Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [10]
Much later.
The Doctor and Kadoguchiroshi sat together in the old Zen Master’s room.
The Doctor had sent Chris off to get them some horses; they’d continue their investigations in the morning.
The Time Lord poured green tea into the Roshi’s small cup. The tea set was hundreds of years old, beautiful, simple pieces of glazed pottery.
‘Why have you come here?’
The Doctor smiled. ‘The roses blooming on Mount Cadon,’ he said.
The Roshi returned his smile. ‘This isn’t a formal interview, Doctor.’
‘I didn’t want to risk a knock over the head!’
‘I rely rather less on the stick than my predecessor. There are less violent ways of startling the mind into awakening.’ The old teacher took a sip of tea.
‘We must do this properly tomorrow.’
21
‘Yes, please,’ said the Doctor. ‘Your tea room is one of the calmest places in the universe. I carry it around with me in case of emergencies.’ He tapped himself absently on the back of the head. ‘But to answer your question, I’m here because I detected a minor temporal distortion somewhere in this area.’
He took the rainbow egg out of his pocket.
The Roshi glanced at the bit of technology. ‘Now tell me why you’re really here.’
‘This is why I’m here,’ said the Doctor, surprised. ‘There really is a temporal distortion.’
The Roshi gazed at him.
‘This terrible waiting,’ whispered the Doctor.
The Roshi poured him a cup of tea, pushing it towards him.
‘Do you remember why I couldn’t defeat the jiki-ketsu-gaki?’ said the Doctor at length, tucking the detector back in his pocket.
‘You were afraid she would kill you.’
‘She had to be stopped, and I was the only one who could do it.’ The Doctor turned the cup around in his hands. ‘Everything was going so well until I realized what it would really take.’
‘And so you hesitated.’
‘In a sense.’ The Doctor laughed. ‘I climbed out through a window and bolted.’
‘You might have died if you’d stayed.’
‘I would have died if you hadn’t pulled me out of the snow. Eighteen people died because I climbed out of that castle window. Killed because I didn’t finish the job. I can’t afford to hesitate. I don’t have the luxury.’
The tea cup made a sound like shattering glass as it struck the floor. The Doctor looked at the broken pieces, appalled.
‘Why are you here?’ said Kadoguchiroshi.
The Doctor breathed out a sigh. ‘Chris,’ he said.
The old man bent and gathered up the pieces of the cup he had dashed to the floor. The Doctor watched him, frowning.
Chiyono took Chris shopping. It took them an hour to walk down to the town.
‘OK,’ he said, as they trudged along the muddy road, maybe you can give me a hint.’
‘A hint?’
‘I’m trying to work out this riddle that Kadoguchiroshi gave me.’
‘ A koan, ’ said Chiyono.
‘Yeah. Listen: there was this guy called Kosen, and – oh, you’ve heard it.’
Chiyono was nodding. ‘What do you think the answer is?’
22
‘I don’t know, but I think it’s got something to do with reincarnation or something. Am I on the right track?’
‘This is the road that leads to town,’ said Chiyono.
‘Argh,’ said Chris.
‘Kuriisu-san,’ said Chiyono, ‘I can’t help you with the koan. You have to penetrate its meaning by yourself.’
‘Oh come on, couldn’t you just sort of nudge me in the right direction?’
‘No one can,’ said Chiyono. ‘You could read all the scriptures, listen to endless lectures, and be able to speak eloquently on Zen, and the plum blossoms would still understand the truth better than you.’
Chris booted a stone. ‘That’s what the Doctor’s always saying. You can’t be told, you just have to understand.’
‘The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.’
They got more than a few strange looks in the town. The Doctor had produced a bag of coins from his capacious pockets, and sent Chris to buy them a pair of horses.
Chris wanted to add to his samurai gear. The samurai armour was neat, made out of strips of metal, light and flexible. One of those ferocious face masks would be cool, too. The only problem