Doctor Who: Drift (33 page)

‘So that’s all it wants to do?’ scoffed Parker. ‘Reach out and touch somebody’s hand?’

‘It reached out to touch Amber Mailloux. Why do you suppose she hasn’t been burned? I’ll tell you what I think: I think it recognised something in her as a part of itself.

Something that had already been burned. It
empathised.
It found itself a friend.’

‘You’re saying this thing is emotionally charged?’

‘Yes. and extremely needy. I don’t believe it’s sentient, not in the strictest sense. It’s self aware and it’s motivated, but only on a very fundamental, emotional level.’

‘So what does this sensitive icicle works want with the Stormcore?’

‘What does anyone want with a Dimension Phase Multiplexer? You wanted it to help find you a way home. It’s a sort of navigational roulette wheel. It bands together interfaces between a multiplicity of dimensions into one central hub, then controls where the ball lands - and that’s the dimension your interstellar craft enters. It’s a pathfinder.’

‘Well, surely, if it’s got a navigator,’ said Melody, ‘what it needs now is a pilot.’

The Doctor fell silent and stared into a multiplicity of dimensions.

This is it. General George Custer, eat your heart out.

When the first shots reached Morgan’s ears, he looked south. A diffuse ribbon of flame leaped up across that end of town, dissolving away in the blizzard. And yet, somewhere down there. Derm’s troops still had an enemy to shoot at.

Morgan looked out over his own line of defence.

The drifts had rolled in with the patience of the tide, but now a spray was curling up from the crests of those great waves, tempting the imagination to draw shapes in the mist.

Until the shapes left the imagination trailing and started to draw themselves.

White threads, barbed and entangled, wove surreal skeletons of crystal in the air. Only to dash the sculptures down from the drifts and reconstruct themselves anew in their advance on the barricade. Tumbleweeds
of
ice rolled along spiking the air with lashing tongues.

‘Torch it!’ yelled Morgan, and fired off the signal shot with his automatic.

Flares were lit, the bonfire roared up in several points at once and the raging flames raced to meet each other. The sculptures seethed and recoiled from the wall of heat.

Morgan, likewise, had to take a step back, an arm coming up to shield his face.

Somebody whooped in triumph. Morgan glanced right.

Past the premature sound of victory, a forte of crystal lightning stabbed through a deserted house, writhing over the timber facade like snakes. The strands converged and sprouted a thicket of ice across the driveway, cutting off the men posted at the back of the building.

Their defences were breached before they’d even begun.

It was not a large church, but to Amber just then it seemed vast and hollow. The murmurs of a frightened congregation filled it to the ceiling and the colour had drained from the stained glass. She felt the eyes of every kid on her, as if they all knew who to blame.

Most of the grown-ups were comforting each other; or praying alone, like Janny Meeks, who had agreed to baby-sit while Makenzie went about his police business.

Makenzie was out front, kneeling over Mom, laid out on her stretcher. He’d promised Mom was going to be okay, and Amber wondered how he could make promises like that.

Shots cracked out, more like on the news than in the movies. Janny Meeks prayed louder, next to her in the pew.

Murmurs stirred all around the church.

‘Settle down, folks,’ Makenzie rose to appeal to them.

‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

More promises. Not like the ones Daddy could never keep, but lies all the same. She stole a sidelong glance at the Meeks woman to make sure she was immersed in prayer, and she was sure then that she knew how to make everything fine.

She slipped out of the pew, making for the church door.

And the storm beyond.

The ice latched onto the next building, the thorny hedgerow severing Morgan’s front line.

He squeezed off a few bursts from the SMG, the suppressed fire shattering whole lengths of the glassy thicket with whispered blows. Sprays of shards forced Ray Landers to seek cover, tumbling behind a couple of trashcans, while the hedgerow started knitting itself together.

Time for that evac: Morgan called the retreat, and spun to make for the church.

