He stared at their blank faces.
‘Please yourselves. Anyway,’ he turned and addressed the otter. ‘We’ve got to have a good look at you. How you getting on with the list, Ty?’
She scratched her head.
‘What’s a “planar thesiogram”? And this one…’ She pointed with a finger. ‘A “follengular beam… beamcaster”?’
She looked up at him.
‘Oh that?’ said the Doctor, looking slightly guilty. ‘Scuse my handwriting. Feeling a bit peckish… that’s a “full English breakfast”. First of all, though, I need to check on Martha.’
‘Are these really necessary?’ demanded the Doctor, pointing at the leather restraints that fastened Martha’s wrists and ankles to the bed. He couldn’t bear to see anyone shackled or tied down, let alone Martha. In her sleep, she growled and thrashed her head from side to side. Her face was slick with sweat.
‘It’s for her own safety as much as anyone else’s,’ Sam Hashmi said apologetically. ‘She was…’ he stumbled for words.
‘Like an animal?’ suggested the Doctor.
Sam nodded.
The Doctor shook his head. He’d brought Martha to Sunday and he should have taken better care of her. If only he’d gone straight back to find the TARDIS instead of messing around in the zoo lab, this might never have happened. Sometimes he got caught up in things so much that he forgot there were other people around, other people that he cared about.
He leaned over Martha and stroked her forehead with the backs of his fingers. She flinched, her body arched up from the bed, and then collapsed back.
‘What medication have you given her?’ he asked Sam without looking up.
‘Antipyretics to bring her fever down and some broad-spectrum antibiotics to help counter any infection.’ He didn’t sound hopeful.
The Doctor leaned back and looked up at the display above Martha’s bed. For a few moments, he scanned it, taking in all the readings. There was something he was missing, he felt sure of it. Something not quite right…
‘It’s not an infection,’ he said suddenly, more to himself than to Sam.
‘It’s not?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s an allergic reaction – look at those readings. What are her histamine levels?’
Sam fumbled about with the clipboard for a moment. ‘You’re right,’ he said, almost disbelievingly. ‘And it’s on a massive scale!’
‘She’s close to anaphylactic shock – we need adrenaline or epinephrine or whatever you’re calling it these days.’
‘I’m on it.’
Sam rushed off to get the drug whilst the Doctor continued to calm Martha down.
‘Don’t you worry, Martha Jones,’ he whispered. ‘We’re going to pull you through this. And then we’re going to Tiffany’s for that breakfast I promised you. And you know how seriously I take promises.’
He tried to sound positive, knowing that somewhere under the fever Martha would be hearing his words. She seemed to relax for a few moments and her eyes opened blearily. There was no sign of her brown irises, just black holes sunk into the dull green of her corneas.
‘Martha,’ whispered the Doctor, ‘can you hear me?’
She gave a little moan and stared at him with those cold, alien eyes.
‘Too dry,’ she murmured.
‘What is?’
‘Too dry,’ she repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘Must go back… back to the water… Must go…’
She closed her eyes and sank back into the damp pillow.
‘Why?’ urged the Doctor. ‘Why have you got to go?’
But Martha didn’t answer. She just moaned quietly, flexing her wrists against the straps.
‘Here we are,’ said Sam suddenly, gently elbowing the Doctor out of the way. In his hand he held a syringe. The Doctor could only hope that, although the adrenaline might reduce Martha’s body’s response to whatever was inside her, it wouldn’t get rid of it.
‘It might take a while to kick in,’ Sam said, stepping back from the bed.
The Doctor nodded and squeezed Martha’s hand, his eyes scanning the monitor. But even as he watched, he could see that the adrenaline was working. Martha’s breathing became less laboured, less painful. He watched her for a few minutes. There was nothing more he could do for her now that the drug was starting to work – but there was something he had to find out.
‘Take care of her,’ he said to Sam. ‘let me know when she comes round.’
