Abandoned fiction 1: Doctor Who: The sun was shining on the sea
I found a cache of fiction I abandoned last summer -- I'm slowly going through and deciding what to salvage and what to give up. Sadly, this first half of a Doctor Who story, which was meant to be part of a whole alternative series of Donna and Martha adventures, is one of the casualties.
Lots of spoilers for seasons three and four.
Warnings: None ( see policy)
===
===
"This," said Martha with flourish that didn't sit quite right with her spare, quick movements, "is a TARDISH."
Donna looked at it more closely. It looked more like one of those old-fashioned double bikes you saw on films. A tandem. A voice in the back of her head started singing, 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.'
"It travels through Time And Relative Dimensions In Space," Martha explained. "Hopefully."
===
===
Oxford, 1859
They stepped out of the TARDISH onto soft, green grass. They were in some sort of huge court, walled by beautiful stone buildings. Martha smiled to herself. Right place, at least.
"Oxford," she said. "Christ Church College, Tom Quad. With any luck, we're somewhere in the 1860s."
"How can you tell?" Donna asked, but she was gaping at the architecture with gratifyingly large eyes.
Martha took the handlebars of the TARDISH, and motioned for Donna to grab the frame. "We need to move this off the grass. Now."
"Why? Does it react badly with grass? Does it need to be kept out of the sun? Is it going to start sinking?"
"No," said Martha, nodding at the far gate. "But otherwise those men over there in bowler hats are going to come and shout at us, and that's always annoying. On three."
On three, they lifted the tandem up and moved it onto a gravel path.
"We're here to see Charles Dodgson," Martha said. "Holder of the Christ Church lectureship in mathematics. He's--"
"No," said Donna, holding up her hand. "Don't tell me. I want to see if I can do this on my own." She closed her eyes, screwing up her face in concentration. After a moment, she started biting her lip. "Ooh, I think I've got it. What was the name?"
"Charles Dodgson. But he's--"
"No!" Donna grinned, excitement and disbelief chasing each other across her face. "That? Is amazing."
"Yeah." Martha grinned back.
"No."
"Yeah."
"Oh my god," said Donna. "We're really going to meet him? We're going to meet--"
"Yeah."
"We're going to meet the Frankenstein?"
Martha blinked. "Um."
Now would be an excellent time to start studying her fingernails. There was something caught under one, maybe she could get it out before anyone noticed.
"Nah, just kidding. Lewis Carroll, here we come!"
===
Torchwood liked to take the idea of offsite backup very, very seriously, Martha explained as they trapsed around the old stone buildings looking for Professor Dodgson's rooms. Anything big enough and bad enough to destroy the onsite data was probably big enough and bad enough to destroy most of the world.
"Modest, aren't you?" Donna interrupted.
So they needed to put the data far out of harm's way, somewhere that spanned enough time, enough history and enough weirdness that a little more couldn't hurt.
Martha let her hand trail along one of the walls, the rough stone strangely comforting. Through one of the windows, she could see a skeleton, the sign of a medical student. The way its arm had been raised in a jaunty salute didn't make it look more friendly; in this day and age, that would be a real person's bones.
"There's only one problem," Martha said, stopping to peer up an unlit staircase. It twisted in on itself, with shadows inching their way out of the darkness like they didn't want to make the first move.
"Of course there is." Donna tapped her head. "There's a lot in here about Torchwood. Go on then, what do we have to do? Sacrifice a Dithri kittenplant with an aluminium penknife to unlock the abDNA-imprinted encryption key?"
Martha tried to give her a quelling look. There was a lot to quell with Donna, even when they weren't stumbling round an Oxford college, trying to find just where Torchwood had thrown their needle in this particular haystack. "No. It's just-- It's still in the experimental stage."
"Right. Of course."
"But it's fine," Martha said, doing her best to sound reassuring. "Nothing can--"
"No," said Donna. "Don't tell me nothing can go wrong."
Martha gave her another look. "I was going to say: nothing can be as bad as doing this accompanied by the Doctor's cheerfully off-key singing."
Donna tilted her head, a smile flickering on and off almost too fast to see. "Yeah. I'll give you that."
