Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Donna and Ten - The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Thirteen ( Chapter 13 )

'Just one mystery left, Doctor . . . who exactly are YOU?' Agatha Christie asked him, turning from the purple glow of the Silent Pool. Donna had just thrown the Firestone pendant into the pool, and Reverend Golightly, the Vespiform alien had dived in after it and drowned.

 

Before the Doctor could fob her off with a glib answer, Agatha doubled over in pain and collapsed.

 

The Doctor caught her and eased her to the ground. 'Oh, it's the Firestone, its part of the Vespiform's mind. It's dying and it's connected to Agatha.'

 

Agatha started to glow purple, and the Doctor wasn't sure if she would survive; time was in flux, and history could be rewritten. But then, the glow around Agatha and the glow in the lake faded, and she seemed to recover, passing out with a sigh.

 

'He let her go,' he observed quietly. 'Right at the end, the Vespiform chose to save someone's life.'

 

'Is she alright, though?' Donna asked in concern.

 

'Of course, the amnesia. Wiped her mind of everything that happened. The wasp, the murders . . .'

 

'And us,' Donna realised. 'She'll forget about us.'

 

'Yeah, but we've solved another riddle . . . The mystery of Agatha Christie. And tomorrow morning . . . her car gets found by the side of a lake . . . A few days later, she turns up in a hotel at Harrogate with no idea of what just happened.' Time wasn't in flux, he realised, it was waiting for him to complete the circle, to avoid the paradox.

 

'Come on, help me get her into the professor's car, we have to take her to the TARDIS, and then on to Harrogate.'

 

They carefully lay her on the rear seat, and set off back to Eddison Manor. When they drove up to the manor, they could see that everyone in the house was trying to clear up after the evenings excitement of having a giant wasp trash the place. They were able to carry Agatha to the TARDIS and set off for the Harrogate Hotel.

 

They landed in a grove of trees that lined the driveway leading up to the hotel. Donna still found it weird that only minutes ago it was the middle of the night, and now it was the following morning. Talk about jet lag. Agatha had regained consciousness, but was still groggy and dazed by the link to the Firestone. Donna took her hand and gently led her out of the TARDIS and guided her towards the hotel.

 

She looked back at them, thinking that somehow she should know them, but couldn't quite remember.

 

'No one'll ever know,' the Doctor told her as they watched her amble towards the hotel.

 

'Lady Eddison, the Colonel, and all the staff . . . What about them?' Donna asked.

 

'Shameful story, they'd never talk of it . . . Too British . . . while the Unicorn does a bunk back to London town, she can never even say she was there.'

 

'What happens to Agatha?'

 

'Oh, great life . . . Met another man, married again . . . saw the world. Wrote and wrote and wrote.'

'She never thought her books were any good though, and she must have spent all those years wondering.' They turned around and went back into the TARDIS.

 

'The thing is,' he reflected as he threw his coat over the coral strut. 'I don't think she ever quite forgot. Great mind like that, some of the details kept bleeding through. All the stuff her imagination could use. Like, Miss Marple.'

 

'I should have made her sign a contract.'

 

'And.. where is it, where is it, hold on.' He knelt down and lifted one of the floor gratings. 'Here we go.'

 

He lifted out an old wooden chest. 'C. That is C for Cybermen.' He took out a disk and dropped it on the upturned lid. 'C for Carrionites,' he said taking out the glowing green crystal ball that contained the alien witches and shaking it, followed by a sculpture of Caesar's head.

 

'And Christie, Agatha. Look at that,' he said holding up a paperback edition of 'Death in the Clouds' with a wasp on the cover.

 

'She did remember.'

 

'Somewhere in the back of her mind, it all lingered . . . And that's not all. Look at the copyright page.'

 

Donna took the book and opened it. 'Facsimile edition, published in the year . . . five billion!'

 

'People never stop reading them. She is the best selling novelist of all time.'

 

Donna sighed. 'But she never knew.'

 

'Well, no one knows how they're going to be remembered. All we can do is hope for the best. Maybe that's what kept her writing . . . Same thing keeps me travelling. Onwards?' he asked with a smile.

