He closed his eyes. He took a deep breath. He turned his head so that when he opened his eyes he could be facing into the clearing. He opened his eyes. And saw the next impossibility.
People were embedded in the wall. Living people, men, and women and children, their hands flailing and their mouths forming soundless words. There was hardly any area of the wall where the order of the mortared stone blocks was not interrupted by a face or a protruding limb. Here an entire head, swinging from side to side; there only a gap in the mortar revealing a pair of wide eyes. Here a leg, sticking, out of the wall and kicking; there three fingertips, wriggling.
The wall was unfinished. It was still being built. While Francis had been gazing into the unseeable distance, the wall had extended several metres across the clearing. New blocks appeared out of the air, flickering at first, and among them were more faces and limbs. The invisible bricklayer built steadily, and the wall marched inexorably onward.
‘Enough!’ The Doctor’s voice broke the silence. The wall faded rapidly, leaving Lacuna staring at the place where the next stone had been about to appear.
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ she said sadly. ‘Another pointless program. More wasted processing.’
‘Even worse, I’m afraid,’ the Doctor said cheerily. ‘The routine is storing the data it generates. And as it’s open-ended, that series – the thing that Pool represents as a wall – will eventually fill up every spare molecule of memory that Pool has. The question is, will it then start using processing areas for extra data storage?’
‘It hardly matters,’ Lacuna said.
‘No.’ The Doctor was gentle, sympathetic. ‘Pool’s increasing size has resulted only in a proliferation of these strange sub-routines. For some time, Pool has been becoming less and less capable of performing the calculations necessary to create a private universe.’
‘So it was completely hopeless?’
‘Not in principle. I can’t tell exactly where and when the original plans became perverted. But it’s hopeless now.’
Francis lowered his head into his hands. Why did the Doctor have to say things like that? Lacuna was looking like a cat that had seen its prey. He could almost hear her purring.
‘On the contrary, Doctor,’ she said. ‘Now we can proceed. Now you have brought us your interesting blue box.’
The all-encompassing maze of colour disappeared in an instant. The circular chamber was once again wide and dark and almost empty. A circle of light illuminated the group gathered round the bank of screens; another shone on the blue box, the battered structure that the Doctor call his TARDIS, standing where the androids had left it near the edge of the room.
There was a long silence.
The Doctor spent several minutes inspecting his hat, turning it over in his hands and picking off specks of dust. When he looked up, he seemed surprised to find Lacuna still staring at him.
‘It’s just a vehicle,’ he said. ‘I travel in it. That’s all.’
‘In that case,’ Lacuna said, ‘you can’t have any objection to Pool looking inside it.’
The Doctor sighed. ‘No. I suppose not.’
The Dalek Killer was fascinating. In Bernice’s experience, small or introverted men were those most likely to be obsessive. She’d never come across this combination before: an expansiveness of both temperament and physique, coupled with a mental set restricted to a handful of concepts. Kill and be killed: apparently the only inhabitants of Daak’s mind.
But there, was something else, of course. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Ace. A giant with three things on his mind, and all of them dangerous, Bernice made a vow never to pick a fight with him.
Not that the OEO Agent was much less single-minded. There was a hint of mania at the corners of Defries’s narrowed eyes, at the edges of her pursed mouth, She was as reckless as the DK, but Bernice suspected that until recently she’d been more cautious. A Field Agent would have to be cautious. But she’d led a troopship full of auxiliaries to their deaths; she was wounded herself, and weakened with pain and drugs. Every dead comrade made her more determined to finish her mission. Bernice understood that. But she didn’t think it would be advisable to stand in the way of Isabelle Defries, either.
And as for Ace...
What was going on between her and the DK? As the four-man squad loped, half-crouching, along the space station’s strangely-twisting corridors, Ace and Daak were squabbling about which of them should guard the other’s back. Daak would clamp a masterful hand on Ace’s shoulder; Ace, snarling, would shrug it off; Daak would look crestfallen; and would then bounce back, only seconds later, with a fearsome grin and an indecent suggestion.