"Oi!"
They looked across the vast expanse of immaculately kept lawn to see a man in a bowler hat waving at them. "You!"
Less of a wave and more of a threatening gesture, really. The sort of imperious command that made Martha think back to being John Smith's maid. She kept him in her sights while letting out a quiet mutter. "Run?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Donna's smile. "Nah, just let me try something, first."
Martha itched for a gun.
"Oi!" Donna shouted, just as imperious. "You! Come here!" Then, to Martha, she whispered, "If he stands his ground, we run. If he comes, we stand our ground. And if-- Oh yes."
The man -- more of a boy, really, Martha could see now in his hesitant movements -- was stumbling towards them across the pebbled path. Across, Martha noted, not along. Any second now, he was going to hit the lawn, and--
"What the bleeding hell do you think you are doing, my boy?" Donna shouted, so firm Martha had to fight down the urge to apologise herself. "Do you think that lawn was made for the likes of you to go trampling across it on a whim?" She pronounced the last like a dirty word.
"Keep it down," Martha offered, watching the boy change course like he'd never even thought of touching grass. "Someone might come out to watch the show."
Donna folded her arms across her chest, the very image of an unimpressed ward sister. "Yeah? Better make it a good one, then, hadn't I?"
There was no arguing with that tone of voice. "How did you know that would work, anyway?"
"I didn't. Where's the fun in that?"
Martha felt herself tense. "You sure you're keeping the DoctorDonna behind lock and key?"
The boy was now in the same line of sight as Donna, so Martha was treated to a clear view of Donna's wince.
"Name?" Donna barked.
With one final, appealling glance at the other side of the lawn, the boy accepted he was in this alone. "Groats, miss. Terry Groats."
"Groats," Donna said to herself. "Groats. Ring a bell, does it, Jones?"
Martha scowled, not entirely for effect. There would be words, later. "Couldn't say, miss."
"Whose job, Groats, was it to keep that tidy?" Donna said, pointing at a beautifully kept flower bed.
Groats made a show of peering at it, then at her. "The gardeners', miss," he said. "And who might you be?"
"Not that." Donna held her finger out in the same direction. "Any fool can see that is in perfect order. The path."
The path was just as neat as the flower bed, but the harmonics in Donna's voice would have made the Doctor apologise. And mean it.
"Um," said Groats.
"Yes. Quite. Well, I think you'd better come with us then, hadn't you?"
===
"Look, I'm sorry," Donna hissed as soon as Terry was safely out of earshot, scurrying up some endless spiral of stairs to announce them to Lewis bloody Carroll.
"Yeah, well," Martha said. She looked like she was forcing herself to relax, ready -- and what was worse, waiting -- to spring into action.
Donna sighed. "No, I am."
She watched Martha peer up the stairwell. The lad would take his time, Donna knew, a petty victory over some big-for-her-boots scullery maid -- or whatever, who knew what he thought she was? -- who just happened to have the upper hand for now. She hoped the diversion didn't give him the chance to do some thinking.
"Yeah? Well maybe you could tell me something, then," Martha said, her voice a little harder than it had been before.
The tell-tale sound of Terry's boots came thumping down the stairwell. Honestly, give a man a bowler hat... It's almost as bad as giving him a screwdriver.
"Better make it quick."
"What's it like?" Martha asked. "Really?"
Donna took a breath, only letting it out when Terry's hat, followed in short order by the rest of him, appeared. "Can I get back to you on that?"
"He'll see you now," Terry said, ducking his head just a little too pointedly for Donna's liking. Still, give Martha five minutes with Mr Alice In Wonderland himself, and they'd have protection from all the trouble any jumped up bowler hat could cause them.
Hopefully.
===
"And wuh-what can I d-d-d-"
A stutter. No one had warned Donna about a stutter. She felt her hearts-- her heart clench. Was that it, then? Doomed forever to go weak at the knees whenever a man couldn't say his own name?
"--do for you?" Lewis Carroll himself finished. He did not sound like a man ready and waiting to hand over anything.
Martha sprang into action, all smooth talk and firm handshakes, letting Donna have a moment to take in the room.
