Текст книги "Doctor Who- Legacy of the Daleks"

Автор книги: John Peel

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

2

The Campbells

‘Damn it, Susan, what’s wrong with you?’

Susan Campbell shook her head, hardly believing that they were having this same argument over again. ‘David, what’s always wrong with me?’ she demanded. Why couldn’t he understand?

He came to stand behind her as she stared into her dressing‐table mirror. It had been thirty‐odd years now since they had married, back in the ruins of a London that had been virtually destroyed by the Daleks. Now, if she looked out of the window, she’d see only new buildings, a pleasant walkway beside the same Thames as had held bloated bodies of resistance workers and slaughtered Robomen – and the occasional Dalek. The horrors had gone, leaving everyday life to continue as it must.

And it was everyday life that had now become a horror to her.

She loved David. She had done almost from the first time she’d seen him, gun in hand, in the wreckage of the city. And he’d been attracted to her, too. In a world where he could trust so little, he’d come quickly to trust and love her.

And that was when their troubles had begun.

Susan looked at his image in the mirror. He’d been twenty‐two when she’d first met him, and now he was fifty‐four. She could still see the shadows of the man she’d met and fallen in love with, but they were overlaid with thirty years of work, hardship and struggles. His hair was thinning and grey. He was getting fat – no, that was unfair. He was getting stout. But he was still David, in many ways the same man.

But not in all ways.

And she? Well, that was the real problem. There was no fault to be found in her man. The fault was within her.

Despite his anger, David was as restrained as ever. He laid a hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Susan, shouldn’t you get over this by now?’

‘Get over it?’ she demanded, glaring at him. She knew she was wrong, that she was being foolish, but she couldn’t help it. ‘Look at me, David!’

‘I am looking at you,’ he said, quietly. ‘I love to look at you.’

‘And I at you.’ Susan felt the tears beginning again, and she fought them back. She stood up and turned to face him. She didn’t need the mirror to tell her what she always knew. ‘David, I can’t take it.’

His face froze. ‘Do you want a divorce? I know they’re strict about them these days, with the need to rebuild the population and all, but –’

‘No!’ she yelled, furious. This was his nastiest barb, the one she hated. ‘David, you know that’s not what I mean. I love you, and I always will. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? I always will.’ She turned away from him and looked at her own image in the mirror.

She looked eighteen – if that. Her elfin face stared back at her in disgust, the hair cropped close to her head. She was in truth so much older, but she wouldn’t look that way for several more centuries. It was part of the blessing, and curse, of not being a human, no matter how intimately she might pass for one.

Not having children was another curse. It wasn’t impossible, of course. Her species – who called themselves Time Lords – and humans could interbreed at times. But this wasn’t guaranteed. She’d tried to give David children, and failed miserably at it, as she had failed at so very much in her life. Their three children had all been Dalek war orphans, adopted and raised as their own. She had loved – and still did love – Ian, Barbara and David Junior.

And they all looked older now than she did.

All of them had moved out as soon as they could. None of them had ever said it was her fault, of course. But Susan knew the truth that they could never hide from her. They could hardly bear to be around her, a permanent testament to their own humanity and fragility. Unlike her, they would age and die in less than sixty years. If she was lucky, in sixty years she’d look like she was in her early twenties.

Susan had not thought this through. When she’d fallen in love with David Campbell, she had assumed that love was enough, even though they were of different species. In some ways, that was true. She didn’t regret a single day of their life together, really. But love wasn’t enough when one person aged and decayed, and the other stayed eternally young.

‘You’re making too much of this,’ David insisted. He didn’t add ‘as always’, but she knew he meant it. ‘I love you, Susan.’

‘David.’ She turned back to him. ‘I love you, too, and that’s the problem. I want to be what you need. And what you need isn’t a teenage wife right now. These silly dinner parties want David Campbell and middle‐aged, greying wife.’ She gestured at the make‐up on her table. ‘Oh, I can apply it again, David. I can add lines and wrinkles. I can wear a greying wig. I can look like I’m fifty. But I can’t be fifty, David. Not a human fifty. And I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep living a lie. It’s bad enough that I have to do this each day for work. I don’t want to have to do it in the evening for another silly function, where everybody’s talking about their age and the good old days when we were killing Daleks, not trying to run a world. I just can’t take it any more.’

