Crossed Wires [2/9]
Crossed Wires
by ErtheChilde
‘You’re trying to say that everything you do is reasonable, and everything I do is inhuman. Well, I’m afraid your judgement’s at fault.’
DISCLAIMER & OTHER WARNINGS
Fighting the niggling suspicion about what was going on, the Doctor slowly asked Rose to repeat herself.
Even before her eyes widened in shock, he knew something was wrong. Although he had thought and formulated the question in English - he had been automatically thinking in the language for centuries now, ever since he started making landing in London a habit - it had come out in Gallifreyan.
‘Ht uibu…ht uibu zpv…ubmljoh?’ Rose wondered, the cadence of her speech telling him it was a question. She didn’t seem surprised by the odd collection of sounds that issued from her lips, so obviously she was still speaking her native tongue. ‘Epdups, i uipvhiu zpv ejeo’u mjlf up tqfbl zpvs mbohvbhf?’
He frowned, trying to parse any bit of meaning from the seemingly unrelated syllables, but came up with nothing.
‘Epdups, xibu’t xspoh? Xibu’t hpjoh po?!’
She obviously realized that he couldn’t understand what she was saying, because her eyes became even wider and her breathing started to increase with agitation.
‘Zpv dbo ifbs nf, uipvhi, sjhiu?’ she demanded, and then seemed to switch tracks, looking a bit reproachful. ‘Xibu bn tbzjoh, pcwjpvtmz zpv dbo ifbs nf, zpv’wf hpu uibu mppl po zpvs gbdf mjlf j’wf tbje tpnfuijoh tuvqje. Tp jt ju kvtu nf? Ibwf zpv tupqqfe voefstuboejoh nf? Xiz dbo’u j voefstuboe zpv? Ep zpv bmxbzt ubml up nf ho zpvs mbohvbhf?’ she asked, her speech getting quicker and more anxious with every syllabus. ‘Op, xbju, zpv tbje uif ubsejt epfto’u usbotmbuf…tp zpv nvtu bmxbzt cf ubmljoh fohmjti xjui nf. Tp xiz bsfo’u zpv ubmljoh fohmjti sjhiu opx?’
She was beginning to panic and the rush of unfamiliar words was giving him a tension headache, and so he held up a hand in an effort to calm her down while he thought through the problem.
I’m still thinking in English and she’s still speaking English, but for some reason we can’t understand each other, he mused. It was like something was mucking with the part of their brains that dealt with comprehension.
Seeing as it had to do with language receptors, he knew the problem was likely down to the translation circuits. Still, just to be sure, he switched on the fault locator and ran a basic check in order to make sure while Rose lingered uncertainly in the background.
As expected, there was a wire that had come loose and he grinned at the sight of it. Brandishing the sonic, he waggled his eyebrows at Rose to show everything was about to be fixed - he earned a nervous laugh at that - he went to work, reattaching it to the circuit it had detached itself from.
‘Ht uibu ju?’ Rose asked tentatively, and then made a face. ‘Hvftt opu…’
The Doctor glowered at the motherboard when it turned out he hadn’t fixed anything. There was no reason for the translation circuits to not be fixed, and the only reason he could think of to explain it was the TARDIS deciding to meddle - maybe she’d decided she wasn’t impressed with his deflecting earlier.
Which was none of her business, really.
He began to tell her so, in very loud and angry diatribe of very precise and mathematically perfect Gallifreyn, earning a few shocks off the console for his efforts.
He was just reaching for the mallet to send her a message with a quick bit of percussive maintenance, just to remind her who was the pilot in this relationship, when he felt a small hand on his shoulder.
‘Epdups?’
Rose had said that word a few times now, and though he still couldn’t understand the logic behind her words, he figured out she must be talking to him.
Glancing up he saw that she was now pointing at something on the console.
A light was blinking on the frequency detector there.
Ah, he thought as he drew closer to it, wincing mentally. He offered up a mental apology.
The TARDIS whirred in such a way that if she had had an actual language, he had no doubt it would be a rather terse suggestion to do something that was anatomically impossible for his species.
It looked like the TARDIS had somehow become trapped in what appeared to be a language field of some sort, one which filtered - or, in this case, completely blocked - the connection between language receptors in the brain and those responsible for speech. The field itself seemed to be coming from the moon the TARDIS was orbiting -
No, not orbiting, he realized as he looked at the proximity readings. We’re being drawn in. It’s a tractor beam.
He made a face.
A tractor beam whose secondary effect was to force sentient creatures to rely on their primary, native tongue?
