by Nick Walters
- it was certainly a tree, but unlike any that had existed on Earth. Indeed ‘tree’ wasn’t enough to describe the enormous growth, implying as it did a single closed organism, discernible from its fellows once you got close enough to tell the wood from the trees. In this case, the wood was the trees and vice versa. Dominating the gardens, which were arranged around it in concentric circles, its main mass consisted of thick, closely intertwined trunks thrusting their limbs into the ground. These bifurcated upwards and outwards into a complex, skeletal network of leafless branches, like fingers clutching at the stars. The extent of the Tree was hard to gauge from a distance, but as they got closer Aline realised it had to be at least a couple of kilometres in diameter. More like a city than a tree.
The allegory was reinforced by the herds of Gardeners that were converging on the Tree like citizens hurrying home before curfew. They ignored the interlopers in their midst, seemingly intent on reaching the Tree. Aline was relieved, if a little perplexed, that no retribution had followed the killing of three of their number. Maybe murder was a new concept for the Gardeners. Before Aline and the others had arrived, death must have been a natural occurrence - no funeral rites, just composting. That had all changed now. Just by being here, they were upsetting the natural order of things, irrevocably skewing the balance of the Garden’s ecosystem.
Aline kept this to herself, mainly because they had enough problems without her making them all feel guilty. After all, they weren’t here by choice.
Presently they reached the end of the avenue, about a hundred yards from the giant Tree whose mass now spanned the horizon and cast an area of deeper darkness which engulfed them and the Gardeners filing into the gaps between its twisting trunks.
The Doctor took out his pen-torch and flitted its beam around. As on the Valethske ship, it wasn’t much help.
‘What do you think they’re doing?’ asked Peri, indicating the clicking, rustling lines of Gardeners.
‘You saw them picking the fruit earlier,’ said the Doctor.
‘Maybe it’s not for their own sustenance, and they’re taking it to whatever lives inside.’
Peri’s eyes glittered as she stared up at the Tree. ‘Not more aliens!’
‘Perhaps there’s a human colony here,’ said Taiana. ‘Yes -
these Gardeners could be genetically engineered servants!’
Athon nodded, his face lit up with enthusiasm. ‘Just waiting for us.’
‘If they had the technology to create genetically engineered plant servants they would know of our presence on their planet,’ said Aline, despairing yet again at Eknuri naivety. Why had they stopped? She wanted to go on, into the Tree. She said as much to the Doctor.
‘I suggest we wait until morning,’ said the Doctor. ‘It will be pitch dark inside - the Gardeners won’t need light. We’ll make camp here.’ He waved the torch beam in the vague direction of a cluster of bushes at the end of the avenue.
Lornay hefted her gun. ‘I say we go in. We still go along with the Captain’s plan. We make contact with the intelligences controlling this world, get their help.’
‘I agree,’ said Aline, stepping up to the Doctor. ‘We can’t waste any more time.’
The Doctor looked dubiously up at the panorama of stars. ‘If the Valethske wanted to find us, they’d have been here by now. They’ve moved on, somewhere else, taking my TARDIS with them.’ His head fell; he was finding it hard to face up to this truth. ‘I’m sorry, Peri.’
Peri moved to his side, her smooth young face downcast, deep furrows below her eyes. She muttered something about it not being his fault.
Lornay appeared to give in. ‘Right. We rest, then. I’ll keep first watch.’
Everyone else sat or lay down, grateful for the rest, even Taiana and Athon. Even the Doctor, who settled himself comfortably against a tree-trunk.
Aline met the Doctor’s gaze. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘Don’t stray too far,’ he said. He pushed his hat down over his eyes but Aline still got the feeling he was watching her.
She walked a little way off, down the avenue towards the Tree.
Something seemed to be happening to her mind, thoughts and images forming deep within it, as if there was something inside her using her brain for its own ends.
As if there was something inside the Tree reaching out to her.
