Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building

by Doctor Who

  Martha turned. Barbara turned, and so did Solin. Even Tiermann and the creature composed of liquid flame turned to see what the Doctor was looking at.

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  The wilderness was vanishing. The forest and everything in it was slowly being ripped out of the ground by its roots. Everything in the far distance, in the foothills of the mountains at the edge of the valley, was shimmering and shaking and coming away from the earth. It was being mulched and pulped and drawn into long strands and it was being sucked into the sky and into the mouth of the biggest monster any of them had ever seen.

  ‘It’s being eaten,’ the Doctor said hollowly. ‘Everything, It s all being eaten by the Voracious Craw.’

  And there the Craw was, edging into the valley at last. With an open mouth the size of Wales and a ring of evil eyes about its head, squeezed tight in greedy pleasure.

  Here it came. Massively and noisily.

  Here it came at last to take them all.

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  WhiletheotherswerestaringinshockattheapproachingCraw,the robot who had been Toaster seized his chance. Green fire flickered about his body as he rounded on his adversary. The last vestiges of Toaster’s mind felt the terrible voice of the Domovoi ringing through him. ‘You will die, Tiermann!’ And with that, the robot launched itself at its startled creator.

  Tiermann fell into the savage embrace. He felt the flames licking around him and they were curiously cool and soft. He felt delirious with pain, confusion, and fury. The Domovoi had him now. She had him just where she had always wanted him. Ever since he had created her, in all her godlike genius and majesty, and locked her underground, far beneath his Dreamhome, this was the moment she had been waiting for.

  The reckoning. She had longed for the day when she would be set free from her servitude and her incarceration. And she could face up to Ernest Tiermann. And destroy him.

  ‘I am the Domovoi,’ she shrieked. ‘But you made me your servant!’

  Tiermann was locked in the robot’s arms. ‘You were all my servants!

  My creations! My playthings! You were mine to control as I wished!’

  Then there came a huge FLLAAAASSSHHH of ultraviolet light.

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  The others whipped around to see. Each of them caught a glimpse of Tiermann and Toaster, standing there, locked in each other’s arms, skeletal and silhouetted in the incandescence. The last of Toaster’s tubes had ignited and gone off in the most brilliant burst of light he had ever mustered.

  It was too much for Tiermann.

  Solin cried out as he saw what was happening. He started forward to help his father, but the Doctor held his arm. ‘It’s too late.’

  Ernest Tiermann’s charred and smouldering form fell away from his opponent’s, and clattered to the ground. Thunk. It lay there untwitching, unbreathing. Utterly dead and smoking.

  Nobody could say anything. They were transfixed instead by the spectacle of Toaster, blinded, staggering about and still wreathed in green flames. The last murderous act that the Domovoi had pushed him to had been one step too far. He was swaying, he was buckling. . .

  the green fire was dying away. . .

  ‘Toaster!’ cried Barbara, to the ancient robot.

  For a moment the old sun bed was himself again. ‘Barbara! Doctor!

  Martha. . . I am sorry. . . I have killed Tiermann. . . She took me over. . . the Domovoi. . . ’

  And then the robot collapsed, stone dead, in the wreckage. The green flame shrank and disappeared. Barbara hastened to his side, gasping and wheezing with grief.

  Martha turned to the Doctor. ‘Is that the end for the Domovoi, too?’

  He looked grim. ‘I don’t know. She was weakening, certainly. She’s losing her influence over things here. There’s hardly anything left for her to control. . . ’

  Solin, who had been solemnly paying tribute over his father’s body, turned back to look at the Voracious Craw. Its dense mass seemed even closer. The very earth underneath them was trembling in an-ticipation of being churned up and stripped away. Rocks and chunks of masonry were starting to quiver. He stared back at the advancing maw and something of the sheer horror of this forced his glance away. It was hard to look at the immense creature for too long. The mind itself seemed to veer away from thoughts of its hugeness and 154

  unstoppability. ‘Doctor. . . ’ he said, quietly.

  The Doctor was on his feet. He looked straight into the distance, at the terrible view Solin had been taking in. And the Doctor grinned.

