Doctor Who - Nuclear Time Page 13

  There was something he should be doing.

  'Escape!' The word was muffled inside his head, and Rory was unsure whether he had actually spoken it out loud. But the urge remained nonetheless.

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  He peered into the blackening haze and, in the soft glow from the window, he managed to discern the faint outline of the doorframe above the stack of furniture which seemed to have fallen in the way. It took a few seconds for Rory to remember that it was he who had put them there. 'Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time,' he told himself.

  Carefully, he rolled Amy from his lap and gently onto the floor, twitching his foot to relieve the cramp.

  She stirred quietly, and Rory tilted his head to one side and smiled affectionately, then stopped himself. 'What am I doing?' he muttered. A sharp slap to the face and Amy was awake, yelping in pain.

  'Ow! What did you do that for?' she scowled, rubbing her cheek.

  'Because we were about to suffocate to death, that's what,' Rory called over his shoulder as he flung himself prostrate on the wooden floorboards. 'Now stay low, the smoke'll be thinnest near the floor.'

  'More crawling? I am so sick of crawling.' Amy lifted herself groggily to her hands and knees and began to follow him. 'Ouch!' she declared. 'The floor's burning!'

  'That's because it is burning.'

  'All right, good point.'

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  Rory reached the edge of the wardrobe and snatched at it with a hand, hauling himself up and into the thicker strata of smoke that was gently descending to the floor. He yelled with pain as the injury in his arm stabbed at his muscle. Amy took a deep breath and joined him, yanking at the desk until it nearly slid over on top of her. She jumped to the side just in time and the drawers smashed a hole in the weakened floorboards by her feet. A sinister orange glow blossomed into the air around them as the flames in the kitchen below lit up the clouds.

  'Yeah, I think we're running out of time,' Rory stated matter-of-factly. He held his breath and heaved at the wardrobe, inching it away from the door. It squealed along the floorboards and they bowed with the weight.

  'The floor's not going to hold.' Amy was already at the door, pulling it open as far as it would go. Just a little further and she'd be able to squeeze through. The bowing frame creaked loudly one final time, and suddenly Amy was on the other side, her eyes watering as the smoke on the landing smothered her face.

  'Push from the other side!' Rory shouted.

  With a concerted effort, the wardrobe slid a few more

  centimetres.

  Then

  the

  floor

  gave

  way

  completely.

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  'Rory!' Amy yelled a warning as the blackened wood crumbled and splintered away. Her fiancé dived for the handle, catching it just in time to avoid the flames below and swinging his other hand up to grab Amy's as his sweaty palms slipped on the roasting metal.

  They tumbled onto the landing, coughing and staggering over to the edge of the thin corridor where the structure was still sound.

  'Where now?' Amy spluttered as the smoke filled her lungs.

  Nursing his burnt hand, Rory edged his way to the top of the staircase and shied away at the heat. Huge flames licked their way up the banisters and the stairs were all but disintegrated.

  'OK, we're going to have to jump for it.' He gestured through one of the doors on the opposite side of the landing. 'I just hope this couple built a compost heap in their back garden.'

  'Made out of what? They don't eat!' Amy was at his side as they pushed into a rear bedroom, still relatively untouched by the flames.

  'Hush, you'll jinx it.' Rory held up a palm. He squinted his eyes and shuffled cautiously to the window as if not being able to see would magically make his hopes come true. But when he opened them and stared down onto the terraced back garden, his expression changed to that of sheer 204

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  incredulity. 'Well,' he said after a long pause, 'I really wasn't expecting that!'

  'Is it safe?' Amy hung back.

  'Uh, yeah.' Rory was still speechless.

  She pressed her face against the glass to see what he was staring at, and then she too opened her mouth in surprise.

  'Whoa,' she said faintly.

  Displayed before them, and mown into the lawn with a large, looping script across the back garden of the opposite house, were the words Follow me, and then what Amy could swear was a smiley face. Both the letters and the face were upside down. She traced the line of the message with her finger as it trailed off to one side and she saw that the author had scrawled a rambling path through hedges and shattered fences that spanned the length of the terrace. She tried to trace it to its end, but the rest of the trail became obscured in the shadow of a series of larger buildings several houses down, and she lost it in the darkness.

  'Do you think it's...?' Rory trailed off.

  'Well, of course it's the Doctor.' A slow smile was spreading across Amy's face. 'I told you he wouldn't leave us!'

  'Not quite the TARDIS materialising in the nick of time though, is it?'

  Amy tutted. 'There's having your cake and 205

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  there's eating it, Rory. Think of it this way - you get to spend more time alone with me.' She winked.

  'That means you want me to go down first and catch you, doesn't it?'

  Amy slid the window smoothly open and flourished her hand. 'My, what a sweet offer, you are quite the gentleman!'

  Rory hit the ground and rolled in a way that would have made his primary-school gym instructor proud, but it still hurt. He scanned his surroundings quickly, but there was no sign of any hostile movement in the gently swaying bushes that hissed and popped at the small drizzle of burning ash and embers as they floated gently across the gardens.

