38 - Human Nature

VIP免费

2024-12-06 0 0 4.11MB 262 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Prologue

'They seem, in places, to address me so directly it's almost uncomfortable'

'Either the wallow in the sudden realization that every single sad song in the world

is written for me alone or the overwhelming, distracting power of a lot of very loud

noise'

From the diary of Prof Bernice Summerfield

Long ago and far away. That's one way of looking at it. But I still sat on the edge

of the bathtub and bit my knuckles.

I'm trying to ignore it, and I hope you are as well. An unfortunate episode. If Ace

was here, I could say to her: 'Yes, I understand it now, once again. I remember that

grief is like having somebody sit on your chest and punch you in the face.' Pain is

always forgotten. That's what allows us to have babies. It is a pity she's not here,

actually, because now we have so much more in common.

Post-It note covering the above

I will not become maudlin. This is all meaningless. I met someone called Guy, he

took on overwhelming odds and then he happened to die. May have died. Did die.

Perhaps.

Post-It note covering the above

'These words are not my own they only come when I'm alone'

Post-It note covering the above

Those five minutes... I remember seeing the look on Clive's face when he heard

that a dear friend of his had hanged himself. The most frightening thing I've ever

seen. Because it was so different. I didn't think that I could make that face if I tried.

What was so bad was that Clive had suddenly, in that moment, discovered how to.

Now I can do it too.

From the diary of Prof Bernice Summerfield

'Aren't there any alien monsters we can go and destroy?' I asked the Doctor, on one

of the few occasions when I met him in the TARDIS corridors. I mean, granted, I'd

been hiding away for a few weeks, and I looked so white that you could put a tail

on me and call me Flopsy, but he'd been hiding too. He hadn't followed up on his

pledge to take me to Blackpool, or somewhere else exciting. He'd just become sad,

at exactly the time I needed him to be happy. Whenever I'd gone into the console

room, he'd been absent, and at night I'd just hear the occasional cry from one of

those terrible nightmares of his.

'Alien monsters...' he mused now, tapping his finger on the tip of his nose. 'No.

They're all gone. Little Johnny Piper - no, sorry, different train of thought. No alien

monsters, I'm afraid.' He had that troubled look about his eyes, and wouldn't quite

look at me.

I wanted rather desperately to touch him, hug him or something, but everything

about him said that that wouldn't be a good idea. He seemed embarrassed about

seeing me, which wasn't really him at all. If I didn't know better, I'd say that he was

thinking as hard about the last five minutes of Guy's life as I was.

Post-It note covering the above

Summerfield, B.S. Subject: Human Nature: 3/10, must try harder. (The 'Human' is

crossed out and then replaced. There is evidence of correcting fluid.)

From the diary of Prof Bernice Summerfield

We wandered into the console room, me still trying to think of some way to break

the ice. One of the many trivial things I'd been doing over the last few days was to

try and repair my portable history unit. It's a little screen that lets you access

archives while in the field. Or, in my case, while in the bath. Normally you'd need

an account with whatever library you're accessing, but, with a bit of help from one

of those beardie-weirdie computer experts you trip over in spaceports, I'd put

together a program that makes the library think you're a member. The thing broke

down, of course, just before Heaven, and I'd been carrying it in my luggage ever

since. So, as part of my great campaign to do things, I had hefted one of the

Doctor's folding work-tables into the console room and set about dismantling the

thing, on and off, with gaps for tea and crying.

As we entered the console room, then, I was surprised to see the unit sitting atop

the folding table, complete and repaired. I picked it up and switched it on, while

the Doctor glanced offhandedly at various monitors on the console. He'd repaired

the unit's hardware, but the programming was all over the place. Travelling

through the time vortex isn't the best place to deal in electronic media, of course.

It's like trying to follow a soap opera that's being performed on a series of trains as

they speed by, while other trains with different stories... well, it's difficult, all

right? Anyhow, the Doctor had succeeded in creating some weird protocols, with

new files half set-up all over the place, and error messages demanding attention

everywhere.

