Doctor Who (29 page)

Behind the Doctor, Peri and Bob were wincing. But Swan took him at his word.

‘Give me one good reason I should trust you,' she said.

‘Good grief, woman,' shouted the Doctor, ‘Haven't I made the picture clear enough for you? Do I have to describe in detail an entire world of zombies? A whole human race turned into dummy terminals for an alien power?'

‘Just give me one reason why
I
should trust
you
,' said Swan desperately.

‘I can't,' said the Doctor. ‘That's a leap you're going to have to make yourself.'

Swan hung up.

This time, Washington's notorious traffic was on our side. As Swan was driving south to her home in Virginia, she became part of a queue of backed-up cars waiting to cross the Cabin John Bridge.
¹
This was quite normal, but for a woman who's just robbed a bank, it was more than a little annoying. She didn't want any trouble, she just wanted to get home and get on with her new and satisfying life.

She switched on her police scanner, twiddling the dial up and down, hoping for news on the delay. And amongst the chatter, she heard her numberplate being read out.

She slammed on the brakes, causing the car behind her to kiss her bumper, and tuned back in.

There it was again. One officer telling another to keep an eye out for her vehicle, believed to be heading south on the Beltway. The other officer said they were stopping cars at the Cabin John Bridge.

She had slipped up somewhere. She had been so confident about her perfect crime that she had left some fingerprint behind, left some witness to tell the tale.

Chick Peters. That little faggot. Or bulldyke, or whatever it was. Swan had scared the man-woman thing so badly that she just about pissed in her pants. But she or he or it hadn't taken the hint. Peters had told the Doctor where Swan was and what she was doing, and one of them had told the police.

Swan would use Luis to kill both of them. Mash their brains between her fingers like a handful of mince.

That would have to keep. For now, she had two problems: the police, and the Doctor, who was out there somewhere in the traffic jam, looking for her. He was the real threat. She just needed a few minutes' peace, out of the pressure, to decide what to do.

Swan took exit 15 onto the George Washington Parkway, safely on the Maryland side of the bridge. The Parkway is divided, with no turnoffs, just exits. She already had a plan: take the ramp to Carderock, double back onto the parkway, heading south-east past the Beltway towards DC. She could get across the river on the Chain Bridge and be safely home in under an hour.

The Travco was waiting for her at the top of the Carderock ramp.

Her first urge was to ram it. Just aim the car at the side of the campervan and smash into it in a white blaze. She took a deep breath and let the station wagon roll to a stop on the side of the parkway, maybe fifty yards behind it.

‘What's your range. Doctor?' she growled. She had the handgun in the pocket of her jacket and the shotgun in the back seat. And she had Luis. The Doctor must have expected her to fly past him on the parkway, giving him a few instants in which to activate his device and deactivate Luis. He had hoped to surprise her, because without that, he was hopelessly outweaponed.

He knew it. The Travco climbed out into the thin stream of traffic, running for it.

Swan had two choices at this point: she could stick to her original plan and head back to the south-east, or she could follow the Doctor and press her advantage.

It had to be now. As long as he was out there, she and Luis would never be safe. He was the only thing that could put a dent in her new life. The only obstacle left to overcome.

Swan pulled out and accelerated. She savoured the mental image of what would happen when they caught him up – the Travco suddenly losing control, careening off the road as its driver lost the mental capacity to steer.

Luis was infuriatingly calm and blank in his seat. She wanted to hit him. ‘If you see the Doctor,' she growled, ‘if you even
sense
him, I want you to drop him where he stands. Blow his brains out. Kill him. Any way you can. Do you understand?'

Luis just blinked slowly, but she knew her instruction had gone in. The Savant would be at least as determined to protect itself as she was.

The Doctor managed to keep ahead of her, driving wildly, weaving the dinosaur bulk of the campervan around the few cars on the road. Swan wanted to slam the accelerator to the floor, but something kept stopping her. It took her a few minutes to realise she didn't dare risk Luis's life: the urge to protect the Savant was too powerful. She swore and slapped the steering wheel. The Doctor had no such limitation, and he was getting away from them, even in that monstrosity.

