‘Isn’t it obvious?’ the Doctor said, then hesitated for a long while, before adding, ‘It’s because we don’t want anyone stealing our recipes.’
He smiled, a little uncertainly.
‘They believe you,’ Alsa said, not bothering to conceal her dissenting opinion. ‘They want your recipes. They don’t just take stuff. They take experiences. Thoughts and emotions and fantasies. That’s what the things suspended in their bodies are for – souvenirs. Badges.’
‘Proof of individual achievement in a hivemind,’ the Doctor muttered.
‘The rules… they’re dead complicated. If an Eyeless is the first one ever to feel or do something or go somewhere, it can wear a memento of it.’
The Doctor looked between the three aliens, tried to guess what each of the artefacts symbolised. Another Eyeless stepped out of the gloom, turned its head so it was facing the Doctor for the first time. The Doctor looked up at it. He took a deep breath.
‘You’re like me,’ Alsa said, this time to the Eyeless, proudly pointing to a ribbon on her jacket. ‘I earned that when I beat Hlann in a fight. Broke his nose. It’s still wonky. You get what you want. That’s like me, too.’
‘This particular Eyeless does have eyes,’ the Doctor told her.
Alsa had kept her distance, but now she was straining to see.
‘Don’t,’ the Doctor warned softly. Then, twirling around to look back at that Eyeless, taking another step over, he said, ‘Mr Eyeless… those ships of yours are very advanced. I mean, just one glance at them and it’s obvious they have galactic range and they’re powered by an artificial sun. Very few civilisations get so advanced. The people of Arcopolis are children by comparison. Well, Alsa is only 13, I suppose, so she’s got an excuse.’
‘Hey!’ Alsa snarled, instinctively moving closer to the nearest Eyeless.
‘You seem very pally with them, Alsa.’
‘I can hear their thoughts. They can hear mine.’
‘And you’re birds of a feather?’
‘I’ve no idea what that means.’ Strange colourful,
flappy thoughts appeared in Alsa’s mind, placed there by the Eyeless. She ignored them.
‘This one killed Jall. Did you realise that, Alsa?’
‘Sure. He’s wearing her eyes.’
He’d assumed she hadn’t seen. ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
Alsa shrugged. ‘I understand why he did it. Can’t put it into words… they’re not like us. And I never really knew Jall that well. They operate on a bigger scale.’
The Doctor looked puzzled. ‘Did you think that, or did they think that for you?’
Alsa frowned. ‘I thought that,’ she insisted.
‘Of course you did.’
‘Of course I did. Look, back at the Council, you were the one going on about the bigger picture. It’s a shame Jall died, but rather her than me.’
‘What makes you think that’s the choice?’ the Doctor asked.
‘I don’t come from a planet with choices.’
‘We’ll see about that.’ He turned to the Eyeless with Jall’s eyes. ‘Those ships are very pretty.’
The Eyeless stayed where it was, let the Doctor come level with it.
The Doctor waved a hand above his head in the vague direction of the ceiling, took another step, turned to back into the wall. ‘But this Fortress is very ugly. It’s horrible.
Offensive. At the moment, it’s… well, it’s asleep. Do nothing to wake it. Please, please do nothing to wake it.’
His other hand found the door frame.
‘He’s trying to get away!’ Alsa shouted.
She really was very smart.
The Eyeless raised its right hand, held it straight out, pointing at the Doctor, palm flat. There was a gold disc embedded there. It flashed with the light of the sun.
The Doctor shrugged when nothing happened. He tapped his lip with the sonic screwdriver, which he’d just taken from his coat pocket. ‘A weapon which literally burns out the neurons. Smoke pours out of the nose and mouth. Doesn’t work on me, just like your telepathy doesn’t work on me. Now… you killed Jall and I made a promise about Jall, and I will honour it.’
He took a step back.
‘Last chance, Alsa. Pick which side you’re on.’
‘You make it sound like we’re playing a game.’
The Doctor looked her right in the eyes, saw nothing but contempt there. So be it.
‘Alsa?’
‘Yes, Doctor?’ she said, sneering.
‘Playtime’s over.’
Before anyone could stop him, the Doctor took the last step back through the doorway. As he passed through, in one movement and without looking back, he turned, brought the sonic screwdriver up level with the nearest control panel, operated it, and made the heavy black metal door slam down.
The Doctor didn’t stick around to see what happened next.
The Eyeless who’d been closest to him managed to lurch forward and catch the underside of the door, quickly twisted to hold it about halfway open. The door was inching down, and the Eyeless wasn’t going to be able to hold it for long.
‘Go!’ Alsa was shouting to the others.
The Doctor was already a hundred paces away. He could hear Alsa swearing and yelling, but it was already
getting faint and after a moment the sound cut off completely. It felt wrong to abandon her, somehow. That said, there was no indication the Eyeless would harm her – rather the opposite – and she was far safer stuck back there than in the depths of this place.
