Doctor Who - Nuclear Time (17 page)

'Five minutes, Doctor, then I'm putting you on the trucks.'

But the Doctor was already out of the door, boots clattering down the iron staircase. 'Thank you!'

Albert tapped a nearby captain softly on the shoulder. 'I'll take it from here,' he whispered, as the last of the androids were unloaded from the truck. He had already retrieved his bag from the front cabin and was toying nervously with the Walkman in his hand.

He wrapped the headphone wire around a finger, then unwrapped it again as

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NUCLEAR TIME

the captain turned his face to acknowledge him. 'Don't do this, Albert.' The voice was low and quiet, but its authority was undeniable.

Albert turned, quickly stuffing the Walkman into his coat pocket. 'What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be cuffed to a radiator or something by now?'

The Doctor pushed through the row of soldiers that divided the two men until he was face to face with the scientist. 'You don't understand what you are about to do.'

'I'm just...' Albert's eyes filled with tears. 'I just want to say goodbye. What's wrong with that?'

'She's a machine, Albert, she doesn't understand the way you see her. She's not even aware of how you feel.

How could she be?'

Albert choked, as the Doctor gently took his hand and began leading the man away from the lorry. The scientist protested and tried to pull away but the Doctor's grip was firm and unyielding. He nodded to the captain to resume the unloading.

'I know what it's like, Albert, to love something that you created, but it's not
real
love, is it? It's pride - you just think you're in love because you made her look so beautiful.'

'She is beautiful.'

'They all are, Albert, everything you've created is incredible. You're decades ahead of your time,
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you know that? But they're not people, they're weapons. You can't forget that - they're guns dressed up like men and women.'

As the Doctor backed away, Albert following reluctantly, he waved a hand behind his back to a group of soldiers who had just finished playing cards around a small circle of barrels in the shade of the officer's mess. They vacated their seats without a word.

'I've never been in love, Doctor.' Albert slumped onto the cool steel seat.

The Doctor settled beside him and rested his head against the corrugated iron wall. 'It's never too late.'

Albert laughed. 'Of course it is. This was my life.

She
was my life. There is nothing for me beyond this.' He turned, suddenly intense. 'Have you really seen the future?'

The Doctor opened his eyes and tilted his head. 'Yes,'

he said with complete sincerity. 'You told me what happened when I found you amongst the survivors.

You said that you'd walked Isley to the dead zone and someone shouted something. It triggered the military programming - no one had a chance. Geoff had no choice but to put you on a truck. You died in the village at Isley's hand.'

His honesty was brutal, and it hit Albert like a bullet through the heart.

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NUCLEAR TIME

'But the point is,' the Doctor continued, 'you wouldn't have done it if you'd known what would happen. It might seem like the most important thing in the universe to say goodbye to her now, but it won't be worth what happens next - you said so yourself. You
told me
yourself.'

Albert leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. He took a deep breath, a long sniff, and when he looked back at the Doctor his eyes were dead and cold.

'You're right.'

The Doctor smiled weakly. 'I'm always right,' he said.

'So what happens now?'

'Nothing and everything.' The Doctor shrugged. 'The future is already changed - you didn't trigger the massacre. That was it. We changed history by having a conversation.'

'But... everything you lived through...?'

'Will soon have no longer existed,' he finished Albert's sentence for him. 'Time will ripple forwards from this point, and in this version all these soldiers will live. You'll never see what I have seen.'

Albert smiled faintly through the tears, his cheeks glistening in the shadow. 'Then shouldn't we be looking a bit happier?'

The Doctor turned away. 'You should,' he said.

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'What's wrong?' Albert was concerned once more.

'It's the bomb, the bomb you dropped - or will drop in an hour's time. That's why I'm stuck living backwards, I managed to halt it at the point of detonation

but

to

extinguish

the

explosion

completely I was forced to dissipate the energy into the past.' He leant forward now. 'But don't you see?

I've changed things, changed the future - including the hour that leads up to the bomb being dropped.

It's a new piece of string; the old time line won't exist any more.'

'So all that energy dissipation...'

'Will be lost. The lost energy will coalesce at the point of impact and explode into the future once again. I can't stop the bomb going off, your government is still going to ignite a war and worst of all, and
worst
of all...' The Doctor struggled to sustain his composure. 'My friends were in Appletown, at the instant of detonation. I've condemned them to death to save your men.'

Albert looked aghast. 'Is there nothing you can do?'

The Doctor looked at his watch. 'Not until I revert to my backwards state. I have to finish the loop with you and Geoff loading me into the truck - if I try and preserve as much of the old time line as possible, it might take longer for the energy to
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reach the critical point. Once this forward loop finishes, I'll be travelling through my arrival at the base, reversed from your point of view.'

'On the bicycle?'