 

'Onwards,' she said. They stood up and he activated the time rotor. 'But not dressed like this, eh?' she said as they watched it pump up and down. 'I'm goin' to get changed, an' then I'm goin' to make . . . what time is it in `ere?' She was still a bit time lagged by jumping from the middle of the night, to the early morning.

 

'It's five twenty three in the afternoon,' he told her.

 

'Right, then one's goin' to make One's dinner,' she said in her posh accent.

 

'Ooh, make two while you're at it, I'm starving.' He gave her his cheeky smile.

 

After a bit of tinkering with the console, the Doctor sniffed the air, and could smell the aroma of cooked food coming along the corridor. He followed his nose to the kitchen / dining room, and was confronted by a very elegant and sartorial dinner laid out on the table. Donna had obviously been inspired by Lady Eddison's kitchen, and there was enough food to feed an army.

 

'Are we expecting company?' he asked sarcastically.

 

'Oi, there's barely enough here for just you,' she said seriously. 'Sit down and start eatin', put some meat on those skinny bones.'

 

He smiled at her motherly attitude and sat down, picking up his knife and fork, and helping himself to a selection of meats and vegetables.

 

'I bet when you walk past the railings of a school, the kids go `now we see you, now we don't, now we see you, now we don't',' she said with a cheeky smile.

 

'I have to keep in shape,' he said in his defence. 'There's a lot of running in this life that I lead.'

 

After the thoroughly enjoyable meal, they retired to the living room for the lady of the house (or TARDIS) to enjoy an evening of catching up with Eastenders, whilst the gentleman enjoyed reading `Death in the Clouds', by one Agatha Christie.

 

'Well, I'm bushed,' Donna said with a yawn. 'I'm off to bed. Where are you takin' me tomorrow?'

 

'Ooh, I know, let's hit the beach . . . how does Brazil sound? Rio de Janeiro . . . you could be the girl from Ipanema,' he said, waggling his eyebrows.

 

'Brilliant! I'll see you in the mornin' . . . goodnight.'

 

'Night Donna,' he said as he finished reading his book.

 

In the early hours of TARDIS time, he had a feeling about his psychic paper, the feeling he usually got when there was a message for him. He had last felt it when the Face of Boe had called him to the hospital in New New York. He went through to the console room, and rummaged through the pockets of his jacket that he'd left over the hand rail. He took the black wallet out of the pocket and flipped it open.

 

`The library come as soon as you can. X' was all it said.

 

'What?' he asked the empty room. The Library was a planet-sized library that was commissioned by Felman Lux during the 50th century.

 

'Come as soon as you can?' he read out loud. That sounded fairly urgent, not desperate, but quite important. The thing that really piqued his interest though, was the `X' at the end. Who, out of all the people that he knew would finish a psychic message with a kiss.

 

[`Doctor, she is returning,'] Lucius had said in Pompeii, having gained the temporary gift of prophecy when the explosion of Vesuvius caused a rift in time which echoed back to the Pyrovillian alternative.

 

`Could it be true?' he asked himself. Could Rose have found a way back to this universe? He knew it was impossible, but so was the fact that they had travelled to the alternate universe in the first place, and Rose would certainly finish a psychic message with a kiss. There was only one way to find out for certain, Brazil would have to wait for another day, the chance of seeing Rose again was just too important to wait.

 

 

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'Books,' the Doctor said as he shut the console down with his usual flourish. 'People never really stop loving books.' He grabbed his coat off the coral strut and put it on as he moved quickly down the ramp. Donna set off after him, her disappointment of not going to Brazil just yet, put to one side as she picked up on his excitement.

 

When she stepped out of the TARDIS, that excitement waned. They were in a large, dimly lit area, with light seeping in through high windows, illuminating the dusty air as it made its way to the floor. The Doctor though was still enthusing about books, she suspected his enthusiasm was caused by having met Agatha Christie, and staying up all night to read one of her novels.

 

'Fifty first century,' he continued. 'By now you've got holovids, direct to brain downloads, fiction mist, but you need the smell . . . the smell of books, Donna. Deep breath.'

