"Well, that's that." The Doctor's voice floated through the air.
"Eh?" Asked another voice—A young man's.
No, that wasn't a sound for the air.
She'd heard it in her mind.
Karnak jumped slightly, up to her left shoulder in dusty old TSV equipment. The uncalculated connection was broken; the idle (and increasingly infuriating) Time Lordian chatter about the table ceased.
"Is there a problem, Technician Karnak?" Sardon asked in his usual quiet, authoritative manner.
"Not at all. The TSV is recalibrating itself and it will take a few minutes in order to catch up with the RealTime events you see on the screen." Karnak shook her head, wondering how tired she was, and how very tired she was getting with all these prim and proper Time Lords. Blessed Ancestors, she wanted a nap, a frosty glass of ja'ar, and a walk around the sand-parks. Not in that order, just any order. As she shook her head, her fingers pressed just a bit more against an unseen element in the TSV.
"I said, 'that's that.'" It was the Doctor's voice again, and she felt his worry.
She saw his worry.
The image of the Doctor on the screen was superimposed by the image in her mind: The old TARDIS flickered in her third eye, and she could see the Doctor in the forefront; younger than ever, without a whit of grey in his thick hair. His clothing was markedly different: instead of the his usual golden brown check trousers that swam about his ankles he was sporting a dark blue-black pattern of tesselations (the mathematician in Karnak approved wholeheartedly, because everyone knew tesselations were a sign of good breeding).
No, not tesselations. "Shepherd's Check", "Hounds-Tooth"
The name of this pattern sounded odd and tasted odd as she mentally repeated herself.
Not an emblem of good breeding on the planet that wove this, but a sign of...wealth? Monetary comfort and advancement.
A restless pattern. It reconfigures in Earth designs and Earth art every 20-30 years or so. Precise and playful. Like Humans themselves. It was why he liked it; it reminded him of himself in his childhood...and how humans were in their own childhood stage of development. They had fun together.
Karnak mentally gulped as the renegade's insight bled into her psyche. This inadvertent mental eavesdropping was not professional, and while she knew it was a part of the crazy old TSV equipment, she couldn't blame a faulty machine if she was the one using it!
Using it on orders...
The woman knew better than to tell anyone, these non-telepaths, that she was temporarily trapped in a bubble of memory. For some reason the Doctor was dwelling on this moment in the past, and she did not want to tell them anything about his deepest thoughts. It was bad enough they were watching every move me made.
Or not made.
The Doctor had been transfixed, immobile, for the better part of an hour inside a claustrophobic little, square-shaped chute. Static made his hair rise up in all direction, like a fibre-optic fountain, and he braced himself with the soles of his battered old shoes for support in the confines as he rustled through his pockets—one after the other—looking for something.
As far as the Time Lords were concerned, this was all that was going on.
Karnak was haplessly trapped in a sharp, clear memory of his mind, so strong that her telepathic mind was forced to pick it up. And she really did not want to. At best she felt like a small child sneaking forbidden holo-programs at night when her parents thought she was asleep.
On the other hand, if she was the reason why the Doctor was feeling these sporadic and helpless jags of mental pain and discomfort...
...the least I can do is tuck it in and soldier it through, she admitted to herself. Truth hurt, but unanswered accountability for one's actions hurt even more. It may be an accident, but she still had hurt him.
So she'd best keep quiet about any discomfort his memory was causing her.
Outside her mental arguing with herself, less than half a second had passed.
She breathed out, and pressed the faulty connection tighter. "The TSV is recalibrating, my Lords and Ladies." The Tech told them in her usual professional tones. "Less than five seconds and the Real Time will be compensated."
A beautiful young man was the source of the other conversation. Jamie. His name was Jamie.
"That's That."
When nothing met this intelligent statement, not even an 'oh, aye,' the Doctor glanced over the Time Rotor to give Jamie a careful look.
The young Scot was sprawled as usual in the Doctor's favorite old wooden chair, but there was a new look on his young, expressive face.
He was gnawing at his thumb in an uncharacteristic display of concern.
