Doctor Who. Zamper

by Gareth Roberts

  Ivzid shook himself, realizing that he was slipping into dreams. He must remain alert, for the sake of his race. Now, there was a thought. His name would go down in the history books. Ivzid, begetter of great deeds, who led the way to the demise of the usurper! A prime role, of which he was deserving. There would have to be changes to the record, of course. No mention would be made of these dealings with parasites. Instead, he would pen an account in which he led a raid on Zamper, raining fire on the vermin! That was how it should have been; that was the way he would tell it. And Hezzka? His part would have to be rewritten, upgraded, to conceal his sordid compromises.

  There was a noise from the next room. Ivzid attuned each of his sensors, diverting a little power from his heater unit to increase his ocular and tympanic capacity. The wall was composed of a thin metal, and the warmth traces of two parasites registered clearly. They were conversing. Ivzid strained to overhear.

  ‘– if we accept a bit of hospitality. That old guy was just doing his job.’ This voice had all the naivety of a hatchling.

  The other parasite, from the look of her a female, replied, ‘He was holding something back.’

  The male folded himself and lay on a resting-bed, his hands knitted behind his head. ‘I’m tired. I can’t be bothered to argue any more, Roz. If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead by now.’

  Ivzid frowned. The Zamper brochure had stated that only five parasites lived here. They had seen four. Now there were two more, and from their conversation they were strangers to the planet. Most strange. He would wake the General and report this odd development.

  Ah. But no. Perhaps this was a discovery better kept to himself. A chance to prove his initiative.

  He shuffled closer to the wall and spied on.

  When she opened her eyes, roused by a faint vibration, Bernice found that the buggy had reached its destination, and was descending a ramp that ended in a small and very clean garage that was illuminated by strips of fluorescent green. A door swung open by itself, admitting her to the Complex. She made sure the flight recorder was still inside her half-melted jacket, and passed through.

  The pavement’s rollers activated the moment she stepped cautiously into the connecting plastic tubeway, and carried her up through the network of connecting walkways that criss-crossed the heart of the Complex. The silence and grand cleanliness of this environment stirred memories of the optimistic future scenarios of mid-twentieth-century Earth culture. On one of the Doctor’s regular trips to England in that period, she’d sneaked off for a look around Milton Keynes, keen to settle some of the archaeological debates it was to spur hundreds of years on. Hours later she’d returned to the TARDIS with an air of being proved right, and boxes full of shoes. The high deserted tubeways and the gently moving escalators of the Zamper Complex left a similar impression of a place not quite suitable for habitation. Whichever way she turned her head, the view was about the same. Her ascent of the travel tube took her to an intersection, and she was gently tipped onto another roller and sent a different way. Half a minute later the journey was over, and she faced a door set in to a blank grey metal wall that slid open as she approached.

  ‘Another one,’ said the tired-looking, red-faced and red-suited man on the other side.

  ‘Yes, hello.’ She held out her hand. ‘Bernice Summerfield. Expecting me?’

  ‘No, as it happens.’ He made a swift appraisal of her and chuckled softly. His thinning, straw-coloured hair was combed back over his ears and he had a healthy outdoor look about him that was entirely contrary to the sterile historylessness of his surroundings. ‘But you’re welcome. I am Taal.’

  After shaking his hand, her attention was drawn to the brightly-coloured structure in the centre of the room. ‘That’s a gaming grid, isn’t it?’

  He held up the palms of his hands. Bernice could tell that he was suppressing his curiosity, and was naturally suspicious of her. Her status as a guest of the Management was not, in the current situation, conducive to easy social dealings with the staff here. Still, it made a change to be feared and not shot at. ‘Just closed up for the night, I’m afraid. Now, you’ll be with Mr Cwej and Ms Forrester? A guest of the Management?’

  ‘That’s right. I’d like to see them.’

  ‘You’ll want apartment thirteen of the guest block.’ He pointed to the inner door. ‘Away through there. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Bernice stopped him as he moved to return to the gaming centre. ‘Taal. I’ve spoken with Smith. I know the way things stand here.’

