Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [72]
‘I don’t advise breaking out. The dog would track you down.’
‘Dog?’
‘An Irish wolfhound.’
‘Of course. The hound of the Baskervilles.’
Chiltern frowned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Oh, I forgot. Hasn’t been published yet. Sorry.’
Chiltern stared at him for a minute, his head propped against his fist. ‘Perhaps this was a mistake.’
‘You’re right there,’ said the Doctor. ‘You should never have had anything to do with the machine. Where has it got you?’
‘Well,’ Chiltern stood up, ‘now that I have you, we’ll see. Come along.’
He led the Doctor, trailed by O’Keagh, along the hall to the kitchen, then, after finding a candle, down a flight of stone steps into an extensive cellar. Once O’Keagh lit a hanging oil lamp, the Doctor could see that most of the area they were in had at one time been given over to wine. A space beneath the steps, barred with an iron gate, had obviously been reserved for special vintages. Of these one-time vinous treasures, no bottle remained. The place had the same empty, disused air as everything else he had seen.
‘This way,’ said Chiltern, and the Doctor followed the wavering candlelight down a passage, past a series of locked storerooms with ancient oak doors. Chiltern stopped in front of one of these and unlocked it with a large, old-fashioned iron key. He stepped inside, fumbled for a minute. The Doctor heard the hum of a generator, then the room was bright with harsh unshaded electric light.
‘Oh dear,’ said the Doctor. He stood with his hands on his hips, lower lip between his teeth, eyeing the gleaming, elegant construction in the centre of the room. Clearly this was where Chiltern’s time and energy had gone, for the metal and mirrors shone. The Doctor moved forward even before O’Keagh could push him and stepped into the machine.
It was open to its farthest extension, so that the mirrors were arrayed almost in a straight line, forming a wall rather than a many sided box. Pulled shut, they would make a chamber not unlike the interior of Scale’s camera obscura, but with mirrored walls. The Doctor saw immediately why Chiltern hadn’t realised a mirror might be missing. The frame was jointed at roughly twenty-centimetre intervals, so that it could be adjusted to hold mirrors of differing widths and number. Currently it held seven. When these were drawn together to form a seven-sided room, they would enclose a smaller, cylindrical chamber with transparent walls and a hinged segment that could be used as a door.
The Doctor stooped to examine the floor. It was a dull, polished metal he’d never seen, cool to the touch in the usual way. Standing, he peered up at a clear dome formed of dozens of individual squares of glass, above which were carefully mounted seven lenses. It was odd to see these focused on the thick cellar walls, but of course time, unlike light, was no respecter of physical boundaries.
‘You sometimes see other times in the mirrors even when the machine is off, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘Yes. There’s no pattern, and the scenes don’t last very long.’
‘Mm hm.’ The Doctor counted the lenses again. One for each mirror. Well, there was the difficulty right there. Scale must have the eighth lens as well as the missing eighth mirror. No doubt, the machine could be set up with various numbers of mirrors and lenses, but a seven-mirror configuration would need a different set of lenses to an octagonal one, its own unique set. They weren’t interchangeable. The machine was lensed for eight mirrors and would never work correctly with fewer.
On the other hand – and this was his problem – it all too clearly worked incorrectly.
‘How did you ever figure out how to put this together?’
‘It came with instructions,’ said Chiltern drily. ‘Look again at the floor.’
The Doctor knelt and took a magnifying glass from his pocket. With this he could see a neatly organised set of engraved diagrams. He followed them with fascination, delighting in their sophistication and clarity. This was quite wonderful. His knowledge must be incomplete. Such easily understood, culturally transcendent instructions had to have been developed