[Fic - Doctor Who] A Room Without Windows (4/12)
Yeah! Look! I got some fic up! :D
No, it is not an April Fool's joke.
Previous Chapters
Prologue: Ghost Stories
Chp. 1: Normality and Eccentricity
Chp. 2: The Loveliest Old Shop Straight Out of Dickens
The Story So Far...
The Doctor and Martha, having mistakenly landed in 1960, are hot on the trail of something that is causing all the words in books to disappear. This leads them to Frank Doel, an old acquaintance of the Doctor and an antiquarian book expert, who tells them that the only books that haven't vanished are those of a mathematician named Robert Timms. Intrigued by this the Doctor buys a copy of Timms' latest effort and our intrepid adventurers head off to find an erstwhile mathematician...
Thanks to my lovely beta and Brit picker, bananasandroses as, without her, I would be abysmally American and spelling things incorrectly. :)
Chapter 3: Strange Bedfellows
They looked over the house and wondered why it was so large for a professor. The Doctor opened the book to the back again and, reading what Martha now recognised as the biography section that the publisher tacked on, remarked that Robert Timms' parents had been quite comfortably off. For a moment Martha wondered aloud if it actually said that in the book, or if it was something he already knew for some nebulous reason. Perhaps, however, the gigantic house provided clues enough. He ignored her and knocked on the door, but some minutes passed and no-one came to answer.
"Maybe he's out," Martha suggested reasonably.
"He's not," the Doctor said firmly. He stooped to examine the hinges of the door and Martha wondered if he was contemplating breaking in. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
"Why did you say no one should be interested in this Timms yet?"
The Doctor, shifting back and forth, eyed the door before answering.
"Well, he's the first human to prove the Riemann's Hypothesis. But his work on it inexplicably doesn't appear until about 300 years from now in the archival system of Maldavarios - dull world, that. Don't know why anyone would purposefully end up in Maldavarios unless you wanted to die of boredom. Certainly no twentieth-century human should, at any rate. But, that aside, this interest in Robert Timms has come entirely too early… Before he's even done anything, I'll venture."
The Doctor tried knocking again and, this time, after a short while, the door cracked open. The dim light from the interior of the house revealed a woman with a thin, pale face framed by a mass of ginger-coloured curls. Before even speaking a word, she looked them over suspiciously and did not so much as move towards opening the door any wider.
"May I help you?"
Her tone, even with her lilting Irish accent, certainly didn't betray any indication that she would actually help them with anything they asked about. This, of course, didn't faze the Doctor in the least, as he, all smiles, brought out his psychic paper and asked, "Is Professor Timms in? I do hope he got my letter regarding my visit…He's the only one who would know what to do with this part of my research…"
For once, even the Doctor failed to open either metaphorical or literal doors. The woman's sharp blue eyes looked over the documentation and then re-appraised the pair in front of her, lingering for a while on Martha. Her expression turned increasingly sour.
"I've had no letter. And no word from Professor Timms, either. And you've had a bad run of luck as he's not in. If you'll leave your names - "
"I'm the Doctor and this is my research assistant, Miss Martha Jones. Professor Timms and I spoke about this at a conference we both attended…although it is very distressing that my letter has been mislaid…"
"Doctor…?" The woman inquired warily.
"John Smith," he added with the slightest bit of impetuousness.
The woman did not seem impressed or convinced. In fact, it appeared as if she was on the verge of shutting the door in their faces when someone on the inside called out.
"Brigit! Have you seen my tie?"
Martha raised an eyebrow.
"Sounds like Professor Timms is in to me."
Brigit pursed her lips together tightly, as footsteps advanced towards the door.
"Oh bother…" a voice floated out, "it's vanished again." The footsteps quickened as if the unseen man had noticed something. "Brigit…is that someone at the door?"
There was the sound of the bolt sliding open, and the door swung open to reveal a man in his late-twenties, with dark brown, wavy hair, and thick-rimmed glasses. He had a dreamy, distracted quality about him as he looked his visitors over.
"Oh, hello." He said to them at a length. He blinked and then adjusted his glasses, as if clearer vision would instantly reveal the identities of his guests. "Who are you?"
"Says he's from that conference. He's doing research and you offered him a place to stay. And she - " Brigit jabbed a finger in Martha's direction, " - Is his 'assistant.'" Her voice was dripping with ill-concealed scepticism.
