TURLOUGH'S TALE

Chapter Two

The arm I just dropped reaches up for me; the Doctor grabs my wrist, then his fingers loosen and his arm falls away from me. Is he dead? I put my hand back on his chest. It rises and falls. Not dead. Why am I glad, then? That would have solved everything, yet I'm glad he is still alive. I leave the knife in my pocket; at this point I could simply strangle him. I sit down next to him and watch his shallow breathing. Then I begin to rummage through his pockets.

Whatever can I do with a yo-yo? The cricket ball I somehow understand but it is useless at the moment. The ball of string I take, along with an impossibly capacious white handkerchief, excessively lace-trimmed, elaborately (and colorfully) embroidered and monogrammed with some kind of royal insignia and the initials "L.A." and the Roman numerals XVI. I sit the Doctor up against a tree, where his head lolls, making it easier for me to dab at the still-bleeding crack I've bestowed upon his cranium. The blood is matting up his hair. I wish I had some water; spit won't do the trick. I can't stop the bleeding but I do get it down to a trickle.

Then I remember there's a stream wandering through here, somewhere. I use the string to tie him to the tree, then listen carefully. Yes, I can hear the water, not far off from the sound of it. It is only a couple minutes' walk away, and I rinse the blood out of the handkerchief and bring it, sopping wet, back to the Doctor. He is coming around. I clean up his wound and as much of his hair as I can, then leave him once more to rinse out the handkerchief again. This time I wring it out, and when I return to the tree I see the Doctor is awake; he looks up at me. "Turlough," he says weakly, and to my shock I see he still trusts me. "Why am I tied up?"

"To keep you from falling over." I put the handkerchief back onto the wound and gently push his head against the tree trunk to hold the cloth in place. I make no move to untie him and he frowns, absorbing this.

"What's going on?" he asks, squinting up at me.

"Nothing," I say, inanely.

"I don't suppose you could untie me now," he says, politely, trying in vain to reach the head wound.

I can't answer for several moments, then force myself to say, "I have a problem, Doctor. A really big problem."

"Concerning me."

"Yes, concerning you."

"If you untie me, maybe we can work it out. I'm listening." The Doctor raises his bound hands expectantly but I make no move toward him.

"Well," I say, "that's part of the problem."

"Oh, I see," he says, but his face tells me he doesn't see.

I sit down on the ground in front of him. "Doctor, I really don't know what to do. I have made a contract and now I can't get out of it." He nods. "It isn't a financial contract. It's a kind of barter. I was promised a way off of Earth, away from that infernal school."

"You know I have already given you that. I can take you anywhere you want to go, within reason."

"Yes, I know, but my end of the bargain… I promised. And… the penalty for not upholding my end of the bargain is death." I cannot bear the sympathy in the Doctor's eyes. I turn away. "My end of the bargain is to kill you." I turn back and see that his expression hasn't changed. "Say something, damn it!"

He is thinking but he's also searching my face – for what? Pity? An apology? A change of heart? It's still his life or mine and I have no intention of dying, for this man or anyone else. Can he see that? Finally he says, very quietly, "Not the Master. He would want to do it himself. So… the Black Guardian. This is his style." He is waiting for confirmation. I give him the barest of nods. "All right. I think I can help you."

"You think?" I sputter. "It's my life on the line!"

"And mine," he reminds me.

"What would you do?"

"I don't know yet."

"Great."

"All right, let me ask you a question: why am I not dead already?"

"I didn't hit you hard enough."

He winces. "You hit me plenty hard." His bound hands rise of their own accord but still can't reach the wound. "You could have killed me eight times over by now. Why haven't you?"

"I wish…." I sigh. "I don't want to." I cover my face with my hands. My numbness is subsiding; the pain that replaces it is destroying me; my brain is on fire. "I don't want to die."

"You don't want to kill, either. Let me help you." He holds his hands out to me again. "Release me." I stand up. "Please." I leave him there, returning to the stream, where I clean that knife as best I can. Most of the rust remains but the mud is easy enough to wash away. I return to the Doctor, crouch before him, knife in hand. He looks at the knife, then up at me, interested but unafraid. He can't possibly still trust me. What's wrong with him? I am annoyed. If he would just lose his temper, if he would only hate me, even for a moment, maybe I could do what I came to do, but there is no hatred in his eyes, not even anger.

I cut the string, free his hands, free him from the tree, catch the bloody handkerchief as it falls. He looks at it and smiles, and for a moment he is elsewhere, perhaps in his memories, and then he is back, holding his head; which is no longer bleeding but clearly hurts. He stands in that peculiarly graceful way he has, using just his legs, then falls back against the tree, still standing but just. He closes his eyes for a full minute, then stands up straight and holds his hand out for the knife. I do nothing. He sighs. "Thank you."

I turn to go wash the handkerchief again and he follows me. When we reach the stream he takes the handkerchief from me and kneels to wash it himself. He knows I am behind him, he knows I have a knife and he knows I am obligated to kill him, and still he bends to dip the hanky in the water, rinse out all the blood, hold it to his head, examine it, rinse it again, hold it briefly against his eyes, then dab at his face with it. He looks back and smiles at me, which I find disconcerting. "Time differential," he says, cheerfully.

"What?"

"It's not a permanent solution. He will eventually know I am still alive, or alive again, but it buys us time. He will think I am dead and leave you alone for a time."

"For a time."

"Yes, for a time."

He stands up, still a little wobbly, and puts his wet hanky in his pocket. It is only now that I think to fold up the knife and put it away too.

"So what's a time differential?" I ask.

"Remember when the Brigadier encountered himself?"

"Zap, to quote Tegan."

"Yes, zap. And that confuses the Black Guardian."

"Can't we kill him?"

The Doctor rolls his eyes. "All this talk about killing. He's not even a person. He's an… embodiment. He is chaos personified."

"So," I say, "you want to confuse confusion."

"Semantics. Anyway, that's just temporary, for our purposes, yours and mine."

"Survival in both cases."

"Yes. There will always be chaos. Chaos is inevitable. All we, or anyone, can do in the long run is counterbalance it."

"So now what?"

The Doctor looks up and down the stream. "I'm all turned around. Do you know the way back to the TARDIS?"

"I think so." I point down the stream. "I think this is a tributary of the other stream we saw. But… what do we tell Tegan? She already hates me."

He starts walking along the stream so I follow him, but we don't speak again until the TARDIS is in sight. "Say nothing. Do nothing. Leave it to me."