by Dan Abnett
Amy.
Rory knew he simply had to see her again. He wasn't going to let a giant shambling lizard kill him in a snowy wood for no good reason. His wife would never let him hear the end of it.
He broke cover and started to run again, this time in a path perpendicular to his original route. A hasty glance over his shoulder told him that the green thing had spotted him. It had turned to blunder after him.
Had it detected movement? Heat?
Heat made a kind of sense. He clung on to the notion.
Why wasn't it shooting? Why didn't it fire its horrible gun? It could just bring him down and save itself the effort of chasing.
There seemed to be only three possible answers to that. It had run out of shots, which seemed unlikely.
That was one. The second was that he was out of range.
The third was that it wanted him alive.
'Slow down!' hissed Amy.
The Doctor was leading the way up the snowy track into the woods with the sort of indefatigable and boundless enthusiasm only he could muster. She scrambled to keep up.
'Are we taking him with us?' she asked.
They both glanced back.
Arabel was following them, with the young man in tow. Samewell was a pretty good-looking bloke, Amy had to admit. He was fresh-faced and cheerful. He seemed trustworthy. He was having an argument with Arabel as he pursued them up the lane.
'It's a Cat A crime,' Amy heard him saying. 'A Cat A crime, Bel! What are you doing with them?'
'I'm looking for Vesta.'
'But you let them out, Bel! What will the Elect say?'
'I don't know, Samewell? Are you going to tell him?'
'I ought to!' declared Samewell. 'Come on, stop and talk to me! Think about this! You're consorting with conjury!'
'I'm looking for my sister,' Bel replied. She kept walking, pulling her long skirts up a little so they didn't get trodden into the snow.
The Elect will find Vesta,' said Samewell. 'Where is your patience?'
'Shut up, Samewell.'
'Those who are patient, they provide for all of the Plantnation,' he said.
'Don't quote Guide's words at me!' Bel snapped.
'I think we'll let him come with us,' the Doctor told Amy.
'Because if he goes back, he'll tell them where we've gone?' asked Amy.
The Doctor nodded. 'I don't think he's going to overpower us singlehanded,' he said.
'I think he'd like to overpower her singlehanded,'
said Amy.
'What?' asked the Doctor.
'He fancies her,' she replied. 'It's obvious.'
'Because they're arguing?'
'Why else did he follow us? He could have just raised the alarm.'
The Doctor frowned thoughtfully and nodded.
'Keen insight, Pond. The mysterious operation of the human heart. Good job.'
He came to a halt. They had climbed quite a way into the skirts of the woods. Would Be, Bel had called it. The Spitablefields fell away behind them. They could see the village of Beside and, south of that, the glint of sunlight on the glass roofs of the heathouses.
'Would Be,' said the Doctor, looking at the shadowed trees and their bright mantles of snow. 'The original Morphans looked at this world, and imagined how it would be. Like a declaration of intent.'
'I thought she was saying "Wood B",' said Amy.
'She probably is,' replied the Doctor. 'That's probably all it was originally. A territorial designation.
Wood B. The hospitable fields. Even the name of the settlement. Hmmm. What's the betting?'
He turned to Bel.
'Is the third plantnation called Aside?' he asked.
'Yes,' she replied.
'How did you know?' asked Amy.
'Oh, a wild guess. Aside, Beside and Seeside. Sites A, B, and C.'
'Ah,' Amy smiled. 'So Seeside isn't beside the sea, then?'
'I imagine not, though I do like to be beside it,' said the Doctor.
They walked on for a moment, not talking, listening to the breathless hush of the wood and the crunch of their footsteps and the half-audible bickering coming from behind them again.
'What is Hereafter?' Amy asked.
'It's a colony world, a human colony world,' said the Doctor. 'Late expansion, Diaspora Era. Think of the name, Morphan?'
'Like orphan?'
'Yes, but also referencing the terraforming or terramorphing processes these settlers were supposed to perform. To colonise a suitable, Earth-like distant world and make it more Earth-like.'
