Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [58]
Chiltern shook his head very slowly. ‘Nothing to remember. I’m... nothing.’ He leaned close to the grid; the Doctor could feel and smell his cool, sour breath. Chiltern shut his eyes, put his lips against the iron, as near as possible to the Doctor’s ear. ‘I’m not here.’
‘Dr Chiltern.’
But Chiltern turned away. ‘Not here.’ He lay again on the bed, his back to the window. After watching him a second longer, the Doctor let go of the grid and dropped beside Anji.
‘Well?’ she said.
The Doctor squinted up at the window, rubbing his sore palms. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know whether it’s the brother?’
‘Don’t know which brother it is. Apparently they’re twins.’
‘Twins?’ Anji glanced at the window, then back to the Doctor. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Identical, as far as I could tell.’
‘I mean, are you sure there are only two of them? Could Chiltern be another of your fractures?’
‘Oh,’ he said in comprehension. He started back towards where they’d left Fitz and she followed. ‘I don’t think so. Each of the fractures simultaneously experiences what all the others are experiencing. That’s not happening here. No, this looks like one of those stories with a Good Twin and an Evil Twin.’
‘Which is which?’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. ‘And what has either of them to do with our time problem?’
‘Well, nothing, I suppose,’ she said after a moment. ‘But there’s clearly something wrong here. We can’t just leave it, can we?’
‘No.’ The Doctor glanced back at the window. ‘I don’t think we can.’
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
The Doctor hadn’t meant to fall asleep. As far as he was concerned, he just sat down on the settee while Fitz and Anji were going to investigate the cake situation, and the next thing he knew he was dreaming. It was the old one, the recurrent one, about his heart. The strange huge ceremonial hall. Sabbath. The pain. Screaming.
As so often in dreams, his emotional reaction didn’t necessarily match the content. This time, he was for some inexplicable reason terrifically concerned that his heart was now outside his chest and exposed to the light. It wasn’t a faux-vampire sort of fear – he wasn’t expecting the heart to burst into flames or crumble to dust. Anyway, the light was all wrong for that kind of nightmare – firelight, not sunlight, and not very strong at that.
No, what he was absurdly upset about was simply that his heart, meant to spend its life unseen, had been touched by light, the dark chambers illuminated. A heart ought to remain safe in its aphotic home from birth till long after death, exposed by decomposition only to the sealed room of the coffin, if at all. This – what was happening – the raised, black and bloody organ, glistening in the light of the torches, was against nature. Wrong. Un—
The Doctor woke up. It was dusk, and there was a note on the table from Anji inviting him to join her and Fitz at Simpson’s for supper.
A few minutes later, coat brushed and hat on head, he was out of the front door. He had only gone a few paces when he found that there was someone at his elbow. Glancing sideways, he wasn’t entirely surprised to see Scale.
‘Evening, sir,’ said Scale obsequiously. He was hunched over a little, and his hands were clasped in front of his chest.
‘Mr Scale,’ the Doctor responded formally. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Well, I come up here – all the way up here, sir, and, mind, it were a journey – to apologise to you, truth be known. Truth be known, I’m a bit ashamed of the way I behaved yesterday. I’m afraid I might have been a bit the worse for drink. I hope you’re not bearing any grudge.’
‘No, no,’ said the Doctor lightly. ‘All of us lose control at one time or another. I dare say you’d had a bad day.’
‘That were it, sir. Very trying. The pressures of the entertainment profession, if I may say so, can be excruciating. I was not quite myself. So I hope you’ll accept my apologies.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
‘Oh, thank ’ee, sir. I knew you was a gentleman. I said to myself when I was debating coming to find you, he’s a gentleman, make no mistake, and he won’t turn away an apology