CHAPTER 12
"WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH YOU?"
The Doctor put all the papers in front of him away as he mulled over Dr. Miller's newest unsettling bit of information. He got to his feet and went into the Critical Care Unit where Mel was still keeping watch over the recovering alien. His companion sat up a little more in her chair when he entered, stretching the same time. "Still sleeping like a baby," she informed.
The Time Lord did not reply, taking a seat beside her. Before he could ask any of the dozens of questions Mel could see in his eyes she beat him to it. "All right, Doctor," she said firmly, "I've given you time to read all the files without pestering you once. Now will you please tell me how you got from tracking your temporal disturbance in orbit to a military base the middle of Florida?"
The Doctor gave his companion a glowing smile. "Actually, you're more in the northeast of Florida, Mel," he corrected mildly.
"At a defunct private airport now being used for secret purposes under the guise of a movie set for Army training films," Mel completed proudly.
The Doctor gave her a surprised and admiring look. "You have been busy, haven't you? And it's training films for all the branches of the military." His companion stuck her tongue out at him. Ignoring this slight he continued. "I managed to track the termination point to an area over the Atlantic Ocean. It had faint traces of an interstellar ion drive mingled in. So instead of wasting time trying to find the ship and missing our rendezvous, I contacted UNIT. They specialize in that sort of thing. UFO's and the like."
Mel raised an eyebrow. She had never heard of the organization until her arrival on Base, and now here was the Doctor talking about it as if it were common knowledge. When she remarked on this, he gave her a brief rundown of his association with the group and his stint as their unpaid Scientific Advisor. "That's how I met the Brigadier, only he was a Colonel when we first bumped into one another," he said wistfully.
Mel had met Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart at the same time she met the Doctor, but they had been very close-mouthed as to the details surrounding their longstanding friendship. Now she understood why.
"Lieutenant Benton was Sergeant Benton in what the Brigadier likes to call his 'blood and thunder days,'" the Doctor was saying. "I pop back from time to time, just to keep a hand in."
"I'll bet. Are you the reason for my miraculous security clearance?"
The Doctor gave a wry smile. "That one surprised me as well," he admitted. "Had to make a quick temporal jump to straighten out your timeline." Suddenly he was very serious and looked over at the bed. "Tell me, Mel, what did your friend here say when you found him? Did he tell you anything helpful? Like who he is and where he was going?"
A troubled look came to Mel's face as she followed his gaze across the room. "Yes. And to be honest, that's been worrying me. He said he was on a diplomatic mission to Earth."
"Earth? That's unlikely. There are no interstellar treaties yet."
"There are no interstellar anything yet," his companion pointed out. "People still think aliens are little green men from Mars not humanoid Alterrans from goodness knows—"
"Alterrans?" the Doctor seized the word, his voice rising in pitch, "He told you he was Alterran?" He was already on his feet, studying the figure in the bed more closely. "That's where I've seen those bio-readings before," he added under his breath.
Completely thrown by this sudden change in mood, Mel followed the Doctor to the bedside. "Not exactly." She recounted the incident with the Medic, going on to say, "He told me he was Ambassador Krystovan on a diplomatic mission to Earth."
The Time Lord turned sharply to her. "Say that again."
"He told me he was Ambassador Krystovan on a diplomatic mission to Earth," his companion repeated patiently.
"Ambassador Krystovan?" the Doctor repeated. "Not Jason Krystovan?"
Mel nodded. "Yes. You've heard of him, I take it."
"But…that's impossible! This is the year 2000, isn't it?"
"Yes. So?"
Realizing he needed to back up, the Doctor explained, "Mel, I happen to know an Alterran by that name. But he's more than six hundred years in the future. He can't be in the twenty-seventh century and crash land in the twentieth."
"He can if he rode that temporal disturbance the way we did," his companion said logically.