'Earth-ish?'
'Indeed.'
'Where's the real Earth?' Amy asked.
The Doctor shrugged. 'Somewhere in the past. I think the Earth and the solar system are gone. The end of their natural lifespan. Humans had to find somewhere else. Think about the name Morphan again.'
'How long have they been here?' asked Amy. She had been to times when the Earth had been abandoned before, but the idea that the world no longer existed seemed especially melancholy.
'Generations,' replied the Doctor. 'Many generations.
Twenty-seven, she said. Lifetimes of backbreaking toil and hard living. It takes a long time to shape and tame a world, even an Earth -ish one. All their labour, all their effort - the Morphans will never get to enjoy it or benefit from it. It's simply for the benefit of the future generations.'
'So what exactly is the problem?' asked Amy.
'You're worried about the snow.'
'The process has gone wrong,' said the Doctor, quietly enough that neither Bel nor Samewell could overhear. 'For some reason, the terraforming programme has abruptly failed. Hereafter is becoming less and less Earth-like. The Morphans came here to plant a nation, but now they're simply going to die out.'
'Why?'
'I don't know,' said the Doctor.
'You've got a hunch, though.'
'It could be that it was never meant to be,' said the Doctor. 'It could be that Hereafter was too difficult a world to convert. Or a fault might have developed in the main atmospheric processors. Or...'
'Or?'
'Nothing,' he said quietly.
'Or what?' she snapped.
'Really, nothing.'
She gave him one of her looks.
'All right,' he said. 'It could be... that there's some kind of influence at work here. I've seen... something like it before, once or twice.'
'What sort of influence?' asked Amy.
'Let's not worry about it until I'm sure,' said the Doctor. He began to stride along the snowy path between the trees with great purpose. 'Let's hope it's a glitch. A processing glitch that I can fix.'
'A glitch?' asked Amy, narrowing her eyes to look at him.
'Not even a glitch.'
'No?'
'Less than a glitch. Smaller than a glitch.'
'Glitch- ish?' she asked
'Exactly!' declared the Doctor. He looked back at Bel. 'Which way from here?' he called brightly.
Rory doubted he could run much further. His legs and lungs were hurting from the effort, and his heart was pounding. He could barely draw a deep enough breath.
There was cold sweat on his spine under his clothes.
This was certainly not the way he'd have chosen to spend Christmas.
He smelled something suddenly. It wasn't a strong smell at all, but against the clear, pure atmosphere of the woodland it stood out sharply. It was a warm smell, wet and metallic, like the linty steam of a laundrette, or the outflow of the industrial washing machines at the back of Leadworth hospital. What was that? What could possibly be warm and wet in a place so locked in by ice and snow?
He came through a stand of trees to a lip of rock. A bank fell away below him, thick with slithered snow.
Below him was a river. It was quite broad, falling steeply down the rocky throat of a gorge to his right into the steep cut basin below him. The far side, steeper than the one he stood on, was densely packed with trees.
The river,
once it had cleared the jumbled, snowcovered undergrowth of the gorge, was ten or twelve metres across. It had frozen over with a thick crust of ice that had been overlaid with the previous night's snow. It looked like a broad stretch of pale concrete. The gorge clearly trapped cold air over the open stretch of water.
Rory glanced over his shoulder. The green thing was still in pursuit, trudging through the trees, occasionally raising a clamp-hand to snap branches out of its way. It was thirty metres behind him and closing.
Rory had speed on his side, but not stamina. The thing just kept going. Rory knew he'd have to rest soon. He was exhausted, as if he'd run a marathon only to find there was no one waiting for him with a tinfoil blanket and a bottle of orange squash.
He made a snap decision. The density of trees on the far side of the river looked as though it offered the best chance of hiding he'd seen all day. The river was an added plus too. The green thing was big and evidently heavy. Rory doubted the ice, even though it looked like bullet-proof plate glass, would support a weight like that.
