Island of Death

by Barry Letts

  A hand under her chin, gently lifting.

  ‘What is your name, my child?’

  ‘Emma.’ There was no tremor in the voice.

  ‘Are you ready to receive the reward your devotion so richly deserves?’

  ‘I am.’

  The Skang put his head back and closed his eyes, murmuring some words. Was he praying? Or delving from the depths of their united being a structure, a ritual, which translated itself into human speech?

  Emma’s face was already blissful. She closed her eyes as the Skang took her lightly by the arms, and touched the nape of her neck with the needle tip of his proboscis. As it entered her flesh, there was a simultaneous sigh of satisfaction from every member of the watching group.

  Emma didn’t even flinch.

  It wasn’t plunged in like a giant dagger but glided through the satin skin as gently as the touch of a loving husband with his virgin bride.

  At once Emma’s peaceful countenance changed. She opened her eyes and, with a gasp, took a deep breath; and as the sharpness entered her further, she uttered a sound very like a moan, but expressive of a delight beyond imagining.

  The Doctor dropped his eyes. If he’d been a near-voyeur before, now he felt that he was illicitly present at an intimacy deeper than any sexual encounter.

  The sound of Emma’s voice grew louder as the moan changed into a crescendo of ecstasy so exquisite it pierced the mind. At the very top of the cry, when it was beginning to seem that there was no limit to the exaltation that she could reach, her voice stopped.

  Despite himself, the Doctor lifted his eyes to see. Sagging in the arms of the Skang, Emma’s body was impaled as deeply as it was possible to be.

  There could be no doubt of it. She was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Everything stopped. The audience... the congregation - the Doctor found it difficult not to categorise the watching Skang in some such way - had all risen to their feet at the same moment, the moment that silence came, as if they were going to join in a standing ovation. But after a deep exhalation, they remained quite still, watching with their great eyes.

  The waiting seemed to last only a minute or so, but with the utter lack of movement or sound it was difficult to judge, and afterwards the Doctor reckoned it must have been more like five minutes before he realised, with a gulp of nausea, that the dead girl was growing thinner, and that Alex’s grip on her arms was tightening until the muscles on his arms stood out like a weightlifter’s, and his Skang body was trembling.

  A strange sound, like a sob from many voices, called his attention to the watchers in the arena. He could see that they were shaking too. Were they sharing the satisfaction, the consummation, they could see before them?

  It didn’t take long. In a matter of minutes, the proboscis was withdrawn, and the corpse, now no more than a covered skeleton, allowed to fell to the ground.

  Alex sat down on the immense throne behind him, and the rest of the Skang also sat down. All remained quite still as two guards appeared and carried off Emma’s poor desecrated body to the side and into one of the caves in the volcano wall.

  A temporary storage place, a ‘chapel of rest’? Or was it destined to become a charnel house for the victims of the coming massacre? How would they dispose of nearly two hundred?

  The Doctor wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. If the Prime Assimilation was to trigger the coming of the Beloved, he would have expected it to arrive within a few seconds. Nothing can travel faster than light, but even in those terms the moon was less than one and a half seconds away, and Hilda had said that the swarm that formed the Great Skang was on the other side of the moon. On the other hand, it couldn’t be entirely composed of psionic energy; there must be a physical component, no matter how tenuous.

  That in itself would slow it down.

  What actually happened was a surprise. As Alex Whitbread

  - the Doctor found it almost impossible to think of the thing on the stage by that name - as it sat there with its great head bowed, it started to sweat.

  But this wasn’t the glow of perspiration you’d see on an athlete who’d run his course. It ran off the Skang in streams, in rivulets, in waterfalls; so much that puddles were forming on the ground beneath.

  Surely the act couldn’t have been so strenuous? If it took so much energy, as the sweat implied, then it was difficult to believe that the absorption could be worthwhile.

  But then the Doctor realised. The human body is about seventy per cent water. It had to go somewhere.

  If all the faithful were to ‘get their reward’, each of the Skang below him would be ingurgitating the insides of some nine bodies. More if the guards were to be included in the final total. Each Skang would have to get rid of well over a hundred gallons of water... or burst.

  The Doctor’s thoughts were broken into by a new sound, like a distant wind. It was growing louder and louder, until the howl of a hurricane assaulted his ear - or was it heard only by the mind? Certainly the tops of the trees growing on the outer slopes of the volcano showed no sign of disturbance.

  At the first murmur, all the Skang started to mutter in unison. It was impossible to hear what they were saying, but the Doctor turned in surprise when he realised that Hilda was joining in. She had her eyes closed, and her head bowed like the rest of the Skang, seemingly oblivious to her human form.

  The noise stopped. All the Skang lifted their heads, stood up as one and raised their arms to heaven.

  The Skang that had been Alex Whitbread did the same, turning towards the back wall of the arena and standing, like a priest, waiting for the descent of his god.

  Pete Andrews was thoroughly fed up, but whether it was with the Royal Navy, himself, his officers or the Brigadier he didn’t know. Or Sarah Jane Smith, for having had the idea in the first place.

  He’d given the order to Bob, whose responsibilities would cover equipment like respirators, only to be greeted by a dismayed face.

