CHAPTER IV
"One more time," the Doctor said. He was leaning against a wall between flat doors, facing Martha. She was seated on one of the benches.
"Doctor, I've already told you the story twice," she whined, leaning forward and tugging at air in exasperation. "I don't know how many more ways I can say it."
"All right," he said, beginning to pace. "Something is swallowing pockets of time, but displacing spatial patterns as well. This considerably narrows down the phenomena that could be involved here."
"Good."
"But there are still a number of them."
"Of course there are."
"Except…" he said, pulling the sonic from inside his jacket and holding it up. He began to move, round the rotunda at a stride suited to his long legs, not to Martha's short ones. Sighing, she stood up to follow.
"You see, it's the concentration of activity that's bothering me," he was saying, the sonic buzzing. "Massive amounts of time just going kerplooey…"
This time when Martha came to, she was standing in a whitewashed tunnel. She looked about, and all she could see were "exit" signs. She bellowed in frustration, swore, and followed the signs.
She found that she had been in the same Métro station from which she and the Doctor had emerged perhaps ten minutes before.
"What the hell?" she asked herself aloud, coming up the last step. "This is like… am I drunk? Maybe they poisoned my crème brûlée and it's something only humans are susceptible to…"
People were staring, but she didn't care. This phenomenon, she could see, was not a one-time occurrence, and it was going to become a serious nuisance.
"Going to become?" she asked herself, in response to her own thought. "It's already a right bloody nuis… "
She had been following the same route back to the crescent shaped building, walking at a mightily brisk pace. She was stopped in mid-sentence, mid-thought, by a particularly welcome sight.
It was unmistakable, of course. The walk, the hair, the suit. Accept no substitute. And there he was, maybe fifty yards ahead, about to cross the plaza. Ah! So, perhaps he'd noticed she was gone this time and had come looking for her. Well, thank goodness she saw him before it was too late!
He stopped and began rooting around in his pocket and she saw the psychic paper come out. It did not register that she currently had the psychic paper stashed in her own pocket.
"Doctor!" she cried out. She called so loud that her voice cracked and wavered a bit. It actually hurt.
But when the Doctor turned to look, Martha swore again, and it caused her to turn her back and begin swiftly crossing the street. Her heart was pounding and her mouth had gone dry. She caught her breath and leaned against a lightpost.
Because when the Doctor had looked to see who had called his name, the woman he'd been walking hand-in-hand with turned and looked as well. A woman in a green blazer and her favourite brown sandals.
When she re-entered the building's lobby, Hervé looked up. "Miss Bankhead! Are you actually having trouble finding the lift?"
"Listen, Hervé," she said. "How many times have you seen me now?"
"Well, just once," he said.
"I mean today."
"Me too. I keep thinking you're going to go up in the lift, but you keep…" he laughed. "…you keep winding up back here in front of my desk somehow. So how can I help you?"
"Never mind. There's only one man who can help me," she sighed. "Unfortunately, he keeps turning his back."
This time, she decided to take the stairs. It was eighteen floors, but rushing, at this point, hadn't done her any good, so she might as well get on the slow path. Besides, another of her selves might be on the lift right now. She couldn't risk running into one of them. "No, no," she said to herself, climbing, rounding floor three. "Because that would make things complicated." She chuckled ruefully.
After the eighth floor, she was so intent on the process of climbing and protesting against her rapidly tiring legs, that she didn't notice the ruckus coming from the metal stairs above. At floor eleven, she was startled when the Doctor appeared suddenly in front of her, almost mowing her down as he made his bulldozing descent of the stairs.
She cried out in surprise. He grabbed her to keep her from falling backwards, then pulled her in for a hug.
"Doctor!"
"Martha!" he hurled back. "It happened again!"
"Yes, I know! How long have I been gone?"
"A minute, maybe a tad more."
"For me, it's been ten or twelve."
"Really? I started scanning for temporal activity and when I turned around, you were gone. Figured I'd see if you were in the lobby like last time. Took the stairs 'cause the lift took too long – well, seven seconds, but still."
"Well, I'm glad I found you. Again."
"Again?"
"Yeah, this time when I came to or whatever, I was in the Métro station where we came in. I came up out of the tunnels and started walking here, and I saw you!"
"You saw me?"
"Walking toward the building across the square," she said, her voice raising in pitch. She took a deep breath. "So I called out to you, and my voice was all hoarse, and when you turned to look…"
"You saw yourself."
"Yes! It was so eerie!"
"We heard a voice calling my name in the square when we first arrived, remember?"
"Yes!"
