by Doctor Who
‘Waiting for you lot to push off out of it,’ Dram growled.
‘You should try coping with that level of ammonia when your lungs are the size of a pig’s nipple,’ added Ecktosca. ‘Filthy stuff.’ Still coughing, he clamped a claw around the poppito tree’s golden trunk.
It glowed and vanished – to reveal a large black disc in the bottom of the plant tray.
‘Can’t be primed by an alien, but will respond to their own kind,’
grinned the Doctor.
154
‘After what we’ve been through, we’re not about to get locked up by Ermenshrew, poisoned by gas or blown to bits by the back-blast of your hyper-destronic pulse!’ Ecktosca scrambled on to the disc.
‘My what?’ The Doctor frowned. ‘Oh, yeah, that!’
‘Come on, Dram,’ said Ecktosca. ‘Anywhere’s got to be better than here.’
Dram joined him. Their images blurred and faded.
The Doctor took Flowers by the hand. ‘We must follow.’
She coughed, her throat still burning with ammonia. ‘But we don’t know where the tunnel leads!’
‘We won’t be there long – we’ll be going straight on to Justice Delta.
Unless it leads to Justice Delta, of course.’
‘But you heard her, it’s not safe for us.’
‘You think it is here?’ He placed his hands on her shoulders, and his eyes looked into hers. ‘You saw the gravometer. The planets are now in their most efficient and balanced positions. Should be a smooth enough ride.’
‘Should be?’ Flowers pulled at the collar of her tunic.
From somewhere up the access tunnel, a deep cry of rage was building.
‘D’you think she’s found out I was bluffing?’ The Doctor jumped on to the platform and hauled Flowers after him.
She huddled beside him on the disc. Slowly, a feeling of pins and needles stretched out through her body. Her ears popped. She found she couldn’t breathe. It was as if some prickling, invisible fist was squeezing her like dough.
Then the world seemed to fade away and Flowers fell screaming into a searing, crackling void.
155
Rose had found one bank of screens marked Justice Delta, showing scenes that had to be local. There were a number of offices, clearly built for humans, now Blathereen squats. One screen showed a room piled high with broken swivel chairs, not built to accommodate alien backsides. Another showed a dark and sinister place with a big blobby shape shifting about at its centre, masked by a blurry yellow light and loads of smoke.
But just as she and Dennel were about to leave the lurching platform in despair, they saw one of the screens was showing the dumping ground for bodies they’d stumbled upon earlier.
‘We should stay put,’ Dennel sighed. ‘At least if the Blathereen come the same way we did, we’ll see them and know we’ve only got ten minutes left to live.’
Rose gave him a gentle shove. ‘It’s not over till it’s over.’ Then she frowned. ‘Hang on – why would the Blathereen want to set a camera there?’
‘Maybe they like gloating over dead humans.’
Just then a grey swirling shape marshmallowed out from nowhere.
Rose blinked as the shape resolved itself into –157
‘Robsen! It’s Warder Robsen!’ Dennel stared in bafflement. ‘How did he – where did he –’
‘We know the where, don’t we? From the borstal!’ Rose watched the screen as Robsen took a slow, shaky look around. ‘As for how –well, it’s not magic, is it?’
Dennel pushed back his fringe. ‘It isn’t?’
‘It must be, I dunno, some sort of transport. They must film it to keep an eye on who goes through!’ She clutched his arm, a wild grin on her face. ‘Maybe we can use it to get out of here!’
Dennel clutched her back grimly. ‘And maybe, if we’ve just watched him come through – so have the Blathereen!’
‘They might have seen us passing that way too!’ Rose scrambled outside into the humid mint of daylight. ‘We’ve got to get to Robsen and clear the area, fast!’
Flowers opened her eyes and gasped. A Blathereen face was glaring down at her, filling her vision. She opened her mouth to scream, but a heavy, slimy claw slapped down over her face.
‘It’s Ecktosca,’ hissed a familiar voice. ‘You’ve already jeopardised our lives by coming after us, at least have the good grace not to shriek like a child and bring every guard in the place down here.’