  Why did they have only five of them? It was okay if you were dealing with a smoke-filled engine room or something of the sort, but not much cop if the ship was facing a full-scale attack of nerve gas (or whatever). The whole point of their presence in Hong Kong had been to police the surrounding sea area, yes, but also to be prepared for any provocation the Commies might throw at them.

  ‘Were you supposed to have them?’ the Brigadier had asked, irritably and irritatingly, with a sub-text of Army glee.

  That was the trouble. He had no idea what the regulation was; but it certainly had been his responsibility as First Lieutenant to make sure that it was followed.

  ‘That’s irrelevant, sir, if you’ll forgive me,’ he’d said. ‘The fact is that only five of the landing party will be protected in the case of another gas attack. The question is, who?’

  ‘Bags I have one!’ said Sarah.

  Oh God! That was all he needed. He’d read The Famous Five as well, but this was hardly the moment, now was it?

  * * *

  The Great Skang didn’t come down from the skies like Peter Pan on a Kirby wire. Nor did it appear with a flash and a puff of smoke like the Demon King in a pantomime. The first intimation that anything was happening at all, as the sound faded away, was a twinkling of sparks, which then multiplied and grew, tracing a three-dimensional outline of the now-familiar Skang figure in the space behind Alex.

  This Skang was not a Gulliver, a living mountain seventy feet tall. It was little more than twice the size of its facsimiles on Earth. But it was no solid, bronze-skinned creature of muscle and sinew. As the hot-white scintillations increased in number, filling in the gaps, they expanded to such a splendour that at first the Doctor couldn’t bear to look.

  As his eyes became accustomed to the intensity of the light, he saw that the shape of the awesome figure wasn’t fixed. It was perpetually melting at the edges, and forming its shape anew; a continuing reminder that this was a visitor from another realm of being.

  When it spoke - and
was he hearing it in his ear or in the depths of his brain? - the sound mirrored the form. It was a multiplicity of voices, as if blown by a gusty wind, at once coming and going, growing and fading; each separate, yet overlapping the next to speak as one, a great voice seeming to echo round the arena.

  ‘Who are you?’ said the Great Skang. ‘You are not the Mother.’

  The Doctor would have expected the voice to be detached, dispassionate. But here was an undertone of real emotion. It felt like the anger of a monarch faced with treachery.

  How could this be? One might as well have expected a beehive to be jealous, to be proud. Ah, but a swarm of bees could certainly be angry - and for that matter, the Great Skang could communicate with the curious hybrid creatures standing before him only by sharing their human sensibility.

  ‘By what right do you stand there?’

  This was a question that could not remain unanswered.

  ‘It was decided by the whole group that I should become their leader,’ said Alex.

  The Doctor found it difficult to believe what he was hearing.

  Was it bravery, desperation - or just foolishness?

  The cold anger grew in the alien voice. ‘You lie. There are many here that disagreed.’

  ‘Then why should they have supported me?’

  The arrogance of the man! Couldn’t he see that he was digging his own grave?

  ‘From fear. We can smell it, rising like smoke. Is this the unity of the Skang? Those we send are not mere messengers.

  They are torn from our very heart to become our children.

  Where is the Mother that we sent?’

  For once, the royal ‘we’ seemed entirely appropriate.

  Alex didn’t answer at once.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ he replied.

  Now the anger was very apparent, not only in the voice, but in the colour of the scintillations that made up the Great Skang body, which were rippled with deep reds.

  ‘Again you lie! She is here - but she is not here! She is confined. She is imprisoned. We can see her buried in stone.

  Where is she?’

  Would he answer?

  But no. Even at such a time the pride of the man Alex Whitbread, the supreme conceit that had ruled his whole life, was greater than his fear. He remained silent.

  ‘Very well,’ continued the great shining figure, ‘you have made our choice for us. This planet Earth will be remembered as one of the failures. We shall destroy all who know of our existence.’

  Exactly what Hilda had warned might happen! But what to do? If the Doctor shouted through the limited gap in the window his voice would never carry; and it had been proved conclusively that he didn’t have the strength to escape.

  ‘But first,’ the Great Skang continued, ‘although it will pierce our heart with a wound that will never heal, we shall destroy you.’ It raised an arm and pointed a finger at Alex.

  As he realised what was to be his fate, his shell of arrogance cracked, and the power of words he’d lived by deserted him. He tried to plead for mercy, but all that came out was an incoherent babble of terror - which soon turned into a scream of the purest agony.

  Again the Doctor witnessed an Incandescence. Again he had to cover his ears against the burning power of the sound, which this time came from the Great Skang itself. Again he saw the network of flame that fluttered over the skin and spread to become a white-hot blaze that blinded the eye; and again he heard the swoosh as it faded.

  Only then did the screaming stop.

  In the silence that followed, the Doctor realised that Hilda’s murmured voice behind him had continued right up until that moment. Indeed, it was the fact that it was no longer there that called attention to it, like the sudden silence of an unwound grandfather clock. He turned.

  But it was no longer Emeritus Professor Dame Hilda Hutchens standing behind him. It was a Skang.

