Doctor Who_ The Myth Makers - Donald Cotton [44]
24
Doctor in the Horse
‘Now once and for all, Steven,’ I said, as soon as I couldn’t avoid being alone with him again for a moment, ‘nothing will induce me to go back to that foul Greek camp! Look what happened to me last time, will you?’
‘Please, dear little Cyclops,’ put in Vicki, sidling up to us like the girl of silk and sherbet she’d just discovered she was. ‘If you won’t do it for me, think of Helen.’
‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind awfully. I’ve been trying to keep my attention on other matters ever since I first saw her.’
‘But I know you like her. Surely you don’t want her to be killed, do you?’
I could have spat in her face, if I hadn’t been fond of her.
‘No red-blooded man is going to kill Helen, you can be sure of that. But, in any case, I’m not going in reach of Odysseus again, for you and Helen together in a gift-wrapped package! I’ve got my own life to be getting on with, thank you!’
‘Well, that won’t take up much of your time in the future, will it; unless you can manage to stop the Doctor somehow?
You’ll be slaughtered with the rest of us,’ said Steven heartlessly.
‘So you’d better hurry up, or it will be too late!’
I saw the point, of course. But why, in Zeus’s name, did it have to be me all the time? I was sick and tired of doing all the work and getting precious little thanks for it. There comes a time when a man has got to put his foot down. So eventually, I put my best one forward, and thinking – damn it! – of Helen all the way, I went back to meet my destiny!
I must say, when I got up close to it, that horse was really something! Those Greeks must have worked – well, like Trojans on a job creation scheme, to get it ready in time!
In fact, I suppose, they must have cobbled it together out of old ships’ timbers and drift-wood, and I could see a thigh-bone or two from the old skittle-alley, which had been pressed into service as ribs. But somehow there was more to it than that – as if it had taken on a life of its own; and Odysseus and the Doctor had just fleshed out an idea the gods had thought of anyway.
Weird, the whole thing!
But there it stood, nostrils flaring and eyes – Zeus knows what they were made of, and I don’t want to – flashing in the sunset; and you could swear it was almost pawing the ground and panting to be off on its ordained trail to mayhem and murder! And the last of Odysseus’ men were just climbing into its sagging belly: so one thing was quite clear – I was too late!
Though what I could have done – what Steven and Vicki could have expected me to do – even if I’d got there earlier, I haven’t the remotest idea. Once Fate is really on its way with the captions rolling, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it, in my experience. Even if I could have contrived to have a quick word with the Doctor, I don’t see how that could possibly have helped.
He probably wouldn’t have listened to me anyway; and, to be fair there was no earthly reason why he should. ‘A man of no importance,’ as Vicki so kindly pointed out. But even if he had listened, why should Odysseus have paid any attention to him?
All Odysseus wanted was the sack of Troy, and sharp about it, with drinks on the house afterwards! And the Doctor had shown him how to go about it, and that was the end of his function, thank you – only do try not to get in the way. That’s all.
They stood there now, the pair of them, looking up at their creation, as if it were a thing of beauty, and not a horrifying, doom-laden juggernaut.
‘Well, Doctor,’ Odysseus was saying, as he picked the splinters out of his gnarled hands; ‘there’s a war-horse and a half for you! That’s something like a secret weapon! Better than half-a-dozen of your crack-brained flying-machines!’
The Doctor, to do him justice, was rather more doubtful. ‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ he said.
‘Why, what’s the matter? Don’t you trust your own invention?’
‘It’s not that. Oh, the idea’s good enough, as ideas go. It’s just that the whole contraption looks so mechanically unsound. I mean, just consider those fetlocks: there’s no safety margin