Martha in the Mirror Read online

>A figure dressed as a monk appeared round the corner. It stopped as it saw the Doctor. Slowly, the figure reached up and pushed back the heavy hood of its cloak. To reveal the grinning face of Gonfer.

  ‘Hi Doctor,’ he said. Then his smile froze and he looked round nervously.

  ‘Oops,’ the Doctor said. ‘Hood off, but still in costume.’

  ‘You won’t tell?’ Gonfer whispered nervously.

  ‘Not in a million years. And you know when most people say that they don’t mean it. But I do. Every second of every minute of every hour…’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gonfer hissed before the Doctor could move on to the days and months and years and beyond.

  ‘Have you got a few minutes?’ the Doctor asked, backing up the stairs to let Gonfer up to the landing and into his room. ‘Only I’d like your help with something.’

  ‘Sure. What do you want?’ Gonfer asked as he shrugged off his monk’s habit. ‘They made me pay for the one I lost,’ he said glumly. ‘Docked my wages.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Wasn’t your fault. You tell them. Or I will, if you like.’

  ‘We’re not supposed to leave our quarters,’ Gonfer said. ‘But I had a shift due in the courtyard so I went to check if we’re allowed out yet. Apparently not. But, I guess it’ll be all right if I’m with you. So, how can I help?’

  ‘By reflecting, really.’

  ‘You want me to think back to when I was attacked?’

  ‘No, no, no.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘Not that kind of reflecting. I want to know if I can see you in the mirror in the Great Hall.’

  It was completely bizarre.

  Martha could see herself in the mirror, but Janna standing right next to her just wasn’t there in the reflection. Martha put her arm round the girl’s shoulder – and in the mirror, her reflection put her arm round… nothing. Was it Martha’s imagination, or did her own reflection have a knowing smile that she herself lacked? Come to that, how would she tell?

  ‘Do you see yourself in the mirror?’ Martha asked.

  Janna shook her head. ‘It’s just empty. I can see you though. With your arm out. You look silly.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Martha agreed, and withdrew her arm. ‘What about other mirrors? Do you appear in them?’

  The girl shrugged and skipped off round the long table, apparently bored with the whole thing.

  Martha turned back to the Mortal Mirror, trying to outstare herself – like that was going to happen. Over her reflected shoulder she saw the Doctor and Gonfer come into the room.

  The Doctor stopped and sighed. ‘Well so much for my big theory.’

  Martha turned. ‘What theory is that?’

  ‘I wondered if it was an effect of the environment.’

  ‘You mean Janna’s reflection is gone because of something here in the castle?’

  ‘Maybe a side effect of the force bubble and the way it allows light through, I thought,’ the Doctor said. ‘Well, that was the theory. Could have been some sort of light-wave sickness, maybe. I don’t know. But since Gonfer here shows up loud and clear…’ The Doctor was standing by Martha now. He leaned forward and peered into the mirror. ‘Is my hair really like that?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  He nodded thoughtfully, before deciding: ‘Good. Good, it looks good. Don’t you think it looks good?’ he asked Gonfer over his shoulder. He didn’t wait for a reply but turned back to the mirror, licking his palm and slicking down his quiff. ‘Still looks good.’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ Martha said, laughing.

  ‘Right.’ The Doctor clapped his hands together. ‘Better get thinking about Theory Number Two then.’ He turned to wave at Gonfer and smile at Janna. Then his smile froze.

  ‘What is Theory Number Two?’ Gonfer asked.

  ‘The diary. The glass diary. I left it on the table when we followed Janna.’ He patted his pockets frantically. ‘Sure I did. Did you see me? I didn’t pick it up again. Did you pick it up again?’

  Martha shook her head. ‘It was there. I didn’t touch it.’

  Gonfer went and looked under the table. Janna stopping skipping and running round the room to watch him, her head tilted to one side with interest.

  Martha tried to remember what the Doctor had done. The diary was not there now, but she remembered him putting it down. That must have been when he saw that Janna was under the table. So just before he asked Martha to look at the table in the mirror and tell him what she saw.