He’d never heard of anything like that before, but even without the effect it was having on him and Rose, he didn’t like it.
He had to get down there and figure out what was going on, before this language barrier caused some sort of intergalactic incident.
If it hadn’t already.
He also needed to somehow explain to Rose what was going on. With no way to be understood, that would be harder than usual.
He was still able to communicate easily with the TARDIS, due in part to their bond, but also because their link was telepathic. It occurred to him that he could connect to Rose’s mind in a similar way. Then there would be no disconnect then, and even if thought didn’t need translation into actual language, they would be able to understand each other perfectly.
But knowing her unease when it came to telepathy, he figured she’d be upset at the idea and he didn’t currently have the ability to explain everything to her. Teaching someone how to keep their thoughts private in the face of telepathic sharing wasn’t exactly something you could stumble through with a quick game of Charades.
Plus, the idea of mentally connecting with anyone except the TARDIS just yet was…uncomfortable.
Well, that option was out.
He considered another moment, musing on the problem, and then nodded to himself.
Got it, he tried to tell her, once again raising a hand to tell her to wait and going rummaging for something under the console.
After a bit of fishing about, he dragged out several of the post-it pads he’d been keeping under the dash, as well as a pen with a dry nib. He scribbled a bit to get the ink flowing, and then set about writing down exactly what he had discover -
Only for several lines of linear Gallifreyan to flow forth.
He stared at it in disgusted disbelief and then threw down the pen in anger.
The minute I find out who’s responsible for this one…
There was a rustling sound and he watched Rose pick up the pen, then scratch something onto the post-it notes.
He raised an eyebrow with just the slightest bit of disdain. If it didn’t work for me, it’s hardly going to work for you.
But when she handed him the post-it and he looked down, he saw that she hadn’t tried to write anything.
Instead, she’d scribbled a quick approximation of the TARDIS console and two stick figures - he took it to be them - standing on either side. Something like waves had been drawn heading toward the two figures, and then a line drawn through it. Finally at the end, a stick figure scratching their head.
The message was clear: she knew there was something wrong with the translation too.
Not only that, but she’d found a way for them to communicate.
The Doctor beamed at her, and caught her up in a hug.
You are fantastic, he told her, although it came out as something infinitely drier and less complimentary in the Gallifreyan sense. She looked confused, but pleased, and even offered him a bit of a grin.
Stay right there, he indicated. He had a plan…
· ΘΣ ·
Now that they seemed to have a way to communicate, Rose waited for the Doctor to return from wherever he had gone and tell her what the plan was. She didn’t like the idea of not understanding what he was saying to her…although, she sort of hoped he would try talking to her again in his language. Even if she couldn’t understand it, it sounded beautiful.
At first, when whatever happened happened, she hadn’t realized that he was speaking to her. She had thought that he’d accidentally turned on a music player or something among the countless buttons and keys on the console.
But then he had looked right at her and opened his mouth - and the lyrics, haunting sound that had flowed from his lips had made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and goosebumps skitter up her back.
No wonder he had once told her she would never be able to speak his language. She had a hard time thinking of ways to describe it, let alone try to mimic the sounds he made. What it must have sounded like, so many people speaking that language together!
Oh, she realized. No wonder he doesn’t want any reminders of it. To lose something that sounds so beautiful…
She tucked that thought away as the Doctor returned to the console room, dragging a huge blackboard behind him.
‘Where the hell did you get that?’ she asked, and he grinned roguishly at her. Obviously he still couldn’t understand her, but he recognized the tone.
He set the board up between two of the TARDIS coral struts, and then pulled her over to the jumpseat to sit down. Pulling out a package of chalk from his jacket pocket - and really, she wasn’t even surprised at the things that came out of there anymore! - and adopting an expression of mock-concentration, he set about creating a rough yet very accurately rendered series of pictographs.
She made out the TARDIS orbiting some kind of planet or moon, emitting little squiggly lines.
‘Something like radiation?’ she guessed, and when he looked a question at her, she got up and took a different piece of chalk.
She drew a quick and very inaccurate looking skeletal arm beside the round planet/moon, like something from an x-ray machine. Those used radiation, right?’
The drawing was badly done, but he seemed to get her thought and shook his head. He reached up a few inches higher than his drawing and made some squiggly lines.
‘The hell’s that supposed to be?’ she asked.
He rolled her eyes, like she was being deliberately obtuse, and then added a something like a shark fin. Something to do with the ocean?
