In the previous chapter, we saw Martha and the Doctor visit 1938, and learned that (oh dear God) the Doctor doesn't know what to do! 1938 is trussed up like a ham, and it's all unstable and waiting to burst...
Meanwhile, Donna and Colin were told they're supposed to try and head off Buford and Company at the pass, before they even leave their office building to go to the capsule site. Failing that, the Doctor suggested, they might try and find a remote detonation device.
And so... maybe they will. Enjoy!
TWENTY-FIVE
Donna and Colin stepped out of the TARDIS, and the vessel almost immediately dematerialised behind them.
"Why do I feel like I've just been sent deep-sea diving, and I've just been cut loose from the ship?" Colin asked her.
"Because you have," she answered easily.
Just as the two of them were about to walk forward and enter the building through a side door, a line of about a dozen suit-clad men and women came through that very door, looking rather serious. Though, many of them looked more worried than anything else. Donna guessed that this is the same group that had been assembled in the conference room two days before, when she'd eavesdropped on their big meeting.
"Have you got one of those Smartphones?" Donna asked Colin.
"You know I do."
"Let me borrow it."
He extracted the device from his breast pocket and handed it to her. "What for?"
Ignoring the question, she said, quickly and softly, "Go in the building and skulk about, see what you can see."
"What?"
"Remote detonation device… something!"
"I have no idea…"
"Just go! Call it a baptism by fire!"
With that, she sauntered right up to the person at the head of the procession, and stuck the phone right in his face.
"Hi there," she said. "Donna Noble from The Chiswick Courier, how are you today?"
"Erm, fine," the man said, eyeing her suspiciously.
The line of people filing out behind him nearly piled up like a heap, as people were taken off-guard by the sudden halt.
"I presume you're heading to Earl's Court and Bolton Gardens for the big opening!" she said, watching Colin, out of the corner of her eye, sneak into the building.
The man looked at his colleagues, who all stared back at him like rabbits in headlights. "Y-yes."
"Wonderful. What sorts of artefacts are you expecting to find?"
Colin had no idea what he was doing. Moreover, he had no idea how long Donna was planning on keeping that whole group of people from leaving the scene… indefinitely. She certainly could hold them for a few minutes, but it's not like he had any idea how to undo do time capsule thing on his own while she distracted the suits.
"Remote detonation device… remote detonation device… let's see," he mused to himself softly, as he stood in the back hallway where he'd entered. "If I were some sort of evil genius, and I had a magic button, where would I put it?"
He sighed and began looking for a door that might lead to the basement.
The building was not large; he'd known that from looking at the blue prints with Donna a few days ago (which now felt like months). So, he was quite easily able to find an unmarked door with a heavy doorknob that differed from all of the others in the building. He went through it, verified that it would not lock behind him, and indeed, found a staircase leading down.,
"A better question would be, if I were a remote detonation device, what would I look like?" he mused again, as he made his way down two flights of stairs. "Well, Colin, I'm glad you asked that. The answer is, I have no bloody idea."
He switched on the light when he reached the bottom of the stairs. He was not surprised (and was surprised that he was not surprised) to find living quarters there – nothing fancy, just a single bed, an icebox, a little stove. There was also a table and chair set, a radio, and armchair with a lamp, and a bookshelf. Not far away, there was a door, so Colin crossed to it, and peeked through. It was a loo.
Indeed, a person would have everything they need to live here more or less comfortably. But, that was only one corner of rather a big room. The rest of the space was curious indeed.
The ceiling was high – higher than one might expect for the basement and foundation of a building this size. Colin reckoned that a fairly standard 2.25-metre space with standard-spaced housing struts would distribute the weight just fine for a building like this.
That's when he realised that something else was off. And he'd only seen this sort of thing one place before…
That is, only one place where the ceiling wasn't collapsing.
And suddenly, he felt a frisson – an uneasy change of pressure in the room. It made him feel prickly, and a bit paranoid...
Donna had lost her grip on the group of people who had just emerged from Buford S. Greene's place of work. She'd got a recording on Colin's phone of the guy at the front of the parade hemming and hawing about "artefacts" from "bygone days," but hadn't succeeded in keeping them occupied long enough to stave off the detonation until the Doctor could get it sorted.
Not that she thought she'd be able to do that alone.
