by Steve Cole
Then more words in a lower register: ‘Nine-zero-omega, four-al-hrb, one-zero-zero …’ And higher voices, different words and numbers, all carrying.
‘Speaking in tongues?’ the Doctor wondered aloud.
‘They belong to a different speaker,’ Brian informed him. ‘Although, it is the same language.’
‘That’s just the TARDIS translating.’
‘No.’ Brian held up his sphere, as if it knew better; perhaps it did. ‘Mr Ball is insistent on this point. Different creatures, but the same language. Or rather, the same kind of information.’
Before the Doctor could follow up, the first creatures came into sight, led by something tall and angular, a mass of spiky limbs and ceremonial armour – like a mantis made from rawhide and dressed in industrial machinery. ‘Two-seven, tau, six-heaven-two,’ it mumbled, ‘sky-alpha. Fixed. Iota …’ Its head perched on a broken neck, its limbs hung down by its side. Others followed, a fetid menagerie of rotting alien forms, the once-bright colours of the skin bled by the darkness, no two the same. Each of the creatures before them had bulging, pellucid eyes, but their sight seemed poor. They knocked into each other and scraped against the walls, twisted, shambling shells, muttering constantly as they stumbled forward.
Brian held out his translation sphere. ‘Mr Ball believes these life forms constitute a threat to our mission.’
‘Wait.’ The Doctor performed a sweep with the sonic, then stared at Brian. ‘I don’t think these poor creatures are life forms in any natural sense of the word. Not any more. They’re just revenants, animated in some way …’ He stepped forward and smiled at the Mantis. ‘Hello! I’m the Doctor …’
The Mantis jerked to sudden attention. It raised arms with vicious barbs and swung them down at the Doctor. He dived clear, almost knocking down Brian.
‘Fair enough,’ said the Doctor, scrambling back up, ‘they’re a threat.’
The other revenants, too, began to shake off their zombie aspects. With a creak and crunch of bone and sinew they drew upright, became more purposeful. The Doctor saw an Andalian among them. Its voice grew deeper as it chanted on: ‘…Ra-betel zero-seron-two … kaffa eight one-sky sexagesimal …’
‘I recognise the formula,’ said Brian. ‘I have been navigating by it.’
‘What?’
‘These beings are imparting precise astrotemporal information: the positioning of a planet relative to its star, its star’s position relative to its galaxy, its galaxy’s relative position in the wider universe …’
The Doctor frowned at the implications – then dodged again as another revenant lunged for him, its goliath claws swishing past his head and smashing shrapnel from the wall. ‘Come on – run!’
He darted back down the tunnel they’d taken – and ran smack into another pack of mismatched, muttering creatures, blocking the way ahead. The stench almost made him retch. ‘No good! Back the way we came.’
They dashed back to the rocky balcony overlooking the abyss. The Mantis, the Andalian and the rest shuffled forward hungrily.
Brian unleashed crackles of energy from his translation sphere, and the Mantis was made more macabre in a halo of electric light. But a tentacle lashed out from somewhere in the scrum and knocked the ball from Brian’s hand. It swung from the cable attached to the Ood’s mouth, jerking his head aside – which was the only reason he avoided a further tentacled blow. The Doctor grabbed his arm and dragged him into a further run as the revenants kept coming, their jumble of coordinates growing louder.
‘It’s like they’re drawing strength from the words,’ the Doctor panted.
‘I believe it is no coincidence that the Andalian is reciting the recent orbital position of Andalia.’
‘What?’
‘Mr Ball set most similar coordinates for our arrival there this morning.’
‘Describing the exact time the Kotturuh descended …?’ The Doctor glanced back, saw the two packs merge into one horrifying mob. ‘That’s it, then! The Kotturuh Design! Each creature a part of it, reciting the position of its world when the Kotturuh descended.’
‘Or when they will descend,’ Brian told him. ‘One is reciting the position its planet will be in many years from now—’
Brian stopped short as they nearly ploughed straight into another party of the revenants. Hissing, clicking and whispering, the creatures shambled from the dark with a graveyard-stink and pale, glowing eyes. A gargoyle-like animal with two sets of arms grabbed Brian’s leg with vicious talons, but the Doctor kicked it clear. He turned back desperately – but the Mantis was almost on top of them, leading the other mob, claws and pincers raised to cut down and kill.
