Wishing Well

by Trevor Baxendale

  Gaskin knew he should go into the tunnel to look for them, but he couldn't bear the thought of such a horribly confined space. He loved the wide-open spaces, the outdoors, craggy mountains under wide blue skies. The idea of going into that narrow patch of darkness made him feel physically ill.

  Jess looked up at him with her big brown eyes, asking the impossible. 'I can't go in there,' Gaskin told her plaintively. 'You know I can't.'

  Jess whined and went into the tunnel alone.

  'Oh, all right,' muttered Gaskin crossly.

  He followed her inside. It was all right for the first few yards because of the light from outside, but it quickly grew dark and the smell of earth was overwhelming. Gaskin felt his old heart begin to race. Summoning the courage that had served him well in his days in the Parachute Regiment, he fought back the urge to turn around and followed Jess further into the shadows.

  It wasn't long before he met an awful sight: the way ahead was completely blocked by soil and rock and a thick wooden beam lay diagonally across the tunnel.

  'Great Scott! There's been a rockfall!' Gaskin forgot all about his claustrophobia as Jess barked again, loud and urgent. She must have sensed it in the house, felt a faint tremor in the earth, or perhaps heard the distant subterranean thunder. But now she'd found something in soil, something that stirred near the ground, under the fallen roof beam.

  A thin, white hand.

  'Angela!' Gaskin grasped the hand and pulled. The hand, cold and shaking, held on to him with an iron grip as he hauled Angela out of the earth. Loose soil poured off her camouflage jacket and hat, and, with a sob of relief, she grabbed hold of Gaskin. He pulled her upright. 'Thank God you're all right!'

  'Martha... and the Doctor...' she panted. 'They're still in there!'

  Jess was barking and prancing around their knees in excitement as someone else slowly emerged from under the roof beam. Covered in soil and dust, coughing and choking, Martha Jones clambered out, followed by the Doctor.

  'Mr Gaskin!' said the Doctor cheerily as he stood up. In the dim light of the tunnel entrance, his face was streaked with cuts and mud. He offered a grimy hand. 'How nice to meet you again!'

  They went straight back to the manor. Martha was amazed to find that the sun was already setting and there was a chill in the air as they walked across the garden. The adrenalin was fading now, leaving her nervous and exhausted.

  She shivered, and the Doctor put his arm around her. 'Cheer up! We've lived to fight another day'

  But Martha kept thinking about Duncan. She'd liked him; it had been horrible to see him transformed and inhuman. She was relieved to have survived, of course, but what about him? If the transmutation hadn't killed him, then surely the rockfall must have. She wondered about it all the way back to the house.

  In the conservatory, Nigel Carson was still unconscious.

  'Been like that ever since I brought him back,' Gaskin told them.

  'I much prefer him that way,' said Angela.

  Gaskin wanted to take Angela to the A&E department at Wardley Hospital, but she was having none of it.

  'I'm perfectly all right,' she insisted. 'All I need is a bath and some of that brandy' All the same, she accepted a chair from the Doctor and sank into it with a groan. 'I'm beginning to think Sadie has a point. Perhaps I am getting too old for all this gallivanting.'

  'Nonsense,' said the Doctor. 'Keeps you young – look at me!'

  Martha insisted on examining the old lady. 'No bones broken, at least. You're lucky. Just minor cuts and contusions.'

  'She's as tough as old boots,' said Gaskin, handing her a drink. 'Here, get this down you.'

  The damage could have been worse for all of them. Most of the rockfall had been deflected by the fallen cross-beam, under which the three of them had been able to shelter. Martha and Angela were bruised and dusty, but the Doctor had a nasty graze on his forehead.

  Angela's mobile phone chirped. 'Excuse me.' She opened it and then held it out at arm's length as she tried to focus on the display. 'Confounded thing – why do they make the writing so small? Oh, it's a text from Sadie asking where we've got to. It's only just come through.'

  'You must have been out of signal range in the tunnel,' said Martha.

  'I'd better give her a call, fill her in on what's been happening.' The old lady paused for a moment. 'Although I'm not at all sure where to begin...'

  'Couldn't agree more,' said Gaskin gruffly. He turned to the Doctor. 'I think it's high time we had an explanation. I had been told you were languishing at the bottom of the village well.'