I pressed a few buttons and cleared everything, discovering, to my relief, that the

Doctor had got the thing functioning correctly at least. I turned to him, grateful to

have something to ask him about. 'Thanks for fixing this up.'

He glanced up from the console. 'I just wanted to work out what it was... how it

worked. I reversed the polarity of the communications coil, by the way, so you can

write into archives too, but to do that I had to connect it through the TARDIS

information processors, because I know how to work with those. So you might get

information from the past. Or the future. Which in some cases wouldn't be a good

idea, so don't use it when we land anywhere. Please.'

I sighed. 'So you repaired it so well that I can't use it?'

'Repaired? Oh, did it need repairing?'

I smiled, which was good. I got the feeling that the module was a sort of present.

'What have you been doing in the last few days, then?'

'Jigsaws. Chinese cookery. I made clay models. Of the Zygons. I did what I

normally do when I'm investigating something... with your unit, I mean. I dived in

and messed it up. Threw away the manual, ignored the notes and laughed in the

face of Balloon Help.' He left the console, and perched in the wicker chair, his

hands folded into a spire. 'That's what I did with the TARDIS when I first got her.

You can't do everything for a long time. In the case of the TARDIS, for far too

long. But when you do get where you want to go, you've learnt all sorts of useful

stuff about the system you're investigating.'

'No wonder your cakes are so awful.' I grabbed a cushion and sat down facing him.

'The ducks like them.'

'The ducks are programmed to like them. Besides, it all sounds rather dangerous to

me. You can get terribly hurt, mucking around like that. I prefer to read the manual

from cover to cover, hopefully in the bath with a good bottle of Cabernet

Sauvignon.'

'Mmmm...' The Doctor frowned again, and jumped up. He started to pace around

the console once more, tapping controls seemingly at random. Maybe it was me

using the words 'terribly hurt' that had set him off again.

God, I was being careful of his feelings!

His glance fastened on a monitor and an uneasy grin spread over his features.

'Found it. Good girl.' He tapped a few buttons and straightened up. 'There's a planet

called Crex in the Augon system. They have a market there. Would you like to go?'

I had the feeling that saying no would invalidate several days' worth of hovering in

the vortex. 'A sort of spacecraft boot sale? Is there something particular you're

after?'

'A white elephant. Maybe a pink one.'

'Is this an item or an acquaintance?

He paused for a moment, and then smiled one of his more dangerous secret smiles.

'Both.'

The TARDIS materialised with that noise it has (sorry, I've never been able to

come up with a good description) amidst a tight little knot of stalls, under the shade

of purple silks and great canopies of striped fabric. The first thing that caught my

attention as the Doctor locked the door behind us was the smell, a wonderfully

jumbled mixture of spices and cooking scents, a hundred different cultures in one

place.

Nobody seemed to bat an eyelid at the TARDIS landing. They must have been

fairly used to materialisations. The Doctor raised his umbrella like an aerial, and

turned it and his nose until he'd settled on a direction. 'This way.' He walked off in

a straight line, tossing a memory module from the TARDIS databanks in his hand

thoughtfully.

I followed him through the masses of alien species, both humanoid and otherwise,

their bargainings and gestures and laughter merging in one great shout. Felt odd to

be out and about, a bit vulnerable. Shrugged it off. The Doctor led the way to a

little hillock, its surface once grassy, but now a churned patch of mud. He pulled

me after him up to the top of it, and from there we got a good look at the whole

market.

It went on for miles, all the way to one cloudy horizon, a brilliant jumble of tents

and awnings. The other way, it petered out a bit in the direction of some

mountains, and a big dark square with some buildings indicated a rough spaceport.

'It's wonderful,' I opined. 'How did it start?'

'Tax concessions.' The Doctor was still turning like a weather vane. His eyes

suddenly focused on something in the distance. He nodded, and then turned to me.

'I'll be gone for an hour. Maybe two. I'll find you.'

'What, in that lot?'

'Back at the TARDIS then.' He seemed eager to get away, flustered and impatient.

In the middle distance I glimpsed the solution to our problem. 'Tell you what,' I

said, pointing. 'I'll meet you over there.

