Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [19]
Penelope adjusted her round spectacles. ‘Are you familiar with the Analytical Engine?’
‘Vaguely,’ said the Doctor, grinning. Chris nudged him.
‘I shall show you my conveyance in the morning. I take it,’ she repeated,
‘you have invented a similar device?’
‘No,’ admitted the Doctor. ‘I stole mine.’
He took the rainbow egg out of his pocket. ‘This, on the other hand, is my own work.’ He handed it to Penelope. Its shifting colours were reflected in her glasses.
‘What untellable technology is this?’ she breathed.
‘Look,’ the Doctor told Chris. The whole surface of the egg was turning white in her grip, blue lines erupting and blurring into the burning light.
‘Can I?’ said Joel. The Doctor nodded, and Penelope reluctantly handed the egg to him. The white receded, becoming just a flare around his fingertips.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘How do I make this thing work?’
‘It’s working perfectly,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’d say we’ve found our temporal anomaly. Has either of you been mistaken for a deity, by any chance?’
‘Oh no,’ said Penelope. ‘Though we did have to dissuade the villagers from worshipping us after we first appeared out of thin air. No, this “god” of theirs arrived three days before we did.’ Penelope was staring at the egg. ‘What precisely is that device?’
‘It detects minor fluctuations in the timestream,’ said the Doctor. ‘Which is what Chris and I came here to investigate in the first place.’
‘In your stolen time machine.’
‘In my stolen time machine.’
Penelope returned his smile. ‘I look forward to exchanging notes with you, Doctor,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, we’d better get the fire lit.’
Chris and Joel got stuck with getting the dinner. Joel struggled with the fire pit while Chris chopped up vegetables with Penelope’s pocket knife. ‘So how is everybody in Little Caldwell?’
Joel glanced at the Doctor. ‘Oh fine. Up to our collective ass in aliens as usual.’
The Doctor and Penelope were deep in a discussion of Newton. Chris grinned. ‘So how does this time machine work?’
‘I’m not sure, exactly. It runs on electricity – Penelope actually used a light-ning bolt to power her first jump, like something out of Frankenstein! She was aiming for the year 2000, and landed in May of 1996. Right in the middle of the magic roundabout, causing the worst traffic jam in Wiltshire history.
40
And guess who got booted out of HQ to take care of it, two days before the Professor X movie premiered?’
‘So you’ve been working for the Admiral all this time?’
‘Yup. Well, up until I got aboard Penelope’s time machine. I couldn’t talk her out of continuing her “experiment”, so I figured I’d better go along and keep an eye on her. Tony whipped up a battery for it. Damn thing only goes backwards now, though, no matter how she sets the dials. She jumped all the way to the middle of the twenty-first century, then back to ’96, then back to 1743, then here.’
‘You want a lift home?’
‘Oh. . . yeah, of course. Thanks. I wanna find out whether they went ahead with the X series or not. So what have you been up to? Where’s Roz?’
‘Roz died,’ said Chris evenly.
‘Oh shit!’ said Joel. ‘Oh man, I’m so sorry. On Earth we had a thing called tact. . . ’
‘It’s all right,’ said Chris. ‘It was a long time ago.’ He pushed the vegetables into a cooking pot.
Neither of them said anything for a while. Chris glanced over at the Doctor and Penelope, whose discussion had turned into an argument. She didn’t look like she would take any crap from him. Good for her.
‘We’ve been doing the usual stuff,’ he told Joel. ‘Saving the universe. You know. So, have you seen this god?’
‘Nobody’s allowed in the shrine but the priest.’ Joel shrugged. ‘The villagers call it Kannon.’
‘The Bodhisattva of compassion,’ said Chris.
‘Oh, you’ve been doing your homework.’
‘I had to impersonate a monk a while back. I did a lot of reading. But it was mostly for appearances. I don’t think I understand Zen at all.’
‘You’re so deep.’
‘Ha ha.’
Out
The Doctor stood at the door of the house. Penelope considered him for a moment. ‘What is it?’ she