Doctor How and the Deadly Anemones

by Mark Speed

“I.” Grk started laughing again. “I not joking, Doctor.”

  The Doctor suddenly stopped laughing. His voice was determined. “Your responsibility, your mess, your clean-up. Goodbye.” He turned to the Spectrel.

  Grk grabbed the Doctor’s shoulder and turned him around. “No. You pay for clean-up.”

  “I think you have to learn,” said the Doctor. “That if you want to take on the responsibility for looking after other out-of-towners, then that means that you are responsible for the downside, as well as the upside.”

  “No. Grk invest a lot of money in this. Need to cover mortgage.”

  “Well, don’t look at me for funding, pal. You pay for your own mistake.”

  “But this very bad advertisement for Grk with out-of-town community.”

  “Let it out to some human Londoner, then.”

  “Oh. Then I have to deal with local authority, get certification, all bureaucracy like that. Cost time and money for compliance. I have compliance done for out-of-town, not human.”

  “Well, you were perfectly happy to let a couple of Rindans die, weren’t you?”

  Grk’s face suddenly hardened. “You.” He pointed a finger at the Doctor. “You make deliberate use of polyp to kill Rindans. Put Grk out of business.”

  “Oh, for… I do believe you’re serious, aren’t you? You think I had a couple of Rindans killed so that I could put you out of business?”

  “Yes. This is exactly what Grk think.”

  “And I suppose you think I had your brother killed as well, do you?”

  Grk thought for a moment, then a wave of realisation washed across his face. “Now I think, then yes. Yes, I think maybe you have my brother killed by polyp!”

  “You know fine well that I didn’t even know your brother was here until you told me he’d been killed. Repeat those allegations in public, and I’ll see you in a court of law.”

  “Good!” said Grk. “See you in court. Listen, you not popular in out-of-town community. You go round with heavy man,” he pointed at Kevin. “You make threats.”

  “When the hell did I ever make a threat?”

  “You make threat about taking Grk to court.”

  “Only if you make slanderous comments, you dimwit.” The Doctor took a deep breath, held Grk by the shoulders again and locked eyes with him. “Look, Grk. I like you. You’re a hard-working chap, and you do a good job. Really, you do. But you’re stressed. You lost your brother. Tim, Trinity and this young man here,” he nodded over at Kevin, “did a fine job of tracking down the polyps. We have two more to find, and we have to go and do that. It’s what we’re good at. You have to do what you’re good at. Yes? You do cleaning. Yes? You’re good at cleaning.”

  “Not happy. Is big problem for Grk. Not liking awkward situations.”

  “Oh, for photon’s sake. Look, I’ll call the Rindans if you like.” He plucked his phone out of his inside breast pocket, selected a number and dialled it. “Hello, Doctor How here…. Yes… Look, I’m at the consul’s new residence in Catford. Yes, the one you’re renting from the Circarians. There’s been a bit of an accident… Dead, I’m afraid. Please accept my sincere condolences… Probably right after they got home this evening. Polyp. Attacked and eaten…. Husband too. Came up the lavatory, would have homed in on their smell in the water. The Circarians are dealing with the clean-up. Want to speak to one of them? No, thought not… Okay, will do… Once again, my sincere and heartfelt condolences.” He looked at Grk, who was looking edgy. “No, he’s very distressed, and really can’t talk at the moment. Oh, but he will be doing the death rites. Gratis, I think, under the circumstances. Cheerio.”

  He turned to Grk. “They totally understand that the polyps home in on their species. All part and parcel of living on Rindan itself. They do so love to play with death.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve really got to be off. If you can take the remains to the consulate tomorrow morning, that would be great.”

  “Okay, take tomorrow. Thank you, Doctor. Sorry about mess.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, old chap. It happens. Just sheer bad luck, I’m afraid. Have a little think about letting this place out to a human. Home environment, you see – not much that can go wrong.”

  “Yes, but I spend thousands on adapting for out-of-town use.”

  “Well, I don’t know what the answer is.” He put a hand on Grk’s shoulder. “You’re a good fellow, Grk. Really, you are. You just need to stick with what you do best. Okay?”

