Doctor Who: Paradise Towers (8 page)

If there was going to be a protest of any sort, this was when it would be made, the Chief thought. But the Caretakers, though looking unhappy, said nothing.

Then there was a bleep on the Chiefs Mark 12 Long Distance Communication Expediter. It was the Deputy Chief.

And the report he had to make was one he knew the Chief did not wish to hear. The prisoner had escaped, the Deputy explained in embarrassed and fearful tones.

The Chief spoke for the benefit of the assembled Caretakers as well as the distant and quaking Deputy Chief. His voice was menacing. ‘Find him,’ he ordered. ‘Find the Great Architect at once.’ He paused grimly. ‘I don’t think I need to remind anyone just how unpleasant a 327 Appendix 3 Subsection 9 death can be.’

The Doctor sighed with relief. He was fairly certain he had lost the pursuing Caretakers. And so, finally, after frantically rushing down flights of rubbish-strewn stairs and along sordid streets, he could pause to mop his brow. When he had his breath back, he would find a way of getting to the pool – and Mel.

As soon as he started to take in his surroundings, he became aware of the quantity of Kang wallscrawl there was about. And one drawing in particular took his notice. It showed a Kang threatened by a Cleaner, its claw reaching out towards the girl in a way that the Doctor found uncomfortably familiar. But this time the Cleaner had some sort of cart in tow behind it. And out of the cart were sticking legs, the legs presumably of earlier victims. A cart? To take the bodies where? The next scrawl showed some sort of door with smoke belching out of it. What was being burnt behind that door? The drawings raised as many questions as they answered but were certainly worth recording.

The Doctor started to trace a copy of the wallscrawl into his pocket book, with the intention of studying them more fully later.

The approach of a Cleaner was very quiet and smooth. The Doctor ought to have known that by now but once again he was taken by surprise. The Cleaner was almost upon him before he looked up from his drawing. The Doctor was not alarmed this time, merely peeved. He had a lot to do and the robot needn’t think it was going to fool him with its oltrimotive bi-curval scraping blades.

‘You don’t catch
me
the same way twice,’ he informed the Megapodic Cleaner as it neared him. ‘I know what you’re going to do next.’

He waited smugly for the familiar claw to appear. It didn’t.

Instead the Cleaner started to spray from its front an evil-smelling smoke. Its taste was acrid. The effect practically lethal.

The Doctor started to choke and splutter. He had to move or he would suffocate. No doubt of that. He turned and started to run as fast as his wheezing lungs would allow him. Pride comes before a fall, the Doctor told himself. Will I never learn?

The Cleaner followed, billowing its noxious smoke as it went. The Doctor had gained some ground by the time he turned into the next street. But not enough. He would tire and the Cleaner would not.

He started to look round for some aid in his plight. And his eye caught a metal notice nailed to one of the walls. ‘For Emergencies’ it read. That was surprising enough. But, even more surprising, underneath the notice was what looked remarkably like an emergency telephone.

‘Nothing ventured,’ the Doctor told himself, running to the phone. He picked up the receiver, but, of course, the phone was dead. He realised he should have known better than to expect anything to work in Paradise Towers. And so, with the Cleaner approaching nearer by the moment, it was also nothing gained.

He sighed and slumped back against the wall to recover his breath before continuing his frantic flight. In leaning back, he must somehow or other have touched a button or gadget on the side of the phone. For, suddenly, without warning, coin tokens started pouring out of the machine. They poured in a clatter onto the floor, hundreds of them, and lay there gleaming amidst the garbage.

The Doctor stooped and picked up some of them. They were all identical, shiny and embossed. And all carried the same inscription. The Doctor brought one even closer to see what it said. ‘Issued by the Great Architect, Kroagnon’ ran the inscription.

Kroagnon. The name rang a bell but infuriatingly the Doctor couldn’t remember why. There were so many puzzles and he desperately needed time to think. But how he was going to get even a minute to think with a Cleaner spraying noxious fumes in pursuit was an even bigger puzzle. It was so infuriating not to have time even to place a name.

‘You really aren’t helping, you know,’ he called out angrily down the street to the Cleaner. ‘What do you want anyway?’

And then, from behind him, he thought he heard the soft mechanical whirring of a different machine. He glanced over his back. Yes, another Cleaner was coming towards him from the other direction, spraying smoke as it came. He was trapped between them and, if there had been any doubt, it was now absolutely clear what the Cleaners wanted. His death.