How he could find anything in this mess, she didn't know. Give her two days -- make it four, she amended, spotting the piles of papers lurking like guilty children under his desk -- and she could have this sorted. But no, she'd seen his type before. It was all right for some, filing, but you got enough letters after your name and suddenly you had a System, and no jumped up temp with a lip on her was going to ruin that just because she knew her alphabet.
"--always been fascinated by your work," Martha was saying. "Your treatment of determinants is so enlightening."
"Wuh-women d-d-d-d- can't normally understand my work," he said. "Huh-haven't the training."
"Oh," said Martha, gleam in her eye, "I've got the training, all right."
For a man with no chin, the look he was giving Martha was surprisingly piercing. "Fuh-foreign, are you?"
"Your thoughts on the parallel postulate, Professor Dodgson, have reached my home country."
He nodded to himself. "Fuh-funny, that. They seem not to have reached my students."
Martha gave him a sympathetic shrug. "Tell me about it. I can't even get my lot to remember the first four axioms, let alone question the fifth."
As she'd been talking, Martha had casually moved them so his back was to Donna. She took advantage of this to mouth to Martha, What?
Martha rolled her eyes, then let her gaze flick briefly to the desk. Oh. Right. Donna started inching towards it, trying not to step on any of the papers littering the floor.
"D-d-d-d-delighted to meet you," Alice-boy said, extending his hand to Martha. "Miss--?"
"Doctor Jones," Martha said.
Carroll hummed and hahhed to himself for a minute, then turned to Donna. "And who, may I ask, is the charming young lady so stealthily approaching my d-d-d-d-desk?"
Donna didn't blush. She didn't. "Donna Noble," she said, holding out her hand. "And may I just say what a wonderful experience it is to meet you?"
"Hmm," he said. "Yes." He didn't take her hand. "Refreshing of you not to make a pun."
Behind him, Martha winced.
"But fuh-for all your justifiable interest in my wuh-work, I can tell by your outlandish clothes you are not here for that."
"Yes," said Martha quickly. "We--"
"I know, I know. You're here about the d-d-d-d-"
Donna nodded encouragement. "The device? The data? The dashing Captain Jack?"
The look he gave her could have frozen lava. "The d-deaths."
===
Jack had done a whole day training session on Dodgson's work, just in case anyone had to do what Martha was doing right now. Well, he'd tried, anyway. The first two times they'd been saved by alien invasion, and the third he'd given up in disgust, complaining it was so far beneath 51st century maths it was like trying to program a computer with an abacus. A broken abacus. With no beads.
At that point, Ianto had taken over.
Nineteenth century Britian was basically, he pointedly hadn't said, the Torchwood of the mathematical world. No one could say they didn't try, and occasionally even get results, but nothing was ever that useful, and the only people convinced of its importance were other nineteenth century British mathematicians. When they needed anything really important or interesting done, they had to go begging to some foreign doctor.
Like Torchwood, they were a lot easier to work with if you didn't point this out. It was only that thought that kept Martha from sharing the insight with Donna. The way Dodgson was treating her made Martha bristle; he clearly needed someone to look down on. His work hadn't even been that monumental, when she'd finally bothered to look at it. Nothing like the last Maths For Medics course she took, but once you got used to the arcane language, not that much harder.
===
[...]
===
"They're Carpenter Fish! Clever little creatures, parasitic as hell. They gestate on brain waves, the cleverer the better. Normally found on aquatic worlds, they probably make do with dolphins, here. Sea turtles at a pinch. They need brain waves to gestate, and then once they've popped, they swim out to live their short, happy lives attached to deep-sea plants, leaving behind them no exit wound and a faint, lingering euphoria. Nothing could be simpler. They're even kept as pets out in Scattaci 3. And controlled substances on Scattaci 5, come to think of it. But with humans, oh, no, that's sad. They pick up on the brain waves, get hooked, and then happily gestate latched inside a muscle somewhere. But when the time comes to get back into the water, they've got to drive you there with them. Oh, oh, and that's when the voices start, I'll bet. Little rhymes telling them to go out into the sea, it's perfectly safe. Nothing but friends here. Then nothing but Carpenters."