Luckily, as the suits were piling into three black, unmarked SUVs, Martha and the Doctor stepped off the TARDIS just across the street. The Doctor looked depressed, despondent…
Donna's eyes fixed on him as the two approached. "Uh oh."
"Yeah," Martha sighed.
"No answers?"
"No, just more questions. Doctor, tell her about the slow vent," Martha requested.
"Never mind that," the Doctor spat. "That is our big uh-oh!" He was pointing at the SUVs driving away from the kerb.
"Sorry – I couldn't hold them," Donna said.
"Okay," he said. "Where's Colin?"
"Inside," she said. "I sent him in to look for a remote detonator. He might know it if he sees one, yeah?"
"Perhaps," the Doctor said, now walking toward the building with purpose.
"What are we doing?" Martha asked, following, along with Donna.
"Finding Colin," he said. "I have a question for him. I don't suppose you know which way the basement door might be, Donna?"
"What makes you think I'd know that?"
"What makes you think Colin's in the basement?" Martha asked.
The three entered the building, and the Doctor said, "If I were a bloke who's never done this before, and I'm looking for a magical button being kept secret by some bad guy, I'd go to the basement, wouldn't you?"
"I… guess," Martha said, shrugging at Donna.
"You two see what you can find upstairs," he said. "Finding and disarming a remote detonation device isn't a bad idea… assuming there is one. If there isn't, well, we'll have to hurry. Thank goodness for the TARDIS, right?"
Donna and Martha went to the right, and the Doctor went straight ahead when they reached the first corner, and like Colin, he didn't have any trouble finding the basement door.
"Colin? Are you down here?" he said from the top of the stairs.
"Doctor? Is that you?"
"Yeah!"
"Come down," Colin requested.
The Doctor descended the steps, and entered the large, open basement space. The first thing he noticed off to the left was what he presumed to be Buford S. Greene's somewhat spartan living quarters.
"Wonder how long he's been living here," the Doctor sighed. "How long does he think he can keep his sanity, living like this, anyway? For God's sake, he thinks he's going to live forever…"
"Did you feel that thing?" Colin asked.
"Feel what thing?"
"That thing… it was really weird… hard to explain…" Colin said. "Like, a sudden pressure change or something."
"Pressure change? No, I didn't feel it," the Doctor told him. "But it's probably not good, whatever it is. How long ago?"
"I dunno, like a minute."
"I don't know what it could be, other than yet another sign that we need to bloody hurry."
"Okay. Look," Colin said, gesturing to the room.
The Doctor saw a floor space about the size that the building might suggest from the outside, with exposed struts all along the walls. In the middle of the room, there were three columns that were decidedly special.
"Whoa," the Doctor said, looking around.
"I know," Colin replied, eyes wide.
The Time Lord walked forward and touched one of the columns. "These are… these are…"
"…insufficient for holding this building up," Colin finished.
"What?" the Doctor asked.
"Look around, Doctor," Colin insisted. "Look at the struts. With a ceiling this high, struts that far apart and these three columns… well, how is this building not collapsing on us? I have literally no idea what's keeping this foundation from completely caving in!"
The Doctor looked around. "Actually, I was about to ask… just that."
"About the struts?"
"No, just if you if you were noticing anything weird about this place from an architect's point of view. I was expecting, say, screws of a substance you didn't recognise, or maybe some rivets at an inappropriate angle, that, say, triangulate into a talisman-like shape."
"What are you on about?"
"Talisman. Something to suggest what's keeping this bloke alive indefinitely... but totally structurally unsound? Really?"
"Yes!"
"Are you sure?" the Doctor asked. "That's all you're seeing? I mean, I suppose… I could examine the materials and do the math…"
"Doctor, I know what I'm talking about! I've designed dozens of basements, and this design would get me sacked!" Then he realised that the Doctor had originally zeroed in on something different. "Why? What were you thinking is off about this place?"
"The columns," he answered. "They're like…"
"Oh! They're like the ones in your spaceship," Colin noticed just now. "I mean, I'd realised that the same structural questions were occurring to me when I was in your ship, but I didn't realise until just this minute that the columns are actually in the same style!"
The Doctor began to saunter around the room, studying the ceiling, struts, columns, floor, living space… everything. "I suppose it's not that bizarre, considering my people are involved in all of this. It didn't occur to me that they might have built this building as well."
