Silhouette (17 page)

Jenny’s hands were a blur, swiping at the attacking volumes, smashing them aside. In contrast it was all Clara could do to stay on her feet and keep the books and paper from her face.

‘Stop her,’ Vastra cried through the noise of beating paper. ‘You have to stop her, Jenny.’

Somehow Jenny was making headway, forcing
her way through the blizzard of paper and cloth and leather towards where Silhouette stood watching. Finally she was close enough to reach the woman, hurling herself forwards and knocking Silhouette to the ground. But it made no difference, more books flew from the shelves to strike at Jenny.

‘Necklace!’ Clara yelled. ‘Get her necklace.’

She had no idea if it would help, but it was all she could think of. She caught snatches of what was happening through the flurry of pages. Glimpses, like juddering frames from an old film. Jenny reaching for the crystal round Silhouette’s neck. Grabbing it. Snapping it free. Hurling it away across the room.

Nothing changed. The books kept coming. The crystal clattered to the wooden floor not far from Clara, gleaming as it caught the light. With a supreme effort, Clara shoved through the books, turning her back into them as if forcing her way through a gale. Three steps, that was all – surely she could manage just three steps. It seemed to take for ever then she was staring down at the crystal, seeing multiple images of her face reflected in crimson, staring back at her.

She stamped down hard with the heel of her boot.

The crystal shattered, blood ray shards spraying out across the floor.

At once the noise and confusion stopped. Books fell to the floor. Slowly Jenny got to her feet.

Silhouette struggled up after her, staring round at
the debris strewn across the floor. ‘What have I done?’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

‘Not enough,’ the blank-faced man said, and hurled himself at her.

In a flash of movement, Jenny was between them, grappling with Affinity. The man’s hand reached up for Jenny’s neck. A glint of red as it moved. Vastra and Clara both rushed to help. Clara grabbed the man’s hand, dragging it back, wrenching the ring from his finger and dropping it to the floor. Again, she stamped down.

And again the effect was immediate. Affinity seemed to sag, stepping away from Jenny. His face slowly filled out, assuming the aspect of the showman at the Carnival who had introduced Vastra to the audience as the Lizard Woman. Then, in rapid succession, he was Festin again, then Jim, and finally Oswald. He looked round, startled and confused as his features slowly faded away again to a blank.

‘My head,’ he said slowly. ‘I can … 
think
.’

‘We are free of him,’ Silhouette said. She enfolded Affinity in an embrace. After a moment she stepped away again. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Clara, Vastra and Jenny.

‘Don’t thank us just yet,’ Clara said. ‘We still have to stop Milton.’

‘He has gone to his vessel,’ Silhouette said. ‘This way.’

But before she could move, there was a sound from the other side of the room – a sudden hiss of escaping gas. The dark cloud inside the glass sphere was churning and swirling. As they watched, it thinned, the sphere slowly becoming transparent, empty.

‘We’re too late,’ Clara realised. ‘He’s released the cloud.’

‘How do we stop it?’ Vastra demanded.

Silhouette and Affinity looked at each other. ‘I don’t think we can,’ Affinity said.

‘Milton may know a way,’ Silhouette suggested.

‘Then show us where he is,’ Jenny said.

The entrance to the underground chamber where Milton’s ship was hidden was under the main staircase. A simple wooden door looked as though it should lead into a store cupboard.

‘There are steps down,’ Affinity explained.

But when they opened the door, they were confronted by a metal shutter. There was no way to open it.

Clara hammered her fist against the metal in frustration. ‘He’s sealed it. How do we open this?’

Neither Silhouette nor Affinity had any idea. ‘He controls everything from his study,’ Silhouette offered.

‘That computer screen,’ Clara said. ‘It’s worth a try.’

*

A dark cloud poured out like smoke from the chimney of the house. It spread thinner and thinner across the sky, wafting its way over London, slowly sinking down through the air.

Several streets away, a dog started to bark angrily. Close by, a jostled pedestrian decided that after all he did mind. A shopkeeper’s frustration with an indecisive customer started to boil over.

