That was the difference. In the old times, he would have heard the night sounds of the forest a waking bird twittering, the bark of a fox, the breathing of the living world about him... Perhaps too the cracking of a twig underfoot, or the distant rattle of gunfire. was the difference. In the old times, he would have heard the night sounds of the forest a waking bird twittering, the bark of a fox, the breathing of the living world about him... Perhaps too the cracking of a twig underfoot, or the distant rattle of gunfire.
Here there was nothing but silence: an unnatural, lifeless silence.
And then, as he stood listening, he heard a voice far away calling his name.
"Jamie! Jamie Doctor where are you?"
She was a long way off, but he recognised her immediately.
"Zoe!" he shouted back, cupping his hands to his mouth: "I"m over here where are you?"
He stumbled on, hoping he was going the right way and the voice came again: "Jamie where are you?"
It was fainter than before, and now the sound echoed eerily, with overlapping reverberations from all sides: he hesitated, confused.
"Zoe? Keep calling, till I find you!"
Then he plunged ahead once more, putting on speed as he picked out a shadowy figure a dark shape against a darker background.
"Zoe is that you?"
But the words froze on his lips: he felt his heart miss a beat, as he took another step forward, and recognised the cut of an eighteenth-century uniform... Was he back in his own time after all?, For the stranger was dressed like an English Redcoat, in a tall military shako like an upturned bucket, with scarlet jacket and buckskin breeches... His old enemy.
Hearing Jamie"s voice, the soldier turned, raising his musket threateningly. Instinctively, Jamie pulled out the sheath knife which he carried at all times. If he was to be ma.s.sacred in cold blood, he could at least defend himself.
The soldier clicked the flintlock, about to fire.
"Shoot me down like a dog, would you?" Jamie roared, his fighting blood aroused. "Well, a McCrimmon never died without a struggle yet! Creag an tuire Creag an tuire!"
With the old Gaelic warcry on his lips he threw himself on his foe and at the same instant, the Redcoat pulled the trigger.
There was a deafening explosion, and a cloud of white, pungent smoke. When the fumes died away, the English soldier had vanished... Jamie was alone: but totally changed.
He stood there, exactly as he had been at the instant when the musket was fired, with his arm upraised and the knife in his hand but he had undergone a horrible transformation.
He was stiff and motionless, translated into two dimensions, like a cardboard cutout. It was as if Jamie had suddenly ceased to be Jamie McCrimmon, and in his place was a black-and-white ill.u.s.tration a lifelike drawing from the pages of a book.
At the same time, a little way off among the soaring tree trunks, Zoe was still trying to find Jamie. She was sure she had heard him calling out to her, not long ago, but then there had been a bang and since then, nothing at all.
"Jamie... I"m here!" she repeated.desperately, trying to project her voice as far as possible. "Are you there? Where are you?"
She hurried on, terrified that she would lose him again.
To be so near and yet so-far from help it was almost too much to bear.
As she dodged round one of the mighty tree trunks, her skirt was snagged on a gnarled twig, and she twitched it away irritably. Then she stopped.
Her skirt? But she never wore skirts...
She looked down at herself and caught her breath. For the silver jumpsuit had gone, and in its place was a long dress of pale blue, with a silk sash at her waist, and a full skirt, puffed out by stiff under-petticoats. She was wearing high-b.u.t.toned boots and when she put her hand to her head she found a band of ribbon tying back her long hair.
Countless millions of children on twentieth-century Earth would have known her at once: but in the City where Zoe was born and brought up, no-one had ever heard of Alice in Wonderland.
This was why when she saw a giant mushroom with a caterpillar on top of it, half-hidden in the shadows, she did not feel any sense of recognition. A moment later, there was a flash of white fur and a fl.u.s.tered rabbit scuttered by.
Zoe blinked. Could the white rabbit really have been consulting a pocket-watch? Nonsense she must be imagining things. Besides, this half-light was very deceptive: it played tricks with your eyes.
If only she had been familiar with the ways of Wonderland, she might have been better prepared for the trap that lay ahead.
