Dr. Who - BBC New Series 48

by Borrowed Time # Naomi A Alderman

  ‘Attempting to remove a Time Harvester watch is a capital offence.’

  ‘A cap—’ Amy managed to squeak.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Symington. ‘If you attempt to remove it, your entire remaining lifespan will be forfeit.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t be trying to cheat on our little arrangement, would you?’

  ‘A nice girl like you.’

  ‘Oh look, Mr Blenkinsop,’ Mr Symington caught Amy’s wrist in his cold, slightly moist hand. His teeth suddenly looked bigger than she’d remembered. ‘These scratches do seem to indicate that she has been trying.

  Bad, bad girl.’

  Mr Symington began to smile more and more broadly.

  His jaw hinged back, far wider than any human person’s mouth should have been able to open.

  And there were many more teeth in his mouth than there should have been.

  Sharp, pointed teeth. To go with his grey skin.

  And Amy realised what the lump on Symington and Blenkinsop’s back was. It was a fin. Like a shark.

  Both of them were closing in now, with their shark-like heads and their fins poking through their suits and their enormous, red-as-blood teeth.

  Amy looked at the Doctor.

  The Doctor looked at her.

  ‘Run!’ they both shouted in unison.

  They ran.

  They burst out of the conference room, the Doctor dragging Amy away from the atrium towards the lifts.

  Symington and Blenkinsop were in pursuit, their heads clearly visible as shark-like now, their mouths open.

  No one in any of the other offices noticed them. Amy realised they must be experiencing the same kind of time-phasing that meant she hadn’t bumped into herself while using this stupid watch. Even when Symington jumped over a desk scattering a shower of papers everywhere, the man behind the desk just calmly picked them up as if they’d been blown by a breeze. No one else was going to help them. They were the only people who could even see what they were running from.

  ‘Stop the lift!’ Amy shouted as they rounded the corner. There was a lift with an open door. They were going to make it! She felt the hot breath from Mr Symington on her neck, smelled the disgusting fish-and-blood aroma, put on an extra burst of speed, dragging the Doctor behind her. She grabbed some office chairs as she passed, throwing them behind her to make it harder for Symington and Blenkinsop to follow.

  She glanced back. Symington had tripped!

  Blenkinsop roared at her with his shark-head and dragged Symington to his feet. The Doctor yanked her arm and she fell forward into the lift, hard against his body. She jabbed at the lift-close button, Symington and Blenkinsop were coming and the doors weren’t closing and they were nearly here and no one else could see them and —The Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at the lift doors and they closed smoothly.

  Just in time. There was a loud BONK and two shark-nose-shaped dents appeared in the lift door. But they were on their way down now. It was only then that Amy noticed they weren’t alone in the lift - there was that man she’d seen earlier, Andrew Brown. He stared at the shark-nose dents and at the Doctor and Amy.

  ‘Negotiations,’ said the Doctor, ‘got a bit heated.’

  Andrew Brown smiled nervously and got out at the next floor.

  Amy tapped her foot as the lift descended.

  ‘We’ve got to get Rory,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t know any of this, he won’t be safe.’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Get Rory, get back to the TARDIS, get out of here, work out how to get that thing off your wrist when we’re a thousand years away.’

  ‘Can’t they just take the time out of my watch anyway?’ said Amy.

  The Doctor clasped Amy’s wrist and frowned at the device, reading through some small print.

  ‘Hmm. Doesn’t look like it. Brilliant legalese - a confiscation of time has to be made in person. And they seem to keep to their contracts. As long as we keep you away from them, they can’t take your time.’

  ‘They’ll be waiting for us downstairs,’ said Amy.

  ‘Sure to be,’ said the Doctor, ‘with all that time at their disposal.’

  ‘So when we get to the bottom,’ said Amy.

  The lift pinged. Ground floor. The doors opened.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘When I say run…’

  Symington and Blenkinsop were waiting in the lobby, their grey-skinned toothy heads weaving from side to side, like carnivorous fish in search of prey. Amy and the Doctor managed to hide behind a crowd of people getting out of another lift and for a moment the two shark-men didn’t notice them. When they did, their heads turned at precisely the same moment, a terrifying unblinking stare.

