"How?"
"Ask him." The boy tilted his head towards the Doctor. "Tell her." Instead, the Doctor said, "Your henchmen attacked us. The ones in the grey uniforms. What do you want us for?"
The boy sn.i.g.g.e.red like a playground bully. Sam had to fight to keep from slamming a knee into his back. "Oh, wow," he said. "You haven"t got a clue, have you?"
"Enlighten me," said the Doctor.
"You"ve got no idea," said the little boy, "and you know what? I like it that way. The big bad Doctor doesn"t know the first thing about me. Guess what.
I"m sixty-two years old." Sam stared at him in astonishment. "Nah. I"m six hundred million years old. I"m a sorcerer, I know all sorts of time-travel-magic c.r.a.p."
The Doctor began, "You don"t "
"No, that"s not it I"ve got alien friends who stopped me from ageing. No I just don"t give a d.a.m.n about growing up. Long as you don"t know me, I"m anyone I want to be. I"m the man, I"m the plan, I"m Peter Pan living in a garbage can. The only thing you know about me is that I can hurt you."
Sam tightened her grip across his chest, realising she was smiling. "Not me,"
she said. "Not any more."
The boy shouted, "Gotcha!"
The Doctor gasped and doubled over.
Behind him behind him was the same little boy, a look of glee on his face, his fingers still digging clawlike into the knife wound in the Doctor"s side.
Sam felt her arms wrench. The first boy had twisted free in that moment of shock. He ran past the Doctor to stand next to the other boy the same boy.
50.They shoved the Doctor, slamming him into Sam, and he fell in a pile at her feet. One arm was wrapped across his body. His other hand held the mangled remains of the box, crushed under him when he fell.
Sam knelt down and picked the Doctor up. Fitz was moving towards the boys. They drew identical knives, stopping him in place.
"Sorry," the Doctor gasped. "Sorry, wasn"t ready for that."
"Scar"s still pretty tender, huh?" said the second boy. Their clothes were different, but the black eye was the same a couple of days less livid on the second boy. She could feel a faint crackle in the air around the two of them: a pressure, like an oncoming storm.
"Look," said the first, "I figure I"ll give you this much for free. I"m not running the grey men. You got other problems than me. I"m just here to keep an eye on things."
"Maybe give "em a nudge to make sure they go my way," said the second. "I"ll be waiting around when you need me. You know how to get in touch."
The Doctor shook his head. "I don"t want to be anywhere near you when the laws of time catch up with you," he said raggedly. Sam helped him as he pulled himself to his feet. "You couldn"t be there to free yourself, because you hadn"t been freed yet. That"s "
"A paradox, huh?" smirked the first boy.
"Yeah," said the second. "Ain"t it?"
And they turned and left.
Sam started after the boys. "No," said the Doctor. He caught her, sagged against her. "No, Sam. Not just yet."
Chapter Five.
Licentious Moments.
There"s an order at the heart of the universe. The law of cause and effect. Event always follows event.
Well, actually, time travel makes the idea of "follows" rather complicated, but even so. Nothing happens without being caused. On that level, if no other, the universe is simple. Elegant. Stable.
There are those who see this order as the handwriting of G.o.d.
But, wherever there"s a G.o.d, there are those who wish to overthrow that G.o.d.
They"re called Faction Paradox. They"re nechronomancers. They summon into our timestream things that never were, things that were never meant to be.
They revel in paradoxes, causal loops, anything that tangles the Web of Time more and more, until the order of the universe is lost in a ma.s.s of exceptions and impossibilities.
These are people to whom the whole reason for linear existence is to see that existence transcended.
Or, as we would see it, destroyed.
There are those who say the Faction create their paradoxes through the use of. . . other other Spirits. Then again, there are those who say they"re just a bunch of jumped-up charlatans putting on an impressive act. Spirits. Then again, there are those who say they"re just a bunch of jumped-up charlatans putting on an impressive act.