===
===
And some other nice snippets, outlining the major plot:
"Do you want my version, or his?" Donna asked.
Martha thought for a moment. "Yours."
"It's basically me telling him to sit down, shut up and let me drive. Only it's not him, it's me and him, the DoctorDonna, and he doesn't like sitting still. That's my version, anyway. You want to hear it from him, too? It's like mine, only with the words 'transducal biopic node' thrown in for no good reason."
---
"What's it like?" Martha asked. "Really?"
Donna was silent for long enough Martha was almost sure she hadn't heard the question. "Can I get back to you on that?"
---
"It's like falling out of love," Donna said suddenly. "That's what this is like. You ever been in love before Tom?"
Martha nodded, silent.
"You know what's it's like, then, when you're falling out of love. And most of the time, right, you're fine. You've moved on, you're you, you've got the whole bloody world in front of you. And then something happens, you hear a song or you see a spider or something, and you're back there, so not over them it's not even funny, and your whole world's changed. You're still you, but you're not alone in your head any more, because everything you see is about them, and everything you do is about them, and--" Donna broke off. "Yeah. It's like that. I should've let him do this. He loves doing the analogies."
---
"You said 'them'," Martha remarked. "Earlier, you said 'them'."
Donna gave her a Look. "You what?"
"You said, 'You're so not over them it's not funny.' Not 'him', but 'them'."
There was a pause. Donna fiddled with her [plot point]. "Yeah, well. I was young once."
---
"Do you know how he felt about us?" Martha asked, not looking at Donna. "Can you access that bit?"
"No," Donna lied. "Sorry." She bumped Martha's shoulder with hers. "But I know how he feels about us."
"Yeah?" Martha asked, faking casual not well at all.
"Yeah," said Donna. Sometimes she felt younger than Martha, that extra year of life worth ten of Donna's, and sometimes, like now, she felt much older. "He loves us, Martha. He does. He's a big, stupid, soft idiot with two hearts that need filling, and we're in there. We are."
---
"You're dying," Martha blurted. "You're dying."
Donna nodded slowly, almost embarrassed. "Yeah. Sorry."
===
===
Lots of spoilers for seasons three and four.
Warnings: None ( see policy)
===
===
"This," said Martha with flourish that didn't sit quite right with her spare, quick movements, "is a TARDISH."
Donna looked at it more closely. It looked more like one of those old-fashioned double bikes you saw on films. A tandem. A voice in the back of her head started singing, 'Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.'
"It travels through Time And Relative Dimensions In Space," Martha explained. "Hopefully."
===
===
Oxford, 1859
They stepped out of the TARDISH onto soft, green grass. They were in some sort of huge court, walled by beautiful stone buildings. Martha smiled to herself. Right place, at least.
"Oxford," she said. "Christ Church College, Tom Quad. With any luck, we're somewhere in the 1860s."
"How can you tell?" Donna asked, but she was gaping at the architecture with gratifyingly large eyes.
Martha took the handlebars of the TARDISH, and motioned for Donna to grab the frame. "We need to move this off the grass. Now."
"Why? Does it react badly with grass? Does it need to be kept out of the sun? Is it going to start sinking?"
"No," said Martha, nodding at the far gate. "But otherwise those men over there in bowler hats are going to come and shout at us, and that's always annoying. On three."
On three, they lifted the tandem up and moved it onto a gravel path.
"We're here to see Charles Dodgson," Martha said. "Holder of the Christ Church lectureship in mathematics. He's--"
"No," said Donna, holding up her hand. "Don't tell me. I want to see if I can do this on my own." She closed her eyes, screwing up her face in concentration. After a moment, she started biting her lip. "Ooh, I think I've got it. What was the name?"
"Charles Dodgson. But he's--"
"No!" Donna grinned, excitement and disbelief chasing each other across her face. "That? Is amazing."
"Yeah." Martha grinned back.
"No."
"Yeah."
"Oh my god," said Donna. "We're really going to meet him? We're going to meet--"
"Yeah."
