OMG almost another month since the last chapter. Jeez. I've been working on several things and not sure where to focus my attention... argh. Sorry for the long waits, and if you're reading this, that means a lot to me!
Just as a bit of an aside: I had it in my mind that I was going to take even MORE time and "retool" chapters 14 and 15 because there was a flaw in the climax of the story that I didn't like... I wrote about half of the new version, and it was bloody boring! So, I decided to go back to the original plan, and err on the side of "more exciting," rather than practical. In which case, I hope you find this EXCITING, a little scary, and that those qualities in the next two chapters will overlay the flaws. ;-)
The Tertia Trochos, "Hilde Weth" is getting desperate. The Time Lord is closing in on her, she's got to clear away any hope of defeat. She's about to start some sort of ritual... what does that mean for our heroes?
Enjoy!
FOURTEEN
Waiting was one of the hardest things for someone like Martha Jones. She was a doer, a mover, a…
"I understand that, Martha, but we've got no choice just now," Walt Ilsman said. He was sitting on the sofa in Martha's room, shuffling a deck of cards on the coffee table. "So play Cribbage with me until something comes up that we can actually help with."
"I've never played Cribbage," Martha said, now staring absently up at the window that appeared to let in light through a swimming pool. Of course, she knew it wasn't a swimming pool at all, but it sure was enticing to look at, and the thought of it felt cool…
"I'll teach you. Come sit down."
"The Vestibule will soon tilt," she said.
"What?" he asked, stopping mid-shuffle.
She turned and looked at him. "What?"
"You said something."
"I did?"
"Yeah. Something about a vestibule."
Martha was silent for a moment, and then she said, "The Vestibule will soon tilt."
"What does that mean?"
"I've got no idea," she said. "It just popped into my head."
"Like when Monoklino popped into your head?"
"Yeah."
"Well, shit," he said, leaving the cards on the table, and putting both hands on his knees. He looked like a man who was annoyed that the oven timer was going off, not someone who was dealing with a terrifying revelation in an in-between dimension from which there may be no return.
Martha blinked at him a few times. "It doesn't mean anything to you?"
"No," he said.
"Why is it in my head and not yours?"
"My guess is because you were staring at the window. Didn't the Doctor say the void lulls?"
"It might mean we're getting closer to something," she said darkly. "It could be a countdown. But more likely, the Doctor is getting closer to something, and Weth is panicking. I've seen it happen."
He paused a moment, then he asked, "Would it be weird to pray?"
"No," she said. "I do my own form of that. Only…"
She stopped short and felt sheepish about what she almost said.
He saw through the batting of her eyes, the look-away, the blush.
"Only you wish for the Doctor to ride in," he said.
"On his white horse with this armour and his sword, yeah," she sighed, rolling her eyes at herself. "Except, it's a blue box, he doesn't wear armour, sometimes to his own detriment. And his weapon is his brain."
"It's a classic image all the same."
"I must sound like such a…"
"Such a what?" he asked, after she failed to finish her thought.
"A child. A little girl grasping at faerie tales or something."
"No, not a child. You do sound a bit smitten," he said. "But you already know that."
"Yeah," she admitted quietly. "That bit I know."
"But you've also seen him do… whatever it is he does, and you have every right to faith in him, and to hold out hope that he'll ride in on his blue horse and wield his brain sword, or whatever."
She chuckled. "Now that is an interesting image."
"So when you say you do your own form of prayer…"
"It's not prayer. But quantum physics does have principles that suggest it's possible to send vibes to someone. I don't fully understand it – I'm a biology person, not a physics person, but I'm, you know… a sciency type."
"You're talking about messages from the universe."
"Not just from, but messages out in the universe, conducted by the universe and its quantum clockworks. Positive energy aimed at a particular person. Sort of like when we used the phone signal to break through to the other dimension, and then used concentration to find the Doctor in the TARDIS. I have to believe it's true, otherwise, what have we got? God?"
"God's okay," said Walt, with a little smile.
"If God is real, then He picks and chooses who lives and dies. He's got some kind of grand plan that doesn't always allow people like us to come out the other side. The Doctor is much less discerning."
"Not about you," Walt said. "I would wager he's pretty discerning when you are involved."
She smiled with a melancholy air in her eyes. "He's discerning when it comes to any of his friends. It's not about me."
Walt shrugged. "Okay. But I think that whatever relationship you have with him, your bond with the Doctor is what's going to save us all. So maybe I should be praying to him as well. Or putting out good vibes for him, or whatever."
"It can't hurt," Martha said.
"Meanwhile, what does The Vestibule will soon tilt mean?"
"I thought you wanted to play Cribbage and wait."
