Dr. Who fanfic: Bubble Tea
Friday, 12 July 2024 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rAuthor:
kaffy_r Characters: The Thirteenth Doctor, Miles Vorkosigan, Ivan Vorpatril, Thomas Nightingale, Peter Grant, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Buckaroo Banzai, Rawhide, a mysterious entity.
Rated: Gen.
Word Count: 11,089 total/5,663 Chapter 1
Summary: The Doctor wasn't sure how many plates the mysterious entity that brought them all together could handle, nor could she figure out why all the plates were in the air. What she did know was that she had to get all the plates - her friends and colleagues - safely out of the holding pen in which they found themselves.
Edited by: No one. That will probably show, for which I beg pardon. I did reread and edit rather obsessively.
Author's Notes: What is it Browning said? That someone's reach should exceed their grasp? This story may very well prove that point. Four years and seven months ago, I started this ungainly crossover/mashup. Could I manage to merge five, count'em five, separate universes? Why sure I could! Real Soon Now. Of course, I'd started without any idea of what to do, where to go, or how to get there ... but finally - finally - it's done. And I don't think I'll ever try something so ridiculous again. Heh.
Disclaimer: And here we go -
1) As much as I wish it were otherwise, no Whoniverse characters are mine. They are the sole properties of the BBC and their respective creators.
2) Miles Vorkosigan and Ivan Vorpatril belong solely to Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.
3) Sherlock Holmes and John Watson belong to the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle.
4) Thomas Nightingale and Peter Grant belong solely to Ben Aaronovitch.
5) Buckaroo Banzai and Rawhide belong solely to Earl Mac Rauch and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
*** *** ***
“Oh dear. This is not good.”
The Doctor eyed the … it wasn’t a room, now, was it? It was more a space. Perhaps colored in shades of ivory and autumn rain, with sort-of walls and a kind-of floor, and a ceiling-that-didn’t-bear-looking-at-too-closely-just-because. Perhaps existing with no color at all. That didn’t bear eying either; when you did, your insides sort of twisted nauseatingly.
So, not just a space. A space that wanted to get into, or possibly come out of, a dimension that wasn’t the third one. Worse, it seemed to want to draw things — people — out of the third one and into itself.
Not good, not good in the least. Even she got a little woozy looking too long at any of the putative borders of the place, and she was fairly certain that humans would fare even worse than that —
“Not good how? No, strike that. Not good in what way beyond the obvious?”
She started. Goodness, he was good at that. She could normally tell when humans were sneaking up on her.
“Miles, please don’t sneak up on me.”
The little man raised an eyebrow. "I seem to remember you telling my mother once that sneaking was the only way I appeared to be comfortable getting around.”
“That was a long time ago, and I was, quite literally, another person. And yes, I know I’m using ‘literally’ incorrectly. Technically.”
The eyebrow stayed up, joined by its mate.
The Doctor groaned. “I’m sorry. But you have to admit you were good at it even as a child —”
“— and it was excellent training for my eventual career. You still haven’t answered my question.”
She grimaced. “I should rephrase that. Not ‘not good.’ Probably ‘difficult’. Yeah, that’s the term, but I didn’t want to bring it up in front of … you know … people. Other people. Other than you, at this point.” She looked back at the extremely small group standing around trying not to look at what was around them. Which on the whole was smart, she thought.
“I tried to call the TARDIS to me, but that’s not happening. At least not right now. I can hear Her, She can hear me, but there’s something preventing Her from coming in.” She stopped for a moment. “It hasn’t stopped other things — people, rather — arriving.”
“That’s … good? Bad? Both?”
Count on a Vorkosigan to make sounding cautious a test of someone else.
“Miles, I don’t know yet. But more moving parts mean more capacity for catastrophe,” she said. She meant to say something more, but her time sense pulsed in a way she suspected had been augmented by her environment. It was unpleasant; she sat down rather suddenly.