The beer tent seems to be a universal icon, and one, to paraphrase a recent

acquaintance, about which I may write a short monograph one day. The

atmosphere's always different to a pub or a bar, slightly edgy and hot under the

canvas, relaxed and cool outside. You see more undone buttons and exposed podge

outside a beer tent than anywhere short of the Flaborama on Boojus 5. I bought a

pint of The Admiral's Old Antisocial at the, thankfully currency-unspecific, bar,

and wandered out to the plastic tables.

Now, you may well be thinking: 'Beer? What a terrible idea. That's no solution.' I

would reply that you're wrong. It's a solution of hops, barley and yeast, and it is so

transcendently wonderful that I long ago made the decision to sacrifice any chance

of trim thighs in favour of it.

Company is always an issue at this juncture. There's no point, in my view, in being

a solitary drinker. You can do that at home, given a certain degree of sadness

which I wouldn't dream of sinking to. Usually. Well, three out of ten times. And

it's been a difficult time for me lately. Anyway, there were the usual tables of

dangerous-looking space pirates, penniless backpackers with their glasses of iced

water, and traders waving their hands and complaining that business wasn't what it

once was. Most of them were aliens of some sort.

Therefore, it was with a rather xenophobic sort of glee that I came across a table

whose occupants were doubly interesting. They were A: human and B: female.

They looked like they all came from different places, and had clustered together

out of the familiar realisation that internal gonads are best, actually. So I sat down

and introduced myself. Professor Bernice Summerfield, FRAS (Fairly Rotten At

Scrabble), current occupier of the Proxima University Chair Of Archaeology (it's

in my room, by the begonias), holder of the Martian Gallantry Medal (I found one

and thought I thoroughly deserved it). They were suitably impressed. They laughed

out loud.

'Jac,' said a young woman with short hair and interesting ear-rings. 'I'm here

researching the origins of the market for Ellerycorp. They're thinking of doing

something similar.' She introduced the others. There was another short- haired

woman with the eyes of a Traveller Priestess, who was called Sarah. I don't think I

ever found out why she was there. And there was a feisty-looking woman with

tanned olive skin, wearing an assortment of charity shop relics that she somehow

made stylish. She was looking at me with a world-weary expression that I found

instantly charming, her head propped up on one hand.

'How's it going?' she asked. For a moment I thought of telling her. But no. 'Fine.'

'Your round, Lucy,' Sarah told her, placing her empty glass definitively down on

the table.

'You're not exactly svelte either,' Lucy replied, reaching for the glasses and

winking.

I smiled at that, too. 'Same again, please,' I said. As soon as Lucy had departed, Jac

told Sarah that the woman was a Psychology tutor, who'd been here for a month,

waiting for an interplanetary lift that never seemed to arrive.

Well, that was a familiar story, and I went on to tell them some of my own history.

As regular readers of my diary (if that's you, Doctor, put it down now) know, there

are certain portions of my life that I can't readily account for. I tend to gloss over

these with a post-it note, but on this occasion I have enough recollections to fill a

page, disconnected as they may be. I said all these things, but some of the words

may be in the wrong order.

Pint two: I'm arguing with them. 'But that's ridiculous. You can't expect an internal

market to operate for any extended period of time -’

Pint three: They're laughing at me. 'There is not a God! Listen, if this coin lands on

the same side... several times... then -’

Pint four: They're falling over themselves, holding up their hands like anglers

talking about the fish that got away. 'Short and stubby. Well, I've only ever

encountered five of them, but - what are you laughing at? Did I say something

funny?'

Pint five: They're listening intently, nodding every now and then. 'So we had to go

away. There were so many of them. I think... I hope it was quick for him.'

Pint six: Sarah is looking at me, concerned and sweet.

'It's not far from here, really. Just a quick hopper ride over the hill. I've got this

really great Alcorian wine that you ought to try. And we could, you know, just

hang around for a while. Play tennis. What do you think?'

The next thing I knew, a familiar hand was tapping me on the shoulder, and

something cold attached itself to my cheek. I was thinking about Sarah's offer, and

I tried to swat the hand away like a fly, but then, suddenly-

I was utterly sober.

