The story, in case you can't feel it, is now winding down. Just a few more chapters to go.
This one is short and sad. I hope you "enjoy" it.
TWENTY-ONE
Seven more days, very much like this one, passed. Research, exhaustion, lovemaking. It was what they did, how they spent their days, evenings and late nights respectively. Sometimes the lovemaking spontaneously rescheduled itself for daytime, and the exhaustion had no respect at all for the constraints of time. But for the most part, this was how they lived and loved.
The strain of Malatia Incognita that was attacking Lincomb and the rest of Sorofrann in 2007 was labelled MISt041379 in C.J.'s books. The research had them reading or skimming at least four or five journals per day, and by the end of the seven days, they had finished leafing through all of them. Every book that C.J. Ephraim had left in his lab, in plain sight, they had seen and dismantled. The pile containing his memoir was growing thicker, and the pages containing the Sorofrann strain were scattered all over the lab. It was rather an interesting manifestation of what Martha imagined C.J.'s brain must have looked like on the inside. And the Doctor's.
C.J.'s research on MISt041379 led them through a thread of his thinking, almost a stream of consciousness, that even the Doctor could only follow once the relevant pages were all put together. He could see evidence that C.J. was making an effort to be "linear," because at some point, he began leaving notes in the margins cross-referencing certain information with other pieces of intel. But like everything else, the Doctor eventually got the big picture, and C.J.'s puzzle pieces brought him to the answer.
"Deffrozine," the Doctor blurted out on the seventh day. "Of course! Blimey, no wonder it took fifty years to get this far."
"What are you talking about?"
"Deffrozine is an enzyme, sort of like Figlozine," he said. "Pops up in certain places all across the universe. Generally speaking, though, it doesn't exist in the same places as Figlozine."
"Figlozine was the one you and C.J. had, yeah?" she asked. "Stimulates the binary vascular?"
"Yeah, all Gallifreyans have it as part of their biology. And Deffrozine is the counter chemical, carried by the Sorofrannians. It's the thing that keeps them alive for thousands upon thousands of years. It always caused problems because when Sorofrannians, like Lincomb, would come to Gallifrey to be educated, they had to have monthly vaccines against the natural Figlozine that occurred in the soil and vegetation," the Doctor explained. "Because Figlozine reacts with Deffrozine, causes a breakdown of both enzymes, which, if it went on for too long, would eventually kill the Sorofrannian in question."
"Hm," Martha said. "Interesting. You did say that Sorofrann and Gallifrey were sort of like sister planets. It stands to reason that their natural compositions would drown each other out. Two sides of the same coin."
"Yep," the Doctor agreed. "I don't know why I didn't think of this before."
"Well, the research was leading us toward spores," she said.
"Which is still true," he pointed out. "The spores in the air were causing the mutation, but C.J. never actually got down to what the virus was attacking. He never quite worked it out in his own case, either, at least, not in time to…"
The Doctor trailed off. He and Martha had not discussed C.J. for a few days, and their connection to him. But this particular reminder of how the man died did not sit well with either one of them, especially with the body still lying on the slab, covered with a sheet.
He cleared his throat. "Anyway," the Doctor said. "This makes things considerably easier."
"What do we need for an antidote?" she asked, remembering how she had gathered ingredients to save the Doctor.
"Just me," he said. "I can transfer the Figlozine from myself to Lincomb through an I.V. And just like before, the cancelling-out will fool the virus into thinking that the Deffrozine is gone, and it should lift, like it did with me."
"Great."
"Well, now, wait. If we extract from me…"
"What?"
"It's just… it's not only Lincomb we have to cure. We'll need at least a hundred vaccines straight away, and then we can teach them how to replicate the enzyme, and that's just to make a dent! But if we extract the Figlozine from me, that's at least twenty-five samples that we'll need if we're going to get this done in a reasonable amount of time… that much Figlozine leaving my system with no time to replenish, it could stop my hearts."
"Okay. Then we need a new plan." Already knowing the answer, she asked, "Where else do we find Figlozine?"
The Doctor's eyes went to the white sheet. "His cells are dead. But it might work if we can reconstitute them somehow. I don't know… electrically?"
"What the hell? It worked for Dr. Frankenstein."
"All right, so what we need are twenty-five DNA swatches from C.J." said the Doctor. "A bunch of petrie dishes, an I.V. and a sonic screwdriver. Fortunately, I have all of those things in my possesstion. We can replicate the enzyme inside the TARDIS."
"Oh. Wow. Is that all? So as soon as we get DNA, we can just… pick up and go back to Sorofrann anytime?"
"Pretty much."
"We're done here?" she asked.
"Yes."
After over a month spent in this oppressive basement, experiencing, by turns, horrifying fear and unimaginable sadness, Martha looked around the lab, wondering how she could ever leave.
For the first time in almost two weeks, the Doctor pulled back the sheet that covered C.J. Ephraim's body. He found that he could not look at the face, with its cheeks withdrawn from the teeth, eye sockets empty and dry. The mouth and the eyes, these are the things that made a person seem like a person. They are what we relate to about each other; the smile, the frown, words, the windows upon the soul. These were things, according to the Doctor's dreams, that C.J. had inherited from his mother. He possessed her compassion and wit as well, but those qualities could still be found in the journals. The Doctor did not want to get stuck into searching the dead face for features he loved that no longer existed. Everything that seemed physically human or relatable about C.J. was now gone, so the Doctor simply concentrated on the clinical task at hand: skin specimens from the arms and legs.