He grabbed her arm as she went down, guiding her to a smoother landing than she’d otherwise have managed.
“Thanks.”
Her unexpected but welcome companion had done his own review of the space, and had done so rather well, considering he was human, and really really not able to look at floor, walls, or ceiling without serious physical and mental risks. Then again, trust a Vorkosigan — especially him — to do the unexpected impossible. He’d probably made a note to collapse for at least a month once they’d escaped, a negotiatory move allowing him to do the job he believed was necessary.
“D’you mind if I sit down with you?”
Miles sounded strained. She looked at him more closely. Yes, he was sweating profusely. The deal he’d made with his body wasn’t completely successful, and that was taking its toll.
“Not at all.”
He settled himself, leaning more heavily on his cane than she thought he wanted to, but doing it with a gentled version of the panache he’d shown when younger. And when had he got to be so old, she wondered a little sadly.
Miles looked at her as if he’d heard the thought, but chose to ignore it. Instead, he shook his head. “I’ll never get used to you. The whole body change thing. Or rather, the whole body and personality change thing. You’re lucky you never wandered into Jackson Whole; their researchers would have had you in pieces so fast you never would have regenerated … that’s what you call it, right? Is this the first time you changed gender? Did you do it after the you with the bowtie? The one who was at our wedding, who knew Taura?”
That was the motormouth she was used to; the Doctor smiled, her momentary sadness gone. “Nope. There was one between. He had grey and wild hair, and an attitude. You’d have liked me then.”
“You’ve always had an attitude.” That was dry enough to crack a lakebed. “Did he have your quite delightful accent?”
“I don’t have an accent!” Then she thought about it. “Yeah, I do, some. Yorkshire. S’where I landed when I regenerated.”
He nodded as if that made sense. “It’s nice to catch up. Let’s do more when we’re out of here. Which brings me back to the question; we’re here, wherever ‘here’ is. Can we get out?”
For a split second, the Doctor was so tired of the type of questions everyone in the universe seemed, at one time or other, to aim at her. She shook it off, reminding herself that there was a reason she’d never be done with rescuing them. She didn’t want to be. Still ….
“Why are you asking me?” She softened that with a smile. “You’re a professional hero, you know; you might be able to find the answer all on your own, eh?”
“For one thing, you’re over here, checking out the — whatever they are, the borders of this place. Besides me, no one else is, which suggests to me that no one else can. I also suspect you’re going to be key to getting us out of here. My guess is that you’re the commonality in our group, since I’d be willing to bet everyone over there knows you, or at least knows of you.”
His glance was keen. “You already know that, don’t you.” It wasn’t even a question.
She closed her eyes briefly. Trust him to say out loud what she’d been determinedly ignoring.
But before she could say anything in response —
“Actually, I was able to check out the borders. It was unpleasant, but necessary.”
Miles twitched. So did the Doctor. What was it today, with people being able to sneak up on her?
The slim brown-haired man leaned on his own silver-topped cane. People who didn’t know him might have assumed that he needed it the way Miles needed his. They would have been wrong. He nodded at Miles, nodded and smiled at the Doctor.
“Thomas!” The Doctor was delighted, all twitchiness forgotten. “I didn’t see you; did you arrive just now?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I think I’ve been here for what seems to be at least 20 minutes, although my perception could be a little off. I can report that I watched you and this gentleman examine our surroundings. I was surprised when you both appeared to retreat back into the center of the space.”
What? The Doctor and Miles hauled themselves to their feet and looked at where they’d been sitting.
“That’s interesting. I don’t recall moving back that far,” Miles said. He looked around at the borders again. “Doctor?”
That was ominous; she hadn’t noticed doing so either. Still, first things first, the Doctor thought. “Thomas, this is Count Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar.” Best to keep it simple, she thought, rather than mentioning Barrayar’s geographic location a long, long, long, very long way from Earth. “Miles, this is Thomas Nightingale, DCI, Metropolitan Police, London.”