‘Side tunnel,’ Brian announced, and ducked into darkness.
The Doctor used his sonic as a torch, brilliant blue lighting the way.
Soon that light was playing over bare rock.
‘Backs to the wall, then,’ the Doctor said quietly.
Brian drew himself to his full height. He smoothed down his rumpled jacket and stood beside the Doctor, facing the pack.
The gargoyle, still muttering, was leading the advance now, four sets of talons ready to rake through flesh and bone. What had begun as a slow, stubborn stumble was ending in an over-cranked frenzy of misplaced limbs as the gibbering revenants packed out the tunnel. The stench was overpowering. The Doctor looked around wildly, incantations filling his ears with babbling echoes, but there was nowhere to run, and nothing the sonic could do as the living dead closed in.
Chapter Seven
‘We surrender!’ the Doctor shouted, but the revenants kept coming. ‘By the Kotturuh code, you have no right to kill us – we are outside the Kotturuh Design!’
Brian held up his translation sphere like a charm against witchcraft. ‘I believe a creature animated by the Kotturuh can kill anything it chooses.’
If I die, I’ll regenerate, the Doctor thought, and maybe I’ll have enough residual energy to let us fight our way through or maybe I won’t. The Mantis claw closed clumsily on his throat as the revenants pressed in. He felt it tighten, and all he could think was, I. Don’t. Want. To—
With a fizz of energy, a luminous robot the size of a tank burst from nowhere, appearing right in the middle of the revenants. It hit the ground running on huge caterpillar tracks, trapping bodies beneath it as it trundled forward. The revenants fell as the robot rumbled through the ranks, and the Mantis was knocked reeling away by the sudden stir of bodies.
The Doctor stared. ‘Doesn’t look like Kotturuh technology …’
As the tank bore down on them, ready to crush them into the rock, Brian thrust out Mr Ball. Crackles of energy flooded through the metalwork. Inches from the Doctor’s legs, the tank stalled, shifted gears and swung round, spluttering and whining like a beast at bay.
‘It may not be our taxi but I’m taking it anyway!’ The Doctor jumped nimbly onto the huge machine and clung on as Brian climbed up beside him. Jerking back and forth, the tank smashed and scraped against the wall where the two of them had been pinned moments earlier. A kind of turret rose up from the body of the tank and rotated around as if getting a 360-view. The Doctor changed a setting on the sonic then almost slipped and fell as the machine reversed at speed into the gibbering throng. He saw the unfortunates who’d been run down were getting back up despite their injuries, no trace of pain, or feeling at all.
And straight away they were back, coming for the Doctor and Brian.
The barbed gargoyle thing extended a mottled, segmented stinger from its back, ready to strike at Brian – the feverish movement at odds with the dull drone of its voice: ‘…Betel asha … tisa-two-erba-zero-sebe thalathun …’ But then a glittering drill-bit as thick as a forearm whirled out from inside the robot and scored a bloodless hole right through the gargoyle’s segmented tail.
‘Diamond core extractor!’ the Doctor shouted, pressing the sonic to the side of the robot. ‘This is a mining machine.’ The sonic buzzed, and the tank lurched into a higher gear, steer
ing wildly through the throng until it broke free of the hordes and rumbled back down along the tunnel – dragging the impaled gargoyle along with it.
‘I’ve hijacked the controls,’ the Doctor shouted, fighting to stay out of reach of the gargoyle which was still swinging its bladed claws. ‘See if I can drive us straight back to the TARDIS.’
Brian crushed up close against him to avoid the gargoyle’s thrashing limbs. ‘We have failed to locate Estinee …’
‘Perhaps this thing can help us!’ the Doctor yelled back.
Veering wildly through the gloom, dragging the thrashing revenant behind them, the Doctor saw writhing shadows form in the air around the vast arena. Kotturuh were starting to assemble – to observe or to act? Desperately the Doctor swerved away from them into the tunnel. ‘Come on, come on, not far now …’
The machine jerked to a halt and hurled them clear like a bucking bronco. The Doctor went head over heels while Brian was sent tumbling against the wall.
