Ten plus eight plus five equals twenty three
Revision of an old piece of fanfic, but this time to include my St Bride's boys; crossover with Dr Who.
“What have you done? I told you not to touch a thing.”
“I haven’t done anything. I very deliberately kept my hands in my pockets-especially after last time.”
Orlando Coppersmith didn’t have time to shudder at the remembrance of what had happened to Dr. Panesar’s amazing tempora-spacial machine the previous time they’d looked after it. When a certain personage had decided to see what this button does. He was too busy wondering why that same machine had every dial spinning wildly and lights flashing like an Aldis lamp. “Well something untoward has happened-I’ve no idea what’s going on. Hold on,” Orlando tweaked a lever, “that should steady it until I’ve worked out how to solve the problem.”
“Shame Dr. Panesar always asks you to look after his baby while he’s away. He’ll go spare when he finds out what you’ve done.” Jonty grinned while his lover groaned.
“I’m sure I can work it out, but it just seems beyond all logic, what’s occurred. Most peculiar.”
“I know what you mean, Orlando. There’s a strange feeling in the air, too.” Jonty peered out of the small window that gave onto Grange Road. “Look at the eerie colour of that sky-if I saw four horsemen coming down the Madingley Road I’d not be in the least surprised. I’d better keep my hat to hand just in case.”
“I think I might just try…”
“Don’t touch that!” An authoritative voice-not unlike that belonging to the Master of St. Bride’s-cut through the air. “We’re in enough of a mess without some bungling amateur sticking his fingers in.”
Orlando bridled. “Excuse me, sir-Dr. Panesar only lets his closest friends in here and I don’t believe that you are one of them.”
“If he’s is responsible for this…” the visitor pointed accusingly at the mass of wires and dials and valves that graced the room, “then he’ll be lucky to have any friends left unless we can sort out the mess he’s made. I’ll rephrase that-unless I can sort out the mess.” He looked daggers at Orlando. “Where is this Dr. Panesar, anyway? He shouldn’t be going off and leaving such a potentially dangerous machine in the hands of…”
Jonty cut in quickly. He’d seen the belligerent look that graced his lover’s eye and didn’t want to be witness to fisticuffs. “He’s not that easy to contact, being in the depths of Devon at the moment. He’s on a cricket tour.”
“Cricket?” The stranger’s face softened into a smile and a wistful look appeared in his eyes. It gave Jonty time to study him; he was young, in possession of both floppy blond hair and a handsome face. And he was wearing what seemed to be a St. Thomas’s rowing club blazer that had grown tails and evolved itself into a frock coat. The stick of celery on the lapel was peculiar, but then the whole situation was out of the ordinary. “At least this Dr. Panesar has taste. Does he bat?”
“No, he’s a slow left armer mainly. Very dangerous on a pitch with a bit of moisture on it.”
“Just like Derek Underwood…” the visitor said, with great affection in his voice. He seemed to be transported in his mind to far away and long ago. Or at least to somewhere else than 1908 Cambridge.
“And how does this help to solve our problem? This discussion of the arcane art of making the ball spin?” Orlando was growing impatient. He had no great love for the game, especially when Jonty got onto the subject of the turning ball.
“More than you would think, Mr…?”
“Dr. Coppersmith. And this is Dr. Stewart. You are?”
“Well, I’m a doctor too, sort of. And I need to make this machine well again or, believe me, there won’t be any more spin bowling or Lord’s or anything, really.”
“Are things that bad?” Orlando looked aghast at the apparatus-the machine that Dr. Panesar had promised would be the first astounding step on the road to space and time travel.
“They will if we don’t get down to work. You can help as long as you just do exactly what I say.”
“He will. He’s good at that.” Jonty hid a grin by looking out of the window at the apocalyptic sky.
“First of all we need to stabilise the hyperspatialresonator. If you take this lever and…”
“Don’t touch that!” Another voice-a deeper one, with more than a trace of Merseyside-came from the door. All three men turned to face the newcomer, Jonty for one incredibly puzzled as to how people were able to get into the laboratory when they’d made sure they’d locked the outside door. The visitor-who also wore a long coat but not quite in such an outlandish style as the other stranger-pointed. “Well he can touch it, but not you.”