She turned the corner of a winding path, and was brought to a standstill, for a high brick wall faced her a wall with a door in it. But the door was firmly shut, and the wall seemed to go on for ever; there was no getting round it. She turned to retrace her steps and found another wall right behind her. She looked right and left, and realised with a sickening feeling of doom that she had been boxed in, caught between four walls which hadn"t been there a moment earlier.
"Doctor!" she cried in sudden panic. "Help me where are you?... Help Help!"
But her voice bounced back at her from these four blank walls. No-one could hear her now: she was shut in and imprisoned.
She returned automatically to the first wall, because that at least had a door in it and seemed to promise a way of escape. As she moved towards it, the door opened as if to welcome her, swinging back on rusty hinges with a high-pitched squeak that set her teeth on edge. But still she couldn"t retreat now. She could only go on.
Through the door she could see nothing but darkness, and she hesitated for a moment; then took her courage in both hands and told herself: "Perhaps it won"t be so gloomy once my eyes get used to it... And anyway, I"m not afraid of the dark!"
So she stepped bravely through the doorway and at once the floor opened up beneath her feet, and she gave a cry of terror as she fell down... down... down... Would the fall never come to an end?
Poor Zoe! How could she know that it was only a rabbit hole?
Somewhere in the Citadel, the Master hugged himself with delight: "Dear Lewis Carroll," he murmured. "Always so reliable... "
He checked the bank of monitor screens once more: there was Zoe, tumbling down Alice"s rabbit hole there was Jamie, frozen into a storybook ill.u.s.tration but the third screen was unaccountably blank.
The Doctor had disappeared.
The Master thumped his clenched fist on the desk in front of him, and barked out an order, his usually mild voice suddenly harsh and impatient: "Where is the Doctor?
Look around he. must be here somewhere... Find him...
Search all of you search search!"
Quickly he pressed several b.u.t.tons, punching up more and more pictures on the rows of screens before him but although they gave him many different views of the forest mazes, there was no sign of the Doctor.
"I see," he said at last, trying to control his anger. "He has eluded us for the moment, so he is not yet completely under my control... Very well perhaps it is better this way... But keep searching he must be found!"
Daylight was breaking through at last: the first long, level rays of sunlight penetrated the forest like aisles of a cathedral, and the Doctor began to feel a little more optimistic. He might be fighting an unknown and invisible enemy, but at least he was no longer playing Blind Man"s Bluff.
If only he knew where the others had got to...
He called out again: "Zoe? Jamie? Is there anybody there?"
From far, far away, he thought he could just detect a cry in response: but the sounds were so distant, it was hard to be sure. Was it really his two young companions, or simply a flirting echo of his own words, reverberating through the trees?
"Zoe... Jamie... Doctor Doctor..."
He held his breath: that was no echo. He was about to shout again, louder than ever, but another sound reached him, from a different direction. It was the tramp of marching feet, and they were coming closer and closer.
The hair p.r.i.c.kled at the back of his neck: he sensed danger. From the sound of that approaching army, he knew that these were not friends, but foes... He had to take cover.
"Very fortunate that these trees are so curiously shaped,"
he muttered to himself. "That one over there its trunk is hollowed out, almost like a sentry box. If I slip inside, I"ll be very well hidden."
No sooner said than done. He dived inside the sheltering tree trunk, and waited tensely for the enemy to arrive.
The sound of marching feet was getting louder at every moment: and he risked peering out, very cautiously, to catch a glimpse of his opponents.
They were heading towards him, silhouetted against the dazzle of the early morning sunlight, so he could not see them clearly: from the outline of their uniform, they seemed to be old-fashioned British soldiery. They looked not unlike the Redcoat trooper Jamie had encountered earlier, with the same high military shakos but these soldiers carried no muskets; and there was one other, vital difference.
At the front of" each helmet, there was a round compound lens of ribbed gla.s.s, with a beam of light shining from it, like a miniature searchlight.
The Doctor had seen those strange head lamps before: the White Robots had carried something very similar. So, these invading troops must be another task force within the same regiment but under whose orders, he wondered.
