Winner Takes All

by Jacqueline Rayner

  But the Quevvil had picked up a silver box, and was pointing it at Robert. Robert was puzzled. So was the Quevvil, as nothing happened. The Quevvil turned to Frinel.

  ‘That one doesn’t have a control disc, you idiot!’ snapped Frinel. ‘Kill another one.’

  The silver box no longer pointed at Robert. He turned, feeling that he was doing it in slow motion, that it was taking him for ever. There was screaming: male screaming. Then the screaming changed to a sort of gurgling choke, as if the person was being strangled. Robert’s gaze finally arrived and took in the scene. It was George; he was lying on the floor, clutching his head. As Robert watched, he stopped choking, stopped clutching his head, lay still. Something trickled out of his ears; Robert looked hurriedly away again.

  Frinel spoke to the Doctor. ‘You were warned. From now on, the slightest deviation will result in the death of a human. Now, continue with the game.’

  The Doctor’s face had gone blank. Robert guessed he was feeling very, very angry and upset, and was trying not to show it. The Doctor picked up the control pad, and began to move Rose through the maze.

  One of the Quevvils, who was hunched over a display of some kind, suddenly called out, ‘The carrier is approaching another carrier again!’

  Robert looked at the screen. Yes, he could just see a figure in the distance.

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ called out the Doctor. ‘I’m not doing it on purpose. I can’t even tell where the other players are any more.’

  Robert held his breath as Frinel waddled over to the Doctor.

  They’d spent some time swapping Darren Pye stories – what he’d said, what he’d done, what they’d heard he’d done, who they’d heard he’d done in. It was quite a catalogue. Mickey would have found it ludicrous if he hadn’t known for a fact that a good part of what sounded like scurrilous rumour really was true. But now they’d sort of sunk into an expectant hush, just waiting for something to happen.

  Suddenly, the sharp ring of a mobile phone cut through the silence in Mrs Pye’s living room. Mickey jumped. This was it! But it wasn’t his mobile, it was Jason’s.

  ‘It’s Anil,’ Jason reported. ‘That bloke’s got back in touch, the one who wouldn’t stop playing the game. He says . . . he says he thinks he’s discovered a new cheat code, cos he can see some bird on the screen. He’s gloating about it.’

  ‘Rose!’ yelled Mickey. ‘Tell him to do that thing, now! Tell him you’ve discovered a quicker way to the end, if he follows our instructions!’

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Jason said into the phone. There was a pause. Then Jason said, ‘Anil says he doesn’t believe him. He says that Anil’s just trying to put him off, feed him a false route, cos Anil wants to finish first. He’s going to keep on playing. He says . . . he says if that bird’s a rival, he’s going to nobble her . . .’

  Rose felt as if she had ten-ton weights in her trainers. The Doctor was moving her at that slow, clunking pace again, each step an event.

  Her head turned, and she caught a glimpse of a figure some way ahead of her. Brilliant! Was everything back to normal? But she had suddenly stopped still, she wasn’t hurrying forward to meet it like before.

  The figure was still coming forward, though, and with a start, Rose realised who it was.

  Darren Pye.

  She knew he was on the planet with them, and anyway the Doctor had told Mickey about it through her, but he hadn’t said a word about Darren being sent to the stronghold. She wondered if the Doctor knew. Surely he wouldn’t be so eager to rescue every last person if he did. She sighed. Yes, he would, he was the Doctor.

  Darren was clumping towards her like a lead-booted ape. She instinctively tried to get out of his way, even though she obviously couldn’t. When he got close, she was amazed to see that he was scowling. It wasn’t that his face had frozen in an angry grimace, he was actually scowling. And there was more: every now and then he would almost pull back a limb, resisting the imperative placed upon him by the wires in his brain. He’s strong, Rose thought, so strong. If he can fight against this . . .

  She could tell when Darren had seen her, because his expression changed. His eyes narrowed, and the hatred directed at her was so intense Rose felt it like a blow. If she had been able to move, she would have staggered back.