The Doctor rubbed his chin. 'Now there's a good idea.'

'But how does this reversed state end? Are you stuck like this for ever?'

'I hope not. The plan was to travel backwards until the explosion was completely dissipated, then, fingers crossed, I'd snap back to the instant the reversion began, pick up my companions and tell the Colonel to drop a second bomb the moment they were safe.'

Albert chuckled incredulously. 'A
second
bomb? Do you think we're made of money?'

The Doctor's glance made him stop short. 'I don't care about money; I care about Amy and Rory. Their lives are beyond value.' He ruffled a hand through his hair. 'Anyway, it's irrelevant now.'

Albert got slowly to his feet. 'Well, go and warn them now! Tell them to stay away from the village!'

'We haven't arrived yet.' The Doctor shrugged. 'And every minute this backwards loop continues takes me further away from that moment.' He leant forward and stood up to join the scientist,
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DOCTOR WHO

moving past him in the direction of the covered walkway that led to the courtyard. His shoulders were hunched, his head hung low, the gait of a defeated man. Albert had to jog to catch up with him, drawing alongside as the Doctor strode beneath the first strips of artificial light.

'You know what?' Albert said with a voice made of steel. 'I don't think you do care about your friends very much.'

The Doctor rounded on him, and the scientist started at the sight of the stranger's face - a tight mask of rage and grief. 'How dare you,' the Doctor hissed. 'You have no idea.'

Undaunted, Albert continued. 'Look at you, Doctor - a man of impossible things. You claim to be able to diffuse the effects of a nuclear bomb, you live backwards through time, you've saved my life and the lives of everyone on this base with nothing but a piece of string...' He dropped his hands to his sides in exasperation. 'Does that sound like the behaviour of a man who just... gives up?'

The Doctor looked at him silently for a full minute, then embraced him. 'You're right,' he said quietly. 'Thank you.'

They walked the last few metres in silence, a pair of guards solemnly pulling open the great iron doors to the courtyard as they stepped, blinking,
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NUCLEAR TIME

into the natural light once more. The citizens had been almost completely transferred to the waiting vehicles at the exit to the compound and the Doctor solemnly took his place at the head of the final queue, boots crunching on the sand as he turned to face the scientist, his back to the trucks. He looked around and snapped his fingers.

'Guards! If you would please escort me to one of the trucks. Backwards, if you don't mind.'

He checked his watch. 'In thirty seconds,' he added.

The five soldiers began to gather hesitantly around the incongruous figure, faces tilted to the balcony above in search of confirmation. Albert followed

their

gaze

and

saw

Geoff,

leaning

nonchalantly over the iron railings. He nodded solemnly and scratched his face, still unsure why he was permitting this.

Albert gave a knowing nod to the Doctor, who smiled and returned the motion. 'I will not be beaten,' he said, and took a step backwards.

Albert didn't notice the switch, the subliminal flash and hiccup in time as the man he had been talking to only seconds before was catapulted backwards half an hour. But the look of unfamiliarity in the prisoner's eyes as he was led away and the unnatural assuredness with which he took each step backwards, told him everything

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he needed to know.

He turned away quietly and spotted the nervous sergeant as he prepared to board up the rear of the first truck. He jogged over to him with a swift

'Hey'.

The sergeant nodded, and then looked up in surprise as he found Albert's Walkman shoved quickly into his hands. 'Sir?' he enquired.

'Can you give this to Isley?' Albert asked as he unravelled the headphones from his pocket and coiled it up in the man's palm. 'She's in the truck at the back.'

'Uh, yeah, sure. Anything you say, sir.'

'It'll make the journey go quicker if she's got music to listen to,' Albert explained. 'And if there's any tape left when she's unloaded, it'll act as an extra reinforcement to her reset and keep you guys safe a bit longer.'

'Oh right. Well, thanks, Dr Gilroy.' The sergeant coiled the wire tightly around the player. 'I'll do that.'

Albert's relief was plain to see and he opened his arms to give the soldier a brief hug of thanks, but he thought better of it upon seeing the soldier's frightened face and instead stuffed his hands into his pockets awkwardly. 'Take care of her,' he said finally. 'She's not like the others. She's special, you know?'

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NUCLEAR TIME

'If you say so, sir.' The sergeant raised his hand in a half salute, but the scientist was already hurrying away.

199

Colorado, 28 August 1981, 6.07 p.m.

The smoke was warm and thick as it coiled around the pair, huddled in the corner of the upstairs bedroom. Amy's head rested gently on her fiancé’s lap as the thick cloud filled her lungs and lulled her to sleep. Rory too was struggling to stay awake; he ran his fingers idly through the girl's soft red hair, the pain in his arm reduced to a dull, soothing throb.

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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DOCTOR WHO

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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NUCLEAR TIME

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