TEN
Martha decided, after all, that she could, in fact, use a cup of coffee. And also a stiff shot of Bourbon, but it was only eight in the morning, so she figured she'd let that one slide. So the two of them went down the hall to the kitchen and had a small breakfast together.
"Is there anything bothering you that I don't know about?" she asked, seeing him chewing his toast with a very furrowed brow.
"I'm a bit worried about that rip over the Isle of Dogs," he said. "I think it's just leakage, I mean, it's not like there's anything harmful absolutely gushing into this world, but void stuff is a contaminant. A sprinkling over London over the past six months to a year is not likely to have had much effect, but by your time? That entire area could be closed down as a war zone."
"Well, how do we seal it?"
The Doctor noted, and enjoyed, the fact that she phrased the question as "we".
"Well, I don't think it will be easy," he told her. "Remember I told you that the void doesn't like pieces of itself being spread about, and that when it was open in 2006, it sucked in all the particles that it could?"
"Yeah."
"Well, now it's leaking. When I detected the rip the other day, I distinctly detected a seepage of energy, not a consumption. That means the polarity has been reversed somehow – blimey, what could be strong enough to reverse the magnetism of the void between universes? Anyway, normally, I'd say we'd have to plug it up with whatever was lost, but I don't think we can do that now because it's not attracting void stuff, it's repelling it."
Martha focused on one phrase. "Plug it up with whatever was lost?"
He looked at her tight-jawed, eyes blazing.
"Yikes. Well, then," she said. "It's a good thing that's not an option anymore." Not that she could any more realistically picture the Doctor tossing Rose into a dimensional rip than she could a Panda bear marrying a goat, but it still was a disturbing thought.
"Trouble is, I have no other ideas of how to seal that type of rift," he told her. "It's like dry-wall. When you get a hole in dry-wall, how do you fix it?"
"More dry-wall."
"Exactly. But what would you do if pieces of the dry-wall were turning to liquid and leaking out? Or lost gravity and started drifting apart? Among other things, it's like putting your finger in a dyke. The only effective way to stop a problem like that is to be inside the wall and shove something much bigger into the hole from the other side."
"Inside the wall? Are you saying we'll have to go into the void?"
"Not unless you'd like to stay for an extended holiday," he shrugged. "And as Rose has shown us, the jet-lag is rather dreadful."
"What about the TARDIS? Wouldn't it protect us?"
"The TARDIS is sentient as well, Martha," he said quietly. "She'd be driven mad just like any one of us."
Martha stopped to contemplate the idea of an insane TARDIS. She made a mental note to ask the Doctor about what that might be like, once the danger of it actually happening was completely over.
"I have an idea that might work," the Doctor said, pulling himself from some sort of reverie. "It's going to mean you're on the ground and I'm in the air for a while, and we'll need to recruit some outside help."
"Okay. What do you need from me?"
He pulled her to her feet and started to lead her by the hand out of the kitchen and down the corridor to the console room. As they walked, he explained, "You are going to go back to the inn and find Luke. Ask him more about the Cyber invasion – try to find out where they were holed-up, where some of the action went down and all that. Your first goal is to try to find pieces of the Cybermen – arms, legs, torso, anything. Second goal is to pick up debris from the area around where the leak is."
"What sort of debris?"
"Anything. Sacks of rubbish, discarded cartwheels, chunks of metal. And the longer it looks like it's been sitting there, the better. A brick fallen from a building is good. And you might start with the alleyways behind smith shops and masons' workhouses if there are any. Anything that can rot is no good, it doesn't last long enough to work."
"All right, maybe I can get some of the novices from the convent to do that. Then what do we do with it all?"
"Bring it back to the stable at the convent and wait for me," he said, smiling.
"And what will you be doing in the meantime?"
"I'm going to try to work out what caused the polarity to reverse," he told her. "If I can, then there's a small chance I can shift it back. Though whatever caused it is bound to be pretty complex." He tugged at the hair on the back of his head.
"But then you'll have to plug it up," she gulped. "Won't you?"
"Yes," he told her. "That's why I need you on the ground."
Sister Micheline was immensely glad to see her, though she eyed Luke with the suspicion which she harboured for most strange men.
