Doctor Who_ Night Of The Humans Part 6

'You know, I've been frogmarched by quite a few people in my time, but you guys really have it down to a fine art. Did you know that?' frogmarched by quite a few people in my time, but you guys really have it down to a fine art. Did you know that?'

Neither Tuco nor the guards answered him.

The Doctor sighed. 'Funny word, isn't it? "Frogmarched", I mean. For one thing, frogs don't march, do they? Well...

Earth frogs don't, anyway.'

Tuco glowered at him. 'What is a frog?' he snapped.

'Oh. Right,' said the Doctor. 'Green thing. Likes ponds.'

'You are not a frog.'

'No, Tuco... I wasn't saying that I'm a frog, I was saying that... Oh, never mind. I guess some of 77.the more eccentric idioms of the English language have fallen by the wayside with you people.'

'Be quiet.'

They were dragging him along one of the subterranean tunnels beneath the human city, past gloomy alcoves in which cowering, b.e.s.t.i.a.l humans sat around flickering fires, gnawing at sc.r.a.ps of grisly-looking, overcooked meat.

They left the tunnel and pa.s.sed through a large chamber, at the far end of which was a white sheet, suspended from the ceiling. A congregation of perhaps a hundred humans sat before the sheet, watching as the flickering image of a film was projected onto it.

There was no sound, only the images, and the Doctor noticed that it was a Western. A sheriff in a white hat hid behind a barrel, loading his pistol, while in the distance four gunslingers in black marched purposefully towards him along a dusty street. A human in long black robes stood next to the screen, and spoke in a loud, booming voice that echoed out across the chamber.

'And Wyturp, brother of Gobo, waited for the servants of the Bad, who had come to Oh-Kaykrall to destroy him.'

All too soon they had left the chamber and entered another tunnel.

'What was that?' asked the Doctor.

'That was the Chamber of Stories,' said Tuco.

78.'So you have electricity? And films? You have films? And Wyturp and Oh Kaykrall... Doesn't he mean Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral?'

Tuco shook his head and grunted. 'Do you know nothing, heathen?' he hissed. 'They are the stories. The stories of the Olden Ones, given to us by Gobo through his son Zasquez and pa.s.sed down through generations.'

The Doctor thought about this for a moment, and then he laughed.

'Yes!' he said. 'Of course! El Paso! You've been watching Westerns. For thousands of years. And without the sound for most of it. No wonder you're getting the names all mixed up.

Tell me, Tuco... The man back there. The one telling the story.

He mentioned Gobo. Is Gobo actually in any of the films?'

Tuco scowled. 'Of course not!' he bellowed. 'Gobo never appears in the pictures. That is forbidden. The stories of the Olden Ones are about his sons, and his brothers, and the Bad, and the servants of the Bad.'

'Right,' said the Doctor. 'Of course.'

None of them had said a word since leaving the Beagle XXI, and they were nearing the far side of the desert of broken gla.s.s before Ahmed spoke.

'It's his father,' he said. 'Captain Jamal. He's the one who got him the job on the s.h.i.+p. He never 79.approves of anything Charlie does.'

'Yes! sneered Slipstream. Typical Sittuun behaviour, that.

I've never known a species like them for red tape and high horses. Little wonder they've no time for gallantry. They're too busy crossing Ts and dotting Is.'

Ahmed glowered across at Slipstream and then returned his attention to the road ahead.

In the back of the buggy, Amy gazed up at the dark blue skies above the Gyre. There, directly above them, the comet, Schuler-Khan, was still visible. It looked larger now; near enough the same size in the night sky as the moon looked back on Earth.

Behind its s.h.i.+ning orb there trailed a narrow mist of green and purple gas. It looked like a single, colourful and s.h.i.+mmering flame suspended in s.p.a.ce. She turned to Ahmed, looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

'Why does everyone call him Charlie?' she asked. 'His Dad calls him Baasim.'

'Charlie's just his nickname! replied Ahmed. 'He studied ancient Earth music at the Lux Academy over in Sol 1. Sorry...

I mean your solar system. Got his name from some saxophone player he really liked. Same as Ella here...'

He drummed his hands on the steering wheel.

'Named her after a singer. If you ask me, Charlie's half human, he's spent that much time 80.around them. It's a wonder he hasn't grown a nose and eyebrows. Ha ha...' He looked at Amy in the mirror. 'Sorry...