Miles kept his face blandly polite, but the Doctor knew his tells. He was impressed. “Detective Chief Inspector … Of Old Earth?”
Nightingale, with a quick glance at the Doctor, nodded. “Yes. From 2022.”
“The Doctor didn’t help you get here with his TARDIS. But you seem to have time traveled. How did you get here?”
Nightingale smiled politely in turn. “Time travel … since it appears to be a little, shall we say, rubbery, who knows who might have been moved forward into the future, or pulled in the opposite direction?”
That set Miles on his back foot, the Doctor noted, before Nightingale continued. “As to how I got here, I’m not quite certain, which was one reason I checked our surroundings, after I … found myself being drawn into this space. I’d been intending to get my jacket from a closet, but opened the door, saw this and was suddenly in the midst of it.”
He frowned slightly. “I use ‘drawn into’ advisedly, because I don’t know if I and Peter — and the rest of this small company — have been drawn to this place, or whether the place itself moved to surround and take us. I’m inclined to believe the second rather than the first, if only because of the feel of the place. There is a … I know you don’t fully approve of the terminology, Doctor, but I work with the tools I’m comfortable with … there is a taste and smell to the air that tells me magic is involved.
“And it’s a hunting magic.”
Nightingale stopped speaking, obviously waiting for some response from the Doctor. She in turn screwed up her face a bit, as if she was forcing herself to drink something sour.
“Hunting magic.” It was her turn to frown. “Thomas, I‘m not gonna knock your expertise, since I’ve seen it work before, but that’s usually when we’ve needed a fireball —”
Miles made a choking sound. “A fireball?” Choking or not, his eyes were starting to light up.
The Doctor needed to shut that down. “Yes, Miles, but that’s not what’s needed here.”
“I agree,” Nightingale said, eyeing Miles speculatively. “And while I defer to your much greater knowledge of all things scientific, which I’m sure will be extremely important shortly, I’m willing to stake my reputation in my own field of expertise on what I’ve just said. I believe that our surroundings have been created at least in part with magic. Hunting — gathering might be a better term because this doesn’t feel quite as dire as the hunting magic I’m used to — but I haven’t yet determined how many higher order spells are involved. I’m working on that now.”
The Doctor, who in her many lifetimes had often run into phenomena known as magic by their observers and practitioners, knew that Nightingale’s own observations might sound odd, but were undoubtedly accurate. “Within your parameters,” she said aloud, “your analysis is unparalleled. The trouble’s trying to figure out how to align your parameters with these perimeters.
She couldn’t resist it. “Parameters and perimeters. They’re confusing, even to me, you know? This time, though, they work well together, don’t they? I rather think —”
“Doctor —” Miles was hiding a smile, albeit not very well.
She shrugged, not quite apologetically. “Sorry. Let’s have it then, Thomas. Fill us in to the extent you can.”
A tall, thin man in black, his hair dressed as severely as his old fashioned suit, approached the three of them. “I should like to join in the analysis if I might.”
Oh, good heavens. Holmes?
The Doctor wanted to laugh, but instead her anger, which had been banked and in the background ever since Miles’ comment, began to burn hotter; still low and slow as yet, but steady. Someone had a lot to answer for. She didn’t like people drawing her friends and colleagues into things, especially danger.
And that was the repugnant point, wasn’t it? She hadn’t been caught in something aimed at someone or something else, which she admitted now was what she’d been hoping against hope. No, she was its target. And worse than that, the someone or something that wanted to get to her was trying to get at her through people she valued.
She was glad Yaz had gone back home with Graham and Ryan to celebrate Graham’s birthday, a celebration she’d planned to join before all this happened. She wondered for a moment if they were in danger, then decided they weren’t, or they would have been here with her. On the other hand, the people in this pocket … universe? Holding pen? She turned her attention back to the detective.
“Mr. Holmes.” She always tried to match his formality, given her knowledge of his tics.
