Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [9]
Do you think it’s changed?’ He looked up at his companion. ‘My hair I mean?’
He turned his attention back to the water, as if he was trying to scry the answer. Nyssa was unsure how to respond. Three days ago the Doctor had been a middle-aged man with a craggy face and curly, greying hair. She had watched him fall from a gantry many hundreds of feet in the air, run over to him, seen his broken body, wept for him. Then, for reasons she still didn’t fully understand, his body had changed: melted, then resolved into a new form.
Now the Doctor appeared half a lifetime younger. Nyssa sat beside him, and looked over his shoulder into the pool.
The Doctor’s face appeared reflected in the water, smiling at her.
‘It’s just that I’m sure that my hair was longer yesterday.’ The Doctor tugged a strand down from his fringe. ‘It’s probably a side-effect of the regeneration... or perhaps a rock of the light. Never mind, eh?’ He poked the surface of the water experimentally, and his face rippled and dissolved. The Doctor turned his attention to Nyssa, apparently untroubled.
‘You seem to have made a full recovery,’ she observed.
Immediately after his transformation the Doctor had been unable to walk unaided and his memory had been erratic. Within hours he had regained most of his faculties.
Now, a few days after the event, his personality had stabilized. Nyssa could see much of the old Doctor in the new version. He had lost none of his wisdom and benevolence. It exhilarated Nyssa, reminding her of Tremas, her late father.
‘I’ll never fully recover,’ the Doctor said matter-of-factly after a moment’s silence. ‘I died, and death is not something you recover from. As you have learnt, at far too young an age.’
Nyssa stared at the ancient stone ceiling. ‘Traken has gone. My people celebrated life, and accepted death. I intend to continue that tradition. I am not a morbid person.’
‘No,’ the Doctor admitted, ‘you aren’t.’
Nyssa changed the subject. ‘Why are the cloisters made from stone?’
The Doctor seemed to consider the question for a moment, puzzlement on his face. ‘Why shouldn’t they be?’
he asked finally,
‘But all the other walls in the ship are made from...’
Nyssa faltered. ‘What are they made from?’
The Doctor smiled forgivingly. ‘The cloisters are among the very oldest parts of the TARDIS. Everything else grew round them.’
‘Metaphorically,’ Nyssa noted.
‘Yes, that’s right, metaphorically. And literally too, of course. Now, I think it’s high time we got Tegan home.’
The Doctor stood, dusting his frock-coat down and adjusting the vegetable pinned to his lapel. ‘The TARDIS
will seem very different without her. In a way, of course,’
he noted softly, ‘she’s been here for a lifetime.’
Before Nyssa could reply, the TARDIS lurched, throwing her off the bench and into a thick stone pillar.
The TARDIS righted itself, once again sending Nyssa sprawling. The Doctor bent down to help her up.
‘Are you all right?’
Nyssa nodded, brushing her hair back into place. ‘What happened?’
The Doctor’s brow furrowed. ‘I’m not sure.’
Tegan’s eyes were fixed on the TARDIS console. Her heart was still racing. She didn’t pretend to understand what had buffeted the TARDIS. The ship still appeared to be in flight: the readouts were constantly changing and lights were flashing, the crystalline column In the centre continued to rise and fall rhythmically. Most telling of all, there was a real sense of motion. They must have hit a pocket of turbulence, just like planes did every so often.
Yeah, right.
The truth was that Tegan didn’t want to think too hard about exactly what the TARDIS was doing. The ship was way out of her league, an alien technology millions of years ahead of Earth in the twentieth century. Tegan was getting used to the impossible. She couldn’t even begin to understand why the TARDIS was bigger on the inside than the outside but had little choice but to accept it. She could get her head around that, anyway. Once you were inside the gleaming console room, It was easy enough to forget that you’d stepped into what looked