Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [4]
Leela had recognised all the signs. She had been carefully observing the movements, which were not proper movements, and the sounds, which were more like feelings, that the TARDIS sometimes made and the Doctor's reaction to them. What was happening at the moment suggested to her that the TARDIS was again about to stop, or drop, or whatever it was it did before she and the Doctor were able to go outside.
Experience made her equally certain that the Doctor would have no idea what they would be facing when they opened the doors of what she used to think of as the travelling hut. 'So what is a purpose?' she asked, checking that her knife was securely sheathed and making sure the small travelling pouch she had added to her belt still contained a selection of essentials, among them a sharpening stone, a high-energy food bar and a comb. Of course she knew now that the TARDIS was a very large non-travelling hut inside a much smaller, travelling box. Everything had an explanation. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, TARDIS, was the explanation of the hut-in-the-box and one day she would understand it, she was sure.
What?' the Doctor said vaguely, not taking his eyes from the console's unhelpful telltales. It was slightly shaming, he was thinking, that he had so little actual control. He should have paid more attention. At the very least he should have got out some manuals at some stage and tinkered a bit. A bit more. It wasn't as if he could take the systems back to the manufacturer for an overhaul. If something needed doing he would have to do it himself.
Something did need doing, of course, and it was irritating that he didn't know what it was. Thumping the control console would clearly be stupid.
Kicking it was quite appealing too. While he was thinking this he suddenly became conscious that Leela was watching him intently. She was trying to look casual about it but there was no disguising her attention.
Unconsciously she had also taken up the first stage of her preparing-to-fight stance. Her weight was slightly forward on the balls of her feet, her hand was on the hilt of the large knife he could not persuade her to give up carrying. She obviously sensed that something was about to happen. It was interesting, he thought, how sensitive she was becoming to the way the TARDIS functioned. It was a pity aggression was always her first response to the unknown, but her early conditioning as a warrior had been thorough and counteracting it would take more time and patience than he presently had.
Leela had recognised other unrelated signs. Her growing experience of the Doctor suggested he was in one of his dark moods and she was sure that the longer he kept glaring at the controls of the TARDIS the more irritated and unreasonable he would become. From time to time she had heard him talking to the machine as if it was a friend and that had been peculiar enough, but offering it personal insults and threatening it was mad and that looked to be what he was once more about to do. All shamans were mad, she reminded herself, that was the nature of their magic, or else they were fakes. The Doctor said they were both - mad and fake. He got angry if she suggested he was a shaman. He never saw it as a compliment to his powers, only as an insult to his mind and his honesty. She remembered when the tribal shaman had gone truly mad. There was no magic then.
There had only been danger for everyone and death for him. But there was an explanation if you thought about it, and there were ways to lighten the Doctor's mood if you knew what interested him. 'If a reason is simply an explanation,' she said, 'what is a purpose?'
The Doctor said, 'I've often wondered that myself,'