Part II
Sarah slammed down the phone. "Damn them!"
"This unit is not equipped for damnation." K-9 whirred anxiously.
"I didn't mean you. Oh… " Sarah fumbled for a curse word. None that came to her tongue seemed adequate. "They don't want to listen. I got through with the Doctor's name to some government lackey who made noises about the ghost shifts changing the world for the better. I told him that's what I was afraid of. I think I've been labeled a crackpot pretty thoroughly at this point, Tegan."
"What about the Brigadier?"
"I couldn't reach him at home. I left a message. He might have been called in to consult."
"Locked up in some government think tank? Brilliant," Tegan said sourly.
"He might do some good. He wouldn't trust these ghosts. The Brigadier never was the kind to assume strange happenings were going to end happily. He and the Doctor would argue about it pretty fiercely."
K-9's tail antenna quirked. "TARDIS contact initiated."
"Barbara! Alice! K-9 has contacted the TARDIS!" The other two women came in from the kitchen in answer to Tegan's call. Alice had a tea tray.
Barbara started passing out teacups. Tegan held Alice's hand tightly. They waited.
At last, K-9's ears twitched. "No answer."
"What do you mean, no answer?" Sarah said disbelievingly.
"The TARDIS is receiving my signal but the Doctor-Master has not answered."
"Maybe they materialized and went straight out. You know how impulsive he can be," Barbara suggested.
"Do you know where the TARDIS is?"
"The communication does not include location. A bearing by triangulation is necessary."
Alice jumped to her feet. "Does that mean we can get out of the house? Great."
"Why don't you and Alice go, Sarah Jane? No use crowding everyone into the car. We'll watch the news here." Tegan could hear the stress in her own voice. Alice turned to stare at her.
"We'll be fine, you two. Go on," Barbara said serenely, and started to flip through the news channels on the telly.
"Alice, you've got your mobile, yes? You're in charge of communications. Call Tegan's mobile if we need to get in touch; Tegan, you go online and check the international news." Sarah Jane spoke authoritatively, sweeping Alice out the door. The girl was eager to go.
Tegan watched through the window as they bundled K-9 into Sarah's car and drove off. Then she went to the computer.
"How can you be so calm, Barbara?" She called up sites and hardly looked at the web pages.
"After I lost Ian, I was no longer afraid of death."
Tegan sat back in her chair, grimly commanding her tears to abate. When the swimming in her eyes cleared, she noticed the blog page she was on. People were sharing photos of the ghosts.
Sarah Jane Smith had a very popular blog. Sarah's computer had a scanner. Tegan grabbed her portfolio and went to work. It was one thing she'd learned to do well with a computer: manipulate and upload images. The task was essential for her work and she had her own gallery web page.
Barbara looked over her shoulder and saw Tegan hard at work, her fingers flying over the keyboard and determination radiating from every inch of her. She had spoken the truth. She was no longer afraid of her own death, but she wanted life for her family. In her youth she had not been very religious. No church she'd ever attended had approached the wonders which travel in the TARDIS had shown her. Barbara had a private and personal God who she simply defined as being big enough to encompass all she'd seen and more than she could imagine.
She did not know if prayers moved this God, but while she sat with her hands clasped in her lap and her tearless eyes scanning the news broadcasts, she prayed. It brought her peace.
K-9 gave them the bearing. Sarah was used to being guided by him. She was not surprised when it turned out the TARDIS was located near the Powell Estate; she'd looked up Miss Rose Tyler.
Alice practically hung out the window. She wanted to see the TARDIS with her own eyes. Only then would it be real. Right now she didn't quite believe it. She'd grown up with the stories until the Doctor seemed no more real than King Arthur. She'd pretended that the blue police box had landed in her back garden and that she'd walked into it and had adventures with the Doctor all over time and space. When she got older, the fantasies took on an inevitable erotic luster.
That's when she'd asked Tegan the wrong question.
"Mum, were you ever in love with the Doctor?"
Tegan Jovanka, the ex Mrs. Chesterton, had turned and stared at her daughter. Alice had inherited a generous share of that formidable temper, with a good dose of her grandmother's strength of will. But she was fourteen and she shrank before the awful look in her mother's eyes. She hadn't understood what she saw there; she didn't understand what she could hear in her mother's harsh voice.
"Everyone loved the Doctor. But being in love with him, that would be like being in love with a thunderstorm. It would blow you about all you let it, and soak you to the skin, but you wouldn't want to get hit by lightning."
Alice didn't know if that was a yes or no. Even at fourteen, she got that. The other thing she knew was that she should never ask again.
Right now, she knew she wanted to meet the Doctor anyway. Because she thought, looking back, that her mother was willing to risk being lightning-struck.
She'd never yet gotten the nerve to ask Sarah Jane the same question, but she'd thought about it.
They reached the park. The TARDIS wasn't there.
"K-9? Can you still pick it up?"
"Yes, mistress. New bearings are required."
"Brilliant. He never did stay in one place for long."
"Maybe he's gone off again. He's got the whole Universe outside his door, why should he keep coming back here?" Alice let her voice be bitter. She didn't handle frustration well, but she came by that honestly.
Sarah Jane Smith reached over and grabbed Alice hard by the upper arm. The girl stared at her in shock. "He's risked his life for this planet more times than you have brain cells rattling around in your head, young lady. Even if he fails today, you wouldn't have seen one day of life in this world if it hadn't been for the Doctor. Remember that before you run your mouth again."
Sarah's rage was incandescent and matched anything Alice had ever seen her mother produce. She shrank back into the far corner of her seat.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Sarah." Her voice was soft. Alice knew she'd been bitchy. "I guess I don't quite believe in him yet. It's like being told Father Christmas comes down the chimney after all. I want to see him before I start leaving a glass of milk by the fireplace like I did when I was a kid."
