Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [32]
Debbie and the Doctor looked at each other. ‘Time travellers?’ they asked, together.
‘You know about Miranda?’ the Prefect asked, seemingly pleased that he had managed to surprise the Doctor.
‘Yes.’
‘Then it seems we have something we could learn from one another. Please... step inside.’
The Doctor peered up the ramp, then turned to Debbie, grinned and began bounding up into the spacecraft.
* * *
They walked through a small garage, or hangar, into a central landing sort of area, with doors leading off in all directions. All the doors were closed but one, which they passed through. The room they found themselves in was opulent, with heavy metal sculptures mounted on the walls and on small plinths. The floor was thickly carpeted, or perhaps it was fur of some kind. It was warm, there was a thick, musky smell and a regular electronic burble in the air.
Debbie wanted to get out.
The door hissed shut behind them, sliding up from the floor.
‘We’re trapped,’ she said, panicking.
‘Stay calm,’ the Doctor told her. He was stepping further into the room, with the same expression on his face kids have in toy shops.
‘But what if we take off?’ she asked. ‘They could be going back to their planet.’
‘That’s out of our hands,’ the Doctor said. ‘If they were going to be hostile, they could have thrown us into a cell, or a torture chamber, or just had us killed outside.’
She wanted to go back the way they had come, open up the ramp and run as far and as fast as she could. She wanted this ship to go away, and she wanted to go back to her life, her stupid, normal life with her stupid, normal husband and his darts and his police record and his Ford Cortina and his mortgage arrears.
Debbie forced herself to stand still. ‘I can’t hear an engine. I don’t think we’re moving.’
‘Relax,’ the Doctor suggested.
‘There’s something wrong,’ she said, looking over to the Doctor for reassurance.
‘No,’ he whispered.
‘There is,’ she insisted.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘It’s a natural reaction to this object and the almost imperceptible differences that come from materials that weren’t mined, refined or synthesised on Earth.’
Debbie realised he must be right. This place wasn’t shocking: it was perfectly within the realm of human imagination. But there were tiny things, things that she didn’t notice until she looked for them, but they unnerved her all the same – the devil in the detail. There weren’t any screws or rivets. The furniture seemed to be made out of metal, not wood, but it felt like plastic.
‘You don’t feel it?’ Debbie asked.
‘I feel it,’ the Doctor said softly. ‘I’ve felt it for as long as I can remember. Every morning, when I wake up in a world with buttons, green leaves, paper money and traces of argon in the air I breathe.’
Debbie rooted in her pocket for her cigarettes.
‘We all get like that. Everyone feels like they are on the outside looking in from time to time,’ Debbie told him. ‘Most of us get over it by the time we’ve done our A-levels.’
The Doctor glared at her. He had been deadly serious. He turned his back on her, busied himself trying to open the door.
At least it was warm, and Debbie was glad to be given the chance to sit down. The chairs were simple padded stools. The Doctor paced around the room, his brow furrowed. He looked so at home here, surrounded by machines and ornaments quite unlike anything Debbie had seen before. She lit her cigarette, and took a deep breath, pleased to smell something familiar.
Debbie wondered why the Doctor wasn’t as scared as she was.
‘Passing for human,’ she said under her breath, looking at him again.
Nothing about him had changed. He was wearing the same black velvet coat, the same boots, a shirt that was identical to the one he’d been wearing in the photograph.
But everything had changed. He looked perfectly at home here, standing in a chamber in a UFO.
He wasn’t human.
The Doctor looked over at her and smiled.