Dr. Who - BBC New Series 28 (5 page)

Instead, what she found – other than stalled elevators probably containing rapidly dehydrating passengers, and

internally locked electronic doors – was a pile of dust on the floor by a junction box in the basement. Presumably maintenance had been doing something to the wiring and had fused the systems. It didn’t occur to Melissa (and why should it?) that the ashes she was wiping casually off her Dolce & Gabbana heels had once been a guy she’d waved to earlier that day called Milo. But she did wonder where Milo and the guys were.

Casually, as she stomped back to her desk in frustration, she flicked the open junction box shut.

At once, the newly installed fibre optics came to life, pulsing purple light throughout their network. The occupants of the building, already whingeing about stuck lifts, no air-con and crashed computers, had all of ten seconds to register their PCs flicker back into life. As office workers do, everyone reached forward and touched their keyboards.

A massive arc of purple light pulsated throughout the building, touching everyone, not just those using the PCs.

Not a person, a roach or a moth in the basement was spared the purple pulse of energy.

Forty-two seconds after Melissa Carson had shut that junction box, all one hundred and seven humans, eighteen rats, two thousand creatures of various sizes and shapes but with six legs or more and three pigeons on the roof were all dead.

‘We have a slight problem, guys,’ Madam Delphi pulsed at Dara Morgan and Caitlin. ‘The MorganTech building in Manhattan is offline. The terminals are terminal.’ There was a noise like an electronic laugh, and

the sine waves pulsed accordingly.

Dara Morgan frowned, tapping at another part of Madam Delphi’s array of monitors and keyboards.

‘I’m not wrong,’ the computer reported.

‘I know,’ Dara Morgan said quickly. ‘You’re never wrong. I’m trying to ascertain what the problem is.’

‘Human error,’ Madam Delphi reported. ‘What else is it going to be? I mean, let’s be honest with each other, you lot are always the weakest links in the chain.’

‘We need New York,’ Caitlin said.

‘Well, we haven’t got New York any longer,’ said the computer.

‘Can you override the pulse?’

‘No,’ snapped Madam Delphi. ‘Too late anyway.

Honestly, my sweets, you’re wasting your time. I’ll see if I can shift resources to a back-up server and start again.’

Dara Morgan lost his cool for the first time in ages.

‘Don’t you get it? We don’t have time to start again. We have to have New York’s M-TEKs online at 10am Manhattan time on Monday.’

‘It’s the city that never sleeps, if I remember my song lyrics,’ the computer said.

‘Yeah, maybe it never sleeps. But it pretty much stops work at 5pm on a Friday and doesn’t go to work at weekends.’

‘Oh, my darling boy, have some faith. I’ve been at this kind of thing across the universe for a few million years now. We’ll just have to do a merger this afternoon. A hostile takeover by MorganTech on a small company in…

ooh let me guess… oh yes, look, here’s one.’

On Madam Delphi’s big screen a shot of a smallish (for New York) office building, all chrome and glass with people milling about popped up.

‘I’m accessing their systems… now. Ooh yes, lots of people. They do hardware service and repairs, a firm co-owned by the Mafiosa, a Chinese Triad and initially set up by IRA laundering. None of whom know about each other obviously. Easy to take over because none of them are going to stand up and scream about it.’

The image changed to one a little further away.

‘Lexington and 3rd, nice spot,’ the computer continued. ‘I knew a cybercafé there once. It never called back.’

Row after row of figures shot across the screens, too fast for Dara Morgan to even count and then the sine waves returned, pulsing again as Madam Delphi purred at them both.

‘Kittel Software Inc, now a subsidiary of MorganTech.

I hope you don’t mind, I had to agree to allow one Harvey Gellar to remain CEO, with a set of shares and a vote on the board.’

Cait frowned. ‘Won’t that be a problem?’

‘In one hour, eighteen minutes, Mr Gellar will get into the lift… sorry, elevator… and ride it to the ground floor.

In one hour, twenty-one minutes, the lift will get stuck between the nineteenth and eighteenth floors. He will press the alarm button. It’ll be the last thing he does.

