Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [127]
The Cardinal wondered what the life expectancy of such a beast would be, down in the vaults on the lowest level of the Gallery. He found himself wishing that it would die soon, then prayed God forgive him the thought.
He was happy. Yes. An unfamiliar word, but not an irrational one. After all, hadn’t he felt this way before, when he’d been in the little room and the Watchmakers had sent their messenger to him? But now there wasn’t even a room, there was just the essence of a room, a realm of pure, hard Reason.
He was cast into a grey cube as firm as concrete, his intelligence seeping into the structure until he was nothing but angles and lines...
Happy. Yes. That was the word.
The doctors looked at each other, shook their heads, and walked away. The same thing they did every morning, in fact.
Richmond Hospital’s newest patient had been found out in the woods near a neighbouring town, and his bed had been paid for by the local council, even though the town didn’t seem to want anything more to do with him. One newspaper claimed that the man had been ‘the first victim of the forest monster’, but of course everybody knew that was rubbish; there wasn’t a mark on him. Some kind of psychological damage, the doctors thought. The patient’s breathing was regular, but his muscles were rigid and there were no signs of brain activity. Oddly, his closed eyelids kept twitching, for no reason anybody could ascertain. Twitching. Once every eight seconds.
Whatever the condition was, the doctors agreed, it was probably incurable.
Deep in the TARDIS, there were places where the halls and the corridors and the boot-cupboards seemed to lack all logic and proportion. If anyone had asked the Doctor, he would have said that these were the undigested remains of Catcher’s UnTARDIS, little corners of Cacophony, locked into the solid body of the ship, trapped like flies in amber.
Christopher Cwej sat in the middle of a shifting courtyard, surrounded by gothic archways set at ridiculous angles and phantom corridors that didn’t lead anywhere. The place was much like the TARDIS cloisters, but the artificial sky above his head was dark, and there were things he couldn’t name seeping through the cracks in the floor. Wolsey the cat was curled in his lap, purring softly, and the walls rippled gently to the sound.
– Ahh, Christopher, whispered the room. Poor Christopher.
If you could only have seen the destiny that history has chosen for you... if you could only have understood the curse of the Watchmakers, and who its victims really are...
In a nearby alcove, one of the roundels blossomed open, closely followed by another, then another. An eye looked around the hall, focusing on Chris Cwej as he sat in his own little secret garden. An ear listened to the whispers, searching for their source, then realizing that they came from somewhere beyond the rational universe. A mouth frowned, disapprovingly.
– Perhaps I should have shown you how it all ends, said the whispers. Perhaps you didn’t understand the choice after all.
Nobody was watching as the roundels closed, and the eye, the ear, and the mouth melted away into the fabric of the ship.
Document Outline
Front cover
Rear cover
Title page
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
A Prologue
Part 1 - State of Independence 1 - Waifs and Strays
2 - A Fistful of Timelines
3 - Thought About Saving the World,Couldn�t Be Bothered
4 - Moment of Catastrophe
Part 2 - Madness, Madness,They Call it Madness 5 - Directory Enquiries
6 - Non-Interventionist Policy (Yeah, Sure)
7 - The Edge of Distraction
8 - Various Gods Out of Assorted Machines