‘What does the ocean have to do with anything?’ she mused out loud. ‘Ocean...oceans and planets, what do they have in common? Or…wait, not planets - moons! Moons and oceans…tides. Something to do with magnets? Oh bollocks, why didn’t I pay attention in school…’ She screwed up her face in an effort to remember. ‘Right, the moon’s got some kind of magnetic pull, makes the tides happen. So…this moon we’re going around, it’s got some kind of pull?’
She directed the last question to him, even knowing he couldn’t understand her, and then reached up an added arrows from the TARDIS to the moon.
His expression lit up with what looked like pride when he realized she’d understood, and she was reward with another melodic exclamation from his beautiful language.
‘Right, good, so we’ve got the first part,’ Rose nodded. She made a motion that he should carry on.
This time he drew two faces next to each other with speech bubbles and a line through both, like two people who couldn’t speak to each other. A facsimile of what she’d drawn earlier.
‘Yeah, I know that part,’ she rolled her eyes. ‘I want to know why it’s happening - and hold on, don’t you speak like 5 billion languages? Why can’t you explain this to me in English even if the TARDIS translation isn’t working?’
He blinked, raised an expectant eyebrow.
She huffed out a breath and went to another section of the blackboard, then drew a stick figure with large ears and a scribbled on leather jacket - he let out a hissing exclamation then that she knew was probably protest - and then a series of speech bubbles coming from his mouth. Each bubble, she filled with a different line of shapes like stars or hearts or triangles.
Inches away, she drew a stick figure of herself, complete with long hair, and filled a speech bubble with triangles. Tapping the two bubbles with the same shapes in them, she repeated, ‘Why can’t you just talk to me in my language?’
He frowned at the picture, and when he understood, he shook his head.
He made a rocking motion with his hands, and then brushed a hand under his chin, flicking outward as he mouthed.
‘You’ve lost me,’ she told him.
He went back to the chalk, drawing something that might have been a baby or a bumpy rock, as well as a stick figure in a chair talking to it.
Probably a baby then.
‘Still makes no sense,’ she shook her head.
He made a wordless grumble and glared at her like she was being deliberately obtuse.
‘Oi! It’s not my fault you’re a rubbish artist!’
He crossed his arms under his armpits defensively, and then his expression cleared. Holding up his hand in what she had started to call his now pay attention gesture, he then pretended to himself in the face, following it up by pointing at her.
It took a bit before his meaning sunk in, when she did, she couldn’t keep in an incredulous laugh. ‘My mother? What’s my mother got to do with the language - oh. Mother tongue.’
She considered the pictures again, and it dawned on her. ‘This…weird magnetic field thing is making people have to speak their mother tongue? So, I have to speak English and you have to speak Time Lord.’
Sensing that she understood, he nodded.
Rose exhaled, feeling strangely exhausted after finally getting down to the gist of things.
‘Alright, then, so what do we do?’ she gave an elaborate shrug.
The Doctor gestured to the door out of the TARDIS, then pointed at himself and walked to fingers toward it. He then held out the sonic in front of it, peering at it thoughtfully.
‘We’ve got to investigate the planet,’ she realized, and nodded at him. ‘Okay, I’m game. The sooner we sort this, the better, right?’
She started toward the door, but a firm hand on her arm stopped her.
The Doctor shook his head at her, and with a series of hand gestures made plain that he expected her to stay there.
‘Oh, not bloody likely!’ she snapped. ‘You’re in just as much of a fix as I am, Doctor, you don’t understand nothing either! What happens if you get in trouble and you can’t ask anyone for help? At least with me you’d have someone on your side!’
But he was still shaking his head and talking to her incomprehensibly. She concentrated on ignoring the lilting language and how convincing whatever he said sounded in it.
Her obstinacy must have shown on her face, because he ducked his head closer to her and she found herself pinned by his icy gaze. He murmured one word - as incomprehensible as all the rest, but somehow from the way he said it and the special weight she could feel behind it, she knew what it was.
Rose Tyler.
She shivered at that, nearly missing the pleading look he was giving her.
She found herself nodding, and he gave her a grateful smile, before heading for the door.
‘No, wait!’ she cried, reaching out and grabbing hold of his arm.
He cocked his head to one side in question.
‘Just…be careful, yeah?’
The smile changed from grateful to something she couldn’t quite interpret, and to her surprise he began taking his wrist watch off.
Quietly explaining something to her, he showed her the watch face and made a slow revolution of the numbers to indicate an hour, then pointed at the door and himself, then made the walking motion with his fingers again.
‘You’ll be back in an hour?’ she guessed.
He grinned and squeezed her hand in acknowledgement.
And with that, the Doctor strode from the console room, leaving her all alone on the TARDIS for the first time.
NEXT CHAPTER