  'I never stay in the same place for long,' said the Doctor, who was sitting on a stool dabbing at the blood on his forehead with a handkerchief. 'Especially if I find myself sharing it with a mindless alien predator.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'That's what I found at the bottom of your well: a particularly nasty example of extraterrestrial life called a Vurosis. Intelligent proto-molecular parasite from the Actron Pleiades star system. They usually prey on defenceless planets containing easily adaptable carbon-based life forms, such as Earth. The Vurosis arrives as a seed, germinates underground and then starts to spread and reproduce by transmutagenic alteration of the indigenous dominant animal population.' The Doctor looked at each of them in turn. 'That means you lot, by the way. Humans.'

  Gaskin blinked. 'I didn't understand a word of that, let alone believe any of it.'

  The Doctor shrugged. 'I wouldn't expect a fly to believe in chemical insecticides, but there we are.' He mimed using a fly spray. 'Pssh! Erk. Dead fly.'

  Gaskin huffed. 'But even so! Extraterrestrials? Here in Creighton Mere? Poppycock.'

  'Be quiet, Henry,' said Angela quietly. 'You didn't see it.'

  'Are you trying to say you did?'

  'Yes. In the tunnel. It was chasing the Doctor and Martha.' Angela sipped her brandy and shuddered. 'It was crushed when the roof collapsed.'

  'Actually, that wasn't the Vurosis itself,' the Doctor said. That was just a human being transmutated into a proto-Vurosis hybrid.'

  'A human being?'

  'Duncan Goode, to be exact,' Martha said.

  Angela looked horrified. 'How?'

  'Telekinetic transmutagenics,' said the Doctor. He caught Angela's look and mistook it for doubt. 'Probably. Possibly. Well, all right, it's just a guess. But can you explain why else a perfectly healthy human being would suddenly transform into a proto-molecular parasite?'

  Angela said that she couldn't.

  'Question is – why would it do that?' pondered the Doctor aloud. His dark eyebrows knitted together in concentration. 'I mean, the Vurosis parasite is an intelligent, thinking being. Murderous and completely without any human moral compunction whatsoever, but it is intelligent. The thing I met was just... empty. The lights were on but no one was at home

  Gaskin cleared his throat. 'This alien thingummy...' he began, almost embarrassed to mention the idea. 'Could it have anything to do with a rather odd stone?'

  The Doctor pulled a face. 'Stone?'

  'It's probably nothing. Forget I mentioned it.'

  'Do you mean the one Nigel Carson was guarding before?' asked Martha.

  'Er – yes.'

  'Guarding?' repeated the Doctor.

  Martha described the stone she had found in Nigel's possession when she and Angela had discovered him unconscious outside the manor.

  'You can have a look at it if you like,' offered Gaskin. He led them into the kitchen and took a small bundle out of one of the drawers. He put it on the kitchen table and unwrapped it.

  They all gathered around the stone. 'It belongs to Nigel Carson,' explained Gaskin.

  'No it doesn't,' said the Doctor. 'It belongs to the Vurosis.'

  EIGHTEEN

  'We found Carson in a state of collapse,' Martha said. 'When he came around, he was behaving very oddly – and he seemed very possessive regarding this thing. Whatever it is.'

  'I thought it might be some kind of alien fossil,' s
aid Gaskin, a little self-consciously. 'A meteorite, perhaps.'

  The Doctor shook his head. He had picked the object up, examined it, sniffed it, shaken it next to his ear to see if there was anything loose inside it. 'I don't know what it's made of, but it isn't rock.'

  'It looks horrid,' commented Angela. 'Like something old and dead, dug up from a grave.'

  'No,' said Martha. 'It looks alive to me. Sort of... grown.'

  'Like an egg, you mean?'

  The Doctor shook his head again. 'It's not an egg, but it's definitely organic'

  'I meant, alive like us.'

  'I know what you mean,' said Gaskin. 'Almost as if it knows we're here.'

  'Yeah,' said Martha. 'Like it's thinking.

  'Ah!' The Doctor leapt to his feet with a sudden cry of joy. 'Oh, yes! Yes! That's it! Martha, you are brilliant. Have I ever told you that? Brilliant!' He was suddenly full of manic energy, pacing around the room, staring at the object in his right hand while his left ran through his hair in a hundred different directions.