Martha visited Rose, who was lying on her back staring wide-eyed at the ceiling like a corpse today. Though she was careful not to touch her, Martha sat with her for about thirty minutes, spoke to her about the Doctor, tried to reach her with familiar words, and for the first time since Rose had been expelled from the void, called her by her real name. Only this seemed to spark anything. Rose turned her head brusquely and seemed to stare at Martha for about ten seconds, and then she returned to her original position.
"How do you know her name is Rose?" asked Sister Micheline with wonder in her voice.
"The Doctor is good," Martha said simply.
Then Martha explained what the Doctor needed: debris from the northern part of the Isle of Dogs. Sister Micheline offered a few of the novices, as well as several children from the orphanage, including Phillip. She gave cross-streets and told them to begin there, and to fan out gradually from there. She told them everything the Doctor had told her, about longer-lingering items and not bringing back anything that could rot. They were all to meet back at the convent no later than four o'
"Now, what good is this going to do?" Luke asked, trailing behind Martha as they walked briskly away from the convent. He had agreed, yet again, to give up a days' business in order to help Martha. She knew that she and the Doctor both owed him a big favour when this was all over, though she wasn't sure they'd be able to compensate for what he'd lost monetarily.
"I'm not sure, Luke," Martha said to him. "If you'd rather just tell me what you know and go back to work, that's absolutely fine. I can get the novices to help me."
"No, I'd rather do this," he said with a big smile on his face. "It's just, it's a bit grotesque looking for body parts. Even if they are metal."
Her 21st century garb was attracting stares, but she was used to it now, and today it didn't bother her. Today, as opposed to yesterday when Bretton had angered her so much, she knew what was happening, had a task to accomplish, she now had a fairly coherent Doctor to turn to, and she had hope that the problem might actually get solved now.
Suddenly she stopped walking and faced Luke, who almost ran smack into her. He pulled her into a doorway so that they wouldn't be in the way of passers-by. "I was thinking," she said. "Who's in charge around here? I mean, if the Cybermen were killed or defeated somehow, wouldn't they know about it? Even if that man in the balloon did something to them, there had to have been, like, bodies lying about, yeah?"
"I suppose. But what could they tell us?"
"Where they stashed the pieces. They didn't just throw them into a black hole."
"All right, better question: why would they tell us?"
"Leave that to me," she said.
Six hundred feet above the Isle of Dogs hung a blue police box, mercifully cloaked by a perception filter from the prying eyes of tittering Victorians. Far below, nuns and children were gathering random pieces of junk to bring back to the convent for a reason they could not say. But they knew that it was exciting and different, so they did it, giggling and chattering all the while.
The Doctor was allowing the leakage from the rift to flow over the TARDIS' receivers. On the screen, equations appeared in thousands of different languages, and he couldn't believe he hadn't noticed the polarity switch before. He'd been so caught up in trying to work out what it was that he hadn't bothered to look at the magnetism factors.
At this point, he still had it in mind that the man in the balloon had been responsible for opening the rift and probably for the reversal as well. But Martha was right – even the eternet, which had perspective over all time and space, was warning him off investigating that man, so he was on his own. At least for now.
As numbers and figures flew past, something caught his eye.
"No, no, wait a minute," he said out loud. "Let's go back."
He froze the screen and scrolled back and put on his glasses. He squinted, then squinted some more. Finally, he was sure that he was right.
Equations indicating the alternate universe, Pete's World, were popping up in the void's natural structure, and attached to them, dimensional repellers, meant to create a bubble impenetrable to void stuff. Their appearance in tandem could only mean one thing.
"Pete Tyler, you daft genius," he said flatly. "That stupid trinket of yours."
When Rose had got sucked into the void, she had been riding in the arms of her father. Pete had the universe-jumping device around his neck, and most likely, he was pressing the button as they were taken off their feet. He must have lost his grip on Rose just at the wrong moment, causing them to get separated – he wound up on the other side, Rose wound up consumed by darkness.
