‘Where are we, anyway?’ said Rory. ‘I mean, nice view.’
‘Hampstead Heath.’ The Doctor banged his palm on his wibble-detector. ‘Brilliant. I can’t get a fix, the signal’s swamping the sensors…’
‘So how are we going to find this paradox thing?’ asked Amy.
Suddenly there was a flash. Rory shielded his eyes as blue lightning sizzled over a block of flats on the edge of the park. The lightning seemed to concentrate at the top of the building.
‘I think we’ve found it,’ said Rory. ‘I’m no expert, but that looks like wibbliness to me…’
‘You’re Harold Jones?’
Mark nodded slowly. The man standing in his hallway was his younger self. It was like being confronted by an old photograph. A face he’d seen many times in the mirror, but so long ago.
‘May I come in?’ said Mark’s younger self.
‘You’re from Pollard & Boyce?’ said Mark.
‘That’s right, I work there. But I think you already know that.’
And then Mark realised the second thing that was wrong about his younger self visiting him. He had no memory of this taking place. When he’d worked at Pollard
& Boyce, he’d never found out about Harold Jones. He’d certainly never gone to visit him.
‘I think you’d better come in.’ Mark conducted his younger self into the lounge. As he did, he felt a tingling in his right hand and noticed that his younger self rubbed his right hand at the same time. He’d felt it too. And there was an odd metallic smell in the air, the smell of dodgems and Scalextric cars. The smell of static electricity.
‘Can I offer you anything? Coffee, tea?’
‘No, I’m good,’ said Mark’s younger self. ‘Can we skip the small talk?’
‘If you like,’ said Mark, sitting at his desk. ‘So how can I help you?’
‘You can help me by telling me who the hell you are,’
said Mark’s younger self aggressively. ‘And why the hell you’ve chosen to interfere in my life.’
Amy caught up with the Doctor and Rory at the entrance of the apartment block. They were both staring up at the top floor of the building, where blue lightning flickered over the steel and glass.
‘We may be too late.’ The Doctor tasted the air. ‘It feels like we’re already too late.’
‘What do you mean, feels?’
‘Time running off the rails. Forging new paths, new possibilities.’
Rory looked around them warily. ‘Yeah, but surely if things were going wrong, the Weeping Angels would be here too, right? Like moths to a gong and all that?’
‘Oh great,’ said Amy. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’
‘Oh, they’ll be here,’ said the Doctor. ‘You can be sure of that. They’ve probably been lying low in the cemetery down the road, awaiting their cue.’ He aimed his sonic screwdriver at the door and it swung open. ‘Amy, Rory.
Stay here.’
‘What?’ protested Amy. ‘Oh no. We’re going with you.’
‘Hey,’ said Rory, grabbing the comer of Amy’s coat. ‘If the Doctor says we should wait here, maybe we should do as the man says. I mean, he does know what he’s talking about.’
‘Amy, listen to your husband,’ said the Doctor. He ran into the brightly lit reception area and bounded up the stairs.
‘Yeah. Like that’s ever gonna happen.’ Amy sprinted into the reception area after the Doctor, her long-suffering husband trailing in her wake.
‘You’re a distant relative?’
‘That’s right,’ said Harold Jones. ‘On Aunt Margaret’s side. I’m from, er, Canada.’
‘Canada?’ said Mark distrustfully. But the man’s words had rung a bell. His mother had once mentioned a relative in Canada, a man who’d come to visit her once and who never replied to her letters or Christmas cards. And that would explain the resemblance…
‘Did you visit my mum once, about six or seven years ago?’ asked Mark.
‘Yes. Yes, that’s right. I happened to be in the country, for work, and I thought I’d look up some relatives.’
‘Right,’ said Mark. ‘And that’s why you got me the job
at Pollard & Boyce?’
Harold nodded. ‘Exactly. They handle a lot of my business, and so I thought I’d do you a favour.’
‘You thought you’d do me a favour?’