The presence she had sensed - it was back, stronger than before. An instant of panic-charged flashback to the Encounter, of the thing reaching out to her and touching her mind - filling it to overflowing with more information than it could possibly handle. A moment of realisation: what if her mind had been changed somehow by the Encounter? Not merely by boosting her psychic powers; what if the Encounter had opened up dormant areas of her mind? Areas that advanced beings could make contact with.
As these thoughts flashed through Aline, she felt her body chill to the bone, her breath swelling and sinking with increased rapidity. Butterflies in the stomach. Dry mouth.
Yes, she had all the symptoms - but she wasn’t afraid. This surprised her more than anything that had happened since Athon’s party. She watched the Gardeners as they filed into the tree, their movements creating a background of clicking and rustling.
And then, slowly, almost without realising it, Aline began to walk towards the Tree.
Peri wandered through the gardens, unable to sleep. She was too worried, her mind wouldn’t stop spinning. The Doctor didn’t usually need sleep but Peri had seen his face, strained and tired. Obviously the loss of the TARDIS was affecting him more than he was letting on.
She came to a chessboard of flowerbeds, alternating orange and blue tulip-like blooms. In the near distance, the Tree loomed. Whatever way she turned, she was always aware of its presence, as if it was watching her. Or something within its tendril maze of branches was watching her. She shuddered, trying to think of something else, without much success.
Suddenly she became aware of soft footfalls on the grass behind her, and turned to see Athon approaching, his bronzed body silvery in the starlight.
Peri folded her arms and gave him her standard glare. ‘Peri,’
he began. ‘I -’
‘If you’re gonna ask me to forgive you, forget it.’
He raised his hands to his chest, as if in prayer. ‘No, nothing like that. I just want to say - sorry.’
It was far, far too late for that. He should have apologised to her the moment - the moment - she’d woken up back on the hill. And then he should have done something to prove he wasn’t a worthless, spineless creep. Where had he been when Lornay had loosed off against the Gardeners? Hiding behind Taiana, that’s where.
Peri turned away. Get lost, Athon, I don’t want to talk to you.
But he wouldn’t go - and worse, he seemed to have regained some of his arrogant self-regard. ‘Peri, we’re both stranded here. We haven’t got much choice over that. So we should at least try to get on.’
So he wasn’t sorry for her sake, he just wanted it easy.
‘Why? Give me one good reason. If we weren’t stuck here you wouldn’t see my heels for dust!’
He changed tack. ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me, but please try to understand. I’m Eknuri, we’re superior to humans in many ways-’
That was it. Without waiting to hear him out, she turned on him. ‘Superior? You? That’s a laugh riot!’
He backed away, a look of dismay breaking over his face.
‘Peri, let me explain -’
Peri sucked in a deep breath and let rip, fists bunching in anger.
‘Shut up! The Doctor risked his life to save me, and I know he’d do it again, and I’d risk my life to save him so I guess that makes us superior, you... you... She spluttered to a halt.
There just weren’t the words to describe him. ‘Just go away, Athon. Go and play with your new friend.’
Athon’s eyes hardened and he straightened up, towering over her. ‘All right. If that’s the way you want it.’ His
voice was shaking with barely suppressed anger and for a moment Peri was scared of him, of the potential of those bulging muscles coupled to an immature mind. She wouldn’t put it past him to lose his rag and hit her.
‘Let us speak to each other no more, unless absolutely necessary. And probably not even then.’ With that, Athon turned and stomped away through a flowerbed, kicking the blooms and scattering their petals to the night.
A little way off Peri saw Lornay leaning against a tree. She’d probably seen their argument, though hopefully she was too far away to hear anything. She’d taken off her combat jacket and now wore only a skimpy singlet. Athon saw her too and changed course. Gloomily Peri watched them kiss, Athon bending as if to smell a flower. Clinging to each other, they moved off into the darkness, out of sight.
‘You’re welcome to him, honey.’ she muttered.
‘He has a fondness for non-Eknuri women.’
Peri all but jumped out of her skin. Taiana! Where the hell did you spring from?’
Taiana’s form resolved itself out of the darkness, her figure-hugging black costume gleaming in the starlight. ‘Like you, couldn’t sleep. Feeling restless.’ She sighed. ‘And lost.’
