Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [63]
They had been through dozens of missions together. The Prompter’s juices flowed more quickly at the prospect of getting back to work.
It gave its belly-foot an experimental wiggle. There. Almost back to full functionality. Carefully, feeling its strength returning, the Prompter of Confessions began to make its way through the dirt.
The Doctor ran past, laser bolts missing him by inches. The Prompter reared up in recognition for a moment before falling back into the dust.
Te Yene Rana trod on it as she raced after the Time Lord, swearing, and the reflattened Prompter expired with a squeak of protest.
This time she wasn’t alone.
The Doctor knelt – sat – facing away from her, so close to one of the walls that his nose was almost pressed to it.
‘No,’ said Penelope, pushing her hands against one wall. ‘No, not this again!’
It was a nightmare, of course, but so vivid! She felt that she could reach out and touch the fine cloth of his jacket, or tweak a lock of his dark hair.
He turned around and peered up at her. She started.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. But his voice was tired now, as though all the pride had gone out of him.
‘Oughtn’t I to be asking you that,’ she quavered, ‘since this is my nightmare, and you are, apparently, a guest in it?’
He shook his head. ‘Some random force,’ he muttered, settling against the wall, ‘desperately lashing out in confusion, bringing together disconnected things. . . ’
She sat down in the middle of the floor. ‘What is this place?’
‘Hell hath no limits,’ he said, ‘nor is circumscrib’d in one self place, where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be. . . ’
‘Doctor Faustus,’ she said. ‘It seems an oddly comfortable Hell.’
‘Wait a few centuries and say that again.’ He gave her a crumpled smile, holding his hat in his hands.
‘Is this, then, the Hell of the time traveller?’ She hugged herself. ‘Are we condemned by our meddling to this timeless place?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘This room isn’t for you. And it isn’t for Chris, as much as, deep down, he believes he deserves it.’ He sighed. ‘I’m afraid it’s for me.’
‘And what crimes have you committed,’ she said softly, ‘that warrant such punishment?’
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He looked at her with his deep and mournful eyes. ‘What do you know about reincarnation?’
‘Ah,’ said Penelope. ‘You are a believer in the transmigration of souls. That you will return as a snail, or perhaps an amoeba. ‘
‘Not exactly,’ said the Doctor. ‘What if I was to tell you that in the. . . century from which I come, we can “die” twelve times, returning in a new body each time?’
‘I see,’ said Penelope.
‘I will be moving on to my eighth body. A new body with a new personality.
A whole new self.’
‘And what will become of your current self? Oh, I see. . . ’
Penelope looked up at the high ceiling of the Room. ‘Is this the price you must pay for your multiple lives? How can you, people accept such a terrible price for their longevity?’
‘It’s not them. Us. It’s me. This is a space in my own mind. The others have got it ready for me.’
‘The others?’
‘My past selves. And now they’re being childish and showing it off.’ He snorted. ‘They hardly need to. I knew this was going to happen to me. Even before the dreams started, I knew. That’s one reason I’ve held on for so long.’
‘A strange form of cruelty. . . ’
He pulled his knees up close to him. ‘Nothing more than I deserve. I did this to the one before me, after all, locked him up and threw away the key.’
Penelope shook her head slowly. ‘But why? What did he do?’
‘Nothing. That was the problem.’ The Doctor seemed to grope for a simple way of explaining. ‘He was afraid, afraid of going power mad. He was so scared of what he might become that he wouldn’t do what needed to be done.
He refused to plan, refused to anticipate. He’d never consider a pre-emptive strike against evil because he was too scared of even being capable of planning one. People were dying because I didn’t know what