by Gary Russell
‘Then what can we do?’ she replied.
He looked at the three faces of the humans in front of him: anxious, terrified, alarmed…all hoping he would come up with something.
And the little Groske, sadly standing apart from them.
The Doctor loved humans – these three kids were fantastic, determined, never giving up, with total belief that they could rescue Sarah Jane and Jo. It was why he loved humans, why he always remembered to have one travelling with him because –
‘Memories! They are using Sarah Jane and Jo’s memories!’ He yelled.
‘We know!’
‘Then don’t you see? We do exactly the same!’ He yelled through the door. ‘Sarah Jane! Jo! Listen to me!’
‘The key…’ That was Jo.
‘It’s almost solid…’ That was Sarah Jane.
And the Doctor spoke so softly and yet powerfully that there was no doubt his voice would carry into the room.
Clyde shivered. It was like the air in the corridor had stopped moving, like the whole world was suddenly still.
Even the throbbing of the Memory Weave within the sealed room seemed to drop, as if it too was somehow listening to the Doctor’s voice.
‘Listen to me. Both of you. I want you to remember everything. Every day with me. Every single second. Let those memories come, stop fighting the Weave. Because your memories are more powerful than anything else on this entire planet. Give the Memory Weave everything! Every planet. Every face. Every madman. Every loss. Every sunset, every scent, every terror, every joy. Every Doctor. Every me!’
Inside the Funeral Chamber, Karim was at the controls, but the Weave seemed to be operating by itself, the power getting stronger, feeding…feeding off the memories!
‘What’s he doing?’ she screamed at Azure, but the big vulture was as confused as her.
‘I remember,’ said Sarah Jane beside the Colonel.
‘I remember,’ echoed Jo, next to Aureolin.
And on their holograms faces, planets, creatures flashed by, like a speeded-up movie.
Daleks. Cybermen. Ice Warriors. Sontarans. Morbius. Azal. Krillitanes. Karfelons. Autons. Arcturans. Arcateenians. Bok. Wirrn. Eldrad. Omega. The Master. Davros. The Brigadier. K-9. Mike. Harry. Draconia. Kastria. So many faces, so many sounds, so many smells, so many temperatures, so many memories…
Karim pointed as the key, that had been so nearly solid, just melted into nothingness as these other memories poured out from the two women strapped into the Memory Weave.
A squawk from Azure made the Colonel stare at her console. Smoke was seeping out from under it. ‘What’s happening?’
Azure’s great wings began flapping. ‘The device is overloading. Too many memories. Too many –’
Another cry – this time from Amaranth, because the Cradle’s strings had snapped, rending the instrument useless, and he staggered back from it, his talons flailing around in fear and bewilderment.
Outside, the Doctor turned to the teenagers.
‘Come on, all of you! Help them!’
Clyde was first to the door, yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Think of us, Sarah Jane! Remember Maria. And her dad! And all the stuff we’ve done. Slitheen, the Gorgon…’
‘And the clowns,’ Rani was yelling. ‘And the Judoon. And the Berserker! And the Mona Lisa coming alive!’
‘Just think, Gran,’ Santiago was shouting. ‘All the places we’ve been to. All the countries, all the people…’
Inside, Jo was smiling as she thought about all the tribes she had visited, all the rivers, and mountains, and deserts and jungles she’d seen. With Cliff, her husband. And their children. And their children’s children…
And Sarah Jane was thinking about Bannerman Road, finding Mister Smith’s Xylok crystal, creating the computer. Of the Bane. Of Luke. Luke, her son…
And then the holograms just vanished and the console beside Jo exploded in a huge mass of sparks and flashes, throwing Aureolin backwards.
‘It’s blown a circuit,’ Sarah Jane said. The straps holding her arms and legs sprung open as the power drained away. She ripped the headset away and was across to Jo, pulling her free, ignoring the explosions around them, almost dragging Jo towards the door, to the Doctor, to freedom.
But the door was sealed.
‘Doctor!’ Sarah Jane shouted. ‘Problem! The door’s sealed and this place is about to go up!’
Jo glanced back. The whole place was a mass of smoke and flame and she drew Sarah Jane’s attention to the power cables leading into the floor. One of them was already ablaze – and when that reached whatever was powering this place beneath the floor…
Colonel Karim saw this too and threw herself forward, preparing to yank the power cable out.
Jo and Sarah Jane hid their eyes as an electrical flash lit up the room like a massive firework had silently gone off, creating a whole load of smoke that made them cough.