He glanced at his watch. As always, that human preoccupation with time! Well, they had so little of it. ‘Susan, I promised the Brewsters I’d be there. We’d be there. Do I have to make excuses for you?’ Once more, he didn’t say ‘again’, but it was there, unspoken.

‘I can’t face them,’ Susan answered. She couldn’t. Tammy Brewster was a nice enough person, but she was obsessed with her health. Or, rather, her un‐health. She was a hypochondriac of the worst kind, constantly discovering new diseases that she was dying from. And yet she was grimly determined to hang on to her fading youth in the worst possible way. Her husband didn’t know that she’d taken two lovers in a desperate attempt to convince herself she was still desirable. It was terrible to watch someone she’d known most of her life face her own mortality and crumble under the impact.

It was something she’d probably not know for several centuries yet. It terrified her to think that one day she might act like these humans. Would she, too, snatch at whatever she could to try to pretend she was still the way she always had been? Would she struggle to stave off encroaching time? Were these frantic flailings for some measure of peace her own eventual destiny?

The thought scared her to death.

‘Susan, I don’t want to argue with you,’ David said, trying hard to keep his temper in check. She appreciated this, even if it didn’t help much.

‘Yes you do,’ she replied. ‘That’s exactly what you want. You want to argue with me, batter me down, convince me I’m a fool, and force me into my ageing make‐up for yet another asinine gathering. David, I’m sorry; I can’t go through with it.’

‘Fine!’ he yelled, yielding at last to his anger. He threw up his hands. ‘Sit here and sulk the whole damned evening! I’ll go on alone, as always.’ He stormed towards the door.

‘David,’ she called desperately. ‘I love you. I do. Never forget that.’

He hesitated, and glared back at her. ‘If you really loved me,’ he snarled, ‘you’d do this for me. But you don’t, so you won’t.’ He left their bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Susan wanted to collapse and cry herself to sleep, as she had so often before. It was no use, really. No matter how many times she tried to explain herself to him, David never understood. She knew what would happen now: he would go to the party, make some excuse for her absence, drink and eat too much, and come home feeling dreadfully sorry for himself.

Well, as always, she’d be here, waiting. One of the advantages of barely ageing was that she still had the body and desires of a human teenager. He wouldn’t want to be cheered up after spending an evening getting thoroughly depressed, but she could do it. Put on a revealing outfit, play up to one of his fantasies, and then bed him before he had the time to remember he was supposed to be furious with her and not aroused by what she was doing.

That would work. It would exhaust him, and stave off another argument for at least a few days. She wished that it wasn’t necessary. No matter how hard she tried to explain, he never understood.

Thirty years was a drop in the ocean of her life. But it was half of her husband’s. And that was where the pain came in. She loved David, and watching him deteriorate for the next ten or twenty or however many years he had left would be torture beyond endurance. David’s hollow offer of divorce might actually be better. If she could go away, ignore him, and live her life… But it wouldn’t work. Susan knew that. For one thing, she loved David too much to hurt him by abandoning him. But not, she admitted to herself ruefully, too much to avoid hurting him by arguing with him.

And, anyway, even if she could somehow put David out of her life, it would only begin again. She’d meet someone, fall in love, and be doomed to repeat this dread in another thirty years. She couldn’t live her life like this, forever chained unevenly to people whose lifetimes were so ephemeral compared with her own. It hurt too much.

‘Grandfather,’ she breathed, for the thousandth time, ‘why did you abandon me?’

She was wallowing in self‐pity, she knew, but she was beyond her ability to climb out of it. Blaming her grandfather for leaving her here was the simplest way to avoid taking the responsibility on her own head. After all, she’d been the one who’d fallen in love. She had begun everything. Her grandfather had simply made her decision for her, one that she would otherwise have had to face herself. She could imagine how much it had hurt him. Was that why he’d taken the decision for her? Had he condemned her to a life of loneliness in revenge?

He had promised to return, too, and see how she was getting along. But he never had. In thirty years, she’d never even seen him. She knew the TARDIS was erratic, but surely, after all these years… the Ship had always loved visiting Earth, after all.

Susan knew she was being foolish, but she felt abandoned. As if he’d banished her from his life and now ignored her. It was hard to believe how close they had once been, and now…

Tears were trickling down her cheeks, but she ignored them. She needed a good cry right now. It wouldn’t solve anything, but at least it would make her feel better when it was over.