They’ll find the body within, oh, a couple of hours and assume it was a heart attack. I’ve already rewritten his terms to ensure that on his death his Irish third cousin, Dara Morgan of MorganTech, inherits everything.’

‘I’m not his third cousin…’

‘You are now according to FBI files.’ Madam Delphi’s screens darkened slightly, the sine wave taking on a red hue as it pulsed. ‘Your constant underestimation of what I can do, Dara Morgan, is beginning to bore me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Good. Now then, this new branch of MorganTech will now appear to have been planning to handle Monday’s launch of the M-TEK all along. They have the specs, details, customer base, everything. All we need to do is get a couple of flunkies in over the weekend to strip out the wiring and put our fibre optics in. And… there, subcontractors booked and assigned. Easy.’

Caitlin looked at Dara Morgan. ‘Yes, Madam Delphi.

Easy.’

‘Cheers m’dears. Now if it’s OK with you kids, I’m just going to download this week’s
Coronation Street omnibus. Whatever will that sweet little David Platt get up to next?’

Sylvia was putting the shopping away in the kitchen.

Neatly, everything in its place. Just as always. She was, however, letting the odd drawer or cupboard door slam shut a little noisily.

‘What have I done now?’ Donna whispered to her granddad from the armchair that faced the TV in the sitting room. Where her dad used to sit and laugh at
The X-Factor
. And repeats of
Dad’s Army
. And that programme where… where…

Well, all his programmes, anyway.

And suddenly, she wanted to move to the settee next to

her granddad but he moved along it instead, so he was sat close to her armchair.

‘Dunno what you mean, darlin’,’ he said, not catching her eye.

‘Right, cos mum’s using IKEA’s finest to beat out the drum solo from something Ozzy Osbourne wrote because she’s suddenly got an interest in heavy rock, yeah?’

‘Oh, she’s just…being your mother. You know…’

‘No, Granddad. No, I don’t know.’ Donna sighed and looked at a local newspaper on the occasional table. Its lead story was about Q-Mart and Betterworth’s opening rival supermarkets in Park Vale.

Thrillsville.

‘I’m here. Chiswick. London W3. Earth. Yesterday I was on another planet, stopping robots fighting a civil war. A week before that, we were in the Garazone Bazaar riding six-legged horses!’ She suddenly grabbed Wilf’s hand. ‘They had six legs! Six. I mean, how fast were we galloping? It was brilliant. I loved it. And Martian Boy was screaming at the top of his lungs “Where’s the off switch?” cos he thought they could be stopped just like that.’

‘He’s not a Martian though, is he? I thought he said—’

‘No, Granddad, he’s not a Martian. It’s a joke.

Remember jokes? You know, that moment when you open your mouth and go ha-ha-ha? We used to do it, even in this house once or twice.’

Donna stared at her granddad’s lined face. When did he suddenly get so old? Was that the strain of Dad’s passing, too? What happened to that man who used to take her for

a spin in his old Aston? Who used to show her off to his old paratrooper mates down at the Social? When did he get replaced by the white-haired old man sitting in front of her?

When did the idea of coming home fill her with such dread? Was this the downside of being with the Doctor?

That normality was now alien?

‘I got something to tell you, sweetheart,’ her granddad said. ‘I reckon it’ll cheer you up. I hope it does.’

Good news at last. Donna smiled. ‘Well, go on then.

Spill.’

Her granddad opened his mouth to speak, but Sylvia chose that moment to come into the sitting room and flop onto the settee next to him.

‘So, where’ve you been, Donna Noble?’

Donna opened her mouth to answer, but her granddad got there first. ‘She’s been horseriding, Sylv. In Dubai.’

‘Dubai? How the hell did you afford Dubai?’ Sylvia sighed. ‘Oh silly me, the Doctor took you, yes?’

Donna nodded. ‘Yeah. He paid for it and everything. I nearly married a rich oil sheikh and lived in his harem, but you know what? I thought it was more important to be here today. With you two.’

‘Well, that’s nice, I’m sure,’ Sylvia said. ‘Perhaps, if hanging out with the rich and famous of OPEC hasn’t been too demanding, you could make us all a cuppa?’

