‘Hey!’ The thug had seen me now, and he was running. And I had nowhere to go.
Except … I started to run too. I glanced back over my shoulder, looking scared, looking like I really feared he would catch me … he was getting closer, he was going to catch me, I had to speed up, so he had to speed up … then I turned back to the doors, exclaimed, ‘Oh, thank god!’ and dived.
And ducked. And stopped just this side of the entrance, as he kept going.
I was going to say ‘kept going right through’, but that wouldn’t be one hundred per cent accurate. Looking at what remained this side of the doorway, 50 per cent accurate would be about right; he’d carelessly left half his torso and both legs behind. At least the floor was covered with a nice wipe-clean low-tech linoleum.
At last the clock in my head told me it was safe, and I dived straight through for real. I looked at the first cell – 450. Damn! I needed to go down, but I’d gone up. I’d have to go back.
I stepped back through the entrance – and something happened. My whole body was shaking, juddering, teeth chattering, bones rattling. Had I got it wrong? Was I being torn apart?
Was this really the end of all my fun?
And then it was over. I was back in the vestibule – the semi-body on the floor told me as much. And I realised what had happened – the incomers had managed to turn off the security and the doors had all opened, just as I was heading through one. Not an experience I’d like to repeat, but much better than being cut in two. I looked around quickly – all the doors had separated out, it was rather like being inside a giant colander. Yes! There was the entrance to the next floor down. I headed straight through.
But I was seen. Shouts came from behind me once again. Spears of red light shot past me. But I had a guard’s eyeball. It wasn’t just computers it unlocked. I could access environmental controls.
I turned off the lights. I didn’t hang around to find out exactly what happened, but the curses that came to my ears suggested my pursuers had just slipped in a pool of blood left by their half a friend. Plus it would take them a while to develop night vision – which they would destroy every time they fired at me. And while they may have got directions from the computer, they weren’t used to the labyrinth. That all gave me a head start, at least.
Down the corridor I ran, ignoring the shouts of prisoners wanting to know what the hell was going on, until I found Cell 376.
The small man inside shrank back into the far corner, clearly terrified. ‘It’s OK, it’s me,’ I whispered. ‘River. Let’s get you out of here.’
He hurried over to the bars. ‘River! What’s happening?’
I pulled up my top to remove my bra. Even with the dim light, the poor man looked like he was going to have a heart attack. ‘Wire saw,’ I explained, handing it over. ‘Start sawing.’ I got out the remainder of the acid – it wasn’t enough to burn all the way through the bars, but was better than nothing. ‘Someone overheard us talking, and they want the Device,’ I told him, finally answering his question. ‘And judging by the number of dead guards they’ve left behind them, they’re not going to say please.’
He froze. ‘No,’ he managed to say. ‘No, that can’t happen. I must find a way to destroy it, I must!’
‘Look, these hoodlums are coming to get you, and the cops are on their way to the “Eye”. It’s a race, and it doesn’t matter if the bad guys or the good guys win, because the good guys will turn into bad guys, if everything you say is true. So we need to get you out of here, then fetch the Device. Take it somewhere completely tech-free. I’ve got a few ideas. Then you can keep on trying to find a way to destroy it, in safety.’
He was still frozen. It was all too much for him to take in. That was understandable. But it was not acceptable. There was more than one life on the line here.
‘Keep sawing!’ I ordered. But I could hear distant footsteps. There was no way we could work fast enough.
There was no time. No time at all.
Time …
‘The important thing is to keep it out of all of their hands.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I suggest hiding it in time, rather than space. Take it somewhere completely non-technological. The Device will be neutered to a certain extent and I’d be surprised if these gentlemen have time-travel capability.’
Now he was staring at me as though I’d suggested taking it in a hot-air balloon to the sun. ‘Hide it … in time?’ he said. ‘That’s … impossible.’
