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ELEVEN
"Your work here is done, Martha," the Doctor insisted, pulling her to her feet. "You get in bed."
"But I'm not that sick yet," she pleaded. "Let me continue to help."
"No, your job was to figure out what was wrong with you, and now that we know that, the rest of us can carry on. Go to bed."
"Give me a book. I'll work with you while I'm lying down and resting," she said, holding out her hand.
He put only his own hand upon it. "Martha, this is not a cold. Or flu or even smallpox. You have the black plague, and it's the year 1350, and there is no way for us to get to any antibiotics to treat it without going to the control room, which is currently overtaken by the aliens who did this to you. Your only chance is to get in bed and stay there. Do not exert yourself, do not even think."
As he talked, he escorted her down the stairs. Now, they were near the bed, and she looked at him sceptically. She was only agreeing to this because she knew he was right; she still didn't like the idea of him ordering her around. "Okay, but you let me know the minute you discover anything useful."
"It's a promise," he said to her. He wasn't sure if he would or could keep the promise, but he would have said anything to get her off her feet and resting.
And she must have been more exhausted and run-down than she let on because she was asleep almost from the moment her head hit the pillow. He reminded himself that he needed to burn these sheets as well as the clothes that Martha was wearing, as soon as she was well again.
Jack double-checked the locks on the bedroom, and left his post at the door. He came toward the stairs just as the Doctor did.
"So, what's our priority?" asked Jack.
The Doctor ran his hand nervously through his hair. He took a deep breath and began speaking a mile a minute. "I... I honestly don't know. Part of me says that it's helping Martha, but in this time and place, there isn't a way to help Martha. So then, part of me thinks it's finding out more about the Namuh, but then part of me thinks that's wasting time because if I just went out to the control room, I could just give them what they want, and they would cure Martha. But then, part of me thinks I can't trust them to do that, and is terrified that even if I give them what they want, they'll still just let her die."
By this time, both hands were tugging at his hair, and his eyes were wild and hearts racing. He calmed for a brief moment, enough to say, "Blimey, there seem to be lots of parts of me, don't there?"
Jack smiled, and patted the Doctor on the back. "It's called being in love, my friend. You get pulled in a million directions, and all of them lead back to the same place."
The Doctor turned and gazed at Martha, already slumbering, though quite fitfully, getting worse by the moment. His hands squeezed the banister as he felt the despair creep up. "We've got to save her, Jack. I haven't come this far just to lose her now, in my own home."
"So let's not," Jack said, matter-of-factly, though reassuringly. He clamped his hand on the Doctor's shoulder and led him up the stairs, back into research territory.
As they reached the top of the stairs, Feeno said softly, "Doctor, Captain, I think I have found something."
They looked at him expectantly, and he stood up. "I don't know how much this will help in our current situation, but it appears that the Namuh Gnieb have a kind of loose telepathic response to human thought."
"A loose telepathic response?" asked the Doctor.
"Yes," Feeno said, uneasily. "But you'll have to forgive me. This text is written in a language I only loosely understand anyway. It resembles some human languages that I recognise, but…"
"Just give me whatever you've got," the Doctor said, trying desperately not to be curt with the nervous Roy-Leman, who clearly just wanted to help.
"Well, near as I can tell, it's not a conscious power that they have," Feeno attempted to explain. "This author even suggests that it's possible that they don't even know they have this power. They can unconsciously hear human thought, which is a by-product of being, well, the opposite of human."
The Doctor was deeply in thought, and muttered, "Humans can only hear and respond to spoken articulations. An anti-human would be unfettered by verbal language."
"Whoa, being an anti-human is more complicated than I would have thought," Jack said, looking over Feeno's shoulder.
"That's because being human is more complicated than you realise," the Doctor said. Jack, the only currently conscious human, felt a pang of resentment about a non-human making assumptions about what he did or did not realise about his own humanity. But he did not argue. Even though he had made the earlier mental note that sometimes the Doctor is wrong, he knew that he should be very selective about when he heeded that thought.
Suddenly, the shadow of a memory began to form in Jack's mind.
Note to self: Sometimes the Doctor is wrong. Get used to it.
Your friend is doing you no good, Captain.
Jack was remembering. Humans have so many unconscious thoughts. Breathe. Ooh, the food is too hot! My leg hurts. Oh, there's a tree there - better swerve to the left to avoid it. So many of those, that when a really clear, conscious thought worms its way in, when, even in a moment under duress, a man has the very clear revelation that sometimes the Doctor is wrong, it is memorable. At a key moment, it can be vividly called upon to come forth as needed…
"Jack, are you all right?" the Doctor asked, noticing the Captain's wrinkled brow.
"I was just remembering," he said, staring blankly at the carpet. "I remember I was facing the Namuh. We were there, in the control room, and I remember thinking that I wished I'd had a weapon as lethal as theirs, but I'd chosen the stunner because you, Doctor, you hate killing. And then I consciously, very clearly, thought sometimes the Doctor is wrong. As soon as I thought that, the female alien said your friend does you no good, Captain. I assumed she meant that Feeno wasn't helping any by pointing the stunner at her, so I told him to stop. And she said yes, that will do. It was as though it wasn't what she'd wanted, but was an acceptable solution anyhow."
An intelligent, dawning smile was spreading across Jack's face as he spoke, and the Doctor's face was responding in kind.
"But what she was really saying was that I wasn't doing you any good by influencing you not to kill and maim and the like…" he smiled maniacally. "Oh Jack, I think you're on to something."
"Well, at least we now have a specific example of how it works," Jack said.
"All right now," the Doctor said, placing both hands on Jack's shoulders. "Think hard. Did this happen more than once when you were in the control room with them?"
Jack closed his eyes tight. After a few moments, he opened his eyes, and turned quickly to Feeno, "When we were in the corridor, just before going into the control room, we looked at each other. What were you thinking?"
Feeno seemed confused at first, and then it dawned on him. "I was thinking that we were about to go in there for the sake of Martha."
"I was too," Jack said. "And do you remember what the alien lady said when we went in there?"
"I'm afraid I don't, Jack."
"She called us noble men. Noble! She was responding to my thought that we were doing it for Martha." Jack turned excitedly and expectantly toward the Doctor.
The Doctor shrugged. "That's pretty vague, Jack."
Jack ignored him. "And then! I've got another one. When the alien dude shot me, just before I hit the floor, I thought please don't hurt Feeno."
"You did? I'm so touched," Feeno said, placing his hand over his heart.
"Well, I couldn't bear the thought of them hurting you because of me. I mean, we just began travelling together. It'd be a shame if you got vaporised on your first time out, when there is so much we haven't done," Jack said with a wink.
"But wait! They didn't hurt me! In fact, they started to, and then changed their minds," Feeno explained, his facial expression growing crazed to match that of Jack and the Doctor.
"So that's how it works! It might even be unconscious on their part! They're responding to our conscious thoughts, but not in any conscious way! It's not like she said 'bwa-ha-ha, your friend Martha is going to die' when we walked into that control room. She just called us noble." Jack cried out, getting more and more excited. "You might be right, Feeno. It might be that the Namuh Gnieb have no clue they are doing this."
"Oh, this could be a major weapon," the Doctor said. "It's a question of simple mental discipline. Strong, conscious, well-placed thoughts." He began to pace.
Jack added, reluctantly, "Well, I hate to bring up the obvious, but I think we're going to need Martha back. I'm not sure my lonely brain can take these guys down on its own - we're going to need extra-strength mental muscle for this, and it has to come from a human."
"All right then! Let's find out what they want! Allons-y, mes enfants!"
