1x09: The Embers of Alexandria (5/7)
Title: The Embers of Alexandria (5/7)
Author: principia_coh
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Waylaid en route to a holiday, the Doctor and Rose encounter unexpected wonders... and new dangers.
Author’s notes: Thanks to ginamak and leighleighla for their excellent and patient beta work!
Episode 9 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following The Wretched Hive last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
------------------------------------------------------------------
After he and Rose had finished taking thorough stock of the resources available, the Doctor promptly appropriated one of Lén and Miðlara’s cots for his work surface.
He now sat cross-legged on the cot’s thin cushioning, the Stemkowski parent array cradled in his lap, sonicing away. He should be able to boost the granularity of the scans by a factor of 3, at a minimum. If he had a fully-equipped workshop on the TARDIS he could produce more hand-scanners but, frankly, simply upgrading the functionality of the current pair would be a better use of everyone’s time.
“So,” he mentioned casually as Miðlara reached over him to pluck a toolkit off the shelf over the cot, “you’ve already ruled out the Daughter Library at the Serapeum, then?”
“The what?”
“The secondary collection. Housed next to the temple to Serapis in Rhakotis.”
Miðlara cast a can you believe these people? look across the room at Lén.
“I take it,” the Doctor responded dryly, “you’re about to tell me that there’s no such thing here.”
“No, no, there’s not. And thank the Tin Vagabond for small favours-if we had another entire library across the city to be searched we’d have needed three times the manpower and equipment just to be where we are now.”
“Which is still way too close to nowhere,” Lén observed.
“It could be worse. We don’t seem to have aroused the suspicion of any of the local populace,” Miðlara replied crisply, “Besides, we now have the welcome assistance of the Doctor and Rose.”
Rose looked up from her examination of the detailed map of the Library which Lén had provided her and smiled.
“Even if their knowledge of the place and time is a bit dubious,” Miðlara muttered.
“Oi, I heard that!” Rose snapped indignantly. “We did tell you we’d only got here by accident.”
Lén hooted. Rose gave him a dirty look and the man reared back as if he expected a smack. The Doctor suppressed a laugh.
“Yes, yes, of course, forgive me,” Miðlara said in a placating tone. He looked down at the Doctor with an understanding smile then walked over to the nearest table, setting his tools down.
Lén crabbed his way slowly down the main worktable and settled in a new position just out of Rose’s reach, eyeing her warily.
The Doctor caught Rose’s eye and waggled his eyebrows. She smiled brightly, leaned over and gave Lén a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“You two have full logs of what you’ve searched so far?” she asked him.
“Of course. Wouldn’t do to be chasing our tails. Mið’s should be pretty obvious; you want me to show you how to connect to mine?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Lén gestured for the roll and laid it out flat as he took Rose through what seemed to be the entire set of command gestures, taking admirable (and well-advised) care not to come off as condescending.
The Doctor smiled to himself and turned his attention back to the array. With any luck, they should be able to have this done and dusted by the morning, send Messrs Lén and Miðlara on their merry way, and be drinking margaritas by the sea.
Or mulsum by the Great Lighthouse. Same difference.
********************************************************************
One full night of searching through the Library later, Rose was back in the lab looking over her and Mið’s rolls; Lén and the Doctor were still out snooping through the Library. As she reviewed the results of their collective efforts so far, it occurred to her that they might be going about this the wrong way. Maybe they should be trying to figure out a way to determine the contents of all the book-like things in the Library rather than worrying about what they were made of.
“Hallo!”
The Doctor trotted back into the lab with his comm roll in hand, which he immediately tossed to Rose. Not that he’s using it to comm much so far.
Rose had briefly considered fetching her and the Doctor’s phones from the TARDIS when she’d first had the chance to get out of the lab independent of Lén or Mið, but had dismissed the thought as foolishness. There was no reason to get the men’s backs up by using such obviously anachronistic technology, and with them willing to share their comm rolls, why not stick with those instead?
As the Doctor launched into an animated conversation with Mið about tweaking some variance or other, Rose opened the roll to find that the Doctor had-among scribblings, diagrams and calculations-drafted the beginnings of a rota. Rose began transferring the self-explanatory parts to the other rolls and marked the sections she needed to ask the Doctor about.
Mið and the Doctor were now carefully removing the front panel from one of the larger bits of gear on the lab’s shelves. Rose continued moving through the Doctor’s copious notes, marvelling at how he could’ve found the time to actually look for anything while getting all this down. A picture popped into her head of the Doctor splayed out between a shelf and a table, sonic in his mouth, holding a scroll up for examination in one hand and jotting down notes on the roll with the other.
Rose tried to keep the merriment out of her voice, with limited success. “Doctor, when you’re free, could you come and have a look at this?”
“Sure,” he said distractedly from where he and Mið had their heads bowed over the panel, “be right there.”
Rose waited patiently and continued combing over the Doctor’s results, until he was apparently satisfied with whatever direction Mið’s efforts were going in and came over to talk to her.
“How may I be of assistance, Ms?” he asked saucily, if not a little tiredly.
Rose glanced over to Mið to make sure he was still engaged in his task. “I’m thinking that we might be better off taking a slightly different approach to all this, but I’m not sure that it’s feasible with what we have on hand.”
