"We"re helping people, whatever you say," Chloe insisted. "These poor ones who took the wrong turns, who made mistakes, who lost the people they love... Who will champion them?" As Chloe paused, Jamais gave a low whimper as if in sympathy. "For every single person in this one true reality, there are an infinity of shadows who turned out differently. But they"re all the same person. Once we found Jamais could travel to these other universes we knew we had to help these poor shadows. To let some of them know what it"s like to succeed before their lives blink out as the universes collapse... before so many die." She smiled shyly. "I go walking. People brush against me and I just know things about them. That"s how I find the poor ones, you see. And then we help them."
Anji wanted to shake her. "But even if it didn"t involve murder the other end people you just happen to b.u.mp into on the street? It"s all so random!"
"We save who we can. So many people will die... you can"t know how many." Anji watched a tear zigzag down Chloe"s cheek. "But I do. And I know it is better to care for a special few than to serve everyone badly."
Anji hated herself, but she could see the glimmer of something in the little girl"s naive argument. Since the different realities had gone into meltdown, the Doctor had been forced into some pretty stark choices. As a side effect of his actions on one occasion, a whole universe was put to death.
No survivors.
Chloe"s way, certain souls were treasured, nurtured, saved. Of course, the thought of picking out just a few lives from countless millions was terrible, ridiculous. On what grounds would you rule the decisions? What possible selection process could you apply?
That"s when she realised she was taking to the decision-making process her own prejudices, her need for a business rationale, to make sure it was a shrewd investment. Erasmus used the innocent mind of a small, curious girl to decide for him. And Anji was shocked to concede that, given the scale of the situation they were speaking of, if you were set on such an eccentric scheme it was as good a means of deciding as any.
"Anyway," sighed Chloe, licking her finger and rubbing it against Jamais"s nose. "Within another hundred years, all the other universes will have collapsed. Our work here is almost done."
"Do you come from Earth yourselves?" asked Anji.
"No. This has been our pilgrimage." Chloe calmed her stroking of her pet"s smooth head. "Our home was destroyed. Our people went rotten and our world followed on. It had to be cut out by the Blessed Destroyer that"s what Erasmus says."
"Blessed Destroyer," echoed the Doctor, with a deep shuddering breath. "And you were set adrift in time and s.p.a.ce with nowhere to go."
"We wandered eternity. Set beacons for more of our kind. We searched the ashes of dead suns to find the magic of the old stellar engineers. And we tried to find our old home still alive in other universes."
The Doctor was hugging his knees, rocking back and forth.
"And did you?" asked Anji.
"No," said Chloe simply. "But we stumbled upon other survivors. There weren"t many. But those we saw were not content merely observing the universe they travelled through. You have to interfere, you have to get involved, it"s important. We learned that when the Blessed Destroyer wiped out our world."
"The only way they could make sense of the catastrophe," murmured the Doctor. He chose not to meet her wonky gaze.
"It was good our world went," she insisted. "We all learned that sacrifices must be made. That good should be pursued, always. The survivors, they spoke of the holy world of Earth, linked to our own world in the old records." She sounded like she was quoting a scripture. "Earth, beloved of the Destroyer. Earth, where one-hearted humans dwell, an inventive, invincible, indomitable species..."
"Please," said the Doctor, strangely shifty and yet clearly moved by what the little girl was saying. "I"m sure you"ve been acting from the most laudable of motives. But the way you"ve used Jamais to ferry people between one universe and the next has done great harm to the structure of time and s.p.a.ce."
Anji looked at the dark lump at Chloe"s knees, its breathing fast and shallow, then up at Chloe. "And to think I reckoned you were just some poor child mixed up in all this. What are you?"
"I am very old," said Chloe slowly. "But I cannot grow. Not since the clock of my world stopped ticking." She paused, gazing at Anji with adoration. "I wish to grow, as you have. I wish to make people"s lives better, as you have... Mum."
Anji shivered and turned away.
"How can this be happening?" Fitz shouted, banging his head on the window as Guy swung the wheel hard left to dodge a Rover and get back to the inside lane. "These are total strangers trying to kill you! I thought they had to know you or something?"
"Bet it"s the car they"ve got a grudge against," Trix a.s.sured him. "Haven"t you ever wanted to run one of these off the road?"
"Not much. But I think I"m about to!" Guy swore again, his eyes streaming. "I can"t see a thing!"