Its spire, like a monument to this abortive battle, was fading in the thickening blizzard.

The Doctor continued briefing Melody and Parker all the way downstairs and across the hall. His voice boomed, but not so loud that they couldn’t all hear the sporadic gunfire outside.

‘This creature concentrates mass around dispersed centres, but the maps indicate that it developed a nucleus before it laid claim to the Stormcore. In theory, all we have to do is apply our solution to that nucleus and the effects should be relayed throughout the entire creature. Like pain conducted through a nervous system; except of course our attack will be travelling from the centre outwards.’

‘Yes, but what is our attack? Where are we going to look for this miracle solution?’ Melody was finding it frustrating, having to chase the Doctor and address his back.

Well, solutions usually originate in the forebrain, so I’d recommend-’ Whatever his recommendation was, he apparently lost sight of it and instead fixed his gaze on empty-space. halting suddenly just inside the laboratory. He snapped his fingers and flipped his hair back as if angry with himself. ‘Of course! I’ve been positively snow-blind.’

Parker came around in front of the Doctor. ‘What have we got?’

‘Not much time,’ he warned the agent morosely. Then he was springing into action, assembling a few simple pieces of apparatus on one of the bench-tops. ‘Melody, be an angel would you and rouse our patients - they need to be ready to move in a short while. Oh and perhaps you could have Leela bring me my coat. I’m going to have to rush this test, but if the results are positive, then I’m going to need to wrap up warm. Very warm.’

Melody opened her mouth to speak, but the Doctor wasn’t quite done.

‘Oh, and Parker, make yourself useful and pour me a dozen Scotches from the bar. And make it a single malt, will you?’

He smiled. Nothing under 12 years old.’

Parker formed a slow frown. ‘Hey, the world’s about to end, why not? Hell, I might even join you.’ His sarcasm soared sharply. ‘How d’you want yours? On the rocks?’

‘No - no. I don’t think so.’ said the Doctor, having apparently given the matter some thought. ‘But you might add a splash of water, take the edge off, there’s a good fellow.’

Melody turned tail to run her errand. More shots were fired out in the streets, further reminders that if time had ever been on their side, it was fast deserting to the enemy.

Derm’s eyes were impenetrable walls, hiding a sense of hopelessness. They’d been that way since the initial assault, when the ice rained in over the flames in high arcs of frozen lightning. Most melted in the heat; but enough touched earth inside the barricades. And two hooked into living targets.

Derm saw Kyle, wild-eyed and looking for something to kill, so he gave the nod. The men, already unravelling, burst apart like glass under a dozen hammers. And the ice raining in converged on the splinters, spinning icicle twine from fragments of the dead.

Derm ordered the squad to fall back, knowing he was buying time at a high premium.

Makenzie had always been a solemn church-goer, but amid the reverent silence of a Sunday morning the Lord might easily prove a good listener. Here, with the gunfire never frequent enough to subside into the background, and everyone besieging him with worries and questions; well.

Makenzie wondered if even the Lord might have given up by now.

He raised his hands for calm one more time and surveyed the faces turned towards him.

Janny Meeks waited expectantly on what he might say. She waited alone.

Amber. God, he’d been praying so hard for the mother, he’d clean forgotten the child.

‘Folks, I have to step outside,’ he announced. ‘Look after Martha, here.’

Makenzie Shaw turned away from the folks of Melvin Village, just this once. The brisk walk down the aisle seemed endless, and he was still far from free when he made the exit.

Joanna felt curiously revitalised, as though she’d been infused with energy rather than blood, but she was grateful for the support afforded by Leela’s strong shoulders as they followed Melody down to the laboratory.

Her nerves were still a little edgy, and the background rattle and thunder of the small battle outside wasn’t doing her any favours.

‘Ah, Leela! And Lieutenant Hmieleski! Good to see you’re doing well!’