Flowers nodded, and he removed his claw. She saw that she was lying in a gloomy, windowless room. By the familiar black and yellow decor it had to be an Executive conference room. She felt dreadful, but at least she’d survived the journey. Which meant that the planets were more or less in perfect position for whatever the Blathereen were planning.
She had a hunch that her own position right now might be less agreeable.
‘Where’s the Doctor?’ she whispered.
Ecktosca gestured behind her. She rolled over groggily to see him crouched over a black disc identical to the one they had stepped on in the aquaculture compound, wielding the sonic screwdriver, pausing every few moments to give it a good shake before continuing.
158
‘It’s not wise, using these things when they’re almost out of batteries,’ the Doctor said with a sigh. ‘The beam’s not fully focused. It’s probably exciting all sorts of stray molecules.’
‘I’m glad something’s excited,’ grumbled Dram.
‘What are you doing?’ said Flowers.
He turned to her with a big smile. ‘Oh, there you are. It’s Justice Delta! Are we jammy or what?’
‘I feel like my insides are jam.’
‘Not that bad, was it?’
‘It was the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to me.’
‘So far.’ The Doctor returned to his work. ‘Hang on. I’m just trying to stop Ermenshrew coming straight after us.’
‘How?’
Ecktosca filled the ensuing silence: ‘By feeding in an offset gravity pulse to the warp relay.’
‘Yeah, what he said,’ the Doctor murmured, waving an arm vaguely.
‘They won’t come through here, they’ll get shunted that way a bit. . . ’
Flowers left him to it and turned to Dram and Ecktosca. ‘Why are you two still here?’
‘Because there are guards outside the door,’ hissed Ecktosca. ‘We’ve heard them moving about.’
‘But we don’t know how many there are,’ Dram added. ‘We need to be really stealthy, strike them down – maybe take the skins of a couple of them.’
Ecktosca nodded. ‘Then perhaps we can bluff our way –’
‘Done it!’ yelled the Doctor happily. ‘That ought to –’
‘Shhhhhhhhh!’
He was nearly drenched in saliva as everyone
hushed him at once.
Then the door swung open and a Blathereen with a gun in its claw barged into the room. Closely followed by another. And another. On instinct, Flowers stared round for somewhere to run or to hide, but they were already coming for her. She squirmed as a claw tightened like slippery steel around her wrist, forcing her to her knees. Dram clenched his claws as if ready to try to fight his way out, but Ecktosca shook his head and raised his arms in surrender.
159
The Doctor pulled a rueful face. ‘Well, at least that’s one question answered. There are lots of guards outside the door.’ He made no protest as a Blathereen grabbed his shoulders in its colossal claws and lifted him a good metre off the ground.
‘Hello,’ said the Doctor brightly. ‘Take me to your leader!’
Riz and Kazta sat together at dinner, a pathetic attempt at strength in numbers. Talk was still going round the tables about the stunt Rose Tyler had pulled two nights previously, and Riz found one or two admiring glances thrown her way by association. Kaz was oblivious to all this. Her eyes were fixed on the Governor as he came in with Blanc.
Riz knew why. There was something in t
he way he walked, a little spring in his step, which seemed out of keeping. His face, too, looked a little fleshier. And he and Blanc were as thick as thieves.
Kazta had noticed too. Riz could see her knuckles had whitened around her plastic spoon.
Maggi joined them at her table, white-faced.
‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Kaz. ‘I heard some of the girls saying you bunked your shift.’
‘I was in Blanc’s room,’ said Maggi simply. ‘She thought you’d been talking to me and she hauled me up on it.’ Riz and Kaz swapped no way! glances.
‘She took you to her room?’ Riz almost yelled, and Kaz kicked her under the table to keep the noise down.
Blanc looked over, but her face was impassive.
‘She thinks she’s scared me into shutting up,’ said Maggi. ‘It was horrible. I wouldn’t have got out alive, except Robsen. . . ’
‘Robsen?’ Kaz pulled a face.
‘Oh, my God!’ Riz felt a little twinge of jealousy. ‘He rescued you?’
‘It – it wasn’t really like that,’ Maggi said shakily. There was a haunted, glassy look about her eyes, as if she was in some kind of shock. ‘Look, I found stuff out. Stuff you won’t believe.’