  ‘Run!’ shouted the Doctor.

  He leapt over the waist-high glass security barrier, Amy followed, screaming at the security guards as they went: ‘He’s after me! Help, he’s after me!’

  The four burly security guards in their black uniforms immediately looked behind her. The crowd of people who’d been going about their business stopped walking and started looking to see what was going on.

  It wasn’t much, but they made a few more obstacles for Symington and Blenkinsop to weave round. Amy and the Doctor ran out of the building. Amy grabbed the Doctor’s hand and dragged him towards the little park with the fountain where she and Rory had-had were-having lunch four-days-ago right-now.

  It was the kind of moment that would have been funny if she hadn’t been in imminent danger. She couldn’t see the other Amy, but the Doctor and Rory both could. Rory looked at her, and then at his invisible dining companion.

  ‘Amy?’ he said. ‘But… Amy?’ He raised both hands in the familiar ‘don’t hurt me’ gesture. ‘This is some time-travel thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Clever,’ muttered the Doctor, ‘Blinovitch Limitation limitation. Very clever.’

  ‘Yes, time travel,’ shouted Amy. ‘No time to explain, shark-men!’

  She grabbed his hand, and they ran.

  As they went, she felt her memories changing. Yes, Rory had suddenly jumped up halfway through lunch and run away. She’d been annoyed.

  They circled round the back of the building. They hadn’t seen Symington and Blenkinsop for a few minutes. They rested, panting, against the wall.

  ‘Have we lost them, Doctor?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘Totally impossible while you’ve got that thing on your wrist. If we can just get to the TARDIS, we might be able to…’

  ‘Did you say shark-men, Amy?’ said Rory.

  ‘Yes?’ said Amy, trying fruitlessly again to undo the straps on her watch.

  ‘What, like those?’

  From the other end of the long narrow street, Symington and Blenkinsop had seen them. They started to run, with great loping strides as if they might never tire, and with no one to get in their way.

  ‘Come on!’ Amy tugged on Rory’s arm.

  ‘No, wait,’ said Rory, ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘If they catch up to us, they’ll kill me!’ said Amy.

  ‘Only if they can reach you,’ said Rory, and pulled the pink plastic Super Lucky Romance Camera out of his pocket.

  ‘Oh,’ said Amy, ‘oh!’

  You were supposed to use the Super Lucky Romance Camera on yourself, with the lens turned towards you.

  But Rory held it the other way round, pointed the lens at Symington and Blenkinsop who were bearing down on them, all grey skin and darting black eyes.

  ‘Say cheese,’ he said.

  He clicked the camera’s button.

  The time bubble expanded around Symington and Blenkinsop. They wrestled against it, struggled, gnashed their teeth and snarled, but the bubble kept on closing in around them. With a gentle pinging sound it settled into a bulbous jelly-like sphere around Symington and Blenkinsop. They were trapped.

  ‘Good thinking, Rory,’ said the Doctor, obviously impressed.

  Rory shrugged, but blushed with pleasure.

  Amy poked at the bubble. Inside it,
Symington and Blenkinsop looked like they were moving so fast that they were just a blur of pointed teeth and bloody gums.

  ‘Better hurry along now,’ said the Doctor. ‘It is a Romance Surprise, after all. It might let them out after five minutes.’

  Rory nodded and backed away from the time bubble.

  He, the Doctor and Amy walked around the corner towards the basement where they’d left the TARDIS.

  They all saw them at the same horrifying moment.

  Waiting by the door, were Symington and Blenkinsop.

  Across the road were another pair of Symington and Blenkinsop. Further up the street, towards the main entrance, there they were again. Looking from side to side, in search of prey.

  ‘But…’ said Rory. He looked at the Doctor. ‘Time travel?’

  The Doctor nodded, grim-faced.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  At the same moment, all three pairs of Symington and Blenkinsop snapped their heads round to stare at them. And then they started to run.

  Chapter

  9

  Rory pulled out his camera, but he knew it was probably hopeless. With so many of the shark-creatures, he’d only be able to form one time bubble before one of the others got them.

