'Where's Peri?' demanded the Doctor, sharply.
'I should have liked to invite your charming companion to join us in the same diverting fashion as yourself, but I was rather relying on her to collect a young gentleman on her way in, which, I'm delighted to say, she has done. In her own whimsical fashion.'
'If you've harmed her —' the Doctor growled, taking a step forward, but stopping short of the invisible barrier.
'Then what, Doctor?' taunted the Mandarin.
'Then you and I shall fall out.' The Doctor spoke calmly and quietly, but the seemingly harmless words were filled with a threat that carried across the room and were not held by the invisible barrier. Stefan instinctively moved closer to his 'Lord', who stayed him with a tiny gesture of his hand.
'I assure you, my dear Doctor, she is in perfect health, merely being... entertained... by one of my minor divertissements, as is the young man. Over the past few weeks I have tried several interesting... inducements... to persuade him to accept my hospitality. Caution, sadly, has proven the better part of valour in his case, until, that is, Miss Peri came along. They make a very good team.'
'Oh, stop this nonsense,' interrupted the Doctor, irritated by the glacial calm, and glacial flow, of the Mandarin's words. 'They're not interested in playing any of your games, and neither am I —'
'But you haven't even started yet, Doctor,' interrupted the Mandarin in turn, 'not in earnest. And how could you, with no one to play with. Meet your opponent, Doctor.' And, as he spoke this last with some relish, the Mandarin made a slight motion with his hand, gesturing towards the wall behind the Doctor. In the same way as the door had, the wall started to dissolve, rapidly clearing from the top downwards until it had vanished, revealing a cell exactly like the Doctor's
But the occupant of the cell was not like the Doctor at all. Half spider, half crab, it stood. Its antennae were waving towards the Time Lord and its black, bulbous body was spattered with sparse coarse hairs a foot long, It was supported on five thin, hairy, angular legs and the sixth fearsome leg was no more than a single armoured claw, whose inside edges were serrated and stained with the blood of countless gory meals...
The tight-fitting tunnel had once again broadened to a gallery, though not as grand as the one they'd first seen. Kevin was breathing heavily now, and Peri, being pulled along by his hand more than helped by it, was panting as well.
'Doesn't this damned ride ever end?' she protested, as the gallery revealed itself.
'You certainly get your money's worth,' observed Kevin, ruefully.
She forced him to a stop as they both recovered a little of their breath. 'Isn't there a service hatch, or something?' she gasped.
'How d'you think we got in here?' he replied, with a note of bitterness.
'Then maybe that's the way to get out.'
'What d'you think I've been looking for for the past half mile?' Kevin asked in what was almost a snarl. 'Well we can't just —'
Her protest was cut off short as a lump of rock splattered against the wall near her head. As she spun to see where it had come from, another, and then another came whizzing through the air. Instinctively, she raised her arm to protect her head.
Below them was a group of six miners, who had been struggling to right an overturned trolley. They had ceased their otherwise perpetual labours now and were slowly moving up the bank towards them. Across the gallery, another pair, climbing a rock face, had settled on a ledge and were searching for more rocks. In the gloom she could see half a dozen diminutive figures moving out of the tunnel, down the track towards them, crouching low, every hand holding a rock or a weapon.
'The miners!' she gasped, incredulously. 'They've come alive!'
She and Kevin also stooped into a low crouch and half-ran, half-stumbled further along the tracks. A hail of rocks shattered all around them and, with a cry of pain, Kevin stumbled and fell, lying still on the ground with blood oozing from a wound behind his ear. Peri crouched down by him, trying to shield his body with hers, arms wrapped tightly around her head. The hail of rocks intensified and, from every side, the dwarf miners moved in for the kill.
The top half of the body was shiny carapace, sectioning and sliding together as the monster swayed in time to its waving antennae. In the softer, leprous looking lower half, which could have been all belly, a small mouth, ringed with needle teeth opened and closed, questing for food as the mandibles on either side, miniature replicas of the giant claw, seemed to wave in anticipation.
The Doctor backed further away, until with a small cry, he jerked his hand back once more from the stinging, burning, invisible wall. He could go no further. A thin chuckle came from the Mandarin, and what sounded like a jeer came from Stefan. The creature seemed to sense weakness, for the multi-faceted eyes on their stubby stalks turned towards the Doctor and the whole revolting body, two metres across, swung around to face him.
Winner take all, Doctor,' taunted the Mandarin, the chuckle turning into a dry laugh, then he moved his hand in a curious gesture and the cell door rematerialised, becoming solid again. The Doctor raced to the door and slammed into its all too solid mass. In what he knew to be a futile appeal, he banged frantically on it with his clenched fist, to be rewarded only with a savage laugh from Stefan. He spun back to face his opponent.
Giant claw raised in preparation, the monstrosity moved forward...
Chapter Five
The Doctor's natural curiosity did what no amount of transcendental meditation could do — it killed his fear stone dead and gave him pause for thought. He watched the slavering beast approach and cocked his head slightly to one side. What was it? What was so odd about it?
