by Doctor Who
Rory threw a look at the Doctor. 'Doctor, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in this spacey stuff, but what if there's a third option.' He took Oliver's DOCTOR WHO
hand. 'Every day you say? Every day since Daisy died?'
Oliver tried to speak but couldn't at first, his mind battling with the question. Then he shook his head. 'No. No, only since... since...'
'Since Mrs Porter brought you to recuperate in Shalford Heights, where she thought you'd be safe.
Not realising her husband had manipulated her into doing it. And once you were here, you could smell the Tahnn, yes? Hear them? Feel them?'
'Yes. Here. I can feel them coming. Here!'
'No you can't, Oliver. I'm sorry, but you are wrong. Because if you had sensed them coming over the last six or so years, they'd be here by now, wouldn't they?'
Oliver wanted to reply but couldn't. The logic Rory had thrown at him panicked him.
'Doctor, Oliver was wrong and because we believed him, we're wrong. The Tahnn aren't coming.'
'You mean, it's all wrong? Oliver couldn't sense them at all?'
'No, not at all. It's the PTSD - he doesn't know what he's actually sensing. His logical mind kept saying it had to be the Tahnn coming. But he was wrong. The reason he can sense them every day?
It's because they are already here. They always have been. That's why he senses them. The Tahnn are already here in Shalford Heights and have been here even longer than Oliver.'
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The Doctor gave a 'Yes!' very loudly. 'Rory, you are more magnificent than I thought you were before.' He looked at Rory. 'I've said that a lot lately, like I expected you to be a bit dim. I'm sorry, I had no right to treat you that way.'
Rory shrugged. 'It's all right. Let's get Amy back safely and I'll forgive you.'
'Oh, Amy's fine, isn't she, 6011?'
'Absolutely.' The Weave smiled at Rory. 'She loves you an awful lot, I can tell you that.'
Rory blushed. 'Anyway,' he said, 'what if Nathaniel Porter is a Tahnn-Weave hybrid.'
'Impossible,' said 6011. 'No Weave would allow their body to be defiled in such a way.'
'Well, as theories go, that's a bit of a leap, Rory,'
said the Doctor. 'Which is why I like it. And it explains everything.' He looked hard at 6011. 'You had a cuckoo in the nest.'
'But if a Tahnn has access to Weave physiology, it could be anyone. We have no Tahnn prisoner in the ship, so we wouldn't know who 3 was pretending to be.'
'Do you have the real Nathaniel Porter?'
'Of course not.'
The Doctor shrugged. 'I bet he never survived the meeting with your double agent. So, Tahnns are basically humanoid, going by Oliver's description, bar the prune faces. So let's say two arms, two legs, heart, lungs, etc, yes?'
'If you say so,' said Rory.
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'The Weave, however, are vastly different. They look like wool, but in fact it's a marvellous form of flexible protein ribbons, always in flux. So they can interconnect with one another, their technology and so on. The ship and crew are all one living organism
— when one dies, they're all in trouble.'
Rory considered this. 'So if Nathaniel Porter is a Tahnn with the capabilities of a Weave...'
'He's about the most dangerous thing on this planet right now.' The Doctor turned to stare crossly at 6011. 'And you, you and your people brought him here and never realised. I thought you were better than that. What happened to all that peace and prosperity and stuff I remember?'
'It died during the war with the Tahnn.' 6011
started to walk away.
'0i, I haven't finished yet.'
'That's irrelevant. I need to take this information back to my Commander and make sure Enola Porter does not break through the hull of our ship.'
Rory frowned. 'Your ship can fly through outer space, but a woman with a trowel can damage it?'
'They are four Weave down, Rory,' the Doctor explained. 'That's like you having pneumonia — all your defences are down. Their ship is very sick and prone to deterioration.'
6011 snatched up the two drawings that Marten Heinke had done showing Weave heads on human bodies. 'Maybe these will remind Enola what she is up against,' 6011 said and walked away.
