She blinked. "What for?"
He caught her by the shoulders, stared her in the eyes, and grinned. She braced herself for the kiss.
"If I hadn"t tried to explain it to you, it would never have made any sense to me either."
Just as quickly, he let go, and started the engine with a single twist of the keys.
Sam leaned an elbow on the open window as they bounced down the garage ramp and into the night. So that"s what he keeps us around for, she thought, blowing out a long cloud of smoke. He can"t think in a straight line without us.
Did he even realise what he was doing to her?
Someone"s trying to send you a message, Doctor, and it"s me. Are you receiv-ing?
62.Kyra stood facing the south side of the clearing, her hands raised. The knife was tucked in her belt. "Thanks and farewell, Spirits of Fire!" she said. "Bring your blessings to us again."
She sank down into the overgrown gra.s.s, looking drained. "That"s the lot,"
she told Fitz. "Give me a cookie, would you?"
Fitz found a paper bag of chocolate-chip cookies in the picnic hamper, and handed her one.
"There"s something coming," said Kyra. She rubbed at the centre of her forehead with the heel of her hand. "Could you feel that?"
"Um, no," said Fitz. "Not really."
"Something big," said Kyra. She bit into the cookie, chewing thoughtfully.
"You know, I had a funny feeling just before the Little Big One. The sort of thing you don"t recognise until afterward, when you look back. Gimme another one."
Fitz handed her the bag. "Is this the same thing, then?"
"I don"t know. I don"t think so. The feeling was coming up, out of the ground.
I don"t know where this is coming from. Nowhere. All around us."
There was another peal of thunder. A fat drop of water hit Fitz"s upturned face. "We"d better get out of here."
"There"s no running from this," said Kyra. She pulled herself to her feet, gathering up her equipment. "Whatever"s on its way, it"s too big. It"s bigger than the city."
Fitz stared at her. "I just meant, before it starts raining."
"Let"s get that shirt off," said Sam. "We"d better check on that wound."
"It"s only a small cut," the Doctor protested. "It should be mostly healed by now."
The Doctor gave up the fight and sat on the edge of the hotel bed, fumbling with his clothes. "Let me get that," she said. Gently. She started undoing b.u.t.tons.
"Sam," he murmured into the top of her head, "there"s something I ought to tell you."
She paused halfway down. "What is it?"
"It"s about what the little boy said. In the alley. It"s about where you might have come from."
She went back to the shirt. "I know all about that," she said.
"You do?"
"The mummy and the daddy love one another very much "
63."When I first met you, years ago. . . I"d only just regenerated." He"d talked about that on the plane, she hadn"t known whether to believe it or not.
"For my people, regeneration is a moment of profound. . . power." His voice was soft, even awed. "It"s a jolt to every fibre of your body. Your whole being turns inside out. For one moment, that sudden release of energy twists your universe into an entirely different shape."
"Oh yeah," said Sam. "I"ve been there a few times." She brushed his shirt back from his shoulders.
He didn"t quite seem to be paying attention. She tugged his sleeves off, threw the shirt on the pile with his cravat and waistcoat.
"But it"s more than that. Time Lords are deeply, uniquely, connected to the vortex. Regeneration is the moment when our biodata is rewoven in the fabric of s.p.a.ce-time."
"You make it sound so poetic."
"Oh. That"s just to keep it from sounding technical," he said. He really really wasn"t paying attention. wasn"t paying attention.
She was carefully peeling back the gauze pad over his wound. The cut had already smoothed itself over, leaving just the fresh, pink line of a newborn scar.
"Biodata isn"t just you," he said: "it"s your intersection with everything else.
My biodata is part of my body, part of my mind, part of the time vortex itself."
"C"mon," she said. "Lie down for a minute." She pushed him gently, rolling him on to his stomach.
"Faction Paradox make use of biodata in their rituals," he went on, undeterred.
"It"s their way of reaching into the vortex, through the lifeline of an individual."
"So it"s like Fitz said." She knelt beside him on the bed, and began gently ma.s.saging the tight muscles in his lower back. "They"re interested in me because my biodata"s all messed up."
"It"s rather worrying," he said. "Given access to your biodata, they could rese-quence your history, rearrange your consciousness do to your lifeline all the things human beings do to fruit flies. Er. . . " Half a puzzled frown peeked out from the pillow as she trailed her fingers down his spine. "What are you doing that for?"
"It helps your circulation. Promotes healing."
