Free Doctor Whom or ET Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Parodication by Adam Roberts Page B

But that’s not to say I know what it is.’
    ‘Is that the best you can do?’
    ‘Master Debater!’ cried the Dr, as if to the air. ‘Oh, wicked Master Debater! Why must you tarry in the ways of ultimate wicked evility?’ He raised his right fist to a point a little way in front of his face, and then rotated it slowly, as if examining it from every angle for the intrinsic interest of its knuckles.
    ‘Can he . . .’ I asked, looking around me but seeing nothing, ‘can he, you know. Can he hear you?’
    The Dr looked crossly at me. ‘Of course not. He’s splashing around in the icy waters of the North Atlantic right now. How could he possibly hear what I’m saying inside my own TARDY in tempo-spacey travel in the vacuum of deep space?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said, a little sulkily. ‘I thought maybe . . . I don’t know .’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I thought maybe he was eavesdropping. You know, electronically. And that was why you suddenly addressed him. I don’t know how your TARDY machines work, now, do I? And anyway, what was I supposed to think? Why were you talking to him if he can’t even hear you?’
    ‘I was being dramatic!’ exclaimed the Dr, in an infuriated tone. ‘I was trying to capture a little of the quasi-operatic excitement incipiently present in the situation. I don’t know why I bother sometimes, honestly.’
    ‘Well there’s no need to be like that,’ I said, hurt, to be honest, by the Dr’s tone.
    ‘Will you two stop it?’ said Linn. ‘We’ve got our next mission to consider.’
    ‘Ah!’ said the Dr. ‘Yes. Gather round, assistants. Gather round.’
    Linn stepped smartly to stand next to the Dr. I tried to do the same, but caught my knee on the edge of the central console in my haste. This was very painful. I yelped and doubled over, trying simultaneously to grab my knee and to keep my balance. I failed in both respects, and instead slammed my forehead against the console. This was also very painful.
    After some effort I was able to pull myself upright. I could see stars. This was because the Dr, oblivious to my pratfalling, had pulled up a viewscreen schematic of the area of space through which we were travelling.
    ‘Our next mission,’ he was saying. ‘Hell. We must avert a terrible dynastic squabble. Apparently a single stick-back-plastic apostrophe, inserted onto an official sign in exactly the right place, should do it.’
    ‘What about this Stavros fellow?’ Linn was saying. ‘I don’t like the sound of this Time Gentleman Violator.’
    ‘Ow,’ I said, rubbing my forehead. ‘Ow, ow, ouch .’
    ‘It’s a nasty piece of work,’ the Dr agreed. ‘It’s designed to destroy a Time Gentleman’s braintide.’
    ‘Braintide?’ Linn asked.
    ‘The sum total of his brainwaves.’
    ‘Ah!’ said Linn, in an I see! tone of voice.
    ‘Ah!’ I said in a my-skull-really-hurts-I-mean-I-don’t-want-to-alarm-anybody-but-I-just-may-actually-have- dislocated -my-knee tone of voice.
    ‘If Stavros, or one of his Garleks, aimed that weapon at my brain’—the Dr patted his own chest—‘it would be curtains for me. Those little velvet curtains about a foot tall that are drawn across the slot at the crematorium through which the coffin disappears. Those sorts of curtains.’
    ‘I thought you said your brain,’ I said, cross on account of my hurty head. ‘Why were you tapping your chest?’
    ‘That’s where my brain is located,’ the Dr said.
    ‘So where is your heart?’
    ‘Are.’
    ‘Up where ?’
    ‘No - are - where are your heart s . I have two.’ He tapped his head. ‘One on the left and one on the right side of my head. It’s always seemed to me an arrangement infinitely to be preferred. Or, perhaps not infinitely, but. You know what I mean.’

Chapter Eight
    THE DOOM OF THE HELL-MET WOMAN
    Finally, after what seemed like a very long-drawn-out journey, the TARDY rematerialised. ‘We’ve arrived!’ announced the Dr, somewhat superfluously. ‘Here we