by Alex Scarrow
It’s attempting to locate a connection to my brain.
The unpleasantly cool sensation inside his nose began to fade. The tentacle was adjusting its temperature to match that of his own body. To make the connection more comfortable for him, perhaps? A reassuring thought if that was the case.
Then …
Then …
4
‘What’s happening?’ called Chan as the Doctor’s body jerked suddenly. ‘Doctor, are you OK?’
Chan looked over her shoulder. The beetle-like creatures were beginning to gather threateningly close. More of them were emerging from the nearby market stalls, where the deflated rinds of melons and husks of corn cobs merged into dark soup, and from a florist’s where hanging baskets drooled tendrils of oil-black slime. The creatures shuffled slowly towards her.
‘Doctor! They’re getting close out here,’ she called.
No answer.
‘I mean reeeeally close!’
No answer. She shone her torch back into the truck. All she could see was the back of the Doctor’s head. He was standing perfectly still now, almost as if he were in some kind of trance.
‘This is not looking good! Doctor?’
She aimed her torch back out at the creatures just as one of them suddenly lashed out towards her with a spiked tentacle. The tentacle wrapped tightly round her leg. She felt its firm vice-like grip contracting, beginning to crush her ankle. Then there was a painful pricking as sharp barbs cut through her biohazard suit and pierced her skin.
‘Oh no! Doctor! It’s cut through my suit!’ she whimpered. ‘It’s broken my skin! I’m infected!’
The Doctor remained perfectly still. His mind was far, far away. His vision was filled with an image of another world. He glimpsed a purple sky, twin suns with a blue hue to them. Another image: a different world, with heavy tumbling clouds and many dozens of twisted pillars of a resin-like substance reaching hundreds of metres towards the troubled sky. It resembled a city of termite mounds. Then another world of green skies, methane gas and floating balloon-like creatures.
Trace memories of worlds this strain of the Spore must have visited before, worlds it had visited, absorbed and moved on from. Worlds visited how many countless millions of years ago?
Then … something resonated in his head. It was not something he could truly describe as a voice. And yet somehow it was. Deep inside his brain he heard a sexless, ageless voice. A whisper of consciousness penetrating his mind. A thought that was distinctly not his.
You seek communication?
I do.
You represent entity?
I do.
Represent of this world?
Yes.
Fleeting images filled the Doctor’s head: a slideshow of species from Earth. Species that the Spore had already touched and absorbed and decoded. Thousands of microbes that it must have first encountered in the dry dirt of the Nevada Desert. Hundreds of insects: an ant, a beetle, a many-hued dragonfly. Now more complex forms: a tan-coloured rodent, a rattlesnake, some small species of desert fox. Now larger: a cow, a dog and finally … a human. A record of the Spore’s journey up the food chain.
Then the procession of images ceased. The Doctor had his vision returned to him.
Not represent entity of this world. From another world.
Yes. I have travelled, as it seems you have.
You have resistant structural code.
The Spore was referring to his inherited immunity. A few lines in his genome that prevented this pathogen from being able to absorb him and render him an amorphous organic soup.
Yes. Your kind once visited my planet. You asked the question and we answered it satisfactorily. We were allowed to continue to exist. We developed a vaccine from the toxin you used to self-terminate.
A correct process. Demonstration of intelligence. Your kind judged acceptable.
The intelligent entities on this planet will not be able to answer your question correctly.
This makes entities’ mass from this world a viable resource.
But they are an intelligent species.
Intelligence defined by answering correctly.
And they will answer you correctly. But not yet.
Irrelevant.
It is not irrelevant. It is simply bad timing.
Explain.
Your journey here was an entirely random one. On what? A rock? A piece of ice? A million different variables conspired to land you on this planet at this time. If one thing had happened differently – if your rock had been a fraction bigger, or travelled a fraction slower, or been affected by the tiniest pull of gravity from some other mass nearby – you might have arrived here just a few decades later … at a time when these entities could answer you correctly.
Irrelevant.
They just need a few more years. That’s all. They will become a remarkable species capable of –
Question must be asked of entity mass from this world.
The Doctor frowned. The Spore was too simple an intelligence to philosophise with. It was no more sophisticated than the majority of desktop computers currently on Earth – little better than an operating system asking for a password. Asking it to make a judgement call was going to be pointless. It was a ‘brain’ designed long ago to deliver a question and listen for the answer. That was all. He was going to have to change his approach …
Evelyn Chan could feel her leg beginning to go numb, an invasive coolness rising inside her thigh, infection spreading from artery to artery. Spore cells swiftly overcame her hastily scrambled immune system, massacring white blood cells in their millions. She felt lightheaded. Dizzy. Her legs wobbled, then buckled beneath her. She collapsed to the ground, gasping as she fought for breath, the torch sliding out of her hand.
‘Doctor!’ she cried groggily. ‘Doctor … I’m dying.’
The Doctor barely heard Evelyn’s voice. It sounded as if it was coming from someone a thousand miles away. All the same, he understood what she’d said. She was infected. He had minutes to save her life, seconds even. Time to roll the dice.
You have made a mistake.
Explain mistake.
You have returned to your origin world. To those that once engineered you, millions of years ago. You are in danger of destroying your creator.
Original creator would have immunity.
But much time has passed. Natural mutations in the DNA of your creator have occurred and compromised that immunity. They have evolved. They are no longer recognisable as the original species – your creators. But they are their descendants. And you will destroy them.
He sensed confusion in the Spore – voices like collegiate whispers, the organic equivalent of a computer struggling to run lines of code it was not designed to process.
They are descendent species of creator?
It sounded like the Spore was asking him for confirmation.
Yes! They are a descendent species! They are the ‘children’ of your creators.
Question must still be answered. Descendants of creator must demonstrate intelligence of original creators. Descendants will know answer.
The Doctor ground his teeth. Perhaps a simple, straightforward lie would work instead. He turned and glanced back out of the truck. Evelyn Chan was lying at the bottom of the ramp; she was dying. It might already be too late to save her. A lie. A simple lie was all he had left. Perhaps this thing’s intelligence was so rudimentary that it would not question the false information he’d given a moment ago; that it would not understand a simple lie.
Earlier information was incorrect.
Explain incorrect information.
I am not from another world.
Explain.
I am a messenger entity of your creator’s descendants. I am an anti-pathogen. Your opposite, designed to communicate with you in the event of your return. I am a construct of theirs, just as you are. I have lived for millions of years, waiting for the possibility of your return. And I was designed to give you the answe
r.
You are construct – a remote partial?
He guessed that was the term the Spore used for one of the crab-like creatures scuttling around on the floor in front of him.
Yes. A remote partial.
You answer for descendants of creator?
Yes, that is my purpose. I will answer the question on their behalf.
The Doctor could sense the Spore trying to work with the limited resources of its genetically encoded artificial intelligence. He held his breath. So much depended on the decision it reached. Not just Evelyn’s life but the life of every living thing on Earth …
Acceptable. The question – explain ratio 1:812.
Chan could feel her mind drifting. She was losing consciousness, descending into a comatose stupor. Her sight was growing foggy, getting dim round the edges.
Is this how it feels to die? It was almost serene, almost pleasant. She was about to be cannibalised from the inside out … and it didn’t seem to matter.
And then something happened. She felt a sharp stabbing in her head, like the sudden onset of a piercing migraine. Her vision began to clear, to refocus. She retched as she felt her muscles cramping: the pain of her body’s immune system fighting back. She struggled to sit up, her head throbbing, her stomach churning.
The pulsating tendril wrapped round her ankle suddenly convulsed violently. Its skin ruptured and a small jet of creamy liquid spurted out across her feet.
Revolted, she tried to kick the dying tendril off her.
The smooth skin of the artery split in a dozen other places and liquid oozed and bubbled out on to the ramp and the tarmac. The nearest of the beetle-like creatures flopped to the ground and began to shudder as if in a seizure. The others followed in quick succession, one after the other, their long spine-covered legs twitching and curling.
She heard footsteps and turned to see the Doctor stepping down from the ramp, wiping a dark smear from beside his nose with the cuff of his jacket.
‘What … what’s happening?’ she slurred. ‘Did you manage to communicate with it?’
‘I did indeed,’ replied the Doctor. ‘And now it’s doing the polite thing and killing itself.’ He smiled. ‘Awfully decent thing, that pathogen. Very understanding.’
Ratio 1:812?
The Doctor smiled. Every child on Gallifrey knew the answer to a question as elementary as that. A classroom question – basic kindergarten eleven-dimension superstring theory.
Well, now, he’d answered the Spore, the answer is …
‘I don’t even understand the question,’ said Chan. ‘Let alone know how we would have come up with an answer.’
She winced as they hobbled up the road, the Doctor supporting her with an arm round her waist. The bones in her ankle were fractured.
‘Well, you’re not a quantum physicist, are you?’
The Doctor turned to look past her shoulder at the rising sun. He narrowed his eyes against the glare. It had emerged in the last few minutes from the flat desert: a ball of molten orange separating itself from the shimmering horizon. Long shadows of stunted Joshua trees made dark stripes across the dusty ground.
