Doctor Who (15 page)

‘What's on the agenda for today?' said Bob.

‘Our goal now is to follow Swan's movements without her being able to follow ours. That means we keep moving and we stay anonymous.'

Peri said, ‘So how do we know what she's doing if we can't use the phone or computers?'

The Doctor raised a finger. ‘Actually, we can do both. We just have to be very careful about it.'

There was a line of telephone poles sticking up from the forest floor, their wire-laden heads looming over the road. Bob and the Doctor picked their way down the steep slope, grabbing onto trunks and shrubs to avoid a long bum's rush into the wet undergrowth below. Peri and I spread a map on the bonnet of the campervan so we'd have an excuse if anyone
pulled over. The occasional car cruised by, but no-one disturbed us.

The Doctor came into view a few minutes later, halfway up one of the poles. He was climbing awkwardly, wearing a pair of gardening gloves, keeping a death-grip on the metal steps. We could see a long coil of wire looped over one of his shoulders, and a leather satchel, like a kid's schoolbag, over the other.

At the top, he stuck a set of instructions onto the wood of the pole with a bit of blu-tac, and went to work with tools from the leather bag. Peri and I leaned over the safety rail to see what Bob was doing. He appeared to be setting up his computer down there, spread out on a picnic blanket.

We looked at one another. ‘How the hell's he gonna run it?' I said.

But the Doctor had thought of everything. After clambering down from the pole, making Peri bite her lip and mutter curses, he hauled himself up the slope carrying some spare cable. Shortly afterwards, Bob's computer was running off Travco power.

I followed the Doctor back down the wet bank, slipping and sliding in melting snow. Bob was hunched awkwardly in front of the Doctor's Apple II. ‘We're in,' he said. I crouched down, shading my eyes so I could read the screen. He'd logged into his university account. The modem was connected to the phone lines by a cable that ran right up the telephone pole. It was the most awkward, overproduced, jerry-rigged lashup I'd ever seen. But it was a thoroughly anonymous way into Swan's private electronic world – provided they could get through the door.

He and Bob spent the next hour trying to break back in to the TLA mainframe. Last time, it had been like a hot knife into the butter. Now, nothing from the Doctor's bag of tricks could crack Swan's security. She had gone back in and nailed shut
every doorway, every window, every trapdoor in her system.

I got bored watching them try and went back to the cabin of the campervan, where Peri was dozing in the driver's seat. We had a lovely view of the misty valley. I checked my look in the rear view mirror and we talked for a bit, swapping favourite films. Mine's
Key Largo
. Peri's is something called
Ghostbusters
that I've never heard of. She told me a funny story from her first year of college: one day she was out walking beside a road when she saw a little white dog come out of a church parking lot. It was tiny, a toy dog – Peri knew it wasn't a poodle, although she didn't really know what it was. It trotted along, surprisingly fast, its little pink tongue flicking in and out as it bounced along the pavement.

A moment later the little dog had wandered out into the road. It was a suburban street, but busy. Peri expected the dog's owner to come running out of the parking lot. But no-one appeared. The little dog trotted across the road and was up onto the opposite pavement before any more traffic came along.

But now the dog was running around in the gas station! Peri reached the big intersection, waiting at the lights, watching as two people started calling the dog. A woman in a pleated skirt knelt down, whistling. But the dog took no notice, this time heading for the four lanes of the main road.

Peri's heart sank as she saw it scoot out into the traffic. It was so small, surely none of the dozens of drivers queued up could see it, let alone the drivers rushing past on the other side of the road.

No – there it was! It had somehow emerged on the other side, without having been crushed into street pizza or causing a ten-car pile up. Peri felt her shoulders sag in relief.

Oh, for God's sake, it was back out in the road again! The
light had just changed, and the first car was moving slowly enough that they could brake to avoid killing it. The two cars behind it braked and honked. Randomly, obliviously, the tiny dog darted sideways through the traffic, constantly moving, jaywalking until it was back on Peri's corner.

It trotted down the pavement, tongue still dangling, as though nothing had happened.

