Wetworld

by Mark Michalowski

  And so, like some sort of wild woman, shrieking and wailing as she went, Martha led her band of equally wild otters over the hill and down the slope towards the Doctor and Ty.

  Analysing it later, the Doctor coolly said that he wasn’t really surprised that the zombie otters took notice of them. Yeah, Doctor. Right. The slime-thing’s chemical control was a blunt instrument, not capable of subtle programming: ‘Bring humans! Guard humans! Don’t let humans go!’ That sort of thing. It hadn’t counted on other otters jumping in to start issuing commands, never mind commands that conflicted with its own.

  As the guard-otters saw – and, more importantly, heard – Martha’s little strike-force hurtling down the slope, they began to move, glancing at each other, quivering in their little furry boots, giving every impression of being confused.

  In amongst all the squeaks and cries her otters bellowed, Martha heard the odd word: ‘Run!’ and ‘Hide!’ and ‘Water-teeth coming!’ What ‘water-teeth’ were, Martha could only imagine – probably some predator that hid in the swamps and of which the otters were mortally afraid. It was this latter that seemed to have the greatest effect. For within seconds, as Martha’s team reached the others, the slime-thing’s conditioning finally broke. And in a mad, panicky flurry, the zombie otters fled, scattering out across the slope in a storm of fur and squeals.

  ‘General Martha Jones of the Seventh Cavalry,’ said Martha, saluting smartly, ‘to the rescue – sir!’

  ‘General Jones!’ beamed the Doctor, returning the salute. ‘I’m going to be recommending you for a commendation. Come here!’

  And he swept her up in a huge hug, lifting her feet clear off the ground.

  ‘Now,’ he said, dropping her back on her feet with a jolt and looking around at the sleepwalking settlers. ‘Let’s see if we can’t wake these sleeping beauties up.’

  The sun had vanished behind the clouds and the rain had begun to fall again as the strange little band reached Sunday City.

  Waking the hypnotised settlers had been surprisingly easy without the otters there to guard them. The Doctor went to each one in turn, whispered in their ears and then clicked his fingers in front of them. One by one, they’d come out of their chemically induced trance, eyes wide and apparently stunned to find themselves standing ankle-deep in mud on the edge of the old city.

  The Doctor pointed them in the direction of Martha and Ty, standing at the brow of the hill and, like acquiescent children, they’d trooped up there to join them.

  The journey back had been a sombre affair: Martha and Ty had wanted to talk to the settlers, find out what had happened, what they’d thought they were supposed to be doing. But the Doctor had cautioned against hassling them too much: they’d been through a lot, and he thought they needed to get back to familiar surroundings before the interrogation started.

  So they passed the trip with Ty and the Doctor explaining to Martha exactly what they’d encountered down at the water’s edge; Martha, likewise, explained all about her little trip to the otters’ nest. She’d recovered the basket with the baby slimey-thing in, that she’d left at the brow of the hill. Of the otters – both friendly and unfriendly, there was no sign. Martha hoped that their brave actions hadn’t put any of them in danger, but the Doctor reassured her that the brainwashed otters were unlikely to have been any threat to the others.

  ‘I think we have you to thank for them,’ the Doctor said to Ty.

  ‘The one with the smudge on its ear?’ Ty said. ‘Thought I recognised him.’

  ‘What?’ said Martha, still trying to work out whether she should be indignant that, somehow, Ty was getting the credit for her perfectly organised and executed rescue.

  ‘Your little A-Team,’ the Doctor explained, turning the spherical basket over in his hands and making silly cooing noises into it. ‘They were Ty’s otters – the ones she’d had in the zoo lab.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ Martha asked.

  ‘Ty here recognised the one with the smudge and the rest was just obvious, wasn’t it Ty?’

  Martha felt her teeth grit, all of their own accord, but managed an interested ‘Really?’-type smile.

