Part 19 (1/2)

'You'll soon see what Earth's like.'

That bothered him too. Did they know that Earth was his home planet? What were they going to do there?

They waited in silence until the s.h.i.+p landed, its rotor falling still with a ping ping. Dr Who operated the scanner and a pleasant green landscape was presented. A discarded crisp packet fluttered by, spoiling the image.

'London, England, Earth, 2001.'

'The time you picked me up from!' Jason exclaimed.

'The precise day. And I'm sure you'll agree, Jason, that this place and time, more than any other, reveals the full extent of 146 the Doctor's reprehensible villainy.'

'Absolutely.'

'I don't understand.' Chris was 953 years before his own birthdate. His mind raced to call up details of long-forgotten history lessons.

'This is a world in chaos.' Dr Who began to pace and make extravagant gestures in much the same manner as the Doctor when in full flow. 'Crime, pollution, starvation, war, the rich becoming richer off the backs of the ever more poverty-stricken undercla.s.s. Greed is king as people covet material wealth and power, regardless of the consequences to others and to their environment.'

Chris swallowed. It all sounded so much like the Earth of his own time: the one he had heard of in newscasts and refused to believe in until he had had to flee the vengeance of a conspiracy exposed. Those newscasts always claimed that things had been better in the past.

'But what's that got to do with the Doctor?'

'You may not realize this,' said Dr Who, 'but, according to the TARDIS, the Doctor visited this planet almost as often as all the other civilized worlds of the universe put together.'

'I . . . think he did express a preference.' Heck, he had picked up Chris here and brought him back since; he knew everything about the place. Dr Who was telling the truth!

'To my distorted reflection, this planet was an opportunity to work his mischief. The Doctor treated Earth like a grand, perverse experiment, to indulge his cruelest whims as he traded in deprivation and misery. Now he's gone, we can tidy up!'

The dark became suffused with light. Red, blue and yellow; strong, primary colours. They merged and formed new, subtler tones. The thunder began and, less obtrusively but closer by, the bubbling of liquids. An ozone smell started life as an abstract notion before taking on actuality. Cold water dripped onto the Doctor's face like pin p.r.i.c.ks and coaxed him away from solitude, into the new world. Reality was remade in a minute and a half.

147.

Ace emerged from the side street and into the blinding winter suns.h.i.+ne and cold, crisp air of Tottenham Court Road. She donned her shades and inspected her surroundings. Same old crowds, same London traffic (ah! - but wasn't that a T-reg Taxi? What year would that make it?), same old Centre Point: a concrete sentry over the busy junction. The air was heavier than she was used to, pollution refracting the shop lights and the early Christmas illuminations. Ace gave a wry smile, walking past the McDonalds branch she had briefly worked in a lifetime ago. Not many places survived her presence so long.

She crossed as soon as the traffic eased and jogged down Charing Cross Road (she considered the tube, but this was healthier and she'd been out of practice). She could have got closer, but materializing in public was something the Doctor would have frowned upon. She had chosen the nearest, most likely deserted spot she could remember from her fries-shovelling days. Even so, she had risked unravelling the s.p.a.ce/time continuum or perhaps providing an old drunk with an anecdote no one would believe.

She paused at a news vendor's and read the date on the Standard Standard: 30 November 2002. Three days cajoling the semi-sentient hopper, coaxing better-than-normal accomplishments from it, and still she couldn't get all the way to 2004. Mind you, this wasn't bad. She flashed it a brief thought of grat.i.tude as she hurried on towards Leicester Square.

She had had no right to expect this century at all, really.

The Doctor inspected the laboratory, sniffing the boiling Contents of a gla.s.s beaker to learn that it contained only green-dyed water. The room was a clutter of test tubes and jars and electrical equipment labelled 'Amp Extractor', 'Light Year Timer' and other improbabilities. A vat of murky liquid on the main bench professed to hold a 'Naughty Brain' and warned the user not to place it in home-built humanoid heads.