 

They moved out of the dim room onto a huge, marble staircase which led down to a balcony overlooking a futuristic city. The Doctor continued his narration as they walked down the steps.

 

'The Library. So big it doesn't need a name, just a great big THE.'

 

'It's like a city,' she said, looking at the view beyond the balcony.

 

'It's a world . . . literally, a world. The whole core of the planet is the index computer. Biggest hard drive ever, and up here, every book ever written. Whole continents of Jeffrey Archer, Bridget Jones, Monty Python's Big Red Book. Brand new editions, specially printed.'

 

He looked over a balcony onto roofs below. 'We're near the equator, so . . .' He licked a finger, and held it up to test the airflow. 'This must be . . . BIOGRAPHIES,' he shouted making Donna jump, and his voice echo around the halls. 'I love biographies.'

 

'Yeah, very you. Always a death at the end,' she said sarcastically.

 

'You need a good death. Without death, there'd only be comedies. Dying gives us size.'

 

Donna picked up a book from a stand on the balcony.

 

'Way-a,' he said, snatching the book off her. 'Spoilers.'

 

'What?'

 

'These books are from your future. You don't want to read ahead . . . spoil all the surprises. Like peeking at the end.'

 

'Isn't travelling with you one big spoiler?' she pointed out.

 

'I try to keep you away from major plot developments. Which, to be honest . . . I seem to be very bad at,' he said distractedly as he looked around. 'Because you know what? This is the biggest library in the universe . . . So where is everyone?'

 

They stopped and listened, all that could be heard was a gentle breeze. 'It's silent,' he said, moving over to an information terminal and using his sonic screwdriver on it.

 

'The library?' she asked, walking over to see what he was doing.

 

'The planet . . . The whole planet.'

 

'Maybe it's a Sunday,' she suggested.

 

'No, I never land on Sundays . . . Sundays are boring.'

 

'Well, maybe everyone's really, really quiet,' she whispered, after all, it was a library.

 

'Yeah, maybe. But they'd still show up on the system.' He continued to search the terminal display. He was looking for one particular life form, a pink and yellow human female.

 

Donna's initial enthusiasm had gone now. She wanted to be on Ipanema beach, drinking pina colada's and chatting up some hunky locals. 'Doctor, why are we here? Really, why?'

 

When she had woken up this morning and gone to the kitchen / dining room for breakfast, he had told her that he was taking a quick detour before going to Brazil, and as usual, he was being very cagey about it.

 

'Oh, you know, just passing,' he said distractedly, still studying the screen.

 

'No, seriously,' she said, trying to pin him down for an explanation. 'It was all let's hit the beach, then suddenly we're in a library. Why?'

 

'Now that's interesting,' he said, ignoring her question

 

'What?'

 

'Scanning for life forms. If I do a scan looking for your basic humanoids, you know, your book readers, few limbs and a face, apart from us, I get nothing. Zippo, nada. See . . .? Nobody home,' he said, showing her the display that showed a filtered humanoid life form count of two.

 

'But if I widen the parameters to any kind of life . . .'

 

The screen counted up and registered an `Error 1,000,000,000,000 life form number capped at maximum record'.

 

'A million, million, gives up after that . . . A million, million.'

 

They looked out again over the cityscape. 'But there's nothing here. There's no one,' Donna said.

 

'And not a sound. A million. million life forms . . . and silence in the library.'

 

'But there's no one here, there's just books. I mean, it's not the books, is it? I mean, it can't be the books, can it? I mean, books can't be alive,' she tried to reason, but wasn't convinced.

 

They both reached cautiously, slowly for a book, afraid that it might bite or something, when a voice made them jump.

 

'Welcome.'

 

Donna pointed up the steps. 'That came from here.'

 

The Doctor let out his breath. 'Yeah.'

 

They went up the steps and returned to the dim, dusty room. To their left was a circular desk, which Donna presumed was where you took your books to have them stamped (or whatever the fifty first century equivalent was). A vaguely humanoid sculpture next to the desk made a ticking sound as it turned its head and spoke with a female voice from a small face on its surface.