"What do we do with this?" asked Martha. She was standing with her back to him, but he knew she was clutching the thick pile of papers that constituted the story of C.J.'s life. "We had talked about putting it all together in order, but… then what?"
"I don't really know, Martha," he sighed.
"I mean, can we keep it?" she asked. He got the feeling that she wasn't really asking him, more thinking aloud. "Do we even want to keep it? Do we have the right to do that?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Well, then what? Can we take it with us, and give it to someone who would read it or publish it or something?"
"I'm not sure if we should do that, either."
She sighed and clutched the papers in her hands tightly, almost protectively. "I know we can't take it all with us, all the journals and stuff, but… I just can't bear the thought that his life's work is going to be left here in a basement to rot to dust. A man's soul survives in his writings, this is what makes him immortal. It's bad enough that his body has gone dry – I don't want that to happen to his thoughts, too."
"Martha, his life's work will come to a head on Sorofrann," he told her. "It won't go to dust because we've stood on C.J.'s shoulders to find a way to save the planet. It's why we're here. Sorry, but I just don't think we're meant to have it."
"I know," she muttered. She clutched the memoir tighter, then forced herself to set it down on the stainless steel counter, and she took a step back from it. She turned and began gathering up the rest of the pages, pointedly avoiding looking at what the Doctor was doing, and depositing them back into the boxes into which C.J. had originally packed them.
She wasn't saying anything. She wasn't crying, but…
The Doctor was a Time Lord first, and a man second.
The Time Lord was tuned into the fabric of existence, had been for over nine-hundred years, and frankly, sometimes it was tedious.
The man was tuned into Martha Jones. That was new, and it was exciting and wonderful.
And so, because the man loved her, and against every insistent protestation currently coursing through his Time Lord consciousness, just this once, he let the man win. He said, "All right, we can take the memoir with us. But not the rest."
She turned and faced him, and smiled warmly. "Thank you, Doctor."
The Doctor swept the floors of the lab, washed and sterilised the petrie dishes that he and Martha had used, and packed them into a little box. He had decided to take them as insurance, just in case he didn't have enough usable ones inside the TARDIS' lab. He unplugged all of the electrical equipment and wound up the cords. He washed down the stainless steel surfaces, and the walls. He took the wooden chair, the last place where C.J. had sat, upstairs to the fireplace and burned it. He replaced all of the chemicals they had used on the shelves around the room, including the fabric softener. Then, he lined up the prepared samples, the ones he had found in the secret storage room, for replacing.
He started with the MISt041379 sample, and closed off the wall with the sonic. Next, he replaced the samples from neighbouring planets. Lastly, he reverently carried the deadly strain that had killed C.J. into the storage room. He set it down carefully, and went about opening the safe once more. It took him a while, even with the sonic, but it was work that he enjoyed, because he felt it was his work, as though he were solving a puzzle that he had set for himself, or another version of him.
Moreover, the Doctor wanted to put that particular sample back exactly where he'd found it… he wasn't sure why. Something about this safe felt good to him, felt right, like it suited him somehow. It was the first evidence he'd had that C.J. had had an extraordinary education, and he had begun to think of it as a symbol of C.J. himself. It was clear, at least to the Doctor, that C.J. had thought so too, given the "geographical" arrangement of the petrie dishes.
At last, the safe was open, and the Doctor knelt, held the dish in his hand for a few seconds then put it softly down inside the safe. He stared at it sadly, then went back to re-calibrating the locks on the safe so that he could shut it securely. He worked it from the back, since he had the door open.
The walls of the small-but-secure box were black, and as such, the inside was dark. But the blue pulsing glow of the sonic screwdriver illuminated slightly the interior of the safe, and something caught the Doctor's eye. Something green. Something he had missed before because it was a dark shade of green, and the Doctor hadn't known the importance of absolutely everything around him, everything in this lab, and everything about this safe.
He frowned with curiosity and reached in, realising that the surface on the right side of the box was actually paper. Or rather, something made of paper was leaning against it. He slid it out. It was an envelope, forest green, fancy, like from a stationery set. It was beat-up, like it had been tossed about quite a bit.
The Doctor looked at the writing on the front of the envelope, and all certainty went out the window. He had to catch his breath while his Time Lord self short-circuited for a few frightening moments, trying to understand.
Meanwhile, Martha did a slow sweep of the house, ostensibly to make sure they weren't leaving anything behind. Really, it was a long goodbye. She tried to think of it as a hello as well, but the stillness of the air, the overwhelming feeling of something ending, would not let her.
From the bedroom, she collected their pyjamas and toiletries, and she resisted the urge to take the Doctor's tie from the wardrobe. She put everything in order, including the clean scrubs, and left the place in ridiculously neat condition.
She brought it all down to the basement where the TARDIS had been parked in the corner for over a week. The Doctor was just then emerging from the storage room, tucking the green envelope into his breast pocket. As an afterthought, she gathered up the pages of the memoir, tied them long-wise and short-wise with some burlap twine that C.J. had on a spool in the lab, then put them into her rucksack. She took all of it into the TARDIS, into their bedroom, and set it down on the floor to be put away later.
As she entered the TARDIS with her cargo, the great vessel groaned uneasily. The Doctor heard the complaint from outside.
"I know, I know, I'm sorry," he said aloud to his trusted ship. "She'll work it out for herself. Just give her a chance."