Well, yes — discount the half crab half spider and the fact that it was six feet across. Hardly usual fauna for Blackpool-by-the-Sea, agreed. Never mind the giant claw or the horrid hairy legs, forget the eyes on stalks and the mouth. What was so odd?
Ah! No... maybe... Yes, that's it! That's what it is! The claw! That snapping noise it's making. The tempo it's waving about. Not exactly Klemperer, it's true, but it's the same jolly old rhythm!
With a single bound the Doctor was up on his bed again, nutcrackers in hand, as he beat out the rhythm on the pipe. The claw stopped waving immediately, the beast not bothering to turn its head. The Doctor beat out another few notes. The beast wavered again. More thumping, then with a curious sideways shuffle the monster lurched over to the pipe in the newly revealed cell and started tapping out the familiar noise of the earlier efforts at communication.
The Doctor slumped against the wall. 'See...?' He called out to no one in particular, but he was certain the Mandarin was monitoring every movement in the cell. 'You can talk your way out of anything...'
Peri shook the unconscious Kevin, desperately trying to revive him. She looked up suddenly, not able to work out what had changed. Then she realised. The hail of rocks had stopped. That in itself struck Peri as suspicious, and she wondered what new tricks the murderous mannikins were up to now. Raising her head cautiously, she immediately understood. Walking carefully towards her, guns at the ready, were the two boiler suits. She shook Kevin again.
'Kevin! Kevin!' Still no response. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered, softly, then she slipped away from him and, at a crouch moved deeper in the mine, unhindered now by the miners, who seemed once again frozen into immobility.
She stayed behind an outcrop of rock and watched the boiler suits reach Kevin. One of them bent down to give the boy a cursory examination, then he took a radio from his overall pocket and started to speak into it, but whatever he said, she couldn't make out.
She turned to go, wanting to get away before whatever aid boiler suit was summoning turned up, and nearly died of fright as she stared into the weather-beaten face of another Forty-Niner. He stayed the way he should have, grinning from ear to ear, immobile. Peri took in the wicked-looking pinch-bar he was holding, and eased it from the wood and plastic fingers. She hefted it in her hand. That felt better. She set off again.
Amid the rich settings of his room, the Mandarin looked positively regal. The Doctor took time to look around the room as Stefan ushered him in, and was suitably impressed by the quality and taste of the furnishings. Stefan lead him unprotesting to stand in front of the Mandarin's giant desk, hands thrust deep into pockets, utterly disrespectful as usual. Stefan glared, furious at this affront to his Lord's dignity. His Lord didn't seem to mind at all, merely raised an eyebrow a millimetre in Stefan's direction.
'The youth is being taken to the cells now, Lord,' reported the henchman in answer to the silent inter-rogation.
'Very well,' acknowledged the Mandarin.
'But the girl —' Stefan continued, hesitantly, reluctant to report less than total success.
'I am dealing with the girl,' cut in the Mandarin with a sharp edge to his voice. Stefan looked disappointed, very disappointed, and the Doctor was worried as he watched him out of the corner of his eye, only half-pretending to study the magnificent Chung silk tapestry on the wall.
'Yes, Lord.'
'Toymaker —' started the Doctor, a detectable threat in his voice.
'Oh, don't worry, Doctor,' cut in the Mandarin again, a trifle testily, thought the Doctor. Perhaps things weren't going quite as much to plan as they'd like me to think... Or perhaps he's fed up with leashing Stefan, the prowling hit man. Goodness knows, I would be — 'She's quite safe... for the moment...' continued the Mandarin, as if that dismissed the matter from further consideration for the next century or so.
The Doctor plonked himself without ceremony in the big chair at the side of the desk — the only other comfortable chair in the room — and insolently swung his leg over the arm, where it dangled nonchalantly. Stefan stiffened visibly, and looked as if his normal retribution for such impertinence was the amputation of the offending limb without the benefit of medical training...
'I don't believe you consider "safe" to be an absolute term,' offered the Doctor, idly, as if the matter might offer possibilities in philosophical discussion, but might as easily prove to be an intellectual dead-end.
'Everything is relative, is it not?' countered the Mandarin, either aping the Doctor's own oft-expressed caveat or endorsing Mr Einstein's observations with his own seal of approval.
'Depends on your standpoint,' observed the Doctor, then added, as if to demonstrate his own, more accurate interpretation of the mathematician's masterpiece, 'or rather on where you're standing...'
The pedantry, predictably enough, was lost on Stefan. Stefan wouldn't have known, or cared about, the General Theory of Relativity if it had come up and hit him on the back of the head with the velocity of C2, though he would certainly have been interested in duplicating the effect on someone else's head. Preferably the tousled one lolling in the chair in front of him.
'Lord, allow me to instruct this insolent gypsy in the proper courtesies—' snarled the guard dog, ears pricking up and teeth baring. The Doctor, stung by what he took to be a derogatory attitude to his friends the travelling people, lashed out a little himself.
'Does your Myrmidon have to be here?' he snapped at the Mandarin. 'I mean, can't you get him back to his kennel?'