A palpable tension was building in the air. Expressions changed as smiles became frowns, as people’s good will and tolerance ebbed away without them even realising what had changed. The mildest of people took offence, the most affable snarled in rage. Arguments became shouting matches, which became fights, which became bloody.

Slowly at first, spreading from Milton’s house, people’s emotions began to get the better of them. Anger clouded judgement.

Silhouette and Affinity stood slightly apart from the others as Vastra worked at the screen.

‘So many deaths,’ Silhouette said quietly, sadly. ‘So much suffering.’

Affinity’s face remained a blank. But his voice now had some texture, echoing the sadness and regret. ‘It was not our doing.’

‘We should have fought him.’

‘We did. We tried. Remember?’

Silhouette nodded. ‘I remember. I remember everything.’

At the screen, Vastra gave an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s useless. The data is all gone. He must have erased it remotely.’

As she spoke, the screen flickered and an image appeared. Milton stared back at them from the tablet. Behind him they could see the cramped interior of his ship’s flight deck.

‘You really cannot be so naive as to think I would leave you any way to stop me, can you?’ His voice emerged clearly from the device. ‘I’d say come and join me, but as you can see I’m a little short of space. Just as you are all a little short of time.’

‘You won’t get away with this,’ Clara said.

‘Another melodramatic stock phrase you’ve always wanted to use?’ Milton said. ‘Sadly, as inaccurate as the first. And is that Silhouette and Affinity I can see behind you?’ He gave a little wave. ‘I’m so sorry that you’ll also be affected by the cloud. Very soon, I expect. You are in the eye of the storm, as it were, so you might have a little more time before it permeates the whole of London’s atmosphere.’

Silhouette stepped closer to the screen. ‘You have made us do terrible things,’ she said.

Milton smiled sympathetically. ‘I made you into a weapon, my dear. Weapons do terrible things. That is rather the point of them.’

‘It is a mistake to turn your own weapons against yourself.’

‘I think I’m quite safe down here, thank you. Oh, but there is one thing you could still do for me.’ He leaned forward slightly. ‘Leave the screen on. I would like to see you all when the anger cloud does reach you. I’d like to watch you kill each other in rage and fury.’

‘The Doctor will stop it,’ Clara said. She tried to sound as if she believed it. Judging by Milton’s amused reaction, she didn’t succeed.

‘I am monitoring the deployment of the cloud quite closely,’ he said. ‘So if that should happen, which I very much doubt, I’ll know all about it. Good luck to him, I say. Although, of course, I don’t really mean that.’

‘Turn it off,’ Clara said.

Vastra wiped her hand across the screen and it faded to black. The sound of Milton’s laughter lingered just a moment longer then it too was gone.

‘That man makes me so angry,’ Jenny said, her hands bunched into tight fists.

‘Let us hope that is the only thing making you angry,’ Vastra said. ‘How long do we have?’

‘Not long,’ Affinity said.

‘Then let’s get thinking,’ Clara told them. ‘We have to leave the cloud to the Doctor and hope he can deal with it. We need to sort out Milton.’

‘And how do we do that?’ Jenny asked.

‘Like Silhouette said, we have weapons.’ Clara nodded at Silhouette and Affinity. ‘Let’s work out how to use them.’

Told off for misbehaving, little Betty Naismith didn’t lower her head and mutter an apology as usual. Instead she slapped her nursemaid hard across the face.

In the pub on the corner of the same street, a quiet regular customer yelled uncontrollably at the barmaid that ‘I’ll be with you in a minute’ wasn’t good enough.

Not far away, a boy’s ‘excuse me’ as he inadvertently knocking into an old woman was answered with a crack of her walking stick across his back.

All across the city, tempers simmered close to boiling point, ready to explode at any moment.

But as the rest of London slowly began its dissolution into anger, hatred and imminent violence, there was one small area that resisted. Watching the emotional indicator levels overlaid on a map of the city, Milton frowned. That made no sense. How come the cloud was having less effect in that one particular area?

He zoomed the map on his screen to a higher level of detail. Things became both clearer and more vexing.

‘The Doctor?’ he wondered out loud. But what could the Doctor be doing at the Carnival of Curiosities that would hold back the effects of the cloud?

