‘Well,’ said the Doctor, ‘I’ll tell you what I know. These lines in the air here … they are the timelines. Here’s your progress through history, mapped into five dimensions, see? And this is the life of your mother, Gladys Presley.’

  ‘It seems so little, compared …’

  ‘And here are the calls you made using this phone that I … erm, my colleagues gave you when you were young. See how the calls are spread evenly along your timeline, but their recipient gets them all in one afternoon? Back in 1958?’

  ‘Time has stood still for Mama,’ he nodded. ‘That’s what I always figured. Somehow … magically … she was caught forever in that golden afternoon, of that final day.’

  Graham stared at him. ‘You thought it was something magical?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘I thought it was God, or the universe, or something. Allowing me to carry on talking to Mama, and receiving her best wishes and all her love, throughout my life. I thought it was a special thing only for us, that only I knew about.’

  ‘That’s amazing …!’ Ryan breathed.

  ‘I think it sounds lovely,’ said Yaz. ‘But surely you knew it couldn’t really have been magic?’

  Elvis suddenly looked tearful. ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I have believed in magic all my life? I’m just a boy from a wooden shack in Tupelo, Mississippi. Why should I become the one that the whole world listens to? Isn’t there a kind of magic in that? Why shouldn’t I end up believing in all kinds of impossible things? How could I even tell what’s real?’

  ‘He’s got a point,’ Graham mused.

  Elvis sobbed, and those lights around his silhouette glittered sharply. ‘When I got the news she was dying, I raced to be at her side. I left my barracks and dropped everything. I drove as fast as I could. But I never made it in time. I never saw her again, face to face. It broke my heart in two.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘But I learned that I could still talk to her. And she could talk to me.’

  ‘When did you realise that?’ the Doctor asked. She knew deep down that it was hopeless to keep flipping back through time, searching for the turning points … They had to go back to the critical moment, the day when time was chipped away by the future hammering at the past. It was the moment that this miracle needed nipping in the bud.

  ‘Germany,’ he said. ‘About a month after the funeral. The army took me all the way to Germany, and Daddy too. And I was just so lonely. I went out of my head, just about. And … one night … without even thinking about it … I was in my room, a little drunk on German beer. I took out that phone and I pressed the green button. Like it could still work. It rang only three times and then … she answered … !’

  They travelled next to 1960 and a certain American military base stuck out in the middle of Germany where it was pouring with rain. They arrived just in time to see a young Elvis Presley singing his heart out for his fellow recruits, on a cobbled-together stage on the parade ground in a lull between downpours. His face was wet when he sang, as he wept for the thought that his mama would never hear him sing again.

  ‘Bit different to being at Wembley Stadium,’ Graham said ruefully, as the show finished. However humble the staging, though, Elvis’s performance had been magnificent.

  It was that night, after the show, when everyone had slapped his back and ruffled his shorn hair, that Elvis sloped off to the furthest corner of the barracks and pressed the green button on his phone. Even though his mama was dead as far as the whole world knew, he was still phoning her, to keep her abreast of his news.

  The Doctor and her friends were just a few yards away, listening in on this moment. The older Elvis was there too, shining in the rain like his body was filled with stardust: remembering every single second of this strange episode.

  ‘Elvis …? Is that you, my boy?’

  Sometimes the young man felt like he was losing his mind. It couldn’t be her. It was just impossible. And yet, here she was still, each time he pressed that green button: still alive.

  ‘Mama, you’re still there …?’

  She calmly, happily, answered his questions. Then he replied to hers. She was amazed to learn he was in Germany. She was astonished to hear that his father was there too. She was glad that he had met the girl of his dreams in Priscilla. And then she was amazed and enchanted to learn that he was speaking to her from the year 1960.

  ‘The future … !’ she gasped, realising full well that she herself wasn’t in it.

