CHAPTER VII
Martha forgot herself for a moment and ran to see what the ruckus was over. By the time she arrived, there was a tall, thin, middle-aged blonde woman standing alone, shivering, pointing at open space. She was wearing a peach-coloured negligée, and was holding it closed at the collar. Her eyes shifted, after a moment, to Martha.
"Did you… did you see… again, he…" she panted.
"Yeah," Martha said. "He just disappeared, eh?"
"That's the second time he's done that!"
Martha's eyes were darting around the area, trying to locate the angel that had zapped the Doctor just now. "He does that sometimes," she said absently. "He's a bit special."
"Special?" the woman shrieked. "That's not special! That's downright unnatural! It's weird! It's… it's… God, I must be hallucinating!"
"That's probably it. You're just under some stress, so, let's get you calmed down," Martha said, taking the woman's arm. "Is there someone in the building who could make you some tea and look after you for a bit?"
"My friend Catherine is down on four," the woman said.
"Let's go knock on her door, eh?"
The Doctor found himself across the street and behind the building.
"Argh!" he growled in frustration.
He walked to the corner of the busy avenue, tapped his rubber-clad toe as he waited for the signal to change, and like a civilised pedestrian, came across the street.
What was up with that woman? What had he done to scare her so badly? She'd called him a pervert – why? (He'd been called many, many things, many, many times, but pervert was something he'd only heard once in a great blue moon, and never with this face…)
By the time he'd sonicked open one of the back doors and ran up the stairs and reached floor seventeen, he was exhausted and panting, but he would not stop. He went back to where that woman had been, hoping to find her once more shouting at him. The sooner he could explain himself, the better off they'd all be.
But his timing was a bit off. He was early. Only, he didn't quite realise it yet.
He found the woman's flat with the door slightly ajar, and he peeked inside. "Madame?" he asked, still panting. "Hello?"
He pushed the door open a bit and was greeted by a strange, strange sight. He couldn't help himself, he walked toward it…
But once inside the flat, he heard a noise and his eyes were drawn. A tall, blonde, middle-aged woman was coming down the hall humming, drying her hair with a towel, her peach-coloured robe hanging wide open. Underneath, she was…
Well, now I can see why she called me a pervert, he thought in the split second before she looked up and screamed.
"Oh!" he panted. "Oh God!"
Really, could this get any more disgusting? he asked himself.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she shouted, pulling her robe closed.
"No, no, let me explain!" he insisted, still breathing hard, his hands out defensively in front of him.
"Explain? Explain? I'll kill you! I have a gun and I'm not af…"
Across the plaza from the building.
Yielding some strange looks from passers-by.
Clearly an angel had been hiding behind the door of the woman's flat! And clearly, he had scared that woman up on seventeen, but twice now, the angels would not give him a chance to talk his way out of it, or find out what she had to do with any of this, or investigate that truly strange sight he'd come across in her flat… or anything! The angels were not letting him do his job!
A great frustration bubbled up within his chest and he began to run toward the building, yelling at the top of his lungs.
Again, some strange looks.
As he neared the building, however, he saw himself and Martha in the lobby talking to Hervé. God, what a mess! He screamed again, and ran past the lobby windows, and it only occurred to him later that he had seen himself doing this, just before going back up to eighteen to begin stashing the angels away. He sonicked open the back entrance once more (or for the first time, depending upon perception), and went to wait in a safe little toilet cubicle. He kept an eye on the time until he thought enough minutes had passed that the frightened woman had seen him disappear for the second time. He willed Martha to get the woman out of the way so that they could continue their work on the seventeeth floor.
He wandered out to the lobby and asked Hervé to borrow the phone.
"First you tell me what the hell is going on," Hervé said. "Who are you, really?"
The Doctor sighed. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Try me," the man said angrily. "You keep showing up in the lobby, occasionally there are two of you at once… I'd say you were a twin, but your friend Miss Bankhead seems to be a twin as well, and what are the odds of that?"
"Trust me, Hervé, you're better off not knowing."
"Then no phone."
"Fine," the Doctor said. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a time-traveller, and so is… well, her name isn't Bankhead, it's Jones. Martha Jones. We're investigating those stone angels in the planters upstairs because they have the power to mess with time. They touch people and zap them back a few minutes, which is what's causing us to be in two places at once… or in one place at two times. The concentration of time being eaten is causing a temporal disturbance, and any number of horrible things could happen here if we don't solve the problem."
He had spoken in a very even tone, uncharacteristically calmly, and without the usual crazed look in his eye.
But it hadn't helped.
"Whatever," Hervé said. "Don't tell me, then."
"You asked, I gave you the truth. I told you you wouldn't believe me."
"Whatever," Hervé repeated, throwing the phone up onto the raised platform around his desk. "Just make your damn phone call and get out of my sight."
"Thanks," muttered the Doctor, dialling Martha's mobile.
"Doctor?" she asked desperately.
"Martha! Where are you, what's happening?"
"I'm behind the building," she said.
"How did you get there? Did you get that lady out of the way, the one in the robe?"
"Her name's Nicolette. Yeah, I took her down to the fourth floor to stay with a friend, and on my way out, I got zapped," she explained.
"And that was after she found me in the hallway and called me a pervert?"
"Yeah," she confirmed. "But Doctor, I think there's something you need to see."
"I think there's something you need to see too," he told her.
"It's a bit grotesque," she whined. "It makes me a little sick…"
"Martha, up on seventeen, in that woman's flat…"
"No, you first," she said. "Come find me. Please."
