Several days had passed and Sarah's house guest still hadn't gotten his memory back. He had however, fixed every broken appliance in the house and much to Harry's dismay, Sarah seemed to be thoroughly enjoying having John around. He didn't like it, not one bit.
John seemed like a nice enough and quite harmless fellow. The two of them had had a great time at the match, and Harry found that he even enjoyed himself despite losing his bet. As suspicious as he wanted to be, he found it was impossible not to like John.
On the other hand, he was certain that Sarah was up to something that could be very dangerous, and that John was somehow connected to it all. He couldn't find fault with anything John did, but he had been watching Sarah closely and she had been making some fairly long trips to the grocer's lately, and had refused to let Harry go with her when she went. There was always some excuse made, such as "Stay and keep John company, I prefer to shop on my own," or, one day when he was particularly insistent, "You tend to your duties Harry, I'll tend to mine."
She hadn't mentioned investigating St. George again either, but every evening, she sat down and pounded away at her keyboard furiously. He tried to find out what she was writing about, but when he went to look at what she was doing, Sarah ripped the paper out of her typewriter and locked it away before he could see it. She smiled and dismissed it, saying that she never let anyone read one of her stories until it was done. Clearly, she was up to something, and Harry was concerned that she could be getting in over her head.
John, meanwhile, was getting antsy. The "several days" the doctors had set aside for his memory to return were gone, and he still couldn't remember a thing before waking up on Sarah's stoop. He'd taken to wandering down the street hoping someone would recognize him, but he never got far before he felt like he needed to come back "home" so he didn't get lost. One evening, as Sarah was furiously typing away, he wandered up into her office and sat quietly, not wanting to interrupt her.
He was so quiet that she didn't notice him until she had typed a line with which she was particularly satisfied. She hit the last key with a flourish, pulled back from her desk to relax and nearly jumped out of her skin. "Oh John," she laughed nervously as she recovered. "You gave me such a start, how long have you been sitting there?"
"Sorry, just a short while. I didn't mean to startle you," he apologized. "It's just been a few minutes, but I know how you like to concentrate."
Sarah smiled warmly at him. "It's alright, no worries. You look as if you've got something serious on your mind John, would you like to talk about it?"
He shrugged a little. "Am I ..." He struggled to put his concern into words.
Sarah reached over and put her hand on his shoulder. "It's alright John, take your time, I can wait."
"Do you know something about me that I don't know?" he finally asked.
She shook her head sadly. "No, I wish I did. I have been working very hard to find out anything I can about you John, but so far, I haven't gotten any results. Don't give up though, because I'm not going to."
He smiled shyly. "Thank you. I just ... you're so protective, and Harry seems so concerned, it's almost like you both know who I am but you're waiting for me to figure it out." He laughed gently, no suspicion in his voice.
"If only it was that simple John," she smiled.
Sarah didn't tell him that she had investigated the jeweler who'd made the ring in his pocket, only to find that they had gone out of business several years ago. She hadn't gotten any results from the search for him she had asked the Brig to conduct either, nor from all of the fliers they had put out and mailed, nor the calls they had made.
She'd decided that the fact that there was absolutely nothing at all on him made him even more interesting, and she became even more determined to learn all she could. The less she knew about him, the more intriguing he became. But she kept that, and the fact the he reminded her of the Doctor, to herself. She had no intention of letting Harry or the Brig lecture her about it. "The plain truth is," she said, "you're a very kind person and easy to like. Harry has grown very fond of you, as have I."
"It's ... um ... mutual," John said. "What are you writing?" he asked, changing the subject.
Sarah smiled warmly. "Tonight, I'm working on a science fiction story. It's the adventures of a young girl named Nicola Jones. She travels through time and space with an alien who calls himself 'The Doctor'. They get into all sorts of trouble while they wander about the universe."
John chuckled. "That sounds great! And definitely a change from South Croydon. Could I ... read it?"
"Would you, I'd love to have an unbiased opinion of it."
When Harry came upstairs about an hour later, the door was open, and as he walked into the room, he saw Sarah and John sitting on the office couch, heads together, laughing as John read what she had written.
"Is it done?" He called out as he walked into the room. "Does that mean I can read it too?" Harry's voice was almost wounded.
Sarah looked up and suddenly felt guilty. "It's not done, but I wanted John's opinion." She gave him a look that was obviously apologetic. "I needed him to read it because he's sort of a disinterested third party."
Harry seemed mollified. "Well, I suppose that makes sense, though I never thought the history of UNIT was that funny."
"Uhm," Sarah bit her lip and shrugged. "I'm afraid this isn't the history of UNIT. I've been working on another book as well."
Harry looked at her curiously. "Really? Can I read it?"
"Yes, but only if you promise to have an open mind and a closed mouth about it." Sarah was very adamant at this point. "I have a contract that says I can't talk about the books until they're published. This is the first one in a series. The publisher thinks it's going to sell very well."
Harry's attitude softened. Maybe this was the conspiracy that was occupying her time. "I promise I won't say a word." He started reading and in a few moments, he was frowning, then he started to smile. "I say, this organization, WIN, the World Investigative Network, it sounds an awful lot like... it is isn't it? It's a story based on... am I in this too?" He started to laugh in awe as he recognized yet another character. "I'd wager anything that General Lutwidge-Douglas is..." Before he could say anything else, Sarah Jane put her hand up to his mouth.
