Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [21]
Now he rooted through the boxes with a startling lack of shame, prodding at the contents and averting his eyes from the various ‘women’s things’ he came across. Then he found a number of ‘men’s things’, too, which struck him as odd. Was this room used by two people, or...?
He suddenly found himself thinking of the few androgynous alien species he’d heard of, creatures that veered from male to female and back again in a matter of moments.
The thought of one of them travelling in the TARDIS made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. Aliens in the TARDIS. No reason why not, he supposed, but the idea of the Doctor having an alien as a companion just made him feel peculiar, somehow. Like the feeling you get when someone you’ve known all your life gets a new and unexpected haircut.
Most of the things in the boxes were human artefacts, but there seemed to be no connection between any of them, as if the owner had desperately tried to understand human culture (or to understand being human?) by collecting as many odds and ends as he/she/it could Finally, at the bottom of the very last box – beneath a mysterious catering receipt for 36,000
sandwiches, and a boxed set of coins celebrating the re-coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (the only re-coronation in British history, the accompanying leaflet said, though it diplomatically failed to mention why it had been necessary) –
he found the most interesting item of all.
Originally it had been a simple computer, light enough to hold in one hand; but so many foreign elements had been added that it was impossible to identify the design. The hardware must have come from a dozen different timezones, and quite possibly as many different civilizations, but all of them had been tacked together with the same brand of micro-thin wiring.
‘Time-Lord technology,’ Chris told himself. ‘Has to be. If they can figure out a way to speak every language, they must be able to make a lead that fits any hardware. Makes sense.’
What puzzled him, though, was the cord that led out of the stripped-down terrulian diode-charger at the back of the machine, a cord ending in an unusual hexagonal pin.
Obviously the computer was supposed to interface with something. Chris wandered around the ship for a while, poking his nose into every door he came to and occasionally going ‘ooh’ or ‘wow’ at what he saw there, looking for a hole that the pin might fit. He tried everything, from the fault locator to the large box-shaped computer-bank labelled PRIME that sat in a corner just outside the console room. He even chased after the food machine as it trundled along the ship’s passages, inspecting it for unusual orifices. No joy.
Just as he was about to give up, it came to him
‘Wait a minute,’ he said aloud, determined that the world should hear his brilliant investigative mind in action. ‘If Time-Lord technology can fit any system...’
Chris left the sentence tantalizingly unfinished. He held up the computer, pointing the lead towards the corridor wall outside his own quarters, finally touching the pin against the surface of a roundel. Slowly and gracefully, the roundel opened up like an iris. Something on the other side grabbed the pin and sucked it into the winking, blinking TARDIS
systems.
‘Can I just take this opportunity to say something?’ Chris addressed himself. ‘You’re brilliant.’
‘I would point out, however, that all you actually did was put a plug in,’ said a voice.
With a start, Chris looked up. The next roundel along had split in half across its centre, and the two halves were now quivering slightly,