The Left_Handed Hummingbird by Kate Orman

Author:Kate Orman [Orman, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Doctor Who (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780426204046
Google: KYyUAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0426204042
Publisher: Doctor Who Books
Published: 1993-12-14T08:00:00+00:00

‘Why?’

‘They keep wiping themselves out of existence. They always insist on tinkering with their history. Perhaps thousands of worlds are developing temporal technology every day, and simply erasing themselves. A tidy self-regulating mechanism.’

‘We might create something worse,’ said Benny. ‘Like – like the Silurians’

world.’

Ace said, ‘But we’re stopping him making changes to the time line. We’ve done it twice.’

The Doctor sighted along the arrow at the target. ‘He’s not going to let us spoil his fun like this,’ he said. ‘He’s already found someone who wants to bring about the end of the world.’

‘The cold war is still on, isn’t it?’ said Benny, alarmed. ‘He’s not going to push any red buttons, is he?’

‘He wouldn’t wipe out his food stock. He wants something vicious, something that will emotionally entangle people. A handful of gruesome murders will be adequate. These days an atrocity can travel around the world by satellite in a day.’

‘But he didn’t get to kill John Lennon,’ said Ace.

‘Oh grief,’ said Benny. ‘Helter Skelter.’

‘ Bozhe moi, ’ said Ace, pressing her palm against her forehead. ‘Charles Manson. Fix one leak and another one opens up.’

‘The Beatles,’ said Benny. ‘Manson said he knew the end of the world was coming from listening to the Beatles. And he murdered all those people to 164

start it happening.’

‘Huitzilin just wants to make sure we don’t miss the point.’ The Doctor pulled back the string.

‘Enough of this,’ said Ace. ‘Let’s trash the bastard.’

‘But if we destroy Huitzilin,’ said Benny, ‘what happens to –’

‘ KYA! ’ shouted Ace.

The Doctor, startled, let the arrow fly. It struck the target dead centre.

New York City, December 8, 1980

The receiver had been torn clear off the wire. A thick tube of electric skin hung down from the phone, trailing the ragged ends of copper wires. ‘No problem,’ said the Doctor, and went to work.

Benny and Ace stood in front of the phone booth, obscuring it. New York was big and dirty and packed wall to wall with people. There was a seemingly permanent traffic jam, bikes and motorbikes winding their way through the stalled mass of cars. Fumes hung in the cold air.

Benny was watching the people. In ten minutes, she had seen punks in silk shirts and slit sunglasses, a pair of tall blacks in African costumes, a troupe of street mimes, a tour group, a book-laden scholar in a chador, a small crowd of prostitutes in coloured wigs, several blank-faced police, and twelve cockroaches as big as her thumb.

A bag lady trundled along the pavement with a supermarket trolley of unidentifiable objects. Benny remembered Zamina calling them catfood monsters, remembered Ocelot’s tin with the cat on the label. Grief, said a little voice in her head, these people eat pet food to stay alive. People moved around the homeless woman in smooth twin streams. No one looked at her, she looked at no one. Benny realized she was just part of the garbage that littered the streets, part of the long chain that began with junk food and ended with junk people.

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