Deep Time by Trevor Baxendale

Author:Trevor Baxendale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2015-09-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

12

Clara was reminded of an Egyptian mummy she had once seen on a museum visit. Laker had the same stiff, papery look, but this was worse because she had known this man as a living person and she could still see a grim likeness in the desiccated features that remained. The sight also brought back discomforting memories of a trip on the Orient Express, and a different kind of mummy that was anything but dead.

Jem remained kneeling, completely silent, unable to tear her gaze away from the corpse.

Mitch Keller climbed slowly to his feet, weighed down with sadness. Hobbo stood up as well, and turned away. Tibby Vent looked as though she wanted to be sick; her face was nearly as pale as Jem’s.

‘What’s happened to him?’ asked Clara.

‘He must have been caught on the very edge of the time flux,’ said the Doctor. ‘It looks as though his suit might have been all right but the organic contents have been aged to death – and beyond.’

Clara felt a sudden flash of irritation. ‘Organic contents?’

‘That was a human being,’ said Tanya Flexx quietly. ‘A person.’

‘And as such he was made of organic matter,’ the Doctor said. ‘The result is the same.’

Tanya simply turned and walked away. Clara felt tears stinging in her eyes. She fiddled with the controls on her wrist and selected the private channel to speak to the Doctor. ‘I thought maybe…’ she started to say, but then choked a little. ‘I hoped that somehow…’

‘He was dead the moment he went over the cliff, Clara,’ the Doctor said softly.

She sniffed. ‘Why are you being so cold? I know you’re not human, but…’

‘We’re running out of time, Clara. Our oxygen levels are getting dangerously low. We need to get to the TARDIS, and this is just slowing us down.’

Clara turned to look at him, but his face was a cold mask, his eyes hard and distant. He could be like that, sometimes. ‘They’re grieving,’ she said.

‘Are you grieving?’

‘I’m upset. He was a good man, a decent man, and he didn’t deserve this. Nor did Jem.’

‘And yet it still happened. The universe has no respect for people or relationships, Clara. You of all people should know that.’

‘It doesn’t mean we have to stop caring. Or is that what you’ve done now? Stopped caring?’

The Doctor’s eyes focused on Clara’s. There was a dark, timeless fatigue in them sometimes that she only glimpsed occasionally. For most of the time he kept it hidden, but now she could see it all: two thousand years of lost friends and loved ones. ‘No, I’ve not stopped caring. I never stop caring. But right now I have to care for the living, Clara. We have to carry on without Laker if we’re not going to end up joining him.’

Mitch walked around the body and put a hand on Jem’s shoulder. ‘We’ll bury him.’

‘What about the suit?’ asked Hobbo. ‘It’s still functional.’

‘It’s what kept him like he is,’ the Doctor said. ‘Without it he would probably turn to dust.

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