Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [89]
A shadow moved in the street below. Fitz craned out and identified it. ‘Doctor!’ he called softly.
The Doctor looked up, moonlight flattening his eyes.
‘Where’re you going, then? No, wait, hang on.’ Fitz stubbed his cigarette on the sill and hurried from his room.
The Doctor eyed him unwelcomingly, but Fitz didn’t care if he didn’t want company. He wanted company. And he wouldn’t mind knowing what was going on either. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I thought I’d take a walk on the moor.’
‘I’d think you’d had enough of it after last night.’
The Doctor moved off without replying. Fitz fell in with him.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what are we looking at? The end of the universe?’
‘Only as we know it.’
‘Oh, so that’s all right then.’
They walked in silence past the church and up the narrow road that led to the moor.
‘So how will it be,’ said Fitz after a while, ‘this end of which you have spoken?’
‘Well, put simply, a chain reaction will start and time will get all shredded up.’
‘That’s the layman’s version.’
‘Yes. I can give you the mathematics if you like.’
Fitz glanced at the Doctor, but apparently he had spoken without irony. ‘That’s all right.’
They walked on.
‘We’re lucky it hasn’t happened already,’ the Doctor said at last.
‘Yeah? Well then, it might not happen for a while.’
‘Your point being...?’
‘Well, that’s better than happening next instant, isn’t it? Gives you some time.’
‘To do what exactly?’
‘Erm, what you always do. Fix things. Pull the impossible rabbit out of the non-existent hat.’
The Doctor smiled faintly; it didn’t reach his eyes. They passed an ancient stone cross, its arms weathered to nubs, and turned left down an even narrower track through some woods.
‘Seriously,’ said Fitz, following the Doctor through the darkness, ‘can’t you pitch a spanner in the thing?’
‘I have to find it first.’
‘Can’t you track its time disruptions signal or whatever?’
‘Only if it’s on. And if it’s on –’
‘– we’re off. Got you. So you don’t have any idea where it is?’
‘Given Victorian transportation limits, it’s probably still in the British Isles at this point, but that’s not much help.’
‘This third Chiltern... He’s not right, is he? I mean, physically. So he’d have to go some place he could hide.’
‘Yes. I’m fairly positive he’s fled to some other place that he owns or feels he has safe access to. But there’s no record of such a place in his personal or professional files at the clinic, or in any of the papers at the house here. Miss Jane and Millie never heard Sebastian mention anything of the sort, and Nathaniel doesn’t know of one, either because there isn’t one or because he lacks the full memory and knowledge that Sebastian had.’
‘So only Sebastian could tell us.’
‘Yes.’
‘Except he’s dead.’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. The word came out strangely, a long sigh. They were out of the trees now and Fitz looked at him sharply, but, in profile at least, his face was without expression.
‘You could try Chief Ironwing,’ Fitz said lightly.
The Doctor actually laughed. ‘Miss Jane is a multiple personality with some telepathic abilities and occasional clairvoyant flashes. She doesn’t actually talk to the dead. Just as well. The poor woman has enough problems.’
‘What about the other mirror? The one Scale had? If that were in the machine, would it work better?’
‘Better as a time machine, yes. It could still be hideously destructive to this continuum.’
‘You mean it can’t be used at all?’
‘I dare say it would work all right in the vortex.’
They had come to the edge of a high field overlooking the moon-shadowed moor. The Doctor pointed to the crags of a massive tor off to the left. ‘I’m going over there.’
‘All that way?’
‘You don’t have to come.’ The