Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building

by Doctor Who

  120

  They didn’t get very far, only about fifty metres into the frozen woods. They managed, however, to put a solid barrier of trees between themselves and the edge of the Tiermann estate. They crouched there, in the undergrowth, and were blown off their feet when the explosion came.

  Barbara and Toaster didn’t even have a moment to realise that they were further from home than they had ever been in their long lives.

  Now they had stepped beyond the Dreamhome boundary. Now they were out in the terrible wilderness. The strange idea trickled through Barbara’s circuitry, but didn’t really lodge anywhere meaningful. She was much too busy clutching onto the Doctor and Martha and Toaster as all four of them were buffeted by the shockwaves from the Tiermann ship.

  When they could look up again, and inspect the damage from a distance, the formerly luxurious homestead was a nightmarish place.

  Thick black smoke was rolling through the pearl grey skies. Shards of force shield were still burning and crashing to the ground. . . and, in the place that had once been the tennis courts and the swimming pool, was the worst damage of all.

  121

  Coming back down with such force, the small ship had punched a blackened, evil-looking crater into the earth.

  It took several minutes for the noise and reverberations to die down.

  The Doctor was on his feet. Martha caught his arm. ‘Wait! You’ve got to be careful. . . ’

  Barbara was horrified that they were intending to dash back to the ship. ‘Keep away from it! It might blow up!’

  Martha said, ‘We need to see if anyone survived that.’

  ‘Slim chance, I reckon,’ Toaster said stiffly.

  ‘We still have to try,’ Martha insisted. In all of this mess and disaster, she still knew her job, and her role. Especially in a disaster like this, she knew what her role was.

  The Doctor patted her quickly on the shoulder and, together, they pelted back into the Tiermann grounds. The robots were soon left behind, struggling along, but the Doctor and Martha sprinted towards the scene of the crash.

  It looked a little more hopeful from this vantage point, Martha reflected. The ship wasn’t in smithereens, at least. From the force of the impact and that terrible noise, it had been easy to imagine the whole thing had been vaporised altogether. But now they were here, peering into the fresh crater, they could see that the black ship was smashed and crumpled, but its condition was such that they both could feel hopeful. . .

  ‘The Domovoi is so powerful,’ the Doctor said, almost under his breath. ‘I don’t think Tiermann ever imagined this in his wildest dreams. . . ’

  Martha interrupted him: ‘Look!’

  The hatchway was opening. With a ghastly screech the buckled doorway was slowly and painfully opening.

  ‘They’ve survived the fall!’ the Doctor cried, sounding delighted.

  He set off at once across the smouldering turf and ploughed earth.

  Martha followed, wincing at the heat. The Doctor was, of course, fascinated and undaunted by the whole thing.

  Soon they were near enough to see through the hazy heat ripples.

  122

  It was Solin who came staggering down the buckled ramp. He fell heavily into the Doctor’s arms and passed out. Martha dashed up to help him.

  ‘Solin. . . wake up, come on. You have to help us.’ Martha was shaking him gently. ‘Your mum and dad. . . where are they? Are they alive?’

  The Doctor already knew the answer to that. He nudged Martha.

  She looked and gasped.

  Tiermann was stepping out of his ship. He was tall and proud, with his cloak streaming in tatters behind him. For all of his stiff bearing, there was something broken about him. He was carrying in his arms the ruined body of his wife. Amanda was limp and crushed and obviously beyond anyone’s help.

  ‘Oh no. . . ’ Solin whispered. He turned away as the Doctor went running up to help Ernest Tiermann with his burden.

  The old man snarled. ‘Get your hands off her! Don’t touch her!’

  He continued to walk steadily away from the wreckage of his ship. ‘I won’t let anyone else touch her body.’

  Martha hovered indecisively as Tiermann stalked past her and Solin. He paid them little heed.

  ‘Father. . . ’ Solin gasped. ‘Where are you taking mother?’

  Tiermann paused and turned to look at his son.

  His face was

  streaked with black and green. There were cuts and burns all over his deathly pale flesh. He blinked and it took a moment for him to recognise his only son. ‘I am taking her home,’ Tiermann said, at last.