Then again, they say the same thing about me.
The Doctor lay back on the hotel bed, folding his hands on his stomach. "Then again," he said, "they say the same thing about me."
Fitz turned to look at Sam. "No wonder they want you. You"re already playing fast and loose with reality. Only your hairdresser knows for sure."
"Are you sure you"re OK?" said Sam. The Doctor had closed his eyes, breathing slowly, as though meditating. She sat down on the end of the bed. "What are we going to do about this Fiction Faction, or whatever?"
"For the moment," said the Doctor, "don"t spare Faction Paradox another thought. As their representative said, they"re not our real problem. The scar 52 is. And whoever is behind our nondescript attackers. So many questions to answer. And Sam, that was not not a number fifteen." a number fifteen."
"Any chance of telling me what a number fifteen is, then?" she shot back.
"I get his attention and stay out of range, you tackle him from behind " The Doctor"s eyes opened. "Oh, what am I talking talking about? Of course, you don"t know that. I"m sorry." about? Of course, you don"t know that. I"m sorry."
Fitz said, "You they worked out that list of moves ages ago. I thought it was a joke at first." He sat down on the edge of the desk. "Well, true believers, what"s our next brilliant move?"
"At least there"s one question I can find an answer to right now," said the Doctor. He bounced up off the bed and grinned at Sam. "Italian? Chinese?
Indian?"
Sam watched the city go past from the window of the Bug. The Doctor was driving, humming tunelessly to himself. For once, he was quiet, wrapped in thought. That suited her fine. At last she had a chance to just sit, and think, and get her breath back.
You"re asking all the wrong questions, the little boy had said. So what were the right questions?
It would have been so easy to fall into the scar. She could feel her other self in there, ready to be displaced, pushed out back into the real world. Like waiting to be born.
But that couldn"t be right, could it? There weren"t two Sams, just two versions of the same Sam. There could be only one of her at a time.
But why weren"t there thousands of her? Millions? All the different possible variations. . . and there were just two. Like a switch you could turn on or off.
"Why are there two of me?" she asked the Doctor. "Why not one? Why not more than two?"
"You appear to have a second timeline," said the Doctor. "An alternative written into your biodata."
"Is that normal? I mean, how many sets of biodata does everyone have?"
"Just the one," said the Doctor. "Normally." And that didn"t actually make any more sense out of how you got from "running into a scarred bit of s.p.a.ce-time"
to "having your timeline toggled", she thought. He went on, "I"m not entirely sure where your second set came from. . . "
"Not entirely entirely sure?" she said. sure?" she said.
"Ah!" said the Doctor brightly, turning the wheel. "Here"s the restaurant!"
53."I want to make sure I get back after they do," Fitz said.
Kyra was spooning camomile flowers into a miniature strainer. "You"re curious," she said. "That"s understandable."
He"d expected a jumble of cats and books. Instead, Kyra"s flat was almost prim; the only clutter was the collection of house plants scattered against walls and windows, and the thick layers of paper on her kitchen noticeboard.
"I"m the opposite of curious," said Fitz. "There are some things man is not meant to know. What the Doctor does after his dinner dates is near the top of the list."
Kyra"s laugh had been worn to a bark by years of the combined smoke of pot, tobacco and incense. "He sounds like quite a character."
She"d fed him tofu stew powerfully flavoured with sage, while ambient music warbled from a recycled tape deck on top of the fridge. The meal had been constantly interrupted by visitors. A skinny kid with tattoos had wolfed down a bowl of the stew. A pair of twins with matching pentacle T-shirts bought satchels of herbs. Kyra"s ex had dropped by to visit the iguana.
" And And they took the Volkswagen," said Fitz. "Here"s a quarter, kid, take the bus to the movies." they took the Volkswagen," said Fitz. "Here"s a quarter, kid, take the bus to the movies."
She pushed a cracked china cup across the kitchen table. "Try this," she said.
"Very good for the nerves."
