Doctor Who_ Unnatural History Part 28

'Fascinating, aren't they?' the Doctor murmured. Think of me as a fellow scientist, not a specimen. 'I only wish I had the time to get to know them better.'

'Indeed,' said the unnaturalist. 'I've even sighted a Sidhe.' There was a hint of wonder in his dull voice. 'If you can only imagine how a worm must feel when it watches a bird fly freely through the air, so I felt when I bound to this plane while reaching above it saw a Sidhe moving freely through the eleven dimensions.'

'Was it beautiful?' the Doctor asked quietly.

The unnaturalist paused. 'Enviable. But it is not my place.'

'Oh, I've never been one for staying in my place.'

'So I've gathered.' Griffin turned away to one of his devices, some sort of biodata entry console. He turned a handle, and cogs and gears went to work, calculating genetics, worldlines, probabilities.

'You see, it's all a matter of cla.s.sification,' he went on, grinding away at the device. 'All these creatures, even the ones from other three-s.p.a.ces, fit into a recognisable taxonomy. We members of the Society determined the system ages ago. Any creature can be put in its place.'

'You don't know everything.'

'Everything that matters.'

'How very boring for you,' said the Doctor. 'What if you find someone that doesn't fit?'

The unnaturalist paused in his task. 'Then it's apocryphal. I handle it. I definitively resolve any contradictions.'

'You kill them.'

Griffin glanced at him, as though surprised. 'They're still alive. Just. . . simpler. And then everything is as I understand it to be.'

A bit of punched card popped out of the biodata machine. He studied it for a moment, then reached for a tool case sitting on the edge of the console.

174.

'Which brings me back to you,' he said.

He opened the case. A dozen pieces of metal glinted in the dim light. The Doctor felt his toes cramping with fear.

'Ah. . . This really isn't necessary,' he began. 'If you're one of those types who simply want to listen to souls in torment, I'll be glad to put on a performance for you. I'm quite fond of amateur dramatics.'

The unnaturalist was searching methodically through the case, picking up implements and examining them. Surgical steel glistened in his long fingers.

'You want to find out what it takes to make me scream?' the Doctor went on.

'A good stubbed toe will do it, actually.'

'It won't hurt if you don't struggle,' Griffin said absently.

'Oh, at least try to put some conviction into it,' called the Doctor.

The unnaturalist turned towards him. In his hand was a thin steel rod, wider than any syringe needle the Doctor had ever seen. The sterile wrapping crackled as he peeled it off.

'I'm going to take a DNA sample,' he said as he closed in. 'It should all be over rather quickly.'

'That's what I'm afraid ' The unnaturalist's hand snaked out and grabbed his jaw, forcing his mouth open, pus.h.i.+ng down till he could feel the tendons stretching. Except that the hand wasn't even touching him he could see it still a few inches in front of him, even as he felt the fingers pressed against his chin.

He couldn't even move to fight it.

The unnaturalist reached the steel rod into the Doctor's mouth, and rubbed it across the soft inside of his cheek, rolling it slightly. He held it up, peering at the traces of saliva and sloughed skin cells. Satisfied, he let go of the Doctor and took the rod back to the console.

The Doctor blinked and swallowed. 'That's all?'

'Well, it was just a DNA sample,' said the unnaturalist.

'Oh,' said the Doctor. The restraints tugged at him as his body slumped in relief.

The unnaturalist turned around again, and his fingers were covered with s.h.i.+ny metal spines.

'And now for the deep sample,' he said.

The pile of sheet music was starting to crackle nicely. Sam briefly considered throwing a few violins on for good measure. Instead she pushed a stool into the kindling. Flames shot up between its rounded legs.

175 Next she hurried into the loo and set fire to the second pile of paper, bog rolls and crumpled Mozart. Her lighter flared, orange flames reflecting back from dusty tiles.

She slipped back out into the shop. The first fire was crackling nicely. Why hadn't the alarms gone off? Maybe he'd done something to them.