  It walked past him to the doorway, put out a hand and leaned on the pile of massive stones that blocked it; and the mound collapsed like a sandcastle when the tide comes in, leaving the way open to the outside.

  There’s very little that wouldn’t collapse under the weight of a double-decker bus.

  The coming of the Great Skang had been a conduit for the complex of psionic and gravitational energy that she’d needed.

  At the door, the new Skang paused and looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ said Hilda’s gentle voice.

  She went out onto the gallery, and the Doctor heard her voice again, now clear and young, ringing out through the amphitheatre below.

  ‘Here I am,’ she said.

  At least the threat of the immediate massacre of all those on Stella Island had been averted. But only at the cost of the greater danger: the continuation of the ‘reward’ ceremony and the mass ingurgitation of the faithful, which would provide the psionic energy for the seeding of the entire planet with thousands of Skang.

  But if the Doctor showed himself, he risked incurring the fate of the late Alex Whitbread. He moved over to the door, where he could get a better view of what was going on.

  The Hilda Skang had walked down and taken her place in front of the giant figure on the stage. At her feet, there was the small pile of dust, still smouldering, that was all that was left of the worldly dreams of Alex Whitbread.

  The angry crimson streaks had vanished from the ever-changing carapace of light before her, giving way to a more gentle glow, a burnished gold that spoke of calmness and harmony; and the voice had lost its fury and become loving in tone.

  ‘We give you our greetings, Mother, and the gratitude of our heart, which tells us you have gathered a cornucopia of plenty for our delight and nourishment...’

  For a being that had spent thousands (if not millions) of years cruising through empty space, with only the occasional pitstop to replenish its fuel, the Great Skang seemed to be surprisingly articulate, thought the Doctor. Then he reminded himself that it was at one with the collective mind of the group below him, and that included some of the finest human brains the century had produced.

  As usual, the Doctor’s analytical faculties, which allowed part of him to stand back and watch without emotion, sat alongside his intense involvement in the fate of those he was trying to help.

  He mustn’t let himself be seduced by the ambience of warm-hearted amity. Just to be in the neighbourhood of these surprising creatures was to feel a kinship with them.

  But he’d seen what had happened to the unfortunate Emma; and if he did nothing to stop it...

  ‘Now is the time for our banquet. Now is the time for us all to share the fruits of your labours, as a foretaste of the abundance yet to come. Let us begin.’

  No!

  The Skang that was Hilda turned and lifted its hand. But before she could speak, the Doctor shot out of the now open door onto the gallery.

  ‘Stop!’ he cried.

  All the alien faces turned towards him. The Great Skang’s body rippled with flashes like a sky full of lightning.

  ‘Who is this? Who dares to speak so to the Great Skang?’

  ‘You mustn’t do this. Can’t you see that it’s wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’

  The incredulity in the voice hit home. Of course it wasn’t wrong to them. This was their life, as Dame Hilda had said to him. Like sentient beings throughout the universe, their only purpose was to survive.

  He’d jumped out of hiding as unthinkingly as one who leaps in front of a speeding bus to save a wandering child.

  But now... he could find nothing to say.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The pause nearly cost the Doctor his life.

  The Great Skang lifted its arm and pointed. The Doctor heard the white-hot noise begin, and felt his skin starting to glow.

  ‘Wrong for you, I mean! Can’t you see that the Earth is the very last place for the Great Skang?’

  The Great Skang paused. ‘In what way?’

  The thought had come instinctively,
like a lifted arm to ward off a blow. But it was true. Of course it was true!

  ‘You have already seen for yourself,’ the Doctor said. ‘No matter how intelligent or full of vital energy they are, human beings are flawed.’

  ‘Explain.’

  At least it was listening, he thought. ‘By their very nature, they are always ready for combat. Their society evolved from tribes; and they’ve never stopped fighting since. Conflict is encrypted in their genes.’

  Would it understand?

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘If you seed a thousand Skang, a hundred thousand, you’re going to have a hundred thousand utterly different personalities scattered round the globe, all keeping their own self-pride and their own precious core beliefs - and willing to fight for them. And believe me, they will.’

  The scintillations of its insubstantial body burst into a display of rainbow colours, changing and moving with streaks of fluid light.

  ‘Hardly fits the image of the unity of the Skang, does it?’

  the Doctor asked.

  ‘Silence!’

  It must be considering the idea.

  At last it spoke. The colours in its sparkling form disappeared. ‘We can see that this was a danger. But not now, now that you have pointed it out. Thank you. But you yourself are a disruptive presence at this time of celebration. You must be eliminated.’ Again it lazily lifted its arm.

  ‘Wait!’

  This time, it wasn’t the Doctor who stopped the Incandescence.

  ‘What is it, Mother?’

  The Doctor is one of the most intelligent, one of the wisest beings on this planet. If he were to be seeded, as a Skang he could give a lead, alongside me, that could help to sweep away the difficulties he speaks of; and I have to tell you they are very real.’

  It would be difficult to believe that the Great Skang had a sense of humour, but when it spoke again, there seemed to be a hint of a laugh in its many voices. ‘How fitting! What do you say, Doctor? It’s a simple choice.’