Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [14]
Smith had grown very quiet. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, head down. Now he looked up, and Chiltern was struck once more by his brilliant eyes, almost relucent in the shadowy hall. ‘But our many selves, potential or realised, share a memory that unites them.’
‘Exactly. This doesn’t seem to be the case with these patients, however. The memory is localised in each of the separate selves – it’s what makes them separate, in fact. They can hide from one another, the mind hiding from itself.’
‘Yes,’ Smith agreed softly. ‘Secrets within secrets.’
‘Secrets,’ said a queer high voice. ‘I know some secrets.’
The two men turned. Without their noticing, Miss Jane had slipped into the hall, standing quietly in the shadows by the door. Her eyes were very wide, almost round.
‘Are you the one who set the tambourine trick?’ said Smith mildly.
‘Tricks,’ she snorted. ‘You’re one to talk about tricks!’
‘How should we address you?’ Chiltern asked.
‘You? On your knees and naked, handsome.’
Used to these sorts of remarks from patients, Chiltern was unperturbed. ‘Then may I call you Miss Jane?’
‘That cow! She doesn’t know anything.’
‘And what is it that you know?’
She smirked coyly. ‘I’m not telling.’
‘May we speak to Chief Ironwing?’
‘No.’ Sulkily.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s gone to sleep.’
‘What about Miss Jane?’
‘Why do you want to speak to her? She’s no fun.’ The woman stepped forward and toyed with Chiltern’s tie. ‘I’m fun. But not you.’ She turned on Smith. ‘You’re beyond all this, aren’t you? Far, far beyond.’
‘Miss Jane –’ Chiltern began soothingly.
‘Don’t call me that!’ She whirled on him again. ‘I hate her! I hate her!’ Her whirl turned into a circle, and she began to turn in one spot, faster and faster. ‘I hate her, hate her, hate her –’
Both men moved forward, but as soon as Chiltern reached for her, she shuddered and became still. Her eyes rolled back in her head as if she might faint again, but then with a shiver, she stood upright. She looked into their faces and her own collapsed into terror. ‘Oh God,’ wailed Constance Jane’s normal voice, ‘has it happened again?’
* * *
Chapter Three
‘You’re not a loser,’ said Anji.
‘Thanks,’ Fitz muttered.
They were in the sitting room of the flat the Doctor had rented, finishing their breakfast coffee. The Doctor was upstairs in the TARDIS, which, with surprising skill, he had managed to insert into the third floor box room. Anji assumed he was absorbed in research and instrument readings, trying to make more sense of the odd temporal pattern that had drawn them here.
Ceding the flat’s two bedrooms to Fitz and Anji, the Doctor slept in the TARDIS, and Fitz and Anji also made use of it for necessities like bathing and laundry. The Doctor had rented the place at very short notice from the brother of a man who was on an extended journey abroad, and it was certainly comfortable enough, with a large sitting room whose two windows overlooked the street. Certain peculiarities, such as a sheaf of letters and bills affixed to the mantelpiece with a jackknife, had given Anji the impression that the usual tenant was something of an eccentric.
‘Really,’ she insisted. ‘You’re not.’
‘The spirits seem to think otherwise.’
‘One spirit,’ she corrected. ‘And frankly, it sounded as if it had some sort of personality problem.’
‘I didn’t think spirits had those.’
‘Perhaps not. But people do. ’
‘Mm.’
They sat in silence for a moment, finishing their coffee.
‘So you think it was all her,’ Fitz said.
‘Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know. Hard to believe she was faking.’
‘The Doctor doesn’t think she is. He thinks when she goes into a trance other personalities emerge.’
‘Yeah, that multiple personality thing he was talking about when he came in last night. I didn’t really follow it.’
‘They’re all really aspects of the same person, but they don’t necessarily share memory.’
‘Ah,’ said Fitz wisely.
‘One of the personalities is often nasty. That would be the one that insulted you.’
There was another moment’s silence. Neither of them really wanted to get to the central