"Oh, I see. Well, as I was saying. . . " His muscles were loosening under her hands as his body gave in to the back rub. "What was I saying?"
"You were explaining about where I came from."
"Ah. Yes. At the moment of regeneration, as I mentioned, everything changes.
All the elements of my existence are woven into something new. For just that 64 moment, my biodata is naked to reality."
"Another scar?" she said. He turned to look. "No, I mean, like the one in the alley."
"More like a bunch of threads tied into a knot. Normally, it has no effect on the local reality. But, in some cases, the biodata strands remain. . . loose.
Unsettled. . . "
For a moment, she had the image of him trailing his loose threads everywhere he went. Barging into her flat, pacing through it, a bunch of thick strands sending cups crashing off surfaces, tipping over chairs, leaving her knotted in the middle of a cat"s cradle upsetting things wherever he went. Not being able to do a thing about it.
"Why did you stop?" he murmured.
She pushed in slow circles with the heels of her palms, using her weight, loosening the knots. "Go on," she said.
"When it happens, for a brief while, everything is, ooh. Vulnerable. All sorts of jumbled signals pouring in. Things that happen in the world can, aaaah, influence who I am. And vice versa."
"But what does this have to do with "
"When I met you, less than a day later, the threads of my being were still in a ragged state. Mmm. You"re really good at this!"
"Yeah, I know." He wriggled, catlike, a blissed-out smile spreading across his face. Defender of the Laws of Time, Protector of the Galaxy, and the biggest back-rub s.l.u.t she"d ever seen.
"It"s possible," he said, "just possible, that my unsettled biodata came into contact with yours. And changed it. Regenerated you, past, present and future.
Turned you into the Sam I knew."
Her hands slowed, halted. "So you you did it." did it."
"Maybe," he said. "Not deliberately."
She tucked her hands under her armpits, suddenly cold. "You changed me."
Walk away, said a voice in her head.
"I needed a friend. I was in a bad way, I needed someone who was. . . "
"Nice?" You can"t trust him. Walk away from him.
"Safe. Non-threatening."
Walk away.
She put her hands back on him, pushed harder this time. He made an incoherent sound as she loosened the muscles at the base of his neck.
"Got more than you bargained for, didn"t you?" She grinned.
65."It wouldn"t have glllll. Been conscious. My subconscious wurgggg. Working on an entirely instiiiiiiihnctive level. Oogah."
Sam laughed throatily. "At last, Time Lord, I have you at my mercy."
"Ah," said the Doctor. "Somehow I knew we"d be getting to that."
He rolled over underneath her and lay there for a moment, head thrown back against the pillow, looking utterly ravished.
Then he hugged her, hands wrapping across her back. "Thank you, Sam, that was utterly delightful."
She waited.
He just beamed up at her.
"Oh, for Christ"s sake," she said, and snogged him.
She let the weight of her body press against the Doctor"s. His hands were still on her back. With her eyes closed she could smell the clean sheets, the sandalwood scent of his hair. His skin felt cool through her T-shirt.
At last she raised her head, gazed down at him.
"Ah," he said.
Oh G.o.d, she thought. Let"s just be friends, I think of you as a sister.
"I think perhaps you"d better think about this a little more," he said. His eyes were suddenly very serious, even as she stroked the side of his face with her fingertips. "Think about it, Sam. You barely know me."
"You don"t have to play the gentleman with me," she murmured. "Not with me."
"I"m old enough to be your great-great-great. . . to be your ancestor. I have done some very terrible things. A lot of people have died because of me. I have killed people, Sam. Think about that."
He hadn"t said anything like that on the plane. "I don"t care," she said uncertainly.
"Don"t you?" said the Doctor. "Do you really not care who I am? You should be afraid." He took hold of her hand. "You should be afraid of what might happen to you because you"re with me."
"It"s a bit late for that, isn"t it?" She kissed him again, just lightly, took the pressure of her body off his.
" You You think about this a little more," she murmured. think about this a little more," she murmured.
There was a knock at the door. They froze, like two children caught raiding the biscuit tin.
Then the Doctor smiled, and Sam broke into silent laughter. "Room service?"
she said.
"h.e.l.lo?" called the Doctor.
66.There was a loud throat-clearing noise. "It"s me. Fitz. I"m back from Kyra"s with some serious information. Unless this is a bad time?"
Sam opened the door. Fitz was hovering in the corridor. He raised an eyebrow at her.
"I"m going back to my room," she said.
"Cold shower?"
"Something like that," she muttered.