The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. Then he looked around as amiably and cheerfully as he could – as if he were inspecting a room in an apartment he might want to buy.
‘No problems here. This is only a room. A warm, moist, unusual room…’
But he kept on puzzling, calculating, observing…The floor under his legs was just this blurry reddish blackish purplish surface which shifted up and down placidly, which was damp and vaguely slimy to the touch. It was warm. The whole place was humid, sticky. And the curved, pulsing walls / ceiling / floor had a habit of not exactly seeming to be there when the Doctor stared at them. When he’d tried to prod any of the surfaces with his fingers, sometimes they were resistant and sometimes he’d found most of his hand sinking into what felt like warm soup and looked like an organic jell with threads of silver running through it and sparkling now and then.
Which I can’t say is a problem. It’s peculiar, but then I love peculiar things. I could almost be said to seek them out. I’m marvellously unusually myself, although I often go unappreciated…
He heard a type of clicking and movement over to his right and made what he thought was an excellent effort to completely ignore it.
He could feel the tendons in his neck standing out with the effort of being happy and interested in the good things of life – however short one’s life turned out to be – and not remotely worried.
All round him – above, beside, behind, below – was this curious living substance, threaded with silver and unable to decide if it was a liquid or a solid, a colloid, or – this could happen – perhaps it would decide to be a gas. What would happen then? That could be terrifying, but it could also be fascinating…
There was no sign of a door, or any other way that he might have entered this space. There was no obvious way to leave.
I’m trapped. I’m trapped. I’m trapped.
But I might like that.
I could grow to like that. And then I might escape. I’m generally excellent at escaping. But that’s mainly when there are guards to bamboozle and locks to unlock, doors that can be opened…
Still, at present I can enjoy being trapped. I can say I’m being held. Like a hug. I am being hugged.
I am not being digested.
I am not being tested.
I am not being tortured.
But then he couldn’t help seeing the small problem – the thing he shouldn’t give any of his attention. There the thing was – just a bit.
Problem.
There was a flicker of disturbingly swift motion, the shifting of a dreadfully thin leg, a predator’s limb.
That wouldn’t be my first choice for a companion…
Ah, but you must understand…’ The Doctor kept his voice steady while he talked to nothing that he wanted to look at right now…‘You’re mistaking me for someone else entirely…Which is to say, the last time I met…something which resembled you, I was someone else entirely…Or not quite my current self…’ His throat and mouth were dry. ‘I tend to believe that you’re someone else entirely, too…I think you’re wearing a mask. I think you’ve been wearing a lot of masks…’
He didn’t think he could keep this up for much longer. The smaller problem – he caught a glimpse of it as it ran up the wall – this minor problem behind which the big problem was hiding – he suspected that was now squatting on the ceiling, waiting directly above his head.
Something flicked off his hat.
And even though the something was a mask, a fiction, a temporary creation called up by something else – the thing was getting very real.
Because the Doctor had been subjected to a number of encounters with a number of nasty things since he’d arrived, and he’d been able to figure out at least a little of what was going on here in this room which wasn’t a room in the place which wasn’t a place…
When the Doctor had initially regained consciousness he had rolled over and seen something impossible. The smooth, weapons-grade surface, the raised reinforcement hemispheres, it had been instantly recognisable – this was Dalek construction, no other race built anything like it. He’d experienced the customary, irrepressible lurch of outrage and fear as he’d raised his eyes to see more, know what he must, start forming a plan. He had even been able to touch the unmistakable, slightly warm, slightly charged metal of a Dalek carapace.
But the first problem which had confronted him – once it was fully revealed – had been much worse than a Dalek.
