Doctor Who: Apollo 23

by Richards, Justin

  ‘Begin what, exactly?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Despite the Doctor’s reservations, this is a very minor procedure. We target a single memory strand – the memory of the trigger that sent our subject off the rails. That was identified in a previous session, and we are now going to remove that memory.’

  ‘And replace it with what?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘With nothing. We leave it blank. Wash it out, as you so eloquently put it.’

  ‘The brain’s like nature. Abhors a vacuum,’ the Doctor said quietly. The hum of the machine became louder, and it seemed that only Amy had heard.

  ‘You mean, they have to put another memory in to replace the old one?’ she asked the Doctor, talking loudly above the building noise.

  He nodded. ‘Yes, otherwise the pattern will simply return, like remembering a dream a few hours later.’

  ‘So their experiment will fail,’ Amy said.

  Her words were almost drowned out by the noise.

  Not the sound of the machine as the power built and increased. The sound of the screams from the prisoner strapped to the chair in the next room.

  Jackson turned from the controls, his face an expression of sudden surprise and fear.

  Nurse Phillips’ hand went to her mouth. Major Carlisle was already pulling open the door.

  The Doctor pushed past and was out of the room before her, Amy close behind.

  ‘Cut the power,’ the Doctor yelled as he raced into the Process Chamber. ‘Cut it now!’

  Chapter

  6

  Although she was only moments behind him, the Doctor had already unstrapped the prisoner when Amy reached the Process Chamber. The hum of the equipment had died away.

  The Doctor was listening to the man’s chest. He straightened up and gently peeled back a closed eyelid.

  ‘Just unconscious, I think,’ the Doctor decided. ‘Let’s hope there’s no permanent damage.’

  ‘What went wrong?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Goodness knows. Could be anything. The tiniest mistake when you’re messing with people’s minds can be fatal. Power spike, power dip, power fluctuation.’

  ‘Could be something to do with the power, then?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Or not.’

  ‘Can he be moved?’ Major Carlisle demanded.

  ‘Moved where?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Back to his cell. This man is a dangerous criminal.’

  ‘Oh you’re all heart, aren’t you,’ the Doctor told her.

  ‘Can he be moved?’ Carlisle repeated, but this time she asked Nurse Phillips who was watching them from the doorway.

  ‘I don’t know. I expect so.’ She sounded nervous. Amy guessed the process had not gone wrong before – at least, not like this.

  The prisoner’s eyelids were fluttering. The Doctor leaned over him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Can you hear me?’

  The man’s breathing became ragged as he struggled to speak. His hands bunched into claws, which then tightened into fists. His back arched and his eyes snapped fully open as he screamed again.

  The Doctor grabbed the man’s shoulders, trying to hold him down. Amy hurried to help. The whole body was convulsing, the man’s teeth clenched, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  ‘Not good,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘This is so not good.’

  ‘Sedative,’ Major Carlisle snapped. Nurse Phillips hurried to a drawer.

  ‘Too late for that,’ the Doctor told them. ‘I’m really sorry about all this,’ he murmured to the man.

  For a moment, the man’s vision seemed to clear. The convulsions became less extreme. He stared up at the Doctor, and Amy heard him clearly say:

  ‘Doctor – is that you?’

  The Doctor looked across at Amy. ‘Who told him my name?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘How could he know you?’

  ‘Doctor – help me,’ the man gasped.

  His voice was barely more than a whisper. Major Carlisle didn’t seem to have heard. Jackson watched from the doorway. Nurse Phillips flicked a syringe full of clear liquid with her finger to release any air bubbles.

  The prisoner’s hand grabbed the Doctor’s. ‘Help me – they’re here!’

  ‘Who are? What are you talking about?’ the Doctor whispered back urgently. ‘What’s the last thing you remember?’

  ‘Remember?’ The man frowned, in an effort to concentrate. ‘Everything’s so muzzy, lately. Since they came. But before that I was in here. I was setting the equipment for the first tests.’