  Amy began to back away. That was OK. If she ran, that’d give him more time to fend them off. But she wasn’t trying to escape. She’d pulled a spanner out of her bag - why did she have a spanner in her bag? -

  and threw it hard at the nearest Symington, or was it Blenkinsop? The shark-man cried out. There was a gash on his face, in the centre of his forehead. He roared in anger. It hadn’t slowed him down at all. All six men roared louder and advanced again.

  For a split second Rory saw that each of the Symingtons and Blenkinsops now had a red gash in the centre of their foreheads. That didn’t make sense, it didn’t…

  And then there was a sudden noise. A bright flash, like a firework exploding in the street. And the sound

  of an old woman shouting. The shark-men all turned to see what was happening. It was the old woman they’d met when they first arrived, the tramp with the smelly old suitcase. She was standing holding her left arm high in the air, waving it around.

  Rory saw that there was a watch on her wrist like Amy’s. Except it was fizzing, like a roman candle, letting out sparks in intermittent bursts. All the Symingtons and Blenkinsops turned towards the old woman, like sharks scenting blood in the water.

  ‘Over here!’ she shouted. ‘Over here! Come on, you ugly disgusting lumps, you know you want it!’

  She waved her arm above her head and the Symingtons and Blenkinsops stopped pursuing Amy.

  They turned simultaneously, like an army marching in perfect unison, to run towards the old woman.

  ‘Now!’ the Doctor nudged Rory in the ribs. Rory aimed his camera, finding each set of shark-men in the viewfinder and dick, dick, dick. The three pairs of shark-men were frozen in time bubbles.

  They all ran towards the old woman, what had her name been, Nadia Montgomery? The card she’d given the Doctor had read ‘Head of Marketing’ - that had seemed like some kind of weird joke. With everything they’d seen since they got here, it didn’t seem so unlikely now.

  ‘That was amazing!’ said Rory.

  Nadia was rubbing at her wrist. She’d looked full of energy for a minute there, shouting at the monsters, like a young woman, but now she just looked old. Her wrist was raw and sore where the watch was rubbing at it.

  Amy looked at her own wrist. ‘What happened to

  yours?’

  Nadia rubbed at the sore patch on her wrist. Her watch sparked and fizzed once, a burst of embers reddening the skin further up her arm. She grimaced.

  ‘It hurts,’ she said. She held out her arm towards Amy: ‘It’s broken.’

  The Doctor pulled the small black bobbly device out of his pocket and ran it over Nadia’s watch. He nodded.

  ‘You’re right, Nadia. It is broken. And it must hurt.

  Look.’ He pointed to where a piece of moulding on the side of Nadia’s watch was broken open - that was the little hole where the sparks came showering out.

  ‘Something went wrong when they made this one.

  See the dial?’ Amy couldn’t quite look at the dial on Nadia’s watch. It was as if she was staring at it through a camera lens, and someone was changing the focus. For a moment the dial would be crystal clear, and then it’d fade into fuzziness again.

  ‘That’s why the Symingtons and Blenkinsops can’t see you until you call them, isn’t it? They home in on the watch, and the watch is changing its position in time all the time.’

  Nadia nodded. She looked older now even than five minutes before.

  ‘The sharks,’ she said, ‘the sharks can’t smell me unless I bleed into the water.’

  ‘And it’s taking time from you and giving it back randomly.’

  Nadia nodded sadly.

  ‘Er, Doctor,’ said Rory, ‘I think, um…’

  He pointed towards one of the bubbles containing a

  Symington and Blenkinsop. The bubble was definitely moving more than the others. That was what was supposed to happen - when you only had a few minutes left inside, the time bubble would start to decay. The roaring gnashing teeth moved faster.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Quite right, yes absolutely, must be moving on, well, to the TARDIS I think or…

  Nadia, could you do me a favour?’

  Nadia looked the Doctor in the eye. She was energetic again, not a day over 60. Her stare was clear and firm.

  ‘Can you cure me? Can you make this stop, and give me my time back?’