  'Clear!' Rory hissed up at the open window before his face was swiftly covered by Amy's jacket. He pulled it out of his eyes, just in time to catch his fiancée as she dropped into his arms with a small squeak.

  She turned her face to look at him, their noses brushing. 'Are you going to carry me the rest of the way then, lover-boy?'

  Rory plonked her on the turf. 'Not likely.'

  Amy rubbed her bruised rear. 'I knew this chivalry wouldn't last for ever. Come on, then!' An instant later and she was pushing through the 206

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  battered remnants of the privet hedges towards the opposite garden.

  'No sign of pursuit.' Rory glanced over his shoulder. 'If they thought there was no way we were going to escape, I feel quite hurt. We don't look that inept, do we?'

  'Hush, you'll jinx it,' Amy replied. `Now's the time to act, not look for motivation.'

  The late afternoon air was cooler now that the pair had moved away from the warmth of the burning building and the sun cast a long shadow over them as they stopped short in the middle of the turf, the message splayed out around them.

  'How did he know what was going to happen to us?' Rory asked quietly. 'He always seems to know.'

  Amy looked up cautiously at the dark outline of the house in front of her, tinged with an orange glow from the flames behind. 'I don't think he did. Otherwise he'd have written it the right way up.' She pondered for a moment. 'No, he must have assumed we would go to this house.' She pointed at the building in front of her.

  'But why?'

  'Let's find out.' She flashed Rory a swift grin and was already pushing open the sliding patio doors before he could protest.

  The young man was left pointing a limp finger 207

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  in the direction of the demolished fences, his other hand stuffed in his pocket. 'Can't we just, you know, do what the message says?' He tailed off and sighed in exasperation. 'Fine, I'm coming!'

  The house was dark and dusty and smelt of sawdust; Rory was sick of the smell of sawdu
st. He found Amy flat on her stomach and worming her way towards the front entrance. His shoes thudded softly as he approached the prone figure and she waved him down without looking.

  'Quiet!' she hissed. 'I'm going to open the front door.'

  Rory looked around quickly, and spotted what Amy must have noticed an instant beforehand. Faint footprints ran across the entrance hall, softly outlined in the dust, and his eyes followed them as they made a beeline for the stairs. There were two sets of prints - a pair of trainers and a pair of heeled boots and Rory's heart sank as he realised where they were.

  The front door squeaked ever so slightly as it opened but there was no sign of movement above the garden gate that Rory could see through the gap.

  Neither he nor Amy were surprised to see the broken bits of timber frame and glass that littered the lawn in front of them. But there was something missing.

  'Where's Albert's body?' Amy asked as she 208

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  quickly pushed the door back onto the latch.

  'I dunno. Taken as a trophy?' Rory shrugged.

  'They're robots, not tribesmen.'

  'Probably best to worry about that once we've found the Doctor, eh?'

  'I suppose.' Amy sidled back through the hallway towards the rear doors once more.

  Rory stopped and waited for a few seconds, ears searching for any sign of pursuit or discovery, but there was no noise apart from the gentle tapping of Amy's heels. He turned and followed her into the back garden.

  As the patio doors slid shut, the house became still once more, a deep, graveside silence. Then a dark silhouette stirred into action from its vantage point in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

  'They've been trimming the hedge-edges!' Rory muttered as he dodged and weaved through the trampled flowerbeds and broken fences that marked the winding path through the rear gardens.

  'The whats?'

  'The. Hedge. Edges,' Rory repeated slowly. Amy grinned. 'Just one more time.'

  'The hedgedgedges. Happy now?'

  'Very.' She smiled sweetly.

  'Look.' He reached out a hand and brushed 209

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  it along the rounded curves of a broken garden border, then gestured to the clippings on the ground. 'It's like they didn't realise the path wasn't meant to be here, and they just incorporated it into their gardening.'

  'But that would mean that this path must have been made before they arrived.'

  Rory pondered. 'And definitely before we arrived. What on earth is the Doctor doing?'

  'Ours not to reason why...' Amy recited. 'Ours just to stay alive.'

  They had crossed nearly a dozen gardens by now and Amy could see the end in sight: a large warehouse at the end of the block with a hole smashed into the side the size of a small car.

  'Sheesh,' she muttered. 'He's had a bit of fun making this, hasn't he? How come we're never around to join in when he starts smashing things up?'

  'We just demolished a house!' Rory pointed to the plume of smoke still billowing out from the broken skeleton of the house behind them. 'I'm trying my best!'

  'And you're very good at it.' Amy placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder as they drew closer to the warehouse. 'But it's all been a bit too easy, hasn't it? I mean, why didn't the androids surround the building we were in, or acknowledge 210

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  the path in their lawns and do something about it?'

  'Like I said, maybe they just assumed it was a part of the landscape. Or...' He paused. 'They could all be inside the warehouse, waiting to ambush us.'

  More cautiously now, they approached either side of the gaping hole and peered tentatively into the deep gloom inside, contrasted further by the brightness of the afternoon sun. The highlights of a fairly large metal object were all that they could pick out, and Rory edged silently inside.