I unpeeled the medi-patch that the Doctor had slapped on to my cheek and looked

up at him. 'What - ?'

'Alcohol dispersion pad. We haven't got much time, and there's a lot you need to

know.' He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet.

'Hey...' Sarah said foggily, gazing up at me. 'Wait a minute...'

'Leave her alone!' Jac was halfway to her feet. 'Who is this guy?'

'It's all right,' I reassured them. 'He's a friend.' I felt suddenly rather foolish, as if

my dad had arrived to pick me up. Rather awkwardly, I shook Sarah's hand.

'Thanks for being so nice. I appreciated the offer.'

She shrugged. 'No problem. I hope it all works out.' 'It will,' I told her. But then I

glanced at the Doctor.

'Quickly,' he said.

His pupils were glowing silver. I got the feeling that it wasn't going to be that easy.

I let the Doctor lead me back to the TARDIS. He was walking quickly, urgently. I

glanced back to see if he was being followed, but that wasn't it. He was walking

like he was about to explode or throw up, as if something terrible was about to

happen and he had to be in a particular place when it did.

'Could I have a few of those patches?' I asked, still banjaxed by my instant

sobriety. 'They're already my favourite bit of TARDIS equipment.'

'Yes. No. I don't know, it isn't important!' The Doctor turned a corner, saw the

TARDIS ahead and broke into a run. He fumbled the door open and leapt inside,

diving at the co-ordinate keyboard and tapping in instructions faster than I could

follow. 'Catch!' he called, and threw me a rolled-up scroll. I noted that it was sealed

with his thumbprint.

The TARDIS doors closed, and the familiar take-off sound began. The central

column started to rise and fall. 'The letter will tell you everything!' the Doctor

shouted. 'And pay attention to the list! See you in three months! Eck.'

The last was a little click from his throat, like something switching itself off. The

Doctor's eyes flicked back to their normal colour. Then he closed them, and his

mouth twisted into a giddy smile.

Then he fell into a crumpled heap.

A red ball rolled from his pocket, and settled in one comer of the console room.

'Doctor?' I ran to his side, and checked his pulses. One seemed to have stopped

altogether. The other was racing. My first impulse was to rush him straight into the

TARDIS medical bay, but I restrained myself. I broke the seal on the scroll and

quickly read the several sheets it contained. 'Oh no...' I groaned when I'd finished,

flopping back against the console. I turned to address the unconscious, still

grinning, body. 'I may have remarked on this on several occasions in the past, but

let me say it definitively this time. You are such a git!'

And, feeling a bit better, I left him there and headed for the wardrobe room.

This adventure was going to require a serious frock.

Diary Entry Ends

A solemn old humanoid with a grey beard stood outside a tent in the marketplace.

He put his hand up to shade his eyes against the setting sun. Out of it, from the

direction of the spaceport, a hopper was approaching. With a great shouting and a

roar of turbos, it descended next to the tent, and the old man walked forward to

greet the occupants.

The first of them leapt out, dressed in a long cloak and breeches, his two swords

crossed in scabbards across his back. He was a young man, well-muscled and vital.

His green eyes flashed in happiness as he embraced the old man. 'Well met, my

son! You meant what you said in the message? You finally got one?'

'Indeed I have, Greeneye. It has been a long wait, but a Time Lord finally

responded to our signal. I had thought that we hadn't tried enough channels, but -'

'Oh, they heard. Those bastards always hear.' Greeneye glanced at the sky

involuntarily. 'Are you coming with us, then? You've waited so long, it'd be a

shame if you weren't there for the kill.'

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Prologue'Theyseem,inplaces,toaddressmesodirectlyit'salmostuncomfortable''Eitherthewallowinthesuddenrealizationthateverysinglesadsongintheworldiswrittenformealoneortheoverwhelming,distractingpowerofalotofveryloudnoise'FromthediaryofProfBerniceSummerfieldLongagoandfaraway.That'sonewayoflookingatit.But...

展开>> 收起<<

38 - Human Nature.pdf

共262页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

38 - Human Nature

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: