Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [24]
‘Corridory,’ Sam suggested, accidentally saying it out loud.
A couple of metres ahead of her, the Doctor stopped at a three-way junction. He seemed to have heard her, for once.
‘Yes, they are, aren’t they?’ he muttered. He surveyed the junction for a moment or two, then licked his finger and held it in the air. ‘Purity of architecture. Most corridors are built to be functional, but this one’s supposed to give the impression of being a corridor, judging by the feel of it. Are you psychic, at all?’
Sam suddenly realised the Doctor had turned to face her. She saw big blue-green eyes in the half-light. Staring, not bothering to blink. You could tell, by the look on his face, that the Doctor thought his eyes were full of madness and poetry.
They weren’t, though. In a previous life, this had probably been his best hypnotising stare, but his face was built differently now. Sam knew all about the Doctor’s previous lives, the other bodies he’d lived in and lost over the years. She also knew that “this” Doctor, “her” Doctor, still didn’t really understand what he looked like, or appreciate the impression he left on the rest of the universe. How long had he been walking around like this? Three years, by his reckoning? And he hadn’t figured out who he was yet.
Just for a second, she felt sorry for him. Because he wanted to be a force of nature again, he wanted to be the incredible escaping equation all the time, but instead he was trapped in a half-human body with a baby-face and floppy curls.
‘Psychic?’ Sam queried.
The Doctor broke off the stare. ‘There’s something here. Something trying to make contact. I can almost feel...’ He punctuated the sentence by jumping up and down. Testing the gravity, maybe. ‘Beneath our feet. Something beneath our feet. Throwing out tendrils.’
‘OK, let me try and translate this into English. Somebody in this pyramid’s trying to make psychic contact with you, is that what you’re saying?’
‘It’s not a pyramid. It’s a ziggurat.’ A new expression materialised on his face. It took Sam a few moments to identify it as a look of pure hurt. Like a child whose parents had just told him that he smelled. ‘It doesn’t want to talk to me. Every time it comes close, it pulls away. It’s trying to make contact, but it’s...’
The sentence ended in mid-pontification. The Doctor moved, faster than Sam could follow. With one smooth motion, he turned, and leapt back down the passageway towards her. A second later, he was standing with his back pressed against the corridor wall, pulling Sam towards him. His hand was clamped across her mouth before she’d even managed to open it.
There was a second or two of absolute silence. Then there were footsteps. Human footsteps, by the sound of them. Around the corner. Getting closer.
Two figures walked past the corridor where Sam and the Doctor stood, moving across the mouth of the t-junction. Sam watched them go by, but the figures didn’t even glance in her direction. The torchlight turned the two newcomers into smudges of orange and black. Sam tried to focus on the contours of their clothes, the details of their faces...
She hiccuped. Somehow, she managed to do it silently.
Eventually, the figures disappeared along the tunnel. The Doctor held Sam still for another minute or so, making sure the coast was clear before he let her go. Sam started spitting as soon as she was free of him.
‘Yeuch,’ she said.
The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. They weren’t very attractive, were they?’
‘I was talking about your hand. Do all Time Lords taste of chicken, or is it just you?’
The Doctor paused for a second, as if considering sticking one of his forgers into his mouth to test it, then frowned. ‘Now is not the time, Sam.’
‘Yeah, I know. Those two. I thought they were human, but...’
‘But?’
‘They didn’t have faces. Skulls. They had bare skulls. Not human skulls, either.’
The Doctor looked pensive. ‘Half-human,