Doctor Who_ Dark Progeny Part 29

The other children were gathering round, helping to tug the shroud free.

'Oh my G.o.d!' uttered Bains.

'I've never seen anything like it,' the Doctor gasped.

The dead child was sitting up, opening his eyes groggily, reaching out to the others and finally smiling. The others were watching him in wonder, touching and stroking his frail naked arms.

'Bustopher Jones,' said one of them. 'Bustopher Jones.'

They all began to chant the name, as if it was some ritual incantation, their voices eerie low whispers in the still night air.

' Bustopher Jones Bustopher Jones Bustopher Jones Bustopher Jones. . . Bustopher Jones Bustopher Jones Bustopher Jones Bustopher Jones. . . ' '

'How I wonder,' said one of the girls, her voice louder and suddenly out of step with the others, 'What you are. . . '

Having made her way down to level twelve via the stairs, Anji very quickly realised that she had no idea at all where she was and where the Doctor might be held. Fortunately, level twelve, the immediate vicinity at least, seemed to be well and truly deserted. She'd emerged into a wide corridor that was poorly illuminated by the same dreary yellow lighting that the rest of the city was using. She'd tried her com badge, but it merely spat and fizzled at her in a not very friendly way at all. The place was obviously falling apart at the seams.

Not far down the corridor was a wall panel like the ones she'd used in medicare. Checking for activity, she set off and tried touching it.

'Anybody there?' she asked, trying to keep her voice low and confidential.

In response she got the same holographic logo as before, except this time it was weak and the voice was high and stringy.

'Can I help you?'

Now. . . How to phrase this. . . There wasn't a lot of option. Not many ways she could frame a question like this. Alarm bells or not, she took the plunge.

'Where are the prisoners kept?'

'Prisoners?'

d.a.m.n.

The VIPs who just had the c.r.a.p kicked out of them, she wanted to scream.

But instead she said, 'Is there a prison section? Are there any cells nearby?'

'I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand your question. Please be more specific.

Do you wish to see the Doctor?'

She glared at the thing in astonishment. How did it. . . ?

197.

Then she saw them at the far end of the corridor. Three black figures walking towards her with their rifles raised. One of them was grinning, talking into a little microphone that was suspended in front of his mouth.

'In that case perhaps I can help after all. . . '

The c.o.c.kpit of the earthmover was amazingly sumptuous and serene. Fitz was impressed by the huge array of holographic screens that swam around the driver's seat. He was also immensely impressed by the way Ayla operated the controls with practised ease. After they had left the fieldbase in tatters, she'd spent a few minutes feeding it instructions, then she'd sat back to enjoy the ride.

He'd thankfully taken a back seat to lick his wounds. He was in a mess. His long legs ached, his chest had taken about as much of a battering as it could manage, and his arms felt fit to drop off.

He found Ayla watching him from her position up front, a look of distraction on her face.

'What's up?' he asked.

'I was just curious,' she said.

He grinned. 'I'm a real mystery, I know. I'm sorry. It's not easy to explain.'

'Try me.'

'I travel with a man called the Doctor. We travel through time and s.p.a.ce in a blue crate that looks just like a twentieth-century wooden police box, but which is in actual fact a multidimensional time s.h.i.+p that's the product of an infinitely superior alien civilisation.'

She raised her eyebrows dismissively at him and turned back to face the controls.

'It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!'

She ignored him.

'I told you it's not easy to explain,' he said.

So they remained silent for a good long while until the holograms started to cackle and s.h.i.+mmer. Then a distorted face appeared in front of Ayla. It was a young woman with long blonde hair tied up in a bob. Quite smart, thought Fitz.

'You wish to make an approach?' the face asked.

Wouldn't mind, Fitz thought.

'We're coming in for repairs,' Ayla told her.

'I'm sorry. We're experiencing some difficulties here at the moment. I can't open the bay doors, but we're also stationary right now so you could park 198outside and come in on foot. I'll extend a boarding tube for you. Please let me have your controls and I'll position you from this end.'

Ayla relinquished the controls and the machine began to grind and shake.

Fitz glared at her in alarm.

'She's not a smooth operator like you,' he complained.

'They're moving us into the aft zone. The ground's pretty unstable here. Just hold tight.'

Finally the creaking and jerking calmed, and Ayla led him to the escape door, where Fitz now found a long kind of enclosed gangplank where there should have been ladders to the ground. She led him across and they emerged into an immense holding area that was as big as any aircraft hangar Fitz had ever seen.

The place was badly illuminated, full of geometric shadows and hideously enormous blocks of darkness. It was constructed of gigantic beams with what must have been thousands of interconnecting metal-grid walkways. It looked to Fitz like a nightmare vision from one of those old German films about the future. Off in the dim distance he could see a row of parked earthmovers, some of them with their tracks dismantled. The scale of the place took his breath away and, as he gazed down into the huge open area below, so did something else.

Grasping Ayla by the arm, he pulled her to the railing and pointed down into the hold. It was some distance away, couched in shadow, but his eye had been drawn towards it as if by some strange invisible attraction.

'There,' he announced triumphantly. 'I told you. . .

A twentieth-century wooden police box.'

The three choppers emerged from the storm unexpectedly, swooping down like vultures into the open area around the caves. They moved with military preci-sion, landing in a tight triangle in front of Bains and the others. The three side doors sprang open and black-uniformed shapes spilled out, rifles raised at the small group.

The Doctor stepped forward under the intense glare from their searchlights.

Bains saw one of the figures flick up her goggles, then reach round to peel off her helmet. Even with the full glare of the lights behind her, he recognised Captain Foley.