She ducked down behind the counter, hidden from the shop.

A moment later she heard the sound of footsteps. The Henches burst into the burning shop, milling and shouting. She peeked around the counter. They were trying to put the fire out by stamping on it, and then hopping around, holding their singed feet.

The unnaturalist appeared like a cold shadow.

'Stop that,' he told the Henches. 'Use the extinguishers.' He looked around. 'There is a second fire behind that door.'

Sam slid out from behind the counter, keeping low, hoping the smoke would keep her invisible as she tiptoed down the stairs.

The Doctor was stuck on one of the big metal frames. She couldn't see anything holding him down, but she knew the invisible pins would be there, maybe through his wrists and ankles. His head hung down loosely, unpinned.

Sam went up to him, pushed the hair out of his face. She could hear him breathing, raggedly, like it hurt.

There were five neat holes in the front of his waistcoat and in the s.h.i.+rt underneath. She brushed her fingers across the cloth, expecting blood, then tugged open the b.u.t.tons. Nothing the skin of his chest was smooth, unscarred.

His eyes opened, lines at the edges. 'About time,' he said hoa.r.s.ely. 'Get me off this thing.'

'Don't push it,' she said. 'I almost left without you.' She tugged at the thing that looked like a knife handle hovering a few inches in front of his left wrist.

No luck. 'Where's Fitz?'

'In Griffin's pocket,' mumbled the Doctor. 'You don't want to know, really.

There's a toolkit on the floor in the far corner. But if you wanted to try a number five why didn't you warn me ahead of time? I could have helped. . . '

Number five? Oh, that list of potted distractions he'd worked out with blonde Sam. Nice to know they had the same brilliant ideas. She started casting about for something she could use to pry the fastener loose. Wait, he'd just said there was a toolkit in the far corner. She dashed over to it those had to be footsteps outside; they must be coming back by now and dragged the battered steel case over to him.

176.

'Perpendicular pliers.'

She grabbed a tool. 'This?'

'No. That.' He tried to point with his nose.

She picked a likely-looking 'that' and held it up. He nodded. She brought it up to the nearer of his pinned wrists, and closed its jaws on the empty s.p.a.ce between the hilt of the knife and his wrist. It grabbed something, she could feel it, and she started to twist the small pair of pliers anticlockwise past his frantically pointing hand.

'As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted. . . '

It was the unnaturalist's voice, right behind her ear.

She froze. The Doctor's hand closed over hers.

Another scar, she thought. As if she hadn't collected enough already.

The unnaturalist had got her pinned up in less than a minute. She'd fought, but he just seemed to have too many hands, d.a.m.n it, clutching and sliding and holding. Then he'd brought out a set of bra.s.s knuckles with needles on them, and sucked something out of her arm.

It felt like something more solid than blood. For a horrible moment, she thought he'd cut away part of the muscle, taken a chunk out of her. But her arm felt fine it didn't even hurt, except for the perfectly circular white scars, just above the crook of her elbow.

Griffin had put the sample into some kind of old-fas.h.i.+oned machine. Sparks and bubbling noises had come out. He'd left whatever it was to cook, while he turned and addressed the Henches standing behind her. 'Everything's secure now. You can join the others in gathering the remaining specimens.' All she could see were their silhouettes on the wall in front of her, shapes with hats turning and filing out.

The unnaturalist went back to his machine, and started turning a handle.

She heard gears moving. He reminded her of an organ-grinder, or something.

A piece of her was in there, going round and round.

'What's that for?' she asked queasily.

'He wants to make us simpler,' came the Doctor's exhausted voice. 'He's not interested in specimens that don't confirm the theories he already knows. None of this messy ambiguity or complexity.'

'Lovely. He should get a job in talk radio,' said Sam.

She stared at the Doctor. While the unnaturalist's back was turned, the Doctor was silently going berserk mouthing something at her, gesturing towards 177 her with his face, pointing back at himself with the fingers of his pinned left hand.

