by Gary Russell
‘You’re not meant to. All four of us need to get down there before they realise what we’re up to, grab our time-locked future selves and hope the Blinovitch Limitation Effect shorts out the whole problem.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’ Ruth asked.
‘Well, usually in situations like this, two people occupying the same time, especially if they are the same time-separated people, tend to result in a big bang that takes out planets, galaxies even. We wouldn’t know much about it.’
‘Not particularly encouraging,’ Ruth said.
‘Ah,’ said Benny, ‘but these “duplicates” are like ghosts. They are fading from existence.’
‘So,’ Jack reasoned, ‘we’re dead either way. Now, or…whatever then they’re from?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Do we need Peter?’
‘Absolutely we need Peter.’
‘We don’t have Peter.’
‘Have faith. My adorable son will be here in a second.’
At which point Peter crashed to the ground beside them.
‘How’d you do that?’ Ruth asked.
‘Which bit, getting free or the expert timing?’
Ruth shrugged. ‘Either.’
‘Expert timing – cos I’m good. Release – well, I deliberately farted.’
‘You…what?’
‘Dog fart,’ Jack said. ‘Worst smell in the universe. Good one.’
Bernice cast a look back at Kik the Assassin who was still waving the air around her face.
‘Jack?’
‘Yes?’
‘Now.’
And Jack grabbed Ruth and Benny, who in turn grabbed her son and with the help of Jack’s impressively long legs, the quartet leapt down the chasm, crashing into the time eddy.
‘Grab yourselves!’ Bernice yelled, but the noise just sounded like a deep, slowed-down recording, so it was indecipherable. Jack was an inch away from his future self, but Peter and Ruth were struggling.
It was like moving through treacle – and Bernice knew that her exposure to the time vortex after years of TARDISes and Time Rings and other paraphernalia would protect her slightly, but the others were utterly frozen.
Except one of them wasn’t. Jack’s momentum propelled him into the other Bernice, knocking into the Glamour, which crashed, in appalling slow motion to the ground.
A chip split off it and Bernice watched her future self scoop it up.
She watched as Jack then melted into his other self and Bernice realised what she needed to do.
As the future Bernice stood up, the chip of rock in her hand, Bernice shoved Ruth into Ruth. As she moved to push Peter she managed to look upwards, although it seemed to take hours or maybe days or maybe a second to turn her head.
Frozen above her were the leaping forms of Kik the Assassin and Cyrrus Globb, the latter dragging with him the terrified Horace Jaanson.
They were frozen in mid-air, because within the eye of this particular time storm, nothing moved normally.
With every effort she could muster, she pushed Peter into Peter. As with Jack and Ruth, Peter seemed to blend into his counterpart, like a photo being blurred on a computer before refocusing.
And then Bernice realised two awful things.
Instead of becoming their future selves, those future selves had taken on the clothing of her group, and the stance. And were frozen in their places.
Then one by one, Jack, Ruth, Peter and future-Bernice vanished for a few seconds, then popped back into existence, exactly where they were before.
The plan hadn’t worked! Why not? Surely all she needed to do was become her future self and everything would be OK?
And then she looked at the version of the Glamour in the centre of the altar, being touched by her future self.
And she saw the fresh gouge in the side where it had been dropped and the fragment she had been given had been chipped off.
The fragment future-Bernice no longer had! In that split second, the guys must have done all that travelling, postcard-sending and ultimately met up with Bernice back on Legion and set her on this course of action.
The fragment of the lodestone. The Glamour. Whatever.
The fragment she herself no longer had, either. Because Cyrrus Globb was holding it. And he was crashing down towards this same time eddy, and there was nothing Bernice could do.
She took a deep breath.
Either it worked or something else happened. Or they would all be time locked for the rest of eternity.
She hoped her future self had foreseen this and had a plan to sort this and avoid Globb and co, or this was going to be the fastest rescue / death plan in history.
What was it Jack had said earlier? Dead either way.
Bernice forced herself forward and became her future self.
