The Doctor raised an eyebrow and tried the comm’s keypad.
TIOUCH ME I DIEE
The Doctor was all thumbs, but the ghost got the message and took a step back. This was odd. If it really wanted to destroy him, it could have made a good stab at it. Why wasn’t it trying? What reason could it have to delay? For that matter, why wait until the corridor was as wide as this and it would be easier to duck past? The Doctor peered at the ceiling to see if there was some sort of emitter or lens projecting the image. The ghost itself was gesturing around impotently. Its fingers brushed the comm.
IM LOOKING 4 SOME1
The Doctor was unused to this form of communication, so it took a moment for him to translate. This was an illusion, just a phantom generated by the Fortress. A defence system. A hologram – or something very like it –with just enough artificial intelligence to work out where the chinks in his armour were. A lure. A trick.
What if he was wrong, though? It was an odd trick. He typed, fumbling a little.
I CAN HLP U
He thought for a moment, then added: IAM DR? BTW
?????
It asked.
‘I wish I knew,’ the Doctor said, typing, ALIEN
4TRESS. IT ATTACKED ARCPLIS. He frowned, adding, U TRAPPED HERE?
The ghost nodded, frantic.
HELP FIND HER
The Doctor was about to ask ‘who?’ but the ghost anticipated this and added: DELA ‘You know Dela?’
The ghost nodded, eager.
‘I know Dela,’ he said. The ghost understood the meaning without the Doctor having to type it out, and its face flickered with hope, for the very first time.
‘What’s your name?’ the Doctor asked.
He read the answer.
‘No. No, no, no.’ The Doctor stepped back. ‘This is a
trap. This is still a trap. A very weird, extremely indirect…
non-trappy… trap.’
There was a single word on the screen.
GYLL
‘You’re Gyll?’
Y
Dela’s lover, the one she’d been so reluctant to talk about, killed on the day the Fortress appeared along with 200 million other people in Arcopolis.
U V BEEN HERE 15 YRS?
The ghost frowned, looked around.
15 MINS MAX
BUT 15 YRS SINCE ATTACK
N
Y
N
YYYWKO
?
WITH KNOBS ON, the Doctor clarified.
Gyll looked very lonely. Sad, more than panicked, like the universe had slipped through those ghostly fingers.
This is a trap, the Doctor reminded himself. A simple trick designed to feed back and magnify his fears and insecurities. Giving him someone to save, allowing him to picture the satisfaction he’d feel when he looked Dela in the eye and said he was sorry Jall died, but he had brought someone else back. The sort of small, human moment he lived for.
It might not be a trap. This might be Gyll, somehow not dead.
He could hear footsteps behind him – the Eyeless was close by. Impossible to tell how close.
The Doctor pulled himself together. The ghost was a distraction. Whether this was a trap or not, whether it was Gyll or not, it was still a distraction. The Doctor knew his priority had to be the weapon, not this.
The weapon could perhaps be altered so that it—The Doctor didn’t even allow himself to finish his thought. No.
I WILL COME BACK 4 U, the Doctor typed quickly, aware as he did so that he’d made a similar promise to Dela. He added a little more, until it read, I WILL COME
BACK 4 U + DELA.
Then the Doctor swept past, careful to avoid even the slightest physical contact with the ghost. He didn’t look back as he hurried away, so didn’t see that Gyll was watching him go, tearful.
Alsa was working with the Eyeless with green eyes, trying to remember everything the Doctor had said about the weapon.
It told her that Dela had fought the telepathic process, found it unpleasant and intrusive. Alsa liked the feeling of having the Eyeless in her mind. Despite that, Alsa wasn’t used to giving. She was used to cooperating, ganging together and divvying up the spoils. Kids did that when they had to. There was plenty for everyone, usually. But you always got something in return for helping someone.
It was only fair.
