She brought the case to their patient. ‘How is she?’
The Doctor unrolled a length of burnt, fragmented material off Jenny’s shoulder to reveal the damage from Kutter’s gun. It had been a glancing shot – a direct hit would have taken her life instantly – but the injury was still very serious.
‘It looks as if she was struck by lightning,’ said Martha.
‘That was a phased energy weapon. Coherent plasma matrix suspended in a particle beam.’ He handed her an injector. ‘Here. The red and blue vials, full dose, into her carotid artery.’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ she replied, and did as he directed. Martha’s eyes were drawn to Jenny’s face; her skin was drained of colour and thin lines of grey were creeping out from the place where she’d been hit. ‘What is that?’
‘Decay stream,’ he snapped. ‘Like the venom on a poisoned blade. If the wound doesn’t kill you, the toxic aftershock will.’
Jenny groaned and Martha felt a flicker of life fading beneath her fingertips. ‘Her pulse is slowing. Oh no, I think we’re going to lose her.’
‘Not today.’ The Doctor snapped his fingers at her. ‘Give me the green squishy thing, it’s a medical nanogene pod!’ She handed him the slimy knot of jelly and he pulled an activating rip-tab, then pressed it into place against Jenny’s skin. The pod dissolved into her flesh in a glitter of light, but it didn’t seem to work. The woman’s back arched and she went slack.
‘We’re too late!’ snarled the Doctor. ‘She’s crashing!’
Martha shook her head. ‘Like you said, not today.’ She bent down over the prone woman and put her hands over Jenny’s chest, pumping a one-two-three rhythm to keep the teacher’s heart beating. For long moments, nothing seemed to happen; and then a rattling gasp issued out of the woman’s mouth and the grey threads began to fade away.
The Doctor threw her a weary smile. ‘Martha Jones. Lifesaver.’
‘Team effort,’ she replied; but she found she couldn’t smile back. ‘Only this one, though. What about the others?’
‘Don’t keep score, you’ll only make yourself feel worse. We just help the ones we can.’ He gathered up Jenny and Martha helped him carry her to the wide, threadbare chair next to the central console.
Jenny dozed and Martha studied her, watching the nanogenes do their amazing work. ‘It’s like watching a fast-forward movie. I can actually see the tissue healing.’
‘They’re tiny robots,’ the Doctor explained, ‘half-organic and half-machine, not much larger than a few atoms in size. Programmed to repair diseased tissue and dismantle germs. They’ll have a near-fatal injury healed up in a few weeks.’
‘Where did you get them?’ she asked. ‘It’s not Earth stuff.’
‘It’s New Earth stuff, actually,’ he said. ‘I borrowed the kit when I was there with Rose, a while back. That was the last of it, though.’
‘Oh. I thought the logo looked familiar.’ She glanced at the discarded jacket. ‘And I did wonder who that belonged to.’
The Doctor looked away. ‘Jenny will be OK. If we hadn’t got her into the TARDIS in time . . .’ He trailed off, his thoughts turning inward.
‘Those nanogenes, do you think that guy Godlove got his hands on some of them? Is that what cured the smallpox?’
He shook his head. ‘Nanomachines die off once their job is done, but traces of them linger in your system for months. I didn’t detect anything like that in Nathan’s bloodstream. No, he was cured by something else, some sort of bio-energy engram. Totally different technology.’ The Doctor walked in a slow circle. ‘And those two men. They had a similar energy trace about them.’
‘Godlove, the cure, those maniacs with those guns. You’re sure there’s a connection between all three?’
‘There’s no doubt in my mind. I just wish I knew what it was.’
‘But who were they?’
He sat heavily. ‘Kutter and Tangleleg, Blaine called them. Outlaws. But I’ve never seen low-life cowboys using directed energy weapons instead of six-guns, have you?’
‘Advanced technology,’ Martha sounded it out. ‘Something from another planet or time period, then?’
The Doctor gave a slow, solemn nod. ‘At first I thought we’d stumbled on something local – weird and strange, but local – only now I’m not so sure.’ He pointed at the air with his finger. ‘We can’t let this go unchecked, Martha. There’s something alien running free out there in the Wild West, and we have to find it. Find it and stop it.’
