Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [102]
It wasn’t any use at all as an escape route. Everybody knew that.
The Doctor leaned over the etchings in the corner of the cell, where he’d had to wipe the floor clean, using his jacket to wash away the spoor Badar had left behind. A few more numbers, a few more subclauses, a few more embellishments…
He was just starting work on the last of the minor transpositions when the door opened and the guards came in.
The Doctor tried to ask them what they wanted, but his voice wasn’t working properly. He wondered how he’d been able to talk to himself so easily. Perhaps he hadn’t, not out loud. Two of the men were carrying shock batons, while those at the back of the little crowd were laughing, at the punchline of a joke the Doctor doubted he’d understand.
The men screamed at him as they kicked him across the floor. The Doctor didn’t know what they were saying. The equations had already started to seep into his neurosystem, blotting out the language link with the TARDIS. There was no pain when his face hit the concrete, although he saw a few spots of blood splash across the floor in front of him. His face was numb from being squeezed so hard.
There was the crackling of electricity. The scent of electrified air. A ripping sound, as the guards tore through the back of his shirt with the business end of the baton. The Doctor felt his muscles loosen, and realised that his limbs were going into spasm.
More crackling, and more, and more, and more. There was a symbol hovering in front of his face, an infinitely complex sculpture of mathematics and Time Lord biomass. He stared at it as the electricity wrenched at his spine, trying to work out what it could possibly mean.
He realised it was a number. Eight. That was all.
And more numbers, sweeping away from it in a graceful arc of blood. Transmigration codes. Probability formulae. Biodata locks. The figures spiralled away from him, forming elaborate patterns, but from here he could see only part of the great work, and no sooner had one section been fed into his nervous system than another had slipped out again at the other end…
Something else moved into view. Dark and heavy, spitting out blue light. The end of one of the batons, moving across his vision, blotting out parts of the equation, opening up gaps in the numbers. The Doctor tried to fill in the gaps himself, tried to finish visualising the mathematics before the baton touched him –
A flash of red in his eye.
Blood.
And something clicked inside his head, the pieces of the equation locking together, each set of numbers finding its rightful place in the great work. The pain lit up the symbols, turned them into fire. The fire spread, from subclause to subclause.
The baton moved away from his eye, but the numbers were already burning, and the guard was saying something the Doctor wouldn’t have been able to understand even if he’d said it in his own
* * *
No Time At All
‘Hello?’ said a little voice.
He couldn’t see out of his right eye, although the left one seemed to be pointing upward, towards what he took to be the ceiling. The ceiling was white, a pleasant, soothing kind of white. He imagined that someone had spent years finding just the right shade, breaking down the humanoid visual system fibre by fibre until they’d worked out exactly how much cream went with exactly how much grey. From somewhere nearby, there was the sound of running water. The smell of greenery.
The Doctor turned his head.
‘Oh,’ said the woman. ‘You must be one of the good guys.’
‘How… can you tell?’ the Doctor asked. He hoped the words were audible, but he couldn’t hear his own voice for some reason, so he wasn’t sure.
‘Because you’re covered in bruises.’
The Doctor considered this. ‘I could be… one of the villains… who’s just… been punished.’
‘Don’t be silly. Good guys don’t punish bad guys by beating them up.’
The Doctor almost nodded. ‘Hello, Sarah Jane,’ he