Island of Death

by Barry Letts

  yes, and in his deltoids too.

  Good grief! Was he feeling his age? Maybe the time for his next regeneration was just around the corner.

  He dragged his thoughts back to the immediate problem.

  Now he was at the top, he had to get into the temple and find Dame Hilda. He could hardly walk in through the front door... but of course, there was no front door. Those spectacular gates of polished timber would have been a hallucination along with the rest. But the entrance would still be guarded.

  If his perception of the temple had been still conditioned by the effects of the mist, there would have been no way that he could have climbed over the top of the sheer perimeter wall at the top of the cliff. But now it was a heap of boulders...

  As he forced his limbs into action again, his mind wandered off under its own devices. Even to have built this makeshift barrier would have taken considerable effort. Did the Skang have super strength? The body of the dead one showed little sign of it.

  Or had they employed contractors from Mauritius or somewhere? It seemed somehow banal even to consider it. If so, what had happened to them? The Skang could never have let them go home.

  He had a mental image of a scruffy tramp steamer leaving the island, with a load of brown-skinned workers asleep on the deck, and the captain in his cabin gloating over a box full of gold coins, like a pirates’ treasure chest. Ridiculous. But maybe it came somewhere near the truth. Maybe their ship was sent to the bottom too; with all hands still on board.

  He came out of his reverie to find that he was at the top of the fifteen-foot wall, and he could hear the murmur of voices on the other side.

  He crawled forward until he could see down into the barren crater, half expecting to see an assembly of figures like the dead Skang.

  But no. There was a small crowd of white-robed humans, settling in to the front rows of the seats, which now appeared as stool-sized rocks. A few of the teachers were coming into the natural arena from the caves in the sides of the crater. In the front row, he spotted Alex Whitbread, a pitiable figure, looking if anything even more haggard and ill than he had on the ship. The jigsaw was becoming clearer. This was why the man had been so desperate. As a Skang, he would have been hell-bent to rejoin the others.

  The grand image of the Great Skang, which had dominated the temple, had disappeared entirely. Where it had been was nothing but the bare wall of the crater itself. In front of it, Hilda was already on the raised area, an expanse of roughly flattened pumice, talking to somebody the Doctor didn’t recognise.

  His mind went into high gear. This must be the beginning of the reward ceremony. The devotees must be getting ready to be brought in at this very moment. He was only just in time.

  But how was he going to get to Hilda?

  A change of plan. He would have to wait until the Skang had shown themselves in their true guise, and then intervene. After that... what?

  Hilda held up her hand for silence. The subdued talking died down as the latecomers took their seats. The teacher who had been speaking to Hilda had left her to find his seat with the others, joining Alex Whitbread in the front row.

  ‘Before we proceed to the proper business of the meeting, we have a sorrowful duty to perform,’ said Mother Hilda.

  Again she lifted her hand, nodding, but this time it was directed towards the gap in the wall of rock that was the entrance to the temple.

  All heads turned to look.

  Through the gap in the boulders, down the roughly hewn steps, came four guards, bearing on their shoulders, like a dead prince, the body of a Skang.

  Must be the same one we found, thought the Doctor.

  As they progressed down the central aisle, there were murmurs of horror and shock.

  The body was laid at the side of the platform, and at a nod from Hilda the four guards left the arena, back through the front entrance. The alarmed assembly grew silent as Hilda moved forwards to stand by the body, and started to speak, telling them that Brother Will seemed to have slipped at the top and fallen to his death.

  ‘...and this is confirmed by one of our brothers. Dafydd?

  Would you be so good as to tell us what you know?’

  The teacher who had been speaking to her earlier stood up.

  ‘I was coming up from the village. It was less than an hour after sunrise - I’d been making sure that my people were ready for the ceremony - and I met Brother Will coming out of the temple. I walked with him along the clifftop for a short way He told me that he’d had a report of intruders at the base of the rock wall. He said it was nonsense, but that he was going to have a look...’ Dafydd, seemingly shaking with emotion, struggled to continue. ‘If only I’d stayed with him!

  But I’d promised to be with my friend Brother Alex at this troubled time; and so I turned back to go to his room to try to comfort him.’

  ‘There was nobody else on the clifftop path?’

  ‘I could see the whole length of it quite clearly. There was no one.’

  Hilda thanked him and he sat down. ‘This is the first of our number on Earth to experience bodily termination,’ Hilda went on. ‘In the present exceptional circumstances, I think it would be inappropriate to continue at once. If Brother Alex is to be returned to the fold... and I do say, if... then it would be manifestly unfair to exclude him. I therefore suggest that we should briefly postpone the final Incandescence.’

  Incandescence? Some sort of cremation?

  It was very quiet. The cries of the gannet lookalikes seemed very thin and far away. The narrow strips of foam - like the lace at the hem of an old-world petticoat - which lapped at the edge of the multicoloured coral, made less noise than Sarah did herself as she splashed more and more inefficiently through the ripples.

  She had found, to her relief, that the water near the reef was only about as deep as the shallow end of the pool where she’d been sent to learn to swim, going on the bus on Saturday mornings, clutching her shilling for the lesson (until her father lost his job and even a bob was too much).

