Jim Ellison woke with a start. He sat up in bed and the blankets fell away from his naked body. In the bed beside him Blair slept on, undisturbed by whatever had woken Jim. His steady breathing was always a comforting sound to Jim and he let the soft rhythm soothe his adrenaline rush. Almost involuntarily, Jim reached out to touch the wild curls, his palm hovering just above Blair’s hair so it faintly brushed his palm. His heart rate steadied, but Jim had not forgotten that something pulled him from sleep.
He took a deep breath and extended his senses out into the night. Eagle’s Nest was quiet. Jim heard the horses in the stables, a dog barking at a passing rat, a couple making love a few houses away. They were normal night-time sounds, nothing out of place, nothing alarming.
Then it came again, a sound so distinctive Jim recognised it instantly. He had waited five years to hear that sound again.
Quickly, he climbed out of the bed and found the clothing he had discarded earlier. Heavy cotton pants, a butternut-coloured shirt and knee-high boots. The leather creaked as he pulled the boots on. He buckled the belt around his waist and the holster settled onto his hip, a familiar weight. Jim drew the gun from the holster and checked it. After five years he was accustomed to the clothing, though he occasionally wished these folks could make decent underwear. He could live with the awful, awful beer and the impossibility of keeping bugs out of the bed. He could live with being a cop without the benefit of a forensics lab – being without the restrictions of Miranda rights was sometimes useful. Fingerprinting wouldn’t be used in criminal investigations for several decades yet, but Jim, with his Sentinel ability and twentieth century knowledge, could and did use them. But he still hated the primitive revolver. No matter how conscientious he was about keeping it clean and oiled, it would never measure up to his police special.
Jim settled the Stetson on his head. Blair stirred a little in his sleep, but did not wake. Jim considered waking him, but decided he should hurry. Blair was not at his best when wakened from a deep sleep. He slipped out of the room and walked out into the night.
Five years living in a place with none of the technology he had been accustomed to in his life before had sharpened Jim’s senses as much as his time with the Chopec in Peru. Jim no longer had the white-noise generators that had been so essential to him in Cascade, but he didn’t need them any more. Compared with twentieth-century Cascade, nineteenth-century Texas was quiet. There was no constant buzz of electricity, no hiss of piped water. Instead there were natural sounds: people, animals, insects and weather; the crackle of wood burning in stoves; and the occasional splash from the nearby river.
Once outside, it was a simple matter for Jim to locate the sound he’d heard. It was in the alley between the saloon and the jailhouse.
Finally!
Jim was surprised to find he had mixed feelings. For five years he had trusted the Doctor to come back, never doubting he and Blair would see Cascade again. Now, striding toward the alley, he felt almost reluctant. Eagle’s Nest had become home. There were people in town Jim cared about and would miss. But not enough to stop him from trying.
The blue box looked a little different. It was cleaner than he remembered. The blue was richer. There was a light on inside the box and Jim heard a masculine voice within.
“Are you sure this time? Because I haven’t forgotten what happened when you said we were in Rio.”
The door flew open and a young man peered out. It wasn’t the man Jim was looking for. The man saw Jim and froze for a moment. Then he gave an odd wave. “Uh. Hi.”
Jim hadn’t heard someone say hi for hello for five years. Weird the things you miss. He tipped his hat to the young man. “Howdy.”
A red-headed woman appeared in the doorway beside him. “What’s up?” she asked brightly before she saw Jim. “Oh.” She stepped out into the alley. Jim noted that her clothing was definitely what he thought of as ‘modern’, though not from the year he’d left.
“Where are we?” she asked him.
Jim tipped his hat again. “Eagle’s Nest, Texas, ma’am, and about a hundred years too early for that skirt.”
She didn’t smile, but her mouth twitched as if she wanted to. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“Been waiting for this blue box for a long time. I wasn’t expecting you, though.”
She did smile, then, and it was the kind of smile that lights up a room. “I’ll get him,” she offered.
“If you’re staying, ma’am, better change your clothes. This is a frontier town. Conservative.”
She narrowed her eyes but didn’t reply. Instead she disappeared back into the box with a flick of her flame-red hair.
“So, uh,” the blonde man said awkwardly, “not New York, then.”
Jim grinned. “I reckon you overshot by a few miles. He offered his hand. “Jim Ellison. I’m the sheriff of Eagle’s Nest. At least for now.”
“Rory Williams.” He shook Jim’s hand with a firm, confident grip. “My wife is Amy Pond. You know the Doctor?”