‘I recommended that they should take you on. But only for a trial period, on the understanding that if you weren’t good enough they were free to let you go.’
Mark remained unconvinced. ‘Really?’
‘So while I may have helped you get your foot in the door, everything you’ve achieved since has been entirely down to you.’
‘They’ve been keeping you updated with my progress then, have they?’
‘Something like that, yes. They call it Project Magwitch.’
As Rory reached for the door of flat 4-A, the Doctor yelled out from behind him. ‘Wait!’
‘What?’ said Rory, his fingertips inches away from the door. A moment later, blue light began to flit intermittently across its surface, and across the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor. Rory felt the hairs on the back of his hand stand on end. ‘What is it?’
‘A Blinovitch limitation field.’ The Doctor levelled his sonic screwdriver at the door, gradually moving closer until there was a spit and crackle. ‘Nasty stuff. Not good to get too close.’
‘But can we get inside?’ said Amy impatiently.
‘In a moment…’ said the Doctor, fiddling with his screwdriver. ‘Nearly there, nearly there…’
While Harold explained about ‘Project Magwitch’, Mark took the opportunity to look around the flat, with its huge windows and its view over London, its designer chairs, its widescreen plasma television. A blue light flashed outside, like that of an ambulance.
Harold’s story made sense, but Mark still didn’t believe it. ‘And that’s why you wouldn’t let me handle any of your cases?’
‘Exactly. I didn’t want you to know. Look, I’m sorry.
Maybe I should have told you, but—’
Harold kept talking but Mark had stopped listening.
He’d noticed the two handwritten letters on Harold’s desk, both of which included a list of places, times and dates going back to 1994. For 1995 he saw the details of an exam he’d taken at university. For 1997 he saw the address of a cafe in Coventry together with some lottery numbers.
For 1998 it described the time he’d lost his wallet in Rome…
Mark suddenly remembered something Rebecca had once said to him a long time ago. About there being somebody at university who looked just like him.
‘What are you doing?’ cried Harold Jones as he realised, too late, that Mark was looking at the contents of his desk.
He lunged forward in a desperate attempt to conceal the letters. ‘You mustn’t look at them, they’re, they’re confidential—’
Mark reached for one of the letters and, as he did, the fingers of his right hand came into contact with Harold’s right hand. Mark heard a loud crackling sound, like a
circuit being shorted, and an agonising bolt of pain shot up his arm. For a moment he had a sensation of cramp-like numbness, and could smell something burning, and then everything went black.
Chapter
14
The Doctor forced open the door to the flat and rushed in, Rory and Amy at his heels. The entrance hallway flickered with blue light, and smoke drifted in the air. It was like stepping into a night club. ‘Hello?’ the Doctor called out.
‘Anyone home?’
They made their way through the smoke into a large room with a kitchen at one end and an office at the other.
All the electrical appliances in the kitchen were going haywire, switching themselves on and off, with smoke pouring from their sockets. Blue lightning crackled across the floor, the ceiling, the walls and the large, wide window that took up one side of the room.
Rory’s eyes started to stream fr
om the smoke. ‘What’s going on?’ he coughed. ‘This place is going bonkers…’
‘Time-energy discharge,’ answered the Doctor, advancing into the room like a prowling tiger. ‘Overloads the electrics.’
The light fittings fizzled, sending out cascades of smouldering sparks. ‘And what could have caused that?’
said Rory.
tap-tap-tap
‘I think I know.’ Amy pointed towards the office, where two men lay slumped unconscious, one on the floor, the other across the desk. They both had their right arms outstretched and appeared to be giving off steam.
‘Mark Whitaker, A and B.’ The Doctor approached the bodies. ‘Must’ve made physical contact, shorted out the differential.’ He crouched beside the body of young Mark and took his pulse, before repeating the process with old Mark. ‘They’re lucky to be alive. It seems young Mark decided to pay his older self a visit.’
