him to meet us here at 11 0'clock...but my
watch seems to have stopped...' He looked suddenly at the high white orb
of the Moon. It silently looked back.
'When did you
arrange to meet him here?' Ace questioned, not remembering any encounter
with a strange man, with a set time and place.
'Oh years
ago...' came a muttered reply, the back of the watch was removed and the
innards carefully examined. 'Or, it might be in a few years time, who
knows?' The watch remained dead.
'A Time Lord
who doesn't know the time,' said Ace with a wide smile. 'There's a neat
little paradox for you...' Her eyes wandered in and out with each new
wave that broke on the wet sand.
'Well, we'll
just have to go to is flat, won't we?' said the Doctor, pushing the
watch that had defeated him back into his pocket 'This way..' he added,
pointing up a sharp sandy incline with his umbrella to where the dunes
held the tangled weeds, each blown in different directions, captured and
held down, left to watch their arms thrown around by the harsh wind.
Cars swung into
the night, headlights flaying wild beams in all directions, red
tail-lights blurring and receding, swaying light patterns weaving in and
out of trees and hills into the distance, gone.
Sand had been
blown by the breezes to the edge of the roadside, the point that Nature
reluctantly fuses with man-made reality. It had heard the angry sirens
of midnight and cool sirens from the sea, caught in the swinging glance
of the lighthouse beam.
'How far now,
Professor?' Ace felt they had walked an interminably long way, and she
felt sure her rucksack was gaining weight with every leaden step.
'Not that far. I
think. Darkness can be so disorientating...' He stopped and turned,
catching the distant pin-prick of the lighthouse glare as it moved in
the dark. So far away. He tapped his lips thoughtfully with the umbrella
and walked on, Ace in tow.
Far ahead, the
Doctor could see the sparkling glowing lights seemingly held before him
at arms length, small dots burning white in the night. The empty
streets, not cold, yet not warm, alone and so lonely, just a thin yellow
line that were the burning leads of streetlamps. Another car swished
by, oblivious and confident, away into the distant grey and dark
hillsides and beyond. The Doctor allowed his eyes to be mesmerised and
followed the pathway of the vehicle, a buzzing red light becoming the
recurring image on his eye as he crossed the road, the weary Ace behind
him, until they finally faced a set of steps running up the outside of a
house, cold and solid in the bleak night.
the homeland page 2
he
immense wall of sound created by a dark beach is frighteningly vast. A
complicated sequence, built up of a hundred thousand well-sequenced cogs
that have run the dark machine of midnight for countless years. The
hiss of the with-drawing tide on the shingle, fusing with the heavy
breath of the incoming tide.