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Rory sighed. 'She still looks like Amy to me.'
The Doctor was settling Oliver in his chair. 'We need to get him safely inside.'
'Why?'
'Because the moment Enola damages that ship, the rest of the Tahnn will be here, and Nathaniel Porter, or whatever hybrid he is, will no longer need 011y alive. Place him inside with Old John and the other staff; he should be safe for a bit.'
'Unless our space killers just think it expedient to kill everyone in the house en masse.'
'Oh, you are Mr Cheerful today, Rory Williams.
Come on, we need to catch up with her!'
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Chapter
13
Not far away, just beneath the school rugby pitch, Enola Porter and her band of archaeologists were preparing for the momentous occasion. Enola and Christopher Maginn were posing for a quick sketch by Marten Heinke, who was more nervous than normal. Hamish Ridley and Walpole Spune were checking their equipment.
'I live for moments like this,' said Ridley. 'You?'
Spune just shrugged. 'I've seen enough things in my lifetime. One more is neither here nor there.'
'Gosh, you're cheerful, aren't you.' Ridley shook his head.
'Enola,' said Marten, putting down his artwork.
'I must ask you again not to do this.'
Enola laughed. 'Why, for heaven's sake?'
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'You know why,' he said darkly. 'I have shown you enough times in my drawings.'
'What's he talking about, Enola?' asked Maginn, but she waved him away.
'Let me discuss this with Marten privately, Christopher,' she said. 'Can you go and stop Spune and Hamish from assaulting one another, yes?'
With a dismissive sigh, Maginn did as bidden.
Enola grabbed Marten's arm. 'Who are you really?'
'I am Marten Heinke.'
'You most certainly are not. Oh, you have his talent and his attitude off pat, but the Marten I first met would not have drawn woolly faces on people.
You tried to warn me about my husband and about the Doctor, didn't you?'
'I have to stop you, Enola. I allowed this charade to continue because I needed to stay undercover, not reveal myself. I had hoped I could scare you away from this path.'
She snorted. 'If you knew me at all, you'd have realised very early on - the more you push me away, the more I push forward. What is behind this wall of mud? What are you hiding?'
'You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'
'Try me. The Doctor reckoned it was something unearthly, a spaceship or something. I think he might be right. You're not human, are you, Marten?'
Marten regarded her carefully and actually smiled. 'You are an exceptional human being, Enola.
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I am honoured to have known you. But if you don't leave this dig now, you will not survive what is to come.'
'And what's that?'
'A race of aliens called the Tahnn. They want what is inside our ship.'
'Your... I see.' Enola glanced over at the other three. 'Are they with you?'
Marten looked affronted. 'No of course not. As if!'
Enola laughed cheerfully. 'I admire your honesty.
But I need a stronger reason not to discover your ship than you simply asking me not to.'
Marten pulled her closer. 'If you damage our hull, you will release something... something I can't put into words that a human can understand. A concept, an energy field. We call it the Glamour. It can change... reality.'
Enola's eyes glittered. 'And you want me to fail to find that?'
'T
he human race is not... genetically conditioned to control it. Your world could go mad, literally insane, in moments.'
Enola considered that. 'But I want to understand that. Can you not see? You know my life - it's been building up to this moment.'
'Then be the better woman,' said Marten. 'For the sake of your species and mine, abort this. Please. I promise you, my people can show you wonders, anything. But don't damage our ship. It is so weak 191
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after centuries underground, undernourished and damaged.'
Enola looked at Marten and thought of the drawings he'd done.
He nodded. 'I can guess what you are thinking.
But imagine if I had come to you and said, "Hallo, I am an alien pretending to be your Germanic friend and I want you to leave my spaceship alone." You'd have thought I was mad.'
'Why do you assume I don't think that now?'
Marten shrugged. 'Because I am desperate. And I hope you understand that.'