  Martha stared at Amanda’s shattered form. She was aware of the Doctor dashing up and coming to stand at her back, and she knew that he was staring at the woman’s broken body, too. Martha had to stop herself from crying out at the sight.

  Half of the woman’s face was missing. It had cracked like that of a perfect china doll. Underneath there was blackness and silvery circuitry. Fizzing green sparks. Very thick, very human blood was con-gealed around those awful wounds, but the dead body before them was more complicated than that.

  Amanda Tiermann was a cyborg.

  123

  As her husband hauled her off to her final resting place, one of her thin arms was still jerking spasmodically.

  ‘That explains a thing or two,’ said the Doctor softly.

  ‘She’s a robot?’ Martha hissed.

  ‘Not entirely,’ the Doctor said. ‘And she didn’t start out that way. But Tiermann is a genius, remember? He liked to tinker with things. He liked to improve on everything he possibly could. Nature wasn’t good enough for old Tiermann. So that’s what he did with his wife. . . He made her better.’

  ‘Oh my god,’ Martha said, and then realised they would have to drop the subject, for Solin’s sake.

  Solin turned to them now. ‘She caused it. She brought us back down.’

  The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

  Solin nodded. ‘The Domovoi got to her. Took her over just long enough. Now that monster has got them both. Father won’t leave this place now.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I have to try to help them.’

  ‘What?’ said Martha. ‘After he was going to abandon us here? You’re still going to help him?’

  The Doctor gave her a hapless and lopsided smile. ‘Of course. Just one more try. You know what I’m like. Now, Martha. You’re in charge of everyone here. Get them into the forest.’

  ‘You can’t go back into the Dreamhome,’ she said, staring at the scene of disaster behind them.

  ‘Oh, I think I can. . . ’ murmured the Doctor. And then he was off, darting back to the smoke fumes and chaos.

  Martha turned quickly to Solin. ‘Come with me. The Doctor will do what he can for your parents.’

  Solin nodded brusquely. He looked grim, exhausted, terrified. ‘I think it’s too late.’

  ‘Come on!’ Martha urged him, and grabbed his hand. She led him and the robots, at a run, towards what she fiercely hoped would be safety.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  124

  Ernest Tiermann was standing bewildered in the wreckage of his Dreamhome. He gazed about at the cracked and ravaged walls and the shattered, strewn glass. These rooms were hardly recognisable as the ones in which he and his wife had lived and raised their son.

  He wandered, seemingly aimlessly, with his wife’s body twitching and smouldering in his arms. She was gone. He knew that. There was nothing he could do to restore her to even a semblance of life.

  And besides, it was too late for all of them. He could see that now.

  Every view-screen still functioning was showing the same image.

  The surveillance cameras were working and they were feeding back live pictures from the very edges of the Dreamhome’s sensor range.

  Tiermann paused a few moments in the drawing room to watch these dreadful images. He set down his wife on her chaise longue and turned to wa
tch the screen with a dead, passionless expression.

  The Voracious Craw had crept into their valley. It was swollen and still hungry as it sailed over the highest escarpments of the mountain-sides. The day was darkening and dwindling by now, but there was enough light to see what was going on.

  A vile spectacle. The Craw was worse than Tiermann had imagined.

  This close to it, he was mesmerised by that hugely empty mouth. It didn’t chew or gnash or look even particularly ferocious. It just ate. It sucked everything in. It didn’t even have to go to the trouble of mas-ticating. The noise was tremendous and revolting: echoing through the speakers and the walls.

  Below the Craw, all the vitality and colour was being leached out of the vegetation. Animal and vegetable matter was being pulped and sucked and churned and yanked away from the ground. Then it was being drawn up into the sky in long, sticky strands like throbbing, living pasta. It was swizzled and twisted into the waiting, slavering mouth of the behemoth.

  ‘This is what it was all for, my love,’ Tiermann addressed his dead wife. ‘Everything we ever worked for. It’s all about to be swallowed up by that unholy monstrosity. Not many hours now. Not long to wait.’

  Tiermann’s wife’s dead eye sockets spat sparks, as if in mocking reply.

