Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [48]
He’d slept the sleep of mathematicians, the sleep of engineers, the sleep of Rassilon and Omega and Chung Sen and Stattenheim and Waldorf. While his higher brain had rested, his subconscious had been busy, putting together the equations symbol by symbol. No effort needed this time, no attempts to take himself out of space-time. It was all pure theory.
Until he told the TARDIS about it, of course.
Once the numbers had finished swimming by, he started dreaming proper dreams again. He dreamed of the planet Morestra, and saw himself standing on the surface while the gravitational machines of the natives began to tear the world apart.
‘No, no, no,’ he told the Morestrans, as their civilisation collapsed in front of their eyes. ‘I said, why don’t you try harnessing the kinetic power of gannets?’
‘I know you’re awake really,’ he heard someone say. ‘Your breathing goes funny when you’re asleep.’
The Doctor opened his eyes. He found himself staring at a blank cream-white ceiling, and for one terrible moment he thought he was back in the room with the fountain, shut out of the rest of the TARDIS. There was, however, the unmistakable aroma of mothballs.
And James Stewart was hovering over his bed, looking down at him with a happy little smile.
‘We weren’t sure what to do with you,’ James Stewart said. ‘We just dumped you in the nearest room with a bed. We were thinking of giving you medical aid, but we thought we’d probably end up killing you by accident.’
The Doctor tried to sit up. In the end, however, he decided that the whole project was far too ambitious.
‘James Stewart,’ he said, ‘1908 to 1997. Hollywood actor, noted for his performances in westerns, Hitchcockian thrillers and charming whimsical comedies. Hello, Mr Stewart. What are you doing in my TARDIS?’
The actor frowned. ‘James Stewart dies in 1997? That’s a shame. I’ll have to go and interview him when I get back.’
The Doctor squinted up at the man’s face. Something was very, very wrong here. For one thing, James Stewart had a woman’s voice. And he was wearing a dress.
‘I’m confused,’ said the Doctor.
So James Stewart put a hand to his own chin, and started peeling away the skin. As the man’s face came off, his features became cold, blank and rubbery. Soon, the face was nothing but a piece of plastic, and the female features underneath were revealed in all their middle-aged glory.
‘Ta-daa,’ said Sarah Jane.
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘You know, that’s a terrible thing to do to somebody recovering from a mental illness.’
Sarah stuck her tongue out at him. ‘You’re no fun any more,’ she said. She threw the mask on to the bed, and it landed on the Doctor’s chest with a plop. ‘I found it in one of the storerooms. I think it was a storeroom, anyway.’
‘All rooms on the TARDIS are storerooms,’ the Doctor told her. ‘Even if they’re only storing air.’
‘Oh, and that’s how you see oxygen, is it? Just another piece of stuff to carry around.’
‘You get these insights, when you’re a Time Lord. Personally, I never travel anywhere without a good supply of air. I’ve got pockets full of it.’
Then he remembered his jacket. More specifically, he remembered how he’d used it to clean the floor of the cell, making space for his equations. He looked down at himself, and saw he was in his shirtsleeves, his clothes covered in blood, dirt and something he didn’t like to think about.
It could have been worse. In some parts of the world, the authorities would have had him dissected, not thrown into prison. The Saudi forces hadn’t even bothered testing his DNA, so the scientific approach obviously wasn’t in vogue there. He’d been a security risk. Nothing more. To be kept out of the way until they’d finished surveying the TARDIS, until they