The Doctor looked over her shoulder at her handwritten queries on his roll. “Hmm, I see what you mean. We might have something around that could help a bit in that respect.”
“A bit?”
“It wouldn’t be a complete solution, but needs must, eh?”
Mið set the panel down a bit loudly, his nose wrinkling. “I’ll just be in here if you need anything in the next few minutes.”
He stepped into the large wardrobe that Rose had first thought would’ve been used to haul the lab’s equipment, but was in reality a space-age loo. It wasn’t bigger on the inside, much to the Doctor’s disappointment.
The Doctor waited a moment, then plucked his sonic out and turned it to an old, familiar setting-the one Rose knew would inaudibly thwart most listening devices.
“Our TARDIS can do most of the types of scans you’re suggesting, but differentiating and translating the content of all the books in the Library at a pop is still rather beyond her capabilities, more’s the pity. Good thought, though.”
“How are you going to get back to her?”
The Doctor smirked. “Nip off while dear Miðlara is still reading the newspaper.”
Rose gasped theatrically and batted the Doctor’s arm. He grinned and scooped up his comm roll from the table.
“Back in a jiff. You’ll barely have time to miss me.”
“I expect a thorough report, Doctor.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
He gave her a quick salute with the rolled-up papyrus, then sauntered out the door.
Smart arse.
********************************************************************
“Doc, what adjustment did you say I needed to make to the refractor?” Lén called from across the lab.
Doc. Some of his previous selves would’ve stomped off in a huff at being called that even the once, crisis or no crisis; he supposed he had Jack to thank for ridding him of that particular idiosyncrasy.
“You lot using synthetic eutectometers or diffusionless actuators?”
Lén snorted. “How would I tell the difference?”
“Blue or green?”
“Um, it’s magenta. I think.”
The Doctor frowned. “And cylindrical? That sounds like a tritonic metastabiliser. You sure about that? Let me see.”
The Doctor laid down the array and walked over to have a look. He pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They’d been at this latest round of upgrades for eleven hours straight now, and it was worrying him how much he was feeling the effects. The day was when he could’ve been working a week straight without stopping and it wouldn’t have much bothered him. Not that they had that luxury. He was acutely aware of the lights on the temporal ossification meter flitting away in the background, and the resultant ever-shifting dissonant whistles that came off Lén and Mið’s recall units were starting to give him an ache right between the eyes. It would hardly do to go telling either of them that, though-the feedback from the TOM was pitched well out of the range of human hearing.
He shot out a puff of breath as he peeked into Lén’s machine. This TCC that Lén and Miðlara worked for (or with, on behalf of their government; the Doctor still wasn’t entirely clear on that distinction) were still using tritonic alignment systems and here they were fighting their own miniature time war. The Doctor wondered how much of their time travel technology the Earth of Lén and Miðlara’s era properly understood and how much of it was received knowledge.
None of the answers that sprang immediately to mind were especially comforting.
“Yep, that’s one of them, alright.”
Rose glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, not in the least bit fooled by his artificially chipper tone. She gave him a softly encouraging smile. She still had faith in his ability to resolve this situation without so much as a blip in history, bless her.
He wished he had the same.
“Tell you what, Lén, let’s close that up for right now and I’ll take a quick run to our... equipment locker to see if there’s anything I can scrounge up. I could do with the stretch of my legs.”
Lén and Mið both looked pleasantly surprised. “Hey, Doc, that’d be great, thanks.”
Rose straightened up from the table as if to go with him and the Doctor mouthed no over the top of Lén’s head. She looked bemused but nodded once with a quick dip of her chin and he knew he could be on his way, with Rose staying behind to keep an eye on the proceedings. He hesitated for a moment-perhaps he oughtn’t be leaving her outnumbered two to one-but the Doctor was fairly certain if they were going to have done anything foolish it would have been well before now.
He smiled and waggled his fingers at the three before stepping back through the perimeter of the perception filter’s field, then briskly walked away from the threshold. A quick backwards glance told him he wasn’t being followed. Once he was out of earshot, the Doctor broke into a run.
********************************************************************
Rose looked up from the roll she’d been using to plot out the best way to cover the remaining sections of the Library-it was possible that the Doctor might come back from his latest trip to the TARDIS with some whiz-bang bit of gadgetry that would suddenly render her efforts moot, but their TARDIS didn’t have the stockpile of random tech from all over spacetime that the original did. She used to tease the Doctor about the TARDIS serving as his glorified junk drawer, but it was times like these that she would’ve been delighted to go rummaging through some decrepit bins for just the thing they needed to save the day.
She was a little surprised the Doctor hadn’t yet wanted her to go with him, but Rose considered it a sign that his appreciation of her abilities was continuing to grow, that he’d been leaving her here to watch over Lén and Mið. Not that there was much watching to do. It turned out Lén had a pregnant wife, and that he hadn’t been having a laugh at Mið when he’d called him “the professor.” Neither of these men wanted to jeopardise the futures they had waiting for them at home.