And, as he saw the line of soldiers march past his hiding place, with their heads turning left and right, and the rays of" light from their helmet lamps, criss-crossing and probing into every dark corner, he shrank back into his hiding-place, and wondered what these strange devices were for.
If he had been with the Master, in his control centre, high up in the Citadel, he would have known at once. Each "lamp" was serving a double function to throw a beam of"
light, but also to record whatever it "saw" and transmit an image back to the banks of monitor screens.
The Master studied the various screens intently: he saw a dozen pictures of tree trunks sliding by, from a dozen different angles but of the Doctor there was still no sign.
"He can"t be far away," he announced. "Continue on your present course search all areas... These are your orders he must be found!"
The Doctor waited, with bated breath, until the last sounds of marching feet died away, and then decided it was safe to come out of hiding.
He emerged cautiously from the tree trunk, about to set off once more when a new and unfamiliar voice made him almost jump out of his skin.
" Heckinah degul Heckinah degul!" The words were unfamiliar, but their meaning was clear enough. " Tolgo phonae Tolgo phonae!"
The Doctor put his hands above his head immediately.
The stranger was only a few paces away: he was dressed in eighteenth-century costume, with his hair sc.r.a.ped back into a short pigtail, and tied with a velvet knot. He wore a full-skirted coat reaching to his knees, unb.u.t.toned shirt and breeches, and a three-cornered hat on his head. And he carried a small flintlock pistol, which he pointed directly at the Doctor"s heart.
The Doctor licked his lips, and said nervously, "I beg your pardon I didn"t quite catch... ?"
The stranger frowned, and took a step towards him, menacingly.
" Langro degul san Langro degul san... ?"
The Doctor considered himself to be reasonably fluent in foreign tongues, but these words were Double Dutch to him. He shook his head with a polite but regretful smile, and asked: " Parlez-vous francais Parlez-vous francais?"
The stranger appeared to be trying out alternative languages, and persevered. " Grildig? Splacknuck? Grildig? Splacknuck? " "
The Doctor tried again: "Do you speak English by any chance?"
A broad smile broke over the man"s face: and the Doctor felt suddenly rea.s.sured. Whoever this man might be, he had a frank, humorous expression; he did not appear to be a villain. And wonder of wonders he spoke English, even if his phraseology was a little old-fashioned.
"Sir! My birth was of honest parents, in an island called England!"
"Good gracious me why didn"t you say so before?" said the Doctor.
"I spoke in as many languages as I had the least smattering of lingua franca, high and low Dutch "
"Ah, Double Dutch I thought as much well, let"s start all over again, shall we? May I ask when you were last in England?"
The stranger knitted his brows with the effort to remember: "We set sail from Bristol on May the Fourth, 1699."
"We?"
"What became of my companions, I cannot tell; they were all lost."
The Doctor sighed sympathetically: "I know how you feel, my dear chap... You and I are in the same boat."
The stranger"s face lit up. "You have a stout ship?" he asked.
He came eagerly up to the Doctor, still holding the pistol, although he appeared to have forgotten it. The Doctor turned the muzzle away with one finger, and exclaimed: "Do put that pop-gun away, there"s a good fellow do you mind? It rather unsettles me."
The stranger, obligingly slipped it into a side-pocket of his coat, as the Doctor continued: "What I mean is I"ve lost my companions as well; two of them a boy and a girl Jamie and Zoe... I suppose you haven"t come across them in your travels, by any chance?"
"Alas, no." The stranger shook his head.
"No. Well, I"ve got to find them. Perhaps you"d care to come along and help me search, if you know your way around these parts?"
The stranger"s face changed; it was as if a shadow had fallen across his lively eyes, and they now appeared dark and brooding. Then: "It is not permitted," he said flatly.
"Not permitted? Who says so?"
"The Master."
The Doctor scratched his head. "Who"s he when he"s at home? The Master of what? Master of where? Who is he?"
The stranger continued in the same monotone: "He has articles of impeachment against you, for treason and other capital crimes."