“Sm— Miss … Dr. Smith.” He acknowledged her greeting, and managed to keep his discomfiture at her appearance less obvious than he might have been expected to. “I see a great deal has changed since last we met.”
The Doctor was impressed that he’d deciphered her identity. “Indeed. Perhaps we can have that conversation at another time,” she said, deciding to put it off as long as possible. She needed to route the conversation back to matters at hand. "Are you all right, Mr. Holmes? Is Watson with you?"
She also needed to gauge his ability to accept the current situation. While Holmes was gifted with a remarkable intellect, and was, within his own parameters (there was that word again), extremely observant, he was, she’d come to realize, much better at interacting with the world when his associate was with him.
“He is. Presently he’s with the group of individuals over there,” he said.
His words drew her attention yet again to the collection of people who were caught in this strange space with her. She could see Watson now, speaking with Ivan Vorpatril and a young man she didn’t recognize, but whose glances toward Nightingale suggested he was the Peter that Thomas had referenced.
And of course there was someone else there who should be safe at home. Dr. Banzai and — yes, there he was, a head and cowboy hat taller than those around him — Rawhide.
As she looked, Rawhide turned and nodded in her direction, one hand tipping the hat slightly. Banzai also turned, apparently alerted by his lieutenant’s move. One raised eyebrow later, the leader of the Banzai Institute strode toward her and those surrounding her.
Banzai had obviously been somewhere important, since both his hakama and montsuki were of stiff silk in black and blue stripes. Rawhide, she noticed, was dressed in his best as well; jacket, bolo tie with turquoise agate clasp, crisp linen shirt, jeans tucked into high-heeled tan leather boots. She made a mental note to ensure she could take them to wherever it was they’d been kidnapped from, then expanded that to all the others gathered here.
“Doctor,” Banzai said, almost as formally as Holmes, but with a wry smile all his own. “I’m afraid we’re meeting again under less than optimal circumstances, but knowing you’re here gives me a certain amount of confidence that we can solve our common mysteries. Before that, perhaps you could introduce me to these gentlemen?”
She did just that, introducing Banzai as “My favorite race-car-driving syncopated-music-making physicist,” causing some serious side-eye from Miles and some well-hidden amusement from Nightingale. Holmes, she noted, had gone into information gathering mode. The emergence of his insatiable curiosity was a good thing. Just because everything she might say might not be in his 19th century daily lexicon didn’t mean that he couldn’t grasp concepts very well, once he grokked context.
“So,” Miles said as the five of them settled back on what appeared to be ground for a quick council of what might be war. “Does anyone here have the slightest idea of where we are?”
Oh, you asked for it, Miles.
“No matter where you go, there you are,” Banzai answered distractedly, as he pulled out a scientific calculator from somewhere in or under his hakama, and began inputting something.
“Wha —” Miles receded into silence.
The Doctor couldn’t help it; she giggled, then managed to turn that into a cough. “Bucka— Dr. Banzai, perhaps we can dispense with that wisdom for now?”
He looked up from his calculator and apparently caught Miles’ expression and that of Holmes, who was deliberately not staring at him, but at what he held. “Ah … Sumimasen.”
She waved her hand. “Iya, ki ni shinaide.”
With that, she began. “Alright, let’s look at what we know.”
“We’re been caught in some sort of net, completely against our will,” Miles began promptly. “We’ve been brought together from human worlds, from various times, and we don’t know why. But so far, everyone here knows you, Doctor. So, yes, as I told you before, I imagine you’re the reason.” He grinned unexpectedly. “It’s nice to know someone else is to blame this time.”
“An undeniable fact on the face of it,” Banzai said, with absolutely no hint of sarcasm. “It’s been my experience that the Doctor is a bit of a chaos attractor. But assuming that she’s the common factor doesn’t mean she might not be. And even if she is, what we need to focus on is a solution. The cause is only tangentially important.”