The Parkway narrowed to two lanes, and then curved sharply. The Doctor turned hard left onto Macarthur Boulevard, without slowing down, almost side-swiping a VW Bug. He stayed on the road, accelerating away, Swan furiously trying to drive faster and failing. The Travco rounded a corner and was
suddenly gone from sight. He was winning this video game. Swan wove down the hairpin turns as fast as she dared. She was aware they were heading back towards the water. But the Doctor had no plan that she could see: he was just frantically trying to put distance between them.

She rounded another sharp turn and slammed on the brakes. The Travco was stopped right across the road. There was a car backed up behind it, the driver already out and pulling open the Travco's doors. There was nobody inside.

Where was he? Hiding amongst the trees? She looked around, frantically. But the trees were naked, standing like narrow arms with a thousand fingers, nothing but open space between them. He'd stand out like a crow on snow if he was there.

She had to find him and kill him, right now, right this minute. The question was, what range was safe? And how far could the Doctor's device reach – less than fifty yards, but how much less?

‘Luis,' she said, ‘that man in the green shirt standing beside the campervan. I want him to come here.'

Luis turned his attention to the man, who was pacing up and down beside the open door of the Travco. The man's irritated walk didn't change. He slapped his hand against the wall of the vehicle.

Then Luis had a very short range indeed. Swan let the car roll forwards until she was within shouting distance of the man. ‘Did you see the driver?' she called out.

The man pointed down the road, past the Travco. ‘He took off like a rabbit out of a box,' he said. ‘The law must be after him, that's all I can say.'

Swan backed up, aimed her car at the trees, and roared around the Travco, her tyres spitting half-frozen mud. She shot past a guard in a little white tollbooth, leaving him gaping.

‘Up ahead,' said Luis.

Swan nearly crashed into a tree. She swung the wheel and screeched to a halt in an empty parking lot.

‘What did you say?'

Luis's voice was low and gravely, as though he hadn't used it for years. ‘Up ahead,' he murmured.

He
could
sense the Doctor. Not close enough to kill, or he would have done it instantly. Oh – perhaps Luis was sensing the Doctor's lethal device. One piece of technology picking up vibrations from its kin.

They were in Great Falls Park, and they had run out of road. ‘Get out,' she told Luis, shutting off the engine. She grabbed the shotgun out of the back seat. The parking lot was next to a visitor's centre in an old tavern, and a canal that ran parallel to the Potomac River. ‘In the house? Luis, is he in the house?'

Luis shook his head. He pointed vaguely across the canal, towards the river.

Swan took Luis by the hand and led him over the wooden bridge to the towpath on the other side. Water roared through the lock beneath their feet. ‘He's trying to lead us away from other people,' she muttered. Their boots made a plasticky crunch on snow and red gravel. ‘Very heroic. Remember, the moment you can do it, kill him.'

Her head swung from side to side, waiting for the Doctor to spring out from somewhere – even from the sluggish water of the canal. A pair of geese ran out of their way. UNSAFE ICE, warned a sign. A guy riding a bike glanced at them and sped away in panic.

Now Luis was leading her, his cool fingers still intertwined with hers. She understood now that there was nothing left of her friend; she was being pulled along by an alien, not a human. A machine built out of the ruins of Luis's brain, using his
neurons for scrap. There were so many things she needed to think about. What the Doctor had told her, about the eggs. About whoever had come up with this technology in the first place. About what Luis was doing to her mind, to her brain. But she couldn't think about any of it now. They had to get rid of the Doctor. And then they would go somewhere quiet, and she would be able to sort it all out.

A side path split away from the towpath. Luis didn't hesitate, turning onto a wooden bridge that crossed the first gush of the Potomac. He stopped partway across, turning his head slowly, like someone moving the aerial on top of a TV Maybe the rocks were getting in the way: everything here was stone, slashed and sliced and shattered by the water. It seethed beneath the bridge in patterns as complex as the static on a screen, forming miniature whirlpools, little channels, swirling backwaters.

