Doctor Who_ The Bodysnatchers - Mark Morris [5]
He tossed the magazine on to a reading table already covered with a scattering of scrolls and charts and sprinted to a dark recess between two tall sets of bookshelves. Wrenching a fire extinguisher fitted with a hose attachment from the wall, he turned and directed a jet of foam at the merrily crackling flames.
The instant the fire was out, the Doctor let the extinguisher drop to the plushly carpeted floor and ruefully assessed the damage. The candelabrum now resembled a melting wedding cake, and all that was left of the page was a sticky pile of mush and a few scraps of drifting black ash.The Doctor sighed deeply and ran a hand through the curls of his wild, shoulder-length hair. 'Good grief,' he murmured. 'Now I can't even repair you, can I?'
He moved around the TARDIS library, picking up the other spilled pages.
When he had them all, he dropped them on to the reading table beside the magazine and placed a chunk of polished blue Nusalian rock, which served as a paperweight, on top of them. He dropped heavily into a high-backed, ornately carved armchair beside the table, leaned forward and picked up the now much-reduced magazine, a Christmas 1893 edition of The Strand .
It was a vital issue, containing the original printing of 'The Final Problem', one of the pivotal Sherlock Holmes stories - and indeed, initially intended by Conan Doyle to be the last before a public outcry encouraged him to resurrect the famous detective. The Doctor had been planning to take the opportunity, while his latest companion, Sam, caught up on some much-needed sleep, to settle down with a nice pot of Darjeeling and a plate of dry-roasted gumblejack fritters and read it for the 437th time.
'The best-laid schemes...' he murmured wistfully, placing the magazine in his lap. Now in his eighth incarnation, he was a far more settled character than the majority of his previous incarnations had been. Nevertheless, his last violent regeneration, during which he had come closer to death than ever before, had shaken up his molecules so comprehensively that certain aspects of his character had come to the fore that had previously been buried so deeply within him they had seemed virtually nonexistent.
His romantic nature, for one. And his tendency to babble about his origins, for another. During his post-regenerative trauma, he had given of himself so freely, so uninhibitedly, that his scrupulously guarded secrets might just as well have been baubles, trinkets, of little or no value.
His plan, after his bittersweet parting from Grace - the woman at whom his perhaps misplaced attentions had been directed -had been to travel alone for a while, to contemplate, take stock, rediscover the silent, still point within himself. However, as usual, events had contrived to overtake him, and now he had Sam aboard. Seventeen years old, socially aware, brave, outspoken, full of enthusiasm and a sense of wonder that she tried to conceal beneath a patina of streetwise indifference ('cool' she'd probably call it), she was both a tonic and a burden - inspirational and maddening in equal measure.
The Doctor turned his thoughts from his companion and back to himself, which was something he had little enough time for these days. He looked around at his library - the tall bookshelves, the darkly ornate fixtures and fittings, the flickering candles in their holders, the Tiffany lamps, the plush, intricately patterned carpet - and he nodded in approval. Yes, this suited him very well. This, for now, reflected his inner mood and character: sombre, thoughtful, tasteful, but with a hint of the impressive and the unusual too.
'And so modest, Doctor,' he murmured, gently mocking himself. It had started in his last incarnation, this sense of self-awareness, of his own very definite place in the complex machinations of the universe. One might almost call it a sense of grandeur, if such a phrase didn't stray too close, dangerously close in fact, to the way in which many of his foes