That's not very politically correct, is it?'

Amy laughed. She wasn't sure why she should be offended by someone talking about noses and eyebrows. After all, the Sittuun were the weird ones for not having them. Weren't they?

When Ahmed noticed her laughing he smiled at her. 'You know something?' he said. 'For a human, you're all right.'

They had left the desert of broken gla.s.s and were now riding up and over one of the sc.r.a.p mounds, heading back towards the valley where the TARDIS had landed. If only, Amy thought, the Doctor could have given her a driving lesson in that thing before they had come here. As it was, the console of the TARDIS was the most confusing thing she'd ever seen; so many dials and levers, b.u.t.tons and bells. She wouldn't have known where to start.

'Say, Ahmed, old chap,' said Slipstream, as they drove on, past towering columns of sc.r.a.p metal and the rusting remnants of long-forgotten s.p.a.cecraft. 'I trust you know the way?'

Ahmed nodded. 'We went there once,' he said solemnly.

'Just the once.'

Slipstream gazed out from the buggy at the decaying vistas around them.

'I'd always wondered what this place would be 81 like! he said, his voice sounding suddenly faraway and dreamy.

'Back when I was a boy.'

'You'd heard about it then?' asked Ahmed.

'Oh yes. There were many stories and legends about the Gyre. Many of them fanciful, of course. After all, n.o.body had set foot on this thing. Well... As far as we knew. That only seemed to lend it a greater air of mystery. It was a truly new world. A world of our own making. There was talk of a great treasure being here, somewhere...'

'Treasure?' asked Amy. 'What, like gold?'

Slipstream and Ahmed both laughed.

'What? What's so funny?'

'Ha ha... My dear girl. Gold? Gold's worthless. Were you brought up in the outer nebulae?'

'Why? I don't get it...'

'Voga and Midas Superior! said Ahmed, sounding far less condescending than Slipstream. 'Gold planets. Midas Superior was solid gold from core to crust. Not much left of either of them now, of course...'

'Well of course,' said Amy, with a trace of sarcasm.

'No! Slipstream continued. 'There may be plenty of gold here on the Gyre, but that isn't the treasure. Legend has it that the Gyre was the final resting place of the Mymon Key.'

Amy was pleased to notice that Ahmed looked as clueless as her at the mention of this name. At 82.least she wasn't the only one.

'What's the Mymon Key?'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Slipstream. 'Probably nothing more than a folk story. A fairy tale. They say it was engineered on a distant world, out beyond Ca.s.siopeia's Elbow. A device of unimaginable power. The owner of the Mymon Key could wield the greatest power in the universe.' He smiled and winked at Amy in the mirror. 'Still,' he said. 'Probably just a fairy tale, eh?'

They had entered a long, narrow gully between two vast and almost limitless piles of sc.r.a.p, each rising up in sheer cliff faces to either side. With the nearest stars and planets, and the dim green glow of Schuler-Khan cut off, the world around them grew darker and the air a little colder. Amy braced herself against the cold and shuddered.

With no one in the buggy talking, she was able to just sit and think, and there were so many things to think about; too many things. She was reminded of that feeling when, after a long and heavy night out, it became clear there was no way home. No taxis at the ranks; the last bus having left several hours earlier. They were always rainy nights, those times when she and her friends would find themselves stranded.

Cold and rainy, almost without exception, and home - warm home and a warm bed - always seemed so far away. She could almost laugh about it now. On those nights, home 83 was never more than five or six miles, walking distance, if you were wearing sensible shoes, and yet they'd do anything rather than walk.

Now home was so far away she struggled to grasp the sheer scale of it, both in miles and years. Looking up into the canyon, at the thin, jagged splinter of dark blue sky above them, she saw just a handful of stars. Could any one of them have been Earth's sun? She wasn't sure. Astronomy had never been her strong point. Even so, she decided to pick one, and make that the Sun.

It wouldn't make any difference if it wasn't. Just picking that single star and deciding it was home brought some degree of comfort; a comfort only dampened by the thought that even if it were the sun, and even if the Earth was still spinning around it, it might be an Earth 2,500 centuries after her time.

'Dirk! said Amy, looking at his reflection in the mirror, 'what's Earth like?'