The Doctor was still undaunted. "You got my letter?" he asked brightly, "About my visit?"
"We've hit quite a snag in our research on prime number theory," put in Martha, acting in her role as research assistant and plastering on a smile despite the woman's dubious expression. The Doctor shot her a quizzical look. "Very…happy, that prime number theory," she added quickly.
Timms blinked again, seemingly unable to really focus on either of them.
"No letter. But," he squinted at the Doctor again, "…I do believe I remember you. Ah yes, that conference in Bath…the panel on recreational mathematics."
"Yes! Bath! I do love Bath," the Doctor exclaimed earnestly. "And Prime Numbers." He gave Martha another bemused sidelong look.
Looking at them again for a moment, Timms seemed to remember that some sort of action was called for.
"Well, Brigit," he said, in a distracted tone of voice, "no use leaving them out in the cold. Have them in and bring them to the back bedroom, I promised him some accommodations -"
"And that's all we can offer you here in the way of accommodations," snapped Brigit.
Her employer simply looked a little startled and continued, "Ah yes, we're not terribly used to entertaining, but I'm certain Brigit can manage a nice cup of tea before she moves on to her other duties."
He welcomed them in and, taking a tenuous sort of charge, Brigit raised her eyebrows and asked pointedly, "Bags, sir?" eyeing her employer who, in the dim light of the entrance hall, looked like his mind had wandered off to wherever it had been previously.
The Doctor strode in as if he owned the place, and Martha followed.
"We're travelling terribly lightly, I'm afraid," he quipped.
Martha nodded at Brigit as she passed.
"Just popped in for some advice, really."
The housekeeper shot her employer another contemptuous look, which he missed altogether. Rather, he just said, "And, Brigit, if you will help me to find that tie before, well, before you -"
"I know, sir." She cut him off, before marching towards a long, dark hallway, and gesturing brusquely to her guests to follow. They passed a number of doors, before arriving at one at the end of a long corridor, which Brigit opened without ceremony and herded them both through.
"The toilet is the door across the hall," she said loudly, "You have no other need to go wandering about." She fixed the Doctor with a look, narrowing her eyes until she looked quite cat-like, and said with quiet intensity: "I don't know who you are, sir-"
"Doctor, actually," the Time Lord interrupted evenly.
"-but I will be watching every move you make here."
"Well, I hope I come up with some interesting tricks to watch, then, for your sake."
Her face flushing scarlet with anger, Brigit swept from the room, slamming the door behind her.
"Friendly woman, that," commented Martha, looking at the door with disgust.
"A martinet with many duties, evidently," said the Doctor, who flopped onto the only bed in the room. "It's a lucky thing for us, however, that her employer has a notoriously poor memory for anything outside of mathematics."
He paused for a moment, stretching out.
"Martha, did you notice that this house has many, many closed doors?"
Thinking it over, she couldn't recall that she had seen even one door open in the entire house…in fact, there was just a feeling of restlessness that pervaded every corner and floor board in it. But it could simply be that the place was old and there was a simple explanation for it all.
"It could just be heating…it is winter here, Doctor."
This was, evidently, an answer he hadn't considered. Heating was probably too much of a human concern for him…
"Could be…That's the problem with being a time traveller, you can go from summer on the Planet Vegnoss - which is rather nasty and hot, Vegnoss being filled with rather nasty and hot volcanoes - to winter in 1960s London and forget to pay your inordinately expensive heating bill somewhere in between." He frowned thoughtfully, "This is why I am glad I don't have a proper domestic-y house - all the creditors would be after me constantly…"
He crossed his arms behind his head, thinking.
"There is one way we can tell if it is heating that keeps the doors closed…"
Martha grinned, knowing exactly where this discussion was going.
"We're just going to have to open them…preferably when the overly suspicious housekeeper does not have her beady eyes on our every move."
***
When Brigit had brought them the requisite cup of tea -"Not even with cream and sugar," the Doctor noted sadly, looking down into his cup in disappointment. "'Unfriendly' is not the word…'Cruel,' maybe? - she had tersely told them that dinner would be served no later than five o'clock and that they were not to move from that room without her express permission until such a time.
This ultimatum didn't perturb either of them, as they had been running around two cities for the better part of the day and so they took it as a mandate to sit for a few hours. The Doctor gave up his place on the bed and instead claimed a position on the window seat, apparently thinking and observing the back garden of the house. After all of the day's events, Martha thought he looked rather strange simply sitting there, silhouetted against the late afternoon light, in a state of relative inactivity.
