Telepathy

The Doctor continued tapping out his message, nutcrackers in hand, but now using the metal bedstead as his transmitter. The Claw replied with what sounded like hysterical snapping of his mandible, tied in with a couple of bursts on the bedstead when it seemed words failed him.

‘It’s not as though the Toymaker is short on resources,’

said the Doctor, in between sentences. ‘He doesn’t need to save on building costs, so why does he build a high-tech barrier, when bricks and mortar would do fine?’ He waved his hand at the once-existent walls and door to demonstrate his point. The Claw’s response seemed to satisfy him, for he handed the antennae over, and watched fascinated as the terrible jaws closed over it as gentle as a summer’s breeze. There being no reply to his rhetorical question, the Doctor supplied his own answer. ‘Because that’s what he knows, and that’s what he controls the easiest.’

‘You said he was telepathic,’ pointed out Peri.

‘Yeah, and summat else,’ added Kevin, somewhat unhelpfully.

‘Telekinetic,’ supplied Peri.

‘Yeah,’ added Kevin, none the wiser.

‘That’s right,’ encouraged the Doctor.

‘So the barrier was made up from his mind?’ speculated Peri.

The Doctor nodded at the seemingly empty doorway.

‘I’m sure it is. But the inconvenience of having to sustain the mental effort bored him. He made it a simple electro-mechanical device which he could switch on and off with a flick of his mind.’

‘If he’s telepathic,’ mused Kevin, reaching a conclusion with the speed of a glacier, ‘he can hear everything we’re thinking...’

‘Only if he’s listening all the time,’ insisted the Doctor.

‘Think of it yourself,’ he invited, ever the optimist. ‘If you could receive every thought of every person within say, what – five miles? You’d go mad. You’d have to discipline your mind absolutely to filter out the thoughts you don’t want to hear. And you’d have to be able to turn them off altogether if you wanted to do some thinking yourself. I’m gambling that the Toymaker’s "Great Work" is of much more interest to him than anything we might be chatting about down here.’

***

The Nightmare Fair, Chapter 8