  ‘Well, old slimey-boy seems to have most of the otters hereabouts under its slippery little thumb: it’s only the ones that had been in the zoo lab, with the control chemicals decaying, that haven’t. Obviously, they had enough intelligence to keep well away from the water and the slime-thing once the intelligence-suppressing chemicals wore off. And when the controlled ones went on their kidnapping rampage here, your friends took the opportunity to let themselves out of their cages and decided that we were their best chance to help get rid of slimey.’

  The other settlers rushed out to greet them, but there was a sense of defeat in the air at the fact that they hadn’t managed to rescue all of the kidnapped humans. No one seemed concerned about Pallister, and Martha realised that she had no idea whether he had any family or friends. It left her feeling a bit cold, a bit detached.

  ‘You OK?’

  It was the Doctor, a hand squeezing her shoulder.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said as brightly as she could. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘You did good, you know,’ he said, as Ty vanished into the crowd of settlers, telling them all about what had happened and escorting the rescued ones away.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Martha, smiling tightly, watching Ty go. ‘

  ‘In a minute,’ the Doctor said, tossing the wicker ball into the air over his shoulder as he strode off towards the zoo lab, ‘I think it’s time to have a good look at all creatures, erm, small.’

  Martha caught it perfectly, watching his back as he went.

  ‘Good catch!’ he called out.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Martha drily. ‘It’s what I’m good at.’

  ‘But first, we have a few people to chat to.’

  FOURTEEN

  The rescued settlers had been gathered in the hospital, where Sam Hashmi and his staff were checking them over, giving them food and drink and generally making sure they were OK. The Doctor whirled in, Martha at his heels, and surveyed the scene.

  ‘Gently does it, I think, Doctor Jones,’ he said quietly. ‘They probably won’t have much conscious memory of what they were doing or how they got there, so let’s tread softly. Relax them, try to get them to go back, in their heads, to earlier on.’

  Martha suppressed a little shudder, remembering what had happened to her when her memory had been jolted too suddenly. From what she’d heard, she’d been quite a handful. And that was just one of her. The thought of half a dozen snarling, snapping people didn’t exactly fill her with joy.

  The Doctor moved to cover one side of the room; Martha picked out a woman – a kindly, motherly looking woman with silvery-white hair and pale skin. She was perched on the edge of a bed, sipping at a mug of tea.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, sitting down beside her. ‘I’m Martha. How’re you?’

  The woman – whose name, Martha discovered, was Marj – smiled tightly, gripping the mug as if it were the only solid, stable thing in her world.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Just fine.’

  ‘Just wanted to see if there was anything you remembered – you know, about before.’

  Marj stared away into the distance.

  ‘Marj?’

  ‘It was like…’ Marj stumbled for words. ‘Like being in someone else’s head. Looking out through their eyes.’ She turned to Martha. ‘Does that make sense?’

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ Martha replied. ‘It happened to me too. Horrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s the loss of control,’ Marj continued, now staring down at the mug that she held firmly on her lap. ‘The feeling of being violated, of everything that’s you just being pushed aside for that… that…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Abruptly, the mug dropped from her fingers and crashed to the floor, tea splashing across the wooden floor like a wave breaking on a shore. Martha’s mouth went dry and, for just a moment, an image of coo
l, clear water sprang into her head.

  Suddenly the Doctor was there in front of her, squatting down, his eyes level with hers.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ she whispered.

  ‘Course you can, Doctor Jones,’ he said. ‘Just remember – the chemicals are gone from you. That thing has no power over you any more.’

  ‘But what about us?’ It was Marj, her voice clipped and trembling. ‘What about me?’

  ‘That’s why Martha needs to speak to you now,’ said the Doctor gently. ‘Before the chemicals in you vanish completely. You’ll be fine, trust me. But we need to find out what you were being made to do. You do understand, don’t you?’

  Marj nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Good. Let me get you some more tea, and you have a chat with Martha. There’s still a dozen settlers out there, and anything you can tell us might help to get them back.’

  There was another nod from Marj, and she tried to smile.

  ‘OK, said Martha. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we…?’