"What is it, Jamie?"
The Jacobite did not answer at first—which also was unlike him. His good, honest nature was not suited for silences—he always knew what he was going to say.
"D'ye think we're doing all right wi'Zoe?" He asked flatly.
The Doctor was quite accustomed to Jamie's blunt candor, and welcomed it. "I don't know what you mean by that, Jamie. She seems to be doing fine."
"Aye, fine, she's havin' fun...but she's really choost a bairn when ye think of it." Jamie shook his head, and his thick brown hair went flying. "She's clever and smart, but she hasn't seem much o' the world, has she?"
"One would say that about you as well, Jamie." The Doctor laughed and tugged off his coat, hanging it on a coat-tree perched incongruously in the Console Room. His long, puffed sleeves had been sliced neatly off just at the elbows, and a stray thread hung down from his left. His clothes made him look small and shriveled up, but an athlete's body moved beneath it. There was power inside his exterior shell—sleeping power.
"Or for that matter, for any of us. Isn't that why we're here in the first place? To see the Universe?"
"Aye, mebbe, but that's only part o' what I meant. She went straight off to the Wheel an' she's too young t'have much wisdom on things. Remember how she was when we first met her?" He shuddered. "She didn't really knoo what it was tae have feelings."
"I think the fact that you treated her no differently than anyone else caught her attention." The Doctor pointed out. He leaned against the Console, one foot neatly tucked behind the other foot's ankle. "She was clearly the youngest member of the crew. Just for that reason alone would make it difficult for people to interact with her."
"Well, could be she's learnin' too fast."
"Jamie, what's really gotten you all bothered about Zoe?"
"Och." Jamie's look was weary. "She's too much like ye, Doctair. Trouble finds her choost as fast. I get worried whenever she goes off to do her own thing."
"But she was forming a friendship with Isobel."
"Aye, and I'm glad. But those two could'a died if we hadn't saved them."
"There were many times we all could have died, you know." The Doctor chided as gently as possible. When Jamie was worried about something, the only solution was to let him run it out.
"Look, all I'm sayin' is, she's either too smart fer her own guide...or...she blunders off intae trouble heedless." There was no mistaking that look from the Jacobite.
The Doctor cleared his throat. "But if she and I are too much alike, as you put it, why are you wanting me to do something about it?"
"Because ye both knoo when tae listen tae this," Jamie tapped his forehead, "o'er this." He tapped the heart-spoon of his chest. "And she's been in a bit o'a gloam since we left Earth."
"Well, yes...she did say she hoped to see Isobel again someday..." The Doctor's voice grew uncertain. "Come to think of it, where is she?" He looked around as if his attention would magic her out of the air.
"I saw her putterin' aboot in that room o' funny toys a while back." Jamie shrugged.
"Toys—oh." The Doctor remembered. "Oh." He said again. "Oh, my. Perhaps I'd best go see to her..." He quickly wiped his hands on a rag and stuffed it into a pocket in his hanging coat. "Mind the store, would you, Jamie?" He asked.
"Mind it frae' what?" Jamie called after him.
"Just let me know if the readings do anything different from what they're doing now." He called back, quickening his steps through the hall to Susan's old Nursery Room.
The Doctor hadn't thought of the Nursery in a long time—simply ages, until a few weeks ago when Zoe "discovered" it and promptly went on a tear of eager exploration. For some reason she was needing the Nursery again, and the TARDIS must have obliged her.
The TARDIS had by now attuned to enough of his brainwaves that it kept the rooms he needed to the forefront. He calculated that by the time another couple of centuries had passed he would be able to go even further on the old craft's understanding—the fact that she permitted his adaptations said a lot about her willingness to increase their bond.
Sometimes he wondered if she just felt sorry for him, but that was a dangerous way to think. The old Timeship had been just as alone as himself; it still sickened him to remember how he's been struck at his first sight of her, how beautiful she was.
Still the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and nothing would ever change it. Even his first true TARDIS, a Type 50, couldn't compare but as a sickly shadow.
