Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25 (14 page)

‘Two sugars,’ he shouted. Next moment he was strolling across the lawn, hands in pockets. A small figure raced across the grass to meet him.

‘Mr Doctor! Mr Doctor!’

‘Hiya, Ranjit,’ the Doctor said. ‘What you got there?’

Then a big grin spread across his face. ‘Awww, I’ve been looking for you, you little minx,’ he said, taking the sonic from Ranjit and waggling it in front of his nose. ‘Where did you get to then?’

‘I found it, Mr Doctor. You dropped it on the ground and a boy took it, but I chased him and got it back for you.’

Breathlessly Ranjit told his story. The Doctor was almost at the table when he stopped dead.

‘Say that bit again.’

‘What bit?’

‘The bit about the men coming. The half-made men.’

Patiently Ranjit repeated his story.

‘I bet he’s got a trace on it,’ the Doctor said.

‘Who?’ asked Donna.

‘Whoever’s using Calcutta as a zytron fuel dump.’ He tapped the sonic against his chin. ‘He’s probably tuned in to the activation signal … so if I just turn it on… risky I suppose, but… it’d be route one… save a lot of mucking about…’ He frowned, then nodded decisively. ‘Yeah, why not? He who dares and all that.’

‘What
are
you prattling on about?’ Donna asked.

Instead of replying, the Doctor turned and ran back to the centre of the lawn.

‘What are you doing
now?
’ Donna shouted in frustration.

‘Just wanna try something. Stand well back, and keep the pot warm.’

‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’

‘Let’s see, shall we?’

The Doctor held the sonic above his head and turned it on. Almost immediately there was a silvery shimmer in the air, and suddenly he was surrounded by a quartet of chalk-white men with blank features and no eyes.

Mary Campbell’s hand flew to her mouth; Adelaide screamed; Gopal and the boys goggled in terror. Donna yelled, ‘Doctor!’ and half-rose from her seat.

The Doctor stood there calmly, looking around at the creatures as they closed in on him.

‘Take me to your leader,’ he said as the men grabbed him.

There was another shimmer, and a second later the Doctor and the four men had disappeared.

The journey was almost instantaneous. One second the Doctor was standing on a springy green lawn, bathed in bright sunshine, the next he was in chilly darkness with a stony surface beneath his feet.

Two of the creatures that had transported him here held his arms in a light grip. What this told him was that they –or rather, whoever was controlling them – knew that even if he tried to give them the slip he wouldn’t get far.

Although the creatures were holding him, they didn’t prevent him from switching off his sonic and slipping it back into his pocket. With the lightest of nudges, they ushered him along what he could only assume was a subterranean passage.

He was angry. And the reason he was angry was because the instant the creatures had appeared in the

garden he had recognised them. Or rather, he had recognised the cruel and illegal process by which they had been created.

Throughout the universe the creatures were known by many different names, but most commonly as gelem warriors. They were a construct race, and their shape depended on whichever species had been harvested to provide the raw material. Their creation, the Doctor knew, had been outlawed by the Pact of Chib in the equivalent of Earth’s eleventh century. Many of the emergent space-faring races had used gelem warriors as cannon fodder in the initial skirmishes of what had later become known as the War of the Five Hundred Worlds. These races would harvest the planets of more primitive species and subject their populations to a hideously painful process, in which their basest instincts were siphoned off in extraction machines and used to create a new race of remorseless, merciless troops. Gelem warriors could survive extreme heat and cold, and needed neither to breathe, eat, drink nor sleep. In essence they were machine-creatures made of pseudo-flesh and powered by a single-minded core of obedience, hatred and aggression. They were like Daleks without the intelligence, efficient but expendable. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of all was that it took at least five members of a species to create each gelem warrior.

Five living creatures had to die horribly to produce one unthinking monster.

The Doctor’s footsteps echoed hollowly as he was marched through a maze of passageways. His guess was that he was in a pretty sizeable cave system, not far from

Calcutta. The caves were narrow and pitch black, though there was a strong flow-through of air, suggesting there had to be plenty of openings up on the surface. A human being wouldn’t have been able to see anything in the darkness, but the Doctor’s superior eyesight was able to discern the basic layout of the route ahead as a series of shadowy shapes.

Eventually the Doctor and his captors came to a halt in front of what appeared to be a section of solid wall. One of the gelem warriors stretched out a hand and touched the wall, and instantly it shimmered and disappeared. The group passed through into a small chamber, which looked like the glowing guts of some vast machine. The chamber was oddly shaped, its gleaming black walls composed of strange, jagged angles. The Doctor whipped out his black-framed spectacles and peered curiously at the exposed tangle of machinery around him.

The technology was advanced, but the craft itself was old, and appeared to have been patched and re-patched over many years. What was even more interesting was that the confused mass of interlinked metal and plastic was not the product of a single planet. There was evidence, even in this tiny area, to suggest that defective systems had been kept operational by fusing them with ostensibly non-compatible components. The Doctor examined a delicate array of filaments that appeared to have been welded to a spiky metal starfish, and shook his head like an electrician faced with a bit of dodgy DIY.

‘Surely that’s not … Oh, blimey, it is. An artificial synapse modulator’s impulse strands are being sieved

through the clamp mechanism of a Cassian neutron scoop.

That’s brilliant! But totally bonkers! Doesn’t whoever’s done this realise the neural feedback could cause lockdown in the… Oh, hang on, he’s draining off the excess with a suction filter from a Draconian land cruiser.

Well… all right, that
is
impressive, I’ll give him that. But this old crate would still never pass its MOT.’

