Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [72]
Thick rugs covered the floor and an open fire lit up the room with a warm orange glow. It reminded Jack of a gentleman’s club like the ones he sometimes walked past on Pall Mall. He’d never actually been in a room like this before.
In fact, he’d only ever seen them at the pictures.
The thick carpet gently tickled his bare feet as he walked around the room.
One corner of the room opened out into a windowed turret, a large wooden 120
desk sat in the circular space, its chair positioned so the occupier could look up from his work and gaze out over the grounds of the building. Jack watched as the Doctor crossed to the desk and began to root through the stacks of papers laid out upon it.
The Doctor flicked through great sheaves of papers so quickly that for a moment Jack thought he was just using them to fan himself. It was only when he joined the Doctor and saw his mouth moving slightly that Jack realized that the Doctor was actually reading each page that flashed past his eyes.
‘You’re from somewhere else, aren’t you?’ Jack began, giving voice to a suspicion that had been growing since the previous night. ‘I mean really somewhere else, like Mars or Krypton or somewhere?’
The Doctor’s mouth twitched slightly at this but he proceeded with his task, continuing to read at his roller-coaster pace. Jack cast his eyes down at the papers on the desk. The paper looked old and stiff, like parchment. Someone had etched delicate symbols on the sheets. Animals, mostly. Some snakes, furry horses and something that looked like a lizard that stood on its hind legs, like a person. One of the symbols caught Jack’s eye. It was a bird of paradise framed by a circle. The bird in the circle was elegant and exotic, and was clearly preparing for flight. He’d seen that image before, carved on to the surface of the glass sphere in Gordy Scraton’s nightclub.
‘Is this Egyptian writing, Doctor, you know, hierographics?’
‘Glyphs, Jack. Hieroglyphs.’ He shook his head, irritably. ‘Ancient Egyptian isn’t the only language with a pictorial alphabet in the Galaxy, you know. And this one certainly didn’t originate on this planet.’ The Doctor dropped the papers he’d been reading on to the desk with a satisfying thump. ‘Don’t they teach you anything useful in your schools?’
‘I think I left before they got around to teaching us Martian.’ Jack looked at the Doctor. ‘You’re not pulling my leg, are you? This writing is from Venus or somewhere, isn’t it?’
‘Rather further than Venus, I suspect. But no, I’m not pulling your leg, Jack.’
‘And you weren’t having me on when you said that you were a different species either? You’re from outer space too, aren’t you?’
The Doctor smiled at some private joke. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment, ‘in a manner of speaking. Although I’m not really from anywhere anymore. I travel in time and space.’
Jack looked at the little man afresh. He took in his mischievous eyes, his wild, sweaty brown hair and his blood-splattered pyjamas. He didn’t look like a man from outer space. He looked more like Christie on a bad day.
Jack wanted to take advantage of the Doctor’s sudden and rare willingness to answer questions. ‘And the bloke behind this place – Moriah? – is he the same as you?’
121
‘Well I hope not, Jack,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘I do hope not.’ He tilted his head and his brow furrowed. ‘I only glimpsed him, but he does seem familiar somehow. I’m fairly sure I don’t recognize him personally, but I think I’ve encountered others of his race before. It’s just a question of when and where.’
‘Doesn’t it say where he’s from in those papers?’
‘I’m afraid not, Jack. These only seem to be the plans for a time corridor.’
‘Come again?’
‘A gateway linking one time and place in the Universe with another. A secret passage in the structure of the Galaxy. The Universe’s equivalent of a back staircase. Presumably that’s how Moriah found his way to Earth.’
‘Oh,’ Jack said, feeling rather out of his depth. He tried to imagine what a corridor in time and space might look like, and failed. Weren’t spacemen supposed to travel to Earth