‘Whoever was operating it, they’ve taken back control!’ The Doctor watched as the mining machine and its struggling gargoyle shone together in glow-worm light.
The turret of the machine flipped open and a girl’s head with wild hair like seagrass peeped out from inside.
‘Estinee!’ the Doctor shouted. How’d she gotten in there?
The girl ducked back down inside as the storm of golden light grew fiercer about her. Then the machine vanished, and only the echoes of the revenant’s voice lingered in the darkness: ‘… seven-gamma-asha … betel asha … tisa-two-erba …’
‘Teleport.’ The Doctor scrambled up. ‘Must’ve pushed through that same worn spot in the shield we did, where the Kotturuh ships slip through.’
‘The child was our target,’ Brian tutted. ‘Mr Ball’s professional pride is hurt.’
‘It’s Estinee getting hurt I’m worried about.’ The Doctor heard the whisper and whirl of Kotturuh taking solid shape from out of the air. He dragged Brian up and started off again along the tunnel. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get to the TARDIS before we’re noticed, and track that teleport trace.’
‘And take revenge,’ Brian suggested.
‘No. Take care of Estinee.’
‘Permanently?’
‘Not that kind of taking care …’
They reached the TARDIS and pushed inside the turquoise churn of the vast interior. The Doctor scanned for power signatures, spied the transmat trail. He spun a dial and reached for the dematerialisation lever.
The veiled, embroidered bulk of a Kotturuh appeared beside him. The Doctor tried to recoil but his body wouldn’t move.
‘We warned you, little one,’ came the grave whisper, as a grey, glittering hand reached out for his neck. ‘You believe you can steal from us?’
‘I …’ The Doctor gritted his teeth, panting out the words with all his strength. ‘I came … to save a life.’
‘The child? She was brought here because the Kotturuh revere life.’
‘Sure you do,’ said the Doctor, ‘the same way a vivisectionist reveres rats.’
‘Little foolish knight, your mind has brushed our Design. Now you can be useful to us.’ As if to emphasise its words, the Kotturuh’s hand closed on the Doctor’s windpipe. ‘You will learn of the gift of Death …’
Then the Kotturuh was gone. The TARDIS engines were harrumphing with conviction. Brian stood with his hand on the dematerialisation lever, watching him closely.
‘What happened?’ Brian asked. ‘Mr Ball suspected a seizure of some kind.’
The Doctor rubbed his throat. You could say I was seized, he tried to say. But while his lips were moving, different words and numbers were dragging themselves from his bruised throat. He tried to swallow them back.
‘Betel four-seron-four … What? kaffa four-four-sky betel … What? ’
‘Astrotemporal coordinates?’ Brian queried.
‘The Kotturuh. One of them was here.’
‘In the TARDIS? Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I did not observe—’
‘Betel four-seron …’ The Doctor sat up in a snap. ‘Astronavigational coordinates. Like the ones the revenants were babbling?’
‘Exactly so. Betel four-seron-four kaffa four-four-sky betel …’ Brian paused. ‘I will need to check the figures to be precise. But I believe they refer to the position of the planet Andalia in around two or three weeks from now.’
‘But the Kotturuh already went to Andalia,’ the Doctor protested. ‘It’s been invaded. Repurposed, laid waste to, shattered.’
‘It has.’ Brian inclined his head regretfully. ‘You haven’t.’
Second Interlude
Rose woke from haunted dreams to find a ghost had come with her: a dark figure, watching from the shadows at the end of her bed.
For a second, feverish still, she remembered her dream. Death – the big man with the dark cloak and scythe – he’d come for her, he’d followed her out of the nightmares.
‘No,’ Rose breathed. ‘I won’t go. Not now, after everything we’ve …’ Then she realised Death didn’t have ears that stuck out that way, and that the black robe was really a leather jacket and the curve of the scythe was that big, beaming grin as the figure stepped into the light.
‘’Ullo, Rose! You’re awake, fantastic.’
‘Is it? Think I’m better off out of it.’ She smiled back at the Doctor, couldn’t help herself, however bad she felt. ‘I must look like death.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he assured her.