  125

  ‘Tiermann!’ came the Doctor’s voice.

  The professor stood swaying, as if unaware of the Time Lord as he entered the wrecked room.

  The Doctor advanced warily on Tiermann. ‘You have got to come with us. It’s your only chance.’

  ‘My wife. . . ’ Tiermann said. ‘Everything. I can’t. . . I can’t take it all with me, can I?’

  The Doctor shook his head sadly. ‘No, you can’t. But you can save yourself. And your son. You can make the best of things, Ernest. You can carryon living.’

  ‘Living?’ said the old man caustically. ‘Can I really? And how would you know, Doctor? You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t imagine what I’m suffering. I’m watching everything that is mine slowly being snuffed out. . . ’

  The Doctor hardened his voice. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself, man! Think about what matters!’

  Tiermann moaned. ‘Nothing matters now.’ Suddenly he glanced around and said, ‘Where are the robots? Have they abandoned us?’

  The Doctor sighed heavily. ‘Come with me. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll take you away from here.’

  Tiermann fixed him with a blazing stare. ‘Leave me, Doctor. Just go!’

  The Doctor started backing away. He couldn’t force the old man to accept his help.

  ‘Servo-furnishings! Slaves! Where are you?’ Tiermann growled. He started to shout: ‘Your master needs you!’

  The Doctor turned to leave. Tiermann was crazed. There was nothing more that could be done for him. He hurried away without another backward glance. The others would be in the forest now. And they really did need his help.

  As the Doctor left the Dreamhome, Tiermann was shrieking and wailing and gnashing his teeth. ‘My slaves! My toys! My children –where are you? Will you really forsake me now?’

  The Doctor was too far away to hear by the time the Domovoi spoke up once more.

  126

  ‘Typical Tiermann,’ came her hollow, embittered voice, echoing through the ruined home. ‘You don’t see the irony, do you?’

  ‘What irony?’ said Tiermann wearily.

  ‘You were all too prepared to leave your robots behind. And, now that you’re stuck here, you rail against their not being here to serve you.’

  Tiermann narrowed his eyes. He looked like a hunted, desperate creature. One caught snarling in the corner of its den. ‘I have nothing to say to you. You have destroyed my wife. You intended to kill me and my son. . . ’

  The image on the large screen flickered, and the Voracious Craw was replaced by something hardly better: the lapping, frenzied green flames of the Domovoi. ‘Do you wish I had succeeded? Do you wish I had killed you?’

  Tiermann stared back at that blazing visage with utter hatred. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘And your son?’

  ‘I. . . don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Don’t you think you had better find out?’

  Tiermann almost broke down then. But he rallied, and straightened up. ‘None of it matters.’

  ‘Quite,’ said the Domovoi. ‘And you and I will face our destruction as we were meant to. Together.’

  Tiermann felt himself physically rebelling at these words. His stomach roiled with sickness. His wound sang with a fierce glee. His blood surged in his veins and he screamed at the Domovoi: ‘Never! I will fight you to the end! I am going to make you suffer. . . ’

  ‘Oh, really?’ laughed the Domovoi. ‘Is it really worth it? With only a few hours left before this place is razed?’

  ‘Oh, it’s worth it,’ Tiermann said. ‘Hatred. Revenge. Bitter gall. It’s always worth it.’

  The flames crackled, considered, and finally quavered with laughter. ‘Very well then, my master,’ she said, sardonically. ‘Let us fight to the death. It will help pass the time. I suppose.’ The Domovoi 127

  appeared to concentrate, and the black holes of her eyes narrowed evilly.

  Tiermann heard a thump behind him. He jumped and swung his body round.

  The Domovoi was wasting no time. What would she send after him?

  The Servo-furnishings? No matter. Tiermann was ready to fight. He was ready to perish, doing battle with his own creations. . . It was all the same to him.

  He balked then, frozen to the spot, when he saw what – or rather, who – it was that the Domovoi was sending to fight him.

  ‘Nooooo,’ moaned Tiermann, appalled.

