Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [25]
‘May I?’ said the Doctor. The old man gestured him over, and he gently touched the man’s leg, using just his fingertips.
‘Psychokinesis,’ he told Penelope.
She shook her head. ‘Mediumistic balderdash. The object is certainly some sort of machine, with advanced surgical abilities.’
Sonchou-san said solemnly, ‘We have suffered a great deal in recent years.
Many of us were killed during uprisings, including much of my family. When the wars began, we had to erect the fence around our village to keep out bandits and desperate soldiers. More than once our crops and goods have been taken by the samurai. But recently our luck has improved. We have pros-pered. With the arrival of Kame, our guardian, we gained a further modicum of protection. All of this was the Bodhisattva’s work. Under the kindly eye of Kannon, I feel we are safe at last.’
‘Unfortunately,’ said the Doctor, ‘word of the statue’s arrival has already reached Gufuu Kocho, and it won’t be long before the other daimyo find out about it.’
‘Surely Kannon will protect us.’
‘Hopefully,’ said the Doctor, ‘but think seriously about this. What will you do if Gufuu’s troops demand you give them the statue? What if bandits attack the village to steal it? Having something so precious may have put you in terrible danger.’
The headman shook his head. ‘We will not give up the statue,’ he said. ‘We are its rightful custodians.’
‘Very well,’ said the Doctor. ‘But believe me, by the end of today, you’ll know just how much Gufuu Kocho wants what you have.’
‘You’re lucky to have a master,’ said Kame. He circled Chris, his katana held lightly in one hand. ‘My lord’s entire family was destroyed in a siege. Of his retainers, only ten survived. All of us ronin, masterless warriors.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Chris. He squinted, shrugging his injured cheek as he took small steps from side to side. The sword felt heavy today, awkward.
‘In my youth, I would never have considered working for peasants,’ said Kame. ‘But if you survive to my age your perspective begins to change. These people sheltered my group after we escaped that conflagration. In return, I offered them my protection.’
He struck out at Chris, who turned the blow away with his own sword.
‘Good,’ said the ronin. ‘There, I’ve told you why I’m here. It’s your turn.’
53
‘I travelled here through time with an extraterrestrial to investigate the temporal anomaly.’
The ronin struck again, and Chris parried again, nearly losing his balance.
‘Less force,’ said Kame. ‘Your balance is an advantage, but your weight is not.
We will try again later.’
Chris let out a snort of frustration as Kame sheathed his katana. ‘You know,’
he said, ‘I’m a crack shot with a blaster. And you can even set them to knock people out instead of killing them. These things –’ he jiggled his sword ‘–
they’re so clumsy, they just chop through people as though they were sides of meat.’
‘The real art,’ said the ronin, taking out his fan, ‘is not the life-giving sword, nor the death-giving sword, but never having to draw your sword at all.’ He opened the fan.
‘Whatever you say,’ said Chris.
In an instant Kame had flipped the fan shut and knocked Chris’s weapon out of his hand with the metal edge. The Adjudicator looked at his fallen sword, and back at the samurai, who was innocently fanning himself.
The Doctor was coming out of the headman’s house, Penelope at his side, stressing out. The Doctor waved to Chris.
‘When you are as old as I am,’ said Kame, ‘and you begin to know that you have done enough killing, perhaps it will make more sense to you.’
Penelope ran up the steps of the shrine, stopping just short of the door. She snatched up one of the pots – the pots that last night had contained soil. Now they were crammed with madly blooming flowers.
The Doctor was looking at a flower. It hung on the end of a branch, alone, trembling in the breeze.
Did humans experience flowers in the same way as he did? Their senses were duller, simpler. The scent and colour would not, could not, be as sharp with, well, inferior processing equipment.