Orlando almost stamped his foot like a child. “And why is he allowed to work on this problem and not me?”
“He’s allowed to because he’s me.”
All three men turned and stared at the stranger. Three voices joined in unison. “What?”
“He’s me when I was younger. I’ve had various forms down the years and he’s the…one, two…fifth one. I’m the eighth. I’m very pleased to meet you,” Eight shook Five’s hand, “again.”
“This is impossible…” Five looked even more bewildered than when he’d first seen the whirring dials.
“I agree with you there-people can’t change their form.” Orlando felt he was on solid grounds of logic here.
“Frogs can, Orlando-egg and then tadpole and then froglet, then the actual thing. Insects have all different sorts of stages, too.” Jonty was rather pleased with himself at his peerless analogy.
“But frogs can’t meet their own selves as tadpoles, can they? Time is a linear quantity that can’t fold back and intersect itself.” Orlando felt as if his poor head was going to splatter itself all over Dr. Panesar’s bothersome contraption unless he found out what was going on, and soon.
Eight and Five exchanged a glance, shook their heads and smiled indulgently. “He’s got a lot to learn, hasn’t he?” Five cuffed Orlando’s shoulder. “I don’t think either you or your Dr. Panesar-marvellous purveyor of the high-flighted delivery that you say he is-should be messing around with apparatus like this if that’s what you believe. A right mess you’ve made of things if you’ve managed to get us both in the same place at the same time. It isn’t possible.”
“A complete paradox,” Eight considered the whirring dials and his eyes bulged like organ stops. “This is a bloody mess. We’d better get our sleeves rolled up.” He and his tadpole version bent over the machine, tentatively poking and prodding, like surgeons examining a particularly nasty spasm of the colon. “Orlando, can you find us a good old fashioned toolkit? Sonic screwdrivers are all very well but sometimes a situation requires brute force and a bloody great wrench.”
Orlando was soon able to lay his hands on just such a thing; he hoped that by showing some good will and enthusiasm to learn then he’d be allowed to join in the game. Whatever it was. Jonty contented himself with observing-if this was going to be the end of the universe then someone had better be keeping their wits about them and making mental notes of it all. You never knew who was going to be asking you for a witness statement in the afterlife.
“Having a nice time, are they?” A voice whispered in Jonty’s ear; a strange accent this time, more suited to the boy who ran errands for the cook at the Stewart house in London than a visitor to a Cambridge laboratory.
“I think they might be if they had the first idea of what they were doing.” Jonty eyed the new arrival; he was scrawny, seemed to lack anything like a sensible jaw and-if he was yet another incarnation of this doctor bloke, as Jonty was afraid he might be from the wild look in his eye-then the man was getting progressively worse with every reworking. “Are you a doctor, too, perchance?”
“Got it in one.” The man grinned and his face suddenly transformed into a version that was almost agreeable. “Tenth variation and I think one of the better ones, really.”
“Aren’t you going to help them?”
“Nah-they’ll only shout at me for getting in the way. It’ll all work out alright-I remember going through it when I was my eighth self.” Ten grinned puckishly.
“Hold on,” the mental wheels of Jonty Stewart may have ground slow but the flour they produced was exceptionally fine. “Does number eight version-that dark haired chap-remember what went on the first time? You know, from when he came here in his fifth variety?” Jonty’s head whirled with all the illogicalities of the events that were unfolding.
“Oh, he does, that’s why it’ll be fine. I’ve been through this three times now-bit bored with it, really. Another fifteen minutes and the universe will be back to normal. Fancy going for a pint?”
“I’d love to but Orlando would panic if I just disappeared. Perhaps you could wait around afterwards and we could pop up to the Bishop’s Cope. Orlando will have to go and write a letter to Dr. Panesar so we’d get time for a chat.”
