Doctor Who: The Turing Test by Paul Leonard

Author:Paul Leonard
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction:Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538066
Publisher: Bbc Worldwide Pub
Published: 2000-10-15T10:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Twelve

The Doctor and I travelled together back to Markebo on what should have been my last day in Sierra Leone. I’m not sure whether the Doctor thought there was anything new to see, or whether he’d invented the journey as a means of persuading me to get him out of the cells. We poked around in the jungle, looking for the remains of the strangers, only to find when we asked in the village that the Africans had thrown them into the river (‘Best place,’ the Doctor commented).

We returned to the river and sat on the banks. The Doctor kicked off his shoes and splashed his feet in the water, like a child. Ripples spread and were lost in the slow swirling of the green water.

‘Be careful,’ I told him. ‘I shouldn’t think it’s clean.’

‘The villagers wash their clothes in the river.’

‘And use it as a toilet, I expect.’

He wrinkled his nose, but didn’t remove his feet from the water.

‘Besides,’ I added, ‘there are leeches.’

‘Hmm.’ The Doctor lifted his dripping feet out and examined his toes. ‘Can’t see any. Perhaps they don’t like my blood.’ He began drying his feet on a large white handkerchief. ‘You shouldn’t be so dismissive of the Africans, you know. They’re just the same as you.’

‘In the sight of God,’ I said.

‘In anybody’s sight,’ he said.

There was an edge of irritation in his voice: though I hadn’t intended to be derogatory towards the Africans, I felt chastised.

‘Tell me,’ he said, in a quite different tone, ‘what do you think it takes to be human?’

Fool that I was, I mistook his meaning. I thought he was talking about maturity, and made an appropriate speech about what it is to be a man, the passion and the uncertainty, the terror, the boredom –

‘The sweaty nights,’ he interrupted. ‘Yes, yes, yes, I know. I mean human – as opposed to –’ he waved at the river, and after a second’s confusion I realised he meant the disposed ‘bodies’ of the strangers – ‘not human.’

I knew, then. I looked away from the Doctor, at the light of the sky reflected in unsteady silver patches on the water. I wondered what shape the Doctor would melt into when he died.

‘I think I would make the same answer,’ I said at last. ‘It’s passion that defines life. Passion, and suffering.’

‘And you’re not sure about me, are you?’

I looked at him, saw a living, breathing being, with an expression of uncertainty and the shadow of a great suffering on his face.

‘You’re not sure that I’m human.’ He leaned forward. ‘Well, let me tell you a secret. I’m not sure either.’

I looked into his eyes for a while, then I remembered the ‘chieftain’ and said, ‘We should take Mass together.’

He agreed, and we walked together to the small, hot, brick church, where there was a service about to begin. The fear-filled priest glanced at the Doctor several times during his brief sermon, with an expression that may have been distaste.

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