"Wait for the Doctor," he sighed. "Yeah, I guess. But while we're waiting, we can try can't we? Try and work out what's going on, so we can help, or…"
He stopped talking, with a small measure of urgency and despair in his voice.
"And now you're understanding me," she said, now her turn to smile. "Just knowing he's out there makes you want to… do something, anything. To help him, make him proud, be ready when he's ready."
He chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I get that. Wow, I can't wait to meet this guy. Although I'm a little afraid I'll fall in love with him."
"It's easy to do," she said. "Like, frighteningly easy."
"Well, I'm an open-minded bloke," Walt shrugged. "My wife discovered a different side to her sexuality with Alien Shrink Lady, why not me with Alien Doctor Guy?"
Understanding that he was not serious, Martha laughed and said, "Blimey, we'll have to form a support group for people like us. You know, before me, there were…"
Martha noticed Walt's attention shifted away from her, and onto something behind her.
However, the only thing behind her was a long, blank wall that had only one very high window.
"Oh, God…" she groaned, and did not want to turn around. Not even a little bit.
Because she knew what she would see.
The Doctor had begun to laugh at himself. This felt like a no-brainer, once he had worked it out: the Tertia Trochos' planet is in the same galaxy as that of the Carrionites, and the materials and physics were similar. Like the Globe Theatre, the talisman in Weth's office was for converting psychic energy via three vessels, requiring participation of a trio, to open and/or activate a portal. The M.O and goals were different, but the portal and energy conversion worked similarly…
Which meant, that without the active contribution of the usurped partner (him), the portal would get a bit confused as to where and how it was meant to open, and how to handle someone coming through. A piece of the puzzle was missing, so the person would arrive in pieces.
Of course true partnerships can't be broken up, and this is why.
But knowing all of this didn't change anything about how he planned to get Martha back. And he needed her back, now more than ever. If for no other reason than to apologise for what he had put her through, for what Weth had put her through because of him… and of course, to confess a thing or two about the last few months...
He fired up the comm device on the console. The time was now. He and Martha needed to take down the Elephant in the Room, clear the air, and become partners again.
It would be the first time he, himself, had attempted to communicate across dimensions; the previous communications had been incoming. The Shadow Proclamation and Martha had done this by using a face-centred cubic molecular structure as a conductor for the communication waves. He didn't think he would need to do that, if the TARDIS understood the brief: trace the energy signature that had created the communiqué. All sound and transmission creates waves, and all they had to do was find them. The TARDIS itself could not cross into another dimension without sustaining significant damage, but her "thoughts" perhaps could.
Breaking through. Doing anything through dimensional walls was not what his type-40 TARDIS had been designed to do, but she had done it more than once before… granted it had almost killed her. But how many times had she been valiant and incredible, and done exactly what was needed, outside of her own "box," as it were.
And surely enough, it took the TARDIS only a few minutes to track down the energy signature needed – it had been less than a day. What Martha had done had packed a punch – something like that was not bound to dissipate in that time.
And in less time than the Doctor had expected, they had locked onto Martha's phone, and it was ringing.
And it rang.
And it rang.
And it rang.
He listened to it ring a full seventeen times before cutting it off.
"Try again, please," he directed his trusted vessel.
It took less time to lock onto the energy signature this time, because the TARDIS had just created her own trail by reaching out to it.
Once again, it rang and rang and rang.
He gave it twenty rings this time.
He was starting to panic.
Ordinarily, Martha's voice mail would have kicked off by now… that was probably too much to ask across dimensions. But the fact that Martha herself, or one of her friends, wasn't answering the call after thirty-seven rings was worrying indeed.
Either it wasn't ringing on her end, which meant that he wasn't making contact, which meant that he'd have to wait for her to call him again (if such a thing were possible). He worried that she might not do that, because she might be waiting for word from him.
Or it meant that all six sets of eyes and ears in the "platform" dimension were focused on something else. And for them to be immersed in something that took precedence over a call from the outside world… well, it probably wasn't good.
"Arrrrgh!" he cried out. "Why can't anything just work? Can't any little thing just be easy? Damn it!"
He took that moment to just be frustrated, but then he picked up Martha's journal off the passenger's seat, and took off running out of the TARDIS.
"The Vestibule is tilting," Walt said, gazing past her.
And Martha knew that he wasn't simply parroting what she had said, but something was speaking through him.
She turned slowly and looked.
The wall was completely gone. The to the left, there were what looked like cross-sections of Bella's, Danielle's, and Holly's rooms, each gaping open on one side, each now bordered by an open, aqua-blue churning void. The white noise was deafening, but there was also a voice… or was there? If there was, it was speaking nonsense. If there wasn't, then what was it overlaying the din? It was hard to hear one's thoughts… the ear was pulled into the mysteries, and drowned by the rush of sound.