"Now Harry, you promised not to say a word, and no, you're not in any of the books until the sixth one," she laughed.
John looked at them incredulously. "Suddenly this is even more interesting," he laughed. "Did you base this on your travels, then?"
Sarah looked at Harry accusingly, but still laughing. "There, you see? Even John managed to figure it out because of you."
Harry laughed with them. "What are you going to call me? Something suitably James Bond-ish, I hope, like 'Roger Goodbody', or 'Nigel Handsome'."
Sarah Jane tried hard not to choke with laughter, but she couldn't help it. "'Roger Goodbody' or 'Nigel Handsome'? Oh please, Harry," she said, trying to stop laughing long enough to breathe. "Since you can't be a Bond Girl, would that make you a 'WIN Boy'?" Now she was holding her sides as she fell to the floor in fits of giggles.
Not having been exposed to James Bond in his current state, John had no idea what they were talking about, but clearly it was hilarious to her, and Harry's reaction didn't make it any easier not to laugh.
"I say," Harry said, laughing and blushing, "I did my share of heroics while we were traveling. Remember that time I infiltrated that..." He caught the cautionary glare that Sarah, who had suddenly stopped laughing, threw at him. "... that scientific outpost that was causing all that trouble for the natives."
John was still laughing. "I had no idea Africa could be so interesting."
"Well, " said Sarah Jane trying hard not to lie. "Uhm, it really isn't quite like that, this story is embellished, you see. It's been written as science fiction. Of course though, if Harry's not careful I may make the name of his character Lumby Wartbottom," she said, starting to laugh again as Harry good-naturedly grumbled. "But you're meant to believe that it's about an alien invasion of Earth."
"Well, I definitely believe it," John laughed. "I'll say it again, you've got a great imagination. That Sontauran fellow..." He shuddered.
"Thank you John, I did sort of base it on my travels, and then I just stretched the truth about it." Sarah smiled awkwardly.
"Well, you really did a great job. I love the DISTAR. Except ..." John got thoughtful. "If the doorway to the police box is really just a gateway to a transdimentional space, why would it crush the flowers underneath the illusion of the three dimensional representation?"
Sarah paused for a moment and then looked over at Harry. He was no help at all, him smiling at her and enjoying the fact that she was at a loss.
"It's fiction, John, there's probably a good reason for it, I just haven't thought of one yet. Unless," she paused, reaching to come up with an acceptable answer. "Since DISTAR stands for Dimensions In Space Time And Relativity, it has some kind of body mass."
John chewed on that answer for a moment, then smacked himself in the head. "No, of course, it's not that it has mass, it's that the gateway itself is three dimensional, in the shape of the police box. It would have to be, I mean a doorway is a gateway into a room, so it's a two dimensional gateway into a three dimensional space. Of course the gateway into a four dimensional space would have to be three dimensional, so it would have to have volume and displace the space within it, and crush the flowers." He smiled, pleased with himself.
Sarah looked over at Harry again. This time, she was stunned. How could John come up with an explanation like that? It sounded exactly like something the Doctor would say.
Harry's expression said very clearly that he was thinking the same thing. Maybe he was wrong to discourage Sarah.
"Oooh, full wastebasket," John said. "Can I empty it for you?"
"Certainly, thank you John." Sarah watched him head down the steps, then she looked back at Harry and shook her head as if to say, 'Of course he's not. What where we thinking?'
Sarah looked at her watch for the third time in ten minutes. She had been waiting in a booth at the back of the restaurant sipping her tea for almost twenty minutes. Finally she saw a shabbily dressed man walking towards her. He slipped into the bench across from her and motioned the waitress over. He ordered a huge meal and then turned to face Sarah Jane.
"Did you find out anything?" she asked.
"I sure did." He pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lit one up, clearly enjoying it. "There's definitely something going on. I mean, everything seems to be on the up-and-up, unless they send you to the doctor. Then you got a fifty-fifty shot of coming back. Seems like it's the slow ones, or the crazy ones, or the ones who've been in the bottle a little too long, they just don't come back." He took a long drag and let it out slowly, looking anxiously for his meal. "Got everyone there good and spooked, I'll tell you that."
"Hmm, that is definitely worth looking into," said Sarah. "Do you know the name of the Doctor they're sending these people to?"
Tommy shook his head. "Nobody's saying much of anything, but I got a couple of missing person names for you." He slipped her a ragged scrap of paper.
"Right then, looks like I'll have to take the matron up on her offer to let me investigate their books." Sarah sipped the last of her tea and then picked up the check. "I'm afraid I'll need you to stay with this a while longer," she said as she pulled an envelope out of her pocket and handed it to him.
"Easily done," he said, taking a quick glance at the envelope's contents before slipping it into his pocket. "You make it well worth my time to stay on the job," he smiled, yellow teeth glinting back at her.
Sarah Jane smiled back at him as she got up and walked away, preoccupied with the missing homeless people.
Author's Note: Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991 has an article that explains that Sarah Jane went on to write not just this history of UNIT, but also a series of novels based on her travels. We've found a reference that mentions Nicola Jones, the Doctor, WIN, and General Lutwidge-Douglas, but we don't have any further details. If anybody knows more about it (including what Harry was ultimately named, or what she called the TARDIS) could you please let us know? We'd really appreciate it!
And as always, thanks for the reviews, they make it all worthwhile...