  She turned back to the mirror, and looked again at the reflection of the table. The velvet cloth hanging over the edge, the patch of floor dimly visible beneath.

  The glass diary resting on the velvet cloth.

  Martha snapped round, checking the table. No diary. Yet – in the mirror…

  ‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘Look – in the mirror. It’s in the mirror.’ She reached out to point to the reflection of the diary that wasn’t there. She was close to the mirror, close enough to touch it. Her fingers brushed against the surface.

  And went through it. Ripples of liquid reflection at her fingertips.

  ‘Martha!’ the Doctor yelled from behind her. She could see his reflection – distorted by the ripples – as he ran towards her. ‘Martha, don’t!’

  But she couldn’t stop herself. It was so strange, so compelling. She leaned forward, over the frame and into the mirror. She felt the cool surface of the looking glass close round her, heard a tearing sound as reality split open, and she stepped into the room beyond.

  The silvery surface closed round Martha, and she was gone. The Doctor saw his reflected self running towards him. Neither slowed down. Both met with a metallic clang, and he bounced back off the mirror and stumbled away.

  ‘Martha!’

  He ran back to the mirror, hammering on the cold, unyielding surface.

  ‘Martha – I’ll get you out of there. Don’t move, don’t do anything, I’ll get you out!’

  The room was like a dimly lit version of the Great Hall. There was no sign of a reflected Gonfer or Doctor. Martha was alone.

  Holding her breath with a mixture of awe and fear and trepidation and excitement, she walked slowly forward. Would that work? It seemed to. Alice, when she went through the looking glass in the story, had to walk away from where she wanted to go, but Martha found herself walking across the Great Hall just as if she was really there.

  Except everything was reversed. She raised her hand, half thinking it would be her other hand which moved. But that worked too.

  ‘Doctor!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s weird. Come and see.’ She turned back, expecting to see him following. Or perhaps standing the other side of the mirror behind her, like it was a window.

  Except that there wasn’t a mirror behind her. There was just an empty alcove, at the back of which was a solid stone wall.

  Martha ran back – thumped at the wall. Felt the dusty stone flaking under her fists as she yelled and shouted for the Doctor. The Doctor who wasn’t there.

  She was trapped in the world behind the mirror and there was no way back.

  The Doctor checked over every inch of the mirror, and then started on the frame.

  ‘It’s just a mirror,’ he said. ‘An ordinary mirror. Or rather, it isn’t. Obviously. As it swallows people up.’

  ‘How can it do that?’ Gonfer asked. ‘I mean, there’s just a wall behind. Where did she go?’

  ‘Some sort of portal. Maybe remote activated, set to allow one person, and only one person, through before switching off again.’ The Doctor stepped back and tapped his chin thoughtfully. His reflection did the same. ‘The diary’s gone,’ he noted. ‘So it is just a mirror again now. But I still can’t see Janna.’

  He swung round to check she was actually there. The girl was sitting cross-legged on the stone floor watching him with interest.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Gonfer asked.

  ‘It means there are degrees, levels of mirror-ness to it. It’s behaving almost like a real mirror. Almost, but not
quite. Why is that?’

  Gonfer shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me.’

  ‘Sustaining another image, a projection? Something from inside the mirror that’s been extruded into the real world just like Martha’s been absorbed into the looking glass?’

  Janna frowned. ‘There was a man,’ she said.

  ‘A man?’

  ‘He came out of the mirror.’

  The Doctor crouched down beside her. ‘Did he? You saw him?’

  ‘I was hiding, under the table. This man came in and looked at the mirror and his reflection…’ She looked away.

  ‘Yes?’ The Doctor was beckoning with his fingers, encouraging her to tell him more. ‘Yes, yes, yes?’

  ‘His reflection had a gun. And shot him.’

  The Doctor’s fingers stopped moving. ‘Oh. And then the man came out of the mirror.’

  Janna nodded.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I watched him push the body back into the mirror. I waited till the man had gone. I went to see the body, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the mirror. Then I ran away to my den and I hid.’

  The Doctor sucked air through his teeth. ‘Yeah, well, that’s probably what I would have done.’ He straightened up. ‘Who was the man?’