They were disturbed by a shout from Ridley and Spune, fighting over something.
'My divination drew us here,' Spune was insisting.
'Nonsense,' countered Ridley. 'You can't divine a dig. Research, historical writings and a damn good leader in Enola Porter brought us here.'
'Careful lads,' Enola started, but Walpole Spune was having none of it. 'You are so closed-minded, Ridley. Have you not seen how marvellous the world is? There's room for all aspects of science.'
'Waving a blasted stick above the ground and saying you've found water, oil, money or the ruddy burial site of an Iron Age chieftain is not science. It's rubbish!'
Which was when Walpole Spune, frustrated at not being taken seriously at a moment of great discovery, shoved Hamish Ridley really hard into 192
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the wall. The wall between the archaeologists and the Exalted.
The wall caved in. Earth and mud and stone poured down.
Enola could only watch in shock as, for a tiny moment, she saw the alien spaceship beyond. It looked like a massive lump of green wool — that was the only way she could think of it.
That tiny moment ended as Hamish Ridley fell into the spaceship. Through it. Ripping an enormous gash in its side.
'No!' screeched Marten, or whoever he really was, behind her.
'Blimey,' was Christopher Maginn's comment.
"Pon my soul,' was Walpole Spune's.
If Hamish Ridley said anything as he fell into the ship, it was drowned out by the vast roar of something that seemed to come from within the ship. No, not from within, Enola realised. It was more like a yell of pain that came from the actual walls. And from Marten, behind her.
The noise didn't stop. It grew louder. Then a massive sparkling luminous burst of green-yellow energy poured out of the fresh rent, bathing them all.
This, Enola realised, was not light. It was something more. She felt it reach into her body, into the very molecules that made her exist, running through them, through the billions of atomic gaps in her cell structure.
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To her, it just felt like someone had looked into her soul.
She blacked out.
6011 gasped in pain as she reached the road leading to the school.
'No,' she hissed, 'I'm too late.'
'Indeed you are, 6011,' said a chilling voice behind her.
She turned and faced what she only knew as Nathaniel Porter. 'You traitor,' she said. 'You betrayed the Commander, the Weave, everything.'
'Not at all,' said Nathaniel Porter. 'I can't betray what I never believed in, can I?'
His face blurred and changed, and 6011 saw its Weave form adopt its true Weave features.
'You!' she gasped.
'Me,' he replied reaching out to grab her shoulders. 'The Glamour is going to be mine,' he said, and let his body turn to wool, flowing into 6011's. She couldn't scream. She could do nothing as the powerful man literally tore her apart, strand by strand. She had no time to think of anything until, in her very last moment of life, she remembered being happy. Being a child back home. Going on a voyage of discovery.
The TARDIS. The suns and moons and stars.
The space-time vortex. The Doctor with a different face, smiling as he showed her the wonders that the universe possessed.
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And 6011 died thinking back to the one good memory she could muster.
For a moment, Nathaniel Porter was pure Weave, then he drew what was left of 6011's body into himself, feeding off it. The next moment he transformed into a red-suited warrior, sallow-faced and oily-breathed. And then he was Nathaniel Porter again.
'The Glamour belongs to the Tahnn,' he said to himself.
Inside the Manse, Old John was sitting with Oliver Marks in his rooms, as the Doctor had asked him to.
The disturbed former soldier was lying on his bed, shivering, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling but seeing... seeing something Old John could only hope he would never experience himself.
Somehow the limping old man knew the Weave ship had been ruptured.
Because for a moment, everything became clear to him.
Because, in his mind's eye, he was 14 again. When he had snuck out from his father's homestead, in the dark, and investigated the torn-open ground where the Sky Gods had sent their emissary.
He had entered that hole, feeling his way in the dark, until he touched it.
It wasn't rock, or iron or anything hard. It was soft, springy.
