'Ah well,' said the Doctor. 'You can't always get what you want.'
Joel laughed, somewhere behind them. The Doctor shot him a look, and the laughter faded into a grin. The Doctor put a finger to his lips and opened the TARDIS door. 'Do come in,' he said.
207.
Penelope gave him a suspicious look, and went inside.
The Doctor and Joel waited outside. After a couple of minutes, the Doctor took out his pocket watch and opened it. Joel tried to peek at the odd workings, but the Time Lord quietly closed the watch before he could see it.
Another couple of minutes passed. Joel glanced at the Doctor. 'She's probably worked out how to fly it by now.'
'Hmm.' The Doctor pushed open the door. Before Joel could follow him in, he held up a finger. 'Wait here,' he said.
Joel stood outside the time vessel, nervously hoping it wouldn't suddenly leave without him. After another minute, he couldn't stand it any longer.
Somehow, the size difference didn't bother him at all. He'd heard too many descriptions. He took in the clinical whiteness of the place, the primitive-looking controls of the central console, the hum that filled the cool, flavourless air.
Penelope was standing before the console, tears pouring down her face.
The Doctor was standing nearby, holding a chair, looking as though he only half knew what to do.
Joel just watched the odd tableau for a minute or two, Penelope crying silently, the Doctor holding the chair an inch off the ground and looking hope-lessly lost.
Joel took the chair out of the Time Lord's hands. The Doctor shook himself, suddenly, putting a hand on the console and watching as Joel positioned the chair behind Penelope. He took her hand and lowered her into the seat.
The Doctor fished through his pockets, discarding three handkerchiefs before he found an unsullied one, and passed it to her. She blew her nose, loudly, and waved the hanky around, speechless.
'Forgive me,' began the Doctor gruffly, 'if '
'There is nothing to forgive,' announced Penelope. She blew her nose again, and said more clearly, 'I could not have conceived of any machine so, so. . .
Doctor, you or rather, those responsible for this craft's construction have not only conquered the dimensions, but are advanced far beyond my capacity to comprehend. For any human being to comprehend.'
'Oh, come on,' said Joel. 'It looks like you built it from a kit.' He reached out to touch one of the low-tech controls, but the Doctor slapped his fingers away. Joel decided not to say anything more, loath to find himself floating home, but he couldn't get the grin off his face.
Penelope had sprung up from the chair and was pacing around the console, peering at everything, careful not to touch any of the controls. 'How is the internal dimensional configuration maintained?' she wondered. 'For that matter, how many spatial dimensions are involved in the displacement process? Are there limits to the temporal distance that can be covered in a single 208 transit?'
The Doctor shook his head. 'You're worse than Albert,' he said. He patted the console, reassuringly. 'All right, old girl. Let's take this lady inventor and this ungrateful fanboy for a spin.'
He winked at them, and they grinned back like a couple of kids.
Kame raised the sake flask and waved it vaguely at Chris, who was a comfortable pile against one wall of the inn. The Adjudicator held out his cup, and somehow, with considerable effort by the two of them, it was filled again.
'I must enjoy this while I can,' said Kame. 'Very soon, Kuriisu-san, it will be a steady diet of rice and tea for this weary warrior.'
'I really expected you to head back to Hekison with everybody,' said Chris.
'You enjoyed all that fighting. Coming back to life all the time. Like a video-game hero!'
Kame wondered vaguely what he was talking about. 'The thing, young Kuriisu-san, is that now that Kannon is no longer Kannon and I do not pretend to fully understand all that has occurred but the thing is that, the next time I die, I will not return.'
He put a hand to his breast. 'At my age, Kuriisu-san, it is time to reconsider one's life. For many years I have lived as best I could by bushido bushido, the strict code of the warrior. Now it is time I went beyond that and attempted to penetrate the truth of reality.' He swallowed his sake. 'If I fail to achieve enlightenment this evening, I shall turn myself over to the tender mercies of Kadoguchiroshi.'
