"I'm going to put this on you just this once, so please pay attention to how it's arranged," the Counsellor said. "Give me your right hand."
Sherlock didn't bother asking how she knew he was right-handed. He already knew that she could get into his mind, but he hoped she was able to deduce that from simple observation. He frowned and realized that he already thought her "talent" seemed very much like cheating.
He held his right hand out to her and she snapped the bracelet around his wrist. "This key is a bit less obvious than mine." She wrapped the silver strand around the bracelet instead of stringing it along the back of his hand. Then she pressed a transparent film along his palm and connected the film to a ring that she slipped onto his right index finger.
"Like handcuffs," he commented drily.
She met his eyes. Her eyes really were remarkable; right now, in the young sunrise filtering through the pines, the color seemed like Egyptian amber. "You're not a prisoner. Remember, at any time you can ask me to drop you off at home, at the exact time we met."
She turned away from him with no further ceremony and placed her hand on the door of what looked like a recreational vehicle. She jiggled the handle, and he saw the chain of her own bracelet shimmer slightly. Whatever device kept the TARDIS locked released, and the door opened. She turned back to him. "Oh, sorry. Perhaps I should let you try it." She closed the door and moved aside.
He stepped forward and decided to experiment; he reached out with his left hand and grabbed the handle. It felt like what it looked like: a simple RV metal door handle. It even gave slightly under his hand, but did not open. Then he decided to exert a little pressure. He pulled his hand back with a hiss. The handle had given him a small but very real electrical shock.
He turned to the Counsellor, his eyebrows drawn together with a question.
"You'll forget all about the shock in ten seconds," she said.
He shook his head. "Forget about what?"
She smiled at him. "Right." She tilted her head back at the door handle. "Want to give it another try?"
Sherlock didn't hesitate. He reached out with his right hand and put pressure on the handle, jiggling it lightly. He noticed that the chain wrapped around his bracelet shimmered slightly, then he heard a light click. The door opened. He opened the door and stepped into the increasingly familiar vessel from another world.
"Close the door firmly behind you," the Counsellor said as she swept past him. He did as he was told then followed her to the console.
"Where are we off to, then?" he asked.
She pushed a display in his direction. He saw elaborate figures, mostly circular and embellished, spinning lazily around each other. "These are time-space coordinates," she said. "I don't expect you to read them, let alone understand them, but I thought you should know what they were." She pulled the display back to her and started manipulating knobs. "I've been following traces of my husband's path all over the multiverse. Some leads in other universes fizzled out –"
"Other universes?" Sherlock asked. He came around to stand behind the display she was studying, trying to decipher the coordinates. He frowned. The discs whirled like clockwork cogs, but their meaning didn't become any more obvious.
"Parallel universes," she said impatiently. "I know you're aware of that – what do you call it? – oh, right. Theory. Physics is an advanced concept yet for you humans, but it's instinctive for Time Lords."
"You sound a bit preachy," he said. He resented the condescension in her tone and, with a start, wondered if this was what regular people felt like whenever he spoke with them.
"Do you want me to apologize for being who I am?" she asked.
Sherlock's mind raced ahead of him, calculating all of the conversational tangents proposed by her question and decided to sidestep all of them. "So you can't find him in any other universe and followed him here."
She smiled wryly. "Yes. The same universe I was born into. Unfortunately I've damaged one of my fuel coils with all of that hopping and I'm stuck on this planet for a while."
"So your promise of showing me the stars and the universe . . ."
She gave him a brief look that somehow managed to demonstrate a darkness he hadn't quite counted on. Remember, Sherlock; she's a wronged spouse searching for her husband after seven hundred years. That kind of danger is exactly why you don't take these flown-spouse cases. "The promise stands. Once the coil accepts the repairs I made, we'll be off. I am hoping, however, to draw on your talent. A few signs pointed to this planet and, more specifically, to your own hometown."
She moved quickly to the other side of the console and turned a different display towards him. The display was racing through several images of London: in front of Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, side streets and alleyways and closes. He studied the images, recognizing immediately every location and seeing the constant in every shot.
"A police box," he said.
"A what?" She came to stand beside him and watched the images scroll.
He turned to her, eager to share with her something she didn't know, happy finally to have an advantage over her. "Police box, apparently a style from . . .the nineteen sixties, if I'm not wrong. They're like miniature police stations. They contained equipment and supplies – documents, forms, the like – and they had a telephone on the outside behind a hinged panel that civilians could use to call the police. They've been largely decommissioned. It's odd to see so many of them. Is this modern-day London?"