  He didn’t react.

  ‘Believe me, my friends and I came here to Zamper by accident. We’re not here to cause any trouble. This time yesterday I’d never heard of this place. But we’ll help if we can.’ She smiled hopefully.

  ‘You just appeared, eh?’

  ‘Yes. We just appeared.’

  ‘Typical of the commercial philosophy,’ said the Doctor. He was leaning over the specimen case, watching the Zamps curled up in their rest position. ‘Zamper was constructed to be a short-term success. Any later problems weren’t accounted for.’ He tapped the case. ‘It’s all so complex. Industrial security, I suppose, but very irritating now things have started to go wrong.’

  In spite of the enthusiasm he had reawakened, and her growing anxiety over the future of Zamper, Smith was finding it hard to keep her eyes open, and looked regularly over at her bedroom door, beyond which her self-warming blanket would be heating up nicely. The cool clean air of this planet increased the body’s need for sleep, although it didn’t appear to be affecting her new colleague. ‘The question we should be asking, perhaps, is where has the design for this object of theirs come from? The same place as the ship designs?’

  Smith yawned. ‘Doctor, would you mind if I –’

  ‘But the Zamps have no creative ability of their own. Their brains just don’t have enough room for it. If we presume that some sort of imagination, an ability to visualize a future event, was once in their nature, then we must also presume that the consortium bred it out. Such a thing is not there. So how are the ships designed?’

  Smith yawned again. ‘Doctor, it’s gone midnight, I really think I –’

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense. The designs must come from somewhere. Within or without.’ He nodded to the projector screen, which he had paused on an image of the artifact. ‘There must be a purpose in its construction. Strictly speaking, the Zamps have no consciousness of their own. They may breed and feed, but those are automatic reactions, and unnaturally reduced anyway.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘What if the construction of such an object is a subverted part of their subconscious, autonomic behaviour pattern?’

  It was difficult to follow his arguments through her tiredness. ‘Not likely. I’ve examined the brains of several Zamps. You can see for yourself, there’s no part of the Zamp brain that can think for itself like that, even on the unconscious level.’ She stood up and made for her bedroom door. ‘You’ve reached the same impasse as I have. There’s simply no logical explanation for why they are building that thing. Now, I really must get to bed. I’m afraid I haven’t got any extra bedding, but there are some blankets in the kitchen cupboards.’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘The instinct we’re searching for. We can’t see it in the dissected brain of an individual Zamp. But we’ve already established the strong, co-operative telepathic link in their herds.’ He paced the lab anxiously, drumming his fingers at his temples. ‘It’s hard to credit, but what if the instinct functions on that level? And if so, why?’

  ‘That’s silly. Goodnight, Doctor.’

  She closed the bedroom door, kicked off her boots, and climbed into bed. There’d be plenty of time to discuss his wild theories in the morning. If, she thought grimly, there was a morning.

  Hezzka was dreaming. He was back on Chelonia, and the place had changed. Gone were the multi-levelled island cities, and the congested sky pedways were cleared of traffic, reclaimed by the giant thrusting flora that sprouted from th
e cracked asphalt below. The equestrian statue of the fourth Big Mother had been toppled, the stone head of the raptor he rode split in two, and corpses lay plastron-up in the streets, shells frying in the heat from the unshielded suns, the organs inside baking and issuing smoke. There was a repulsive odour of cooking flesh.

  The last Chelonian, Hezzka dragged himself forward on three limbs, each movement sending a shriek of pain through his weary bones. He felt that the suns were descending through black burning clouds, twin spheres of coruscating energy absorbing the last of the planet’s atmosphere. The angry Goddess was redeeming her gifts. Destruction came also from below, in the shape of crushing hands of bark, curling woody metatarsals to pierce the moaning dead with nightmarishly sharp-tipped thorns. Hezzka slithered forward, resisting death, searching for an impossible sanctuary, one eye flowing where a thorn had scratched. A fang-bird dropped from the sky, its vestigial wings flapping helplessly, its body caught in a nimbus of fire.