The Doctor looked at him over the top of glasses she wasn’t wearing; he just smiled equably back, so she continued, only a little nettled at his glee.
“Doctor Banzai is correct, as is Count Vorkosigan. So let’s continue, shall we?”
She looked around her, and plunged in.
“How many of you found yourself uncomfortable when you tried to examine the borders of our space — I’ll call it that for now, because, really, who wants to think of it as a holding pen, even though that’s what I think I’d call it — and by uncomfortable, I mean physically and mentally … a bit nauseated, a bit dizzy, a bit wanting to get away from it and retreat to the middle of the space? Asking because I felt that way, and I think humans are probably even more apt to be affected. We can’t plan efficiently if everyone wants to sick up, am I right?”
“I see that your facility with words continues apace, Dr Smith. And your propensity for making illogical comments,” Holmes said with a touch of asperity, before putting a finger to his own lips as he considered her question. “However, to your actual question, I can say that Watson was initially interested in our borders, but retreated quickly. He noticed the nausea and dizziness you reference and advised me against exploring it.”
Nightingale nodded. “I felt it, as did Count Vorkosigan. It is, I am reasonably certain, a sort of defense mechanism designed to keep us all in one small space without necessarily noticing it. And yes, it feels like magic — but not magic that feels as if it comes from our sphere.”
“Magic.” If Holmes’ voice could be any icier, the Doctor couldn’t see how. Before Nightingale could bristle she stepped in, reaching again for the formality she needed to convince the detective not to write Thomas off.
“Mr. Holmes, I have worked with DCI Nightingale before, and I vouch for both his sanity and his abilities. Despite his rank at the Met, his methods are as unpopular with his superiors as yours are there, and at Scotland Yard. They are also frequently almost as successful as yours.”
She thought that should work; Holmes might not believe Nightingale, but he tended to respect people whose reputation with police mirrored his to any extent.
“Very well. DCI Nightingale, if you would continue.” The ice melted a little.
Nightingale actually bowed slightly in Holmes’ direction. The Doctor, as always, marveled at his self control. “I’ve spotted one of what I think would correspond with first order spells in my experience. It’s simple, and I think it’s what causes the nausea — you don’t have to build sophisticated defenses around your work, if one spell makes people too sick or dizzy to mount an attack on it. In a way it’s elegant, albeit brutally so.”
He smiled a bit, then continued. “It’s minor though, and is backed by other … spells, yes, but for our purposes, since I’m one of only two people here who regularly deal in magic, let’s call them formulae. These formulae seem to be more intensely configured, so I think that they are probably constructive creations. They may be the load-bearing walls, the infrastructure, of this place.”
He gestured broadly around himself and got to his feet. That caught everyone’s attention, including the people who had heretofore not been part of the discussion. The Doctor saw Ivan Vorpatril tap Nightingale’s apprentice on the shoulder, then say something to Dr. Watson. All three turned and headed to the circle, with Rawhide well ahead of them. Nightingale nodded in satisfaction.
“I’d like to investigate those a little further, and — Peter, if you would?”
The young Black man had just reached their group. “Guv?”
“I’ll need your help. If you can accompany me to the borders of our space, we need to look for weak spots in the spell system.”
Nightingale turned to the Doctor. “This is DC Peter Grant. He and I will try to ascertain the framework into which we’ve been locked. If we can figure that out, we can begin to talk about how to dismantle it in a way that allows us to return to our own framework. Does that make sense?”
The Doctor nodded, but Grant looked dubious. “I don’t think this is going to be like knocking on a wall to find the hidden entrance.”
“Nor do I,” his superior said. “But it never hurts to check.”
Grant rolled his eyes, but did a sketchy salute. “Let’s go. Both of us at the same place, or do we split up?”
“Together, I should think,” Nightingale said. “Let’s head in that direction. Doctor, we’ll be back as soon as possible.”
They left the circle. The Doctor watched them, noticing how they stepped gingerly on what she supposed was ground, or floor.
