Longer delay between postings than I would have liked! I was out of town for three days with no room in my schedule for writing! My life is so hard. Sigh. In the old days, I could update my stories every day... but alas, no longer!
So you're about to find out what the egg/seashell thing does, but... oh, but. So many questions!
Enjoy!
FOUR
Lights danced everywhere – through the windows, across the walls, over their skin and in their eyes. They stood at the window of their hotel room of the Paris, Las Vegas casino and stared at the Bellagio across the street. Martha leaned against the Doctor, knowing he was probably scowling behind her, but uncaring, because at least his arms were around her waist, and they were here together.
"So," he said, taking a deep breath and sighing heavily. She felt him tense and relax, then kiss the top of her head. "You saw something bizarre in the O show."
"Yeah," she said. "Especially when the so-called volunteer dived from the rafters."
"What's your hypothesis, Dr. Jones?"
"My guess, you mean? My guess is that he's not human."
"Ah."
"I mean, if you say Joe Mullen is human, so be it. But the diver… I'm thinking, not so much. That pool was what? Twelve feet deep? And that was a hundred-foot drop at least. An adult male human would have hit the bottom of the pool and sustained a head injury at the very least."
"That is true," he conceded.
"So, I think that he, and maybe some of the other performers, the divers, are alien."
"A very good hypothesis," he said.
"A guess," she corrected.
"But it's not quite right."
"It told you. A guess," she affirmed, pulling away. She turned toward him and adopted her usual, business-like manner of investigation. He had to smile at this, given the formal cocktail dress and stilettos she was wearing. The juxtaposition delighted him.
"Don't guess. Go further. How else might someone survive a dive like that, into a pool that seems too small?"
As a hint, he threw his eyes toward the TARDIS, parked in the corner of the room. But Martha missed it.
She was busy contemplating, and had turned again toward the window. "How else, how else?" she asked herself. After a few beats, she wrinkled her nose at the view outside and said, "That's funny."
"What's funny?"
She pointed across the street and said, "The Bellagio. You can only see one domed atrium ceiling from here. I could have sworn there were three rooms right in a row, letting in natural light."
"Mm-hm," he said, still smiling. "Getting warmer."
"Well…" she turned to him and became irritated at the look on his face. "Stop that! What am I, your pupil? You're enjoying this way too much, and… oh my God!" Suddenly her eyes and mouth flew open and she looked at him with total shock.
"What?"
"The TARDIS has an observatory with a glass ceiling that you can't see from the outside!"
"Yes, it does."
"Oh my God!"
"I know, right? It's genius!"
"Genius?" she shouted.
"Yeah!"
"It's dangerous! It's insane!"
"Well, yeah, that too," he corrected himself, feeling chastised.
She paced to the TARDIS and then came back. "Doctor, what is that egg-seashell looking thing in Joe Mullen's office?"
"It's a Dimensional Control," he said. "Somehow, Curtis Katossian, the founder of MGM Resorts International, got hold of Dimensional Transcendentalism. He was so sworn to secrecy that he couldn't even tell Mullen, his heir apparent, what it does. Just that it's… what was it he said?"
"It's the key to Las Vegas as we know it."
"Yeah, and ain't it the truth? Haven't been here since the 1970's. Things have changed. I mean, it was never exactly a cow-town, but it used to be much more… quaint. Normal. Containable."
"Dimensional Transcendentalism," she repeated absently. Then, "That's what the TARDIS has, yeah?"
"Yep. Bigger on the inside."
"Does the TARDIS have an egg-seashell thingy somewhere inside?"
"Yes, in the Cloister Room. About a quarter-mile back from the console room."
"Blimey," she breathed. "That's mental!"
He took a deep breath, and spoke. "So, that Cirque du Soleil pool is only twelve feet deep on the outside. But when you dive in, I'd wager, it's more like twenty-five, maybe thirty feet. Or it might even change from one moment to the next, depending on who is doing the diving and what his or her needs are. A human would have a hard landing on the water, but wouldn't hit the bottom. For an experienced diver, it would be easy peasy. And a real treat, to get to do any kind of dive, and not to have to worry about the bottom of the pool."
"D'you think the divers know about the… dimensional anomaly?"
"How could they not?" the Doctor asked. "I would think that, at the very least, they've been paid off or threatened into not asking too many questions. Each one of them will have inspected the pool. There's no way they haven't noticed."
There was a long silence, while they both considered the implications of this news, from differing angles. Then, Martha stopped at the window and said, "And the Belllagio has literally miles of casino and atrium and shopping… but look! I mean, it looks big, but not… I mean…"
"Yep," he agreed, staring out there himself. "Dimensionally Transcendental."
"How many casinos do you reckon are like that?"