  ‘Do you know what? We’re going to stop it.’

  Martha stood up. ‘Why? What’s left to save?’

  ‘Plenty,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s plenty here besides the Tiermann clan. Indigenous stuff. Lovely plants and beasties who never did anyone any harm, cosmically speaking. Let’s save them all! And besides.

  I wouldn’t like to bet on our chances of getting away safely with the Voracious Craw sucking everything up. Even that little hop we just did wore the TARDIS out – it’s still being affected. So we still have to stop the Craw.’

  ‘How are we going to do that?’ Martha asked. She was longing to simply get inside the TARDIS and leave this place. But the Doctor knew what he was doing. If he said they had to stop the Craw first, then that was what they’d have to do.

  ‘Aha,’ grinned the Doctor. ‘Luckily, I’ve been working on my second secret plan for the last little while. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘What secret plan?’ Martha frowned.

  ‘Barbara,’ the Doctor said gently, touching the robot’s shoulder. ‘Any more pop left?’

  Confused, she said, ‘Of course, Doctor.’

  Seconds later they were all forcing down more carbonated drinks at the Doctor’s request. None of them were particularly thirsty, after everything he had made them drink, during the last hour or so.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Solin asked, frowning.

  ‘How’s this a plan?’ said Martha, tipping more pop down her throat.

  ‘You’ll see!’ he grinned, pacing about and jumping up and down on the spot. ‘I’m trying to fizz myself up! Come on, you lot! Jump!’ Suddenly, he stopped and clicked his fingers. ‘Sound system?’ he asked.

  The Dreamhome must have had a very advanced sound system, I’d have thought. Hidden speakers and microphones and stuff. That’s how the Domovoi was communicating with you all, and you with it.

  Can you show me?’

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  Solin looked around at the burning, shattered walls of the Dreamhome. ‘Of course. If there’s anything left, and still in working order. . . ’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Off you go! Quickly!’ He glanced at his watch, and then at the horizon, and made a few rapid calculations in his head. ‘If I’m right, we’ve got about twenty minutes until this whole place vanishes up into the rapacious maw of the Voracious Craw.’ He saw that Martha was staring at him and he grinned reassuringly. ‘You think I’ve gone bananas, don’t you?’

  ‘Why don’t we just leave?’ she said pointedly.

  ‘I want to try something out,’ he said.

  ‘Is this your plan to distract the Craw with the TARDIS?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve changed my mind. This is different! This is brilliant! My other plan! I’m going to put a stop to the Craw and send it on its way back into space. I’m going to make it leave this world alone.’

  ‘But why?’ Martha asked, exasperated. ‘It’s too late! Everything’s gone! Everyone’s dead! We don’t even know if the Domovoi herself is alive. . . ’

  The Doctor looked serious and thoughtful. ‘What about the creatures, hmm? They were here before the Tiermann family arrived.

  What about the trees and all that? And what about that sabre-tooth we saw right at the start? Her and her cubs? What about them?’ He swigged back his pop and reached for another bottle. ‘It’ the likes of her I’m doing this for.’

  Solin gave a yell from across the ruins. ‘The sound system is working! What do you wan
t me to do?’

  ‘Aha!’ cried the Doctor energetically, and went skipping over the wreckage, all skinny, excitable limb and whirling coat tails.

  Martha stared back at the vast tapeworm thing in the sky. Less than twenty minutes. To her eyes it seemed like they would have much less time.

  She forced herself to think more positively. The Doctor knew what he was doing. And, truth be told, he had shamed her, by having to remind her of the sabre-tooth, and the other life forms indigenous to 156

  Tiermann’s World. Of course they had to do what they could to knock the Craw off course, and save them.

  The Doctor called her over. ‘And Barbara, you can help too!’

  Martha hurried across and found that he had fixed up a microphone and was gathering them around it.

  ‘Now, Barbara, you work the controls on this,’ he said. ‘You can’t do what the rest of us are going to do, because, well, you don’t have a belly or an oesophagus or anything.’

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ Barbara asked, taking hold of the microphone.

  The Doctor winked at them all. ‘Hope you’re all feeling windy.’