As a reflex to stave off boredom, she plucked a copy of Alice in Wonderland from between an unread - but nonetheless impressive-looking - edition of Great Expectations and a well-loved copy of Principia. Alice did not provide her with much amusement, however, as she and all her cohorts had evidently been sucked down a rabbit hole and the resultant blankness utterly dampened Martha's reading spirits.
The Doctor saw this and, turning away from his silent reverie, remarked "Curiouser and curiouser, that GBUTMOWB" with more than a touch of amusement.
Giving up, Martha attempted to nap, although thoughts from the day kept her mind whirring and consequently found herself unable to sleep. Sometimes, still feigning sleep, she would observe her companion through half closed eyes and wonder where his thoughts were taking him. Maybe, in his head, he was on another world, in another time, with another-
Martha did not allow herself to complete this last thought, and turned away from him sharply, squeezing her eyes shut and willing some light form of sleep her way. She had just managed to find herself in the murky territory between sleeping and wakefulness when a sharp knock on the door brought her bolt upright.
Brigit opened the door and walked in, not so much as pausing for permission from the room's occupants.
"Dinner," she announced imperiously, before turning around without another word and marching back the way she had come.
The Doctor hopped up from his seat at the window and, lamenting the fact that humans had such a biology that made them sleep half their existence away, waited for Martha to join him before they made their way out into the dim hallway with its many firmly closed doors. This time, suddenly aware of the strange feeling the hall seemed to give off, Martha felt as if tiptoeing through it would be more appropriate and might just have done so if the Doctor, not at all affected by the building's atmosphere, not been sauntering along in front of her, humming to himself.
When they came into the brightly-lit dining room, it was like entering another world. They found Robert Timms at the table, listening briefly to a news report on the radio, although he looked like he was trying to listen to something beyond the room itself. He turned the programme off when he noticed them and, absentmindedly, waved for his guests to seat themselves.
"I hope your room is to your liking," he said formally.
"Oh, lovely," answered the Doctor, settling into his chair.
"Yes, lovely," Martha agreed, with a lesser degree of enthusiasm, "Thank you."
Brigit came in and heaved a steaming boiled chicken onto a waiting trivet in the middle of the table. Timms thanked her without looking up and turned to his guests.
"I was just hearing about this affair with the books - all the words are disappearing right from between the covers, they say. Something to do with defective ink and insects. Quite mad, really."
"Yes, quite," replied the Doctor, keeping his expression neutral.
"Say, Doctor-" Timms paused, utterly caught up in a thought, "Actually, my apologies but I can't remember your surname for the life of me. I truly am terrible at these things…"
The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say so much as a word, Brigit stepped out with another steaming dish.
"Smith, as you'll remember it, sir." She went about setting down a bowl of peas with painstaking sluggishness. "From your conference."
Timms frowned and looked as if he considered saying something to his housekeeper, but she sensed an oncoming reprimand and quickly retreated back into the sanctity of the kitchen. Seemingly changing his mind, Timms leaned in conspiratorially towards the Doctor.
"Don't mind Brigit, poor girl," he whispered. "She's from Belfast. I can't tell you all the horrors she saw there. It's all left her a bit prickly, it did. But," he continued on in a louder voice, "Tell me about your research."
Once again, the Doctor managed to utterly astound Martha with his frightening capacity to simply make things up as he went along. Maths had never been her favorite subject, but she had done tolerably well in it. However, the conversation that the Time Lord and the Professor were now engaging in was far above anything she had ever studied. Timms, in fact, seemed to be wholly in possession of himself as soon as the Doctor began talking about the complexities and connections between prime numbers and harmonic series, his distracted demeanor replaced by something alert and in command. Even Brigit, who had wandered in to observe her employer under the pretense of clearing some of the plates away, seemed a bit surprised at the change in him. As she passed through on her way back to the long hallway and the bedrooms therein, she even paused for a moment to regard him with a guarded sense of relief.
Martha just tried to nod in the correct places and look very serious in affecting her role, lest anyone realize that, for a research assistant, she wasn't very knowledgeable in her professor's research. But if she knew the Doctor - and by now she hoped she knew at least so much - he could talk enough to cover the ignorance of four or five research assistants. Perhaps more.
