Confronted with the apparent obligation to spend my money on train tickets to the shopping district and the library and back again for myself and a total stranger, plus making excuses to my parents for missing dinner and being out who knew how late, I looked to Koizumi. Surely he could spare both the time and the money?
Unfortunately Koizumi proved exactly as reliable as ever.
“Alas, I’m afraid I must bow out for now,” Koizumi said quietly. “I’m afraid my part-time job has just called. Strange… this is the first time in months such a thing has happened. Now, the second time today. I hope nothing bad has happened.”
Translated: a closed space has opened up somewhere not far away, and Koizumi has been called in to help take care of it. Again. This strange person with a magic phone box apparently had no problem sharing his secrets with us, but Koizumi wasn’t going to be so loose-lipped. He must have received a text message while the Doctor and his companion were talking.
“However, I’m sure my colleague Kyon will be more than glad to escort Miss Smith,” Koizumi continued. “Kyon, I leave our guests in your capable hands.”
A large black taxicab pulled up by the curb. If the driver opened his door, he’d hit the phone box. “I will see you in the morning, before classes, Kyon. Good evening.” With that Koizumi got into the cab, and off it went, taking him wherever his organization thought he was needed.
I considered the unpleasant options of either refusing to help or losing my entire evening plus train fare for two. Fortunately the appearance of a quiet savior on the sidewalk provided me with a third option.
I’m sorry, Nagato, but I’m going to throw an unpleasant and difficult task into your hands yet again.
“Nagato!” I shouted, waving to her. She was standing near the base of the hill, staring intently at the police box. When I shouted her head turned very slowly to look at me. After a moment she nodded fractionally, the absolute minimum gesture, and then walked slowly over to where the three of us stood- Sarah Jane, the Doctor, and I.
“This is Yuki Nagato,” I told the two strangers. “She loves reading books and is a frequent user of the local library.” I turned to face Yuki and said, “These are visitors from a long way away.”
“England,” said Sarah Jane.
“Gallifrey,” said the Doctor.
“I see,” Yuki murmured.
“Miss Smith here wishes to do some history research at the library,” I continued. “Would you be able to take her there, let her do her reading, and bring her back here afterward?”
Yuki looked at Sarah Jane, then looked at the Doctor for about twice as long. She then looked at me and said, “Understood.”
“If it’s inconvenient, please don’t trouble yourself,” I added. Yet another count of hypocrisy to add to my list of sins against Nagato.
“It is all right.” Yuki stared at me a little more closely. There was something inside her, some deep misgiving or worry that she wasn’t able to articulate.
“I beg your pardon,” the Doctor said, trying to bring his voice down to a murmur, “but is your friend all right?”
Yuki is the single most reliable person I have ever met. She might choose not to do anything, but when she said she would do something, she did it. How dare this bizarre stranger imply that she might betray a trust?
“It’s just that I don’t often see someone that afraid of me,” he continued. “I’ve seen plenty of people angry at me, exasperated, annoyed, peeved, ticked off, confused, bewitched, bebothered, bewildered, and on occasion admiring… but not afraid.” He considered this a moment and then added, “That is, nobody who hadn’t done something to deserve it.”
Oh. That put a different cast on things. Wait… how did he know she was afraid of him? I’d always thought Nagato was totally expressionless to everyone’s eyes but mine. “She’s… very shy. She spends most of her time in books. She’s not comfortable at all around strangers.”
“Yes, but Sarah is a stranger, too,” the Doctor pointed out. “She’s not at all worried about her.”
“Sarah Jane is standing right here listening to all this,” Miss Smith said. “And so is the subject of your debate. Honestly, Doctor!”
“I do not mind,” Yuki said.
“Well, I do!” Sarah took Yuki’s hand. Yuki did not resist. Barring any serious threat, Yuki almost never resisted anything. “Since our two friends seem to want us out from underfoot, I think we should oblige. Shall we go?”
Yuki looked at Sarah’s hand, then looked at me. “Be careful,” she said, and then in English, “One five.”
One five? Does she mean 1-5, her class? Why should I be careful about- wait, Mr. Strame was the new homeroom teacher of class 1-5, at least for the moment. But she already warned me about him.
“What was that?” The Doctor turned his head to one side, as if he’d heard something wrong. “Must be a glitch in the TARDIS’s automatic translation system.”
I ignored him. “I’m going straight home,” I told her. “I’ll see you in the club room tomorrow, all right? We can talk there.”
Yuki nodded, then turned her attention back to Sarah Jane. Without a word passing between them, they reached some sort of consensus, because they walked together to the train ticket kiosk.
“Well, I suppose that’s settled,” the Doctor nodded. “Look, I’m sorry I can’t invite you in for a spot of tea or anything, but I’ve got quite a bit of work ahead of me. Good-bye! I’ll be seeing you!” The strange tall man grinned and added, “Certainly you’ll be seeing me!”
That last shot, as the Doctor stepped back into the phone box and closed the door behind him, left me with a sense of unease. Yuki wouldn’t give me a second warning about Mr. Strame… but what if this Doctor person was an alien of the same kind as Strame? An alien with similar powers… and similar motivations?