  ‘The equipment?’ Amy looked at the Doctor, then back at the prisoner. ‘Why would they let a prisoner set up the equipment’

  ‘I’m not a prisoner,’ the man said. His voice was fading. He slumped back in the chair. ‘I built this. I set all this up. You have to believe me. I’m—’

  Then the syringe stabbed into his upper arm and his voice choked off. The man’s eyes closed. A great shiver ran through his body. Then he was still.

  Nurse Phillips pulled out the syringe and stepped back.

  ‘Oh thanks,’ the Doctor said. ‘That was a big help.’

  ‘The man was distressed, in convulsions,’ Nurse Phillips said. ‘He needed sedating. Normally—’

  ‘Normally?’ the Doctor gave a mirthless laugh. ‘What exactly is normal about this? About any of this?’ He shook his head sadly, like a frustrated parent giving up trying to explain something simple to an unhelpful child.

  ‘Can we move him now?’ Major Carlisle asked.

  ‘You can do what you like with him,’ the Doctor said, striding from the room. ‘He’s dead.’

  Amy found the Doctor sitting at a table in the small canteen. He was the only person there, leaning back in his chair with his feet up on the table. His fingers were laced together behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Did the nurse kill him?’ Amy asked.

  ‘Not on purpose.’ The Doctor swung his legs off the table and jolted upright in the chair. ‘No, that’s not fair. It wasn’t her fault at all. The sedative was just the last straw. He’d probably have died anyway.’

  ‘And how come he knew you?’

  ‘Been thinking about that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Remember I said the memory they were erasing had to be replaced with something?’

  Amy nodded. ‘Otherwise it just sort of reappears like the memory of a dream popping up later.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but I think that man got someone else’s memory. Or a bit of it.’

  ‘So what did he mean by “They’re here” and all that stuff?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe nothing. He was confused – well, he was dying, let’s face it. Perhaps he meant the new memories in his head, who can tell? But something went wrong with Jackson’s process.’ The Doctor’s eyes flicked to the side as he looked past Amy. ‘Talk of the devil.’

  Amy turned and saw that the Professor had come into the canteen. He looked tired and worried.

  ‘There was a power surge,’ Jackson said, joining them at the table. He stared down at the plastic surface. ‘Never happened before. And now the man’s dead. I didn’t even know his name – he was just Prisoner Nine.’ He looked up at Amy and the Doctor, and Amy saw that his grey eyes had a haunted look to them. ‘It must be connected to the same problem as the quantum displacement systems.’

  ‘Possibly,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘I’d need to look at the receptors out on the lunar surface to be sure. Once I’ve checked the calibration of the equipment in the basement level, that is.’

  ‘Can you really fix it?’

  ‘If I want to,’ the Doctor said.

  Jackson was confused. ‘Why might you not want to?’

  The Doctor met the man’s gaze. For several moments he said nothing. Then, when he did reply his voice was level and almost devoid of emotion. Amy could tell he was holding back his real feelings, but there was no mistaking what they were.

  ‘I’ve seen enough of your proce
ss to know what your ultimate goal must be, Professor Jackson. Oh you make a good case for rehabilitating the prisoners, for erasing selected memories – maybe even replacing them. But that isn’t what you’re really aiming for, is it? You want to wipe the mind completely clean, create a blank template. And then overwrite it with a new personality. Am I right, or…’ The Doctor leaned back in his chair and sniffed. ‘Well, there’s no or is there, because I am right.’

  Jackson looked like he’d been thumped. But he recovered quickly. ‘You’re a very perceptive man, Doctor. But I don’t understand your concern.’

  ‘Concern?’ the Doctor countered. ‘Concern?’

  Jackson held his hand up. ‘I offer the chance to swap the mind – the life – of a worthless criminal for someone who would otherwise be taken from us. Imagine it, the opportunity for a great musician or thinker, who is terminally ill, or just very old, to live on. To renew themselves, literally to have a new life in a new form. To become someone new, but with all that brilliance preserved.’

  Put like that, Amy didn’t think it sounded so bad. Except that someone else had to lose their mind.