‘Yeah, well, so did you a minute ago. Standing there at the end of the bed.’
‘Ta very much.’
‘I was dreaming about it …’ Rose trailed off. ‘Oi. Were you watching me sleep?’
‘No!’ the Doctor protested. ‘I was poking your feet and yelling at you to wake up. About time you took some notice.’
She saw the frown in that big lugubrious face he tried so hard to smile through, felt its weight. ‘I remember … when I was a kid. There’s a story, isn’t there? Death standing at the end of a bed.’
‘Brothers Grimm,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Godfather Death!’
‘I might’ve been dreaming about it,’ she said. ‘How’d it go?’
‘Cheery little bedtime tale, that one. Still, you are in bed, and there’s time …’ He sat down at the foot of the bed, rubbed the back of his neck. ‘There was this tailor. Twelve kids. Thirteenth on the way. And he was poor – so poor he couldn’t feed another hungry mouth.’
‘Sounds like this guy on the estate,’ Rose said. ‘He was falsely claiming, though, he only had four …’
The Doctor went on with his story, about how the tailor came to choose Death as his son’s godfather. ‘Death was quite flattered, as it goes. No one had asked him anything like this.’
Rose pulled a face. ‘Funny, that.’
‘So he said: “You know what? Sure! I’ll be your boy’s godfather. He’ll want for nothing.”’
‘Death’s gonna bring down the vibe at the kid’s birthday parties, though, isn’t he?’
The Doctor shot her a look. ‘D’you want me to tell this story or not?’
‘Sorry,’ said Rose. ‘I do. Go on.’
‘Death was as good as his word, the kid and his family wanted for nothing. And when the kid was eighteen, Death came and said, “Right, then. You’re going to be—”’
‘An undertaker!’
‘You’re gonna be a doctor,’ said the Doctor quietly. ‘A very great, fantastic doctor. No medical school for you, big guy. Just take this gift from me, this herb – you’ll do well for others, and for yourself. And his godson says, “How does it work?” And Death says, “OK, here’s the trick.”’ The Doctor paused, stared into space. ‘There’s always a trick.’
‘Well?’ Rose prompted.
‘Death says to the boy: “When you’re called to a patient on their deathbed, look for me. If you see me standing at the head of the bed, give them some of that herb – you
’ll cure them. If you see me standing at the foot of the bed, there’s nothing you can do – it’s their time to die. Look for me in this way and you’ll never make the wrong call. You’ll grow famous and respected. Always right.”’
Rose was doubtful. ‘He’s tricking him, isn’t he?’
‘Nope. Death had told it straight. The tailor’s son grew famous; live or die, he always called it.’ The Doctor looked at her. ‘Then the King got sick and called him to his royal bedchamber. He was a much-loved king, well worth saving, and the son was well chuffed to have such a famous patient. But Death was standing at the foot of the bed.’
Rose sucked in a breath. ‘Bye, bye, King.’
‘You’d think. But the tailor’s son, says, “No – this isn’t right. I want to save him, I know best.” And so, what does he do? He shifts the bed round, one-eighty degrees. Now Death’s standing at the head of the bed, not the foot, and the tailor’s son gives the King the herb and he gets better.’
‘Ohhh, Death’s not gonna like that,’ Rose predicted.
‘Death’s like, “What the hell was that? That could’ve been a fixed point in time. You don’t mess with that.”’
‘That sounds like you talking now,’ said Rose quietly.
‘“Don’t try and trick me again, godson”,’ the Doctor went on. ‘“It won’t end well.”’ He paused, looked down at his hands. ‘Well, the doctor stuck to the rules, but then the King’s lovely daughter got sick. Really sick. And the King says to the tailor’s son: “If you cure her, I’ll give you her hand in marriage.”’
Rose snorted. ‘Don’t ask your daughter first, King, will you?’
‘Anyway, the tailor’s son goes to the Princess, who’s very beautiful, probably, and he falls in love. Boom! Just like that. And then he sees his godfather, Death. Standing there. By the foot of the bed.’ The Doctor was staring into space. ‘Waiting to claim her.’
‘Well?’ Rose nudged him. ‘What happens next?’