FOUR
As it turned out, Julia Swayles' horrible flu did not abate overnight, so Martha agreed to work two more shifts for her.
"Might as well, since we're in town until Friday," she shrugged. "Right?"
"Your choice," the Doctor told her, with a smile. "Donna and I can come with you to the bus stop, and look at the Latin slab."
Martha sighed. "It makes me nervous to hear you say that. Part of me thinks it won't be there when we get there."
"Oof. If that's the case, then the whole thing is even more serious than we thought. We might then be dealing with a localised time loop, or a time cone. Societies with time-dropping abilities often use loops and cones because they aren't sure how else to conceal things... hopefully, if that's the case, no one will accidentally fall through it, and wind up in medieval Japan or something..."
"Oh, great," Donna chirped. "Thanks for that. Go on, now Martha. Go do your very difficult job with a clear head."
Martha chuckled. "I'm just going to go get changed," she said.
The trio arrived at the corner of Earl's Court Road and Bolton Gardens approximately twenty minutes later, and as usual, the bench was filled already with commuters.
"Oh my God," Donna hissed, as they were crossing the street toward the desired bus stop. As she said this, she slapped Martha's arm subtly several times, and nodded toward a cluster of men standing near the trees where the stone slab was. They were talking in low tones, and two of the men were wearing standard business attire, appropriate for the early twenty-first century, one of whom appeared to be carrying the plans for something, rolled up under his arm.
But it was the third man that had caught Donna's attention. He was plump, though wearing a loose-fitting, old-fashioned black and white pin-striped suit, and saddle shoes on his feet. His hair was slicked down and he had rather a comical moustache, they realised, as they set foot on the corner, and casually attempted to act like they were simply waiting for the bus.
"Buford S. Greene," Martha whispered, trying not to watch the man.
The Doctor had clearly registered it all, and was now searching the border between concrete and trees for the Latin-inscribed slab in question, while keeping one eye on the three men. The panel was there, of course, and as soon as he saw it, he understood why Martha had said that it looked as though it had been there for decades… but clearly hadn't.
He gave his Companions a knowing look, that told them he felt something when he looked at it.
"Hinky?" Martha whispered.
"Hinky of the highest order," he whispered back. "Time-Lord-level hink."
Much to Martha's dismay, the bus came quickly today, and she was forced to board it, and head to work for another twelve-, possibly sixteen-hour shift on behalf of her sick friend.
"Go," Donna said, seeing the reluctance on her face. "Go do some good. We'll keep you posted, and won't do anything pulse-poundingly dangerous without you."
"Better not," Martha said with mock seriousness. She waved at the Doctor and stepped aboard the large red vehicle, then watched as the corner disappeared into the distance.
That was when the Doctor and Donna realised that it was a bit out-of-the-ordinary that they were still standing there, while the bus was peeling away from the kerb. They looked at each other, and then, having a similar thought, glanced at the men in suits.
Yep, they were being watched.
"Don't let them see your face," he advised Donna quietly.
"Why?"
"Just don't!"
She sighed with exasperation, and went inside the bus shelter when she could see, but not hear them. Most of her face was obscured by a movie poster stuck to the glass, but she could peer through a slat, and had a good view of all four men.
"Good morning, gentlemen!" the Doctor, true to form, bellowed. "I take it you are the wonderful folks responsible for this time capsule project."
A man in a tan suit, with light-coloured hair and a sour expression, blinked uncomfortably at them. He attempted a smile, and then asked, in a tightly-wound voice that left no question as to the man's feelings on the Doctor's demonstrative curiosity, "And you would be?"
That's when the comical character with the saddle shoes stepped between the Doctor and the man in tan. "Now, now, Fulton, that's no kind of courtesy in the face of public interest." He smiled at the Doctor and extended his hand. "I'm Buford S. Greene, head of PR for Burch and Bradley. Please excuse my colleague, as he has no savoir-faire."
"Oh, that's all right," the Doctor said, shaking Mr. Greene's hand. "I'm a bit of a socially blunt instrument myself, at times."
And while the Doctor and Greene were gripping hands, in the split second just before they released, Donna saw something pass between them. In their eyes. In their fake smiles. In their impossible clutches on one another's digits. It was a knowing, an understanding of some sort…
She knew that the Doctor was onto Buford S. Greene, but could the reverse be true?
When the two men in pin-stipes let go, the shorter, stouter of the two asked cordially, "And so, to echo the tactless Mr. Fulton's question, only in a much more artful way, who might you be, sir?"
The Doctor replied, "Smith. John Smith. My friends and I have just heard of this time capsule business in the news, and let me tell you what: it's just fascinating! Thought we'd pop by, and see it for ourselves."
Greene laughed. "Well, at the moment, there's nothing more to see than a slab of rock," he said. "If you come back in a week, there will be much more to see."
"A week?" asked the Doctor. "A week from today? That's when you're set to open the capsule?"
"That's right."
"For a crowd, yeah? Gathered here, on the corner, raptly attentive to what might be found in that pod… what intriguing artefacts and secrets from seventy years ago might be revealed…"
"That's what we're hoping, yes," replied Greene.
"And also, perhaps, what a mergers and acquisitions firm that didn't exist seventy years ago might want with a time capsule?"
Greene stood up straight and gripped is own lapels. "I'm sure I wouldn't know."
"I'm sure you wouldn't. Will you also be revealing at that time, what the Latin inscription means? I mean, I know it translates to, in seventy years, the time of answering arrives, but what's the significance of it? It's a truly enticing puzzle. I mean, most inscriptions of this sort, say Let's find out what the future thinks of us, or Let's crack this baby open and see if moths fly out. But this one… this one is unique. The time of answering."