  ‘Don’t know. One of the important people. I still see him. He’s still here.’

  ‘Or his reflection is.’

  ‘His reflection?’ Gonfer said.

  ‘Well, not strictly his reflection. But a mirror image. that is, an image from the mirror. Could be someone else entirely, could be anyone – or anything. It just looks like him. Like a mirror image of him. But it could be someone else, clothed in the light of his reflection. A disguise for whoever he is. The mirror can become a portal – a doorway into… somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’ Janna asked.

  ‘A pocket universe, a finite space, another world. Must be a tiny world – you’d need huge amounts of energy to sustain anything big. I wonder where it gets the energy from, it isn’t connected to anything.’

  He ran back to the mirror and examined the frame. He pulled it carefully forward from the wall and peered behind. ‘Found the controls,’ he announced. ‘Encoded access. And a deadlock seal on the security pad.’ He stepped back and threw his arms open. ‘It must use light. I bet it uses light. That’d be brilliant, using light.’

  ‘For what?’ Gonfer asked.

  ‘Energy. Light is energy. Convert the protons that hit the mirror’s surface. Maybe capture their kinetic energy. Or potential energy… No,’ he decided, ‘that would make the mirror turn black. Heat maybe?’ he shook his head in a sudden violent movement and waved his hand as if to clear the air. ‘Doesn’t matter. We can worry about that later. First we need to get Martha back.’ He leaned towards the mirror and shouted: ‘Can you hear me, Martha? Be with you in a tick. Soon have you out of there. Promise. Cross my hearts.’

  ‘We could get Bill and Bott to smash it open,’ Janna said.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’ The Doctor caught sight of Janna’s disappointed look. ‘But thanks for the thought.’ He had his sonic screwdriver in his hand. ‘I’ve got a better idea though. Something a bit less drastic. If a man can come out of the mirror, then so can Martha.’

  ‘You can get her back?’ Janna said, jumping to her feet in delight.

  The Doctor’s grin was enormous. ‘Oh yes.’

  There was something very different about the place, though it took Martha a while to work out what it was. Then it struck her, so suddenly that she said it out loud.

  ‘There’s no smell.’

  She sniffed, drawing in a deep breath of empty air. The whole place smelled empty – of nothing at all. It was like drinking distilled water – you thought water from the tap had little taste until you tried pure water. Then you realised that what you thought was ‘nothing’ was a whole mixture of different subtle flavours. Distilled, pure air – was that it?

  Or is it just that smells don’t have reflections, she wondered. Was that what she was now – just a reflection, somehow split from her actual self? Was another version of Martha, real Martha, still out in the Great Hall with the Doctor? The thought made her feel dizzy and faint. Was this for ever?

  ‘No chance,’ she muttered. There had to be some other way out, a way back. Martha looked round. The flickering lights cast only a faint glow, the whole room was in semi-darkness. The doors at the end of the Great Hall were standing open and she could see into the passageway outside.

  ‘So what’s beyond the reflection?’ she wondered, walking slowly towards the open doors.

  ‘It’s all to do with refraction,’ the Doctor was saying as he tied the sonic screwdriver in position. He’d had to use a lace from one of his shoes, looped through the frame of the mirror and holding the sonic screwdriver angled towards the surface. ‘Agitate the mirror at just the right angle, and that will stimulate the systems and…’ He stepped back to admire his work. ‘And there you go. Well, there I go. You’d better stay here.’

  ‘Why can’t we see Martha in the mirror?’ Janna asked.

  ‘You can talk!’ the Doctor said, looking from the girl to the empty space where her reflection wasn’t. ‘But we will. Once I…’ He reached for the sonic screwdriver. Then, abruptly, he pulled his hand away as if frightened he might get burned.

  ‘What is it?’ Gonfer asked.

  ‘We can’t look,’ the Doctor said. ‘If it’s a refractual technique, then the protons are giving off potential energy – energy from light they haven’t yet reflected, you follow?’

  ‘No,’ Gonfer and Janna both said.