Bernice couldn’t work it out. But Ace, at least, seemed aware that death and glory were not the only alternatives. Ace was being very careful. ‘Look after Belle,’ Ace had whispered to Bernice. ‘I’ll try to keep the DK on a leash.’
Ace had changed. There hadn’t been time, on Heaven, for the two women to get to know each other. And Ace had been preoccupied with Jan. Don’t be so mealy-mouthed, Bernice told herself. Ace had been a teenager in love. Bernice’s opinion, then, had been that Ace was brave, bright, emotional and impulsive; she had shown her feelings, often forcibly.
It had been three years for Ace. For Bernice, it had been – much less. Travelling in the TARDIS messed with your sense of time. Three years can be a long time in a young life, Bernice concluded, and three years in Bernice’s century had certainly changed Ace.
On Heaven, Bernice had found Ace easy to read. Every thought and feeling that had entered Ace’s mind had appeared simultaneously on her face.
And now... Ace’s face was no less expressive. A friendly, conspiratorial smile for Bernice, a sympathetic glance for Defries, a half-angry, half-amused growl for Daak. It’s not that the expressions aren’t spontaneous or genuine, Bernice said to herself, it’s just that they’re edited. Ace is thinking and feeling as much as ever, but she’s controlling the output of signals. We all do it. Why shouldn’t she? It’s a change, that’s all. Why do people have to become more difficult?
‘Which way?’ Defries’s urgent voice brought Bernice back to the immediate problem.
They had reached a junction. The corridor they had travelled along had turned an abrupt corner and then ended at a blank, curved wall. Smaller corridors ran to the left and right, curving away from the junction alongside the wall.
‘We must be at the edge of the centre of the station,’ Bernice said to Ace and Defries. Daak was standing guard. ‘This facing wall must mark the perimeter of the drum-shaped structure where the – where the brains are kept.’
‘So, which way?’ Defries said impatiently.
Bernice suppressed a curt retort. ‘I’m sure I came through this junction. I remember that remarkable mural. But there was a fourth passage – a ramp upwards, through this wall. But there’s nothing here, now. Maybe I’m –’
‘Droids!’ Daak shouted, and flattened himself against the curving wall, pulling Ace with him. Pulses of laser light streamed from the right-hand passage and blasted white-hot holes in the opposite wall.
Bernice and Defries were lying on the floor, edging backwards while firing their blasters at the black-robed androids.
The shooting stopped. The androids had stopped advancing, and were now out of sight beyond the bend in the passage. Defries and Bernice rolled towards the inner wall, and Bernice helped Defries to stand.
No-one moved. There was no sound.
Ace slipped from beneath Daak’s arm and moved along the wall to Defries. She tipped her head towards the right-hand passage and lifted an interrogative eyebrow. Defries nodded. Ace, her back pressed against the walk tiptoed towards the enemy. She disappeared from view round the curve.
Five seconds later she reappeared, running.
‘Here they come,’ she said. ‘About a million of ‘em.’
The passage was filled with androids, each carrying a weapon. They advanced slowly, not firing. Bernice coul
d hardly resist the urge to turn and run, but she supported Defries and retreated step by step.
Defries had had the same idea. ‘We can outrun them,’ she said. ‘At my command, full speed in the other direction.’
‘No.’ It was Daak’s voice, from just behind them. ‘I said before, I won’t go where they want me to go. Ace, you picked up grenades from the shuttle?’
Ace nodded.
‘Buy me thirty seconds,’ Daak said, and his chainsword roared into life.
The front rank of androids, four abreast, had started shooting again. Four beads of light swept across the junction, each bearing blinding pulses of energy that burst against walls, floor and ceiling.
Lousy shots, Bernice thought, as her first well-aimed burst exploded in the torso of one of the droids. Defries was firing too. Another droid down. Two dark shapes flew overhead: Ace’s grenades, landing behind the first row of advancing black scarecrows.
The androids stopped, staggered, tripped, were pushed by those still advancing from the rear. Bernice and Defries stepped back a few paces, to where Daak’s shrieking chainsword was slicing a hole in the curved wall.