At the increased magnitude, he saw that another marker had shown up on the map – closing on the area that was resisting the effects. Milton’s frown became a smile and he nodded with satisfaction. Whatever the Doctor was doing – and he was quite sure it must be the Doctor – it would soon stop. Empath had found him.

A darkness was permeating the thin layer of smog that lay over London like a grubby reflection of the snow-covered ground. The Doctor could see it swirling and thickening above them as the show got under way.

A handful of coins had persuaded the lad on the gate to open the Carnival of Curiosities for free. A folded banknote added further encouragement for him to yell at the top of his voice that there was no admittance charge and that the show of a lifetime was about to start.

Inquisitive and intrigued, the crowds gathered round the open area where the Strong Man and the jugglers usually performed. They were not to be disappointed. In fact, the Doctor reflected, they had to be positively enthralled, enraptured, and lots of other
positive things beginning with ‘en’.

He was off to a good start. Some impressive juggling was followed by a jaw-dropping display of acrobatics. The Doctor had not been specific but he had made it very clear to each and every one of the performers that they were to give the show of their lives. Or else, their lives might very soon end. The Doctor didn’t see himself as a natural performer, not in this incarnation, but he managed to rouse the crowd, building the level of anticipation.

The audience was growing bigger by the moment as more and more people heard the cries of delight and whoops of excitement. Strax was a big hit. No one was quite sure what to make of him – was he a genuine Strong Man, or a clown? When he threatened to obliterate anyone who laughed as he attempted to juggle with cannon balls, the crowd burst into a spontaneous mixture of applause and hysterics.

And all the time, the cloud above them gathered and darkened, as if focused on this small area of amusement and goodwill in a city now wallowing in confusion and anger. Timing was everything, the Doctor reflected, as the crowd laughed and clapped again. He could just make out the distinctive shape of Empath pushing his way slowly through. The Doctor glanced up again. Was it his imagination, or did the cloud now look like a giant claw waiting to strike down at him?

He nodded to Strax. ‘Keep it going,’ he mouthed. Then the Doctor walked over to the edge of the assembled crowd, to the point where Empath was emerging.

The marker that represented Empath was now right at the heart of the area resisting the cloud’s effects. It wouldn’t be long now, Milton thought. Empath would deal with the Doctor and then the cloud would do its worst. Checking other areas, he was pleased to see that fights were breaking out in several pubs. Police sent to calm the trouble were joining in. Another hour or two and the entire city would be in chaos.

A chime from the communications systems surprised him. It was probably the Doctor’s friends, ready to beg for their lives. Yes, he decided, he would make the connection. He enjoyed seeing people beg, especially when he knew it was a completely futile act.

Sure enough, the familiar face of the Doctor’s young friend Clara appeared on the screen. Milton could see the lizard woman and her maid behind. There was no sign of Silhouette or Affinity, but they were probably there somewhere. Unless they had already succumbed and killed each other, that was a pleasant thought.

‘Please,’ Clara said, ‘you have to stop this. It’s getting out of hand.’

‘That is sort of the point, actually,’ Milton told her. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘But people are
dying
. Don’t you care about that at all?’

‘Not really, I’m afraid.’ Milton leaned back in his command chair. ‘I assume you’ve been trying to find a way to open the security door and get down here. I did see that it registered an attack with a blunt instrument as well as a crude attempt to hack the locking software.’

‘You can’t blame us for trying, can you?’ the maid Jenny told him.

‘Oh not at all. I applaud the effort.’ He clapped his hands together a couple of times to make the point. ‘But there really isn’t any way to get to me or to stop the cloud. So …’

He paused. That was odd. There was another message coming in.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Milton said, ‘I’m going to have to put you on hold just for a minute. Have a nice day.’

He switched channels. His first thought was that it was the secondary comms link from the library, but the face that appeared on the screen now was as surprising as it was unexpected. Milton felt suddenly cold. They’d found him – how could they have found him?

‘You know who I am?’ the pale face on the screen asked.

‘Of course, Senior Deputy Shadow Architect.’ Milton struggled to keep the nerves out of his voice. ‘I must apologise for the abrupt end to our last conversation, but as you will recall I rather fancied escaping before you could have me summarily executed on the spot.’