Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles Part 8

A month had pa.s.sed since she'd seen the old Marnal die and the young one take his place. The agency was still paying her to look after him, and it wasn't as though she had anything better to go to. So she came round every day, still in her carer's uniform, to make sure he was all right. He seemed grateful for the company, in his way, especially after she managed to fob off his relatives.

His family weren't interested in Marnal, they were interested in his money, and when she'd told them he'd recovered and looked better they stayed away.

Which was probably just as well.

Marnal had spent the last month piecing together episodes in the Doctor's life, using the universe in a bottle. Rachel had seen some of this the Doctor speeding around San Francisco on a motorbike, confronting a bulky reptilian creature at the Tower of London, attending an arms bazaar on the moon, punting down the Cam. Marnal had doc.u.mented hundreds of landings. The Doctor's was a long life, and he was trying to review everything he could.

At the moment, he was poised over his bottle universe, peering into it.

The Doctor was looking up at a flying saucer exploding over a red desert, an expression of quiet satisfaction on his face. Marnal had scribbled notes on pad after pad of paper. He'd asked Rachel to stop off at Smith's on her way over to him to pick up some more, but Rachel had forgotten. He still had a few spare sheets.

One of the ones he was working on caught her eye.

'What's this list?' She read from part of it. '"Lorenzo, Delilah, Frank, Clau-dia, Deborah, Jemima-Katy, Miranda, Nina, Anji, Beatrice".'

'His companions, in the order he first met them.'

'A lot of people.'

'Indeed. He's dragged them all into his criminal lifestyle. It should be possible to trace at least some of these people.'

'Using that device?'

'No, the telephone directory. All of these people are from Earth, from this time zone, give or take. Now look at that,' he said, holding up one of the sheets of paper and pointing at what looked for all the world like a scribble.

'That's the course of his travels. There's also a list of all the planets he's visited.

I tried to put them all in chronological order, but it's impossible.'

Rachel looked for patterns. Marnal had carefully marked points on the line with numbers. He sipped at his coffee as she studied it.

'There's a long straight line here,' she ventured.

49.'After he destroyed Gallifrey, he hid out on Earth for over a hundred years.

That was when he started to claim his memory had been erased. It was during that period that the incident with the Provider happened.'

'What's this gap just before that?'

'There's a discontinuity. A piece missing. Right at the moment Gallifrey was destroyed. Three minutes seven seconds' duration. It's like an area of s.p.a.ce-time has been boxed off.'

'Because of the temporal warp. . . factor thing?'

'The violence of the destruction of Gallifrey, yes. It must be. Look at the rest of the Doctor's time-stream, though. It's meant to be a neat line. The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail out of all this chaos, I don't know.'

Rachel certainly couldn't, not from this.

'As for his future. . . he has three ninth incarnations. I've never seen anything like it.'

Marnal was rubbing his eyes.

'Have you slept?' she asked. 'I mean. . . do you even sleep?'

'So much to know,' Marnal said. 'So many facts to keep straight.'

'You're a writer,' she reminded him. 'I know your novels were all based on reality '

'They were reality,' he snapped. 'They were perfect unless some d.a.m.nfool editor got his pen to them and '

'Yeah. OK. But you're thinking about it like, I don't know, a novel. A biography. At the moment, you're writing a biography. What you want is something more like a clinical a.s.sessment. You don't really care about where he's been, and who he met. It's now that you're interested in. You want to understand how his mind works, you want to know who he is, and why he did what he did.'

Marnal looked at her for a moment.

'Obviously,' she continued, 'his past and his background and all that are factors in making him who he is. But you're getting obsessed with history. If you want to know your enemy, you don't worry about what presents he got for his tenth birthday, or what he had for breakfast three weeks ago. You want to know how he'll act. He has things he values, he has strategies for achieving goals, he has strengths and weaknesses. A psychology. You're asking "Doctor what?" when you should he asking "Doctor who?" Does that make sense?'

Marnal nodded. 'Yes. There is a certain pattern to his behaviour.'

'There is for everyone. It's psychology.'

'You've studied this discipline?'

50.'Well, a bit, yes, as part of my nursing. I don't have a degree in it.'

For the first time, Marnal looked interested in hearing from her.

It was dark and raining.

Fitz stepped out of the TARDIS and splashed mud over his shoes and trousers.

'Where are we now?'

'The TARDIS detected a complex shape here.'

'A shape?'

