Chapter LXVIII
Mira's POV
I don't want to lose you.
The words echoed in her head as she walked along the corridor. She had seen his face, she had heard the sincerity in his voice, and still she tried to pretend she hadn't had, she had been wrong, tried to convince herself he had just casually said it, not meaning anything. He was alien after all, how could she judge him like she would judge a human? And yet, deep down inside her she knew that this most likely had been as close as he would ever get with words to express what his feelings, express that...
No. Never.
He had to know that this would lead to nothing but pain; know it just as she knew it.
She wished he would have yelled at her, been angry, something like that. Anything but expressing his fear of losing her. It was unfair, absolutely unfair. Why couldn't the others for once, just for once, keep their feelings to themselves? But no, now she had to deal with it, question her every action, trying to not hurt him – at least not any more than she already had by leaving him standing there, telling him to his face to not let it get in the way. But what had he expected, with her being ambushed like that?
And now the only thing she could do was trying to be angry at him, trying to channel her panic into anger – panic she knew all to well, a feeling she had always felt when someone threatened to come too close to her; though she had also thought it had long been gone. She had finally grown out of it, learned to handle it without pushing others away; or at least so she had thought. But obviously that had only been true in good times. Well, relatively good times. Times when she had at least been in her own universe, with it being at least one constant to rely on. Was it all coming back now? All that childish, self destructive behaviour she thought she had overcome? Did she really overcome it? Or had she just learned to compensate it and now her true self was coming back to the surface again?
She immediately tried to push this thought away. No, if there was something left she could rely on then it was the fact that she knew herself. She had always had a tendency to be slightly close to the edge – sometimes too close or maybe even over the edge, at least for short moments. But that was one of the reasons she was still alive – why she had been so successfully in staying alive and relatively sane over all those centuries. She knew both sides, sanity and insanity, and she knew the fine line between them. And it was only too understandable that she was falling back into old behavioural patterns in a situation similar to when It had brought to a time in her future centuries ago, losing everything and everyone.
Deep in thoughts and without paying attention she opened the door to her room, only to find herself suddenly lunging forwards, hitting her toes hard on something and fighting for balance. She spun around, looking at the floor and searching for the door sill she just must have tripped over. The door sill that had never been and still wasn't there – but she had tripped over something.
"Really?" she asked and looked around.
The old time ship was in a huff, she could feel it. The TARDIS didn't agree with how she had treated him, but she was also deeply worried.
"You know, dealing with him and this whole situation is hard enough as it is. You feeling offended by things I said to him isn't very helpful," she murmured as she got rid of her clothes. Of course she knew that the TARDIS would always feel like this, knowing of the symbiotic relationship between her and the Doctor. Just as she knew how headstrong the TARDIS could be from time to time. So she not even bothered to roll her eyes as she switched on the shower and the water stayed cold.
"Think you can bug me with cold water? Think again."
Suddenly, the water stopped all together.
"Great..."
She should have known it. For a moment she stood with her head against the cold glass of the shower cubicle, feeling incredibly and utterly defeated. She sure had it coming, hadn't she? She went back out of the bathroom to grab at least some fresh clothes.
But, as she went through the contents of the wardrobe, she suddenly heard water running in the bathroom. At first it was a slight dripping, but after a few seconds it turned into the loud splashing of the shower. As she turned her head she could see that the mirror was steaming up.
She walked back into the bathroom, thinking for a moment that the TARDIS was only playing games with her. But the water stayed warm as it was, and slowly but surely she could feel that her concerns had gotten the better of the old time ship.
...