The other four women – Petra had been hanging out in Bella's room – now stood just like Martha and Walt, near the edge, stunned, a bit hypnotised…
"Tilting," Holly said aloud, and her voice seemed to echo, as though they were in a canyon. It carried over the white noise, and Martha felt it was reverberating in her mind.
Bella sobbed, "It's happening again, it's happening again!" This did not get amplified, but it could be heard and felt by all six humans.
"The Vestibule is tilting," said Petra, amplified.
They began to feel the floor beneath their feet move, and gravity was starting to pull them toward the void. The seemingly endless, thunderous, blinding border of this space-time anomaly, that could indeed have no border, or could pull them across into another universe where they would cease to be corporeal, cease to be themselves, individuals, with their own will.
The floor slowly became a ramp, and Martha stumbled a bit.
"Tilting," she said. Then she shouted as loudly as she could, "Oh God, everyone hold onto something!"
She leapt at the column in her room, and wrapped her arms around it just in time to be pulled off her feet by a kind of gravity, the entire dimension literally tilting.
If they would not go willingly, they would be poured across the Void into an Abyss.
Immediately, Martha's arms began to ache. She could see Walt hanging on the other column in her room, but she couldn't see anyone else.
"Is everyone okay? Anyone falling?"
"I'm here!" Danielle called out, and in turn, everyone verified that they were, for the moment, hanging on.
And now the voice-like sound became an actual voice, speaking in an unknown language.
"What the fuck?" Bella screamed. "Are we supposed to know what any of that means?"
And the next thing the voice said was, "It is merely an appeal for acquiescence." It echoed, god-like, in their minds, but spoke with a German accent. They all understood it was Weth… or the Tertia Trochos entity they had all known as a German-speaking couples therapist who had effectively destroyed their already foundering relationships, and imprisoned them here.
"You're mad!" Danielle shot back.
"It's not as though there is a way out," said the voice. "No-one can save you… no matter how much they know about time and the universe."
"Does she know?" Walt asked. "I thought you said you were undercover!"
"We were," Martha said. "She's must've worked it out. That's why this is happening before it's time, before we're ready. She must be nervous!"
"I'm not nervous. But indeed I did work it out," said the voice, calmly. "Your John is a Time Lord, Martha. Time Lords are formidable, indeed. And I will say that if anyone could get you free of a time anomaly in a vestibular dimension, it's one of those pompous arses with their vortexes and their instruments and their knowledge of the cosmos and all things that bind events and universes."
"Amen!" Bella screamed, which reminded Martha of her chat with Walt about prayer, the Doctor, faith, and what they knew he could do. It was clear that they were not the only ones having those thoughts. These folks had needed something to cling to, and the Doctor was it. Just like her. Just like everyone who crossed into his orbit.
"But it's all the more reason why I implore you, all of you, to let go of that hope," said the voice of the Tertia Trochos.
"Not happening!" Martha shouted, arms screaming at her with strain and pain.
"The Time Lord cannot save you, and the fact that he is, in fact, such a strong specimen just gives you more hope! And the more hope you have, the more resistance you have. And the more resistance you have, the rougher the transition will be. The more likely you are to ripped apart! Martha, you know this well. Your Time Lord will cause your temporary dismemberment for a second time, except in the Monoklino Abyss, there is no corporeal form. So your dismemberment will be cerebral, abstract, and infinitely more uncomfortable. Horrifying, I've heard it called."
"We'll take our chances!" Walt cried out.
"Hold tight, everyone! Just hold tight!" Martha called. "It's just words!"
"Take your chances?" asked the voice. "Of being pulled apart in Monoklino's Abyss? Being conscious in so many forms and places all at once, your molecules burning upon stars, others becoming ether, only to reconstitute over and over until they are found. Of having parts of you freeze, others suffocated, others drowned, distilled into pure sadness, pure gravity, pure concept? Until a million years pass, and they try to come together again, only to find that the puzzle is harder than they thought…"
"Shut up!" Bella screamed. "Just shut the hell up, you bloody witch! Shut up!"
"Just hold on!" Walt encouraged.
"I can't anymore!" Holly protested. "I'm tired. I'm so tired of this whole thing…"
"Me too," said Petra.
"Don't you dare give in!" Martha said to them. "If the Tertia Trochos are onto him, it means he's let himself be known somehow, and he's on the move! It means he's breathing down her neck, and he's close!"
"Oh, Martha," whined Holly. "I'm sorry
"No, Holly! Don't be sorry! Just be…"
And a loud, electronic melody boomed through the space. It was Martha's phone.
"What the hell?" Bella said.
"That's him! He's calling! He's got a lock on us!" Martha said. "Please don't give up! Please!"