‘Think calmly.’ The smoke was billowing around him and the Cleaners were practically upon him. Smoke, claws, blades. It soon wouldn’t matter which way they chose to dispose of him.

His hands scrabbled blindly along the wall by the telephone.

His coughing was violent now and his breathing irregular and painful. Something told him there was a door there. A door perhaps just to a cupboard but still a door. His fingertips could trace part of its outline. If only there was some way of opening it.

The Cleaners closed for the kill. And the Doctor’s hand with its last ounce of strength found a tiny lever hidden in the wall.

The door sprang open and the Doctor felt himself catapulted away from the Cleaners, away from the smoke, down, down into blackness. He heard the door snapping shut behind him. It was the last sound he remembered before the blackness swallowed him.

Mel and Pex were on the twelfth floor now, if the signs were to be believed and they probably weren’t. But the lift ahead looked the best maintained Mel had seen yet. Perhaps this might be the one, the miraculous lift in Paradise Towers that actually worked properly. It was worth a try anyway.

She started towards the lift but Pex restrained her. ‘Wait there. I’ll check if it’s safe.’

Mel started to say that she was perfectly capable of doing her own checking but he had bounded to the entrance to the lift before she could get the words out.

‘Well?’

‘It’s safe.’ Pex beckoned her to approach. But, as he beckoned, two Blue Kangs stepped from the shadows beside the lift, crossbows at the ready. Mel turned to run. But her escape route was blocked by more Blue Kangs, crossbows also at the ready. They must have been following Pex and herself for some time. She gritted her teeth. Thank you for checking so well, Pex, she thought.

There must have been five or six of them in all, gathered in an ominous circle around their prisoners. Now she could see them closely, Mel could see that in all but colour they closely resembled the Red Kangs. Even the weapons were similar. And no doubt equally accurate.

‘Come on, come on.’ Pex had suddenly struck an extraordinary martial pose. It reminded Mel of the karate experts she had watched back on Earth but the pose was both more extravagant and more blatantly aggressive. With his jaw jutting out and his powerful arms poised, Pex was an impressive sight.

To Mel at least. The Blue Kangs watched impassively as Pex ranted at them. ‘I’ll take you all on,’ he announced, shooting out a tautened arm. ‘Look, with my bare hands I’ll do it.’ To Mel’s surprise he almost managed a snarl. ‘I’m a trained fighting machine. Come on. Fight... Fight...’

None of the Kangs rose to the challenge. They just watched and under their gaze Pex’s gestures became less confident.

‘Enough, Musclebrain, get back.’ The girl who appeared to be the leader spoke at last. Her tone was contemptuous and the effect immediate. Pex’s performance collapsed completely and he stood shamefacedly by Mel’s side. The Blue Kangs had not even bothered to respond physically to Pex’s challenge.

‘Will you please tell us why you’re holding us here?’ Mel demanded.

‘We saw you with the Red Kangs,’ the Blue Kang leader replied.

‘Yes,’ Mel acknowledged, ‘but they were holding me captive too. I don’t know much about them. I’m certainly not their friend.’ The Blue Kangs appeared undecided so Mel persisted.

‘Look, my name’s Mel. I’m just a visitor here.’

The Blue Kang nodded curtly at Pex. ‘You know him?’

‘I’m protecting her,’ Pex put in aggressively before Mel could reply. His intervention irritated Mel and it gave her an ideal opportunity to find out more about someone who had dogged her steps ever since she’d been parted from the Doctor.

‘Do you know this person?’ she asked.

‘All Kangs know the Musclebrain,’ the Blue Kang leader answered, with a mocking smile. ‘Scaredy cat Pex. When the in-betweens sent us all here in the Ship, us and the oldsters, the Musclebrain hid away and came with us. ’Cos he didn’t want to fight in the war along with the other in-betweens.’

‘Who told you that?’ Pex spoke sharply but he had a shifty look in his eye and Mel already started to suspect the Blue Kang was telling the truth.

‘Everyone knows that,’ she replied, choosing to address herself to Mel and ignoring Pex. ‘The oldsters call out after him in the carrydoors. The Musclebrain is a scaredy cat.’

‘Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!’ The other Kangs took up the cry and clustered round the unhappy Pex. His eyes took on a haunted look.