‘So it wasn’t old Mark interfering with his own past,’
said Amy. ‘It was young Mark interfering with his own future…’
tap-tap-tap
‘But this shouldn’t have happened?’ said Rory. ‘I mean, whichever way round it is, bumping into yourself’s gotta be bad news, right?’
‘It’s not an ideal situation, no,’ said the Doctor. ‘We have to get them out of here. Rory, you take one Mark, I’ll take the other.’
‘Right,’ said Rory, heaving young Mark into an upright position. While he did this, the Doctor managed to get old Mark standing and half-lifted, half-dragged him towards the doorway.
tap-tap-tap
Rory’s lungs felt like they were on fire. As he struggled across the room with young Mark, all the light fittings burst into flames.
‘I don’t get it,’ shouted Amy over the chaos. ‘Why isn’t
the sprinkler system switching on?’
‘Something’s preventing it,’ said the Doctor. ‘Look.’
Rory followed the Doctor’s gaze to the window on the far side of the room. Six stone figures stood on the other side of the glass, their hands pressed against its surface, staring inside with serene, blank faces. The Weeping Angels. All bathed in the flickering glow of the lightning.
‘What are they doing?’ shouted Rory to the Doctor.
‘What do you think?’ the Doctor yelled back. ‘Feeding!’
But that was impossible, thought Rory. They were four storeys up. There was nothing for the Angels to be standing on.
tap-tap-tap
Rory couldn’t keep his eyes on all of the Angels at once. Worse, with all the smoke swirling about, he could barely keep his eyes open. But that sound the Angels were making, they were tapping on the glass with their fingers…
There was a loud creaking, cracking sound. Rory caught a glimpse of the window covered in a spider’s web of fracture lines emanating from the hand of one of the Angels. Then he had to blink, and an instant later there was an ear-splitting crash as the entire window shattered into a hundred pieces. The night wind roared in, fanning the flames higher and blowing the smoke towards Rory, Amy and the Doctor.
And Rory could see the Weeping Angels, never visibly moving but in the process of clambering into the room, one by one, their mouths wide as though screaming in triumph.
‘Come on,’ yelled the Doctor into Rory’s ear. ‘We have to go!’
Rory gripped young Mark by the waistband and tugged him into the hallway, through billowing smoke and surging, snapping flames. It was like they were escaping from hell itself.
Mark’s older self came to with a retching cough. His eyes and throat stung and there was a smoky, acrid taste on his tongue. But he could smell fresh air and hear the rustle of leaves in the breeze. He was lying on the ground, he realised. Rory knelt beside him, taking his pulse. Behind Rory he could make out the Doctor and Amy, looking down at someone else laid out on the pavement, someone he couldn’t see.
Then it all came back to him. The visit from his younger self. He could picture him framed in the doorway.
Mark gasped deeply and suddenly at the memory.
‘It’s all right,’ said Rory soothingly. ‘You’re safe, mate.
Me and the Doctor rescued you.’
‘You rescued me?’
Rory indicated the top of the apartment block. The top floor was a blaze of flickering orange flame, oily black smoke scudding up into the night sky.
‘What… what happened?’ said Mark, pulling himself to his feet.
‘Hey, take it easy,’ said Rory. ‘You, um, seem to have bumped into yourself.’
Mark staggered over to the Doctor and Amy. They were tending to his younger self, who had been put in the
recovery position, his suit charred, his skin smudged with soot. For one horrible moment, Mark thought that his younger self might be dead, until he groaned and breathed in a deep, sleepy breath.
Mark stared at him, then up at his burning apartment, unable to take it all in. There was something else, something he’d forgotten. ‘What did you just say?’ he shouted at Rory. ‘I bumped into myself?’
‘The Doctor thinks you may have, er, made physical contact, or something. Which released a load of time energy.’
Physical contact? He could remember sitting at his desk, his younger self in front of him, and he could remember realising that his younger self hadn’t been listening to him because—‘The letter!’ breathed Mark. ‘The letter I have to send to myself…’
‘What?’ said Rory.
‘Where is it? Did you bring it here?’
‘No. Should we have done?’