  So she was spared the ordeal of scrambling over the harsh coral of the reef, and she was able to stop and rest with her toes in the sand whenever it felt as though her muscles were about to give out.

  She kept a weather eye on the Hallaton, so that the moment she felt it was near enough, she could change course, and make straight for it. It was when she was on her fourth break, as she was seriously beginning to think that she’d taken on more than she could manage, that she became aware of an extra sound on top of the natural ones. It was coming from the ship: voices calling out - and the distant throb of the engine starting up.

  They were getting ready to sail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  There seemed to be some sort of a trial going on. Dame Hilda had taken her place on the rough seat hacked out of a lump of pumice that was in the place of the regal throne of white marble the Doctor remembered from the day before.

  In spite of his bowed shoulders, which spoke of the extreme weakness of his emaciated body, Alex Whitbread, who was standing to her left, had his chin arrogantly raised as he surveyed those about to judge him and pass sentence.

  One by one, members of the group came up to stand on Hilda’s right and speak either for or against reinstatement.

  The Doctor was only half listening. Though, of course, the delay would give Sarah time to get to the Brigadier, the internal politics of the Skang surely couldn’t have much to do with the business in hand?

  After the first three or four speeches, which all seemed to be in Alex’s favour, and the reaction from the rest of the teachers, the Doctor felt that the outcome was only too predictable. It almost seemed as if they were just going through a ritual.

  Still listening with half an ear, his mind wandered off to consider the puzzles that still remained unsolved. How were the Skang able to disguise themselves as human beings with such uncanny accuracy? What had happened to the original humans? And how did the aliens land on the Earth in the first place?<
br />
  He cast his mind back to the innumerable forms of life he’d encountered during his long years of wandering through space and time, and could think of none that matched the Skang - though, of course, he still had to contend with the unpredictable gaps in his memory that resulted from the process of regeneration.

  His thoughts returned to the present with a jolt. This was exactly the sort of distraction they’d been taught at the Academy to guard against. This was when one was most vulnerable.

  As if he hadn’t learnt the lesson for himself! There was the time, for instance, when he’d nearly lost a leg to a Sclaponian dragonfly, because he’d been daydreaming about the voluptuous wife of the Grand Vizier. Quite vainly, of course.

  Any sort of union with a Sclaponian, whether permanent or temporary, would have been a disaster. He’d have lost more than a leg...

  A movement below caught his eye. Good grief, he’d let his mind wander off again! What was going on?

  There’d been a show of hands. He’d registered that. Alex Whitbread had overwhelmingly won the vote. But what was happening now?

  All the teachers were standing.

  All, including Dame Hilda and Whitbread himself, had thrown their heads back, and had closed their eyes. A murmur floated up, a murmur that was not quite a chant, the guttural voices sounding profoundly non-human.

  As the sound grew louder, the Doctor felt as if his brain was shaking in his skull - and he remembered something that had been hidden from him up to this moment. The only time he’d felt anything like it before was in the run-up to his last regeneration.

  Desperate to stop his mind dissolving altogether, he covered his ears, and brought his awareness to a sharp point of concentration, hearing the sound as a mere unmeaningful noise.

  Louder and louder, the off-key inharmonious tones echoed round the perfect acoustic of the crater, until, with a final shout, they abruptly stopped.

  The Doctor blinked and took his hands from his ears. The atmosphere above the white-clad figures was shimmering like the air above a hot tarmac road in the height of summer. Or was it his mind that was losing its hold on the sight before his eyes?

  A feeling of utter relaxation and peace swept over him as his sight cleared. It was as if he’d been looking at the group of Skang all along. The large heads, the staring eyes, the needle probosces, the shining bronze skin - all seemed utterly natural and right. These creatures, for all their gargoyle features, were not in the least threatening.

  He was part of their family.

  ‘Are you telling me that I can’t believe the evidence of my own eyes, Miss Smith?’

  The Alka-Seltzer had merely dulled the throbbing in the Brigadier’s head. It had certainly done nothing to make him view the Doctor’s latest escapade any more kindly. And now this preposterous tale!

  The prints had been handed round the upper bridge for everybody to look at, including the Cox’n.

  Even in the heat of the midday sun, Sarah was still dripping lagoon water all over the deck. When she’d arrived at the ship, it had been moving very very slowly ahead as they pulled in the anchor cable. Luckily, they’d left the rope ladder over the side, for when she and the Doctor came back with the launch.

  Seeing how desperate she was, they aborted the weighing of the anchor, and were lying to the cable at half its proper length while they listened to her story.

  ‘Please, Brigadier, you must believe me! The Doctor said that if we don’t stop it, all the Skang followers are going to be ingurgitated, and...’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ What the devil was the child babbling about?

  ‘You know, like those people on Hampstead Heath. That’s what the reward ceremony is all about.’

  The Doctor was obsessed. Hadn’t they had proof enough that it was all above board? ‘Is that right? And how does he know that? Were they marching up and down with placards?’

  ‘He... he worked it out.’

  ‘You mean he guessed!’

  Sarah almost stamped her foot in frustration. ‘It wasn’t like that at all! We saw a dead Skang!’