"Now, take the magnificent Euler's work," Timms was saying. "There's a way to represent an infinite series like 1/n^x as a product of all the primes -"
His musings were interrupted by the sound of footsteps and, sending the door to the dining room crashing open, Brigit came in, looking frightfully alarmed and yelling.
"Sir! Sir! She's managed to go and do it again and I don't know how, but she's done it again! She can't have. She can't have. She-"
Timms was up in a moment, a look of utter alarm crossing his features, and began quickly making his way towards the hall door. The Doctor exchanged a look with Martha and they both followed him.
In the long hallway, a prism of light was falling from one open door, where all the commotion seemed to be coming from. The Professor entered, Brigit hung back for a moment until her guests arrived, after which she seemed to force herself to go into the room as well.
The Doctor was not quite sure what to make of the scene that greeted him upon following his reluctant hosts into the chamber. In a bedroom with no windows, a woman in a dressing gown had seemingly half tumbled out of her bed. She lay, unmoving, surrounded by beeping and whirring medical equipment. Timms was instantly kneeling at her side, smoothing her scraggly brown hair out of her face.
"Margaret, Margaret…what's happened to you…?"
The woman did not respond in the least to either his touch or his words. She simply lay there, like a twisted rag doll - a tangle of limbs and sheets.
Suddenly aware that his house guests were staring at him, the Professor shouted, "Brigit! Brigit! Do your job and help me!"
Brigit was busying herself at a table off to the side, pulling on a pair of sterilised rubber gloves. Under her breath she was reciting, "Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life…"
"Hang that and help me!" Timms shouted again, attempting to gather the woman in the duvet in order to place her back onto the bed. The housekeeper, wide-eyed and frightened, tried to go on faster with the gloves, making tentative half steps at the same time, mechanically chanting "Holy Mary, Mother of God" but clearly not making much of an effort to get any closer to the prone woman before she was absolutely ready.
The Doctor, perhaps noticing that Brigit didn't really intend to help at all, pushed past her and knelt beside Timms.
"Just - just take the corners of the duvet and we'll get her firmly back on the bed. That's right, Margaret - safe and well."
The Doctor gathered up the corners of the wayward covering and, in a few moments, he and Timms had lifted the woman up onto the bed again. The Professor was straightening out her legs, and the Doctor busied himself by taking one of her hands in order to reposition an awkwardly-bent arm. By this time, Brigit had firmly gotten both gloves on and, regaining a bit more of her previous momentum, shoved the Doctor out of the way and began arranging Margaret on the bed and checking various tubes and readings from the medical instruments.
Martha ran over - and although the equipment was old compared to what she was used to - she discreetly checked all of the readings in order to assure herself that the woman was medically stable.
Brigit suddenly seemed very incensed by the presence of two strangers in the room and, turning to her employer gazed at him with icy certitude.
"Sir," Timms' eyes were still blazing as she addressed him, "I have got a handle on it now. You should take your guests away from here."
"I'll speak to you later, Miss Doyle," he responded with uncharacteristic harshness, "And, Mr. Smith and-" he looked at Martha, but could not come up with her name, Martha said it under her breath but was ignored, "…your assistant…I apologise for the inconvenience. But I think it would be better for you to retire to your room for the night."
Then, taking one more glance at the figure on the bed, he went from the room.
Martha noticed that the Doctor did not immediately follow, but instead was looking at one of his hands with frightening intensity.
"Doctor…?" Martha prompted, mystified by his strange behavior.
It didn't even seem that he had registered that she had spoken to him until, with that same intensity he looked up at her and spoke.
"The smell of burning." He looked from his hand to her, although she had the uncanny feeling that he wasn't really seeing her. "Do you smell that?"
Martha, perplexed at the question, shook her head slowly.
"That would be the white rabbit," said Brigit, so softly, it was almost inaudible. She did not turn around, but continued arranging the limbs of the limp figure on the bed and professionally covering her with a blanket.
The Doctor looked at her with a vague hint of alarm before he turned to leave the room. Martha watched him go before turning back to the woman in the bed.
"Miss Doyle, was it?"
The housekeeper nodded, tucking a sheet firmly in around her patient.
"Thought you might not be got rid of so easily. No matter what he says."
This was what she had been training for - situations like this. Martha knew exactly what she could do.
"I…I want to help. So please, tell me, what is wrong with her…?"
