by Doctor Who
‘Neither could I,’ said Petr simply. ‘I had a sense something was. . .
wrong. I came up to the forest and could hear things moving about.
Creatures I did not recognise.’
Saul raised a quizzical eyebrow, but it was left to Martha to articu-late his surprise. ‘That doesn’t sound much like you,’ she said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful, but. . . ’
‘You think I am not by nature a man of action and instinct?’ Petr glanced at his younger brother. ‘You are right, but I had a good teacher.’ A slow, sad smile passed over his features. ‘You know, sometimes I can hear Saul’s voice in my head, telling me about the plants, the animals, the web of life. . . Encouraging me to trust my instincts.’
Saul was preoccupied with the swords at his belt, studiously rearranging them so that he did not have to look his brother in the eye. ‘If Jude has disappeared, like the others. . . ’ Saul sighed, a bleak note of defeat in his voice. He sounded crushed and resigned, as if the dragon had already stamped down on his body and ended his life.
‘Look, if anyone can, get to the bottom of the disappearances, it’s the Doctor,’ said Martha, desperate to offer Saul some hope. ‘Whatever it is that generates and sustains this world – he’ll find it, and make sure the children are brought back.’
Petr turned to look at Martha, his face grim. ‘Tonight, more and more people are seeing their children in the fog. The village is thick with innuendo and fear. If the legends are true, their return will only bring destruction to us all.’
Saul’s face suddenly brightened; it was as if he’d been turning Martha’s words over in his mind and now, finally, they had hit home.
‘You said the Doctor is now in the place that sustains us all? Is that not 101
the seat of the Creator, the place of the Eternal Dead?’ His face broke into a grin, and it was a wonderful thing to see. ‘Perhaps. . . perhaps Jude is with the Doctor.’
Petr laid a sympathetic hand on Saul’s arm. ‘Wherever Jude is. . .
we must accept that we can’t do anything for her now. I’m sorry.’
Martha was intrigued by Saul’s sudden mention of some sort of religious belief; she was sure she had seen no churches in the village, and yet both men clearly shared a vocabulary that – however rarely used – required no further explanation.
She was about to question them on this when the dark silence of the forest was cut asunder by another piercing roar. At least one vast creature was moving towards them; Martha could hear the distant sound of trees toppling and being forced aside.
‘What are those creatures?’ asked Petr. He started to walk through the trees, towards the paths and tracks that led back to the village. To Martha’s great relief, Saul was soon walking at his side.
‘They mark the edge of our world,’ said Saul simply. ‘And our world is getting smaller all the time. . . ’
‘Where did you spring from?’ exclaimed the Doctor, delighted. He’d given Jude a huge hug, and was now looking her up and down, amazed by her very presence on the research station.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jude honestly. ‘I was in the forest, then I was here! I woke up in a dark room. I think I fell.’
‘You’re so lucky!’ exclaimed the Doctor. ‘The barriers between our two worlds were breaking down. You could so easily have ended up in space, or just been snuffed out like a candle – but here you are!
Large as life and twice as wonderful!’ He looked around slowly, as if the full implication of his own words was only just dawning on him.
‘Here you are. . . in the real world,’ he whispered quietly. ‘How is that even possible?’
‘I didn’t mean to go into the forest,’ continued Jude, glancing around guiltily. ‘I’ve only ever gone there with Dad before – he’s always telling me it’s not safe. But I wanted to see what you all were talking about. I wanted to say goodbye to you properly.’
102
‘And instead you stumbled into that monster!’
‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ said Jude, wide-eyed.
‘Like so much of your world,’ said the Doctor, ‘it’s as if countless legends and fables have been simmered down, condensed, pureed together in a blender. . . ’
‘Is my father going to be all right?’
‘Martha went after him,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m sure they’ll be fine.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Jude. ‘All I’ve seen so far are little rooms and long corridors. I’ve been wandering about for ages, but I can’t work out what sort of building we’re in.’
