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certain of Whether the Walls of the Tunnel Will Col-
lapse
Fish! Was this how oil on a puddle, FISH out of puddle erupting in rainbows
water felt? Colour swirling away, spinning hands and feet TOO FAR away,
swirling away, too far away  her HEART was fluttering. God! Swirl flutter by
flutter by  Oh, God! Oh, mother! Oh, GOD!
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Chapter 13
Intersection of Three Sets
The Healer and the Warrior
Were walking hand in hand;
The Warrior asked the Healer
If he knew what he had planned.
 To see the future and the past, she said,
 It must be grand!
(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass,
non-existent manuscript)
She broke through the surface tension at the tunnel s end and burst into air
and sunlight and flopped on the grass, gulping air, tears streaming down her
face. Her jittering hands were afire, her whole body glowed like a ghost, the
air cracking and popping around her.
She dragged her head up, forced herself up onto her knees. Her heart was
trying to rip its way out of her chest. Nearby, a young boy  five? six?  was
regarding her incuriously, hands in his pockets.
The Doctor stood not ten feet away. He was going to shoot the boy.
With a wordless shriek, Ace threw herself at him and thwacked him with
the cattle prod.
They tumbled to the ground, both weapons bouncing away across the grass.
Jesus, some of the things she d seen the Auxies do, but you didn t kill children,
you didn t kill kids!
She slapped him across the face, once, hard.  What are you doing? she
shrieked.  What the cruk do you think you re doing?
But he just laughed, his pupils expanded to huge black circles, a look of
giddy ecstasy crossing his features. Ace realized she couldn t hear him laugh-
ing.
His head lolled back suddenly. She let go of his lapels.
The rift was still open. Worse, it was getting bigger, blowing up like a
balloon, bringing the rushing chaos of the Vortex with it. The air was full of
butterfly colours and a raging noise so loud she hadn t even heard it. Her
linen dress was no protection against the slicing wind.
The Doctor lay limp on the grass, hyperventilating. There was dew or con-
densation forming on his face and hands. Time twisted and twitched in Ace s
149
belly.
She found the pistol in a hollow in the lawn. Late nineteenth century.
The rift was a swelling sphere, throwing up clumps of seared grass and
soil as it bit into the ground. Its edge blew outwards, towards the Doctor.
The Time Lord rolled onto his side, still laughing  but there was something
about the way the air was crumpling and his body was twisting and space
was folding up around him and he thrashed soundlessly and clawed the air, a
piece of animated origami, assaulted by time, drowning in it  and the Ants
were going to come through and she had to stop it, she had to stop it, all she
had to do was 
Ace snapped up the pistol, took careful aim, and shot the five-year-old child
between the eyes.
Benny ran out into a storm of colour and sound. The wind almost slapped her
off her feet. She grabbed for the TARDIS and leant hard on it, trying to take
in her surroundings.
There was a gaping hole in the air, flickering fitfully, on and off. It was
closing, snapping out waves of random energy: scarlet, aqua, gold, white,
heliotrope, lime, vermilion. She ripped her eyes away from it.
She was just a few seconds too late.
The Doctor, Ace, and a small child were lying in a strange triangle on the
grass. Bernice started running to them through the dying timestorm. She
stopped short when she saw that the boy wasn t going to need her help. Just
a few seconds late.
Ace was trying to push herself onto her knees, the pistol still in her hand.
Benny marched over to her and pulled the weapon out of her fingers.  Doc-
tor . . .  said Ace indistinctly.
Benny hurled the gun away and hauled her to her feet. She was freezing
cold, condensation all over her flesh; the grass underfoot was covered in frost,
as though the rift were trying to suck all the heat out of its surroundings.
There was suddenly a woman at Bernice s side. Period dress  continental.
 What year is this? shouted Benny.
The woman didn t hear.  I ll take her inside, she shouted, leading the dazed
Ace away towards a country mansion.
At last, with a tremendous pop, the rift closed.
Benny blinked rapidly, trying to get the spots out of her field of vision. She
knelt beside the Doctor. There was ice in his hair and a thin layer of frost on
his face. He was trying to roll over, hands pressed to his ears, wearing a crazy
grin.
She took hold of him, helped him into a sitting position.  Doctor, she said
sharply,  Doctor!
150
His eyelids flickered.  Hello, Bernice, he said, the words blurring together.
 Is that you? I was trying to daydream, but you know, my mind just kept
wandering . . . 
 Shut up, you git, she said,  you re half-frozen.
 Is that all? She hefted him to his feet, and caught him as he stumbled.  I
thought I was caught in the chronon backwash of an interdimensional implo-
sion. Just shows how wrong a person can be. It s good to see you.
 You too. Now be quiet.
The woman in the dress had come back outside. She averted her eyes from
the dead child lying on the lawn.
 Oh God, said Benny.  Was it yours?
The woman shook her head. Wordlessly, she helped Bernice take the Doctor
inside the house.
Nicolas was eating something in the kitchen. Kadiatu had interrupted his
usual rounds; she needed to get back to the farm. She sat in the living room,
gnawing the haunch of a horse and thinking.
There was nothing left of her vessel but a large empty space. She rubbed
the back of her neck, absently. Ship should have been destroyed. But it wasn t.
Why not?
The Doctor probably had a good idea.
He was part of her family s stories. Her great-great-grandmother had writ-
ten a book about him  well, about UNIT, but the two were difficult to sepa-
rate. She had heard all about him as a child, read all about him as an adult.
But she d never expected to run into him on King s Cross Station.
Just imagine. If the transit system hadn t decided to get the two of them
together, she wouldn t be sitting here eating this horse.
She put the hunk of meat down, closed her eyes. It had been Aunt Francine
who d made her realize who the little man was, Aunt Francine and her X-ray
eyes, seeing past the human facade into his alien physiology  the physiology
she had read about in the Stone Mountain archives, using a borrowed ice-
breaker to access the classified files stored from the first grandfather s time.
And there had been more.
A second Time Lord had been on Earth in those days, but he wasn t stranded
the way they were stranded without her prototype vessel. He was coming and
going freely, just to spite his old rival. UNIT s priority A1 order had been to
watch for him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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