by Dan Abnett
‘Or this wasn’t a genetic library at all,’ he said. ‘It was an organic farm.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ said the Doctor, ‘that someone or something was growing meat in these tanks.’
Amy pulled a revolted face.
‘Like something out of Frankenstein’s lab?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘but an awful lot less nice.’
The hatch to the Incrypt waited for a moment, considering the scan of Rory’s palm. Rory stood with his hand pressed to the plate and a sick, fixed grin on his face, frantically working out what he would say when the hatch didn’t open.
He’d just come up with an absolutely killer approach that would absolutely, without question, persuade Bill Groan and the other Morphans he was on the level, despite the non-compliance of the hatch, but then the hatch opened and he never got a chance to use it.
‘You see?’ he said, hoping the billion tons of relief freighting his voice at that moment would not be obvious.
‘Well,’ said Bill Groan.
‘Guide preserve us,’ said Winnowner.
‘We have done you a disservice, Elect Rory,’ said Sol Farrow.
‘That’s entirely OK and fine,’ said Rory shaking his head and swallowing hard. ‘I understand that you have to be careful, especially with all the… the things that are happening. Shall we?’
He moved towards the hatch.
‘Well, there’s no need to go in now, is there?’ asked Winnowner. Jack Duggat half-blocked Rory’s nonchalant advance.
‘I mean,’ said the old woman, ‘the point was to see if you could open the door, and that point’s been made. There’s no need to go in.’
‘Well, no, I suppose,’ said Rory.
‘We had resolved to consult our Guide Emanual,’ Bill Groan said to Winnowner. ‘The chequer has confirmed Elect Rory’s worthiness. Why would we not include him in our study?’
Winnowner dropped her voice and spoke very directly and intently to Bill Groan.
‘Our council,’ she hissed. ‘Our council, not anybody else’s! This is a matter for Beside, and the council of Beside, and the word of our Guide Emanual as it is expressed to our council, not to anyone else! I’m sure Elect Rory and his council would not wish any of us to go prying into his Incrypt if we were visiting his plantnation.’
‘What about a fresh eye, an alternative approach?’ Vesta suggested.
‘No!’ snapped Winnowner.
‘It’s not for you to say no,’ said Bill Groan.
‘Nor is it for you to say yes,’ replied Winnowner. ‘The council must vote on it. That is all there is to it.’
Bill Groan nodded. He glanced at Sol. ‘Can we get back into the hall?’
The hammering had died away. It seemed quieter in the assembly. Things had calmed down. Or things were waiting to pounce the moment the doors opened.
‘Jack and I will check,’ Sol replied.
‘Send everyone home except the council,’ said Bill. ‘Clear the assembly. We need to settle this and we need to get on. If this danger is as urgent as Vesta and Rory say…’
The two men unbolted the doors and went back into the hall. Rory heard a renewed round of raised voices. He glanced at Vesta, worried. She smiled back reassuringly.
After a couple of minutes, Sol reappeared at the doors and beckoned them through. The assembly room had been emptied apart from the remaining council members. One of Jack Duggat’s labourers was closing up the outer doors. Nothing had been overturned, but many of the chairs and benches in the congregation section had been pushed aside or left in disarray. The meeting had not ended happily.
‘I had to bend the truth a little,’ Rory heard Jack Duggat mutter to Bill Groan. ‘I told them they had to return to their homes tonight because Guide needed the space. Deliberations had to be made. I told them it was Guide’s express desire.’
‘Guide will forgive you, Jack,’ Bill replied.
‘I said they’d have answers come Guide’s Bell,’ Jack added.
‘Then we’ll have to find them by then,’ said Bill.
He gestured to Vesta, indicating she should take Rory to one side and be seated. There was drink and a little food set out on a sideboard. Rory hadn’t realised just how hungry he was. He took some kind of soup, and some spelt bread, and watched as the council sat in discussion. Vesta ate too, with gusto, her eyes not leaving the debating council members.
‘Oh,’ she said suddenly, and sadly.
‘What?’ asked Rory. Before she could answer, he saw that Bill Groan was coming over.