‘We’re in. . . a ship, I suppose you could say. The Castor, it’s called
– part prison, part science lab. We’re drifting in deep space, millions of miles from the nearest planet. Your world, your home. . . well, it’s sort of generated by this ship, and contained within it.’ He sighed.
‘That was gobbledegook, wasn’t it?’
Jude nodded. ‘You wouldn’t make a very good teacher,’ she said, giggling.
‘Ah, well,’ said the Doctor, feigning hurt. ‘I’m more of a. . . hands-on kind of teacher, you know. I’d much rather show you something and let you make up your own mind.’ He paused, thinking, then dashed off down the corridor, Jude close behind. He found a window, sealed shut, and operated a control at its base. The shutter slid open, revealing the haunting beauty of the profound darkness of space beyond.
Jude’s eyes widened. She stared in silent and wondrous awe, allowing the Doctor to walk quietly back to the computer screen. He busied himself at the keyboard for a while, trying to reassure baffled software and overwrite recalcitrant protocols. Then he became aware of Jude’s presence at his side.
After just a moment or two of confusion, Jude seemed to have understood where she was and what the Doctor was trying to show her.
The girl was unflappable. ‘And what’s that?’ she said calmly, pointing at the computer console.
‘It shows me every living thing on this ship,’ said the Doctor. He pointed to the intermittent, contradictory reading. ‘This signal’s puzzling. The systems can’t get a lock on it, as if it doesn’t really exist in 103
this universe.’
‘When I was wandering around,’ said Jude, ‘I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye. I’d hear movement, but there was no one there.’
The Doctor looked up and down the long, bare corridor. Was it his imagination, or was it starting to become dark? Shadows seemed to be pooling at either end, and the doors recessed into the walls were much less clear now.
He turned back to the screen. He followed the signal along a corridor, tracing its path with his finger.
‘Whatever it is,’ said the Doctor, a note of anxiety creeping into his voice, ‘I think it’s coming this way.’
Martha, Petr and Saul returned to the village as quickly and as calmly as they could. Saul, not surprisingly, kept glancing over his shoulder, as if he thought he might catch some glimpse of his departed daughter.
Martha didn’t blame him; she wished there was more they could have done, but she had to admit she was glad to be leaving the dark trees and the sounds of gathering beasts far behind, All three skidded to a halt when they finally emerged from the trees, amazed and disturbed by what they saw. Martha had encountered nothing like it before; down below them the village was entirely shrouded in fog. It had rolled in towards the clustered buildings from the lake and surrounding fields, and coagulated and coalesced in every space. Great blocks of mist pressed tightly against every window, every door; from a distance it appeared to be a solid, seemingly im-penetrable bank of cloud, about three storeys high and almost exactly the same size and shape as the village. Above the village, and around it, the air seemed relatively clear and open.
Martha suppressed a shiver; Saul and Petr exchanged a glance, then began to jog down the path and towards the blanketed buildings.
They made their way to Saul’s house. The fog was so thick Martha could only just make out her own
hands in front of her face when she raised them. Thankfully Saul’s instincts were unaffected, and Martha grabbed a fistful of his clothing from time to time for fear of losing 104
him completely in the mist. But Saul’s house was both empty and in darkness – and, now they looked more attentively through the fog, they could not see a single light burning against the grey fog.
‘They’ve all gone!’ exclaimed Petr, but Saul wasn’t so quick to come to a judgement. He knocked loudly on his neighbours’ homes – no response – and then set off down the mist-shrouded streets. Sighing, Martha and Petr ran after him.
They passed numerous silent houses, each a solid block of darkness that loomed suddenly out of the grey mist like a geometric creature of nightmare; the fog was so thick it soaked up every footfall, every sound of exertion, and even Saul’s bold cries.
Suddenly, Petr stumbled over something – Martha wasn’t surprised, even their feet and the ground on which they ran were barely visible.