And the time eddy changed – it got wider, larger, capturing the dropping Cyrrus Globb, Kik the Assassin and Professor Horace Jaanson it its wake.
And the time eddy vanished completely.
Then the lodestone vanished completely.
Then Bernice, Jack, Ruth and Peter vanished completely.
Then Globb, Kik the Assassin and Jaanson vanished completely.
Then the whole pyramid vanished completely.
—
On the red, damp surface of Aztec Moon, Colonel Sadkin groaned and pushed himself up out of the cold mud, letting the rain from above wake him.
He immediately sprang into action, yelling at his waking Clerics.
And then stopped.
The pyramid was gone, leaving a gaping hole in the ground, that got bigger as the surrounding surface of the planet cracked and fell away, into the new hole, trying to fill it.
Sadkin could do nothing else as Verger Brown, the Talpidian digger, Brother Elias and all his men one by one dropped into the hole.
And as Colonel Sadkin fell to his death, into the heart of the rapidly disintegrating planet, his last thought was of the person who had done this.
Bernice Summerfield.
6
Planet Earth
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Southern Hemisphere, Earth, Sol 3, Milky Way, Universe. Bit of a long address, and certainly the average postcard doesn’t give anyone room to write that and put a stamp on it.
The Doctor replaced the postcard, showing the world-famous Opera House at night, in the spinner-rack. He admired the architecture and design of the Opera House, not just because Utzon’s shapes created perfect acoustics, but also because it provided an excellent shadow on the Botanical Gardens side that meant he had been able to park the TARDIS in the shade with no one really noticing.
He spun the rack and selected another one. This one showed a koala in a Santa hat, holding a pennant with the Australian flag on it. WELCOME TO A SYDNEY CHRISTMAS it said, neatly avoiding the fact that koalas tended not to live in the city due to the lack of eucalyptus leaves and the general yelling and screaming and media frenzy that would result if they did. Koalas are pretty mild and shy creatures; they tended not to seek celebrity status, name their babies after soft drinks, and queue up on red carpets posing for the paparazzi. The Doctor thought koalas had pretty much got the right idea.
‘I once went to a planet where the koalas were the dominant species,’ he told the woman standing next to him. ‘Fantastic civilisation – and certainly had the least halitosis of anywhere in the cosmos.’
The woman gave him a look and then took a step away, as if unsure that she wanted to be near a madman.
‘Great conversationalists,’ the Doctor added with a smile. ‘Very into the arts and childcare.’
The woman tried to look busy with a couple of mugs and tea towels.
The Doctor glanced around the rest of the tourist shop. Tourists mainly (surprise, surprise), taking a souvenir home from this rather glorious city. The woman the Doctor had spoken to seemed unable to escape his gaze.
She was small – probably no more than five foot, early twenties with dark skin and long dark hair, her eyes hidden behind
large sunglasses. She wore a collared black shirt and blue jeans, with a sensible pair of Chucks and had a designer handbag slung over one shoulder.
The Doctor reached towards her and tapped the bridge of her sunnies, causing them to slip slightly down her nose, so he could see her brown eyes. He grinned. ‘Hullo, where are you from?’
‘London,’ she said in a decidedly South London accent.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘No. No I don’t think so.’
‘Don’t much care what you think, Mr Weirdo,’ she retorted, and he raised an eyebrow. This one was going to be fun, then. ‘Touch me again, and I’ll cripple you,’ she added.
The Doctor pulled a mock ‘Ooh, I’m so scared’ expression and tapped her glasses again, so they actually fell off.
The small woman slapped his hand away. ‘I’m warning you…’ she started, but he just sighed and looked over her shoulder, scanning the shop for someone else.
‘I’m sure you are,’ he said dismissively, ‘and I apologise if I’m annoying you, but it’s your own fault.’
‘How?’
‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘if you are going to visit twenty-first-century Earth, you need to do your research a little better.’