  “Okay, Doctor. Sorry for create trouble.”

  “If you’re going to cater for the out-of-towners, why not pick someone who’s easy? Maybe I’ll put a couple of Yarts your way. They were looking for somewhere new. Not very demanding.”

  “Thanks, Doctor. Appreciate help. Sorry about early comments.”

  “I completely understand. Come on, Kevin. Let’s see what Trini’s been up to.”

  Kevin and the Doctor entered the Spectrel.

  “I’m glad that’s over,” said the Doctor.

  “I thought you handled that pretty well, Doc. I mean, you could have read the riot act to him, right?”

  “Honestly, Kevin. Your comment about intelligent extraterrestrial life wasn’t far from the truth. It’s like a children’s playground.” He fiddled with the controls. “Of course, I can see what’s going to happen now.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see? The Rindans are going to get wind of the fact that a polyp their original consul introduced illegally killed Grk’s brother, who was also here illegally. Circarians… well, you can see what they’re like. Volatile. Grk was making death-threats against the Rindans to me the other day, holding them responsible. The Rindans might very well think that Grk deliberately put their new consul at risk. There’s a potential for a feud now.” He let out a huge sigh. “I may be a Time Keeper, but I just never get a moment’s peace and quiet to myself.”

  “Sorry, Doc. Look – here’s Trin!”

  Trinity walked into the Spectrel on four legs – the middle two pairs were holding a fat package wrapped in a grey silk web. It was not at all what Kevin had expected to see. The package was a couple of feet long and a foot in diameter, with a bulge at one end.

  “Good girl!” said the Doctor as Trinity dropped it at his feet. He tickled her big spider’s head, got his Ultraknife out and scanned the package. “Still alive. It’s gone into hibernation mode. This will do very nicely indeed. You’re the best, Trinity. If you go to your room you’ll find a nice treat waiting for you. It might take a minute or two for you to catch it, but I know you’ll enjoy the chase.”

  Trinity bolted from the control room.

  “Like, what have you given her?”

  “Mmm?” the Doctor was watching a couple of house-bots pick up the polyp.

  “The treat. Like, I get the impression you’ve given her something… to eat alive.”

  “Yes,” said the Doctor absently, following the house-bots out of the room, and indicating that Kevin should follow him. “Don’t worry your pretty little very-suddenly-ethical meat-eating head about it.”

  “Excuse me, Doc. But there is actually an issue of ethics here. You can’t just throw live animals in there for Trini to eat.”

  “Oh, Kevin,” sighed the Doctor. “You never think about where your own food comes from, do you? Hmm? I remember your comments the other week that – as far as you’re concerned – a milkshake comes from a machine. And I have to say that you rather enjoyed bashing what little brains there were out of some oversized cockroaches last week.”

  “That’s different, innit? That was life and death. What you’re doing is cruel.”

  “It’s cruel to deprive a predator of the joys of the hunt. You wouldn’t deprive a dog of the pleasure of chasing a ball, or a cat of the joy of sinking its talons into a toy dangling on the end of a stick, would you?”

  “A ball or a thing on a bit of string isn’t alive, Doc. That’s my point, innit?”

  “The same technology that can
put together a perfect Jamaican patty based on your thought waves can put together a treat for Trinity.”

  “Right. But if it’s –”

  “If it’s only got a nervous system capable of trying to evade Trinity, but no consciousness then the problem is…?”

  “Well…”

  “I have neither the time nor the mood for an ethical debate about the nature of consciousness. And don’t get me started on moral relativism. Do you see how I dress?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Black suit and white shirt.”

  “Yeah, but why’s that relevant? I don’t get it.”

  “It’s pretty black and white, Kevin. Geddit?”

  The house-bots led them back to the lab. This time a large tank of water had appeared next to the dissection table. It was floating a couple of feet from the floor, with no visible means of support. With a nod, the Doctor indicated to the house-bots that they should put the silk-wrapped polyp in the tank. They lowered it in slowly, taking it to the bottom themselves. He gave another nod and they started cutting into the mesh of silk threads that bound the creature up. A med-bot lowered itself into the tank and hovered in the water near the two house-bots.