  Martha smiled at him, incredulously. 'What have I said?'

  'Don't you see? You're absolutely right – it is thinking! It's a brain!'

  A brain?' Martha looked faintly disgusted as the Doctor continued to roam the room, throwing the object from hand to hand.

  'Yeah, that's right. A brain! But not just any brain, it's the brain – the brain of the Vurosis! I really should have spotted it sooner. Of course, that's the trouble with being a genius. Sometimes you just can't see the blindingly obvious.'

  'Thanks.'

  'Anyway, this little beauty has a lot to answer for.' The Doctor rolled the brain down his forearm, flicked it up into the air by straightening his arm as it reached his elbow, caught it deftly with the same hand.

  'You're saying that thing belongs to the creature in the well?' asked Gaskin doubtfully.

  'Well, I said the lights were on but there was no one home! This is why. Creature in the well – brain up here.'

  'Pardon me,' said Angela, 'but how can the two things be separated? I mean, isn't that usually fatal?'

  'Not for the Vurosis. It must be part of its life cycle. The Vurosis grows underground for years and years, spreading its roots, getting ready for the point at which it reaches full maturity – usually called the rising. But to complete the process, the brain is added – like a kind of intelligent seed, helping to germinate the main body.' He spun to face Gaskin. 'But how come Nigel Carson's got it? What would he want with a Vurosis brain?'

  'I really have no idea,' said Gaskin.

  'Where is he, anyway?'

  'In the conservatory. Why?'

  'I think it's time we asked him a few questions.'

  'You'll have to wake him up first,' said Gaskin.

  Nigel Carson was still slumped in the wicker chair in the corner of the conservatory.

  They tried calling him, tapping him, even shaking him, but he stayed resolutely unconscious. Martha grew concerned, lifting the man's eyelids to show only the whites. 'He's in some sort of catatonic state,' she said. 'Shock?'

  'Perhaps we should call a doctor,' suggested Gaskin.

  'Good idea,' said the Doctor, stepping forward. He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. 'Is this the patient?'

  'What are you going to do?'

  'Wake him up.' The Doctor spread the fingers of his right hand across Nigel's face, so that he appeared to grip the man's forehead. Then the Doctor suddenly closed his eyes and Nigel jerked into life with a startled squeak, his legs and arms shooting out straight as if someone had jabbed him with a knitting needle.

  'What? What?' Nigel looked wildly about him. 'Where am I?'

  'What did you do to him?' Martha asked, not entirely sure she approved.

  'Just tweaked his hypothalamus,' said the Doctor casually. 'You won't find it in any medical textbooks. Not on this planet anyway.'

  Nigel Carson looked up at the faces surrounding him and swallowed hard. 'Where is it?' he demanded thickly. 'Where's the stone?'

  The Doctor held it up, just out of reach.

  Nigel sat upright, his hand moving towards the stone, but then he hesitated. 'What's wrong with it?' he asked, looking from the stone to the Doctor and back again. 'What have you done to it?'

  'Nothing. Why?'

  Nigel swallowed hard and sank back into his chair. 'It doesn't matter.'

  'Are you sure?'

  Nigel looked hard at the stone and then pinched the bridge of his nose, screwing up his eyes. Martha thought he was about to burst into tears. But, in a very small voice, he simply said, 'I can't hear it any more. It's not speaking to me.'

  The Doctor knelt down so that he was level with Nigel and spoke very gently, as if to a small child. 'Did this stone tell you things, Nigel?'

  He nodded.

  'Speaking to you in your mind so that no one else could hear?'

  Another nod. 'But I can't hear it any more. It's gone now...'

  'I don't think he's up to an interrogation, Doctor,' said Gaskin. 'He's obviously in a state of shock. I've seen it before, during my time with the Paras. You won't get anything out of him in that condition except gobbledegook.'

  'It's not gobbledegook.' The Doctor straightened up, looking thoughtful.

  'I'm afraid I didn't follow any of it,' admitted Angela.

  'It seems the Vurosis brain has been in direct telepathic communication with him,' explained the Doctor. 'It may even have used some form of ultra-fine telekinetic link, actually changing his neurological make-up to suit its own purposes. Guiding him, giving him instructions...'

  'What for?'

  'Well, what does any brain need?'

