Part 2 (1/2)
Chris had sighted down the arrow, trying not to squint at the straw target. 'Tell me anyway,' he said.
The Doctor hesitated, as though appraising the young man's stance and aim. 'Should I go back and put a stop to the Black Death?' he said.
Chris let the arrow go. It sliced through the air, thudded into the TARDIS wall behind the target, clattered to the floor.
He made a face. 'That'd be easy,' he said. 'You'd just work out where and when to be with a bottle of penicillin, right?'
'But then Europe's population would rise instead of falling dramatically. Labour would become cheaper instead of scarce and precious. Feudalism might continue for centuries.'
'So it's too big to stop. Too much a part of history.'
'And changing that history would mean erasing the thirtieth century you and Roz come from.'
Chris nodded to himself, flicked his yellow hair out of his eyes, and nocked another arrow.
The Doctor said, 'This is a well-worn discussion.'
'It helps to hear it from you,' Chris had said. 'If you're certain, then I'm certain.' The arrow had bounced off the wall.
'This is really starting to bug me!'
The Doctor emptied his bucket into the laundry sink. He couldn't change history on such a ma.s.sive scale. Not Earth's history. His voyages through time and s.p.a.ce had taken him from one end of the little blue planet's story to the other, from the beginnings of life to long after its destruction. But he always ended up back here, in a narrow band of time stretching from the middle of the nineteenth century to around the end of the twentieth. His home away from home.
He sighed, putting the mop away in the cupboard. He couldn't rebuild the house, but he could do a little cleaning.
Christopher Cwej was playing chess with Roslyn Forrester in Hyde Park. Roz's (genuine 1996) watch made a dull electronic noise. 'Time to go,' she said, standing up.
Chris looked at her, face level with hers. 'Just when I'm winning!' he said.
She grimaced in annoyance until she saw that he was joking. He grinned at her, tumbling the pieces into a bag and stuffing them into his backpack.
They walked along in silence, enjoying the suns.h.i.+ne.
Yesterday they'd gone to the Three Sisters and walked down the side of a mountain. The day before that they'd gone to a film festival.
They had seriously chilled out over the last couple of months. Not that there hadn't been enough excitement, between the bungee jumping and sneaking on board the Greenpeace mission. But not once in the last month had his life been at risk, or had a whole planet depended on him or Roz or the Doctor.
He felt alive again. Very alive.
He risked a glance at Roz. Her deep brown skin glowed with health; her dark eyes flashed in the sunlight. She was wearing a denim jacket over a tight T-s.h.i.+rt and jeans. She was old enough to be his mother, and she'd probably shoot his head off if he so much as contemplated holding her hand, but...
A bus sounded its horn as he almost stepped in front of it. Chris jumped back onto the pavement with an embarra.s.sed yelp.
He looked around, feeling his ears turn red, but Roz hadn't noticed. She was staring up at a building. 'This is it,'
she said, nodding at a sign.
Chris looked around. 'I don't see the Doctor.'
'Do you want to go in and see if he's there?'
'Okay.' Chris paused in the doorway, but Roz was pretending to read a billboard. He frowned and went inside.
The Doctor was waiting for him, sitting at the end of a row of orange plastic chairs. He held his one-of-a-kind white fedora in his lap. He was wearing one of his old s.h.i.+rts and a pair of oversized, worn trousers. Work clothes.
Chris glanced at the receptionist, busy with paperwork, and went over to the Time Lord.
The Doctor stood up. 'h.e.l.lo, Chris,' he said, peering up at the Adjudicator. 'How have you been?'
'Oh, fine.' Chris glanced at the door. Outside, Roz looked away quickly. 'We've been down in Sydney for the last couple of days. We spent some time at a seminar on law enforcement. It was fascinating, really primitive stuff...'
The Doctor jammed his hat on his head. 'You'll have to tell me all about it.' He nodded at the receptionist, moved towards the door.
'Er,' said Chris.
The Doctor stopped with his hand on the door handle, looking out at Roz, who was watching the traffic.
'When you phoned,' said Chris, 'you said there was someone you wanted us to meet.'
'There was,' sighed the Doctor. 'There was. Come on.'
It took a couple of hours on the train, and a half-hour walk, to get to the beach house. Chris had wanted to rent a car, but, given what had happened to the last two, they'd decided against it.
At last they wound their way through the scrub to the house. It was miles from civilization, surrounded by an overgrown garden that segued into the bush. The sun was going down behind the mountains as the Doctor pushed open the front door. He never seemed to lock the place up.
'Whose turn is it in the kitchen?' said Chris. Roz and the Doctor both smiled at him. 'Oh...' he murmured, heading inside.
Roz pulled her boots off, shook the sand out of them.
The ocean was a dark, gla.s.sy ma.s.s. A single white smear appeared down the centre as the moon's reflection brightened. She sat down on a foldup chair, put her bare feet up on the railing and closed her eyes, listening to the white noise of the surf.
After a while she opened them again. The Doctor had come out onto the porch, silently. He had changed into his more usual outfit - the linen suit and the silk s.h.i.+rt - though he hadn't bothered to put on a tie. His feet were bare. The sea breeze ruffled his dark hair.
He noticed that she'd noticed him, and handed her a tiny T mail datacube, the sort the TARDIS console spat out. She thumbed the switch on the base. A tiny Bernice appeared on top of the cube.
Hi! I'm on the planet Youkali Six, in the jungle not ten kilometres from the Archaeological Inst.i.tute, with Jason. It's kilometres from the Archaeological Inst.i.tute, with Jason. It's the year twenty-five eighty-seven. The precise time and the year twenty-five eighty-seven. The precise time and coordinates are appended. coordinates are appended.