She sighed and stood up straight, stretching, then meandered over to the rationer. Once the Doctor had persuaded it to dispense what he and Rose considered a proper cuppa, she’d been availing herself at regular intervals-when she was actually in the lab and not out scouring the stacks along with Lén or Mið.
“Mið, do we have any more of the Thiruvanan circuits?” Lén asked as he dashed off the query on his comm roll. It was more efficient to keep everyone in the loop as much as possible, and Rose had quickly persuaded both the men to start reading their exchanges out loud when here in the lab, no matter how daft it might make them feel.
After a moment, he read, “If you didn’t see it on the shelves earlier, probably not. We didn’t have that many to begin with.”
Lén turned to Rose. “Y’all wouldn’t happen to have any in your supplies, would you?”
The younger man’s Southern American accent had got more pronounced as first the hours and then days had passed, and Rose wasn’t sure whether it was a sign of his fatigue or an increasing comfort level with her and the Doctor. For that matter, the accent itself might have been an affectation of the TARDIS’ translation circuits to begin with. At any rate, it was rather endearing.
“I, I don’t know. I’d have to ask the Doctor. And he’s left his comm roll.”
Rose and Lén both looked to where the Doctor had left his faux scroll on the table near her.
“Damn, I guess we should’ve sent him back out with it.”
“You’re right, should’ve thought of that first. Next time.”
“It’s okay, we can just ask him when he gets back. Maybe let you get outta here for a few minutes. Hate having to keep you cooped up in here all day.”
Lén might be sorry that she had to stay hidden during the Library’s hours of business (after all, it wouldn’t do for a woman to be caught rooting around in the stacks), but Rose felt terrible for him and Mið. Time travel wasn’t anything they did for fun-they were both researchers who’d been drafted into this particular bit of the war effort for their expertise in this period of Earth’s history and its languages. And both men knew that even if (when, dammit) they succeeded, their war might be far from over.
What the Doctor was playing at by leaving his comm roll behind was another matter altogether. She was going to have to have a word when he got back.
Rose gave Lén a faint smile and sipped at her tea. Keep calm and carry on, Tyler.
********************************************************************
Miðlara Pembekuan, 83/3 Domitianus LR
LOG 29
Lén Matagal and I continue our mission to locate the documents secreted within the collection of the Great Library of Alexandria.
We have made much progress in winnowing down the potential locations of the illicit manuscripts, thanks in no small part to a pair of fellow time travellers who have exerted considerable efforts to assist us, as outlined in greater detail in my last three logs.
If anything, the pair seem even more invested in the complete achievement of our mission goals than either Dr Matagal or myself, something I had not imagined possible. I must admit that with the addition of their expert aid, I regard success to be within our reach, possibly for the first time since shortly after our arrival.
The pair of travellers claim that they did not intend to arrive at this location and time, and given the faulty knowledge they have expressed of the era, a few scenarios suggest themselves.
I am reminded as I check the temporal ossification meter that despite our enhanced capabilities we are now within a54,7 of threshold and thus I must bring this entry to a close.
I am aware of the reportage requirements for all extratemporal contacts and will see it to it that both Dr Matagal and I fulfil them when we return.
/LOG ENDS
********************************************************************
The Doctor practically flew back into the lab, arms full of things Rose figured he’d likely just had stored in his pockets. His disappearing acts had become almost routine at this point; even now that they were each carrying their comm roll at all times, Rose could tell he’d gone back to the TARDIS every time his instructional chatter across the rolls slowed down or ceased altogether.
Mið looked up at the clatter of the objects scattering across the main work table, then quickly went back to his retooling work. Lén was still out in the stacks, even at this hour, and Rose was getting ready to rejoin the effort. The team’s previous avoidance of any actions that might draw the attention of the locals had become an extravagance they could no longer afford.
It was taking too sodding long to find the manuscripts. Lén and Mið seemed almost afraid of the TOM, and even the Doctor had failed to slow down long enough to explain precisely how to decipher its output. Good thing, then, that she’d had plenty of practise with the system the gizmo had derived its functionality from. She knew only too well how close they were to the point of no return, certainly knew better than either of the researchers how incredibly dangerous the information the K’N had planted was. She’d witnessed entire universes shattering under less strain.
Rose had been trying to get the Doctor to slow down even a little, to rest, to eat, but so far it had been in vain. She’d never seen him this harried or haggard-at least never when they were together. She preferred not to think about the times she’d witnessed when they weren’t. The few moments they’d had to themselves here, she’d felt an increasing sense of panic radiating off of him. The closer the deadline loomed, the more and more keyed up the Doctor was getting-and the more keyed up he got, the less he seemed to even be hearing her or anyone else.
He was now huddled over the items he’d brought back to lab, hands flying frantically from piece to piece, assembling who knew what. Once the Doctor had determined the equipment they’d started with was inadequate to the task, even with his profound improvements, he’d begun throwing together new instruments at a breakneck pace. If this latest piece was something that would help her directly, Rose should wait for him to finish. If not, she really needed to get back out there.
“Doctor.”
When he didn’t respond, Rose laid the lightest touch on his shoulder. The Doctor nearly jumped out of his skin, and turned to her with a hunted, feverish look in his eye, still hunched protectively over his work like an animal jealously guarding its food. Rose flinched, and she watched the Doctor throttle back his reaction. He could probably tell he was starting to scare her.
