Doctor Who: Molten Heart

by Una McCormack

  “What does it say?” he said.

  “Have a guess,” said the Doctor.

  Ryan looked at the metal cage, which really did look very rusty. “I’m gonna guess it says, ‘Come on up’.”

  “Bingo,” said the Doctor. “Shall we give it a go?”

  Four Greenwatch marched ahead of Yaz and Graham; four marched behind. Yaz glanced over her shoulder and saw hard, stony faces; implacable and emotionless. Ahead, the backs of their captors were like boulders, impassable. The lights on the rocks around them glanced off them, making them glow like Hallowe’en decorations. She shuddered. There was no way past these people; there was no way she and Graham could possibly fight their way through. It would be like trying to punch your way through a mountain.

  “I notice they’re not taking us above ground,” Graham whispered.

  “Don’t want to show us to ordinary people,” said Yaz. She raised her voice slightly, sounding more confident than she felt. “Don’t want to admit the evidence in front of their own eyes.”

  At length, they came to a huge carved doorway, guarded by two more Greenwatch. Lanterns stood on either side of the door, huge emeralds cut with many faces, sending green light shimmering across the walls.

  “Well, this looks like someone’s headquarters,” Yaz said. “Wonder who it could be, with all this green light?”

  The guards moved aside to let their party enter. They came into a passageway hewn out of white stone, but lit, again, so that the walls shone green. They came to another guarded door and, passing through this, came out into a huge white hall.

  At the far end, waiting for them, was someone who could only be Emerald.

  She was smaller than Yaz had expected, having heard so much about her, almost petite. But she would stand out, even in a room of these remarkable people. Every facet of her seemed to have been cut to perfection; every angle on her considered and finessed for the best effect. On her forehead, like a crown, there was a single red gem. When she moved, she shimmered, and light glanced from her; green light, with the occasional flash of red. Yaz realised her eyes had started watering from the quick shifts in the light. Emerald certainly knew how to disconcert. Yaz summoned up all her wits, and all her training, and all she had learned from her travels with the Doctor so far, tried to speak as plainly and as honestly as possible. She planted both feet firmly on the ground, and crossed her arms behind her back.

  “I know that we come as big shock,” she said. “We’re strangers here – and I know how strange we look! We know how close knit your community is, how frightening we must seem. But we really don’t mean you any harm. We’re here to help you!”

  Emerald leaned forward. The light danced from the garnet on her forehead. “Why do you think we need your help?”

  “You must know what’s happening,” said Graham.

  “Must I?”

  “The steaming pools of liquid,” said Yaz. “The drying seas. The cracks in the sphere of the world.”

  “What about them?” Emerald said.

  “They’re not good news, you know,” said Graham.

  “They’re not news at all,” said Emerald.

  Yaz and Graham gave each other puzzled looks. Graham said, “So, er, what are you doing about them?”

  Very softly, Emerald began to laugh.

  “What’s funny?” said Graham.

  “You are,” said Emerald. “Both of you. Strangers to this world, by your admission. How long have you been here? It’s hardly any time since your blue box arrived. You’re not even sure what food and drink you can have.”

  Oh, thought Yaz. Quartz really did tell her everything.

  “I’m the ruler here,” said Emerald. “I know everything that happens within my sphere of influence. I know everything Basalt said, everything he believed, and everything he tried. And yet, you two believe that you can tell me what I should do.”

  Yaz shook her head. “You know what’s happening here, within the sphere of the world. But I don’t think you have any idea what goes on beyond it. You know that the outside world is breaking through, but you don’t know what to do about it. And that terrifies you, doesn’t it?”

  The garnet flashed.

  “Yaz,” murmured Graham. “I’m not sure this is helping.”

  “You need to stop pretending that nothing is happening,” said Yaz, urgently, while she had a chance. “You need to tell people the truth!”

  Emerald turned on her. “And what do you think they would do, if they knew that the world was ending?”

  There it is, thought Yaz.