The Eyeless said it understood, and now, suddenly, Alsa remembered running across a dusty, airless landscape, weighing almost nothing, leaping forwards a hundred metres at a time, kicking up bronze dust and being flooded with such an amazing elated feeling. Thirty Eyeless were around her, all sharing that feeling, amplifying it by endlessly feeding it back, running for running’s sake.
‘You actually did that?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s brilliant.’
‘There was a danger we would be dashed against the rocks.’
‘That was what made it brilliant. You could have died.’
‘An unlikely outcome,’ it told her before conceding, ‘although a possible one.’
Reluctant to be dragged away from those memories, keen for more like it, Alsa remembered what the Eyeless wanted her to do. Alsa remembered the Council meeting, knowing exactly what Jennver was going to say because it was what she always said, letting the smelly old woman walk into it.
The Eyeless seemed more interested in that than in her memories of the Doctor.
‘You were angry.’
Alsa snickered. When wasn’t she?
The Eyeless were better than people. They could do so much that people couldn’t. Jennver and the other parents wanted everyone to sit around eating weeds, plopping out babies. Alsa had thought the Doctor would change things, but he wasn’t going to help her. But she wanted more than memories – if the Eyeless took the weapon, she couldn’t use it to power the city—‘In return for your help, we will give you an engine that will do that,’ the Eyeless promised.
‘Will I be able to operate it?’
‘Yes. We will give you that knowledge, too.’
‘Only me?’
‘That is your desire, so yes.’
‘Give me another memory,’ she said.
Jall screaming, terrified and alone as the Eyeless killed her, drank her thoughts so that it was both the murderer and the victim, the emotion feeding back, just like the sense of elation had a moment before.
Alsa’s chest heaved like her heart was going to burst out of it. She felt terrified, but still not quite fully back in her own body. She was now acutely aware of the weight of her feet, the sweat in her armpits, the dryness in her mouth. Her breathing. She was breathing too fast. She had to stop breathing. Her tongue almost choked her.
‘Why did you show me that?’ Alsa gasped.
Jall’s dead eyes peered down at her.
It was only a sensation, like the others.
Was that her own thought or had the Eyeless put it there? It wasn’t anything like what she wanted to think.
‘Not a nice sensation.’
‘No. Neither good nor bad, merely true.’ It hesitated ‘You want power over others, but why? Do you think you will be a good leader?’
Alsa shrugged. ‘Don’t you want to have power among the Eyeless?’
‘No.’ But the only Eyeless with eyes had paused, just for a moment.
‘I suppose,’ she conceded. ‘Jennver got out of having babies. She’s too old now, but she wasn’t fifteen years
ago. I want that choice.’
‘Jennver holds the power in the village because she is the only obstetrician. You need someone to deliver the babies. She has not shared her knowledge because that knowledge is her power.’
That simple truth had never once occurred to Alsa, but there was no disputing it. Jennver had been as manipulative as anyone. She almost felt admiration.
Alsa’s mind now flooded with a whole new vocabulary: words like gravidity, macrosomia, haematocrit, folate, even somatomammotropin. More years’ experience than she’
d lived.
‘You are now an obstetrician,’ the Eyeless announced.
‘What would you like in return?’
‘Your anger.’
The thick steel door slammed down in front of the Doctor like a guillotine blade, almost taking his toes off.
Symbols set in the door explained it would stay deadbolt sealed for precisely one minute. Sensors dotted around the room whirred and bleeped. The Fortress was performing a full bioscan on him. This didn’t worry him; it meant he must be getting closer to the weapon chamber.
The Doctor kept aiming glances over his shoulder, wondering how far behind him the Eyeless was. He’d not seen or heard it for a while. It might have been caught in another trap. Perhaps it had met the ghost.
The encounter with Gyll had rattled the Doctor. It didn’t make sense that the ghost had been one of the automatic defences. Or, rather, it didn’t make sense to him. If it was one of the defences, by definition there was a mechanical, perfect logic involved.
The Doctor wasn’t sure what worried him the most: that it was all part of a game the Fortress was playing with him and he didn’t understand the rules… or that he’d really met the ghost of Gyll.