‘Is this true, Pex?’ At first there was no reply. Mel asked again and finally Pex acknowledged that it was true. Every word of it.

‘I’ve made up for it since I was here,’ he insisted, desperately. ‘Since I’ve been in Paradise Towers, I’ve been brave, a hero, a fighting mach–’ he stopped, unable to continue.

Mel could not keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘Sent by powers you weren’t allowed to name?’ she reminded him. Then added bitterly, ‘I should have guessed.’ If she had ever been uncertain whether she was better off on her own, there could be no doubt now.

She turned to the Blue Kang leader. ‘Will you allow me to go if I go alone? I give you my word I mean no harm. You can see I’ve got no weapons, nothing dangerous. Look.’

She held out her arms to show her defencelessness. There was a tense moment while the leader glanced round the others for approval of Mel’s proposal but there was no hostility or distrust in their young faces.

‘You may go.’

‘Thanks.’

There was only the painful moment of saying goodbye to Pex before Mel could go. She was tempted just to walk away but he was so dejected that she felt she had to say something.

‘Goodbye, Pex,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m sorry for you.’

And then Mel was off alone down the street. The taunting cries of ‘Scaredy cat’ gradually faded from her ears.

Maddy was one of the younger Rezzies. Plumper, jollier and, in many ways, more innocent than her two elderly near neighbours. But she noticed things and she listened to things.

And there were a lot of rumours going the rounds of the Rezzies which were disturbing enough to keep her awake at night. In the end, she had decided that she ought to go and talk it all over with Tilda and Tabby. They were, after all, older and wiser than she was, and might put it all in perspective. The only problem was that they didn’t always encourage calls, indeed were sometimes distinctly unwelcoming. So it was with some trepidation that she knocked on their front door. Or what was left of it.

‘Come in!’ Tilda’s voice called welcomingly. Maddy stepped in eagerly but was almost immediately aware of an air of disappointment. She strongly suspected they had been expecting someone else.

‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ Maddy began.

‘No, no,’ Tabby replied. ‘We’re just finishing.’ She picked the last piece of meat off a small carcase that lay on the table. Its shape and size fascinated Maddy. Meat, after all, was a rare treat now that times were so hard in Paradise Towers. It might even be a rat. Or a very large mouse. She envied them whatever it was. She rarely had the nerve to set traps herself.

Tilda saw her staring at the carcase and in a trice the plate had been whisked away. ‘Have some tea, Maddy,’ Tilda put in, to cover the activity.

‘Oh, thank you, dear,’ Maddy replied, settling herself into a seat at the table by Tabby. Tabby always made her nervous. She couldn’t tell why. Maybe it was those protruding teeth.

Nevertheless, Tabby smiled amiably enough while Tilda bustled around making tea.

‘I just had to come and tell you.’

‘Tell us what, Maddy?’

‘Another Caretaker’s disappeared.’ She delivered the latest rumour with some pride. It wasn’t often that she knew something Tilda and Tabby didn’t. But the item fell rather flat.

The older Rezzies only evinced a modicum of interest.

‘Was it the Kangs?’ Tabby enquired, picking something from her large front teeth.

‘Well,’ Maddy replied, ‘they’re trying to make out it might be.’ She leant forward conspiratorially. ‘But from what I’ve heard, there’s more to it than anybody’s letting on. I mean, people don’t just vanish, do they?’

‘Oh no, of course not. There’s always something left behind.’

Rather an odd remark of Tilda’s, Maddy thought. Odder still since as she spoke she was pouring the bones left over from the meal into the waste disposal unit in the wall. It made a rather alarming gurgling noise as the bones disappeared into its metal jaws.

‘You know, Tilda and Tabby, my dears,’ Maddy continued over the din, trying once again to turn the conversation the way she wanted. ‘I do sometimes wonder if we know everything that’s going on in dear Paradise Towers.’

‘What do you mean?’ Tabby was puzzled rather than interested.

There was so much that Maddy wanted to discuss. The missing Caretakers. The strange noises she sometimes heard coming from Tilda and Tabby’s flat. The severe shortage of meat all the Rezzies were experiencing and some tips on how to remedy the deficiency. But, somehow, when it came to it, she didn’t have the nerve.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she tailed off vaguely; ‘It’s just a feeling.