And if he was scaring her, she could only imagine what Lén and Mið must be thinking.
“Rose?” he asked, his voice teetering on the edge of cracking.
“Should I take that with me?” Rose pointed carefully to the nucleus of the device he was assembling.
“No, no, thanks for asking,” he answered, a bit more smoothly this time.
Mið glanced furtively up at Rose. She looked at Mið and shook her head as she began rubbing her hand reassuringly up and down the Doctor’s back, between his taut shoulders. He didn’t relax completely, though he looked like he was sorely tempted to melt into her touch. After a few moments, he sat up straight and continued his assembling. The Doctor was still clearly unhappy, his mouth formed into a long grimace, but he no longer looked like he was going to split the back of his jacket.
“I’m going to go now,” she said carefully, first looking to the Doctor, and then to Mið with a smile that she hoped was reassuring.
“Right. We’ll let you know on the rolls if anything develops,” Mið said in a casual tone.
The Doctor didn’t look up at her as she finished gathering her tools and slung Mið’s burlap bag across her body.
As she stepped into the archway, the Doctor called out to her. “Be careful.”
“Yeah. You too.”
********************************************************************
Lén put the last section of Proteus back on the shelf in front of him. All of the scrolls had definitely been handled by someone else from the future. Probably some clown who came back to copy it for fun and profit. Or maybe some rich "patron" of the arts who knew it was gonna vanish soon, and came back on an ego trip to have a peek so he could jump right back and rub it in his friends' faces.
It didn’t really matter which it was-this wasn't what they were looking for. Just another dead end in the line of dead ends that had been this whole mission. Maybe if the Doc and Rose had been here from the get-go, they would've stood a better shot at licking the problem. The guy had been working miracles, and Rose was a real firecracker, just the kick in the butt he and Mið needed.
Thanks to the pack full of better mousetraps he was hauling around and Rose's divide-and-conquer approach, he’d been able to get through more checks in five days than he and Mið had run in the whole last month plus.
Command sure had started out thinking they could fix everything in a jiffy, but everyone from the head of the TCC down had way underestimated how tough this was gonna be, had called it a milk run. The only person who’d had the faintest clue of what was probably gonna go down and hadn’t been afraid to say it was Mið. Lén hadn’t been real happy about getting stuck with Professor Sadsack, but give the man his due: he knew what he was talking about, and if everyone had listened to him in the first place they might've been done and home by now.
Two ways this whole thing coulda been fixed already and neither of ‘em needed him.
Lén ran towards the next target, hoping like hell that Rose was having better luck than he was. If she was here, Rose would probably give him a shove and tell him to quit moping and get on with his job. How she was keeping it so together he didn't know. The only reason he and Mið hadn’t gone crazy yet was ‘cause they were too bone-tired, and as for the Doc, he was right about on the hairy edge. Even Rose couldn’t get the Doc to take a break, and as far as Lén reckoned she was his wife.
He got to the meeting room that had been giving the scanner kittens and took a gander. Maybe it was a good sign he didn’t see anything likely-it wasn’t like the K’Ns would’ve just left the things sitting around where anyone could walk off with 'em, not even by accident.
Lén frowned and shoved his bag onto his back. He was gonna have to crawl for this one. He got down under the big table, fished out a reader and started looking. Sometimes people dropped stuff that ended up rolling under the tables. Nothing. He felt around under the seat of the benches for anything weird. Nope, not there either. He swung the bag around again and laid down to have a look at the underside of the table.
The scanner started chirping at him again. “I know, I know, you think I didn’t hear you the first twenty times?” he mumbled. Maybe someone had chucked a used scroll into one of the buckets where the clerks kept the fresh stuff. He’d find out in a minute.
If he could only get the frickin’ thing to shut-
********************************************************************
He knew bloody well that Rose thought he was on the verge of a psychotic break, he knew it, but he wasn’t, he really really really wasn’t. There was just no time.
No time to stop and smell the Roses, no time for sergeants, no time like the present, no time for a circus at the railway station, no time for a suitcase, sandwich and a morning paper, no time to think, no time to dare, no time at all, no time this time…
No time for bloody song lyrics by The bloody Police, well done there, Doctor.
Time, time, time, running out of time.
He felt like a spectator, a fraud, a useless voyeur, watching the future-his and Rose’s future, Lén and Miðlara’s future, everyone’s future-get knocked about like a ball of string in the claws of a careless kitten, unravelling and knotting and tearing and shredding until there was nothing left. A great white angry wall of nothing.
He hated walls.
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Part 6.1
Author: principia_coh
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Waylaid en route to a holiday, the Doctor and Rose encounter unexpected wonders... and new dangers.
Author’s notes: Thanks to ginamak and leighleighla for their excellent and patient beta work!
Episode 9 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following The Wretched Hive last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
------------------------------------------------------------------
After he and Rose had finished taking thorough stock of the resources available, the Doctor promptly appropriated one of Lén and Miðlara’s cots for his work surface.