Suddenly Luis was moving again. The bridge became a raised walkway across an island of grey rocks and grey trees. There was no-one here. Swan wanted to stand still for a moment, to sit down and rest. Everything was lit up with winter sunshine, fresh and cold and clear, as though frozen in crystal. A single raptor drifted overhead, black wings spread wide. It folded itself into a tree as they ran by.

There was a second bridge, this time over a rocky gully where only a trickle ran through. ‘Stop,' said Swan quietly. Luis stopped in his tracks, staring intently up ahead.

‘Wait here for one minute,' she murmured. ‘Then follow me.'

She went forward. How far did the wooden trail lead? She could hear furious white noise ahead, the sound of the Great Falls. The Doctor was running out of dry land.

The trail ran out, suddenly, turning into a wide wooden platform on the edge of a cliff. There was a huge rock in the centre. Swan edged forward in case the Doctor might be
crouching behind it, keeping the shotgun at the ready. But there was no-one here. Swan barely glanced at the Falls themselves, a gorge a hundred feet wide, a great flat expanse of rock being demolished by violent water.

He must have left the trail. The only cover was the boardwalk; everything else was raw trees and rocks tumbled like dice. But if he was down there, hidden by the wood, he couldn't see her. Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Luis was crossing the bridge behind her. She decided to move things along. She pointed the shotgun down at the planks and pulled the trigger.

Wooden shrapnel and smoke exploded up around her. She dodged back, cursing, blinded for a moment by a rain of splinters. She batted them out of her face with her gloves.

The Doctor appeared from beneath the platform on the far side.
He held a ball of plastic in his hand
. He stared at her: where was Luis? Why weren't they together? In that split-second, Swan knew she had the drop on him. Behind her, Luis stepped up onto the platform.

Look Ma – top of the food chain!

‘
Do it
,' screamed Swan, but Luis already was.

It was like sticking your thumb into the torn wires at the back of an electric kettle. It was like jamming your head inside a bell and then striking it as hard as you could. It was like putting on headphones and pressing ‘play' without realising the volume is turned all the way up. It was the feeling of the circuitry printed inside your head getting ready to shift and change.

There was a crucial instant, like the moment of unbalance on a tightrope, when the Doctor was about to fall. Mentally flailing for anything to grab onto,
anything
to focus on, anything to deflect the process that was taking root inside his skull. The
more he tried to focus, to remember what he was supposed to do, the more it seemed to feed energy to that process. The roar of the falls and the winter sunlight grew into a blur like gravel in the eyes and ears.

He had fallen to his knees on the rocks, and in front of him were the contents of his pockets: coins and trinkets, transistors and toys. On a piece of paper there was a design drawn, its lines and curves carefully marked out in a pattern of geometric relationships and symbols. It was Bob's occult sigil, the diagram he had given the Doctor to protect him from whatever cosmic forces Swan might be able to yield.

And bless you, Bob, bless you, it didn't mean a thing.

In that split-second of distracting nonsense, the Doctor's thumb pressed into the trigger of the device.

¹
Later renamed the American Legion Memorial Bridge

WE WAITED FOR
hours. Bob and Peri waited to see what was going to become of their lives. I waited to see how my book was going to end.

And then the door opened. The Doctor came through. His black suit was dusty and damp and one of the knees was torn. Otherwise, he looked entirely undamaged.

‘Doctor!' shouted Bob. The Doctor gave a little bow.

‘You could have called!' said Peri, trying hard not to burst into tears.

‘How do we know it's him?' I said.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Do I strike you as the somnambulistic victim of neural reprogramming?'

Peri hugged him. ‘You are OK, aren't you?'

The Doctor nodded. He looked tired, but satisfied, like someone returning from a long day's good work.

Bob said, ‘What about Swan? And Luis? What about the Savant? Is the Earth safe? What happened?'

‘Well,' said the Doctor, ‘I'll tell you.'

Mondy had continued monitoring Swan's calls the whole time. He had overheard me setting up the meeting in the diner, and passed it on to the Doctor. The moment the Doctor was finished at Swan's house, he put the pedal to the metal to try to catch us up. He knew the number of the payphone across the street because he'd been there five minutes ago. When he called
me and then Swan at the payphone, he was just around the corner.