Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [104]
180
‘Ah, it is the little Doctor, I wondered if we would finally meet. What am I to make of this strange man who is so anxious to involve himself in matters which are of no concern of his?’ The amusement left Moriah’s face. ‘This is a private matter. It is none of your business. Stay out of my affairs.’
‘This is my business. You’re interfering with the lives of people I care about.
That makes this my business. Now, I’m warning you, Moriah, stay away from my friends.’
Moriah shook his head, as if he felt that the Doctor had genuinely misun-derstood the situation. ‘That woman is mine to do with as I see fit. I gave her life. If I choose to bury her then so be it.’
The Doctor stared with incomprehension at the muscular man before him.
‘But why? Why create something so precious only to destroy it?’
‘She is flawed,’ Moriah spat with distaste. ‘Just another failure. I have worked unceasingly to return my betrothed to me. I have searched for longer than you have lived. Searched for longer than any of you can possibly imagine.’
Julia looked up from Tilda’s unconscious body. Finally, she understood what the work at the Institute was really about. She snorted, bitterly. And she’d thought that the Petruska Programme was merely an addition to the main work. But instead it was the task. ‘And all our years of work?’ she said.
‘A means to an end, Doctor Mannheim. Nothing more. You think I care for the disturbed of this world. The bodies of humans have provided the fertile soil on which I have laboured to bring back my bride. That is the extent of my interest in them. Death took my love from me, and it will return her.’
Something broke in the little man standing before the giant. The Doctor suddenly had to use his umbrella to support himself as if he were an old man.
Tears filled his eyes, which glistened brighter than ever. The transformation was shocking. Somehow, Julia had never expected to see the Doctor cry.
‘Death doesn’t give us second chances, can’t you see?’ the Doctor pleaded, his voice shrill, as if he were desperate to be understood. ‘If it did, don’t you think that I would have changed the past a thousand times. Don’t you think that I would have brought back all the friends I’ve lost? We have to face losing the people we care for. We can’t avoid it. And it hurts.’ The Doctor pressed his hand against his breast, as if he needed to support his heart. ‘Sometimes it hurts so much I can hardly bear it.’
‘Don’t waste your words on him, Doctor,’ a new voice commanded.
Julia whirled round to see a woman striding into the room, moving with natural authority despite being dressed in workmen’s clothes. Her skin was tanned and her hair blonde and bleached by the sun. Despite this, she looked completely exhausted. Julia Mannheim placed her accent immediately, one hundred per cent New York.
181
‘Moriah’s not telling you the whole truth. Petruska didn’t just die. She killed herself. It was the only way to be rid of the man who had made her life intolerable.’
‘No!’ Moriah roared in anguish, and collapsed to his knees, clutching his face.
Gilliam felt a wave of satisfaction as Moriah knelt in front of her, sobbing like a lost child, oblivious to everything but his hurt. She had never even considered the possibility that he might still be alive after all this time. The legends on Kr’on Tep called him the man-god, and perhaps he was immortal.
He certainly must have lived for uncountable centuries. Thousands of years spent mourning a woman who hated him with every ounce of her being.
He was so different to how she had imagined him. She’d thought of him as a warrior, with a fighter’s body, a hard cruel face and dark eyes. In reality, whilst he was muscular, he wasn’t a warrior. He was a huge man, bulky and bulging beneath his suit – perhaps he’d gone to seed over the ages. For all his years, his face was unlined and curiously ageless. Only his eyes betrayed his age. As if fatigued from always being focused on events beyond the range of human senses.
She’d seen eyes like those before.
The little man in the tweed jacket,