He and his wife used different surnames. They were most likely from Jim’s future, then. Both spoke with British accents, but from different regions. Jim filed the information away automatically and answered Rory’s question, “We met five years ago.” He thought about that, then corrected himself. “Or a long way in the future.”
Jim could see Rory was ready to ask another question, but that was when the door opened wide and the Doctor appeared. He looked the same. As closely as Jim remembered, he was wearing the same clothes he had been in when they met. But he gave no sign he recognised Jim. He didn’t even say hello. Instead, he turned to the woman – Amy – with a sunny smile.
“I told you. Stetsons are cool!” the Doctor declared.
“In these parts, it’s just clothing,” Jim pointed out. “Doctor, we’ve been waiting for you a long time.” He couldn’t keep his voice entirely free of pique.
Amy snorted. “I waited twelve years.”
“But I did come back!” the Doctor protested. He studied Jim curiously.
Jim didn’t like the implications of that look. “You don’t remember me, do you?” he challenged.
“We haven’t met.”
“You brought me and my partner here!”
“If I did, that’s my future. Your past. It happens that way sometimes.”
“Is he like River?” Amy asked eagerly.
“There is only one River Song,” the Doctor answered.
“Doctor,” Jim interrupted.
“Yes,” he said briskly. “You can tell me about it inside. Amy, Rory, try and stay out of trouble.”
Jim glanced at the girl’s skirt again. Trouble would find her. “Uh, let’s go back to my place,” he offered. “I’ll introduce you to my partner.”
***
It wasn’t even dawn Jim had brought home guests for breakfast. But Blair was used to improvising. He cooked up a batch of oatmeal, salt beef and tea. The tea was made from local herbs, not imported from China, but it wasn’t bad.
At the table, Jim sat beside the Doctor, with Amy and Rory on the other side of the table. She was now wearing one of Molly’s old dresses. Jim and Blair saved Molly from bandits and she had lived with them for a while. The green-dyed cotton suited Amy’s complexion. She’d complained about the corset, but Blair noticed her husband seemed to appreciate it.
Blair served the oatmeal in a giant bowl so everyone could help themselves. He poured tea for everyone and took his seat beside Jim.
Jim was in the middle of telling their story. “…So we ran. What else could we do? Next thing I know there’s this blue box in front of us and a crazy man leaning out of it telling us to get inside.”
“And you did?” Rory said with a laugh and a glance at the Doctor.
Blair answered. “I wouldn’t have trusted him for a second. But Jim ran ahead of me.”
Jim smiled. “Well, I could see a few things you didn’t.”
Blair grinned back and picked up the story. “The Doctor told us to hold tight to something. Thirty seconds later we were just outside Eagle’s Nest. He told us he had to go back and stop them, and promised to come back for us.”
“Five years ago,” Jim pointed out.
Amy laughed. “You’re lucky.”
The Doctor, who had been very quiet, said, “The Tardis can pinpoint an exact point in space and time, but she won’t always home in on it perfectly.”
“You didn’t come back for us tonight, did you?” Blair realised.
“I’m a time traveller. What happened for you in 1999 is in my future. I couldn’t come back for you because I didn’t know you were here until we landed.” But then he smiled. “I’ll still take you home, if you’re ready to leave.”
“We’re ready,” Jim said at once.
“Come on, man. It’s not that bad here!” Blair was ready to leave, too. But he loved living in the wild west. It was an anthropologist’s dream: he was literally living in history. He’d spent time with the Comanche and learned how their sentinels worked together. He’d been able to study Frontier American society from the inside. He loved every second of it, even as he missed Naomi and Simon and all their friends back in Cascade.
Jim laid a warm hand on Blair’s thigh. “It’s not that bad being sheriff in a frontier town,” he conceded, “and I will miss it. But I want to live someplace where we can be out of the closet.”
Blair pulled a face. “I hear you,” he agreed fervently. Most of the town had assumed Jim and Molly were a couple while she lived with them. It hadn’t been planned that way, and in public they all denied the rumours, but they knew denial was considered confirmation by many and the deception was useful.
“But before we go,” Jim went on, “Doctor, what do you know about a creature no one can remember seeing?”
Blair expected the Doctor to be confused by the nonsensical question, but the Doctor sat up straight. “What creatures?” he asked sharply.
Blair knew, because Jim had told him, but he still felt weird about Jim mentioning it. It sounded insane, after all.
Jim answered matter-of-factly. “Tall. Humanoid. White skin, great hollows for eyes. No nose or mouth. Three fingers on each hand. It has a slower metabolism than humans, heart rate about twenty per minute. Body temperature cool, but warm-blooded. It smells sweet, like jasmine.”