  The moon passed before the suns.

  Hezzka fell; his heart pounding, the ground opening, feet flailing, he dropped into a freezing darkness.

  His fall was cushioned by cold mud, into which his feebly protesting form was submerged. In less than a second, he had sunk through a thick barrier of the sludge, and plopped out into a tunnel. His remaining eye increased its range, and he saw that he was enclosed between solid walls of earth. A prisoner. The walls on either side were streaked with a glowing white substance and a fetid odour came from the end of the tunnel. That and a hideous tapping sound.

  Centuries of evolution and civilization were stripped clear and Hezzka knew primal fear, a pure animal terror. A shadow reared against the facing wall, the tapping grew louder, now accompanied by a dragging sound as something indescribably horrific pulled itself along. It came into sight. It was a merciless, evil, slithering thing, twice the size of him; its feelers, dripping with Chelonian blood, drooped obscenely from its head. His frantic efforts to retreat were halted and he went limp. The beast’s mouth opened wide, revealing a hideous black gullet and a circular digestive tract that glistened with oil each time the muscle inside winked hungrily.

  Hezzka screamed as the thing came closer, whistling, clicking, slithering, and lowered its head to feed, to feed on him, its final victim, the last of the Chelonians –

  He woke to the sound of his own frantic murmurs. He was rolling from side to side on the lumpy uncomfortable resting-bed. The room was now in darkness.

  ‘General?’ Ivzid was at his side now, his eyes night-lit. ‘You are troubled?’ he enquired with heavy sarcasm.

  Hezzka shuddered. He recalled the mission to Zamper and the odd events of the day. The dream images lingered, and he could almost see the ravenous beast before his eyes. In his mind, he was still trapped in the monster’s underground lair.

  Ivzid’s eyes, all that was visible of the lad, seemed to be mocking him. ‘A bad dream, that is all,’ Hezzka said, aware of the flutter in his voice. ‘Nothing more.’ But perhaps his mind was trying to tell him something. In his heart, he was unhappy at coming to this place and dealing with parasites. The dream could have been the result of his guilt rising, unchecked, to the surface.

  ‘General, there are two more parasites in the next room,’ said Ivzid. ‘I was about to wake you. Surely there are supposed to be only five workers here?’

  Hezzka barely heard him. He remained dazed, adrenal‐amyl pumping through his bloodstream. Somehow it had been more than a dream. His automatics struggled vainly to relax him. ‘Ivzid, I… I saw –’ he searched his mind for the word, dredged it up from his schooldays, ‘– an Arionite.’

  ‘An Arionite?’ Ivzid scoffed. ‘The Arionites are long dead. The Book of Time tells us so: “Fiftie generations of the houses of Chelonia hath passed since the last Arionite bog was salted”.’

  ‘But I saw one, Ivzid. I saw them return to destroy us, to bring death on all our families.’

  Ivzid growled. ‘In your dream, General?’

  ‘Yes. In my dream.’ Hezzka glared back at him.

  ‘How could you tell? The appearance of the Arionites is not recorded. It is a scholars’ battle to prove that they even existed.’ He motored away from the bed, and raised a foot to indicate the far wall. ‘Sir, I consider it more important to examine these new para–’

  A fresh terror struck Hezzka. ‘I know what an Arionite looks like Ivzid, because we saw such creatures this very day. In the construction yard. The Zamps!’

  ‘Unpleasant creatures but plainly harmless,’ was Ivzid’s summation.

  As he emerged from his shell, Hezzka felt the beginnings of shame. His previous outbursts now, even to himself, appeared unseemly, and surely not fitting for an officer of his rank on a mission of such import. Mumbling of mythic terrors, indeed.

  Yet the vision had been so vivid that in the few seconds’ confusion between sleeping and waking, the dream world had possessed more certainty than this one.

