by Doctor Who
‘I advise you to curb your enthusiasm until you have something a little more concrete in the way of proof,’ warned Issabel. ‘I abandoned that theory with good reason – it’s impossible to generate that level of energy.’
‘The Doctor says it is possible. He’s working on the problem – un-62
conventional but very brilliant.’ He’s gorgeous too, she felt like adding, and started to blush.
‘I can see I shall have to meet with this Doctor,’ said Issabel thoughtfully.
‘Anyway,’ said Flowers, charging on, ‘the thing is, he claims he needs his friend to help him. An astrophysicist who’s currently incarcerated on Justice Beta.’
Issabel’s gaze now flicked up to Flowers’s eyes and bored into them deeply. ‘Oh really?’
Flowers was taken aback by this sudden intimacy and looked down at her shoes. ‘He’s asked that we give her the chance to let her prove her worth. . . prove how she could aid him with this project. I know the Doctor is a prisoner and in no position to make demands, but –’
‘You feel it would be best to indulge him, to let him explain himself freely rather than attempt to extract the knowledge from his mind against his will?’
‘I do,’ said Flowers firmly. ‘Let’s give him the chance to help us willingly, at least in the first instance.’
‘You’re too soft on the prisoners. This is a labour camp, however you choose to dress it up.’
‘I don’t care for that term, Consul,’ she said, unable to make eye contact now herself.
‘Oh, very well,’ said Issabel. ‘We’ll play out some rope to this Doctor and see if he hangs himself.’
‘Thank you, Consul. And his astrophysicist friend on Beta?’
Issabel looked at Flowers again. The smile on her face did nothing to soften her drawn features. ‘I’ll have to give this matter some thought. Have the datacore from the ruined console delivered to me here immediately.’
‘But, Consul Issabel, I’ve already explained that without the translation –’
‘Do it!’ she snapped. ‘I wish to inspect the damage for myself.’
‘At once, Consul.’
Flowers nodded and rushed from the room.
‘You’re the boss,’ she muttered.
63
‘That’s right, Flowers,’ said Issabel coolly as the door slid closed.
‘I’m the boss.’
A couple of hours later, the Doctor’s tour finished as he was returned to his cell. The Slitheen were still out, hard at it in the solar workshops, so the cell was empty.
He lay on his bunk, twiddled his thumbs for a bit. Boring. His eyes started playing over the photos on the wall of the Slitheen ancestors in their alien drag.
It set him thinking about Ecktosca and Dram. Could they really be simple historians with an interest in antiques and their family tree, now filling their days as model prisoners? He supposed that all families had their share of black sheep, and that the Slitheen were no exception. It was perfectly possible he’d met only the evil, ruthless, profit-driven members of the family, and that the rest were lovable, kind and well motivated.
But while all Slitheen undoubtedly looked alike – a strong family resemblance, to be sure – in one of the pictures there was a creature who looked the living spit of Ecktosca Fel Fotch, wriggling with a grin out of a Martian’s body armour. Why? Historical re-enactment?
Keeping family traditions alive?
With a wicked grin, the Doctor decided it was the perfect time for a quick poke about the nest.
Rose woke up with a splitting headache, alone in a cell under a single burning light bulb. The room was small and bare save for a wooden bench with no mattress and a bucket. Solitary confinement, she supposed, someplace far away from everyone else.
How had she got things so wrong? Rose felt the back of her head to check it hadn’t been caved in by the warder’s blow. She supposed she had just added another twenty years to her sentence here and made Kazta more mad at her than ever – and all for nothing. She wondered how long she’d been out, and how long before she was let out. If their punishments were anything like their jail sentences on Justicia, she could be here for weeks.
64
‘Rose?’ She jumped at the sound of Dennel’s voice at the door. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Are you stalking me or something?’ she joked. ‘What time is it?’
‘After ten at night. Just wanted to know if you were OK,’ he said.
