Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book One - Lawrence Miles [139]
I.M. Foreman shook her head. ‘No, not that problem. I mean the problem of them being the most arrogant sods in this galaxy.’
‘Oh, I see. That problem.’ The bread stuff vanished into his mouth, but he kept talking anyway. ‘Go on. Tell me.’
‘Most races start out in life thinking they’re at the centre of the universe,’ I.M. Foreman explained. ‘They think the whole of space revolves around the home world. They think it makes them the chosen of God. It’s the most common belief system there is. For humanoids, anyway.’
‘True,’ said the Doctor. ‘Very true.’
‘Then they find out about astronomy. They find out they’re not at the centre of things at all. They work out that their planet’s just one more lump of rock floating in the middle of the red shift. Things change after that. They don’t believe they’re the masters of the galaxy any more.’
‘I think I can see where this is going,’ said the Doctor.
‘Mmm. Gallifrey’s at the centre of this galaxy. Maybe not the exact dead centre, but it’s as close as you can get without ending up in a black hole. The truth about the Time Lords is, they never grew up. They worked out that they really were at the centre of the galaxy. Maybe not the universe, but the galaxy’s good enough. So they never learned the same lesson as everyone else. They still think they’re the chosen ones.’
The Doctor swallowed the last of the bread, and pushed his plate away from him. There was no point in doing that, seeing as there weren’t any waiters around, but he obviously felt it was important to maintain a sense of etiquette.
‘Can I ask you something personal?’ he said.
I.M. Foreman nodded. ‘I warn you, though. If it’s anything to do with how I got this body, the details are going to be messy. You’ve never been a woman, have you?’
‘I’m not sure I’ve ever even been a man. That’s not what I was going to ask.’
‘Go on.’
He leaned forward across the plates, and across the bottled universe that lay in the grass between them. His eyes were glinting again. Sure to be a bad sign.
‘Are you still a believer?’ he asked.
I.M. Foreman tried not to laugh. The Doctor must have seen the muscles twitching in her face.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘I never believed,’ I.M. Foreman told him. ‘Believing wasn’t the point. The order’s ideas were useful, that’s all. Even back in the priesthood, they never taught us to believe anything. You should know that. You trained with the order as well. That’s what you told me last time, anyway.’
‘Not with the order, exactly. There wasn’t an order in my day. Just a lone monk, out on his own in the mountains.’
‘Doesn’t matter. The message must have been the same.’
There was a long silence after that. I.M. Foreman guessed it was what people more human than herself liked to call an ‘awkward pause’.
‘Shall we get back to the story?’ the Doctor asked. More to fill the gap in the conversation than for any other reason, I.M. Foreman guessed.
She shrugged. ‘Which story?’
‘Either. We might as well see where the past takes us.’
I.M. Foreman turned away from him then, and squinted down into the valley. She couldn’t see a thing, of course, at least not through her eyes. But she could make out the patterns of life down in the woods, the interactions of plants and animals and micro‐organisms inside their own little ecosystem. She could feel the way the undergrowth was reacting to the TARDIS as well. She could sense the Ship’s presence in the earth, rooting itself in the environment, reaching out through the ground and searching for its owner. Trying to become one with Foreman’s World, the way so many other things had.
She looked at the Doctor again, and found herself staring right into his gooey blue eyes. She could see the patterns of life inside him, too, and it was only then that she realised exactly how much he’d changed since the last time they’d met.
He smiled at her, but only weakly.