Dr. Who - BBC New Series 29

by The Eyeless # Lance Parkin

  The Fortress fired a second mini-missile, which the Doctor leapt over like it was a hurdle. The weapon had anticipated the Doctor would duck, like he had the first time, so it had aimed low. Glancing back over his shoulder, the Doctor saw that both missiles were now arcing round to have another go.

  He glanced down at his hand, with its tiny scratch.

  The dart had taken his biodata sample.

  The missiles were programmed with his genetic details, and wouldn’t give up until they’d hit him.

  Dela and the children were outside now and had finally stopped running. Dela’s skin was tingling. It had only been when she saw Cozzan’s red face that she realised they all had instant sunburn from the sphere that had broken off the Eyeless ship. Apart from that, she felt fine.

  The boys had no obvious injuries or distress. She was proud of how calm they’d been.

  They had led her out of the Factory down to ground level and straight into an area thick with trees. The Fortress still overshadowed them, but they were shielded from the worst of the oppressive black shape by a canopy of fronds and ferns and flat leaves. Dela could barely see ten paces in front of her.

  ‘It’s the Urban Jungle,’ Morren told her solemnly.

  ‘A good place to get lost,’ Gar said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking back. She wondered if the Doctor was all right.

  The ground was wet from the previous night’s rain, and the air was saturated with the smells of loam and fruit and pollen and bark and so much else.

  ‘What was it before?’ she wondered aloud. They were east of the Factory, not all that far from where she’d lived.

  There had been nothing like this in the City back then.

  The boys all approximated a shrug.

  Dela tried to get her bearings. ‘Close to the Aircar Factory, in the direction of the… it’s the Botanical Gardens. No, too close, they were miles away… wait…

  the plants have spread out. Seeds and spores must have blown here.’

  ‘There are domes and stuff in the heart of the Jungle, where the plants are thickest,’ Gar confirmed, nodding his head in the right direction, keeping his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Nothing’s very colourful,’ Dela said.

  ‘What do you mean? It’s all green.’

  Dela laughed. ‘I used to come here. Well, to the Gardens.’

  ‘With, er, thingy?’ Cozzan asked.

  ‘Gyll, yes, and on school trips and with my parents before that. It was where rare plants were kept. There were flowers, then. Every size and shape and colour.’

  The flowering plants would have survived the coming of the Fortress, but slowly died off without any insects to pollinate them. The vegetation no longer had to appeal to bees or ants.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Cozzan asked.

  Dela had been thinking. ‘We go back to the settlement.

  Get out the way, let the Doctor and the aliens… the other aliens… settle their dispute.’

  ‘I meant now Jeffip and Fladon are dead. They did so much.’

  Dela hadn’t thought her heart could sink any lower.

  She’d put that question to the back of her mind.

  ‘They learned their skills. Boys like you will have to step up to take their place. We will all have to be braver.’

  ‘You lived in the Jungle before?’

  ‘No… it wasn’t here, this was all just part of the city. I was a bank manager.’

  ‘A what?’

  She smiled. ‘That would take a very long time to explain. Jeffip was a teacher. A primary school teacher.

  Fladon worked in the Car Factory. Very little of what we knew before was any use.’

  ‘Mum!’ Morren called out. He was a little way ahead, and was now signalling them all to slow down.

  The boys’ feral instinct was to duck down. Dela craned her neck, hoping to get a better look at whatever it was.

  Gar grabbed at her.

  Dela felt them in her mind before she saw them.

  Dozens of Eyeless, marching in single file, each of them negotiating the obstacles and hazards they encountered, ducking under branches, stepping over root bores and round fallen trees without breaking their stride or their perfect formation.

  A burble of thoughts, imperatives and observations, flittered between the aliens. They were marching on the Fortress; were one of five groups heading there; wanted to get inside the building and acquire the weapon before the Doctor did.

  If they saw the humans, or heard their thoughts, they didn’t acknowledge it. The glass men were already hard to see, and within seconds of passing, the column had completely disappeared into the foliage.

  ‘I have to warn the Doctor,’ Dela said. No one was more surprised hearing the words than she was, but saying them had been a liberation. She knew it was the right thing to do. Then, she said to the boys: ‘You can find your way back to the settlement? Do that. Warn Jennver and the others. Tell them what happened.’

  She hugged them all, even Gar. That left them too embarrassed to object. Dela took her chance to escape them.

  The two missiles were circling and had the Doctor pinned with his back to a large metal pillar.

  They were in a circular vault, around seventy metres in diameter. The missiles were circling the perimeter of the room, sticking close together. There were ten exits, equally spaced, along the perimeter, but every time the Doctor made for one of the doorways, one of the two missiles started heading for it and they could travel four times faster than he could. The pillar he had his back to was a crankshaft in the middle of the room that the missiles didn’t want to damage, so they were waiting for him to make his move. They didn’t seem to want to come in any closer than the perimeter.

  He had to get to one of the doors, but every time he started towards one, it became clear the missiles could get there first.

  He was more than a little annoyed with himself, because there was clearly, mathematically, a way to get to a door. The Fortress was setting him a puzzle.

