In the Cafe of Reasonable Comfort
Paul Andinach
Dorothee is an ex-companion of the Doctor's who shows up in some of
the later New Adventures novels. She lives in 19th-century France,
but owns a short-range time machine which she uses to help her to
defend Earth from alien invasion and to go shopping at Marks &
Spencer.
Her dining companion is of course from 'The Curse of Fatal Death',
and if that means nothing to you, you'll probably struggle with
this story.
---------
In the Cafe of Reasonable Comfort
by Paul Andinach
Glebe, Sydney, Earth. 30 December 1999, 7:59pm.
Dorothee leaned back and glanced casually around the cafe. She
wouldn't know the Doctor by sight, of course, but they'd arranged
to meet at 8pm, and she expected him to be punctual; he knew as
well as anyone the importance of precise timing in meetings between
time-travellers. Which meant he'd be here in three... two... one...
"Dorothee? I hope you haven't been waiting too long."
Dorothee's head snapped around, and she stared at the blonde woman
in the red-and-black trouser suit who was seating herself at one of
the two empty chairs.
A waiter came, deposited plates, left again.
"Well," Dorothee drawled. "You said on the phone you'd regenerated
again, but your voice didn't sound *that* different."
The blonde looked blank.
Dorothee grinned. "Let's try that again," she said. "Me Dorothee.
You Emma?"
The blonde nodded, looking relieved. "The Doctor will be along
soon. He had some shopping to do, he said."
"And he couldn't let you watch him shopping?" Dorothee asked,
raising an eyebrow. "Is he back to being a secretive git, then?"
Emma blinked. "No, usually he's very good at explaining things -
getting him to stop is more the problem, he loves showing off...
what's this parmagiana doing here?"
"That's *me* showing off," Dorothee said. "The Doctor always has
the eggplant parmagiana when we come here, so I wanted to have it
ready when he came in. Only he's going to be late, so - " She broke
off, and frowned at the plates the waiter had left. "I ordered for
three; there's only two here."
Emma shrugged, and started into the parmagiana in front of her.
"The Doctor will probably hop back after the meal to let them know
he'll have been late," she said.
"Does that a lot, does he?" said Dorothee, then waved a hand,
dismissing the subject. "So, this secret shopping excursion... If I
didn't know better, I'd say it was an excuse to let the old
girlfriend and the new girlfriend size each other up while the guy
was safely out of the way..." She grinned at the idea.
Emma giggled. "That's what *I* said, and he told me not to be
silly, you're just old friends."
"Did he now," said Dorothee thoughtfully. "Did he say anything
else?"
"He said that if he was too long, you could pass the time by
telling me about this cafe."
"Too right," said Dorothee.
"So?" Emma prompted. "What's so special about this cafe?"
"The eggplant parmagiana is outstanding," Dorothee proclaimed.
"I know that already," Emma said, pointing a fork at her. "What
else?"
"What makes you think there's anything else?"
"Well, that didn't pass much time, did it?"
"Time is relative," Dorothee said solemnly. "When would you say
this cafe was built?"
Emma looked around the cafe, taking in the framed postcards on the
white plaster walls, the rubbery-looking pot plants. "This is a
trick question, isn't it?"
"Of course it's a trick question. What's your answer?"
"I'd say it was built... fifteen, twenty years ago?"
Dorothee shook her head. "It wasn't."
"When was it built, then?"
"It wasn't," Dorothee repeated. "One day it wasn't here, the next
it was - weird pot plants, graffiti, and all." She waved her hands
expressively. "Ask anyone around here and they'll tell you - well,
probably they'll tell you that of course it was built, they just
can't quite recall exactly when. And you know what *that* means."
She looked at Emma, who nodded. "And in another few years, it'll be
gone again, the same way it came."
"Wow," said Emma, wide-eyed.
"That's nothing," Dorothee said. "In a few centuries' time, it'll
happen all over again on Argolis. Then in Bellatrix City. Of
course, I'm speaking linear time here. Properly speaking, the
'next' occurrence might just as easily be the cafe on Ehft, three
thousand years ago."
"Wow," said Emma again. "So this cafe moves around in time and
space? Does that mean the chef's an alien?"