“Silence,” Amy said, but it wasn’t an order. She sounded scared. She looked down at her hands, turning them over as if something was missing. She pushed up her sleeves and stared at her own arms.
Rory leaned close to her. “It’s alright, Amy. None of us is marked.”
“Marked?” Jim asked.
“We mark our skin when we see them,” Rory explained. “It’s the only way to know.”
“No one who sees the Silence remembers them,” the Doctor asserted. “Not even me. So how is it you’ve managed to study one so closely and remember?”
Jim looked at Blair as if asking his permission. Blair nodded. There was no reason to keep Jim’s secret from these people.
“I’m a sentinel,” Jim said, looking at the Doctor.
Blair could see the young couple didn’t understand, but the Doctor’s face lit up with excitement.
“Of course! You would have an eidetic sensory memory that even the Silence couldn’t override. It’s in your genetic makeup. Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“But we defeated the Silence,” Rory said.
“In 1969,” the Doctor answered, with no trace of condescension. “Here and now, they are still everywhere, manipulating human history.”
“Stop,” Blair interrupted. “What’s the Silence? I know better than to doubt Jim’s senses, but I’ve never seen this thing.”
“You have,” Rory told him. “You just don’t remember seeing them. That’s the point. The instant you look away, you forget what you’ve seen.”
Blair looked at Rory sceptically. That story had more holes in it than a broken basket. “If you can’t remember seeing them, how could you recognise it from Jim’s description?” Blair challenged.
“We don’t, not really,” Amy answered. “We’ve put it together by leaving ourselves messages. Each time we saw one, we’d record a bit more. But even that, you forget after a while. What makes you different?” The last was directed to Jim.
“I’m a sentinel,” he said again, then explained. “It’s a genetic gift. All my senses are…well, much stronger than a normal person.”
It was typical of Jim to understate it like that. Blair opened his mouth to tell the truth, but the Doctor got there first.
“If he’s a true sentinel, Jim is aware of more than you can imagine, and his brain records all of it, every detail. It’s the basic nature of the Silence that we all forget them. But it’s the basic nature of a sentinel to forget nothing. There’s a conflict, but the sentinel is stronger because his ability is active. The Silence is passive.”
“My memory isn’t that good,” Jim objected.
“Yes it is, Jim,” Blair told him. “It’s not conscious. It can’t be – you’d be overwhelmed by it the way…the way Alex was. But if I help you focus, you can go back to any time and remember every detail. You know you can.”
Jim thought about it and nodded. “You’re right,” he conceded.
“So you can remember the Silence as long as you see them for yourself,” the Doctor explained. “How many of them are here?”
Jim frowned. “I’ve only ever seen one at a time, so maybe only one. But it doesn’t always look the same. Details change. Clothing, the shades of its skin. Maybe that’s normal for them and there’s just one. Or there could be six different ones. I call it The Watcher because mostly that’s all it does. Watch people.”
“If it knew you were from the future it would kill you both. We’d better get you back to your own time. There are none of them left in 1999.”
Blair frowned, “Because you defeated them in 1969?”
“No! Not defeated. I used their power of post-hypnotic suggestion together with a famous moment in history to kill them. It was a brilliant plan, but it has a downside. I can’t do anything to keep them off Earth before that moment. Like now.”
Blair shook his head. “I think you lost me.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Rory told him with a smile.
“I still want to know what they’re up to, though,” the Doctor continued, ignoring the interruption. “Let’s go.” He bounced to his feet.
Everyone else remained seated. Jim leaned back in his chair. “Go where, exactly?”
“Wherever you’ve seen the Silence.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now!”
Jim smiled, but Blair could see his stubborn streak kicking in. “Doctor, it’s been here for five years. It isn’t going anywhere and it’s dark out there. Unless your night vision is as good as mine or better, sit down and wait for dawn.”
The Doctor glanced toward the door, evidently jittery, then back to Jim. He sat down. “Not that good, no,” he muttered grumpily.
***
Jim cinched the saddle into place and hooked a spare gun belt over the pommel. He stroked the horse’s neck gently, feeling his eagerness in his quivering muscles. Blair had named their horses: Enqueri and Chief, a kind of private joke and reminder of the world they had left. They were Comanche horses: the Comanche were horse breeders and traders and, knowing they were dealing with a sentinel, they had offered Jim their very best. Enqueri was a chestnut gelding, powerful and fast. It had taken them a while to get used to each other, but now Jim found he could almost read the horse’s mind, the subtle signals of movement, scent and breath as clear to his senses as language. In return, Enqueri was responsive to Jim’s every command. They were good friends.
