The Revengers;Always the Third Doctor!;Jo Grant;Katy Manning;Jon Pertwee;UNIT;TARDIS;The Revengers Episode Six
The Revengers
Episode Six
Written by Jeri Massi
Dr. Breed frowned as he studied the thin sheets of acetate that the Doctor handed to him. Across the wide desk of the front office of the operating theatre, Mark Lowry watched with curiosity but did not speak. Breed at last set the four-color acetate plates down on the bare surface of the desk, laying them out like playing cards in careful order. He fished in his breast pocket for his glasses and put them on, then peered at the plates again. Lowry came around the desk and gazed at them. The Doctor folded his arms and watched the two humans, his lined face expressionless except for a look of patience.
"But how did you accomplish this?" Breed asked at last. "We have nothing like this, not even in the best research facilities on London. I daresay that not even Burroughs Wellcome could produce slides like this."
Mark glanced sharply at the Doctor, equally curious, and fascinated at the color plates.
"I have my own sophisticated equipment," the Doctor said briefly. "It's all in a little setup I have that I call the TARDIS."
Lowry spoke sharply, his voice slightly imperious. "I should very much like to see this set-up."
The Doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry. Even if I permitted it, the Brigadier would not. He and I are both convinced that it's better for me to let huma---to let established medical science proceed at its own pace."
The Doctor pointed to the plates. "You see, gentlemen, that I was able to capture the sequence of damage to the protein itself. In the first slide, you see the normal configuration of the nerve protein. It is a protein that sits on the membrane of the nerve, and as far as I can determine, it carries on no vital function other than being a link in a long chain of proteins." He pointed to the next slide. "The time lapse on these allows you to view the changes that take place. The second slide shows the protein after it has been exposed to the toxin."
"Deformation is already beginning," Breed muttered. He peered at the second plate hard through his glasses, then slid them down his nose and looked over the tops of the lenses at the plate.
"Quite." The Doctor paced to the other end of the table. "As you can see, the sequence progresses to here, slide six, where the protein goes through an uncharacteristic change. It folds up a leg, so to speak. It suddenly takes on a negative charge and reconfigures. Look at plate number eight."
The men did so. "It's no longer recognizable," Breed muttered.
"That's because it's no longer a protein," Lowry added, also staring at it.
"No," the Doctor said. "It has become a crystalline structure, a bit of dangerous rubbish that now sits on the membrane of the nerve."
"So," Lowry added. "Whatever its function was, if it had any at all, it can no longer carry out that function. And not only that, it may present a danger to the normal function of the nerve."
"Even worse," the Doctor told him. "Here is another set of plates. Clear those off, will you?":
They cleared away the first set of acetate sheets and set down the new plates. Breed and Lowry leaned over them and studied them. At least Breed said, "So this is how it spreads. Comes into contact with other, identical proteins."
"Yes, and reconfigures them," the Doctor added. "Somehow that odd negative charge that it has taken is able to be communicated. Nothing in the immune system seems to recognize this as an aberration. And so it rather effortlessly reconfigures other nerve proteins and turns them into crystalline structures as well."
Breed straightened up and put a hand to his back, aware of having been bent over too long in study of the plates. He was a short, slender man with a gray goatee. "Hence the nerve damage," he told the Doctor. "Eventually, when enough of these fellows are turned into bits of crystalline debris, they would act as little daggers sitting on sensitive tissue. They eventually populate into the confused fibtrillary tangles of the plaques."
The Doctor nodded. "That's why the cadavers showed the spongiform degeneration in their brains. Nerve cells are especially concentrated there, and of course that is where they are most active, and so it is in the brain where the disease really takes off, so to speak. The microscopic crystals are insoluble. As they increase in number, they eventually tear holes in the nerve tissue. But it takes year for the accumulation to become acute."
Breed nodded, thoughtful. He stroked his short beard. "And you have reproduced this chain reaction in your own lab," he said quietly. "By what mechanism did you do so?"
"I used dilutions of nerve gas," the Doctor told him. "It took days to find the right dilution. Too much, and the nerves are destroyed outright."
Lowry spoke up, his voice sharper and more annoyed. "Yes, but you refuse to let your work be verified! Nor will you allow us to inspect your laboratory!"
The Doctor did not alter his expression or voice. "You have the plates, Professor Lowry. You have the information. Go to your own laboratory and duplicate my work. I will be happy to supply you with the figures and even the samples of the chemicals I used."