"No, no," said Dorothee. "It's not the same cafe, it's half a dozen
different cafes, which happen to be identical. The fact that the
human chef here makes eggplant parmigiana exactly like the Janx
chef in Bellatrix is a complete coincidence. Just like everything
else about the cafes."
"But it's not really coincidence, is it?"
Dorothee shook her head. "A while back - and now I'm *not* talking
linear time, in linear time it hasn't happened yet - a while back,
a woman you won't have heard of built her own home-made time
machine and set out to see the universe. Her machine worked by
punching a hole through the universe, connecting her here-and-now
with the there-and-then she wanted to visit; the holes were
supposed to heal up once she'd passed through them, but she didn't
really know what she was doing, so she left a big multi-dimensional
rift behind her until she ran into the Doctor." The point of her
knife waved about in the air between them, tracing a three-
dimensional approximation of the four-dimensional path.
"And he fixed it?"
"Oh, he fixed the time machine but good," Dorothee said. "But it
was too late to do anything about the rift, so it's still there.
And things fall into it from time to time - like this cafe.
Somewhere, somewhen, the original cafe fell into the rift, and it
fell out in six different places."
Emma looked thoughtful. "So why did the Doctor want you to tell me
this?"
Dorothee shrugged. "Maybe he just thought you'd be interested. But
as it happens, it's related to what I wanted to talk to him about.
I think I've found another one."
"Another cafe?"
"No, another time rift. Well, another set of duplicates, but what I
can see of the distribution doesn't match the time rift I've just
been talking about."
"So what's it a duplicate of this time? A lunch bar? A cinema?"
"A person."
Emma stared at her.
"Oh, it's not completely unheard-of. I remember the Doctor telling
me once about this alien whose hyperdrive exploded when he tried to
use it to take off from a planet... but anyway, I first ran into
this guy in France; he was fighting with the British Army in the
First World War. Didn't think anything of it at the time, but then
a few weeks later I ran into him again - in England, one hundred
years earlier."
"Another time traveller?" Emma suggested. "Or just a coincidence -
we met a blue avian last month on Sivana that sounded just like the
Doctor."
Dorothee shook her head. "I was *there* when he fell out of the
timestream again - one moment, he was parading up and down, next
moment, he was gone, and it was like he'd never existed. Good
thing, too - another couple of days and he'd have been King the way
he was going. Then there he was again in Victorian times - just
making a quiet living and doing charitable works, thank God; I had
enough of saving the Queen when I was travelling with the Doctor."
She poked at her parmigiana. "And I've just been to England again
in this time zone, following another trail, and London's full of
the crukkers - comparatively speaking, I mean; I've found six so
far, ranging from a peer of the realm to the cleaner at an art
gallery. Several working for the foreign office, for some reason;
it's a wonder they've never bumped into each other."
Emma looked thoughtful. "So, you've found this time rift, and you
need the Doctor to fix it?"
"Need? No," Dorothee said. "I reckon I can handle it on my own,
this is just professional courtesy."
"How *do* you fix a time rift, anyway?"
"First thing you've got to do is work out what caused it - I've got
that covered. You remember I mentioned a peer of the realm? He's
the original - that's why there's so many duplicates in London,
because he keeps popping back into his own recent past to tweak
things, and it's put a lot of stress on that one patch of space-
time. Come to think of it, that probably explains why most of the
modern duplicates are imperfect copies - like recording a program
over and over on the same worn-out tape... sorry, I can see your
eyes glazing over. Where was I?"
"What's the second step for fixing a time rift?"
Dorothee grinned. "Stop it happening, of course. The advantage of
being a time traveller in this line of work is that you know what's
going to go wrong before it happens. Lord Look-at-me-stuffing-up-
reality has his fingerprints all over history, but from where we're
sitting he hasn't actually put them there yet - today, his time
machine's still in pieces in the coach-house. All I have to do is
pop over some time before the maiden voyage tomorrow night, sneak
in, and break something small but vital, and the whole thing will
be nipped in the bud. He only stumbled on the secret of time travel
by chance, he'll never know what went wrong."
