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Chapter 5
'Quantum… Is that, atoms and stuff?'
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The Doctor stood down from the pallet and brushed off his hands with a wry smile. His examination of the ceiling panels confirmed his suspicions: the cell was as secure as anything. It was relatively well furnished, though: a bed of sorts, chair, desk, and sanitary facilities through an alcove hidden by a modest opaque curtain.
The Doctor sat on the sleeping pallet and considered his options. His sonic screwdriver had been removed, along with the assorted contents of his pockets, although they had let him keep the battered paper bag of Jellybabies. Come to think of it, he wasn't entirely sure how they'd got there in the first place. He'd had Rose down as a strawberry heart sort of girl…
He was getting distracted again. He stood up and paced, like a caged animal. The walls of his prison were solid rock, doubly protected by the same middling-level force field that had temporarily held him in the cellar. The ceiling panels were stuck in place: no escape that way. That left the window and the door.
He hopped up onto the pallet again and peered out. The arched window was open, but the force barrier shimmered against the night sky, at least as, if not more effective than bars. He was comforted to pick out the Summer Triangle nestled to the left of one of the moons. There were three in the sky, giving off a combined creamy light, and he hoped Rose had made it back to the clearing all right. He also hoped that the Harper wasn't giving her a hard time.
The Harpers may have emptied his coat, but the Doctor had other ways of concealing 'stuff'. He was amazed they hadn't bothered to sweep him with a metal detector. He stood down from the cot and pulled out the TARDIS key from around his neck. He tossed it up in the air and let it fall to the floor. He was unsurprised to see the key aim itself across the forest. At least those Harpers hadn't found it yet.
He wondered if he'd done the right thing. Leaving his companion with an arrogant, injured being was not a very intelligent thing to do, he reflected. But he'd done it now. No sense worrying about the past.
The past…
He closed down that section of his extensive brain automatically. That was one thing even he couldn't change: that war had come perilously close to tearing the continuum apart, although that seemed to have happened to him a lot in his life. This was different though; this was the arrogance of the Time Lords at its peak, and look where it had left them.
Stop.
He scooped the key off the floor and replaced it around his neck, tucking it into his jumper. He rolled his shoulders. Time to go. He remembered back to the cellar, to Rose's ingenuity with the panel, and began combing the walls.
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The Lady swept back up the flights of spiralling stairs, seemingly using no energy at all to climb to the highest levels of the temple. Her silks rippled behind her like the tail of an exotic fish. She reached the highest level again and breezed through the gauzy curtain. The assembled Harpers looked up expectantly, their harp strings in varying degrees of repair. Wind had increased as night fell, and their hair and robes tangled together, varying lengths of lightest brown with the blues and yellows of master Harpers.
And in the centre, her robes of palest yellow gleaming in a glow that seemed to emanate from her tiny form, Canola, her broken harp in two pieces before her crossed legs. Her fair hair streamed out behind her in loose waves, and her eyes were closed. The Lady saw her cheeks shine with tears, like crystal facets in the milky moons' light.
The Lady glided through the circle of Harpers to her daughter and knelt, gathering her into the folds of her embrace. Canola snuffled gently, her twelve fingers clutching at the Lady's sleeves. 'Can you fix it?' she asked, her young voice calm with self-control.
'No. But I know who can.'
Canola tilted her head back, staring up at the starlit sky. 'She who stole the last harp,' she whispered. 'The banished Harper - he is with her; they are together, but I don't know where. It feels funny. As if the Strings were bending back on themselves...'
The Lady held her close, allowing a flicker of wonderment at the degree of sensitivity her child had to the Strings. The summer night was warm but not stifling, and the wind was welcome and cool. A Yellow Coat finished retuning her harp and began manipulating the vines as an experiment, her playing audible as a series of quantum notes. Responding to the molecular changes, the leaves quivered as the branch snaked down from the pillar behind her and curled into a neat spiral pile.
Her arms entwined about her beloved, the Lady had a sudden flash of inspiration. She stared at it mentally until the glow subsided, and the perfect idea revolved slowly in her mind like an apple on a stalk. It was all clear, how to safely play the Superstring without harming the instruments again.
She smiled.