***
Notes: Mathy stuff courtesy of my brilliant friend evilrobot69 who probably would be appalled to know that I have used it for this purpose…
^_^
No, it is not an April Fool's joke.
Previous Chapters
Prologue: Ghost Stories
Chp. 1: Normality and Eccentricity
Chp. 2: The Loveliest Old Shop Straight Out of Dickens
The Story So Far...
The Doctor and Martha, having mistakenly landed in 1960, are hot on the trail of something that is causing all the words in books to disappear. This leads them to Frank Doel, an old acquaintance of the Doctor and an antiquarian book expert, who tells them that the only books that haven't vanished are those of a mathematician named Robert Timms. Intrigued by this the Doctor buys a copy of Timms' latest effort and our intrepid adventurers head off to find an erstwhile mathematician...
Thanks to my lovely beta and Brit picker, bananasandroses as, without her, I would be abysmally American and spelling things incorrectly. :)
Chapter 3: Strange Bedfellows
They looked over the house and wondered why it was so large for a professor. The Doctor opened the book to the back again and, reading what Martha now recognised as the biography section that the publisher tacked on, remarked that Robert Timms' parents had been quite comfortably off. For a moment Martha wondered aloud if it actually said that in the book, or if it was something he already knew for some nebulous reason. Perhaps, however, the gigantic house provided clues enough. He ignored her and knocked on the door, but some minutes passed and no-one came to answer.
"Maybe he's out," Martha suggested reasonably.
"He's not," the Doctor said firmly. He stooped to examine the hinges of the door and Martha wondered if he was contemplating breaking in. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
"Why did you say no one should be interested in this Timms yet?"
The Doctor, shifting back and forth, eyed the door before answering.
"Well, he's the first human to prove the Riemann's Hypothesis. But his work on it inexplicably doesn't appear until about 300 years from now in the archival system of Maldavarios - dull world, that. Don't know why anyone would purposefully end up in Maldavarios unless you wanted to die of boredom. Certainly no twentieth-century human should, at any rate. But, that aside, this interest in Robert Timms has come entirely too early… Before he's even done anything, I'll venture."
The Doctor tried knocking again and, this time, after a short while, the door cracked open. The dim light from the interior of the house revealed a woman with a thin, pale face framed by a mass of ginger-coloured curls. Before even speaking a word, she looked them over suspiciously and did not so much as move towards opening the door any wider.
"May I help you?"
Her tone, even with her lilting Irish accent, certainly didn't betray any indication that she would actually help them with anything they asked about. This, of course, didn't faze the Doctor in the least, as he, all smiles, brought out his psychic paper and asked, "Is Professor Timms in? I do hope he got my letter regarding my visit…He's the only one who would know what to do with this part of my research…"
For once, even the Doctor failed to open either metaphorical or literal doors. The woman's sharp blue eyes looked over the documentation and then re-appraised the pair in front of her, lingering for a while on Martha. Her expression turned increasingly sour.
"I've had no letter. And no word from Professor Timms, either. And you've had a bad run of luck as he's not in. If you'll leave your names - "
"I'm the Doctor and this is my research assistant, Miss Martha Jones. Professor Timms and I spoke about this at a conference we both attended…although it is very distressing that my letter has been mislaid…"
"Doctor…?" The woman inquired warily.
"John Smith," he added with the slightest bit of impetuousness.
The woman did not seem impressed or convinced. In fact, it appeared as if she was on the verge of shutting the door in their faces when someone on the inside called out.
"Brigit! Have you seen my tie?"
Martha raised an eyebrow.
"Sounds like Professor Timms is in to me."
Brigit pursed her lips together tightly, as footsteps advanced towards the door.
"Oh bother…" a voice floated out, "it's vanished again." The footsteps quickened as if the unseen man had noticed something. "Brigit…is that someone at the door?"
There was the sound of the bolt sliding open, and the door swung open to reveal a man in his late-twenties, with dark brown, wavy hair, and thick-rimmed glasses. He had a dreamy, distracted quality about him as he looked his visitors over.
"Oh, hello." He said to them at a length. He blinked and then adjusted his glasses, as if clearer vision would instantly reveal the identities of his guests. "Who are you?"
"Says he's from that conference. He's doing research and you offered him a place to stay. And she - " Brigit jabbed a finger in Martha's direction, " - Is his 'assistant.'" Her voice was dripping with ill-concealed scepticism.
The Doctor was still undaunted. "You got my letter?" he asked brightly, "About my visit?"
