Part 36 (1/2)

Bernice tried to say something but, as her face blurred and ran into the Doctor's, it was his voice that said, 'Are we having fun yet?'

The last thing Ace saw as a separate individual were the Doctor's impossibly blue eyes growing larger and larger, as if to swallow her. Then darkness wrapped its comforting arms around her, and she was borne away by a torrent of faces, words, feelings, betrayals, loves, lovers, pains and pleasures. Like a child in the world's largest sweetshop, she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of choices. Everything was possible. Everything was there, if she could only find it...

Bishop's s.h.i.+p was homely for one: cramped for nine.

Nine people. That was all they had left from an original team of twenty*eight. Miles Engado, Cheryl Russell, Piper O'Rourke, Christine LaFayette, a systems a.n.a.lyst named Sulio N'Farr, Filo Julee, Tiw Heimdall, Shmuel Zehavi, a scheduler called Brandon Courdry. Survivors, all.

Piper sat with Miles in the pilot's cabin, whilst their friends laughed and cried and slapped each other on the back, or simply lay still in the small cargo bay, too exhausted, both emotionally and physically, to move.

On Miles's lap lay the softly pulsing medicine wheel. Had it been the power of the wheel that held the forces from the Mushroom Farm at bay, or had it been blind luck? Whatever, Earth would be pleased to have a sample of the precious high*ma.s.s elements, if that was indeed what the wheel was now composed of. And if there was anything of the old order left on Earth.

Unable to even think any more through sheer exhaustion, Piper glanced at the real*time simularity which overlaid the blank forward bulkhead, displaying a receding Lucifer. Belial and Moloch were too small to see. She was glad that the view was a simularity rather than a real porthole or viewscreen: it meant that she couldn't see her reflection. She felt every one of her eighty*odd years: she was sure she must look them as well.

'I wish I knew what was going on back there,' she said.

Miles put his hand over hers. 'Just be glad we got out.'

'You'll never know how glad.'

She leant forward to kiss him. Unnoticed, Lucifer's red glare s.h.i.+fted through orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, before the planet, its moons, and every trace of human and alien habitation, vanished from the universe.

In their place, a black void took shape, a warning to all not to disturb the Angels at their wors.h.i.+p, a sh.e.l.l to shut out the demons.

The smell of boiled cabbage and disinfectant trickled down stained walls, lurked behind cheerful posters of cartoon bunnies with toothbrushes, collected in unvacuumed corners, and pooled in the worn holes, the cigarette burns and the high*heel imprints in the threadbare linoleum. Acedoctorbernice's footsteps echoed through the ward like the tapping of a blind man's cane. Faces turned to watch from the sanctuary of their beds: scarred, scared, bandaged and burned.

The curtains around the last bed in the line rippled ponderously as Acedoctorbernice approached. Behind it, lungs laboured to suck in air. A machine beeped with the same maddening regularity as a fly beating against a window.

Acedoctorbernice didn't want to draw back the curtain, but somehow it drew back anyway. Her father lay there, projecting from the starched sheets like a pressed flower in an envelope. She barely recognized him, his half*forgotten features made more unfamiliar by illness and pain. His dull brown eyes stared vacantly at the punchboard ceiling and the flickering fluorescent light. The fingers of his right hand had dug into the sheets as if trying to find a last handhold on life.

'Hi. Remember me?'

Jan stepped out of the bright sunlight which spilled from the window on the other side of the bed.

Acedoctorbernice's mouth was suddenly dry, and the buzzing of the fluorescent light seemed to suddenly intrude far too much upon reality.

'Yeah, I remember.'

He was wearing an old army greatcoat slung over a baggy T-s.h.i.+rt and a tight pair of psychedelic knee*length shorts. His hair was matted on top and plaited down the back. Someone with patience and no imagination had tied little ribbons into it. Acedoctorbernice had forgotten about the dirt ingrained into his face, and the slackness of his smile.

'Memory plays funny tricks, you know? Like, did we love each other once? Did we fly to the moon together? Did I put flowers in your hair?'

'Yeah we... we did that.'

Acedoctorbernice was edgy, and guilty about the edginess. This was Jan Jan for G.o.d's sake! Her lover! The man she had been willing to leave the Doctor for, and who the Doctor had cold*bloodedly led to his death for what he fondly supposed to be the greater good. for G.o.d's sake! Her lover! The man she had been willing to leave the Doctor for, and who the Doctor had cold*bloodedly led to his death for what he fondly supposed to be the greater good.

'Then why the sad face?'

'It was a lot of years ago.'

On the bed between them, her father went on grasping one moment after another, the rasp of his breath and the beep of his heart filling the silence between their words.

'Love is forever. Or did you forget?'

'Then maybe I didn't love you.' She wanted to slap her hand over her mouth, but the truth had escaped and hung between them, vibrating gently like a struck bell.

Jan's face seemed to sag. 'You said you did.'

'I was wrong.' There was strength in the truth: she felt it, drew power from it.

'But we shared time, s.p.a.ce, our bodies '

'I was young young.'

His shoulders were rounded, his lower lip swollen and childish. She felt pity for him, mixed with something dangerously close to contempt. Why hadn't she seen how pretentious he had been?

'We shared so much.'

'Yeah, like you shared me with Maire? Like you would have shared me with any other woman who took your fancy?'

'You were the special one, Ace.'

'Lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d! I was only special because I fell for your crude charm.'

'You must have felt something for me.'

Acedoctorbernice glanced down at where her father held on precariously to his life, and was unsurprised to see that he was wearing a brown corduroy jacket and a pullover covered in tiny question marks. She brushed his fine brown hair out of his eyes, and marvelled at the tiny wrinkles that surrounded them.

'You, you, you. It was always about you, wasn't it, Jan? I don't love you. I never loved you. I only went with you because he he disapproved.' disapproved.'

Acedoctorbernice turned on her heel and left, only looking back when the dirty linoleum became softer and rose up beneath her feet, but all he could see was the tiny blue flowers which carpeted the slopes of Mount Cadon, their long stamens waving gently in the breeze as they searched the air for unwary lizards, flicking back in momentary alarm as Doctorberniceace climbed past them, returning to their search within moments as their small vegetable memories forgot that anything had disturbed them. Down at the base of the mountain, where its slope blended gradually with the arid plains of southern Gallifrey, the Prydonian Academy erupted in ebony splendour. High above, higher even than the violet clouds and the hovering flocks of air diamonds, the peak of the mountain was abruptly cut off by the pearly orange sheen of the transduction barrier.

The Hermit was sitting, as always, in the shade of a bush.

The small, intense boy who sat beside him looked up casually at Doctorberniceace's approach.

'You're early,' the Hermit said with a sunny smile.

'I... I skipped temporal protocol.'

'As you can see, I am busy. Come back later.'

'I was hoping you would tell me '

'Tell you what?' the boy beside him cut in. 'About the vampire swarms and the legions of the Sphinx? He's told me all that!'

'Do I know you?' Doctorberniceace asked carefully in third*level High Gallifreyan, using the intonation specifically reserved for dismissive politeness.