  The revelation and the gap of time between them set them both off crying again. The distance seemed too cruel. But then she was the one to calm them both. To make it seem better again with coaxing words, the way she always had done. ‘Elvis, sweetheart … listen … we have a wonderful gift here. This is a wonderful thing. Whatever this is … this link between us … it’s a way of cheating the end, don’t you see? It’s proof, somehow … that the link between us will never end …’

  ‘I see that,’ he said, choking with grief all over again. ‘I know that, Mama.’

  Eventually they finished the call, and he promised he would ring again soon. ‘Don’t you forget!’ she laughed, and then the line clicked and he was left alone in the foreign rain.

  The Doctor and her friends watched the young man walk home to his bed in the little house on the military base.

  ‘I remember how I felt,’ old Elvis said, his voice full of wonder. ‘I thought it was a miracle, every time we got to talk again.’

  The Doctor touched his arm gently. ‘You must take the phone off him,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to sneak into your own house while he sleeps and retrieve that phone. That’s the way to set history right.’

  They waited outside the house while the older Elvis snuck indoors to complete his mission. He was really glowing now. Flickering blue, like old-fashioned television pictures reflected on the wall.

  ‘He’s fading away, isn’t he?’ said Yaz.

  The Doctor nodded ruefully. ‘Older, healthier, wiser Elvis is becoming more and more hypothetical as his timeline corrodes and history returns to its proper order.’

  Graham sighed. ‘Is there no way of saving him, Doc? That old guy’s lived to a contented old age. Does he really have to fade away?’

  She smiled sadly. ‘It happens to everyone, Graham.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘Well. It’s not all been bad, has it – I mean, for him it’s five years since he lent the phone to Frank Sinatra, and if you hadn’t gotten hold of him …’

  ‘Elvis said he got Frankie to sing down the phone to his mum to surprise her – she was a big fan.’ Ryan laughed. ‘That must’ve blown her mind!’

  They waited for Elvis to creep like a lambent blue ghost to his own bedside and spirit the mobile phone away. It took longer than they expected, and it was a worry: maybe he’d decided not to bother. Maybe he wanted to save his own skin. Maybe the younger self had awakened and caught a glimpse of the old man stealing into the room and haunting himself?

  ‘It’s crazy,’ the Doctor sighed. ‘All these years I’ve faced menaces and villains who want to change history to their own advantage, and who tamper with the web of time. And here’s one who’s been most effective of all, and it’s someone’s mum. And all she’s done to create vast cosmic ripples is to carry on chatting to her son after her death. She’s guided him with love and good advice, and that’s changed history. Telling him to lay off the sleeping pills and the prescription drugs and the booze and the hamburgers and all the things that made him ill.’

  ‘I bet she told him to sack that manager of his, the Colonel, too,’ Graham said. ‘I bet it was her who did that.’

  ‘And when he marries Priscilla, she’d have told him not to let her get away,’ the Doctor added. ‘Because, you know, in the real universe, he loses her. He neglects her and he loses her. And everything winds up going wrong for him. He makes a brilliant comeback or two, and everyone loves him, but then …’

  ‘Will our memories change?’ Yaz asked. ‘Will we always think he died forty years ago or …?’

  Graham coughed. ‘Shush now, he’s coming back.’

  The lonesome ghost in the one-piece suit was doddering out of the front door. The Doctor dashed to meet him. ‘Did you get the phone?’

  He held it up almost reluctantly. ‘I got it.’

  She made as if to take it. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

  ‘But if I give you this, everything in my life will be different, won’t it? I’ll miss out on all those calls. All that advice my mama gave me from beyond the grave?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘But you say it’s important that I give it back to you? That I forgo that miracle? For the sake of the rest of the world?’

  She smiled gently. ‘That’s right. I meant it. Small things can cause big ripples. The changes that the phones caused in your life will make wars happen. Bombs will fall. People will die. History will go wrong. I mean it, Elvis. It’s deadly serious, this business.’

  He nodded, looking amazed and shocked. Then he said, ‘Then if I do lose my miracle forever, will you grant me one more wish with your magic time machine, Doctor?’