  Solin blinked at him. ‘What?’

  The Doctor said: ‘On Barbara’s count of three, we’re all going to burp as loudly and as much as we possibly can.’

  ‘Burp?’ Martha nearly laughed. This was typical of him. ‘I thought you were going to make some solemn speech and broadcast it over the speakers. Something about protecting this planet and warning the Craw. Saying you were a Time Lord and so it better watch out and all that!’

  ‘No, no, no,’ the Doctor shook his head firmly. ‘Do you think that thing’ – he pointed wildly – ‘is going to take any notice of speech-making and diplomacy? No! Belching! That’s what we have to do!

  It’s the only way!’

  ‘But. . . why, Doctor?’ Solin asked, utterly mystified.

  Barbara – who had learned a thing or two about trusting the Doctor’s ideas – simply told him: ‘Just do it. And – one – and two – and three!’

  The three of them belched as much and as loudly as they could into the microphone.

  The Doctor was surprisingly, disgustingly eloquent with his burps.

  They recorded a minute’s worth and then the Doctor instructed Barbara: ‘Right. Loop it. Amplify it. Distort it. Echo it. And get the remains of this house to broadcast it, loud as it can in the direction of the Voracious Craw!’

  Barbara set busily to work.

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  ‘Do you know, my ears are ringing?’ the Doctor told Martha. ‘You’ve got a powerful set of lungs on you.’

  ‘Me?’ she gasped.

  Solin was looking mystified. ‘What are we doing? I’ve watched both my parents die today. My home destroyed. And you are making us behave like children, Doctor. . . ’

  Now the Doctor looked serious. ‘All in a good cause, Solin. You’ll see.’

  Barbara had been communing with the rest of the shattered house.

  ‘Doctor! The Domovoi is completely dormant! Almost dead! She isn’t resisting at all as I take over the circuits, as I use the sound system. . . ’

  ‘Just as well,’ the Doctor said. ‘We don’t need her interference now.

  OK, Barbara? Ready?’

  The robot nodded. ‘All set.’

  The Doctor turned to look up into the sky.

  The Craw was almost directly above the forest in which the TARDIS

  had materialised in the first place. The tree tops were rippling and their roots digging in for dear life. . .

  ‘Do it, Barbara!’ the Doctor commanded. ‘Do it now!’

  Barbara played the short looped tape they had made.

  The noise came blaring out of every speaker hidden away in the wreckage of the Dreamhome.

  The Doctor and his friends covered their ears. The noise was terrific.

  Martha felt as if her eardrums were going to explode. Every organ inside each of their bodies was vibrating fit to burst. The ground was quaking and shaking underneath them.

  All around them bruited the horrendous, continuous noise of the biggest belch ever recorded. An almighty eructation was ripping out across the land.

  Martha was ducking down beside Solin, and she watched the Doctor striding about, laughing madly, hands clamped to his ears.

  Then she looked up at the horrendous underbelly of the Voracious Craw.

  The effect of their recording on the creature was astonishing.

  Its mouth had clamped shut.

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  The forest lay still beneath it. The vegetation that had started to lift away from the ground slumped back down into place. The Craw was simply hovering ineffectually as the sound waves echoed through the valley.

  Martha hurried over to the Doctor and tugged on his coat sleeve.

  She tried to ask him what was happening, and why the Craw had stopped. But the noise was too fierce for them to say anything to each other.

  She could only watch, with the Doctor, Solin and Barbara, as the Voracious Craw gradually changed its mind. And changed its direction. It was backing up, rather slowly, with all the grace of a massive cruise liner doing a U-turn in the middle of a stormy ocean.

  Still the noise rang out. Slowed down, altered, looped like that. . .

  their belches did sound horrific.

  Like the cries of some ancient,

  primeval beast. . .

  Now the Doctor was springing up and down on his toes. He was jumping for joy and waving his hands in the air. Martha still couldn’t hear what he was shouting.

  But one thing was plain. Something was happening that had never happened before.

  The Voracious Craw was going. It was turning away and growing smaller as it slipped into the upper atmosphere. It was leaving Tiermann’s World behind.

