Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [5]
– though clearly, from the condition of the buildings on either side, some years earlier than they had been there. He read the name on the gates: I M FOREMAN
The Doctor made his way through the TARDIS corridors to a small room walled with glass charts. A computer sat between two of them, and he fiddled around on this for about half an hour before pressing a button and turning to look at the charts. Each showed a green line bisecting its illuminated grid: one climbed steeply in a straight line, several were parabolas of varying curvature, and one had a pattern on it that a human being, though able to take it in through the eye, could not have processed into an image. He fed the coordinates of each graph into the computer, pressed a few lighted areas on the control panel and studied the equations that came up on the screen. He ran these through a series of functions, then pressed another button.
The charts on one wall shifted configuration and became a set of monitors showing several views of a shabby London street crowded mostly with immigrants – Africans, newly arrived Pakistanis, a few Koreans – and some down-at-heels natives. The Doctor zoomed in on one of these: a slight, intense young man in a threadbare jacket and scarf, hurrying through the cold.
The Doctor frowned, checked the numbers and ran them again. The images on the screen remained the same. He enlarged the view of the man’s face: bony, dark-eyed, wire-rim glasses. In need of a haircut. The Doctor folded his arms and studied this unlikely looking centre of the time disruptions, and wondered what to do.
CHAPTER TWO
When Ethan Amberglass walked into his flat and found an odd little man sitting there, he didn’t think anything of it; he presumed he was hallucinating again.
The medication had really worn out quickly this time; probably he was on his way to another breakdown. Nothing to be done. He crossed to the linoleum-topped table – which, when new and bright yellow, had graced some long-gone kitchen – and turned on the computer to check his email. It was all from the office. When he had deleted most of it and stood up to go to the kitchen, the man was still there, hands folded on the red handle of an umbrella, watching him with bright blue eyes. He wore a loosely cut, cream-coloured suit of lightweight wool and a handsome burgundy waistcoat, but the elegant effect was spoiled by his small-brimmed flat hat and the fact that the umbrella handle was shaped like a question mark.
Ethan saw that he’d hallucinated another figure as well – a sturdy, handsome girl in her late teens. That was a pleasant change. He wasn’t crazy about her shoes, though.
In the kitchen, he went over his limited stock of food. Health Puffs? No, no sugar rush. Canned macaroni and cheese? Hm. Perhaps. Marmite? No. He checked the refrigerator. Success. Three slices of leftover pizza. He tried to remember how long they’d been in there. Well, what difference did it make –
it was basically just cheese and bread. To be on the safe side, he peeled off the pepperoni and threw it in the bin.
Pizza in the oven, he returned to what in someone else’s flat might have been called the sitting room. Aside from the computer table, it contained a piano nearly buried beneath journals and papers. To Ethan’s disappointment, the little man was still there, sitting quietly in the same pose. The girl was still there too, looking bored and twisting a strand of her long ponytail. If he was going to hallucinate a woman, he would have thought he could manage someone less disdainful.
The man raised his hat and gave him a gap-toothed, sweetly childlike smile.
‘Hello. I’m the Doctor, and this is my friend Ace.’
16
The Algebra of Ice
So they could talk. Ethan preferred it when they couldn’t, but he was stuck with the situation. He said, ‘Ace isn’t a proper name.’
‘It’s my name,’ the girl said warningly.
From exactly what part of his unconscious