Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 42

'Jeez, Doc. What did you put in here? Rocket fuel?'

The Doctor's smile widened.

'Something like that.'

McBride hauled himself up in the chair. The Doctor was dressed once again in his usual clothes; checked trousers, dark jacket and that absurd tank top covered in question marks that he seemed to think was fas.h.i.+onable. McBride rubbed at his eyes and took another sip of his coffee. There was something different about the Doctor now, a spring in his step that hadn't been there before. It was as if returning to the TARDIS had given him a boost, revitalised him in some way. There was an energy about him, a determination in those grey eyes of his, the sense of something... alien. McBride felt goose b.u.mps run down his spine.

They were about to start playing the endgame.

McBride could feel his system being jolted back to life by whatever the Doctor had slipped in his coffee. Feeling better than he had in days, McBride looked across to where the little Time Lord was hovering by the control console. He hauled himself out of his chair, drained the remainder of his coffee and crossed to the Doctor's side.

'What's up, Doc?'

'He's going to Kennington. To the cottage. He's going to cross over.

Oh, the arrogance of the man. Right, Cody, time to get going. McBride shuffled awkwardly.

'I ain't goin' with you, Doc.'

The Doctor turned and peered at him. 'Well, if you'd rather stay here... Dimension jumping can be... disorientating.'

'Hey I'm no coward!' McBride felt himself reddening under the gaze of those brilliant grey eyes.

'I didn't say you were,' said the Doctor gently 'It's just...' McBride took a deep breath. 'It's just that you've lost your friend and I don't want to lose mine. Mullen's alone, Doctor. He's alone and trapped up there and until now I've not come up with any way of saving him, but now...'

'Now that you know that the TARDIS is here you think that you can.'

206.

McBride nodded. 'I've been figurin' out ways of getting him out of this hospital and keep coming up with zip. But I don't have to get him out of the hospital. I just have to get him down here.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow 'Is that all?'

'Oh h.e.l.l, Doc, I know I've got these extra-dimensional guys and cybernetic monkeys to get by, not to mention avoiding getting fried to a crisp by Crawhammer and his missiles, but it's a chance and I've got to take it... if you'll let me.'

'I'll send the TARDIS back on an automatic relay. You won't even realise it's gone.'

The Doctor solemnly lifted the TARDIS key from around his neck and held it out.

'Don't let the general get his hands on this, whatever you do.'

McBride took it. 'Thanks, Doctor. I owe you one...'

The Doctor nodded, slowly. 'You're a brave man, Cody McBride.

Ace would have been proud of you.'

He pulled at the large red control handle and, with a low drone, the double doors of the time machine swung open.

McBride scratched at his chin. 'Just don't wind up in any giant ants'

nests...'

The Doctor pulled a bottle of ant powder from his jacket pocket.

'Always prepared.'

With a sort of half-wave, McBride stepped back out into the boiler room. The doors swung shut behind him. There was a G.o.dawful trumpeting sound and the blue box seemed to flicker for a second, then the silence and stillness returned. McBride stared at the elegant filigree key in the palm of his hand.

'You'd better d.a.m.n well appreciate this, Mullen.'

Snow had settled on the charred remains of the chocolate-box cottage.

The Doctor was crouched by the side of the road examining the body of a young policeman. He could barely have been more than twenty-one years old, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle, blood staining the perfect white of the snow.

The Doctor reached out and closed the policeman's eyes, angry and frustrated. In all his lives he had never met anyone with such a casual disregard for life as George Limb. The frail old man seemed to kill without remorse, without compunction, reducing lives to statistics, p.a.w.ns in some sick chess game, weighing up their usefulness to his plans, then using them or casting them aside.

He looked back towards London. From here the dimensional tear was like a huge jagged crescent in the night sky, making the lights of 207 the city look pale and muted. The quiet of the night was punctuated by harsh whiplash cracks of energy.

The Doctor straightened. This game had gone on long enough. It was time to take control, to put things right. He crunched up the snow-covered pathway to the cottage and pushed open the front door.

The cottage was gutted, a tangled mess of burnt furniture and timbers, crumbling brickwork and charred linen. In the centre of the room were the twisted remains of the police motorcycle, and everywhere were the curled and blackened bodies of the ants. The roof was gone and snow was dusting the burnt surfaces, turning the inside of the cottage into a nightmarish monochrome landscape.

The Doctor picked his way gingerly through the ruins, grimacing at the acrid smell that hung in the air. There was a clear trail through the snow and ash. Three sets of footprints, two small, one large. Limb, Jimmy and their primate bodyguard.