‘I know how you feel.’ said Peri, thinking of the TARDIS - the home she was just getting used to, and would probably never see again.
‘My servitors - without them I have no access to the datanet.
My mind feels empty.’ Taiana’s deep voice was dripping with sadness. ‘I can’t think like I used to. Every thought, every idea, every whim I had was backed up or acted upon by the datanet. Now when I try to think of something, all I get is –
nothing.’ she folded her arms, her head tilting at a contemplative angle. ‘A hundred years. So much would have happened back home. I ache to know.’
There was no tactful way of saying what Peri thought of next, so she just came straight out with it. ‘Won’t everyone you know have died after a hundred years?’
Taiana smiled sadly. ‘Home is still home. And no, not everyone. We Eknuri can live for up to two hundred years. I myself am eighty.’
‘That’s nothing,’ said Peri, ‘the Doctor’s almost ten times that.’
‘Really,’ intoned Taiana seemingly without interest. Then her head jerked upwards, her eyes fixed on a point in the sky above the topmost branches of the Tree. ‘A shooting star...’ she breathed.
Peri looked. It appeared as if one of the stars was moving, a pinpoint of light describing a falling arc against the deep blue of the night sky.
A shooting star - or a starship?
Peri’s blood ran cold. ‘That’s no comet,’ she stammered.
‘Come on - let’s get back to the Doctor and the others!’
Aline jumped as someone tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Relief flooded through her as she realised that it was the Doctor. ‘Nowhere.’
The Doctor stood before her, hands in pockets, his pale tan costume an area of relative brightness in the gloom. ‘You were walking towards the Tree, as if you were in a trance.’
How could she explain what she felt? That something inside the Tree was calling her, something she felt would complete her.
‘Was I? I didn’t realise...’
He saw through her straightaway. ‘You’ve sensed it again, haven’t you? The alien presence.’ He looked over to the towering mass of trunks and branches. ‘And it’s in there.’
Aline shook her head, ready to deny everything, but to her surprise, she said, ‘Yes.’
He began ushering her back towards the others. ‘I don’t think it’s a very good idea to go in at night.’
She shook free, suddenly angry at him. ‘You can’t order me around,’ she said with more harshness than she felt. ‘I’m going in whether you think it’s a good idea or not!’
He ran a hand through his hair, exasperated.
‘Oh come on, Doctor - don’t tell me you’re not curious.’
‘Oh, I am, I am.’ He looked back towards the end of the avenue of trees. ‘I suppose the others will be safe.’
Aline saw her chance. ‘Yes, they’ll be fine.’ She began to move off towards the Tree, not looking to see if he followed.
She was glad to find that he did.
‘We’ll just take a quick look,’ said the Doctor. ‘That’s all.’
Aline took his hand, which seemed to surprise him, and led him across the skirt of grassland that surrounded the Tree. There were still a few Gardeners about, their clicking movements jerky and urgent, as if they were rushing to be on time for something.
Aline and the Doctor followed a trio of the motile plants into a dark gap between two massive trunks, each easily five metres across. Aline was fleetingly reminded of the cave in which they’d hid from the Valethske. The gap led into a soft-floored tunnel that meandered its way into the depths of the Tree. The Doctor had been wrong about the darkness - a phosphorescent moss clung to the walls, bathing everything in a green glow. Above, the ‘ceiling’ was a knotted fibrous mass, the roots and rhizomes of a profusion of parasitic plants trailing down and brushing against their faces. Aline noticed the Gardeners in front brushing them aside with quick, nervous-seeming movements of their appendages.
Behind them, more Gardeners followed. Aline sensed that there was no threat in the plant-creatures. She’d encountered alien plant species before, and though not usually hostile they all possessed a certain single-mindedness. All they wanted to do was disperse their spores as widely as possible. As for the purpose of the Gardeners, Aline felt she was shortly going to find out, along with answers to bigger, more personal questions.
Caught up in the procession of clicking, swaying plants, the Doctor and Aline moved deeper and deeper into the Tree.
