Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [56]
‘What does Ace think?’
‘I haven’t mentioned it to her. I’m not sure I trust her right now.’
‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t say anything.’
‘If there’s something wrong,’ said Benny, ‘I want to bloody know.’
The Doctor opened his mouth and shut it again.
‘You told me you’d never play games with me,’ said Benny. ‘If this is a game, I’m walking out. I’ll go and study the hippies.’ She turned on her heel.
‘Don’t leave me,’ he said.
She turned back. To her not inconsiderable surprise, he broke into a grin. ‘A game,’ he said. ‘Yes, it’s a sort of game. But not the sort you’re thinking of.’
She sat down on the edge of the writing desk, hugging herself. ‘Well?’ she said.
‘The hummingbird,’ said the Doctor, ‘is an extraordinary creature. Its wings beat as often as eighty times per second. The smaller species must eat more than their own body weight every day, just to stay alive. A human being with a metabolism that fast would simply burst into flames.’
Benny wasn’t interested. ‘Why did your eyes bleed when you looked at that piece of paper?’
‘It was charged with psychic energy. Like an enormous battery. The words were dancing on the page, almost ready to rip free.’
‘Another booby trap?’
‘Of a kind. A very specific kind. The amount of energy contained in the entire book must have been phenomenal. And, if I’m right, all that power was meant to be released in one go. In response to a particular stimulus.’
‘I see,’ said Bernice. ‘You’re asking me to believe in magic spells.’
‘There’s nothing magic about psi,’ said the Doctor irritably. ‘It follows the laws of physics, the same as any other force. But since it affects consciousness, it can seem inconsistent. Incomprehensible. Better understood using symbols and pictures.’
‘The Aztecs thought of the universe as a painted book,’ said Benny, ‘and the gods were the scribes who wrote in it.’
‘Change the writing, erase the picture, and you change reality. That was what the book was for.’
‘And Huitzilopochtli came to destroy it. Because it could have destroyed him. And instead, he destroyed Cristián.’
The Doctor closed his eyes. ‘He just happened to be holding the page.’
‘But the page,’ said Bernice. ‘When you tried to read it, the page attacked you.’
‘Yes.’
‘It mistook you for Huitzilopochtli.’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, looking at her.
They stayed there for a moment. She was intensely remembering her first journey in the TARDIS, the wrenching moment when she’d understood that everything was going wrong. She remembered wondering if this alien she suddenly realized she knew nothing about were turning into a monster.
‘Your nest’s been invaded by a cuckoo,’ she said.
The Doctor swung around again, putting his feet up on the writing table. Still trying to seem relaxed. ‘Looking for changes in yourself is like trying to look at your own eyes. You can’t see them directly, you have to use a mirror.’ He nodded at her. ‘You’re my mirror, Benny.’
‘Why don’t you want me to tell Ace?’
‘I don’t think she trusts me. I’m not sure what she might decide to do about that.’
‘All right,’ said Benny, ‘I won’t tell her – if you tell me everything. And don’t lie, or I’ll know.’
He folded his arms behind his head, elaborately. ‘After the sacrifice,’ he said slowly, ‘I thought everything else had changed. I went on thinking that, because it was so much better than the alternative.’ He waved his foot idly, as though looking for the words. ‘I was partly right. Something fundamental in the fabric of the universe was altered. Like a colossal watchmaker adjusting a cog.’
‘If mass murder was all it took, every war would warp reality. But you already knew that someone or something has been playing with your past.’
The Doctor