Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice

by Stephen Baxter

  Zoe fumbled to release her harness. The scans had shown furious activity for the first few hours after the last human had left the moon; the Blue Soldiers seemed to have scoured the ice corridors for their enemy. But then, once the moon was established as abandoned, the Soldiers, and the Dolls, had simply shut down, as far as anyone could tell from a distance.

  Zoe murmured, ‘I’m going to expect a warm welcome with every step we take, Doctor.’

  ‘Perhaps. But they don’t seem to have reacted to the landing of this ship yet, Zoe. We must remember we’re not dealing with a human military force here. This isn’t a UNIT base we’re sneaking into. The Blue Soldiers are a desperate gesture of self-defence by an ancient and ailing mind. I think I would have been surprised if there had been anything resembling a conventional organisation – you know, sentries and patrols… Let’s just be thankful for any advantage.’

  This logic was convincing. But she knew the clutching fear would not leave her until she was safely back on the phibian ship again, and away from this place.

  As they assembled at the phibian’s airlock, Harry momentarily blocked the way with an upraised arm. ‘You’re sure you want to go through with this?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ the Doctor said peremptorily. ‘And the sooner we get on with it—’

  ‘Phee? You sure too?’

  Phee, the amulet at her neck visible through her skinsuit, scowled. ‘My mum is making you say this, isn’t she?’

  ‘Well, yes. She twisted my arm. Look, Phee, she’s concerned for your safety. And if you want to back out of this now we can just take off in this bucket and go straight back to the Wheel, and there’s no shame, no questions asked, no pride lost—’

  ‘I have to do this.’ The Doctor and Jamie had patiently talked her through it all. How the amulet had been thrown back in time, and still bore the traces of that event in particles their equipment could detect. It was an extraordinary story, but somehow it made sense, given the object’s own tangled relationship with her own family. ‘This old amulet is the reason we’re all here. The colony, my family especially. Now it’s time to bring it home.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s time.’

  ‘Which is all very abstract,’ Sonia said sternly, ‘when you’re risking the life of a sixteen-year-old girl. Phee, Harry’s right. You don’t have to do what he says.’

  ‘It’s my choice,’ Phee said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  With good grace Harry stepped aside.

  They had landed close to the surface support facility where Jo had first brought Zoe and the Doctor to this moon. Now the low, plain building was dark, and much of it was open to vacuum. There was no movement: no humans, no Blue Dolls, no Soldiers.

  Inside they found their way to the downshaft without difficulty, and descended.

  Soon they were through a lock and inside the pressurised side-shafts, and they pushed back their skinsuit hoods. The air was cold, colder than it had seemed before. Zoe thought she could smell burned plastic, and the sharp smell of ozone – static electricity? – and, under it all, the iron stink of human blood.

  The Doctor led the four of them down another vertical shaft, deeper into the moon’s interior. He intended to retrace the steps he had taken on his second venture into the moon, and return to the nest of the Blue Dolls.

  He warned, ‘Of course we may be in danger from the Blue Soldiers when they work out we are here. But remember too that nobody has been back here since the fighting with the Blue Soldiers, and the evacuation. Nobody human, I mean. So there has been no clean-up.’ He glanced at Phee. ‘We may see some sights which will be – well, distressing.’

  ‘Dead people, you mean,’ Phee said bluntly. ‘Don’t worry. It was another reason my mother didn’t want me to come down here. I’m not squeamish.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not,’ the Doctor said. ‘But none of us in this party are trained soldiers. Not even you, Marshal Paley. So let’s be honest with ourselves. This isn’t going to be easy.’

  They reached a side-shaft, and the Doctor, quite nimbly, swung inside. Sonia insisted on taking the lead now, her blaster loose in its holster at her side. The Doctor and Phee followed, with Zoe at the rear.

  Sonia said, ‘I don’t know why you wanted to come this way in the first place. If we’re heading for the core, Florian’s new trial bore would be a lot easier. Takes you straight there.’

  ‘Yes, well, digging that shaft was a clear act of aggression, and I don’t think we should have anything to do with that. And besides, there’s somebody we need to find first.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘An ally, I hope—’

  ‘Hush.’ Sonia held up a hand. They stood stock still. Then she led them forward, treading softly.