  ‘Useless!’ said Martha. ‘Absolutely useless!’

  ‘Oh come on! You’re not—’

  The Doctor stopped when he saw the expression on Martha’s face. She wasn’t in the mood for his usual brand of jokiness. He sighed and plonked himself on the bed next to her.

  ‘Sadly,’ he said, ‘I’m inclined to agree with you. There’s just not enough to go on – not without poking deeply enough to trigger psychotic episodes like you suffered. I’d try a bit of hypnosis if I didn’t think it’d be too intrusive.’

  Martha nodded. ‘It’s like most of them didn’t even know what the objects were that they’d been told to fetch. They’re like dogs, trained to fetch a newspaper without even knowing what a newspaper is.’

  ‘And their memories are fading quickly,’ the Doctor sighed. ‘Human brain chemistry’s obviously more resilient than the otters’. And let’s face it, if I wasn’t able to get anything out of what happened to me, what chance have these poor people?’

  Suddenly, Martha’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Hang on!’ she whispered. ‘You said that hypnosis would be too intrusive, yeah?’

  The Doctor looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Go on…’

  Martha narrowed her eyes. ‘Tell me I’m wrong, that I haven’t grasped how the psychic paper works, but couldn’t you—’

  ‘Yes!’ The Doctor leaped up and almost punched the air. Martha almost fell over. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? Martha Jones, you just keep getting better and better!’

  ‘Does that mean I get TARDIS driving lessons?’

  ‘Don’t push it,’ he said, grinning. ‘But I might show you how to change the spare wheel. C’mon!’

  ‘Just take a few deep breaths,’ said the Doctor to Marj. ‘Let yourself relax… that’s it… Now: look at this piece of paper. Try to think about what you were doing, what you were carrying, back there at the settlement. Tell me what you see.’

  Martha watched Marj closely, saw the puzzlement on her face – puzzlement that was suddenly replaced by incredulity.

  ‘How…’ she began. ‘That’s… that’s…’ She tipped her head slightly, as if the angle of whatever she was seeing was wrong. ‘That’s… it looks like some sort of circuit, doesn’t it? An electronic circuit.’ She looked up at the Doctor and Martha. ‘Is that right?’

  The Doctor whipped the psychic paper back into his pocket and grinned.

  ‘Oh yes, Marj. That’s so right. Now, you have a nice sleep. You’ll feel much better when you wake up. Believe me.’

  Marj smiled gently, nodded, and lay back on the bed. Within seconds, she was asleep.

  ‘Wow!’ Even Martha was impressed. ‘Does that help, though?’

  ‘Oh yes – and I’ve only just started. Care to accompany me on my rounds?’

  It took less than half an hour. Of the six settlers they’d brought back, only one was unable to remember anything. The others, to varying degrees, responded well to the psychic paper, letting it gently draw out the buried memories of what the slime creature had commanded of them, what they’d been told to fetch, where they’d been told to take it. To Martha, none of the individual bits and pieces meant much, but the Doctor was getting more and more excited.

  When the last of the rescuees was sleeping soundly, he let out a quietly triumphant ‘Yes!’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Slimey-boy out there is making something – building something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Something big and chunky. A bit like me,’ he said, ‘only with added electronics.’

  ‘They’re building a fruit machine?’ grinned Martha.

  ‘Oh, please,’ the Doctor said, his mouth downcast. ‘One of those dance-step machines at the very least. Still, I’ll let it all stew in the Doctor-o-tronic for a while.’ He tapped his head. ‘We’ll have a look at baby slimey. Maybe that’ll supply the missing bits.’

  The zoo lab was deserted: Ty had left a note pinned to the cage in which she’d placed the wicker sphere containing the baby slimey: Gone to find Candy – thought you’d like the honour of checking out Junior. Love, Ty. xx

  ‘So,’ said Martha as the Doctor popped his glasses on and set about cutting through the otters’ handiwork to the thing that flopped inside. ‘This Ty. What’s she like, then?’