"But what did you use as a test subject?" Breed asked.
"White mice. Their nerve structures are fairly similar to that of humans. They also rely on cholinesterase as a regulator of brain and nerve function. That was what I was after."
Breed was surprised "Cholinesterase?"
Lowry waved it away. "Cholinesterase is a brain enzyme that is inhibited in the presence of many minor toxins. It is hardly worth mentioning. It eventually comes up to normal levels once the acute toxicity is removed."
"You should pay more attention to its functioning!" the Doctor said sharply. "Do you think a brain enzyme has nothing to do but hang about and catch up with itself? Cholinesterase is critical to normal nerve cell development. If it is suppressed for any significant interval, serious damage can be done to the nervous system!"
"Cholinesterase is also inhibited in Alzheimer's patients," Breed muttered. "But it has been regarded as a by-product of the disease, not a contributing factor."
"I have more news for you," the Doctor said. Both men looked at him.
"We have found a link among the victims. They all attended the same secondary school. They were on a boxing team together."
"This case gets more odd by the minute," Breed muttered. "Go on, Doctor."
"I think that the police had better get in touch with all other members of that team," the Doctor told them. "They must be tested for this disease."
Lowry's eyes got wide. "Tested how? We can no more test for this than we can test for Alzheimer's!"
"I can test them," the Doctor said. "Get me blood samples. I will run the tests in my special apparatus at UNIT Headquarters."
Breed shook his head in wonder. He removed his glasses, folded them up, and returned them to his breast pocket. "I must confess, Doctor, we in law enforcement have always regarded UNIT as something of a paper tiger organisation. A concession to modern fantasies of scientific fiction. But if you fellows have developed such sophisticated techniques of research as this, then I confess we have gravely mis-appraised your abilities."
The Doctor inclined his head slightly. "UNIT tries to act in the interests of world security, Dr. Breed. We don't often mind if our secrecy leads to misunderstanding. Better that than the premature release of knowledge that could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands."
Breed nodded. "I shall telephone Inspector Jake. We must bring these people in discretely and run tests." He strode toward the door and then stopped. "Have you developed a cure? An antidote?" Lowry looked at him sharply.
"No," the Doctor said. "As far as I can determine, a crystal cannot be restored to the form of a protein. In fact, if I could do that, I could return the dead to life. And I readily admit that such a feat is beyond me."
A silence descended on the room. At last Breed said, "You mean, whoever has this disease---is doomed?"
"Perhaps we can postpone the inevitable," the Doctor said. "I think that the dormancy cycle of this disease was about five to eight years for the victims. We may be able to lengthen that cycle out to as long as twenty years, depending on the susceptibility of any victims." He shook his head. "That is the only hope I can offer."
"What if people---what if people are still being infected? Is there a point where a vaccine could be of help?"
The Doctor considered, then gave a brief nod. "If the protein reconfiguring has not yet gotten under weigh---I mean, if the immune system were not yet effected enough so that the cholinesterase had not yet been suppressed to the point where it could not govern protein function, then I could probably rig up a type of blood filtering system."
"You mean, like they do with dialysis patients?" Lowry asked.
The Doctor nodded. "Yes, specifically remove the toxin from the blood, artificially boost cholinesterase by direct injection, and probably minimize or eliminate the threat. But," he added. "I think that all of our victims were exposed years ago."
"I must notify the chief inspector." And Breed walked out. Still not satisfied, Lowry spoke again. He leaned against the wall and folded his thick arms. "It is impossible to be sure of all of this without due verification," he insisted. "As a scientist, you know the risk that you are asking us to take."
"All I am asking you to do, Professor Lowry, is draw blood from no more than thirty test subjects. There's no great risk in that, provided the needles are properly sterilised."
"Yes, and then what?" Lowry snapped. "Rely on you to tell us who lives and who dies? Tell innocent people that they'll be dead of dementia within a few years strictly because you say so?"
The Doctor was annoyed. "I can call in a reputable scientist to help me, a professor at Oxford with whom I have worked in the past, a Professor Shaw."
"But not one of us?"
"Professor Shaw has received full clearance to work on UNIT's most secret projects."
Lowry came off the wall on that, but the Doctor did not even afford him a glance. The time lord scooped up the second set of plates. "I'm sure that Professor Shaw's verification will satisfy the medical community." He glanced up and said, rather coolly, "And if not, then I am afraid you will simply have to trust me." He held up the sheaf of acetate sheets. "And these."