  The passage ahead was filled with Blues. Blue bodies, curled up on the floor or clinging, flattened, to the walls and ceiling. Most of them were adult bodies, Soldiers, though a few Dolls nuzzled between the larger forms. This tableau was utterly still, silent. Like a heap of discarded sculptures, Zoe thought. She seemed to be frozen with fear.

  ‘I wonder what they dream about,’ Phee said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor said. ‘I rather hope it’s nothing at all.’

  Sonia took an experimental step forward.

  There was a rustling. Every Blue head lifted and turned, like so many antennas, to face the human party. Every one, all at once. Zoe quailed, under the gaze of a hundred pairs of empty black eyes.

  Sonia had her blaster drawn. ‘Well, they’re blocking the passage. It’s either go back or go through them.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ The Doctor pushed her aside, and began shaking out the display flags he had been carrying. ‘Here, put these on.’ He handed them around.

  Sonia took her flag, looking confused. ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Put it on! We haven’t come here to shoot our way through anything, Sonia. We’re here to talk – to listen – not to destroy. And this encounter is going to prove if that’s possible or not. Look, put these over your shoulders like cloaks, you see?’ When they were all draped in the flags, the Doctor nodded at Zoe. ‘You have the controls.’

  Zoe tapped a command into the simple keyboard of her control unit.

  Immediately the flags lit up, with shifting, striped patterns of light, graceful curves, delicate colours. There were images of Saturn’s rings, some recorded, some a live feed from MMAC – and, if the Doctor was right, a reflection of the thoughts of the entity at the heart of the moon, and at the centre of all this.

  All those heads shifted again, to stare at the flags.

  The Doctor took one pace forward, two, cautiously stepping over the prone bodies. The Blues didn’t get out of his way, but they didn’t impede him either. Their heads swivelled to follow the shifting patterns on the flags, with more of those unearthly rustles.

  ‘You can follow me safely, I think,’ the Doctor said calmly. ‘Try not to step on anybody. I don’t think they’d react badly, but let’s not take the chance, eh? Oh, and Phee, now would be a good time to begin displaying that amulet of yours. No need for anything fancy. Just hang it outside your skinsuit, perhaps. Make it visible.’

  Sonia growled, ‘But do not compromise the integrity of your suit, soldier.’

  ‘Yes, Marshal,’ Phee sighed.

  Zoe was the last to walk across the chamber. The Blue bodies at her feet were tightly packed, but she followed where the others had walked, where there was room to set her feet down. The Blues watched her, and the shifting colours on her flag. They didn’t breathe, it struck Zoe now. There was not a single sigh, or gasp, or cough. And if she put her ear to any of those blue chests, there would be no heartbeat. So strange, at the same time human yet so inhuman.

  She wanted to shrink away from any contact with them, to flee, to huddle back into herself. To go back. But she was halfway across the blockage now. She took another step, and another, following the others, and made it to the far side. She took a few hurried s
teps away from the last prone body, the last sprawled limbs.

  The Doctor was waiting for her, a broad, sympathetic smile on his face. ‘Well done,’ he whispered. ‘I’m starting to think we might actually live through this. Come on!’ They walked after Sonia and Phee. ‘What about your sensor kit, Zoe? Any significant readings?’

  She checked her readouts. ‘There’s an elevated level of ozone in the air.’

  ‘I can smell that,’ the Doctor said. ‘Like the seaside. Mmm. Sandcastles and candy floss!’

  ‘What? Some of that might be a residue of all the blaster fire down here.’

  ‘Or perhaps there’s some other cause. Well, I expect we’ll find out. What else?’

  ‘A cocktail of exotic hydrocarbons in the air. I suspect that’s a relic of the Blues. I mean—’

  ‘The destroyed ones, yes. What about the core?’

  ‘The most significant reading is an oddity. An elevated yield of neutrinos, coming out of the core.’

  He looked at her sharply. ‘More neutrinos? That’s odd.’