  'A body,' said Martha instantly.

  The Doctor clicked his fingers. 'Top marks, ten out of ten. If the brain needs anything, anything at all, it has to have a body – arms and legs and all that useful stuff. It hasn't got access to its own body, 'cos that's stuck down the well – but in the meantime Nigel Carson will do very nicely.'

  'So it's been using him?'

  'Exactly. Until now.' The Doctor looked serious as he turned to Gaskin. 'It's more than shock, I'm afraid. Nigel's wounded – in here.' He tapped the side of his head. 'A sudden telekinetic disconnection like that could do a lot of damage to the human mind. But why would it sever its link just like that?'

  'Perhaps it doesn't need him any more,' suggested Martha.

  The Doctor suddenly looked worried. 'Oh – that's a thought. And not a very nice one at that.'

  'Why not?' asked Angela.

  'It means it's found something better.'

  'Its own body?'

  'Not quite.'

  Realisation came to Martha with sickening clarity. 'Duncan?'

  The Doctor nodded. 'Spot on, top marks again. You'll go far at this rate, Martha Jones.'

  Martha put her hand to her mouth as she remembered the way Duncan had transformed and pursued them up the tunnel. 'But it changed him – mutated him. And he killed Ben Seddon. Nigel Carson never did anything like that, did he?'

  'Duncan paid the price for being too close to the Vurosis itself. He'd have been in range of the transmutagenic field. Unlucky.'

  Martha bit her lip. It was more than unlucky.

  'How did Ben Seddon die?' the Doctor asked her.

  Martha took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. 'It was exactly like Barney Hackett, only faster. He just sort of crumpled into nothing.'

  'So the Vurosis is learning...' The Doctor scratched his ear thoughtfully. 'Every time it gets better at it. Tommy the cat – fell down the well, but wasn't much use. Not sophisticated enough. Barney Hackett was better, but it couldn't control the transmutation. Overcooked him until there was nothing but ashes left. Then it found Duncan, right next to it in the tunnel. But now it's learnt enough to control the change, and to control Duncan – or what was left of him. Killed Ben Seddon by deliberately accelerating the process, because now it's showing off – look what I can do! Hey, these humans are fun! I can mak
e 'em jump around, change 'em, kill 'em whenever I like. It's easy!'

  'But what does it actually want?' asked Gaskin.

  'Isn't it obvious? The brain needs to be reunited with its body. It's using whatever it can to achieve exactly that – first Nigel, and now Duncan

  'But Duncan was buried in the tunnel.'

  'It won't give up that easily.'

  Gaskin stiffened. 'Are you saying we can expect more trouble, Doctor?'

  'Without a doubt.'

  And at that moment the doorbell rang.

  NINETEEN

  Martha had half expected to find an alien monster at the door, asking if it could have its brain back.

  Thankfully, it was only Sadie Brown arriving with some provisions. 'It's late and I thought you could all do with something to eat,' she explained as she bustled in with a large hamper of food. 'I doubt Henry will have organised anything.'

  'We have been rather busy,' said Gaskin, following her into the kitchen.

  'You needn't act so grumpy, Henry,' Sadie told him. 'Angela's brought me up to speed. I know all about your tunnel, and him.' She nodded towards Nigel Carson, who was behind the Doctor and Martha. Nigel remained in the doorway, glowering at everyone while they all stood around getting in each other's way.

  Angela said she would make a pot of tea. 'I think we could all do with one.'

  The big kitchen table was soon covered with sandwiches, cakes and cartons of fruit juice, as well as a big pile of homemade scones and pastries. Sadie said that if they weren't eaten they would only go to waste.

  The Doctor picked up a jar of thick-cut marmalade. 'Marmalade! Oh, it's ages since I had marmalade!'

  'It's homemade,' said Sadie proudly. 'My speciality.'

  'Aww, even better! And does it have really big bits of orange peel in it?'

  Sadie said that it did.

  'Brilliant!' The Doctor sat down and swung his trainers up onto the kitchen table, but then caught Martha's glare from the other side and immediately lowered them to the floor. 'Any toast?' he asked innocently. 'Can't have marmalade without toast.'

  Nigel Carson moved into the room, and everyone fell quiet. He looked pale and weak, his eyes hollow, as he watched them all gathering around the table.