Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles Part 13

'Touche,' the Doctor said quietly.

'There's no escape this time, Doctor.'

'There never is,' the Doctor sighed. 'We don't have to go through these theatrics. If you've got something to say, we can sit down like men and discuss it. Pull up a chair.'

Marnal paced around the room. There was a small pile of books by the door that the Doctor didn't think had been there before, which was odd. Ten books, a seemingly random collection of old and relatively new paperbacks and hardbacks. They were turned deliberately? so that he couldn't see the t.i.tles.

Finally, Marnal was in front of him again. 'I spent a lifetime trying to remember that name. Just one word, right on the tip of my tongue.'

The Doctor let him speak, tested the manacles. Steel, welded, and they weren't going to budge.

'I've lived here for a long time.'

He looked to be in his mid-thirties.

'How long, out of interest?' the Doctor asked.

'A hundred and twenty-two years.'

'Really?' the Doctor said, nonchalant. 'This house is a little older than I thought, then.'

'I've watched the trees in the garden grow from saplings.'

77.The trick with these sort of bonds was to create a little wriggle room, but as things were going there wasn't a huge amount the Doctor could do now. The weak link was the chair. It was made from metal, but it was quite spindly and wouldn't last long against the concrete floor down here. But breaking it up would be very noisy.

'It was all so frustrating. I knew all that time that if I could just say the word everything about my life would make sense. It would all fall into place. There would be meaning.'

Marnal was leaning over the Doctor, who smiled politely.

'Have you felt like that? Oh wait. . . I see from your expression that you have. You and I are '

'Strangely alike?' The Doctor completed his sentence for him. 'That is what you were going to say, isn't it? Or was it going to be "two sides of the same coin"? If you've spent an entire lifetime sitting around in this house, waiting for something to come along, to hear some magic word that will solve all your problems, hoping someone walks in and knows it all already and gives you all the answers, then no, sorry, no we're not the same.'

'I always thought there was more to it all than this.'

The Doctor looked up. 'Doesn't everyone feel like that, from time to time?'

he asked.

'You think that a human being could feel emptiness like we do?'

'I don't feel. . . ' But the Doctor couldn't finish the sentence. 'I'm half-full, not half-empty. I don't feel sorry for myself, I don't dwell on the past.'

'You wouldn't want to remember, would you?'

The Doctor felt as though something dark was fluttering above him.

'Not when there's so much more in the present and the future, no.'

'I had fragments of it,' Marnal said. He'd walked over to the pile of books, and now picked up a handful of them. 'But I was like a man dying out in the snow, recalling the flicker of a match.'

The Doctor squirmed a little in his seat. It wasn't physically uncomfortable.

'My life had great purpose, once,' Marnal said, waving the books. 'I always knew it. I had bathed in the light of heaven, and now I was in darkness, but I knew that I would come back, yes, I would come back. Until that day '

'You thought you'd go back?' the Doctor asked.

'Yes.'

'I. . . didn't,' the Doctor admitted. 'The way I saw it, my purpose was to be the match. To carry the torch, to be the torch. The spark of heavenly light in the cold and the darkness. To go forward with all my beliefs and '

'That,' Marnal said, looking weary, 'was because you knew what I didn't.'

He turned and left the room, locking the door behind him.

'I didn't,' the Doctor said quietly.

78.Fitz strummed the new guitar he'd somehow acquired during the course of his clothes shopping.

'I'm going to miss the TARDIS wardrobe,' Trix said. She'd b.u.t.toned up her s.h.i.+rt and was walking around his hotel room, looking for the skirt she'd bought this afternoon. It was the casually miraculous, Fitz thought. Sharing a life with such a woman, just turning your head to see her there.

She frowned. 'You have the strangest look on your face.'

'You're a beautiful person,' he told her.

'There's a lot you don't know about me.'

'And I have hidden depths too,' Fitz countered. 'Or, at the very least, I have a lot of hidden shallows.'

Trix sighed. 'Are you ever going to get changed?'

'The restaurant isn't ten minutes' walk away and we've got an hour before we have to be there.'

He plucked at the guitar again.

'Are you getting hungry? You've not eaten anything today.'

'It's OK, Trix, I can look after myself.'

She smiled. 'Sorry.'

'What for?'

'I don't want to nag.'

'You weren't.' He put the guitar down and patted the bed, trying to look seductive.

Trix was too busy putting on her skirt to notice.

Fitz wondered how best to attract her attention. 'Remind me to ask her about Jamais and Chloe. I forgot before.'

'I'll try to remember. So what do you think Greg will be like?'

'Tall, dark and handsome, I'm guessing. Like me.' He gave what he hoped was a sweet smile and patted the bed again.

'Anji's one of the richest women in Britain now,' Trix said, failing to take the hint.

'Takes one to know one. It's weird. Like we won the pools or something.

What's that thing they always say?'

Trix grinned. '"It won't change me." I've always thought they should take the money off anyone who said that, and give it to someone who could do with a change.'

'No. I was thinking more like "It hasn't sunk in yet". A lot's happening all at once.'

Trix's smile faltered.

'No,' Fitz said quickly. 'It's not a problem. Just that I've spent so long being the same old Fitz, it's strange that everything's changed. But it's changed for the better.'

79.He patted the bed again.

'I saw you the first time,' Trix told him. 'But it really is time you got ready.'

The young woman had come in to feed the Doctor. She wasn't saying anything.

She was something of an expert at serving him. She'd given him some juice, tipping it into his mouth at just the right angle. Then some soup and bread, the soup not so hot it burned, just enough bread each time to get a good mouthful. She'd done this before, and she really didn't look like a professional kidnapper.

'You're a nurse?' he guessed, once the bowl was empty.

She nodded.

'What's your name?'

The young woman spent a couple of seconds calculating whether to answer.

'Rachel.'

'h.e.l.lo, Rachel. I'm the Doctor.'

She clearly didn't want to get into a conversation.

'How long have you known Marnal?' he tried.

Again, she was very wary of him.

'It's not a trick,' the Doctor said. 'If it was a trick, I'd tell you.'

A wry smile. 'I've known him a few months. I mean, I'd read some of his books. They're like Tolkien, aren't they? Everyone reads at least one of them when they're fourteen.'

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. 'He's an author? That explains the books he was waving around. He wrote them?'

Rachel nodded, but it was her turn to look puzzled. 'He told me you'd recognise his name.'

'He's preceded his fame, I'm afraid,' the Doctor admitted. 'So those books are science fantasy?'

'They're about his planet.'

The Doctor sat back, a little surprised. 'I don't suppose you could read me a bedtime story?'

She was back to being wary. 'I shouldn't be telling you anything. Have you had enough supper?'

So, it was evening. He'd lost all track of time down here.

'I'm a light eater. Thank you.'

She barely nodded.

'Some days, do you feel empty inside?' the Doctor asked.

'No,' Rachel replied, before looking away. 'Some days I don't.'

'That's '

'Stupid thing to talk about. Makes no difference.'

80.'Of course it does.'

'Not when everyone feels like that.'

'Everyone you know?'

'Everyone in the world. In the universe, probably.'

'I've got friends. They don't think like that.'

'Yeah, well, I learnt in psychology that they do, they're just better at coping or hiding it. Or they're on pills. A lot of us are on pills. More than you'd think.

No one ever talks about it.'

'My friends aren't,' the Doctor insisted. 'I'm not. I don't think like that. Not often.'

'Freud had a word for it.'

'Transference,' the Doctor replied automatically. 'Denial,' Rachel corrected him.

She collected the crockery, and left the Doctor alone.