Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [80]
– huge, gulping sobs, like grief. The Doctor turned away uncomfortably. He wondered whether he should leave Molecross alone for a bit, go and check to see whether Ace and Ethan had come back. Though no doubt she and Ethan were doing quite nicely, thank you.
‘I need to go,’ Molecross said between sobs. He was sniffing loudly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Go. . . ’
‘I can’t take you home yet, Molecross. The situation is too –’
‘No. I mean, go to the village. Get a room. Look at the sky and breathe the air and see people. I can’t. . . ’ He was beginning to shiver. ‘This is too much.’
‘Ah.’ The Doctor understood. ‘Overload. Not to worry – it shouldn’t last more than a day or so. In the meantime, we’ll find you an inn.’
‘You know,’ Ace said, ‘you’re better.’
‘Than anyone else you’ve known?’
She began to laugh, then hiccup. ‘Conceited sod.’
‘Understandably, the question consumes me.’
‘What I mean is,’ she said solemnly, ‘you’ve not been seeing things.’
‘There’ve been periods before when I haven’t.’
‘But you’re not taking your meds.’
‘No,’ he agreed. One for the Doctor.
‘Only I’m wondering,’ she said, ‘whether the meds might have caused them.
The hallucinations.’
Ethan thought about it. He’d been put on anti-psychotics several years before, after a breakdown that a psychiatrist had diagnosed as schizophrenic.
He’d had all sorts of nervous episodes and instabilities before that, a few of them, such as hysterical deafness, fairly exotic. But had he experienced visual delusions? He hadn’t even had an imaginary friend when he was a boy.
‘What were they like?’
Chapter Nineteen
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‘Nothing very dramatic. People would appear in my flat and talk to me.’
‘Like tell you to kill yourself or murder people or that you were Margaret Thatcher?’
‘No, they just talked. It made sense at the time, but afterward I could never remember what they’d said. Most of them didn’t talk, actually. They just sat and watched me work.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘Oh, all sorts. An elderly woman, a young Jamaican boy, bloke who looked like a rugby forward. Once a pair of twins.’
‘No little green men.’
‘No. Nor spiders. Some people in the institution saw spiders. Very nasty.’
‘But you’ve not seen anything lately.’
‘No. The Doctor kept telling me I shouldn’t be taking those pills. Perhaps he was right.’
By this time, they were walking up the rise to the TARDIS. Ethan stopped to look back at the pretty little village with its snowy streets and warm windows.
‘He’s always right,’ Ace said. ‘It may not look like it, but at the end of the day he is.’
‘Ace. . . ’
She turned, and stopped dead when she saw his face. ‘What is it?’
‘Get the Doctor.’ She hesitated and he gave her a desperate push. ‘Get the Doctor, for God’s sake! They’re coming through!’
As she ran toward the TARDIS, Ethan stared at the air above the pond. It looks like lightning, he thought. How can it look like lightning when it’s cold?
It doesn’t look like lightning. It looks like a step graph. It looks like a grid of lozenges. It looks like all of them and none of them. He half fell to the cold ground. How quiet everything was. The branches above him were still. No wisp of wind shivered the snow. The village was silent. Surely, nothing was actually happening.
‘Not to worry, Ace.’ It was the Doctor’s voice, coming closer. ‘The site was on top of the glacier. I scuppered it.’
‘It’s not there, it’s here!’
‘It can’t be here, there’s no flat place –’ The Doctor came hurrying up and followed Ethan’s gaze. He gasped.
‘It’s happening,’ Ethan said quietly. ‘It really is.’
‘The equations are complete!’ The Doctor began to run. Ace shot after him.
‘Stay there, Ace!’
‘Oh right – bloody likely,’ she said, and dashed past him.
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The Algebra of Ice
The Doctor swore and grabbed Ethan’s arm: ‘Come with me.’
‘Forgive me for asking,’ Ethan panted as they ran and slid down the rise, ‘but what exactly can you do?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor groaned. ‘I should have realised they could use the pond. What’s happening now?’
Ethan looked up. The grid hung in the darkness, an angled