And, of course, no one expects to end up saying something like ‘much worse than a Dalek’. What’s much worse than a Dalek…? Well, it’s best not to mention…
Utterly alert at once, the Doctor had sprung to his feet, hearts racing, and faced the living nightmare that was Davros. Somehow Davros was right there, alive, his wizened skull-like face sneering, his pink snaking tongue darting over those leathery, mummified lips. Davros, the creator of the Daleks, his wasted lower limbs coddled in the initial generation, basic Dalek transport module. The Doctor had even been able to smell that characteristic combination of stale air, not-quite-arrested bodily decay and malignant DNA that had haunted him when he was on Skaro, the Daleks’ planet of origin. Skaro, torn apart by the hatred that spawned the Daleks, the universe’s ultimate killing machines.
The Doctor had peered down at Davros, at that monstrous mind and tormented body. The Doctor had tried to stay certain that the Daleks had destroyed Davros as genetically unacceptable. Davros couldn’t be here. Davros wasn’t even behaving quite like Davros. He hadn’t spoken. Not one word.
And I’ve rarely met a megalomaniac so fond of the sound of his own voice.
Davros had sneered, licked his lips over and over, hovered his one claw of a hand over the control stick of his module, licked again, hovered again, sneered again. It was as if the morally deformed scientist was caught in a bend of time.
It’s like a transchronic loop, the Doctor had thought.
I can think of myself thinking that. I can think that I am remembering that from my recent past. I can build layers of thinking.
I can even think that an entity is gouging out my past and showing it to me like highly unpleasant movies – except these aren’t just images, they are being given substance…I can think that.
I’m good at thinking. Geniuses are and I’m a genius. I’m several geniuses all together under one hat. Although my hat is currently over there…With those few pale fibres on it – like fragments of a web…Which it’s best not to notice…
If I can only keep on thinking, I’ll be all right. Thinking about other things, pleasant things, safe things, running off and thinking in strange places where It doesn’t want meto…That’s what I have to do.
And I always have had a talent for both running off and thinking in strange places. Einstein and Feynman and Leonardo and Zogg the Remarkable, they all complained about it.
But in the end I do always come up with a result, a solution to the problem…
Facing Davros, an engineer of terror, the Doctor had said pleasantly, ‘And I can think of very few people I’d rather see caught in a transchronic loop, but it’s not quite that either, is it?’ He’d tapped Davros’s carapace and his finger had penetrated it, sunk in. The hemispheres on its surface began to be more translucent, the less faith the Doctor had in them. ‘No, this is…It’s more like watching a recorded image, a repeating image.’ Somehow his psychic energy, his artron energy, his belief, was being harnessed to create beings, to manipulate matter into complex living forms. While being rather horrifying, it was also a remarkable achievement.
And as soon as the Doctor had uncovered his nightmare’s secret, the image of Davros had shivered, become a wavering shape and then been reabsorbed into the reddish blackish purplish surface confining the Doctor.
He’d sighed – shaken, but still in control.
He’d been permitted a moment to rest and to wonder why his mind’s energy had been forced to summon up one of its own worst fears. That didn�
��t bode well. Something was using his memories like an index file…and only accessing the fear-inducing data.
He’d focused on gathering his strength, because he had an idea he would need it.
And he’d been right. The Doctor usually was.
A Cyberman – solid, convincing, blank-eyed and slit-mouthed – had risen smoothly up from the not-quite-floor. The Doctor had managed not to flinch. This was absolutely a Cyberman. It had just the right air of obsession, and of a sick joke: as if someone had decided to make models of the living dead, cleanly metallic animated corpses, and then sent them marching across the universe to make more living dead until nothing had a heart, or a warm impulse, until all was cold and the Cyber Purpose had defeated itself and left them with nothing.
They were dreadful things, Cybermen.
So I’d be wise not to think of one too clearly. I will only remember how I get nightmares to go away…I give them no energy. I give them no belief.
The Cyberman had twitched a finger and given a slight nod. And again. And again. It hadn’t been difficult for the Doctor to notice the tell-tale signs of repetition. This was another prefabricated creature, a fake.