And with a last look back at his friend, the Doctor headed for the zoo lab.
Unfortunately, before he could get down to the work of examining the new otter, the Doctor discovered that he had another problem to deal with.
Making his way across the square, he saw an officious little figure come bustling out of the Council building towards him. He really didn’t have time for Pallister.
But Pallister was not in the mood to be ignored.
‘Doctor!’ he called across the square. The Doctor pretended he hadn’t seen or heard him, and carried on walking. But Pallister sped up.
‘Doctor,’ he said from too close for the Doctor to carry on his act. He spun round and smiled brightly. It often disarmed people, he thought – although one look at Pallister’s grim face suggested that this wasn’t going to be one of those occasions.
‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Mr Lassiter.’
‘Pallister,’ the man corrected him, and the Doctor saw the angry twitch of a muscle at the corner of the Chief Councillor’s mouth.
‘How can I help you? I’m rather busy at the moment.’
‘There’s a Council meeting this evening,’ Pallister said, clasping his hands together. ‘I’d like to know what I can tell them about your presence here.’
‘Of course you would. Well, as soon as I find out, you’ll be the first to know.’
Pallister was thrown.
‘You don’t know why you’re here?’
‘Oh, I know why I’m here.’ The Doctor leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Trouble,’ he said simply.
‘Trouble? What sort of trouble?’
The Doctor looked around, as if they might be overheard.
‘The worst kind of trouble, if you take my meaning.’
‘And, erm, what would that be, exactly?’
‘There’s something bad going on here, Mr Pallister. Something very bad indeed – and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’ He paused again for effect. ‘It’s what I do.’
With that, he clasped Pallister’s clammy little hand firmly, gave it a shake, and rushed off to the zoo lab, leaving Sunday’s Chief Councillor standing, dumbfounded, in the middle of the square.
The Doctor was quite impressed at the level of technology that the Sundayans had managed to salvage from the flood. He was less impressed with the breakfast. He was still picking bits of what they laughingly called tomatoes out of his teeth as he carried the otter to the examining table and swung the huge lamp into position over his head.
He held out his hand, palm up, to one side.
‘Swab,’ he said sternly.
‘What?’ Ty stared at him.
‘Sorry. Getting carried away there. Just pass those scissors, will you?’
Ty’s stare became wider.
‘Just a little short back and sides,’ he explained.
Ty handed him the scissors and he set about clipping the hair around the otter’s ears.
‘Well, sir,’ he said in a cheery tone of voice. ‘Going anywhere nice for your holidays? Really? Lovely! See the game last night?’ He snipped and tutted, rolling his eyes. ‘We were robbed, weren’t we, eh? That last-minute penalty, eh?’
‘What are you on about?’ said Ty, helping to pick away the tufts of the otter’s hair as the Doctor reached the skin.
‘Hairdresser’s banter,’ grinned the Doctor. He paused and squinted at his handiwork. ‘He’s not going to be too happy with that when he comes round. Never mind – a bit of gel
’ll sort it out. Maybe some extensions. Oooh, there we are: look!’
Ty peered closer: speckling the surface of the skin, in a broad band across its head, stretching from ear to ear, were tiny, dark-red dots.
‘It’s the same as on Martha, isn’t it? What are you doing?’
The Doctor picked up a syringe and handed it to Ty.
‘Like to do the honours? Cerebrospinal fluid, please – five millilitres.’
Ty took the syringe, tipped the otter’s head to one side, carefully inserted the tip of the needle into the back of its neck and began to withdraw the plunger. The syringe filled up with a brownish-pink fluid.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘I’ll tell you that when we’ve found it. Right!’ He took the syringe from Ty and held it up to the light. ‘Let’s get this over to the bio lab – I’ve got a feeling this might be just the breakthrough we need.’
‘It’s incredible,’ said Ty, her eyes scanning the screen set into the large, glossy desktop.