"Wow, this is weird."
"Welcome to my life," the Doctor said to him, absently. "Weird is my middle name. Well, not really. But it absolutely could be. And my surname, if you like. Doctor Weird."
"Thing is, though," Colin said, moving to the wall to examine the struts. "As far as I can tell, the construction materials are fairly standard. There's concrete, solid wood, steel nails."
"All stuff found on Earth, you mean?" the Doctor asked. "Except for the columns."
"Yeah," Colin shrugged. "It looks like a shoddy building site, from my point of view. Normal, if poorly-rendered."
The Doctor scowled, and continued to walk around the room contemplatively. "What is it with this place, eh?"
After going in separate directions from the Doctor, Martha and Donna headed upstairs to the glass conference room.
They hadn't expected to see anyone in the building, having assumed that everyone would be off to the time capsule site, so they were taken off-guard. And as soon as they spied Buford S. Greene, of all people, standing still in the conference room, Donna realised that he had, indeed, been rather conspicuously absent from the procession of suits headed to Earl's Court Road.
They stopped in their tracks and looked at each other with surprise.
"Well, bollocks," Donna whispered. "What now?"
"Plan B," Martha whispered back. "Instead of finding a remote detonation device, maybe we can convince him to call it off."
"Seriously?"
"What would the Doctor do?"
"Talk his ear off," Donna sighed.
"Exactly," Martha said, heading up the stairs. Donna followed.
When they reached the top of the stairs, they turned right, then walked about twenty paces to the conference room door. They pulled it open and stepped inside.
"Hello, ladies," Buford Greene said. He was standing at the other end of the room with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out of a wide window toward the city. In the distance, the London Eye could be seen.
"Hello, Mr. Greene," Martha said. After a pause, she admitted, "We didn't know you'd realised we were here."
"I know the Doctor is here," he said. "You couldn't be far behind. I was told he'd escaped from the Inner Sanctum… how did he do it?"
"Don't you mean the Kyriarch System?"
"If you like."
"No-one knows how he escaped?" Martha asked, trying not to sound concerned.
"No-one seems to," Greene replied.
"Well, that is our little secret, I'm afraid," Martha said. In truth, she was relieved to hear that at least from Greene's point of view, Pym's role in their freedom was not common knowledge, which hopefully meant that the agent would be safe, until the Doctor had a chance to extract him.
"But you can bet they didn't have to use any stolen technology, unlike some people," Donna said.
Greene turned and faced them, hands still clasped behind him. He smiled pleasantly. "I'm not using any stolen technology," he said. "Everything I have, I've been given."
"Whatever," Donna quipped. "Potato po-tah-to."
"And to be perfectly honest," Greene continued. "I don't have independent use of anything, myself. It's all being done to me. With my full permission, and cooperation, of course. Though, once I know how to restart the time loop, I will have some agency of my own."
"So, apart from hinging their hopes on you to play Time Lord once every seventy years, it's all hands-off for you," Martha surmised. "They're keeping you alive, they're driving the action, and whatnot."
"Indeed, Dr. Jones," he said, pleasantly.
"So how did you know the Doctor is in the building, then?" Donna wanted to know. "You don't have some sort of artificially-acquired Time Lord mojo going on?"
Greene laughed. "Heavens, no. That's preposterous! As though the Time Lords would even consider sharing their power!"
"Surveillance, then," Martha assumed.
"No," he told her. "I know he's in the building because the building can feel him."
"What are you talking about?" Donna asked, impatiently.
"The air here is disturbed when he enters," Greene explained. "Well, it's not just the Doctor – it's any Time Lord. But since he's all there is…"
"Wait," Martha cut in. "The air is disturbed?"
"Yes, well, maybe not the air, exactly, but I don't know how to explain it scientifically. Something in the fabric of this place changes, and it's palpable. The atmosphere vibrates differently than normal, and it's very unsettling. For a few minutes, anyway, and then you acclimate. It changes again when he leaves."
"Why hasn't the Doctor mentioned it?" she wondered.