He now sat cross-legged on the cot’s thin cushioning, the Stemkowski parent array cradled in his lap, sonicing away. He should be able to boost the granularity of the scans by a factor of 3, at a minimum. If he had a fully-equipped workshop on the TARDIS he could produce more hand-scanners but, frankly, simply upgrading the functionality of the current pair would be a better use of everyone’s time.
“So,” he mentioned casually as Miðlara reached over him to pluck a toolkit off the shelf over the cot, “you’ve already ruled out the Daughter Library at the Serapeum, then?”
“The what?”
“The secondary collection. Housed next to the temple to Serapis in Rhakotis.”
Miðlara cast a can you believe these people? look across the room at Lén.
“I take it,” the Doctor responded dryly, “you’re about to tell me that there’s no such thing here.”
“No, no, there’s not. And thank the Tin Vagabond for small favours-if we had another entire library across the city to be searched we’d have needed three times the manpower and equipment just to be where we are now.”
“Which is still way too close to nowhere,” Lén observed.
“It could be worse. We don’t seem to have aroused the suspicion of any of the local populace,” Miðlara replied crisply, “Besides, we now have the welcome assistance of the Doctor and Rose.”
Rose looked up from her examination of the detailed map of the Library which Lén had provided her and smiled.
“Even if their knowledge of the place and time is a bit dubious,” Miðlara muttered.
“Oi, I heard that!” Rose snapped indignantly. “We did tell you we’d only got here by accident.”
Lén hooted. Rose gave him a dirty look and the man reared back as if he expected a smack. The Doctor suppressed a laugh.
“Yes, yes, of course, forgive me,” Miðlara said in a placating tone. He looked down at the Doctor with an understanding smile then walked over to the nearest table, setting his tools down.
Lén crabbed his way slowly down the main worktable and settled in a new position just out of Rose’s reach, eyeing her warily.
The Doctor caught Rose’s eye and waggled his eyebrows. She smiled brightly, leaned over and gave Lén a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
“You two have full logs of what you’ve searched so far?” she asked him.
“Of course. Wouldn’t do to be chasing our tails. Mið’s should be pretty obvious; you want me to show you how to connect to mine?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Lén gestured for the roll and laid it out flat as he took Rose through what seemed to be the entire set of command gestures, taking admirable (and well-advised) care not to come off as condescending.
The Doctor smiled to himself and turned his attention back to the array. With any luck, they should be able to have this done and dusted by the morning, send Messrs Lén and Miðlara on their merry way, and be drinking margaritas by the sea.
Or mulsum by the Great Lighthouse. Same difference.
********************************************************************
One full night of searching through the Library later, Rose was back in the lab looking over her and Mið’s rolls; Lén and the Doctor were still out snooping through the Library. As she reviewed the results of their collective efforts so far, it occurred to her that they might be going about this the wrong way. Maybe they should be trying to figure out a way to determine the contents of all the book-like things in the Library rather than worrying about what they were made of.
“Hallo!”
The Doctor trotted back into the lab with his comm roll in hand, which he immediately tossed to Rose. Not that he’s using it to comm much so far.
Rose had briefly considered fetching her and the Doctor’s phones from the TARDIS when she’d first had the chance to get out of the lab independent of Lén or Mið, but had dismissed the thought as foolishness. There was no reason to get the men’s backs up by using such obviously anachronistic technology, and with them willing to share their comm rolls, why not stick with those instead?
As the Doctor launched into an animated conversation with Mið about tweaking some variance or other, Rose opened the roll to find that the Doctor had-among scribblings, diagrams and calculations-drafted the beginnings of a rota. Rose began transferring the self-explanatory parts to the other rolls and marked the sections she needed to ask the Doctor about.
Mið and the Doctor were now carefully removing the front panel from one of the larger bits of gear on the lab’s shelves. Rose continued moving through the Doctor’s copious notes, marvelling at how he could’ve found the time to actually look for anything while getting all this down. A picture popped into her head of the Doctor splayed out between a shelf and a table, sonic in his mouth, holding a scroll up for examination in one hand and jotting down notes on the roll with the other.
Rose tried to keep the merriment out of her voice, with limited success. “Doctor, when you’re free, could you come and have a look at this?”
“Sure,” he said distractedly from where he and Mið had their heads bowed over the panel, “be right there.”
Rose waited patiently and continued combing over the Doctor’s results, until he was apparently satisfied with whatever direction Mið’s efforts were going in and came over to talk to her.
“How may I be of assistance, Ms?” he asked saucily, if not a little tiredly.
Rose glanced over to Mið to make sure he was still engaged in his task. “I’m thinking that we might be better off taking a slightly different approach to all this, but I’m not sure that it’s feasible with what we have on hand.”
The Doctor looked over her shoulder at her handwritten queries on his roll. “Hmm, I see what you mean. We might have something around that could help a bit in that respect.”
“A bit?”
“It wouldn’t be a complete solution, but needs must, eh?”
Mið set the panel down a bit loudly, his nose wrinkling. “I’ll just be in here if you need anything in the next few minutes.”
He stepped into the large wardrobe that Rose had first thought would’ve been used to haul the lab’s equipment, but was in reality a space-age loo. It wasn’t bigger on the inside, much to the Doctor’s disappointment.
The Doctor waited a moment, then plucked his sonic out and turned it to an old, familiar setting-the one Rose knew would inaudibly thwart most listening devices.
