Winner Takes All (13 page)

‘Yeah, course,' said Mickey, sounding a bit worried. ‘But you're coming back, ain't ya?'

‘Course we are,' said Rose. But the thing was, when you went off into time and space in the TARDIS, you were never entirely sure.

Mickey hobbled across to the front door to see them off. ‘I'd stick a wedge under it or something till you can get it fixed,' said the Doctor. ‘Don't forget that the Quevvils know where you live.'

‘You said you smashed their teleport system!' said Rose.

‘They might fix it!' replied the Doctor.

‘Thanks for the cheerful thought,' said Mickey. ‘I'll sleep so soundly tonight now.'

Rose heard the door shut behind them as they started down the stairs. ‘We're gonna be able to stop this, aren't we?' she asked the Doctor.

‘It'll be a cinch,' he replied.

‘No more humans getting their heads bitten off by aliens?'

‘And no more aliens getting shot by humans,' said the

Doctor. ‘Don't worry. We'll stop it, no problem.'

A figure had slipped into the shadows of a doorway as the Doctor and Rose left Mickey's flat. Now it left its hiding place and peered round the corner to watch them as they went down the stairs: the tall, arrogant bloke and the mouthy tart. He'd wipe the smiles off their faces. They weren't going to get in his way again.

‘You ain't gonna stop this,' grunted Darren Pye, spitting after the retreating figures. ‘I'm the one who's gonna stop
you
.'

TWELVE

'I
love you, Robert.' The beautiful girl with the long blonde hair
who looked a bit like Suzie Price
was gazing at him in adoration. ‘I've been watching you, couldn't keep my eyes off you. I watched how you dealt with those terrible aliens. The way you grabbed that iron bar and used it like a sword, the way you fenced with that alien and drove him off . . . You must be a master swordsman!'

But she was sitting over the other side of the room and had barely looked in his direction, and when she had she hadn't noticed him, and she'd probably heard his mum call him ‘Bobbles' . . .

And then the leader of the aliens, the one that Robert had defeated in battle, had taken off his mask
and underneath he had the head of a porcupine

And Robert knew that it had ever been their destiny to meet in this way, and that he must destroy his
– mother –
father as the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

Mickey looked around the lounge, and finally picked up a TV mag. ‘Won't be needing this any more,' he murmured, casting a rueful eye over at the gap where only that morning the television had stood. Then he slowly made his way back to the front door, and, crouching down with a lot of yelps of pain – although probably not as many as if anyone had been present to potentially offer sympathy – wedged the magazine between the frame and the door. It probably wouldn't stand much, but would prevent anyone bursting in on him. He glanced up at the wall, where a large red sign instructed people to STOP. Shame aliens didn't pay any attention to that.

He had taken two shuffling steps back from the door when he heard a noise on the other side. The aliens? Mickey hurriedly looked round for a weapon. But no, a second's concentration and he realised it was footsteps. Human footsteps. The Doctor and Rose, having forgotten something? No, it was only one person. The burglar, returning for more?

Mickey kept still and silent. Inside he was laughing and pointing at himself for the paranoia, but exposure to the Doctor had had an effect. There were some scary things out there. ‘Don't have nightmares,'
Crimewatch
always said, but they were trying to persuade people it was statistically unlikely for the awful things they were showing to happen to any particular audience member, and when you'd been there and done that on what seemed like a regular basis now, you stopped believing the platitudes.

Were the footsteps going to pass his door? No. They stopped right outside it.

And tried the handle.

A legitimate visitor would knock at this point, or call out or something.

No one knocked, and no one called out. Instead, they tried shoving the door again. The door opened a centimetre or so, the magazine beginning to scrunch up. A rough, male voice said, ‘Open up, Smith.' Darren Pye.

Mickey didn't say a word. He began to back away, as quietly as he could, looking for something else he could use to keep the door shut.

‘I know you're in there, Smith. I know your freaky friends brought some of them games here, and I want 'em.'

‘Well, you can't have them,' called back Mickey, forgetting he was pretending not to be there.

It sounded as if Darren was giving the door a kicking. Amazingly, the magazine was still wedged tightly beneath it, preventing it from opening, but any moment he'd have it off its hinges.

But then the noise stopped. Mickey suddenly stood up straight, alerted by a feeling that he couldn't quite place. A tingle in the air, and for some reason Pancake Day came to mind . . . He heard a shout of alarm from outside the door, probably the nearest anyone had ever heard Darren Pye get to shock and fear.

Then Mickey realised: this was what it had felt like just before the aliens – the Quevvils – had burst into his flat. The Doctor's warning had been right; they must have been able to fix their teleport system, and they'd just materialised the other side of his front door.

They'd be after the Doctor. Had to be. But maybe they still thought Mickey was an expert; maybe with the Doctor not here they'd try to kidnap Mickey again . . . Or, worse, maybe they'd worked out that Mickey wasn't an expert, and they wouldn't want to risk him spreading details of their plans or their underground base or their true nature . . .

There was no other exit from his flat. Even in full health he couldn't hope to outmanoeuvre the Quevvils and their flying quills and their laser guns; with his dodgy knee he had no chance. Mickey hurried back as fast as he could, eager to find a hiding place. But then he heard voices from outside.

‘How on Earth did you do that?' yelled Darren Pye.

Then came the voice of a Quevvil: ‘This human has witnessed our materialisation! He must be destroyed!'

Mickey froze, waiting for the hiss of the laser beam, the scream of the dying man. But it didn't come.

‘No!' yelled Darren Pye. ‘I can help you!'

There was a pause, then a Quevvil said, ‘Explain.'

