Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [115]
‘Destroyed?’ said Chiltern. He was still staring, his mouth slightly open. The Doctor sympathised. Sabbath came on. He wasn’t armed except for his cane, but the Doctor knew Chiltern couldn’t handle both of them. Not to mention the Angel-Maker, who was no doubt around somewhere.
‘Yes, indeed.’ Sabbath started up the stage steps. ‘Temporally speaking, the Doctor is an extremely unusual individual. One might say unique. I can’t predict exactly what would befall the machine if you attempted to run him through it, but you may take my word that it would be calamitous. As he very well knows.’ He eyed the Doctor with amusement. The Doctor gazed back sourly. ‘He’s a tricky fellow. Fools others into helping him find things he intends to destroy, for example. I dare say he was goading you on.’
‘It would kill him.’
‘And you. And, in a manner of speaking, the machine. But it would save Time. That’s all that matters to the Doctor. Now please shut it off.’
Chiltern held his ground. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You know,’ said Sabbath, gaining the stage, ‘I don’t care.’
The Doctor made a sudden, desperate lunge for freedom. Chiltern staggered, then grabbed at him again – the Doctor cried out as the thorns snagged in his flesh. He heard Sabbath’s angry roar – Chiltern must have attacked him too. The Doctor thrashed frantically as the brambles slipped around him like jagged-edged snakes. The machine’s hum razored through his brain. It was happening, he could feel it. The stretching fabric, the snapping threads, one here, one there, one now, one then – it would be just a few at first, one, then another, then another, and then they’d come faster, like the patter of rain before a downpour, and then –
Chiltern suddenly jerked and grunted. The thorns loosened. The Doctor batted and pulled at them furiously. Chiltern rolled away from him, snarling in rage. The Doctor writhed loose and leaped for the machine. As he wrenched the door open, he thought he heard Sabbath yell, telling him to stop, telling someone to stop, then he was inside. The central chamber was blank and empty. He plunged in and slammed the door behind him.
Splinters of time hit him from eight directions. His head shot back, his back arched. He clawed at the transparent walls, whimpering. The pain... the force... He began to turn, caught in some invisible circling current. In the mirror opposite, he saw himself, coatless, bloody, stretched in agony. Slowly he rotated. The next mirror floated into view. There he was, coatless, arching, scraping futilely at the wall –
It wasn’t him.
The Doctor could barely focus. He tried to squint. It wasn’t him. It was a smaller man, brown-haired, dressed in white, squinting back out of fierce blue eyes. He’d seen him somewhere, hadn’t he? Dreamed about him? What –
The next mirror drifted in front of him. The Doctor wondered if the time pressure was distorting his senses. For this wasn’t him either, but a robust, heavy fellow in a motley coat, his face slack with reflected bewilderment. They watched each other move away. The Doctor shut his eyes. just keep them closed for a bit. Reorient. Give it a minute... There.
He looked. This time the man looking back was a tall, curly-haired, pop-eyed fellow in a long scarf, someone Tenniel could have drawn for Lewis Carroll. They stared at each other in amazement. The Doctor put out a hand. So did the other. Then he was gone, replaced by the reflection in the next mirror, a stylish, white-haired man in a velvet jacket.
A new wave of pain hit the Doctor. His head snapped back and hit the wall, his joints felt as if they were pulling apart. He was too weak to cry out. He would have fallen in a heap if the current hadn’t borne him up, still turning him gently while his nerves crackled and short-circuited. Break, damn you! Break! You’ve never had a spanner like this thrown in you! Chew on me till your teeth crack. Grind me up