Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [68]
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Chris realized he couldn’t remember whether this was the original, or the copy. It didn’t seem polite to ask.
‘How long are we going to be here?’ Iaomnet was saying. ‘You know they’ll be looking for me.’
‘I’d say it’s rather unlikely they’ll come looking for you here,’
said the Doctor. ‘It’s taken us a month to get here. If anyone’s interested in us, they’d have done something before now.’
The bored-looking customs officer didn’t give the second Doctor a second glance. Chris grinned. They were safe, for now.
All they had to do was get back to the TARDIS and let her sort the two Doctors out. And make sure Iaomnet didn’t get away.
‘I don’t think I like the look of the buffet,’ said Roz. Chris had already started loading food on to his plate. ‘What is that, anyway?’
‘Come on, Roz,’ he said. ‘You must’ve eaten lots of alien food as a kid.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said Roz. The hotel’s restaurant wasn’t crowded, which only added to her worry.
‘There were heaps of sim ads for alien stuff when I was little,’
said Chris. ‘I used to always want whatever looked grossest.’ He stuck a fork in something which wriggled.
Roz said, ‘Maybe I’ll get something from the menu.’
She glanced back at the table. The two Doctors were sitting side by side, Iaomnet on the opposite side of the table. The identical Time Lords weren’t talking, for once. The last month had been a non-stop discussion of everything from probability physics to Roy Lichtenstein, and on one especially garrulous occasion, both at once. But they’d seemed to wind down over the last week or so. Maybe they’d talked about everything they knew.
The five of them had been crammed into the same room aboard the liner for the last week of the trip. She and Chris hadn’t had many chances to talk; they had to constantly keep one eye on Iaomnet. She’d almost succeeded in getting a message to a double-eye, twice. After the second time Roz had wanted to keep her sedated, but both Doctors had objected.
‘The copy,’ said Roz. ‘Do you think we can trust him?’
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Chris looked up from the desserts. ‘He’s just the Doctor, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘I mean, he hasn’t done anything suspicious for the last month. Besides, I keep forgetting which one is which.’ Roz decided not to let on she had the same problem. ‘I’m more worried about Iaomnet – what’re we going to do with her?’
‘I’m not sure yet. We can’t keep dragging her around behind us.’
‘Good thing we’ve had so much experience at escaping,’ said Chris. ‘We know all the tricks.’
‘Messy situation.’
‘The Lacaillian stuff’s pretty safe,’ said Chris. ‘Kind of bland, though.’
Iaomnet was eating breadsticks, snapping them into little pieces. She hardly noticed when one of the Doctors got up to hit the buffet table. She ground a piece of breadstick into powder with her fingernail.
‘I can help you escape,’ said the other one.
Iaomnet stopped mangling the breadstick. She carefully didn’t look up. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘How?’
‘I have almost entirely regained control,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s becoming difficult to maintain this façade. We must both get away.’
‘Regained –’
‘This form… attached itself to me when the Nexus was disrupted.’
It was like finding the missing part of a jigsaw puzzle under the bed. ‘Emil?’ she hissed.
‘We’ll wait until we have only one or two of them to deal with,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll immobilize one of them, and you take care of the other.’
‘Why didn’t you say something on the liner?’
‘I was still reintegrating my own personality,’ said Zatopek.
‘And if we had escaped, where would we have gone?’
She looked at him. He was still absolutely identical to the other Doctor – as though he was wearing this body like a suit of clothes. ‘How –’
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‘Perhaps later,’ said Emil, quickly. Iaomnet glanced over to the buffet. The others were on their way back.
The bagbot was waiting for them at the door to the hotel room.
‘Hiya,’ it said. The Doctor patted it, absently. ‘Your