  Mm. That might be a different matter. But the child was a journalist. She was quite capable of making it up.

  Pete Andrews, as Commanding Officer, seemed as doubtful as the Brigadier. ‘We have to catch the tide, you know, otherwise we’ll be stuck here until tomorrow. I’ve no intention of trying that narrow entrance in the middle of the night. If the Doctor’s not back soon, we may even have to sail without him. He’ll just have to come back with the others.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point! They’re not coming back! Why won’t you listen to me!’

  ‘Good God!’ As she was speaking, Chris had picked up a pair of binoculars and was staring through them at the island.

  Sarah turned to see what he was looking at. Her expression changed from despair to triumph. ‘Look!’ she cried, pointing at the beach.

  The Brigadier had been wondering whether it would be okay to take another dose of Alka-Seltzer so soon after the first. But Sarah’s change of tone brought him swiftly back to the matter in hand. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Have a look for yourself, sir,’ said Chris, handing him the glasses.

  As the Hallaton had moved forward half the length of the anchor cable, she had come into a position where they could see the beach quite clearly - and not just the beginning of the road and the huts, but in the distance, the top of the volcano in the middle of the island.

  It was too far away to see at a glance with the naked eye, but as the image came into focus, he could see that the golden sand seemed to have turned black, and the avenue of neat white villas with its shapely palm trees had become something more like a mini-version of the shantytown on the outskirts of Bombay, in the middle of a bleak tangle of thorny shrubs.

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ came Pete Andrews’ voice. ‘There’s no temple, either.’

  The Brigadier shifted his gaze.

  As he registered the piles of rocks sitting at the top of the volcano where he had seen - and walked among - the pillars of marble, and the space where he’d seen the great doors, he felt his head swim; and it had nothing to do with the bottle he’d left nearly empty in the wardroom when he went to bed.

  How could this be true?

  He pulled himself together. Why hadn’t he believed her?

  The Doctor usually turned out to be right in the end. They had been drugged, just as she’d said; and it must still have been having an effect.

  ‘Miss Smith... Sarah. I owe you an apology. My behaviour has been inexcusable. Now tell me again exactly what the Doctor said. And this time I’ll listen to you.’

  The Doctor shook himself. These were the alien monsters who could easily become the agents of the end of the human race. Why should he feel such overwhelming warmth towards them?

  All the Skang raised their heads and turned together to look at the one who had been Alex Whitbread, standing alone at the side of the makeshift stage. The creature he had become looked as sorry as the human he had been. Its white robe hung loosely on its thin frame, its cheeks were sunken, and its eyes, unlike the glistening orbs of its fellows, were half closed, dull and discoloured. Even the bronze skin had dulled to a blotchy mud colour.

  The Skang on the other side of the platform, who used to be Hilda, lifted her hand and pointed to Alex. As if she were a puppet master pulling a string, all the rest, with one accord, raised their right arms to point at him as well; and at the same time their voices could be heard again.

  But how very different! At first there was nothing but a soft hum, but gradually it grew into a changing chorus of chanted notes, with shifting harmonies strange to the human ear, which would meet each other - and then be lost - only to join again in ever sweeter concord.

  The Doctor was fighting to keep a hold on the reality of the situation. This could be the siren song that lured him to an unknown doom.

  He must be true to his purpose! These creatures must be forced to leave the planet,
or pitilessly annihilated, utterly wiped out... but ah! How could his heart not melt? How could it not be entranced by such a heavenly sound? Surely this must be the very music of the spheres, the song sung by the stars themselves in the silence of space.

  As the crescendo reached a climax that touched him more deeply than the most sublime of symphonies, it began to fade. The voices fell away, one by one, until there was nothing but one high, sweet note, purer than any flute, which lingered into a stillness that had the touch of silk.

  Only then did the Doctor notice what had been happening to the forlorn figure of Alex. As if he had been absorbing the very essence of the sound itself, the bony figure had rounded into the muscular form of perfection; his bronze skin was shining as though polished by the sun; his eyes, now wide open and alert, were arrogantly defying the world; and he was standing tall, triumphantly restored to his former Skangness.

  As the Skang that was Hilda dropped her hand and the rest followed suit, Alex, apparently to her surprise, walked firmly across the stage to where the corpse lay waiting. Raising his hand, he pointed. All the Skang bar Hilda followed suit, and after a moment she too complied with the unspoken command.

  Naked politics, thought the Doctor, whose normal objec-tivity was fast returning. Maybe there was something there that he could use.

  He became conscious of another sound coming from the assembled Skang. But this time it was a sustained hissing, an intense sibilation, a white noise that burnt into the brain and made it shrink away in self-defence.

  Presently, as the sibilance became almost unbearable, he noticed a scintillation, a web of sparks, dancing over the skin of the dead Skang, which spread and expanded until it was one unbroken sheet of fire.

  Soon the blaze of light was too bright to bear, illuminating the arena, shaming the sunlight itself. The Doctor had to close his eyes and look away.

  A whoosh like the take-off of a Guy Fawkes rocket; and the light on his eyelids was gone. The sound of the Skang faded away.