‘Oh no,’ said Mark. ‘Oh no….’ He looked at Rory, whose mouth hung open with incomprehension, then Mark turned and ran back to the entrance of the flats.
‘Hey, where are you going? You’ll get yourself killed!’
Rory shouted after him. ‘Doctor, the old one’s doing a runner!’
Mark shoved open the security doors and raced up the stairwell, his chest straining with the effort. He passed some of the other residents of the block as they made their way downstairs. They called out to him, warning him not
to go up there, but he ignored them.
He reached the fourth floor and slammed open the door to the corridor. A wall of searing heat hit him in the face, like he had just entered a furnace. He felt his skin prickle with sweat. The corridor ahead was clear, except for the thick black smoke that hung overhead like an indoor thundercloud.
Keeping his head low, Mark lurched down the corridor towards the door to his flat. His lungs felt like they were burning and he could hear his own ragged, desperate gasps for breath.
He made it through the door into his hallway. It was almost unrecognisable, lit a deep red by the pulsing glow of the fire. He could barely keep his eyes open. But he had to find the letter.
Mark entered his lounge to be confronted by a vision from a nightmare. The kitchen was a roaring mass of flames, a plume of fire stretched from his television up to the ceiling, and his sofa smouldered with foul-smelling smoke.
There were six figures in the room, standing perfectly still amidst the conflagration, each one holding its head in its hands, its wings folded back.
As Mark was forced to blink to clear his eyes of the smoke, the statues began to move. They slowly lowered their hands and turned to face towards Mark. There was no expression in their eyes. They seemed oblivious to the flames licking over their stonework.
Then, one by one, they opened their mouths, exposing their long, sharp fangs.
Mark stumbled blindly to his desk, feeling his way across the room until it banged into his midriff and the smoke cleared sufficiently for him to see the papers on his desk. As he watched, both the letters caught fire and shrivelled to black. The flames consumed both letters utterly, sending charred fragments fluttering up into the air.
Mark felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.
‘We have to go,’ said the Doctor adamantly. ‘ Now.’
Mark could see the Weeping Angels behind the Doc
tor, reaching out towards him. The sight caused Mark to freeze in terror. He couldn’t speak or move.
The Doctor took him by the wrist and guided him back through the lounge, past the Angels and out into the hallway. Mark could hardly breathe and could barely see, but the Doctor kept leading him through the smoke and darkness, helping him down the stairwell and out into the clean night air.
Amy squealed with relief as the Doctor tumbled from the burning building, heaving old Mark with him. Old Mark’s clothes and hair were dirty and charred, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. He sat on the pavement a few metres away from where his younger self was sleeping.
The residents of the apartment block had gathered in the car park, marvelling at the blaze as they awaited the arrival of the fire services. The fire would be visible all across London.
The Doctor squatted beside old Mark. ‘What were you trying to do?’
‘The letter, Doctor.’ Mark took in another lungful of air.
‘The letter I received from my future self, the one I had to send? It was in there. Both copies were in there!’
‘Oh my God…’ said Amy, her mouth falling open.
‘I saw them burn,’ said Mark wretchedly. ‘So that’s it.
History’s been changed.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rory.
‘How can I have sent myself the letter, when I don’t have it any more! ‘ yelled Mark.
‘Can’t you just make another copy?’
‘I can’t remember every single word of the letter, can I?
And if I got a single word wrong…’
‘Oh. Right. Yeah.’
‘Didn’t you make any photocopies, or anything like that?’ said Amy.
‘No,’ Mark replied, levelling his gaze accusingly at the Doctor. ‘Because you told me not to, remember?’
The Doctor frowned. ‘So, so now you can no longer send the letter to yourself, and the entire course of history has changed, with disastrous ramifications for the entire planet.’
He paused to straighten up, lick a finger and hold it in the air. ‘Unless…’ He reached for his wibble-detector, which was still slung around his neck, and began to urgently twiddle with its dials. ‘Oh no. Oh no no no no no…’
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