Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [0]
Swordplay, samurai, demons, magic, aliens, adventure, excitement. . . Who needs them?
The Doctor and Chris travel to sixteenth-century Japan, a country gripped by civil war as feudal lords vie for control. Anything could tip the balance of power. So when a god falls out of the sky, everyone wants it.
As villagers are healed and crops grow far too fast, the Doctor and Chris try to find the secret of the miracles – before two rival armies can start a war over who owns the god.
Chris soon finds himself alone – except for an alien slaver, a time-travelling Victorian inventor, a gang of demons, an old friend with suspicious motives, a village full of innocent bystanders, and several thousand samurai.
Without the Doctor, someone has to take up the challenge of adventure and stop the god falling into the wrong hands. Someone has to be a hero – but Chris isn’t sure he wants to be hero any more.
KATE ORMAN lives in Sydney, Australia. The Doctor has somehow survived her four previous New Adventures.
THE ROOM WITH
NO DOORS
Kate Orman
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by
Doctor Who Books
an imprint of Virgin Publishing Ltd
332 Ladbroke Grove
London W10 5AH
Copyright © Kate Orman 1997
The right of Russell T Davies to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting Corporation 1996
Cover illustration by Jon Sullivan
ISBN 0 426 20500 6
Typeset by Galleon Typesetting, Ipswich
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For the Doctor, and all his travel agents La mort nous parle d’une voix profonde pour ne rien dire.
Death’s got a deep voice, but nothing to say.
Paul Valery
Contents
First Slice: The killing sword
1
A better class of portentous dream
3
1: How to win
7
2: Blue-eyed samurai
15
The Room With No Doors
29
3: How to lose
31
4: Rescue (hopefully)
37
The Room With No Doors
47
5: Yes, but is it Kannon?
49
6: Flying Heads
59
7: Coffin cure
65
8: Waiting for the demons
69
In Penelope’s dream
85
9: Pigeon English
87
Second Slice: The life-giving sword
95
10: Changing direction
97
11: Sixteenth-century digital boy
105
12: Alienation
111
13: Manacle depression
119
14: The writing on the walls
123
15: Cat and mouse
133
16: Fourth-dimension dream
141
17: Time’s arrow
153
Scream of consciousness
159
Third Slice: No sword
161
18: Meanwhile, back at the monastery
163
Falling upwards
171
19: Needlessly Messianic
175
Unturtled
183
20: Half a cat is better than none
185
21: Out of the bag
193
22: Kami Chameleon
199
23: Life in linear time
201
24: Room for living
207
Thanks to:
213
First Slice
The killing sword
En largo camino paja pesa.
On a long journey, even a straw is heavy.
(Spanish proverb)
A better class of portentous dream
Christopher Rodonante Cwej opened his eyes.
He was in the Room With No Doors.
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Not again.’
He woke up.
Chris folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling. ‘Whew.’
For a while he just listened to the soft thrumming of the TARDIS, a sound you didn’t hear so much as feel. He reached out a hand and pressed it against the white wall of the room, feeling that deep hum in his fingertips.
The space-time ship must have noticed his movement. Some ripples of light moved across the ceiling, like reflections in fish tank, He smiled. The TARDIS
could be pretty weird, but she took good care of