Bernice felt rather than heard the two explosions, like a double heartbeat, and then the corridor was filled with flames. Ace’s grenades had been incendiaries. Bernice looked again: beneath the sudden billows of smoke the black robes shrivelled and flamed, revealing the asymmetrical bodies of the lurching androids uncoordinated dancers in the fires.
A suitably medieval vision of hell, she thought.
Ace’s voice: ‘Come on. We’re through.’
Daak was kicking the wall, his chainsword still hacking at the edges of the hole it had torn in the metallic substance. Then he hurled himself against the rigid flap of wall, pushing it, bending it back into the hole, stamping on it as he forced his way into the darkness beyond.
Bernice and Defries followed him. As she stepped on to the tongue of buckled metal, Bernice looked back. Ace, standing smoke-wreathed in the centre of the corridor, rolled another grenade along the floor towards the androids. She leapt into the hole and almost knocked Bernice over.
‘Move!’ Ace yelled. ‘That one’s high explosive.’
Bernice staggered a few steps forward. The corridor was dimly lit, featureless, and sloped upwards. Daak was already some distance ahead.
This time the explosion sounded like thunder, and the blast shook the floor. Ace, Defries and Bernice fell in a heap. Smoke, dust and heat burst through the hole behind them. The air seared Bernice’s throat.
‘Get up! Move!’ Ace urged between coughs. ‘That won’t hold them for long. Benny, is this the right way?’
Daak’s voice answered, echoing down the ramp. ‘It’s the way they don’t want us to go. Good enough for me.’
‘I think so,’ Benny said, forcing the words through the bitter dryness that had coated the inside of her mouth. She pointed up the sloping corridor. ‘To the centre. Above the centre.’
Defries stood, painfully. ‘And then we destroy it,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is.’
Only one of the screens was now lit, showing little but red-tinged smoke.
‘More droids!’ Lacuna screamed. ‘Britta, bring up more droids! Prepare the guards in the upper galleries. Our visitors will find hawks in the aviary. They will be stopped!’
Francis hugged Elaine and tried to shrink further into the shadows beneath the screens. Seen from below, Lacuna’s long body would have looked comical as she ran back and forth, if it had not been for the grimace of rage that contorted her white face.
‘Treacherous, incompetent droids!’ Lacuna jumped towards Britta and slapped the girl’s face. ‘Program them to self-destruct whenever they miss a target. They will learn obedience.’
The Doctor stepped in front of her. ‘Lacuna,’ he said. She raised her hand, but he didn’t flinch. ‘Lacuna, the androids are ineffective because they are badly designed. Their programming is as twisted as their bodies.’
Lacuna was trembling with anger. ‘The intruders must be stopped. They intend to destroy Pool.’
‘I agree.’
Lacuna lowered her hand. ‘You agree?’
‘Of course. But Ace and Benny and the others don’t have to be killed. You don’t have to play these cat and mouse games with your clockwork soldiers. Pool has the power to stop them.’
The tall woman stared at the Doctor, and then closed her eyes. The Doctor stepped back, watched her for a moment, and walked round her to the console at which Britta was working.
‘Britta,’ he said, ‘let’s start decommissioning those androids, shall we?’
‘No!’ Lacuna’s eyes had snapped open, and she whirled towards the Doctor. ‘The androids must guard Pool against the intruders.’
‘What? Why?’ the Doctor spluttered incoherently. ‘It’s not necessary. It’s barbaric. Call them off. What is Pool playing at?’
Lacuna tossed her great head and wouldn’t look at him. ‘Pool is – troubled,’ she muttered. ‘The waters are muddied. Pool is preoccupied.’ She faced the Doctor at last. ‘Pool has better things to think about!’
The Doctor looked at her quizzically. ‘You can’t get through, can you? Your link’s on the blink. It’s all going wrong, Lacuna. The whole scheme’s falling apart. Can’t you see–’
‘They’re in the galleries!’ Britta’s shrill, excited exclamation rang in the chamber. The Doctor and Lacuna turned to look at the screens.
