Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [23]
It was ten feet long, a mass of melted stone, with patches of shiny metal showing through here and there. At the top, there were perhaps a dozen jointed metal. . . arms?
‘Kannon of a Thousand Hands,’ said the Doctor.
The impact had crushed some of the ‘arms’ and bent others, so that they reached out from the object’s body in random, twisted directions. It made Penelope think of the discarded shell of some giant, macabre insect.
‘Try to be quiet,’ she whispered. ‘No one but a priest is supposed to enter the shrine. I have no idea what the penalty for blasphemy might be.’
49
The Doctor’s torch beam moved across a row of small pots filled with earth, set before the kami. Offerings of some kind? The pots overflowed the wooden building, on to the steps.
‘I thought at first it must be a meteor,’ she said. ‘But it seems to be a metallic object, partly encased in melted rock.’
‘Soil,’ said the Doctor. Kneeling, he brushed his fingertips across the surface of the kami. ‘Melted right on to the metal skin. It must have made quite an impact.’
The Doctor switched off his torch. Penelope blinked in the sudden blackness, and then was half blinded. She raised a hand to her face, involuntarily.
It was the rainbow-coloured egg, singing with brilliance.
‘An object from another world,’ breathed Penelope, looking at the kami. ‘Or perhaps from Earth’s future? How long does it take the human race to develop vehicles which can journey through space?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ muttered the Doctor. He was brushing a hand over the surface of the object, the shining ovoid cupped in his other palm.
Penelope made a sour face at his back.
‘I am certain that I am very stupid,’ she said, ‘not to recognize it at once.’
He took out some sort of mechanism and waved it over the surface of the object, listened to the slow clicking noise emanating from the machine. ‘Thought so. . . ’
‘No doubt you know precisely what it is.’ For a moment Penelope felt the clenching in her heart she associated with her husband – her former husband.
She pushed him out of her thoughts.
‘I have no idea,’ said the Doctor, standing up and taking the torch out of his mouth. ‘But I seriously doubt it’s here to make the rice grow faster.’ He looked around suddenly. ‘There! Did you hear that?’
Penelope held her breath, listening. Were they about to be discovered?
They waited for long seconds. The Doctor shone his torch beam across her face. She shook her head.
‘Hmm. . . ’ The Doctor snapped off his torch, plunging them back into blackness. ‘Those bushi know this is here. If they’re feeling brave, we can expect them tomorrow morning. If their discretion is the better part of their valour, they’ll be back with reinforcements.’ He eyed the thing. ‘We need to find some way of getting rid of it.’
‘But we must discover its true nature,’ said Penelope. ‘What is it? How can it have these powers?’
‘I thought we weren’t supposed to interfere?’
‘We can observe,’ said Penelope, adjusting her glasses, without interfering.’
The Doctor grinned. ‘You’re going to love Heisenberg. Seriously, I’ve done about all the observing I can without proper tools. I can’t even see half the 50
thing’s surface for mud. For now, what it actually is doesn’t seem to be as important as the effect it’s having on everyone around it.’
‘As for the bushi,’ said Penelope, ‘the village is fortified to some extent, and it has a flesh-and-blood guardian. But I fear you’re right: the inhabitants are in great danger. We’ll speak with the headman in the morning.’
They hesitated at the doorway of the shrine, listening. It seemed no one had been disturbed by their visit.
Penelope glanced back at the object once more. ‘In the morning,’ she whispered again.
Chris opened one eye as someone booted him gently. ‘G’way,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ Joel shouted. ‘You’re missing the meeting.’
Chris opened his bleary eyes. He was lying on a tatami, huddled under a sleeping bag and a blanket. The cut on his cheek throbbed and the stubble on his chin itched.
Given the choice of this