Jim turned to Blair, who handed him a water-skin and a cloth-wrapped bundle.
“I know you said a day, but…” Blair shrugged.
Jim smiled. “We won’t be delayed, Chief. I promise. But I’ll take the food anyway. You be ready when we get back.”
Blair nodded. “We don’t have much to pack, but we can’t leave here without tying up some loose ends. You want to hand your badge to Roy?”
“Yes. He won’t want it, but he’s the best man to take over.” Jim packed the food into a saddlebag. He reached out to Blair. They did not kiss. It had been hard enough to break the habit and though the stable was private, they wouldn’t risk it. Instead, Jim clasped Blair’s shoulder firmly. He could gauge Blair’s mood from the tension – or lack of it – in the muscle beneath his palm. Blair was relaxed, untroubled in spite of his outward fussing. Blair raised a hand to his shoulder, but brief brush of his fingers over Jim’s said everything a kiss could. Jim smiled. They didn’t need words.
Jim mounted Enqueri with the graceful ease of long practice. He smiled down at Blair, a promise to return quickly, and urged the horse into motion. The Doctor, riding Blair’s mount, Chief, followed him.
Jim could understand the Doctor’s eagerness to use his sentinel gift. It had to be frustrating to have an enemy you couldn’t hunt down. Until the Doctor’s return, though Jim had been aware of the creature called the Silence, he hadn’t thought of it as a threat. The Silence, so far as he knew, never harmed anyone. It just watched. But perhaps Jim hadn’t been paying enough attention. He had assumed it was just one creature; the Doctor said there could be hundreds. If they could manipulate people, the Silence didn’t have to do harm directly.
So Jim agreed to show the Doctor the places where the Silence were most often seen. For Jim, that meant the foothills above the town.
“Will bullets kill these critters?” Jim asked as they rode side by side, heading out of town.
“Probably,” the Doctor answered. “Being shot hurts them, but I don’t know if we’ve ever managed to kill one. I can’t remember it.”
Jim greeted Ed as they passed the hardware store, but didn’t stop to chat. “What are we going to do if we find one?” he asked the Doctor.
“Find out if it’s alone,” the Doctor answered at once, “and then make it up as we go. If it’s a threat I’ll try to kill it, but only if I can figure out how to do it without blowing your cover. I can’t risk changing the future this time.”
The possibilities implied by that made Jim’s head spin and his blood run cold. Blair might get a kick out of the paradox, but it scared Jim to death. If there was a future version of the Doctor who brought him and Blair to Eagle’s Nest in the first place, couldn’t they be changing that future right now? What would that mean?
Once out of town, Jim signalled a gallop and they rode for the foothills. The earth was iron-rich, red and dry so the horses’ hooves kicked up a cloud of dust around them as they rode. Jim raised his kerchief over his nose and mouth to avoid breathing the dust, but didn’t slow. The Doctor kept pace with him.
Only when they reached the foothills did Jim slow the horses to a trot. He pulled the kerchief down and transferred the reins to his left hand before he loosed the gun in his holster. He glanced back, once, to make sure the Doctor was riding well, and then extended his senses into the hills ahead of them. He scanned ahead as far as he could see, letting his hearing piggyback on his sight. He heard the eagles cry as the rode the thermals high above, saw small animals in the brush, heard the hiss of a snake and the bubbling of an underground creek. He detected people far to the east, but no one close.
“The gun isn’t necessary,” the Doctor said. Though he spoke quietly, his voice boomed in Jim’s head.
Jim cursed inwardly and dialled his senses back to a more normal level. “You’re a time traveller. Don’t you know the history of this place?”
“I haven’t been here before!” the Doctor said defensively, which Jim took as a no.
“This is Comanche territory. There’s a treaty and we trade with them for horses, but we still have raids and skirmishes.”
The Doctor took a moment to process that. “You would know well in advance if there was an attack force near.”
“Not if you keep yelling,” Jim growled.
The trail narrowed as they rode higher and Jim slowed the horses to a walk. Here, there was a lot of loose scree on the trail and the horses’ hooves slipped a little as they went. They entered a narrow gully, the rocky walls on either side rising high above them. This was the part of the journey Jim was nervous about: it was such a perfect place for an ambush. But he sensed no one nearby and they came through the gully without incident. From there, Jim took a trail that angled steeply upward. As he came to a place where it widened enough for the horses to walk two abreast, he stopped and waited for the Doctor to come alongside.