Slipstream laughed. 'Earth? Well, I've only been the once, Miss Pond. Y'see, I grew up on t.i.tan.'

'But what's it like?'

Slipstream mulled this over for a moment, and grimaced.

'Far too many tourists,' he said bluntly.

It wasn't the answer Amy had been looking for. She wanted to hear stories about magnificent cities made of gla.s.s, or cruise s.h.i.+ps that floated through the clouds. She wanted him to tell her about robot butlers, or floating cities.

84.Still, what else could he tell her? If she had learned one thing about the future, it was that it was nothing like people said it would be.

85.

Chapter.

8.

Charlie sat alone in his quarters, looking at the rifle, now fully charged, that he would never use. He knew that elsewhere on the s.h.i.+p his father and Dr Heeva would be preparing the Nan.o.bomb for detonation, and he felt something, a feeling or an emotion, that he didn't recognise. It was like an aching in his chest, a real and physical pain. It was a mood that hung over him like the darkest of rain clouds. his quarters, looking at the rifle, now fully charged, that he would never use. He knew that elsewhere on the s.h.i.+p his father and Dr Heeva would be preparing the Nan.o.bomb for detonation, and he felt something, a feeling or an emotion, that he didn't recognise. It was like an aching in his chest, a real and physical pain. It was a mood that hung over him like the darkest of rain clouds.

He thought about Amy and Ahmed, driving across the Gyre in Ella, his buggy, and he realised he would never see them again. He had known Ahmed almost five years. They were the same age, and had joined the crew of the Beagle XXI at the same time. There had been some animosity at first; 87 Ahmed taunting Charlie, saying he'd only got the job because of his father. Of course, this was true, in part, but soon enough they became friends. They had seen so much of the universe together; each experience new for both of them. Ahmed was not just his friend, he was the best of friends.

But something else was gnawing away at Charlie.

Something he couldn't quite fathom. Everything about that day's events seemed so unlikely. They had been on the Gyre for more than a hundred days, and there had been no answer to any of their distress calls. The Gyre was so remote that years and decades could pa.s.s without another s.h.i.+p pa.s.sing it. And yet, in a single day, they had been joined by not one but two separate parties.

Amy, Charlie had decided, was trustworthy. His years at a university populated largely by humans had given him some understanding of their ways and customs. He knew when humans were lying and when they were telling the truth, most of the time. No, she was fine, and if she trusted the Doctor, then maybe he was fine too.

Which just left Slipstream.

On and on they drove through the dark gully. Biting winds that chilled her to the bone came sweeping through its gloomy, zigzagging corridor. In what little light there was, Amy saw long-forgotten and discarded relics on the side of the path: emptied 88.containers, shattered belongings. She saw a plastic doll pinned to the ground by an old oil drum, its hollow eye sockets gazing up at the dark sky, and it made her sad. Sad because maybe its owner had died here, or maybe it had been lost or thrown away.

At last they left the gully and reached the precipice of a vast canyon, across which there lay a wide metal pipe. Ahmed brought the buggy to a halt, the engine still purring away.

'OK! he said. 'This is where we have to be careful.'

Slipstream looked out across the canyon, squinting his eyes and toying with the ends of his moustache.

'Well... At least there's a bridge.'

'Except it's not a bridge,' said Ahmed. 'It's a pipe. As in, it's round. You ever tried steering a buggy on something that's round?'

'Nonsense!' Slipstream snorted. 'Just keep her straight, and drive on into those rushes yonder.'

He pointed across the gorge to where a forest of what looked like tall black reeds were swaying in the wind.

'And that's the other thing! said Ahmed. 'That's where the Sollogs live.'

Slipstream snapped his head in Ahmed's direction, his eyebrows bunching together.

'Sollogs? What in the devil's name is a Sollog?'

89.Ahmed looked from Slipstream to Amy. He looked worried. No, more than worried. He looked genuinely terrified.

'They're... they're like slugs! he said. 'Giant slugs.'

Slipstream laughed.

'My dear chap... It'll take more than a few pesky molluscs to get Dirk Slipstream's knickers in a twist. Drive on.'

Ahmed revved the engine again, and took the buggy closer to the edge of the canyon.

'Is there another way?' asked Amy. 'Some other way around that doesn't involve crossing a ridiculously deep canyon and ending up in a swamp filled with giant slugs?'

Ahmed shook his head.