But with that initial bloom of exhilaration and delight had come a crushing sensation of sorrow. This TARDIS had been slated for decommission—decommission!
A polite word for murder.
The little Time Lord paused and stroked the smooth white wall with his fingertips. TARDISes, even the modern, soulless ones, were still alive. Decommission meant tearing them apart, cannibalising the useful and expensive bits, and melting down the rest or throwing it in a junk heap with the bones of other murdered TARDISes.
It had not taken long before the Doctor had had a double mission: To protect themselves from the Time Lords...and also, to protect her.
His hearts might ache for his people and his planet, but he knew the pain was no less than what rested in her. Susan was the last of her line; so was this TARDIS. Even if you accepted the rumours that there were two more Type-40's gadding about, ghosts stricken off the records and made invisible...they were still lost.
And since the old Girl had embraced him, crippled and limited his mental powers were in his first incarnation...the least he could do was return the favor.
"Where's Zoe, old Girl?" He murmured quietly. "Where'd you put the Nursery?" He didn't bother with asking why she let Zoe 'discover' Susan's old playroom. Play was something Zoe didn't understand and that was because she didn't have enough experience with it. It had been one of the more unexpected pleasures of his life to bumble into her playing with some of Susan's old toys—with the same happy excitement his 'little Time Tot" had demonstrated.
Zoe would have made a good Time Lady.
The Doctor slowed his walk, sensing the corridors bend and shift with every step.
Little Zoe, small, clever, and intelligent and brave. She would have been such friends with Susan...
"Look, Doctor!" Zoe whirled at him with one of Susan's NOISIER old posi-spheres in her hands. "This is fantastic! Where did you find this! I can only catch it when I'm not thinking about it!"
"Splendid!" He clapped his hands together as a very un-scientifically possessed Zoe hopped up and down. "How long did it take you to figure it out?"
"Oh, no more than forty-five seconds." Still giggling she stared at the toy in her hand. "But not thinking about it so I could catch it...that took me a bit longer!"
"Well, aren't you the clever one," he thought of the infinite number of Time Lords who simply wouldn't believe a short-lived being like a human—and a virtual baby at that—had mastered a toy for a Time Tot.
And perhaps he shouldn't have, but old habits—and instincts—die very hard and he thought of the game Time Lords played.
"Here we go, Zoe! Time for a new game!"
Zoe squeaked as he scooped up the little sphere and whispered something out of the range of her hearing. It lit up like an LED firecracker, and hopped out of his hand and over her shoulder, chuckling and clicking as it bounced off the opposite wall and went rolling down the hallway.
"Doctor! What did you do? What did you say to it?" Half-laughing, the girl started running after the toy. "What game is this? Here, you! Come back! Doctor!"
"We're playing Keep Away!" The Doctor scampered past her with an astonishingly battered up old thing in his hands. It looked like a tube made of moth-eaten animal skin or felt, with an illogical edge on one end, the other closed up. "Quick, Zoe! Find a hat! They're easier to catch if you behave illogically!" With a sudden hop the little man kicked up his heels—just like the comedians in the old silent films—and started waving the "hat" around like a hoop-net.
"Wh—but-" Zoe soon realized laughing out loud was a severe disadvantage when one was competing with the Doctor on anything. "You can't catch something just by behaving illogically, Doctor!" She ran after him, trying to keep up while she held on to her aching ribs.
"Of course you can't! That's why you have to not think about them too!" Swoop, hop, skip, the Doctor moved like a demented leprechaun down the hall as the posi-sphere toddled and spun and made suspiciously merry sounds. "Otherwise—unh!" He swung and missed—it danced through Zoe's legs and the Doctor followed it.
Zoe screamed as the Doctor jumped to his feet and took off running after the sphere—with her hanging for dear life off his shoulder.
"What's all the—"
Jamie stopped in the doorway, his jaw hanging to his sporran at the sight. "Och, noo what?" He groaned. "Did those beasties break oo' o'the zoo again?"
