Okay folks. Another short, sweet one.
And hey, why not leave a review this time? Only one reader is reviewing regularly... *snif*
Enjoy!
Chapter 10
"Random time," Martha muttered, following the Doctor's instructions. "Random place." She flipped a switch then that set the TARDIS humming toward its new locale.
After a few moments, the vessel stopped. The Doctor took Martha's hand and without a word, they walked through the door, leaving a puzzled Yorlo in the console room.
"So where are we?" she asked. "I forgot to look at the display before we left the TARDIS."
They were traipsing across a damp, grassy field with no civilisation in sight, save for a tiny wooden shack in the distance. The Doctor was leading her straight toward it.
"I don't really know," he confessed. "I could make a guess, but it actually isn't that important. The point is..."
Within thirty seconds they had reached the shack, and without hesitation, the Doctor threw open the door and stepped inside. It appeared the shack had once been some kind of stable. Some objects resembling bridles and bits hung from the walls, as well as the rotted remains of some sort of grain-based feed in glass bins along the wall.
And sure enough, on the end of the room, hanging from a rusty nail, there was Martha's portrait.
She sighed. "Okay, there it is. What does this prove?"
"Nothing yet," he told her. "What was your theory about why this is happening?"
"I didn't have a valid theory," she said, rather more shrilly than she had intended. She threw up her hands. "I just thought maybe my soul had been appropriated into the painting somehow. Or part of it."
The Doctor narrowed his eyes and said, "That's actually not bad."
"It isn't?"
"No, it's not, as hypotheses go. I just don't think it's true. But it's worth a look."
He took her hand and led her back out into the grass and back toward the TARDIS. When they reached the inside, he said, "Do it again. Random."
"Er, why don't you do it again?" she asked him. "So that I, and my swollen feet and weighed-down pelvis, can hang out here by the door without having to walk up and down that ramp."
"Okay," he shrugged. "Probably best if I do it this time anyhow."
Martha leaned against a rail near the door while the TARDIS moved to yet another random location.
Once again, the Doctor headed down the ramp, except this time, he stopped at the door and said to Martha, "Stay here. I'll be back in a few minutes."
Martha was confused, but she stayed in the console room with Yorlo for about five minutes, chatting, until the Doctor returned.
When he stepped back through the door, he said, "Martha, I don't think it has anything to do with you. You weren't with me at all, and I still found the painting with no problem. I mean, I suppose we could really test that theory a bit better if I left you here and did another random jump to see if it's there, but I'm pretty sure the painting isn't following you specifically."
"Are you certain it is still the original, Doctor?" asked Yorlo.
"Yep," said the Doctor. "More certain than ever. We have seen the original everywhere we have been since leaving Oliris. And now that I..."
"Now that you, what?" Martha practically shouted. "What is going on?"
"In a moment," he answered. She let out an exasperated hiss.
One more time, the Doctor set the TARDIS on "random," and they landed in yet another unknown time and place.
"Yorlo," said the Doctor. "You go this time. Martha and I will stay here. You go to the nearest building and poke around a bit, see if you don't come across it."
When Yorlo returned, it was fifteen minutes later, but he had indeed found the painting.
"Yorlo found it on his own. So, it's not about us," the Doctor said to Martha. "What is it about?"
"The TARDIS!" Martha exclaimed. "Oh my God, the painting is following the TARDIS!"
The Doctor's eyebrows went up and he nodded knowingly. "I wasn't sure until now, but... now I'm sure. It's about the TARDIS."
Martha's eyes were drawn to the golden lights on the ceiling and the wheels of the universe began to spin behind them. The Doctor could practically feel her metacogitating as some understanding set in.
The Doctor thanked Yorlo for his help, but graciously reminded him that this really was something for him and Martha to deal with, at least for the moment. Yorlo agreed without protest to cool his heels for a bit in the TARDIS, and gave them directions to Martha's portrait which he'd found on his own a few minutes before. It was inside the building nearest to the TARDIS, which turned out to be a theatre, and the painting hung in the lobby. At the moment, a crowd was gathering in anticipation of some performance or other, while the two of them stood staring at it. Neither of them moved for about two minutes, but at last, it was Martha who stepped forward and reached out to touch it.
She ran her fingers over a small area near the lower right corner. It was a spot where the royal purple shawl in which Michelangelo had painted her was bending and folding a little, and some shadowy nuances complemented the true violet paint. Her fingers moved in a circle for a few moments, and she pulled them away from the painting and examined her fingertips.
"Hm," she said, almost imperceptibly. Then she reached into her pocket and extracted a tool that the Doctor had almost forgotten she had: her own sonic screwdriver. He had fashioned it for her during a time when the danger-alert was high for her sister, counting on Martha's more and more acute Time Lord sensibilities to let her know how to use it.
She shined the sonic light into that same corner. The device's familiar noise ramped up to an extremely high frequency within a few moments, and she was forced to take her finger from the button.
She turned and faced the Doctor. "Is it protesting?"
"Maybe a little."
"Why? I'm not trying to manipulate anything, I'm just taking a reading."
"Well, it's not a protestation exactly. More like feedback coming through a speaker when someone holds the microphone too close."
"Am I right, Doctor, in what I'm thinking?"
"What are you thinking?"
She stepped even closer to him and lowered her voice. "That the paint is mixed with a tincture of Time Vortex, and that is what's making it follow the TARDIS all over time and the cosmos."
He smiled softly. "You know you're right."
"The Vortex wants to be whole," she said.
"Yes, it does."
"How is that even possible?"
"Oh, it's possible."
She turned back to the painting and tapped her foot at it. "So, the fact that we have seen it everywhere we've been, that's just a coincidence? It just goes and attaches itself to some wall, somewhere near where the TARDIS is parked, somewhere in the time vicinity, give or take a few hundred years... and we just happen to come upon it?"
"I suppose. Or more likely, it is following us, after a fashion, because it wants to be seen. Particles of Vortex want to be re-adhered to the whole, via the TARDIS' heart. It might, in fact, be semi-sentient, and knows that it is a work of art that can only make an impact visually, so it's zeroing in on us, and by extension, Yorlo, because we are the beings with visual perception associated with the TARDIS."
While he was talking, she had turned to face him, but now she went back to looking at her own likeness on the wall, with a slight bit of wonder, and an equal amount of disdain. "Blimey," she breathed. Once again, they were quiet for a few long moments, and then she faced the Doctor again. "I have to ask, Doctor... how did you know? I mean, I'm the one who didn't like the bloody thing to begin with. It was my Spidey senses that tingled the most when the painting was in our hotel room, so how come you're the one who worked it out?"
He put his arm around her and guided her back toward the door which would lead them to open air, and then the TARDIS. "Martha, it must have become clear to you by now that just because you have acquired some of the abilities and perspectives innate to Time Lords, it doesn't mean that you now know everything that I know."
"Well, yeah," she agreed. "You have, what, eight hundred and some years' of plain-old experience that I don't have. You've studied and traveled and done things..."
"Exactly."
He was silent for a moment, and then Martha asked, "So, is that all I get? You knew it because of experience?"
He inhaled loudly, then said, "Martha, have I told you my new theory on how the psychic barrier at the Pecclates Carnival works?"