Doctor Who_ The Sleep of Reason - Martin Day [44]
In any case, why was he so suddenly interested in her? She’d been bumping into him in the corridors and grounds for weeks and he’d barely said ‘Hello’
before. Now, after one dream about some black dogs, Smith was suddenly asking difficult questions, Fitz was trying to flirt with her (or was it the other way round?), and the blonde woman, Trix. . . Well, she and Fitz had very much kept themselves to themselves after their arrival at the Retreat, rarely leaving their cottage or the library. Now they seemed to be everywhere, Fitz patrolling the gardens and lawns with the security guards, Trix getting pally with the nurses. . . And Dr Smith had gone to the effort of arranging a meeting with Laska only to dribble on about the importance of belief and truth in the modern world.
Just before Laska had left Smith had tried another tack. ‘Do you ever feel the need to tidy up a room – really tidy it, right down to the things that have been there so long, you’ve almost forgotten to see them? And have you noticed how you normally emerge from that tidying process feeling better, more positive? As if you’ve made a fresh start. And yet, from one point of view, what difference does it make, if you tidy a single room of your house?
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Does it feed the poor, establish world peace, bring order to a chaotic cosmos?’
Smith had shaken his head, still for all the world talking as much to himself as to Laska. ‘Of course it doesn’t – and yet we still experience the compulsion to try to put things right.’
By this point, Fitz was hanging on his every word; Trix looked as if she had heard it all before.
‘My time here,’ said Smith, indicating the Retreat, ‘perhaps will not amount to much – though I say that not out of arrogance, but out of honesty. And yet, I still feel that there’s some good to be done here – the chance to make a difference to a few lives.’ Smith nodded triumphantly. ‘Sometimes that’s all you can do.’
‘You make yourself sound like Superman,’ said Laska, irritated by Smith’s manner. ‘And this week you’re going to save one or two poor souls instead of stopping Lex Luthor blowing up the world!’
Smith only seemed to take Laska’s flippant, almost sarcastic, words at face value. Smith had beamed, as if Laska had just uttered a declaration of intent with which Smith wholeheartedly agreed. ‘That’s it, my dear – that’s absolutely right. A lovely analogy.’ He turned his eyes towards her again. ‘It’s vital that you know,’ he continued, ‘those “poor souls”, as you put it – they’re as fundamental to me as anything, or anyone else. For too long now I’ve been concentrating on the “bigger picture”, as you might say. Sometimes the details are just as important.’
Laska supposed that Smith meant that, although his interest in her was professional, it was motivated in no small part by his compassion. Well, bully for him.
Now she sat in her room, waiting for the irritation she had felt to boil away.
She analysed and re-analysed the surreal conversation over and over, wondering if shades and tones of meaning remained to be extracted.
She walked to the window. The books and papers were still scattered across the floor. She realised that Smith’s sudden interest in her had coincided not just with the dream, and the pendant, but with her opening her father’s case and beginning to read the old diaries within. How on earth could they be connected to anything that Smith might be interested in? She glanced down at the turn-of the-century doctor’s diary; she was surprised how engaged she had been by the events it described. Something had drawn her on, and would doubtless draw her back to them tonight, turning pages of spider’s scrawl that smelled of ages long gone.
She knew it wasn’t normal to dwell on such things, to go over every conversation and encounter searching for evidence and additional information.
Her inability to take even the most trivial conversation at face value had, apparently, been a symptom of her mental illness; when she had returned to 76
her room after seeing Smith the first thing she’d done was check her medication. But