  “Watch this,” said the Doctor. “Trini gave it a tiny shot of venom to paralyse it before she wrapped it up. They’re able to squeeze out their body fluids and condense themselves. A form of hibernation. We got enough data from the autopsy to figure out what kind of emetic to use.”

  “Emetic?”

  The Doctor cast Kevin a backward glance. “Emetic. Something that makes you throw up.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Here we go.” The house-bots moved away, then broke up through the surface. The polyp was expanding, and the tentacles began to move slowly. A little hatch opened on the med-bot and a syringe popped out on an arm. The needle jabbed deep into the body of the polyp and the plunger injected a liquid. The med-bot rose to the surface and exited the water. Kevin noticed that the house-bots were now equipped with a fine gauze net.

  Kevin saw something black in his peripheral vision, and started. It was Trinity. She was in her feline form. She looked up with her glowing green eyes, and purred. She rubbed herself against his right leg and then sat in front of him, watching the tank, the tip of her tail flicking.

  The polyp’s body contracted from the foot to the head a couple of times. Then it pulsed in a massive spasm which made Kevin wince with the imagined pain of it. Pieces of flesh with purple veins popped out of the creature’s mouth.

  “They don’t have an alimentary canal as such. Just a mouth. Anything that they can’t digest – which isn’t much, by the way – they excrete via the mouth. This is its last meal.”

  The house-bots dived in and caught the pieces of flesh in the gauze, then broke the surface again. Two other house-bots were waiting with a transparent container.

  “The earthly remains of the Rindans,” said the Doctor. “Well, what hasn’t been digested yet.”

  The polyp was now doing what Kevin thought of as a ‘dry heave’, and he remembered the pain of trying to vomit on an empty stomach. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

  “Oh, don’t feel sorry for it, lad. You with your moral relativism. This thing would happily eat you for lunch. Aside from that, it can’t really feel pain as you and I understand it. It’s got about as much consciousness as your mobile phone.”

  The polyp stopped pulsing. Kevin realised it had grown to around four times the volume it had been when wrapped up by Trinity. It used its tentacles to right itself onto its foot, which rippled as it stuck to the bottom of the tank. The tentacles started waving more vigorously, and he could now see that four were short and four were long, just like the one they’d carried out the autopsy on earlier. There was a scar running down the body, and the four short tentacles were on either side of the scar. The tentacles spread out and pressed the sides of the tank, feeling for any holes. A couple of the longer ones broke the surface.

  Then the foot started rippling rapidly and let go of the bottom. Using its tentacles, it climbed the side of the tank and planted its foot so that the body remained just under the surface. The tentacles came out of the water and explored as far as they could around the outside of the tank. Apparently accepting that there was nowhere else for it to go at the moment, the polyp let go of the side of the tank, sank back to the bottom, then planted its foot there, its tentacles floating in the water.

  “That thing is well scary, Doc.”

  “No, I’ll tell you what’s scary, Kevin. What’s really scary is that this one split before we caught it, as I hypothesised. And we have absolutely no idea where the other one is.”

  “Couldn’t it have split from one of the other ones we caught today?”

  “Trinity said this one is different. She can taste the difference between individuals.”

  “Wow, that’s a downer.” Kevin thought for a moment. “Won’t it go straight for the next Rindan it can find?”

  “It would if it could smell them in the water. My analysis of the sewer maps shows that it could only be in an area where there are no Rindans. Their consulate is north of the Thames, which it probably can’t get across.”

  “Okay. So can I ask what you’re going to do with this one?”

  “Give it back to the Rindans, of course. Along with the remains of the consul and her husband. I just want to make a point about the rules and why we have them.”

  “What are they going to do with it? Kill it?”

  “Probably. And eat it afterwards, is my bet. There’s quite a nice circuity to that. Funny lot with their eating, the Rindans.”

  The Doctor staggered forward and leaned against the autopsy table.

