Secret Histories 10: Dr. DOA

by Simon R. Green

  I knelt down to study the bottom of the tube. A ring of what might have been controls surrounded the base, but they were nothing I could understand.

  “Careful, Eddie,” said Molly.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s not like I could wake them up. They’ve been dead for a very long time.”

  “I can’t believe I’m having to be the sensible one,” said Molly.

  “You’ll get over it,” I said. I stood up again. “I think the crew members were in these tubes when the ship came down, to protect them, but there must have been a massive systems failure on impact. I don’t think they ever got to wake up. Those who weren’t killed outright by the crash just slept on until they died. And then the tubes preserved their bodies. They came all this way . . . just to die in their sleep without ever seeing where they’d arrived.”

  “Is it possible your family does know about this ship?” Molly said carefully. “It oversees Black Heir; you said so yourself.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We have extensive files on all the alien species currently visiting this planet. More than you’d think. Aliens hang around the earth like winos outside a bar. And for much the same reasons . . . Just because I don’t recognise this particular species doesn’t mean no one in my family would. Specialist departments, remember? My family is responsible for overseeing most of the Pacts and Agreements that keep the various alien species from misbehaving while they’re here.”

  “Hold it again,” said Molly. “Who set up these Pacts and Agreements in the first place?”

  “The Organisation,” I said.

  “Never heard of them,” said Molly.

  “Not many have,” I said. “And that’s the way they like it. The Droods aren’t the only really secret agents. The point is, we’re supposed to be kept informed about all crash sites so we can keep an eye on them. Remember the group that Black Heir replaced, and what they got up to? If Black Heir’s people have been keeping all this to themselves, so they could be sure of exclusive salvage rights, they must have been pretty confident that no one else knew about it.”

  A transparent tube slammed down from up above, so fast it seemed to just appear around Molly. Neither of us had time to react. Molly bounced off the inner wall, and then hammered on it with her fists, but she couldn’t break it. She spun round and round inside the tube, searching for weak spots, and then she dropped her hands and looked at me desperately. She raised her voice, and it came to me quite clearly.

  “What is this, Eddie?”

  “Black Heir must have left some security protocols in place here,” I said, trying hard to sound calm. “Something to protect its buried treasure from outsiders. We must have triggered it when we got too close to the tubes.”

  “Well, why did it grab me and not you?”

  “Because I’m a Drood.”

  I got down on one knee and studied the controls round the base. They were the same as before, and they still didn’t make any sense.

  “I don’t like to touch any of this, in case I make things worse,” I said finally.

  “How could it be worse?” Molly said loudly. “I’m trapped in here! Just hit something!”

  I tried everything, but nothing worked. The system was locked.

  Molly swore flatly, and I looked up immediately. The swirling light I’d seen in the other tubes was rising slowly up inside Molly’s tube. It had already enveloped her ankles. She kicked out at the eerie glow, and her foot moved jerkily through it, as though encountering resistance. She cried out briefly, and I was quickly up on my feet again.

  “Molly? Are you all right?”

  “Eddie, my feet have gone numb. I can’t feel them. And the numbness is crawling up my legs, along with the light. Damn . . . I’m starting to feel tired. Drowsy.”

  The tube was trying to preserve her. As it had failed to do with the alien crew. And there was no telling what effect the light would have on her human physiology. I armoured up, yelled for Molly to back away, and then hit the transparent wall with all my strength. My golden fist just skidded away, leaving the tube unmarked. I hit it again and again, putting all my strength into each blow, but I couldn’t even crack the material. I stood back again, breathing hard, and Molly looked at me with bleary eyes.

  “Have you got anything on you that might help, Molly?” I said loudly.

  It was clear she was being affected by the rising light. It was past her knees now, and still climbing. She patted vaguely at her sides with her hands, but couldn’t seem to make them work. As though she’d forgotten what they were, or what they were for. Her eyes kept closing, and she had to fight to force them open again.

  I forced myself to be calm, so I could think. If my armour couldn’t do the job, what else did I have that might? The Armourer’s parting gifts. I reached through my armoured side and brought out the plastic boxes I’d been given. They looked very small in my golden palm. The neural inhibitor wasn’t any use, and neither was the truth inducer or the chemical nose. I put them back and searched through all my other pockets. And found a left-over portable door, from an old case. A simple black blob that could spread out to make an opening in anything. I slapped the black blob against the tube’s outer wall. If I could open up a hole big enough for Molly to step through . . . I let go of the blob and it just fell away, unable to get a hold on the alien material of the tube wall. I watched numbly as it fell to the floor.

  Molly sank slowly to her knees, half disappearing into the swirling, rising light. She slumped forward against the tube, her face pressed against the inner wall. Her features were slack, her eyes closing. I knelt down facing her, and slammed my hands against the outside of the tube, desperate to get her attention.

  “Molly!” I shouted. “The wristwatch! Remember the wristwatch the Armourer gave you! It’s a time compressor, speeding up the age of everything it touches . . . Molly! Put your watch against the tube and hit the damned button!”

