Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 20

She reached out and ruffled his hair. 'My ghastly secret, revealed,' he said.

'Come on, let's get some sleep.'

The Doctor stopped with the key in the lock.

The house was one of San Francisco's painted ladies, one of a row of slender homes, their Victorian ornamentation and their window edges painted pristine white. The front door was reached from the street by a flight of steps, a yellowish light burning above the entrance.

He had left his companions sleeping at Kyra's house. They needed the rest, but the intense attack had left him full of nervous energy. And curiosity, about something Kyra had said.

He shouldn't quite be here. But that seldom stopped him from going anywhere.

He turned the key. The front door to Professor Joyce's house swung open, silently.

He had been expecting to find Joyce and his wife at home. But the house was dark, except for a lamp on a table in the front hallway.

126.

The Doctor carefully shut the front door. He brushed his fingers across the pile of papers on the hallway table. There was a paperweight, a gla.s.sy globe of liquid. When he picked it up, tiny stars swirled through it, glittering in the dim light.

He put the paperweight back where it had been, carefully. He didn't want to leave too many traces of his visit, too much disarray.

The door to the front room was open. A quick look around wouldn't hurt.

The Doctor slipped inside. He reached for the light switch, thought better of it, and instead turned on a lamp on an end table.

The front room reminded him at once of the console room smaller, of course, but with the same sense of home, of familiar comfort. Thick curtains were drawn across the three windows facing the street. There were neat rows of books packed into a pair of matching cases, an upright box for newspapers and magazines, polished leather furniture. Here was a forgotten gla.s.s next to the easy chair, there was a pair of Anne's shoes under the coffee table.

The Doctor sat down in the easy chair. His body sank into it, his eyes closing of their own accord.

He imagined the comfortable evenings spent here. The radio on the bookcase playing softly. The magazines, filled with thoughtful commentary, good fiction.

Or the little pile of letters, donations to be made, notes to be sent to Senators and Representatives.

He could already see the rest of the house. The well-equipped kitchen Joyce had always liked to cook with its orderly cupboards and drawers. The soft colours of the bedroom. Perhaps a study or library, more books, old favourites and st.u.r.dy works of reference.

You would always know where to find something in this house. Not because it was obsessively orderly Joyce liked order, but only because it made life easier. The soup ladle or the paperclips would always be in the same place.

Or your car keys, thought the Doctor. He had once spent a week searching the TARDIS for the keys to the Bug.

What would his house be like? He would have to start from scratch, his books and his equipment and his centuries of souvenirs all destroyed with the TARDIS, gone down with the s.h.i.+p. Daniel and Anne could help him pick out furniture.

'I've been here for most of my life,' Kyra had said. Just a few decades. But in that time she'd become part of the place. Not the concrete and paving. The mountains and the salt water, the harmony of languages, the constant bubbling of tourists and newcomers, the famous places and the forgotten people.

127.

He could do that. A lifetime to Kyra Skye was only a handful of heartbeats to him. He could become this city's protector, the way that she thought of herself. Come to know it intimately, its quirks and rhythms. Keep it safe from earthquakes and edacious extraterrestrials.

But he would have so much more time than Kyra ever could. He bet Joyce knew what to do in a quake, where to meet with dissenters and dreamers, where all the best restaurants were.

He could have Carolyn and James over for dinner, go cycling with Grace.

Long chats about new books and old adventures at a favourite bar. Would Fitz stay here as well? Would Sam? Would they work together, fending off alien invasions and defeating mad scientists?

The Doctor climbed out of the easy chair. A little too easy, he thought. He inched back the curtains, looked out at the city lights, thinking of fireworks over the Bay.

Day Zero.

Aliens are the new undercla.s.s, man. They're our Them, the ones who are gonna rush over our border and overrun our comfy middle-cla.s.s life. The DW Griffiths of today can't get away with having hordes of rabid blacks out to violate our women but if you make 'em so they take 'em to a s.h.i.+p in outer s.p.a.ce, you can have 'em probe their naughty bits to your heart's content. And they'll impregnate our women with their twisted alien DNA, too, if you don't keep an eye out for them. Can't have 'em polluting the race with their half-breeds. Gotta fight that future.

But it's different this time, right? It's not the Blacks, not the Reds, it's the Greys, man.

Eldin Sanchez, Interesting Times Interesting Times, 31 October 2002

Chapter Twelve.

Stuffed and Mounted.

Professor Daniel Joyce strolled across the gra.s.s towards the physics building, devoting his mental powers to nothing more strenuous than wondering whether the morning drizzle was heavy enough to warrant putting up his umbrella. It was a good feeling, to put all the plans and procedures and things-to-do aside, even if only for a little while.

One of the things-to-do was standing under a tree ahead. For a moment Joyce was tempted to change course to avoid him, but the Doctor had spotted him and was already bounding over.

'It's not ' began Joyce.

The Doctor talked right over him. 'h.e.l.lo, Professor, how was your night out?

What did you and Anne go to see?'

'Beautiful,' he said. ' La Traviata La Traviata at the Opera House.' In fact he and Anne had had a wonderful evening watching a dinner-theatre production of a knockabout farce, but it never hurt to mislead someone a little every once in a while. at the Opera House.' In fact he and Anne had had a wonderful evening watching a dinner-theatre production of a knockabout farce, but it never hurt to mislead someone a little every once in a while.

'How was the food?' asked the Doctor.

'Hmm?'

'At the dinner theatre.'

Joyce snorted. 'Never you mind. It was delicious. Your device still isn't ready yet.'

'Ohh ' The Doctor screwed up his face. 'Gobstoppers!'

'These things take time,' said Joyce. 'You'll just have to have patience, Doctor.'