Ten narrowed his eyes, his unusually perceptive gaze boring into Jonty’s, just as if he was applying a microscope to the man’s soul. “Have you ever met a guy called Harkness? Cos he’d eat you with a spoon.”
Jonty blushed, grinned and prayed that Orlando wouldn’t turn around.
“Funny thing is though, after I got out of here the second time I had a bit of a think-as you do-and there was something really odd. The only way I could get it to make any sense was if the dimensions had split four ways.”
“I’m sorry?”
“If there’d been four of my regenerations here. You’re not keeping something secret are you? Like you being me?”
“I can assure you that if I’d been flitting across the universe or whatever it is you do I’d have remembered. Same with Orlando-he’s not you, either.”
“Well perhaps it’s your multi-talented Dr. Panesar who’s the missing link. Is he gay?”
“He’s very high spirited if that’s what you mean.” Jonty had just thought he’d got on top of the conversation but this new strand puzzled him.
“Ah, no. Nancy boy-is he one of them?”
“I don’t think so-he’s actually got a bit of a thing for the college nurse. Quite a passion. Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering whether he was an old enemy of mine-ours. If he was this bloke, the Master, it would explain his setting up this machine and then doing a runner. And also his being the fourth part of the equation. If he is the Master I’d steer clear-nasty bit of work.”
“Nurse Hatfield will be most upset if her fancy boy is such a cad.”
“Jonty, I could kiss you. I’ve never heard anyone call the Master a cad but it’s a bloody great way to describe him.”
“We could look out for this chap if you want. What’s his description again?”
“Maths and physics genius, almost as clever as me, bit anti-social-well you’d have to be if you were set on universal domination. And a wearer of the green carnation as you might say.”
Jonty felt a strange lump developing in his throat, matched by an equally odd sensation in his stomach. “Could you bear to say that all again? In words of no more than three syllables? I have a bit of a headache coming on.”
“Brilliant. Unsociable. Gay.”
Jonty swallowed hard and in a voice that barely squeaked out managed to utter, “Orlando? Could you come over here for a moment, please?”
“What have you done? I told you not to touch a thing.”
“I haven’t done anything. I very deliberately kept my hands in my pockets-especially after last time.”
Orlando Coppersmith didn’t have time to shudder at the remembrance of what had happened to Dr. Panesar’s amazing tempora-spacial machine the previous time they’d looked after it. When a certain personage had decided to see what this button does. He was too busy wondering why that same machine had every dial spinning wildly and lights flashing like an Aldis lamp. “Well something untoward has happened-I’ve no idea what’s going on. Hold on,” Orlando tweaked a lever, “that should steady it until I’ve worked out how to solve the problem.”
“Shame Dr. Panesar always asks you to look after his baby while he’s away. He’ll go spare when he finds out what you’ve done.” Jonty grinned while his lover groaned.
“I’m sure I can work it out, but it just seems beyond all logic, what’s occurred. Most peculiar.”
“I know what you mean, Orlando. There’s a strange feeling in the air, too.” Jonty peered out of the small window that gave onto Grange Road. “Look at the eerie colour of that sky-if I saw four horsemen coming down the Madingley Road I’d not be in the least surprised. I’d better keep my hat to hand just in case.”
“I think I might just try…”
“Don’t touch that!” An authoritative voice-not unlike that belonging to the Master of St. Bride’s-cut through the air. “We’re in enough of a mess without some bungling amateur sticking his fingers in.”
Orlando bridled. “Excuse me, sir-Dr. Panesar only lets his closest friends in here and I don’t believe that you are one of them.”
“If he’s is responsible for this…” the visitor pointed accusingly at the mass of wires and dials and valves that graced the room, “then he’ll be lucky to have any friends left unless we can sort out the mess he’s made. I’ll rephrase that-unless I can sort out the mess.” He looked daggers at Orlando. “Where is this Dr. Panesar, anyway? He shouldn’t be going off and leaving such a potentially dangerous machine in the hands of…”
Jonty cut in quickly. He’d seen the belligerent look that graced his lover’s eye and didn’t want to be witness to fisticuffs. “He’s not that easy to contact, being in the depths of Devon at the moment. He’s on a cricket tour.”