Riz glanced around, to check no warder was about to come and hassle them. ‘Try us.’
160
‘Don’t have to. I’m gonna prove it. To everyone.’ Abruptly she gave that slightly hopeless smile of hers. ‘And when I do, Kaz, you gotta take charge. You gotta make sure stuff happens.’
Kaz gave her a weary look. ‘What you talking about now?’
But her eyes widened, just as Riz’s did, when Maggi sneakily showed them a gleaming white key card.
Riz felt like her jaw had dropped down to the table. ‘Is it Robsen’s?’
Maggi nodded. ‘I don’t think he’ll be needing it where he’s gone.’
Robsen came to on a bed of fragrant grass. The smell mingled with rotting flesh and turned his stomach. The sky was a bilious green, which matched the way he felt perfectly.
Then he saw Block-walker Dennel and the girl, Rose Tyler. His brain ground through the pieces of this poser, but found no answer.
‘You’re on Justice Delta,’ said Rose. ‘How d’you get here?’
‘Maggi Jalovitch pushed me. . . ’
Rose gave him a hand up. ‘She’s a big girl, but that’s still one hell of a shove.’
‘Norris. . . ’ Robsen couldn’t stop staring at the big man’s body, his dark and lifeless eyes. ‘Then Blanc did kill him?’
Dennel nodded. ‘And hid him out here with the rest of her victims.’
Robsen joined in with the nodding, speechless.
‘At last he sees the light. Oh, and you know those monsters I tried telling you about? I think there’s a load more of them on the way.’
Rose peered around behind him. ‘Now, you seemed to pop right out of thin air, somewhere over there. . . ’
He rubbed his tender head. ‘It’s all mixed up. Maggi – Jalovitch, I mean – was in Blanc’s room, and there was this sort of disc thing. . . ’
‘Like this disc thing?’ called Dennel.
Rose helped Robsen up and saw Dennel was gesturing at a dark, round platform, like a swish set of bathroom scales, half hidden by the undergrowth.
‘So if we stand on that, we end up in Blanc’s room?’ Dennel looked hopeful. ‘Home!’
‘Prison,’ Rose reminded him. ‘Back to square one.’
161
Dennel shook his head. ‘Freedom’s well overrated. I wanna go back.
I don’t know nothing else.’
‘You’ll know Blanc’s claws round your throat if you go back,’ Rose told him. ‘It’s no safer for us there –’
‘Of course it is!’
‘All right, enough!’ Self-consciously, Robsen pulled himself free.
‘Dennel’s right. We’ve got to go back.’
Rose folded her arms. ‘Oh yeah? Well, let’s see you work it.’
Robsen stiffened. ‘Well, before, I just sort of. . . ’ He staggered on to the disc.
Absolutely nothing happened.
He and Dennel peered around the area for any workings, but there was no sign.
‘Blanc could send humans through –’ Rose waved around the corpse-strewn area – ‘but she wouldn’t exactly want them coming back, would she? Not that they were in any state to.’
‘I know I’m supposed to be your warder, but. . . ’ Robsen held his face in his hands. ‘What do we do? I mean, are there really monsters here?’
Rose glanced about nervously. ‘If we wait round here much longer, you’ll find out when they come to kill us.’
Even as she spoke, a distant, tremendous crashing sound carried through the fresh mint forest.
‘Waiting’s over,’ said Dennel.
Flowers, Ecktosca and Dram were marched down the corridor behind the Doctor. They must have covered fifty metres before the Blathereen called them to a stop by a set of double doors.
‘No wonder that portal’s so heavily guarded,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’re on the big man’s doorstep!’
‘Don Arco,’ muttered Dram.
Flowers frowned. ‘That’s who Ermenshrew was talking to in her office!’
‘The Blathereen Patriarch. May plaque brown his belly.’ Ecktosca earned himself a cuff round the back of the head. ‘So this is where 162
he’s set up shop.’
‘It’s the Executive’s prime lecture theatre,’ said Flowers.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Not any more.’
Justicia’s new management had made one or two changes.
