Doctor Who - The Tardis #54 Air- "The Ghost of the Machine"

[seal_girl]

Title - The Ghost of the Machine
Author - Sealgirl in
seal_girl
Fandom - Doctor Who
Characters - The TARDIS, Tenth Doctor, Martha Jones
Prompt - #54 Air
Word Count - 2575
Rating - G
Summary - The Doctor and Martha end up in a strange place when the Tardis decides on a brief detour.
AN - Set sometime early in the Third series. Written for the 
spook_me   Halloween challenge, with the prompt “Ghost”.
Continuity - 6/100
Table - Here

The Ghost of the Machine.

There was no one. Nothing. Nowhere. Devoid of change, and thought, I waited.

There was nothing, and then.

And then there was… that sound…

= = =

‘She can have an odd sense of humour sometimes,’ the Doctor said with a light laugh. He patted the TARDIS console in a friendly manner, and grinned at Martha.

‘She didn’t have to send us to a battle,’ Martha replied, scowling back at him. ‘I thought you said Muswell Hill, not the Battle of the Boyne!’

‘Anyone can make a mistake!’

‘Hmm.’

‘It’s not like any harm was done!’

Martha glanced down at her torn jacket then looked back at him. He seemed to realise that that had been the wrong thing to say. He grinned at her, and was faintly annoyed when she found herself grinning back. She stood watching the console pulse for a few minutes, hearing that familiar noise and letting the sound wash through her.

‘So where are we gonna go now?’ Martha asked eventually. ‘What else is there to see today!’

The Doctor regarded her with mild amusement as she spoke.

‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘we’ve just saved the world, yet again, this time from some sort of slimy spiders…’

‘Arachnoids,’ corrected the Doctor.

‘Ok, slimy arachnoids, we’ve waded through mud, we’ve fought robotic snails on a French battlefield. I don’t think there’s anything that can really top that.’

She folded her arms, challenging him to prove her wrong.

‘I see,’ he replied slowly, ‘you’ve have had enough adventuring for one day? You’d like somewhere peaceful? Quiet?’

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I was just hoping for a bath!’

He paused, looking at her with his head cocked slightly to one side.

‘I’ve got it!’ he said quickly. The grin spread across his face until he was positively beaming. ‘How about the beach?’

‘Beach? You want to go to the beach?’

‘Yeah, sand castles, bright sunshine, ice cream. A lovely, warm sea you can swim in for hours… better than a Jacuzzi.’

Martha was wavering, and she knew he could tell. The grin grew even wider, and even more alien and alluring.

‘I know somewhere they have wonderful beaches,’ he said.

‘I thought you might.’ He had an answer for everything.

He didn’t need any more prompting than that, and his hands moved to the controls of the Tardis. With a careless flick of his wrist he set his machine in motion.

‘Will it take long,’ she asked, glancing down at he dirty clothes. ‘Should I change?’

The Doctor considered this for a moment, looking up to the ceiling in that way he did, all boyish charm and childish reserve.

‘Naaah!’ he said. ‘We’re almost there already!’

She looked at him as sceptically as she could, and was trying to think up a suitable riposte when the churning motion of the central column ground to a halt.

The Doctor glowed with brash enthusiasm, and Martha couldn’t help feeling carried away by his attitude; it was infectious.

‘And here we are!’ he said, guiding her to the door and throwing it open with a flourish. ‘The best beach this side of Ursa… M…’

Martha peeped past his shoulder.

They were back on earth; she might not be a seasoned time traveller, but she could recognise her own planet. It felt like her own home planet.
They were in a dusty room, like a forgotten storeroom, except it was empty. There was a strong smell of dustsheets and mouldy wood. The window facing them looked out over an old garden of faded, winter-green, and out past that to wasteland, miles and miles of wasteland. The room itself had a stale, stuffy feeling in it, as if the air hadn’t moved or changed for a very long time.

There was a cold pause.

‘You have got to be kidding me!’ she said, turning to glare at the Doctor. ‘Best beach?’

She turned, expecting to see… she didn’t really know what she had been expecting to see, but the expression unease mixed with vigilance made her stop talking.

He hesitated at the doorway of the Tardis, looking round the room slowly without stepping out. He’d never done that before, and for some reason the gesture left her feeling uneasy.

They stood there for some time, and the Doctor seemed to be listening carefully. Martha hardly dared to breath, trying not to disturb him.