“Over there,” Jim pointed to a different trail below them, “was the first time I saw it. I was escorting a caravan to the railroad.” He turned toward the rocky plateau above them. “It was up there, watching us the whole way. I thought it was a Comanche scout at first, but when I got a good look I could tell it wasn’t human. After, I rode up here to see what kind of trail it left, but I didn’t find any sign of it.”
The Doctor pointed some kind of metal wand toward the plateau. Jim winced as a high-pitched scream came from the gadget and it glowed briefly. Pain pierced Jim’s skull and he raised both hands to his ears. The Doctor glanced at the instrument as the sound died away.
“What is that?” Jim asked, still holding his head.
“Sonic screwdriver,” the Doctor answered, which told Jim exactly nothing. But sonic explained the scream in his head. “Warn a man next time, will you. That damn hurt!”
The Doctor looked confused but only for an instant. “Oh. Right. Sorry.” He stared at the ‘screwdriver’ for a few moments. “There’s a cavern under the plateau,” he said. “Do you know the way in?”
Jim hadn’t known a cavern existed, but he shrugged. “Reckon I can find it,” he agreed.
Dismounting, Jim stroked Enqueri’s neck in unspoken thanks. A truck might be faster, but he enjoyed travelling on horseback. There was something special about the relationship with a horse; though the horse obeyed him it felt like a relationship of equals, and he was careful to let Enqueri know his efforts were appreciated. Jim tied the reins loosely around the pommel so they wouldn’t tangle in the brush if the horse wandered. He left him to graze, though there was little enough forage up here.
The Doctor waited, still in the saddle.
Jim looked up to him. “Am I searching for a cavern or some kind of alien technology?”
“I don’t know. It could be either, but it will look like it belongs here.”
Jim nodded at the unhelpful information. He wasn’t going to search with his sight. He walked to the place where he had seen the creature watching so many years before. He closed his eyes for a moment, calling up the memory. It had been a hot day – a bad day to travel. Jim rode beside the caravan, sweating, his Stetson pulled down to shield his eyes. Every thirty seconds or so, he did a quick visual sweep, and that was how he saw the strange figure on the rocky plateau. It was a silhouette against the bright sky but even from that distance to Jim’s sentinel sight it didn’t appear entirely human. It was too tall, its head too large. And still. The creature had been completely still.
Jim walked across the plateau to where the creature had been standing that day. He knew he would find no visible trail: it had been years ago and Jim came up here then to try to find it, and failed to find anything. Which suggested that either the creature had beamed out of there, Star Trek style, it could fly or it left the plateau without walking. Jim knelt on the ground and laid his hand on the rock, spreading his fingers wide and opening his sense of touch as completely as he dared. The weight of clothing against his skin became irritating but he pushed that aside. He felt the dust on his palm, little pieces of grit in the creases of his skin. He felt the warmth of the sun on his back and the radiant heat it drew from the rock. They were surface things, unimportant, but he had to notice them in order to filter them out. He quested below the ground, searching out the cavern the Doctor said was there. He felt small tremors in the ground. Yes, there was something down there.
If he couldn’t find the way in by touch, and he couldn’t see it…
They smelled like jasmine. Jim sought out the scent. Out here, so far from other people, it was easy to catalogue everything he could smell: the dust, plants, wildlife, the horses and leather. And the faintest trace of jasmine. Jim rose to his feet and followed the scent, moving slowly across the plateau. As so often happened when he worked as a sentinel, he forgot everything but the scent he was tracking. The Doctor, the horses, even the creature he might find at the end of the trail were forgotten. Blair would have kept his mind on the danger, but Blair was still in town.
The scent of jasmine led him to the other side of the plateau. Here, the plateau sloped downward in a gentle gradient, but then broke in a steep drop-off with an angle or around sixty degrees. It was climbable, but dangerous and it was a long way to fall. Jim started over the edge, focussed on the scent trail. The ground moved under his boots. Adrenaline flooded him and instinctively Jim crouched, reaching down with both hands for balance.
“Jim!” the Doctor shouted.
The fear in his voice, together with the adrenaline rush jerked Jim back to full awareness. He wasn’t falling. The ground under him was sinking into the plateau with the smooth, silent motion of an elevator.
“I think I found your entrance,” Jim called back.