  She forced her eyes open, and looked at her left hand. She pressed the watch against the inner wall, and then her eyes closed again. I beat on the wall with both hands, shouting her name again and again. Her other hand rose slowly up out of the churning light, found the watch, and fumbled at it for an agonizingly long moment before she found the button, and held it down. Cracks immediately appeared in the tube wall, shooting off from her arm in all directions, splitting and branching. And still, the tube held. I stood up and hit the tube with all my armoured strength. The tube shattered into a hundred jagged pieces, and I reached in, grabbed Molly, and hauled her out of the wreckage. The glowing light surged up, as though angry at being cheated of its prey. I backed quickly away, hugging Molly to me, and the light faded away and was gone, unable to maintain itself outside the tube.

  I had to hold Molly up as her legs dangled uselessly. Her face rested against my golden chest, her eyes closed. I shook her hard, and said her name insistently until she frowned petulantly and tried to push me away with her weak arms.

  “Leave me alone. I’m tired. Let me sleep.”

  “We have to get out of here, Molly. Molly!” I armoured down so she could see my face. “Molly, please . . .”

  Her eyes opened, and she looked at me for a long moment. “Eddie . . . ?”

  She got her feet under her and stood up straight, shaking her head to clear it. I let go of her, ready to grab hold again if her strength appeared to be giving out. She looked back at the shattered tube, shuddered briefly, and then peered solemnly at her wristwatch.

  “It seems . . . the new Armourer does good work.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Oh look; it’s stopped.”

  “You can wind it later,” I said patiently. “We have to get out of here, Molly. God knows what other booby traps Black Heir might have put in place.”

  “Bastards,” Molly said succinctly.

  A painfully loud siren blasted into life,
a sharp mechanical sound that went right through my head. Molly clapped both hands to her ears. The siren cut off, and then repeated itself briefly at regular intervals. Molly lowered her hands and glared about her.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Sounds like a timer,” I said. “Oh hell, it’s a countdown. Remember what the Caretaker said, about Black Heir being ready to blow everything up? He meant the ship! Black Heir would rather see all of this destroyed than risk it falling into someone else’s hands. Black Heir’s people always were dogs in the manger.”

  “Have we got time to get out of here?” said Molly.

  “What do you think?”

  “Bastards! We have to find the bomb and shut it down!”

  I looked around. The ship stretched away in every direction, back and forth and up and down. Miles and miles of alien tech, and the bomb could be anywhere.

  “It can’t be part of the ship,” I said, “or it would have gone off when the ship crashed.”

  “Not if it was an auto-destruct,” said Molly, “that the crew never got a chance to use.”

  “So Black Heir found it and set its own timer in place so it could control it!” I said. “That means Earth technology, and I can track that!”

  I armoured up again and concentrated. My senses are always sharper, clearer, when I’m in my armour. First, I tuned out the siren, and then I boosted my hearing, listening for the timer. And there it was, just three decks down. We were in with a chance. I yelled to Molly to follow me and ran for the nearest ladder. I scrambled down three levels and looked quickly about me. The Earth tech had been attached directly to the gleaming ship wall, sticking out like a sore thumb. I ran over to it and examined the simple mechanism at close range. Molly soon caught up, breathing hard.

  “Rip the bloody thing off the wall!”

  “No,” I said, not looking away. “That could trigger the explosion. Maybe if I press my chest against the bomb, my armour will absorb the explosion . . .”

  “You can’t risk that!” said Molly. “Even if your armour did soak up the blast, the impact would still probably kill you.”

  “Molly, I’m dead anyway. No point in both of us dying . . .”

  “No! Think of something else!”

  Not alien tech. Earth tech . . . I pressed one golden hand carefully against the timer, and sent golden tendrils easing into the mechanism. They found their way in without any problem, and then it was the easiest thing in the world to sever the connections between the timer and the bomb. The siren snapped off, and a blessed silence returned. I pulled the tendrils back out, armoured down, and let out a long sigh of relief. Molly hugged me tightly, pushed me away, and glared about her.

  “I am sick to death of this ship, Eddie. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said.

  I led the way back to the ladder, and then we both stopped as we spotted a single transparent tube, standing alone and half-hidden in the shadows. It was broken, and empty. The shattered pieces pointed outwards. This tube had been smashed open from the inside.

  “One of them survived,” I said. “One of them got out . . .”

  “Yes,” said the Caretaker, standing behind us.

  We both spun round to face him. He wasn’t stooped over any more. Standing up straight, studying us thoughtfully with clear, intelligent eyes, he didn’t look nearly as old and decrepit as he had before. He smiled gently.

  “This is why I stayed. Everyone else was happy to go to London, but I couldn’t leave my family. I had the ship’s mechanisms make me over into a human form, right after the crash. Standard procedure. And I lived among humans for so long . . . I almost came to think of myself as one. But in the end, I just couldn’t go.”

  “Does Black Heir know who, and what, you are?” I said.

  “No,” said the Caretaker. “I could never trust Black Heir’s people with that kind of knowledge. They just thought of me as the long-standing Caretaker, who came with the house. Perfect camouflage.”