  ‘It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,’ the Doctor said quietly. ‘A great musician who finds his new body is tone deaf? A thinker whose thoughts inhabit the mind of a simpleton?’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be random. You’d get to choose, to fit the mind to a suitable donor. No problem.’

  Amy knew what the Doctor was really so opposed to. ‘The donor has to die,’ she said. ‘That’s the problem.’

  ‘As I said before, perhaps we should agree to differ, until the systems are fixed. My process is far from that stage, and under the current circumstances I shan’t be doing any more tests.’

  The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’ll fix your systems. After that, we’ll talk again.’

  ‘Fair enough. I look forward to it.’ Jackson stood up. ‘I suppose we have rather overlooked the ethics of what we’re doing while we’ve been caught up in the excitement of actually doing it.’

  Amy waited until Jackson had gone before she asked: ‘Can you really fix their quantum thingie systems?’

  ‘Oh, probably.’ The Doctor leaped to his feet. He jumped up and down a couple of times. ‘I’d have thought a power surge would affect the artificial gravity, but it’s fine. That’s lucky.’

  ‘Unless Jackson’s lying about the power surge,’ Amy pointed out.

  ‘Not sure why he should. Why don’t you go and see Nurse Phillips?’

  ‘See if he’s lying about whether there have been any other accidents, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly,’ the Doctor said. ‘Jackson said she was there for every process session. She’s young enough to be a bit chatty, a bit indiscreet.’

  ‘A bit intimidated?’

  ‘If need be.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘Don’t frighten her too much, scary lady.’

  Amy’s eyes widened. ‘As if.’

  There was only one patient in the base sickbay. Nurse Phillips was checking the equipment that monitored the sleeping woman’s vital signs. Amy had little idea what any of the blips and traces and numbers actually meant.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ she asked.

  If the young nurse was surprised to see her, she didn’t show it. Her pale grey eyes flicked back to the woman in the bed. ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Liz Didbrook. She is, or was, Professor Jackson’s assistant.’

  Amy looked at the sleeping woman. She was restless. Her head twisted on the pillow and she murmured quietly to herself. She looked to be in her early thirties. Her dark hair was damp with sweat.

  ‘Does she have a fever? Is she infectious?’

  The woman’s eyes flickered open as Amy spoke.

  ‘Neither,’ said Nurse Phillips. ‘It’s some sort of nervous breakdown. Brought on by stress, Professor Jackson thinks. We keep her sedated.’

  Not as sedated as Prisoner Nine, Amy hoped. She leaned over the bed, listening. ‘What is she saying?’

  ‘Just nonsense,’ Nurse Phillips said. ‘We’d get her to a hospital in Texas, only…’

  ‘Only there’s no way home right now,’ Amy finished.

  ‘It’s just gibberish,’ Nurse Phillips said as Amy continued to listen.

  The woman – Liz – was staring at Amy, her expression suddenly alert. ‘You’re new.’

  ‘Yes. I’m Amy. I’m here to help.’

  ‘Giant turtles live for ages,’ Liz said. ‘Evolution is all about survival of the fittest.’

  ‘You see – nonsense,’ Nurse Phillips said. She turned and walked out of the room.

  ‘But fittest doesn’t mean strongest,’ Liz went on. ‘It means most apt. That’s why they want us.’

  ‘Why who wants us?’ Amy said.

  ‘The white rabbit is running late,’ Liz said. ‘X marks the spot where the treasure is buried. When the sky is dark, the wolves are running.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Amy said quietly. ‘Just gibberish. Hey – get well soon.’ She patted the woman gently on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see you, yeah?’

  ‘Don’t go! They’re here.’ Liz struggled to sit up. ‘I have to… Trains are delayed on all routes. Even Route 66. Distraction. They’re delayed by the distraction.’

  ‘The trains?’ Amy frowned. There was something in what she said – something close to making sense, but clouded in the rest of it. Distraction. ‘Are you saying that you have to distract them. Whoever they are?’ She looked round. ‘Can they hear us? Are they listening?’

  ‘Listen from the inside – it’s so much clearer. So much clearer inside the mind. Distractions abound. Distractions are good. Good, bad and ugly. Spaghetti Westerns for tea and lunch and dinner and breakfast and making a meal of it.’