  Casting his doubts aside, trying to assert the dignity of rank, he said. ‘Think nothing more of it. The food we have eaten here,’ he belched for effect, ‘may have a mild deranger effect. What of these new parasites?’

  ‘In the next room, General.’

  ‘I can hear something.’ Forrester motioned Cwej to silence and pointed to the wall. ‘Voices, through there.’ They came again. A stream of bass rumbles.

  ‘Taal did say there were visitors here besides ourselves,’ Cwej pointed out.

  ‘He didn’t say they were aliens.’ She listened again. ‘I can’t make out the words.’ She pictured the owners of the voices as hairy, as broad as they were tall, with flicking tails and savage fangs.

  Cwej fell back on his soft, springy bed. ‘Just relax, Roz.’

  ‘How can I? There’s no lock on the door.’ Her eyes cast around the room, searching for a tool for the task she had in mind. In the drawer between their beds she found a couple of crystal tumblers. ‘Excellent.’ She hurried back to the wall, pressed one of the tumblers against it, and listened.

  Cwej yawned and buried his face in his pillow. ‘I don’t believe some of the things you do.’

  The female parasite was holding something to the wall. Ivzid scanned it. A non-electronic device, composed of processed silicates. Hardly useful. ‘What is the purpose of this?’ he wondered aloud. ‘Could it be a form of resonator?’

  ‘A primitive adaptation of the principle,’ said the General, who had clambered down from the bed and joined the inspection. ‘They mean to amplify our conversation.’

  ‘They dare to spy on us?’ Ivzid considered the two parasites once more; the female was warmer, her muscles tensed. The male, lying back on one bed, was more relaxed. It followed that the female was the commander, as the parasite custom seemed to be.

  ‘I can just make out what they’re saying,’ he heard her say.

  He shook with anger, took a deep breath and bellowed, ‘Oh it’s hard when you’re in space, and there’s no green about the place, and the journey’s end seems ever further on-on-on…’ To his delight, the General took up the song, clearly determined to assert his character after his silly nightmare. ‘But when it comes there’s lots to eat,’ they harmonized, ‘and parasites to greet, before you blast them from existence with your gun-gun-gun.’

  The martial metre lifted Ivzid’s heart, and he remembered how good it was to be a Chelonian. To be made of the best stuff. He and the General laughed heartily as the parasite leapt back in alarm.

  Bernice walked through from the gaming centre into a long high corridor with numbered doors on either side. The lighting was dimmed for the night, and she was forced to squint to make out the numbers. She counted off the numbers, only giving the task half her attention.

  This was apartment thirteen, wasn’t it? Probably. She opened the door, sensing the presence of others in the darkness. She slipped off her boots and tucked them under her arm. Cwej and Forrester were, by the look of things, fast asleep. If their day had been anything like hers, they ne
eded the rest.

  The room was very dark. She felt her way forward, and the tips of her fingers brushed candlewick. Good, a bed. Occupied? She listened closely. The occupant of the bed was breathing deeply and snoring loudly. It had to be Cwej.

  Oh well, room enough for two. And in the morning he’d get quite a shock. Childish, admittedly, but Bernice had learnt over the last few years to enjoy the simple pleasures life offered whenever she could. Careful not to wake him, Bernice put her boots under the bed and climbed in. She really was very tired and as soon as her head touched the pillow she fell asleep.

  She was disturbed. Cwej was hogging the sheets. Each time she tried to pull them back he shuffled about and took more. The bedsprings creaked under his weight. But then, Bernice reflected, he was a big lad.

  She dreamt.

  An ordinary sort of dream. Edwardian London, being knocked on the head, being strangled by Ace, being half-eaten by carnivorous plants, being menaced by a glinting octopus with the sea inside-out above it, being spat at by pink-haired youths, being chatted up by Dr Watson, doing a jigsaw at Allen Road, painting a picture of a lady with a shopping basket, shopping with President Flavia, entering Paris on a haycart, being…

  Being stared at by a Chelonian.

  Being stared at by a Chelonian.

  Being stared at by a Chelonian.