The bio lab, situated on the other side of the square, was a considerably more impressive building than the zoo lab. The settlers had been lucky that all this hadn’t been lost in the flood too – although it couldn’t begin to make up for the lost settlers themselves. On the outside, it looked much the same as the other buildings – a single-storey log cabin. But inside the walls had been lined with smooth, white plastic sheeting, heat-sealed and brightly lit to create a series of rooms that resembled the inside of a fridge. Cool, clean and clinical, even the air smelled sterile.
Three or four white-coated technicians busied themselves at various pieces of equipment on the benches arrayed around the room. Along with the reassuring beeping and whirring of machinery, there was a low hum of air conditioning. At the centre of the room was a table the size of a barn door, its surface dark and glass-smooth with half a dozen big screens set into it and a host of touch-sensitive panels and buttons around them.
The Doctor peered over her shoulder at the full-colour, computer-augmented images that rotated on the desk.
‘Proteins!’ he said. ‘Now why aren’t I surprised?’
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his spectacles and put them on. ‘Now… let’s have a look…’
Almost elbowing Ty aside, he took a deep breath and began typing on the virtual keyboard, projected onto the glass surface of the table.
‘I didn’t know it could do that!’ exclaimed Ty as a single small screen suddenly grew to take up most of the surface of the table.
‘It can’t,’ said the Doctor without looking at her, adding in a whisper: ‘But don’t tell anyone – it’ll invalidate the guarantee. Oooh – look at that! Now that is interesting.’
He stood back proudly and folded his arms.
The vast tabletop screen was filled with an assortment of strange, clumpy shapes, rotating, swirling, joining up with each other and forming long chains before breaking apart and reforming.
‘I feel like I’m back at nursery school with you, Doctor,’ Ty said tiredly. ‘But at a guess—’
‘Oh, an educated guess, surely, Professor.’
She ignored his flattery. ‘At a guess, I’d say we were looking at protein synthesis.’ She glanced up at the Doctor for confirmation. He just raised an eyebrow. ‘That,’ she said, tracing a long, twisty thread, ‘is RNA, yes? And it’s controlling the manufacture of these proteins.’ She reached out and dabbed at three or four other images.
‘Go on,’ the Doctor said approvingly. ‘And what’s RNA for?’
‘Ribonucleic acid is involved in the replication of DNA, the chemical that codes for the construction of living organisms,’ she said, as if she were quoting from a textbook.
‘And what else has RNA been implicated in?’
Ty frowned, watching the kaleidoscope of images in front of her.
‘Not memories, surely?’ She looked up at him in disbelief. ‘But that idea was discredited on Earth decades ago.’
‘We’re not on Earth any more, Toto,’ the Doctor reminded her with a grin.
Ty didn’t understand, but suspected the Doctor was taking the mickey out of her. She turned back to the display table.
‘So… you’re saying that these proteins and this RNA contain memories? Those things in the otters’ nests are implanting memories into the otters?’
‘Not just memories,’ the Doctor said gravely. ‘And not just the otters. These are the results from Martha.’
Ty’s eyes widened.
‘But why? Is this connected with the otters’ braininess?’
The Doctor took off his glasses and twirled them in his fingers.
‘When you catch the otters, they’re dim but violent, and after a couple of days they turn clever and friendly. These proteins are just what you’d need to stimulate aggression – and suppress intelligence.’
‘So it’s not that the otters are actually getting cleverer,’ said Ty, struggling to keep up with the speed of his train of thought, ‘but that they’re just returning to their normal level of smartness? The proteins have been holding them back, and once they’re gone…’
The Doctor nodded.
‘In the meantime, they’re creating an allergic reaction in Martha’s body.’ He pursed up his lips and narrowed his eyes. ‘But as to why…’
He turned suddenly.
‘The other skeletons that I heard you’d found: have they been given a good going-over?’
Ty nodded. ‘They were all people who disappeared during the flood. Dental records are pretty clear.’