“Our TARDIS can do most of the types of scans you’re suggesting, but differentiating and translating the content of all the books in the Library at a pop is still rather beyond her capabilities, more’s the pity. Good thought, though.”
“How are you going to get back to her?”
The Doctor smirked. “Nip off while dear Miðlara is still reading the newspaper.”
Rose gasped theatrically and batted the Doctor’s arm. He grinned and scooped up his comm roll from the table.
“Back in a jiff. You’ll barely have time to miss me.”
“I expect a thorough report, Doctor.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
He gave her a quick salute with the rolled-up papyrus, then sauntered out the door.
Smart arse.
********************************************************************
“Doc, what adjustment did you say I needed to make to the refractor?” Lén called from across the lab.
Doc. Some of his previous selves would’ve stomped off in a huff at being called that even the once, crisis or no crisis; he supposed he had Jack to thank for ridding him of that particular idiosyncrasy.
“You lot using synthetic eutectometers or diffusionless actuators?”
Lén snorted. “How would I tell the difference?”
“Blue or green?”
“Um, it’s magenta. I think.”
The Doctor frowned. “And cylindrical? That sounds like a tritonic metastabiliser. You sure about that? Let me see.”
The Doctor laid down the array and walked over to have a look. He pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They’d been at this latest round of upgrades for eleven hours straight now, and it was worrying him how much he was feeling the effects. The day was when he could’ve been working a week straight without stopping and it wouldn’t have much bothered him. Not that they had that luxury. He was acutely aware of the lights on the temporal ossification meter flitting away in the background, and the resultant ever-shifting dissonant whistles that came off Lén and Mið’s recall units were starting to give him an ache right between the eyes. It would hardly do to go telling either of them that, though-the feedback from the TOM was pitched well out of the range of human hearing.
He shot out a puff of breath as he peeked into Lén’s machine. This TCC that Lén and Miðlara worked for (or with, on behalf of their government; the Doctor still wasn’t entirely clear on that distinction) were still using tritonic alignment systems and here they were fighting their own miniature time war. The Doctor wondered how much of their time travel technology the Earth of Lén and Miðlara’s era properly understood and how much of it was received knowledge.
None of the answers that sprang immediately to mind were especially comforting.
“Yep, that’s one of them, alright.”
Rose glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, not in the least bit fooled by his artificially chipper tone. She gave him a softly encouraging smile. She still had faith in his ability to resolve this situation without so much as a blip in history, bless her.
He wished he had the same.
“Tell you what, Lén, let’s close that up for right now and I’ll take a quick run to our... equipment locker to see if there’s anything I can scrounge up. I could do with the stretch of my legs.”
Lén and Mið both looked pleasantly surprised. “Hey, Doc, that’d be great, thanks.”
Rose straightened up from the table as if to go with him and the Doctor mouthed no over the top of Lén’s head. She looked bemused but nodded once with a quick dip of her chin and he knew he could be on his way, with Rose staying behind to keep an eye on the proceedings. He hesitated for a moment-perhaps he oughtn’t be leaving her outnumbered two to one-but the Doctor was fairly certain if they were going to have done anything foolish it would have been well before now.
He smiled and waggled his fingers at the three before stepping back through the perimeter of the perception filter’s field, then briskly walked away from the threshold. A quick backwards glance told him he wasn’t being followed. Once he was out of earshot, the Doctor broke into a run.
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Rose looked up from the roll she’d been using to plot out the best way to cover the remaining sections of the Library-it was possible that the Doctor might come back from his latest trip to the TARDIS with some whiz-bang bit of gadgetry that would suddenly render her efforts moot, but their TARDIS didn’t have the stockpile of random tech from all over spacetime that the original did. She used to tease the Doctor about the TARDIS serving as his glorified junk drawer, but it was times like these that she would’ve been delighted to go rummaging through some decrepit bins for just the thing they needed to save the day.
She was a little surprised the Doctor hadn’t yet wanted her to go with him, but Rose considered it a sign that his appreciation of her abilities was continuing to grow, that he’d been leaving her here to watch over Lén and Mið. Not that there was much watching to do. It turned out Lén had a pregnant wife, and that he hadn’t been having a laugh at Mið when he’d called him “the professor.” Neither of these men wanted to jeopardise the futures they had waiting for them at home.
She sighed and stood up straight, stretching, then meandered over to the rationer. Once the Doctor had persuaded it to dispense what he and Rose considered a proper cuppa, she’d been availing herself at regular intervals-when she was actually in the lab and not out scouring the stacks along with Lén or Mið.
“Mið, do we have any more of the Thiruvanan circuits?” Lén asked as he dashed off the query on his comm roll. It was more efficient to keep everyone in the loop as much as possible, and Rose had quickly persuaded both the men to start reading their exchanges out loud when here in the lab, no matter how daft it might make them feel.
After a moment, he read, “If you didn’t see it on the shelves earlier, probably not. We didn’t have that many to begin with.”
Lén turned to Rose. “Y’all wouldn’t happen to have any in your supplies, would you?”
