Doctor Who and the Empire of Glass

Doctor Who and the Empire of Glass Lane, Andy Published: 1995 Categorie(s): Fiction, Science Fiction, Time travel Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/ebooks/empireof-glass/index.shtml 1 About Lane: Andrew Lane (born 1963), who also writes as Andy Lane, is a British author and journalist. He is best known for writing a number of spin-off novels based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who (and a novel for the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood), as well as assor-ted non fiction books based upon popular film and TV franchises such as James Bond. He has also written TV storylines and scripts for the Sky One science fiction series Space Island One. Andy Lane currently lives with his wife and son in Hampshire, England. He is represented by Robert Kirby at United Agents. Source: Wikipedia Copyright: Please read the legal notice included in this e-book and/or check the copyright status in your country. Note: This book is brought to you by Feedbooks http://www.feedbooks.com Strictly for personal use, do not use this file for commercial purposes. 2 Prologue July 1587 One month. Mary Harries gazed out across the sparkling blue ocean at the depart-ing ship. From her position on the cliff she was looking down upon its deck - freshly scrubbed and glistening in the hot summer sunlight. Its sails were swollen with the breeze, and it listed slightly to one side as it began its long tack out of the harbour and its longer journey home. Gulls swooped low around its bows and, higher in the sky, the black squiggles of larger birds were wheeling and soaring. She couldn`t tell what sort of birds they were, but there was a lot about New Albion that she couldn`t recognize. Turning her attention back to the ship, she could see sailors scurry across the rigging like spiders on a cobweb. One of them turned around and gazed back toward the coast, shielding his eyes with his hand. His chest was bare, and he wore a bandana around his head. Seeing her, he waved in big, sweeping gestures. She waved too, choking back a sob. It was Jim: even at that distance she recognised his sun-bleached hair, drawn back in a tarred pig-tail and bouncing against his back as his powerful arms moved. Those arms, which had pulled her close and held her, tight. Those arms, in whose embrace she had slept on many a night. Those powerful, tender arms. One month. She blinked, and the ship was blotted out by tears as if by a sudden squall. They spilled, hot and salty, down her cheeks and across her lips, and it was like tasting the salt on Jim`s skin again as her mouth explored his body. A sudden sob made her shoulders convulse. Grief and loss twisted her stomach, and she hugged herself despite the heat that made her dress stick to her body, wishing that her arms were Jim`s arms and her tears were his lips. But it would never be so again. One month. That`s how long she and Jim had been given together. That was how long it had been since the ship docked and the colonists had emerged, blinking and unsteady, into the heavy heat and the ever-present humid-ity. The voyage from England had taken three months, and of the seven score and ten colonists who had started the journey, the inspirational words of Sir Walter Ralegh still ringing in their ears, almost two score were now held in the bosom of Jesus. The rest had followed Governor White onto the soil of New Albion. While he sketched the strange new 3 plants and the strange, rust-skinned primitives, they had built their cab-ins and planted their crops. The sailors - who, on the ship, had laughed at them and called them `puke-stockings` - watched at first, amused, but after a few days some had joined in, lending their expertise and their strength. Mary had been cooking one night when Jim had walked over and told her that she was beautiful. He had a sailor`s directness and a sailor`s weatherbeaten face, but he had the eyes of an angel, and nobody had ever told her that before. She had been happy, for a while. So happy that she hadn`t minded rising at dawn and working until long after the sun had set, trying to put the colony on a firm footing. Then the fever came, and the crops showed no sign of growing, and some of the sheep that they had brought with them from England sickened and died, and Governor White had decided to return to England when the ship left and ask advice. And the perfect idyll of hard days working and long nights spent in Jim`s arms were at an end. The ship was smaller now, and Mary`s eyes were half-blinded by the sparkle of the sun on the water, but she could still see Jim`s arm waving. It would be six months at least before Governor White returned, and it might not even be on the same ship. Perhaps the colony would survive, or Good Queen Bess might decide that it was not worth sustaining. Wherever she ended up, Mary knew that it would not be with Jim. A movement in the sky caught Mary`s attention. Glancing up, she no-ticed that the large birds were swooping lower, almost as if they had been waiting for the ship to leave. She dismissed the notion as fanciful: even in the New World, birds were just birds. Casting one last glance at the departing ship - just a piece of flotsam, dark against the blue of the waves - she turned away toward the trees that hid the settlement. No doubt there would be half a hundred things to do when she got back. There always were. Governor White`s daughter was almost seven months with child now, her belly stretched like the canvas of the ship`s sails, and she was almost unable to work. That meant more for the rest of the women to do. More to do and nothing to show for it, not even a pair of strong arms in the night. The birds were plunging down behind the treeline now, and it oc-curred to Mary that they were larger than any birds that she had ever seen before. Their bodies looked more like the shells of crabs, and their wings were the red of fresh blood. Perhaps the tears gumming her eye-lashes together were magnifying things, or perhaps her grief at losing 4 Jim was unhinging her reason, but surely no bird that ever flew looked likethat . Mary began to move faster through the underbrush towards the trees, and the path that led to the settlement. Bushes whipped at her legs, scratching her as she broke into a stumbling run. Someone in the settle-ment had started to scream like a pig about to be slaughtered, and be-hind the screams Mary could hear the flapping of huge wings. What was happening? What in God`s good name was happening? She was barely ten feet from the trees when the demon settled to the ground in front of her, furling its wings across its hard, red back. Eyes on the end of stalks, like those of a snail, regarded her curiously. And as its claws reached out for her, she screamed. And screamed. And for all the years following that moment, after everything that was done to her, in her head she still screamed. August, 1592 Matt Jobswortham pulled back on the horse`s reins, slowing his dray down by just a jot. The streets of Deptford were crowded with people going about their business - some in fine clothes, some in sailors` garb, some in rags - and he didn`t want any of them going under his wheels. The barrels of cider on the back of the dray were so heavy that the wheels were already cutting great ruts in the road. They would cut through a limb with equal ease and what would happen to him then, eh? He`d be finished for sure, banged up in prison for months until someone bothered to determine whether or not there was a case to answer. He glanced around, impressed as ever with the bustle of the place. Deptford was near London, and the houses reflected that proximity. Why, some of them were three storeys or more! All these people, living above each other in small rooms, day in and day out. It wasn`t natural. He liked coming to London, but he wouldn`t like to live there. Give him his farmhouse any day. It was a hot day, and he could smell something thick and cloying on the back of the wind, like an animal that had been dead for weeks. It was the river of course. He`d crossed it a good half hour before, but he could still smell it. Raw with sewage it was, raw and stinking, like a festering wound running through the centre of the city. He didn`t know how people here could stand it. Matt had been on the road since dawn, bringing the barrels up from Sussex. He`d been dreaming of the cider: imagining the sharp, bitter taste of it as it cut through the dirt in his mouth and the sewer smell at the 5 ... - tailieumienphi.vn