Still, it had been difficult to lower his levels of fear. If something could make a convincing Cyberman, might not the fake Cyberman be just as bad as a real one? What was the difference between being killed by an imitation Cyberman and the genuine article? It wasn’t going to be much fun finding out.
The Doctor had pressed himself to be as jovial as he ever had, to play the fool harder and faster than he’d thought he could. ‘Ah, but no you don’t. I really must insist that no you don’t.’ He had sat down, lounged, wagged one hand scoldingly. ‘I really can’t have just anyone barging in here, you know. Not that I know where here is – but I’m sure I only made a reservation for one…’
But perhaps having just anyone barge in was exactly what was going to happen. The Doctor had fumbled in his pocket, brought out a rumpled paper bag and offered it – ‘Jelly baby?’ – to the forbidding figure, the terror of so many planets. At once the Cyberman had seemed to lose solidity and melt away.
But it had taken longer for the Cyberman to fade than it had for Davros to leave the Doctor be. And the Cyberman had seemed more confidently constructed, more real. Whatever was conjuring up these things, it was a quick learner.
While he remembered all this, pondered it, the Doctor continued to bear something important in mind…
There’s no problem, no problem overhead, no problem with a bulbous, unclean-looking body and long, sharp legs and longer, sharper mouth parts –
The Doctor’s scalp tingled and crawled as he fought not to think of the thing overhead and made efforts to recall with absolute clarity how he had been confronted, not only with Davros and a Cyberman, but with a Sontaran warrior, then the hideous green parasitic worm that was a Wirrn larva, then an Auton – smooth-faced, implacable killer…
Each creation had been more real than the last, more able to move and function in a way that he found hard to ignore.
The Doctor banged his head back against the wet, hot surface behind him and announced to the general area, ‘I do admire your abilities, you know. There are scientists all over the universe rattling their brains and breaking test tubes trying to get anywhere near your ability to form life out of…Well, what are you doing exactly…? Altering matter at a sub-atomic level and then knitting it up like a pullover into life. Or something quite like life. I’m impressed, really I am.’
Something hard and cold scraped gently through the Doctor’s dense tumble of hair and touched his forehead for a moment before withdrawing. This made it tricky not to scream.
‘But why won’t you let me meet you – the real you? Why the clever puppets? If you wanted to destroy me, I’m sure you could have. Are you running some kind of experiment? Because I love experiments and I must say I’m sure I’d be able to help you if you’d just let me know what you were trying to find out…Or…Is this a game…? I always enjoy a game. Do you know poker? Don’t play it much myself, but I knew a man who did and he taught me a thing or two…’
There was no reply, and the Doctor couldn’t avoid considering another possibility – that he was trapped here because It found him entertaining. Maybe he was going to be destroyed, but he was going to be destroyed in a slow, ornate way that It found amusing – by repeated attacks from everything he’d ever tried to fight against, everything that had ever troubled him. His memories were being ransacked and used against him. Eventually, he would be worn down, he would have no power to resist and this or that creation would draw out so much of his artron energy that it would become truly alive – before it drained him of all that he was.
That’s why It’s other name is Soul-Eater.
‘I do know what you really are, by the way…Who you are…I do remember what Putta said on the golf course. It seems that while I’m in here you can’t manage to give me any of those nasty headaches, or make me forget things…So I must be very close…In the eye of the storm…Is that it? Have you let me into the eye of your storm…?’
And then, slowly descending from the ceiling, came a spider. It was sharply defined, intelligent and deadly. Its dark legs were covered in dense greyish fur that suggested underground places and lurking. It wasn’t so terribly huge. Its cephalothorax was only about the size of perhaps a large orange, or a sizeable potato. Its abdomen was larger, beating faintly with a rapid pulse and straggled here and there with wiry, tawny fur.
The abdomen wasn’t quite as big as a rugby ball.
Not quite that big.
The rearmost two of its fast, clever legs played out silk as it dropped while the others readied themselves.