Lowry met his eye. "Come now, Doctor. Advanced equipment unheard of even in the most elaborate research facilities? The ability to photograph proteins in the very act of disfiguring? All within a week of study?" He walked up to the Doctor, face to face. "Who are you, Doctor? Where have you gotten these specialized abilities and gadgetry? A madman working ceaselessly could not have deduced all of this within a week."
The Doctor saw the challenge in the younger man's eyes. "I am the scientific advisor to UNIT," he said, his voice direct. It was a clear statement that he would say no more.
Lowry did not back off. "And what is your hold on Miss Grant, then?"
The question caught the Doctor slightly off guard, and Mark Lowry at least had the satisfaction of seeing the time lord's steady eyes flicker, but then the Doctor said quietly, "I have no hold on Miss Grant, except the hold that one friend has on another friend."
"No. She is entirely under your power." Lowry's voice was quiet, too. The challenge was evident.
"On the contrary, she is under my protection. Anybody who takes an interest in her would be well advised to take that into consideration." Now the Doctor's eyes went into Lowry's, searching. He saw, to his own surprise, that the young man understood---at least intuitively---the power of that gaze and was able to deflect it.
Breed walked in and stopped in surprise to see the two men staring hard at each other, their faces grim. "I say, gentlemen, is everything all right?"
Lowry stepped back and broke the battle of wills. He did not address Breed at all but spoke to the Doctor. "I will not let you bring her into this, or make her a pawn of your little game, Doctor." He backed away from the Doctor. "For you have used her in the past, to the point that you made her willing to throw her life away for you. You have dominated her and taken away her will." He threw his glance to the plates. "As for those, you have done nothing but show us pretty mock-ups, and you have flooded us with hypothetical suggestions about a fantastic possible cause for these dementias. I am not satisfied by your report, and I do not accept it." He stopped at the door.
"You seem to forget: you have no voice in this matter," the Doctor said coolly. Dr. Breed is acting for the police, and I am acting for UNIT. You simply invited yourself into this investigation, and we allowed it out of respect for your credentials."
Lowry flushed and turned to Breed, who instantly became apologetic. "My dear boy, you have been of inestimable help, but the Doctor's call for tests is appropriate. As for the rest, we'll have to see what can be proved out."
"So, the two old schoolmen will lock arms against me," Lowry began. "We'll see about that." And he walked out.
* * * *
The police interviewed Jo at the foot of the stairs that led up to the locker rooms. Covered in a blanket, buckled securely to an ambulance stretcher, Neil's body was carried out. She felt faint and weak for a moment as the ambulance men carried it past her. The police constable reached out to steady her, but Jo got hold of herself and shook her head.
"I must go on to the school," she said.
"The school, Miss?" he asked.
She nodded. "The other man, Len, the one who was killed in his car. He had ties to a secondary school. Three of the men who had been on the school's boxing team years ago have died of dementia."
"And this young man, did he know them?" the constable asked.
"I don't know," she said. "The note ties him in with Len, and yet---this was suicide, wasn't it? I mean, I didn't see him do it, but I should have realized it was what he was up to---"
"It looks like suicide," the officer said. "But he was purposed to do it. It seems planned out."
She looked up at him.
"Looks like his mother's telephone number and address in the gym bag," he told her. "And his bankbook. But no change of clothes, and no towel. Looks like he got his affairs in order and took steps for his next of kin to be notified. Plus, he was wearing---like a--a diaper that they make for old people who can't hold their water. Stopped him from messing himself when he died." He hesitated and then said gently, "Were you aware of any threats against Mr. Sparrowe?"
She shook her head. "He was very gentle, a very gentle, scholarly person. Great love for fitness training."
"He never mentioned this Revengers group to you?"
"He and Mark Lowry and Ralph Braithewight were all close friends," she said. "Perhaps they would know more." She looked up at him. "Is it possible that a man could be so afraid of somebody---that he would kill himself just to avoid a worse death?"
The constable shook his head. "I don't know, Miss. Anything is possible, I suppose."
She nodded. As soon as she could get away, she found a telephone, left a message for the Doctor at the lab at UNIT, and then drove down to the school where Len had once coached boxing. It was nearly noon by then, and her best hope was that she could find the faculty together.