The nature of the device is to flout the void, rip through it, keep it from touching the traveller. Pete must have still had hold of Rose's arm or wrist, because the device confused the void. The Doctor had never thought of the device as giving off any energy, but it must have done, because some of it was clinging to Rose. Immediately, the void must have begun rejecting that energy, and with it, Rose. She must have been tossed about inside the void for God knows how long before being spat out on Earth. He still didn't know why she'd fallen backwards in time, but it didn't matter now.
He felt his body tighten with that familiar flow of adrenaline, the excitement of knowing that by Jove he's got it! He threw up one of the floor panels and began dashing around beneath.
"Hello, I'm Luke Montgomery and this is Martha Jones," Luke said to the constable at the front desk. "We're here to speak to someone specific."
"And who might that be, son?" the man asked, sprightly, but suspicious.
"Well, frankly, whomever was charged with investigating the armoured attack at Christmas," Luke said carefully. Then he added, "We may have some further information regarding the man in the balloon."
"That inquiry has been closed," the constable practically shouted. "Now get off, the both of you."
"Oh, I think the detective will be very interested in what we have to say," Martha interrupted, silkily. "Especially when he finds out what we know about him." She stared at the constable with deep meaning in her eyes.
The constable eyed her back. He considered her, then said, "You don't know anything."
"I know plenty, sir, and I think you might be privy to what I'm talking about as well," she said. Again, she looked at him with wide, meaningful eyes. The man shifted uncomfortably.
At last, he said, "Very well." He disappeared through a door.
Luke looked at Martha with amazement. "Martha! That's blackmail! What in God's name do you know?"
"Absolutely nothing," she told him. "But there's always something, isn't there?"
"Apparently!" Luke exclaimed, delighted.
When the constable re-appeared, he was followed by a larger man in a tweed suit. Martha thought absently that the man must be positively sweltering in those clothes.
"Yes?" asked the man.
"Are you the detective who investigated the armoured attacks at Christmas?" Martha asked.
"The name is Decker. What do you want?"
"Well, Mr. Decker, we were wondering what happened to all the suits of armour," she said, trying to make the request sound as innocent as possible.
"What do you need to know that for?"
She looked at Luke. He improvised. "Er, I'm in the metal trade and I reckoned this might be a good way to come by some cheap materials." This actually sounded more like a question than a statement, and Martha was fairly certain that Decker didn't buy it, but it was a level try.
He looked Luke over, then looked Martha over. She could see the flicker of wonder come into his eyes when he realised what she was wearing, but he said nothing about it. "The armour was taken from the city. It's gone."
"Oh, right then," Martha said brightly. "Taken by whom? The city must have had to hire cargo carriers of some sort. If you could give us the name of the company, then we'll get out of your hair."
"They're out of business."
"A name then, would be fine. People are easy enough to track down. He's bound to be working with another cargo company now."
Decker stared at her, and she stared back, unwavering and smiling slightly. She was trying to project friendly tenacity and she was fairly certain she was succeeding... at least in the area of tenacity.
"Look, I don't know the name, I don't know where he went. The suits of armour are just gone, aren't they? Now please leave me alone," Decker said to them. It was clear that he was nervous and angry, though his voice remained even.
"Mr. Decker," Martha said softly. "I think that you and I both know that those things were not suits of armour. And if you insist that they were, then as a law-abiding citizen of this great city, I must ask you, what happened to the bodies inside? Who were they, and what did you tell their families when you had them carried out of the city to be buried in some unmarked grave by cargo cart?"
Both Decker and Luke looked at her with surprise. Decker's surprise registered more terror; Luke's, admiration.
"Good," she said calmly. "I'm glad that we can all agree that they were actually mechanical men from another world. That being the case, I'm fairly certain that this department did not hire a cargo company to have them removed from the city, as that would have aroused suspicion as to their true nature. Rather, you would have used the department's own man-power and stashed them somewhere in London. Now tell me where that is, or I will start having to ask questions of possible witnesses, and you will very soon find widespread panic on your hands."
Decker pulled at his collar and Martha knew she had him on the ropes. It wasn't the most ethical thing to do, but this wasn't even her time, and it's not like she had intergalactic knowledge, mind reading skills or psychic paper. She had to rely on her purely human wits – which were considerable, she thought, with satisfaction.
"Follow me," Decker finally said, leading them out of the police station.