The Doctor's curiosity was shared by Bernice, who wandered about and touched everything. Melanie perched on a stool and shook her head repeatedly as if hoping to wake up. Roslyn was nonplussed but attentive, waiting for an explanation.

148.

'I knew it,' said Benny at length. 'h.e.l.l is a mad scientist's lab, and you're in charge of it!'

'This isn't h.e.l.l,' the Doctor a.s.sured her. It's only a sequel.'

'To what?'

'To our encounter with Jason and his ident.i.ty-usurping colleague.'

'So where are we?' Roz asked. She looked up as thunder crashed overhead. Rain sliced onto and through the cracked pavement lights and formed a puddle on the wooden floor. A jagged lightning fork cast her face into relief.

'In what is obviously Jason's idea of my headquarters.'

'You mean he created this?' said Mel.

'Somehow, I don't think he just found it here.'

'We're dealing with someone who possesses a real comic book mentality,' Benny considered, frowning at a meter which purported to measure neutron flows in gigacurrents.

'Don't knock it,' said the Doctor, 'it's that mentality which kept us alive when, by rights, we should have been blasted to ashes. Jason considers me the arch-enemy of Dr Who, so in true comic book style, he refused to let me die in s.p.a.ce.

Subconsciously or otherwise, he saved us and brought us here.'

'To where, exactly?' asked Mel.

'To a room, it seems, conspicuous by its lack of exits.'

'No worries,' Benny chipped in. 'I'm sure our benefactor will have thought to give us a secret door.'

'I'm sure,' the Doctor agreed. 'And, wherever and whenever we turn out to be, I think I can guarantee one more thing.'

'Oh?'

'We're in a sequel. Another clash between Dr Who and his malevolent doppelganger. That means the TARDIS is undoubtedly on its way.'

The TARDIS had materialized by the lake in St James's Park, providing eight sober locals with an anecdote no one would believe. Its occupants headed onto the Mall, along which Dr Who strolled, hands behind his back, enjoying the faint breeze of the warm July morning. Jason kept pace, but Chris lagged 149 behind and watched his two allies carefully.

'Why are we in England?' asked Jason. 'Surely America is a far more evil place? Or Russia?'

'One step at a time, my boy,' the older man said, with the air of a kindly tutor. 'This world's system of national boundaries is like none I've encountered elsewhere. The Doctor enjoyed pitting country against country and watching them fight for religion or territory or simply to profit from each other's misfortunes. We have more than a world's fair share of wicked rulers to depose before Earth can finally know peace. We may as well start with those whose misdeeds we are most familiar with.'

'Where are we going?'

Dr Who produced an umbrella from nowhere. It was uncannily like the Doctor's own, right down to the red question mark-shaped handle. He twirled it, pointed down the straight, tree-lined road and answered: 'There!'

Chris strained to see past the imposing marble statue at the road's end. He was getting the sick feeling that this was an important place, historically speaking.

The newspaper archives of Westminster Library had been computerized, but the available search categories didn't suit Ace's admittedly rather esoteric requirements. She spent several long hours poring over headlines, most of which concerned the Golden Jubilee celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II. She was hot and wanted to take off the trenchcoat and backpack, but she knew how her fellow researchers might react to the hopper's appearance. The organism slept, its pulsating body warm on her shoulders.

The evening had drawn in by the time Ace stepped out onto St Martin's Street, well satisfied. She squinted to read her print-out: the salient details of the top ten weirdest reported events of the century thus far. She had given special weighting to mentions of time travel, proximity to London, all the usual things. It was her best shot. She would visit each of the ten events in order, beginning with the most recent. If she couldn't find the Doctor or his sc.u.mbag double mixed up in at least one 150 of them, she would eat her shades.

Ace took one last look at the London of late 2002, then muttered: 'Been here, done this!' and set about locating a secluded corner from which to vanish.

The Doctor and his three companions emerged into the underground station at Victoria Embankment. When they looked back, the steps they had climbed were no longer there, and Bernice swore that the siting of the laboratory was geographically impossible.