Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors Part 19

(Several minutes silence) DOCTOR: It's the effort that counts, Chris.

CHRIS: No.

DOCTOR: Most people don't even try to make a difference.

CHRIS: No, no.

DOCTOR: I don't know what to say. I don't. . . I just don't.

CHRIS: I know. What is this human thing called 'feeling'? (Pause) I'm sorry, that was uncalled for.

DOCTOR: The Room. . .

CHRIS: It's just a dream I keep having.

DOCTOR: No.

CHRIS: It must be so frightening.

DOCTOR: I don't have time to be frightened. No room for angst, no room for self-pity. Just get the job done and then gibber in a corner.

CHRIS: (Small laugh) Yeah.

It went on like that for another ten minutes, before the Doctor sent Chris out on some errand or other. Te Yene Rana powered down the fly, sending it instructions to come back on line if another conversation started.

She didn't know what all that had been about, and she didn't especially care. All that d.a.m.ned babble hadn't left her any wiser about what they knew about 'the pod'.

'Thanks,' she muttered, and settled down with another raw fish. To wait.

The Doctor had sent Chris off to see to the horses. Now he sat alone in the room in the inn.

He remembered fainting in the garden of Doa-no-naiheya Monastery, on his first day out of the Life-Prolonging Room. The pale suns.h.i.+ne against the wall, the smooth texture of the wood under his hands as he fell against it, the hoe dropping from his fingers. The soft dirt catching him.

He remembered trying to open his eyes as Chiyono argued with the head monk, Kadoguchiros.h.i.+'s predecessor, a terrible old grouch who was forever knocking his students over the head in the hopes of enlightening them.

The old master hadn't been interested in the nun's explanations. As far as he was concerned, this layabout was long overdue to leave the monastery.

Somehow or other the Doctor had managed to get back to his feet and get on with the gardening, the sun a bright and painful blur at the edge of his vision. The old Ros.h.i.+ had snorted and wandered off to find someone else to berate.

Sometimes all you wanted to do was sleep.

114.

There was a small, neat knock at the door. 'Come in,' he called, after a moment.

Penelope slid the door open, looking uncomfortable in her slippered feet.

She looked up and down the narrow corridor outside, weary with the pressure of curious eyes, and came inside, closing the door behind her.

She sat on the floor, her legs folded to one side. 'I've been thinking ' she began.

' I've I've been thinking about your time machine,' he said. He pulled the miniature table to him. There was a scroll map draped across it, along with scribbled diagrams of Penelope's Riemann engine. 'Now, if it couldn't have powered your trips through the fourth dimension, how was it you came all this way?' been thinking about your time machine,' he said. He pulled the miniature table to him. There was a scroll map draped across it, along with scribbled diagrams of Penelope's Riemann engine. 'Now, if it couldn't have powered your trips through the fourth dimension, how was it you came all this way?'

Penelope frowned, annoyed at being cut off, but waited to hear what he had to say.

'It's my guess,' said the Doctor, 'that someone brought you here. They were aware of your attempts at dimensional transference, and sent forward the energy needed for you to actually make the jump.'

'But why forward the first time? And why so many stops along the way?'

'Perhaps they could only send you enough energy for short steps, instead of the whole journey.'

Penelope was nodding. 'They must want my machine for some reason,'

she said. 'But surely, if they can send such energy through time, they could construct their own time conveyance.'

'Small-scale projections like that are actually quite simple,' said the Doctor. 'But a working dimensional engine is something else again. Put the two together, and you have a functioning time machine.'

'It was a call for help,' concluded Penelope. 'Perhaps another time traveller is stranded here '

'Or an alien or aliens. Someone with the technology to displace those packets of temporal energy.'

' or in an even earlier epoch than this one. Wait, the time conveyance didn't stop working until we arrived here. . . that is, now. So they must be now. Doctor, it must be the galliform creatures that Mr Cwej was talking to.'

'The Kapteynians? That's an interesting possibility.' The Doctor s.h.i.+fted the table until Penelope could see the map. He rummaged in his pockets until he found a chewed pen. 'I've been doing some calculations. It's my guess their base is about here.'

He wrote a large KAPTEYNIAN BASE, ballpoint sc.r.a.ping the fine paper, just to make sure she didn't get lost.

Penelope peered at the map through her spectacles, but didn't take it in.

'What is the significance of a flock of b.u.t.terflies?' she asked.

115.

'A very bad omen, to the j.a.panese,' he answered, absently, annotating the map. 'A battle or a disaster. They're the souls of those who haven't died yet.'

'Curious that I should dream about it. I hope it means nothing. I'm sure my own anxiety is represented by the room without any egress. . . '

The Doctor looked up at her. She started. 'What did you say?'

She thought she had offended him. 'Perhaps you do not discuss dreams in your century ' she began, but he had caught her wrist and his eyes were demanding she tell him the rest.

'I went into a hut in a j.a.panese garden. When I turned to leave again,' she said, 'I discovered that the door had vanished.'

'How many walls?'

'Six.'

'Was the ceiling low or high?'