‘We’ve taken the vote,’ Bill said. ‘It’s gone against you. I’m sorry, Elect.’
‘OK,’ said Rory. ‘What happens now?’
‘The Council will withdraw to the Incrypt and start work,’ said Bill. ‘I suggest you two stay here for now. Stay close by so we can talk, if we need to. Help yourself to more food. Rest a while.’
Bill walked back to the council members, who stood and followed him through the doors into the Incrypt. Jack Duggat went with them, leaving Sol Farrow behind to keep an eye on them. Sol closed the back doors, and then shrugged at Vesta and Rory, acknowledging that he shared their helplessness. Then he ladled out a bowl of soup and went to sit by one of the firebuckets.
Rory sat while Vesta and Sol continued to eat. He listened to the crack and pop of the embers in the firebuckets. A soft but steady tapping on the panes of the assembly windows told him it was snowing hard again.
He realised that, despite the dangers and alarms of the day, waiting was perhaps the worst thing of all.
‘Can we leave this place now?’ Amy asked. ‘Because it pongs.’
‘Uh-huh,’ the Doctor nodded. She could tell he wasn’t really listening. He was too deep in thought. She could almost see the cogs going around.
‘Shall we go out the way we came in?’ she asked, gesturing to the door that led back into the prep room.
‘Mm-hmm,’ he said. She still didn’t have his attention properly. He was just making sounds in response to her sounds, encouraging, non-specific sounds that created the illusion of an actual conversation without him having to engage in one.
That worried Amy. When the Doctor got side-tracked and lost in thought, it meant that there was a lot at stake. There was clearly a big problem on Hereafter, a proper, serious life-and/or-death problem. She’d worked that much out for herself. But the Doctor seemed to be troubled because, on top of the problem, there was a mystery as well.
She knew the Doctor quite liked problems. It didn’t matter how big, or difficult, or scary, or intractable, or galaxy-crushing, or tal-king-like-this-in-a-ras-ping-mon-o-tone-ro-bot-voice-and-u-sing-words-like-ex-ter-min-ate a problem was, the Doctor relished them. He could confront them. He could take them on. He could solve them. He could usually say something quite pithy and off the cuff while solving them.
Mysteries, on the other hand, nagged. They festered and itched. They got him distracted and made him fidgety. A problem and a mystery at the same time was a body blow, because the Doctor could only get on with solving the problem once he’d explained the mystery.
The mystery here had various elements: the complexity and scale of the terraformer, the machinations of the surly and relentless Ice Warriors, and the seriously terrible weather. Amy thought that, if it was up to her, she might choose to add a complete and utter lack of Christmas to the list, but that seemed unfair. However, there were other elements. Something to do with this giant greenhouse stacked with tanks of rotting meat, for a start. She didn’t really get the significance of that, but it seemed to trouble the Doctor greatly. It didn’t seem to fit with the other things he was worried about. It was odd. It was inexplicable.
Still, a bad smell was a bad smell, and a bad smell would have come as a welcome and fragrant breath of fresh air compared to the honk in the gallery. They’d been obliged to stand around in that place, surrounded by those reeking vats, for far too long as it was.
&nbs
p; ‘We’ll go back out then?’ she prompted.
‘Mm-hmm.’
He wasn’t even looking at her. He was pacing up and down, his finger to his lips.
‘We’ll come back out through that prep room with all the suits, then?’ she asked. ‘Find something else to look at?’
‘Uh-huh.’
She turned to Bel and Samewell.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘If we start walking, he’ll follow us.’
They started walking back along the row of vats towards the exit hatch. Sure enough, the Doctor followed them, though he was still so deeply submerged in thought it looked like he needed an idea snorkel.
They went out through the domed prep room with the Doctor tagging along behind.
‘Maybe we’ll find a nice spot for a picnic?’ Amy called out over her shoulder.
‘Mm-hmm,’ the Doctor responded.
‘He’s not listening to us,’ Amy said to Samewell and Bel. ‘His mind’s gone walkabout. He’s going into thinky overdrive.’
‘Does he get like this often?’ asked Arabel.
