Doctor Who by Una McCormack

Author:Una McCormack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Seven

“I’m starting to think,” said Graham, “that travelling with the Doctor involves a lot of doing time.”

Yaz didn’t answer. She was pacing the small room in which they had been locked. Emerald’s accusation that Yaz was involving herself in a situation about which she had little knowledge and no right to intervene had hit hard. But we can see the damage up above, Yaz thought. Someone has got to get Emerald to listen! Others had tried – Basalt for one – and they had got nowhere. Perhaps an outsider saying it would make the difference… And yet, what gave them the right to turn up and start ordering these people about?

“Yaz,” said Graham, “sit down, please. You’re going to wear yourself out!”

The worse thing was that it all looked so easy when the Doctor did it. People got persuaded to a better course of action, were reminded of their better nature… Yaz wanted to be able to do that too. She wanted to show the Doctor what she was made of, how much she had learned and how far she had come, that all the time she had been travelling with her she had been learning from her… Yaz felt that she had been given a job to do, entrusted with a task by the Doctor. What if she had failed, and failed badly? She didn’t like that thought at all.

“You know,” said Graham, “This is twice we’ve been locked up since arriving here.”

And then there was Quartz. He had handed them over to Emerald so casually, for whatever small advantage that gained him. Money? Influence? Fat lot of good it would do him if the world ended. Yes, Yaz was angry with Quartz, and she was particularly angry with herself for trusting him, for not listening to what her instincts, and the Doctor’s, were telling her about him…

“This won’t make a difference to your career, will it, Yaz? Locked up again. That can’t look good on a copper’s record. I don’t want this holding you back.”

Yaz swung round and came to stand in front of Graham. “Graham, are you seriously suggesting that being held prisoner on an alien planet by rock-people might one day be a bar to me getting promoted?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I? What do I know about coppering?”

“You think that if I had a conversation about this with my sergeant we’d get much past the bit about the rock-people?”

“I suppose not,” Graham said, cheerfully. “But at least it’s stopped you marching and up and down wearing a hole in the floor.”

Yaz realised she’d been played, by an expert. Graham was smiling up at her, and she laughed and sat down next to him, her legs pulled up and her hands resting limply on her knees.

“That’s better!” he said.

“So,” Yaz said. “What are we going to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Graham. “We got out of it all right last time, didn’t we?”

“Last time someone came and let us out,” Yaz said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen again.

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