Still not actually looking at her, he pointed at her shirt. ‘That’s from the market in Baloo City on Jalt. The synthetics that wove together to make it simply don’t exist in this solar system, and won’t till the late twenty-fifth century. The bag you got, I’m guessing, from Camden Market, but not till about 2605 because that designer wasn’t born till around then. And the sunglasses? They’re mine, well not mine exactly, they were a gift I gave to someone once. I know that, because the slight chip in the left lens was made when we went rock-surfing on Volcana. I was more adventurous in those days. This version of me wouldn’t be seen dead rock-surfing – far too dangerous.’ Then he looked at her. ‘So what’s your name, my little non-domicile chum?’
She looked up at him, a slight smile on her face. ‘I’m Ruth. And you’re as good as I heard.’
‘Not really, Ruth,’ he said. ‘You’re just pretty bad at fitting in. And, if those glasses do still belong to whom I gave them to and they were loaned to you, their owner is slipping. So I think—’
The Doctor stopped. Something was pressed into the small of his back – it felt like a gun of sorts. He wasn’t really in the mood to take the risk. ‘So I think,’ he continued, ‘that a friend of yours is behind me.’
‘He is,’ Ruth said. ‘Armed.’
‘I guessed.’
‘Fancy guessing what kind of gun, where it was manufactured and how I got it to Earth?’ said a male voice behind him.
‘Guns aren’t my thing,’ the Doctor said.
‘Good,’ said the male. He had a deep, but also soft voice. It was a voice that was probably used to getting what it wanted.
‘If I promise not to make a scene, would you mind putting the gun away?’ the Doctor said. ‘You know, before any of the humans in here notice?’ He scanned the shop – ah, perfect, over by the baseball caps area was a mirror. He could see himself and Ruth in it, and behind him, equally short, a figure in a grey hoodie, the top pulled up so high and forward that there was no chance of getting even a glimpse of the face. And the angle wasn’t good enough to confirm it was a gun and not a comb or porcelain kangaroo jabbed into his back.
‘Can’t say I give a damn if the humans do see anything,’ the gunman responded.
It was an act, the Doctor decided. The voice betrayed that. He wasn’t quite as aggressive and sarcastic as he pretended to be. But probably enough that it wasn’t worth calling his bluff. Yet. ‘What would you like me to do?’
‘There’s a café along the waterfront. Meet us there in ten minutes.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘We’re in Darling Harbour, there’s barely an establishment here that isn’t a café.’
‘Coffee shop,’ said the male.
‘Field not narrowing,’ the Doctor replied. ‘What’s it called?’
Neither of his new ‘friends’ had an answer for that.
‘It has green umbrellas outside,’ the male said eventually. ‘Ask for Jack.’
The Doctor gritted his teeth. ‘Again. Darling Harbour. Sydney. Any idea how many people in any given café, even one with green umbrellas outside, will be called Jack?’
At which point, something slammed into his upper back (probably a fist) and he went flying forward, crashing into the postcard spinner, and he fell flat on his face, bringing down a display of horrible pink and glitter T-shirts as well.
Shoppers looked aghast as he tried to salvage dignity and get straight back up but realised someone had tied his shoelaces together. He staggered and fell again.
Of his assailants, there was no sign and, by the time he’d freed his feet and grudgingly apologised to the storeowners, ten minutes was nearly past. He left the shop, ignoring the looks and tuts from his fellow customers and scanned both sides of Darling Harbour.
Christmas. In the heat. It seemed wrong, the Doctor thought, that no matter where you went in the universe, Christmas was represented by red-jacketed Santas, reindeer and green pointy Christmas trees. Sydney, despite this being the height of summer, was no exception.
The waterfront was decorated as if it were a bitter New York winter, or a savage Welsh one. Inflatable, jolly, fat, heavily-swathed-in-red-clothes Santas were clustered on a barge. The lampposts were wrapped in tinsel and snowflakes, whilst giant snowmen wobbled atop many buildings and one was suspended on the fascia of the Anzac Road Bridge. It just seemed wrong, bearing in mind Sydney probably saw enough snow in an average year to fill a teaspoon.
