THE REVELATION

A wave of unpleasant heat came over Martha as though she'd been thrown into an oven. The girl's name echoed over and over in her head, and she even swooned a bit, catching herself on the kitchen counter. She thought about asking the girl to repeat it, just to be sure, but in the end, there was no need. She was sure. How could she not have seen it before?

The Doctor's voice snapped her out of her stupor. "Martha!" she heard him screaming from the outside. "What's going on?"

Billy said, "I'll go and see if he needs any help holding... you know what off." He left the house through the kitchen door and began running.

Suddenly, the implications of having Frannie Obeng in this house hit her. Listening to the Doctor ranting and raving about crossing timelines and paradoxes and all that Back To The Future stuff had taught her a thing or two.

This girl could cause a major paradox, unless we can stop her!

"Listen," Martha said to Miss Obeng. "We have to get out of here, it's not safe!"

"Well yeah," Frannie agreed. "My stupid sister just proved that."

"No, it's not that. There are these... things, and they're after us."

"What things?" the girl asked. "What are you on about?"

Martha lost her cool for a second and threw herself forward, grasping Frannie's shoulders. "Just listen to me! You need to get out of here and never ever come back! Do you understand?"

Frannie shook loose of Martha's grip. "You're mad, you are! And don't tell me what to do! You're not my mother."

With that, Frannie took her sister by the hand and dashed out of the house through the kitchen door, and the other two girls shrugged and went off after them. Martha was alone in the kitchen of Wester Drumlins, shaking.

Into the empty space, with a quavering voice, she responded to Frannie's final phrase with, "I wish I could say the same to you."

In a daze, Martha went out through the front door and saw the Doctor and Billy standing just outside the entrance to the house grounds. All four angels were there, surrounding a large patch of garden as though they were going to pounce on it, but the two men were looking at them. Good thing too, because Martha didn't notice them at all as she moved slowly across the grounds, staring at nothing.

As she reached the entrance, she looked up and noticed that the Doctor and Billy looking at her, searching. She only asked, "Where are the girls?"

"They ran off in the other direction. What's wrong?" the Doctor said.

"So they're definitely off the premises?"

"Yep. What's wrong?"

"Can we go home now?"

"Yeah. I told Billy he could stay on our sofa for tonight. What's wrong?"

"Okay, we have plenty of extra blankets in..."

"Martha," he said forcefully, but with concern. "What is wrong?"

She took a deep breath that seemed to make her whole body tingle. "I just met a girl called Frannie Obeng, and her sister Letitia."

"So? Who's Frannie Obeng?"

Martha made meaningful eye-contact with the Doctor then, and said, "She's my mum."

The Doctor and Martha held each others' eyes, and Billy exclaimed in a low voice, "Oh, bugger."


The Doctor could tell that Billy had a million questions, especially after this new revelation, but he resisted asking them. He simply walked with them, thanked them, made small talk.

As they walked through the door, the Doctor invited Billy to have a seat. He hung up his coat and set the Timey-Wimey Detector upon the coffee table, and asked, "So, then, your sister Tish is named after your aunt."

"Yeah," Martha said, throwing herself into the armchair. "But we never knew her. She died of cancer in 1978."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Billy muttered, sitting on the edge of the sofa.

"I just can't believe it. I know for a solid fact that that little girl, that tiny, innocent thing that I rescued from a kitchen cave-in is going to waste away from cancer in less than ten years. God, that is so hard to accept! She'll be nineteen then – hardly will have lived at all. I never thought about how young she was when she died because it happened before I was born, like history, you know? But now... suddenly..."

"Welcome to my world," the Doctor said softly, kneeling down next to her. He kissed her hand. "But you also know that her older sister will grow up and have a great, full life."

Billy pointed out, "That is, if we can stop her hanging around Wester Drumlins. What if she gets zapped?

"I never get born," Martha answered. "Gee, now I really feel like Marty McFly."

"Right," the Doctor sighed, sitting back on his heels. "Any suggestions?"

She sniffed. "No. Do you know how stubborn she is?"

"It has been brought to my attention, yes," the Doctor replied. "What's she doing there, anyway?"

"She likes old things," Martha explained. "She always has. Do you know what my mother does for a living? She works at Sotheby's Auction House in the authentications department. She heads her own research team. But that's Francine Jones, the Cambridge-educated, briefcase-carrying, daughter-pestering, proper English career woman. Frannie Obeng, she just steals random things from old delapidated houses. Her friend said she needs to find things on her own, she can't just buy them... oh my God."

"What?"