"We're going to meet the Frankenstein?"
Martha blinked. "Um."
Now would be an excellent time to start studying her fingernails. There was something caught under one, maybe she could get it out before anyone noticed.
"Nah, just kidding. Lewis Carroll, here we come!"
===
Torchwood liked to take the idea of offsite backup very, very seriously, Martha explained as they trapsed around the old stone buildings looking for Professor Dodgson's rooms. Anything big enough and bad enough to destroy the onsite data was probably big enough and bad enough to destroy most of the world.
"Modest, aren't you?" Donna interrupted.
So they needed to put the data far out of harm's way, somewhere that spanned enough time, enough history and enough weirdness that a little more couldn't hurt.
Martha let her hand trail along one of the walls, the rough stone strangely comforting. Through one of the windows, she could see a skeleton, the sign of a medical student. The way its arm had been raised in a jaunty salute didn't make it look more friendly; in this day and age, that would be a real person's bones.
"There's only one problem," Martha said, stopping to peer up an unlit staircase. It twisted in on itself, with shadows inching their way out of the darkness like they didn't want to make the first move.
"Of course there is." Donna tapped her head. "There's a lot in here about Torchwood. Go on then, what do we have to do? Sacrifice a Dithri kittenplant with an aluminium penknife to unlock the abDNA-imprinted encryption key?"
Martha tried to give her a quelling look. There was a lot to quell with Donna, even when they weren't stumbling round an Oxford college, trying to find just where Torchwood had thrown their needle in this particular haystack. "No. It's just-- It's still in the experimental stage."
"Right. Of course."
"But it's fine," Martha said, doing her best to sound reassuring. "Nothing can--"
"No," said Donna. "Don't tell me nothing can go wrong."
Martha gave her another look. "I was going to say: nothing can be as bad as doing this accompanied by the Doctor's cheerfully off-key singing."
Donna tilted her head, a smile flickering on and off almost too fast to see. "Yeah. I'll give you that."
"Oi!"
They looked across the vast expanse of immaculately kept lawn to see a man in a bowler hat waving at them. "You!"
Less of a wave and more of a threatening gesture, really. The sort of imperious command that made Martha think back to being John Smith's maid. She kept him in her sights while letting out a quiet mutter. "Run?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Donna's smile. "Nah, just let me try something, first."
Martha itched for a gun.
"Oi!" Donna shouted, just as imperious. "You! Come here!" Then, to Martha, she whispered, "If he stands his ground, we run. If he comes, we stand our ground. And if-- Oh yes."
The man -- more of a boy, really, Martha could see now in his hesitant movements -- was stumbling towards them across the pebbled path. Across, Martha noted, not along. Any second now, he was going to hit the lawn, and--
"What the bleeding hell do you think you are doing, my boy?" Donna shouted, so firm Martha had to fight down the urge to apologise herself. "Do you think that lawn was made for the likes of you to go trampling across it on a whim?" She pronounced the last like a dirty word.
"Keep it down," Martha offered, watching the boy change course like he'd never even thought of touching grass. "Someone might come out to watch the show."
Donna folded her arms across her chest, the very image of an unimpressed ward sister. "Yeah? Better make it a good one, then, hadn't I?"
There was no arguing with that tone of voice. "How did you know that would work, anyway?"
"I didn't. Where's the fun in that?"
Martha felt herself tense. "You sure you're keeping the DoctorDonna behind lock and key?"
The boy was now in the same line of sight as Donna, so Martha was treated to a clear view of Donna's wince.
"Name?" Donna barked.
With one final, appealling glance at the other side of the lawn, the boy accepted he was in this alone. "Groats, miss. Terry Groats."
"Groats," Donna said to herself. "Groats. Ring a bell, does it, Jones?"
Martha scowled, not entirely for effect. There would be words, later. "Couldn't say, miss."
"Whose job, Groats, was it to keep that tidy?" Donna said, pointing at a beautifully kept flower bed.
Groats made a show of peering at it, then at her. "The gardeners', miss," he said. "And who might you be?"
"Not that." Donna held her finger out in the same direction. "Any fool can see that is in perfect order. The path."