Alsa’s comm was in the Doctor’s hand, set to display all the internal defences of the Fortress. Within fifteen seconds it had saved his life by spotting a row of nozzles in the floor. They were designed to blast up jets of poison gas, and he’d have completely missed them. The simple motion sensor that would have triggered the trap was easily tricked by the Doctor using a sweet wrapper he found in his pocket.
There were dull clangs of solid glass against metal floor. Footfalls behind him. One Eyeless had got through, but only the one. The Doctor had to slow down a little to neutralise every trap. Unless there was another door he could close behind himself soon – and he couldn’t see anything obvious on the plan – it would catch up with him.
The corridor curved down. There were a number of locked doors to either side, but he couldn’t slow down, so didn’t try them.
He avoided a trap designed to fire plastic straps to snare his chest like a boa constrictor. He left it live, and hurried away. Ten seconds later, the Doctor was gratified to hear it triggered, but also alarmed the Eyeless had been that close behind him. The glass man didn’t breathe, so the trap wouldn’t suffocate it, and it’d be free soon enough.
The Eyeless fascinated him. Did they know specifically
about the weapon at the heart of this Fortress, or had they simply marked out Arcopolis as a potential source of advanced technology?
He scolded himself. They must know. It was a long way to come on a whim.
He had to get to the weapon before the Eyeless did. No: faster than that. He needed to get to the weapon before they even tried, because when they tried… well, that would set the Fortress going and make his life difficult.
The Doctor picked up his pace.
If the Eyeless knew about the weapon, he wondered, did that mean they knew all his secrets?
Whatever the Doctor had done to the door, the Eyeless couldn’t undo. There had been no way to brace it open, so there was only time for one Eyeless to get through. This frustrated Alsa, who kicked and punched at the metal, but all it did was clang and hurt her fists and feet.
That only made Alsa more angry.
The two Eyeless left behind stood there, unmoving, impassive.
‘Don’t you ever get upset?’ she asked them.
‘No. All our decisions and actions are rational.’
Alsa barged into the door, shoulder first. ‘Damn it!’
‘You will not open the door using that method
.’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘No. I would like to.’
It was just the one with the eyes talking to her now, she could tell that somehow. It was almost like it was whispering to her. The other one was keeping its distance.
‘I thought you could read my mind.’
‘That does not mean I can feel what you feel. I would like to.’
And now Alsa was looking at herself standing over by the door. She felt confused, but didn’t look it. She looked gleeful. That girl wasn’t her. It looked like her, but… she was inside the Eyeless. She was tall, strong. She wasn’t hungry or cold, wasn’t even breathing. She could see right through her six-fingered hand. There was a gold disc in there. It was weird. She wasn’t looking out through little holes in her skull, like she usually did; she had a total awareness of her surroundings.
‘We’ve swapped bodies?’ Alsa asked.
‘That is the simplest way of describing it, yes,’ the girl opposite her said, mumbling and slurring a little, as if she wasn’t used to having a tongue. ‘We call it psychografting.’
It was like she was driving its body. The Eyeless was clearly driving hers, flexing the fingers, running them up and down her arm. It revelled in the sensation, wide-eyed.
‘How bizarre … arms … fingers … hair!’
‘Watch where you’re putting those hands,’ Alsa warned.
The other Eyeless shifted its feet, fascinated.
For the first time in her life, Alsa felt calm.
‘You’ve never been angry before?’
‘Not like this. Not the actual emotion, just a copy.’ The Eyeless in her body was breathing hard, swaying. ‘Such rage,’ it said.
‘I told you I was angry.’
‘It is exhilarating. All sorts of hormonal surges and physical responses. I see something, I want to hurt it.’
‘But that’s what I see. All the time.’
In response, the Eyeless punched the wall, then grabbed at that hand with the other, crying out in pain.
Alsa would have smiled, but the face she wore was featureless, immobile, so she couldn’t. She looked down at her own arm… her new one. Alsa couldn’t see herself inside the glass. A thought crossed her mind: where was she?
Never mind that: she really wanted to see how much she could wind up the Eyeless.
‘The Doctor lied,’ she said. ‘All that stuff about herbs was rubbish. He let me down and he lied to you.’
‘How can you be certain?’
‘Normal people have intuition. Feel it in our stomach.
Try it.’
The Eyeless growled, a noise that made Alsa start, even in her new, impassive body. She had never made that sound herself.
‘The Doctor tricked me!’ it snarled.
‘Yes. He tricked us both.’
‘I will kill him!’
The Eyeless slammed into the door then tried clawing at the metal. Its comrade watched this, impassively.
If it carried on like this, it would hurt itself. No, not itself: that was her body it was wearing, and Alsa wanted it back in one piece.
‘You need to calm down a bit. Focus. You want to hurt him, not yourself. Close your eyes,’ Alsa suggested.
She figured that closing eyes was something the Eyeless could never have done before, and she quickly felt the alien’s mind grow almost giddy at the darkness.
‘That is… so strange.’
‘It’s just normal.’
‘No … strange.’ It was opening and closing its eyes, now. Grinning like an idiot.
After another minute of that, the Eyeless announced it would restore control of her body and Alsa was back where she belonged, feeling dizzy and her hand was throbbing. Alsa felt upset again, but it was dying down, becoming dulled. She wore the grin the Eyeless had made.