"Her friend. Alice McCluskey, the redhead who was with her this morning? That's Alice Duchamp, my mum's best friend! She keeps trying to fix me up with her son Wilhelm. He looks like a chubby David Caruso."

Billy winced and the Doctor laughed. "The future is funny that way."

"Anyway, she goes to that house every day to get something new for her collection," said Martha.

He took the other armchair and plunged himself into thought. "Well, let's see. What do we know about your mum's personality? Stubborn, tough, clever. She looks after her own."

"She has athsma," Martha offered, feeling unhelpful.

"She sort of hinted that she has rather strict parents," Billy said. "Is that true?"

"Yes," Martha realised. "It is. They're African Catholics."

Billy sympathised. "Ooh, no toes out of line!"

"Which is why she's a bit naughty, I'd wager," the Doctor thought aloud.

Martha smiled. "Do as you're told, Martha. I'm your mum, I know best. What a hypocrite!"

"I think you'll find that most parents are, a little bit."

"But I suppose that means that telling her she can't won't work, because it will just make her want to even more. And then she'll drag her friends into it and they'll all get zapped," Martha reasoned.

"Well, now we're back to that old dilemma," the Doctor shrugged. "When we didn't know who she was and we were going to try and find out, we had this discussion. How do we know when she'll be there, since we can't patrol the place twenty-four hours a day? We can't set up a..." he froze and stared at Martha.

"What?"

"Remember I said that we couldn't set up a device to detect her energy signature because we didn't have her DNA?"

"Oh!" Martha said, sitting up straight.

"Yes!" The Doctor leaned forward and grabbed the Timey-Wimey Detector. "We'll still need this thing to tell us when the TARDIS gets here, but there's nothing that says we can't add a function. It'll be like a Swiss Army knife."

"Right, because all Swiss Army knives detect energy signatures and pick up traces of temporal displacement residue."

"Clearly, you've never been to Switzerland in the year 4122."

"Clearly."

"You two are barmy," Billy said, half-laughing, half-scared.

The Doctor stood up and opened the storage cupboard. He found an old torch and screwed off its head. Then he rooted around for a pair of pliers and when he found them, he used them to yank the coil at the bottom of the torch's body out of the tubing.

"Martha, can I have a shock of your hair, please?" he asked. Martha grabbed her hairbrush from the bathroom and pulled some of the excess hair loose. The Doctor pressed the wad of hair against the bottom of the torch's head, then pressed the coil against it. He handed it to Billy to hold that way, while he fetched the electrical tape. He wrapped it up with the tape, so that it was all pressed together. Then he broke the glass barrier between the little lightbulb and the rest of the world, and the sonic screwdriver then came out of his pocket and buzzed against each part of the new little machine.

"What are you doing?" asked Billy.

"Well, normally a torch gives off energy," the Doctor said. "I'm reversing its output to input, and asking it to take the DNA sample and convert it to an energy signature sample. And we'll set it somewhere on the grounds at Wester Drumlins, just in case Frannie happens by again. I'm setting it to recognise a 50% or better similarity, so it will pick up the mother of the DNA subject."

"How will we know, if the device is across town?" asked Martha.

"This is how," said the Doctor. He went back into the storage cupboard and came back with a red Christmas light. He detached it from its wire, and sonicked it, then sonicked part of the coil on the new machine. Then, he attached the red light to the Timey-Wimey Detector with tape. "There. Now the red light will come on whenever Francine is near the little machine."

"Good, so blue, we have a TARDIS. Red, my... Frannie is near Wester Drumlins," Martha explained, more to herself than to anyone.

"Corrrrrrect," the Doctor said, rolling the 'r's' exaggeratedly.

"You made that out of a torch?" Billy asked.

"Yes. Well, and my trusty sonic screwdriver."

"And you made the Timey-Wimey Detector out of an egg boiler and an old film projector?"

"Yes."

"You're like an alien MacGyver!"

"Alien?" the Doctor started, looking up quickly at Martha and Billy. "Who said I was an alien?"

"She did," Billy answered, pointing at Martha almost accusatorily.

"Oh, right. Well. Yes, then," the Doctor conceded, going back to the new detector for fine-tuning.

In a moment, the red light came on, blinking like mad, detecting Martha's energy signature in the air as a match for the DNA sample it had been given. The Doctor tuned it down to detect a 50-75% similarity and no more, that way the sonic wouldn't constantly be making noise whenever Martha was near it.

"Right then," said the Doctor. "Now we'll know when she's there. Now how do we get her to stay away?"