Death of the Doctor (7 page)

And Sarah Jane was thinking about Bannerman Road, finding Mister Smith’s Xylok crystal, creating the computer. Of the Bane. Of Luke. Luke, her son…

And then the holograms just vanished and the console beside Jo exploded in a huge mass of sparks and flashes, throwing Aureolin backwards.

‘It’s blown a circuit,’ Sarah Jane said. The straps holding her arms and legs sprung open as the power drained away. She ripped the headset away and was across to Jo, pulling her free, ignoring the explosions around them, almost dragging Jo towards the door, to the Doctor, to freedom.

But the door was sealed.

‘Doctor!’ Sarah Jane shouted. ‘Problem! The door’s sealed and this place is about to go up!’

Jo glanced back. The whole place was a mass of smoke and flame and she drew Sarah Jane’s attention to the power cables leading into the floor. One of them was already ablaze – and when that reached whatever was powering this place beneath the floor…

Colonel Karim saw this too and threw herself forward, preparing to yank the power cable out.

Jo and Sarah Jane hid their eyes as an electrical flash lit up the room like a massive firework had silently gone off, creating a whole load of smoke that made them cough.

Of Colonel Karim, there was no sign. Perhaps she had been completely vaporised by the power feedback.

And the cables were both ablaze now.

Sarah Jane was trying the sonic but it wasn’t working and she realised it had drained itself on the alien world. Getting them back here.

‘Where’s your sonic screwdriver?’ Jo called through the door.

‘In the TARDIS,’ the Doctor said back.

‘And we can’t get in because we stopped ourselves remembering the key, so it faded away.’ Sarah Jane smiled sadly at the irony.

‘Doctor,’ said Jo quietly, bravely ignoring the destruction around her, destruction getting closer to claiming them with each second. ‘Doctor, I just want to say…I’m so glad I saw you again. I waited all this time. And it was worth it. Every second.’ She shrugged to Sarah Jane. ‘Funny thing is, your funeral turns out to be ours instead.’

‘Doctor,’ Sarah Jane added. ‘All of you. Look after Luke for me. Please.’

‘Listen!’ The Doctor was now yelling excitedly through the door over the two of them. ‘Listen to me! My funeral! Don’t you see?’

Sarah Jane and Jo looked at one another and then, as one, turned back to look behind them – through the smoke and flame, past the three panicking Shansheeth who were failing to stop the flames which had now spread to the drapes, engulfing the whole back end of the room in flame.

They shrieked. They squawked.

But Sarah Jane and Jo focused on just one thing.

The lead-lined coffin.

They half ran, half-dragged each other to it, and pulled the lid up. Sarah Jane made Jo get in first and then as the whole Memory Weave set up exploded, she followed.

The last things Sarah Jane saw as she closed the lid tightly on herself and Jo was Azure, flying across the room, wings flapping furiously, screeching in madness and anger at her, his talons dragging across the coffin lid as she pulled it tight.

That, and the flaming cables finally reaching the power source in the floor.

They felt the explosion from within. It churned the coffin up, bouncing it over the floor.

And then all was silent. The two women counted to ten, then pushed the lid of the coffin up and scrambled out.

The Funeral Chamber was all but gone – just the walls remained, scorched black. Of the three Shansheeth, nothing but a few black feathers were left.

The Memory Weaves, the consoles, the Cradle, and the pews, all turned to ash.

Only the TARDIS was whole, untouched and indestructible as ever. The brilliant, amazing, wonderful TARDIS that had been both their homes at different times.

The door to the Funeral Chamber was gone, embedded in the wall of the corridor outside, forced out there by the explosion.

And walking through the smoke were Clyde, Rani and Santiago, each of them hugging Sarah Jane and Jo for all they were worth.

As the smoke cleared, the Doctor was leaning nonchalantly against the now empty door frame, as if he did things like this every day.

Which he did.

They all did.

Because that’s what made them all so brilliant.

The Groske was there, wiping soot off the walls. ‘Take forever to clean. Groske busy for weeks.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Smell of roast chicken.’ And he scampered around, busy and happy.

As they all moved towards the Doctor, he held up a hand.

‘One thing. The Mona Lisa coming to life?’

‘Long story,’ said Rani.

He threw his arms around Clyde and Rani’s shoulders and looked his old companions straight in the face. ‘Now then, Smith and Jones. How brilliant were you?’ He nodded at the coffin. ‘The trap turned out to be the solution. That’s so neat, I could write a thesis.’

Jo and Sarah Jane just hugged each other and laughed with relief.

