Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [80]
And Forrester stood in the middle of it all, in a jungle of her own, lined with concrete and lit with a kind of light that wasn’t meant for the eyes of the eighteenth century. She seemed oblivious to it all. She was scratching at her wrist again, gritting her teeth, swearing curses that hadn’t been invented yet. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with everything?
‘This was your home, wasn’t it?’ asked the clock, quietly.
11:57 was written all over its body.
Marielle regarded her coldly. (Her? How long had clocks had genders?) ‘Paris. It was once my home, it is true. But I was forced to depart.’
‘I know. Most of your mother’s bloodline died on the guillotine, or in the violence that surrounded it. You saw some of them die. Cracked ribs. Broken necks.’
‘Mademoiselle, please –’
‘I’m sorry. I just thought it was curious, that’s all.’
‘Curious?’
Christopher ran past again, from the other direction this time. He was followed by a horde of shapeless alien monsters, plus a number of hard-faced mechanical men with glowing red eyes. Childhood nightmares, Duquesne thought. The uniforms were the same as ever, though many of the beings wore armbands marked with the ‘crooked cross’ emblem of the eastern mystics. The armbands were red, and the crosses were a striking black in colour, surrounded by a circle of white.
Duquesne wondered what the significance of the symbol was.
‘Curious that you’d want to return here,’ elaborated the clock. ‘Curious that of all the possibilities in the darkness, you’d choose this one.’
‘It is the one I know best,’ said Duquesne, with a dash of what she hoped was defiance.
‘But there are infinite worlds in this realm, Marielle. Why choose one at all? Why tie yourself down to a single flavour of reality? Why not live with the possibility of all of them?’
Duquesne shook her head. ‘We all need something to hold onto, Horloge. We cannot live our lives in the dark.’
‘Ahh. I think I see.’ The clock nodded, and Duquesne saw a few of the Roman numerals fall from its face, a V and an I dropping into the bowl of soup that rested on the table between them. ‘You mean, you’d rather live in this place of suffering and bad memories than live with the darkness of not-knowing-for-certain? Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t...?’
Duquesne shook her head. ‘We need some order in our lives,’ she said. ‘We need some reason in our existence.’
‘Really? Why?’
Another horde of ‘people’ hurried past. There were dozens of them this time; faceless Revolutionaries, spiky-headed machine-creatures, even some of the clanking things Duquesne had glimpsed in the TARDIS. At the very centre of the crowd was Christopher, his arms and legs restrained by ropes and tendrils. Those of the creatures that had shoulders were carrying him away on them.
‘Marielle !’ he shouted as he vanished down the street.
Duquesne stood, preparing to leave. There was a clockwork hand on her arm, restraining her.
‘I asked you a question,’ smiled the clock. ‘Why?’
Duquesne looked from the disintegrating face of the machine to the crowds outside, as they formed a grim procession along the street. ‘I cannot answer,’ she said.
‘Please. I must go.’
The clock lowered its arm. Duquesne ran out of the restaurant.
The head had been more or less intact, though Catcher had supplemented the neck with a few old nails. The awkward spaces in the chest had been neatly filled in with rubble, and one of the legs had been beyond repair, so he’d replaced it with a fallen girder. Splinters of wood had been inserted into the arms in those areas where the bones had gone missing.
All in all, the operation had been a success. The body of Isaac Penley