“Cricket?” The stranger’s face softened into a smile and a wistful look appeared in his eyes. It gave Jonty time to study him; he was young, in possession of both floppy blond hair and a handsome face. And he was wearing what seemed to be a St. Thomas’s rowing club blazer that had grown tails and evolved itself into a frock coat. The stick of celery on the lapel was peculiar, but then the whole situation was out of the ordinary. “At least this Dr. Panesar has taste. Does he bat?”
“No, he’s a slow left armer mainly. Very dangerous on a pitch with a bit of moisture on it.”
“Just like Derek Underwood…” the visitor said, with great affection in his voice. He seemed to be transported in his mind to far away and long ago. Or at least to somewhere else than 1908 Cambridge.
“And how does this help to solve our problem? This discussion of the arcane art of making the ball spin?” Orlando was growing impatient. He had no great love for the game, especially when Jonty got onto the subject of the turning ball.
“More than you would think, Mr…?”
“Dr. Coppersmith. And this is Dr. Stewart. You are?”
“Well, I’m a doctor too, sort of. And I need to make this machine well again or, believe me, there won’t be any more spin bowling or Lord’s or anything, really.”
“Are things that bad?” Orlando looked aghast at the apparatus-the machine that Dr. Panesar had promised would be the first astounding step on the road to space and time travel.
“They will if we don’t get down to work. You can help as long as you just do exactly what I say.”
“He will. He’s good at that.” Jonty hid a grin by looking out of the window at the apocalyptic sky.
“First of all we need to stabilise the hyperspatialresonator. If you take this lever and…”
“Don’t touch that!” Another voice-a deeper one, with more than a trace of Merseyside-came from the door. All three men turned to face the newcomer, Jonty for one incredibly puzzled as to how people were able to get into the laboratory when they’d made sure they’d locked the outside door. The visitor-who also wore a long coat but not quite in such an outlandish style as the other stranger-pointed. “Well he can touch it, but not you.”
Orlando almost stamped his foot like a child. “And why is he allowed to work on this problem and not me?”
“He’s allowed to because he’s me.”
All three men turned and stared at the stranger. Three voices joined in unison. “What?”
“He’s me when I was younger. I’ve had various forms down the years and he’s the…one, two…fifth one. I’m the eighth. I’m very pleased to meet you,” Eight shook Five’s hand, “again.”
“This is impossible…” Five looked even more bewildered than when he’d first seen the whirring dials.
“I agree with you there-people can’t change their form.” Orlando felt he was on solid grounds of logic here.
“Frogs can, Orlando-egg and then tadpole and then froglet, then the actual thing. Insects have all different sorts of stages, too.” Jonty was rather pleased with himself at his peerless analogy.
“But frogs can’t meet their own selves as tadpoles, can they? Time is a linear quantity that can’t fold back and intersect itself.” Orlando felt as if his poor head was going to splatter itself all over Dr. Panesar’s bothersome contraption unless he found out what was going on, and soon.
Eight and Five exchanged a glance, shook their heads and smiled indulgently. “He’s got a lot to learn, hasn’t he?” Five cuffed Orlando’s shoulder. “I don’t think either you or your Dr. Panesar-marvellous purveyor of the high-flighted delivery that you say he is-should be messing around with apparatus like this if that’s what you believe. A right mess you’ve made of things if you’ve managed to get us both in the same place at the same time. It isn’t possible.”
“A complete paradox,” Eight considered the whirring dials and his eyes bulged like organ stops. “This is a bloody mess. We’d better get our sleeves rolled up.” He and his tadpole version bent over the machine, tentatively poking and prodding, like surgeons examining a particularly nasty spasm of the colon. “Orlando, can you find us a good old fashioned toolkit? Sonic screwdrivers are all very well but sometimes a situation requires brute force and a bloody great wrench.”