Darren was gabbling now. ‘I know what you are, right? I know what you're doing. I heard those freaks talking. You're aliens, right, and you want to kill these insect things. That's cool. I saw you appear before, out of thin air like that. I want to help.'

A Quevvil – Mickey had no idea if it was the same or a different one – said, ‘You have not yet explained how you intend to help us.'

‘I've already sorted it. Spreading these things over the country. Getting people who know what they're doing.'

And the unsurprise of the century: Darren Pye was the dealer. The death dealer. The one who would send your anyone to their death for less than the price of a telly. And thinking of tellies, he probably had a fair idea where Mickey's had gone too; why else would he have been hanging around here to hear the Doctor and Rose talking, to see the Quevvils appear . . .

And the Quevvil replied, ‘We have already located the person we need. We have come here to fetch him.'

‘What, that Doctor freak?' said Darren. ‘He's not here.'

Mickey didn't know what happened next, but Darren let out a yelp. ‘No! Look, I said I could help you. I'll tell you where he is. All I want is that you make me your sole dealer on Earth. People'll pay good money for this stuff. I just want a cut. Look, do we have a deal?'

There was a pause, then a Quevvil said, ‘Yes. Tell us where this “Doctor freak” is.'

‘Right. Yeah. Right. He's gone to your planet, him and that little cow. He's got a thing called a tarpit or something. He's plugging one of your cards in it and it'll take him there.'

There was another pause.

‘We must warn Frinel,' said one Quevvil.

‘We must return to Toop,' said the voice of another.

‘What about this human? Shall I kill him?'

There was a yell from Darren Pye. ‘We had a deal! I said I'd help you!'

The Quevvil spoke again. ‘No. Bring him with us. We cannot afford to leave behind a human who knows the truth, but if this human wants to help us . . . he can play the game.'

There was another yell from Darren, abruptly cut off. Mickey shivered. Had they killed him after all? But no, there was the lemony scent in the air again, and the fizzy feeling that made his hair stand on end.

He left it for a couple of minutes, but couldn't stand the suspense any longer than that. He limped to the front door, and put his ear against it. Not a sound. He pulled away the crumpled magazine, and eased open the door. No one was outside: no humans, no aliens.

Mickey slammed the door, shoved the magazine under it again, stumbled back into the lounge and collapsed on a chair. His knee was hurting like crazy, but all he could think about was the Doctor and Rose. The monsters knew they were on their way. They'd be waiting for them. And there was no way on Earth he could let them know about it.

They were hand in hand, and they almost jogged back to the TARDIS. It was a time machine, but somehow time still seemed of the essence.

The Doctor, annoyingly, hadn't told Rose his plan. This either meant that he didn't have one, or he just expected her to do what he asked her, when he asked her, without worrying about silly little things like explanations or reasons for it. But she didn't have to put up with that. ‘What's the plan then?' she asked as they came up to the TARDIS, reasoning she might as well know the worst sooner rather than later. Just because it was the Doctor's time machine, that didn't mean she had to play entirely by his rules.

‘I'm gonna try an' home in on this Mantodean stronghold. Rescue anyone still in there. Then find where they're holding the people ready to play the game. Rescue them. Persuade the Quevvils not to do this any more. When we don't succeed, do something clever which means they can't do it whether they want to or not.'

‘Great,' she said. ‘I approve.'

‘I'm glad you approve,' the Doctor replied, getting out his TARDIS key.

‘How're we going to do all that then?' she asked. ‘Bribe them with salt?'

The Doctor had earlier seemed not entirely impressed by her salt brainwave. She'd explained it in detail while they'd been trooping round all the flats.

‘Well, I remembered this thing about how porcupines go mad for it,' she'd explained. ‘They chew stuff to bits if someone's just touched it with sweaty hands, that's how much they love it. So I figured . . .'

The Doctor had interrupted her. ‘These aren't porcupines! Porcupines don't, contrary to popular belief, shoot their quills at you. They don't walk upright. They don't carry little laser guns. And they don't, whatever David Attenborough might tell you, kidnap human beings and teleport them to an alien planet!'

Rose shrugged. ‘Well, I knew it was a long shot . . .'

He'd grinned then. ‘A bloomin' brilliant one!' And he'd given her a great big hug, swinging her off her feet. ‘I'll never let anyone call you a dumb human again.'

‘What, you mean they –'

‘Nah,' he'd interrupted again, laughing, and he took her hand and led her off down the street.

‘Nah,' he said again now. ‘We're going to figure that out when we get there. Easier that way. I hate having to keep rejigging a plan just cos there was something we didn't know about before we arrived.'

‘Yeah, right,' said Rose. ‘You've just got this seat-of-the-pants thing going. You'd get all bored if you'd got it sorted beforehand.'

He just smiled at that, as he pushed open the blue double doors; didn't confirm or deny.

Rose was sort of used to coming into the TARDIS now, in the same way Alexander Graham Bell's friends must have grown used to the miracle of being called up on the telephone after the first few times, but she still got a rush from it, the casual wandering into a wonderful alien environment, a machine that was, amazingly, bigger on the inside than the outside. That would have been astounding enough in itself, even without the whole ‘travel to anywhere and anywhen' thing.

The Doctor held out a hand for the winning scratchcard as they walked up the ramp into the dark control room, and she pulled it out of her jeans pocket again, hoping the slight crease it in wouldn't have harmed whatever strange technology it was concealing.

She passed it over, and the Doctor stuck the card into a slot in the console. The
TARDIS
always seemed to have exactly what was needed. Rose suspected that it somehow adapted itself to the Doctor's requirements, but she'd never managed to catch it out; never managed to spot something that she knew hadn't been there before, or found anything to be absent that had previously been present.