  He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust until eventually the pitch black shadows mellowed into grey shapes and he realised that the object was a large, petrol-driven, ride-on lawnmower, parked in the centre of the space. The tracks they had followed clearly ended beneath its chunky tyres. But it wasn't the machine that Rory had fixed his frightened gaze on; it was the person slumped casually on the modest seat, arms resting gently in her lap.

  It was Isley.

  211

  Chapter

  17

  Colorado, 28 August 1981, 6.30 p.m.

  The android's eyes flickered around the shadows of the warehouse, amplifying the light and searching for signs of movement. She had been waiting for five minutes and twenty-seven seconds when the whitened greys of the space caught a movement behind one of the tall wooden supports. Her head swivelled to focus.

  A girl - brown eyes, red hair, pale skin - was moving quietly and swiftly across the side of one wall.

  Isley flexed her joints in preparation for the kill, a cat, coiled and ready to spring. It took a fraction of a second for her to leap to her feet and lunge towards the target.

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  Suddenly she was jerked backwards, the wire that still connected the headphone speakers that bounced lazily over her shoulders tightening around her neck. With her head racing through analyses of possible attack patterns and counter moves the girl might exhibit, she hadn't noticed the second target.

  A click, a snap, a spin, a second click and the sound of a button being depressed registered in her brain. The cassette hissed through the blank opening of the tape for three seconds before the music began, softly drifting into her sensory circuits from the speakers around her neck.

  Rory swore. 'Where's the volume slidey thing? Oh wait, no, here it is.'

  The music increased in pitch and Isley's head slumped forward onto her chest.

  'Cut that a bit fine.' Amy moved over swiftly, trying to avoid the glazed eyes of the android.

  'I was the one whose neck was in reach!' Rory reminded her as he waved a hand across Isley's face.

  'It looks like the magic music works then.'

  'Can we talk to her?'

  'Albert said she wouldn't respond to anyone except people he'd instructed her to communicate with.'

  'But he did instruct her to communicate with 214

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  us. Didn't he?'

  As if a switch had suddenly been flipped in her head, Isley swivelled to face Rory. The pair started, but she made no further motion. Eventually her lips parted and she spoke, a flat, emotionless monotone.

  'Where's Albert?'

  Amy and Rory glanced at each other.

  'See?' Amy said.

  'Albert has not instructed me to communicate with you.' Isley clarified, 'But I am not restricted by my original programming.' There was a pause. 'Where is Albert?' she reiterated.

  Rory clasped his hands together and leaned forward angrily. 'You killed him, don't you remember that? You threw him out of a window. We were there, we saw it.'

  Isley shook her head. 'No.'

  'No? What do you mean "no"?'

  'That isn't what happened.'

  Amy crouched in front of the young woman.

  'Then what did happen, Isley?' she asked carefully.

  'You and you,' she looked from Amy to Rory,

  'discovered me in my room in the house. It took three minutes, forty-two seconds for my system to reboot effectively after the military programmes activated, a process delayed due to the length of 215

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  time I was shut down by the electromagnetic field. By the time I was active, you had already left the building.'

  'But Albert was there. You threw him from the upstairs window — the wreckage is all over the front lawn!'

  Again Isley shook her head, almost in time to the music. 'I jumped through the window myself in pursuit. Albert never entered the village.'

  Rory was thoroughly confused by now. 'A lying robot. Now I've seen everything!' he declared loudly, waving his hands in exasperation.

  Amy held up a p
lacating finger. 'Hold on a second,' she said before resuming her line of questioning. 'Isley, when was the last time you saw Albert?'

  'The military compound, in the dead zone between transports, he was talking to your...' Her eye ticked as she searched her dictionary. 'Friend?' she suggested eventually.

  'The Doctor!' Rory pinched his nose with a finger and thumb and squinted as he tried to get his head around what he was hearing.

  'He's changed the past,' Amy whispered. 'Or he will change the past.'

  'Were we at the compound, Isley?'

  'No.'

  Amy looked to Rory. 'Well either he's changed 216

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  the past whilst we're here or we're going to die before he comes to pick us up.'

  'That's a comforting thought. Thanks, Amy. But how can he have changed the past without us noticing?'

  Rory

  was

  getting

  frustrated.

  'We

  remember what happened!'

  'Yeah, but we're time travellers! We're not even meant to exist in this time and place. If messing about with time is going to change our memories, where would you stop?'

  Rory circled the lawnmower, his mind racing. 'That still doesn't explain why the Doctor's popped off to do that and left us here with nothing but a lawnmower message for help.'

  'He saved Albert. I think that's reason enough,' Amy snapped.

  'As far as I can see this whole thing is because of Albert anyway.'

  Amy sighed and turned away, refocusing her attention on the android. 'Were you waiting for us here?

  Why?'

  'I can read. Basic tracking programs are improved and refined by application; defenceless targets are useful for practice. It was logical that you would obey the instruction described by this machine.'

  'Can't any of the other models read?' Amy raised an eyebrow.