  He didn’t look up.

  ‘Ty? Oh, she’s nice.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Martha. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Mmm, dunno really. Best ask her.’ He pulled a face as he snipped through more of the twigs and grass, opening up a circular hole at the top. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wondering, really. Seems quite a mother-figure, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Older than my mum, I reckon.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The Doctor turned the ball in his hands, jiggling it to shake the thing inside out into a plastic bowl.

  ‘At least,’ Martha said, watching his face.

  ‘Gotcha!’ he cried as the thing plopped out. He tossed the ball away into a corner.

  ‘I s’pose it’s all relative, though, isn’t it?’ Martha mused.

  The Doctor picked up a couple of long pairs of tweezers and began pulling and tugging at the thing in the dish. It reminded Martha of a greeny-black cow’s tongue – about six inches long and four across, one end rounded, the other raggedly flat, as though it had been cut.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I mean, with you being 900-and-odd. Anyone less than, ooh, 200 must seem much the same.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Doctor. ‘Probably.’

  Suddenly, he looked up at her and took his glasses off. ‘Martha,’ he said, his tone suddenly very different.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You mentioned babies,’ he said.

  Whoah! thought Martha, suddenly thrown. Where had this come from?

  ‘Babies?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Well…,’ he sucked in his cheeks and looked down at the thing slowly writhing in the dish. ‘Baby. Singular.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This little beauty. You said it was a baby slimey.’

  She pulled a stupid face. She couldn’t keep up. ‘What?’

  ‘This,’ he said, holding it up with a pair of tweezers where it twirled and twisted like the biggest slug Martha had ever seen. ‘You said it was a baby.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, and couldn’t have sounded less interested if it had been something he’d pulled out from under a car bonnet.

  ‘Well you were wrong – and right.’ He put it back in the dish. ‘Look at that flat edge: this has been cut. Cut from the tip of one of the big slimey’s tentacles. Probably poked itself into your chums’ nest and they managed to slice it off. There are fragments of stone in the cut end: language and tool-making, eh? Your furry friends are looking cleverer by the minute.

  ‘And the “right” bit?’

  ‘Well…’ He popped his glasses back in his pocket and leaned back in his cha
ir, hands clasped behind his head. ‘It’s a baby too – given the right environment and food, this little chap could grow up just like his daddy. Or mummy. Which is a bit disturbing, considering what Pallister was talking about.’

  ‘That’s how slimey reproduces, then? Chop off a bit of him and it grows into a new one?’

  ‘Looks like it. Give me another half hour with him and I’ll know for sure.’ He paused and looked up expectantly. ‘And although it’d be dreadfully sexist of me to suggest it, a cuppa wouldn’t half go down well right about now.’

  Martha raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I’ll let you off, just this once. One lump or two?’

  Martha ran – almost literally – into Ty as she was fetching the Doctor his tea. They almost collided on the steps of the zoo lab. Ty looked flustered – something that Martha would never have imagined Ty could look.

  ‘I can’t find her,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Candy. No one’s seen her.’

  ‘But she came back here.’

  Ty shook her head. ‘I don’t think she did: she left us, but there’s been no sign of her at all.’

  ‘She must be somewhere. Why wouldn’t she have come straight back here…?’ Even as she asked the question, Martha knew the answer. Well, one possible answer. Two, actually. ‘Maybe she decided to see if she could find the other settlers,’ she suggested, wrapping her hands around the cooling mug.

  ‘And maybe she got caught,’ Ty supplied the second possibility. ‘Why didn’t she just do what the Doctor said and come back here?’

  Martha raised an eyebrow. ‘Well,’ she said wryly, ‘sometimes people don’t. Do what the Doctor says, I mean.’

  ‘He’s usually right, though.’

  ‘Usually,’ Martha agreed. ‘But not always. He does tend to get a bit bossy sometimes – makes people do the opposite, you know, just to show they’ve got a bit of independence.’

  Listen to me! thought Martha. Some friend I am, slagging him off behind his back!