Orlando was soon able to lay his hands on just such a thing; he hoped that by showing some good will and enthusiasm to learn then he’d be allowed to join in the game. Whatever it was. Jonty contented himself with observing-if this was going to be the end of the universe then someone had better be keeping their wits about them and making mental notes of it all. You never knew who was going to be asking you for a witness statement in the afterlife.
“Having a nice time, are they?” A voice whispered in Jonty’s ear; a strange accent this time, more suited to the boy who ran errands for the cook at the Stewart house in London than a visitor to a Cambridge laboratory.
“I think they might be if they had the first idea of what they were doing.” Jonty eyed the new arrival; he was scrawny, seemed to lack anything like a sensible jaw and-if he was yet another incarnation of this doctor bloke, as Jonty was afraid he might be from the wild look in his eye-then the man was getting progressively worse with every reworking. “Are you a doctor, too, perchance?”
“Got it in one.” The man grinned and his face suddenly transformed into a version that was almost agreeable. “Tenth variation and I think one of the better ones, really.”
“Aren’t you going to help them?”
“Nah-they’ll only shout at me for getting in the way. It’ll all work out alright-I remember going through it when I was my eighth self.” Ten grinned puckishly.
“Hold on,” the mental wheels of Jonty Stewart may have ground slow but the flour they produced was exceptionally fine. “Does number eight version-that dark haired chap-remember what went on the first time? You know, from when he came here in his fifth variety?” Jonty’s head whirled with all the illogicalities of the events that were unfolding.
“Oh, he does, that’s why it’ll be fine. I’ve been through this three times now-bit bored with it, really. Another fifteen minutes and the universe will be back to normal. Fancy going for a pint?”
“I’d love to but Orlando would panic if I just disappeared. Perhaps you could wait around afterwards and we could pop up to the Bishop’s Cope. Orlando will have to go and write a letter to Dr. Panesar so we’d get time for a chat.”
Ten narrowed his eyes, his unusually perceptive gaze boring into Jonty’s, just as if he was applying a microscope to the man’s soul. “Have you ever met a guy called Harkness? Cos he’d eat you with a spoon.”
Jonty blushed, grinned and prayed that Orlando wouldn’t turn around.
“Funny thing is though, after I got out of here the second time I had a bit of a think-as you do-and there was something really odd. The only way I could get it to make any sense was if the dimensions had split four ways.”
“I’m sorry?”
“If there’d been four of my regenerations here. You’re not keeping something secret are you? Like you being me?”
“I can assure you that if I’d been flitting across the universe or whatever it is you do I’d have remembered. Same with Orlando-he’s not you, either.”
“Well perhaps it’s your multi-talented Dr. Panesar who’s the missing link. Is he gay?”
“He’s very high spirited if that’s what you mean.” Jonty had just thought he’d got on top of the conversation but this new strand puzzled him.
“Ah, no. Nancy boy-is he one of them?”
“I don’t think so-he’s actually got a bit of a thing for the college nurse. Quite a passion. Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering whether he was an old enemy of mine-ours. If he was this bloke, the Master, it would explain his setting up this machine and then doing a runner. And also his being the fourth part of the equation. If he is the Master I’d steer clear-nasty bit of work.”
“Nurse Hatfield will be most upset if her fancy boy is such a cad.”
“Jonty, I could kiss you. I’ve never heard anyone call the Master a cad but it’s a bloody great way to describe him.”
“We could look out for this chap if you want. What’s his description again?”
“Maths and physics genius, almost as clever as me, bit anti-social-well you’d have to be if you were set on universal domination. And a wearer of the green carnation as you might say.”
Jonty felt a strange lump developing in his throat, matched by an equally odd sensation in his stomach. “Could you bear to say that all again? In words of no more than three syllables? I have a bit of a headache coming on.”
“Brilliant. Unsociable. Gay.”
Jonty swallowed hard and in a voice that barely squeaked out managed to utter, “Orlando? Could you come over here for a moment, please?”