Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [111]
‘Yes.’
Chiltern stabbed a thorn into the Doctor’s cheekbone and drew it languidly down his face, laying the skin open. The Doctor hissed in breath. He felt the blood slide hotly out and run down his neck. ‘Where is the mirror?’
‘With its brothers.’
‘The machine is here?’
‘What strange eyes you have.’ Almost wonderingly, Chiltern pushed the Doctor’s hair back, then took a handful and turned his head first to one side then the other. ‘It’s easy to believe you’re not human. Sebastian told me, of course. But I’d have known anyway.’
‘How?’
‘I can see it. Around you. I felt it too. It’s difficult to describe. A contortion. As if right next to you everything were going more swiftly. Or more slowly.’ Of course, thought the Doctor. Like the Angel-Maker, or Millie in her trance. The time-sense of the mad. Chiltern was still gazing at him, curious and speculative. ‘I wonder,’ he mused, ‘what would happen if we put you in the machine.’ The Doctor’s face went still. ‘Dear me, you don’t seem to like that idea.’
‘Chiltern,’ the Doctor said carefully, ‘you have to understand. Using the machine again could cause –’
‘– hideous destruction beyond all imagining.’ Chiltern stroked his hair softly. ‘Yes, yes, I know – I overheard you with Sebastian. What’s that to me? I already have hideous suffering beyond all imagining.’
‘All right,’ said the Doctor angrily, ‘let’s reduce it all to you. You could die.’
Chiltern laughed. ‘That’s supposed to dissuade me? I fear you don’t know your audience, Doctor. But do go on. I want to hear you try to save the situation.’
The Doctor was silent. Chiltern’s face changed. ‘Such a good man, pleading for all those unknown lives. And yet, as I recall, you can be quite brutal if you feel the occasion calls for it. I refer to your energetic activity with that gate. You remember, don’t you? It was something like this.’ And he raised the Doctor and smashed him against the floor.
And then again.
And then again.
And then –
* * *
Are you ready?’ Nathaniel Chiltern asked.
Constance Jane held on to his hand, staring at the machine. It was beautiful, really. Shining and brilliant. It belonged on a stage. She looked around the small gas lit theatre of the Phantasmagorical Exhibit, reminded of some of the places in which she’d performed as a medium. The stage was bigger of course; she supposed the front part covered an orchestra pit. In the seating area, empty chairs held a phantom audience. Witnesses to her new life. But still...
‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Perhaps Millie should do this. She’s much bolder than I am.’
‘That may be,’ said Nathaniel, ‘but as it happens, she’s chosen not to be here.’
‘She did choose, didn’t she?’
‘She appears to do what she wants.’
Constance nodded. ‘I guess that means that she approves. Otherwise, she’d come out and stop me, wouldn’t she?’
‘I have no doubt.’ He took her hand in both of his. ‘I wish I could guarantee this.’
‘Oh.’ She looked up into his grave face. ‘That’s all right. No guarantee on anything, is there?’ She turned toward the machine. ‘Tell me what to do.’
‘It’s quite simple. I start the machine, and we wait while the time diffraction and recombination takes place. A light on the control board comes on when it’s safe to enter. You enter through that panel with the glyphs on it. I close it after you, and you walk through the door to the inner chamber and into the past.’
She bit her lip. ‘And what about you?’
‘I’ll do the same thing with my brother. Different time setting, obviously. The day when Sebastian put us through the machine. We’ll go in together, and, I hope, emerge again as one.’
‘So, if it works, I won’t see you again.’
‘I won’t exist,’ he said steadily. ‘But, really, I don’t exist now.’
‘And if it doesn’t work?’
‘I imagine it will kill us. I hope so.’
She looked down. ‘All right,’ she said finally. She squeezed