Doctor Who_ Time Zero Part 35

'No!' the Doctor said again.

Trix stared at him for several seconds, unblinking. 'Oh well,' she said at last. 'Just thought I'd ask.' She smiled suddenly and brilliantly. '"A race against infinity." That's what he said. I remember now.'

'Thank you, Trix,' the Doctor said. 'That may help us.' He reached out and they shook hands.

'My pleasure, Doctor.'

'Thank you,' he said again. 'And goodbye.'

'Hint taken,' she said quietly. 'I'll go and pack my things. Goodbye, Fitz.' She smiled at Fitz again, before turning to glare at Anji.

'I think we can leave Nesbitt and Naryshkin to sort out some explanation of what happened here,' the Doctor said when Trix was gone.

'You really want to go back to London?' Fitz asked Anji.

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, I do.' She sighed. 'I've just settled back into my life. Look, it's been fun if that's the right word. And it's been terrific to see you both again.'

'And find I'm not dead,' Fitz said.

'Yes. But time moves on...'

'It does indeed,' the Doctor agreed. 'And if it's home you want to go, then it is to home we shall take you.'

Without discussing it, or even coming to any conscious decision, they were now walking back through the castle corridors. Towards the TARDIS.

'Unless you'd rather hitch a lift back to Blighty with the troops,' Fitz suggested.

'No thank you. I had quite enough fun getting here on military transport. Not that I knew that was what it was,' Anji said. 'I'll tell you about it some time. When I'm over the trauma.'

'I thought you weren't staying with us,' he teased.

They were at the TARDIS. The Doctor was pulling the key from his waistcoat pocket while at the same time somehow managing to swing his arms round his own body to keep warm.

'Over a drink,' Anji said. 'In a pub. On Earth.'

'Sounds good to me.'

Fitz and Anji stood looking at each other as the Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door and swung it open. For once neither of them was being sarcastic, neither of them was pretending, neither of them felt uneasy with the other.

'I meant it,' Anji said. 'It's been fun. Despite everything.'

'You trust him to get you home this time?' Fitz asked, teasing again.

'I trust you both,' she said. 'What was that?'

They had all heard it. A crunching sound from the other side of the TARDIS. Something heavy dropped or someone stamping on the ice*frosted snow.

The Doctor frowned. 'I'll have a look. Probably nothing, but you never know.'

'I'm not letting him out of my sight, not for a moment,' Anji told Fitz, and they followed him.

They walked right round the TARDIS and back to the front again where the door was still standing ajar.

'Nothing. Imagination,' Fitz said.

'Collective imagination?'

'Or,' the Doctor said brightly, 'an echo of things past.' He ushered them inside. 'Or things to come.'

'Is that a problem?' Fitz wanted to know.

'I hope not. Though I have to admit '

'Uh*oh,' Anji said. 'Here we go.'

'That we do have one very small job to do on the way back to present*day London.'

'I knew it.'

'Much of a detour?' Fitz asked.

'Just back to 1938. The Euston Road.'

'Er, why?'

'Because, Fitz, you still have your journal.'

He produced it with a flourish from his pocket. 'So I do.'

'And I bought it in 1938 from an antiquarian bookshop on the Euston Road.'

'But that's impossible,' Anji said.

The Doctor grinned. 'Not if we get there a few days before I bought it and sell it to them, it isn't.'

Anji c.o.c.ked her head to one side. 'Can we do that?'

Fitz laughed. 'Oh I do so love it when we get to save the universe and and turn a tidy profit.' turn a tidy profit.'

'I think I'll be out of pocket overall,' the Doctor said as he busied himself about the console. 'It cost me three s.h.i.+llings and I doubt we'll get two for it.'

He sounded, Anji thought as she stifled a smile, a bit miffed.

Beginnings: 1938b

The elderly man sniffed and shuffled out from behind his table to push the door shut. He gathered his coat about his neck and returned to the task of counting the day's meagre takings.

The Doctor, Anji and Fitz exchanged uncomfortable glances. The Doctor cleared his throat. 'Would you like us to come back?' he asked over*politely.

The old man glanced up. 'Didn't see you choose anything,' he said. His voice was like a crackly old record.