  Liz’s hand shot out from under the sheets and grabbed Amy’s wrist. ‘I can’t tell you if they’re here. Flies in the ointment. Rain in the wind. Spanners in the works. Wolves in the wood.’

  The woman’s eyes were a startling blue as she gazed intently at Amy. ‘What are you telling me?’ Amy asked. ‘You mean the systems here? Spanners in the works – is that what you mean?’

  ‘Spanners in the works,’ Liz said. Her grip on Amy’s wrist tightened urgently. ‘Gremlins in the process.’

  ‘The process?’ Amy repeated. There was a sound behind her and she turned, pulling her arm away from Liz’s grip.

  ‘She really should rest,’ Nurse Phillips said. How long had she been there, watching? ‘It’s just nonsense, all of it. Pay no attention.’

  Amy looked back at Liz – now slumped down in the bed. The colour seemed to have drained from her eyes, so the blue was almost grey.

  ‘The grey African elephant is the largest mouse in the western hemisphere and comes in nine different shades of pink,’ Liz murmured. ‘Remember what I said.’ Her eyes slowly closed, and her words became just mumbles.

  ‘I’ll remember,’ Amy said quietly. Louder, to Nurse Phillips, she said: ‘You’re right. She’s obviously flipped out. She’s just talking rubbish.’

  Chapter

  7

  The damaged area was easy to spot once the Doctor knew where to look.

  It took him a while to work out the design of the quantum displacement systems. But once he’d got the hang of it, he could trace through the various components. He already had a good idea where the problem must be.

  ‘Accidental?’ Major Carlisle asked.

  A whole section of pipes and tubes had been blown out. Cables hung loose and a junction box was a blackened mess.

  ‘Difficult to tell,’ the Doctor admitted. He licked his thumb and forefinger and then griped the end of a wire. It sparked violently. ‘Well, that’s something.’

  Major Carlisle winced as the Doctor inspected his blackened fingers. ‘But it could be sabotage?’

  ‘Could be. You expecting sabotage?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘The good news is that it shouldn’t take long to fix. Just reco
nnect all the bits and bobs, and bypass this junction box.’

  ‘Bits and bobs?’

  ‘Then realign the receptors outside and bits and bobs your uncle.’

  ‘You’re either very brilliant or completely mad,’ Major Carlisle told him.

  ‘Both, actually. But veering towards the brilliant. You don’t want to see me when I’m mad.’ The Doctor already had his sonic screwdriver out and was reattaching wires. ‘You going to stand there watching me?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Go away. No, I don’t mean it like that,’ he went on quickly. ‘Just don’t want to be distracted at a crucial moment. Can you tell Colonel Devenish that everything’s under control, and that I’ll need to go out on the surface and test things and realign the receptors.’

  It seemed only a few moments later that a shadow fell across the Doctor as he finished the final few connections. But he realised that almost an hour had passed.

  Captain Reeve waited until the Doctor was done before he spoke. ‘The Colonel says it’s fine for you to go out on the surface. You can have permission, no problem.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for permission.’

  ‘Yeah, he knows. But he’s given it anyway. That way he can put conditions on it.’

  ‘Conditions?’ The Doctor closed up the blackened shell of the now empty junction box.

  ‘Well, just the one. He’s going out there with you.’

  Captain Reeve helped the Doctor and Colonel Devenish suit up. Soon the two of them were walking out across the surface of the moon. Devenish’s bulky white spacesuit was a contrast to the Doctor’s more advanced and streamlined red one.

  ‘We’re on a closed communications circuit,’ Devenish said. ‘No one else can hear us.’

  ‘And why are you telling me this?’ the Doctor wondered.

  ‘Just thought I’d mention it. Same as Major Carlisle just happened to mention to me that the damage to the systems could be sabotage.’

  ‘Could be. Or it could be accidental. An overloaded component, a power surge. Whatever. I’ll have a better idea when I check the receptors. If they’ve mis-phased then it could be just bad luck. But if the target location has actually been reset, that suggests it’s deliberate.’