‘Causes of death?’
‘Impossible to tell from the skeletons – I assumed they drowned. But they all have holes in their chests or their heads – different sizes. Some the size of a fist, others just pinpricks.’
The Doctor chewed thoughtfully on the arm of his glasses.
‘Sounds to me like someone’s been experimenting. Someone. Or something.’
‘Experimenting?’
‘Experimenting with human bodies – working out how they work, how to get inside them.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ty hug her arms to herself tighter.
‘We really could do with understanding why, what those slimy little pets of the otters are up to.’ His eyes lit up and he grinned. ‘You know what we need to decode the RNA and the proteins, don’t you?’
Ty shook her head.
‘What we need is the most advanced biological computer I can think of.’
‘Here?’ Ty scoffed. ‘You’re lucky we’ve got all this stuff. Where d’you think you’re going to lay your hands on something like that?’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow and gave her one of those stares.
‘You’re looking at it,’ he said.
‘You’re mad!’ cried Ty, staring at the Doctor with wide eyes.
‘One man’s madness is another man’s, erm, poison,’ the Doctor replied. ‘Say hello to the Doctor-o-tronic.’
‘Exactly,’ Ty reiterated. ‘This stuff is poison. Look what it’s done to Martha – and you’re going to, what, inject it into yourself?’
The Doctor pressed his lips together and took Ty’s hands in his. His skin felt strangely cool.
‘If there was another choice…’ he said gently. ‘We need to know what those slime-things are putting into the otters – and into Martha. Your equipment here might be sophisticated, but it’s not that sophisticated. This, however—’ He tapped his temple ‘—is!’
Ty shook her head firmly.
‘Use me,’ she said suddenly, impulsively. ‘Inject it into me.’
‘Humans might be clever,’ the Doctor smiled, ‘but I’m brilliant! And at the moment, we need brilliance, not another person who needs strapping to a bed.’
‘How d’you know it won’t be you who gets strapped to the bed? What makes you so special, hmm?’
He looked at her for a few moments.
‘We don’t have time to discuss it. Ty, I’m Martha’s best chance. I brought her here
, I owe it to her.’
There was a heavy silence between them, punctuated only by the bleeps and bloops of the equipment in the lab. Eventually, realising that he wouldn’t give in, Ty sighed.
‘OK – what do we need to do?’
NINE
Martha woke up, drenched in sweat, her hospital gown and the bed sheets clinging to her. For a moment, she had no idea where she was: a dimly lit room, a lemony, timbery smell in her nostrils. And then it came back to her – everything.
‘How are you feeling?’
Martha jumped as a figure appeared out of the gloom. A short, elderly Indian man, peering at her worriedly.
‘Where’s the Doctor?’
‘The Doctor?’ the man said – his name came to her from nowhere: Dr Hashmi. Sam. He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. D’you want me to find him?’
Hashmi glanced into the air above her, and Martha followed his gaze to see some sort of display screen, hanging over her head, showing an augmented view of her body with numerous winking lights and flickering patches on it.
‘How am I?’ she ventured.
Hashmi smiled cautiously.
‘Your friend was right,’ he said. ‘We pumped you full of every antihistamine and epinephrine analogue we have and it seems to have done the trick. We’ve damped down your body’s allergic reaction to whatever’s inside you.’
Martha let out a sigh and gripped the edge of the sheets – but Hashmi placed his hand on hers before she could throw them back. He’d taken the restraints off when he’d seen that she was no longer dangerous.
‘But I think you should have a bit more rest. Your body’s very weak – we’ve had to feed you intravenously.’
For the first time, Martha noticed the tube taped to the back of her wrist.
‘I’ve got to find the Doctor,’ she said.
‘I’ll find him for you. Stay here and I’ll get you something to eat and drink. If you get up now, you’ll be back in bed in minutes, trust me. You’ve had quite a shock.’
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