‘We cannot allow the Doctor to escape,’ the Eyeless said. Now it seemed to be both of them speaking again.
‘We’ve got to be careful,’ Alsa reminded them. ‘The Doctor said that the Fortress was asleep, and we shouldn’t wake it.’
‘He said it was on standby,’ the Eyeless concurred. ‘We should also take into account that, while the Fortress demonstrates great potential, and warrants full investigation, we have what we originally came to this planet for.’
‘You do?’
‘We have the hypercube.’
The information poured into Alsa’s mind, like she was remembering it. A hypercube was an object where the interior measurements were larger than the exterior ones.
Like going into a small tent and finding that inside it was a huge hall.
Alsa got a mental picture of a big, blue, wooden box,
with windows and a light on top.
‘I don’t recognise that at all,’ she said, annoyed that they expected her to know about it.
‘It is not Arcopolis technology.’
‘Then… ?’ she asked, impatient.
‘We were passing through this space sector when we detected the hypercube in flight. We were able to calculate its trajectory to this planet and arrive here two days before it. It landed on a beach around ten miles from here and our landing party took possession of it shortly afterwards.
Despite our efforts, we are currently unable to unlock the door. It remains on the beach where we found it.’
‘Whose is it, then?’
‘Ours,’ the Eyeless said, confused by the question.
‘Whose was it before? Where did it come from?’
‘We think it belonged to the Doctor. We think it is the TARDIS he spoke to Dela about. While he did not describe its physical properties to her, he explained that the noun was an acronym for Thyme… Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. Hypercubes possess the property of relative dimensionality.’
What flowed into Alsa’s head next made no sense to her. It was a string of numbers and other symbols that might have been numbers, but none that Jeffip had ever taught her. The word ‘equations’ swam through her mind.
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘We will learn all the secrets of the TARDIS.’
‘What does the Doctor use it for?’
‘Apparently it is a vehicle and a home and a museum and a laboratory and a library.’
Alsa was trying to get everything straight. So, the Eyeless had come to this planet looking for that big blue crate, the TARDIS. They weren’t here for the weapon at all. They might not even know about the weapon.
‘Weapon?’ For the first time when it was in its own body, Alsa felt the Eyeless radiate an emotion: fear. Then another: fascination.
The Fortress strategy computer was assessing the pieces of data it had collected.
There were two alien creatures and a native humanoid in one of the outer chambers. They hadn’t moved for a few minutes. The aliens communicated via simple telepathic broadcasts, which operated at 93.7 megamyers.
The computer listened in, rather than jamming the signal.
There were four more aliens outside, by the breach, and six native humanoids. An alien and a non-native humanoid were through the outer defences, heading to the central vault. There were three spacecraft immediately outside.
The computer sifted this information. There were two points of immediate concern.
The three spacecraft were potentially a threat. The strategy computer was watching them carefully. It toyed with the idea of a first strike, but rejected it. It was programmed to use proportionate force.
The non-native humanoid, the one with two hearts, concerned it more, because he had managed to get further than the strategy computer had originally projected. He was the one who had opened the outer hatches, using a sonic resonator. His avoidance of the various traps and snares indicated high levels of intelligence and initiative.
It checked its files, and discovered whole dedicated sections and subroutines about this individual, the Doctor.
It brought them online, studied them.
The Doctor was aware of the wea
pon. He was making his way towards it. The computer selected the best strategy to stop him and implemented it.
This whole planet was quiet in the first place and the thick walls of the Fortress acted to provide soundproofing against even the silence. On the other hand, because it was constructed almost entirely of metal, every noise the Doctor made as he hurried through the latest corridor rang out and echoed. It was dark, with just the emergency lighting. The various traps that had dogged him at first were becoming increasingly thin on the ground and this worried him.
The Eyeless must have got out of the snare by now, although the Doctor hadn’t heard it behind him.
He’d been moving for half an hour. There was still some way to the central vaults, according to the comm.
The narrow corridors were a maze, like a nervous system or an animal warren – lots of tunnels branching off and leading to chambers and alcoves. The whole place was empty. There were racks and hooks and sockets everywhere, but no equipment or other material.
The immense strength of the weapon, even when it was inactive, was as tangible to him as the weather was when he was outside. He could feel its weight, oppressive.
The corridor opened up in front of him. It was now twice as wide, although this didn’t serve an obvious purpose. For no reason he could have explained, the Doctor glanced down at the comm.
HELP
He looked back up. A beautiful face was looking right into his eyes. A ghost, standing in front of him, its cold, crisp glow radiating like nothing else in the perpetual gloom. It wore the same flowing white robes as the other ghosts he’d seen, and it looked just as scared, trapped. The ghost moved its hand, and the Doctor was going to take it, but then remembered what had happened to Frad.
It’s not trapped, it’s the trap. Don’t forget that, Doctor.
‘And I was just thinking how thin on the ground the automatic defences had become,’ he said out loud. He glanced behind him, double-checking the Eyeless wasn’t there.
The ghost looked bewildered.
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