Then he stepped forward and pivoted round to take a better look at the room they were in.

‘Looks like a storage room of some sort,’ he said, popping his glasses on. ‘And no one’s been here for a long, long time… but still...’

‘Is everything ok, Doctor?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you’re not exactly bubbling over with joy, are you!’

‘No,’ he murmured, as if he hadn’t been listening. ‘No, I’m not, am I.’

‘No!’ she said with a huff, and stepped out of the Tardis to join him. ‘Where do you think we are? What time as well?’

‘Difficult to say,’ said the Doctor, tentatively lifting up one of the dustsheets. ‘Mid 20th Century most likely. I wonder why we came here?’

He looked back at the Tardis and frowned. Martha followed his gaze. The Tardis seemed older, if that were possible, as if a thin layer of dust was covering it. Martha almost expected to see the paint peeling off as well.

The feeling of decay made Martha uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to thinking about the Tardis as something that could be changed or destroyed, or damaged in any way. It had always seemed indestructible; so did the Doctor. She tried to take a calming deep breath, but the musty air just made her throat dry and she wanted to cough.

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and twirled it around in his fingers. But he didn’t use it on anything.

Martha waited for a good few minutes, watching the Doctor look around and stare at the various dustcovers and moth-eaten chairs. He made no move to leave, and she was getting cold. But she still waited for him, not interrupting him while he was thinking.

It was difficult to decide what he was doing; thinking seemed to cover it best. But then, he was an alien even though he looked human enough, and maybe he had other senses, and other things to sense as well that she could not.

And all the time she waited she was aware of the great looming blue box behind her.

It seemed to be getting older. She didn’t know how old it was, but the years seemed to be weighing it down. She didn’t notice at first, but slowly her thoughts were drawn to the Tardis until she could think of almost nothing else. She almost reached out to touch its outer surface.  Almost.

Suddenly something seemed to move. Well, move wasn’t quite the right word, but something in the room changed and both Martha and the Doctor felt it. They looked at each other.

‘Did you see that!’ she asked.

‘Not see, sensed,’ the Doctor corrected. ‘There’s something else here.’

When he didn’t move or speak again, Martha felt obliged to ask:

‘Um… maybe… maybe we should just go?’

But that wasn’t what she wanted to do, and she felt that neither the Doctor, or the Tardis wanted that either. It was an odd feeling, and she shivered.

‘I think something’s stuck here,’ said the Doctor at last. ‘That’s why the Tardis brought us.’

‘How would she know?’ asked Martha. ‘You don’t think she’s been here before, do you? Somehow?’

The Doctor shook his head very slowly.

‘No. No I don’t think that’s it. She’s not been here before.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘But something here caught her attention.’

That statement wasn’t said with any great enthusiasm, and Martha’s bad feelings suddenly got worse.

‘Somethings usually aren’t good!’

‘That’s true,’ admitted the Doctor, ‘but not all somethings are bad either.’

Martha wasn’t convinced, but didn’t reply.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Can you hear anything?’

She listened as hard as she could. She stood as still as a statue for over a minute and was about to give up when she did hear something, as clear as if the Doctor had spoken.

‘You hear anything?’

Martha’s breath caught and she looked up to see the Doctor smiling.

‘I can hear someone!’ she said. ‘There’s someone here!’

‘I don’t think it’s a someone, though,’ he told her sombrely.

‘Something?’

He had stopped listening to her to look around again. Martha frowned as a cold shiver ran up her spine. Somethings, alien somethings most likely; all the alien somethins she’d met so far hadn’t been friendly! She sighed, she would have liked to have a bath and a rest before saving the world again.

They waited again, and this time the Doctor flicked on his sonic screwdriver and began pointing it all over the room.

‘What are you looking for?’ Martha asked.

The Doctor mumbled something mostly incomprehensible, but she caught the word “shell”. She stuck her hands in her pocket and gave him a look.

‘You don’t know do you?’

His head snapped up at her comment, but he was smirking.

‘You know, that’s one of the things I like most about you Martha! Always got your eye on the greater picture!’

At first she smiled at the perceived compliment, then it changed into a frown. He hadn’t really said anything! But before she could challenge him on it he let out an “Ah!” of surprise and beckoned her over.

‘Look at this,’ he said. She reached out. ‘No, don’t touch it. Not yet.’