  Never before, in the history of this monstrous race, had one of the Voracious Craw left behind a meal unfinished. . .

  Once he was quite sure that the Craw was going, the Doctor turned to hug his companions. And when she was crushed to him and he was yelling right down her ear, then Martha could at last hear what he was saying: ‘We did it! We sent it away! We saved the world, Martha! We saved the world again!’

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  They let Solin take one last look around the ruins of the only home he had ever known. The Doctor and Martha were waiting for him by the TARDIS.

  ‘So. . . the noise we were making,’ Martha said. ‘It was just like the sound of an even bigger and even more Voracious Craw?’

  ‘That’s exactly how that creature heard it,’ the Doctor nodded. He was still drinking pop. He had somehow acquired a taste for the sticky, sugary stuff and now Barbara’s supply was almost depleted. Not that Barbara was complaining. With not so many bottles clunking around inside her, she felt lighter, and freer than she had in years.

  ‘And our Voracious Craw backed off and went away, because it thought that a bigger Craw had first dibs on the planet?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ the Doctor said. ‘They are a dreary bunch of witless bullies, I’m afraid. And they give in very easily, when someone bigger and stronger comes along. Like all bullies do. All we had to do was stand up to it.’

  ‘We scared the hell out of it,’ Martha laughed.

  ‘That’s another way of putting it,’ the Doctor grinned. ‘Was that a medical diagnosis, Doctor Jones?’

  ‘You bet your monstrous eructations on it, Doctor.’

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  He unlocked the TARDIS door for her. ‘Shall we tell the others it’s time to go?’

  She nodded towards Solin, who was still striding about thoughtfully in the blackened rubble. ‘It’ll be hard for him.’

  ‘He’ll be OK. He’s a resilient kid. And he’ll fit right in on Spaceport Antelope Slash Nitelite. It’s a real ragbag of displaced persons and interesting types. Quite I fascinating place, really. I reckon Barbara will enjoy it there, too. She’s had far too sheltered a life. She’ll look after Solin.’

  They watched B
arbara ambling up to the TARDIS. She had a spring in her step. She looked as elated as a vending machine ever could.

  ‘I’m ready, Doctor, Martha,’ she said. ‘I’ve said my goodbyes. To Toaster, to everyone else.’

  ‘And the Domovoi?’ the Doctor asked her.

  ‘I think she’s gone,’ Barbara said, frowning. ‘I can’t detect her anywhere in the remains of the Dreamhome. I think she’s gone deep, deep underground.’

  The Doctor stared at Barbara and nodded solemnly.

  For a second he allowed himself to wonder: what if she was lying?

  She had been connected to the Domovoi, after all. What if – even unbeknownst to Barbara herself – the Domovoi had secreted some small part of her malign intelligence inside the circuits of the vending robot? And what if she managed to get herself away from Tiermann’s World? What if she managed to smuggle herself away, inside Barbara, and into the galaxy at large?

  The Doctor waved the thought away. He was getting much too suspicious. Always thinking and expecting the worst. No, the Domovoi was gone. And it was time for them to leave, too.

  ‘I think I’m ready, Doctor. To explore the universe,’ Barbara said brightly.

  The Doctor was watching as Solin turned his back on his wrecked and burning world. There was nothing left here for him now. The boy was turning and walking towards the TARDIS, ready to be swept away and taken into a different time and place.

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  The Doctor smiled at Barbara. ‘It’s completely marvellous, exploring the universe,’ he told her. ‘Everyone should try it. Eh, Martha?’

  ‘Too right,’ she said, and led the way into the ship. Martha was secretly glad that they were dropping off Barbara and Solin (with that embarrassing crush of his!) at that spaceport. They were all very nice and everything, but she was happiest when it was just he and the Doctor.

  Smith and Jones. At home in the universe. And setting off together for new and fantastic adventures.

  Now she was returning to the valley.

  Her cubs were safe. They were strong and they had been fed at last. She had found them something: a fleeing beast she had caught up with and casually killed. She had fed her cubs and she had eaten a little flesh too, though not as much as she needed to.