Peri watched it go. If the dog had stopped for a moment, frightened by the traffic, it would have been run over. But it just kept moving, and the cars just kept missing it. It was almost, she thought, as though the dog hadn't been killed because it had never occurred to it that it was in danger.

‘Sometimes that dog reminds me of the Doctor,' she laughed. ‘And sometimes it reminds me of me.'

‘So,' I said, ‘do you think you'll keep on travelling with him?'

The smile slid off Peri's face. ‘Well,' she said hesitantly, ‘I don't think there's really much
point
.'

‘You know,' I said, ‘all this would be more fun if we were actually going somewhere. Road trips usually go in a straight line, not round and round in circles. And then we end up sitting here while the geeks have all the fun.'

‘It's not that,' said Peri. ‘You know that old saying about flying – that it's hours of boredom plus minutes of stark terror? Being with the Doctor is like that. Sometimes it's horrible, but sometimes it's so exciting . . . but when it comes to the crunch, the only thing I can do is sit here. I don't know anything about computers. Or aliens either. The Doctor is always having to pull me out of some scrape. I'm pretty much useless, really.'

We sat there for a few moments.! said, ‘You know, I think in a way he's doing all this stuff for you.'

She turned to look at me. ‘What do you mean, “for me”?'

‘Whatever's going on with these devices, he takes it very
seriously. He even thinks it could be the end of the world. The end of your world.'

‘My world? You mean he wants to save the States?'

‘Because it's your home,' I said.

‘He doesn't even
like
America.'

‘He likes you.'

‘We can't seem to get along.'

‘You like him, don't you?'

The smile inched its way back onto her face. ‘Yeah. I do. He can be a pain in the ass, but he's a lot of fun to be around.' She told me about her first time on board the Doctor's boat. ‘I have a little white room all to myself,' she said. ‘That first morning I woke up and I swear I didn't know who I was. Never mind where, I couldn't even think of my name for about half a minute. I just lay there in a kind of daze, staring at a white wall and wondering what was going on. I mean, I'd woken up in hotel rooms all my life, but this was different. Like I had turned into somebody new. I was starting a whole new life.'

At that moment, we heard another car. I looked in the side-view mirror. ‘Oh, shit burgers,' I said. ‘It's the police.' They pulled in between us and the Doctor's car.

Peri gripped the steering wheel. ‘What're we gonna
do
?' she squeaked. She pushed her hair out of her face, screwed her courage to the sticking-place, and told me to put my arm around her.

‘What?'

‘You heard.'

I slipped my arm around Peri's shoulders as an officer of the law armed with a pistol and a vast moustache strode over to the parked campervan. Both of us must have been silently uttering the same prayer. Please don't let him see the cable. Please don't let him see the cable.

He tap-tapped on the driver's side window, and Peri wound it down, giving him her big, perfect smile. ‘Good morning,' she said.

‘Good morning to y'all,' said the officer. ‘Just wanted to make sure you're all right out here.'

‘Oh, we're fine,' said Peri. ‘Just admiring the scenery.'

Officer Moustache didn't answer. He was giving me The Look. My heart dropped into my stomach and slid from there down to my boots. I had seen The Look many a time before, and it always meant trouble.

‘Step out of the car, please,' said Officer Moustache. He took a step back so Peri could open the door

‘Is there a problem, officer?' said Peri, all nineteen-year-old timid friendliness, sending out the vibes of a good kid from a good family who would just, you know, like,
die
if she ever got into trouble.

‘Come on and step out of the car. Both of you.'

We got out. Officer Moustache herded Peri around to the passenger side and stood us next to one another. He took a good, long look at both of us, as though he was comparing us.

He undid the catch on his holster, so his pistol was handy. ‘Don't you make any sudden moves, now,' he said.

Very suddenly, his meaty hands were undoing the button on my jacket. ‘What the hell!' I yelped, slapping them away. ‘What is this, a strip search?'

‘You shut the hell up and keep still,' he said. He grabbed hold of the jacket and ripped it open, sending buttons popping off into the snow.