"We've hit quite a snag in our research on prime number theory," put in Martha, acting in her role as research assistant and plastering on a smile despite the woman's dubious expression. The Doctor shot her a quizzical look. "Very…happy, that prime number theory," she added quickly.
Timms blinked again, seemingly unable to really focus on either of them.
"No letter. But," he squinted at the Doctor again, "…I do believe I remember you. Ah yes, that conference in Bath…the panel on recreational mathematics."
"Yes! Bath! I do love Bath," the Doctor exclaimed earnestly. "And Prime Numbers." He gave Martha another bemused sidelong look.
Looking at them again for a moment, Timms seemed to remember that some sort of action was called for.
"Well, Brigit," he said, in a distracted tone of voice, "no use leaving them out in the cold. Have them in and bring them to the back bedroom, I promised him some accommodations -"
"And that's all we can offer you here in the way of accommodations," snapped Brigit.
Her employer simply looked a little startled and continued, "Ah yes, we're not terribly used to entertaining, but I'm certain Brigit can manage a nice cup of tea before she moves on to her other duties."
He welcomed them in and, taking a tenuous sort of charge, Brigit raised her eyebrows and asked pointedly, "Bags, sir?" eyeing her employer who, in the dim light of the entrance hall, looked like his mind had wandered off to wherever it had been previously.
The Doctor strode in as if he owned the place, and Martha followed.
"We're travelling terribly lightly, I'm afraid," he quipped.
Martha nodded at Brigit as she passed.
"Just popped in for some advice, really."
The housekeeper shot her employer another contemptuous look, which he missed altogether. Rather, he just said, "And, Brigit, if you will help me to find that tie before, well, before you -"
"I know, sir." She cut him off, before marching towards a long, dark hallway, and gesturing brusquely to her guests to follow. They passed a number of doors, before arriving at one at the end of a long corridor, which Brigit opened without ceremony and herded them both through.
"The toilet is the door across the hall," she said loudly, "You have no other need to go wandering about." She fixed the Doctor with a look, narrowing her eyes until she looked quite cat-like, and said with quiet intensity: "I don't know who you are, sir-"
"Doctor, actually," the Time Lord interrupted evenly.
"-but I will be watching every move you make here."
"Well, I hope I come up with some interesting tricks to watch, then, for your sake."
Her face flushing scarlet with anger, Brigit swept from the room, slamming the door behind her.
"Friendly woman, that," commented Martha, looking at the door with disgust.
"A martinet with many duties, evidently," said the Doctor, who flopped onto the only bed in the room. "It's a lucky thing for us, however, that her employer has a notoriously poor memory for anything outside of mathematics."
He paused for a moment, stretching out.
"Martha, did you notice that this house has many, many closed doors?"
Thinking it over, she couldn't recall that she had seen even one door open in the entire house…in fact, there was just a feeling of restlessness that pervaded every corner and floor board in it. But it could simply be that the place was old and there was a simple explanation for it all.
"It could just be heating…it is winter here, Doctor."
This was, evidently, an answer he hadn't considered. Heating was probably too much of a human concern for him…
"Could be…That's the problem with being a time traveller, you can go from summer on the Planet Vegnoss - which is rather nasty and hot, Vegnoss being filled with rather nasty and hot volcanoes - to winter in 1960s London and forget to pay your inordinately expensive heating bill somewhere in between." He frowned thoughtfully, "This is why I am glad I don't have a proper domestic-y house - all the creditors would be after me constantly…"
He crossed his arms behind his head, thinking.
"There is one way we can tell if it is heating that keeps the doors closed…"
Martha grinned, knowing exactly where this discussion was going.
"We're just going to have to open them…preferably when the overly suspicious housekeeper does not have her beady eyes on our every move."
***
When Brigit had brought them the requisite cup of tea -"Not even with cream and sugar," the Doctor noted sadly, looking down into his cup in disappointment. "'Unfriendly' is not the word…'Cruel,' maybe? - she had tersely told them that dinner would be served no later than five o'clock and that they were not to move from that room without her express permission until such a time.
This ultimatum didn't perturb either of them, as they had been running around two cities for the better part of the day and so they took it as a mandate to sit for a few hours. The Doctor gave up his place on the bed and instead claimed a position on the window seat, apparently thinking and observing the back garden of the house. After all of the day's events, Martha thought he looked rather strange simply sitting there, silhouetted against the late afternoon light, in a state of relative inactivity.