‘Then we have to track down this Alvin Godlove. He’s the key to it all. We need to learn his secret.’ She frowned. ‘But how do we find him before those two psychos do? You saw what they did, they don’t care about who they hurt or what they destroy. Who knows how many other people they’ve killed just to get here?’
‘Dekkerville, Blaine said.’ The Doctor’s hands hovered over the controls of the TARDIS. ‘It’s tricky, but we could try a sideways shunt in space with the same temporal coordinates.’
Martha’s frown deepened. ‘No offence, but we might draw a lot of attention if you materialise a police box in the middle of the town square.’
He nodded again. ‘You could be right. Kutter said I was different. I think he might have been able to sense who I am, just a little. And if there’s aliens involved, they might spot a moving time capsule like a flare on a dark night.’
‘We’ll find another way to get to Dekkerville, then.’
‘No,’ said a weak voice. They both turned and found Jenny reaching up from the chair. ‘That’s . . . wrong . . .’
Martha knelt beside her. ‘Don’t try to talk. Just rest. You’ll be fine, I promise, but you have to rest.’
Jenny shook her head. ‘No, listen to me . . .’ She coughed. ‘I heard you. Dekkerville . . . That was a lie. Blaine lied to those menv . . . Godlove . . . Didn’t go south. North. He went northwards.’
‘Well, well. Clever sheriff,’ said the Doctor. ‘He sent them on a wild goose chase.’
‘So where is Alvin Godlove’s medicine show now, then?’ asked Martha.
‘Ironhill,’ husked the woman.
A sudden, warm tightness at her shoulder sent small thrills of pain down Jenny’s arm and she hissed, clutching at it. The schoolteacher had woken up in her own bed, rolled the bedclothes off and sat up, peering into the morning light that filtered through her window. Her first thoughts were that the whole frightful experience had been a night terror of her own.
Now, she gingerly pulled her nightgown an inch down her arm to reveal the site of the pain. A poultice was secured in place there with a bandage, and the skin either side was tender and livid, as if she had been too long in the sun. Jenny’s mouth was dry and she took a sip of water from the glass on her nightstand.
In fits and starts, pieces of the night before returned to her. Taking the Doctor and Martha to see young Nathan; the boy’s peculiar stories, told to them in his mournful trance; and then the horror of the longriders in the main street.
A gasp escaped her lips. The memory of incredible, heart-stopping pain flooded through her and for a moment she felt it again. The wash of murderous heat as the white flash of light struck her. The agony, greater than anything she had ever experienced before, smashing her into a dark, rumbling blackness. She had been shot. She should have been dead.
Jenny struggled out of bed and doggedly dressed herself, her face twisting in frustration as she attempted to remember. ‘There was a room,’ she said aloud, ‘the walls honey-yellow and warm, like beaten gold.’ A domed space, or so it had seemed, with a strange device at the centre. A thing of brass and crystal, delicate and yet powerful. Something about it made her think of an engine, but she could not fathom why. ‘But where?’ she asked herself. She knew Redwater, having lived there for these past five years, and she knew full well that no building such as the one she had been in existed there.
‘The Doctor.’ She remembered him carrying her, carrying her towards the blue box. He had been talking to her all
the way, whispering. Telling her to hold on, to stay awake. ‘And Martha.’ Jenny recalled the girl’s face with perfect clarity, hovering close to her, breathing life back into her lungs. There was something else, as well, something on the tip her tongue. She’d told them . . . Told them what?
A delicate knock sounded at the door, and Mrs Toomey entered with a tray of breakfast things. The elderly woman gawked at her. ‘Good grief, Miss Forrest, but you shouldn’t ought to be up and about! You took a dreadful injury! You were dead to the world when that young Doctor fella brought you back here!’
She shook her head. ‘Thank you kindly for your concern, but I feel well enough to be about the day.’ She glanced out of the window and frowned, the light of the morning showing the blackened ruins among the undamaged buildings, where before stores and homes had stood. ‘I must speak with him.’
EIGHT
‘ALL I’M SAYIN’ is,’ Loomis Teague grated, ‘how do we know that pair o’ hellhounds ain’t gonna come riding back here looking for some payback, once they figure they been gulled by Blaine?’