This was the point at which Peri, her back braced against the car, lifted her right foot and extended her leg like a harpoon tipped with a high-heeled shoe right into Officer Moustache's beefy groin.

He bent over and uttered a stream of imprecations that I'm not gonna repeat in case there are ladies reading. As he came back up his hand was reaching into his holster.

I applied my trusty right hook, aiming for just below the moustache. He went down into the gravel and slush without another dirty word.

Peri crouched and snatched the gun out of his holster. She held it like it would explode at any moment. ‘You take it,' she gasped.

I went to the police car, pulled the keys out of the ignition, wiped them and the gun clean with the inside of my pocket, and locked the gun in the trunk. Then I chucked the keys out into the valley as far as they would go.

‘Whoah.' Peri was bent over a little, her hands on her knees, like she couldn't get her breath. She was looking down at the policeman we'd knocked out. ‘Whoah,
shit.
What the hell was that all about?'

‘I don't want to know what the hell that was all about.'

‘You know, he never even noticed the cable.'

We looked at one another, and both of us ran to the railing, waving our arms and shouting, ‘Doctor! Get
up
here! You get up here
now
!'

I SWITCHED OFF
the radio when
Long Distance Runaround
came on. Peri, who had been dozing, woke up with a start in the abrupt silence. ‘Can't stand that album,' I muttered.

We had been driving since early morning. Peri offered to take a shift behind the wheel, but I could see how much she needed a nap, so I chivalrously insisted she try to get some Zs in the Travco's small bunk. She had switched on the radio, keeping it down low, saying that the familiar music would help her to sleep.

The Doctor sat on the bunk bed. He was building something back there, and had been for hours. He had interrupted our journey three times to run into stores he spotted out of the window. The bunk was strewn with bits of metal and tools, probably arranged in a careful order that the Doctor understood but which, to anybody else (me, for example) looked like a jumbled mess.

We had dropped Bob off in a motel in Frederick. The Doctor insisted that someone should stay near a phone line while we made out great expedition down the Delamarva Peninsula. Bob would stay connected to his email account via an Anderson Jacobson A211 acoustic coupler – a chunky beige modem with padded rests for the phone receiver. He set up the tap on Swan's phone to forward to his home answering machine; if she made a call, it would be recorded, and he could play back the messages by calling the machine. (Before we paid for the room,
Bob checked that its phone was touch-tone and not rotary-dial.) Every two hours, we would call to see if our efficient spy had any new information.

It was the tap that had sent us on the long drive eastward. She had phoned Luis Perez to let him know she'd be away for a day or so. She said she was going to ‘visit' Charles Cobb, the deceased collector, in Ocean City. (The Doctor was at first disbelieving and then amused when Bob assured him there
is
a place called Ocean City.) Neither Swan nor Luis mentioned what was living in Luis's bathroom: for that sort of exchange, they'd use payphones or a face-to-face meeting. We didn't have a phone book for Ocean City, so I bullied Mondy into coughing up Cobb's address. ‘His number's been disconnected,' the phreak reported. ‘But I looked at the last couple of bills.'

Bob had been happy to stay wired to the network in the motel, but the Doctor had also wanted to leave Peri behind. ‘This expedition is going to involve not just a tedious trip from one side of the state to the other, but some real-life breaking and entering,' he told her. ‘There's not only the risk of another confrontation with the police, but with Swan. I'd rather you kept Bob company while I confront them.'

‘No way,' said Peri. ‘I'm not sitting in some motel while you have all the fun. I've never been to Ocean City.'

‘Peri!' He could pack her name with a world of irritation. ‘It's the middle of winter!'

‘You're not leaving me out!'

‘I'll never understand you! First you complain about being put into danger, then you're upset because I want to keep you out of it!'

Peri won that one by getting into the passenger seat and refusing to be budged. The Doctor threw up his hands and got into the back. I took the wheel, remembering the time my dad
made me drive my two bickering cousins to Orange. I had solved the problem of their constant noise by dumping them by the side of the road and driving off, returning half an hour later to pick up a couple of very quiet kids. Thankfully we sat in a disgusted silence until Peri balled up her jacket between her head and the window and dropped off.