Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles Part 37

Trix paused, not wanting to say it.

'You can. . . bring him back. Whether you should or not, I don't know. But you can. He was your friend.'

She looked him in the eye.

'And I have faith you'll do what's right. No, not faith. Something better: knowledge. Certain knowledge. You never lose, not in the end, not like this.

Please '

The Doctor put his finger to her lips.

'I brought the dead back to life on my very first day in the job,' the Doctor told her.

Behind him stood Fitz.

219.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr

Chapter Thirteen.

It's the End. . .

Trix and Fitz were hugging and kissing. The Doctor moved away, giving them their s.p.a.ce, and found himself next to Mrs Winfield whom he'd run past on the way out of the house to save Trix. It was a pleasant summer's night in England.

'Mister. . . sir. . . ' It was a small woman, probably in her late fifties.

'Doctor,' he corrected her.

'My husband died too. They got him before he could get inside the house, that first day.'

'He's right here, Jackie.'

'You know my name?'

'Des loves you. He's been with you all this time.'

'I felt like he was standing next to me.'

Trix was looking over at the Doctor. 'What's he doing?' she asked Fitz. 'He's acting like some medium at the end of a pier. He'll be asking the crowd if they know anyone called "John" next, and telling whoever puts her hand up that John's saying she should get on with her life.'

Fitz was biting his lip. 'No. Watch. Because just when you think you know how b.l.o.o.d.y brilliant he is, and you think you've seen him do everything. . . '

The Doctor took Mrs Winfield's hand in his, reached out.

'I can feel. . . '

The Doctor nodded.

'Do you remember the first time we held hands, Des?' she asked.

'I remember,' her husband replied. 'I was so nervous.'

The Doctor took Mr Winfield's hand in his hand, and led him back from the dead. A middle-aged man in cords and a raincoat stepped forward, and stood before his wife. The two of them were crying.

Trix wiped away a tear herself.

'I tried calling out to you,' he said. 'Touching you, blocking your way, writing you a note. I even texted your mobile but you didn't have it on.'

'The battery had gone. I never know how to recharge it. You do all that.'

('I wrote to you in lipstick on the bathroom mirror,' said Fitz. 'You never saw the notes I left you. I shouted until I was hoa.r.s.e, I grabbed your arm. I 223 tried to hug you. I sat next to you in the car, you couldn't see or hear me.') 'Then I thought, well, perhaps I was was a ghost. So I followed you around. I didn't know what else to do.' a ghost. So I followed you around. I didn't know what else to do.'

('That's what I did,' Fitz told Trix.) Mr Winfield hugged the Doctor. 'How do I thank you?'

The Doctor shrugged, a little embarra.s.sed. 'It was nothing. Now, find yourself somewhere safe. This isn't over yet.'

They nodded, still dazed, but with the presence of mind to do what he suggested. They hurried next door, still holding hands. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix went back inside Marnal's house, where Rachel was waiting for them.

'"It was nothing"?' Trix echoed.

'I don't like to blow my own trumpet.'

'As opposed to the Last Trumpet?' Fitz suggested.

'Oh, I get that. That's good.'

'Thanks.'

'You are going to explain,' Trix told him.

'Of course, he's going to explain,' Fitz said. 'It's got something to do with parallel universes, I reckon. Usually when stuff around here makes no sense it's '

'Beehives,' the Doctor said smugly. Not that he wasn't within his rights to look a bit self-satisfied.

Trix rolled her eyes. 'And that would be the explanation? Well, I suppose at least it's light on techn.o.babble.'

'Dead bees, specifically. When a bee dies it needs to be cleared out of the hive. There are bees whose only job is to tidy up. A dead bee secretes oleic acid. You can probably work out the rest.'

Trix smiled sweetly. 'Humour me.'

'The acid is the chemical signal that tells a bee that another bee is dead. So far, so good. If you daub a live bee with oleic acid, though, the other bees a.s.sume it's dead, and carry it out of the hive. Even if it's struggling. It's not that the bee smells dead to the other bees, it is dead. They treat it exactly as if it's dead, their brains block out any evidence that contradicts that. The Vore must have evolved along the same lines they have to know when to clean their nests but they've refined the technique into a weapon they can use on others. They daub some equivalent of oleic acid on a person and that makes everyone else think that person's dead. Smells like fly spray. Our brains are easily tricked, especially if all the senses are being deceived. If reality doesn't seem to match up with what our eyes and ears tell us, our brain ignores enough reality until it does. . . or we go mad, of course. Meanwhile, the Vore's enemies are completely demoralised and thrown into complete chaos, 224 leaving the Vore free to concentrate their efforts on achieving their aims, not on fighting their enemy.'

Trix was shaking her head. 'I saw Fitz die.'

Fitz waved at her. 'Alive,' he pointed out.