He looked across the room to the Doctor, and Martha hid a small smile. A day ago, Teague had been ready to turn a knife on the Doctor and fleece him; but now Teague and the rest of the townsfolk in Redwater were looking to him for guidance, even if they weren’t aware of it themselves. He had that way about him, she mused. He was take-charge, he always had an answer. In chaos, he became the eye of the storm.
‘They won’t be back,’ said the Doctor. ‘You deal with as many troublemakers and all-around nasty folks as I have, and after a while you learn to read them.’ He walked slowly around the table in the middle of the store, giving everyone in the room a steady look.
The owner, Mr Vogel, had offered to host this ‘meeting of great import’ in his shop, as that was the only building still intact with enough room for all the storeowners and town elders to gather in. Their usual haunt across the way, the Bluebird saloon, was a burnt-out shadow of its former self, razed to the dirt by a stray shot from Tangleleg’s gun.
‘Those men aren’t out for revenge, Loomis. I know their kind. They’re hunters. They’re looking for a very specific prey. They won’t come back because there’s nothing here for them. No targets.’
‘Bounty riders, you mean?’ asked Vogel. ‘Regulators sent by some dark agency to find Professor Godlove? But to what end?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ said Martha. The men seemed a bit uncomfortable with a woman taking part in town business, but she had no time for their delicate sensibilities. ‘We’re going to have a very serious chat with our friend Alvin.’
Zachariah Hawkes, who had been chewing his lower lip with greater and greater impatience, finally stepped forward and flapped his hands. ‘With all due respect to the little filly here, I have to say that my concerns lie not with our neighbours in Ironhill or parts beyond, but with the good folks in our community!’ A ripple of agreement passed through the assembled men. Hawkes gestured at the air. ‘With the sudden and most untimely passing of our steadfast Sheriff Tobias Blaine, Redwater finds itself without the rule of law and at the mercy of future attacks!’ He produced a smudged copy of the Chronicle, with a smeared headline that read Town Attacked! Hooligans on the Prowyl! ‘I have already produced a new edition saying as much in my editorial!’
‘You spelt “prowl” wrong,’ offered Martha.
The Doctor took the paper off him, gave it a grim onceover, and then screwed it into a ball. ‘I’ve never liked sensationalist tabloids,’ he said firmly, thrusting the ball of paper back into Hawkes’s inky hands. ‘You people need to pull together, not panic and jump at shadows!’
‘Sir, you are correct,’ said Joe Pitt, kneading his hat brim. ‘And I think, we was all mightily awed of how you stood up to those snakes and then looked to Miss Forrest. Clearly you’re a man of courage and learning, and I’d hasten to say, we could do no better than ask you to fill Tobias’s boots for the duration.’ He held out a hand, and in it was a six-pointed tin star. ‘I’d like to propose the Doctor for the job of Town Sheriff.’
‘Seconded!’ said Vogel, pressing the badge into the Doctor’s grip.
The Doctor’s firm expression slipped in a moment of genuine surprise. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa! Oh no,’ he shook his head. ‘I wore one of these once, ages ago, and all it got me was trouble. I’m not doing that again.’
Martha saw Jenny enter the store, the menfolk bowing and making space for her. ‘You all right?’
‘Thanks to you both,’ nodded the teacher. ‘I owe you my life.’
Martha felt slightly abashed. ‘Ah, it’s OK. That’s what we do, me and him. It’s our thing.’
‘Doctor, please,’ Joe was saying. ‘We’re all at sea here. What took place last night . . . Well, we ain’t never seen the like.’
‘All the more reason to pull together,’ repeated the Doctor. ‘I’ve got to find Alvin Godlove, or else other towns, other people will suffer like you did last night. Tobias Blaine, Fess Logan and everyone else who was hurt, they’re just the start. Whether he knows it or not, Godlove’s leaving a trail of death and pain in his wake and I have to stop it.’ He approached Teague. ‘Loomis,’ he said sternly, ‘Listen to me. It’s time you grew up, my old mucker. Put away the cards and the poker chips, get rid of that knife, stop going down the pub every night with your mates and getting into fights. This is your town, and you need to do right by it. Take some responsibility.’
Teague gave a nervous nod. ‘O-OK, Doc. Whatever you say. I guess I have been a mite selfish in recent times. Guess I could do better . . .’
