Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [65]
‘All taken care of, sir.’
The Doctor shut his eyes in a pang of reluctant sympathy for Scale. And guilt. Vera was right. In a way, he’d led him to his death.
The lid banged open. Before the Doctor could move, O’Keagh grabbed him, wrenched his arms up behind his back, and hauled him out. For the first time, he took in his surroundings. Steel drawers and cabinets. Shelves of large, labelled jars. Electric lighting above a long metal table with straps hanging from it. A white-tiled floor with a large central drain. The Doctor’s eyes winced away from this back to the jars. They definitely contained tissue, but he couldn’t make out exactly what kind. O’Keagh dragged him towards the table.
The Doctor supposed things could be going worse, but for the moment exactly how eluded him. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he rasped at Chiltern – rather stupidly, he reflected, as the answer was unpleasantly obvious. ‘Are you going to kill me?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Chiltern as O’Keagh wrestled the Doctor on to the table. Chiltern stepped forward to fasten the restraints. Once his wrists were strapped, the Doctor stopped fighting. He closed his eyes in exasperation. Chiltern moved down to secure his ankles. ‘Thank you, Mr O’Keagh. That will be all for the moment.’
The Doctor heard O’Keagh leave the room. Chiltern came back to the head of the table and regarded his prisoner thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been told you have dangerous eyes. Will you behave, or do I have to blindfold you?’
The Doctor sighed irritably. ‘You don’t need to worry.’
‘Good. Now, who are you?’
‘I’m the only one who can help you.’
‘Do I need help?’
‘Badly.’
‘Really? I’d say you were the one in trouble at the moment.’
‘However much trouble I’m in, there’s only one of me. How many of you are there?’
Chiltern stared at him rigidly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, don’t be coy!’ the Doctor shouted, jerking at the straps. ‘I’m talking about the machine! The time machine! Now are you going to release me and let me help you, or not?’ Chiltern took a step back. ‘You have the mirrors, but the mirrors aren’t enough. You have to have the machinery. You must have found it separated from the mirrors. How did you even know what it was? Surely there wasn’t an operating manual. The thing must have been all set up, with the frame for the mirrors intact but empty. What was it being sold as?’
‘A carnival ride,’ Chiltern whispered. ‘But no one could guess how it had worked.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘So they’d sold off the mirrors for a maze. I knew as soon as I saw it that it was unique, some strange work of genius. Then the man who had it, a dealer in antique machines, told me of the queer things the mirrors had sometimes showed. I traced them.’
‘You’d guessed it was a time machine.’
Chiltern nodded slowly. ‘I knew it was something extraordinary, and thought it might have to do with time.’ He came closer. ‘I guessed. But you knew.’ He bent over the Doctor. ‘How did you know?’
The Doctor didn’t answer. Chiltern placed a hand on his forehead, then felt for his pulse. ‘There’s something unnatural about you. Your body temperature is much too low, for one thing.’
The Doctor had been thinking for decades that he ought to devise an explanation for that particular peculiarity. Unfortunately, he still hadn’t come up with one. Chiltern took a stethoscope from his pocket and undid a few buttons of the Doctor’s waistcoat and shirt. He frowned. ‘What happened here?’
‘Accident,’ said the Doctor shortly.
‘A rather complicated one, apparently. What about this?’ Chiltern fingered the thick scar above where the Doctor’s heart had been. ‘You haven’t led a very healthy life.’
‘That’s one way of putting it. So you’re a surgeon too?’
‘I do the occasional autopsy.’
‘I see. And send the occasional corpse to potter’s field. So much for Scale.’
Chiltern shrugged and pressed the cold stethoscope to the Doctor