Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [73]
He sat back on his heels. ‘Remarkable. And where are the controls?’
Chiltern showed him a simple console made of the same metal, a rounded-edge cube with no joins and a control panel consisting of raised symbols. At a glance, the Doctor could see that these were keyed to a base-12 number system. When he examined the sides, he saw diagrams illustrating the use of the console. The simplicity was breathtaking. Of course, the machine had been designed to be user-friendly. The technological complexity was all concealed inside the apparently impenetrable box.
He went around to the other side. Well, wasn’t this nice? Instructions for spatial plane interfacing. The Doctor ran his finger lightly over the raised glyphs. That certainly would make the unwieldy device no problem to transport. He wondered whether Chiltern had understood the instructions. Better not to draw attention to them by asking.
Chiltern had been watching him impatiently. ‘Can you repair it?’
‘I’m not sure. But in any case, it mustn’t be used again.’
‘Not used?’
‘Never,’ said the Doctor, still somewhat distracted by the beauty of the machine’s design. ‘I suspected as much before I came here, to be frank, but now that I’ve seen it, it’s obvious that using the machine when it’s not working properly is hideously damaging to Time. Even running tests in order to adjust it to the correct settings wouldn’t be safe.’
‘So you won’t even attempt the task?’
‘There are dozens of things that could be wrong. The Earth’s magnetic field, for example, might be different from that of the world on which this was constructed. There’s also the gravitational field to be considered.’ The Doctor thought of the eighteenth-century Earth clocks used to measure time at sea, subject to the environmental stresses of movement, moisture, temperature... Who made you? he wondered, lightly touching the glyphs. What were their dreams for you?
‘There must be a way.’
‘There isn’t, can’t you understand? The device hasn’t even got all its parts. You’d distort Time so badly that whatever you want to accomplish would undoubtedly turn into something else. Not to mention the damage to the rest of the universe. We’re talking about a cosmic problem here.’
‘That can be avoided somehow!’
‘No it cannot!’ The Doctor turned on Chiltern. ‘Get some perspective, man! Haven’t you been listening? Even if it were complete, turning on the machine could easily start a time destabilisation that –’
‘Mr O’Keagh,’ Chiltern said.
The Doctor exhaled angrily. As O’Keagh started for him, he turned and sprang up to grab the edge of the machine’s roof. Ignoring Chiltern’s angry shout, he hoisted himself on to the glass tiles and rapidly shoved the lenses out of alignment, actually managing to pull one loose and fling it to the floor before O’Keagh, after several jumps, succeeded in grabbing his ankle and jerking him down. He fell right into the big man’s arms, one of which immediately whipped around his neck while the other pinioned his chest and upper arms. Livid, Chiltern rushed forward and hit him hard in the face.
‘Hours of work!’ he cried. ‘Hours!’
‘I weep for you,’ the Doctor wheezed. ‘I deeply sympathise.’ Chiltern hit him again, this time in the stomach, and the Doctor didn’t say anything else as he was hauled from the room and back to the old wine cellar. Chiltern dragged open the barred gate beneath the steps; it grated screechingly along the flagstones. ‘Throw him in. Find a padlock.’ O’Keagh shoved the Doctor into the recess and Chiltern threw his weight on to the gate to clang it shut. He leaned against the bars, smiling viciously. ‘Maybe you can’t be forced, my strange friend. But you can certainly be used.’
‘For what?