  He handed her the phone and took her arm and she felt him pulsating and glowing with light as she led him and the others back to the TARDIS.

  Minutes later they were in Graceland, halfway round the world in Memphis, and two years earlier in time.

  ‘Glory be,’ Elvis breathed, as they stepped out onto the manicured lawn into purple twilight. ‘I’m home again.’

  It was the Graceland of his youth: just how it was when he was a young man, soon after buying the home of his dreams.

  Beyond the portico and the tall white pillars all the lights were burning a warm apricot and yellow.

  ‘Will you come with me and meet her?’ the King asked his new friends.

  So they entered the palace together in the hush of early evening and found the whole house in eerie silence.

  ‘There’s no sign of Daddy, or the servants or anyone else,’ the elderly Elvis observed. ‘They say she sent everyone away. She knew it was the end. She knew it was the final day. She was tired from everything. From fighting her sickness, and all the tears. And she was tired, too, from talking all day on the phone. All day she had listened to her boy getting older and older, growing from a boy to a man to a much older man: living a whole lifetime in just one day.’

  The Doctor smiled, gazing around at the opulent splendour of the rooms of Elvis’s mansion. ‘A whole lifetime in just one day. That’s a wonder in itself.’

  He led the way upstairs to his mama’s private room.

  Inside it was like a cosy little grotto of warm light. Everything was comfortable and delightful. She had everything she needed.

  At least, she had everything she needed now.

  ‘My son,’ she said, as soon as the door opened. She recognised him at once. ‘You’re my son.’

  Graham squeezed the Doctor’s arm. They hung back in the corridor. ‘She knows him, even though he’s twice her age.’

  The Doctor sighed. ‘That’s what it’s like when time does funny things. Time Lords recognise each other with their hearts. It’s the only way. The same seems true of Elvis and Gladys.’

  They watched from a respectful distance as Elvis hugged his mama.

  Ryan gave a kind of suppressed whimper inside his chest and Yaz put her arm around him.

  Elvis lifted up his head and called to them. ‘Hey, these are my friends, Mama. They brought me here. Faster than anyone else ever could. They brought me here to see you, just in time.’

  Gladys welcomed them all in and fussed over them from her chair. She was low on energy, it was obvious to see, so they resolved not to stay very long.

  ‘Hey, Mama,’ Elvis told her, and cradled her soft, tear-filled face in his hands. ‘I told you everything would be all right.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And it was, wasn’t it? Everything was just fine.’

  He was turning transparent before their eyes. He was see-through blue and silvery.

  ‘Elvis … something’s happening to you,’ she said, huskily. ‘It’s like you’re changing … into starlight …’

  ‘I am, Mama,’ he whispered. ‘Didn’t I always tell you I was going to be a star? It’s what we’re made from … in the end we all become stars …’

  Mrs Presley smiled and nodded. And then she fell asleep and her visitors knew that she wouldn’t wake up again.

  The ghostly Elvis led them quietly, back through Graceland, back outside, to the TARDIS.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you let my mama and me keep those phones in the first place. And I know it was you, in a different form, somehow. I don’t know how that works, but I know it was you. You tried to be kind, and then you had to put it all right. And I want to tell you – thank you. You’ve given me something I never would have had otherwise. I got to kiss her goodbye.’

  The Doctor wrinkled her nose and gave a modest shrug. ‘Hey, it was just me being my usual clumsy, interfering self.’ She beamed at him. ‘History hasn’t quite gone back into its usual groove. There’s still a couple of things awry. That business with Frank Sinatra isn’t quite right in real-world terms, and your mum being at home when she died … well, that’s a bit off-kilter, too. But I honestly think it’s all better this way and not all that disastrous. I think we’ve actually managed to improve on history here today. And it’s not every day you can say that!’ Saying this, the Doctor stepped forward to hug the puzzled-looking Elvis …

  And the old ghost faded away into nothingness.

  The TARDIS team were standing alone on the grass outside Graceland and the moon was full in the Memphis skies.

