Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures [006] - Cat's Cradle - Warhead by Andrew Cartmel

Author:Andrew Cartmel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426203674
Publisher: Doctor Who Books
Published: 1992-06-12T22:00:00+00:00

12

At Heathrow Ace hung back while the Doctor bartered for a taxi outside the Arrivals building. The Doctor had a knack with taxis. Within five minutes they were riding out of the airport on the back of the motorcycles, diving down a long concrete tunnel and angling low to the ground as they swept on to the curving orbital roads. Armoured cars lined the escape lanes and khaki-uniformed squaddies stood smoking and talking on the grass verges beside them.

As soon as the taxi-bikes were past the airport perimeter, they hit the traffic. A solid column of locked metal, cars extending back along the approaching roads as far as you could see. Some of the lines of traffic were moving. Most weren’t. Gipsy-looking roadsiders moved up and down the stalled columns selling food, newspapers, themselves. Ragged children tagged along with some of the roadsiders. A whole subculture that had grown with the traffic problem, their numbers rising in symmetry with the falling average speed of cars in urban centres.

Ace had her arms wrapped around her taxi driver, a Sikh in a red and white leather jacket with heavy shoulder pads. In front of her she could see the Doctor sitting on the back of the other motorcycle. For some reason his hat hadn’t blown off.

The bikes reduced speed as they entered the traffic pattern, slowing, dodging, threading through the motionless lines of vehicles. The fumes were thick around them now. They accelerated again, hitting a stretch where there was clearance for the bikes. Ace’s driver offered her a mask, holding it over his shoulder, dangling by its strap. Ace shouted that she was all right. They’d be out of the worst of it soon, and she liked to feel the slipstream on her face. The cars on either side of them blurred as the speed of the motorcycle picked up. Ace looked at the endless stalled traffic. Passenger vehicles, giant container trucks; even some of the old-fashioned taxis. The ones that were black cars. Ace could remember when London had been full of them. Some of the drivers in the passenger cars were using phones or watching television. Some had computers on, doing work ready for when they eventually reached their offices. But most just sat passively, their engines churning exhaust and their air conditioning carrying the fumes back in to them. Ace could hear a sound, swept back to her by the wind over the driver’s shoulder. The Sikh was laughing. He made a rude gesture at these sheep sitting in their cars, twisted his throttle and they roared away.

The taxis carried them down the old M2, bouncing over the ruts in the broken road surface. The air was clean and Ace was enjoying the cold sting of it on her face when the Doctor signalled, waving his arm in a slowing-down signal to Ace’s driver. Ace found herself looking for a place where it would make sense to stop. They’d travelled for about ninety kilometres down the old ruined motorway heading due south.

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