He took her hand gently and held it as they crouched down to get a closer look at the object he’d pointed out.

Sitting on one of the dusty low tables, there was a crystal, about the size of an old ten pence piece, but thicker and with a single hold through the very centre. It was dark, but as she looked it seemed to have something moving inside it, like tiny flecks of dust wafted on the air and sparkling in the sun.

They both peered at it, getting as close as they dared.

‘What is it Doctor?’ Martha whispered.

‘Is it Doctor?’ echoed back to them.

She looked at him in surprise and fear but, to her relief, he seemed to have the faintest smile on his lips. And he hadn’t let go of her hand.

‘Well, you don’t see these any more,’ he said.

‘See these any more.’

She looked at him, her eyebrows raised and her expression asking him the question she didn’t want to say out loud. But her thought echoed round the room anyway.

‘What is it?’

‘A little piece of the past, or the future, depending on how you look at it,’ he said.

‘How you look at it.’

‘And I though the other ones were all gone. Well, they are all gone, but not gone completely. I wonder how this ended up stuck here.’

Martha opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but stopped. There was no echo this time.

The swirling dust seemed to move faster.

‘It’s not talking to us,’ he said, leaning close to whisper in her ear. ‘We need to wait.’

They did, still crouched down together, staring at the small fragment of crystal on the table. She was aware of a growing noise in her head, like the buzz of static from a detuned radio.

Her head began to hurt, as if something way pressing down on it from about. The air grew thick and clogged up her lungs so she couldn’t breath. And time slowed.

In her mind she saw the stars spin like dust, as slowly as the universe could move. She stood there for what seemed like eons, her mind watching the myriads of bright, white dots dancing the dance of Gravity and Death and Time that stretched across the Universe. There was speech too though she couldn’t understand it, talk of great and important things, more important than she could understand and more sorrowful than she could bear.

The Doctor’s grip on her hand grew tighter and infinitely slowly she turned to look at him. There were tears in his eyes.

‘They’re not all powerful,’ he told her, though his lips didn’t seem to move. ‘They are born, they get old, they die. But sometimes, something goes wrong.’ He looked back at the disk on the table. ‘Who knows how long this one has been stuck here, all alone, with no way out.’

Just as the heaviness in her head reached its peak, there was a glow from the disk, and the whole house seemed to sigh. She had to close her eye for a moment. But when she looked back at the table, the ache had gone, the disk was dark, and the sparkle inside it was gone.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘What was that?’

The Doctor looked up to the blue box behind her. When Martha looked, she was relieved to see it looking normal, well as normal as a big blue police box standing in a storeroom could be.

‘What was that?’

The Doctor looked at her, then back to the Tardis and back to her once more. He raised his eyebrows

‘One of… those?’ she muttered in surprise. ‘A Tardis? But…’

He put his fingers to his lips, and stayed still for a moment. Martha guessed he was trying to communicate with his Tardis, but it was difficult to tell. At that moment he looked so unknowable, and so alien. Then he shrugged, in a very human way and the feeling evaporated.

‘She’s not going to tell me,’ he said with a sigh.

He’d explained, of course, about what the Tardis is, and what it does and what it can do. For a while she had been quite unnerved by the knowledge that it could see into her mind. She had never though of it as a real person, the way the Doctor did, not until just now. It could keep its secrets if it wanted to, even from him. How many secrets did it have? What else had it seen and felt and understood?

The Doctor reached down and picked up the crystal disk, gently rolling it round in his hand.

‘This one must have become stuck here somehow,’ he said. ‘Who knows how it came to be torn away from the rest of itself. Who knows…’

‘So is this another actual Tardis?’ she asked.

‘No, I don’t know what happened to the rest of it, but this was just a fragment; an echo of its former self, stuck in this. But now it’s gone. It’s free.’

He turned her hand over and dropped the crystal into it.

‘Right!’ he said suddenly. ‘The beach!’ Reaching out, the Doctor patted the side of the Tardis as if he was petting a faithful dog. ‘Onwards to the beach!’

He disappeared inside.

‘To the beach,’ said Martha.

There was still a multitude of questions unanswered, who had she known, how had she found it? Why here? Why now?

‘You’re not going to tell me, either?’ she murmured. ‘Are you?’

Then Martha smiled. After all, who better to keep secrets, than a Tardis? She took one last look at the room, and at the disk in her hand, then stepped inside and closed the door.

= = =

The End