  ‘C’mon, Doc,’ Graham told the unusually quiet Doctor. ‘Maybe it’s time we were on our way. Come on, guys.’

  The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘You’re right. Let’s go, fam.’ And she grinned at the moon and the mansion with its soft golden lights, and the faint trace of stardust in the dark air.

  Einstein and the Doctor

  Jo Cotterill

  The time rotor wheezed to a stop. ‘Here we are!’ announced the Doctor. ‘Bern, Switzerland.’ She peered at the display. ‘Hmm. I was aiming for 1905 but I think we might be a bit earlier than that. The TARDIS sometimes has its own funny ideas.’ She twisted a handle. ‘Some odd readings here, wonder what’s going on?’

  ‘I can’t believe we’re going to meet Einstein,’ Graham said, his eyes alight. ‘What a legend.’

  ‘Do we get to go to his wedding?’ asked Yaz hopefully. ‘After what you said at my nan’s in 1947 …’

  ‘Certainly not,’ the Doctor said firmly. ‘I officiated at Albert’s wedding. Well, another me. I can’t bump into myself; it’d be embarrassing. I wouldn’t know where to look.’

  Ryan took the craziness in his stride as usual. ‘Does Einstein have that mad hair, like on the posters?’

  ‘Depends how much he’s been drinking,’ remarked the Doctor, tucking the sonic into her pocket. ‘He’s a right party animal, old Bertie.’

  Yaz gave Ryan a gentle punch. ‘Oi, it’s not just his hair he’s famous for; it’s his brain.’

  ‘Too right,’ said the Doctor. ‘Did you know he left his brain to science? When they cut it up, they discovered that his inferior parietal lobe was fifteen per cent wider than a normal person’s.’

  Graham stared at her. ‘Inferior what?’

  ‘They cut up his brain?’ Ryan pulled a face. ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘I think it’s amazing,’ Yaz countered. ‘He was still contributing to science, even after death.’

  They stepped out of the TARDIS into a park, the door clicking shut behind them.

  ‘Brrr. Seems to be winter.’ The Doctor gazed around. Straight, neat footpaths bordered grassy squares, but no feet crunched the stones. An ornate ironwork bandstand rose empty from the other side of the dark still duckpond. The trees, twisted and bare, traced black lines against the white sky. No birds perched in the branches. ‘Not exactly lively, is it? Where is everyone?’

  ‘There.’ Ryan pointed. Coming in through the corner gate was a couple, their steps quick and hurried, their breath puffing into the air. The woman wore a headscarf tied tightly under her chin; her arms were crossed over her chest in the cold. The man at her side wore a hat pulled low over his forehead and carried what looked like a large bundle of blankets. They hurried onwards, gazes fixed firmly on the ground.

  ‘What’s he carrying?’ Yaz took a step forward.

  ‘Laundry?’ suggested Graham.

  ‘A child,’ said the Doctor, her voice calm and quiet.

  As the couple neared, the four travellers could see two legs dangling from the bundle, short socks and girls’ shoes encasing the feet. No one said anything until the Doctor stepped forward to intercept. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

  The couple started violently, the woman letting out a stifled shriek.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ the Doctor went on. ‘We’ve just arrived here. Seeing the sights of Bern, you know.’

  ‘Friedrich, we mustn’t stop,’ the woman said, her voice high and tight. ‘Johanna …’

  The man shifted his arms, and the blanket slipped sideways, revealing a small golden head. The girl’s eyes were closed, and there was a bluish pallor to her skin.

  ‘Johanna? Is this your daughter?’ asked the Doctor. She reached out a hand to brush the girl’s hair out of her face, but Friedrich jerked back.

  ‘Don’t touch her!’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Yaz.

  Friedrich glared at her. ‘Same thing that’s wrong with all the others. Marthe, come.’ He and the woman turned to set off again.

  ‘Where are you taking her?’ the Doctor called after them.

  ‘Where do you think?’ Friedrich snapped back. ‘To get help!’ He jerked his head to where a tall gothic spire rose out of the trees.