The tracks led through the ruined house to what had once been a back parlour. The Doctor peered cautiously through the remains of the doorway. Somehow this room had been partially saved from the fire.

Blackened shreds of what had once been floral curtains waved in the cold night air, a tall parlour palm miraculously untouched by the flames, its leaves frosted with ice stood by a shattered window.

In the middle of the room the tracks stopped. A large circle had been melted through the snow, revealing blackened floorboards. The Doctor knelt down and pressed his hand to the floor. It was warm and the boards were loose.

He lifted first one board, then another. Below him an array of lights blinked rhythmically. He ran his fingertips across a row of b.u.t.tons/ smiled and keyed in a simple sequence.

There was a sudden discordant wailing, and the air s.h.i.+mmered for a moment. Suddenly the Doctor felt flooded with warmth. The snow vanished, the smell of acrid smoke cleared and the cottage sat around him, bright and clean, pristine, with no sign that there had ever been a fire.

'Now, let's see...' the Doctor muttered, and hit another b.u.t.ton.

Everything s.h.i.+mmered and changed again. He was in a harshly lit underground bunker. He hit another b.u.t.ton...

Now he was in the middle of a large, elegant conference room.

Huge, sombre portraits lined the wood-panelled walls, an elaborate crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. At the end of the room were tall shuttered windows. Footfalls echoing on the polished wooden floor, the Doctor crossed the room and eased one of the shutters open.

Below him London stretched out along Whitehall, but not the 208 London that he knew so well. All the landmarks were there, the skyline was so nearly familiar, but there was something not quite right about it, as if someone had taken a photograph of the city and photocopied it over and over again, losing definition with every generation.

Below him people flickered through the rain-slick streets like hummingbirds, cars were little more than blurs of light on the roads.

Overhead the night sky was dominated by the huge energy tear airs.h.i.+ps and gyrocopters hovering around it like bees.

The Doctor gave a deep sigh. He remembered another Christmas, many years ago, when he had stared out across another carbon copy of London, looked at another unfamiliar sky and watched helplessly as people struggled to survive by abandoning all their humanity. Earth's fate had always been irrevocably linked with that of its twin. There had always been the possibility that Earth would follow the evolutionary path of Mondas, that humanity would surrender flesh and blood to cold, gleaming technology. George Limb had forced that evolutionary path. His endless tinkering had thrown up time line after time line, endless alternatives running side by side through history, each of them playing out to a different conclusion, each of them fundamentally, irrevocably wrong.

On the surface everything in this reality seemed so clean and orderly.

The people improved - faster and stronger than they were before. The augmentation on the corpses that the Doctor had examined back in the hospital had been elegant and delicate, but ultimately he feared it was the first step that led to an inevitable destiny, to the human beings of this world becoming a new race of Cybermen.

He had been helpless to save the people of Mondas...

He was about to turn away from the window when something caught his eye in the street. Amongst the flickering streams of pedestrians there was a slow-moving shape, a figure struggling through the drifting snow.

Frowning, the Doctor pulled a pair of opera gla.s.ses from his jacket pocket, struggling to focus through the blur of people and traffic.

A weary, haggard face swam into view.

The Doctor let the gla.s.ses drop in surprise.

'Rita..?'

Rita stared up at the imposing grey facade of the Ministry of Augmentation. All around her was the constant buzz of super-fast conversation, the blur of lights as traffic flashed before her.

She could almost shut it out, now. Almost. Her eyes were streaming from trying to keep up with the lightning-quick people around her, her 209 head pounded from the constant babble. She had stopped trying to dodge out of people's way. Now they just surged around her, as if she was a rock in a riverbed. She caught the occasional word. s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation, insults, pity.

In the end it was the snowflakes that had saved her. The snowflakes that had stopped her wanting to step out screaming into the tide of traffic. In all the world it seemed as if they were the only things moving slower than her. If she concentrated on their gentle fluttering paths, then everything seemed all right. Everything fell into place.

Focused her.

It had been the broadcast that had finally given Rita a goal. The face of the so-called prime minister staring sternly out from one of the huge city television screens. A face that she now clearly remembered looming over her in the cottage.

A link back to her own reality. That was the spur she needed.

She had stumbled through the cheering crowds, out of Trafalgar Square and up Whitehall. The Ministry of Augmentation was lit up like a beacon, floodlit and festooned with Christmas lights. She had no idea what she was going to do once she got there. Improvise, she told herself. She'd bluffed her way into more important places than this before.

Now that she was standing outside the huge old building, though, she felt her confidence starting to fade away. Press and photographers were milling at the foot of the steps. Policemen stood in imposing ranks outside the huge, elegant doors.

