Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Times Crucible - Marc Platt [76]
From the thought-pool of the people he suddenly caught the punchline of the joke.
When is the Pythia like an old pipe-cleaner? When she's gone clean round the bend.
20: The Banshee Circuit
A fine mist had started to rise after the rain. The warm air, held at a constant temperature, was clammy and moist — grey, as if the gaps between the buildings were slowly solidifying.
Shonnzi stood in the doorway of an isolated and tumbledown tower, avoiding the burial of Reogus that was taking place in a courtyard nearby. He had never seen death before, although he'd been told about it. Its sudden finality, a brutal snatching away of friendship and love, had stunned him. Threads were severed, leaving too much unsaid and unfinished. Only grey sorrow and regret were left. Untold memories were lost forever. He wanted to run and leap the mercury stream, back to where his friend still existed, to start again.
No one answered his questions any more. The Doctor used to answer everything in his dreams, but now that the Doctor was actually here, it wasn't working out like that. It wasn't the Time Shonnzi had planned. He had brought Ace as he was told. Now the Doctor was supposed to put everything right. The Processes weren't going to sit gathering slime forever.
The Doctor had said, "Never judge the tea by the teapot, Shonnzi. And don't judge the teapot by the cosy. Always look at people from the inside."
When Shonnzi looked at the Doctor from the inside, a skill he had not lost from when he was a Pilot, he was confused. The Doctor who had taught him so much, was a traveller and a wise man with stories so enthralling and fantastical, they put the nursery tales of his old Babushka to shame. Better than the myths in the Book of Future Legends that they learned by rote at school, although the Doctor also told tales of the future —but he told them as if they were the past.
When Shonnzi looked inside the Doctor for this richness, there was nothing. The Doctor's mind was a maze of empty corridors and empty rooms. All bare boards and dust-webs. Shonnzi felt cheated. He had the feeling that Ace knew more than the Doctor knew. Even he knew more — too much to understand. This Doctor, whom he and Ace had championed, was a real letdown.
Something had to be done for Chesperl too. Her grief stunned her for now, but the City was no place to bring up a child. Shonnzi knew that better than anyone.
Ace sat silently on the step of a ruined tower, waiting while the Doctor climbed the building for a better view of the City. He had found her a notepad in his trouser pocket and she was scribbling down her plans for what she called a Process trap.
Shonnzi was shocked by her cutting temper and her forthright opinions. He liked that. He was fascinated by her sleek brown hair, glossy in the starlight. As she leaned forward, the curving nape of her neck was covered by a thin film of the City's glinting dust. Shonnzi wanted to run his finger gently across the strange texture of her skin.
As she worked, she chewed on one of the biscuits he had given her. One of the latest batch that the kid had brought. It came from the TARDIS food machine, which lay in a hollow on the earliest Phase of the City. But on the next Phase, the machine was gone, carried off to the Watch Tower by the Guards. And on the farthest Phase, it lay discarded and lifeless outside the Tower, its food supply exhausted.
Shonnzi shuddered. Something had passed behind him, cold and lifeless. He thought of the dark spectral figure, its cloak swirling, an emanation of horror.
He dared to look and saw the silver cat vanishing up the stone tower's inner stairway.
Ace had not noticed. Her hand was fixed inside her jacket. Shonnzi knew she was fingering the plans with which he had been entrusted. The Doctor had told him that in his dreams. But that Doctor had raised a lot of expectations.
At first, Shonnzi had wondered why Ace was holding back on handing over the plans. Now he knew she was right.
This Doctor, this Wilby the Doctor, was not the Doctor he had seen in his dreams.
A fork