"It hurts!" Danielle complained.
"And I've got nothing to go back to," Petra sobbed. "My marriage is over…"
"All of our marriages are over," Danielle reminded them all. "It's why we should go willingly. Why she thinks we should become one with…"
"No!" Martha insisted.
The phone stopped ringing, but then started up again a few moments later. They could not answer it, but they could hear it, and it was given them – at least some of them – faith. A reason not to let go.
The Doctor threw open the front door of the squat, white building in which "Hilde Weth" had her couselling office. He stalked down the hall and saw, underneath her office door, purple, blue, and yellow lights flashing.
"Oh, no you don't," he growled, and he sonicked his way inside.
Weth was standing beside her desk seemingly in a meditative state. Swirls of smoke and light were surrounding the eagle statue, and emanating throughout the room, as though the entire space were being enveloped by a spell of some sort. It was simply an energy conversion in process – a much bigger and more involved kind than the one that had dumped Martha, one piece at a time, in the platform dimension. And based on Weth's stance, he could see that there was some kind of psychic link. He could use that to his advantage!
The Tertia Trochos' eyes flew open, and she smiled at him. He felt as though there were acid in her expression, wickedness… knowledge.
"Time Lord!" she cried out.
He stopped in his tracks, and somehow stumbled back against the office door – it felt as though an unseen force was pressing on his chest, forcing him into retreat. He lost his footing for a few moments, but worked to hold onto the journal in his hand, and not drop it. Not long ago, he had been pressed up against this very door with Weth's tongue in his mouth, begging him to just be hers. All for the sake of… this. This chaos, this malevolence, the power and malice that had paralysed him for a few moments.
What is that? Does she have magic? Does she…
No… energy converter, the power of three, the same galaxy as the Carrionites, their weapons and physics being similar…
He heaved himself up straight with great effort, and said, "Tertia Trochos," loudly and clearly.
The room stopped roiling with the energy of universes, colours, lights, sounds, and Weth clutched at her collarbone and was thrown back against the wall behind her, just as the Doctor had been. When she lost her footing, he only seemed to gain his.
He said, moving toward her, "The Naming. Hell of a trick that is."
"You can't help her now, Time Lord!" she rasped, having slumped down to a sitting position. She was incapacitated, and he was also acutely aware that that state of affairs wouldn't last long, and the naming trick would not work for a second time. "She's gone! Accept it."
"Yeah, you'd like that wouldn't you?" he said to her. "Make your life a lot easier. And you can call me Doctor, all right? I'll take that little bit of power away from you, and give you permission to say it. Doc-tor. Unlike you, I actually try to heal!"
"You are not cognizant of the restorative, benevolent, all-encompassing…"
"…supremacy of Monoklino," he finished, with an eyeroll. "Give me a break. He's using you to feed, Hilde, that's all! And you're bloody letting him! Falling for his song and dance about balance and trinities and whatever other blather he's got you believing."
"Blasphemy!" she said, now standing upright.
He ignored her now, because to do anything other than try and communicate with Martha would be a waste of time.
The ritual was already going, there was some sort of mental or telepathic link between Weth and the dimension where Martha was. Being a Time Lord had its advantages, absolutely, one of them being an ability to dial in psychically, walk into and out of people's minds…
He stood in front of the talisman on the desk, the epicentre of the ritual and the debris blowing anew in the air of the office. He closed his eyes and concentrated, somewhat aware of Weth regaining her strength, and her voice growing louder in protestation… he didn't have much time.
"Come on," he whispered. Then he put his mind on Martha, tried to find her… "Where are you?" he asked aloud.
And then he felt immersion. His thoughts became eneveloped, and he understood that he was linked with the Vestibule, the place he had been calling the Platform, because it was where Martha and the others were waiting to be transported to their destination.
But immediately, he felt instability, sensory overload, full exposure to the Anosychos Void…
"Oh no…" he whispered.
He felt the driving panic and fear from the humans within, he heard screaming, sobbing, white noise, he heard Martha's voice insisting that no-one give up, keep the faith, know that the Doctor…
"Martha," he said out loud.
He heard a cry of joy from her, and few exclamations of confusion and happiness from her cohorts.
He martialed his concentration, and did what he could to stabilise the Vestibule.
"I'm trying to get you back on your feet," he said. "Is it working?"
The expressions of relief from inside were palpable, and he could feel them relax.
"Yes!" she called back. Then she said, "You lot, don't move away from whatever you were holding onto! It might happen again!"
He opened the journal to a marked page, and looked hard at the purple letters, and the red annotations he had made.
Oh boy.
Becoming a true partnership... will it save them? How will they do it?
Would love a review, if you can spare thirty seconds. It would be super helpful to know you're still reading... Thank you for doing so!