  “Why did you let them gut your ship?” said Molly.

  “It was never going to fly again,” said the Caretaker, “and nothing here was any use to me.”

  “You must know the rest of your crew is dead,” I said carefully. “Why have you stayed, all this time?”

  “Because the ship’s beacon is still working,” said the Caretaker. “Signalling to the stars that one of us is still alive. Someday, my people will come looking. To take me home again. Are you going to make me leave here?”

  “No,” I said. “This place, this ship, still needs a Caretaker.”

  We left him there, looking around and remembering old times.

  “Are you going to tell your family about him?” said Molly.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “My relatives don’t need to know about another beachcombing alien. And it won’t be the first secret I’ve kept from them, after all.”

  “You old softie,” said Molly.

  * * *

  We left the house and trudged back down the dirt path. Night had fallen, and the stars were out. The moon was hidden behind clouds. The cold night air was bracing, even refreshing, after the hothouse environment of the crashed ship. I breathed deeply to clear my head of many things. I went to the cliff edge to look out over the sea again. The sea was still crashing against the black rocks far below, wearing them away moment by moment. The ocean was patient. It had all the time in the world. Molly stood beside me, giving me some space, and some time. The cold wind surged around me, pulling at my clothes like someone impatient for me to be moving on. Like the death that haunted my every moment. I felt cold, and worn down. I looked to Molly. Her concern was clear in her face, but she didn’t say anything. I reached out an arm to her, and she moved in close, so she could lean against me while I put my arm around her shoulders. She felt warm and comforting. Someone I could lean on, when my strength gave out.

  “Bit of a wasted journey,” I said. “No one here to ask about Dr DOA. No new leads to follow. We’ve wasted our time, and come to the end of the trail. Nothing left but to go back to Drood Hall. And hope they’ve come up with something.”

  “There is one place I’ve been thinking about,” Molly said carefully. “Somewhere . . . from my past.”

  I looked at her. There were undertones in her voice I didn’t like. “Where did you have in mind? And why haven’t you mentioned it till now?”

  “This is from way back in the day, when everyone called me a supernatural terrorist . . .”

  “Because you were,” I said, briefly amused. “I was there, remember? Trying to stop you.”

  “The point is,” said Molly, “back then, I mixed with some pretty extreme people. Because I needed all the allies and support I could get, in my vendetta against your family. I couldn’t afford to be choosy. And I never actually cut my ties with a lot of them. Some were friends, as well as useful allies. I’ve been out of touch with most of them for ages . . . Partly because I was trying to be a different person; partly because I knew they wouldn’t approve of you. But I always kept the lines of communication open . . . just in case. I needed to feel there was somewhere I could go if I ever really upset your family.”

  “I often feel the same way,” I said. “Why do you suppose I maintain so many safe houses?”

  “There’s a place where we all used to meet,” said Molly. “Very secret, and very secure. I’m pretty sure no one but us ever knew about it. If I put the word out, that I need help, I think a lot of the old gang would still turn up. They could help, Eddie! They’re all . . . creative people. They might know Dr DOA, or know about him, or know of something that could save you.”

  “They’d help a Drood?” I said.

  “They’ll help save the man I love,” said Molly. “Or there will be trouble.”

  I thought about it, and then nodded. Any port in a storm, when th
e ship is sinking. “How are you going to contact them, with your magics gone?”

  She gave me a look, and brought out her cell phone. It was bright pink, with a Hello Kitty design.

  “You sure you can get reception here?” I said. “We’re a long way from anywhere.”

  “It’s not that kind of phone,” said Molly. “This is part of the magical network. And it’s always fully charged. Good thing one of us thinks ahead.”

  She turned the phone on, selected some names from the menu, and spoke into the phone.

  “This is Molly. Everyone who hears this, I need help. Big-time. Get back to the old clubhouse, and I’ll see you there. Don’t keep me waiting.”

  She shut the phone down and put it away.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  She gave me a superior smile. “Magic gets the job done while Science is still looking for its trousers. And it’s not wise to stay on the phone too long. It can attract the wrong kind of attention.”

  “As opposed to the sort of people you’re trying to contact?” I said.

  “Don’t be a smart-arse,” said Molly.

  “All right,” I said. “Where do we have to go, to meet these old chums of yours? The Wulfshead?”

  “Not really their scene,” said Molly. “They don’t like public places.”

  “If they’re the kind of people I’m starting to remember, that’s understandable,” I said. “Where would they feel safe?”

  “Ah . . . ,” said Molly. “You’re really not going to like this.”

  “There hasn’t been much about today I have liked,” I said. “Go on; surprise me.”

  “Where can you go,” said Molly, “when the whole world will kill you if it can get its hands on you? You go underground. All the way underground. Down a disused coal mine in Wales, the Deep Down Pit. Closed in the Eighties and abandoned, so we moved in and made use of it for ourselves. It’s been left untouched and forgotten ever since. I haven’t been back in ages. I don’t know who will turn up . . . But if anyone knows how to save a life, it’s the kind of people who put so much thought into how to take them.”