‘Yeah,’ said Amy. ‘Check this out.’ Still walking, she called out over her shoulder, ‘I see the walruses are very big this season.’
‘Mmmmm.’
‘They’re flowering very early.’
‘Mm-hmmm.’
‘Nice to see them playing glockenspiels, though, eh?’
‘Mmmmm.’
With her eyes and mouth open wide in mock dismay, Amy shook her head at Samewell and Bel, and made them both laugh.
Suddenly, the Doctor was right beside them. He was staring straight ahead. He was alarmingly alert.
‘We’ve got to go back,’ he said quietly.
‘What?’ Amy asked.
He forced them to stop walking by sticking his arm out in front of them, and craned his head, listening.
‘What?’ Amy repeated.
‘We’ve definitely got to go back,’ he said.
‘Into the stinky room? Why?’
‘Shhh!’ he said. ‘Can’t you hear that?’
Amy couldn’t hear anything.
‘We’ve got to go back,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or at the very least, we’ve got to not go this way.’
Then Amy heard it too. It was far away and coming from up ahead. It was the sound of footsteps. Heavy, regular, lumbering footsteps.
‘Stay!’ the Doctor whispered to them, as though his raised index finger would freeze them to the spot. He edged forward until he could peer down the corridor ahead.
The footsteps were getting closer. He saw movement first, then a shadow, cast on the corridor wall by a row of solamps.
There was no mistaking the silhouette.
He turned to them.
‘Ice Warriors,’ he said. ‘Coming this way. Run.’
‘Regular running or run for your life running?’ asked Amy.
‘What do you think?’ the Doctor replied.
They ran.
They ran back through the prep room and into the organic gallery, ignoring the smell. The Doctor skidded to a halt in the doorway, checking the door panel to see if there was any way to close and lock the hatch behind them. Whatever had bored through the mechanism to open it had fused the hatch motors. The hatch was wedged open.
‘Keep going!’ he yelled, running to catch up with them. They were running down the length of the vast gallery, following the grilled metal pathways between the stinking vats and the glass tanks clotted with slime.
‘How do you know there’ll be an exit at the far end?’ Amy shouted at the Doctor.
‘I don’t!’ he replied.
‘Then what?’
‘We don’t have a lot of choice!’ he replied.
Amy glanced back. Always a mistake, but she did it anyway.
She could see the entry hatch fifty metres behind her. The first of the Ice Warriors had appeared. There were three of them. They were so big, they had to come through the hatchway one at a time. There was something flat and expressionless about their faces. The overhead light banks reflected off their red lenses. They walked like hit-men, hired killers wearing expensive shades.
At least, she thought, the rows of vats and metal tanks would provide a little shelter and cover if the Ice Men started using their guns. Warriors. Warriors.
One last glimpse behind her showed her they weren’t packing guns at all.
They were carrying swords. Dirty great, double-handed, barb-hilted broadswords.
‘Oh great!’ she said.
CHAPTER 12
BRIGHTER VISIONS BEAM AFAR
The Doctor heard Amy’s strangled expression of alarm, and glanced back at their pursuers as well. He saw what she had just seen. The brutal, medieval weapons that the Ice Warriors were carrying with such brutal, medieval intent put an extra spurt of vigour into his pace. He began to lead the way, urging Samewell and Bel after him.
‘Swords?’ screeched Amy, lengthening her stride to keep up. ‘Swords? Honestly? For really real?’
‘I have no idea what that’s about!’ the Doctor yelled back at her.
‘Yes, you do!’ Amy objected. ‘You always do!’
‘Well,’ the Doctor shouted over his shoulder, sprinting hell for leather, ‘I suppose I could speculate that the Ice Warriors are an ancient and martial society that takes great pride in preserving and maintaining the traditions of weapon-craft honed by their ancestors, and that the use of ancient, bladed combat weapons suggests an intent to ritually slaughter or ceremonially execute! But I didn’t think that would be a particularly cheerful thing to say while they were chasing us!’ he added.
