Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 33

'And... what about me? Is this the first time we've met since then?'

'Definitely,' said Stella. 'I've seen you on television of course, and in the papers. I was so proud of you.'

'Stella... why is everyone so down on the Americans?'

Stella opened her eyes wide with horror.

'Oh, not you, darling,' she gushed. 'Everyone adores you! It's just...

the others. Well, most of them... they just come across as so...

backward. And not just in you know the obvious way.'

'But what about the Western alliance? The great transatlantic bond?

Roosevelt and Churchill...'

Stella's face clouded. 'You really shouldn't mention that name, you know,' she said.

'Churchill?' Rita exclaimed. 'why the h.e.l.l not? He's a G.o.dd.a.m.n hero!' 'Rita, I really do think that's in poor taste. It's... been interesting seeing you again, but you really must excuse me.'

157.

'Sure,' said Rita, still puzzled. What had she said?

She expected Stella to be swept up in the people-flow. Instead she smoothed down her dress, straightened her shoulders and placed her back against the brick wall.

Rita's eyes narrowed. There was a minute, electrical-sounding hum, and Stella twitched slightly. Rita peered at the wall behind her. In the tiny s.p.a.ce between Stella's hair and the brickwork, Rita could just discern two needle-thin metal p.r.o.ngs extending from the wall.

She swallowed dryly and felt instantly sick. They looked for all the world like they were penetrating the back of Stella's skull.

158.

Chapter Seventeen.

Edward Drakefell hadn't left his Islington flat since his return from Harley Street. He hadn't left his front room, to be more accurate. He'd repeatedly tried to call Dr Hopkins, but had only got his rude American a.s.sistant. He hadn't eaten or washed or done anything except sit on the floor with the curtains closed and watch the television, listen to the World Service and comb and re-comb the pages of every national newspaper. The situation was deteriorating fast. Details of a Russian attack on a 'top secret Anglo-American research facility' (though nothing about the s.h.i.+p) had been released to the press. Parliament was in all-night session and there was mounting pressure on the prime minister to address the nation.

But it was worse than that. For years Drakefell had nurtured a suspicion no, it wasn't much more than a vague feeling really that some unseen hand was guiding the world towards a dark future.

He'd felt that ever since the dark days of the Blitz. They hadn't won the last war, they'd survived it. They'd clung on by their fingernails until the next time, and now that time had come. They'd lost their tenuous grip.

He recalled the Doctor's dire warning. Cosmic chaos. But to Drakefell it seemed only natural. He saw it every day in the nature of his work, in the results of experiments. He watched stars collapse. He recorded events so huge that all the warheads on the planet going off at the same time wouldn't even be a pinp.r.i.c.k in comparison.

He had lived in fear all his life. He'd been drawn to it. Why else had he gone to work at the primate house?

The doorbell rang.

Drakefell ignored it. He'd been expecting a visit he hadn't reported back to Winnerton Flats since the Russian attack. He turned the television and radio down and curled up in a ball in a corner of the room to wait for them to go away.

But they didn't.

He heard a sharp crack as the front door splintered. Two people, a man in his fifties and an elderly woman, both smartly dressed, walked towards him.

159.

'Stop...' he stammered. 'That is, can I help you? Did the general send you?'

The man reached forward, grabbed his wrists and jerked him to his feet. Drakefell struggled, but he couldn't begin to break the man's grip.

The woman was s.h.i.+ning some sort of a torch onto his hands. It didn't give out any light as such, but made the palms of his hands and his fingers glow with a silvery sheen.

'He's been in contact with it,' she said.

'Where is the dimensional stabiliser?' the man demanded.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Drakefell pleaded.

The woman began opening cupboards, effortlessly upending furniture, tearing the carpet up.

'I can crush your hands,' said the man, increasing the pressure of his grip until Drakefell cried out. 'Where is it?'

'Harley Street!' Drakefell cried. 'With my psychiatrist!'

His a.s.sailants looked at each other.

'What number?' said the man.

'Fourteen!'

'Name?'

'Dr John Hopkins.'

'Describe him.' the woman cut in.

'He's old,' whimpered Drakefell. 'In his eighties. Frail-looking. I don't know...'

'It seems our friend has been holding out on us,' the man said, suddenly releasing his grip.

Drakefell collapsed onto the carpet and was sick. Without another Word the man and the woman left.

The guard was asleep.

'Keep an eye on him,' whispered the Doctor.

He had a screwdriver in his hand and was poking away at one of the barred metal headboards on the beds.

What are you doing?' O'Brien whispered.

'I'm hoping to build myself a sort of ladder,' the Doctor replied, removing struts from the headboard and laying them quietly in a row on the bed.

'A, ladder? How? Where?'

