‘It’s called Dance of Days. They must have moved it from the city this morning. Is this what you were going to show me?’
‘No. Look around.’
There were people everywhere. All ages, plenty of kids.
The distant buildings of Arcopolis were covered in ivy, most of them. Others had tarnished, become brick red.
There was a gap in the skyline where the Fortress had been, like the city was missing a tooth.
A crowd was gathering around the TARDIS.
‘It took us weeks to get it here,’ a man said.
Alsa wouldn’t have recognised him if he hadn’t had his hands in his pockets. He wore a tool belt, and his hair was starting to thin a little.
‘Gar?’
He nodded.
Alsa turned, drank it all in. ‘This is the future.’
‘Yup,’ the Doctor said. He was also looking around.
Everyone clearly knew who he was. Many of them had been there twenty years before. The others must have heard stories about him. An older woman stepped out from the group.
‘This is your time machine?’ Dela asked. Her hair was extraordinarily, vividly white, now. She looked radiant.
‘Yes.’
‘It doesn’t look like a time machine, it looks like…’
She wasn’t sure what it looked like.
‘There’s a reason,’ the Doctor assured her. ‘A really good one.’
‘You don’t look a day older.’
‘I’m not. Not quite.’
She ran a hand along his temple. ‘You still have the bruise.’
‘You must have scores more children by now,’ the
Doctor said lightly.
‘Only one more. Lios. A boy. Well, a man now. It’s all grandchildren these days.’
The Doctor beamed. ‘Hang on. Almost forgot. Brought you a present.’
He nipped back into the TARDIS.
‘And the weapon?’ Dela asked.
Alsa held out a small, charred piece of metal for Dela and Gar to inspect. ‘We went to an asteroid – like a little planet. It didn’t have any air, so we had to wear spacesuits. There was a plasma vent, like a pit of energy.
We dropped it in there and the weapon just opened up. We couldn’t look at what was inside, but once it was out, it couldn’t survive in our universe. Then we went to another planet and ate weird stuff called “burgers”.’
The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS holding a birdcage. Inside were two birds that would have fitted in the palm of his hand. Their feathers were a rainbow, from their red caps to their violet wingtips.
‘Kegronian Halcyons,’ the Doctor said. ‘A breeding pair. Widely regarded as having the most beautiful plumage and song of any bird in the universe. Very adaptable. Not much meat on them, but… well, that’s good news for the Kegronian Halcyon, isn’t it, all things considered?’
The Doctor opened a small door on the side of the cage, and the two birds pushed their way out, then spread their colourful wings and they were off, swooping around each other, darting towards the city and so many potential roosts.
The others watched the birds, but the Doctor was staring at the necklace Dela wore – a glass pendant.
She glanced over at him. ‘They’re all over the city, get washed up in the streams. The water wears them smooth.’
Gar was handing the Doctor one, but he held up his hand. ‘Won’t work on me. Alsa?’
Alsa took one. ‘Oh…’
‘Memories?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Yes,’ Gar said. ‘Some from the Eyeless, some from the ghosts.’
‘A source of technical knowledge?’
‘And a way of broadening our horizons.’
Dela smiled. ‘Gyll,’ she said, touching her stone. ‘At least… I like to think so.’
‘So you go into the City, now?’ Alsa asked.
‘Yes,’ Dela said. ‘We choose to. We have choices, now.
There are so many of us, we’ve actually lost count. Which is silly, there aren’t all that many. Thousands.’
Alsa smiled.
‘It makes everything a lot easier.’
The Doctor was grinning. ‘Who says there are no second chances, eh? What wally ever said that? See, Alsa, it all works out.’
‘Yes…’
‘So now you’ve seen this, I can take you back, safe in the knowledge that it all turns out for the best and—’
‘Doctor,’ Dela cut in, ‘it didn’t happen that way.’
‘It doesn’t what?’
‘This is the first time we’ve seen either of you for twenty years. You said before that if it isn’t what happened, it can’t happen.’
‘I…’ The Doctor was lost for words. ‘We must have…
no. It’s the plan, you see. A bit of Ghost of Christmas Future, just enough to make Alsa mend her ways – that was what that McDuck reference was all about. I really liked the McDuck reference.’
‘You never came back. Is that bad?’
‘It means…’ the Doctor began, ‘we must have got sidetracked. Or… worse.’
‘You’re so thick,’ Alsa said.
‘I’m not,’ the Doctor objected. ‘I’m great.’
‘Don’t you get it?’
The Doctor looked around, nonplussed.
‘I get off here,’ Alsa explained. ‘I stay in the future.
Can I come back, Dela? I know all about obstetrics.’
Dela raised an eyebrow.
‘You don’t have to,’ the Doctor said. It wasn’t clear if he meant that Alsa didn’t have to stay or that Dela didn’t have to take her. ‘Although, come to think of it, that would work.’
‘I just told you it would…’ Alsa pointed out.
‘I was talking in terms of the timeline,’ the Doctor said airily.
‘You can be a child here, Alsa,’ Dela said. ‘There are plenty of other children now. You can be grown up. Only if you want to, only when you’re ready.’
The Doctor was beaming. ‘There are choices here for you, now. Yes. The perfect solution. If anyone asks, this was the plan all along. What a great idea this was of mine.’
‘You could stay, too, Doctor,’ Dela said.
‘Well,’ he said, smile flashing, ‘it wouldn’t be fair on the rest of the universe, you having me all to yourself, would it?’
‘Life’s not fair,’ Alsa noted.
The Doctor sniffed the air, turned on his heel, drank in the scene. He was lost in thought for a moment, then realised he’d placed his hand on the side of the TARDIS.
There was a big, wide universe out there and he had his second chance, too.
‘Life’s not fair?’ he echoed. ‘Well… I’ll have to see what I can do about that.’
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jon Blum, Graeme Burk, Mark Clapham, Mark
Jones, Danielle Labbate, Philip Purser-Hallard, Kate Orman, Lars Pearson, Lloyd Rose, Jim Smith and Robert Smith. Thanks to the many and various behind the scenes people, including, but no doubt not limited to, Lee Binding, Albert DePetrillo, Caroline Newbury, Nicholas Payne, Gary Russell and Steve Tribe. Special thanks to Justin Richards and to Russell T Davies.
David Tennant reads Pest Control
Written by Peter Anghelides
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Donna Noble is back home in London, catching up with her family and generally giving them all the gossip about her journeys. Her grandfather is especially overjoyed –he’s discovered a new star and had it named after him. He takes the Doctor, as his special guest, to the naming ceremony.
But the Doctor is suspicious about some of the other changes he can see in Earth’s heavens. Particularly that bright star, right there. No, not that one, that one, there, on the left…
The world’s population is slowly being converted to a new path, a new way of thinking. Something is coming to Earth, an ancient force from the Dark Times. Something powerful, angry, and all-consuming…
Document Outline
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Table of Contents
PART ONE
PART TWO
Also available from BBC Audiobooks
Dr. Who - BBC New Series 29 Page 18