Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [91]
‘ “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” Isherwood, wasn’t it?’
There was a frantic susurration through the images, the stolen sounds crackling madly. Dodging to look around the floating cells, the Doctor caught a glimpse of a figure, on a camp bed hard up against the inner wall. The Doctor pushed forward, brushing aside the furious lunges from the stills.
‘I always thought that was a bit deliberately conscious. The camera conceals as much as it shows, don’t you think?’ he continued.
Yes, there was a figure there. A man, in a rough grey suit, curled into a rocking ball. Yet the voices didn’t come from him.
‘Camera. Passive. Impartial.’
‘Well, yes. The camera is objective, but the person who points it isn’t. And people behave differently when they think they are observed.’
‘Observed.’ The word came back in hundreds of voices. The Doctor could catch hundreds of inflections in it. A fearful man; a woman in a nervous assignation in a dingy hotel room; a militiaman describing his position. The Doctor batted a flickering image of himself and – actually, had that been...? But when he turned to find the image again, it had danced backwards into the dark corners. He shrugged and looked down at the man he had found.
‘All. Wrong. No order. No. Truth.’
‘Ah.’ The Doctor wondered if, somewhere in the back of this record of himself, there was a glimpse of him sat with Jean-Paul. He wondered how extensive this surveillance had been, how much this man knew. He might have any number of answers. He might know the things Fitz was so careful to avoid mentioning. He might have records of the Doctor’s past, might be able to tell the Doctor just what had happened. He tentatively raised a hand to touch the man.
The figure’s head shot up and the Doctor tried not to recoil from the face. Whatever had been watching them, it wasn’t human. Or sane. He wondered why he had even entertained the idea that it was.
‘Absolute.’ The voices whispered and commanded.
* * *
‘Bloody h‐’
Fitz bit his lip hard at the sharp look from the woman. She had his wrist in a vicelike grip and was holding it hard against the edge of a table. The tweezers in her other hand pulled out a final shard of glass.
‘Flex,’ she commanded. Fitz winced.
‘But...’
‘Flex.’
He straightened his fingers, almost closing his eyes in fear of the pain. The gashes were, mostly, shallow but moving his hand made the raw edges move against each other. The nurse gestured and he curled his fingers in tight. She nodded, pulled his fist open again and started binding the palm.
‘Keep moving it, yes? Otherwise you will not be picking up that guitar again.’
She laughed when he started, pausing briefly to tap the tips of his fingers. ‘You have revealing hands. Calluses, here, see?’
Fitz nodded and watched as she finished tying the bandage on. He’d not even thought of that. He’d been so bothered by where he was going, by what would happen to him, that he hadn’t even considered that his stupid behaviour back at the bar had nearly ruined his playing. Too caught up in the politics of the here and now to worry about notions of culture or future. A medic had been past, rushing with nervous energy, and glanced at his wound. Then the woman had come and fixed it. He flexed it again, wincing still at the pain, but worried that the hand might get stuck in the clawlike shape. It hurt, badly. The tendons wanted to cramp up. He stared at the bandages in misery.
‘Up.’ The woman was pushing him, none too gently, getting him out of the chair. Another man was already shuffling forward, limping. His trouser leg was ripped and bloodied. Fitz hurriedly got up and moved aside. He glanced about, wondering where he was meant to go. He’d been hurried in so fast, through a heavy door set in a high wall, then along corridors to these two long low rooms. He had no idea where he was, or how to get out.
‘You. English!’
A guard was by one of the doors. The only open door, in fact, glaring and gesturing at him to hurry. Fitz walked over