A while later – she had washed and dried her hair and had tucked a part of it in a knot high on the back of her head, leaving the rest from under the knot as a ponytail hanging down her back, and put on fresh clothes, black as usual – she was wandering aimlessly through the corridors. She was always afraid to get lost, but right now this fear just added to the list of things she should care about but didn't. Things like feeling absolutely tired and exhausted, her eyes burning and her neck aching, yet being unable to find some sleep. Or like feeling weak with hunger, but then again feeling like chocking when trying to eat something. Well, maybe eating that dry bread roll she had found in the kitchen hadn't been the best of all choices. Actually, she should look after Martha. Not that she would wake up in the library, being completely lost how to find her way back go the console room. But at the same time she was sick of caring for others. It wasn't particularly about Martha – she just couldn't do it right now. Instead she continued on her way through the corridors, trying the doors on each side of it. They were all locked, and she was about to just give up as one of them swung open, leading directly to the gigantic garden where they had planted the psychic plant. She had never been there after that; out of fear to get lost because the last time the door seemingly had vanished behind them. This time she didn't care.
So it actually did resemble his lost home world, with the burned orange sky, the reddish grass and the silver leaves on those alien trees. She walked until she found the psychic plant. It was still small, but it had already grown tiny, heart-shaped leaves with – in opposite to the plant on Earth – a slightly reddish-purple hue, together a few fragile twigs and thin branches. She listened for a moment, but the plant was still too young to possess the psychic powers of its mother-plant.
She sat down, leaning her back against a tree and took in the panorama. Was it really a horizon she could see or merely an optical illusion? How big was this ship? And the Doctor, he wasn't here that often, was he? At least not for as long as she knew him. She tried to imagine how she would feel with this being the only thing left of Earth, of her home world. Would she be able to bear it? Probably not, even though the last day of Earth would come sooner or later. Question was, would she die before that day or would she live to see it? And would she then say the same things as the Doctor? That everything had its time and place? And how would she react when someone would just refuse to accept it, just like she did? Acting like some selfish idiot, not able to see and comprehend the inevitable? He was right, everything had to end, at the latest with the end of the universe itself. And the universe would end, would die at some point, wouldn't it? At least as far as science in her universe had worked it out. Maybe she should ask him, for he, with all his superior knowledge about time travel and the universe, must know it.
Martha's POV
It took her a few moments to get her bearings and remember where she was when she woke up. Then, as she saw the the countless bookcases around her, she remembered. She hadn't meant to fall asleep in the middle of the library, but it had happened anyway. Her eyes caught the tray with the food and tea. The tea was cold by know, but she didn't mind. She felt like starving, and it would be a shame to let all the good food go to waste.
After she was finished, she looked around the library, but she really seemed to be alone here. For a moment she thought about what to do next – she wasn't quite sure she would find the way back to the console room on her own. But what else was there to do? Try to find some intercom as in Star Trek, and call for help? So she headed for the door, not believing she could actually get lost inside the TARDIS. It couldn't be that big, could it? And indeed, after a few turns left and right through the labyrinths the corridors were forming, she reached the console room.
Only the Doctor was here, just as she had secretly hoped. He had changed, wearing now the blue suit he had worn when she first met him.
"So, where to next?" she asked and circled the console, letting the fingers of her right hand stroke slightly over the surface.
She stopped once she stood next to him and turned her face, only to catch his glance as he looked down at her. She couldn't help it, but he seemed to be somehow distracted.
"Don't know," he simply said and looked back at the console again, flipping some switches.
"A foreign planet? I mean, really foreign this time, not New Earth," she said, trying to sound lightly.
"What's wrong with Earth," he replied without looking up.
It took her a moment to grasp the meaning of his words. Nothing. Nothing was wrong with Earth. Maybe she should just be glad that it was still there? She had tried to imagine how it must be with all of mankind and Earth gone, earlier in the library, but she just couldn't.
"Nothings wrong with Earth. Fine, can we see dinosaurs then?" she asked and beamed at him.
This time he looked up, but not at her – she followed his eyes and saw Mira walking up the stairs.
"What?" Mira asked, obviously slightly suspicious finding not only the Doctor but also she herself staring at her.
"We're just talking about where to go next," she hurried to say, "What about dinosaurs? On Earth, of course."
"Don't know," Mira said, came closer and leaned against the handrail, her arms crossed. "It's his decision, he's the pilot."
She looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to figure out what had happened when she had been sleeping. There was a certain kind of tension in the air between them – but then again, Mira hadn't sounded snappish or miffed. Her eyes came to rest on the Doctor now, who just stared into space for a few seconds – before he burst into action.
"Okay, Earth it is then. Dinosaurs. Mira, do you still remember what I've showed you? I guess dinosaurs were around at the same time frame in your universe. "
"It's a rather big time frame," Mira replied, sounding somehow sceptical.
"Yeah, will be hard to miss, so good to get some more practice," he said lightly, fiddling with the console.
"Great," Mira sighed and put her hand lightly on a transparent glass sphere, what looked a bit like the paper weights one could buy everywhere.
"You can fly the TARDIS?" she asked Mira.
"Hardly. Doubt any human will ever be able to," Mira replied without looking up.
"But you can read the instruments then?" she asked and pointed at the monitor. The weird, circular signs didn't mean anything to her.
"No. It's not so much about reading, but-"
"Oi, no talking, or we'll end up sometime else," the Doctor interrupted them.
"That'll happen anyway," Mira replied under her breath.
"Have a bit more trust in your navigational skills!" the Doctor yelled as he pulled a lever, "Just like me. Don't always know where I'm going, but it's always with confidence!"
Suddenly the TARDIS jumped and she hurried to hold something.
The next moments the TARDIS was shaking and Mira and the Doctor were yelling some stuff at each other she could understand, but not make any sense out of it. Finally, the shaking and rocking stopped again, and Mira and the Doctor just looked at each other for a moment.
"We're there?" Mira asked.
"Don't know, are we?" he replied.
"Well, then, look at the instruments?" Mira said.
"Nah, where would the fun be in that?" he said and grabbed his cloak. "We'll see in a moment. Martha, come on, no need to loiter in the console room when outside waits a whole Jurassic world to- " He had reached the door by know, opened it and suddenly stopped.
"What?" Mira asked and hurried at his side. "Oh."
"I did say dinosaurs, didn't I?" the Doctor asked and looked at her.
"You did."
"Then what's that?"
"Clearly not dinosaurs. Honestly, don't know why. It felt right."
Meanwhile, she stood behind them and tried to look over Mira's shoulder. Well, no. Definitely no dinosaurs. She squeezed herself past them and out of the TARDIS. It was a beautiful but also quite cold day, and an amazing view was spreading out in front of her. But still, definitely no dinosaurs. Not even a near miss.
"It felt right or like dinosaurs?" she heard the Doctor say behind her. Sounded like he and Mira had left the TARDIS as well now.
"Right. How am I supposed to know how dinosaurs feel?"
"Well, that's weird," the Doctor said.
She had no idea what they were talking about, and somehow she didn't really care right now. Instead she turned around.
"Is that?" she said as her eyes fell on a huge statue. "Oh, my God. That's the Statue of Liberty."
Mira and the Doctor spun around as well now.
"Gateway to the New World," the Doctor said after a moment, now clearly in his element. "Give me you tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free."
"That's so brilliant," she said. Well, no dinosaurs, but... "I've always wanted to go to New York. I mean the real New York, not the new, new, new, new, new one!"
"Well, there's the genuine article," the Doctor replied. "So good, they named it twice. Mind you, it was New Amsterdam originally. Harder to say twice. Now wonder it didn't catch on. New Amsterdam, New Amsterdam."
"What's so hard with saying New Amsterdam?" Mira asked, and indeed, it didn't sound too hard when she was saying it. But then again, English didn't seem to be her native language. Was she Dutch? She didn't sound Dutch, did she? One of her fellow students was Dutch, but he sounded differently, his accent was softer.
"I wonder what year it is, because look, the Empire State Building's not even finished yet," she said after she had turned around again.
"Work in progress," the Doctor said, "Still got a couple floors to go, and if I know my history, that makes the date somewhere around..."
"1930," Mira said without turning her eyes away from the skyline.