'Hair of the dog, eh?' Chris grinned. 'I'll drink to that!' He leant over the smoky firepit, and dropped a crumpled piece of paper into it. The flames flared up for an instant, and the paper was gone.
'And you, Kuriisu-san?' Kame glanced around at the rabble in the inn. They had walked a long way into town, and he wanted to be sure they got back to the monastery with their skins and their purses intact. 'What of your quest to discover what lies beyond death? I doubt my poor descriptions have left you any the wiser.'
'Oh,' said Chris, waving his cup around and splashing sake down his sleeve, 'I'm not worried about any of that any more. It's all resolved. I have been,' he pronounced carefully, 'de-angsted.'
Kame nodded. 'You struck me as more of a straightforward, courageous fellow than a philosopher.'
'Oh. Thanks. Hey?'
'This "original nature" of which Roshi has spoken. . . it is not studying sutras or debating points of scripture. It is behaving purely and simply as oneself It is only when you stop to worry that you become burdened, unable to act.'
209.
'That's deep.' Kame bowed. Chris raised his sake cup. 'Here's half a cat in your eye.'
So Christopher Cwej went up the mountain in the morning, squinting in the sunlight glinting off the fresh snow. He carried nothing with him. He thought about nothing as he climbed up towards the Castle, just looked at the snow and the trees and the leaves and stones, and smiled to himself from time to time.
The TARDIS wasn't back yet. There was a square indentation in the snow, freshly dusted by last night's small fall. Chris sat down beside it, on a fallen beam.
The shrine, the single carved stone meant to lock in the spirit of the vampire, was gone. Chris suspected it was somewhere about the place, probably in little pieces, but he didn't go looking for it.
He checked again, looking into the unhappy place inside himself where Liz had been living all this time. But now, when he reached for those feelings, they were gone. It really was all resolved.
Even the weird dreams would probably stop now.
He started to whistle.
The Doctor stood with his hands resting lightly on the console as the materi-alization routine began. For a moment he thought about nothing at all, just listening to the grinding sound of the TARDIS landing as though it was music, letting his head become completely empty and be filled by that old, familiar, meaningless sound.
Then all of the thoughts and plans and memories came flooding back in.
For a moment, the Doctor felt as though his brain was too small to hold it all, as though something was going to start flowing over the top of his mind and dribble down the sides of his head.
Wouldn't it be nice, he thought for a moment, amidst the jumbled shouting in his skull, to be a plum blossom, and just bloom without a thought?
There was the usual clunk as the TARDIS finished landing. The Doctor pulled his thoughts together and opened the doors.
A snowball hit him squarely in the face.
He yelled and knocked the powdery snow away. Another snowball sailed past as he stormed out of the door.
Chris was peeping up from behind a snow fortress. 'Got you!' called the young man.
'Right,' said the Doctor. He ducked behind a tree and started rolling up a missile of his own.
210.
Psychokinetic sat by himself, wings and legs folded, watching the villagers pick through the remains of their homes.
The other Kapteynians were helping to lift beams and clear away ruined timber and thatching. Only three dwellings had survived the fire, though that was enough to house the survivors until new huts could be built. Mikeneko and Gardener were inspecting the damage to the crops, which was not as severe as they had first thought.
Psychokinetic pecked at the ground nervously, tasting soot, It was possible they might survive the damage he had done to them.
Gardener kept insisting that it wasn't his fault. Its memories of his time in the cryostasis pod were sharp as crystal. From his point of view, it had been years of confinement. Years of panic. His powers lashing out erratically, sometimes sensing his environment, sometimes desperately trying to interact with it.
And he couldn't even help them. Gardener insisted he do nothing until he recovered his health no one knew what strange side effects his time in the pod may have had. And, now he was out of the supercooled environment, his psychokinetic ability was barely enough to lift a worm, let alone shift charred beams and ruined tatami tatami.
He closed his eyes, slowly becoming aware of the movement around him.
Felt the mass of the timber, the strength of the humans' muscles, acceleration, gravity, velocity, force. It was a pale awareness after the cold intensity of the pod.