He’d met ghosts before. That didn’t bother him. They were usually trouble, but plenty of the people and things and people-things the Doctor met on his travels were trouble.
No.
The thing was… the weapon, the ultimate weapon at the heart of the Fortress, utterly annihilated its target. The whole point of it was that it left no trace. If that was a real ghost, it was most certainly a trace. Not just something it had missed, something it had affected.
The Doctor didn’t want to think too hard about the weapon; he wanted to get to it, destroy it and leave. Keep it simple.
The Doctor glanced down at Alsa’s comm, but the screen was dead. He rattled the device and the plan of the Fortress reappeared, but as it did so, the floor shook.
That was puzzling. Had he really – ? He rattled the comm again.
The floor shook again.
‘Am I doing that?’ the Doctor asked out loud, wondering how he possibly could be.
Then he looked more closely at the display. It wasn’t him – the Eyeless ships had begun their attack.
This wasn’t good.
The minute was up, there was a click, the deadbolt slid back, and the door in front of him started to roll open, very slowly.
There was still no sign of the Eyeless. The Doctor glanced back –– and something the size of a man, coiled and glinting, barely visible, was springing at him.
A poised landing and two sharp strides and the Eyeless was at him, swinging its arm precisely, efficiently. The Doctor’s reflexive, panicky dodge worked, though, and the glass hand grasped at air.
The Doctor lurched for the door, but it wasn’t far enough open, and he merely clanged into it.
‘Get them to call off the attack!’ the Doctor shouted at the Eyeless, ducking clear of another swipe.
It wasn’t listening. It was hunched down, like a prize fighter, and had managed to get him to take two paces away from the door, which was now almost fully open.
The Doctor had to get out of here.
His opponent was used to reading minds, but couldn’t do that now. So the Doctor simply feinted, moving to step right, then darting left, past it and through the doorway.
The door slammed down between them.
Timelocked, deadbolt sealed. One minute.
The Doctor took a deep breath and hurried on.
Jeffip watched the four Eyeless who’d stayed out of the Fortress.
Fladon, Dela and the boys were at the big window, looking out at the spacecraft. Jeffip could hardly blame them for that. He, though, was far more interested in the ships’ builders.
Telepaths. They’d taken memories from Dela, as easily as if they’d overheard her talking.
What sort of society would a race of mindreaders have?
Jeffip thought of all the things they couldn’t do: lie, cheat, boast, patronise, deceive, conceal, exaggerate, bluff.
Those all seemed like negative things, and usually they were, but even the white lies, even being polite, would be impossible.
Jeffip didn’t like the idea of living in a place where every passing thought was transmitted to everyone else.
He had lived with the same three dozen adults for fifteen years, in a situation that forced them together, sharing so much. Even now, though, he didn’t know absolutely everything about any of them. They all had secrets. He often thought things he didn’t really mean, or had opinions he didn’t want other people to know, or ideas he wasn’t ready to share.
Jeffip was at a huge disadvantage. The Eyeless knew what he was thinking, but he didn’t have a clue about them. He couldn’t even work out where they thought.
They didn’t have brains, at least not like human beings did, or built-in computers or… well, anything he could imagine which was capable of thinking.
The Eyeless were wandering around and looked aimless, but Jeffip thought there must be some alien purpose to it. They could be pacing out the room, or performing some other type of survey.
One of the Eyeless was walking up to him, now.
‘What are you looking at?’ it demanded.
This startled Jeffip. Up until now, their voices had been perfectly calm.
‘I meant no offence,’ Jeffip insisted, looking down at his own feet.
‘You like looking at people?’ it asked.
Dela was near to them, and she walked over, puzzled.
‘Why’s it doing that?’ she asked.
Jeffip shrugged.
‘It’s like it’s drunk,’ Dela pointed out.
It was a good description. The body language was different – more of a swagger.
‘We need to get out of here,’ Jeffip said.