'High. Very high.'

'What colour were the walls?'

'They were I don't know, they were no particular colour '

He took her face in his hands, suddenly, and her eyes went wide with indignation and alarm. He looked into them, hard.

'You haven't got a trace of telepathic ability,' he said, letting her go. 'So where did that dream come from?'

One b.u.t.ton of her jacket had come undone. She was carefully doing it back up, blus.h.i.+ng furiously, her eyes on the map. 'Whatever its significance,' she said, with barely restrained rage, 'I am not some sort of biological specimen for you to examine and catalogue.'

He stifled his urge to apologize, scowling at a point on the wall behind her.

She said, 'Despite the fact that we are fellow scientists, I feel you have treated me very poorly since we first met. I do not care a whit for how advanced you are, nor how far-flung the year you call home. Your ill manners are not excusable by an accident of time.'

She got up and stalked out of the room with utter dignity. He saw she had taken the map with her.

Which was all very well, but where had that dream come from?

And back in her room, the Caxtarid smiled around a mouthful of sea bream.

The more divided these aliens were, the better her chances.

'I don't know where to start,' she said, bits of fish flying out of her mouth.

'It all looks so good!'

Penelope wore a kimono. She had tucked her gla.s.ses away with her other few nineteenth-century possessions in a leather satchel. The matchlock lay across her lap.

116.

She rode slowly away from Tos.h.i.+. Reluctantly, she had to admit that she had half hoped someone would ride after her and stop her. Preferably the Doctor, with an apology.

She had the map, and enough food for several days. She knew where the others were going, and if her mission was unsuccessful, she could meet them there. And the avian people had seemed quite friendly.

She sat up straight, and set off with the same spirit of adventure in which she had launched herself into the fourth dimension.

It began to rain.

One of the horse handlers bowed low and handed Chris a piece of paper. He thought it was the bill, and was halfway to the Doctor's room for a translation when he saw it was written in English.

'Dear Chris,' it said. 'Have gone to investigate something. Please go on ahead, I'll catch you up.'

Chris shouted several extremely filthy words. The only reason he was not instantly thrown out of the inn was that no one could understand them.

And in her room at a different inn, Te Yene Rana eyed the Doctor and took out her favourite torture device.

117.

13.Manacle depression

Wednesday 22 May 1996, subjective time Probably March 1560, local time Dear Diary, I managed to get one of the pages to give me a lesson in etiquette. According to him, I was doing everything wrong, from the way I was sitting to the way I was talking to where I put my eyes.

I don't know whether it might've been better to just be a barbarian, and sit on the wooden floor cross-legged and talk out of turn. I've met aliens and humans who'd be impressed by that kind of stuff.

Probably not. This lot are all so polite and reserved it's amazing they don't explode. It's all very Spock it's not that they're emotionless, it's that the emotions are buried under the surface. If you show anger, you lose face.

So I've got to do everything right, or at least, as right as I can. But as my dad would say, the product does the selling, not the packaging.

And have I ever just made a sale.

After making me watch the execution, they made me wait for ages in an anteroom. Every time the door slid open and I thought it was my turn to go in., some samurai would appear, bow over the threshold, and go into the daimyo's guest room.

At last one of the pages gestured me in. I did the bow without looking too stupid, and knelt/sat in front of Gufuu Kocho, lord of Han, Daini and Sanban districts.

I think I'd gone a bit funny by that stage. I wasn't going to be able to wow them with toys or technological curiosities. If I didn't come up with something, something huge, I was going to be Joel Mince.

The guy is short, but from where I was kneeling, he looked about twenty feet tall. His hair is white a bit prematurely, I think, he's not that old. He's got a hard, hard face and nasty eyes, like a tough general out of a war movie.

119.

But he hides it behind the good manners and the soft voice.

'You say you have knowledge which could help me,' said Gufuu. 'What do you have to say?'

'Your Majesty,' I said, sounding like a complete schmuck, 'I've travelled here from a distant land, a very distant land. I brought with me as much of the knowledge of, er, my people as I could fit into this device.'

I had the PowerBook with me. An attendant pushed one of those eensy tables over to me, and I put the computer on it. The daimyo waited, probably thinking I was nuts.

'I wasn't sure at first what kind of machinery or information you might find useful,' I said. 'But at last, I realized what I had that you could use.'

I turned the PowerBook around. The daimyo leant forwards, peering at the faint screen. The attendant obligingly moved the little table closer to him.

'That ill.u.s.tration shows a machine called Jacquard's automatic loom. In my country, weaving is done by large, complex machines, instead of by hand, using a spindle. The machines can weave far more quickly and efficiently.'

The daimyo looked up from the PowerBook screen. I was really surprised by how readily he'd accepted it. A good sign. He said, 'This mechanism would be of use to me if I was a merchant. How can it help a warlord?'

'I'm glad you asked,' I said. 'With modifications, that machine is capable of much more than just weaving. . . '

And then, dear diary, I explained how to build the world's first computer.

Brief explanation. The earliest computers were based on the Jacquard loom.