The phone bleeped at her. Susan cursed and threw a pillow at it. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. It bleeped again.

‘Hold all incoming calls,’ she snapped.

‘Priority override,’ the phone informed her, in its somewhat prim voice.

Frowning, Susan crossed to it, and looked at the message pad. It was from Peace Headquarters, of course. Nobody else she knew had a priority override. And she couldn’t ignore this. ‘Voice only,’ she ordered. She didn’t want the duty officer seeing her like this. Then she laughed, ironically. She’d meant without her full makeup on, so she appeared to be fifty. She’d almost forgotten that she was wearing nothing but underwear. There was something odd about that being her second concern, and not her first.

‘Susan.’ It was Don Spencer. Susan liked the younger man: efficient, intelligent and gentle, he reminded her of a younger David. ‘Is something wrong with your phone?’

‘No,’ she answered, wiping away the tears at last. ‘With me. I’m not dressed.’

‘Oh. Well, you’d better get dressed, and fast. There’s a priority alert from DA‐17.’

That made her forget her problems. ‘Does it check?’

‘As well as it can from here,’ he answered. ‘I’m downloading coordinates to your runabout now. We need you on the spot.’

‘Understood.’ There was no begging off from this, of course, but the idea didn’t even cross her mind. ‘I’ll report in once I arrive. Out.’

The phone switched off, and Susan hurried to her wardrobe. She’d worked as a Peace Officer for more than twenty years, patrolling and checking out the Dalek Artefacts. It was astonishing how many stupid people there were who wouldn’t stay out of them, no matter how often they were warned, or however many people were killed by booby traps the nasty little vermin had left behind. If someone had managed to get into DA‐17, it was Susan’s duty to extract them and seal the place off again. She grabbed her uniform from the wardrobe and pulled on the dark coveralls. She reached for the padding she normally wore to simulate an extra twenty pounds in body weight, and then hesitated. It was night, and she wasn’t going into headquarters. There really wasn’t any compelling need for her normal disguise. Disgusted as she was with it, she was happy for any excuse not to wear it. She’d just be herself tonight. The chances were that whoever had intruded in DA‐17 was already dead, but if they weren’t, they weren’t going to know that Susan should look a lot older than she did.

She hurried down to the garage, sealing the house behind her. She left a brief message for David, telling him where she was going in case he arrived home before she did, and then slipped into the runabout. It was a small model, electrically powered, of course. She brought it on line, and checked the computer. The location and information about DA‐17 were still downloading, but they would be ready by the time she was. The fuel cell was fully charged, and the Artefact was within cruising range. Not a problem.

The runabout moved silently off into the night, its headlights picking out the way from the city. Susan estimated a trip time of about thirty minutes. As she drove, she had the computer play back the data on DA‐17. It was – no surprise! – an unevaluated site, just a few miles from the main Dalek mining camp in Surrey. Basically a tunnel leading into the ground, with blast doors at the base. There had been no power readings after the invasion was over, so it had been locked and sealed and left for later. And, as with so many other sites, later had never come.

Still, the information was reassuring. It meant that there was very little chance that the intruder had managed to get inside the Artefact. Very few people could break Dalek encryption codes. And the chances that the tunnel entrance was booby‐trapped were pretty small. By the time Susan arrived, the intruder or intruders would be either frustrated or long gone.

This wasn’t going to be much of a problem at all. Still, it would serve to clear her mind of her own problems, at least for an hour or so…

The TARDIS was too large, and too small. The Doctor stomped through the corridors, not really paying attention to what he saw. The skin on his face still itched from where he’d restored it, and his memory still pained him from the causes of those scars.

He and Sam had become mixed up in the plans of the deadly Kusks on the dying planet of Hirath. Struggling to contain the damage the creatures had managed to inflict, he had narrowly escaped with his life. It had been a long time since he’d been raked over the coals quite so nastily, and it wasn’t easy getting over it.

Especially alone.

To be honest with himself – and he hated to be other than that – it was the loneliness that hurt the most. He knew his own failings, and one was the fact that he loved an audience. It wasn’t simply that he liked to astound his companions with his brilliance – though there was a certain measure of that in his personality – but that he genuinely enjoyed talking to other people. It was no fun at all being alone.

He needed a new companion.

