Part 19 (2/2)

He winked at Simon, who almost dropped his cup.

Simon and Genevieve had a few moments together while the Doctor was pottering around in the kitchen. They sat next to each other at a long table set with crystal gla.s.ses and real china plates.

'There must be a drudgebot around somewhere,' said Simon.

'Maybe the Earth Reptile set the table,' said Genevieve. Simon gave her a peculiar look. 'Don't you think a bot would seem out of place here?' She looked around at the antique furniture, the oil paintings, the worn paper covering on the walls. 'I'll bet this room isn't even bugged.'

'What about all the machinery in the kitchen?' said Simon.

'Did you notice how the kitchen was completely different to the other rooms?' said Genevieve. 'It looked modern. Plenty of plastic and technology. But these rooms... The world he's describing is a high-tech, low-impact society. Clean and efficient.

I'll wager they recycle everything, and not because they have to.'

'You're talking about it as though it's real,' Simon pointed out.

'To him it obviously is. He's not quite what I expected... but then, he doesn't exist, does he?'

'He's not what I expected, either.'

They looked at each other, considering whether to swap a few hints about their respective missions. The Doctor chose that moment to hover back in.

'You were both looking for me,' he said, 'but what was it you were really after, eh?' He hovered up to the table. 'I've often 148 asked myself that. But I think I'm used to Utopia after a millennium.' He gave one of his crinkly smiles. 'You're probably wondering whether I'm the real thing or just some madman pottering about an ancient house in the middle of nowhere.

Whether I really am the Doctor. Well, I'm not.'

'You're not?' said Simon.

'I'm not the Doctor. I'm a a Doctor. An alternative, you might say. You're both young, you have many possible futures, if you see what I mean. Did you imagine you'd be where you are now, doing what you're doing now, a year ago? Five years ago?' Doctor. An alternative, you might say. You're both young, you have many possible futures, if you see what I mean. Did you imagine you'd be where you are now, doing what you're doing now, a year ago? Five years ago?'

'No,' said Simon.

'I suppose not,' said Genevieve. 'Time has a way of changing our plans.'

'Exactly. Exactly right. Let me put it another way. If you wanted to change the world, would you try to save the whole world, rush about everywhere trying to take care of all the problems that desperately needed attention? Or would you choose just one place and put all of your energy into looking after it?'

'It's a good question,' said Genevieve. 'Spread your good deeds as far as you can, or concentrate on creating one...

Utopia?'

'Exactly.' The Doctor took her hand, perfect skin and nails held lightly in his leathery fingers. 'Exactly, young lady. It was time to make a decision. I hadn't had the choice for a long time, you see. I was trapped here. All I wanted to do was get away, but, you see, what I really wanted back was my freedom. The freedom to choose whether to stay or to go. When I had that choice, I chose to stay.'

'Stay here on Earth?' said Genevieve.

'That's right. I think it was the right decision. Of course, I also decided to go gallivanting about to every planet in existence, toppling evil empires and returning lost balloons to small children. Most of the decisions I could have made I did make somewhere.'

'So you don't exist in our world?' said Simon.

'Nor you in mine,' said the Doctor. 'No offence, of course, the timestreams are big enough for everyone. Think of me as a set of hypothetical situations.'

149.

'If you insist,' said Simon.

'One of you stays,' said Genevieve, 'one of you goes.'

'Hundreds if not thousands of each,' said the Doctor. 'Some of me are killed in a prison cell by the Earth Reptiles and left to rot things weren't so friendly then. Some of me have gone on to destroy whole worlds always in a good cause, of course and others don't face anything more traumatic than a bad aphid infestation. Some of me aren't me at all; at least one of me is a ruthless dictator with my picture up everywhere. In a sense we're all just third-generation copies of the original.'

'The original Doctor?' said Simon. He was starting to get the feeling he got when he cram-viewed too many study sims in a row, carried away on a wave of input.

'Time, as you say, has a way of changing our plans,' the Doctor was saying. 'Choosing the future Time wanted would have meant opening up the past. A real Pandora's Box, crammed to the hinges with dark and fantastic secrets. I was curious, of course. But in time, as the knowledge filtered through, I would be changed. Changed in ways I couldn't predict. I did know one thing.' His ancient eyes were serious. 'Whatever I would have become, I would have called it evil.'

There was a few moments' silence. Simon asked, 'You said you'd been here for a thousand years.'

'Next Thursday,' beamed the Doctor.

'How? You can't be human.'

'After a thousand years of looking after this planet, I'd say I'm as human as I'm going to get. You could say I've gone native.'

A shaft of late-afternoon light shone through the window for a moment, the last before the sun disappeared behind the distant city. Simon had a strange urge to go to the window and see if the city was still there, if they'd been drawn inexplicably into the Doctor's fantasy world like children into fairyland.

For a moment he could have sworn he saw an alien, an honest-to-G.o.d BEM with green skin and five arms and five legs, its ceiling-high anemone shape caught in the beam of sunlight. He glanced at Genevieve. She had seen it too she was staring at the suddenly empty spot in the lounge, staring out of the window.

From the garden came the sound of children laughing.

150.

It was dark by the time they finished dinner. The Doctor had done all the cooking himself, with the a.s.sistance of the kitchen machines. And probably with help from more of his invisible friends: organic vegetables, herbs from the garden, and a home-made wine that tasted like punch. In the head.

Simon still felt a bit foggy, the wine's aftertaste like fuzz in his mouth. The Doctor had hovered upstairs and shown them the guest bedrooms, fresh sheets on the beds, towels neatly folded on the end. Simon's room came equipped with a couple of cats, who were obligingly warming up the antique bra.s.s bed, purring.

Simon sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb the fat, sleek animals. The room was oddly shaped, right at the very top of the house, tucked away under the sloping roof.

There was a triangular mirror hung on the wall. Simon looked at himself in it, wondering what Genevieve saw. He kept his sandy hair cut short. He had the usual tan and the usual slight fold to the eyelids. The fact that he looked so ordinary was a definite plus for a terrorist. Worked for Mr Jamey.

A window faced on to the garden, pitch-black. Simon wondered what was out there. The lights of the overcity, hidden by the Reserve's thick forests? Or Doctor Smith's world, populated by peace-loving humans and their friendly reptile friends? If he walked out of the door and headed away from the house, what would he see?

Nothing he didn't have a torch. He hadn't meant to stay until dark. He certainly hadn't meant to spend the night.

He reached out a hand and fingered the peeling wallpaper, wondering if Mr Jamey knew about the place. Of course he knew about it. He'd said something about intercepting another investigator's Centcomp research requests.

The nondescript man (how can you describe someone as nondescript? but it was just the right word for Mr Jamey) had warned him that his resistance cell had been broken. He'd just dropped it into the conversation, right there at the dance club, while Simon was handing over the stolen software from a particularly unimportant Imperial cleaning robot. Telepaths, Mr 151 Jamey had said over the roar of the music, probably. And something about Simon needing to see a Doctor.

Genevieve slammed the door behind him. Simon leapt off the bed as though it had been electrified, narrowly missed banging his head on the low ceiling, and glared at her.

She was naked under a white bath towel, her hair wet and falling in ringlets to her shoulders. There were beads of water on her arms and the slopes of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He was struck by sudden memory: Sibongile on the night before the day she died, light from the candles she'd placed around her dorm room reflected in her eyes. Simon looked away, towards the window again.

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