Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [33]
The Doctor laughed too, then sat down astride an ornate Baroque chair. 'Do you know,' he said, folding his arms on the chair's gilded back, 'you impress me enormously.'
'I do?' She blinked, taken aback.
'Oh, yes. Not many people, even in the twenty-first century, are prepared to accept the truth about me, even when I present them with incontrovertible evidence. You, though, have not only accepted, but even have a sense of humour about it.' Then his look sobered 'You've saved me an enormous headache, Nina. And a great deal of time.'
She giggled again and waved at the room. 'Time doesn't matter to you, though, does it? If I waste any, you can just wind it back!'
'Well ... it isn't quite that simple. And it would be helpful if we didn't waste more than we have to. We need to talk about Ruth.' He hesitated. 'Would you rather go back into the cottage? The TARDIS can be daunting –'
'No.' Nina struggled into a more upright position from the armchair's
delicious depths. 'I rather like it in here. Now I'm getting used to it.' She sounded surprised, and he grinned, his blue eyes twinkling with pleasure. Strange, thought Nina, she could have sworn they were green before.
'Good! To Ruth, then. There are three things I would very much like to know: one, which world she comes from; two, how she got here; and three, why she came. Answering number one would probably also answer number two, but three is more of a conundrum. Her intentions could be wholly innocent. On the other hand –'
Nina interrupted. 'How can they be innocent, if she killed Charlie?'
'I don't know that she had anything to do with his death. As I said last night, it's only a surmise, and until I can find out more about her I can't be sure.'
With an effort Nina bit back her impatience. 'OK,' she said. 'So how do we find out where she's from? We can't exactly walk straight up to her and ask!'
'Quite.' The Doctor picked up his own teacup, saw that it was empty and put it down again. His eyes narrowed. 'I'd like to find out where she's based. She must have brought some survival equipment from her own world, and if I could trace that –'
'Can't you?' Nina was surprised. 'With the gadgets you must have, I'd have thought it'd be easy.'
'Oh, theoretically, it is. I've certainly got enough "gadgets" to detect a signature from any off-planet material. But I've tried every method I can think of, and found nothing at all. Either something's blocking the signals, or her technology is unknown even to me.' He looked up, his eyes intent. 'You tried to follow her a few days ago, didn't you?'
So he had seen them ... Nina made a sound midway between a sigh and a snort. 'Yeah, well, that was a pretty useless exercise.' She described Ruth's abrupt and baffling disappearance as they had approached the holiday chalets, finishing, 'I don't know how she did it. There's nothing else up there except the coast path, so unless she can make herself invisible?' She lifted querying eyebrows.
'Possible,' the Doctor said, 'but unlikely. We're talking technology, not magic, and invisibility involves some highly complicated physical laws.'
'I could ask around the village, see if she's renting something,' Nina suggested. 'Or Steve might know.'
'I doubt that he does. Anyway, I don't want to involve him; as I said before, he's too biased. No, my guess is that she isn't renting, because it would be too risky. She's hiding somewhere in the area.'
'I could try following her again.'
'You could, yes, but if she gave you the slip once she's likely to do it a second time. For the moment, I think we should concentrate on other aspects.' The Doctor stood up and paced across the floor, stopping by a large console at the centre of the room. It looked like something out of a Jules Verne story; as the Doctor's fingers moved over it, he said, 'Hmm . . .' and made a minor adjustment to something that she couldn't see. Then he turned