No. He needed Sam. He stopped still in the corridor, absentmindedly scratching at the regenerating skin.

He didn’t blame her for leaving the Kusk base as its life‐support shut down – and yet she’d held his body, he’d smelt it on his clothes. Had she thought him dead? Had she gone to help Anstaar? The Kusk ship had gone and he prayed she had been safely on board, but he had no way of knowing where she might be.

His companions always left him; he was used to that. Their lives were lived at a different tempo from his, and he understood it. Each was so short and so intense, and each had needs that he probably could never really comprehend. But there was always some sort of closure when they left him, a feeling that their time with him was done, that they had learnt what they must, even that their lives thereafter would be helped by the time they had spent with him.

Not so Sam. Their journeys were not yet finished. Their purpose was not yet accomplished, whatever that purpose was. The Doctor knew that he was rationalising his own insecurities, but he was sure of this. He and Sam were not yet finished with each other. He couldn’t simply let her go.

‘Emotion,’ he said loudly. ‘That’s the trouble. I can pretend I’m not involved, but it’s a lie.’

Wonderful. Now he was talking to himself. Was he that desperate for company?

Yes. He was.

‘This isn’t about me,’ he said. ‘It’s about her. She’s probably in trouble, in desperate need of me.’ He reached out to touch one of the roundels in the corridor wall. ‘Come on, old girl. We can find her. I know we can.’ He let his hand fall. Who was he trying to fool? The TARDIS knew his every thought before he did. And he knew what a sham he was. He hurt, and he needed companionship. Had Sam taken a rational decision to walk away from him, to leave the TARDIS and their travels for ever? What had happened to her down on Hirath?

Well, there was nobody else around to feel sorry for him.

He hurried on his way to the main console room. Inactivity chafed his soul. He had to do something, anything, to try to find Sam. If she was fine, then he could walk away and leave her if that was what she wished. If she was in trouble…

He hated himself for hoping she was in trouble.

Stars whirled overhead as he strode into the console room. Usually he could enjoy the view, but now he was too bothered. He hurt. He hadn’t felt this alone since his decision to leave Gallifrey. That had been hard enough, and even harder when he’d decided to take Susan with him. He couldn’t leave her behind to be brainwashed and regimented in the thought patterns of the rulers of his homeworld. But the decision to flee had been so hard…

Why was he thinking of that now? It had absolutely nothing to do with Sam, or his recent ordeal. Was his mind starting to wander? Was he so reliant on having someone around to admire him?

He collapsed into his chair and poured himself a cup of Earl Grey. He sipped at it, but tasted nothing but bitterness. He replaced the cup and glared at it. Was there no relief for him anywhere? He picked up the book he’d been reading, and was surprised to discover it was Songs of Innocence, a first edition, personally inscribed by William Blake. He couldn’t remember reading it, but it was open at ‘The Divine Image’. He read:

‘For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity, a human face:

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.’

The Doctor sighed. ‘I think you got it wrong, William,’ he murmured. ‘I have human dress, but no peace.’ Blake had used a child as the symbol of innocence in those poems, and it had been far, far too long since he was either a child or innocent. Perhaps that was what attracted him to humans so much – their almost endless capacity for being children, and being so innocent even in a hostile universe. He strove himself for a lack of guile, but it was so very hard to achieve.

‘What have I done?’ he asked the room at large. ‘I’ve run from my people, and hidden myself. I’ve fought for what I believe is right. Sometimes I’ve even won. But what has it gained me? What do I have to show for it? I’m sitting here alone, arguing with myself! And, worse, I’m losing!’

Wasn’t the first sign of dementia talking to oneself? Or was it answering oneself?

He jumped to his feet and crossed to the console. ‘We have to find her,’ he informed the empty console room. ‘She can’t have gone far. I have to know. Where is she?’ He slammed his fist down on the panel as if chastising the TARDIS itself. ‘Tell me!’

There was no reply. The TARDIS was probably sulking.

‘Earth,’ the Doctor decided. ‘Maybe she’ll have gone home.’ He shrugged. It was a better place than most to start his search. Besides, he had exactly three options: forget about her, look for her, or sit and mope. He’d brought Sam out among the stars, and shown her wonders and terrors she’d never dreamed about before. He couldn’t abandon her now.