  ‘No,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Not sure I do either. But if we see Martha in the mirror, actually inside it – then she’ll never get out. It’ll fix the refraction. Just observing her changes the world she’s in, and imprisons her inside. That’s what happened to Manfred Grieg,’ he realised. ‘Even if you did get out, you’d be…’ He wiggled his lower jaw as he considered. ‘Actually, I don’t know what you’d be. But it wouldn’t be good, that’s for sure. One way or another you’d be trapped.’

  ‘I still don’t understand how she got in there,’ Gonfer said. ‘If she is in there.’

  ‘I don’t know where else she’d be. Someone set the mirror, primed it to allow one person through then it shut down again.’ His eyes widened. ‘And they put the diary in there. Someone came and took it and put it in the mirror world knowing we’d see it. I’d see it. Oh Martha,’ he realised, ‘it was a trap. A trap for me. I am so, so sorry.’

  ‘But we’ll get her back,’ Janna said.

  ‘We will. And then I’ve got a few questions for General Orlo.’

  ‘Orlo?’ Gonfer said.

  ‘Starting with,’ the Doctor said, ‘did he know when he offered it that this is the actual real Mortal Mirror and not a copy? Or is he being duped like the rest of us?’ He adjusted the sonic screwdriver and turned to face Gonfer and Janna. ‘Right, you two get out of here. Shut the doors and don’t let anyone in. No one must see what happens in the mirror or we’ll both be trapped inside, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Gonfer said. ‘But what about you – won’t you see Martha before you step through?’

  ‘I’ll close my eyes,’ the Doctor decided. ‘That’s desperately dangerous for a man with only one shoelace, but sacrifices have to be made. I’m hoping only sentient recognition will trap us inside. I mean, some dust mite or spider or even a mouse or something is bound to see us in the mirror. But so long as they don’t know what they’re looking at we should be OK.’

  ‘What if you’re not?’ Gonfer asked.

  ‘Well, if we’re not out and calling for you in half an hour then you might want to think about getting some tea. Then do as Janna said, and get Bill and Bott to smash the mirror.’

  ‘But you said that would trap you inside,’ Janna told him.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘And not just us, I suspect. If we’re not back, it might be best if nothing came out of the mirror ev
er again.’

  Beyond the patch of corridor visible through the doors, there was nothing. Or so it seemed. As Martha peered into the darkness, though, she realised there was something – vague shapes in the gloom.

  She felt her way carefully along, glancing back to the doors and what light there was, afraid that at any moment she might be swallowed up by the shadows and cease to exist. With every tentative step she took she could hear the sound of her own breathing echoing rhythmically in her ears.

  She was in a corridor – just like the corridor outside the real Great Hall in the real castle Extremis. Only shrouded in darkness. She felt her way along, hand on cold stone wall, feet scuffing on the flagstone floor. Her breathing seemed to be getting louder.

  Her hand felt the change from stone to wood, the give as the door she was pressing on swung slowly open. Martha stepped carefully, tentatively into the dark room. The air seemed to breathe round her – sighing and blowing like a breeze.

  Shapes loomed either side like pews in the nave of a darkened church. She gingerly reached for the nearest of the shapes. It was angular and hard to the touch. Wood. The end of a bed.

  Martha froze. Realisation crept over her, cold and unpleasant – it wasn’t only her own breathing she could hear. She could hear breathing coming from the bed. From all the beds. She was in some sort of dormitory.

  Her eyes were adjusting now and she could make out the space between two of the beds – a low cabinet. Something hanging from a rail… An armoured tunic that glinted as it caught a sudden flare of light.

  Not a dormitory. A barracks.

  Scaly reptilian skin caught the flickering light.

  A great yellow-eyed head rose from the nearest bed. Sharp teeth flashed as the great jutting jaw moved.

  ‘Is that you, Sastrak?’ a voice growled. ‘Is it time?’

  Martha backed slowly away, retracing her steps. The light behind her blinked out. The Zerugian’s eyes continued to glow in the dark, turning, searching Martha out.

  Then a hand came down on her shoulder, twisted her round. Another clamped across her mouth before she could cry out.

  The Doctor pulled her gently back into the corridor, and Martha let out a sigh of relief as soon as he removed his hand.