But Jo arrived at the school after the lunch hour. When she was shown into the headmaster's office, she was dismayed to find a rather young man in charge. The office was modern, small, with only two book shelves that appeared to be made out of molded plastic, and no carpeting.
"Miss Grant," he said cordially. He rose and shook hands with her. "I am the current administrator here. They call me Philips. I understand that you are interested in some of our history from several years ago."
"Yes," she said urgently. Several of the men who were on the boxing team from about eight years ago have succumbed to terrible illness. We are trying to find a link---something that they were all exposed to, or that they may have taken---"
He brought his finger tips together. "Yes, the police were on to me not a full hour ago. Wanted a list if names of the boxing team for five years running." He leaned forward and jotted a note on the blotter of his desk. "I can easily accommodate you, run you a copy of the information. Or was there more?"
"I wonder if I could get a list of faculty who were on staff at that time," she said. "Do you have anybody here now who was teaching then?"
He instantly shook his head. "No, in fact, I owe my own rather meteoric rise up the administrative ladder to events back then. I was brought in as a bit of a nonentity to replace a very good headmaster." He flashed a look of bland compassion at her. "Alas, he had the misfortune to preside over the student body when things got a bit unruly. Not his fault at all, but there was quite a shake-up."
"What happened?" she asked.
"Student suicide," he told her. "I don't know much about it, really. Youngster with emotional problems. New to the school. A big---er, large boned young man. Very strong. I rather suppose that students and teachers alike thought that he could 'take it,' as they say."
"Are they sure it was suicide?" she asked. "Was there an investigation?"
He nodded. "I mean, you could review the police reports if you like, but it was rather clearly cut. His father was a police officer. Took the old man's gun and did himself in with it, through the mouth." He paused and thought it through. "As I recall, there had been an incident. A fight. Everybody involved was suspended, and they lost all their privileges. The young man returned to school at the end of the week, attended one day, and then took his own life."
"And the headmaster was blamed?" she asked.
He nodded emphatically. "The whole system was blamed, Miss Grant. All of the faculty who'd had contact with the boy were either forced into retirement or transferred or left of their own accord. The headmaster was retired. He died about five years after. Never got over the disgrace of it. I believe that the young man's family blamed him and the school."
"Do you recall the name of the boy?"
"Eh, Ronnie." He frowned. "They still talk about Ronnie, but I can't think of the last name. Never comes up. Say the first name, and everybody knows who you mean. I'll track it down for you, but they did a pretty good job of excising all memory of him from the official school history. Once the re-shuffling was done, the system preferred to think it had never happened. But of course, I can find his full name."
"Was Ronnie on the boxing team?"
He sighed. "I'm sure I don't know that at all, and---as I said---there won't be any record of it. But I will tell you what I can do." And his voice became more cheerful. She looked up. "There's a young priest in my parish," he told her. "Few years older than you. In fact, he's on the list I gave to the police. He was a fabulous boxer in school here and coaches the boys in his parish school. He could tell you more about Ronnie. I believe that he was in school here when it happened, but he would be a couple years older than Ronnie."
He wrote down a name and telephone number on a slip of paper and passed it to her. "Father Dunn. Catholic priest," he said.
"Was there a Neil Sparrowe who was enrolled back then?" she asked.
"Well, now you truly are out of my depth. Eight years ago I was teaching elsewhere. I came in the year after the shake up. But I can take you to our files and let you look through the enrollments." He stood up. "It's this way."
* * * *
Searching the files took just over an hour. One of the challenges was to find the enrollment lists from eight years ago. Though the files for the most recent years were kept flawlessly organized, those from the more distant past were not in good form. And Jo added to her own tasks by checking for the names of anybody related to Neil or to Len. But she found no other students with last names that matched either of the dead men. She also wrote down the names of the faculty members at the time, and she was able to find an old address for each of them.
There were old school magazines in the files, and she browsed these, looking at the pictures of the faculty where she could find them. At last, she tidied up the files and left. She was surprised, when she came out to the car park, to see the Doctor's jaunty Edwardian roadster waiting for her, the Doctor himself at the wheel, patient for once.
He saw her, put the car into gear, and drove over to her, pulling up alongside her. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Police notified me about the young man's suicide," he told her. "I wanted to make sure you were all right."
"Shaken up," she told him. "Did they tell you about the note?"
He nodded, his lined face grim, and his eyes showing concern. "Look, why not ride with me down to Jake's office? I've got to go see him, and then we'll get back to the lab."