‘It’s not,’ I said, ‘and you’re just going to have to trust me on that.’ I peeled the Vortex Manipulator off my wrist and I handed it to him through the bars. ‘It’s got voice controls,’ I told him. ‘Tell it where and when you want to go. Fetch the Eye, and meet me here.’ I told him where and when – deciding on my office, in the twentieth century. He gaped as I told him the address and the date, and my preferred time of day. I shrugged. ‘I’ll meet you there, and we’ll work out the best hiding place.’
‘But what are you—’
‘It only carries one. I’ll get a lift home. I’ve got friends,’ I said, mental fingers firmly crossed. ‘Go! Now!’
His finger hovered over the button – I think he suspected I was playing some elaborate joke on him. Or that it was a trap, that I was one of the bad guys.
‘Now!’ I shouted.
Ventrian vanished; the thugs arrived; I ran.
Oh, how I ran. To my shame, I lost my way. I wasn’t thinking, wasn’t planning, I was a fleeing animal operating on instinct and desperation. And the predators were on my heels.
And then I turned a corner …
… and there was nothing. Actual nothing.
This was where they’d broken in. There was a temporary seal over the hole with what the hubby used to call ‘space cling-film’ (it’s rather an endearing little affectation he has, likening things to Earth objects from the twentieth century), but through it was a field of nothingness. The sort of nothingness that includes absolutely no air. There was no ship visible. There was no way out.
They were laughing as they reached me. They knew I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t fight my way through four of them, not when they all had guns, and poor little me only had a sharpened nail file.
That’s probably why they couldn’t understand why I was laughing too.
Because who would be mad enough to use a sharpened nail file to cut through space cling-film? When there was just a void on the other side?
Hey, fellas, I think that would be me.
I took a very deep breath.
They were still smiling for, ooh, almost a second before they realised. Before they were sucked towards the rapidly increasing opening.
And I too was pulled out – into uncertainty.
If I survived, I would send a message to the Doctor, and he would pop back here to rescue me.
If I didn’t survive, I wouldn’t be able to send the message. So my Beloved wouldn’t be able to rescue me. So I’d die.
And I had no way of knowing which future awaited.
I was floating, falling …
A muscled arm grabbed me, curling around my waist from behind.
It wasn’t Beloved’s arm. Not any of him.
And I was so surprised, because things have always worked out before, somehow. I really thought they always would. Forever. I never really expected there to be an end.
Shame I wouldn’t get to say goodbye.
‘Sorry, my love,’ I whispered. Maybe the words would get to him somehow. River’s last goodbye.
I still had the nail file in my hand. I only had moments to live. Even if it took the last scrap of energy I possessed, I was going to take someone with me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SPACE, AD 5147
Then I saw a face. His face. Not him, solid, holding out a hand to guide me into the TARDIS. Just the vague ghost of his face, hanging in the void.
Oh, I thought. I’m seeing things. My life passing before my eyes. My loved ones waiting to greet me at the gates of … w
herever.
If there had to be an end, I could cope with that being the last thing I ever saw. His silly old face with that silly old floppy hair, that silly old fez and that silly old bow tie …
That silly old, wonderful old face.
I stared into its diaphanous eyes, and stabbed backwards, as hard as I could.
A hand caught my wrist. A voice exclaimed, ‘Hey!’ It sounded annoyed.
I wondered how someone could be talking to me in the vacuum of space, and how I could hear them. In space, no one can hear you scream. Or chuckle. Which is what this voice went on to do.
And then I realised I was breathing. Lovely, lovely oxygen. I was inside an air bubble, alongside my … captor? Rescuer?
‘Thing about being immortal is I age very slowly. Which means hair, nails, stuff like that – real slow too. So let’s cancel the manicure, OK?’
Oh, I knew that voice. So I repositioned the nail file carefully.
‘OK, you do not wanna do that! Do you know how many hearts would be broken?’
‘It’s not hearts I’m aiming for. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to grab a lady from behind?’