Emma looked puzzled. "But if you prevent the time rift from ever
having happened in the first place, won't you cause some kind of
terrible paradox?"
"I can see why the Doctor keeps you around," Dorothee said. "Yes,
preventing the time rift will take a bunch of people out of
history, and normally that's impossibly dangerous; but this is a
special case. Remember I said that when the duplicate in Regency
England disappeared, history went back to normal? Same with all of
them, as far back and forth as I can reach: none of them have any
*real* effect on history, you wouldn't even know they'd been there
unless you were there at the time, so the net effect of removing
them from the timestream will be nil."
"You're sure?"
"Well, all right, I'm going to get the Doctor to check the bits of
history I can't reach, in case one of them somehow had an effect
that persisted after he was gone, but it's just a formality, I
don't really expect it to... hello, what's this?"
The waiter was approaching their table again, bearing a third
eggplant parmagiana and a small gift-wrapped box.
Dorothee looked toward the cafe's entrance. As she'd expected, the
Doctor was crossing the cafe toward them; he would arrive at the
table at the same time as his parmagiana.
What she hadn't expected was that his new face would be so
familiar.
"Cruk. I *am* going to need the Doctor's help with this one after
all..."
Emma, whose face had lit up at the sight of the Doctor, looked
puzzled. "What makes you say that?"
Dorothee sighed, and began digging through her knapsack in search
of the photograph of Edmund, Lord Blackadder.
"Finish your parmigiana," she said. "I'll explain later."
---------
Featuring the Ninth Doctor and Emma, this interlude takes place
between the television stories 'Doctor Who: The Movie' and 'The
Curse of Fatal Death'.
Daibhid Ceannaideach
A work of genius.
"Several working for the Foreign Office".... Well, Johnny English,
obviously, Nigel Small-Fawcett from "Never Say Never Again" and, um,
Agent Barcleycard, or whatever his name is?
Then there's the police inspector, the priest, the amusement park owner
and, oddest of all, the talking African Hornbill...
Dave
David S. Rubin
> Author's Note:
>
> Dorothee is an ex-companion of the Doctor's who shows up in some of
> the later New Adventures novels. She lives in 19th-century France,
> but owns a short-range time machine which she uses to help her to
> defend Earth from alien invasion and to go shopping at Marks &
> Spencer.
That would be Ace, isn't it? I never read "Curse of the Fatal Death"
so I didn't read the story, though :(
cheers,
DSR
I. Inayat
"David S. Rubin" <dav...@touro.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.A41.4.10.104123...@academic.touro.edu...
> I never read "Curse of the Fatal Death" so I didn't read the story, though :(
Curse of the Fatal Death was a comedy skit (for the BBC's Comic Relief). It
eventually got a video release, along with a few other skits, under the 'Curse
of the Fatal Death' title.
Imran.
BKWillis
>In the Cafe of Reasonable Comfort
>by Paul Andinach
>
<snip>
This. Was. Freakin'. Excellent.
Fine work, Paul. _Damn_ fine. Witty, charming, funny, and with clues that
make perfect sense in retrospect, but neatly avoid telegraphing the ending.
The surprise was complete and thus my enjoyment, too.
BKWillis
--
"I want our literature to become more male, less female. Men shouldn't buy
'self-help' books unless the subject matter is car maintenance, golf swing
improvement or how to disassemble a f**king Browning B.A.R. We don't improve
ourselves, we improve our stuff."
--Kim du Toit
Paul Andinach
news:Pine.A41.4.10.104123...@academic.touro.edu:
> On 30 Dec 2004, Paul Andinach wrote:
>
> > Author's Note:
> >
> > Dorothee is an ex-companion of the Doctor's who shows up in
> > some of the later New Adventures novels. She lives in
> > 19th-century France, but owns a short-range time machine which
> > she uses to help her to defend Earth from alien invasion and to
> > go shopping at Marks & Spencer.
>
> That would be Ace, isn't it?
Yes, that's right. Nothing in the story requires you to know that
it's Ace, though.
> I never read "Curse of the Fatal Death" so I didn't read the
> story, though :(
As Imran has already pointed out, you never *watched* 'The Curse of
Fatal Death'.