Chapter Twelve

Until next time

The attic at 13 Bannerman Road was silent, when suddenly Mister Smith detected a temporal flux.

The source was the TARDIS, which wheezed and groaned into solidity in front of the computer, and the doors opened.

First Clyde, then Rani and finally Santiago emerged.

‘Whoa!’ Clyde said. ‘The attic. Home! It’s like everything moved around us. I’m so never getting used to that.’

Rani was staring at Mr Smith. ‘You are in big trouble. Those Shansheeth were bad!’

Mr Smith apologised. ‘It transpires that you encountered a rogue element and the Wide Wing of the High Shansheeth Nest has already sent their apologies.’

Santiago was staring at Mr Smith. ‘On top of everything else, you’ve got a talking computer in the chimney.’ He hugged Rani and Clyde. ‘Of course you have. Why wouldn’t you?’

Inside the amazing TARDIS, Sarah Jane and Jo were saying goodbye to the Doctor.

Jo was running her hands over the console. It looked very different to the one she remembered and yet…somehow so familiar. She sniffed loudly. ‘Same old TARDIS,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t matter what you’ve changed, it still smells the same.’

Sarah Jane breathed in deeply and then nodded in agreement.

‘But it’s time to go,’ Jo continued. ‘Because if I stand here any longer, I’ll stay forever. And these days, I’d slow you down.’

The Doctor busied himself with the console, not catching either of their eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’d really better go. You know me. Things to do.’

‘It’s daft,’ said Sarah Jane quietly. ‘Because we both had this theory that if you ever died, we’d feel it. Somehow. We’d just know. But that’s silly, isn’t it?’

The Doctor looked at them. ‘I don’t know. Maybe not. Because between you and me, if that day ever comes,’ and he leaned towards them, as if telling then something top secret, ‘I think the whole universe might shiver.’

Jo and Sarah Jane stared at him, captivated. Until he went “boo!” very suddenly and made them jump. And laugh. Jo hugged him first and then stood back, to let Sarah Jane say her goodbye.

‘Until next time,’ he whispered to her, so that only Sarah Jane could hear.

She smiled and followed Jo out of the TARDIS and into the attic, where they joined the teenagers, watching as the police box faded away.

After a few moments’ sad silence, Santiago nudged Rani. ‘It’s just like you said. You save the world. From an attic. In Ealing!’

Rani smiled. ‘You know, we do. We sort out Slitheen. And Sontarans. And the Trickster. And your family fight oil barons and factories and that’s equally important. But I live over the road, and Clyde’s mum is just a few streets away. At the end of the day, who’s waiting for you?’

Santiago shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s time to make some changes. I dunno.’

Jo was suddenly behind him, and kissed the back of his head. ‘I think our next stop is Norway, sweetheart. Meet up with your mum and dad and have a bit of a break, yeah?’

‘I’d like that,’ Santiago agreed.

‘So would I,’ said Jo.

‘But before then, I’m starving.’

Jo turned to Sarah Jane. ‘Got any food in this house?’

‘Must be something in the fridge. Probably not much, though. I’m not one for cooking,’ Sarah Jane said.

‘Great. We’ll whip something up,’ Jo said and led Santiago out of the attic and downstairs.

Rani was about to follow, but Clyde asked Sarah Jane a question. ‘D’you think there’s lots of Jo Grants out there? Old companions of the Doctor?’

Sarah Jane smiled. ‘I do a little search now and again.’

‘You Google “TARDIS”?’

‘Hey,’ said Sarah Jane. ‘It works. I mean, I can’t always be sure. I know a woman in Australia called Tegan Jovanka, fighting for Aboriginal rights. There’s a Ben and Polly running an orphanage in India. A Doctor Holloway in San Francisco looking into new breakthroughs in surgery. I knew a lovely doctor once, Harry Sullivan.’ Sarah Jane sighed sadly. ‘He did such good work with vaccines, saved thousands of lives. Then there’s a woman called Dorothy who runs that company, “A Charitable Earth”, raising billions, where she works alongside a Melanie Bush, providing PCs to schools in Africa. And this couple in Cambridge, professors at the university, Ian and Barbara Chesterton. Rumour has it, they’ve never aged, not since the Sixties. So yeah, I often wonder…’

‘That’ll be us one day,’ said Clyde to Rani.

‘Out there. Still fighting.’

Sarah Jane held them close. ‘Echoes of the Doctor, all over the world. With friends like us, he’s never going to die, is he?’

And with a little smile at Mr Smith, Sarah Jane led them out of the attic, and downstairs to find out what was happening in the kitchen.