  ‘Something to do with pi,’ he told himself.

  He waited until the missiles were directly behind him, then ran for it, straight towards one of the doors, but one of the mini missiles started powering round. He turned his head, and it was obvious that it would get to the door before he got anywhere near.

  The Doctor ran back to the middle of the room, and the shelter of the mechanism there. The missile raced past the doorway before resuming its perimeter patrol.

  ‘2 pi R,’ the Doctor said, still trying to work out the solution. ‘The radius of the circle is, um, call it a hundred feet… er, I mean thirty metres… and there’s a value of…

  they’re four times faster than me, so if I’m standing a quarter of the radius of the… I’m in the centre of the circle, so if I… but there are two missiles… so if I’m standing an eighth of the radius of… Oh, stuff this for a game of soldiers!’

  In no mood to play along, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver and started running straight at the missiles.

  One of them pitched round and straight at him. There was no time to check, so the Doctor fired away and hoped he’d got it right.

  A big glob of air shimmered in front him and the missile flew right into it. Instantaneously, every screw, weld, seal and rivet failed. The missile became a bucketful of missile components, not one of which was connected to another. The pieces also lost all their momentum, just drizzling down onto the ground.

  For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction – in other words, the force of the sonic burst flicked the Doctor off his feet and sent him flying back.

  He landed on one foot, stumbled, fell and landed awkwardly. His body noted irritably that it was tired and bruised and scratched enough already, thanks.

  Despite that, the Doctor felt like kissing the sonic screwdriver. There was a cloud to the silver lining: the Maximum Disassemble setting drained all its power. He could set the screwdriver to recharge itself, perhaps by absorbing ambient
sound, but that would take a few minutes.

  Which was a shame, as the second missile was coming straight for him right now.

  It was moments away. Reflexively, the Doctor flinched and raised his elbow so it was right between his head and the missile, peered at the weapon through the crook of his arm.

  The air between them was blurring, growing opalescent.

  The Doctor had just formed the thought that it might be a residual effect of the sonic burst when the shape resolved into a ghost – a middle-aged man in a toga, with a smooth head.

  The ghost fixed a dark-eyed stare at the Doctor, surprised to see a man cowering quite so comprehensively from it.

  The ghost didn’t see the missile coming. The Doctor did, through its translucent, bald head. He wasn’t sure what would happen, but couldn’t do much to affect the outcome anyway. In the event, the missile hit the ghost square in the back of the head and the two were annihilated in a burst of light.

  The Doctor blinked the flash out of his eyes.

  ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ he murmured. It was pure luck that he hadn’t been hit himself, but that didn’t make him feel

  any better about it.

  He scrambled around on the ground for something, found it and hurried off towards one of the doorways.

  Before he got much further, his route was cut off by a shimmer in the air. Another ghost had appeared. Another one. Another. Within moments, there were too many ghosts to count – there was just a tornado cloud made from long limbs, flowing robes and hair, lit from within, engulfing him.

  *

  The Eyeless had been burbling away, crunching the numbers, drawing up their plan. Alsa stood between them all, but didn’t feel involved. They were finally calming down. As was she, Alsa realised. Their emotions were catching.

  The mental images of the inner vault held in the five Eyeless minds dripped details of the traps that lay in wait.

  The Eyeless had worked out that the Fortress would only ever hit back slightly harder than it had been hit. The Eyeless had confronted it with three ships. If they had brought thirty, it would have attacked them with ten times the ferocity.

  ‘The Doctor was smart to show up here on his own, without any guns or other weapons,’ Alsa said. ‘He left his spaceship on the beach, so he’s still got a spaceship.’

  She was trying to rile them, but it wasn’t working. The Eyeless understood she was impatient, so without waiting to be asked what her plan was, she told them they should let the Doctor do the hard work of getting the weapon, then ambush him. Simple.

  ‘No,’ the Eyeless said. It was like a chorus. ‘It is not acceptable to allow anyone else even temporary control of the weapon. We have to acquire it first.’

  ‘There’s no way to do that,’ Alsa complained.

  ‘We have calculated an option that guarantees we can secure the weapon chamber before the Doctor arrives,’ the Eyeless told her.

  As one, they turned towards the corridor that led into the central vault.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’ Alsa demanded.

  The corridor was uneven and blasted, making it tricky to follow them.

  She saw their plan.

  ‘That’s it? Charge at the guns? It’s suicide!’

  ‘Not for all of us. The benefit justifies the cost.’

  ‘You don’t want to die, surely?’

  ‘It is not our preference. Humans have adopted such strategies. Your current culture is based around short-term sacrifice to ensure the survival of future generations.’

  The whole point, Alsa thought sulkily, was that she hated that and wanted it changed. They still hadn’t reassured her that they could build the engine they’d promised her.

  ‘How many is “enough”?’ she asked.

  ‘It only needs a handful,’ the Eyeless said. ‘One will certainly survive, there is a sixty-seven per cent chance that more than one will. The survivor or survivors will acquire the weapon.’