"Give me the wheel!" yelled Fitz. Guy felt the cool leather twist under his fingers, but too late the car lurched with a sickening impact as someone sideswiped the rear driver"s side.
"We"re taking this next exit," Trix snapped. "There"s a huge tanker up ahead and I"ve seen Terminator 2 Terminator 2."
Guy whacked at the indicator.
"Slow down!" Fitz heaved the wheel round to the left. "This is us!"
"I told you, I can"t see a b.l.o.o.d.y thing!"
He heard the engine growl angrily as their speed dipped too low for the gear, and changed down blindly.
"Why couldn"t Anji have an automatic?" complained Fitz as they swung a juddering left and on to another road.
"Hey! We wanted to go this way anyway, that was the right exit." Trix pointed this out like it would cheer them up.
"Hallelujah," muttered Guy. "Please can we stop now?"
"Lay-by," announced Fitz. "Slow her down. Faster."
Guy began to accelerate and Fitz jerked hard on the wheel.
"No, I mean, slow her down faster than "
The car whumped into something and everyone screamed as it felt for a second like the car would roll over. But instead, as Guy yanked up hard on the handbrake it came to a slow, grinding, graunching halt.
"Well," said Fitz. "That was a sticky moment."
"I"d call it a soaking wet one," Guy muttered as he killed the engine.
"Never mind," called Trix as she opened her door. "Your underwear was dirty anyway, right?"
Guy"s eyes cleared of the mist, and he saw the MG had ploughed a snaking way through a reservation of earth blocking the lay-by from the main road. Now it was pointing up the rise as if about to blast off into the pale blue sky. A snack truck was parked nearby and its oversized clientele stared at them slack-jawed, bits of bacon b.u.t.ty falling from their lips.
He jumped as Trix banged on his window. "Get out from there, Schumacher. Licence or not, I"m driving."
Guy almost fell out of the car, shaking with shock.
"Get a move on," said Fitz worriedly. "Those bruisers don"t look too impressed that we interrupted their breakfast. We don"t want them having a go too."
Trix hit the ignition as Guy wrestled feebly with the buckled door.
"Look at the state of this car," he moaned. "Anji is going to k"
"Don"t even think it," Fitz warned him. Guy fell inside and Trix gunned the rattling engine, ready to reverse down the bank and back on to the tarmac.
Anji wished the Doctor would recover enough for them to get out of here. This gloomy room with its endless night through the window was beginning to freak her out. She could feel all kinds of weird vibrations in the floor, and the soft, lulling noises of some strange machinery nearby.
"Chloe," said the Doctor softly, "time is running out to put things right."
"The wraiths told you that?" Anji asked, suspiciously.
"Yes. They"ve been trying to communicate with Chloe and Erasmus, but Jamais has been neutralising them. They can"t operate efficiently in this physical realm, and we can"t operate in theirs believe me." He sighed. "Anyway. Unable to get through to Chloe and friends, they tried to influence other humans. To eliminate Guy."
"Guy! But... why?" Anji felt like tearing her hair out in frustration. "What"s a minor civil servant dealing with fish quotas ever done to the universe?"
"They can"t tell."
"Nothing to do with that glitch in his DNA you picked up on?"
"I suppose it must be, somehow. He"s certainly linked to the damage in some way."
"And so is Sabbath," Chloe announced.
The girl had hissed the name with the same loathing and weariness it provoked in Anji. "How do you know about Sabbath?" she asked the child.
"I met him once. When I touched him, I knew about you. And about the plans he would have for Guy one day." Chloe tickled Jamais"s ear, and the animal rallied a little, raising its head. "It hurt just to touch him. When I recovered, the book was just lying there beside me."
Anji stared at the Doctor, scared and confused. "Sabbath wrote that book?"
"And I knew I had to take it with me," Chloe said miserably. "I just knew."
"And so do the wraiths," said the Doctor distantly, apparently away in some other world. "It"s a mess. And we"ve made it all a lot worse by looking after Guy as Chloe said instead of allowing him to die."
Anji couldn"t believe what she was hearing. "How can you even say that?" she croaked.
"I saved the lives of you and your friends when you breached this universe, Doctor," said Chloe coldly, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "And you promised you"d help him for me. He"s not a poor one to be helped in our usual way, but I know he"s "
"The most special man in the whole universe, because that wretched book tells you so," sneered the Doctor.
"And you"re now quite happy to see him die because those wraith things tell you you so," said Anji. "So which is better?" so," said Anji. "So which is better?"