'One end of a five-dimensional object, according to the instruments. A vastly long, very narrow tube, sculpted from history. Some kind of wormhole.'

'Uh-huh.' That didn't sound very interesting. Not worth, as the expression went, getting out of bed for. Fitz glanced over at Trix, who was looking around and trying to get used to the dark.

'What's causing it?' she asked.

The Doctor had some sort of Geiger counter-type thing in his hand and was half-heartedly waving it around. 'The signal's not very strong, but there's a huge amount of disruption in hypers.p.a.ce and I don't really understand why.

It may be evidence of another time-traveller. On the other hand, there's always a chance it could have been an echo, or some fleeting piece of rogue energy.

Or. . . er. . . well, it might be caused by us travelling here to investigate the phenomenon.'

'We could be chasing our own tails?'

'Yes.' The Doctor at least had the decency to sound embarra.s.sed.

'Terrific,' Fitz said. 'Where are we?'

'One of the London churchyards, I think,' the Doctor said, making a show of sniffing the air. '2005 by the smell of it.'

Fitz and Trix glanced at each other.

The Doctor was checking the device in his hand. 'There's definitely something. It seems to be stronger facing north. I'll head up this way and try to triangulate the signal.'

He strode off, oblivious to the rain.

'England in the twenty-first century,' Trix said quietly.

'We didn't, y'know, mean it,' Fitz said. 'What we said on Mars.'

'It was a figure of speech,' Trix agreed.

'I mean, I do like you, but. . . '

'And I like you. But we don't really even know each other.'

'I mean, we're kind of living together already, in the TARDIS. And that's working. Don't get me wrong, but if we go too fast, then '

'It's OK, Fitz. I agree.' Trix hesitated. 'We're living together. I hadn't really thought of it like that.'

51.The rain pelted against the side of the TARDIS.

'We should go and find the Doctor,' Fitz said.

Trix agreed, and they headed off.

They found the Doctor propped up against a tree, adjusting the detector.

He angled it one way, then another. Finally, he walked off. Fitz and Trix followed. It had stopped raining, but it was still muddy. Fitz wasn't enjoying himself.

'Yes. Here we are,' the Doctor announced.

There was a tiny plastic ball, faint blue light pulsing from inside it, nestled at the base of a gravestone. The Doctor knelt down and picked it up.

'The signal is coming from this,' he told them. He scrutinised it carefully. It was about the size of a marble.

'Any idea what it is?' Trix asked.

The Doctor shrugged. 'Nor who put it here.'

Fitz was more interested in the gravestone itself. A recent one. Trix read the inscription.

SAMANTHA LYNN JONES.

19802002 'She was young,' Trix said.

'Younger when we knew her,' Fitz said softly.

Trix looked over to the Doctor for confirmation. 'You knew her?'

The Doctor looked impa.s.sive. 'I don't remember.'

Fitz looked up from the gravestone. 'Drop the act.'

'Pardon?' The Doctor was taken aback.

'It's Sam.'

'Fitz, I don't '

'The three of us spent years together. You'd been travelling with her for years before you met me. She grew up travelling with you.'

'You know I don't '

'Oh, I know all right,' Fitz spat. 'You don't remember anyone or anything, except when you do, of course. You can't operate the TARDIS any more, except when you can. You don't know what happens in the future, except when you do. Drop the act, it got old years ago.'

The Doctor was still smiling, but there was a flicker of uncertainty there.

The hint of a facade. 'Fitz, whatever terrible thing happened, it happened to you. Your memories went too.'

Fitz gathered his thoughts before replying. 'Not straight away. They faded.

We were going to talk, we were going to have a conversation, and when the time came, you said "No".'

'I wasn't ready.'

52.It was a quiet night. The only sound was a lorry in the distance, reversing.

It had gone before Fitz spoke again.

'If I woke up without my memories I'd be keen to get them back. Wouldn't you, Trix?'

'You leave me out of this.'

'No. Wouldn't you say the Doctor exhibited curiosity?'

'Fitz. . . ' the Doctor warned.

'You've just chased a flas.h.i.+ng plastic ball halfway across the solar system, but for years now you haven't shown the slightest desire to find out who you are, where you're from, if there are others like you and where they all are.

Isn't that ever so slightly odd? Isn't it remarkably like there's something you have to face up to, but you daren't do it? Two hearts and no b.a.l.l.s, is that it?'

'That isn't it,' the Doctor said.