Doctor Who_ The Last Dodo - Jacqueline Rayner [7]
Only the Doctor could sound that threatening and that disarming at the same time.
Eve began to speak. Probably, thought Martha, she wasn’t quite sure why she was doing so, why she was obeying the Doctor. After all, logic dictated that two people found in the middle of a building would have a fairly good idea of where they were without needing to be told.
‘This is the Museum of the Last Ones,’ Eve said again. ‘Home to the last remaining specimen of every otherwise‐extinct life form in the universe.’
The Doctor blinked. ‘But that’s trillions upon jillions upon, I don’t know, gazillions.’
‘And thus the museum encompasses the entire planet.’ said Eve.
Martha stared at her. ‘Not exactly a family day out, then.’
‘More like a year out,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’d need to pack a fair few picnics. I might be inclined to be impressed, if I wasn’t fairly sure I’m not going to like anything I hear.’
‘How could you possibly object?’ Eve asked. ‘This is the greatest conservation project the universe has ever known.’ The Doctor shuffled around on the desk. ‘I knew an old lady who made gooseberry conserve,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there was a lot in it for the gooseberries.’
Eve ignored him. ‘We monitor every species, everywhere. When there is a single specimen left, our detectors pick this up. A collection agent is dispatched to retrieve the specimen, so it may be preserved for all time. Thus no species will ever be fully extinct while the museum exists.’
‘You expect the last one to just hang around while you bimble down in your rocket ship or whatever?’ said Martha incredulously.
The look Eve gave her was extremely pitying. She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a pendant, a chunky metal square on which was a numberpad and a large blue button. ‘The collection agents use teleport technology,’ she explained. ‘They can arrive at the correct location almost instantaneously.’ She dangled the pendant tauntingly in front of her. ‘But don’t think you can use these to escape. Each one is keyed to a specific individual, and will carry that person only.’
‘As if we’d try to escape!’ said the Doctor indignantly. ‘Still, that’s not all you use the technology for, is it – I thought I detected a little teleporty swish as we came through your door. That makes sense; being curator of this whole museum would require quite a bit of commuting otherwise. Still, you must work a long day, what with Northern hemisphere business hours, Southern hemisphere business hours, not to mention whatever time they open at the equator…’
‘I never sleep,’ Eve told him.
‘Quite right! It’s for tortoises, I always say – unless you’re the last tortoise of your kind, of course, in which case you get to be put in suspended animation for all eternity instead.’
‘It has to be done,’ said Eve. She reached behind her and slid back a wooden panel. Below was a bank of tiny lights the size of pinpricks, hundreds if not thousands of them, flashing in an endless sequence, one after the other. ‘Each flash of a light represents an alert,’ Eve told them. ‘A species has come to an end.’
Martha opened her eyes wide in shock. ‘But there have been loads, just since you opened the panel!’
Eve nodded. ‘Indeed.’
‘The last dodo,’ Martha whispered under her breath. ‘But, hang on, there was a gorilla there. Gorillas aren’t extinct.’
‘Martha, Martha, Martha,’ said the Doctor. ‘Think.’
She thought, and of course it was obvious. ‘They’re extinct now,’ she said. ‘Whenever “now” is.’
He nodded sadly. ‘I spotted an aye‐aye, a Siberian tiger, a chubby little kakapo – puts it a bit after your time, but not necessarily by much.’
Eve was looking both puzzled and fascinated. Martha realised that they had been talking too freely of their bizarre way of life – did they really want this woman to know they were time travellers? – and hastened