"Neither!" said the Doctor hotly, and Chloe had to put a finger to her lips and shush him.
"You should go," she hissed. "Erasmus will wake soon. There is a meeting we have to attend this morning."
"With whom?" enquired the Doctor, getting unsteadily to his feet.
"With him. Daniel Basalt."
"I thought you wanted me to stop him for you," the Doctor said bitterly.
"But Mr Nencini is still alive," mused Chloe. "He must be cleared away to stabilise the transfer."
"Now you expect me to let him kill again before I stop him? If I can stop him?" The Doctor shook his head and took a step towards Chloe.
Then Jamais rose a little way and growled.
And Anji and the Doctor were out in the street, sprawling on the hard pavement.
The Doctor was up in a moment, beating on the green front door beside them. "I"ve been thrown out of better places, you know!"
"Stop shouting," Anji hissed at him, scrabbling for the loose change and tissues that had fallen from her bag. "People are staring." She looked round, trying to get her bearings, scrambled up from the ground. It was a bright morning, and pa.s.sers-by were giving them wary looks. Across the road was the car park the TARDIS had arrived in probably hours ago.
"We"ve got to stop this," the Doctor cried miserably. Then Anji nearly collapsed as he lost his balance and stumbled into her. She fought to bear his weight. "Doctor? What is it, what"s wrong?"
"The atmosphere in there," he gasped. "The Timeless building. Sustaining me, after... after what happened."
"Those wraith things," muttered Anji darkly. "Are they going to come back?"
He shook his head. "They were directing my attention before. Now they"ve taken it by force. I"ve promised them I"ll do all I can but there"s so little time... for them and for us."
"Lean on me," she told him. "Let"s get you back to the TARDIS." She staggered away from the green door. "And hope it"s not more than a tenner for a Police Box on overnight stay, "cause that"s all I"ve got."
The three loud knocks on the warehouse door echoed inside and obliterated every other sound.
Basalt watched as the four apes stood to sudden attention, their weapons trained on the doorway including the chimp who"d been sat beside him, trying to stare him out with his big black eyes.
Sabbath, who had only recently emerged hale and hearty and clearly refreshed from the dark rear of the warehouse, smiled knowingly at that skinny creep Kalic.u.m. The guy was supposed to be a surgeon, but with the dark crusting of blood on his white coat, he looked more like a butcher. He was holding some kind of crazy metal net in his long, fidgeting fingers just the right size for Jamais. There seemed to be a tiny bulb set into every link, glowing a dark shade of blue.
"Answer the door, Mr Basalt," suggested Sabbath. "Do not keep your erstwhile employers waiting."
Basalt rose, twitched his forearm and felt the comforting weight of the concealed knife taped to his wrist. He walked across the room in long, confident strides, aware that all eyes were on him.
A simple pull on his cuff and the tape broke, the knife slithered down into his grip. No one realised a thing. The second that little blonde freak stepped through the door Basalt would grab her by the neck and use her as a shield. How"d Sabbath like her with her throat slit? He smiled. He was going to take her and make her make him disappear...
He reached the door and pulled across the heavy bolt holding it locked in place. Then, with a deep breath, he prepared to pounce and wrenched open the door.
A split second later he realised he was grabbing an old lady, staring at him through thick spectacles, her eyes round and wide in alarm. Committed to action he spun her round, locked one arm about her neck and swung her body round to cover his own, the knife held to her cheek.
"I thought this was the cash and carry!" the old lady squawked.
"Don"t move!" Basalt bellowed, his heart sinking further with every beat. "Anyone!"
"Or you"ll do what?" Sabbath enquired casually. "Kill an old woman? Do you truly imagine I would care in the slightest?"
"Oh sweet G.o.d," muttered the old woman, holding herself stock-still in Basalt"s grip. "Him again."
But Basalt was barely listening. Sabbath was right. He had a useless hostage. But they wouldn"t want him dead until Erasmus and Chloe were here, for sure. He knew he was safe till...
Basalt heard a low growl and felt the muzzle of a gun push into the side of his skull. Another chimp was standing just behind him.
"Really, Mr Basalt," called Sabbath almost sadly as the knife fell to the floor with a clatter. "Did you really think I wouldn"t have guards placed outside the building too?
The old woman pushed a hand inside her coat and pressed it against her heart. She started to rock and shake like she was having some kind of heart attack.