"But my car is here---"
"We'll pick it up later this afternoon."
She knew then that he was worried about her. Again, such concern from him worried her. His threshold of fear, both for himself and for others, tended to be a very high one. But she didn't question him. After all, it might just be concern over her nearness to Neil's death. Or perhaps even guilt that she had been in the same room with the frantic young man, perhaps in danger herself, without the Doctor there.
She smiled her happy smile at him, glad to be going with him any where. "All right, then, Doctor. I'm with you!"
He laughed. "Splendid!"
She came around the front and climbed in. She was not entirely surprised when he quickly put his arm across her shoulders and then just as quickly let her go. Yes, he had been worried. But she did not ask him about it. He sharply turned the wheel, released the clutch, and they sped away.
* * * *
Inspector Jake greeted them both with a nod as they entered. "Bring tea," he told one of the officers. It had been a cold drive, and Jo was certainly famished. Tea would have to do, but she was having inner visions of that pub, the ham, the fried bread . . . .
"Simms has died," Jake said. The news brought her back to the moment, and she saw in her mind the photo of the chubby boy lacing up a boxer's glove. He had grown up into a man who died of dementia and blindness. She put a hand to her mouth.
"Sit down, Jo," the Doctor said quietly, and she did. She steadied herself after a moment, but Jake appeared not to notice her at all. As the Doctor unfastened his cape and slung it over another chair, the tall, rangy police inspector paced behind his immaculate desk. "Breed has already done a preliminary, Doctor. Verified the presence of the typical spongiform degeneration. Wants you to do the rest."
He glanced at the Doctor. "But there was a bit of an anomaly."
"Yes?"
"Eh, not with the medical end." The young officer returned with a tray of tea, and Jake nodded for him to set it down. Only then did the police inspector officially notice Jo. "Tea, young lady?"
"Please," she said. The inspector went to the tea tray, and the Doctor rested his hand on Jo's shoulder. He looked down at her, his eyes quiet and steadying. She nodded. She was all right.
"Simms' house was broken into," Jake announced as he stirred one beaker of tea. He straightened up and brought it to Jo.
"Broken into?" the Doctor asked. "When?"
"Saturday night. Late. The family were with him at the hospital, at his deathbed. Somebody climbed into a window and made off with the television and a few random boxes from the attic. But we wonder if there's not somebody in the critical care ward who was tracking his death throes with an eye to getting away with burglary. Thought you should know. And---"
Jake hesitated and glanced down at Jo. Then he handed the Doctor a beaker. "I've gotten a complaint."
"Oh? Yes?"
"From rather high up. The captaincy."
"Dear me," the Doctor said.
Jake offered the ghost of a smile as he took up his own tea. "That's what I said. They want your credentials. We always require credentials. It has been brought to their attention that you were brought onto this case without due processing and verification of your experience."
"I don't have any credentials," the Doctor said. "I am officially a nobody. Which is just as I like it."
"I'll tell them that I've lost them," Jake promised. "No, better yet, I'll tell them that I've sent them by post. That will keep them chasing their tails for a while."
"So you're ready to accept me at face value, are you?"
"I accept Breed at face value, and he believes in you." Jake took a long and appreciative swallow of hot tea. He lowered the beaker, looked into it, and said, "I've also rung up the Brigadier, and he's vouched for you. And he's got credentials up to his---" He saw Jo and cut himself short. "Belt buckle," he said lamely.
Jo finally spoke up. "But who would complain about you?" she asked the Doctor. "You've knocked yourself out on this case!"
Jake cut in. "Oh, that young fellow," he said airily. "The nearsighted bloke from the hallowed halls of learning. I've never met him myself, but the pasthologists talk about him."
"Mark Lowry?" she asked.
He took another swallow of tea and nodded. "Horned his way in on the investigation and then became angry when the findings did not concur with his." He glanced over at the Doctor. "Ghoulish sort. Always hanging about these cases, offering his advice. Breed says he's brilliant, so Breed puts up with him." He turned away and then turned back, as a thought struck him. "Say, didn't he follow you off to lunch one day? Breed told me had made your acquaintance."
"I suppose he did," the Doctor said quietly, and he glanced again at Jo. It began to sink in on her. It was how Mark had befriended her. She had discarded his note, and yet he had followed her the next day to the weight room at Len's. He had even admitted it. She suddenly wondered, if she had turned him down again, would he have appeared somewhere else?