"Help us, Jamie!" Zoe was laughing so hard she could barely breathe, much less speak, and the Doctor's constant switch of direction and altitude as he chased after the sphere made it like riding a shaved llama, backwards. She clung to his braces for support, grateful that they were much stronger than they appeared.
Jamie took one long look at the two, and the odd little gewgaw they were chasing. A gleam lit up his hazel eyes.
"Think I won't." He said sweetly, and leaned against the wall with his arms folded...all the better to watch.
"Jamie!" Zoe scolded.
"Hah! Got you now, you little—oh, my word!" The Doctor swore in a language neither human could fathom. "You knocked a hole in my favorite hat, you little-"
"Och, time tae let that thing die a clean death, Doctor." Jamie calmly pulled a twist of smoked meat from his sporran and gave it a critical examination as his closest friends continued on their merry way to the madhouse. "Polly would a-gree."
"Polly was far too concerned with other peoples' appearances!" The Doctor paused and straightened, breathing fast from the effort. The sphere sensed his gaze was no longer on it, and wobbled in a rough ellipse around the little Time Lord.
Jamie lifted one brow. "Ah, ye noo Polly. She jest wanted wha's gude for ye."
"I don't recall you taking that opinion when she took the barber's shears to your hair!"
"That was different!"
"That was not different!"
"It was!"
"It was NOT!"
Hanging off the Doctor's back, her cheek grazing the surprisingly painful metal clip in the small of his back, Zoe saw the sphere toddling its way closer and closer. The Doctor had no awareness that his quarry was now approaching the backs of his scuffled-up half-boots. He held her breath and slowly started to inch her hand out...
"Was not, I tell you!" The argument was still going full thrusters and aft-engines.
"Doctor!"
"Eh?" The Doctor twisted to look down.
"You're scaring it off! I almost had it!"
"I did not scare it off! I wasn't thinking of it, I assure you! Blame Jamie!"
"Och! Ye'll not be draggin' me intae ye're daft wee games!" Jamie snorted. "Besides, I think yon beastie's a bit of a tippler."
"It's not a tippler, Jamie. It's a quantitatively accurate gauge for mental focus. A highly advanced and rather expensive device, I'll have you know! The fact that it moves like a Chumblie is immaterial."
"Oh, aye...eh?" Jamie straightened up. "What's a chumblie? Is it like a three-legged goat?"
"No, no, Jamie! A Chumblie is a Chumblie! I'm sure I explained them to you!"
"Um..."
Zoe twisted to look up at the Doctor, but all she got was a fine view of the left side of his bright red and yellow braces, his crisp sky-blue shirt with its wing collar sticking in odd directions, and the wild, sooty mes that was his hair. If she looked very hard, she'd see a tip of his earlobe hiding in the depths.
"Is a chumblie like an isopod?" She asked. "Because this sphere moves like it has an odd number of legs-"
And just that quickly, the mental "video" of the Doctor's life melted from Karnak's mind. The TSV was back in RealTime.
She was very, very grateful.
Androgum ships really had to be one of the most unsung, underappreciated forms of torture in the Third Zone.
For the fourth time in three minutes, the Doctor pinched his nose shut against a new urge to sneeze.
The Doctor's restless nature had its flaws, and the questionable advantage was, he was always finding new flaws. In this particular case, he had vowed he would never again crawl into another dry-goods chute-unless his life or another life was at stake.
Next time I'll try the garbage chutes, he half-promised himself. The build up of static made him edgy and nervous as though a bevy of Daleks were charging up their weapons on all sides. Or like the time that WOTAN thing got his attention...shudders.
The little man hung on to the edge of the chute, peering out at the slightest crack and took a deep breath of relief to see he was finally on the correct floor. Time and Space be thanked; no more climbing about!
He fumbled into his pockets one-handed, gnawing on his bottom lip in concentration. Ball of string, Vaughn's old radio when Jamie got tired of it...Some of Victoria's hairpins (how could someone be so neat and yet shed them at every opportunity...)...bottle of Polly's ever-present nail polish...let's see...that felt like that whateverthatthing was that Ben kept dropping...oh, yes. Navy can-opener. Not that he ever used it; preferred his pocket-knife...come on, come on, this is the right pocket...always the last thing you find, isn't it?