The younger man’s Southern American accent had got more pronounced as first the hours and then days had passed, and Rose wasn’t sure whether it was a sign of his fatigue or an increasing comfort level with her and the Doctor. For that matter, the accent itself might have been an affectation of the TARDIS’ translation circuits to begin with. At any rate, it was rather endearing.
“I, I don’t know. I’d have to ask the Doctor. And he’s left his comm roll.”
Rose and Lén both looked to where the Doctor had left his faux scroll on the table near her.
“Damn, I guess we should’ve sent him back out with it.”
“You’re right, should’ve thought of that first. Next time.”
“It’s okay, we can just ask him when he gets back. Maybe let you get outta here for a few minutes. Hate having to keep you cooped up in here all day.”
Lén might be sorry that she had to stay hidden during the Library’s hours of business (after all, it wouldn’t do for a woman to be caught rooting around in the stacks), but Rose felt terrible for him and Mið. Time travel wasn’t anything they did for fun-they were both researchers who’d been drafted into this particular bit of the war effort for their expertise in this period of Earth’s history and its languages. And both men knew that even if (when, dammit) they succeeded, their war might be far from over.
What the Doctor was playing at by leaving his comm roll behind was another matter altogether. She was going to have to have a word when he got back.
Rose gave Lén a faint smile and sipped at her tea. Keep calm and carry on, Tyler.
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Miðlara Pembekuan, 83/3 Domitianus LR
LOG 29
Lén Matagal and I continue our mission to locate the documents secreted within the collection of the Great Library of Alexandria.
We have made much progress in winnowing down the potential locations of the illicit manuscripts, thanks in no small part to a pair of fellow time travellers who have exerted considerable efforts to assist us, as outlined in greater detail in my last three logs.
If anything, the pair seem even more invested in the complete achievement of our mission goals than either Dr Matagal or myself, something I had not imagined possible. I must admit that with the addition of their expert aid, I regard success to be within our reach, possibly for the first time since shortly after our arrival.
The pair of travellers claim that they did not intend to arrive at this location and time, and given the faulty knowledge they have expressed of the era, a few scenarios suggest themselves.
- First, that their point of origin is from a timeframe even farther into Earth’s future (relative to Local Reckoning) than our own, during which knowledge of Earth’s antiquity has been lost or obscured. Their scrupulous refusal to provide information regarding future events, coupled with their superior technical knowledge and the limited personal information with which they have supplied us would lend credence to this hypothesis.
- Second, that their point of origin is temporally aligned with our own, but that they are humans or near-humans who are not of Earthish origin and upbringing. It is theoretically possible that descendants of Earth’s earliest attempts at exoclusteric settlements may have developed time travel capability or their own or been granted access to pre-existing facilities that belong to local civilisations. However, neither party has presented any voluntary or involuntary behaviours that suggest a lack of familiarity with Earthish cultural norms or even a lengthy removal from direct Earthish influence.
- Third, that their point of origin is temporally aligned with our own, but that they are neither human nor near-human. If this is the case, it would suggest that the Shadow Proclamation or a similarly competent outside entity has chosen to intervene in the war on our behalf but wishes to remain anonymous, and has thus disguised their agents as humans. The scans I conducted upon the parties’ entrance to our laboratory did register a few anomalies, but nothing that would strongly suggest this option. Further, I have had occasional skin contact with both parties, and while one has what seems to be a notably cooler body temperature than the other, the deviation is well within the normal range of the expected dermal properties for all known human or near-human groups.
I am reminded as I check the temporal ossification meter that despite our enhanced capabilities we are now within a54,7 of threshold and thus I must bring this entry to a close.
I am aware of the reportage requirements for all extratemporal contacts and will see it to it that both Dr Matagal and I fulfil them when we return.
/LOG ENDS
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The Doctor practically flew back into the lab, arms full of things Rose figured he’d likely just had stored in his pockets. His disappearing acts had become almost routine at this point; even now that they were each carrying their comm roll at all times, Rose could tell he’d gone back to the TARDIS every time his instructional chatter across the rolls slowed down or ceased altogether.
Mið looked up at the clatter of the objects scattering across the main work table, then quickly went back to his retooling work. Lén was still out in the stacks, even at this hour, and Rose was getting ready to rejoin the effort. The team’s previous avoidance of any actions that might draw the attention of the locals had become an extravagance they could no longer afford.
It was taking too sodding long to find the manuscripts. Lén and Mið seemed almost afraid of the TOM, and even the Doctor had failed to slow down long enough to explain precisely how to decipher its output. Good thing, then, that she’d had plenty of practise with the system the gizmo had derived its functionality from. She knew only too well how close they were to the point of no return, certainly knew better than either of the researchers how incredibly dangerous the information the K’N had planted was. She’d witnessed entire universes shattering under less strain.
Rose had been trying to get the Doctor to slow down even a little, to rest, to eat, but so far it had been in vain. She’d never seen him this harried or haggard-at least never when they were together. She preferred not to think about the times she’d witnessed when they weren’t. The few moments they’d had to themselves here, she’d felt an increasing sense of panic radiating off of him. The closer the deadline loomed, the more and more keyed up the Doctor was getting-and the more keyed up he got, the less he seemed to even be hearing her or anyone else.
