Part 41 (1/2)

Rebecca and Trevor looked like sleeping children as the Doctor and Ace laid them together at the side of the pit that had once been the village green.

'Will she be all right?' asked Ace, wiping the welcome rain from her face.

'She's free of the taint, if that's what you mean,' replied the Doctor, looking into the middle distance, at the smoke rising from some distant catastrophe.

'That isn't isn't what I meant.' what I meant.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'They'll all have to rebuild their lives.

It'll be hard, without Jack, but I have a feeling they'll survive.

Humans usually do.' He paused, picking up a piece of gla.s.s from the mirror. The clouds parted, and it glinted in the light of the afternoon sun. 'Jack was attacked on many fronts, but he was ultimately defeated by humanity. I appealed to those feelings that Jack had spent hundreds of years repressing.

Those people trapped inside Jack decided that true death was preferable to the hollow existence they had. Deep down, I believe every human being, no matter how evil, would have made the same choice.'

'Even me?' asked Ace.

'Especially you. With no energy, no substance, Jack - Jerak -effectively ceased to exist.'

'Jerak?'

'That was Jack's real name. A creature manipulated by the Hakolians to become a war machine.'

'Hakolians?'

'I never did finish telling you about Little Hodcombe, did I?'

The Doctor smiled. 'Oh, well, there's plenty of time for that.

Perhaps I'll take you there. Jane still makes an excellent cup of tea.'

'What about those hunters?' asked Ace. 'Where did they come from?'

'Psychic extensions of the villagers' attempts to buy out of the system before they died, couched in the only mythic expression that seemed appropriate. Rebecca and I were spewed out because we didn't belong...'

'And the b.u.t.terflies?'

'Yes,' said the Doctor, weighing the gla.s.s in his hand, and looking at the sky through it. 'They didn't belong there either.'

'Is that part of the mirror?'

'It is,' said the Doctor. 'Jack used the mirror as a direct access point to himself. Destroying it rendered him incapable of escape. That was a good idea of yours to smash it.'

'It wasn't mine,' said Ace.

'But you wanted wanted to do it,' said the Doctor with a knowing smile. 'If anything of Jack i' the Green did survive,' he said at last, 'then he's trapped in here.' to do it,' said the Doctor with a knowing smile. 'If anything of Jack i' the Green did survive,' he said at last, 'then he's trapped in here.'

The Doctor dropped the piece of gla.s.s, and ground it to dust beneath his foot.

FIRST EPILOGUE.

ENGLISH SETTLEMENT.

Several hours had pa.s.sed and night was just beginning to blanket the land, free of fear. In the vicarage doorway, the Doctor stood watching the flas.h.i.+ng lights of fire engines, ambulances and police cars as they cl.u.s.tered around the remains of the green and the pub. There had been much official scratching of heads, at least until the soldiers turned up. They wore the unmistakable winged-globe emblem of the United Nations, and had been summoned by a phone call from someone who claimed he had once a.s.sisted them.

'Only sixty-three people unaccounted for,' Ace told him after having spoken to one of the army men. 'And another thirty-three found dead. That still means most of the villagers survived. They found a lot of people hiding in their homes, delirious. Of course, they're not saying much.'

'What can they say?' asked the Doctor sadly. 'Who would believe them? Earthquakes aren't common in England, but then neither are aliens menaces destroying whole villages.'

'Just a minute ago you said this sort of thing happened -'

'Twice,' interrupted the Doctor. 'And both times the official explanation was a natural phenomenon. Lethbridge-Stewart's successors will have this one under wraps for a few weeks, and then it'll be as if nothing ever happened.'

'Isn't that a bit cynical?'

'Maybe. In a way, not much has changed. The people of Hexen Bridge have always been good at keeping secrets.' The Doctor paused, and then began walking away from the village towards the TARDIS. Ace hurried after him, slinging her backpack on to her shoulders as she did so.

'I'm glad the rain's stopped,' she said, remembering the thunder storm a few nights before, and her desperate attempt to find the Doctor's craft.

'Oh, a little rain never hurt anyone,' said the Doctor. 'It washes away the madness.' There was a dip in his voice as they pa.s.sed A Taste of the Orient, and he removed his hat as a mark of respect. 'It seems so long ago,' he whispered.

'What, the meal?' said Ace. 'Yeah. Ages.'

'I meant when I first came here,' said the Doctor. 'It's been a shadow at the back of my mind for so long. I can't believe it's gone.' He sighed. 'Still, plenty more where that came from.'

'I've been thinking,' said Ace. 'How much of the violence was Jack's influence, and how much was what was normal for these people anyway?'

'I can't answer that,' said the Doctor. 'Only each individual can. They'll notice a change in each other. But they'll be just as imperfect as any other group of people. At least Jack won't be there, making them worse.' He pushed his hands into his pockets. 'I said I'd take Denman back to Liverpool - he's waiting for us at the TARDIS. Anyway, I want to see for myself what's happened up there.'

'You said Hatch released something into the water supply.'

'Yes. Jack was beginning to travel to Merseyside, you see.

Like a bee to a psychic honeypot. Of course, he'd have overwhelmed the entire country in time. Maybe the world...'

'What'll happen to the people in Liverpool?'

'They'll recover,' said the Doctor. 'I managed to minimise the damage to the water supply. There'll be something of a crime epidemic - but then, that's not unusual in the summer.

The sad thing is, I'm not sure anyone will notice.'