Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [2]
For a long time, the unfamiliar, inadequate rhythm prevented him from sleeping. Not that he slept much ordinarily. But in his new weakness he often stretched out, exhausted, only to find himself kept awake, teased from peace, by the wrongness of his pulse, the way it beat strangely in his ear against the pillow. What was this new code hammering through his body? What did it mean?
Mortal.
No, he’d always known he could die. Not mortal.
Damaged. Crippled.
Through his shirt, his cold fingers sought out the thick ridge of his scar.
Human.
Stop this!
He rested his forehead against the cool glass of the compartment window. It was a grey day, and periodically the landscape outside darkened enough for him to glimpse his reflection, pale and partial, like a ghost. Did he look different now? He didn’t think so. The same face – a man, just under forty, that human beings apparently found handsome. His appearance didn’t really change, hadn’t changed for a hundred years now. Maybe some strands of grey in the thick brown hair. And before that? What had he looked like when he was young, a boy? Had he ever been a boy? Did whatever manner of being he was have a childhood? True, he sometimes got the impression that he’d once been shorter. But there were also moments when he could have sworn he had once been taller.
The Doctor sat back and shut his eyes. Thackata-thack. Thackata-thack. Trains. What memories he had began a hundred years ago on a nineteenth-century train like this one. A second-class carriage. A wary woman opposite. Himself, just returned to consciousness. Confusion. Then panic. Then fear. Then something worse: the understanding that his past then was as lost as his heart was now. Gone, the both of them. Why even think about it? A waste of the time he seemed to have so much of. Better to concentrate on the matter at hand. That certainly provided enough mysteries of its own.
* * *
Octave could never see over the footlights into the dark, high-vaulted hall, so before a performance he would slip around to the back of the theatre to get a look at the audience. He did this early, before he was in makeup and while people were still finding their seats, so he could lurk unobtrusively and get a look at the faces. He liked to get a sense of whom he would be playing to.
Though the rather lurid posters outside proclaimed him Octave the Uncanny and showed him communing with skull-faced spirits and sharing a drink with the Devil, he was in person an unprepossessing man, thin and sallow with a scanty moustache and a hairline that was receding early. No one ever gave him a second glance when he loitered in the lobby or took a turn up and down the aisles.
Aside from getting a general sense of his public for the evening, Octave kept an eye out for other magicians and professional debunkers. He hated dealing with that sort of nonsense, and it was best to be prepared for it. Just a few weeks ago, Maskelyne had stood up from a seat and challenged him in mid-show. Maskelyne himself. Octave had been impressed in spite of the circumstances. He’d also been quite nervous when – as he had to, naturally, to avoid a fuss – he’d invited him up on stage. Not because he feared exposure, obviously. Simply because it was... Maskelyne. A legendary member of the legendary conjuring family. And of course, even the great Maskelyne had come away impressed in turn.
Afterwards he had bulled the unwilling Octave out for a drink and tried to persuade him to bring his act to London. It had been very difficult putting him off. Quite understandably, Maskelyne couldn’t see why a man who bothered to perform as a professional magician wouldn’t want to make the best living possible at it – why, in short, he wouldn’t seek his fortune in London, where Maskelyne was certain he would find not only fortune but fame beyond his dreams. Octave explained that he had no dreams of fame, and that the money he made touring the North was sufficient for his needs. This latter wasn’t precisely true. But then the precise truth was... untellable.