‘But -’ Madok began, and then realised that it was not his place to interfere. He had thought that Ace intended to stay with Kedin. Hadn’t she told the Doctor yet?
Kedin and Ace wandered up to the blue box as the Doctor disappeared through its door.
‘I’ve still got to give him this,’ Ace said. She looked tense.
Kedin took the package from her hands. He tore it open.
Ace stared at him as he unfolded the contents: her black jacket, covered with badges and signs. He placed it over her shoulders.
‘What’s this for?’ she said.
Kedin put his hand under her chin and lifted her face. ‘Ace, my dear, you must go with the Doctor.’
‘You what? But we’ve talked about this. We’ve got plans.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘You’ve told me many stories about your travels with the Doctor,’ Kedin said,
‘and jolly exciting they were too. But they set me thinking.
I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about you, you know. And you’re getting into that remarkable box thing with the Doctor, where you belong.’
Madok turned away. He felt he was intruding on a private conversation, but to step away would only draw attention to his presence. He couldn’t bear the look of sorrow in Ace’s eyes.
‘He needs you, Ace,’ Kedin said, his voice trembling with intensity. ‘He can’t function without you. And, from what you tell me, he has a great burden to carry and much to do.’
Madok glanced at Ace. Tears were running down her cheeks. ‘You’re only saying that to get rid of me,’ she said.
‘You don’t want me at all.’
Kedin leant forward and kissed the tears from her face.
‘Ace, Ace,’ he said, almost moaning as he spoke. ‘Nothing could be further than the truth. But listen to me, please. You know that if you don’t go with the Doctor now, you’ll never get another chance. If that box flies away, or whatever it does, and you’re not inside it, you will come to regret it.
Perhaps not at once, but eventually, and more and more as each day passes. You know that’s true.’
Ace stared up at him, her mouth moving soundlessly. ‘But what about us?’ she whispered at last.
Kedin smiled. ‘Well, as the foremost member of the aristocracy I suppose I should know all there is to know about being noble. We have to make sacrifices, Ace.’ He swept his hand in an arc across the sky. ‘There are millions upon millions of worlds out there, my darling. Our broken hearts don’t really matter. Not in the end.’
Ace wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She seemed to Madok, suddenly, to look no older than a child. She gazed at the scene of destruction around her, as if searching for some hope or purpose. ‘I wanted -’ she began.
Kedin placed a finger on her lips. ‘None of us has what we wanted, Ace.’
The Doctor emerged, carrying a large box made of translucent material. ‘Here are the kits,’ he said. ‘Complete with instructions. Your scientists should be able to work out how to use them.’ He looked from Madok to Kedin, and from Kedin to Ace. ‘Ready, Ace?’
Ace lifted her hand to touch Kedin’s face, and then turned away. ‘Yes, I’m ready. Goodbye, Kedin Ashar.’
Madok and Kedin watched the blue box as it became transparent, and then disappeared.
A part of me has gone, too, Madok thought. I’ll never see her again.
‘Remarkable mode of transport,’ Kedin observed. He stood for a moment, in silence, staring at the place where the Doctor’s craft had stood. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, rousing himself.
‘There’s work to be done. The call of duty, and so forth. We must all do our duty, eh, Madok?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ Madok said.
About the Author
To my chagrin I’m old enough to remember seeing the broadcast of the first episode of Doctor Who in 1963.
A lot has happened since then, and most of it - what it was like to be educated at a traditional selective grammar school, the counter-culture scene of the early seventies and its merging into glam-rock and then punk, why I missed the Pertwee years, how I sold Dungeons & Dragons to teenagers throughout the land and came to publish White Dwarf magazine, my first company directorship, when I wrote my first Fighting Fantasy gamebook -
you really don’t want to know in any detail.
In 1989 I was trying to make a living from writing, and not succeeding. I applied for a part-time job: Doctor Who Editor at book publishers W H Allen. The books concerned were novelisations of the TV stories. W H Allen became Virgin Publishing, I became the Fiction Publisher, we acquired a licence from the BBC to publish original Doctor Who novels, and in 1992 there began a five-year stint of almost uninterrupted publishing fun. We did Doctor Who -
The New Adventures, and then Doctor Who - The Missing Adventures. We published non-fiction books and illustrated books about Doctor Who. I wrote my first Doctor Who novel: Deceit. We published books about other television programmes: Red Dwarf, Blake’s 7, The Avengers, Babylon 5, right up to Buffy the Vampire Slayer this year. We published the infamous Black Lace imprint: erotic fiction by women and for women.
I’m in Southampton now, writing this, and also writing other books and doing bits of freelance copy-editing and proof-reading. I miss my London friends, and the talented people I worked with.
But there are compensations.
‘True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.’ Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism, 1711.
Peter Darvill-Evans June 2000
Document Outline
Front Cover
Back Cover
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
About the Author
Independence Day Page 28
