Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [113]
‘You still feel guilt, do you?’ Omega said.
‘Of course I do,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘Whatever I have done to redeem myself since, I still stabbed her.’
Omega frowned. ‘But now there was no crime. You are feeling guilty about a crime that you didn’t commit.’
‘I committed it.’
‘Not any more. It never happened.’
‘And it’s as easy as that?’
‘Yes.’
‘It seems like cheating, somehow,’ the Doctor noted, remembering that he had taken Larna’s hand, started to dance, shared thoughts and intimacies with her.
‘Just different rules.’
She had returned, wearing a green dress that wouldn’t have been out of place at a medieval banquet on Earth. It had a full skirt and an embroidered bodice, with a tight waistband. Her hair had been carefully arranged around a pearl tiara.
‘Dinner is served,’ she announced.
The Doctor walked over to her, took her arm.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Are you all right?’ he repeated. She gave a careful nod.
The Doctor looked up and the throne room had become a banqueting chamber, dominated by a large triangular oak table. There was a high-backed chair at each point of the table, and three full place settings had been laid. Beyond the other archway was the clanking of pots, the rattling of cutlery, the hissing of pans. The kitchens. And the room had always been like this, he remembered. They’d walked in and the table had always been there, and Omega had always been seated with his back to the fire. The flames glinted from the metal armour and framed his vast body. An effect, of course, that was fully intentional.
The Doctor stepped back into the room, pulled a chair back for his companion, then took the remaining one for himself. He glanced down. The cutlery was all of the finest silver, lovingly engraved with various designs familiar from ancient Gallifrey. Each of the three diners had enough of it in front of them to open a shop: laid out in front of his plate, for example, was a teaspoon, tablespoon, coffee spoon, soup spoon, cake spoon and a serving spoon, along with a few others with more arcane function. There were equivalent numbers of knives and forks.
He looked up. Omega was already munching at a leg of…
something. Chicken, probably,
‘What will you have, Doctor?’ he asked, the meat visible in his mouth as he spoke.
‘I’ve not seen the menu,’ he replied.
‘You can have anything. Anything at all.’
‘Anything at all?’ the Doctor repeated softly.
Omega nodded.
‘Not meat. I’m a vegetarian.’
‘Whatever you eat, Doctor, no animal will die. Your meal will be the product of my mind.’
The Doctor snapped a smile. ‘It’s the principle.’
‘What principle? That you don’t eat imaginary animals?
Feast yourself on minotaur steak and dragon scale soup.’
‘When I meet unicorns, Lord Omega, the very last thing that I want to do is turn them into burgers. It would be like…
well, you wouldn’t serve roast Gallifreyan, would you? Even imaginary Gallifreyan.’
‘No? I could do so…’ He paused, a wide smile on his lips.
Then he laughed, the half chewed remains of an imaginary chicken spluttering out over his part of the table.
The Doctor shuddered, ‘Could I see the menu, please?’
Omega grunted his disapproval, but with a flourish of his gauntlet a slim volume appeared on the Doctor’s side plate.
The Doctor grinned, and picked the book up. ‘Ta.’
‘What will you have?’ Omega asked his wife as the Doctor busied himself. She selected a vegetable soup and a glass of a particular type of Gallifreyan sweet wine. It duly appeared in front of her. She selected the appropriate spoon, and began to eat.
The Doctor opened the menu in the middle. The pages were thin almost tissue paper, like the pages of his mother’s old Bible. He had to wet his finger to turn them. He flicked through a few starters.