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Rose marched angrily through another of the TARDIS' extensive corridors. 'Arolan! You there?' She shrugged the coat so that the shoulders fell off, clutching the harp to her as the sleeves sagged, and shook out her hair. 'Arolan! I've got your harp!' Flashbacks of the day she'd first met the Doctor kept appearing in her head with alarming frequency, so often that she nearly called 'Wilson' once.
She rounded another corner and found herself back in the console room. Still no sign of the Harper. She plonked the harp down by the entrance and gratefully slid out from under the coat. How did that kid cope with something so heavy and hot in an atmosphere like this? She draped it over the back of a random chair and stared aimlessly at the switches.
Navigating TARDIS-key-style had led her back to the Ship in half the time it had taken the Doctor to find the temple, although she could still feel the twigs and leaves in her hair from some tangled patches. She rubbed at her head, dislodging some miscellaneous shrubbery, and clenched her fists over the tangles. She felt like screaming in frustration.
How could she lose a lame alien? Well, in the TARDIS it wasn't exactly hard, she reflected, wandering over to the harp.
She had to admit, it was very beautiful. In her limited experience of musical instruments, this one had a kind of shine to the polished wood that was somehow special. The carry strap was an intricately braided cord; the loose strings apparently made from the same kind of cord, but, and this was the impossible bit, infinitely thin.
She stared at it for a long while as her mind tried unsuccessfully to impose a horizon. Eventually the dull ache building at her temples began lapping at her forehead and eyes, and she turned away, wincing. Her brain obviously wasn't built to conceive of that kind of distance. It was like the Doctor had once told her: human minds filtered the larger concepts – time, infinity and such - like the eye filtering light.
Her attention went to him. He was, in all probability, locked up in some cell as usual, awaiting either a rescue or a freak event to throw the temple down. Strange how he attracted coincidences like that: in the time (God knew how long) she'd been with him, they'd escaped death so many times it was...
It was what? Impossible?
Not probably, certainly. But around him, the odds tended to get skewed.
Speaking of skewed. She went carefully back to the harp and idly twirled one of the pegs. The string in question tightened perceptibly. She reached out tentatively and plucked it.
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She awoke with the mother of headaches out in full force and her eyes full of gunk. Blinking sluggishly, she levered herself up onto an elbow and came face to face with a furious Arolan. 'What on Ellin were you doing?' he hissed.
She sat up, sideways, and scrubbed her eyes with her fingertips. 'Nothing...'
He gripped her shoulders, two fingers too many. 'You plucked it! An untrained human, not even a red coat yet!'
'What happened?'
'Thankfully not a lot.' He released her and stood up, his coat swirling. 'Just a little vibration, but the Lords and Ladies are sure to know where we are now.' He looked over from the console. 'Can you move this thing?'
'You leg's fixed,' she pointed out hazily.
He let out his breath, annoyed. 'Yes, when I felt the harp, I came back in and tuned it and fixed myself. And before you say it,' he continued as Rose opened her mouth, 'your "Doctor" said nothing about me staying put here. I went a-wandering.'
'What happened to me?' Rose stood up uncertainly, falling against the wall as her legs buckled. Arolan made no move to help her; rather his glare sharpened.
'You vibrated. On a quantum level.'
'Quantum… Is that, atoms and stuff?'
'Smaller than that. Because you're not used to it, you passed out. Your brain must be pretty primitive,' he added unnecessarily, smirking a little. 'You were completely gone for a while. Your mind just couldn't cope with the scale.'
'Now you've finished telling me how out of date I am,' snapped Rose, 'perhaps we could go and rescue the Doctor?'
'Why?'
Rose's jaw dropped. 'Why? Why! He rescued you, remember? You fainted right in front of us!'
'I was fine!' he countered. 'I was just tired.'
'Your leg was smashed!' she shouted.
He glowered at her, acknowledging the truth reluctantly. Then he wheeled and examined the console. 'You didn't answer me before.'
'What?' she asked sullenly.
'Can you move this?'
'Not without him on board. But I can work some of the scanners and stuff.' A part of Rose's mind balked at that. Can you? Soon find out, she answered mentally.
'Let's do that,' said Arolan decisively.
Damn.
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