Francis lifted his head above the edge of the display and found himself staring at a confusing picture of pipes and girders. At first he could see nothing moving; then he saw them. Four tiny figures, crawling like ants along a horizontal beam of metal. Above, below and around them, girders and hawsers criss-crossed an apparently boundless gulf. He looked at the other screens: each provided a different perspective of the same scene. Some, from lower viewpoints, gave glimpses of the faceted dome that covered the expanse of space; others looked down and revealed the four tiny figures balanced a hundred metres above a vast, circular, grey plain.
On some of the screens, Francis thought he saw other figures moving in the high shadows.
‘They will find hawks in the aviary,’ Lacuna said.
Ace didn’t like heights. But she reckoned that was only natural. Falling off a tall building is, after all, much more dangerous than falling off a low wall. So crawling along a girder that was swaying gently under the dome of a gigantic space station induced a level of fear that Ace thought she could handle.
It was the idea of falling into a sea of brains that turned over her insides.
She had to take another look. She stopped crawling. Daak was several metres ahead of her. She hoped he’d stop when he reached the next supporting strut. He hadn’t responded to her last shout. He hadn’t even looked back. Ace was beginning to think he’d finally flipped.
Defries, with Benny just behind her, was a long way in the other direction. Belle was slowing down. The pain was showing in her face, her movements.
Maybe we’re not going to get out of this, Ace thought. Come on, Doctor: haven’t you short-circuited the mad scientist’s gizmo yet, or bamboozled the megalomaniac survivor of an ancient race of warrior wizards, or whatever it is this time? Get your finger out, Doc. I’m running out of time, luck and ammunition. Just one grenade left. That’s going to do a lot of damage in a soup bowl the size of Wembley stadium, I don’t think.
Right then. Take another look.
It was bigger than Wembley stadium. Even from her high perch, Ace couldn’t see all of it at one glance. In the distance the curving edge of it; everywhere else below her nothing but the flat expanse of mottled: brown and grey. How many millions had died to create this blotchy, congealed stew? Even Benny had looked green when she’d first seen it, and Benny had had time to get used to the idea.
For a vertiginous instant, Ace lost all sense of direction. The grey-brown circle suddenly became the face of a planet, and Ace was approaching it from space. No gravity, she thought, as
she felt her body begin to roll.
‘Ace!’
‘Ace!’
She hugged the girder. Eyes closed. Deep breaths. Sweat cold down her back.
Jesus, Mary, Michael and all the saints, that had been close. If her own mind could play tricks like that, she’d be easy meat for any of those giant prawns.
Who had shouted? Defries. Ace lifted her head and waved. Belle managed a tight smile. Had there been another voice? The Doctor’s?
This wasn’t the time to think about it. Worry about giant prawns instead, Ace told herself. Get moving. Get to the next stanchion.
She lifted herself on to hands and knees, edged to the centre of the girder, waited until her limbs had stopped shaking, and started to crawl.
Daak was waiting for her beyond the next upright. He had had to wait: he’d run out of girder. Ace inched along the lip of metal beside the stanchion and found the Dalek Killer sitting at the end of the girder, his legs dangling over the drop. He was staring downwards with a fierce grin, an expression that didn’t change as he turned and saw Ace.
‘Hi, doll. It ain’t safe up here. Come and hold on to me.’
‘Even under these circumstances,’ Ace said, ‘I think I can resist the temptation. What have you found that’s so interesting?’ She crouched next to him and summoned the courage to peer over the end of the girder.
‘Don’t know,’ Daak said. ‘What do you make of it?’
There was an artificial island almost directly beneath them. Ace scanned the horizon.
‘It’s dead centre, isn’t it?’ she said. Scores of pipes of various colours and widths were plugged into apertures on the diamond-shaped slab. Some of, the pipes were rigid, others appeared flexible; some were ribbed, some bulged and sagged, some were bundled with spirals of cable.
Ace’s gaze followed the pipes upwards. They all descended from a structure that was suspended high above them from the centre of the dome. The structure had originally been a sphere, Ace guessed, although it was now, like the space station itself, an accretion of bizarre extrusions. Ducts, pipes and cables ran into it from all round the edges of the dome.
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