As a reflex to stave off boredom, she plucked a copy of Alice in Wonderland from between an unread - but nonetheless impressive-looking - edition of Great Expectations and a well-loved copy of Principia. Alice did not provide her with much amusement, however, as she and all her cohorts had evidently been sucked down a rabbit hole and the resultant blankness utterly dampened Martha's reading spirits.
The Doctor saw this and, turning away from his silent reverie, remarked "Curiouser and curiouser, that GBUTMOWB" with more than a touch of amusement.
Giving up, Martha attempted to nap, although thoughts from the day kept her mind whirring and consequently found herself unable to sleep. Sometimes, still feigning sleep, she would observe her companion through half closed eyes and wonder where his thoughts were taking him. Maybe, in his head, he was on another world, in another time, with another-
Martha did not allow herself to complete this last thought, and turned away from him sharply, squeezing her eyes shut and willing some light form of sleep her way. She had just managed to find herself in the murky territory between sleeping and wakefulness when a sharp knock on the door brought her bolt upright.
Brigit opened the door and walked in, not so much as pausing for permission from the room's occupants.
"Dinner," she announced imperiously, before turning around without another word and marching back the way she had come.
The Doctor hopped up from his seat at the window and, lamenting the fact that humans had such a biology that made them sleep half their existence away, waited for Martha to join him before they made their way out into the dim hallway with its many firmly closed doors. This time, suddenly aware of the strange feeling the hall seemed to give off, Martha felt as if tiptoeing through it would be more appropriate and might just have done so if the Doctor, not at all affected by the building's atmosphere, not been sauntering along in front of her, humming to himself.
When they came into the brightly-lit dining room, it was like entering another world. They found Robert Timms at the table, listening briefly to a news report on the radio, although he looked like he was trying to listen to something beyond the room itself. He turned the programme off when he noticed them and, absentmindedly, waved for his guests to seat themselves.
"I hope your room is to your liking," he said formally.
"Oh, lovely," answered the Doctor, settling into his chair.
"Yes, lovely," Martha agreed, with a lesser degree of enthusiasm, "Thank you."
Brigit came in and heaved a steaming boiled chicken onto a waiting trivet in the middle of the table. Timms thanked her without looking up and turned to his guests.
"I was just hearing about this affair with the books - all the words are disappearing right from between the covers, they say. Something to do with defective ink and insects. Quite mad, really."
"Yes, quite," replied the Doctor, keeping his expression neutral.
"Say, Doctor-" Timms paused, utterly caught up in a thought, "Actually, my apologies but I can't remember your surname for the life of me. I truly am terrible at these things…"
The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say so much as a word, Brigit stepped out with another steaming dish.
"Smith, as you'll remember it, sir." She went about setting down a bowl of peas with painstaking sluggishness. "From your conference."
Timms frowned and looked as if he considered saying something to his housekeeper, but she sensed an oncoming reprimand and quickly retreated back into the sanctity of the kitchen. Seemingly changing his mind, Timms leaned in conspiratorially towards the Doctor.
"Don't mind Brigit, poor girl," he whispered. "She's from Belfast. I can't tell you all the horrors she saw there. It's all left her a bit prickly, it did. But," he continued on in a louder voice, "Tell me about your research."
Once again, the Doctor managed to utterly astound Martha with his frightening capacity to simply make things up as he went along. Maths had never been her favorite subject, but she had done tolerably well in it. However, the conversation that the Time Lord and the Professor were now engaging in was far above anything she had ever studied. Timms, in fact, seemed to be wholly in possession of himself as soon as the Doctor began talking about the complexities and connections between prime numbers and harmonic series, his distracted demeanor replaced by something alert and in command. Even Brigit, who had wandered in to observe her employer under the pretense of clearing some of the plates away, seemed a bit surprised at the change in him. As she passed through on her way back to the long hallway and the bedrooms therein, she even paused for a moment to regard him with a guarded sense of relief.
Martha just tried to nod in the correct places and look very serious in affecting her role, lest anyone realize that, for a research assistant, she wasn't very knowledgeable in her professor's research. But if she knew the Doctor - and by now she hoped she knew at least so much - he could talk enough to cover the ignorance of four or five research assistants. Perhaps more.