  Astrophysicist Zoe knew that neutrinos were ghostly subatomic particles to which almost any substance was quite transparent. If they were somehow being created in the core of the moon, most would flood out through its mass and into deep space, with only a handful of them being impeded by the moon’s billions of tonnes of ice. ‘What’s the significance, do you think, Doctor?’

  ‘Well, the usual ways to create a neutrino flow are to turn a nuclear reactor on and off, or to make a star detonate in a supernova explosion… It’s too early to theorise. We need more facts, Zoe, and that’s why we’re here: facts! Come along.’ And he trotted ahead.

  But after only a few more paces they came to a battlefield. Sonia and Phee had already come to a halt, and were standing and staring.

  It was a war zone entirely contained within a few dozen metres of tunnel. The ice walls themselves were pocked and scarred by blaster fire. Bodies lay scattered, smashed and broken, human and Blue alike – a lot more Blues, or the remains of them, but dried human blood was splashed everywhere, deep brown against the blue-white ice. Some of the human victims had died in the process of transformation, like Sinbad Omar, with blue patches embedded in their skin.

  The Doctor said gently, ‘There’s nothing we can do here. We must move on—’

  Sonia turned on him with a snarl. ‘Doctor, I don’t care what other goals you have today. We aren’t going on until we’ve done something for these people. Phee, I need you to help.’ She dug a little medallion out of her own vest. ‘See this dog tag? Everybody down here should have been wearing one of these. See if you can help me find them. Then their families will know where they are, at least. Even if the bodies can’t be taken back for processing.’

  ‘Processing?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘Bodies are recycled, in the hydroponics bays,’ Sonia said. ‘Even in death you contribute to the colony. Not to my taste, but it’s done respectfully enough.’

  With a visible effort, Phee nodded. ‘I’ll help you, Marshal.’

  Slowly the two of them worked their way around the bodies. Zoe thought Phee showed remarkable courage in handling the broken corpses, in digging into their bloodied skinsuits and clothing. But many of the bodies were too badly damaged, or transformed, for the dog tags to have survived.

  So Zoe stepped forward and dug a small sample extractor from her kit. ‘I’ll take swab samples. A DNA identification will back up the dog tags. And if the tags are missing—’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Let me help you, Zoe.’

  It took half an hour to complete the grisly process. Zoe uploaded all her data to MMAC. Sonia passed around wet-wipe towels from her own small kit, and the four of them cleaned blood and sticky Blue tissue from their skinsuits and gloved hands.

  Then they moved on.

  Time and space swam strangely for Zoe in these corridors of primordial ice. Sometimes it seemed as if they had walked many kilometres, other times as if she had barely stepped away from the vertical access shaft. The thick air, the stench of ozone and plastic and blood, all made the experience dreamlike, swimming. The gravity was fading too as they gradually descended deeper into the moon. It all worked to detach her from her usual logic, her own inner sense of order and regularity.

  She felt great relief when they finally reached the place the Doctor had labelled the Nest of the Blue Dolls. It was another landmark reached, and Zoe was a step nearer the end of this unnerving journey.

  The Doctor walked forward, his flag over his shoulders, his hands held out, empty. Fifty little heads swivelled with a rustle like turning pages. ‘I’m looking for First,’ he said clearly. He raised his left palm and marked a downward slash with his right forefinger. ‘The one called First. Is he here?’ He moved through the crowd, like an adult walking through a room of napping children. ‘First. I’m looking for First.’ He made the name mark over and over.

  At last the crowd parted, little bodies slithering and rolling out of the way, and a single Blue Doll came forward.

  The Doctor leaned down, his hands resting on his knees. ‘How good to see you again, old boy. I’m the Doctor. Remember?’

  First simply stared back, his face blank.

  ‘Now,’ the Doctor said, ‘we need your help. Or rather, I hope we are going to be able to help each other. Phee? It’s up to you now.’

  Phee came forward hesitantly. ‘What am I supposed to say?’

  Sonia grunted. ‘How about, “Take me to your leader”?’

  The Doctor glared at her.

  Phee stood before the Blue Doll, who gazed back patiently. She bent down and held out the amulet, still on the chain around her neck. ‘I’ve brought this back. I think it’s yours.’