"He hasn't noticed," he said. "He hasn't felt the change, exactly. He'd have to be standing in the building already when he comes in, which… I suppose is possible, given who he is, and what he can do. I've felt the switch in the environment when the Doctor has entered the building. Others have, as well – they aren't sure what to make of it. I'm the only one who knows what it is. Everyone else just tries to chalk it up to the barometric pressure, or something that's all in their heads."
"We didn't feel it because we entered the building at the same time as he did… or just a few seconds later," Donna mused.
"Exactly," Greene told her.
"But what about when you first met, over at the time capsule site?" Donna asked. "There was some definite recognition there."
"I recognised that he was a man who was acting bizarrely and didn't belong there, who wasn't just making small talk. I recognised that he might make trouble for us," Greene answered. "It was my own intuition – it was nothing to do with 'mojo' or technology."
"So, you're here, what? Guarding the place, just in case the Doctor comes a-skulking?" Martha asked. "Because I'd have thought you wouldn't miss the opening of your pet project."
"I'll get to witness that plenty of times over the milllenia," he said. "I'm missing it this time because I have to spend three times as much time inside the building as out."
"Or?"
"Or I die," he answered simply. "And I'm not meant to do that. Ever."
"Three times as much time in the building as out. The Time Lords decided that?"
"They didn't decide it. They did the math, and that's what they came up with, in order to keep a human alive indefinitely, with the mechanisms they've put in place. Anyway, I was in the Kyriarch system a bit too long, and put myself in peril. I didn't plan ahead, and now I'm stuck here. For now. I have to catch up on my time inside."
"What is so flipping special about inside?" Donna asked, point-blank. "What is it with this building?"
He smiled wistfully, with a combination of awe and worry. "Oh, Ms. Noble. If only you understood where you were standing."
"Help me understand, then."
"I don't think I'm the best man for that job," he confessed. "That man is... well, sneaking about downstairs just now probably, unless he's standing on the landing trying to eavesdrop."
"And you're not meant to die, ever?" Donna confirmed. "Why the hell would you want to live forever?"
He sat down in one of the conference chairs, and leaned back, taking a deep breath.
"When it started, it was just a question of surviving, not living forever," he said.
"Surviving what?"
"I had chronic Bradycardia," he admitted.
Martha sucked in some air through her teeth. "Ooh, in 1938?"
He nodded. "Most of my life. I felt like a ticking bloody time-bomb."
"What is Bradycardia?" Donna asked. "Sounds serious."
Martha shrugged. "These days… well, yeah, it's definitely a condition that needs attention. But back then?"
"A death sentence?" she asked. "I mean, an early death?"
"More or less. It's a heart condition," Greene said. "It causes fatigue, dizziness, chest pain…"
"Can lead to congestive heart failure," Martha added. "Myocardial infarction…"
"What?" Donna asked, flatly.
"Heart attack," she clarified. "Sudden cardiac death. It's caused by anything from prolonged sleep apnea to syphilis."
"I did not have syphilis!" he shouted, outraged.
"I didn't say you did," Martha retorted. "As I said, there are lots of causes."
"Anyway, without pacemakers or any other such option, in 1938… well, at age forty-two, I felt my days were numbered. I could drop dead at any second. I had never been anywhere, never seen anything. I had never…" he swallowed hard, and stopped.
"What?" Donna probed. "What were you going to say?"
"Never been with a woman," he said, quietly.
"Oh," she sighed. "I'm sorry."
"I was a sickly child, and portly adult," he said, shrugging. "Not exactly the recipe for a born ladies' man."
As Donna launched into a commiserating answer, and began falling down what Martha felt must be a wormhole with Buford S. Greene, it occurred to Martha that they were wasting time. They had the villain talking, like the Doctor always did, but the problem had not been solved! 1938 was still poised to flatten London in the next half hour…
Martha began to cast her eyes about the office, through the glass walls, for any indicator of where a remote detonator might be. She tried to think fast, and wondered how she might create a ruse to get out into the open office area, and look about.
She must've been wicked obvious in her search, because hearing Greene say, "Dr. Jones?" snapped her out of her reverie. She looked at him, and found him holding a device in his hand – a remote control of sorts. "Looking for this?"
And then he smiled at her, and deposited it back in his pocket.
Well, what now? Sheesh, this guy is stubborn. ;-)
If you're reading, play fair, and send a review as well. Just take a minute and make my day! Thank you for reading, either way!