  Easy, tiger, she thought, as he lurched nearer and nearer. Now would really be a good time for the Doctor to do something. Because seeing Rose was only going to act as an incentive for Darren to really regain control of his limbs . . .

  ‘The carriers should not be able to approach each other!’ shouted Frinel. ‘This game was designed so each carrier would follow a separate route! If the human controllers caught sight of the carriers . . .’

  A nervous-looking Quevvil hurried over and examined the console. ‘He has negated the repulsion field of the control disc, Frinel!’

  Robert held his breath. Would they discover the other refinements the Doctor had made to the controls?

  ‘Then change it back!’ snapped Frinel.

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure if I can,’ squeaked the Quevvil.

  Darren Pye was in front of Rose now. She couldn’t help but stare right into his face. She could see every zit, every broken blood vessel, every snotty hair bristling out of his nostrils.

  And then she sensed movement, and forced her eyeballs to look down, as far as they would go. Darren was raising his gun. Was it a superhuman effort on his part? Was it an instruction from his controller? And what have I ever done to you? Rose screamed inside her head.

  Darren Pye grinned. His mouth opened slowly, and with an obvious effort he forced out the words: ‘Baa baa beesh . . .’

  Bye, bye, thought Rose, and braced herself.

  ‘There!’ cried the Quevvil, slamming the top back on the console and hurrying off to be as far outside Frinel’s circle of awareness as possible.

  ‘No!’ shouted the Doctor.

  It hit Rose like a bullet. Pain exploded, blossomed within her, till there was nothing else.

  The impact threw her backwards. And that was all she knew.

  Robert, watching the screen, gave a cry.

  The man, the ugly man, had been pulled from view, as if he was on the end of a horizontal bungee rope.

  The Doctor, not seeming to care that he was surrounded by monsters with spikes and guns and brain-squishing devices, started yelling at Frinel. ‘How stupid are you? I thought the whole idea was to get her through to the end! If you’ve hurt her . . .’

  Frinel appeared unconcerned. He gestured at the screen, which was showing a view of a rocky ceiling. ‘The neural relays are still transmitting, therefore the carrier has not been damaged.’

  The Doctor spoke through clenched teeth. ‘She is not “the carrier”. She is a person, and her name is Rose Tyler.’

  Frinel waved this away.

  ‘And even if she is alive, and you can just count yourself lucky, pal, that she is, she might still be “damaged”. Like poles repel, an’ all that. You switch that back on when they’re next to each other, and what did you expect to happen?’

  ‘Continue playing,’ said Frinel, ‘or we kill another human.’

  ‘Oh, that’s your answer to everything,’ spat the Doctor, but he picked up the control pad again.

  Suddenly one of the other Quevvils called out, ‘Frinel! Mantodeans approaching!’

  Robert swivelled his head to look. There was only the one screen in the room, the one showing Rose’s point of view, but this Quevvil had a chart that looked like the one from the other room, only it showed a cluster of small red lights. They were approaching a single, shining white light.

  ‘Evade the Mantodeans!’ Frinel snapped to the Doctor.

  But the other Quevvil interrupted. ‘No, Frinel, they are approaching the other carrier. The one being controlled from Earth.’

  Frinel waved a paw. ‘Then it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter?’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s a human being! At least let me try to help
them!’

  ‘They are unimportant,’ said Frinel. ‘You will continue to play the game.’

  Robert was still watching the chart. The red dots had now totally surrounded the white dot. And then, as he looked, the white light blinked out.

  ‘Too late,’ said the Quevvil.

  Jason got a text message from Anil. ‘He says the bloke messaged him. He says it’s game over. He’s blaming Anil, though I can’t see where he gets that from.’

  And Mickey’s stomach dropped like a stone, as he thought, someone’s just died. A human being’s just died. And I should have been able to stop it. If I’d just thought of the right things to say.

  Sod this hero stuff for a lark.

  But, on the plus side, at least he’d got his telly back.

  Rose, not dead, woke up. It took her about six seconds to remember where she was and what was happening. And when she’d remembered it all, she felt very, very cross.

