Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [57]
Reluctantly, Menzies left him – with another warning not to exert himself for a while. Sooal checked the treatment sheets. He didn’t know how much time he had left: the array had to be his first priority
‘I’m here to see Doctor Menzies,’ said the perky little man at the front door.
Bernard looked him up and down, wondering if he was a new patient, just arrived. He didn’t have any luggage with him, and they were usually accompanied by some hugely embarrassed son or daughter, or a tearful spouse, keen to impress on the staff that their dearly beloved wasn’t really going round the bend, but just needed some ‘convalescence’. But the man was alone, his only luggage a rather ugly umbrella. There was something frighteningly intense in the man’s eyes – and at the same time, something else, frustratingly vague. If he wasn’t a patient, Bernard thought, he ought to be. He waved the man in, checked that there were no relatives tugging suitcases out of a car outside, and closed the door.
‘What did you say your name was?’
‘I didn’t. But it’s Smith. John Smith.’
‘And is Doctor Menzies expecting you?’
‘I doubt it – but I’m sure he’ll be interested to speak to me.’
The little man leaned forwards and peered into the dining room where the tables were being set up for breakfast.
‘I’ll go and see, but it’s a bit early. He may not be up yet.’
‘I can wait.’
Bernard shrugged and gestured across the hallway to the lounge. Mr Smith nodded and strolled through whilst Bernard went upstairs to find Doctor Menzies.
No sooner had Bernard gone around the corner at the top of the stairs than the Doctor poked his head around the lounge doorway. Checking the coast was dear, he headed for the steps to the cellar.
The laboratory was still and quiet. A faint hint of bacon hung in the air. Joyce had said the transmat portal was somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. He looked down at the pristine white tiles on the floor, hoping to find some indication of its location, some marker. He knelt down and soon spotted a faint scratch in the tiles. Experimentally, he waved his umbrella around in the air above it, but nothing happened.
‘Control panel, control panel,’ he muttered to himself as he stood up and looked around the room. It had to be here somewhere. With a gleeful smile, he spotted the Bakelite light switches and scampered over to them. The switches themselves seemed fixed, unworking. But to his delight he discovered the whole block was hinged at the side, and swung away from the wall to reveal a flat-panel display, lights winking merrily. He tapped at it and it answered him with a beep. Closing it, he crossed back to the scratch and stuck out his umbrella. The end of it disappeared. He moved it backwards and forwards a few times and then stepped through.
The Doctor pulled a face at the state of the ship as he materialised in the corridor. Water ran in dribbles down the walls, and slimy skeins of algae reflected back the overhead lights, eerily green. Rivulets of rust trailed from leaking bolts, and the sounds of the ship’s hull, creaking and groaning, reminded him of a medieval torture chamber.
‘I wonder if Mary needs a part-time cleaning job,’ he thought. As he strolled through the deserted ship, remembering Joyce’s vague directions, it was easy to imagine it being haunted
– dark, ungainly shadows were everywhere, and the omnipresent sounds of the vessel hinted that the ship’s crew still strolled the corridors, incorporeal and angry. As he headed for the sleeper chambec he stopped to look over the few control panels that still showed any life, hoping for some due as to the purpose of this whole set-up. But all he could gather was that it had been there about three years, was running on emergency batteries, and would never be capable of leaving the Earth’s atmosphere again.
He soon reached the chamber Other than the ten or so people on the couches it was deserted. Their total stillness was unsettling.
For a few