Doctor Who - Short Trips (Big Finish) - 20 - Destination Prague by Steven Savile

Author:Steven Savile
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781844352531
Publisher: Big Finish
Published: 2008-05-28T07:00:00+00:00

Suspension and Disbelief

Mary Robinette Kowal

An Adventure of the Fifth Doctor

The Doctor adjusted the celery on his lapel and stepped out of the

TARDIS onto Kampa Island, nestled under the Charles Bridge. He

inhaled with appreciation. ‘Ah, Prague.’

The setting sun cast long shadows through the stone pilings of the

bridge, which rose from the Vltava River like the battlements of a Gothic

castle.

A scream fell from above.

Both hearts pounding, the Doctor spun as a man hurtled over the

edge of the bridge. Limbs flailing, the man landed on the island with a

bone- cracking thud.

The Doctor raced forward but before he took more than five paces,

the man sat up.

No human could have survived that fall.

The man stood and took a few steps. He waved at the Doctor. Then

he flew upward as if pulled by a Velderon tractor beam.

Something was very wrong. In 2181, no one on Earth had the

resources to power that kind of anti-gravity technology. Earth was not

due to recover from the Oil Wars for another fifty years.

Which meant there was an alien on the bridge.

The Doctor sprinted up a set of stairs switchbacking to the top. By the

balustrade, a young woman knelt over a prone body, wrapping it in cloth.

‘Excuse me.’

She looked up, her face eerily pale in the shadow of the balustrade.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’

‘I’m the Doctor, and you are?’

‘Ma.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Sorry, the

Edwardian clothes should have tipped me off, but I’m a little... so are you

in earnest?’

‘Very much so.’ He knelt by the cloth, trying to see the body.

Kája’s hands shook as she tugged the cloth into place. ‘When does

earnest open?’

He blinked. ‘Pardon me?’

‘The show. The Importance of Being Ernest. When do you open?’

'Ah!' She was talking about theatre. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you meant —’

The Doctor shook his head trying to return to the subject of the body.

‘Look. I don’t think you’re in a position to quiz me when you’ve got a

dead body here.’

Kája looked up sharply; her eyes were red. For the first time, he

realized that she had been crying. ‘It’s not a body.’ She pulled the cloth

150

back to show the face. ‘It’s a marionette.’

The falling figure made sense now; she had thrown the marionette

over the side of the bridge and then pulled it up by the strings. The

marionette was as big as a man, and eerily lifelike. Its smooth face

stared up at the sky as if it were counting stars. A wig of black hair

cupped the head in a bowl cut. Though its features were more aquiline, it

had something of the look of Adric about it. The Doctor looked away from

the marionette. Now was not the time to think about Adric. ‘Who is it

supposed to be?’

She stared at the marionette, her face very still. ‘My fiancé.’

‘Fiancé?’

She looked at him like he was dim. ‘A copy of him. I was making Juro

Janosík for our production of Krofta’s puppet play and used Dusan as the

model.’

‘Why did you throw it over the side of the bridge?’

Her eyes filled with tears and she suddenly looked much younger

than the Doctor had thought.

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