  Something bumped against her feet. She couldn’t look to see what it was. Then she felt herself move. She began to stand up. As she did, she saw the thing at her feet. It was Darren Pye’s head.

  TWENTY

  Rose had been taken away from Darren Pye’s head, away from the Mantodeans she could see in the distance, chomping away at something unseen, but perfectly imaginable, on the floor.

  She had been taken down many more tunnels, across chasms, up steps, and through she wasn’t sure how many encrypted locks and booby-trapped doors, and she was really fed up.

  Then, just as she’d given up hope of ever hearing another human voice again, she spoke to herself.

  ‘Rose, it’s me. You’re nearly there, so I’ve got to risk it.’

  Her hand pulled the mobile out of her pocket, and began to dial.

  ‘Just got to speak to Mickey again. Listen, I’m going to get you out of there. Once you’re at close enough range, they’re going to activate the disruptors. I don’t know what’s going to happen then. But you’ll be OK. Trust me.’

  The phone was held up to her ear.

  ‘What’s that you were saying about being OK and trusting me?’ said Mickey’s voice. ‘Is everything all right, Rose? God, I hope you’re OK.’

  But Rose couldn’t answer him, and the Doctor couldn’t hear him.

  ‘Mickey?’ Rose said, in the Doctor’s words. ‘I hope you’re all set. Because it’s going to be any minute now.’

  There was an air of barely suppressed excitement in the Quevvil control room.

  As soon as Rose had started the final approach to the centre, Frinel had ordered the Quevvils into the yellow-lit shower cubicles, which apparently were teleport booths. Nearly every Quevvil had squeezed in, leaving only one or two manning the various bits and pieces around the room.

  Frinel himself was standing outside the nearest booth. The Quevvil called Herryan was in place to activate the disruptors, and then, the instant they were switched on, to teleport the Quevvils across to the heart of the Mantodean stronghold.

  ‘I shall lead the charge myself,’ Frinel had announced. ‘It is only fitting.’ He waved his fist in the air triumphantly. ‘Final victory approaches!’

  The final lock was the trickiest yet. Rose avoided the acid flow and the razor blades that thudded out at head height, while standing at the top of a sheer cliff, and finally cracked the code. Or rather, the Doctor did all that.

  The door opened. A hundred Mantodeans turned to look at her.

  ‘Mickey, now!’ she found herself yelling.

  ‘Herryan, now!’ cried Frinel.

  Herryan’s paw shot out, and hit the button activating the disruptors. The screen in front of the Doctor went blank. Barely a split second later, the paw moved to hit the button activating the teleporters.

  Robert felt his hair spring up on his head, the air full of static. There was a smell like lemon washing-up liquid, and all the Quevvils vanished.

  The heads of everyone remaining turned to stare as the door of the room smashed to the floor. Through the doorway fell Mr Nkomo, Mrs Nkomo, Mr Snow, Rachel Goldberg, Mr Johnson, Anne something or other, Tim Breeley and the Japanese girl, propelled forward by their momentum, each with a disruptor strapped to his or her chest.

  The yellow lights of the teleport booths snapped out.

  Every screen, dial and read-out in the room died instantly.

  And, for a moment, there was silence.

  Then, ‘I think all your mates have just been atomised,’ said the Doctor to the two remaining Quevvils. ‘It might be an idea for you to surrender now.’

  Back on Earth, the one remaining player of Death to Mantodeans shook his control pad, tried thumping the games console, and switched the TV on and off a couple of times. Nothing seemed to work. He looked at his watch, and saw it was the middle of the night. How long had he been playing that game for? He realised he was really quite hungry and tired now. Plus, wasn’t it supposed to be bad for your eyes? He’d get a sandwich, go to bed, and maybe try the game again in the morning. It might have sorted itself out by then.

  And 100 miles away, a man who had agreed to pay £500 for something that would rid him of his wife once and for all lay tossing and turning in his bed, wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake, wondering if he’d been ripped off, wondering if the promised ticket would ever arrive, wondering if he really hated her quite that much after all . . .