  “It’s bad enough that there are rumours going around that there are strange people here,” Emerald said. “What do you think would happen if people knew the whole truth? There’d be panic, chaos—”

  “Perhaps you should have more trust in people,” Yaz said. “Yes, there’s always someone who panics, but I’ve seen people in a crisis, and they can be great, they can be brilliant – as long as someone leads them properly!”

  There was a silence.

  “Oh crumbs,” muttered Graham. “I think that’s torn it.”

  “I see,” said Emerald. “My leadership is at fault.”

  “We can help,” said Yaz, softening her tone. “Please, if you have it – let us have our blue box back. There’ll be something inside that we can use, I’m sure—”

  But Emerald was no longer listening. She waved her hands, and the Greenwatch pulled Yaz and Graham away. Yaz called out, “Please! We can help you!”

  “Save your energy, Yaz love,” said Graham, resignedly. “I think we’re about to add another dungeon to our collection.”

  Ryan eyed the rusty metal cage thoughtfully. “What do you think, Doctor? Is it safe?”

  “Oh no,” said the Doctor. “No, I shouldn’t think so, not in the slightest!”

  Ryan sighed. “In that case I guess we have to get inside then.”

  The Doctor grinned. “Me, first!”

  Ash and Ryan held the cage steady while the Doctor entered. “All right,” she said. “Nothing’s broken yet. I think we can try someone else.”

  Ryan went in next. The cage tilted slightly, but the mesh floor turned out to be surprisingly robust. Ash climbed in next and, once they had the balance right, everything stayed solid.

  “Good craftsmanship,” said the Doctor, running the sonic over the mesh.

  “What do you think this button does?” said Ash, pointing to a panel on the wall.

  Ryan reached out and pressed it. With a clank and a groan, the lift shot up, sending the three friends crashing back against the mesh walls of the cage.

  “Ryan!” shouted the Doctor. “Never, ever press random buttons!”

  “You do it all the time!”

  “That’s different!” said the Doctor.

  “How?” said Ryan.

  “Because that’s me!”

  “The floor’s holding!” Ash called out. “I think we’re all right!”

  And it turned out they were. Once the initial shock was over, they realised they were racing upwards at a great pace.

  “Oh, this is more like it,” said the Doctor. “Hurray for the marvels of mechanisation!”

  “Much better than walking,” said Ryan.

  There was a rustle overhead, and Ryan looked up at the mesh roof of the cage. A ruby rat was peering down at them. Ryan had the distinct impression that it was smiling. If not that, it was certainly showing teeth. “Er, Doctor,” he said. “Those rats – did you ever work out what their teeth are made of? Anything that might be able to break a chain?”

  The Doctor followed Ryan’s gaze, saw the rat and leapt to her feet. “Oh no you don’t! Hoick me up, Ryan!”

  Ryan hoisted her up onto his shoulders, and the Doctor tried to flick the rat away. “Shoo! Go on!”

  This, it seemed, only attracted more rats, and they were, as far as Ryan could tell, pretty narked about having their peace disturbed. Now they were swarming around the bottom of the cage. The Doctor jumped
down from Ryan’s shoulders and then, together with Ash, started to shove the creatures out of the enclosed space. There were easily a dozen rats now, with more appearing every second.

  “Where are they coming from?” cried Ryan.

  “Nesting in the walls,” said Ash. “I told you they were beasts!”

  “They were fine one at a time!” cried the Doctor.

  “They don’t always come one at a time!” said Ash.

  The lift was still shooting upwards. Suddenly they were past the patch where the rats had been nesting, and, in short order, they had shoved the rest out of the lift. Ryan was about to take a breath, when the lift swayed, shuddered and slowed.

  “All that thrashing about didn’t do the lift much good,” said the Doctor.

  “What if it stops working?” asked Ash, a hint of fear creeping into her voice.

  “Well,” said the Doctor. “That’s an interesting question. Option A. It stops dead and we’re left suspended in the middle of this shaft. Long climb upwards if that happens! I hope someone packed some rope—”

  “Or…?” said Ryan, before that one started up again.

