Doctor Who: BBC Past Doctor Adventures [057] - Heritage by Dale Smith

Author:Dale Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538646
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 2002-10-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

6. August, 6048 CE

15:45

Sheriff wasn’t one for spending a lot of time in his jailhouse. It made him feel too much like a jailer. The beauty about being the law in a small town like Heritage was that you knew everybody better than they knew themselves. There was no unsolved crime in Heritage, because everybody knew who had done what to whom before they were halfway through doing it. Sheriff’s job wasn’t to enforce the law, to punish the wrong-doers, it was to walk around the town and smile at people. Remind them they were part of a community, and the community had wide eyes and a long memory. He was a symbol, that was all; a symbol that nobody could get away with anything in a town like Heritage.

You didn’t lock symbols away in dusty plasticrete rooms with one window, one door, one desk and one chair for company. No, you set them out where everybody could see them, and admire the craftsmanship. Sheriff liked to spend his time with people, with friends, and so he didn’t have much time for the jailhouse, no.

Somewhere along the line, though, something had changed.

As he walked the dusty street, he started to feel people’s eyes on him, heavier than usual. He could feel them pressing down on him, feel the way they looked at him and screamed at him to do something – to save them – all without saying a word. They turned to him without even realising they were doing it, looking to him to give them something they couldn’t give themselves. And when he didn’t, when he couldn’t… he was their symbol, their tarnished mirror; he was the reflection of everything they didn’t want to see.

Slowly, Bernard and those kids he used for ego-support started swaggering around the streets, every day claiming an inch more of it for themselves. It got so that Sheriff didn’t feel right out there any more. He lost the battle for the street, and instead turned to greeting and reassuring his charges from a stool in Cole’s bar and grill. After all, Cole’s was the hub of Heritage; everybody went to Cole’s at some point in the day. Why ache your feet walking to them, when they would come to you?

Only they didn’t come to him. When people wanted something doing, something arranging, they went to Bernard.

Everyone was afraid of Bernard. Even Sheriff.

He knew when it had started to happen. He could pin it down to the exact night.

So could everyone on Heritage.

Since that night, Cole’s had seemed ever more welcoming, that one stool moulding itself until it complemented his ample buttocks perfectly. The street had seemed ever hotter, the sun overhead burning into his red skin and slowly spit-roasting his flesh. The jailhouse had seemed ever darker, the corners breeding things that made his skin crawl. There was no indigenous life on Heritage, despite the ample provision of air and water. Everything that grew had been brought with them when they broke

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