The Doctor knew it would be a very bad idea to imagine the creature swinging forward and grabbing him, smothering his face and closing its limbs inescapably behind his skull.
He didn’t think he’d like that at all.
And naturally I wouldn’t enjoy having the thing leap on to my back and cling there, digging into my brain and controlling me, enslaving me the way it did the human settlers on Metebelis 3.
The Doctor swallowed audibly. He smiled the best smile he could manage under the circumstances. ‘Cephalothorax is a wonderful word…Very useful for spiders. They don’t have a separate head and thorax – which is why we use the term ce-pha-lo-tho-rax – the two parts are fused together in arachnids, just so…’ He avoided actually touching the spider’s cephalothorax in case he could feel it really clearly – all those hairs, all that poised energy. He didn’t want it to seem any more substantial than it already did.
Plus, it was a monstrously large, dank, hairy, dangerous, brain-eating spider. Of course he didn’t want to touch it.
The Doctor blinked and the spider’s mouthparts fluttered, glistened. It had halted at his eye level and now span so that it could look at him. Then it span back – ready to grab him.
‘I can tell you another marvellous word.’ The Doctor took a deep breath. Saying Its name hadn’t gone well the last time, but then again It had been so keen to be forgotten, hidden. Surely that did indicate a weakness. ‘Ahhmmm…Bah-Sokhar. Bah-Sokhar? You are a Bah-Sokhar, aren’t you? Behind all the pretending and eating people – which really isn’t any way to behave – and magic tricks…That’s what you are, isn’t it? Hello, Bah-Sokhar. I’m the Doctor. Although I think you already know that – you seem to have been climbing around in my memories for a while…Shouldn’t we meet properly now we’ve been introduced?’
The Doctor paused.
The Doctor waited.
The Doctor grinned his most friendly grin.
The spider flinched, then stretched its legs and swung forward on its silk. Any second now it was going to touch his face.
STANDING IN HER KITCHEN, Mrs Julia Fetch was preparing the lovely fresh vegetables her grandchildren had brought in for dinner. She was podding peas, collecting them in the old brown ceramic basin that had been in every family kitchen she had ever known.
The children were helping, which was kind of them. Honor was washing spinach leaves under the tap and singing a little song to herself. Xavier was slicing broccoli very carefully because the knife was really sharp and he had been warned not to cut himself.
Julia glanced over when Xavier said, ‘Oh. Oh, look.’
‘What is it? Have you cut your finger?’
‘No. He’s fine.’ Honor gave Xavier’s answer. Each of the twins always seemed to know exactly what was happening to the other. Julia thought it was sweet. And it must mean they were never lonely.
Honor stepped across from the sink and peered at Xavier’s hand. ‘He’s found something.’
‘Yes.’ Xavier raised his right hand and, dangling from it was a spider. ‘I’ve found something.’ He watched it spinning and flexing its tiny legs.
Julia didn’t especially like spiders. ‘Perhaps you could put it outside again where it lives…’
Honor shook her head happily. ‘No, he’s got a better idea.’
And Xavier lifted the spider higher. He angled his head, opened his mouth and then dropped the little arachnid in between his lips. Xavier swallowed the spider. ‘There we are. Now I understand more about spiders.’
Honor clapped her hands delightedly – as if a puppy had just done a trick.
Julia wasn’t quite sure this was the usual way to deal with such things, but if it pleased Honor and Xavier then it must be all right.
She went back to removing the peas from their pods. There were almost enough for the three of them. How marvellous. What a fine meal they were going to have with the pretty napkins and the shiny knives and forks and the thick white linen tablecloth that Papa had bought in Dublin…‘Well, don’t get so full of spider that you won’t want your dinner.’
Julia Fetch wondered what meat they were going to have for their meal. It seemed that she should have decided by now…Something tasty…Something fresh…Fresh meat would be best.
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