  “The other option is that we plunge back down in this cage to where we started. I’m not keen on that option. I’m really not keen on any option that ends with squelching. I suppose both options might end in a squelch, if you think them through… it’s just that one ends in a squelch sooner than the other one.”

  “I don’t like either of those options,” said Ash, in a small voice.

  The lift shuddered again, and then ground to a halt.

  There was a short pause, during which nobody spoke or moved.

  “Hello, option A,” said Ryan.

  The cage rocked again and tilted alarmingly to one side.

  “There is the third option,” said the Doctor, trying to keep her footing. “Which is a worrying combination of options A and B. We hang around for a while and then we plunge and then we squelch.”

  “Again,” said Ryan, “not keen.” He looked at Ash. “No squelch for you, I guess.”

  “No,” said Ash. “I’d shatter.”

  The lift swung about.

  And then, slowly, miraculously, it started to move slowly upwards.

  “Is it working again?” said Ryan.

  “I don’t think so…” said the Doctor. “Look up.”

  Ryan looked up. There were some faint and flickering lights overhead. Light at the end of the tunnel. Slowly, the lift came upwards, and halted. Strong arms were holding it steady. The door to the cage was pulled open. Ash cried out for joy.

  “Dad!”

  “Ah,” said the Doctor, scrambling out of the cage and greeting their saviour. “Basalt, I presume?”

  Seven

  “I’m starting to think,” said Graham, “that travelling with the Doctor involves a lot of doing time.”

  Yaz didn’t answer. She was pacing the small room in which they had been locked. Emerald’s accusation that Yaz was involving herself in a situation about which she had little knowledge and no right to intervene had hit hard. But we can see the damage up above, Yaz thought. Someone has got to get Emerald to listen! Others had tried – Basalt for one – and they had got nowhere. Perhaps an outsider saying it would make the difference… And yet, what gave them the right to turn up and start ordering these people about?

  “Yaz,” said Graham, “sit down, please. You’re going to wear yourself out!”

  The worse thing was that it all looked so easy when the Doctor did it. People got persuaded to a better course of action, were reminded of their better nature… Yaz wanted to be able to do that too. She wanted to show the Doctor what she was made of, how much she had learned and how far she had come, that all the time she had been travelling with her she had been learning from her… Yaz felt that she had been given a job to do, entrusted with a task by the Doctor. What if she had failed, and failed badly? She didn’t like that thought at all.

  “You know,” said Graham, “This is twice we’ve been locked up since arriving here.”

  And then there was Quartz. He had handed them over to Emerald so casually, for whatever small advantage that gained him. Money? Influence? Fat lot of good it would do him if the world ended. Yes, Yaz was angry with Quartz, and she was particularly angry with herself for trusting him, for not listening to what her instincts, and the Doctor’s, were telling her about him…

  “This won’t make a difference to your career, will it, Yaz? Locked up again. That can’t look good on a copper’s record. I don’t want this holding you back.”

  Yaz swung round and came to stand in front of Graham. “Graham, are you seriously suggesting that being held prisoner on an alien planet by rock-people might one day be a bar to me getting promoted?”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I? What do I know about coppering?”

  “You think that if I had a conversation about this with my sergeant we’d get much past the bit about the rock-people?”

  “I suppose not,” Graham said, cheerfully. “But at least it’s stopped you marching and up and down wearing a hole in the floor.”

  Yaz realised she’d been played, by an expert. Graham was smiling up at her, and she laughed and sat down next to him, her legs pulled up and her hands resting limply on her knees.

  “That’s better!” he said.

  “So,” Yaz said. “What are we going to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Graham. “We got out of it all right last time, didn’t we?”

  “Last time someone came and let us out,” Yaz said. “I don’t think that’s going to happen again.”

  She jumped up again and went over to the door.

  “Oh, now don’t start that again!”