'Is that it?' she called, trying to keep the unnaturalist distracted. 'You want to turn us into good little boys and girls? We're too rebellious for you?'

'Believe me, I couldn't care less whether you're a rebel,' said the unnaturalist.

'So long as you're just just a rebel.' a rebel.'

'Oh yes, I see,' said the Doctor in a mocking upper-cla.s.s lisp. 'As I was just telling Tubby Rowlands down at the club, those rebels have got to know their place.'

The unnaturalist turned sharply, and the Doctor stopped his frantic gestures in an instant. 'I just want you to pick a role and stay in it,' said the unnaturalist as he advanced on the Doctor. 'You're an overgrown university student who still wants to change the universe. Or who left home to wander because he was bored. Or you're a hero with wild ideas about a quest. It doesn't matter to me.

Just so long as you don't start going outside your category.'

They've got to pigeonhole you, thought Sam. Otherwise they might have to take you seriously.

'What a load of b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!' she shouted.

The unnaturalist had turned to her, his gaze falling on her like a particularly clammy hand.

'You take one look at us and think you know everything, like you've got us all worked out, we're just labels. Cla.s.sifications. Junkies and street kids and and throwaways.'

Behind him she could see the Doctor nodding enthusiastically. Keep him talking. . . But the unnaturalist's eyes were already drifting away.

'Well maybe I'm not nailed down either,' said the Doctor. 'Maybe my past changes when you're not looking. Maybe on Tuesdays I'm a G.o.d who's dressing down, and after hours I'm a mad professor who thinks he's an alien.'

'You don't really believe that, do you?'

'Well I'm beginning to see the attractiveness of it,' said the Doctor. He managed a bared-teeth smile. 'That being, it gets right up your nose.'

'It's impossible,' the unnaturalist said wearily. 'There's no evidence for it.'

'What, not even if I say so?'

'Of course not.'

'Not even if my biodata says so?' The Doctor's voice was almost teasing.

'You've looked at it. . . '

'Even then. It contradicts the data I've gathered so far.'

178.

'Well that's rather the point, isn't it? Maybe there are are inconsistencies. Maybe there inconsistencies. Maybe there are are things that change.' He raised his head, and those blue eyes were looking right into the unnaturalist's grey. 'It's still a good story, isn't it?' things that change.' He raised his head, and those blue eyes were looking right into the unnaturalist's grey. 'It's still a good story, isn't it?'

The unnaturalist turned away in contempt. 'And you call yourself a scientist.'

'Well, yes. But one with more interesting questions to ask. Why not look at what all those creatures are are, what they're doing, not just how they fit in your little case?'

And the Doctor was trying again to signal to her, this time bending his left hand flat, pointing straight at her, nodding his head in the direction of her no, of his his hand, making her look at it, see the handle of the perpendicular pliers peeking out of his sleeve. . . hand, making her look at it, see the handle of the perpendicular pliers peeking out of his sleeve. . .

He'd kept them, the sneaky b.a.s.t.a.r.d had palmed them and she hadn't even noticed.

But the unnaturalist was walking back to him now he couldn't do anything or he'd see. 'You're just trying to hide your single true origin,' said the unnaturalist. 'The role you play, which I need to understand. . . ' Her heart leapt into her mouth as he came up close to the Doctor's arms: he was bound to spot the tool.

'Well hey,' she blurted. 'If that's what you wanted to know about, why didn't you just ask me me?'

The unnaturalist froze. She had no idea what the h.e.l.l to say next. Slowly he turned, fixed those fish eyes on her. 'How would you know anything about him?'

'I was on a plane with him for thirteen hours,' she said. 'You think he could stay quiet for that long? He told me his whole life story before we pa.s.sed New York.'

The unnaturalist started to turn away dismissively. 'He's just established he wouldn't tell the truth '