Read Online Doctor Who: Keeping Up With the Joneses by Nick Harkaway - Free Book Online Page B

Heidt was to be believed, closer to the enemy; and the big, bold double doors to the rest of this floor, including no doubt the library. Heidt wanted him to go there, that was clear enough. He instinctively wanted to go somewhere else, to step outside the game, but if he beat it and it was aimed at the enemy that would be something of a fatal embarrassment. It had occurred to him that he had only Heidt’s word for it that Heidt was the nice half of the mine’s consciousness, or indeed that there were two halves at all.
    In the end, it came down to a choice: trust, or don’t.
Heidt knows you believe in trust. He could be manipulating you. But he let you know that he knows. Show of honesty. Show of honesty could be a ruse, can’t trust it. If you don’t trust it, and he’s telling the truth, and you lose.
Round and around and around. Finally, the question is: if you’re going to die, do you die believing in enemies or friends? All right, one vote in favour of trust.
    And Christina: why was she here? She was a piece of what Heidt intended, obviously. Key. Detonator. Bomb. Hostage. Save her. Save Jonestown. Save the TARDIS. Save himself.
    She was tugging on his arm. ‘Run!’
    He ran for the big doors. For the library.
I am the Doctor. In the end, I choose this: I choose trust, I choose to solve the puzzle, I choose to see what’s behind the curtain.
    They went through.
    *
    The Library was huge, with more books than she’d ever imagined. They were stacked in shelves, lying around in piles. Some were floating. It was impossible.
    She stared. The Doctor was nodding slowly, as if he’d known all along, though she was reasonably sure he hadn’t.
    He looked over at her with a ghost of a smile. ‘Go ahead.’
    ‘It’s bigger on the inside!’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is my library.’
    The TARDIS library, he meant; so they were back in the TARDIS proper. Inside Heidt’s house, the room he sent them to, the room he was presumably protecting, was in the Doctor’s part of the TARDIS, the bit of the machine which was still functioning the way it was supposed to.
    But if the monster got in here, that would mean very bad things, she was sure. Death and endings. She realised she despised death.
    She felt the monster arrive outside, the appalling power of it. The doors behind them shuddered, but held. The noise was not that neat three-part beat any more, it was a scream, a howl of metal and stress, far too long. The Doctor winced. ‘Propulsion,’ he muttered. ‘And structural integrity fields.’
    ‘That sounds bad.’
    ‘It is.’
    ‘Then do something. Solve the puzzle.’
    He seemed to ignite. ‘Yes! Exactly. Solve the puzzle.
Allons y!
That’s French, you know.’
    Marvellous. Now he was quoting Arwen Jones at her.
    But he was moving, too, talking to himself, thinking aloud the way he had before but much, much more faster.
    ‘Library, library, library. He can’t say, he’s trying to tell us but he can’t go right ahead and say it. All right. Full of books. But really full of books. Too full. Can’t possibly be a book he wants me to find unless there’s a clue because we don’t have time to read them all and he has to point the way. What’s not where it should be? Ludowig’s
Histories of the Dalek Imperium
ought to be there but it’s here… no, that was me. This one is…
The Quarry
. (Only signed copy in the universe. He’ll be missed.) But not what we need right now… No! Not books… furniture. Chairs, tables, tapestries… can’t be! No! Maps!’
    He turned left, hurtled down between the stacks, and they emerged into a sort of side chapel, a room formed by the shelves, with a huge table covered in ancient and modern maps. At the far end was a writing table and a very comfortable-looking chair.
    ‘Maps! Maps maps maps, oooh, YES! Jonestown. Never had a map of Jonestown, never knew it was here, so this belongs to Heidt. (Nice penmanship. Mermaid. Other mermaid. Lots and lots of and lots of