Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [20]
‘Can you hear that?’
‘No,’ said Penelope.
He turned to look at her, as though she were a student who had given the wrong answer. ‘Thanks for the rescue,’ he said.
‘We were expecting you,’ she said. Behind them, at the fire pit, Mr Mintz and Mr Cwej (which was pronounced Kwedge, he had told her) laughed at 41
some shared joke. ‘A woman visiting her mother in Shuuraku village brought back news of your arrival there, and Mr Mintz recognized you immediately from your description. He did not seem surprised at your arrival.’
‘And less surprised that we needed rescuing,’ said the Doctor.
‘He told me a little of your adventures,’ said Penelope. ‘Tell me, Doctor. . . ?’
‘It’s just Doctor,’ he said.
‘Tell me, why have you come here?’
‘As I said, I detected a fluctuation in the timelines,’ he said. ‘Nothing major.
I thought this would be a bit of a holiday, actually.’
‘You didn’t allow for the temperament of the natives,’ said Penelope, adjusting her glasses.
‘It’s a bad time for the country,’ said the Doctor. ‘Though we’d have had an even rougher time of it if we’d arrived next century. . . ’
‘The Tokugawa era, yes,’ said Penelope. ‘But back to the reason for your arrival.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven. Do please tell me more about why you’ve come here.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘I’m being interrogated,’ he said.
‘Forgive my curiosity,’ said Penelope. ‘After Mr Mintz, you are only the second time traveller I have encountered. He says that you make minor adjustments to history. You do not merely investigate, you interfere.’
‘If there’s something out of place here, I’ll put it right.’
‘I see. And precisely what gives you the right to do that?’
‘I am being interrogated,’ said the Doctor.
‘Please,’ said Penelope. ‘Don’t sidestep the question. Are you some sort of cosmic policeman? To whom do you answer for your actions?’
‘Myself, mostly,’ he said.
‘And if your actions leave a situation worse than when you began?’
That shaft struck home. His eyes were suddenly deadly serious, searching her face. ‘If you arrived in your time machine,’ he asked, ‘and someone was about to, exempli gratia, murder a child, would you stop them?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. I have no right to interfere with the flow of history.’
‘Ah. That’s the easy answer. But what might you really do? If it came to the crunch? I’m going for a walk.’
He slipped out of the door without looking back. Penelope watched him go, wondering why he didn’t take a light.
Chris and Joel had been heating sake over the firepit for an hour. Penelope had muttered something about the cat that swallowed the cream and had gone out half an hour ago, carrying the big torch with her.
42
‘So,’ said Chris, filling his fourth or maybe fifth cup of the rice wine, ‘is this just a holiday for you? Or are you going back to work for the Admiral?’
Joel’s glasses were round mirrors reflecting the flickering fire. ‘I haven’t decided yet. Thirteen years is a long time.’
‘Sounds like you were looking for a way out.’
‘No,’ said Joel. He took a mouthful from his cup. ‘It’s good work. The underground railroad has spread all over the planet; I’ve lost count of how many stranded aliens we’ve helped out. It’d be easy to spend a lifetime doing that. I think the Admiral even wants me to follow in his footsteps. Take over when he’s too old to be running around, dodging the CIA.’
‘Yeah, but don’t you ever get the urge to go do something else?’
‘I nearly walked out after the time we helped that Lalandian group. They’d been killing and eating people for weeks before we tracked them down.’
‘What did you do?’ Chris spilt warm sake over his hand as he filled another cup.
‘We fixed their ship and sent them home,’ said Joel. ‘They’d chewed up about twenty human beings. Swore blind they weren’t on safari – they were just stuck and running out of supplies. I nearly walked. Isaac talked me out of it in the end.’
‘What if,’ said Chris, ‘what if, though, you didn’t feel like you were up to the job any more? If, you know, like, something happened and it was your fault. . . ’
‘The weirdest