The path was just as neat as the flower bed, but the harmonics in Donna's voice would have made the Doctor apologise. And mean it.
"Um," said Groats.
"Yes. Quite. Well, I think you'd better come with us then, hadn't you?"
===
"Look, I'm sorry," Donna hissed as soon as Terry was safely out of earshot, scurrying up some endless spiral of stairs to announce them to Lewis bloody Carroll.
"Yeah, well," Martha said. She looked like she was forcing herself to relax, ready -- and what was worse, waiting -- to spring into action.
Donna sighed. "No, I am."
She watched Martha peer up the stairwell. The lad would take his time, Donna knew, a petty victory over some big-for-her-boots scullery maid -- or whatever, who knew what he thought she was? -- who just happened to have the upper hand for now. She hoped the diversion didn't give him the chance to do some thinking.
"Yeah? Well maybe you could tell me something, then," Martha said, her voice a little harder than it had been before.
The tell-tale sound of Terry's boots came thumping down the stairwell. Honestly, give a man a bowler hat... It's almost as bad as giving him a screwdriver.
"Better make it quick."
"What's it like?" Martha asked. "Really?"
Donna took a breath, only letting it out when Terry's hat, followed in short order by the rest of him, appeared. "Can I get back to you on that?"
"He'll see you now," Terry said, ducking his head just a little too pointedly for Donna's liking. Still, give Martha five minutes with Mr Alice In Wonderland himself, and they'd have protection from all the trouble any jumped up bowler hat could cause them.
Hopefully.
===
"And wuh-what can I d-d-d-"
A stutter. No one had warned Donna about a stutter. She felt her hearts-- her heart clench. Was that it, then? Doomed forever to go weak at the knees whenever a man couldn't say his own name?
"--do for you?" Lewis Carroll himself finished. He did not sound like a man ready and waiting to hand over anything.
Martha sprang into action, all smooth talk and firm handshakes, letting Donna have a moment to take in the room.
How he could find anything in this mess, she didn't know. Give her two days -- make it four, she amended, spotting the piles of papers lurking like guilty children under his desk -- and she could have this sorted. But no, she'd seen his type before. It was all right for some, filing, but you got enough letters after your name and suddenly you had a System, and no jumped up temp with a lip on her was going to ruin that just because she knew her alphabet.
"--always been fascinated by your work," Martha was saying. "Your treatment of determinants is so enlightening."
"Wuh-women d-d-d-d- can't normally understand my work," he said. "Huh-haven't the training."
"Oh," said Martha, gleam in her eye, "I've got the training, all right."
For a man with no chin, the look he was giving Martha was surprisingly piercing. "Fuh-foreign, are you?"
"Your thoughts on the parallel postulate, Professor Dodgson, have reached my home country."
He nodded to himself. "Fuh-funny, that. They seem not to have reached my students."
Martha gave him a sympathetic shrug. "Tell me about it. I can't even get my lot to remember the first four axioms, let alone question the fifth."
As she'd been talking, Martha had casually moved them so his back was to Donna. She took advantage of this to mouth to Martha, What?
Martha rolled her eyes, then let her gaze flick briefly to the desk. Oh. Right. Donna started inching towards it, trying not to step on any of the papers littering the floor.
"D-d-d-d-delighted to meet you," Alice-boy said, extending his hand to Martha. "Miss--?"
"Doctor Jones," Martha said.
Carroll hummed and hahhed to himself for a minute, then turned to Donna. "And who, may I ask, is the charming young lady so stealthily approaching my d-d-d-d-desk?"
Donna didn't blush. She didn't. "Donna Noble," she said, holding out her hand. "And may I just say what a wonderful experience it is to meet you?"
"Hmm," he said. "Yes." He didn't take her hand. "Refreshing of you not to make a pun."
Behind him, Martha winced.
"But fuh-for all your justifiable interest in my wuh-work, I can tell by your outlandish clothes you are not here for that."
"Yes," said Martha quickly. "We--"
"I know, I know. You're here about the d-d-d-d-"
Donna nodded encouragement. "The device? The data? The dashing Captain Jack?"