  The Doctor narrowed his mouth. This was obviously a very hard thing to ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes I can.’

  ‘All right then,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Nadia didn’t like to move from her spot outside the Bank. When she was feeling more herself, she thought that this was the only place that she might find out what had happened to her. And when she was feeling so very old, she just didn’t want to move at all. And she never went inside. Because that was where she’d put on this watch that led to all this trouble. And that was where the Symingtons and Blenkinsops were.

  But she stiffened her sinews and straightened her aching back and, very slowly, creeping very quietly, made her way in through the basement door. She went as quickly as she could, keeping ducking out of sight whenever anyone walked past - no one took any notice of an old tramp outside, but they’d certainly notice if one had penetrated the Bank itself. She came to the

  door where the Doctor said he wanted her to check. She opened it very quietly.

  Inside the small dusty room were hundreds of Symingtons and Blenkinsops. They filled up all the space and the places between the spaces and the space where there was no space. They were folded over onto each other in time - her malfunctioning watch let her see them. There were five or six or seven of them for every one that would have been visible to anyone else.

  But they didn’t see her. They were all turned away, weaving, bobbing their heads, staring at the big blue police box in the corner.

  ‘That’s it then,’ said the Doctor. ‘Given what Nadia’s told us, we can’t go in there. Too dangerous for Amy, too dangerous all around, especially if they know what the TARDIS is, especially if they can time travel.’

  ‘But couldn’t you…’ Rory looked behind him nervously. They were marching across Paternoster Square, in front of St Paul’s Cathedral. All around them, men and women in expensive suits were eating pricey lunches with pale glasses of costly white wine, with no appearance that anything extremely dangerous was going on at all. Rory couldn’t help feeling that at any moment an army of Symingtons or Blenkinsops was going to march down the cathedral steps towards them.

  They’d only just got away before that time bubble started to decay. ‘Couldn’t you, just, you know, run through, open the TARDIS, go and pick up Amy, get out?’

  The D
octor was walking faster now, his long legs striding north past identical-looking grey stone office buildings. Rory glanced into a window. He could

  have sworn he saw a Symington in there. Or maybe a Blenkinsop. Surely he was imagining it.

  ‘No, Rory,’ the Doctor shouted. ‘You really do need to get the fundamentals of time travel into your head.

  If we run in and try to get to the TARDIS, they only have to travel back a few minutes to be ready for us.

  You really shouldn’t do that, of course, goodness knows what it’s doing to the temporal superstructure of this planet but— Wait, of course. Of course!’

  ‘What’s that Doctor?’ Amy was striding along beside the Doctor. Rory didn’t understand why, given that he wasn’t any shorter than either of them, but he was always the one not quite keeping up. He quickened his pace.

  The Doctor stopped suddenly. Rory walked into him.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Rory, but the Doctor didn’t notice.

  He smacked his palm against his forehead.

  ‘Of course,’ said the Doctor again, spinning on his heel. ‘Of course, time travel!’

  Amy and Rory looked at each other in bewilderment then back at the Doctor.

  ‘Did you see what happened, when you threw that spanner at one of the Symingtons? No of course you didn’t of course not - you were frightened, you were running for your life. It was just a split second.’

  ‘I saw,’ said Rory. They all suddenly had a wound on their foreheads.’

  ‘Yes! Brilliant! Why do I always underestimate you, Rory, you’re brilliant! Now, tell me why that happened.’

  ‘l, um…’

  ‘Yes I see, not quite there yet, well why should you be? It’s because…’ the Doctor spread his arms very wide as if revealing the finale to a magic trick, ‘they’re all the same person!’

  Amy and Rory looked at each other again. Rory wondered if Amy had understood what the Doctor was talking about. He didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t, especially if Amy had already got it.

  ‘What are you talking about, Doctor?’ asked Amy.

  ‘They’re the same creature!’ said the Doctor. ‘Folded back on themselves in time. Do you remember how they all turned their heads to look at us in unison? That’s why they all saw us at the same moment! When one of them sees, all the rest of them - all the ones that are later in the timeline, that is - remember seeing.’