Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [2]
I don’t know what you’d do, but in an effort to stop the explosion I’d probably grasp at the most familiar, easiest option there was – and say, ‘an apple, please’.
The Doctor didn’t offer me a choice between every food in the world (actually, for some reason he keeps trying to feed me chips – healthy way to go, Doctor’), what he said to me was, ‘Where would you like to go now? I can take you anywhere! Anywhere at all!’ There he was, poised over the controls, grinning at me, fingers itching to press the switches that would take me to the place I wanted to go.
I could choose to go anywhere at all. Any house, city, county, country, continent, planet, solar system, or galaxy in the universe. At any time, from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch.
As my brain exploded, I found myself seeking solace in the comfort of childhood, and as if from a distance I heard myself saying the same thing that I always said when I was little and it was the summer holidays and Mum asked me ‘Where would you like to go?’ I said, ‘Let’s go to the zoo.’
And the Doctor looked at me as if I’d just kicked his puppy.
No, really, his face kind of fell. Disappointed, but hard at the same time, like he was angry with me. Then his expression relaxed and he just said, in his normal voice, ‘Nah, gotta be somewhere better than that. I’m offering you anywhere in the universe!’
So I said, ‘Can I think about it?’ and he nodded but told me not to take too long, because he didn’t want to be wasting time when we could be having fun.
Now I’m wondering what to do, because I know I upset him, but I don’t know why. Not only have I still got to choose between the Milky Way and the porridge and the crisps and the other billion options (minus apple), but I have to decide whether to talk to him about it or not. I don’t want to upset him again.
If it’s ever happened to you, what did you do?
And really, what on Earth is wrong with going to the zoo?
Martha walked into the control room, and found the Doctor sitting in a chair, reading some book with a picture of a rocket on the cover. How he could bear science fiction when he knew what it was really like out there she didn’t know – perhaps it amused him, like the way she had begun to find medical dramas hilarious after she started at the hospital. Not that she’d caught the Doctor hanging around reading very often; he wasn’t really the sitting type, manic movement was more his sort of thing – she guessed he was waiting for her to tell him her choice, her golden ticket destination, and the instant she did he’d spring into action, pulling levers and pumping pumps and pressing buttons and darting all over the place like he’d got ants in his pants. Fleas on his knees. Eels at his heels.
‘Aha! Martha! Excellent!’ he said. ‘Decided yet?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said.
He blinked, pretend‐baffled. ‘You didn’t upset me.’
‘Yes, I did. But I didn’t mean to. Just tell me, so I don’t do it again, what’s wrong with going to the zoo?’
He frowned at that, seeming to weigh up the options. Finally he simply said, ‘Just not really me.’
‘Come on, I can tell it’s more than that.’
The Doctor sighed and drew in a deep breath. ‘OK. It… hurts. The thought of anything being caged hurts me.’
Martha perched on the edge of his chair. ‘Oh, but there’re plenty of places without cages these days. My these days, I mean, where I come from. They give the animals loads of freedom.’
‘Cages don’t always have bars, Martha,’ he said. ‘Just because you call something