She bent down to help the village leader to his feet. Ignorant of their plight, Saul continued on and had soon disappeared into the grey, writhing void.
Something brushed against Martha’s back. She turned instinctively.
A child stood some metres away, the fog surrounding him like a protective cocoon. Martha was about to cry out to the others when she suddenly noticed that the child’s eyes were blank and lifeless, the colour of tears and slate and rain. The child’s skin was pallid, but the entire figure was so pale you could hardly tell where skin ended and clothing began. If it were possible to sculpt a human form from fog, this would be the result.
The child extended an arm and reached out for Martha, its mouth opening soundlessly.
‘Thorn!’ exclaimed Petr. He stumbled forward, almost falling to his knees again, but, like Martha, his initial reaction of delight soon turned to ice-cold fear when he stared into the boy’s empty eyes.
‘Come on!’ said Martha, pulling Petr to her side and then pro-pelling both of them deeper into the fog. Pure, primal terror took over. Martha wouldn’t look back on her flight from the child with any degree of pride, but there was something so fundamentally lifeless about the figure that dread was the only natural response.
For the first time, Martha could hear her footsteps – or was it her 105
heart beating? – as they put as much distance as they could between themselves and the phantasm. Petr was holding on to Martha tightly, as if he were a drowning man in a foaming sea of grey and Martha was the only thing that would keep him from going under.
Martha glanced back over her shoulder. The figure was fading away
– first a smudged child’s drawing, then an optical illusion caused by the writhing, overlapping banks of fog.
‘This way!’
Saul’s voice was strong enough to cut through even their terror; Martha and Petr half-ran, half-stumbled in the direction of the sound, an aural beacon in the silent nothingness of the fog. Moments later they saw the first glimmer of light, then the huge, resolute form of Saul. It seemed at first that Saul was holding back the fog by the sheer power of his presence; then Martha saw where they were.
The village hall was surrounded by light – every lantern, every blazing torch from the village had been brought here and placed around the building. Every door, every window, every spare patch of ground front and back had a light hanging there; it was just enough to keep the fog at bay.
Behind Saul, in the huge arched doorway, stood the stooped figure of the Dazai, a lopsided grin on her lined face; behind her clustered a gaggle of villagers, looking out at the fog in terror.
‘I thought,’ said the old woman, taking a step towards Petr, ‘that, in your absence, someone ought to take charge. . . ’
The Doctor turned to Jude. ‘Now, I don’t want to worry you or anything,’ he said, ‘but there’s no point hiding. I’ve been watching for this thing for some time and. . . Well, it seems quite capable of walking through doors and walls if the mood takes it.’
‘And that’s not worrying?’ said Jude.
‘The Doctor ruffled her hair like an overenthusiastic uncle, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll think of something.’
‘We’ll think of something,’ said Jude, emphatically. ‘Anyway, how do you know this thing is evil?’
106
The Doctor sighed. ‘When you’ve wandered the universe as long as I have,’ he said, ‘you can count the creatures that skulk about in the dark that are actually pleased to see you on the fingers of one hand.
A Ralafean’s hand, come to that.’
Jude looked at him blankly.
‘The people of Ralafea.’ explained the Doctor patiently. ‘Notorious throughout the cosmos for having four thumbs and one finger per hand. Invented the mobile phone before the printing press. Anyway. . . ’ he took one last look at the screen – the creature or person or whatever was only a few metres away now, but apparently one floor beneath them. ‘Thankfully, I want to go in the opposite direction. The main science hub.’ He walked away, and Jude was forced to jog to keep at his side. ‘I can’t avoid the creature, so I might as well just go about my business. . . ’
‘What do you expect to find in this “hub”?’ asked Jude.
‘Lots and lots of answers,’ said the Doctor. ‘Big, juicy ones you can really get your teeth into.’ He nodded back at the computer station.
‘Just a dumb terminal, you see. Would only tell me so much.’