  They’d reached a small antechamber. Through the next doorway, Alsa could see the vast interior of the inner vault, so much larger and more solid than the mental picture had made it seem.

  Alsa looked over at the five Eyeless.

  A handful.

  The Eyeless with Jall’s eyes held out its hand, waved its fingers almost cheerfully.

  ‘A handful is six,’ it told her. ‘You are the sixth.’

  ‘Touch me and I die!’ the Doctor shouted.

  Countless ghosts swirled away until he was out of their reach, but still they circled him. The Doctor looked ahead, then behind, but couldn’t see past the ghosts. There was no way out.

  One soon drifted into the eye of the storm, floated in front of him. A young man. It thought about reaching out, but hesitated… and was lost to the throng. As soon as its light had faded, another ghost had taken its place. It was screaming, silently, and even the Doctor flinched at the raw horror in its eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ said the Doctor, trying to move out of its way, but there were ghosts in every direction. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Their light, blue and pearl grey, wasn’t cast far from them. Every few seconds, a ghost or group of them would break from the pack to confront him.

  He saw five ghostly children in short robes looking around. Four of them were crying, and the other was looking up, too surprised to react. The Doctor had to try something for them. He took the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. It had recharged enough for him to take some simple readings. They told him nothing, so he thought about it.

  Could they really, somehow, be the lost souls of Arcopolis?

  ‘There’s nothing I could do,’ the Doctor said quietly.

  ‘Nothing I can do.’

  Two ghosts appeared in the children’s place – a man and a woman with almost angelic expressions, holding hands, trembling a little. They had gone almost as soon as they’d arrived.

  ‘I said I’m sorry. I meant it. I’m sorry.’

  Dark thoughts swirled inside the Doctor, almost filling him, almost dragging him under. All the other ghosts, his own ghosts.

  ‘There is nothing I can do!’ he whispered.

  Would he have to look all 200 million of them in the eye? The Doctor vowed to do that, if that was what it took. He would stand here, tell each of them to their face, however long that took.

  ‘Really. There’s nothing.’

  But he would be telling them all the same thing.

  They were crowding a little closer, now, although there was still a sense of respectful distance. He had to get to the weapon. As the Doctor stepped forward, the ghosts moved with him, blocked his way.

  ‘Can’t you hear me? Don’t you understand?’

  There was no individual response from them, nothing to suggest a connection or a meaningful communication.

  There was just their shock and loss and emptiness. A hollow, objectless, grief. The sense of loss, the sense of futility, the sense of fate. It echoed within the Doctor. The sense that this shouldn’t have happened, eliding without difficulty into a sense of helplessness.

  ‘I wish I could. I wish I could do everything. I wish I could save everyone. I can’t.’

  Fifteen years ago, this had just been a normal world.

  These people hadn’t been criminals or vicious or even the tiniest bit selfish. They didn’t deserve this. They had been peaceful and prosperous. Charity was easily given when there was plenty for everyone, and their magnificent city was a monument that there once had been. But even now, even after all this time and hardship, the survivors of this fallen civilisation had fed him from their own meagre supplies. Everyone would have a little less to eat, but the Doctor had just sat there and slurped up their soup and chomped away on their fruit. They’d shared their lives with him, showed him kindness. Not threatened him with violence or even with confinement. They were good people. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair on them. None of it.

  What had he done for them? What could he do for them?

  He checke
d the sonic screwdriver again.

  ‘You’re not even a blip on the sonic,’ the Doctor said. ‘I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what you are, only some of the things you’re not. There’s no point crowding me.’

  The Doctor tried to move on, but the ghosts were consciously blocking him, now. They had become

  agitated.

  ‘I mean it! Begone! Shift!’

  They all moved a little closer.

  ‘Touch me and I die. Just die. That would be it.

  Nothing like… what you’ve got. Just an end to it all. And then where would you be?’

  As he’d thought that, for only a fraction of a fraction of a second, the Doctor wondered if that would be so bad.

  ‘Do you think you’re special?’ the Doctor demanded.

  He had seen so many people die.

  ‘At least some of you survived,’ the Doctor shouted, angry at them now. ‘You weren’t the last.’

  The ghosts were all glaring, now, eyes fixed on him.

  Like that pack of kids when they’d first attacked him.

  They weren’t as angry as him. How could they be? Even all of them added together, how could they be?

  ‘I’m the last one,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’m it. My people died. All of them. And Time Lords don’t die just the once, you know. You have to kill us a lot more than once to make it stick.’

  Still the ghosts pressed at him, some holding out their hands like beggars after a scrap of food, some shouldering towards him like they were after a fight, some apparently just wanting him to see them cry. They kept coming, like waves to a beach.

  ‘Do you know what? In the end their sacrifice made no difference. Because they survived. Thousands of them, millions. Just one. It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing.

  And… do you know what?… life is always better than death. Always. Yet I want all of them dead. Every single last one of them. When did I become someone who wanted to exterminate? When was that? When did they win?’

  The ghosts weren’t listening.

  The Doctor lunged at the next one with the sonic screwdriver, brandishing it like a dagger.

  ‘Just leave me alone!’ he shouted.