He hurtled down the bank, almost falling and rolling. He kept his footing, skidding down the snow like a downhill skier. He picked his way through the snowy rocks and boulders by the river's edge, sliding on small, trapped puddles of ice, and reached the river.
Rory knelt down, reached out, and tested the ice with his hand. He applied firm pressure. It felt rock solid. As a nurse, he'd seen plenty of people brought into casualty with hypothermia and worse after falling through ice into ponds and lakes. Going out on ice was a stupid, stupid risk to take. Then again, none of the accident victims he'd seen being wheeled in on stretchers had taken to the ice because they were being chased by a two-metre tall, bipedal crocodile with baleful red eyes and a ray gun.
On cue, the green thing appeared at the top of the slope behind him. The afternoon sunlight flared off its pie-segment red lenses as it turned its ridged head to look at him.
Rory got up. He put a foot out onto the ice, let it take his weight, and then gingerly stepped clear of the bank. It was slippery, despite the dusting of snow. It felt like a window lubricated with washing up liquid under his feet. He took one step, and then another, arms wide for balance, teetering. The ice beneath him creaked. It made the sorts of popping, squealing protests that polystyrene packing made when you got a new TV or microwave out of its box.
He wobbled. He took another step. Another.
Another.
He glanced back. The green thing was coming down the slope after him, surefootedly negotiating the deep snow. It had a clear view of him. It could shoot him now. He was an open target.
He took another step. He took another. He was almost halfway across.
The ice gave out under him.
He plunged straight down into the river as though a trapdoor had slammed open underneath him. The moment he went, he knew he was done for. Even if the shock of the freezing water didn't actually kill him stone dead, he was miles from help and medical attention. His body temperature would drop sharply, and never recover. He would seize up and die.
He went under, right under the water. He was braced for the terrible cold. It was so cold, it seemed to burn him. Then he realised it wasn't cold at all.
The water under the crust of ice, fast-flowing and brisk, was warm. The water was warm.
Rory floundered, baffled. He struggled for the surface. Above him, he saw daylight. The ice had given way in several places, its disintegration prompted by the hole he had caused. The warm water was eating away at the edges of the plunge-hole, like a corrosive agent at work, broadening it and creating a channel.
He struck up towards it, arms churning, weighed down by his waterlogged parka. He broke the surface and took in a lungful of air. The cold stung his face.
The warmth of the water was almost like a blessed relief from the gnawing ache of winter.
Spluttering, he started to tread water, the motion of the water rotated him in the ragged space he'd made in the ice cover.
He saw his monstrous pursuer. It had reached the bank and was staring out at him. He was right there in front of it, but it didn't seem to register him properly.
Heat, he thought. Heat. It was following my heat.
Now I'm in hot water, I'm harder to detect. It can still see me, but my thermal image is more difficult to isolate.
Rory took a deep breath and went under. He didn't want to be visible at all. He wanted the water to mask him entirely.
'In hot water' indeed.
He wanted the river to carry him along and hide his trail from the creature.
For a moment, almost jubilant, he considered his luck. Falling through the ice had seemed to represent certain death, until he discovered the water beneath was warm. Being cornered in the water seemed to represent a second certain death, until it became apparent that the surrounding heat was confusing his implacable pursuer.
Then Rory realised there was a downside after all.
He swam underwater, borne along by the current, intending to surface for another lungful of air further downstream.
But he was under the ice again. He struck it from below, expecting it to splinter and give, but it was solid. It was as hard and firm as an oak lid on the top of the river. There was no air. There was no gap. There was no space for him to grab a breath.
He wasn't going to die of hypothermia or temperature shock. He wasn't going to be broken or blasted by a giant green monster.
He was simply going to drown.
Chapter
6
Deep and Crisp and Even
In the time it had taken them to trek through the shadowed snow of Would Be, the sky had changed colour. Looking up through the trees, Amy saw an expanse overhead that looked like wet slate. There was a whisper of cloud. A moody twilight had fallen across the wood.