Then she squinted, and bit back a tiny squeak of happy discovery as she spotted the beginning of difference between what they walked over and what they passed by.
The “floor” is beige, dirty beige. No, not dirty; beige that's trying to become brown … and now it’s brown. Like earth? Yes! And look! The border “walls” are definitely ivory ... sort of, if ivory could get washed in bluing by mistake. But definitely color. Color! And the color of what sits above me is … blue! Sky!
The Doctor turned back toward her remaining compatriots, a huge smile on her face, intending to ask if any of them noticed the addition of color around them. As she did so, something flickered in the corner of her eye, something bright. Before she could move her head to see what it was, it was gone.
That was definitely some … thing.
“Did anyone see that?”
She fixed her gaze on Holmes. He raised an eyebrow (what was it with eyebrows today? She briefly wished for the magnificent ones she’d had in her previous incarnation) and bent his head slightly, but said nothing. He’d seen something, then, but wasn’t willing to say what he thought it was without more information. What about the others?
“See what?” Rawhide.
“Sorry, no.” Nightingale frowned, as he and his apprentice turned back upon hearing her question.
“Huh?” Peter Grant, but his eyes were narrow. Hmmm.
“Uh … maybe?” Miles, too, was part of the narrow-eye brigade. He struggled to his feet. “Over there?” He pointed with his chin, then his cane.
The Doctor looked in that direction, hard. There? No. Wait. Yes? This place is so hard on physical senses … mine included. She extended her Gallifreyan time-space awareness even further than it was already, although it made her head ache. She rubbed her temples.
Aha! It was there! There was another bright flash this time with a hint of color, possibly blue or aqua, and an accompanying rhythmic pressure in her awareness, almost pleasant —
“Doctor, I’ve just measured a burst of energy. Hmmm ... two bursts now,” Banzai said, whose fingers were dancing across his calculator. Which was obviously more than a calculator; where did he find the time to develop such advanced equipment?.
Banzai continued. “The bursts appear to be … what’s the energy that often surrounds you? Artron energy? This signature is almost identical to artron’s. But not entirely.”
“Buckaroo, if I’m not mistaken, we’re not actually talking about energy emanating from any specific point around us. It seems to be coming from numerous points,” Rawhide said. He’d pulled out his own more-than-a-calculator. “It’s like lightning emanating to and from thunderclouds; you can’t really predict the exact points of emanation or destination. Still … yes, the most intense readings are from … over there. I think.” He copied Miles’ chin signage, then made an exasperated sound deep in his throat. “It’s deucedly difficult to triangulate.”
The Doctor was still trying to spot the whatever-it-was that had momentarily glimmered blue-green just beyond reach of her regular and Gallifreyan senses, but what the two Cavaliers had spotted was important. “Something akin to artron energy?”
“Indeed,” Banzai said. He looked at her, and she knew he expected her to say something.
She acknowledged him briefly but said nothing, then started to walk in a tight circle, just to one side of the group and deliberately close to the border area. Artron energy, or perhaps as near to it as made no difference —
For a second, she thought she could see a ghostly skyline, one that looked like Londo—
“Doctor Smith? Are you alright? Is there something I can do?”
It wasn’t Holmes; it was Watson. Of course it would be the real doctor in the group, wondering whether the strangely dressed woman needed some assistance, possibly medical.
The skyline shivered and seemed to retreat into somewhere else. Damn.
She put her frustration aside, even as she tried to track the ghostly skyline. “I’m fine, Dr. Watson. This activity is just helpful; keeps my brain in shape. As Mr. Holmes uses his violin, you might say.”
“Ah.” Watson looked unconvinced, but nodded. The Doctor was grateful for his polite verbal retreat. Walking helped her think, although the others were looking at her with varying degrees of curiosity. Then she had a thought.
“Doctor Watson, can I make use of your eyes for a moment?”
“Certainly. Where do you want me to look?”