He exhaled through pursed lips. "A bunch, I should think. At least those owned by MGM International, and maybe others. Which means that if the Dimensional Control fails, a whole lot of people are in danger."
"I wonder if the TARDIS sensed it," she speculated. "I mean, we were saying, maybe the distress call from Mullen was the reason why the TARDIS 'randomly' came here, but… it seems like this dimensional thing would be so much more of a beacon."
He pursed his lips and shrugged. "Well… maybe not… which means we might be looking for something more involved here, something more time-based." At this point, he began to walk toward the TARDIS, and he burst through the doors. Martha followed. "The TARDIS is trained – programmed, conditioned, designed, whatever – to home in on the Vortex. It's who she is. It's the reason she exists. Like me, it's in her guts. And I know it sounds weird, but Dimensional Transcendentalism is just a means to an end for her. She needs to have it in order to be inconspicuous wherever she goes. Otherwise, she'd simply be huge and unwieldy and not as useful."
"Okay, I see."
"There's really no reason for one dimensionally transcendental thing to be able to detect another. So, the Dimensional Control wouldn't just pop up on her radar. See?" he asked, throwing gears into place, doing a routine that felt incredibly familiar to Martha. But the TARDIS made a 'whoop' sound, and the Doctor said to the Time Rotor, "What? What are you doing?"
He squinted at the screen, and re-adopted the scowl.
"What's wrong?" Martha wondered.
"She recognises it," he said. "The Dimensional Control. She's giving coordinates for it, just a few hundred metres from here. Across the street in the Bellagio, in Mullen's office."
"So, were you wrong about there being no reason for the TARDIS to want to home in on it, or is there something else bizarre going on?"
"The second thing."
Without ceremony, without warning and almost totally without finesse, the Doctor, still dressed in the charcoal-grey Armani suit he'd donned for Cirque du Soleil, burst through the door of Joseph Mullen's office.
"I want to know everything," he said, with a sweeping loud voice, striding straight in. He stopped five feet short of Mullen's desk, and stood with his feet far apart and his arms crossed over his chest. He bore holes into the CEO's forehead with his eyes. "Because I know, Mullen, that there is something you're not telling me."
"Not telling you? About what?"
"Who is Mr. Varpet? What is he? How is he supposed to 'fix' whatever goes wrong with that doohickey in your cabinet? What did Katossian do or say to him? How much did Katossian pay for the Dimensional Control?"
Mullen's eyes were wide as saucers. He was sitting at his desk, phone to his ear. He turned his attention briefly to the phone call. "Honey, I'm going to have to let you go. I'll see you in the morning, okay?" He ended the connection and said to the Doctor, "Dimensional Control?"
"Yes, yes, Dimensional Control," said the Doctor, annoyed. "Don't play dumb! How did Katossian come by it?"
Still stunned, Mullen said, "I don't even know what it is! All he told me was that it is the key to…"
"…Las Vegas as we know it," the Doctor interrupted. "I know. How convenient. Telling you just enough to make you mighty nervous about it, but not actually telling you what it does? Taking the secret to his bloody grave?"
Mullen got to his feet. "I know! It's really fucking annoying, is what it is! I've been sitting on this thing for three years, without knowing a goddamned thing about it!" he shouted. "Is it a computer thing? Is it chemical? Is it radioactive? I mean, why does it glow green without being plugged into anything? Am I going to lose my hair, or my mind, from sitting this close to it? Should I have some of my sperm frozen, just in case?"
Martha watched Mullen, and paid specific attention to his body language. She did the same with the Doctor. She watched the Time Lord's reaction to the man, and realised there was a huge disconnect here.
"Doctor…" she said, softly, forgetting that Mullen knew him as "Smith."
The Doctor didn't hear her. He shoved his hands in his pockets now, and began to pace. "I want to know, why you? How did you become CEO of MGM? Why did Katossian choose you? How did he meet Varpet? Why did Varpet offer him the Dimensional Control? At what cost? What kind of soul-selling did Katossian do in order to get it? What kind are you doing, Mister I-Don't-Know-A-Bloody-Thing? How did Varpet get that seven-hundred-digit phone number to pass along to Katossian? And I know I've already asked this, but while we're at it, I may as well ask again: who the hell is Varpet?" He stopped pacing and stood still in the middle of Mullen's office. Deadly serious, he said, "And last but not least, I want to know why my TARDIS is homing in on that thing. There is no good nor logical reason for it, so answer me that, Mullen."
"Doctor…" Martha tried again.
"TARDIS?" said Mullen. "What in God's name is a TARDIS?"
"I think you know very well what a TARDIS is, Mr. Mullen."
"I don't think he does, Doctor," Martha said.
"What?" the Doctor spat at her, seeming just now to realise she was there, trying to communicate with him.
"Doctor, look at him," she said. "He doesn't know the first thing about any of this."