"Now, take the magnificent Euler's work," Timms was saying. "There's a way to represent an infinite series like 1/n^x as a product of all the primes -"
His musings were interrupted by the sound of footsteps and, sending the door to the dining room crashing open, Brigit came in, looking frightfully alarmed and yelling.
"Sir! Sir! She's managed to go and do it again and I don't know how, but she's done it again! She can't have. She can't have. She-"
Timms was up in a moment, a look of utter alarm crossing his features, and began quickly making his way towards the hall door. The Doctor exchanged a look with Martha and they both followed him.
In the long hallway, a prism of light was falling from one open door, where all the commotion seemed to be coming from. The Professor entered, Brigit hung back for a moment until her guests arrived, after which she seemed to force herself to go into the room as well.
The Doctor was not quite sure what to make of the scene that greeted him upon following his reluctant hosts into the chamber. In a bedroom with no windows, a woman in a dressing gown had seemingly half tumbled out of her bed. She lay, unmoving, surrounded by beeping and whirring medical equipment. Timms was instantly kneeling at her side, smoothing her scraggly brown hair out of her face.
"Margaret, Margaret…what's happened to you…?"
The woman did not respond in the least to either his touch or his words. She simply lay there, like a twisted rag doll - a tangle of limbs and sheets.
Suddenly aware that his house guests were staring at him, the Professor shouted, "Brigit! Brigit! Do your job and help me!"
Brigit was busying herself at a table off to the side, pulling on a pair of sterilised rubber gloves. Under her breath she was reciting, "Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life…"
"Hang that and help me!" Timms shouted again, attempting to gather the woman in the duvet in order to place her back onto the bed. The housekeeper, wide-eyed and frightened, tried to go on faster with the gloves, making tentative half steps at the same time, mechanically chanting "Holy Mary, Mother of God" but clearly not making much of an effort to get any closer to the prone woman before she was absolutely ready.
The Doctor, perhaps noticing that Brigit didn't really intend to help at all, pushed past her and knelt beside Timms.
"Just - just take the corners of the duvet and we'll get her firmly back on the bed. That's right, Margaret - safe and well."
The Doctor gathered up the corners of the wayward covering and, in a few moments, he and Timms had lifted the woman up onto the bed again. The Professor was straightening out her legs, and the Doctor busied himself by taking one of her hands in order to reposition an awkwardly-bent arm. By this time, Brigit had firmly gotten both gloves on and, regaining a bit more of her previous momentum, shoved the Doctor out of the way and began arranging Margaret on the bed and checking various tubes and readings from the medical instruments.
Martha ran over - and although the equipment was old compared to what she was used to - she discreetly checked all of the readings in order to assure herself that the woman was medically stable.
Brigit suddenly seemed very incensed by the presence of two strangers in the room and, turning to her employer gazed at him with icy certitude.
"Sir," Timms' eyes were still blazing as she addressed him, "I have got a handle on it now. You should take your guests away from here."
"I'll speak to you later, Miss Doyle," he responded with uncharacteristic harshness, "And, Mr. Smith and-" he looked at Martha, but could not come up with her name, Martha said it under her breath but was ignored, "…your assistant…I apologise for the inconvenience. But I think it would be better for you to retire to your room for the night."
Then, taking one more glance at the figure on the bed, he went from the room.
Martha noticed that the Doctor did not immediately follow, but instead was looking at one of his hands with frightening intensity.
"Doctor…?" Martha prompted, mystified by his strange behavior.
It didn't even seem that he had registered that she had spoken to him until, with that same intensity he looked up at her and spoke.
"The smell of burning." He looked from his hand to her, although she had the uncanny feeling that he wasn't really seeing her. "Do you smell that?"
Martha, perplexed at the question, shook her head slowly.
"That would be the white rabbit," said Brigit, so softly, it was almost inaudible. She did not turn around, but continued arranging the limbs of the limp figure on the bed and professionally covering her with a blanket.
The Doctor looked at her with a vague hint of alarm before he turned to leave the room. Martha watched him go before turning back to the woman in the bed.
"Miss Doyle, was it?"
The housekeeper nodded, tucking a sheet firmly in around her patient.
"Thought you might not be got rid of so easily. No matter what he says."
This was what she had been training for - situations like this. Martha knew exactly what she could do.
"I…I want to help. So please, tell me, what is wrong with her…?"
***
Notes: Mathy stuff courtesy of my brilliant friend evilrobot69 who probably would be appalled to know that I have used it for this purpose…
^_^