Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [7]
Ethan opened his eyes. The Doctor was peering at the computer screen.
Ethan strode over and shut the machine off. Very quietly, he said, ‘I’m going out to get something to eat. Do not follow me.’ Then he grabbed his jacket off a chair and was gone.
Ace and the Doctor looked at each other.
‘It happened again, didn’t it?’ she said. He nodded. ‘But why?’
‘I’m afraid we may have caused it. He’s at an axis of time disruption, and our coming into it was a tipping point.’
‘But nothing changed for us.’
‘No, we’re time stable. There has to be some explanation for all this.’ The Doctor switched the computer on again. ‘Go after him, Ace. See if you can bring him back.’
‘What if I make things shift again?’
‘I think I’m the main problem there.’
‘But then if I bring him back here where you are –’
‘Just go, Ace! Before he freezes in that jacket.’
‘Right!’ she said shortly. It got on her wick when he ordered her around.
She banged down the stairs and out into the cold street. Which way had he –
okay, there. She spotted his back heading towards Earl’s Court Road and ran after him, dodging people in hats and scarves. On the chilly air, she smelled curry and Middle Eastern spices. She could use a proper meal after all that machine-generated stuff in the TARDIS. ‘Oi,’ she yelled. ‘Hang on! Ethan!’
He looked over his shoulder and froze, as if she were a car rushing toward him that it was too late to dodge. She slowed down, panting, and stopped a few feet from him. He watched her rigidly.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It really is. We’re not hallucinations, the Doctor and me. Honest.’
‘You all say that,’ he said between his teeth.
‘That’s not my fault.’ The Doctor had been right – his corduroy jacket was too thin for this weather. He was so small, almost as small as the Doctor and almost as intense, but all nerves where the Doctor was all stillness. He couldn’t Chapter Two
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be that much older than she was. ‘What d’you expect me to say if I’m real, that I’m not? And all those ones trying to fool you, well of course they’d say they were real too. So that’s just how it’s going to be.’
He considered this. ‘Good point.’
‘That’s right,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s find a café.’
He pulled his shoulders up reluctantly. ‘I don’t want to sit in public talking to myself.’
Ace just stopped herself from rolling her eyes. ‘Right. I’ll get some take-away and we’ll go back to your flat.’
‘Not the flat.’
She resisted the impulse to shake him. If he wouldn’t sit in a café and wouldn’t return to his flat, where were they going to eat? On a park bench in the cold? Oh give it up! she thought, but she knew the Doctor wouldn’t want her to. She took his arm firmly. ‘Come on, then. We’ll get some food and work out where to go.’
The Doctor sat in front of Ethan’s computer, legs crossed under him, hands on his knees. There must be something here somewhere that would explain why the TARDIS sensors had picked out Ethan Amberglass at the centre of the disturbances, the break in the mirror from which all the cracks ran. Of course, given the temporal unsteadiness, it was possible that he and Ace were early, that Ethan was yet to become a problem.
The Doctor went through the files. They all had to do with aspects of the Riemann hypothesis. He checked the email. Business-related exchanges about various projects. Only one was interesting: ‘Have you considered U’s notes?’, and Ethan’s terse reply, ‘Waste of time.’ The Doctor searched for other references to these notes but didn’t find anything. Well, he’d just dig a little deeper.
‘So what’s this Riemann hypothesis?’ said Ace, munching on her samosa.
‘You really want to know?’ His tone was sceptical.
Actually, Ace didn’t want to know, but anything was preferable to watching the movie. They were in an art cinema showing a festival of prize-winning Lat-vian films, and the only other patron was an elderly woman who seemed to be asleep. On the screen, a man stared mournfully into a black pond. Reeds waved sinuously in the dark water, and a woman