"November the first," she added after she had grabbed a newspaper with the date on it.
"You're getting good at this," the Doctor said irritated without looking at them. "Both of you!" Then he turned his head and saw the newspaper in her hands. But how had Mira figured out the year?
"Eighty years ago," she said. "It's funny, because you see all those old newsreels all in black and white like it's so far away, but here we are. It's real. It's now. Come on then, you. Where do you want to go first?"
"Hey, wait. We wanted to see dinosaurs, didn't we? So back to the TARDIS and try it again," Mira said.
"Nah, now we're here, so we can stay for a while," the Doctor said and started walking away from the TARDIS. "Last stop before your detour anyway."
"Hooverville Mystery Deepens," she read from the newspaper as she was hurrying to follow the Doctor and ignoring what he had just said about that being her detour. "What's Hooverville?"
Doctor's POV
Little later they had reached Central Park. He had watched Mira from the side, wondering what had brought them here. He didn't believe in coincidence or a navigational error. She had said id had felt right, so had known – in some way – what she had been doing. A part of him still wanted to refuse the idea of her being that sensitive to time, wanted to instinctively discard it; but he knew better by now. She on the other hand didn't look particularly happy, and he assumed she was aware of it as well – that's why she had wanted to go back to the TARDIS, not because she was keen on seeing dinosaurs.
"Herbert Hoover, thirty first President of the USA, came to power a year ago," he started to explain as they were approaching Hooverville, but mainly for the sake of saying anything at all. "Up till then New York was a boom town, the Roaring Twenties, and then-"
"The Wall Street Crash, yeah? When was that, 1929?" Martha asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Whole economy wiped out overnight. Thousands of people unemployed. All of a sudden, the huddled masses doubled in number with nowhere to go. So, they ended up here in Central Park."
"What, they actually live in the park? In the middle of the city?" Martha asked, but not a moment later she could see it for herself.
They had reached Hooverville, a shanty town in the middle of Central Park, overlooked by the skyscrapers. The contrast couldn't have been any bigger between the rich city and the poorest in here, that had lived in the huge skyscrapers themselves not too long ago.
"Where else should they go?" Mira replied. "They all lost their jobs, couldn't pay rent, lost everything. I wasn't born in the States, and it was a bit before my time anyway, but I don't think the social system here was very good at this time. So no one helped them."
"Where are you from then?" he heard Martha ask.
"Terrania. Gobi desert. I have a rather nice flat there, amazing view over the city and Crest Spaceport," she replied.
Well, Martha had most likely meant where she was born, and it certainly wasn't in Terrania. And Mira most certainly knew what Martha wanted to know.
"Bit hot there in the desert, isn't it?" Martha asked.
"Not too hot. We have an atmospheric weather control system."
"So you-" Martha started to say, but got interrupted by people yelling and shouting.
"You thieving lowlife!" a man yelled, and a fight broke out between him and another man.
"I didn't touch it!" the other guy, in clothes just as shabby as the first one's yelled.
Now he could see they were fighting over a loaf of bread.
"Somebody stole it!" the first man accused the other one.
"Cut that out! Cut that out right now!" a man of colour, coming out of a tent, yelled at them. He had a certain authority to him, and indeed, he managed to break the fight.
"He stole my bread!" the first man said again.
"That's enough! Did you take it?" the man from the tend asked the other man.
"I don't know what happened. He just went crazy."
"That's enough! Now, think real careful before you lie to me."
"I'm starving, Solomon."
So he was indeed well known with the people, the Doctor thought as he watched Solomon hold out his hand. The guy accused of stealing gave him the loaf of bread he had hidden inside his coat.
"We're all starving," Solomon said. "We all got families somewhere."
Then he broke the bread and gave half of the loaf to each of both men.
"No stealing and no fighting," Solomon continued. "You know the rules. Thirteen years ago I fought in the Great War. A lot of us did. And the only reason we got through was because we stuck together. No matter how bad things get, we still act like human beings. It's all we got."