Fitz took a tentative slurp while Kyra put on her gla.s.ses. She grabbed her hair and yanked it into place behind her head with a rubber band. "My little-old-librarian look," she said, shuffling through the papers she"d strewn on the table. "I"m going to look fabulous with a head of grey hair. I"ll look like a serious crone. The mad old woman at the end of the block, with kids daring one another to knock on my door. Ah. Ley map."
She turned it around so he could see. It was a tourist map of the centre of San Francisco, covered in thick black dots. Each dot was connected to several others with a black line, creating a spider"s web of interconnections, apparently at random.
"I"ve been charting it for over a year," said Kyra. "I"m d.a.m.ned if I can see a pattern."
"What is it?" said Fitz, turning the map around. The city was almost invisible under the knot of markings. "And how do you chart it?"
"Pendulum," said Kyra. "I"m useless with dowsing rods. Those are lines of energy crisscrossing the city. The pattern has never been this dense or complex, not until now. Look, here"s a map from five years ago. Only a handful of nodes."
"Sorry," said Fitz, "I"m still back with the pendulum. Exactly what do you do?"
54."I use it to sense changes in vibrational frequency."
"Riiight," said Fitz.
"I"ve been doing this for thirty-five years," said Kyra, hauling herself out of the chair. "I figure I know what I"m up to by now."
Whoops. "You don"t look a day over thirty."
"Flatterer," said Kyra. "Pull yourself together, sceptic boy." She hefted a picnic basket. "I"m going to show you what I"m talking about."
Sam was sure everyone in the restaurant was looking at them. Everybody was wearing a tux or evening gown, jewellery flashing, waiters bowing and sc.r.a.ping. Between the Doctor"s fancy dress and wild curls, and her jeans and jacket, it was as though they"d beamed down from Mars.
A tuxedoed waiter had already breezed up with a wooden board of freshly baked bread, pouring iced water and rattling off a list of elaborate special dishes before leaving them with the menu. There was a small forest of knives and forks and spoons and gla.s.ses spread out on the table in front of them.
This is crazy, thought Sam. We"re getting out of here. She reached for her jacket, slung over the back of the chair.
"Places like this always make me nervous," murmured the Doctor.
Sam looked up at him. He was staring at the row of cutlery, a piece of bread held in one hand. "I can never remember the etiquette," he confided.
"The differences between twenty-first-century America and the planet Quinnis in the fourth universe. Which knife do you use for the b.u.t.ter?"
"Probably the b.u.t.ter knife," said Sam. She pointed at the breadboard. The Doctor smiled bashfully.
She watched him as he squashed b.u.t.ter all over the bread. He was out of place here too, she realised: it wasn"t even his planet. He was just pretending to be human, in a way, and sometimes he wasn"t all that good at it.
She gulped water, clutching the menu. "Can we really afford this?"
"Of course we can," said the Doctor. "Only the best. Trust me the finances are all taken care of."
Fair enough. "So is this your usual method of pulling?" she said lightly. He stared at her, b.u.t.ter knife hovering, looking vaguely bewildered. "You know. . .
impressing a girl. Taking her out for some posh nosh."
"Oh no no no," said the Doctor.
"Oh." said Sam.
"No, if I really wanted to impress someone, I"d take them to the Perspective Centre run by the Halergani, outside the galactic plane. They"ve got a gla.s.sed-55.in floor with a stellar magnification grid in it, so you can see the whole galaxy spread out underneath you."
He was grinning like a little kid. "And it all looks close enough to touch. It"s just amazing. But I"m afraid that"s all beyond my reach now." He sank slightly in his chair, his eyes looking into the distance at something she couldn"t imagine, and let out a resigned breath. She saw the years growing back on to his face.
"So, dinner."
"I was eighteen years old when I came to San Francisco. I arrived with the Summer of Love and I"ve been here ever since. But the place never felt this strange."
"You were a drop-out," said Fitz, frowning. "A real live hippie."