"As head of PR, it's my job to drum up publicity, that is all," said Greene. Then he attempted to redirect the Doctor's attention to said publicity. "Yesterday's news report was just the beginning. Expect to see adverts soon, on the wire, as well as…"
"Do you mean, on the telly, Mr. Greene?" said a man in a dark blue suit, who had not yet said a word. He turned his attention to the Doctor. "He means, on the television and radio, as well as in print media and the internet. We're planning a promotional Blitzkrieg."
The Doctor found this to be very interesting wording.
"Yes, yes," Greene said, sighing. "Television and internet. The two social bastions of the twenty-first century, or so it would seem."
"It would, indeed," the Doctor mused.
Greene smiled, recovering his decorum. "I'm an old-fashioned sort of bloke."
"Yeah, I'm getting that."
"I suspect you're a bit old-fashioned yourself, eh, Mr. Smith?" The veneer of the PR expert faded for just a second, and the man's eyes flashed with suspicion.
"That I am," the Doctor replied, with more calm, but with unmistakable recognition of the other man's tone.
"It's just that I don't hold with this modern mass media business," Mr. Greene explained whimsically. "Just give me a good, hot-off-the-presses newspaper – that's the thing for me!"
"I see. Quite an unusual point of view for the head of PR for London's pinnacle M&A firm."
"It takes all manner of sailor to navigate a ship, Mr. Smith."
"Evidently," the Doctor said.
The Doctor eventually made his excuses, and he walked away. Donna waited a couple of minutes, then left the bus shelter, taking care to keep her hair hanging in her face as she walked passed the three men. She didn't reckon it would be a problem - they were now standing a good ten metres away.
She found the Doctor around the corner, leaning against a building, waiting for her. The two of them now began heading back to Martha's flat.
Donna commented, "You've got to stop using that John Smith alias. It's bloody obvious what you're doing."
"Martha said I could keep it," he responded, not really thinking the comment through.
"What?" she asked, nonplussed.
"Thing is, Donna, his recognising me could not have been genuine," he said.
Switching gears, she asked, "How d'you mean?"
"He's not a Time Lord," the Time Lord reasoned. "So, he couldn't just, you know, look at me, or shake my hand and know that I am one. Only one of my own could do that… and even then, it's not reliable. That means there has to be something else about this guy…"
"He knew you're a Time Lord?"
"He knew something," said the Doctor. "He's got acute senses. Unnaturally acute, somehow."
"And you used your own unnaturally acute senses to sense this?"
"Sort of," he told her. "You might've missed it, but there was a moment when…"
"…when you each realised that the other knew something about the game?"
"Yeah," he said, with surprise.
"No, I caught it. It was like a neon sign, that."
"Oh. Well, what do you make of it?"
"What could I make of it?" she asked, with a chuckle. "Just what I saw. The two of you, locking hands, fake-smiling, recognising pretty clearly that something is amiss. He saw something in you, you saw something in him. End of. At least from my point of view."
"I'm genetically programmed for the hairs on my neck to stand on-end when I see someone like him."
"Someone like him?"
"Someone who is out of their time."
"I see. So perhaps he is a time-traveller, and not just a dropper, as you said."
"But he cannot have been genetically programmed in the same way," the Doctor mused, barely hearing Donna's commentary at all now. He walked up the steps of Martha's flat, and without thinking, sonicked open the front door (instead of using the key he'd been given), stepping aside to let Donna walk through it. When he shut it behind him, he leaned against it, and stared off into the distance for a few moments, then said, "Which means, he must have technology."
"I don't follow."
"He can't be a Time Lord," he said. "He can't have the same Spidey senses as I have. So he must have be able to sense me, by using some sort of technology."
"Oh. Well, blimey, who the hell could forge technology like that?"
"The Time Lords."
Feeling silly, she repeated, "Oh."
"Just because my people are gone, doesn't mean our know-how hasn't survived in the form of pirated technology and literally stolen pieces of equipment."
"Oh. Uh-oh."
"Yeah," he mused.
"So now what?" she asked.
He made eye-contact for the first time since they'd walked away from the time capsule corner. "I'm going skulking.
"Skulking?"
"Yes, skulking. It means sneaking. Gathering reconnaissance without being seen."
She gave him a tedious expression that could have frozen a lake. "I know what skulking means."
"Then, why did you ask?"
"Clearly, I was incredulous," she told him, emphatically.
"Why?"
"Because it's a daft idea. Shouldn't we just wait and see what happens when they open the thing?"
He frowned. "Really, Donna?"
"Okay, okay, even worse idea. But what do you think you're going to find out? More importantly, what's all this you business. What about me? I'm coming with you!"
"I don't know what I'm going to find out – that's why I'm going. And you're not coming."
"I've skulked with you before!"
"But you're not coming this time."
"Give me one good reason why not!" she demanded, hands on hips.
"You haven't thought this through, have you?"
"Do I ever?" she asked, sarcastically.
"It's an M&A firm, or at least something fronting as one."
"Yeah?"
"Which one of the three of us, you, me, or Martha, would be the best-equipped to go undercover there, if need be, in the next few days?"
"Me, of course," she told him, without hesitation. "I hope you're not trying to tell me different."
"If you go skulking with me today, and we get caught, and you're seen, then we've lost a hugely valuable angle that we could have played in the future."
"Oh."
A pause while he examined her face. "We good?"
"Yeah. As long as you're not shining me on, Alien Boy."
"I'm not," he told her, seriously. "Now, I've got to get back to that corner before Nigel H. Bumblebee leaves with his cronies."
"You mean Buford S. Greene."
"Yeah, like it makes a difference," he quipped, slipping back out the front door.
All righty - not hugely exciting, but some plot advancement happening! Thanks for staying with me - please leave a review! :-D