‘Course.’ Donna stood up but wasn’t fast enough to stop Sylvia getting another jibe in. ‘Can you remember where the teabags are? And the kettle?’

And that was it. Time to have this out.

‘What have I done, Mum? I mean, really, where did it go wrong? All you ever told me was to go out, do things, get a job, live my life. And I do that. And it’s still not good enough, is it?’ She sat down again. ‘I’m still not good enough, am I? Was Dad as disappointed in me as you are?’

‘Don’t you dare speak about your father like that,’

Sylvia yelled, far louder than seemed necessary.

‘Now, now—’ Wilf started, but Sylvia shushed him sharply.

‘No, no, it’s time Lady Muck over there had a few home truths.’ Sylvia leaned forward, jabbing at the air with her finger. ‘Your grandfather and I are worried sick, you know that? You up and leave with barely a word, you turn up once in a blue moon when it suits you and you’re off again. I don’t know whether you’re alive or dead. I don’t know if each time the phone rings it’s you telling me you’re in Timbuktu, or there’s a ring on the doorbell and it’ll be the police saying they’ve found you washed up in the Thames. A letter arrives for you and I put it on the mantelpiece, hoping that somehow that means you’ll come home sooner. But after a couple of weeks, I just chuck it on your bed because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t bring you home. Ever since you met that Doctor bloke, you’ve become a different person.’

Donna stared at her mum in mute shock. Where had all this come from. ‘Why the hell would you assume I’m dead? That’s mad.’

‘It’s not mad, it’s not unreasonable. It’s what I think.

Every day I don’t hear from you, I think it more. Maybe if

you were a mother, maybe if you’d got kids, stupid, selfish, unthinking kids, you’d understand.’

Sylvia was shaking now.

Donna was horrified. She’d somehow, without meaning to, without quite knowing why, she’d made her mum cry!

For all the wrong reasons! Like there were right ones…

You’re not supposed to make your mum cry…

‘I’m not gonna die, Mum! No policeman’s gonna ring the doorbell and say I’m dead.’

‘Why not?’ Sylvia was almost screaming now, not in an angry way, but tears were rolling down her cheeks – no, they were actually throwing themselves down her face, like wet lemmings. ‘Why not? It’s what happened when your dad died!’

The sudden silence was gut-wrenchingly terrible.

Then Donna was across the room, hugging her sobbing mother, holding her, squeezing her, mumbling apologies and soothing words, telling her that it was all right, that she was there.

But one thought ran through her mind. Tomorrow, she’d be gone again. With the Doctor. Because that’s what she wanted.

But did she have the right to? Had she really earned the right to go off again if this was what her mum thought?

All those times she and Sylvia had fought, argued, yelled. As a teenager (and frankly, most of her spoilt twenties), Donna had just put it down to ‘that’s my mum’.

But Donna wasn’t that person now, and she could see that her widowed mum, one year on, needed her daughter more than ever before.

And Donna was crying too now.

Crying for her mum’s pain, her dad’s loss, remembering that knock on the door. The policeman standing there.

‘He was supposed to die here, in my arms, with his family,’ Sylvia was saying. ‘Not in a bloody filling station.

Alone.’

At which point, with timing for which both the words ‘impeccable’ and ‘inconvenient’ were invented, the doorbell rang.

Wordlessly, Wilf went to answer it, and Donna heard him say ‘Ah, not a good time.’ Donna knew, without hearing the response, exactly who was on the doorstep.

And so did Sylvia.

She looked with red, teary eyes at her daughter.

And, for the first time that Donna could remember, Sylvia Noble stroked Donna’s face, a soft caress of pure maternal love. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Then she called, ‘Come in, Doctor.’

A moment later, the Doctor’s face popped round the sitting room door, brainy specs in place, hair madder than normal.

‘Hullo,’ he said to all of them. ‘Do you know the Carnes family by any chance? I think they’ve got aliens in the family.’

The tourist trade in Moscatelli was mainly based around olive groves, orangeries, a nice vineyard and the annual motorcycle race that started thirteen miles away in Florence and ended up the other side of the mountains in

this small but oft-visited little town.

The people who lived in Moscatelli were mostly Italians who had been there for thirty or so generations.