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He had pushed against it, feeling it give, and then, somehow, his right foot had found a weak spot, like a knot in wood. He had massaged at it, worked at it until it gave way, and as first his foot then his leg had pushed into the weakened area of whatever it was he was exploring, he had heard a terrible noise. A screech of pain. A roar of anger.
He was bathed in a momentary green light and flung back.
The breach had sealed itself.
The green glow was gone.
He had tried to get up, but his leg was shattered.
So was his ankle, his foot and each toe.
And he had begun screaming until the whole village woke and managed to find him. Tor and his father Wulf had been horrified.
'Owain,' they'd said. 'Owain, what have you done to displease the Sky Gods so?'
But the Sky Gods were not displeased, it seemed.
No crops failed, no herds died. Indeed, for the rest of the village, life had carried on as normal.
But for Owain, one thing wasn't normal. Because his father died at the age of 35, and Tor died at 38, and his mother died at 29 (all good ages), but Owain himself didn't die. One by one, the villagers died as they would normally do, but he didn't. He just kept ageing, his leg never truly healing until he reached 65 years. His own children had had children by then. All had since died.
After 300 years, Owain knew this was the curse 196
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the Sky Gods had given him. He lived on through so many hundreds of lives, changing his identity between Owain, Owen, Ian, Iain, Ewan, Euan and John - all variants of the same name - on a regular basis. Often he would leave what eventually grew into Shalford Heights for a generation, so he could return when no one would remember the old man with the bad limp who had once lived there.
But he knew why he was there. It was a punishment. For he had disturbed the gift of the Sky Gods, and his penance was to ensure that no other human did the same thing.
Over the centuries, of course, Owain learned to realise this had been no gift of the Sky Gods. There were no Sky Gods, not in the sense that Wulf and Tor had envisaged. Yet what was under that mound, whatever it was, had to be protected.
That was why he stayed in Shalford Heights and why, for the last twelve years, he had been employed by Nathaniel Porter.
And only he knew the truth.
One day he had followed Nathaniel Porter to the school, hoping he wasn't going near the mound. But he
was. And Owain, by this time, known locally as Old John, had watched as creatures emerged from under the ground. Like woollen toys, man-sized and eager, first one then more had emerged from the ground. And, after a while, one on its own.
Nathaniel Porter had witnessed this too.
Nathaniel Porter had approached this solitary 197
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creature and tried to speak to it. And it had devoured him. One moment Nathaniel Porter had been trying to talk to the wool creature, the next, he was wrapped within wool himself and then, his body was gone. A moment later the wool creature had become Nathaniel Porter.
Old John had limped back to the Manse, to warn Mrs Porter, but she wasn't there and he had never seen her again.
Nathaniel Porter, apparently saddened by the disappearance of his wife, had eventually declared her dead, and the rest had become a nightmare.
When Oliver Marks had arrived, Old John took to looking after him, much as he'd sworn to look after the gift of the Sky Gods. He had failed in that task. He would not fail Oliver Marks.
Except now, it would appear, he had.
Because Old John's leg seared in agony suddenly, and he knew. He knew the thing under the ground had been disturbed, and he cried out.
But Oliver Marks cried out more. One word, shrieked so loudly, it could probably be heard in London.
'Daisy!'
The door to the room was flung open, and the Doctor and Rory Williams and Amy Pond were standing there.
'I'm sorry,' wailed Old John. 'I'm so sorry.'
Oliver Marks sat bolt upright.
'They are here,' he announced to the four of them.
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'I can smell them in the air.'
'Not yet they're not, 01ly. Unless...' The Doctor stopped and looked at Rory and Amy. 'Oh very clever, we all fell for that.'
'What?' asked Rory.
'That's not Amy,' the Doctor said.
'I know,' said Rory. 'It's 6011.'
'No, it's not,' the Doctor said. '6011 may well be dead. He probably killed her.'
'Who?'
The Doctor threw his arms up in anguish. 'The person who isn't here. The person under our noses from the very beginning.'