The Doctor appreciated his quick understanding of her request. Intelligent companions; worth their weight in gold. “Over there. Do you see a skyline?”
Watson peered in the direction she indicated, started to speak, then peered again. He turned his attention back to her, frowning. “I thought I saw London in the distance, but the damnable — sorry, ma’am — the fog seems to have obscured it.” Watson lost the frown as he asked, “Did I actually see something, Doctor? Something real?”
The Doctor took a deep breath and nodded. “I think so. I hope so.”
Watson gazed back at where the shadow skyline had appeared, then turned and gave a brief bow to the Doctor. “Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.” With that, he walked over to stand with Holmes.
The Doctor had stopped circling as she spoke. Now she moved even closer to their presumed border barrier. Walking closer to that reminded her of the danger, let her taste that danger.
She nodded, first to Watson and then to everyone else looking at her. Then she concentrated, not looking up from the … well, it hadn’t been ground, but now she was happy to call it that, and — no, wait!
She abandoned her border trajectory and walked toward what she saw, unsurprised to find that it seemed to swell far larger than her approach might have afforded in real time. For all that, the patch of grass was so tiny, so normal looking, that she would have missed it had it not been for the tiny blue flowers — forget-me-nots — peeking up from a fringe of emerald blades.
Forget-me-nots.
Forget me not.
This is important. She screwed up her face in an effort to, once more, connect the dots. I should be grasping the thing that’s just outside of my various sights. I should be able to find —
Something jumped … something ….
“Hey,” Ivan said, pointing away from the apparent borders of the place. “There’s a, a — I mean, yeah … weird but true — a stream over there. That wasn’t there before, I mean.”
Everyone followed where his finger directed. And sure enough there bubbled a pretty little rill, with bright green grass waving in softly ragged clusters on its banks. Others in the group gravitated toward the stream, too, drawn by something that looked at least a bit like their own universe. Water! Grass! Things that cast shadows!
The Doctor spied more forget-me-nots next to the spring, peeking out from between blades of grass. As she did, she felt a breeze; an odd one, that seemed to come from the spring, but circled around ‘til it rested softly on the back of her neck. The breeze brought the slightest aroma of … hmmm … lilies of the valley. Sure enough, there they were, waving in the breeze, knocking gently against their shorter blue sisters, their perfume threading directly to her brain to an intoxicating degree.
And if that wasn’t an effort at communication, she’d be a monkey’s uncle. Or aunt. “Something is trying to talk to us,” she said. “To me in particular.”
“How do you know?” Nightingale didn’t sound as if he disagreed. He was simply curious. She smiled at his acceptance, letting it energize her a little, letting it put her into professorial mode.
“Well, communication is, put simply, how intelligent beings synchronize their understanding of the world, a way to ensure we can operate together in a way we couldn’t if we were at conceptual loggerheads,” she said in answer. “Humans do that synchronization largely with the tool of spoken language.
“But there are other ways to communicate, other tools in the kit, aren’t there?” She smiled again, while silently admonishing herself not to blather on as she all too often did. Professorial mode had its drawbacks. “After all, we see as well as hear; images communicate. In fact, it’s probably true that images are an even more ancient method of communication and synchronization. When we speak, we create images in our head; when we create images, we talk about them with words.”
“The language of glyphs. The language of paintings; the language of fans at the French court of the Sun King; the language of music — one of my favorite languages, for the record.” She walked to the stream. Crouching down beside a mixed cluster of white bells and blue petals, she breathed in deep, then looked up at him and smiled. “The language of flowers.”
“That is certainly poetical, Doctor Smith,” Holmes said, coming up behind Nightingale. “Can you or Inspector Nightingale clarify what you believe these flowers are saying?” Like Nightingale’s, his question was straightforward, not sarcastic.
