Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [7]
The Doctor looked pained.
‘Yeah, all right, just being polite.’ Fitz lit the cigarette and took a draw from it to get it going. ‘How did you know?’
The Doctor pointed to the pile of around a hundred cigarette butts on the floor. ‘Elementary, my dear Fitz.’
His companion nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, well, this ship may be full of stuff, but there’s not one ashtray.’
‘Cigarettes will be the death of you,’ the Doctor said.
Fitz took the cigarette from his mouth. ‘You know that for a fact?’
The Doctor looked askance at him.
‘Hey, look, sometimes you know the future, yeah?
You being a time-traveller. I’ve seen you do that “I know you” stuff, and then you tell someone their destiny.’
‘I’ve not done that for ages,’ the Doctor laughed.
‘So you don’t know how I die?’
‘No. There are some things it’s better not knowing.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you all right? You look like there’s something on your mind.’
Fitz looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Er. . . look. Didn’t mean to interrupt.
I’ll get back to. . . I’ll go back to my room.’
It had been an hour. Marnal had been sitting in the same spot, the same look of expectation on his face the whole time. He’d been writing up today’s events in his diary, scribbling away happily. He’d not once asked Rachel for her side of the story.
‘I don’t think they’re coming,’ Rachel said gently.
‘I don’t understand why they haven’t shown up. There must be a good reason.’
‘So how did you end up here on Earth?’ Rachel asked.
He was clearly a little irritated by the question. ‘I’ll explain later.’
16
‘Don’t you have a rocket or a flying saucer or something? You could go to them.’
Marnal shook his head sadly. ‘My TARDIS was taken from me.’
‘TARDIS?’
Marnal took a deep breath before starting. ‘It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. TARDISes are semi-sentient dimensionally transcenden-tal time-space machines created using block transfer computations and powered via the Eye of Harmony. They dematerialise from one point expressed as a set of relative space-time coordinates and travel via the time vortex until they rematerialise at another point. My TARDIS was a Type. . . ’
Rachel listened carefully, wondering if she should take notes.
‘So you’re stuck on Earth?’ she asked, when she was sure he’d finished.
‘Yes.’
‘No alien technology at all? Not, of course, that you’d think of it as alien.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Is there no other way to get in touch?’
Marnal thought for a moment. ‘There may be,’ he concluded. ‘We need to check the library.’
The Doctor was back in the control room, sitting in his chair with his book.
There was a chime from the console. The Doctor finished the scene he was reading and headed over. The computer display was scrolling data too fast for human eyes to take it in. The Doctor read it carefully, then read it again to make sure.
He reached out, a little tentatively, and flicked a couple of switches. He waited for this to take effect, then adjusted a dial. There was an anomalous reading coming from Earth. He tried to pinpoint the time zone.
Trix was sneaking past him.
‘I can see you,’ he told her, without looking up. ‘Getting itchy feet?’
‘Eh?’
‘Can’t wait to land?’
Trix relaxed. ‘No, sorry. Looking for something in the fridge.’ She was in silk pyjamas. ‘ The Doctor’s Dilemma?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I met Shaw at one of Wilde’s parties.’
‘I didn’t think Shaw drank.’
‘He didn’t drink spirits or beer. He drank champagne. “Doctor,” he told me,
“I’m not a champagne teetotaller.”’
‘That gives me an idea,’ she said, resuming her journey to the TARDIS fridge.
‘Wait a second. Oscar Wilde?’
The Doctor smiled and nodded. ‘March 1895. Around the time of the Mc-Carthy murder. Sherlock Holmes solved the case before I could, as I recall.’
17
‘Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character,’ Trix pointed out.
The Doctor grinned. ‘My dear, one of the things you’ll learn is that it’s all real. Every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip.’
‘But that’s just not possible. I mean some books contradict other