Och, he could imagine Jamie's exasperated voice when Polly said that once. Why would ye keep lookin' after ye find it? Giving Ben a roaring seal of approval at Jamie's good common sense and a look of pure scath from Polly at them both. Proving that they hadn't been completely foolish, the young men had chosen not to celebrate their cleverness, but advanced in reverse to the library so they could hide or build up a pillow fort or whatever to fend off the worst of Polly's considerable stores of rage...
...The Doctor couldn't help but smile at the memory. Dear Polly. Thank goodness he'd only see the full force of her rare angers once. But she never did accept defeat well (possibly because she lose so very seldom), and her concentrated war with the TARDIS over his wardrobe had been the stuff of legends. Jamie always made a point of telling the story to new companions...
"But if a machine can decide what one wears, why are you telling me what I've got is unsuitable?"
Ah, Zoe. Not only was she as likely to quarrel with a machine as himself...she was just as likely to win that quarrel.
There.
The little man's smile bloomed to a positively childlike glow of delight.
He pulled out the tiny posi-sphere, and bore it to his lips. Once again he whispered unheard commands to the toy.
And lightly tossed it down the hallway.
At first, Brasher had been rightfully infuriated—nay, inflamed—to be tricked into his own pen but his apprentices were never far and the Time Lord hadn't removed his comm. It was a short matter to arrange his own rescue, but while he was waiting, he was thinking.
But as the search grew ever more fruitless (even his admitted rivals had pitched in to help, because unlike the unlamented future dish of pablum that was Mirrortooth), his own advice came back to him.
If a trickster came with one reliable rule, it was they never completely applied to the rules.
So...the idea that a Time Lord might actually seek out the company of the living cattle...might actually be profitable.
It was an avenue he hadn't explored yet...it was possible he was attached to lesser beings...
He held back, waiting in the shadows with the patience of a good hunter. Even the guards didn't know he was there, watching them.
For some time he just waited. The guards were a good, honest lot and paid well with extra meat for their hours of time. Brasher trusted them with the goods because they were never tempted to take a few bites out of the product. They were far happier with the reward of fine dishes from the Grig's own tables.
There was little to see of the cargo. Once in a while an alien would go up and stand before the barred and re-enforced door. When it was that Perelaccan, the guards would have a bit of fun by telling him to go walk in a circle, backwards, or something similar. The simple-minded beast was at least getting some exercise, and that was good. A strong bit of flesh like that needed more attention. Brasher figured his usual masters were always telling him to do something, for he appeared to get restless when he was idle.
They were now telling him to stand on one foot until he grew tired.
Brasher was watching this, but also keeping his eyes on everything else.
His reward was a tiny flutter of movement, far off to the side.
All his senses sharpened; his vision telescoped to that anomaly.
The guards were not noticing. They were looking elsewhere.
It was the door to the wall-chute used to dispose of the used-up but dry, paper or plastic-based elements used to wrap delicate merchandise and ship's equipment. Nothing went to waste on a Third-Zone based ship; the wrapping sheets were valuable for hundreds of things but they needed to be quickly put up, cleaned, and re-rolled into tubes for storage. Hence there was a chute every fifty steps along the ship's corridors.
For a moment, Brasher couldn't believe what he was seeing. Those chutes were painfully dry and charged with static electricity that was constantly being ground down by dry chemical sprays. Left unattended, they were terrible fire hazards. That someone actually contemplated getting inside one of these chutes...
But, yes, there he was.
Brasher watched, and he was Androgum enough to be impressed as a small hand slipped outside the flapping door. It held something tiny, and with a moment of judgment, threw it hard to the far side of the hallway. It made a strange, high-pitched clicking sound as it rolled and bounced.
His guards instantly stiffened, eyes shooting to the sound. A part of the Master Fowler wanted to tell his men to look alert, but the Fowler in him, the Hunter, wanted to see what would happen and he let events progress naturally.