Rita looked down at her snow-sodden clothes. She wasn't exactly looking her best. Certainly not in a fit state to bat her eyelashes at the cops. a.s.suming that she could bat her eyelashes fast enough in this crazy, whirling world.

'You pick a great time to try and get back home, girl.' She muttered under her breath. 'Wait until the d.a.m.n country goes to war and then try and get in to see the prime minister.'

Brus.h.i.+ng some of the snow from her shoulders, she pushed her way to a zebra crossing, flinching as the cars snapped to a halt, their radiators perfectly lined up on either side of the black-and-white strip.

Ignoring the curious glances of the drivers behind their winds.h.i.+elds, she scurried across the road, tucking into the shadow of the great grey building. Lights burned bright and warm behind the netted windows; vague shadowed figures flitted past open doors.

Rita threw a glance towards the main entrance. Policemen were pus.h.i.+ng the crowd of photographers back onto the sidewalk. One of them peered over to where she huddled against the wall. Rita pulled 210 her collar up and pushed herself into the crowd of Christmas shoppers, ignoring their complaints and letting herself be carried along in the tide.

Stupid. What did she think she was going to do? Climb in one of the windows and hope that n.o.body noticed her?

Out of sight of the policemen, she extricated herself from the bustling crowds, slipping between the shadowed pillars of Whitehall.

The wind was starting to bite through her now and she pulled her coat tight around her, cursing her taste in skirts, shoes and fishnets. She blew into her hands, trying to coax some life back into her fingers.

'Jeez, I wish more people smoked in this screwed-up city.'

A coughing laugh made her jump. She could make out a figure huddled against one of the pillars.

'I'd offer you one of mine, but this is me last one.'

A pinp.r.i.c.k of orange light flared up in the darkness for a moment and Rita caught the whiff of tobacco as the wind whipped the smoke past her. She squinted at the silhouetted shape.

'Do you make a habit of scaring the c.r.a.p out of people, or do you just save it for Christmas?'

'No, most of the time I just scare the c.r.a.p out of myself.'

A tousled figure emerged from between the pillars, pulling the last lungfuls of smoke from the stub of a cigarette. Rita took a nervous step backwards as the man flicked the b.u.t.t into the snow. He was thin, in his forties, maybe his fifties, his hair thinning, his clothes just a little on the wrong side of shabby. He peered at her curiously.

'You're not from round here, are you?'

'No,' she replied. 'I'm an Eskimo'

'Course you are. I should have guessed, what with the high heels and the fishnets an' everything.'

'You sayin' Eskimos can't be well dressed?'

'I'm saying that Eskimos' teeth don't chatter when they talk. You American?'

Rita felt her hackles rising. 'Look, I've just about had enough of people saying, "Are you American?" in that tone of voice. Have you got a problem with where I'm from?'

'Nope.' The man shrugged. 'Explains why you're here, that's all...'

'So why am I here?'

'Same reason as me, I guess'. The man nodded at a small doorway tucked amid the grandiose stonework of the ministry, a single white spotlight making the snow on the step glisten. 'Last three Christmases I've come here, smoked myself hoa.r.s.e amongst these pillars and tried to make the same decision.'

211.

'What decision?'

'Same one as I guess you're trying to make. Do I become like them?' He peered past her at the oblivious crowd that raced beyond the pillars, his face sad and pale. 'Do you take the generous Christmas offer of the Ministry of Augmentation, the St Nicolas farthing?'

He pulled a copper coin from the pocket of his shabby jacket and stared at it solemnly. 'I've always said that I'd never do it, always stuck to my guns, told myself that I'd die human, no tubes an' bits of metal in me, but...'

'But...?' Rita stared at him, puzzled.

'It gets harder every year. Every street has more energy points than before, everything gets geared up for a faster pace of life, everyone around you becomes a blur, leaves you behind.' He looked at Rita with hollow eyes. 'Do you know that the houses they are building now don't even have kitchens, that they're trying to phase out food shops from the high streets altogether.' He shrugged. 'I've got to live here to work, and if I stay, then I've got to adapt.'

'You mean ' Rita's voice was low ' sockets in the back of your head, wires under your skin?'

The little man nodded. 'Last three years I've thought about it, last, three years I've scared myself sick and walked away, but now...' He toyed with the coin in the palm of his hand. 'Every year they hand out the St Nicolas farthing in Covent Garden. If you takes it, then there's tax breaks, and notes made on your papers, and better work opportunities...'

'If you allow them to do the... augmentation.'