  First reached out with a small, sketchy hand, and laid his palm on the amulet. There was a crackle, a kind of spark. Phee jumped back.

  Sonia was at her side immediately. ‘Are you all right? What was that?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just a sort of shock, an electric shock. It made me jump.’

  ‘The ozone level just rose a bit,’ Zoe said, reading her instrument unit. ‘I think it was some kind of electrical discharge.’

  ‘A transfer of energy,’ the Doctor said, ‘which seems to have accompanied a transfer of information.’

  First, the Blue Doll, turned and walked away, heading for a passageway at the back of the nest chamber.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ Phee asked.

  The Doctor smiled. ‘I think we’d better follow and find out, don’t you?’ Whistling a little tune, he wrapped up his display flag into a bundle and followed the Blue Doll.

  Zoe hurried after him. ‘Doctor, there’s something else. I’ve seen a spike in the neutrino output.’ She peered into the dark tunnel. ‘Whatever’s waiting for us down there—’

  ‘It’s already responding,’ he said with relish. ‘Good! And since we’re still alive I presume my ploy of linking up with our little friend here is working – proof that we are a friendly embassy, not an invasion force. Isn’t this wonderful, Zoe? Plunging into the unknown. Heading for first contact with a new alien species, perhaps. Anything at all could lie in wait for us down there!’

  She linked her arm in his. ‘Ask me how I feel about it all later – if we live through it…’

  37

  JO LAWS CALLED a council meeting in her home in Res Three. A meeting of sorts. One of the old council members was dead, poor Sinbad Omar, and another, Marshal Sonia Paley, was down on the moon with the Doctor and Phee. But Florian Hart was here, and she had demanded the meeting in the first place. And Luis Reyes, the man from the Planetary Ethics Commission, who was doing a good job in helping a wounded community pull back together, even if it was outside his remit of ethical policing. But then, in a crisis, as Jo had observed many times before, people pulled together regardless of formal rank and role. Jamie McCrimmon was here too, at Jo’s invitation, because the young traveller was about the only adult on the Wh
eel the more disillusioned kids would speak to, since the incident of the kettling.

  Florian was as uncompromising as ever. The first agenda item she wanted to raise was about sending prison gangs down to the moon for forced labour. ‘Every unproductive day is a wasted day. We’re here for one thing only, and that’s—’

  ‘Bernalium,’ the rest chorused, sitting around Jo’s kitchen table.

  And little Casey, playing on the floor at Jo’s feet, echoed it too. ‘Benn-ar-umm!’ She had a new blue doll, made by Jo and Phee of scraps of cloth, to make up for the loss of the old one.

  ‘We know, Florian,’ said Jo, feeling strained, exhausted before the latest fight even started. ‘Look, what labour we do have is tied up putting the Wheel back together, which is what keeps us all alive, if you hadn’t noticed. And the moon is not yet secure. The work of clearing it out to the point where we can begin operations again—’

  ‘Hasn’t even begun. And every day we delay puts off the restart even more.’ Florian glanced at Jamie. ‘We could send down those kids who went to Titan. That would show them.’

  ‘Ye’ll do that o’er my dead body,’ Jamie growled, glaring at her.

  Luis Reyes said, ‘Florian, the PEC would have significant reservations about sending young people and children into a site which is, depending on your definition, either a war zone, a crime scene, or a site of special scientific interest.’

  ‘Pah!’ Florian pointed at Jo. ‘But our glorious leader here has sent her own kid into that “war zone”. How do you square that?’

  Jamie said, ‘The Doctor says Phee’s needed. To sort out whatever beastie’s lurkin’ there. You heard the arguments.’

  ‘And I agreed,’ Jo said firmly. ‘Admittedly reluctantly.’

  ‘You’re talking about science,’ said Florian. ‘We’re not here for science. All right, Mayor. Here’s a compromise. Let me go down to the moon.’

  ‘I can’t possibly allow it,’ Jo said. ‘You heard Sonia’s orders. The moon isn’t secure. The Doctor and his party are under Sonia’s own protection. I couldn’t allow—’