"My dear Melanie, the TARDIS is a little better suited for that sort of thing. Any conventional craft would've been torn to pieces, or more accurately, aged to pieces, along with every …one…on…" The Doctor blinked, suddenly struck by his own words and the description of what had happened to the remains of the crew; crumbling to dust, as though time itself had caught up with them. Then he remembered the unusually thick plating in the passenger cabin where this lone survivor had been. He looked more closely at the occupant of the bed. Although severely battered and bruised, he appeared untouched by the ravages of time.
Mel stood thoughtfully a moment. "Well…could he be your friend's ancestor?"
The Doctor considered. This was indeed a possibility, as he never did know if Jason had been named after an ancestor. Nonetheless, as he continued to study the gravely injured individual a voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that despite the impossibility of it all this was his former traveling companion. A companion with a unique gift.
Looking up at his current companion, the Doctor said, "There is a way to find out."
"I know. Wait till he wakes up again," Mel replied logically.
"No, we don't even need to do that," the Doctor said mysteriously. "I just have to touch him. If I'm right, as soon as my time aura registers, his heart rate will jump." He took hold of the Alterran's left hand; a monitor indicating an increased heart rate the same instant. Then the hand in the Doctor's slowly reacted, the fingers moving slightly. After a few seconds, the hand closed and the Alterran started to stir.
"Yes, I knew it was you," the Doctor said softly as two familiar sapphire blue eyes slowly fluttered open and struggled to focus on him. "Although how you got here is still a mystery to me. What am I going to do with you?" he scolded gently.
As Jason came more awake, he realized the aura registering on his senses was not a dream. He looked at his Time Lord friend in a mixture of relief, bewilderment and amazement. Another regeneration, Doctor? he thought, his eyes taking in the unfamiliar face smiling down at him. His mind tried to filter through the information flooding into it, attempting to analyze a timeline. Which regeneration was this in relation to the last time they had crossed paths? Unfortunately, the only information Jason could access readily was his friend's identity, his mind still too fuzzy to access anything intelligible. The tube in his throat prevented him from speaking but his eyes spoke volumes, as did his grip on the Doctor's hand.
Again Jason tried to move but was prevented by the restraints. He still was not fully cognizant of where he was or what was happening and a wave of absolute terror suddenly rose up in him, the monitors registering his reaction as his heart rate jumped dramatically. As frantically as his weakened body would allow, he pulled at the restraint on his left hand.
"Jason, don't panic!" the Doctor ordered suddenly, taking his friend's arm in an iron grip and holding it immobile. "You're not on a ventilator for nothing. You've already stopped breathing twice. The last thing you need is to put yourself into cardiac arrest. Now calm down!" His friend immediately froze his eyes wide with fear.
A nurse came in at that moment and asked if everything were all right, an alarm having sounded at the nurse's station. The Doctor told her to wait and turned back to his panicked and now fully conscious friend. "Jason, you trust me, don't you?" he asked, looking his friend straight in the eyes. He received a small nod in reply. "Then believe me when I tell you that you are perfectly safe. But if you don't calm down, you'll force me to have you sedated. And you don't want that, do you?"
By this time Mel was on the other side of the bed, an astonished look on her face. Dr. Miller had been instructing her for what seemed like forever on the best way to handle the Visitor when he awoke. "Use a calm soothing tone," he had told her time and again. What would he have thought had he heard the commanding tones the Doctor was using—and successfully!
Seeing the look on her face, the Doctor gave an apologetic smile. "Jason has a, uh…phobia about being tied down," he explained as he removed the restraint from his friend's wrist.
Only when I'm completely helpless and don't know what the hell is going on, Jason thought darkly, not taking his eyes from the Time Lord's face.
"That will have to do," the Doctor said sternly, taking his friend's hand again and sandwiching it between his own. "This is the only part of you that survived unscathed. But if you start flailing about you'll pull all your tubes out." He paused before asking firmly, "Now, are you going to calm down? Or am I going to have to have you sedated?"