Half a kilometre down the road, the roadblock waited. They could make out the trucks and the soldiers lined up in their white biohazard suits.
‘However, a quantum physicist in about fifty years’ time will understand, Evelyn Chan. And that’s really all that matters.’
He raised the sample container in his hand. ‘By the way, you’ll want this analysed to produce a vaccine, just in case there’s another rock in near-Earth orbit carrying another pathogen. The Spore does seem to come in clusters, from our experience.’
She looked again at the sample. Half an hour ago it had been a bubbling puddle of black goo, now it looked like dried fruit or the mummified ear of some shrivelled and long-forgotten pharaoh.
The Spore was dead.
‘Why don’t you just tell me the answer? I know, being a mere dumb human I probably won’t understand what it means, but at least if another one of these things does arrive in the near future, we’ll have the right answer to give.’
The Doctor pressed his lips together. ‘But, Evelyn, this is scientific knowledge that you should earn rather than receive ahead of the natural time. It would be like me handing over an antimatter energy cell to Isaac Newton and telling him to have a play around with it. Maybe take it apart and see how it all ticks.’ He chuckled at the thought of that. ‘Rather a messy bang there, I’d imagine.’
He turned to look at her. ‘All I will tell you is, in the place where I come from …’ He paused and a wistful smile played across his lips for a moment. ‘I should say, where I came from, the answer was used by some of my people to claim final proof of the existence of the old gods.’
‘Really?’
‘And,’ he continued with a grin, ‘just as many said the answer finally disproved the notion of gods.’ He laughed. ‘Funny old universe. You never do get a clear and final answer on that particular question, do you?’
They were closer to the roadblock now. The Doctor could make out more detail. Major Platt was warily watching their slow, hobbling approach. Every last soldier was scrambled and manning the barricade, guns held, muzzles aimed at the ground. But ready. In case. More trucks had arrived during the night and several helicopters were buzzing in the dawn sky, search beams carving bright lines down on to the desert.
Evelyn Chan had unzipped and removed her hood as soon as the Doctor had assured her the pathogen was quite dead and harmless. Now she wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘So, did you come here in some big spaceship?’ she asked.
He frowned, pouting at the same time. ‘I suppose it’s a little bit like a spaceship. Although it doesn’t look particularly grand from the outside.’
She looked up at the gradually lightening sky. ‘And you really have been way out there? Beyond our solar system?’
He nodded. ‘Many places. Many times.’
‘You must have seen some incredible things.’
He nodded. ‘Quite a few. In the end, though, it’s mostly a handful of elements combined in an infinite variety of interesting ways.’ He scratched his chin thoughtfully.
Chan’s eyes were still up on the heavens. Dawn was slowly painting out the stars one by one as the sky paled from a deep midnight purple to an intense morning blue. ‘I’d love to see what’s out there.’
He turned to look at her. ‘Well, your kind will one day, Evelyn.’ He nodded pensively. ‘Not long after you learn the answer to that question, actually. It will unlock your understanding of higher spatial dimensions. It will allow humanity to cross the vast distances between star systems. It will –’ He stopped himself. ‘Ah, but there you go. I’m giving too much away, aren’t I?’
They approached the roadblock. The Doctor casually saluted to the waiting major, then tossed the specimen jar to him over the stretched coil of barbed wire.
‘Right. Here you are, Major. One Captain Evelyn Chan, battered and bruised, but not infectious. She’s quite safe. But she does need someone to take a look at her ankle.’
The Doctor eased his hold on Chan as she took the cautiously extended hand of a soldier. Then he turned and began to walk away from the barricade, back into the desert.
‘And where are you going?’ called Major Platt. ‘We need to debrief you! We need to know exactly what happened back there.’
The Doctor offered Chan a small wave. ‘I’ll let you bring him up to speed.’
‘Where are you going, Doctor?’ she called.
The Doctor rolled his gaze upwards at the rapidly disappearing stars in the brightening sky. A gesture for her eyes only.
She nodded. Understood. ‘And … and will you be back? Will we see you again?’
He grinned. ‘I imagine I might look in on you sometime in the future, Captain Evelyn Chan.’
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, eleven ebook short stories will be available to download and collect throughout 2013.
ELEVEN MONTHS.
ELEVEN AUTHORS.
ELEVEN STORIES.
FIFTY SPECTACULAR YEARS.
PUFFIN BOOKS
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First published by Puffin Books 2013
Text copyright © Alex Scarrow and BBC Worldwide Limited, 2013
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ISBN: 978–1–405–91216–7
It all started with a Scarecrow.
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