He frowned at her in disbelief. "Did it occur to you that he might be lying?"
"No, never," she said calmly, sarcastically. "I've never met a human being in my whole life who lied to cover up something dodgy."
"Martha…"
"Doctor, I have training in psychiatry, and thanks to UNIT, in basic interrogation techniques. Assuming Mr. Mullen is human…"
"Excuse me?" Mullen said.
"…from what I've observed, he's telling the truth. He's clueless."
"Human?" asked Mullen, nervously raising his voice. "What the hell are you talking about? What else would I be?"
"Any number of things, okay?" Martha snapped at him. "Just give us a mo', would you? I'm trying to keep my friend here from using a sonic device to unravel MGM's master hard drive or something. Or your brain."
Mullen's jaw dropped, but he fell silent.
The Doctor frowned at her. "How did you know I was…"
"Because I know you, love," she said. "I know that nothing, including me, is as important to you as your TARDIS. If you think someone's been mucking about with her, then you would, in fact, come a little unglued. Maybe rightfully so. But shouting at this man isn't helping."
"Martha," he said, walking toward her, his voice low and intense. "Somehow that egg-seashell thing and my TARDIS are connected. That should not be. I explained to you, there is no reason for one Dimensionally Transcendental thing to have contact with another, unless there has already been contact. So, who the hell has been in my TARDIS? In her database? In her heart? Who's been messing with the Vortex in that way? I have to know, and I don't have anywhere else to start!"
"Fine, I get it. But it's pretty clear to me that even if Mullen is lying, he's not going to say anything." She chuckled. "I mean, like I said, UNIT trained me in various interrogation techniques, including what they call interrogation with incentives, so I could…"
"No, no, please," Mullen said, hands in defensive mode, taking a couple of steps backward.
"Don't worry," Martha said to him. "I'm just making a point. That's not how we roll."
She saw, out of the corner of her eye, that Mullen relaxed a bit. But not completely. The Doctor looked at him with mistrust, still scowling deeply, which clearly made him nervous.
"Which brings up a good point, Doctor," Martha continued. "Because the next step after cornering him in his office, shouting at him and insisting that he knows stuff, is interrogation."
The Doctor's face hardened. "Fine. Then, Dr. Jones, where do we go from here? Because I don't know what he's done to my TARDIS, and I've got nothing else."
"You're the cleverest man in the universe," she counselled. "You can work it out."
Mullen had been watching the two people who had burst (twice) into his office tonight with a mixture of fear, curiosity and disbelief. When Katossian had retired, Mullen had only thought he had no understanding about the glowing green thing in his office. Now, if possible, he understood even less.
All he knew from Katossian was that the device was supposed to glow green, and if "the worst" happened, and it went to yellow, he was to call some bizarre phone number and attempt to contact someone called Mr. Varpet. If he failed to do so, Vegas "as we know it," whatever that meant, was at stake. Katossian had been hush-hush on every other detail. When he told these people that this was all he knew, he was telling the truth.
Earlier, a man named Mr. Smith and his associate, Miss Jones, had answered his call, claiming to work with Mr. Varpet. They seemed to be offering help. There was nothing particularly weird about this (accepting the weird circumstances), except that the woman was dressed a bit formally for a business call, and actually, so was the man.
An hour later, the man, whom the woman was now calling "Doctor" was asking who the hell Mr. Varpet was. The woman, also, apparently, a doctor, seemed to believe him about being in the dark over the glowing device, but the man did not. There seemed to be some vague threat about advanced interrogation techniques (read: torture), and there was something (or someone) called a TARDIS. The only thing that Mullen could glean about the TARDIS was that it was presumably more important to "the Doctor" (Dr. Smith?) than his companion "Dr. Jones." Which was a shame, because Dr. Jones seemed to think an awful lot of him, calling him the cleverest man in the universe, and all. The TARDIS must be something (or someone) extraordinary, indeed.
"Okay, look," Mullen said, after Dr. Jones had challenged her partner to work it out, and he'd said nothing for about thirty seconds. "I'm not just saying this to get you both the hell out of my office – although I do want you both the hell out of my office. The only thing I can think of is, maybe talk to Katossian's daughters, or his ex-wife."
"Were they involved in the business?" Martha Jones asked.
"Not as such," he said. "But they inherited pieces of it, and of course, inherited tons of money when he died. It's not unreasonable to think that they might know something. A titbit of some sort that could help you? Maybe?"
"How do we know you won't leave town while we're talking to them?" asked the Doctor.
"Where would I go?" asked Mullen. "I have a meeting with the shareholders from Dubai in the morning! They're already set up in the Penthouse upstairs."
So, if you're reading this story, please review! Only fair. Also, I love reviews - needy that way. :-D
