Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [50]
‘Can you use the egg’s recordings?’ asked Mr Cwej.
‘That’s just what I’m doing. The coordinates might be a bit approximate, though. Better to take a bit too much than a bit too little!’
The light from the egg suddenly brightened to the point at which it was too harsh to look at. ‘Right, said the Doctor.
He picked up Penelope’s precious box of spare punchcards, plucked one out, and deftly poked a series of holes in it with a pen.
‘Exactly what are you doing?’ said Penelope, in alarm.
‘Hold on!’ said the time traveller. He fed the card into the hybrid mechanism.
Penelope felt her stomach turn over. The light leapt outwards, forcing her eyes closed. For a moment her ears rang. There was a violent lurch, like the feeling of a ship’s deck beneath your feet in rough water.
She opened her eyes.
She was in a forest.
Her first urge was to faint dead away.
At least one of the peasants had actually done so. The others were praying fervently: ‘Save us from suffering, save us from harm, Bodhisattva, come to us!’
Scores of them. All praying. As Penelope looked around, she realized they were in a clearing. A fire flickered in the middle, and the surviving villagers were huddled around it, staring up at them.
No – staring past them. Penelope turned around.
The pod was a foot behind her. She leapt backwards and nearly fell into the fire.
∗ ∗ ∗
101
A fox watched Chris from the forest.
All the others were sleeping, all but a couple of guards. The scrap of meat it wanted was right near the awake one.
The fox wondered whether he was going to go to sleep. Might he lie down, start snoring? Might he nod off still sitting up, his eyes drooping until the fox could no longer make them out in the firelight? Just long enough for a quick dash to the scrap and back again?
But the human obstinately refused to close his eyes, as though he had something against sleep. Eventually the fox gave up in disgust, winding its way back into the forest.
Penelope opened her eyes as someone prodded her with their toe.
‘Sorry to wake you,’ said the Doctor.
‘You didn’t,’ said Penelope, sitting up. Damp leaves fell off her clothes. ‘I’m afraid even my adventures in Africa as a younger woman did not prepare me for slumber in a wet Japanese forest.’
He squatted down beside her. The clearing was full of movement. ‘Dawn’s not far away,’ he said. ‘The samurai are going to get quite a surprise when they wake up. I don’t think they’ll be in a very good mood.’
‘Where are we going?’ He held out a hand, and she let him help her to her feet.
‘Doa-no-naiheya Monastery,’ he said. ‘The chief monk is a friend of mine.
Take Kame with you on the journey. He’ll look after you.’
‘My carriage,’ said Penelope.
The Doctor turned to follow her gaze. Mr Cwej was checking the reins of the two horses.
The pod was strapped to the back of the hansom cab, like a bizarre piece of luggage. Some of the fused soil had been roughly chiselled away from it, lightening the load.
Penelope went up to the bizarre object. Its ‘arms’ protruded from one side of the vehicle. She looked at them, struck again by their resemblance to an insect’s legs – cast in metal, warped by the heat of their fall through the atmosphere. They seemed too delicate to have survived the plummet.
The thing’s shape was like an hourglass: a thicker section at the ‘head’ end, from which the ‘arms’ protruded, a narrower midsection, and then a thicker base.
‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘exactly how did you bring us here last night?’
He clasped his hands behind his back, suddenly turning into a university lecturer. ‘Your mechanism was lacking a power source which could create a dimensional warping effect. I provided one.’
‘In the form of the “egg”?’
102
‘Yes. But it’s still your Analytical Engine that’s creating the essential equations.’
Penelope realized she was smiling broadly. She wiped the expression from her face. ‘What about the villagers?’
‘They’re going to the monastery as well,’ he said.