The look he gave her could have frozen lava. "The d-deaths."
===
Jack had done a whole day training session on Dodgson's work, just in case anyone had to do what Martha was doing right now. Well, he'd tried, anyway. The first two times they'd been saved by alien invasion, and the third he'd given up in disgust, complaining it was so far beneath 51st century maths it was like trying to program a computer with an abacus. A broken abacus. With no beads.
At that point, Ianto had taken over.
Nineteenth century Britian was basically, he pointedly hadn't said, the Torchwood of the mathematical world. No one could say they didn't try, and occasionally even get results, but nothing was ever that useful, and the only people convinced of its importance were other nineteenth century British mathematicians. When they needed anything really important or interesting done, they had to go begging to some foreign doctor.
Like Torchwood, they were a lot easier to work with if you didn't point this out. It was only that thought that kept Martha from sharing the insight with Donna. The way Dodgson was treating her made Martha bristle; he clearly needed someone to look down on. His work hadn't even been that monumental, when she'd finally bothered to look at it. Nothing like the last Maths For Medics course she took, but once you got used to the arcane language, not that much harder.
===
[...]
===
"They're Carpenter Fish! Clever little creatures, parasitic as hell. They gestate on brain waves, the cleverer the better. Normally found on aquatic worlds, they probably make do with dolphins, here. Sea turtles at a pinch. They need brain waves to gestate, and then once they've popped, they swim out to live their short, happy lives attached to deep-sea plants, leaving behind them no exit wound and a faint, lingering euphoria. Nothing could be simpler. They're even kept as pets out in Scattaci 3. And controlled substances on Scattaci 5, come to think of it. But with humans, oh, no, that's sad. They pick up on the brain waves, get hooked, and then happily gestate latched inside a muscle somewhere. But when the time comes to get back into the water, they've got to drive you there with them. Oh, oh, and that's when the voices start, I'll bet. Little rhymes telling them to go out into the sea, it's perfectly safe. Nothing but friends here. Then nothing but Carpenters."
===
===
And some other nice snippets, outlining the major plot:
"Do you want my version, or his?" Donna asked.
Martha thought for a moment. "Yours."
"It's basically me telling him to sit down, shut up and let me drive. Only it's not him, it's me and him, the DoctorDonna, and he doesn't like sitting still. That's my version, anyway. You want to hear it from him, too? It's like mine, only with the words 'transducal biopic node' thrown in for no good reason."
---
"What's it like?" Martha asked. "Really?"
Donna was silent for long enough Martha was almost sure she hadn't heard the question. "Can I get back to you on that?"
---
"It's like falling out of love," Donna said suddenly. "That's what this is like. You ever been in love before Tom?"
Martha nodded, silent.
"You know what's it's like, then, when you're falling out of love. And most of the time, right, you're fine. You've moved on, you're you, you've got the whole bloody world in front of you. And then something happens, you hear a song or you see a spider or something, and you're back there, so not over them it's not even funny, and your whole world's changed. You're still you, but you're not alone in your head any more, because everything you see is about them, and everything you do is about them, and--" Donna broke off. "Yeah. It's like that. I should've let him do this. He loves doing the analogies."
---
"You said 'them'," Martha remarked. "Earlier, you said 'them'."
Donna gave her a Look. "You what?"
"You said, 'You're so not over them it's not funny.' Not 'him', but 'them'."
There was a pause. Donna fiddled with her [plot point]. "Yeah, well. I was young once."
---
"Do you know how he felt about us?" Martha asked, not looking at Donna. "Can you access that bit?"
"No," Donna lied. "Sorry." She bumped Martha's shoulder with hers. "But I know how he feels about us."
"Yeah?" Martha asked, faking casual not well at all.
"Yeah," said Donna. Sometimes she felt younger than Martha, that extra year of life worth ten of Donna's, and sometimes, like now, she felt much older. "He loves us, Martha. He does. He's a big, stupid, soft idiot with two hearts that need filling, and we're in there. We are."
---
"You're dying," Martha blurted. "You're dying."
Donna nodded slowly, almost embarrassed. "Yeah. Sorry."
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