‘You’ve made yourself into a real celebrity. Rumours are spreading through the blocks about the girl who started a food-fight riot before jumping on the Governor and trying to pull his face off. Is that true?’
‘Eyewitness account,’ she sighed.
‘Because you thought he was an alien. Like you told me.’
‘I thought he was. . . ’ She groaned, put her head in her hands. ‘I so thought he was.’
‘Well, whatever you thought, you’re, like, a total hero to everyone.’
‘Total zero, more like,’ she countered. ‘I’ve messed up. God knows what the Governor will do to me now.’
‘I’ll try to find out how long you’ll be in here,’ said Dennel.
‘Should you even be here talking to me?’
‘No.’
‘What if you get caught? You’re crazy!’
‘Takes one to know one,’ he said. ‘Got to go. I can hear someone coming.’
Rose heard his scuffling footsteps retreat quickly from the door, soon to be replaced by a set of precise, military clips and clops on the floor. She backed away from the door, warily, wondering who was approaching and what they had in mind.
The footsteps stopped outside. There was a long, horrible pause.
A grille snapped open in the door.
And a plate of food was pushed through, cold and congealing beneath a thick, rubbery skin.
Rose heaved a monumental sigh of relief, took the food, and slumped back down on the bench.
Then there was a heavy rapping on the door. Rose jumped so high she nearly banged her aching head on the ceiling.
‘Tyler?’
It was Norris. Why was a warder knocking before he entered?
‘Wha– what is it?’ she said shakily.
65
A key turned in the heavy door. Norris opened it quickly and looked both ways before coming in, as if wary of being seen. As he entered the room his bulk quivered, barely contained by his uniform.
‘What do you want?’
He looked at her intently. Little beads of sweat were dripping down his cheek from beneath his peaked cap.
The peaked cap that hid his forehead from sight.
Rose’s mouth ran dry. Suddenly she could picture a zipper running along the length of his head. . .
‘I think we need to talk, Tyler,’ said Norris, his mean eyes hard upon her. ‘Nice and private. No one else around. . . ’
Rose caught a stink of bad breath as he spoke. She shrank away to the corner of her cell as he advanced towards her.
66
The Doctor had all but finished searching the Slitheen cell. He’d turned up nothing of interest, and now his hands were sticky with muck. Whatever fluid they used to line their nests, away from their body heat it hardened to a sort of quicklime. It had reddened the skin on his hands, leaving them chapped and sore. Bit of a giveaway, really.
So, he decided, he might just as well get them really dirty.
Beneath the layers of lime, the base of Ecktosca’s nest was hard and almost shiny like marble. He rapped his knuckles against this crust and a crack appeared.
Oops. Well, no going back now, then.
He forced his hand right through so that his fingers were exploring a small crevice. The tips scraped against something hard. Frowning, the Doctor hooked hold of it and pulled it out.
It looked a little like a scuba diver’s mask, except the front was made of a strange, opaque substance, and the metal frame for it was buckled and clumsily cut. There was no
strap, though two holes scored either side suggested there was space for one.
67
‘Home-made compression field,’ murmured the Doctor. ‘Courtesy of the SCAT-house workshops.’
‘And a little old-fashioned Slitheen ingenuity.’
The Doctor spun round to find Ecktosca Fel Fotch in the doorway.
He’d been so engrossed in his find he’d not heard the doors open.
‘An application of the gear you’ve been using to control the sun-bursts,’ he surmised. ‘But why? If you can’t find your ancestors’ compression fields you’ll make your own, is that it?’
Dram burst past his brother and lumbered into the cell, claws raised and outstretched for the Doctor’s throat. The globs descended on Dram before he could get halfway across the room, and held him still.
‘Don’t think about it too hard, you fool,’ hissed Ecktosca, moving forwards so that the door slammed shut behind him. ‘If the globules detect what we’ve been up to we’re finished. Even if we have just given Flowers full mastery over solar flares.’
‘You’ve sorted that out for her, have you? Well done.’ The Doctor beamed. ‘She’s gonna think all her Christmases have come at once.