'It's all right, I know you're not dead, but I. . . I saw it.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Your eyes have played tricks on you before now. You've been fooled by optical illusions. You've been scared watching a horror video that's just pixels on a TV screen. All around the world, millions of dead people who couldn't see each other, who couldn't understand why no one could see them. All trying to attract attention, none able to break down the doors of perception.'

Trix s.h.i.+vered. 'How much more reality is my brain blocking out for me?'

'Well, only you can answer that one,' the Doctor grinned. 'The Vore are adept at warping s.p.a.ce, and it seems they can warp perceptions just as easily.'

'So how did you know?'

'They clearly had to tailor their chemicals to one life form, and that was humanity. I suspect they abducted humans early on to work out exactly which formula they had to use. I'm a Time Lord, and I wasn't affected. So, when I arrived at Marnal's house I just saw Fitz and Mr Winfield standing there and asked why they looked so miserable.'

'What's a Time Lord?' Trix asked.

'Long story, albeit one with a sudden ending,' the Doctor said. 'I'll explain later. Now we have to contact the authorities. The United Nations. Get the message out, bring everyone we can back.'

'No one really died?' Fitz said. 'You're going to bring millions of people back from the dead? G.o.d, you're cool.'

'No,' said the Doctor sadly. 'It's too late for some of them.'

'But. . .

'The Vore simply killed some people,' he paused. 'And many religions bury their dead quickly. Or cremate them.'

Trix recoiled, thinking of a bee dragged from its hive kicking and fighting.

'There will have been accidents. Suicides. . . both among the dead and the living, if you get my meaning. Many will have died in the panic, all around the world.'

'It can't be many.'

'It will be tens of thousands,' the Doctor said. 'We're not done yet.'

The Doctor used Trix's mobile to call the United Nations, working his way through various switchboards and layers of admin. He left Marnal's house and made his way down the street as he talked. The signal was better outside.

Every time he was put on hold he would knock on a door, see who was home 225.

living and dead and where he could he would reunite them. Number Four got their children back, crying and a little sick from eating nothing but biscuits for the last few days. Mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, young and old. . . The Doctor alone could see them and have them return to the land of the living. The dead had almost all followed their friends or families around. Now that the living knew where to look the signs were everywhere the notes left, the furniture moved, the emails and messages on answering machines.

It was half an hour before the Doctor had explained to the right UN person on the other end of the phone how his technique worked. An hour later, it was the main news on every TV and radio channel. Shortly after that some preachers, mediums and shamans showed up on the news channels saying they had always claimed this was possible. As Rachel noted, if only people like that could predict things before they happened instead of afterwards, the world would be a better place.

The total death toll would never be known.

And the Vore weren't beaten yet.

It was going to take some time to explain the situation to the authorities and to give them advice. The British government was sending a car for the Doctor, who suggested that instead of sitting around Fitz, Trix and Rachel should load the contents of Marnal's library into the TARDIS. The three of them grum-bled, but started work. Luckily for them, when the TARDIS returned from the Vore moon it had landed right in the middle of the library. The Doctor would have helped, he said, but he kept getting priority phone calls.

They were about halfway done with their task when the Doctor got off the phone once again.

'The Vore have built a fortress that was the word the a.n.a.lyst used. Every Vore in the world seems to be heading there,' the Doctor announced. 'It's a termite mound, but one the size of a mountain. There are waves of Vore flying in that direction.'

'Where?' Trix asked 'Somewhere called Guinea-Bissau,' the Doctor answered. 'I hate to admit it, but '

'West African coast,' Fitz said. 'Its chief exports are rice, coconuts, peanuts, fish and timber. Its population is about 1.4 million, half of whom are ani-mists, almost all the rest being Muslim. The national motto is Unidade, Luta, Progresso. It was called Portuguese Guinea in my day.'

The Doctor looked impressed.

'He cribbed it off my laptop on the flight over from New York,' Trix told him.

'Seven hours,' Fitz said. 'You get a lot of time to read.'

226.

'We're going out there, joining HMS Ill.u.s.trious Ill.u.s.trious and aliasing with the UN. and aliasing with the UN.

My reputation precedes me apparently.' The Doctor smiled at the thought. 'If anyone finds the visualiser that Marnal built, that might come in handy.'

'It's in the garage, I think,' Rachel said.

She went looking for it. Trix vanished into the TARDIS with another armful of books.

'Doctor,' said Fitz, once the two of them were alone. 'I know about Gallifrey.

My memory came back a while ago.'

'I think I must have wiped your memories too. To keep my secret.'

'If that was you, it wasn't a brilliant job. The last couple of years, some times I've remembered, some times I haven't.'

'I was in a hurry and had other things on my mind.'

'I. . . wasn't sure what you knew. I didn't want to burden you with. . . '

'With the knowledge I had destroyed a planet?'

'Yeah. I didn't really know how to handle it. Not really the sort of thing you already know how to deal with.'

'No,' the Doctor said quietly.

'You remember what happened, now?'

'I don't remember it. I've only seen it. I don't think it's quite me yet.'