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed – there seemed to be a dark shadow, overlaid on the computer terminal.
The Doctor blinked, and the
shadow vanished – just a plain, boring computer keyboard and screen set into the wall.
‘Phew,’ said the Doctor, increasing his walking pace just a little.
‘Thought we were in trouble for a moment then.’
And, without really seeing it, he walked straight into the creature in front of him and was swallowed by darkness.
107
Children are supposed to bring people together, not drive them further apart. At least, that was what Ben Abbas had always been taught. Now, locked in a marriage he did not understand, and sad-dled with a baby who seemed to demand constant attention and gave nothing back in return, Abbas wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Abbas wondered – just for a moment – if he could gain any insight from looking at his father’s life, but he quickly discounted the notion.
His own father had been a bully and a cheat; it was a happy family only on the surface, with each of them playing set roles with the skill of trained actors. Any dissent, any honesty even, had been beaten out of them with simple precision.
Abbas was going to have to sort this out for himself. He was on his own. He smiled. Just like the old days. . .
He called out for Gabby Jayne – habit, as much as anything else.
He knew she was on a shoot until evening, and their son was safely tucked up at the nursery until four. So, time to get the evening meal on – and time to think.
Abbas wandered into the kitchen with a bag of vegetables, arranging them across the work surface once the automatic lights had flickered on. He turned to operate the control pad in the arched doorway, switching on the under-floor heating and making sure the screen in 109
the wall was on the news channel.
He paused for a moment, letting the white noise of babbling voices wash over him, trying to force himself to relax, to get a grip on his emotions. OK, so she’d been spotted on the arm of that good-looking young actor with the famously unruly hair. It didn’t amount to anything, did it? Perhaps Gabby Jayne was just doing what she was told, putting her face about a bit for the paparazzi – by all accounts, the boy was a rising star, and the soap in which he appeared had been the number one show for months. Not that Abbas had ever seen it, of course – he had better things to do with his time than watch fictional people betray and humiliate each other. He got enough of that in real life.
Still, perhaps it was time
for a peace offering – one of his special lasagnes normally did the trick. ‘Diplomats from the Pacific Rim Co-operative have told reporters that they hope that the leaders of the sub-Saharan autonomies will listen to their plans for a cessation of violence. World Minister Cho stated that the nations “need a period of peace, for the good of all our peoples”.’
Abbas snorted, thinking still of Gabby Jayne. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s what we need. Peace.’
As he began slicing an onion – the control panel chirruped, offering to prepare the vegetables for him, but Abbas preferred to do it the old way – the reporter handed back to the studio.
‘Thanks, Benoit,’ said the male anchor, turning to the camera with a well-practised smile. ‘And now, other news. . . Scientists working at the New Rome Institute have announced that they are continuing with their controversial Chimera Project, despite opposition from human rights activists and prison reform groups. The project, which aims to rehabilitate dangerous offenders through extreme psycholog-ical processes, has been criticised for legitimising torture, and for its unusual methodology.’
Abbas reached for another onion. Though his eyes were streaming, he could just make out some sort of space station on the screen set into the wall; it spun on its axis against a milky background of bright stars and interstellar gas.
110
Despite everything, despite all these attempts to get Gabby Jayne out of his mind, Abbas’ mind was bursting with images of her: when they first met, their honeymoon of unseasonal rain and midnight encounters in deserted restaurants, her first big break and all the joy that had brought them. . . His fingers almost slipped off the knife he was using.
Blasted onions!
The newsreader continued reading the autocue as smoothly as if the words were only now occurring to him. ‘Concern has also been expressed as the research station Castor, and the Chimera Project it houses, is effectively beyond Earth jurisdiction. The station currently hangs in the demilitarised zone, though recently it had to call on Earth security forces to quell an uprising. All attempts at independent investigation have been rebuffed, and rumours of unacceptably high numbers of patient casualties persist.’