  “I just want a look out…” She peered through a crack in the rock to try to recce the passageway beyond, but she couldn’t see much.

  Graham sighed. “We just have to sit it out until something comes along. Maybe those guards, that Greenwatch or whatever they call themselves will turn up again and we can jump them—”

  “Graham,” said Yaz, “I think there’s someone opening the door.”

  Graham stood up, magnificently. “All right,” he said. “Now get yourself behind me.” He put up his fists. Yaz stifled a laugh. He looked like one of those old-time boxing champs in a black and white film. The rock in front of the door moved back, and a jet-black face looked in. When they saw Yaz and Graham, they smiled, and little fissures of laughter lines deepened around their eyes. Yaz was sure she recognised this person, but she couldn’t place them. Whoever they were, they had a green emerald on their chest. They were Greenwatch.

  “What do you want?” Yaz said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

  The watchman looked nervously back down the corridor. “I’m a friend of Basalt. I’m here to help you – help you get away. But you must be quiet!”

  Graham put down his fists. “Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice?”

  “Hmm,” said Yaz. “How about, ‘once bitten twice shy’?”

  Graham was having none of it. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Yaz gave up. You couldn’t beat Graham at the game of clichés. She followed him, reluctantly, into the passageway, and after their new friend.

  Ryan and the Doctor watched with delight as Basalt and Ash folded each other into an embrace. “Aw!” said the Doctor. “Family reunion! That’s lovely!”

  “Doesn’t she look like him?” Ryan said.

  “Chip off the old block,” the Doctor said, earning a groan from Ryan.

  Ash pulled her father over to meet her friends. “This is the Doctor, and this is Ryan. They’re here to help us.” Her voice was shaking with excitement. “Dad, look at them!”

  Basalt took them both by their hands. “You aren’t the first… others that I’ve seen. But you look very different…”

  The Doctor was immediately alert. “Others? Where?”

  “I’ll show you. But first, tell me – are you from t
he surface? What’s there? Have there always been others there, others like you?”

  “Slightly more complicated than that,” said the Doctor. “Let’s say… that yours isn’t the only world out there.”

  Basalt thought about this for a moment, and then Ryan had the privilege of seeing a smile of great joy pass over his face. Basalt looked as if all his wildest, most fondly held dreams had at last come. “I see,” he said. “Well, the sphere is full of marvels, and ones that we barely know. Why shouldn’t there be even more than I dared hope was possible?”

  The Doctor beamed at him. “I knew I was going to like you!”

  He grasped her hand. “And you and your friend have brought Ash all the way here to me,” he said. “That makes me particularly grateful.”

  “Ash did most of the work,” said the Doctor. “Led the way, solved your messages.”

  “You helped, Doctor,” she said.

  “All we did was hold back the lavasharks and the ruby rats,” said Ryan.

  “Ah, yes,” said Basalt, “all most interesting creatures—”

  “Dad,” said his daughter, in the universal voice of the child whose parent is on the verge of embarrassing her. “I think we’ve got more to be thinking about right now?”

  “You’re quite right,” he said, and then hugged her again. “Well done, Ash.”

  “There were moments when I thought I’d never crack your code,” she said.

  “Sadly necessary,” said Basalt. “If Emerald had followed us, she would have destroyed evidence of our journey, and any advice I left on how to follow. Do you know if she’s sent anyone?”

  Ash shook her head. “Quartz would have told me if she had.”

  Her father didn’t look so sure. “Quartz,” he said, “is complicated. He’s been a good friend to me over the years. But he’s a good friend of Emerald too. We were all friends, once, although time and the wearing of the world has caused some rifts between us.”

  “Doctor…” said Ryan, anxiously, thinking of his granddad and of Yasmin.

  “I know, Ryan,” she said, softly. “Basalt – we’ve left friends behind in Quartz’s care. Will he do them any harm?”

  “Harm?” Basalt shook his head. “Oh, no, he wouldn’t harm them! No, not Quartz. But he might not give them all the help they need. And he might take them to Emerald.”