"But we didn't see anyone," he said. "Where did you go?"
"As soon as I realised what I'd done, I crossed the street."
"Good move. Still, I'm surprised I didn't see you."
"Well, I was in a crowd."
He smiled. "You stand out in a crowd, Martha. To me, anyway."
"Ugh," she groaned. "That was bad."
"I know," he said giddily. "But it's true." He took her by the shoulders and kissed her squarely, briefly.
"So, you were coming down to the lobby to find me?"
"Yep."
"Okay, you found me. Now what do we do?"
"Please, have you met me? I'm going to talk."
A quick consult of the directory on the eleventh floor told them that the property manager resided on the fifth floor in the G suite. As they exited the lift on floor five, they turned right, and immediately noticed that floor five was laid out and decorated in exactly the same way as floor eighteen. Martha knocked on the door, as the Doctor was distracted once again by a plant. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding the planter quizzically.
"What's wrong now? A breed of palm that doesn't grow in this solar system?"
"No," he said. "It's the Hydrangeas. I love hydrangeas, especially the blue ones."
When the door opened, they came into contact with a man who looked very Mediterranean. Prominent nose, dark eyes, slicked-back hair, wearing a burnt orange, fitted jumper. He was holding a cigarette in his hand, and without a touch of annoyance, he said, "Yes?"
"Hello, I'm the Doctor and this is Martha Jones," the Time Lord said, stepping forward boisterously the shake the man's hand. "Mind if we have a word with you?"
"Not at all," he said. "My name is Gérardin. Shall we chat inside?"
"Thank you," the Doctor said, taking Martha's hand and accepting Gérardin's invite.
The flat was spectacular, but decorated very much like the hallways. Blond wood floors or tan carpets, touches of chrome, tropical foliage.
"So, I assume you are interested in a flat here," their host said. "Please have a seat."
The Doctor and Martha sat side-by-side on a tan, crescent-shaped sofa, and the Doctor said, looking around, "So, I'll go out on a limb and guess that it's you who hired the decorator for the building."
"Indeed," Gérardin said, handing them each a bottle of water, then seating himself across from them. "I am partial owner. My business partner does not live on-site, so I take care of the property. And I can assure you, it is well cared-for, from the cobbles outside to the fertilised soil in our planters. So, you are a doctor?"
"I am," answered the Doctor. "Just moved to town. Need a place to live."
"Just come from London, I estimate," Gérardin commented with a knowing smile. "And you, Miss Jones?"
"Same for me," she said.
"Ah! Both doctors, what a lovely couple," Gérardin cried out, clapping his hands. He put his cigarette out in an ashtray that looked like a Picasso painting, and then pushed it aside with contempt. "You will fit in here nicely. Everyone in the building is a young professional, and most of the couples are unmarried. Do you mind my asking if you are married?"
"No, we're not," the Doctor answered.
"Lovely," he said. "So, would you like a tour of one of the residences? We have a few vacancies."
"Well, perhaps later," said the Doctor. "Before we do that, though, let's talk about safety."
"We have a state-of-the-art, twenty-four-hour surveillance system," Gérardin assured him. "And we screen our security carefully."
"Yeah, Hervé," the Doctor commented. "Boy, nothing gets past that one. But that's not what I mean. I mean, are there any… disturbances?"
"Disturbances? Do you mean, like, barking dogs, people fighting?"
"No, more just… you know, disturbances. People disappearing. Things going bump in the night. Scary stories."
Gérardin looked at the Doctor with some concern, and when he changed his gaze to Martha, she said, "The Doctor is extremely superstitious. This is the fourth building we've been to – he keeps insisting they're haunted by the spirits of insurrectionists."
"I'm quirky," the Doctor said with a little nose wrinkle.
Gérardin reached into a drawer in the giant ottoman that doubled as a coffee table, and pulled out another cigarette and a fancy lighter. He meticulously lit his cigarette, slowly closed the top of the lighter, and took a long drag, letting the smoke drift at a leisurely pace from between his lips. He didn't make eye contact during all of this, and for a few seconds after.
At last, he looked up at them with a very serious expression. His light tone had gone quite dark when he said, "I think I know what you mean, Doctor."
"You do?"
"About the disturbances, yes."
"Tell me."
"For that, you need to talk to Thierret," Gérardin said.
"Who's that?" asked the Doctor.
"Yann Thierret, he's the landscape architect who designed the planters in the hallways," he said.
"You think the plants have got something to do with it?" asked Martha.
"Well, it was when he brought in all that stonework that the trouble began."
