Part 34 (2/2)

Everything had changed tonight.

'Here, here,' Dieter Steinmann was telling him, urging the Doctor to take a sledgehammer.

The Doctor held up his hands. 'This is your moment,' he told the young man.

'But you '

'My contribution was nothing,' the Doctor insisted. 'And whatever I achieved here, it wasn't really what I came to Berlin for.'

Dieter lowered the sledgehammer. 'Miranda. She is not here. I am sorry. You have helped us, but we have not been able to help you find your daughter.'

The Doctor nodded sadly. 'I have to get back to England. There may have been other leads.'

He walked away, through the Brandenburg Gate, against the flow of the crowd.

An hour after dawn, the day was already hot, and smelled of spice and dried flowers. Miranda's companion was fast asleep beside her, worn out from the night before. He smelled of pot and cheap beer. It wasn't too difficult to extricate herself from him.

Miranda stood and stretched, smiling with the body-memory of the night before.

She saw his rucksack at the foot of the bed. Perhaps if she searched it, she'd find some ID. He'd told her his name at the beginning of the evening, but she had been distracted by the TV. He was West German. No, news update: last night he'd been West German, but this morning he'd wake up a.s.suming he did ever wake up a German. They'd watched satellite TV in the hotel bar, seen crowds surging through Checkpoint Charlie, scaling the Wall, attacking it with sledgehammers. Unable to speak Hindi, he'd relied on Miranda's running commentary. Neither of them could believe it was happening. It had been a full hour before they'd been sure it wasn't some sort of science-fiction film.

And they'd drunk although only he had got drunk and he'd smoked which hadn't appealed at all and they'd gone up to her room and spent the night celebrating. She'd laughed when he'd asked if it was her first time, and she'd surprised him, and then they'd made sure they were safe, then they hadn't needed to speak any more.

She found her Batman T-s.h.i.+rt in her bag and put it on, before opening up the shutters and stepping out on to the balcony.

So hot and so light! So colourful!

Below, in the courtyard, the crowds were swarming. There were so many people here. People to carry your bags, people to open the doors, people to serve your drinks, people to bring bring you the drinks. That was the division between East and West, she decided here the cheapest part of any process was the cost of labour. Here perfectly ordinary houses had half a dozen servants, or staff, or whatever you wanted to call them. you the drinks. That was the division between East and West, she decided here the cheapest part of any process was the cost of labour. Here perfectly ordinary houses had half a dozen servants, or staff, or whatever you wanted to call them.

Miranda hadn't yet discovered the history of the hotel, but it had plainly been a palace once, and no doubt its staff had been even more numerous than the army currently working here. It was a vast building, with blue minarets and a vast golden dome. It didn't seem to belong on the same planet as the filthy, congested, thrown-together streets that surrounded it.

There were vultures circling overhead. When she'd first arrived in the country, that had seemed ominous. When she realised they nested in the eaves of the hotel, as doves would have done in England, it had seemed absurd, Pythonesque. A month on, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

So why had the crowds stopped to stare up at them?

For a moment, Miranda thought they were looking at her. A few years ago, she'd have been absurdly self-conscious in just a T-s.h.i.+rt, but now she quite enjoyed the idea of standing on a balcony while a crowd below hung on her every move.

Then she looked up, back over her shoulder.

A silver disc, hanging above the hotel like a couple of extra storeys.

It was the size of a house. For a moment, it didn't strike Miranda as odd: there were things she'd seen in India that were far more alien.

Then she realised what it was, that it didn't belong belong and that it had come for her. and that it had come for her.

But by then she couldn't move. She was surrounded by a blue haze, and the world around her evaporated.

Her eyes were the same.

Her face was a latex mask. Her skin looked as if it had been bathed in something corrosive, something that had scored lines into it while also loosening it from her skull and making it melt a little. Her hair was white, now, and wispy, contrasting with the dark Terylene of her nightdress.

She looked into his eyes, and didn't say anything. It wasn't difficult to know what she was thinking: that he barely looked a day older than the last time she'd seen him, that he'd looked the same since they'd first met. Now she was in an old people's home, her life nearly spent.

'Betty,' the Doctor said.

She smiled, the effort almost visibly draining her. She seemed to draw strength from the beautiful roses in their vases and the flickering light of the television screen playing on her face.

'Have you found her?' she asked.

He shook his head. 'I thought she was in Berlin. I went there, but no one had seen her. I've just come from there.'

'I didn't see you on the telly. They had a newsflash during the break on Coronation Street Coronation Street. Show me the photo again.'

The Doctor took the photo of Miranda he kept in his coat pocket, apologised that it was a couple of years out of date. She would be nineteen now.

'I love her,' the Doctor said.

'Of course you do, she's your daughter. She's very pretty,' Betty said. 'I can see the resemblance.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Everyone said that. We weren't related I adopted her.'

'You never could do things the easy way, could you?' She chuckled, admiring the photo. The Doctor looked at the picture frames lined up on Betty's shelf children, grandchildren, even a great-grandchild now. All that history, all those connections. Betty belonged here: her life, her history, her genes, all weaving and interweaving across more than a century. Now the century was about to enter its final decade, and his friends had started dying, one by one: Salvador, Irving, Larry and Graham just this year. They'd left so much behind; they'd contributed to the planet they'd found themselves on. In that same time, what had he done? He'd known he was different, but had always thought that meant he should lie low keep himself out of the history books. If he went tomorrow, what would he leave behind? He could have made a difference, in this of all centuries. He could have made things better.

'Do you want a handkerchief?' Betty asked, handing the picture back.

He shook his head. Then he looked at the photograph in his hand and he knew. Wherever Miranda was, whatever she thought of him, he knew that he'd achieved at least one thing.

'She's a good girl,' the Doctor said quietly. 'I'm so proud of her.'

'Nineteen?' Betty said. She hadn't heard the last thing he'd said. The Doctor realised with a start that Betty was going a little deaf. 'I wasn't that much younger when we first met. Things have changed, though. Kids grow up so much faster. I've got grandchildren Miranda's age, and... oh, the things they get up to.'

'You were engaged at Miranda's age,' the Doctor reminded her.

'We didn't have teenagers when I was a teenager,' Betty chortled. 'You never really grew up, did you? You're like Peter Pan. You don't change.'

'The world's changed around me,' the Doctor said. 'Remember when I talked about the future? Well, it's starting to happen. Things have changed, and usually for the better. There's ma.s.s production, but mankind isn't the slave of machines. We treat the mentally ill like people now, we don't just lock them away. Computers are everywhere. And now, now the Cold War's over. The world's a better place than it could have been. But a lot of things have changed since I first went to Middletown.'

'You always were ahead of your time,' Betty said, laughing.

<script>