Chapter 5

Susan looked at the thing with disgust.

"That was inside me?"

The Doctor frowned and held the jar protectively to himself. "Careful, you'll hurt his feelings!" He peered at the water-blob and grinned. "I think I'll call him… Plato."

"Why not Tolstoy, if you're going to randomly assign names to things?" asked Susan sarcastically.

"What's Tolstoy got to do with Atlantis? Besides, Tolstoy's taken."

"By who?"

"A bat."

"A bat…"

"Yup."

Susan rolled her eyes, then frowned and rubbed her temples. Then she gasped, her eyes wide.

"What's wrong?" asked the Doctor anxiously, setting Plato's jar down and stepping towards her.

"That thing attacked me!" exclaimed Susan, pointing at the jar and its contents. "I just remembered…" The Doctor clicked his fingers as if something had just occurred to him. He reached for Susan's temples.

"Can I come in?"

"If you must."

The Doctor sent his mind forth into Susan's. Show me what it is you just remembered. Susan's memories of the night before played out before him. You're sure this was last night?

Yes.

But this wasn't in your mind last night.

It just… came back to me, I guess.

"Hmm…" The Doctor opened his eyes and stepped back. "Remember what I said about someone not filing Kaelah's memories?"

"Yes…" Susan looked a little wary.

"It was just being sat on."

"Err… what?"

The Doctor launched into a realisation/imagery-frenzy. "Imagine your brain's an office, right, and each person's got a different job. So, you've got one poor person filing away all the things you see through your eyes. Obviously, you're almost always seeing something, so this wee busy person's a little frantic. Now imagine you've got a saboteur inside-"

"Plato?"

"Plato," the Doctor confirmed. "And he's taking over the office, like an "under new management" type of thing. But he's done it in an illegal or morally wrong way, and he doesn't want the Big Boss- that's you, by the way- to find out. So, he hides the data recording his entry by sitting on it, obscuring it from anyone looking in. And your poor image-filer will just think that he's been given slightly less paperwork to do for a change, which I'm sure he'd be thankful for."

Susan tried to banish the mental image she had of little people running around inside her head. It didn't quite work.

"So, are you suggesting that this is what happened to me and Kaelah?"

"Stating, more like. It might explain why she tried to attack Donna, too."

"But why-"

At that moment, Plato's jar crashed to the floor and he tried to flow away, but the Doctor caught him in a beaker and transferred him to another jar.

"He used momentum to make the jar topple over!" he exclaimed, examining the broken glass on the floor. "Clever!"

"Not necessarily a good thing," Susan pointed out, sweeping up the fragments with a brush and pan.

"True. Well, I think we'd better go show our little friend to the Council Elders, and give Donna that medicine. Allons-y!"

Drat, drat and double drat!

"Doctor!"

The Doctor stopped in his tracks and spun round to face the servant hurrying towards him.

"That's me."

"The Council requests your presence."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows at Susan, who shrugged. "You'd better go," she said. "I'll go give Donna the medicine." As the Doctor handed it over, Susan whispered, "Are you going to introduce them to our new friend?"

"Maybe. It depends on what they want me for." Susan nodded once and continued along to the bedroom, while the Doctor followed the servant to the Council Chamber.

The five Elders were seated as they had been the previous day: around a pool. Heram greeted him.

"Doctor! Thankyou for coming so quickly. I don't suppose you've seen Kaelah or Jalem at all today?"

"Nope, I haven't seen them since last night," replied the Doctor slowly, sure this wasn't the real reason the anxious looking Elders had summoned him. But, before he could ask, Susan burst into the chamber yelling, "Grandfather! Donna's gone!"

"That was the next thing we were going to tell you," sighed Sani, shaking her head sadly. "One of the servants found a fine powder in the bottom of Donna's glass from last night. It appears she's been drugged."

"We know," said the Doctor darkly. "Susan was about to give her some medicine for it."

Donna rolled over on the hard surface and began to dry-heave. She felt terrible, and had nothing left to eject from her stomach. She could sense people walking around her, debating in low whispers, but her head didn't seem interested in understanding them. She caught the odd word, such as "human," "Time Lord," and "power," but it didn't make much sense. All she knew was that she'd fallen asleep in her and Susan's bedroom, and that she'd woken up here… wherever "here" was. This has to be the worst bug I've ever had, she thought.

Susan was amazed the Doctor had never worn someone's floor through, though it was probably just a matter of time; she'd have hated to have seen the bills he'd have got from irate people demanding he paid for the cost of a new carpet or something. Time-Travelling, while enjoyable, was only profitable in that it enriched your experiences.

She shook her head. It was a mark of how long she'd lived as a human, with everyday worries like bills, that she was now thinking of things as trivial as this.

"What would anyone want with Donna?" muttered the Doctor, completing one circuit of the room and beginning the next. "I mean, she's nice enough, but she's not special, she's not powerful, she's not connected, she's not clever, she's not important-"

"Woah, you are so lucky Donna didn't hear you say that!" Susan grinned evilly. "She'd punch you in the face for that."

"She did, and she didn't."

"Bet she threatened to, though."

The Doctor continued his pacing. "What she is, though," he went on, pretending not to have heard his granddaughter's comment, "is connected to me, you and the TARDIS. Which is probably why old Plato here-" he patted his pocket where Plato's jar was "-had a shot at getting into your mind last night."

"But he did, though."

"Not as easily as he would have had if you'd been completely human."

The Council Elders looked completely at sea. Which they were.

"What are you talking about, Doctor?" asked Ylea. "Who is this Plato?"

"A Greek philosopher who wrote a thing or two about Atlantis. He's also the namesake of this little blob here." He held up the jar for the Elders to see. "He decided to go brain-hopping into Susan last night, and we suspect one of his friends could be inside Kaelah."

"What would Susan or Kaelah have in their minds that this… thing would want?" asked Forem nervously.

"I intend to find out," replied the Doctor, placing the jar on a table and opening the lid.