"He's always after something," Jake said dismissively. "Not the first time he's thrown a tantrum to the chaps upstairs. They give him great heed because he's a somebody in medical research and toxicology. And because he's rolling in filthy lucre."
"We should get back to the lab," the Doctor said.
"But what about Neil Sparrowe?" Jo asked. Jake turned to her. "I mean, he had a note like Len did. Was it as old as Len's, or had Neil just received it?" she asked.
Jake shook his head. "We cannot identify the source of the paper except in general terms, but we are fairly sure that both notes were written with the same pen, and were cut from the same page or at least the same notebook."
"Years ago," the Doctor murmured.
"And yet, Neil was so frightened," she said. "Why become so frightened all of a sudden?"
"Perhaps because Len had been killed," Jake told her.
The Doctor spoke up: "Yes, but if they didn't take the threats seriously five or six or even eight years ago, why take them seriously now? Why save the notes for several years and then suddenly become afraid?" He paced restlessly. "And what was it that was done? Whoever these Revengers are, if it was not a colossal hoax, what was done that made them so vengeful?"
"There was a suicide at the school," Jo told them. "At the secondary school where Hughes and Wilson and Simms were on the boxing team. And Len was coach. Maybe that was what provoked the notes." She related to them all that Administrator Philips had told her.
"We cannot absolutely link those notes to the school. Was Neil Sparrowe a student at that school?" the Doctor asked.
"No," she admitted. "And Neil was certainly not on a boxing team back then. He and Mark and Ralph all became interested in fitness training together---at university--- not secondary school. They're avid boxers and martial artists now, but not back in secondary school." She paused. "In fact, they've rather communicated to me that they were picked on in secondary school. 'Ninety pound weaklings,' Mark said."
"And the dead lad, Sparrowe," Jake added. "He also told you that he was guilty of sin, did he not? Did he not say that he had done wrong?"
"Yes, but I think that may have been a religious thing," she told him. "Like he had denied the existence of God, and he thought that was a sin."
"Or maybe something else," the Doctor added. "Come on. We'd better let the Inspector be about his business."
* * * *
"This case gets more confusing the longer I look at it," the Doctor said. "I've identified the toxin, and I think it was likely a deliberate poisoning. But now everything else has become a hopless knot of confusion." He stretched out his long legs. The pub was warm and was not crowded. Jo leaned back in the cushioned chair. It was thickly padded but upholstered with a rubbery material that the new pubs used because the chairs wiped down more easily. She also stretched out her legs. She looked at the ceiling. Her head had a slightly giddy sensation from the Guiness she had drunk. The lunch had been excellent. Huge trenchers of bread with chewy, flavorful crusts, tender insides, and a chicken stew poured over everything, it's thick gravy filling all the pores of the bread. And then afterward, baked apple with real whipped cream. And then the beer.
"You all right?" the Doctor asked.
"What do you think of Mark?" she asked back.
He was silent. The silence became so long that she made herself sit up and look at him.
"Jo, do you ever think that I control you?" he asked suddenly.
"Control me? I wish you did sometimes! I bet you wish you did sometimes!" She meant it as a joke, but a pained look flickered across his eyes.
"Why, Jo?"
"Well, you know, when I don't listen to you and go running off half-cocked into trouble," she said. She saw that he was deeply concerned about something, and she made her voice coaxing. "Oh, come on! You know you're fishing me out of trouble half the time! And it's always because I don't listen!" She smiled naughtily. "But I am always sorry afterward, and you do forgive me, don't you?"
But the Doctor could not be coaxed out of whatever was troubling him. "I wasn't controlling you at the island prison," he said. "You got me out of trouble that time."
"Yes, I certainly did. And a good thing I was there, wasn't it?" she smiled at him with her happy smile and cocked her head, but he could not be charmed.
"Look, what is it? What's wrong?" she asked. She hesitated and then put her hand over his, a gentle reminder of their solidarity. "What's got to you?"
"Lowry said I have you under my control," he told her, and his face was nearly expressionless except for the guilt and worry in his eyes.
The pronouncement hit her like a slap. Jo was amazed to feel a flush creep up her cheeks. It was both shame and a sudden rage. She smothered both, but it took a moment. "You," she began. But she stopped. She realized instantly what Mark could have played on. She had told him about stepping in front of the Doctor to shield him. Could he really have used that knowledge to shame the Doctor? "You're my teacher," she said at last, and then she couldn't say anything more.