"Mostly," she said. "Some of the photos go back to the year two thousand five. I don't have as much evidence from before then; some spotty stories –"
"Evidence? Where did these photos come from? And the stories?"
She smiled. "A conspiracy group called LINDA, mostly."
He pulled back sharply. "Linda?"
"Anagram. London Investigation 'N Detective Agency."
He let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Amateurs."
"Of course. Who else would post so much of their evidence on public forums and ask for more information? Most of the stories seem to be nothing more than flights of fancy, but some of them . . .well, some of them sound very much like the Doctor."
He had questions on the tip of his tongue, but some of them disappeared when she said Doctor. He shook his head. He was working; he needed to focus. "And why is this such a hard thing? If some of the stories sound right, why wouldn't you simply watch for the next story?"
She tossed her head and pointed. "The forums dry up of serious leads in two thousand nine. The amateurs can't find a trace."
"What makes you think he'd stay in London?" he asked. "Why wouldn't he just move locations, go to Bosnia or Borneo or –"
"Boston?" she asked with an honestly companionable smile. It was nice to have that kind of disarmed interaction, especially after all the recent tension with the only friend he'd had. She shook her head again. "He's identifying himself as English, just as I've chosen to identify myself as American. The stories vary regarding his exact accent: Northern, Estuary, Scottish. But he's always English. And he travels with his TARDIS stuck in that form." Again she pointed at the police box. "I'd be surprised if it didn't play God Save The Queen on its speakers every time he opened the door."
Sherlock smiled perfunctorily at her joke, but his mind was racing. "So why wouldn't it be as easy as going to London and examining all the police boxes until we found one that was smaller on the outside?"
She tilted her head at him. "Two problems with your suggestion: one, he doesn't stay in one place for long. He's aware, I think, of the vulnerability of having his TARDIS stuck in that form. While most humans can be unobservant twits, some of them would start to notice a structure that looks brand new when most have been decommissioned. Curiosity is a problem. Second, we wouldn't be able to access his TARDIS with our keys, so how would we know for certain when we'd found him?"
"Brand new box, you said so yourself," he said. "We would find one that looked brand new and stake it out until he returned to it."
"I've tried that," she sighed. "Every time this group, LINDA, found one, it was gone by the time I got there. It's exhausting looking for a man whose mind is capable of staying one step ahead of you. Besides, there's something else."
"What's that?"
"His whole purpose for living seems to be the need to show off for humans. According to this group he is rarely without a human companion, sometimes more than one. He takes them on little adventures, puts them in dangerous situations just so he can rescue them and endear himself to them."
Sherlock frowned. "That sounds incredibly narcissistic."
That dark look passed over her face. "That would be the Doctor in spades."
He assessed her briefly, letting the silence write a prologue before he filled in the rest. "It might be said you've just done the same."
"The same what? Don't forget yourself, Sherlock. You're my employee. I'm not trying to impress you. I'm trying to use you. There's a difference."
"Not much of one. Narcissists use people to boost their egos, you know." He shook his head. "Doesn't matter. Unimportant. So you're taking me back to London."
"We're already here."
"How does this work? There's no sound, no sense of movement –"
"Advanced physics, beyond string theory. Tesseracts. Doesn't matter. We're not getting into that."
"And . . .when are we?"
She frowned. "The same day we met. Same hour. About fifteen minutes after we left."
"Why wouldn't we just go back to a past sighting and follow him?"
"No," she said flatly.
"No? Just no?"
"That would cross my own timestream."
"Timestream?"
"You humans go forward in time. Only forward. Most living creatures can only go forward in time from point A, birth, to point B, death. Time Lords get to play with time, but we cannot go back to a point in our own lives, our own timestreams. Understand?"
"Sort of."
"Good enough. Once we're married, Time Lords join their timestreams with their spouses. If I go backwards in his timestream, it would be like violating my own. It would undo my existence and compromise the time vortex that empowers the TARDIS." She caught his eye in a significant manner. "Boom doesn't begin to cover it."
"So his time has moved forward and forced you to move forward with him."
"Yes."
"And does this little conspiracy group have any photos of your husband?"
She smiled. It seemed very bitter. "Oh, lots. Most blurry. A few good and clear. Some police-sketch kinds of renderings." She pulled up the information on the display and showed him.
"But these men are different," he said. He watched the faces flash before him. "I'm counting four different faces."
"Yes, well." She turned away from the console and headed for the door. "Another story for another time."
He studied the faces more closely. "There's no way this is makeup or masks or disguises. These are structurally different faces."
"Come on, Sherlock. Let's start our search."
"Using what?"
She flashed that wide and honest smile. "What you use best. Your mind."