Doctor Who_ Cats Cradle_ Witch Mark - Andrew Hunt [121]
'Come on,' urged the Doctor, interrupting Ace's thoughts; 'I must restore the link with the Eye. Ace, give me that rock.
'What?' Ace remembered the fragment of stone that she had slipped into her pocket. She handed it to the Doctor. He took it eagerly and gazed into it. A faint flicker of light still hung there.
'There's still some residual functioning. Enough to restore the link. Now all I need is the correct connections - organic matter. Come on!' He ran his fingers along the dusty console. Davy s hands clutched at his chest.
'You all right?' Ace asked.
'There's nothing for it,' the Doctor decided. 'I'll have to dematerialize - hand over some of the computational capacity to what's left of the block transfer matrix.' He flicked switches.
‘Doctor, there's something wrong with the old bloke. I think …’
On the oscillating column, a shape began to materialize. Not completely in phase with reality, it had the appearance of a cat but its body was fluid. It stretched and yawned, pixel teeth glinting unaccountably in the twilight. Supported by the cradle of the TARDIS's time rotor, it spun round and round, casually summing up the situation. It purred happily, content with its lot.
Old Davy gave a gasp as the dull pain seared into fire. He fell forward into Herne's lap, twisting as he did so. At the last moment, Ace saw how similar their faces were in their separate agonies - they could almost be brothers, twins, or ... the same person.
There was a brilliant flash of light. It was the light of creation and left dazzling images dancing on Ace's retina. Before she could see properly, it was evident that Old Davy and Herne were no longer within the TARDIS. The same person? One travelling forwards, the other backwards through time until the turning point? But how? She thought of the book again and then wondered if the idea for the social experiment that was Tír na n-Óg had been Goibhnie's after all. At last she saw the grey mass of tissue quivering on the chair. She recoiled from the remnants of Goibhnie's experiment in disgust.
'You've come,' the Doctor said. Was he talking to that? Ace turned and found that it was the cat he was addressing. 'Lynx,' he said again.
The time column rose up out of its central position within the console, supported on a shaft of black light. The cat grinned, capering round and round, creating a swirling column in the blackness.
Gently, the Doctor tossed the rock fragment into the swirling vortex produced by the feline's motion.
'What good's that then?' asked Ace.
The Doctor looked at her sternly. 'Watch!' he said.
The rock hung, suspended under the transparent rotor, still lacking connections. The cat pounced, digging its claws into Goibhnie's protoplasmic material.
'It's ideal, I suppose,' said the Doctor. 'As part of Herne, it's had some experience of time stress so the TARDIS’s functioning shouldn't affect it too badly.'
The cat cut the material into strips and flung them into the chaos at the TARDIS's heart. One by one they attached to the rock fragment, grew, linked up. Slowly the light within the console room grew brighter, more healthy. The TARDIS was being restored as quanta of energy spurted in through the growing link with the Eye of Harmony.
But at the same time as the energy surged, the cat became less and less in synch with Ace and the Doctor's continuum. Parts of it faded in and out of existence, shimmering and deliquescing.
'What's happening to it, Professor?' Ace asked. She looked closely at him. Just as the TARDIS was being supplied with energy, he too seemed to be shedding the burden which had been weighing him down.
He stretched catlike, and then brushed the accumulated dust of his journey from his jacket. With some irritation, he flicked at a particle on his lapel, sending. it slowly