'We're not buying,' Anji said.

'Selling,' the Doctor added.

'Have we got a treat for you!' Fitz told him. The man looked unimpressed. 'Well, yes we have actually,' Fitz explained.

The Doctor put the journal carefully, almost respectfully down on the table. The old man peered at it suspiciously for a moment. Then he took a pencil from behind his ear, and prodded the book with the blunt end.

'What is this?'

'It is the much sought*after expedition journal of the ill*fated Hanson*Galloway excursion to Siberia of 1894,' Fitz told him proudly.

The man grunted and returned his attention to the piles of coins he was counting. 'One and six,' he announced after a while. 'Take it or leave it.'

'One and six?!' Fitz spluttered. 'That's an insult!'

Except that his last word was drowned by the Doctor's loud: 'Very generous offer thank you.'

The old man pushed a s.h.i.+lling and a sixpence across the table. The Doctor gathered them up and tipped a non*existent hat in polite farewell.

'Another job well done,' he announced as they emerged on to the street.

'And we have been,' Fitz said sourly.

'It's not your money,' Anji pointed out.

'It's my epic, though, isn't it? My life's work. My pride and joy.'

The TARDIS was standing at the next corner. For once it did not look at all out of place even though people were having to step round it on the pavement.

'One and six, indeed.'

'He did give us new coins,' the Doctor said enthusiastically. 'Look at that all s.h.i.+ning and sparkly.'

'Oh hooray.' Fitz kicked his feet. 'Though I suppose they might be worth more than one and six in the future. Is there a market for 1938 coins, Doctor?'

The Doctor was staring down at the two s.h.i.+ny coins in his palm. 'Oh, I don't think so,' he said. Then he frowned, opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked up.

His face seemed suddenly drained of colour. 'Back in a tick,' he murmured.

Then the Doctor turned and ran full pelt back towards the bookshop.

'Counterfeit do you suppose?' Fitz said. 'Or just short*changed? I was thinking I could invest that. Do they let two*year olds open high interest building society accounts?'

They arrived back in the shop to find the Doctor desperately haggling with the old man, who seemed to have come to enthusiastic life. They were each holding opposite ends of the journal, as if engaged in a bizarre tug of war. The one and sixpence was lying on the table in front of the Doctor.

'But you just paid me one and six for it,' the Doctor insisted in an exasperated tone.

'I won't take less than three s.h.i.+llings,' the old man replied, equally insistent.

'I've changed my mind.'

'Too late.'

'Two s.h.i.+llings.'

'Three, I tell you.'

'Half a crown.' The Doctor's voice seemed to have risen an octave.

'Two and nine pence, not a penny less.'

'Done,' Fitz said loudly. 'In every sense of the word.'

The Doctor let go of the book and rummaged about in his trouser pockets. Eventually he pulled out a handful of coins. He picked out several and slammed them down next to the original sixpence and s.h.i.+lling. 'There,' he said in a tone that suggested he was leaving poisonous spider rather than money.

'Quickly, back to the TARDIS,' the Doctor whispered to Fitz and Anji as they reached the door. He was holding the journal tightly to his chest.

'What's the rush, what's going on?' Anji wanted to know.

'Hurry!' the Doctor hissed as they stepped back into the street. Then he was running again.

A moment later the door opened once more. 'You there young man!' The bookseller was shouting after them, waving his fist. 'Come back.'

Fitz and Anji were running after the Doctor now. People were turning to look.

'Come back,' the old man shouted again, starting after them at a stumbling run. 'These coins have King George VI on them,' he shrieked. 'What's your game?'

'Why does he have a problem with George VI?' Fitz asked as they tumbled back inside the TARDIS and the Doctor closed the doors.

'And why did we need to get the book back suddenly?'

'This book,' the Doctor said breathlessly as he held it up, 'needs to be returned to the bookshop I bought it from in time for me to buy it in the first place.'

'In 1938.'

'Yes. Otherwise, much of what has happened won't have been able to happen and...' He waved his arms about in a way that suggested they should draw their own conclusions.

'Goodbye reality?' Fitz hazarded.

'In short, yes. We wouldn't have been there to stop Curtis and Sabbath.'