‘But it’s a behind in a million … ’
I reholstered the nail file and spun around in the artificial gravity of the bubble. Couldn’t help smiling as I looked up at him. ‘Hello, Jack.’
‘Hey, River.’
‘Did you just happen to be passing?’
He pointed to the Doctor’s face, still hanging in the Stygian darkness of space. The vision suddenly opened its mouth and said: ‘You’ve reached the Doctor’s emergency line. I’m sorry I’m not able to deal with your life-or-death problem right now. If you confirm your coordinates, someone will be there to rescue you shortly.’
WHAT? He’d rerouted my eventual call to his answerphone? He’d palmed off my rescue to someone else?
‘Yup,’ said Captain Jack Harkness. ‘I’m your replacement bus service. The man himself is a bit busy. Saving the universe – or was it a Girl Scout cook-out?’
‘Well, he does love his smores.’
A sudden flash of colour in the gloom. A spaceship, pulling away from Stormcage. It had been out of sight around the far corner. Jack turned to look too. His face took on a grim expression. ‘That’s one of the Gain Gang ships. Is that who you’ve been messing with to end up floating about in space like this?’
‘I don’t “mess”,’ I said. ‘And I’ve never heard of them. Gain Gang?’
‘Yeah. You’ve heard “No pain, no gain”? Well they’ve reversed it. Where there’s Gain, there’s pain. Gangsters, racketeers, space mob – whatever you want to call it.’
Having seen the heavies who’d broken into Stormcage, learning they were mobsters didn’t surprise me. At least they were now dead mobsters: no one had given them an air bubble and they were floating around space like dead fish in an aquarium. My mind immediately went to Melody. I’d been living in 1939 America, it hadn’t been hard to find people to talk to for research into mobsters. I’d met witnesses to the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, spoke to one of Lucky Luciano’s runners, and – due to a slight misremembering of a kids’ movie I’d seen at a drive-in in the 1970s – given Bugsy Siegel a custard pie. Although actually, it worked out fine, he rather liked it.
But despite organised crime being a way of life back in thirties America, I wasn’t a fan. Random crime is much more fun in my book.
My book. Damn it. I almost said some very rude words, but I didn’t want to shock the delicate ears of Captain Jack Harkness. My typewriter was back in my cell, and my Vortex Manipulator with the back-up was on the wrist of a frightened archaeologist with a decidedly sweaty grip on reality. Worse thing of all, I’d nearly finished it. Acquaintances have told me of painful things they’ve experienced – gallstones, childbirth, decapitation – but I’m practically certain none of them is anywhere near as painful as a writer losing a nearly completed work in progress. OK, so I’d just been saved from almost certain death, but this really put a dampener on the day. It was time to go home.
‘Well, thanks for the rescue,’ I said, ‘but I can’t hang around here all day. Have to meet a friend of mine back in 1939.’
‘Someone special?’
‘Oh, incomparable. Fancy giving me a lift home?’
‘Do I get to come in for coffee?’
‘Oh, we’ll see … ’ I gave him the coordinates and he input them into his Vortex Manipulator. ‘Ooh, looks like the latest model,’ I said. ‘Carries two, I see.’
‘Only problem is you can’t hang out with twins,’ he said, and pressed the button.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
NEW YORK, AD 1939
Travelling by Vortex Manipulator is not pleasant, even with the latest model, and travelling to 1930s New York is ten times worse than a standard trip, for reasons I’ve already explained. The instant we arrived in my office, I checked in the wall mirror to see if my stomach was actually on top of my head, my intestines wrapped around my ankles and my lungs upside down somewhere around knee-level. To my immense surprise, there were no internal organs on the outside of my body at all. Physical sensations can be deceiving.
‘Ventrian?’ I called out. ‘Are you here? It’s me, River.’
Jack smiled. ‘That the guy you’ve got the date with?’
‘That’s right, Captain. And the date we’re supposed to have together is the twelfth of April 1939 at noon – is he off, or is it us?’