'Inside the chimney.'

When the Doctor had finished he gathered up the struts, crossed to the furnace-hatch and opened it. It was hotter now than before. The shaft was thicker with smoke, the subterranean glow brighter and fiercer.

160.

The Doctor eased one of the struts into the brick cylinder and jammed it against the curving brickwork just below the level of the hatch, driving its ends into the old, soot-blackened mortar, wedging it in place. He placed another, higher and further around the wall.

He'd have to do the rest as he went. Gingerly he squeezed himself into the hole, arms first, head and shoulders, then, gripping at his makes.h.i.+ft rungs, he hauled his entire body through.

'Close the hatch, Davey,' he whispered, 'then wake the guard. Then make yourself scarce. Go and sleep in one of the other wards.'

'I don't like this,' the young captain replied. 'How'll you get out up there if the hatch is closed? a.s.suming there's a hatch up there at all...

You'll be stuck in there.'

'I'll be fine. I shouldn't be long. Close the hatch.'

O'Brien did as he was told. The Doctor was locked in.

The strut he was standing on groaned and s.h.i.+fted slightly. Six floors below him the fire raged.

He jammed a third, higher strut into place, hauled himself up, then a fourth...

He was practically blind from the smoke. The heat billowed upward in painful waves. He tested his weight against another rung and began hauling himself up, only for it to twist from the wall in a shower of mortar, jerk from the Doctor's hand and fall clattering into the furnace six storeys below.

The Doctor was unbalanced. He felt his foot slipping on the metal bar. He slammed against the wall and tried to steady himself, his fingers taut in the brickwork's ungenerous cracks.

Slowly he continued his upward task, until, six struts up, his head drew level with another hatchway.

He barely saw it, so thick was the smoke. A human would be unconscious by now and fast approaching death. He didn't feel too well himself.

He probed at the crack around the door with his one remaining strut.

He hoped for some small crack, some misalignment, some purchase that he could perhaps jemmy the door off.

The door fitted perfectly. His tool slipped at once from the narrowest of cracks, not once but continually, until finally it twisted and tore itself from his grasp and bounced and spun and fell into the furnace far below.

Now he really was stuck. And it was getting hotter, and even his adaptable lungs were starting to give out. The soles of his shoes were starting to melt.

He closed his eyes and tried to be still, to slow his breathing down, 161 down...

As his own breath fell shallow and silent, he became aware of the other.

Beyond the hatch, in the room, a slow, steady sobbing.

The Doctor's eyes snapped open. The fumes must be making him slow. He banged on the hatch with his fist.

'h.e.l.lo,' he called. 'Is anybody in there? I seem to have become stuck in the chimney. Can you let me out, please?'

The sobbing stopped.

'h.e.l.lo,' the Doctor called again. 'I'm afraid I may suffocate if you don't let me out. I won't hurt you. I think I know who you are, and where you come from. I think we've met before, briefly.'

The Doctor waited, tense, listening. Suddenly there was a sort of groaning, whirring sound, followed by a series of heavy and irregular footsteps and the occasional clang of metal.

The hatch opened and a face peered in at him.

'Have we met before?'

'Yes, Captain O'Brien, we have.'

The Doctor was shocked at the face that confronted him. How unlike the Davey O'Brien he had just left. This one his other-dimensional self looked drawn, terrified, his eyes wide, red and rimless. He wore a tattered dressing-gown that was too big for his shrunken frame, and his hair was falling out in clumps.

He hadn't even been like this when the Doctor had last seen him just after his s.h.i.+p had come down, that first day when he and Ace had materialised here.

O'Brien's hands closed about his shoulders and he felt himself being lifted to safety. They were in a smallish room with stone walls, no windows and a heavily reinforced door.

O'Brien seemed to find the task effortless. He paused for a moment, the Doctor held high, then set him down as smoothly as a machine.

The Doctor reached out a hand and drew back the sleeve of u Brien's old dressing-gown.

Beneath the uppermost layer of skin, from the wrists upwards, the Doctor could see an astonis.h.i.+ng network of tiny wires ascending his emaciated arm.

O'Brien drew back.

'Is that all you came here for? To stare at the freak? Is this some sort of d.a.m.ned experiment again? Leave me alone!'

'Please excuse me,' said the Doctor. 'That is the most elegant bio-mechanical interface I think I have ever seen. May I ask, what is your primary motor force? Some form of micro-hydraulics?'

162.

'You know,' said O'Brien, surprised. 'The others, they puzzle, they guess.'

'I'm not from these parts,' said the Doctor. 'Any more than you are.'

'They don't know how to feed me properly,' said O'Brien.

'I imagine you have some sort of biochemical/electrical storage system.'