The two fighters looked at him for a moment, then walked away.
He walked over to Solomon, Mira and Martha following him. "I suppose that makes you the boss around here," he addressed him.
"And, er, who might you be?" Solomon asked him.
"He's the Doctor," Martha said before he had the chance to introduce himself. "And that's Mira. I'm Martha."
"A doctor," Solomon said. "Huh. Well, we got stockbrokers, we got a lawyer, but you're the first doctor. Neighbourhood gets classier by the day."
"How many people live here?" Martha asked.
"At any one time, hundreds," Solomon replied. "No place else to go. But I will say this about Hooverville. We are a truly equal society. Black, white, all the same. All starving. So you're welcome, both of you. But tell me. Doctor, you're a man of learning, right? Explain this to me. That there's going to be the tallest building in the world. How come they can do that, when we got people starving in the heart of Manhattan?"
He couldn't give him an answer to that. Well, he actually could. But it was not one Solomon would want to hear. As much as he liked to help them, help humanity, they had to figure that part out for themselves. And they would. At least some of them.
"So, men are going missing. Is this true?" he asked Solomon.
"It's true all right," Solomon said after a moment of consideration and then led them to his tend. Obviously that was not something he wanted to discuss in public.
"How can you be so sure people go missing?" Mira asked as they had sat down on some low benches. "There are so many people here, leaving and coming all the time. You certainly don't keep any records, do you?"
"This is different," Solomon said.
"In what way?" Martha wanted to know.
"Someone takes them, at night," Solomon said. "We hear something, someone calls out for help. By the time we get there, they're gone like they vanished into thin air."
"And you're sure someone's taking them?" he asked, and saw Mira nodding slightly at him at the same time. So she had already figured out that Solomon was convinced by his own words, and not just making something up.
"Doctor, when you got next to nothing, you hold on to the little you got," Solomon replied. "Your knife, blanket, you take it with you. You don't leave bread uneaten, fire still burning."
"Have you been to the police?" Martha asked.
"Yeah, we tried that. Another deadbeat goes missing, big deal," Solomon said, frustration in his voice.
"So the question is, who's taking them and what for?" he said, more to himself than to Solomon.
"Solomon!" suddenly someone called from outside the tend, and a moment later a young chap stuck his head through the door. "Solomon, Mister Diagoras is here."
Solomon excused himself and went out. He jumped up and followed him, just as Mira and Martha. His eyes stayed on Martha for a moment. She was the kind of person he would have taken with him as a companion, no matter what of his regenerations. Bright, lively, and not easily scared. And she and Mira seemed to get along rather well. But there was no way of letting her stay. He had endangered enough people throughout his life, it had to stop now.
Once outside, a crowd had already gathered in front of a man who must be Diagoras.
"I need men," he just announced. "Volunteers. I've got a little work for you and you sure look like you can use the money."
"Yeah. What is the money?" the boy asked.
"A dollar a day."
"What's the work?" Solomon wanted to know.
"A little trip down the sewers. Got a tunnel collapsed needs clearing and fixing. Any takers?"
"A dollar a day? That's slave wage. And men don't always come back up, do they," Solomon said.
"Accidents happen," Diagoras said with a most unappealing smile.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "What sort of accidents?" Maybe that was the first trail to the people going missing.
"You don't need the work?" Diagoras asked instead of answering his question. "That's fine. Anybody else?"
He raised his hand, pretty much simultaneously with Mira.
"Enough with the questions," Diagoras said.
"Oh, no, no, no. I'm volunteering. I'll go. We'll go."
Martha also raised her hand now. "I'll kill you for this," she whispered, and he smiled at her. Talking about companions.
"Anybody else?" Diagoras asked.
Babypanda468, Ronin Kenshin, Julia N SnowMiko, heroherondaletotherescue, bored411, NeoMulder, 10th Squad 3rd Seat, Type40TARDIS, . .Be: Thank you so much for leaving a review :-)