***
The hatch closed, plunging them both into darkness, but Jim’s eyes adjusted quickly. Beside him, the Doctor muttered something about the dark and raised his screwdriver. Jim braced for another burst of pain but the gadget only glowed brightly as the Doctor pointed it like a flashlight. Jim blinked, his vision adjusting to the increased light. Then he smelled jasmine, thick and cloying. It was close…or there were a lot of them. The Doctor stepped forward, intending to pass Jim.
Jim grabbed his shoulder. “Wait! They’re here.”
“I don’t see – ”
Jim interrupted impatiently. “Neither do I. I smell them.” He kept his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “Let me go first.”
“You’re – ”
“I’m the sentinel,” Jim insisted.
“Good point. Go ahead.”
Jim moved past him. “This isn’t a natural cave,” he said as they walked. “The walls are smooth, like metal. I can’t see tool marks or rivets, so it wasn’t built with today’s technology.” He stopped walking, holding up a hand in a “stop” signal. “I hear something…I think it’s them.”
“What do you hear?” the Doctor asked quietly, moving up to Jim’s side.
“It’s hard to describe. Breathing, I think. Maybe voices. Not words.” It sounded like Darth Vader battling a chipmunk, but Jim thought it best not to voice that description.
“If this is like the tunnels we found in 1969 there will be a door or a hatch,” the Doctor said tensely.
The passage sloped down sharply, but there were no stairs. Jim laid one hand on the wall for balance as they continued downward. All his senses were alert. The smell of jasmine was strong, but beneath that he began to detect something else. A familiar scent that seemed as out of place as the jasmine. Something from his life in Cascade. Banana? He searched his memory, and as the scent deepened he got it. Not banana, though it was similar. Something much more ominous.
It was nitroglycerin. Dynamite.
***
Once Amy got over her pique about the dress, she loved being in the Wild West. The town wasn’t much: houses, stores, saloon and a church all on a single street. But it was so very real. She’d seen this street in a hundred movies, but that was nothing to walking down it, her shoes gathering dust, the sun beating down on her shoulders, smelling horses and livestock, tripping over chickens running wild in the street. And there were the people: women in long dresses and colourful shawls, men in cowboy hats with guns hanging from belts and shiny spurs on their boots. So much more fun than Venice.
She almost danced down the street with Rory walking more sedately at her side and Blair a few paces behind them.
“This place is amazing!” Amy declared.
“Straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie,” Rory agreed.
“It’s not Rawhide,” Blair pointed out, keeping his voice low. “It’s real, and you need to be a lot tougher than Clint when things get bad around here.”
Rory frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The Comanche raided the Barstow ranch a month ago.” Blair indicated the direction with a nod of his head. “The house burned to the ground. Four people died.”
Rory looked where Blair pointed, but there was little left to see. That was Blair’s point. All that remained of the ranch were the fields and fences and scorched earth.
“Comanche?” Rory repeated. “As in Native American?”
Blair smiled. “You won’t hear that term around here, but yeah. Jim thinks the raid was retaliatory, but we couldn’t prove it.”
“I see why you’re so keen to go home,” Rory commented.
Blair laughed. “No way, man. This is way safer than Cascade. No, I want to go home because that’s where our friends and family are. And because this isn’t a good place to be gay. I’ll miss it, though.”
Amy raised a hand to shield her eyes as she gazed up at the hills. “We should have gone with them.”
“There were only two horses,” Blair reminded her. “They’ll be – ” he broke off, his eyes on the plateau. Dread filled him an instant before the roar of an explosion reached them and the plateau disappeared in flame and smoke.
“Doctor!” Amy gasped. She began to move forward as if she would run all the way there.
Rory stopped her.
Blair’s heart was beating wildly but he did his best to keep his voice steady. “Anything that could cause an explosion that big, Jim would have known it was there. They’re okay.” He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. Jim’s senses were amazing, that was true, but would he have sensed it in time to get away?
“Are you sure?” Rory asked, as if he could read Blair’s mind.
“Uh…about eighty percent,” Blair admitted.
They were not the only ones who had noticed the distant explosion. Small groups of people gathered in the street were looking up there and pointing. No one seemed very concerned, though.
“We should go. They might need help.” Amy shook off Rory’s restraining hand.
Blair agreed with her. “Can either of you fly that blue box?”
Amy answered, “No.”
“Then, can you both ride?”
Amy nodded. So did Rory but he added, “A little.”
“Alright. I’ll try to borrow some horses. Go back to the house and pack us some food, water and blankets. If someone’s hurt, we might be out there overnight.”
