Doctor Who - Downtime Part 29

The frame was broken and the gla.s.s cracked.

The thunder was getting louder. She sat on the bed and looked out of the window. To the west, the clouds were being churned. The sky was boiling. Fingers of light were shooting upwards from somewhere close, north-west of the ca.n.a.l.

Directly above that point, something was forming in the sky a glaze of grey-silver light hanging in the air that glittered malevolently.

Kate wanted to take the boat home now. She pulled away from the window and knocked a cus.h.i.+on off the bed.

The gun had been under the cus.h.i.+on. It lay on the blanket, black and vicious, an instrument of death. Her father's gun.

She knew he would need it. Without hesitating, she lifted up the weapon, surprised by its weight, and slipped it into the inside pocket of her coat.

She locked up as best she could, pulled her tatty bicycle off the boat and set off along the towpath in the direction her father had taken.

The towpath of the ca.n.a.l ran along the south boundary of New World University. From the foot of the hill, the Brigadier and Harrods surveyed the complex. Its array of ziggurats crowned the rise like a maleficent fortress. The place looked deserted.

The needles of light from the pyramid that crowned the largest building were still forking up into the sky. Directly overhead, a glittering canker was forming, slowly throwing strands of material outwards to form a canopy in the air. Here and there, tiny shreds of web were floating down through the trees.

Harrods seemed undaunted by the spectacle. He produced some fruit he had 'borrowed' from the boat and offered an apple to the Brigadier. 'Sir? What now, sir? Take the place by storm?'

'If we must,' said Lethbridge-Stewart. He felt in his jacket and faltered. He started to slap his other pockets in growing disbelief. 'd.a.m.nation. I'm an old fool.'

'Sir?' queried Harrods.

The Brigadier shook his head. 'My gun. I didn't pick it up.'

He felt so old. His faculties were slipping away. How did he miss his gun? He remembered putting it down on the bed.

He reached into his inside pocket again and touched a card. It was the picture of his grandson. No wonder he was losing his marbles after a shock like that.

'Want to go back?' Harrods asked.

The Brigadier touched the card again. No need to look.

'No, too late for that,' he said with grim foreboding. 'Come on.'

He set off up the hill with Harrods marching behind him.

The Intelligence flexed its power. It was spreading outwards through every connection, sending rings around the Earth.

Blind darkness no longer confined it. It saw through thousands of eyes, lived in thousands of shapes. Its webs were spreading over the globe's surface and filling the sky above. And once the planet was coc.o.o.ned, it would all be the Intelligence. One ma.s.s of thoughts in one global body.

Since that malicious reversal in its fortunes contrived by the Doctor, it had waited, slowly building its power, feeling its way into the Earth's power systems. Everything leading to this moment of release and rebirth.

It would have happened sooner, but the Intelligence had been weak and the humans unreliable. It had lodged in Travers, but he was not enough. The monks of Detsen tried to trap it, but could not wholly withstand its influence. Charles Bryce had been meant to find the Locus, but he died, carried away by some unforeseen Earth virus and the Intelligence had been too weak to save him. So the task fell to Victoria Waterfield and that was better, because it fulfilled a grudging l.u.s.t for revenge against the Doctor by using one of his servants.

Entranced by the shapes it inhabited, the Intelligence flexed its power again. On a railway line in Kent, an abandoned Eurotrain shuddered and suddenly reared above its tracks like a snake. Hundreds of tons of screeching metal turning this way and that. Eventually the Intelligence got bored and threw the train down an embankment in ruin.

In the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, dozens of deactivated computer terminals logged themselves in again and rose above their work stations as high as their cables would allow. In a demented dance of computer death, they flung themselves back and forth, smas.h.i.+ng to pieces against desks, walls and workers.

From Manila to Mexico City, bank cashpoints unexpectedly spewed streams of paper money onto the streets.

In Stockholm, the computer-based heating system of the Soderstrom Corp went into overdrive and the building went up like a torch.

Data was displaced and transferred from one system to another. Cancer research scientists in Brazilia were regaled with theatre ticket availability in Vienna. Monitors in the Kremlin watched in amazement as the contents of the CIA database were transmitted live on Russian television.

The Intelligence launched an array of tomahawk missiles from a cruiser in the Gulf. It played with them like toys in the air over Baghdad, engineering near misses, weaving smoke trails, finally letting them drop useless and unprimed into the desert.

Workers in nuclear power stations across the globe struggled to maintain their safe systems, as sudden inexplicable interference threatened to drive all their reactors critical. There were explosions in Andhra Pradesh and the Ukraine.

From every connected television receiver in the world, the Intelligence looked out and watched the humans on sofas and floors, eating, sleeping and performing other unrecognizable functions.

From every loudspeaker and tannoy system came the sudden thunderous burst of maniacal alien laughter.

A sudden alarm ran through the web. Instantly several million eyes turned inwards.

Christopher Rice sat in the chair in Victoria Waterfield's office in the New World Administration Block. His slumped head jerked into life and stared into the glare of the computer terminal.