She was watching the Doctor with a curiously vacant look in her face, paus-ing as if she were uncertain what to do next.

199.

Bains wrapped his arms round the children, and saw her eyes flick from the Doctor to them. The troops were gathering into tight formation around her, guns ready.

Foley was shaking her head, arms held in front of her in a strangely pleading gesture. She was gazing straight at the Doctor now, and Bains could see the twinkling of tears in her eyes.

'I'm sorry, Doctor,' she gasped.

And Bains saw their grips tighten on the rifles.

'I did tell you,' Fitz said, finding it hard to keep the smugness out of his voice.

Ayla was standing there with her mouth wide open, gawking at the impossibly vast interior of the TARDIS. The console room was still in a mess from the Doctor's earlier mad panic, and the floor was littered with all manner of instruments from sonic wrenches to bent paperclips. But despite the chaos, and despite that fact that the TARDIS may well remain a useless heap of transdi-mensional sc.r.a.p, Fitz felt an overwhelming sense of relief to be back.

'But it's impossible,' Ayla was saying as she tumbled down the steps into the room and then sustained the full impact of realising there were even more ludicrously gigantic areas leading off from the central control area.

'That's what they all say,' Fitz told her, running his hands over the centre console like a man stroking his prized Lamborghini.

'I just knew there was something about you,' she muttered as she performed a slow pirouette on her heels, trying to take in the sheer scale of the TARDIS interior.

'I can be a surprising man,' he told her, putting on the Connery slur.

She didn't react at all. Just kept on turning and gazing and looking utterly gobsmacked, obviously far more impressed by the hardware than the man. Uh-huh. OK. He still had one or two cards left up his sleeve.

'I'm going to take a shower,' he told her.

No answer.

'An antigrav shower,' he explained.

She turned and nodded.

'It's very stimulating.'

She was smiling now and shaking her head.

'Well,' he said, finally resigned, 'there's a kitchen through there. You're very welcome to make yourself at home.'

'I will,' she said. 'Thank you.'

200.He found himself standing there like one of those naff nodding dogs. The situation dragged on for a whole ten seconds before he finally squeezed a big stupid grin into his face and made his embarra.s.sed retreat.

He was holding a short black truncheon up to her face. She simply gazed back at him with all the determination she could muster. But her arms were tied and she was feeling queasy and achy and she really didn't know how much more of this nightmare treatment she could withstand.

'Who do you work for?' he asked, getting more agitated by the minute.

Anji was aware of Peron standing nearby, watching her with an intense stare.

'I don't work for anybody,' she told him for the umpteenth time. 'We're just travellers. We crash-landed.'

'Explain how you just happened to travel hundreds of light years into the middle of nowhere when we didn't have a single residue of hypers.p.a.ce drive when we scanned after your crash.'

'We don't travel through hypers.p.a.ce.'

'Liar!'

He jerked the truncheon in her direction and she felt her head explode with light and pain. The sensation died and she found the man glaring at the truncheon with gritted teeth.

'Get me some power to my comp,' he yelled, his face crimson with effort.

He tried again, pointing the device close to her face, his eyes wild and manic.

Again, the light burst into her head. This time dimmer but more sustained.

She could feel it burning the backs of her eyes, as if her brain had erupted into flames. She screamed but the man was screaming back.

' Tell me! Tell me! ' he cried. ' ' he cried. ' Tell me! Tell me! ' '

Then there was calm. A cool breeze of air. The fires died out and she gazed dizzily at the room full of people who were like things in a dream, wispy and not quite material. And on the walls around her she saw the image. The picture they'd ripped from her head. Distorted and repeated dozens of times as if she were in the heart of a hall of mirrors.

A picture of the TARDIS.

Foley's apology seemed such an inadequate thing for the murder she was about to commit. The Doctor watched her with pain in his eyes, and suddenly all she could see was the glitter of starlight through tears. She sensed Klute and Downs either side, rifles pruned and ready to fire. They awaited her order, fingers already squeezing the triggers. She sensed a deep dark s.p.a.ce open up 201 inside her and out of it came a sorrow so huge that she found it impossible to stifle the sobs as she raised her own rifle and fired The explosions were immense and simultaneous. The whole world turned in all directions at once, spinning and crying and howling, until Bains landed with a thud in the dirt. He opened his eyes to find he'd been thrown a good few metres, and the children were scattered around him, rising groggily from the ground to gaze back at the flaming inferno that used to be choppers and troops.

The Doctor was scrambling to his knees in the churned mud nearby, and a moment later Bains saw the anguish in his face as he stared back at the children, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng from one to another. Framed against the burning backdrop, the Doctor appeared to Bains like a dark avenging demon, hair a disorderly pile above his ferocious face.

'You could have simply jammed their weapons,' he shrieked.

The sudden appalling realisation hit Bains hard. The children had somehow caused the rifles to backfire, destroying the troops and the whole area around them in one tremendous fireball. His view of the innocents took a sharp swerve and he regarded them with new horror.

The Doctor tramped over, grabbing one of the children seemingly at random and dragging it up by the scruff of the neck. He glared into the child's eyes, and the child scowled back. For long moments they were locked in conflict. Then the Doctor's chin fell to his chest, and when he looked up again the anger had declined.

'I know they were going to kill us,' he said quietly. 'But it's no reason to kill them.'

The child, one of the boys, reached out to touch the side of the Doctor's face, a look of puzzlement clear in his features.

'It's not easy to explain,' the Doctor told him. 'It's just that. . . life's just. . .

too precious precious.'