Of Colonel Karim, there was no sign. Perhaps she had been completely vaporised by the power feedback.
And the cables were both ablaze now.
Sarah Jane was trying the sonic but it wasn’t working and she realised it had drained itself on the alien world. Getting them back here.
‘Where’s your sonic screwdriver?’ Jo called through the door.
‘In the TARDIS,’ the Doctor said back.
‘And we can’t get in because we stopped ourselves remembering the key, so it faded away.’ Sarah Jane smiled sadly at the irony.
‘Doctor,’ said Jo quietly, bravely ignoring the destruction around her, destruction getting closer to claiming them with each second. ‘Doctor, I just want to say…I’m so glad I saw you again. I waited all this time. And it was worth it. Every second.’ She shrugged to Sarah Jane. ‘Funny thing is, your funeral turns out to be ours instead.’
‘Doctor,’ Sarah Jane added. ‘All of you. Look after Luke for me. Please.’
‘Listen!’ The Doctor was now yelling excitedly through the door over the two of them. ‘Listen to me! My funeral! Don’t you see?’
Sarah Jane and Jo looked at one another and then, as one, turned back to look behind them – through the smoke and flame, past the three panicking Shansheeth who were failing to stop the flames which had now spread to the drapes, engulfing the whole back end of the room in flame.
They shrieked. They squawked.
But Sarah Jane and Jo focused on just one thing.
The lead-lined coffin.
They half ran, half-dragged each other to it, and pulled the lid up. Sarah Jane made Jo get in first and then as the whole Memory Weave set up exploded, she followed.
The last things Sarah Jane saw as she closed the lid tightly on herself and Jo was Azure, flying across the room, wings flapping furiously, screeching in madness and anger at her, his talons dragging across the coffin lid as she pulled it tight.
That, and the flaming cables finally reaching the power source in the floor.
They felt the explosion from within. It churned the coffin up, bouncing it over the floor.
And then all was silent. The two women counted to ten, then pushed the lid of the coffin up and scrambled out.
The Funeral Chamber was all but gone – just the walls remained, scorched black. Of the three Shansheeth, nothing but a few black feathers were left.
The Memory Weaves, the consoles, the Cradle, and the pews, all turned to ash.
Only the TARDIS was whole, untouched and indestructible as ever. The brilliant, amazing, wonderful TARDIS that had been both their homes at different times.
The door to the Funeral Chamber was gone, embedded in the wall of the corridor outside, forced out there by the explosion.
And walking through the smoke were Clyde, Rani and Santiago, each of them hugging Sarah Jane and Jo for all they were worth.
As the smoke cleared, the Doctor was leaning nonchalantly against the now empty door frame, as if he did things like this every day.
Which he did.
They all did.
<
br /> Because that’s what made them all so brilliant.
The Groske was there, wiping soot off the walls. ‘Take forever to clean. Groske busy for weeks.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Smell of roast chicken.’ And he scampered around, busy and happy.
As they all moved towards the Doctor, he held up a hand.
‘One thing. The Mona Lisa coming to life?’
‘Long story,’ said Rani.
He threw his arms around Clyde and Rani’s shoulders and looked his old companions straight in the face. ‘Now then, Smith and Jones. How brilliant were you?’ He nodded at the coffin. ‘The trap turned out to be the solution. That’s so neat, I could write a thesis.’
Jo and Sarah Jane just hugged each other and laughed with relief.
Chapter Twelve
Until next time
The attic at 13 Bannerman Road was silent, when suddenly Mister Smith detected a temporal flux.
The source was the TARDIS, which wheezed and groaned into solidity in front of the computer, and the doors opened.
First Clyde, then Rani and finally Santiago emerged.
‘Whoa!’ Clyde said. ‘The attic. Home! It’s like everything moved around us. I’m so never getting used to that.’
Rani was staring at Mr Smith. ‘You are in big trouble. Those Shansheeth were bad!’
Mr Smith apologised. ‘It transpires that you encountered a rogue element and the Wide Wing of the High Shansheeth Nest has already sent their apologies.’
Santiago was staring at Mr Smith. ‘On top of everything else, you’ve got a talking computer in the chimney.’ He hugged Rani and Clyde. ‘Of course you have. Why wouldn’t you?’
Inside the amazing TARDIS, Sarah Jane and Jo were saying goodbye to the Doctor.
