Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [22]
The Doctor sighed and sat down again. ‘I suppose you didn’t receive some sort of secret intelligence and set up a clandestine rendezvous to make the purchase, either?’
Dunnock sniffed. ‘Do I really look like the sort of person to arrange to meet a strange young man in a dark alleyway to conduct an illicit purchase?’
Martha jumped on this. ‘A young man?’
‘And you wouldn’t remember his name – or what he looked like?’ asked the Doctor urgently.
But on this, the professor resolutely refused to deny anything at all.
Finally, fed up, Martha sat down on the bench and sighed. ‘I just don’t get it,’ she said. ‘Can I ask, hypothetically, why a hypothetical professor would be keeping a hypothetical missing link in his bathroom and hiding under the table if anyone comes round?’
Dunnock threw his hands in the air. ‘My dear young lady, that is precisely the point! Because it is not hypothetical!’
‘Well, I know it isn’t, but I thought…’
‘I think what the not‐professor means,’ interjected the Doctor, ‘is that the “missing link” is no longer a subject for hypotheses, because it is actual.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Martha, remembering her thoughts about how the museum would be ruinous for palaeontologists. ‘You’re worried that you’ll be out of a job when people don’t need to speculate any more.’
‘Of course not,’ said the professor, who seemed to have forgotten that he didn’t know what they were talking about, ‘I’m worried that I’ll be out of a job if it’s discovered that my book – my research, my reputation! – is built on a false premise.’ He opened an overhead cupboard and stretched up to reach a copy of Fishy Fingers. The book fell open at an obviously frequently consulted page showing a selection of bones and a diagram of a strange‐looking creature. Its resemblance to the animal in the bathroom did not seem marked. Dunnock pointed out features one by one. ‘I thought that was an elbow, but it’s a knee. I thought these were toes, but they’re spines. The mouth is all wrong, it has gills all over the place, and as for the colour…! Not to mention the lack of scales, the way it moves, what it eats. And you wouldn’t believe what it can do with its flippers – it turns accepted theory on its head!’
‘Whoops,’ said the Doctor.
The old man sighed. ‘I thought this would be the crowning moment of my career. But instead it has thrown me into self‐doubt. I cannot proceed with theories that I know to be false. But I cannot bring myself to admit how wrong I have been. My reputation would never recover!’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Martha. ‘Scientists have to backtrack all the time, surely, as new evidence comes to light. Just publish a new book and everyone’ll be bowled over in amazement at your incredible insights.’
Dunnock huffed. ‘And what evidence do I produce, young lady? You expect me to explain how I have revised my entire theory with no new fossil discovery, no new analyses…’
‘And you can’t show them Mervin because he’s supposed to have been extinct for a few million years,’ Martha realised.
‘They would want to put him in a cage! Cut him open! And I…’ he smiled shyly. ‘I have become quite fond of him. I have provided him with a home, food, female company…’
‘You what?’ The Doctor sounded incredulous. ‘You’ve found a girlfriend for a millions‐of‐years‐old, extinct half‐fish half‐mammal? That must have been one heck of an ad you placed in the Lonely Hearts column.’
‘Girlfriend-s,’ the professor corrected him, indicating the other end of the caravan. On a shelf stood a tank and a cage.
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor blankly. ‘His female friends are – a goldfish and a hamster.’
‘I didn’t know which side of the family he would incline towards,’ Dunnock explained.
‘Oh,’ said the Doctor again, seemingly lost for words. Martha was too.
‘And you’re definitely not going to tell us who sold him to you?’ asked the Doctor when he recovered.