Jack checked his Vortex Manipulator. ‘Right time, right place,’ he said. ‘How’s your date getting here?’
‘Also Vortex Manipulator. Although not the latest model.’
He shrugged. ‘Don’t sweat it. You know what these things are like. They’re often out by a bit, space or time. Turned up late to my own wedding once.’ He smiled and I raised my eyebrows, indicating I wanted to hear more. He obliged. ‘I’d met this guy just after Woodstock. August of 1969. Peace and love – two of my favourite things. I said it was the VM that made me late, and he was so mad he grabbed it off my wrist and scooted back in time to stop himself from meeting me in the first place. Unfortunately, long story short, he got there too early and popped up right in the middle of the stage. People were so high they just applauded. He liked the adulation, the wedding never happened, and he went on to have six hit albums.’
I rolled my eyes, but with a smile. I was extremely fond of Jack.
‘Anyway. Want me to help you look for the guy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll handle it. But thanks.’
‘OK. But I’d steer clear of the fifty-second century for a while. You’re not going to be Deff’s favourite gal.’
Jack and I made a rather enjoyable farewell, then he zipped off to who knows where or when, complaining that he was needed for a lot of jailbreaks just at the moment.
The name Deff had rung a bell. Yes … ‘Sukri’ (who I’d guessed was a prisoner) had passed on my and Ventrian’s conversations to a Deff – presumably Don of the space Mafia. Jack’s warning was justified: there was a very good chance he knew my name. Next time I went to the 51-hundreds I’d have to watch my back. I can handle myself, of course, but there’s no point looking for trouble.
Oh, who am I kidding. I always look for trouble. After all, like calls to like.
Talking of calls – and talking of trouble – I’d better make that call to the Doctor. I patched into his emergency line, confirmed my previous coordinates – and rerouted the automatic answer to them as well. As a Child of Time, paradoxes bring me out in hives; I have to be very careful.
That done, I had to decide whether to sit and wait for Ventrian to turn up, or to carry out a search in case he’d arrived early or displaced. Well, I’m not one for sitting or waiting, so the latter seemed preferable. I left a note on my desk, propped against a framed photo of my parents. Nineteen-thirties fashions rather suited my mother, but unfortunately my father had decided to adopt a pencil moustache which he thought would make him blend in. Oh, Dad. I do
love you, but no. Just no.
I visited some of the other floors of the building, popping into a few offices to ask if anyone had seen a small confused man wandering about. No luck. I went down to the street and canvassed the locale, still nothing. Conceding defeat, I returned to my office. Still no Ventrian, and my note was still lying on my desk. So he hadn’t –
Hold on. The note was lying on my desk. I’d left it propped up against my parents’ photo.
The photo was gone.
I shifted immediately into alert mode. Someone had been in here. No sign of anyone having forced their way in, implying matter transmission of some sort. Ventrian? Well, that was the logical answer, of course, but why would he have taken the photo? And why not wait for me here, the note clearly said I’d be back soon.
A knock at the door. Perhaps Ventrian returning, or one of my neighbours coming to tell me a man had suddenly appeared in their broom cupboard. I genuinely had no presentiment of evil. As far as I knew, I had no enemies in this city in this time period.
Silly me.
I opened the door.
It wasn’t one of my neighbours. The way I knew that was that all of my neighbours were under eight foot tall; also the majority of them were human.
Actually, it’s possible the person on the other side of the doorway had once been human. Humanoid, at least. But he had been majorly modified. One arm looked human, the other ended in what appeared to be the huge claws of a Raxacoricofallapatorian. What I assumed to be his original eyes were all-white, and a pair of completely circular black eyes now sat above them. At first I thought he was wearing a particularly unfashionable hat, but a second look showed me it was the horned forehead of some arachnoid race, perhaps the Skithra. One leg was definitely robotic, and I’m just not going to guess what might be going on under his clothing. Basically: one very big and definitely scary dude.
Doctor Who Page 8