By the time Blair had talked Everson into loaning him three horses it was later than he liked. He’d been hoping Jim would show up and save them a trip but there was no sign of him. He held the horse for Amy while she mounted and couldn’t help grinning as she cursed the dress she wore. On her second attempt, she got herself into the saddle. Blair looked her over and was relieved to see she had a good seat. He mounted his horse and waited for Rory.
Rory moved his horse alongside Blair. “I’m a nurse. If he’s hurt…”
Blair nodded. “Jim was a field medic. If the Doctor is hurt, he’ll know what to do.”
“The Doctor isn’t human.”
“No kidding. Jim’s senses are as good as a hospital lab.”
Amy interrupted them. “Are you boys going to stay and chat, or can we go?”
“Let’s go,” Blair agreed. He signalled a gallop and they left the town in their dust.
***
When they reached the hills, Blair slowed his horse to give the others a chance to catch up. He studied the ground while he waited, hoping to find some sign of Jim’s passing. It was possible the explosion was a coincidence and Jim hadn’t gone that way. Blair wanted to be sure before he took this young couple into danger.
He dismounted and walked toward the place where the track diverged then crouched down to examine the ground. Blair was rarely called upon to track: Jim was so much better at it. But Jim taught him what to look for, and others had taught Blair what they knew. He was an adequate tracker. He could see the marks of horses’ hooves in the dust but they were not fresh.
“What’s wrong?” Rory asked as he and Amy came alongside.
Blair explained, still looking at the ground.
“But we know where they went,” Amy objected, looking up at the plateau. There was no more flame visible, but smoke still rose in a black column from the rock.
“We’re assuming, Amy. Jim didn’t say exactly where they were going.” But Blair had found nothing to track on the dry ground, so he had no better ideas. He was about to say so, when he heard a horse coming. “Never mind.”
Enqueri was walking, with both Jim and the Doctor on his back. That was strange enough that Blair mounted up again and cantered up the track to meet them. Where was Chief?
As he came close to them, Blair saw blood on Jim’s shirt. Both of them were dirty, their clothing scorched. They’d been near that explosion.
Blair moved his horse alongside and reached for his lover. “Jim?”
The Doctor spoke quietly, “He’s hurt, but it’s not bad. The explosion overwhelmed his hearing.”
Blair looked to Jim, who nodded without speaking. Blair understood. Something that loud was bad for normal hearing. It wasn’t at all uncommon for someone in proximity to a large explosion to lose their hearing for some time afterwards. For Jim…if he’d known it was coming he might have had time to protect himself. But if he hadn’t, it would be worse, so much worse, than for someone with normal senses. Any damage to his hearing should be temporary – Jim’s senses adapted remarkably well – but it might last longer than it would for most people. Blair guessed from the Doctor’s quiet tone that sounds were painful for Jim right now, so he didn’t speak. With Jim, he didn’t need words anyway, but his first worry wasn’t Jim’s hearing. It was the blood on his shirt.
Blair slid easily down from his horse and reached up to help Jim. Jim dismounted unsteadily and leaned heavily on Blair, still holding the saddle with his other hand.
“What happened?” Blair asked in a whisper. He tried to lift Jim’s shirt.
“Ricochet,” Jim answered, his voice tight with pain.
“Shit, Jim!” Blair signalled to Rory for help and led Jim to the side of the track where he could lie down. “He’s been shot,” Blair explained quickly when Rory joined him.
“It’s not bad,” Jim protested.
Rory knelt quickly and pulled Jim’s shirt away from the wound. “There isn’t too much blood. That’s a good sign. I need water.”
Amy was already there, offering the bottle. Rory took it from her, cleaned his hands, then examined Jim’s wound. He touched the bloody skin carefully, murmuring apologies each time Jim flinched.
Blair waited, tense, though he could tell Jim wasn’t hurt badly. Jim was hurting, but his colour was good and he was conscious. They had both been injured worse than this. Of course, that was in Cascade, where an ambulance was a mere phone call away.
When Rory looked up, his relief was plain before he spoke. “The bullet just grazed him. It’s deep and needs stitches, but there’s no sign of shrapnel in the wound and no damage to his organs.”
“Could have told you that,” Jim grated out.
“How’s your hearing?” Blair asked, giving Jim the water bottle to drink.
“Hurts. I tried to dial it back, but…”
“Yeah, I know. It’ll take time, Jim.”
Rory bandaged Jim’s wound. “This isn’t exactly sterile. We need to get you into the Tardis. I can deal with this properly there.” He looked up at the Doctor.
“The sooner we leave, the better,” the Doctor agreed.