'Very, very funny. There's less than a day left '

'I know, I know. It's not as if either my a.s.sistant or I wasn't working on it for most of the night,' he added grumpily. 'In between trying to squeeze in all the other experiments we have to finish before you heal the wounded s.p.a.ce-time.'

In fact, those Advanced Research Project experiments could probably have been finished a week or two ago, except that there was no way he would have let them take priority over his paper for the Indian-Pakistani antinuclear-initiative conference. That was just the way it was; when his particular corner of the 130 world's problems was in need of attention, then for a while all the cosmic stuff could just go hang.

He grumbled his way up the steps to the physics building. 'Two years' worth of painstaking enquiry, and it all has to get wrapped up in a day '

'My TARDIS is dying in there,' said the Doctor, 'What if it were your '

'Oh, spare me the tasteless a.n.a.logies,' growled Joyce. 'It's still your mess you've got into, and I'm just helping you clean it up. Again.' He prodded a finger into the Doctor's chest as they headed down the hall. 'Who do you think had to rush over to get that prattling fool Wagg a spare beryllium chip?'

'Oh, is that that it? Well did you know I spent a whole it? Well did you know I spent a whole week week cleaning up the after-effects of your visit to Youkali ' cleaning up the after-effects of your visit to Youkali '

'That was ages ago '

'Or how about the time '

Each stopped and motioned for the other to finish what he was saying. They ended up just staring at each other for a moment, then both burst out chuckling.

Joyce slapped the Doctor on the arm.

'Come along,' said Joyce, 'I'll show you excuse me, son, could you hold that for us?'

The student he'd called out to held the lift door open for them.

'I shouldn't have even had to bother you about this,' muttered the Doctor, pacing in the confines of the lift as it rose. 'If the Time Lords had ever responded to my message, I still don't know why they didn't. . . '

'Maybe they want you to be stranded,' said Joyce.

The Doctor wheeled around, gaping.

'Well think about it,' Joyce went on. 'You must make them very nervous. You topple governments on a spare weekend. . . What do they think will happen if you ever turn your attention back home?'

'Ridiculous.' Joyce winced; the Doctor had nearly taken the student's head off with one of his expansive hand gestures. 'I'm a personal friend of the President. They would never dare '

'Oh? Who is President there nowadays?'

'Flav No, Rom-' A frown creased his forehead. 'Do you know, I'm not entirely sure.'

The lift doors opened, and the student exited as quickly as possible.

'If worst comes to worst, this isn't such a bad place,' Joyce said as they rounded the corner to his lab. 'I've got settled here.'

131.

'This is for you.' The Doctor took a sealed plastic container out of his pocket.

'Sounds ghastly.'

Joyce took the box. Inside, the hyperdrive from the Basardi s.p.a.cecraft was glowing softly, like some particularly long-forgotten leftovers. 'Why? What's the matter with it?'

'I mean, getting settled sounds ghastly. Not my cup of tea, milk, two sugars, and a couple of digestive biscuits, if you know what I mean.'

'You can't tell me you haven't thought about it,' said Joyce.

'I don't want to think about it. Not until I have to.'

Joyce sighed to himself; the Doctor just couldn't grasp it. He'd get so much done in the s.p.a.ce of just a few days you couldn't deny that but he just couldn't seem to handle the concept of staying in one place. Working on one corner of a problem, over the course of a lifetime. Having restaurants you ate in regularly, instead of once in a blue moon.

Ah well, the Doctor made that sort of life impossible for himself, just by being who he was. No place would dare dare stay the same around him. stay the same around him.

'If only I could get to the TARDIS laboratories,' sighed the Doctor, wandering through the lab and leaving a little trail of disarrayed objects in his wake.

The benches were littered with badly disguised anachronistic equipment. The Doctor stooped to stare at a four-s.p.a.ce vibrometer disguised as an oscilloscope.

There was a wild signal waggling across the screen. 'The feedback from the hyperdrive?'

'Almost certainly,' said Joyce.

The Doctor nodded, curls flopping. 'I had a long chat with the navigator trine aboard their s.h.i.+p. The scar's signals distorted the membranes inside the drive so in turn it's been sending out its own dimensional warbling.'

'Like a distress beacon gone wrong,' said Joyce.

'Take a recording of it before you shut it down,' said the Doctor. 'You should be able to correct your distorted readings from the data.'

'My very thoughts.' Joyce eased the Tupperware container into a locked chemicals cupboard and turned the key.

The Doctor was still rummaging on the bench. 'Is this a remote force transmitter? Mind if I borrow it?' he said, slipping it into his pocket.

'Be my guest,' said Joyce drily. 'We have dozens.'

'I thought you might. Wait a moment,' said the Doctor. 'What about this?' He ran his fingers over the grey-green metal case of an outdated chemical balance.

The front came away easily, revealing a small, sparkling alien device. It was a 132 perfect, gla.s.sy sphere, unreflecting, its surface studded with dozens of slender crystal spikes.

'Oh, the thingummy?' said Joyce.

The Doctor brushed some of the spikes with his fingertips. 'It's still warm,'

he said. 'You ran this last night, didn't you?'

Joyce said, 'There are some aspects of the anomaly we still don't fully understand. There were one or two tests. . . '

'You must have known what this would do to me,' breathed the Doctor. 'You must have paralysed the entire network of biodata strands. Like freezing a river.'

'Just for a few seconds,' said Joyce. 'Would you like to see the printouts?'

'You knew,' insisted the Doctor. 'You knew that it was an extrusion of my biodata.'

'I had my suspicions,' said Joyce. 'You've never needed to have things spelled out for you. You're bright enough to work them out for yourself.'