Should put her in a good mood – which is good for me. . . ’
The globs drifted slowly away from Dram’s trembling body. His black eyes were still narrowed at the Doctor.
‘Poking about in our affairs is not good for you, Doctor,’ said Ecktosca heavily.
‘What do you care? You’re going to escape! I bet you’ve got another one of these gadgets salted away in Dram Fel Fotch’s nest. . . But how are you going to break out without bringing down the globs, eh?’ He grinned. ‘I get it. Compression field shrinks down your form, alters the molecular state of your mind and body. It’ll compress the implant too, confuse the signals enough for you to get away. Right?’ He chucked the compression field at Dram, who caught it in one massive hand.
‘Thing is – even if you’ve bypassed the implant, even if you’ve rustled yourselves up a top disguise on the SCAT-house sewing machine –where is there to go?’
‘That’s not your business,’ hissed Dram.
‘And home-made compression fields aren’t Flowers’s business, either,’ said the Doctor brightly. ‘But it’s weird how these things get 68
out.’
Ecktosca’s big black eyes narrowed. ‘You wish to stop us?’
‘What, and miss having the cell all to myself?’
‘Then you wish to escape with us.’
‘That’s a generous offer.’ He grinned. ‘When are you off?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Dram.
‘When help is at hand,’ said Ecktosca, just as unhelpfully.
‘Fine. I’m not ready to leave yet either. I’m trying to swing a visit from a good friend of mine.’ He frowned. ‘And even if that comes off, I can’t just escape to any old place. I’ve got property I need to collect.’
‘Is that a fact?’ said Ecktosca softly. ‘Well, then, let’s hope you live long enough to do so.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
The Slitheen lumbered closer, pressed his grotesquely babyish face up close. ‘It is not only the globules that watch over us on Justice Prime, Doctor.’
‘I think you know why I’m here, Tyler,’ said Norris, pausing in front of her.
‘You’re Slitheen,’ Rose croaked, flattening herself against the wall, preparing to bolt.
Norris frowned. ‘That name again. . . What is it with you?’
‘I’m not saying another word till you take off your cap!’
He did so. There was nothing there but the mother of all strap marks right across his head from where the plastic lining had cut into the skin.
‘Satisfied?’
Rose stared. Then she closed her eyes and shuddered with relief.
‘OK, so I’m totally paranoid and I’m feeling completely stupid right now. What are you doing here?’
‘I want to know who sent you,’ said Norris.
‘Not you too.’ Rose sighed. ‘Did the Governor send you to talk to me? He thinks I’m some kind of undercover agent.’
‘And you’re not?’
69
‘No! Me and my friend came to Justicia by accident and he got taken somewhere else while I ended up here.’
‘The Governor’s convinced that someone’s coming to check up on this place.’ Norris sighed. ‘And he’s dead right. It’s me.’
Rose gawped. ‘You?’
‘But how did he get to hear an agent was being sent?’ He sat down on the floor in front of her, and his hard face softened. ‘I’ve been sent by a covert wing of Earth’s government to infiltrate Justicia and report back on the way it’s run, the way prisoners are really treated
– just what our colonies’ money is funding. Whether what they get is worth all this.’
‘How long have you been here?’ asked Rose cautiously.
‘Nine months.’ He shook his head and winced. ‘Two weeks’ induction on Justice Delta with the Executive – that’s where they monitor the experiments, co-ordinate the whole system – and then I was put on patrol here, trailing Blanc around, junior partner.’
‘And you let her get away with treating people. . . ?’
‘It’s a deep-cover job. I do what I can, but I’m not here to straighten things. I’m here to find stuff out and report back.’ He rubbed his hands through his close-cropped hair. ‘And Jeez, have I found stuff out. For all the good it does me.’
Rose nodded encouragingly. ‘Well?’