Snowlight. She remembered it from her childhood.
A magical dusk where the ground seemed brighter than the sky, foretelling the imminent arrival of snow. It was an oddly fond memory, but in her current situation, it was not an exciting prospect.
A minute or so later, the first flakes started to fall.
They came down lazy and slow, just one or two at first, drifting like ash from an evening bonfire, or drowsy bumblebees.
'Button up!' declared the Doctor. 'Not far now.'
The snow grew a little heavier, but it was still pretty, like the picturesque flakes on a Dickensian Christmas card scene, rather than a full-on Scott of the Antarctic /
March of the Penguins / 'I'm just going outside now, I may be some time' thing.
Adjusting her mittens, Amy noticed how both Arabel and Samewell were intrigued by the falling snow. Neither of them had ever seen much of it, certainly not in its most fleeting, eerie state of actually falling out of the sky.
'It's a real novelty,' said the Doctor, noticing her interest. He had plucked up the collar of his jacket and was holding it closed with one hand.
'Like a Christmas single?' she asked, smiling.
'It doesn't mean it's a good thing,' he replied.
'So, just like a Christmas record, then?' she asked.
She watched Bel take off her glove and hold out a hand, letting flakes alight on her pink palm. Samewell grinned, and stuck out his tongue to catch a flake.
'What are you thinking about?' Amy asked the Doctor.
'I'm thinking about the little pockets of early human beings,' he replied quietly. 'Little communities of brave and determined hunter-gatherers, delighted by the unfamiliarity of snow and not even beginning to realise it's the first traces of an approaching ice age. Not even beginning to realise that what is enchanting now will starve them and freeze them and kill them inside six months.'
He blew on his hands.
'Let's find this memory yard,' he said.
It wasn't far off. With the ghost snow falling as silently as moving stars, the clearing was hauntingly beautiful. It was also terribly melancholy. The Doctor reckoned that Would Be had been deliberately pl
anted by earlier generations of Morphans. The little grey headstones looked like trees that had yet to flourish.
Amy couldn't believe how many of them there were.
They were like the rings of a tree. Add them all together, and they represented the toil and dedication that had gone into building Beside.
Bel took them to the marker of her father's grave.
Though the snow was laying, it had not yet covered and hidden the jar and the little bunch of heathouse flowers.
'She was here,' said Bel. 'Only Vesta would do that.'
'You wouldn't do it?' asked the Doctor.
Bel seemed to think about replying, but didn't. She looked as though the answer was too sad or ordinary or unremarkable for her to say out loud.
'Bel would mean to,' said Samewell, 'but she's always so busy. We're all so busy. Vesta would remember what day it was.'
The Doctor walked around the grave two or three times, a thumb under his chin and an index finger crooked across his mouth.
'There are only her tracks,' he said, pointing. 'Only hers. The snow's beginning to hide them. Look, that's her. Footsteps and the brush of long skirts. Just hers.
Well, ours too now, but ignore them. She came up the way we came, up the path. She came up from the plantation. But she didn't go that way. She went off in the other direction.' He turned to Bel. 'Where else would she go?'
Bel shrugged. 'Nowhere. She'd have been late for work as it was. Guide's Bell would have rung. She would have just gone back.'
'What's this way?' the Doctor asked, following the line of swiftly vanishing footprints.
'Nothing,' said Samewell. 'If you go that way you'd eventually reach Farafield, I suppose. Firmer Number Three is roughly that way.'
'Only roughly,' said Bel.
They all squinted into the falling snow. The sky had darkened so much, it was hard to make out the gloomy shoulders of the mountains.
'She was going somewhere,' said the Doctor, leading the way briskly. The trail took them out of the memory yard and deep into the trees. He pointed at the ground as he walked.
'Look,' he called back. 'Straight line! She wasn't wandering, wasn't strolling around. A very deliberate straight line.'
'Maybe she saw something,' suggested Amy, close on his heels.
