looked away. It was a startled, frightened movement. Instinctive.

A response to the staccato sound of gunfire from somewhere behind him. A moment later there was the noise of an explosion. The man was on his feet, the screen a blur as his image wiped across it.

'Naryshkin what is it?' Curtis was hauling himself to his feet. 'What's going on there?'

More gunfire louder and closer now. A scream. Shouting.

Explosions. Then the sound cut off.

And the screen went blank.

27: Under Siege

'That sounded close.'

They had made their encampment in what had once been the castle's Great Hall. The room was broken, and the debris from its collapse helped fuel the fire. The smoke curled out of the hole and drifted away into the night.

Price was sleeping, using his pack as a pillow. George and Fitz were sitting nervously by the fire, trying to keep warm. Caversham was by what had been the main entrance way. The remains of tile wooden door were propped shut, wedged with some of the st.u.r.dier struts and beams from tile collapsed roof. The fire crackled and popped and spat. But what Fitz what all of them had heard was the animal roar from outside. It sounded almost plaintive, disappointed, hungry.

And close.

'Well, I'm not going to look,' George said. He tossed a lump of wood on to the fire, sending up a shower of sparks and ash.

Caversham looked over, annoyed by the sound and tile light. He waved for them to be quiet. 'I'm trying to hear,' he hissed across the room. 'There's something outside, I think.'

Fitz joined him at the door. 'What did you hear?' he asked quietly. 'One of the dinosaur things?'

'I'm not sure. But listen.'

Fitz listened. It sounded like a buzzing or humming. Like machinery or equipment. But they all knew there was nothing like that in the empty corridor beyond tile door. Then, as they stood silent and still, a light shone through the cracks in the door, round the edge of the frame, under and across the floor. It was a brilliant white, artificially bright, strobing and throbbing in time to the buzzing hum. The light seemed to flicker and ripple, the rays from one crack interfering with those from another so that it threw patterns like nerves across the floor and tile walls.

Caversham leaned forward and peered through a crack in the door.

'There's nothing there,' he said slowly. 'Just the light.'

'Could it be someone come to find us, to rescue us?' George asked. Fitz had not heard him join them. By the fire, Price was sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

'How would they know where we are, or that we need help?' Fitz wondered.

'Wait here.' Caversham started to pull away the bracing struts from the door. 'I'll go and see.'

'Are you sure?' George asked.

'If we don't look, we'll never know.'

'I'll come with you,' Fitz said as he helped drag the protesting door open. The light spilled into the room, making night into day.

'No. There's no point risking more than we must.' Caversham pushed the door shut behind him before Fitz could protest. 'I won't be long,' he said through one of the gaps in the wood.

Fitz watched him go, a dark shadow cut out of the pulsing light as he walked slowly along the corridor. Then the light swallowed him up. 'How long do we give him?' George asked after a minute. Fitz did not answer. He was wondering the same thing.

After another minute, George grabbed the door and swung it open again. 'This is ridiculous,' he said. 'I'm going after him.'

'No, wait ' Fitz made to grab him, but George was gone. Swallowed up by the light as he strode down the corridor after Caversham, Fitz turned to Price, wondering what to do now.

The sound of the gunshot, together with the screaming, made up his mind for him. He turned and ran after George. And as he ran, conscious of Price close on his heels, the light cut out and abruptly he was running in darkness, his eyes not used to the gloom, his boots skidding on the icy flagstones. He caught his foot on the uneven floor, cannoned into something someone and recognised George's grunt of pain and surprise.

'What's happening, where's Caversham?'

'I don't know.'

From behind them came the sc.r.a.pe and hiss of a striking match. Price's features flared into light. 'Wait here,' he said. 'I'll get a torch from the fire.'

They waited, an agonising time in the near*darkness, their eyes slowly adjusting. When Price returned brandis.h.i.+ng a flaming piece of wood from the fire, Fitz's vision again smeared over as his pupils contracted.

They made their way the whole length of the corridor. There was nothing in any of the ruined rooms they pa.s.sed, no sign of Caversham at all. The door at the end of the corridor was still jammed solidly shut. Peering through the gap between the wooden planks that formed the door, Fitz could see one of the lizard*like creatures strutting slowly across the courtyard on its hind legs. Its head moved to and fro as if testing the air, as if trying to sniff them out. There was no way it could see them, but Fitz drew back anyway, afraid.

The light the light from the torch. That could be seen. He grabbed Price's shoulder, having to reach up for it, and pushed him back down the corridor, explaining in a hushed whisper.

They retraced their steps, to no avail. The only thing of note that they found was the lump in the floor that Fitz had tripped over.

'I'm sure it wasn't there earlier,' George said. 'We'd have seen it.'

'Maybe,' Fitz said. He was worried that they were desperate to find anything, that they might read significance into normality just to try to make sense of things. But despite his initial doubts he knelt down with George to inspect the black shape in the guttering torchlight.

It was smooth and round, the rough size and shape of a golf ball, and so black that it seemed to absorb the torchlight. Fitz reached out to pick it up, and his fingers slipped off its slick surface.

'It's slippery,' he exclaimed.

'Ice,' George said.

Fitz tried again to pick it up, but he was unable to move it. He leaned down so his head was close to the icy floor. 'Doesn't seem to be frozen down. I can see right underneath except for the point where it touches.'

'Is it important?' Price asked.

As if in reply there came the sound of a crash from back down the corridor. It was followed immediately by another, and a third. Splintering wood and shattering, cras.h.i.+ng stone took barely a second to register, then they were on their feet again.

'It might be,' Fitz shouted. 'But it's hardly the most important thing right now.'

With the roars and triumphant bellows of the dinosaur*lizards echoing down the corridor after them, they ran as fast as they could for the Great Hall.