Jo was running her hands over the console. It looked very different to the one she remembered and yet…somehow so familiar. She sniffed loudly. ‘Same old TARDIS,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter what you’ve changed, it still smells the same.’
Sarah Jane breathed in deeply and then nodded in agreement.
‘But it’s time to go,’ Jo continued. ‘Because if I stand here any longer, I’ll stay forever. And these days, I’d slow you down.’
The Doctor busied himself with the console, not catching either of their eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’d really better go. You know me. Things to do.’
‘It’s daft,’ said Sarah Jane quietly. ‘Because we both had this theory that if you ever died, we’d feel it. Somehow. We’d just know. But that’s silly, isn’t it?’
The Doctor looked at them. ‘I don’t know. Maybe not. Because between you and me, if that day ever comes,’ and he leaned towards them, as if telling then something top secret, ‘I think the whole universe might shiver.’
Jo and Sarah Jane stared at him, captivated. Until he went “boo!” very suddenly and made them jump. And laugh. Jo hugged him first and then stood back, to let Sarah Jane say her goodbye.
‘Until next time,’ he whispered to her, so that only Sarah Jane could hear.
She smiled and followed Jo out of the TARDIS and into the attic, where they joined the teenagers, watching as the police box faded away.
After a few moments’ sad silence, Santiago nudged Rani. ‘It’s just like you said. You save the world. From an attic. In Ealing!’
Rani smiled. ‘You know, we do. We sort out Slitheen. And Sontarans. And the Trickster. And your family fight oil barons and factories and that’s equally important. But I live over the road, and Clyde’s mum is just a few streets away. At the end of the day, who’s waiting for you?’
Santiago shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s time to make some changes. I dunno.’
Jo was suddenly behind him, and kissed the back of his head. ‘I think our next stop is Norway, sweetheart. Meet up with your mum and dad and have a bit of a break, yeah?’
‘I’d like that,’ Santiago agreed.
‘So would I,’ said Jo.
‘But before then, I’m starving.’
Jo turned to Sarah Jane. ‘Got any food in this house?’
‘Must be something in the fridge. Probably not much, though. I’m not one for cooking,’ Sarah Jane said.
‘Great. We’ll whip something up,’ Jo said and led Santiago out of the attic and downstairs.
Rani was about to follow, but Clyde asked Sarah Jane a question. ‘D’you think there’s lots of Jo Grants out there? Old companions of the Doctor?’
Sarah Jane smiled. ‘I do a little search now and again.’
‘You Google “TARDIS”?’
‘Hey,’ said Sarah Jane. ‘It works. I mean, I can’t always be sure. I know a woman in Australia called Tegan Jovanka, fighting for Aboriginal rights. There’s a Ben and Polly running an orphanage in India. A Doctor Holloway in San Francisco looking into new breakthroughs in surgery. I knew a lovely doctor once, Harry Sullivan.’ Sarah Jane sighed sadly. ‘He did such good work with vaccines, saved thousands of lives. Then there’s a woman called Dorothy who runs that company, “A Charitable Earth”, raising billions, where she works alongside a Melanie Bush, providing PCs to schools in Africa. And this couple in Cambridge, professors at the university, Ian and Barbara Chesterton. Rumour has it, they’ve never aged, not since the Sixties. So yeah, I often wonder…’
‘That’ll be us one day,’ said Clyde to Rani.
‘Out there. Still fighting.’
Sarah Jane held them close. ‘Echoes of the Doctor, all over the world. With friends like us, he’s never going to die, is he?’
And with a little smile at Mr Smith, Sarah Jane led them out of the attic, and downstairs to find out what was happening in the kitchen.
BBC CHILDREN’S BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Australia) Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria, 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa
Published by BBC Children’s Books, 2010
Text and design © Children’s Character Books, 2010
Sarah Jane Adventures © BBC 2007
www.thesja.com
BBC logo ™ & BBC 1996. Licensed by BBC Worldwide Limited
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-40-590806-1
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
The Death of the Doctor
Chapter One: Very bad news
Chapter Two: The Epitaph Stone
Chapter Three: Bang on time
Chapter Four: The smell of time
Chapter Five: Sorry for your loss
Chapter Six: The cradle sings
Chapter Seven: Sorry, Clyde
Chapter Eight: Come along, Smith
Chapter Nine: A madman with a box
Chapter Ten: Trapped
Chapter Eleven: Activate the memory weave
Chapter Twelve: Until next time