“I think that someone I’ve come into contact with before has brought me, and all of you, here. I don’t know who it is yet, nor the reason, but I don’t think there’s anything malevolent going on, because I can’t imagine anyone — any bad guy, you might say — using flowers to communicate. There’s nothing villainous about forget-me-nots, now, is there?”
Before she could continue —
The flash of blue-green again. Now subtly different. Now no longer subtly different. Now no longer a flash but a streak hanging above newborn lawn, grass spreading in shades of malachite and viridian; the streak above moving like a living thing, the sward below following it like the partner in a dance.
Dance … green and dancing, green and leaping. Forget me nots. Forget me not. Leaping; bright green and lea—
Oh.
Oh. Of course.
Stupidly blind, Doctor. Blind old big brain. If it’d been a weasel, it would have bitten me.
Now the Doctor knew what to say and who to address.
“ Come on out. No need to keep playing hide and seek. I’m here, I’ll listen,” she said. “All you had to do is ask.”
At first nothing. Then —
“Hey — Hey!!” That was Ivan.
“Whoah, that’s a—” Peter this time “— can a … can they get that big?”
“What in tarnation is — now hold on, Buckaroo, you can’t catch it!” Rawhide, taking off at a dead run in the direction of the blue-green streak’s final position, his admonition to Banzai notwithstanding, toward what everyone could now see as—
“Good God!” Watson ejaculated, all Victorian Londoner horror.
“Ah … that’s a, it’s a—” Ivan really hadn’t been able to finish a sentence for the last minute or so.
Ivan’s cousin, on the other hand: “It’s an Earth toad. A freakishly large Earth toad.”
Buckaroo and Holmes, at the same time, declarations only slightly different:
“I believe it’s actually a frog. Sugoi. ”
“It appears, rather, to be a large frog; freakishly large, in the Count’s words. Possibly some mutated or previously unknown type of Anoures Ceratophryidae. ” The two men moved toward the animal, their expressions equally absorbed.
“It’s going to talk, isn’t it.” Peter Grant didn’t sound surprised at all; resigned, yes, but not surprised.
“Yes, I am.”
The mellow Sheffield-accented female voice was painfully familiar to the Doctor. She was so glad Graham was not here.
So … what to say to the frog? How to explain it — her, for now — to all the perplexed humans now gathering around the two of them? Their surroundings, the Doctor noted, had now changed to a meadow, the kind you might see in a Norwegian high summer.
Nothing for it, then. She turned around to face her companions.
“People, I’d like to introduce you to the Solitract. It’s … she’s … the entity that brought us here.” She stopped and looked toward the frog who really was freakishly large, she saw; much larger than it had been the first time the Doctor met it. “And I’m sure she can tell us why.”
tbc: Chapter Two
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Date: Saturday, 13 July 2024 06:29 am (UTC)Wah.
P.
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Date: Saturday, 13 July 2024 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 14 July 2024 11:07 am (UTC)(I don't know most of the characters, but I'm on board. 😄)
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Date: Sunday, 14 July 2024 05:29 pm (UTC)Two things:
1) This made me laugh out loud this morning, and boy howdy, did I ever need a laugh.
2) This is exactly the reaction I was hoping for - huzzah!
A third thing was hovering in my mind ... ah, yes: If you ever have the time (and I know you have loads of time/s) pick up on Bujold's Vorkosigan saga. Miles is an amazing character (his mother is even more amazing), and the stories have made me laugh out loud, then cry. It's a damned fine series.
Right, a fourth thing: the "Rivers of London" series is wonderful. I binge-read them all at once, and I hope the author writes another book.
And finally ... if you ever get a chance to watch "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension", or even better, find the two Earl Mac Rauch novels the movie is based on ... well, I'm not sure how to predict you'll respond. Partly because Buckaroo and his band of scientist-musicians (the Hong Kong Cavaliers) are indescribable.
And now the second and final chapter of this Frankenstein Fic is up. Huzzah!
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Date: Monday, 15 July 2024 01:04 am (UTC)And there you have it; another