While he wasn’t exactly convinced he was doing the right thing, he was at least doing something. In Thannos time it had been 3177, so allowing for that… His hands flickered over the controls, setting the destination co‐ordinates for London, in the year –

A light pulsed on the console, and the Doctor stared at it. The telepathic circuits… Sam. Had she –?

Then a blast sent him tumbling across the room, his mind a searing blaze of pain.

Agony. Despair. Death.

The Doctor managed to crawl to his hands and knees, his mind scorched by the strong telepathic message that had broken past all of his normal safeguards. His limbs shook, and he couldn’t focus his mind on anything but the appalling – the terror –

The end of everything. Nothingness. Pain. Obliteration.

And: Kill!

He was aware that he was whining slightly as he staggered to his feet and lurched back to the console. He slammed his hand down on the telepathic contact, cutting off the message, and freeing his mind again from its dreadful grip.

He breathed deeply, leaning on the panel until the shaking in his body had ceased. The message had been so strong it had threatened to overwhelm him. But he had recognised it in the few seconds it had lasted.

‘Susan…’ he whispered. Was it merely a coincidence that he’d been thinking of her only minutes before? Or was coincidence just another word for causation?

What had happened to her? What or who had she been wanting to kill? That wasn’t the Susan he’d –

Then he stopped himself. What she was like now, he had no idea. A twinge of guilt needled his mind as he realised that he’d hardly thought of her in ages, let alone visited her as he had promised so glibly. If it hadn’t been for Rassilon’s Game, he’d never have seen her at all in all these hundreds of years. And even then, he’d barely talked to her.

What was behind this message? He was starting to think coherently again, though his head still throbbed. A mental blast like that, amplified through the telepathic circuits, could do a great deal of damage to any Time Lord close to the source. He checked the space‐time co‐ordinates and discovered something very strange. First of all, the mental blast had come via the telepathic circuits of another TARDIS. Which didn’t make any sense, because Susan certainly didn’t have access to one. Did she?

And second, it had come from a world other than Earth, and at a distant time.

Somehow, obviously, she must have come into contact with another TARDIS. Or was it his, but from some other incarnation? It wasn’t one of his past selves, of course: he’d have recalled such a meeting.

Which didn’t, of course, rule out either his own future self or a future regeneration. He checked the records, though, and discovered that the carrier wave didn’t match his own TARDIS. So she had somehow made contact with another Time Lord, and used his or her ship to get off Earth, either voluntarily or as a captive. The latter was only too plausible, considering only renegades made a habit of picking up people from one world and transporting them to another.

Like himself.

But, then, there was the content of her message, racked by pain and anguish that he could hardly understand himself. What could have driven her to this? And there had been that sensation that death was hovering close beside her. Susan hadn’t been fearing impending death – she was facing it. Not with doubt, but with certainty. Was her message, then, aimed at him – a cry for help?

No. He had not sensed that it was a cry for anything other than death and revenge. But why?

The Doctor opened his eyes at last, staring at the console. Susan was on the verge of death, and already sunk into despair. She needed his help. Guiltily, he realised that he’d abandoned her for far too long, and she had been far too young when he had cut off all of her ties with her own heritage. At the time it had seemed to be the right thing to do… hadn’t it? He didn’t know.

But maybe now he could do something about it.

His hands moved towards the controls, to alter the TARDIS’s flight towards the co‐ordinates he’d gleaned from the telepathic circuits. And then he stopped.

They were set for his search for Sam… Thirty‐odd years after the Daleks had invaded Earth. Where Susan should be, before she sent the telepathic message… Perhaps he could take care of both tasks together. Discover what had happened to Susan, and search for Sam at the same time… Susan’s husband… what was his name? Oh, yes! David Campbell! He’d been high up in the resistance movement. He was bound to be a part of the restructuring that took place after the clean‐up. He might even be the best person to ask about Sam. If she was in New London, David would probably be the right person to talk to for information.

Yes. That was the answer. He smiled, suddenly. If he found out what had caused Susan’s problem, then perhaps he could prevent whatever had caused her to send that message in the first place. So it would be tweaking the laws of Time, and he would no doubt get a slap on the wrist the next time he visited Gallifrey. But what did that matter, compared to all of the complaints they undoubtedly had against him already? One more minor violation on his record. Well, laws should be tempered by compassion.

Enough thought, enough moodiness: it was time for action…