‘It’s too risky to stay,’ Dela agreed.
Something had changed, and Jeffip tried to think of the most diplomatic way of asking. Then he realised that the Eyeless had read his mind.
‘We consulted our colleague,’ it answered. ‘The presence of a weapon of such power changes the equations. We have decided on a strategy of violent conflict resolution. Do not attempt to leave this area, as we will have further need of your knowledge.’
The calm way that was announced infuriated Dela, who just turned to Jeffip and looked like she was going to take it out on him. Jeffip was equally frustrated. He pushed his way in front of the Eyeless nearest to him.
‘Careful,’ Dela warned.
‘The Doctor warned us,’ Jeffip said curtly. ‘You know that already.’
The Eyeless didn’t respond.
‘You would attack the Fortress?’
‘The assault will begin shortly. Please take cover.’
They’d all heard that. Fladon and the boys looked around and quickly concluded that the safest place would be behind the engine blocks.
Dela joined Jeffip. He wanted to slap her, even though he knew she agreed with him that attacking the Fortress was insanity. What was the matter with him?
‘I can’t allow it,’ Jeffip said, venting his anger on the Eyeless. ‘I will do everything I can to stop this.’
The Eyeless raised its right hand.
Jeffip frowned. There was a gold disc embedded in the glass palm. Everyone noticed it at the same time. The ground had started to shake beneath their feet.
‘I don’t understand,’ Jeffip said, irritated. ‘What do want me to—?’
The gold disc flashed as bright as the sun for a fraction of a second. Jeffip staggered one step back, then stumbled over. Smoke was pouring from his mouth and nostrils. He tried to pull himself up, tried to cough, but instead all he did was die.
The Doctor wasn’t worried too much about the Eyeless ships. He was extremely worried about how the Fortress would respond to them. He could see from the comm display that the Fortress strategy computer was running detectors over the spacecraft, as they moved into atta
ck position. There was only one reason a strategy computer collected data.
He had to get to the weapon, and he had to do it right now, while the Fortress was still inactive, because things were about to get a lot more dangerous. The route was laid out for him, right there on the comm screen.
The Doctor began running.
*
Dela’s eyes were screwed shut.
She was huddled with the others, behind the stack of engine blocks. They shouldn’t have come here. It was so stupid of them. They told the children over and over not to come to the City at all, but especially not to go near the Fortress. Here they were, ten metres away from it. If they’d stayed in the village, what would have happened?
They’d have just lost a few of the boys and Alsa, the biggest problem case amongst the girls. Jeffip would still be alive. The Doctor and the Eyeless would have settled their dispute without them – it wasn’t as though any of the survivors could have changed anything.
‘What’s happening?’ Morren said, so softly she hardly heard him, even though her son was curled up, pressing into her. Even with her eyes closed, Dela’s world filled with light.
And then came the sound.
It was so tempting to turn and look. To fight that, Dela imagined her feet had been nailed to the floor and her eyelids had been gummed up with glue. It was the first time in years she’d had her two sons with her like this.
The boys were holding – squeezing – her hands. She hoped she could transmit strength to them. Dela hoped she had that strength within her to give.
There was terror, like a blanket, numbing her, isolating
her from the outside world. She tried, and failed, to block out the whole universe.
The ground was vibrating. A sensation Dela remembered from before, so she concentrated on that, the past, when the machines and engines of Arcopolis thrummed all the time, never sleeping, never even pausing. Every day since, Dela had had moments when she’d pictured the faces of her parents, her friends, her lover. There weren’t any tears now, not after so long. She had also pined for the comforts of the city, the auto-massaging-showers, the instant food, pills that made headaches go away, robots that unloaded the washer-dryer and ironed everything. The humming now was different; a far less specific memory, one of a sense of activity, the feel of technology. It made her nostalgic, even as she felt scared that the light and sound coming from the Eyeless ships would take her apart. She’d been safe, then.
Dr. Who - BBC New Series 29 Page 11