Part 44 (1/2)

185.

A group of guards were standing at one corner, drinking. The figure paused for a moment against a doorway. He wrapped his cloak tightly round himself and the gloom swallowed him.

The Doctor moved on without pausing.

'Where did he go?' said Chris as they hovered past the empty doorway.

Dorothee turned to Innocet. 'If these are the Doctor's memories, surely we'd only see things through his eyes?'

Innocet nodded. 'But these are more than memories.'

The guards burst into drunken laughter.

The Doctor was already pa.s.sing above them.

'There he is,' said Leela. The cloaked figure had slipped out of the shadows ahead of the Doctor, and was hurrying away.

The first shades of grey were leaking into the night sky when he finally reached a shuttered house, wedged between a seedy tavern and the dingy shop of a memory broker. He let himself in and padded up the wooden stairs.

The old alien woman, sewing in the little room stacked with books, hardly acknowledged him when he entered. Her Punchinello face huddled near her chin, overshadowed by her wispy domed head.

'Where's my granddaughter?' he said.

She put away her needle. 'Sleeping, Meyopapa. Half the night she spent on the roof watching the fire.'

'I told you not to let her up there,' he growled. 'Not where she can be seen.'

The old woman scratched her teeth. 'No use arguing with that one.'

He fished a jingling purse out of his cloak. 'You have to leave, Mamlaurea. It's no longer safe here.'

'Go home?' she said. 'Back to Tersurus?'

He nodded grimly. 'And take Susan with you. Take the first Astrafoil you can get places on. Carry as little as possible. You mustn't look as if you're fleeing.'

The old woman was staring at him. 'Meyopapa, you not coming too?'

'Some time, perhaps.' He bent to look out of the little window. The window in through which Dorothee and the others were staring.

He looked directly through them. His black hair was swept back, but even in the early light, his face was deep in shadow.

The Doctor was inside the room, but Dorothee could not see his face at all. She only saw his head give a twitch of shock as a young girl walked into the room.

'Grandfather!' She hurled herself at the man, burying herself in his cloak. 'Oh, Grandfather, I thought you'd never come. It's been days. Where have you been? Did you see the fire? What happened to your shoes?'

'Yes, I saw it, child. Deplorable.'

Her hair was cropped short and her eyes were huge and brown, set in an elfin face. She was laughing. 'Oh, I've missed you. I was reading Pelatov and then I suddenly knew you were here.'

He looked directly at her. 'And you've seen no one else?'

186.

'No. I don't go out. I know it's dangerous out there.'

'And how do you know that?'

'Well, you told me.'

'Hmm?'

She was only half daring to meet his eye. 'And there are strangers in the street below. I've seen them from the window.'

He glared at the old woman. She shrugged and bustled out. 'I cannot turn my eyes every way all at once.'

'I'm sorry, Grandfather,' said the girl and hugged him again.

'No, no, Susan. It's I who should be sorry. This is no way to bring up a child, not locked away with a fussy old nanya and a crotchety grandfather who's never here.'

'You have your work,' she said. 'It's a great secret. That's why you protect me.'

'What's that? What do you mean?'

She lowered her eyes. 'I never saw my mother. But I know that she died when I was born, at the very same moment as the Pythia cursed the world.'

'What's that old woman been telling you?'

'Not Mamlaurea. My mother told me. I stil hear her thoughts in my mind. And father too. Ever since he died in battle.'

'On one of Ra.s.silon's filthy bow-s.h.i.+ps.'

Susan was smiling gently. 'Mother told me that I'm the last of the real children of Gallifrey.'

'Dear child,' he said. 'That's why you're so precious.'

'But you'll always be with me too, Grandfather. I'll always know you.'

Dorothee finally caught sight of the Doctor's face. He had turned away from the scene. There was a look of bewildered fear in his eyes.

Time froze as he saw the ghosts at the window.

'Oh, no. Not now!' He tugged at his vest. 'Whatever happened to privacy?'

'We came to fetch you back,' said Innocet.

'What for?'

'For your sake, Doctor,' said Romana.

He peered at Innocet. 'Do I know you?'