He did not see the beam that began to fall from the front of one of the ruined houses. He felt it, felt it come loose and willingly jump into gravity's arms, oblivious of the fragile creatures that were beneath it.
Psychokinetic opened his eyes. The humans were shouting in surprise and then in relief, two of them cowering under the beam he was holding up.
A beam that weighed as much as three Kapteynians.
'You'd better get out from under there,' he said shakily, 'because I think I'm going to faint.'
Chris and the Doctor were pushing a massive snowball along the ground.
'That's enough,' Chris decided. 'Now for stage two.'
They made the second tier by rolling up a smaller ball and slapping stinging-cold handfuls of snow on to it, until it formed a lumpy sphere, about the right size.
'Got some questions for you,' said Chris, as they gingerly lifted the second snowball into place.
Chris's look was thoughtful, but it wasn't the faintly worried, puzzled look he'd worn for too long. 'Fire away,' said the Doctor, feeling himself relax.
211.
'OK. Firstly, why didn't you get Joel to tell you what wow, this sounds weird about the eighth Doctor?'
The seventh Doctor smiled, patting the snowball into shape. 'I don't want to know,' he said. 'I really don't. I'm not going to try to plan for it, live in constant anticipation.'
'Kame calls that dying isagi-yoku,' said Chris. 'Without reluctance or hesita-tion.'
'When it happens, it happens.' The Doctor shrugged. 'Death's the one door you can't close.'
'Which brings us to the other thing,' the young man said shyly. 'You see, after I passed my last Adjudicator exam and joined the force, I had to fill out this huge form, and one of the questions was about next of kin. In case I was killed in the line of duty.'
'Don't worry,' said the Doctor. 'If anything ever happens to you, I'll make sure your family is all right.'
'Actually,' said Chris, 'I was thinking about you.'
'I think we can make the head just by packing on handfuls,' said the Doctor.
He rolled a small snowball and patted it down into place. 'Like this.'
Chris frowned, but started scooping up snow.
'Anyway,' said the Doctor, 'I see I completely failed to teach you anything about manipulation.'
Chris laughed. 'I did con Psychokinetic into contacting Penelope, though.'
'Oh yes. Penelope told me about the "explosive". Very clever.'
Chris had a pocketful of small stones. Now he gave the snowman a crooked smile and two beady eyes. The Doctor found a pair of fallen branches and pushed them into the snowman where his arms ought to be.
'Is Penelope going to be OK?'
'Oh, yes. I'm sure she will fight for her divorce, go on working. The real shame is that she won't ever have the recognition she deserves.'
'At least she won't have to worry about any more weird dreams. The Room With No Doors. Poor old Psychokinetic, locked away. . . ' Chris met the Doctor's eyes. 'Nobody deserves that.'
'You're right.' The Doctor clasped Chris's arm. 'No one does.'
Chris nodded. He waved his arm at the snowman as though it were a work of art. Its irregular, noseless face beamed back at them. 'Well, what do you think?'
'Nine out of ten, Chris,' said the Doctor.
212.
Thanks to: Rebecca Levene and Peter Darvill-Evans, Andy Bodle and all at Virgin for all these years.
Rebecca J. Anderson, for her kind permission to quote from Sacrifice Sacrifice.
Jeff Beuck, for the 'Superb' rating. :-) Jon Blum, for writing the Doctor's subterranean thoughts, and continuing to be full of clever insights. :-x Dave Halfpenny, Craig A. Reed, Jr, and Kyla Ward, who know about samurai and such things.
Jim Mortimore, Lance Parkin and Marc Platt, for Useful Discussions.
Geoffrey Weasel for the Japanese translations arigatou! arigatou!
The readthrough crew: Todd Beilby, Jon Blum, Aaron Brockbank, Steven Caldwell, David Carroll, Stephen Groenewegen, James Sellwood, Kyla Ward and Grant Wittingham.
And to everyone else who helped in any way!
213.