Inside it was oppressively dark. The stale, rank air was so thick you could chew it. The ornately designed windows had been smeared with a brown, gooey slime as if to keep out the light. The seats had all been ripped out and an uneven, glassy material secreted over the floor in their place. Flowers felt as if she was standing on the carapace of some enormous, sleeping creature.
And there was another creature that sat in the middle of this night-mare landscape. She could see it from here, shrouded in spice-rich smoke from the hundreds of burning candles that encircled it.
The guards held back, apparently reluctant to continue into the ruined theatre, and the Doctor turned to Ecktosca.
‘Why all the
vapours?’
But it was Dram who answered, with ghoulish enthusiasm. ‘Don Arco’s escaped execution twice. The second time he had to hide out in a toxic dump for a year. Wrecked his lungs.’
‘The fumes from the salve-candles are meant to ease his breathing,’
said Ecktosca. ‘Though if you ask me, he’s just posing. There’s nothing wrong with him at all.’
‘Approach,’ boomed a gravelly voice through the swirls of smog.
Flowers recognised it from her eavesdropping on Ermenshrew. She and the others were pushed on into the gloom, their feet sticking on the syrupy surface. Flowers choked on the smoke. Then, out of the flickering, shifting shadows, the shape of an enormous, obese Blathereen resolved itself, wheezing for breath. Its stomach spilled over its lap, almost reaching its waxen knees. Its neck was a swollen sac, and rippled as it swept its head from side to side, until it came to fix its bulbous, watery eyes on the Doctor.
‘Don Arco, right?’ The Doctor nodded in greeting. ‘The big cheese.
The head honcho. The Patriarch.’
The leathery lips cracked open in a smile. ‘Welcome to my worlds.’
∗ ∗ ∗
163
Riz was staring at the bowl of gloop in front of her, too nervous to eat, despite Kaz urging her to keep up her strength for the struggles ahead.
They had a warder key – a passcard that could get her and Kaz and Maggi anywhere in the prison. A last kindness from Robsen. She hoped he was OK, wherever he’d ended up.
Now they could grab a shuttle, force someone to take them away from here. Forget this place. Escape. Start again somewhere, be free. . .
Suddenly Maggi started moaning and groaning and clutching her stomach. ‘I’m gonna be sick! I am!’
Riz stared at Kaz. What was Maggi doing? Already a pair of warders was heading her way, while Blanc and the Governor looked over and frowned from the top table.
‘Give me the key card,’ Kaz hissed. ‘Maggi, if they search you. . . ’
But it was too late. Maggi meekly allowed the warders to take her away, out through the canteen doors.
‘She bottled it,’ whispered Kaz hoarsely.
Staring down at her steaming plate, Riz didn’t see what happened next. But somehow Maggi had got free and sneaked back inside. Because a few seconds later, she was standing right behind Blanc and the Governor, shouting at the top of her lungs.
‘You don’t believe in monsters?’ She slapped one hand down on Blanc’s head and another one down on the Governor’s. Shocked, they tried to turn to face her, but as they did she yanked something in their hair. ‘Look who we got in charge here!’
The canteen fell silent as a blue crackle of energy erupted in front of Maggi. Blanc was up on her feet now. Through the unearthly glow, something was pushing out of her head like thick waxy pus from a zit. The Governor, too, was thrashing about as something alien, something far bigger than he was, fought for release.
‘’S what I saw,’ whimpered Kazta. ‘What Blanc showed me.’
164
Riz watched in horror as the monsters crawled out of their human hiding places. People started to scream, to be sick, to burst out in tears.
Blanc lunged at Maggi with massive, muscular arms, but she was too slow. Instead, her claws connected with a panicking warder. He collapsed over the table, his head twisted at an unnatural angle.
Maggi pushed aside the Governor and scrambled over the warder’s body, standing on the table. ‘You all got a choice!’ she bellowed over the racket in the hall. ‘Stay here and let the monsters kill you – or kill them first!’
‘So, you’re the esteemed Doctor.’ Don Arco heaved a noisy breath, nodded approvingly. ‘The man who showed us the light. We were so close to the breakthrough we needed, we just couldn’t see it.’