Unauthorized personnel were moving across the quadrant towards the building's entrance.

'Intruders,' whispered the voice in Christopher's throat.

'Go and greet them properly.'

The eyes of the Yeti behind his chair flared angrily and the brute lumbered away on its mission.

Harrods pulled at the skein of web that covered the doorway into New World reception. He followed the Brigadier warily into the dark foyer. It looked as if it had been abandoned for years. An eerie glow came from the blank terminal screen on the reception desk, lighting the web that hung in festoons from the ceiling.

Harrods sniffed. 'Sir, something rotten in here, sir. I can feel it.'

The Brigadier smiled grimly. 'Too quiet.' He marched on past the desk towards a lift door in the back wall.

Harrods was certain they should have gone to his garage first. They were sure to have found something to use as a weapon there a tin-opener or chair leg or something if the Chillys hadn't been and cleaned it out by now. But they'd seen neither sight nor sound of a Chilly since they'd arrived. He saw the receptionist's terminal flare for a moment. In the half-light, he was sure it swivelled towards him.

'Let's start at the top,' said Lethbridge-Stewart and pressed for the lift. The door took an age to open.

Rather against his better judgement, they stepped into the clinical interior and he pressed for the doors to close. As the machine began to judder upwards, Harrods looked down at his grubby boots and said, 'Did you ever go to the Variety shows, sir? Loved the Variety, I did.'

The lift appeared to judder to a complete halt and the lights dimmed. The Brigadier jabbed at the control panel but nothing happened. He turned to Harrods and found he was looking at Danny Hinton.

The boy looked decidedly pale.

'Sorry, sir,' he said sheepishly.

'I give up, Hinton,' complained the Brigadier. 'Am I asleep or are you dead?'

Danny shrugged. 'Never did philosophy, sir. You're in the lift. I'm in the computer system. We have interface.'

Nothing had really surprised the Brigadier for years. Not until he'd seen his daughter that very afternoon. He tried to take everything in his stride, but there were times when he was sorely tested. 'So I'm talking to a ghost in a machine, am I?'

The boy nodded. Strangely, he didn't seem to be that distressed about being dead.

'And what's the warning this time?'

Danny edged closer. 'The Intelligence has got into the logic systems of New World's computers. I snuck a ride too. It's a virus. It's already spreading across the Internet...'

'Transmitted from this building?' interrupted the Brigadier.

'Well, we'd better put a stop to that.'

The boy seemed in earnest. He nodded towards the control panel. 'I'll take you in, sir. As far as I can.'

'And what do I do when I get there?'

The boy was gone already, but his voice lingered. 'Trust me.'

'That's what you said before,' the Brigadier muttered.

'Sir?' asked Harrods, suddenly back. The lights came up and the lift was moving again.

'Nothing, Flight Sergeant. I just walked over someone's grave.'

The answer seemed to satisfy the tramp, who scratched at his fingers and peered at the floor-indicator.

The lift stopped with a clunk, but the doors stayed resolutely stuck.

After a moment, the Brigadier struck at the door with his fist and complained, 'Come on Hinton!', as if the boy was late for cla.s.s.

28.

Something in the System ate chained her bike to the rack outside the administration Kblock. Some of the other bikes had strands of web attached to them.

Overhead, the web canopy caught and reflected the flaring lights back down onto the angular buildings. The deserted campus was like Docklands at weekends. A film set waiting for the action to start.

Kate felt the dead weight of the gun inside her coat. She pushed her way warily into the reception area. The swathes of web inside intensified the gloom. They rippled like living things in the draught she had created. She wanted to run straight out again, but a sudden movement attracted her attention.

A figure was seated behind the reception desk. The pale glow from the terminal screen gave him the eerie appearance of a ghost. He looked up at her and the blank screen appeared as two white squares in his gla.s.ses.

Kate was incredulous. 'I thought you were...' She couldn't say the word.

'Maybe.' Danny's face was flattened by the glow. 'I need your help, Kate. And so does your dad. You'd better come and sit down.'

She didn't argue, but by the time she had edged round the desk, the apparition had vanished from the chair.

'Go on, sit down,' he said, suddenly emerging from the shadows behind her.

'What do I do?' she asked.

'Sit.'

She did as she was told and faced the blank screen.

He was no more than a face at her shoulder, lit by the glow.

'This whole place is part of the computer. The machines and the buildings too. That's what's causing all this.'

'The virus in the computer. That's what you said before.'

'It's alive inside the computer. It's extending its web outwards. Beyond the buildings here, right across the world.

That's why your dad's here. He's in terrible danger inside the building.'

'I've got to reach him. That's why I came.' She started to stand again.

Not that way. You can help him better here.'

'How?'

'By accessing the database. That way you let him through.'

'But I don't know how. What about you? What was that thing, that monster that you..

There was a pause. 'I got absorbed,' said Danny coldly.

'I'm in here too.'