I didn’t get much studying done that night, nor sleep. My brain kept chasing itself in circles, trying to put the pieces together: Suzumiya, Strame, both Asahinas, Nagato, Koizumi, and this Doctor and his friend Sarah.
The next morning I arrived at the train station early- or so I thought. Nagato was waiting for me.
She sat on a bench on the far end of the train station from where that phone booth still stood. She had a book in her hands with an English title- one of the most ridiculous names I’d ever seen. Quartermass? What Japanese tongue could wrap itself around that?
She didn’t look up from her book as I walked up to her. “Good morning,” I said.
A marginal Yuki-nod was my only answer.
“How did things go with Miss Smith?” I asked.
“There were no problems,” Yuki replied, and after several seconds of silence I thought that would be the end of it. Then she added, without preamble, “She is an absolutely normal human, apparently of Earth origin. She is also a time traveler.”
I blinked. “Like Asahina?”
Yuki shook her head. “Smith does not have an independent time travel capability. She apparently comes from the past, not the future. She expressed surprise and delight at the current state of human data exchange technology. She was also surprised at certain historical facts which apparently occurred later than her native time frame.”
Was that what the Doctor had meant about us being twenty-five years ahead of Sarah Jane Smith?
“I do not believe she is under any compulsion or mental control,” she added. “Her conduct is not dissimilar to certain behavior patterns of Haruhi Suzumiya.”
Oh, brother. Spare us a second coming of Haruhi, please. One is plenty.
“When the library closed I acquired food for Sarah Jane Smith and the Doctor, then brought her back to this place on the last train. I have remained here since.”
Wait a minute… you remained here all night?
“It is not a problem. I felt it desirable to keep this place under surveillance.”
“It’s a big problem! Do they know you’ve been here all night?”
“They have not emerged from their transcendent dimensional pocket. It is possible they have scanners to allow them to monitor the area, but I have sensed no such system.”
That was either comforting or very, very worrying.
“Well, if that’s so, that’s so,” I said at last, “but there’s someone else that needs observation. So long as they stay in their blue box, they’re not our worry, right? Let’s get moving, or else we’ll be late.”
I had Yuki on her feet and halfway down the length of the station before my plan to get us all away from the stranger and his blue box came crashing down. It was knocked down and run over by the black taxi which chose that moment to pull up to the curb and disgorge Koizumi before zooming off again.
The SOS Brigade’s mysterious esper had a large bandage bound around his head.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
Koizumi looked for a moment like he wanted to postpone that conversation, looking at the other people- mostly fellow students- walking around us. Finally he shook his head and sighed. “Something unprecedented happened. Something which has my superiors in the Agency very, very worried indeed.”
Koizumi took Nagato and myself in arm and walked us a few steps back down the side of the station, away from the main flow of foot traffic. “The first closed space of the day was typical, and very easily dealt with,” he said. “I believe it was due to a bit of minor pique on the part of Suzumiya, possibly that the SOS Brigade wasn’t as impressive as it could have been for a visitor.
“But the second one, the one that opened while we were meeting this Doctor person, was unlike anything I have ever seen before. It was literally the difference between day and night. You would have to see it for yourself to fully understand, and even then without powers like those of my associates and myself, you wouldn’t see all the changes.”
At any other time Koizumi would use that smug, self-deprecating tone that meant he was bragging, but not now. I had only seen him this serious one or two other times, and both times it meant things were at their worst.
“When we got there there were two celestials. One was the normal kind, as you saw when I first showed you closed space. The other was dark and malevolent. We could smell evil, killing intent coming off it in the same way light comes from normal celestials. And rather than destroying everything around them, the two celestials were battling each other.”
Suzumiya’s subconscious fighting itself? I’d only seen closed space twice, once when Koizumi had taken me, and again when Suzumiya had been about to recreate the world. I’d seen the celestials both times, and I never wished to see them again, not if I could help it. Those products of Haruhi’s power terrified me, and I didn’t mind admitting it.
“At first we tried to attack both celestials,” Koizumi said. “The light celestial swatted us away, but the dark celestial attacked. I was knocked into a building,” he said, gesturing to his scalp. “Some of us might have died if the light celestial hadn’t attacked. After that we stood back to watch the fight.
“Before long it became apparent that the light celestial was losing. We discussed this and decided to focus our attacks on the dark celestial at all cost. With a coordinated attack we dispatched the dark celestial without incident. At that point the light celestial collapsed and vanished itself, and the closed space collapsed.
“We still do not understand the meaning behind what we witnessed,” Koizumi concluded. “But we are very, very worried for the state of mind of Haruhi. She is confused, in pain, and a bit frightened- that we can sense clearly. But what is wrong- and what it means for the rest of us- we cannot come to a consensus on this.”
“A fascinating story,” a soft, jovial voice said from behind us.
I jumped. My feet literally left the ground. I managed not to fall down as I turned to face the Doctor, who was grinning that tooth-filled grin of his down at us.
“And it might just explain what brought me here,” he continued, looking at the three of us. “Now… perhaps we could start at the beginning?”
(Posted Tue, 07 May 2013 23:43)
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