Sarah's face crumpled. "I know. Sometimes I don't believe in him either." Her mouth trembled.
Alice was horrified to see the years suddenly marching across Aunt Sarah's face. She took Sarah's hand from her arm and squeezed it. "I do believe in the Doctor. I do, I do."
Sarah laughed soggily. "If that worked I'd get the whole world chanting it."
Tegan sat back, smiling. Sarah Jane's email box was filling up with responses to the blog. People had taken photographs, which scanned in, obviously matched in points with her Cybermen drawings. The message to be wary was getting out. And maybe, just maybe, some bright young thing in a government office or military lab was paying attention.
Then the ghost shift came back and the images resolved into horror. Cybermen. Up the street, down the street, in the house with them. Tegan dived behind a sofa and began to frantically dial her daughter's mobile number. She heard Barbara politely greeting the Cyberman that had appeared in Sarah Jane's flat.
"We welcome you peacefully. Please state your purpose."
Tegan jammed the mobile to her ear. Alice. Pick up. I want to hear your voice, baby.
"Mistress! Incoming radio transmission. Turn on radio receiver at once."
Alice's mobile rang. It was her mother's number. She kept an eye on the Cybermen appearing in the streets and spoke frantically, "You were right. They're all over the place. We didn't find the Doctor. Mum? Mum? Are you there? Oh, God, Mum, say something." On the other end, she could hear breathing, Barbara's voice, and a metallic one.
Sarah had the radio on. The message was awful. The Cybermen announced their successful invasion. In the not too great distance, they could see explosions.
"K-9? Have you located the TARDIS?"
"It is located in the area of Canary Wharf."
Right where the explosions were most visible. Of course.
"I don't think we can reach him, Alice."
Alice listened to her mother's carefully controlled breathing. Tegan was hiding. A Cyberman was with her grandmother.
"Let's go back, Aunt Sarah. We tried. Unless… well… I can walk back to your place, if you think K-9 could help the Doctor. You two could go on without me, but I'm not leaving Mum and Gran on their own. "
"Doctor-Master is not responding from the TARDIS, Mistress."
Sarah Jane Smith had been in some pretty tight spots in her life, with and without the Doctor. She felt for the shape of this problem and what could be done for it.
"K-9? Could you help him?"
"This unit is tasked to protect the Doctor-Master's friends, Mistress."
"Right. We're going home, Alice."
Sarah's car reached her driveway about the time all the Cybermen came out on the street and formed ranks to march towards Canary Wharf.
Alice rushed in. Tegan was just crawling out from behind the sofa. Alice tackled her mother and the two hugged frantically. It was Barbara who held the door for Sarah Jane and K-9 to come in. Only age had put a crimp in Barbara's straight back. Her dark eyes were as keen as ever, watching the Cybermen march away.
"It's already going wrong for them. They think they're in charge, but they no longer rule every street in this city. They're losing."
"The Doctor is that way. I'm sure he's at the bottom of it all."
Barbara chuckled. "Isn't he always?" Her voice held great fondness. She closed the door and went to make fresh tea.
They watched the news. They held each other. They drank the tea and ate Barbara's sandwiches. The Doctor was winning. The world would be safe.
Then the skies filled with Daleks and Barbara, who had been as steady as a rock, fell like a stone with paper-white skin and blue lips. While the Doctor hopped universes and schemed to defeat both his enemies, under K-9's directions Tegan and Alice performed artificial respiration on Barbara while Sarah Jane begged for an ambulance to come.
For Sarah Jane Smith, the worst part was finding in the corner of her heart a feeling of gladness that Barbara had been the one to break. To scream down the phone line gave her some outlet for her own terror as one of her worst nightmares filled the sky.
Barbara Wright Chesterton struggled inside herself. She thought she'd outlived all those old fears but all she had to do was hear the cry of 'Exterminate' to be flung into the deepest, rankest depths of her own mind. The Daleks had persecuted and pursued them over years and light years. Each time death had seemed certain, each time the Doctor had rescued them by the slimmest of margins. The temptation to let go, to be free of the fear of the Daleks forever, was so strong. But Tegan and Alice were clinging to her, holding her to life with their magnificent stubborness. And somewhere out there, the Doctor was fighting for them all. If she died now, and he found out, it would be one more pain in his old heart. Hearts.
She swallowed the aspirin. She let the fear go, and released consciousness trusting her family to be with her.
Sarah was standing at the window. She had meant to watch for an ambulance, but there were wonders in the sky. "Look," she said, standing aside so that Tegan and Alice could see without leaving Barbara. Daleks and Cybermen were being pulled helplessly through the sky.
Barbara's head was in Tegan's lap. Tegan croaked out half a laugh and stroked the sleeping woman's forehead. "He's done it again. The Doctor's done it again, Barbara."
Alice laughed and leapt up, one joyous rush taking her to the window. She was nearly twenty, but like a child at Christmas, she watched as the worst monsters of her childhood fairytales were sucked right out of the world. Sarah Jane smiled at her, and then shared a glance with Tegan. They both knew that this victory had not come without a dreadful price. But still, it was a victory. They'd lived.
"I wish we could thank him; thank the Doctor," Alice said wistfully.
"He doesn't like to be thanked, Alice. He always tries to slip out quietly when they begin the party or try to give him awards."
"I know. It's in the stories you've always told me. I just… oh, well, you know." Alice stared out the window.
No thanks, no good-byes; the Doctor got on with his life. But here in this flat, three women who had known him well and one who had known of him all her life, said 'thank you, Doctor' and 'good-bye, Doctor' in their hearts.
To be continued…