A door opened on the far side of the chamber, five triangular spars of shiny black material folding back like the petals of a flower to create a space through which they could pass. The Doctor was ushered along a cramped series of weirdly proportioned corridors, all the while shaking his head and tut-tutting at the way in which different alien technologies had been cannibalised to keep the craft airworthy. At any one time he was able to spot about a thousand things that were teetering on the brink of going wrong, all of which added up to a countless number of potential disasters just waiting to happen.

At last he was pushed into a space about the size of an average sitting room. Pulsing strands and filaments attached to random bits of equipment snaked and looped everywhere, though they all seemed to lead to the same place – a complicated, web-like framework in the centre of the room, which contained the ship’s pilot.

‘So you’re the nutjob behind this lot,’ said the Doctor, glaring up at the alien quivering like a spider at the centre of its web of technology. ‘I’m disappointed. I thought the Jal Karath were supposed to be peace-loving and intelligent.’

The creature was black, sinuous and weed-like. It was

composed of dozens of thin, twining limbs, attached to a thicker central stalk, which was covered in clusters of blinking, milky-white eyes. Via its limbs, it was linked into the workings of the spacecraft, giving the impression that the vessel was an extension of its body, or even that the creature itself formed the engine, or perhaps the heart, of its ship.

‘So we are,’ the alien said, its voice high and fluting, but oddly machine-like, as though it was being relayed through some mechanical device.

‘Well, you coulda fooled me,’ said the Doctor. ‘With your gelem warriors and your zytron dumping, you’re like a one-organism bio-hazard.’

‘I am not responsible for either of these…

misdemeanours,’ said the Jal Karath blithely.

The Doctor pointed an accusatory finger at the alien.

‘There’s no point trying to wriggle out of it, sunshine. I’ve got you bang to rights. And I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna put an end to this, right here, right now. And no amount of your ghoulish, gormless gelem warriors will be able to stop me.’

The Jal Karath seemed unconcerned by the Doctor’s threat. ‘Your bio-scan reveals that you are not a native of this planet.’

‘So?’ said the Doctor. ‘What’s that got to do with the price of walnuts?’

‘I’m curious. What does the fate of these primitives matter to you?’

‘They’re living, feeling, intelligent creatures,’ said the Doctor angrily, ‘and living, feeling, intelligent creatures

have the right not to be terrorised and murdered by other living, feeling, intelligent creatures. Just cos they’re not as brainy as you doesn’t mean—’

‘I agree,’ said the Jal Karath.

The Doctor stopped, cut off in mid-sentence. ‘What?’

‘I agree that these primitive creatures have the right to live their lives in peace, free from interference by other species. That is why I am here.’

‘Right,’ said the Doctor heavily. ‘Well, see, the thing is, I think you’re missing the point. It’s
because
you’re here that all this bad stuff is happening.’

‘No it isn’t,’ said the Jal Karath.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘Crikey, you’ve got some serious denial issues. Look, shall we rewind this conversation? Start at the beginning? I’ll try and air my grievances in words of one syllable, so you can understand.’

‘I understand perfectly well,’ said the Jal Karath in its fluting and infuriatingly reasonable voice. ‘It is you who does not understand; you who is making assumptions about my presence on this planet.’

The Doctor sighed, raised one eyebrow and folded his arms. ‘All right, I’ll buy that for now. Go on. Surprise me.’

The Jal Karath stirred in its pulsing web. Its multiple eyes blinked. ‘My name is Darac-Poul-Caparrel-Jal-7. I am a Hive 7 Enforcer. I am here in pursuit of a fugitive from my planet, Veec-Elic-Savareen-Jal-9. Veec-9 is wanted for terrorist crimes against all eleven Hives on Jal Paloor. He is using stolen glamour technology to live

among the primitives on this planet. His intention is to harvest enough of these primitives—’

‘Humans,’ said the Doctor bluntly. ‘They’re called humans.’

‘Enough of these
humans
,’ continued the Jal Karath, ‘to build an army of gelem warriors. He intends to use his army to overthrow the eleven Hives and establish a dictatorship. It is my mission to stop him.’

‘What, just you?’ said the Doctor. ‘In a battered old crate like this? The eleven Hives a bit strapped for cash, are they?’

The Jal Karath did not react to the Doctor’s mocking tone. Its trilling voice, which reminded the Doctor of the squeak of fingernails on an icy window, remained calm and constant.

‘There were four of us when we set out on this mission, each one carefully selected by the Hive Council. This “battered old crate”, as you call it, was once an A-class pulse flier, the most technologically advanced isomorphic craft ever produced on Jal Paloor.’

The Doctor whistled. ‘You must have been up in the air for a very long time.’

‘When I left Jal Paloor my civilisation was in the ninety-third quadrant.’

‘So that’s…’ the Doctor did a quick calculation ‘…over four hundred years ago. What happened to your mates?’

‘They expired when their craft’s systems failed. They are in the Drift now.’

‘And meanwhile you keep limping along,’ said the Doctor. ‘Why don’t you just do yourself a favour, Darac-7? Why don’t you give it all up and go home?’

‘We are a long-lived race,’ said the Jal Karath, ‘and on Jal Paloor little changes from one quadrant to the next. As long as Veec-9 is alive, he is a danger to us.’

The Doctor regarded the alien pilot, stony-faced. ‘That doesn’t excuse your use of gelem warriors to track down this fugitive of yours. Extraction machines were outlawed centuries ago. According to article 29.8 of the Shadow Proclamation—’

‘The gelem warriors are not mine,’ said the Jal Karath.