Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [92]
He stayed like that for some time, holding her to his chest, and Sam didn’t struggle. While he was there, she didn’t have to think about anything else. She didn’t have to worry about the hallucinations, or about the state of the world in 2080, or about the signals bursting out of her ears.
Eventually, he said, ‘Something’s happened.’
He didn’t explain what he meant by that. Sam remembered the banging, crashing sound from downstairs, and wondered if he’d seen something there, something even stranger than James Stewart in an overcoat.
But if he had, he didn’t tell her about it.
* * *
FOREMAN’S WORLD:
AFTERNOON ON THE SECOND DAY
‘I see,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s an allegory.’
I.M. Foreman tutted at him. ‘It’s a riddle. You used to know it. You must have done, if you studied with the order. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
They were walking the length of the valley, heading away from the woodland where the TARDIS had been parked. The fields ahead of them had been laid out in neat squares, so from here they could see an enormous chessboard of green and gold, sloping upward and into the mist. I.M. Foreman had often thought about playing an actual game of chess here, controlling the bodies of the local animals to use as pieces, but it seemed like an awful lot of effort to go to for an afternoon’s entertainment. There were sheep grazing in the squares now, completely unaware that some of them were in exactly the right positions for a Rùy Lopez opening.
‘It’s been five regenerations since the last time I saw you. A lot of things get filed away with every change. Pushed to the back of my mind.’ The Doctor shook his head, and I.M. Foreman watched the curls bobbing around his head in all directions. A few of them seemed to be trying to break through the time barrier.’Let me make sure I’ve got this right. You take a baby goose, and put it inside a bottle. Then the goose grows up, so it can’t get out on its own. And you want me to tell you how to get the goose out, is that it?’
I.M. Foreman sighed. The Doctor was going into lovable-idiot’ mode, apparently. ‘That’s the general idea.’
The Doctor sucked his lip for a few moments. ‘Well, you could always break the bottle.’
‘Without breaking the bottle,’ I.M. Foreman told him. ‘That’s the whole point. You can’t break it. Or cut a hole in it. Or even touch it.’
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. ‘In that case –’
‘And this version of the riddle comes from pre-industrial Earth,’ I.M. Foreman cut in. ‘So it doesn’t have anything to do with teleportation. Or transmigration of object. All right?’
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor.
They kept walking, cutting across one of the cornfields, and doing their best not to leave too many messy footprints behind.
‘Ah,’ the Doctor repeated.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ said I.M. Foreman.
‘I’ll get there,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘So. What do you think about Sam?’
‘You mean, about the fact that you’ve left someone on Earth whose sole purpose in life is to destroy human history?’
‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ the Doctor mumbled.
‘I think it’s quite typical of you, actually.’ The Doctor’s face wrinkled up when she said that, much to I.M. Foreman’s amusement. ‘There’s one thing I still don’t get, though.’
‘There would be. Is it about my shadow?’
‘No, but we’ll come to that. You said the TARDIS had seen something bad happen on Earth in 1996. You said it had tried to warn you about it. Is that the idea?’
‘More or less,’ said the Doctor. ‘It might not have been something that happened on Earth, as such. But something connected with the Remote. With the time I spent in that prison cell.’
‘What, though? Was it just what you did to Sam, or am I barking up the wrong tree again?’
The Doctor stopped walking. Which is what he always did, I.M. Foreman noted, when he wanted to make a point.
‘Something changed,’ he said. Annoyingly, he seemed to want to leave it at that. I.M. Foreman decided not to let him, and folded her arms in the most aggressive way possible.
‘What happened to Sam only relates to Earth’s history,’ the Doctor