 

'I am Courtesy Node seven one zero slash aqua. Please enjoy the Library and respect the personal access codes of all your fellow readers, regardless of species or hygiene taboo.'

 

'That face, it looks real.'

 

'Yeah . . . don't worry about it.'

 

'A statue with a real face, though?' she asked uncertainly. 'It's a hologram or something, isn't it?' she ventured.

 

'No . . . but really, its fine.'

 

The Node spoke again. 'Additional. There follows a brief message from the Head Librarian for your urgent attention. It has been edited for tone and content by a Felman Lux Automated Decency Filter . . . Message follows. Run. For God's sake, run. No where is safe. The library has sealed itself, we can't. Oh, they're here. Argh. Slarg. Snick. Message ends. Please switch off your mobile comm. units for the comfort of other readers,' the unemotional voice said.

 

'So that's why we're here,' he said, confirming Donna's suspicions that it wasn't his love of Agatha Christie novels that had brought them here.

 

'Any other messages, same date stamp?' he asked the Node urgently.

 

'One additional message. This message carries a Felman Lux coherency warning of five zero eleven . . .' it started to say in its unhurried fashion.

 

'Yeah, yeah, fine, fine, fine. Just play it,' he shouted impatiently.

 

'Message follows. Count the shadows. For God's sake, remember, if you want to live, count the shadows. Message ends.'

 

They looked around the large, empty hall.

 

'Donna?' he said quietly, not wanting to disturb anything that might be lurking nearby.

 

'Yeah?' she said nervously.

 

'Stay out of the shadows.'

 

'Why, what's in the shadows?' she asked, but he didn't answer. Instead he walked back towards the TARDIS, and she thought for a moment, just the slightest slither of time, that they were going to leave whatever was in the shadows to its own devices, and make a quick getaway. But no, he walked past, and through a door opposite the grand staircase, into a long room filled with shelf upon shelf of books as far as the eye could see, and four floors high.

 

'So . . . we weren't just in the neighbourhood,' she said, looking up at the impressive collection.

 

'Yeah, I kind of . . . sort of lied a bit. I got a message on the psychic paper.' He held it up in front of her, and the message appeared, as if being written by an invisible pen.

 

`The library come as soon as you can. X'

 

'What do you think? Cry for help?' he asked her.

 

She took the wallet off him and turned it to face him. 'Cry for help with a kiss?' she said teasingly.

 

'Oh, we've all done that.'

 

'Who's it from?' she asked. Whoever it was, they knew him well. `Come as soon as you can', not desperate, but intriguing enough to draw him in like a moth to a flame. And the kiss; that was a nice touch, leaving him wondering if it was from his lost love, Rose.

 

'No idea,' he said honestly. He knew who he'd like it to be from, but that was personal.

 

Donna wanted to see if she was on the right track. 'So why did we come here? Why did you . . .'

 

The Doctor was looking down the rows of book shelves. 'Donna,' he interrupted.

 

She saw the look of concern on his face, and looked in the same direction. Rows of lights were going out, and the darkness was getting closer, bringing with it the shadows.

 

Now, she was getting scared. 'What's happening?'

 

'RUN!' he shouted, pulling her into a run, away from the approaching darkness.

 

They came to a door between the book shelves, and he tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge.

 

'Come on,' he pleaded at the door.

 

'What, is it locked?'

 

'Jammed. The wood's warped.'

 

'Well, sonic it . . . Use the thingy,' she said, making the action of using the sonic screwdriver with her thumb.

 

'I can't, its wood,' he said in frustration.

 

'What, it doesn't do wood?' A futuristic, multi purpose tool, and it doesn't do wood? He'd be better off with a Swiss Army Knife, she thought.

 

No, wait, he'd had an idea. 'Hang on, hang on. I can vibrate the molecules, fry the bindings. I can shatterline the interface,' he babbled.

'Oh, get out of the way,' she said angrily. She showed him how they vibrated molecules in Chiswick, and gave the door a powerful kick, causing the double doors to fly open. They rushed inside, and he found a book to put through the handles, effectively barring the door.