He was now huddled over the items he’d brought back to lab, hands flying frantically from piece to piece, assembling who knew what. Once the Doctor had determined the equipment they’d started with was inadequate to the task, even with his profound improvements, he’d begun throwing together new instruments at a breakneck pace. If this latest piece was something that would help her directly, Rose should wait for him to finish. If not, she really needed to get back out there.
“Doctor.”
When he didn’t respond, Rose laid the lightest touch on his shoulder. The Doctor nearly jumped out of his skin, and turned to her with a hunted, feverish look in his eye, still hunched protectively over his work like an animal jealously guarding its food. Rose flinched, and she watched the Doctor throttle back his reaction. He could probably tell he was starting to scare her.
And if he was scaring her, she could only imagine what Lén and Mið must be thinking.
“Rose?” he asked, his voice teetering on the edge of cracking.
“Should I take that with me?” Rose pointed carefully to the nucleus of the device he was assembling.
“No, no, thanks for asking,” he answered, a bit more smoothly this time.
Mið glanced furtively up at Rose. She looked at Mið and shook her head as she began rubbing her hand reassuringly up and down the Doctor’s back, between his taut shoulders. He didn’t relax completely, though he looked like he was sorely tempted to melt into her touch. After a few moments, he sat up straight and continued his assembling. The Doctor was still clearly unhappy, his mouth formed into a long grimace, but he no longer looked like he was going to split the back of his jacket.
“I’m going to go now,” she said carefully, first looking to the Doctor, and then to Mið with a smile that she hoped was reassuring.
“Right. We’ll let you know on the rolls if anything develops,” Mið said in a casual tone.
The Doctor didn’t look up at her as she finished gathering her tools and slung Mið’s burlap bag across her body.
As she stepped into the archway, the Doctor called out to her. “Be careful.”
“Yeah. You too.”
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Lén put the last section of Proteus back on the shelf in front of him. All of the scrolls had definitely been handled by someone else from the future. Probably some clown who came back to copy it for fun and profit. Or maybe some rich "patron" of the arts who knew it was gonna vanish soon, and came back on an ego trip to have a peek so he could jump right back and rub it in his friends' faces.
It didn’t really matter which it was-this wasn't what they were looking for. Just another dead end in the line of dead ends that had been this whole mission. Maybe if the Doc and Rose had been here from the get-go, they would've stood a better shot at licking the problem. The guy had been working miracles, and Rose was a real firecracker, just the kick in the butt he and Mið needed.
Thanks to the pack full of better mousetraps he was hauling around and Rose's divide-and-conquer approach, he’d been able to get through more checks in five days than he and Mið had run in the whole last month plus.
Command sure had started out thinking they could fix everything in a jiffy, but everyone from the head of the TCC down had way underestimated how tough this was gonna be, had called it a milk run. The only person who’d had the faintest clue of what was probably gonna go down and hadn’t been afraid to say it was Mið. Lén hadn’t been real happy about getting stuck with Professor Sadsack, but give the man his due: he knew what he was talking about, and if everyone had listened to him in the first place they might've been done and home by now.
Two ways this whole thing coulda been fixed already and neither of ‘em needed him.
Lén ran towards the next target, hoping like hell that Rose was having better luck than he was. If she was here, Rose would probably give him a shove and tell him to quit moping and get on with his job. How she was keeping it so together he didn't know. The only reason he and Mið hadn’t gone crazy yet was ‘cause they were too bone-tired, and as for the Doc, he was right about on the hairy edge. Even Rose couldn’t get the Doc to take a break, and as far as Lén reckoned she was his wife.
He got to the meeting room that had been giving the scanner kittens and took a gander. Maybe it was a good sign he didn’t see anything likely-it wasn’t like the K’Ns would’ve just left the things sitting around where anyone could walk off with 'em, not even by accident.
Lén frowned and shoved his bag onto his back. He was gonna have to crawl for this one. He got down under the big table, fished out a reader and started looking. Sometimes people dropped stuff that ended up rolling under the tables. Nothing. He felt around under the seat of the benches for anything weird. Nope, not there either. He swung the bag around again and laid down to have a look at the underside of the table.
The scanner started chirping at him again. “I know, I know, you think I didn’t hear you the first twenty times?” he mumbled. Maybe someone had chucked a used scroll into one of the buckets where the clerks kept the fresh stuff. He’d find out in a minute.
If he could only get the frickin’ thing to shut-
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He knew bloody well that Rose thought he was on the verge of a psychotic break, he knew it, but he wasn’t, he really really really wasn’t. There was just no time.
No time to stop and smell the Roses, no time for sergeants, no time like the present, no time for a circus at the railway station, no time for a suitcase, sandwich and a morning paper, no time to think, no time to dare, no time at all, no time this time…
No time for bloody song lyrics by The bloody Police, well done there, Doctor.
Time, time, time, running out of time.
He felt like a spectator, a fraud, a useless voyeur, watching the future-his and Rose’s future, Lén and Miðlara’s future, everyone’s future-get knocked about like a ball of string in the claws of a careless kitten, unravelling and knotting and tearing and shredding until there was nothing left. A great white angry wall of nothing.
He hated walls.
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Part 6.1