‘Since I came here there’ve been four warders and one trustee who disappeared in weird circumstances – oh, and six-teen prisoners. All of them just vanished. Sure, there’ll be a missing shuttle in the dock sometimes, or we’ll find a wrecked skimmer out on the surface, but look a little closer and you find the facts just don’t fit.’
‘And the Governor knows about this?’
‘He doesn’t want to know. He’s told me we don’t need to bother the Executives, sweeping it all under the carpet so it won’t look bad on him.’ He grimaced. ‘You can see the effect the strain’s been having on him. He’s a mental and physical wreck. And I can’t say I’m surprised
– the Executive should have cottoned on to the fact that something ‘s rotten here by now. Instead they’re sending more prisoners!’
‘Well, what about the people who sent you? What are they doing?’
70
‘What the hell are they doing?’ Norris agreed bitterly. ‘When I was sent here it was arranged that someone would contact me four months later. Well, I waited for that someone and – nothing. Nothing ever since, either.’
‘Well. . . can’t you get in touch with them?’
‘On a deep-cover op?’ Norris snorted. ‘And here was me thinking maybe you knew something. But if you’re asking dumb questions like that, you really don’t know jack, do you?’
Rose shrugged. ‘So what do you think. . . The people who put you here have left you to it?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’ He looked at her again, imploringly.
‘You swear you don’t know anything? Only you’ve been acting kind of weird for a regular girl, and this alien stuff. . . ’
‘I came here with a friend,’ said Rose. ‘And I know he could help you, if we could only find out where he was. . . ’
Norris shook his head. ‘I can’t help you, girlie. I can’t even help myself.’
The cell door swung suddenly open. ‘You’re dead right there, Norris.’
Blanc stood in the doorway.
Norris scrambled to his feet. ‘OK, Tyler,’ he said quickly, forcing gruffness into his voice. ‘I’ve tried the nice guy approach and you still won’t play ball. Now Blanc’s gonna teach you a lesson.’
‘You have no idea,’ said Blanc.
She reached out her arm and hooked it round his neck. Norris was a big man, he should have been able to shake her off with ease. But hi
s eyes bulged, and a thick, throttling noise built in the back of his throat as Blanc tightened her armlock.
‘Get off him!’ Rose shouted, throwing herself forwards. But Blanc kicked her back against the bench.
With a noise like cracking eggshells, Norris’s head lolled forwards.
One last rattling breath bubbled up from his crushed throat as he slumped to the floor.
Rose stared at her, appalled. ‘You’ve killed him!’
71
Blanc shrugged. ‘Kinder that way. The people he’s hoping will contact him are dead or replaced by now. He was all alone, poor thing.’
Her eyes twinkled. ‘Now he’s gone to join them.’
‘You evil –’
‘Yes, why am I so evil and twisted?’ said Blanc in mock consternation. ‘Was I abused as a child? Was I bullied and beaten at school?’
She belched. ‘Or am I a mean old thing stuck in a ridiculous human body who’d do anything for a few laughs to pass the time?’
‘Oh no,’ said Rose, as the smell of bad breath wafted past her nostrils.
Blanc grinned. ‘Oh yeah.’
And she parted her scraped-back hair to reveal a tiny golden zip in the centre, running vertically across her head.
‘But you’re too thin!’ Rose protested. ‘How do you fit in there? I thought –’ Then she realised. She’d met the Slitheen back in her own time – and now she was hundreds of years in the future. Who was to say that Slitheen in this day and age weren’t more advanced?
Whatever, Blanc ignored her. ‘We’re too close to pulling this off to let a weird little miss who knows the Slitheen steam in out of nowhere to screw everything up. So, I’ve scared you and scared you till you stink like the pretty little piggy you are. . . and now I’m going to have me some happy hunting.’
Rose charged at Blanc. It was like running at a wall. Her shoulder jarred with the impact, but she managed to knock the woman aside long enough to squeeze through the doorway.
‘I want you to run, Tyler,’ called Blanc mockingly. ‘You’ll only make it sweeter!’