He realized that this revelation, combined with what Jake had said about Mark Lowry, had overwhelmed her. He took her hand with strong reassurance. "I am your teacher, and you're my pupil, Jo. That's what I want." He suddenly drew her in. "Is that enough for you? Are you happy with that?"
She felt tears sting her eyes, but they were tears of humiliation, for now she was convinced that Mark had been manipulating her to uncover her deepest secrets, and he had used them.
"What have I gotten myself into?" she asked suddenly. Tears started down her cheeks. "He's been using me to find out about you, to get to you!"
"But why are you crying?" he asked. "He said some hasty things, that's all."
"Because I told him about Azal, and he used that, didn't he? Is that why you're worried? What did he say to you?"
"Nothing. It was nothing," the Doctor whispered. But she knew that he realised that she was right.
"He followed you that day to the tea room," she said. "And when he saw me, he knew. He knew---"
"What did he know?" the Doctor asked.
That I love you with all my heart, Jo thought. But she could not say that. Not to the Doctor. The kind of love that she would gladly have given him and taken from him would have imprisoned him, and he would have regarded it as a wrong against her, as abusing her youth and trust in him. For she knew that he was very old, and that inbred into the deepest parts of him was a love of wandring into hardships that no human could endure, not for a lifetime. She had accepted that a long time ago and had accepted and respected him for exactly what he was: this good, remote, exiled person who needed care to help him endure his imprisonment, and who needed understanding to help him endure himself.
She made herself calm down. "He knew that I trust you, and even if he didn't know how to phrase it, he knew that I am your pupil, and you are my teacher," she said calmly. "So he knew that he could get to you through me, and he shifted his approach. He began to follow me, instead of you."
She looked up at him. "And he wheedled and coaxed me until I told him about Azal, and then he used that to---to hurt you, to accuse you. But I did that freely. I did that willingly. As freely as you came down those steps to save me. As freely as you came to the ruined city to buy me back from the Primitives on that planet!"
"Yes, yes, it's all right." He was comforting and soothing, and this time, he did not let her go. She realized that Mark Lowry had done what the Master himself had never done: he had made the Doctor unsure, stripped off some of that idealism, genuinely hurt him.
"Doctor," she asked after a moment. "How involved is he in this?"
He looked down at her for a long and quiet moment, his eyes reflective. At last he said. "There is no link. Even if Neil Sparrowe was somehow involved eight years ago in this school thing, Mark did not know him then. They met at university."
They had to get back to the lab and start the next rounds of investigations. There was the priest that she had to see, and she had to do something about Neil's death: attend the service for him if nothing else. She had to find out what arrangements had been made. She had been the last person with him, and if he had a family, she knew that she needed to speak with them. And the Doctor had to see to the testing of all those poor people. He let her go, but she could see that he was still subdued from Mark's accusations.
"Mark simply manipulates people," Jo said at last. "He wants to be where the action is. He wants to direct things, to control things. To control people if he can, and make them be what he wants them to be."
"All right," he said quietly, soothing her.
They stood up to leave, but the man behind the bar approached them. "You the bloke they call the Doctor?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Police on the phone. Says it's urgent. Some nasty business about a dead chap they just found."
The Doctor hurried to the bar and scooped up the phone, with Jo at his elbow. "Where are you?" the Doctor asked.
"We got a call. Urgent need to speak to us," Jake told him over the phone. "Anonymous tipper left a message for me this morning just after the suicide, but I only just received it---"
"Yes! And?" The Doctor could scarcely contain his impatience.
"I think the fellow's dead, Doctor. I'm at the university's public rooms---"
"You think he's dead? Well is he, or isn't he?"
"I don't know! We're afraid to handle him!" Jake exclaimed. This was amazing, coming from a hard bitten police man like Jake. "There's an awful smell, but not-well, not a biological smell. He's prone on a bed, and he's burning hot, Doctor. Like he's got a fever. No breathing that we can see, but he's hot, and the smell is coming from him. Radiating, like. My men are afraid to touch him. He's dressed more like faculty than a student, and he's young enough to be either."
"Could it be Mark Lowry?" the Doctor asked.
"I don't know. I've never seen Lowry in person."
"We'll be right there. Give me the address."
The Doctor took it without writing it down and turned to Jo.
"What about Mark?" she asked.
"They've found somebody else. Looks like an acute toxicity. Come on."