  Robert was feeling quite dazed. He couldn’t quite believe that the Doctor had done it. ‘Had to get everyone across the desert first, had to drag things out long enough for them to make it. Then split-second timing,’ the Doctor had said. ‘Those things only work at very close range. Had to be near enough to get here when the teleporter was still in operation, while the Quevvils were still streaming through the air as their component atoms – but not so soon that they’d muck it all up as soon as the disruptor signal was sent. Then we’d’ve just had a pile of angry Quevvils on our hands, and that’d be no good to anybody.’ He’d smiled then. ‘I suppose that Mickey’s not so useless after all.’ He put a finger to his lips, and hissed to

  Robert, ‘But don’t tell him I said so.’

  ‘But what about Rose?’ said Robert, hardly daring to think about what might have happened to the wonderful girl.

  The Doctor looked really solemn for a second. Then he gave a sort of half-smile, an ‘of course it’s all right, honest’ smile. He looked round to where the Nkomos were hugging, and Rachel and Daniel Goldberg were clinging to each other as if they’d never let go, and Mr Snow was saying to Mrs Snow that they were certainly never coming here again, and they’d be writing a strongly worded letter to the company.

  ‘I didn’t know if the disruptors would knock out the control system,’ he said. ‘I thought they would – couldn’t be sure though. Bit scared I was leaving Rose frozen solid in the middle of a bunch of Mantodeans. But she’ll be all right.’

  ‘But what about the bunch of Mantodeans?’ asked Robert, who’d seen the screen in the instant before the signal had been cut off. He hoped that was all that had been cut off.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ the Doctor reiterated. ‘But it wouldn’t hurt to go and see . . .’

  Every light died. Every technological hum cut out.

  ‘Crikey,’ whispered Rose. She said it to herself, in her head, but was astonished to hear the sound come out of her mouth. She could speak again! She tried moving a foot. Yes! She could walk again!

  Her delight was slightly tempered by the realisation that she was going to have to get out of this room full of Mantodeans without any of those superpowers the control device had given her.

  This room full of Mantodeans – who were all looking at her. ‘What have you done!’ screeched one. Rose was surprised. She’d never heard a Mantodean speak before, she’d been assuming they were just dumb monsters, beasts acting on instinct. How stupid she’d been – how could dumb monsters have created a maze like this, and puzzles and traps like those she’d encountered?

  ‘You can speak!’ she said.r />
  There was a collective hiss from the Mantodeans. ‘It talks! It talks!’

  The Mantodean who first spoke stepped forward. ‘If it talks, if it is not a dumb beast like the others, then it will explain why it has done this to us, before we crush its thorax and it can talk no more!’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Rose. ‘I . . . I think there’ve been a lot of crossed wires here. You thought humans were animals, we thought you were monsters . . .’ This didn’t seem to be going down too well, so she changed tack. ‘Look, the Quevvils –’ there was a hissing from the Mantodeans – ‘the Quevvils have been kidnapping my people, humans, and sending them over here to get into your stronghold. They couldn’t get in, but they’d developed this disruptor – she tapped her chest – ‘so they could knock out your defences and teleport in.’ She looked around. ‘Thought they’d be here by now. Although obviously I’m glad they’re not.’

  ‘You are an ally of the Quevvils?’ snapped a Mantodean.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘They’ve been forcing us to do this. Really forcing, so we couldn’t move for ourselves, or even speak. Look, it’s nothing to do with me. Please, if I could just go, I’ll never bother you again . . . I’m really sorry for what’s happened.’

  But the first Mantodean was coming towards her, and its mandibles were opening. ‘You brought this “disruptor” into the centre of our stronghold!’ it said. ‘You have destroyed all our technology! You have brought all our defences down!’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ said Rose, backing away, trying desperately to see if there was anywhere to run to. But the Mantodeans behind her were closing in. And the jaws in front of her were opening wider and wider, getting closer and closer . . .

  Snap!

  The Mantodean’s jaws crunched shut.

  Rose, to her great surprise, still had a head. The disruptor, however, now lay at her feet, the steel-strong straps now neatly severed.