The harbour was, as he’d said earlier, mostly a vast array of restaurants and bars and coffee shops on both sides of the water, developed in the last decade or so into one of the city’s main ‘must-see’ areas, supplying the handful of hotels in the area that charged a premium for a ‘water view’. He looked to his right. The humongous Pyrmont footbridge, to the right, the IMAX cinema and the Friendship Garden. He scanned all the storefronts, looking for one nearby that had green umbrellas.
None of them. He went right, following the curve of the harbour round to the other side, trying not to get irritated with the slow-wandering pedestrians that always seemed to materialise in front of him when he was in a hurry. Why were there no set rules for walking? Cars had lanes. Bikes had lanes. Why not pedestrians? How much simpler the world(s) would be if pedestrians had to walk fast on the left and slower on the right. Maybe they could have a middle lane where they could drift in and stop and chat to friends. And thus stay out of his way.
Mind you, this was a schizophrenic country that had one foot still in its colonial origins as a British discovery and the other in modern, fast-paced America. It was a weird amalgam of both cultures – Darling Harbour being a prime example. It used the British spelling of ‘harbour’ whilst adopting American spellings for words like ‘labor’. And don’t even get him started on their use of the word ‘thongs’, which had one meaning in Australia and a wholly different one throughout the rest of the entire universe.
No wonder the people who lived there were so confused they couldn’t walk around a semi-circular harbour in a straightforward orderly fashion and stay out of his way!
He was suddenly aware from the looks he was getting that this last set of thoughts had actually been said (well, OK, really rather yelled) out loud. A woman in a green bikini and her partner, a buff guy in shorts and ‘thongs’ (definitely not flip-flops), were standing in front of him.
‘Look mate if you don’t like ’Stralia, go back home, you Irish ponce.’
The Doctor stared at him and heard himself say, ‘Scottish ponce, actually,’ then wondered why. After all, he was Gallifreyan, it wasn’t his fault that he had ended up with a particular distinctive human accent. Perhaps one day he’d get an Aussie accent (but which one, AuE, Strine or…shudder…bogan?)
He slapped the side of his head. ‘Focus. I really should f
ocus,’ he said to the two Australians then marched past them as if they simply weren’t annoying him any more.
He was then aware that he was being carefully watched. He checked, made sure nothing else could be interesting this stranger, but no, it was definitely him being watched. Observed might have been a better word. An indigenous male, tall, dark, dressed in a white shirt and chinos. The man smiled at the Doctor, nodded, then turned and just seemed to melt into the crowd. Weird, the Doctor decided, but not a priority because he had to find this ‘Jack’ person.
Focus.
Yes! There was a café-bar. He stopped. It was called the White Rabbit, and sure enough had green umbrellas outside.
The White Rabbit?
Like the place on Legion.
Or the pub on the Thames Embankment.
Or the bar on Bedrock 12.
Or…
The Doctor stood outside and stared in. It was utterly deserted. The only café place in the whole area not heaving. Indeed, bearing in mind how many people were queuing to get into the other places, it seemed weird that this was empty.
‘Shimmer,’ he muttered, wondering what everyone else saw this building as.
He scanned the ground. Sure enough, the Shimmer control was down to the right, near an umbrella. To anyone else, he assumed, he was walking into a closed-off shop or something.
‘That’s a lot of effort,’ he called into the empty place. ‘Why not just leave it as it really is?’
‘There are a lot of buildings being done up around here,’ replied someone new. ‘Thought this might be more appealing.’
‘There are a lot of coffee shops too,’ the Doctor retorted. ‘You didn’t think that would be equally confusing?’
‘Ah, but how many of them are called the White Rabbit?’
‘Why didn’t your goons just say that? Looking for the Rabbit would have been a lot easier than looking for a place with green umbrellas.’
‘Because,’ said Ruth who was suddenly beside him, staring angrily into the empty café, ‘it wasn’t called the White Rabbit when we left. Idiot.’
‘I’m not an—’
‘Not you,’ she snapped at the Doctor. ‘Him. In there.’