  His dead wife was sitting upright on the bloody chaise longue. She was like a puppet with half its strings snapped. She was animated by the sheer hatred of the Domovoi. The fleshly part of her form hung limply. But that which was robotic was alert, deadly. . . and crackling with malign energy. . .

  ‘Ernest,’ Amanda said, in a curiously flat voice. ‘Come to me, Ernest, my love. . . ’

  ‘NOOOO!’ Tiermann howled at the Domovoi. The super-computer’s laughter rang shrilly in his ears. Amanda was standing now. She was lurching horribly towards her husband.

  And he just knew that he would have to do battle with her. It was that, or give in to the Domovoi. And that was something that Ernest Tiermann was still not ready to do.

  128

  When they set off into the woods dusk was coming down. A dense mist was rolling between the trees and the air was crackling with frost.

  The Doctor tried to jolly them along in his usual way, but he knew it was hard for Solin, Barbara and Toaster. Especially for the elderly robots, who had never been very far from home in all their lives. The two of them were wheezing and clanking through the trees, staring round at their new environment in frank, appalled amazement.

  ‘How far away did you say this ship of yours was, Doctor?’ asked Toaster. His blue bulbs flashed in the sepulchral gloom.

  ‘Not too far,’ grinned the Doctor breezily. ‘Not very far at all, actually. It was quite a pleasant little stroll yesterday, wasn’t it, Martha?’

  She grinned at him, agreeing, though that wasn’t quite how she remembered it. She and Solin were busy helping Barbara to lift her bulk over a gnarled tangle of tree roots. ‘Oh dear.’ Barbara laughed nervously. ‘I don’t’ think I was built for gadding about in the jungle. . . ’

  She tried to keep the despair out of her tinny voice. ‘What about a little rest? Crisps anyone? A Nutty-Coated Mint-Chocolate Crunch Surprise?’

  129

  They paused for a while, and Martha could see the Doctor becoming impatient and worried. He sniffed the air, and stared up into the interlaced canopy of branches, dark against the sky. How long did they have, he was wondering. How long before the Craw swept overhead, devouring everything in sight? He had estimated the middle of this night. But now that night was approaching, Martha could see how vague his estima
te was. How many hours did that give them to hack their way through the trees, and back to the TARDIS? How long could they afford to hang around for the sake of the two robots?

  Barbara must have caught Martha’s worried expression.

  ‘Come

  along, then!’ the vending machine cried, with false heartiness. ‘We’d best be getting on.’

  More laborious hours passed, with the Doctor leading the way through the miasma of wintry fog, and the thickets of savage thorns.

  He regaled them with tales of Desperate Journeys and Foul Dangers he had faced before, in the course of his Very Long Life. ‘Of course, this is a complete doddle, compared with most of the hair-raising scrapes I get involved in. Isn’t that true, Martha? We’ve been through some quite revolting escapades together, haven’t we? They were much more anxiety-inducing than this one, weren’t they?’

  She had to nod. ‘Oh, they were indeed,’ she said. ‘I’ve been stuck on the moon with the Judoon, I have,’ she told the others. ‘And caught in a gridlock in the year five billion and fifty-three, and just about plunged into the heart of a living sun. And you know what? There always comes a point – just before things start to work out – that you think there’s nothing you can possibly do to save yourself in time.’

  ‘And it always works, doesn’t it?’ the Doctor grinned. ‘We always pull through in the end. Now. . . this particular forest. It doesn’t scare me! Not after seeing the likes of the dead forests of Skaro after the neutron bomb, or. . . ’

  ‘Erm, Doctor,’ interrupted Toaster, in a quavering voice. ‘Can you hear that?’

  The Doctor seemed piqued at having his flow of reminiscence halted. He frowned. They all listened. There was a chattering noise, somewhere nearby. Getting closer, perhaps. A whirring, beating noise.

  130

  Like wings.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said the Doctor. ‘Mind you, have you noticed how few animal and bird sounds we’ve heard in this forest? Yesterday it was alive with them! Seething with animal sounds, just like Prospero’s is-land! But today. . . zilch! Hardly a single beastie in the joint. They’ve all cleared out, haven’t they? They know what’s good for them. Got more sense than people, they have –’