At least half a dozen Ice Warriors were doggedly following them down the length of the gallery. Still more had appeared at the hatch. The nearest Warriors seemed to be calling out to them. They were making strange, guttural noises, at least, perhaps uttering warnings, or issuing orders for their fleet quarry to halt or surrender. It was hard to tell. Each bark sounded less like words, and more like the pneumatic spit of a torque wrench driven by compressed air.
Arabel was lagging behind the Doctor, Samewell and Amy. Her long and heavy winter skirts were seriously encumbering her.
‘Come on!’ Samewell exclaimed, grabbing her by the arm and propelling her ahead of him. He looked around in time to see Amy trip over the lip of a deck plate and sprawl headlong.
‘Go!’ Samewell yelled to Bel, and darted back to help Amy.
She had winded herself. He hauled her to her feet.
‘Come on!’ he begged.
‘O-OK!’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I banged my knees,’ Amy said, fighting to draw a breath.
‘You’ve got to keep running!’ he insisted.
They looked back.
An Ice Warrior was just twenty metres away. It came around the end of a row of vats, saw them, and raised its sword in a braced, two-handed grip, hilt high, the blade tipped down, like a ninja with a katana. Or whatever those swords in the kung fu movies Rory liked were called. Katanas? Kanteenas? Katonas?
The Ice Warrior didn’t break stride. It seemed to accelerate, as if it was charging them.
Amy and Samewell fled, his hand clamped firmly around hers.
Leading the furious escape, the Doctor spotted an exit hatch in the end wall of the farm gallery. It was exactly the same as the hatch they’d entered the gallery by, except that it was shut.
It was the only way out.
He ran up to it, shoe-sliding the last few steps so he slammed into it. The hatch was sealed tight, but there was another palm-checker built into the frame. It hadn’t been tampered with or bored through. It was in full working order.
The Doctor slapped his right hand flat against the plate. A neon glow travelled up the metal under his hand. Then red lights began to flash in all four corners of the door and an angry klaxon sounded repeatedly.
The door did not recognise his print.
It wasn’t going to open.
‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. For
a split second, he started to reach for his sonic screwdriver. Then he remembered that it was a waste of time. The Ice Warriors were far too close.
Arabel arrived beside him, and Amy and Samewell were just behind her. The Doctor turned to the terrified Arabel, grabbed her by the wrist, and jammed her right hand against the palm-checker. A neon glow travelled up the metal under her hand. There was a click, and then a hiss, and the hatch opened.
The Doctor bundled Arabel into the hatch, and then grabbed Amy and Samewell as they ran up, and shoved them through too. He turned in the open doorway, and took one last look at the advancing Ice Warriors. He grinned.
‘Warriors of the Tanssor clan!’ he cried out to them. ‘Warriors of the Tanssor clan line of the Ixon Mons family, inform your warlord that the Belot’ssar greets him!’
They stopped in their tracks and stared at him. He threw a cocksure salute, stepped backwards through the hatch and pressed the palm-plate. The klaxon sounded again, and the red corner lights flashed. The hatch did not shut with the dramatic flourish he’d been going for.
‘Still got to sort that part out,’ he acknowledged, pointing to the lock mechanism. The Ice Warriors started forward with renewed determination, raising their blades.
Amy reached past the Doctor and pressed her hand against the plate. A neon glow travelled up the metal under her hand. There was a click, and then a hiss, and then the hatch clanged shut in the faces of the Ice Warriors, locking them out.
The Doctor looked at Amy. They were nose to nose.
‘How did you know that would work?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t,’ she said.
‘Good thing it did, though, eh?’ he pointed out.
‘I would think so,’ she replied.
They both jerked back a step as several echoing blows were delivered to the other side of the hatch.
‘That’ll keep them out for a moment,’ said the Doctor.
‘What if they cut through the lock like they cut the other ones?’ Amy asked.
‘Oh, they will,’ said the Doctor. ‘But now we have a head start. And it’s because you’re human.’
‘What?’ asked Amy.
‘It’s because you’re human,’ the Doctor repeated.
‘And for those of us who aren’t fluent in non-sequitur?’ Amy asked.