On reflection, there's only one thing you *really* need to know about
'The Curse of Fatal Death' to get the point of 'In the Cafe of
Reasonable Comfort' (as opposed to getting all the in-jokes), and I
think that, if I've done my job properly, you ought to be able to
infer that one thing from context at the appropriate moment anyway.
I would appreciate it if you would read the story and tell me if you
think I've done my job properly...
Paul
--
The Pink Pedanther
Paul Andinach
news:20041230171648...@mb-m04.aol.com:
> <Paul Andinach wrote:>
>
> > In the Cafe of Reasonable Comfort
> > by Paul Andinach
>
> <snip>
>
> This. Was. Freakin'. Excellent.
>
> Fine work, Paul. _Damn_ fine.
Thank you.
> Witty, charming, funny, and with clues that make perfect sense in
> retrospect, but neatly avoid telegraphing the ending.
That's good to know. I always worry about these things because by
the time I'm done with the story I know it like the back of my
hand, so I have no way of gauging how it's going to come across to
someone who's never seen it before.
Paul Andinach
wrote in
news:1104422433.1...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
> LOL!
>
> A work of genius.
Thank you.
> "Several working for the Foreign Office".... Well, Johnny
> English, obviously, Nigel Small-Fawcett from "Never Say Never
> Again" and, um, Agent Barcleycard, or whatever his name is?
I didn't count Agent Barclaycard separately from Johnny English.
The other one I had in mind was Dexter Hayman from 'Hot Shots! Part
Deux', although at this late date I can't recall exactly what his job
description was.
> Then there's the police inspector, the priest, the amusement
> park owner
Yes, yes, but I didn't want to over-do it...
> and, oddest of all, the talking African Hornbill...
I still say that was just a coincidence.
Igenlode Wordsmith
[snip]
> Dorothee sighed, and began digging through her knapsack in search
> of the photograph of Edmund, Lord Blackadder.
>
> "Finish your parmigiana," she said. "I'll explain later."
>
*Nice* punchline... although to be honest, I laughed out loud *before*
reading the other posts and dimly remembering what I'd heard about 'The
Curse of Fatal Death'. Blackadder duplicated through history by a time
rift is quite funny enough on his own ;-)
--
Igenlode Visit the Ivory Tower http://curry.250x.com/Tower/
* The old that is strong does not wither *
Daibhid Ceannaideach
Date: 31/12/04 00:32 GMT Standard Time
>On 31 Dec 2004, "Daibhid Ceannaideach" <daibhidc...@aol.com>
>wrote in
>news:1104422433.1...@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
>
>> LOL!
>>
>> A work of genius.
>
>Thank you.
>
>
>> "Several working for the Foreign Office".... Well, Johnny
>> English, obviously, Nigel Small-Fawcett from "Never Say Never
>> Again" and, um, Agent Barcleycard, or whatever his name is?
>
>I didn't count Agent Barclaycard separately from Johnny English.
>The other one I had in mind was Dexter Hayman from 'Hot Shots! Part
>Deux', although at this late date I can't recall exactly what his job
>description was.
D'oh! Forgot about him!
>> Then there's the police inspector, the priest, the amusement
>> park owner
>
>Yes, yes, but I didn't want to over-do it...
>
>> and, oddest of all, the talking African Hornbill...
>
>I still say that was just a coincidence.
Eh? Oh, missed that completely!
"a blue avian ... on Sivana that sounded just like the Doctor".
Sivana, Savannah.
I stand in further awe.
--
Dave
The Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
In life, as in breakfast cereal, it is always best to read the instructions on
the box.
-Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
David S. Rubin
> As Imran has already pointed out, you never *watched* 'The Curse of
> Fatal Death'.
oops. I stand corrected.
> On reflection, there's only one thing you *really* need to know about
> 'The Curse of Fatal Death' to get the point of 'In the Cafe of
> Reasonable Comfort' (as opposed to getting all the in-jokes), and I
> think that, if I've done my job properly, you ought to be able to
> infer that one thing from context at the appropriate moment anyway.
>
> I would appreciate it if you would read the story and tell me if you
> think I've done my job properly...
Well, I've read it and enjoyed it, so you've done your job properly :)