The Doctor’s greeting was a welcome dose of warmth, but sounded a little too exuberant for the occasion. Joanna gently shrugged off Leela’s help, thanking her with a nod, before attempting to make sense of everything going on in the laboratory: the covered corpse; Melody helping the Doctor on with his coat; even the sight of the woman’s partner - she assumed - playing bartender, she noted in her stride. But the Doctor, perched on a stool and working his way along a row of shot-glasses, was hard on her battered skull.

‘Oh, I’m a long way off well,’ she answered coolly. She was afraid she wasn’t awake yet; this seemed so unlike him. ‘It sounds bad out there. Doctor.’

‘And getting worse, I’ve no doubt.’ The Doctor returned to his mournful slouch, as though to show he plainly wasn’t enjoying himself. ‘Which is precisely why I’m resorting to such extremes. I’m normally more of a ginger pop man myself.’

The agent behind the bar jerked a thumb at his solitary customer. ‘Don’t mind him, he’s trying for a drunken moment of clarity.’

Joanna pushed her way forward, stooping to turn the Doctor around on his stool and peer into his eyes. Beneath the faint alcohol-induced glaze, she wanted to find the same foundations for trust she had discovered there before. If he was lost, then so was everybody here.

‘Doctor, tell me this is part of some plan.’

The Doctor revolved on his stool, and laid a paternal hand on her, a father who has some bad news to impart.

‘Lieutenant Hmieleski, it’s a beastly job but someone has to do it. Melody, tell them how my experiment in electrolysis is going, won’t you?’

Melody patiently crossed the room to the side bench, where twin electrodes had been fed from a small power supply into a beaker full of clear liquid. The woman gingerly lifted one of the electrodes out of the liquid and held it up where everyone could see it: a diamond bud had formed around the electrode stem, so fiery white it hurt the eyes.

‘Positive results. Doctor. Very positive,’ concluded Melody, revealing a degree of surprise. ‘I guess this means your drinking time hasn’t been wasted.’

‘No, indeed,’ agreed the Doctor glumly.

‘Doctor, what does this mean?’ Poor Leela was more anxious than anyone for answers.

Melody smiled around the room. ‘It means, I think, we have a way to fight back.’

The Doctor stood, swirling the remnants of another Scotch around in its glass and watching the whirlpool motions. ‘Yes, all we need now is for some poor fool to venture into the nucleus of the storm and entice it down the mountain for a swim.’

A motion flashed in her eye: Melody tossed the crystal gem towards her. Joanna nearly choked on a rise of panic, and she fumbled the catch. The Doctor dipped expertly down and the jewel fell neatly into his palm.

‘Butterfingers,’ he said, kindly, flipping the crystal between his fingers. ‘But you needn’t be nervous. This is our invader in its purest form - and the good news is, it’s perfectly inert.

It’s as if the creature can’t multiply without its chosen vector, its building block here in our dimension. Something with a suitably crystalline structure, like ice.’

Joanna stared, all but hypnotised by the crystal. Leela approached slowly for a closer view.

‘It was the fish tank, you see,’ the Doctor gazed deep into the impossibly white facets. ‘Not the temperature of the water, so much as the fact that it’s rendered inactive in solution. Which is exactly where it needs to be if we’re to stand any chance of fighting it.’

The Doctor planted the jewel in Joanna’s hand. To her, it felt as cold and lethal as ever.

‘While it’s inert and defenceless, it’s really a very simple matter to decompose the electrolyte, separate the alien crystals from its earthly - or rather, watery - host, so to speak. After that, it’s just a matter of making sure your Captain stores it somewhere safe, where it can’t recombine with water and re-freeze.’

He examined his hand and flexed the fingers experimentally. ‘Hm. still reasonably good co-ordination.

Perhaps a couple more for the road? Parker, if you please?’

While the man, Parker obliged, Joanna frowned. She was scared - scared of the thing in her hand, and just as scared of the funereal chords playing in the Doctor’s voice.