Doctor Who_ Silver Nemesis Part 7

'If we are overcome,' the Lieutenant argued, 'our entire strategy will fail. The Cyber race will cease to exist.'

There was a deathly silence. The Leader's circuits checked and double-checked the rationale of the Lieutenant's statement. Finally he was forced to speak.

'Your logic is correct,' he replied heavily. 'Their supply of gold is limited.' He turned to the remaining Cybermen, who were firing laser beams at the crypt, and called: 'Retreat.'

They began making their way back through the forest towards the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.

The two men were still standing on guard, large, silent and immovable, one at either end of the craft when to their surprise the Doctor suddenly appeared from the bushes in front of them and politely raised his hat. 'Good afternoon,'

he called. 'I'm the Doctor. You wanted to kill me.'

Before they could recover themselves he was gone, bolting into the forest. The guards looked at each other, drew their guns, and ran after him.

No sooner had they disappeared into the trees than Ace appeared, darted to the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and threw a can of nitro-nine under it. She ran quickly back into the forest and dived behind a large tree.

As she did so, the out-of-breath guards came into sight of the returning Cybermen: of the Doctor there was no sign. The Cybermen stopped in surprise. The two men stopped too, realizing the Doctor had gone to ground somewhere nearby. Before they could alert the Cybermen, however, there was a loud explosion from behind them.

Their jaws dropped and they turned to see what was left of the Cyber s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p engulfed in flames.

To the Cyber Leader only one explanation was possible.

His reaction was instant. 'Betrayal,' he said matter-of-factly. 'Kill them.'

Before they could explain or even protest, the guards fell to the laser fire of the Cybermen.

Ace, making her way quietly to where she could see the Doctor was hiding, stopped in horror. The Doctor, however, waved to her and together they ran off.

Glimpsing a movement, the Cyber Leader spotted them in the distance, against the background of the smoking ruins of his s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. As the Doctor flitted away, recognition dawned upon the Cyber Leader.

In the crypt, Lady Peinforte and Richard had at last succeeded in removing the heavy stone slab that for three hundred and fifty years had served as the lid of her ladys.h.i.+p's tomb.

The brilliant silver figure of the statue of Nemesis lay inside. Lady Peinforte was ecstatic. Richard, however, had other concerns. 'But my lady,' he asked, 'where are your bones?'

Lady Peinforte picked up the arrow and held it out to the statue, staring down into the sarcophagus with an expression of childlike wonder. The statue gave an intense sudden glow of silver light which shone from the entire surface of its body.

'What matter?' Lady Peinforte replied tersely. The arrow, in her hand was flas.h.i.+ng like a beacon, dazzling them with its bright silver light. As if in response, the statue began pulsating simultaneously.

Arriving back outside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ace stopped for breath. The Cybermen were a safe distance behind and, for the moment, were not an immediate threat.

Noticing that Ace was unusually subdued, the Doctor looked quizzically at her. There was a pause.

'They killed them,' Ace eventually said. Her voice was shocked. 'Just because I blew up the s.h.i.+p.'

'They'd already killed them,' said the Doctor firmly.

Ace looked at him in surprise.

'Cybermen create other Cybermen out of human beings by first enslaving their minds,' the Doctor continued. 'The ones on guard there were only partly processed. Mentally, they were destroyed a long time ago.'

The full horror of the Cybermen's evil struck Ace for the first time.

'You mean that's why the Cybermen saved my life?' she asked. 'So they could do that to me?'

The Doctor nodded sadly. 'They used to be like human beings themselves,' he said. 'Quite a few people have tried to follow their example.' He dismissed the Cybermen from his mind. 'Enough of them,' he said briskly, and turned his attention to Ace's ghetto blaster. Looking up again a moment later, however, he could see she had still not managed to forget the frightful scene she had witnessed.

Ace looked up at him, saw the thought in his eyes and nodded in confirmation.

'I still don't like it,' she said.

'Nothing about the Cybermen is likeable,' replied the Doctor. 'Are we still jamming their transmission?'

Ace looked. 'The tape's still running,' she responded.

'Good,' said the Doctor. 'Now let's find out who's listening to it.'

He turned up the volume. Jazz blew once again across the English woodland.

'Mmm,' murmured the Doctor appreciatively. 'Sweet.'

He switched on the machine's holographic projector.

Two of the kind of people the Doctor had described as trying to follow the example of the Cybermen were at that moment only a few hundred yards away. De Flores and Karl stood waiting as the Cybermen approached them. The Cybermen stopped. De Flores held up a hand in greeting.

'We want to talk to you,' he said. The Cybermen waited.

De Flores, apparently unabashed, continued. 'I don't know if you're familiar with Wagner's The Ring The Ring,' he said, with all the social ease of a man conducting an interval chat at a Vienna Opera House. The Cybermen, as ever, looked blank. De Flores explained. 'We,' he said, 'are supermen.

But you... you are giants. Wonderful creatures.'

'Of course,' returned the Cyber Leader. 'But why should we form an alliance with you?'

De Flores became animated. 'We had a leader once,' he said. His eyes gazed far off. He was suddenly looking back fifty years. 'He predicted your coming. Now, together, we shall fulfil his vision and enslave the world.'

'Together?' The Cyber Leader would have laughed in contempt had he been capable of laughter. 'Cybermen need no help from any race.'

'But,' Karl interrupted, 'a woman who is almost less than human now holds the statue.' The Cybermen looked at Karl for the first time.

'While we have the bow of Nemesis,' continued De Flores smoothly. 'She now holds the arrow and the statue itself, yet she is armed,' he permitted himself a complacent chuckle, 'with only primitive toys.'

'You insult us?' the Cyber Leader asked, without a trace of expression.