  Trinity was looking hard at the Doctor and let out a loud and baleful yowl. Kevin rushed to the Doctor’s side and put an arm around his shoulder.

  “Doctor, are you alright?”

  “Yes and no,” gasped the Doctor. His eyes were screwed up and his face contorted with pain. His breaths were quick and shallow.

  “Doc, you’re in shock or something. I’m going to help you lie down, alright?” Kevin was still in his combat suit with its power-assist, and found it easy to lay the Doctor on the floor of the lab.

  “Med-bots! House-bots!” said Kevin. “I need to take him to the sick bay. Wherever it is you took David Where, I need you to take him there.”

  “There’s…” gasped the Doctor, “There’s no need for that. Just… Just get me to my room. Don’t faff around with the bots. Just take me there now, lad.”

  “But I ca –”

  “Just take me to my bed!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Kevin picked Doctor How up, thanking his lucky stars for the suit. He supported the Time Keeper’s head as best he could. How’s breaths had become longer and deeper, which he took to be a good sign. Sweat was forming on his forehead, which Kevin thought was bad.

  “Mum, Mum,” muttered Kevin as he walked through the corridors of the Spectrel, a house-bot leading the way. Trinity walked by his side, glancing upwards every couple of steps and letting out a strangled meow.

  “Why the hell are you calling for your mother?” mumbled the Doctor.

  “Well she’s a nurse, ain’t she? She’d know exactly what to do. I’m trying to remember all the first aid she taught me.”

  “Don’t you dare call her,” said How. “This will pass.”

  “Like, is this a medical condition you have? Are you having a fit or something?”

  “I’m over-tired, Kevin. The strain of getting David’s Spectrel back in order didn’t help.”

  Kevin remembered the allusions the Doctor had made in the previous days, and he silently cursed David Where for his neglect, and Walter When for his apparent cowardice.

  The house-bot went through a doorway and into a room with a bed. This was the Doctor’s bedroom. Kevin looked around. He’d never seen this place before. It was Spartan in the extreme – white walls as bare as those in the laboratory. Th
e only furniture was a simple black desk with a black chair, facing a blank white wall. He was reminded of a monk’s cell from the Middle Ages, and a flash of understanding hit him. He felt a pang of sadness for the Doctor’s lifestyle.

  He laid the Time Keeper down gently on the bed. It was a simple affair. White sheets. No duvet was necessary, he realised – it would be some kind of smart material. There was no pillow.

  “I’m alone, Doc! I dunno what to do. How can I get in touch with Where or When?”

  “Don’t bother with them,” said the Doctor. “I’m going to be alright, lad.” His body stiffened and his face contorted in pain. Sweat from his temples hit the sheets and disappeared.

  Kevin reached out a hand and touched his forehead. “You’re burning up!”

  “Leave me alone, damn you!” The Doctor was panting heavily again.

  “Sorry, Doc.”

  “I’m sorry…” The Doctor panted heavily for a few seconds. “I don’t mean to be uncivil. But please go.”

  “I can’t just leave you like this.”

  “I’d rather you did. Please. Although I’d appreciate it if you’d take my shoes off. Leave them by the side of the bed.”

  “Sure. Okay, Doc.” Kevin undid the laces on the Doctor’s shoes and set them down. “I’m worried, Doc. That’s all. Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

  “It’s nothing I’ve not been through before.”

  “Oh.” Another insight hit Kevin. “This is like your,” he hesitated, knowing the offence an incorrect term taken from the Doctor Who television series might cause. “Erm, is this your regeneration?”

  The Doctor squinted open half of his right eye and Kevin thought he was going to get a mouthful.

  “Aye, lad. Now be a good fellow and give me a little privacy, will you?”

  “Is it going to be like…?”

  The Doctor pushed himself up on his elbows. “No it’s not going to be like on the TV, damn you! There will be no bolts of electricity, or inappropriate and fancy special effects! Nor will I come out wearing a ridiculously overlong scarf or poncey bow tie. But there will be an awful lot of pain and discomfort on my part. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave me to suffer in peace.” He slumped back onto the bed, panting.