‘I know you will.’ The Doctor patted him on the chest and when he took his hand away, the tin star was pinned on the man’s waistcoat. ‘Sheriff Teague here is going to do the right thing, isn’t that so?’
Teague gawked at the badge. ‘Sheriff?’ Then the idea bedded in with him, and suddenly the gambler drew himself up, straight, steady and clear-eyed. ‘Yeah. That I am.’ Teague nodded toward Pitt. ‘And the first order of business is, get the Doctor and Miss Martha here some horses. They got business in Ironhill.’
‘You’re riding out, then?’ asked Jenny.
‘We have to,’ said Martha.
‘That mining town’s two days from here on horseback,’ said Hawkes. ‘Godlove’s liable to be gone before you get there!’
‘That’s if they follow the stagecoach trail. There’s a shortcut through the hills,’ offered Pitt. ‘Take it at a gallop and with the wind at your back, you’ll make it before sunset.’
‘Rough land out there,’ noted Teague. ‘Nothing but rocks and rattlers. You get lost in the hills, the coyotes’ll be chewin’ on your bones by nightfall.’
‘I know of a body, knows the route,’ Joe continued. ‘Reckon he might throw in as your guide, like.’
‘I’ve still got a fair bit of winnings left over from yesterday,’ said the Doctor. ‘Use that to pay for everything, and keep the change.’
The stableman nodded and headed off as the meeting began to break up. Loomis Teague led the men out, giving out orders in a strong, commanding voice.
‘Who would have thought a card-sharp and a reprobate would have it in him to be a town official?’ Jenny asked lightly, watching him go.
‘I’ve got an eye for people,’ said the Doctor. ‘Sometimes, all a person needs is a little trust to put them on the straight and narrow.’
Jenny took his hand. ‘Thank you, Doctor. If you hadn’t been here last night, then this whole town would be cinders.’
He eyed her. ‘I’m not the one who saved Nathan’s life, Jenny. You’re the one who pushed him out of the path of that beam. You saved him.’
‘I did what I thought was right,’
Martha studied her bandages. ‘How’s the shoulder?’
‘Painful,’ Jenny admitted, ‘but much preferable to the other option.’ She looked away. ‘I don’t know what you did, but I know it should not have healed this quickly. Are you using Godlove’
s medicine? Will I have the dreams?’
‘Not unless you eat loads of cheese before you go to bed,’ said the Doctor. ‘Don’t be afraid. We just used a cure . . . something that’s a bit before its time. You know, like Captain Nemo’s submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues or the rocket in From the Earth to the Moon.’
‘A science of the future?’ Jenny replied. ‘How marvellous.’
Vogel approached with a pile of gear and dropped it on the table before them. ‘Doctor, Miss Jones. Please, take these as a gift.’
Martha reached out and took a hat from the pile. ‘Ooh, cool!’ She sat it on her head at a jaunty angle. ‘Very Madonna, don’t you think?’ She fingered a poncho and frowned. ‘Not that, though. It’s too Ugly Betty for me.’
‘Oh, I quite like the Man-With-No-Name look,’ said the Doctor.
‘Well, you would,’ she sniffed.
He chose a hat, then picked up a thick leather holster and belt, and cinched it in place around his waist. ‘That’s snug.’
Vogel smiled. ‘I’ll hazard you’ll want this as well.’ The storekeeper slid a black revolver across the table toward him.
‘Colt model of 1873, single-action .45 calibre pistol,’ said the Doctor, eyeing the gun coldly. ‘Commonly known as the Peacemaker. They called it “the Gun that Won the West” . . . The pistol behind a million gunfights, range wars and shootouts.’ He shook his head. ‘You can keep it.’
Vogel’s smile slipped. ‘But Doctor, surely you won’t venture out into the wilds without a firearm? This, sir, is the finest gun ever made, an invaluable tool to any man. In these days, it is as necessary to have as the clothes on your back!’
‘A weapon is only a tool,’ said the Doctor carefully. ‘I’ve heard a lot of people say that over the years. But so is a hammer, and if that’s the only tool you have, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.’ He pushed the revolver back toward Vogel. ‘No thanks.’
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