The tension in his voice made Blair think there was more to this story. “You take my horse and go ahead,” Blair suggested. “I’ll ride with Jim and we’ll meet you at the Tardis.”
“Good idea,” the Doctor said, jumping down from Enqueri’s saddle. “Come along, Ponds!”
They changed horses and set off at a gallop, leaving Blair wondering why the Doctor was in such a hurry.
Finally alone with Jim, he kissed him. “Are you sure you’re okay, cowboy?” he asked.
“I will be.” Jim hauled himself up. “Both the horses bolted when the cavern blew,” he said. “Enqueri came to my whistle. Chief just kept going.”
“He would,” Blair answered, grateful his horse hadn’t been killed, at least. “I guess it doesn’t matter. We’re leaving anyway. What happened, Jim?”
He offered Jim his help to mount up, but Jim waved it away. He hauled himself up into the saddle. A grunt of pain escaped him and he grabbed his injured side as soon as he was seated.
“Quit trying to be a hero,” Blair snapped, and swung himself up behind Jim. “Now tell me what happened.”
As Enqueri began to walk, Jim explained. “There was a cavern under the plateau. I don’t know what else to call it, but it wasn’t natural. I think it was some sort of surveillance station. Anyway, it was packed with dynamite. One of those Watchers…Silence…saw us and it…” his voice trailed off.
Blair waited, and when Jim didn’t go on he prompted, “It saw you and…?”
“I’m still trying to figure it out. I guess it was an attack, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it. You know those plasma globes, where you touch the glass and you can see the electricity inside?”
Blair remembered them from science lab when he was a kid. A glass globe filled with neon which made the electric current visible and powered by a simple electrode in the centre. If you touched the glass, the current would be attracted to your fingers because the body conducts electricity better than the surrounding air. They were fascinating to a kid. “Yeah, I remember,” he answered.
“Well, that’s how it looked. And felt. The Silence was in the middle and the air became charged around us. I don’t know if it meant to blow the dynamite or if it’s so dumb it didn’t know how volatile that stuff is. I shot it to stop the charge building.”
“And you missed?” Blair asked, thinking that Jim didn’t miss very often.
“That’s the weird part. I didn’t miss. The Doctor claimed bullets can hurt them, but this one must have had a vest or a shield. The bullet just bounced off. The Doctor yelled at me to run and I didn’t even notice I’d been hit at first. We just had to get out before it blew.”
“So that thing is dead?”
“It was still underground when the tunnel blew. If bullets bounce off it, I guess it might be able to survive, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Good. Let’s get you home.”
***
The telephone shrilled into the silence of the bedroom and Simon jerked awake, cursing. He rolled over in bed and reached for the phone. In the darkness, he fumbled and the receiver dropped to the ground. The ringing cut off abruptly. He swore again and snapped on the bedside light before he leaned over the side of the bed and finally picked up the phone.
As he raised the phone to his ear, he glanced at his alarm clock. The red, glowing numbers told him it was nearly three in the morning. There had to be some emergency for him to be called in at this hour. Dread filled him.
“Banks,” he said into the phone. His mouth was dry and he looked for a glass of water but the glass on his nightstand held the remains of a smoked cigar.
“Simon, it’s Jim.”
For a moment, Simon’s mind went blank. Jim Ellison had, after all, been missing for more than two years. Missing, Simon always insisted, not dead, though so many had died on the night Ellison and Sandburg disappeared that the odds were very much against their survival. But they never found a body, nor even signs of a struggle, and Ellison was nothing if not a survivor. Though Simon had given up the search, having exhausted all avenues a year ago, he would not believe Ellison and Sandburg were dead without proof.
But a phone call at three o’clock in the morning was not how Simon expected to find his old friends.
Jim? his sleep-fuddled brain questioned. Jim who?
Adrenaline flooded him as he belatedly recognised the voice and understood. “Ellison?” Simon almost yelled into the phone. “Where are you? Is Sandburg with you? What the – ”
“Woah, Simon, not so loud!” Ellison said. “I know you have a lot of questions, but please listen. We need help.”
Fully awake now, Simon sat up. “Tell me what you need,” he instructed.
“We’re on the interstate where it crosses Green River out of Cascade. No ID, no money. Can you come and pick us up? I’m, uh, I’m hurt, or we’d walk.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Thank you.”
Simon found himself holding a dead phone. He hung it up and took a deep breath. Jim was alive!
And hurt, his memory supplied. Which, knowing Jim, meant something serious, but he would worry about that when he found them. Simon dressed quickly and headed out the door, his mind filling with questions and relief.
~ End ~