The Doctor squeezed her hand as if to reassure her. He must think she was terrified. Aline held back a titter of amusement.
She wasn’t scared at all.
Presently the tunnel widened, and led into a cathedral-sized chamber, its barked walls bulging and knotted, patched like a luminous map of alien continents with the phosphorescent moss.
The far side of the chamber was a convex bulge, like a giant green stomach. Running across its middle was a lipped slit, like the mouth of some prodigious reptile. In front of this Gardeners clustered, their appendages raised above their flower-heads, waving in unison.
As Aline and the Doctor watched, the green mouth opened, and from its dark depths a cluster of mottled purple tongues unfurled, reaching down to the floor of the chamber like ramps.
Aline paused at the edge of the tunnel, eyes fixed on the mouth, on the tongues. Fear returned, swamping her in a sudden tidal wave. She clung on to the Doctor, barely aware of the Gardeners that stepped around and over her.
‘Come on, let’s get back to the others,’ said the Doctor, pulling her away from the scene.
But Aline stood firm. She heard her own voice as if from far below her. ‘No. No, I’ve got to stay.’
The Doctor caught his breath. Did he realise something had changed in her?
‘We’ll observe for a bit longer,’ he said, his voice tight with reluctance.
The rustling of the Gardeners increased in urgency until, in a blur of movement, things scuttled down the tongues. A new genus of motile plant; many-legged, bulbous creatures the size of small cars. As they descended, their pod-like bodies opened like the wing-cases of beetles.
When they reached the floor of the chamber they stopped before the mass of Gardeners, who stooped above them and from their trumpet-like mouths poured the fruit they’d harvested earlier. When full, the pod-like motiles closed and ran back up the ramp-like tongues into the gaping mouth.
Aline found herself moving towards the forest of Gardeners, eyes fixed on the darkness inside the green mouth. Fear had gone, replaced by certainty. She knew what she had to do.
She had to allow herself to be harvested.
‘Aline!’ cried the Doctor. ‘stop! Try to resist it!’
‘I don’t want to,’ she murmured. ‘Can you feel it too?’
The Doctor kept pace with her. ‘I can feel something - some sort of psychic signal, emanating from beneath the Tree.’ He stood In front of her. ‘I can’t allow you to go in there.’
But I want to go,’ said Aline. ‘I’m not afraid.’
By now they were caught up in the rustling crowd of Gardeners - it was like being inside a fiving, moving forest.
Stilt-like legs leaned and shifted. Appendages curled and whipped and clutched.
The Doctor dodged a questing frond. ‘Aline, listen to me.
You’ve told me about your Encounter, how something tried to psychically link with you. It’s obviously left some residue of itself buried deep inside your mind, and the thing inside this planet recognises it! It wants to make contact - not with you, but with the thing that destroyed your sanity! This time it’ll totally overwhelm you. I can’t let you go!’
Aline shook her head, disappointed in the Doctor - he’d got it all wrong. ‘Doctor, it’s not like that. My Encounter was merely a preparation for this. All my life I’ve been fascinated by alien species, alien cultures. The thing I Encountered knew this, and wanted to make me see - make me see everything. It prepared me. paved the way. My enforced xenophobia, the Eknuri assignment, my meeting you, the Valethske attack - it was all to get me here, so I could make contact with the being that lives inside the Garden, fulfil my destiny.’
The Doctor looked suddenly furious. ‘Aline, you’re a scientist!’
A green tentacle curled around his waist. ‘Listen to the rubbish , you’re spouting!’ A Gardener hoisted him high in the air.
His hands clawed frantically at the appendage. ‘There’s no such thing as destiny!’ he cried - then the Gardener flung him across the chamber. He hit the mossy wall and fell to the leafy ground, apparently out cold.
Aline smiled. ‘Doctor, I thought you were my destiny, but you were only a part of it.’
She turned away from the fallen Time Lord and walked up to the green mouth. The gateway to her destiny. As Gardeners wrapped their welcoming tentacles around her, hoisting her up towards the mouth, Aline fancied she could see a smile playing around its corners.