'Of course not,' replied De Flores hastily. 'But whatever your...' he searched for the most diplomatic phrase, 'unfortunate vulnerability, it does not affect us. We can remove her for you.'

Karl gestured slightly with their two machine-guns. It was not lost on the Cybermen. The Leader replied without hesitation.

'We accept,' he told them. 'Destroy the woman and her servant and we will divide the planet into your slave groups and ours. But remember, any betrayal will be fatal.

We are invulnerable to your weapons.'

'Not so the woman and her servant,' replied De Flores smugly. He snapped his fingers at Karl, who handed him the machine-gun. De Flores weighed it appraisingly in his hands for an instant, then snapped back the safety catch.

'Ah,' he said with nostalgia. 'I feel young again. Come.'

He led Karl off at a sprightly pace into the trees, towards the tower. As soon as they were out of earshot, the Cyber Leader turned to the waiting Cybermen. 'As soon as they have the statue and the arrow,' he intoned, 'destroy them.'

With the monitor speaker switched off, the tape played on silently. Above the ghetto blaster the hologram remained blank, looking like a small globe of mist immediately on top of the machine. The Doctor drummed his fingers.

'Nothing there?' he asked in frustration.

'See for yourself,' replied Ace.

The Doctor glared at the hologram. 'That handful back there weren't the only Cybermen in the universe,' he insisted. 'We've only got to find out where the others are.'

Ace sighed. 'Look,' she said. 'This is the computer's reading of where their transmission signal is being received. Right?'

'Quite,' replied the Doctor.

'But according to the scanner,' continued Ace patiently, 'nothing is there.'

The Doctor gave a howl of rage. 'Then the scanner's wrong,' he yelled. He calmed himself with difficulty and spoke in a restrained manner. 'The ones we've seen are only the advance party. Out there somewhere,' he waved his arm across the sky, 'is the entire Cyber force and they want the Nemesis more than anything else in s.p.a.ce.'

Ace looked at him doubtfully. The Doctor did occasionally make mistakes after all. 'How can you be so sure?' she asked.

'Because,' said the Doctor with great self control, 'validium is more incalculably destructive than I could possibly convey to you. It generates evil. It had to...' He stopped himself. Suddenly he looked at Ace anew. 'And because it's 1988,' he finished. There was a pause. Ace sensed there was more that he wanted to say and that it was difficult for him. The Doctor took a deep breath and continued. 'When I launched the Nemesis, the orbit I gave it brought it back past the Earth every twenty-five years.

Look back over your own century. It first appeared in 1913..'

'The eve of the First World War,' said Ace in wonder.

'Twenty-five years on...' the Doctor prompted her.

'1938...'

'Hitler annexes Austria.'

Ace was beginning to see the pattern. '1963...' she began, but the Doctor completed it for her.

'Kennedy is a.s.sa.s.sinated.'

Ace looked at him with real fear. She hardly dared ask, but knew that she had to do so. '1988?' she said quietly.

'Check the scanner again,' said the Doctor.

Out of the corner of his eye, Richard sneaked a glance at Lady Peinforte. She had still not stopped gazing at the statue of Nemesis; she seemed to be communing with it in some silent, mysterious way that he could not begin to understand. The arrow and the statue now glowed as one with an almost blinding intensity.

'How perfect you are,' breathed Lady Peinforte ecstatically to the statue. 'Oh, how perfect. Immaculate beauty carved in absolute evil.'

Richard could not bear it any longer. He had to tell her what was on his mind. 'But where lie your bones my lady?'

he asked desperately. Lady Peinforte did not give any indication of having heard. 'They must be buried,' he added emphatically.

With an enormous effort, Lady Peinforte appeared to wrench her attention away from the statue. 'What matter?'

she hissed. 'They are dead. But I live. And soon I'll have the bow...' she shuddered with pleasure, 'and my Nemesis will be complete.'

Richard was shocked at the change that had come over her. It was as though the statue's presence had induced in her a trance-like state.

A sudden burst of machine-gun fire from outside ripped through the window. Bullets tore across the wall above them. Lady Peinforte and Richard ducked. 'We are attacked,' shouted Lady Peinforte unnecessarily. 'Quickly.

The arrows.'

Richard was seized by fear. 'We have but one left,' he told her. 'And I do not think our arrows can stop these weapons.' He stole a cautious look out of the window which told him everything he needed to know: De Flores and Karl with their submachine-guns were advancing briskly towards the tower.

Lady Peinforte, however, had other ideas. 'Nonsense,'

she told him briskly. 'Make it count. They destroyed the silver creatures.'

As though in mockery, a second burst of fire tore through the doorway, shattering bits of plaster off the sarcophagus. Richard panicked. He turned to his mistress.

Suddenly he felt very calm. 'See, lady,' he said. 'We have no chance.'

Lady Peinforte stared in disbelief. 'No. They cannot take the Nemesis,' she said, 'not now I have it.' She put her arms round the statue, cradling it like a child. 'They cannot.'

Richard looked back through the doorway. De Flores and Karl were only yards away. He fired the last arrow. It shot through the doorway. De Flores and Karl threw themselves to the ground as the arrow flashed over their heads. They remained still, evidently fearing another.

Lady Peinforte was groping inside her tomb. There was a creak, and a section of the wall of the crypt suddenly swung back in a shower of cobwebs, revealing itself as a hidden door. Richard was open-mouthed in surprise. Lady Peinforte smiled grimly. 'Not for nothing did I design my own tomb,' she said, and pointed at the ancient inscription on the wall. 'Death is but a door. I always knew I'd cheat it.

Help me with the statue.'

Outside, Karl and De Flores were raising themselves cautiously on to their elbows. Richard implored her. 'We cannot lift it, lady. We must fly.'