'I had hoped that listening to a Time Lord's wisdom might advance dear Stefan's education,' announced the Mandarin with not a scrap of sincerity in his voice.
'You've left it a little late for that,' pointed out the Doctor, and then finished, with a sniff: 'And even I need a spark of basic intelligence to work with..
The Mandarin chuckled. 'Well,' he affirmed, 'Stefan's intelligence is very basic indeed.'
'And, given there's not a moral scruple in his whole body, you've got the prime requisites for the Universal Henchman,' snapped the Doctor, irritated for an irrational moment by the ease with which his antagonists were always able to surround themselves with the dregs of whichever society they were in at the time.
'Not at all, Doctor,' disputed the Mandarin mildly. 'If those were the only requirements, I could have half the human race in my employ.' He smiled, gently, patronisingly. His eyes drifted back to Stefan and almost softened for a moment. 'No, loyalty and complete obedience are needed too, and they are far rarer qualities...' Stefan almost beamed with gratification. Almost. In fact his face didn't move a muscle. Just the eyes shone with a fervent, Storm-Trooper zeal.
'Nonsense,' shot back the Doctor, unwilling to let Stefan preen himself in this gruesome fashion. 'You can find them in abundance in any penal colony on any planet in any universe. They're all sadly full of madmen and their lackeys...'
The Mandarin rose gracefully, and placed his hands in the wide sleeves of his robes. He walked around the desk to observe more closely the tapestry which had seemed to interest the Doctor on his way in.
'Your manners, Doctor, do not have appeared to have improved with time,' he observed mildly as he crossed the room. 'I invite you and your travelling companion here to join with me in a few innocent games —'
'Since when has there ever been anything innocent about your games?' interjected the Doctor, bitterly. The Mandarin chose to ignore the remark.
'— and you do nothing but rail against the qualities of my poor servants, hardly the behaviour of a true gentleman, let alone a sportsman.'
'None of your... pastimes qualify as sports,' retorted the Doctor, 'and the activities in the Roman Coliseum were also called games, as I recall...'
'There are similarities,' agreed the Mandarin, with a smile almost to himself.
'There certainly are. Cruel and pointless, both of them. I don't like your version any better than I liked theirs, in fact —' the Doctor stood abruptly and Stefan stiffened. — 'I don't like you, Toymaker, and I don't like the vacuous way you wander through this Universe treating every intelligent species you meet like counters on a board...' The Mandarin's comment about the Roman Games suddenly touched a nerve. 'How long have you been here?' asked the Doctor, suspiciously.
'Here?' asked the Mandarin, taking his hands from his sleeves and gesturing broadly at the whole room.
'No, here,' repeated the Doctor, raising his arm high above his head and rotating his hand to indicate the whole planet.
'Oh, not long,' replied the Mandarin, airily, 'a matter of millenia only.'
'Subjective?' asked the Doctor, darkly.
'What other kind of time is there?' asked the Mandarin innocently.
The Doctor chose not to rise to the bait. 'Enjoying it?' he asked the Mandarin, echoing the same innocent tone.
'Fascinating little world, isn't it?' continued the Mandarin, in a polite, drawing-room sort of way.
'Yes, it is.'
'A favourite of yours, I believe?'
'Yes. Is that why you came here?'
'The ingenuity of the locals is really quite remarkable...'
'Is that why you came here?' repeated the Doctor, a terrible suspicion forming in his mind.
'And they do so love playing games. All sorts of games...'
'Have you come here for me?' The question was now insistent.
'My dear Doctor!' The Mandarin swung round, the polite tone of voice now belied by the glint in his eye. 'The last time we met you were the victim of your own intellectual conceit, which now seems to have developed into full-blown paranoia! At one time, it's true, I held a passing interest in your... peregrinations... through time and space, but the idea that I should squat on this amusing but depressingly backward planet waiting for you to 'drop in' is egocentric in the extreme...'
The Doctor refused to be bluffed. 'You set up the Space-Time Vortex,' he accused, quietly.
'Doctor,' replied the Mandarin, fixing him with his eyes and replying just as quietly, 'I am the Space-Time Vortex.'
That stopped the Doctor in his tracks. Either the man was truly mad or... 'What do you want with me?' he asked, his voice a little hoarse with what could have been genuine fear.
'You know perfectly well,' replied the Mandarin implacably.
'How often do I have to win before you give up?' he dem
anded with a sigh.
'Oh lots,' replied the Mandarin, sweeping back to his enormous chair, having decided that whatever interested the Doctor in the tapestry was of no significance at all to himself.
'No more games,' asserted the Doctor. 'I refuse.'
'Oh just one more, Doctor. We'll call that the decider, shall we?'
'A "decider" implies the scores are even. They're not. I'm ahead. Let's just call it "the last", shall we?' 'Then you will play? Good...'
'Not yet,' warned the Doctor. 'Not at all unless —'
'Unless?' prompted the Mandarin.
'Unless I see Peri, safe and sound, in the flesh. Where is she?'
'Close to hand, I assure you, and having quite the time of her life...'
'I warned you, Toymaker...'
'I will not harm her,' the Mandarin protested, seeking to reassure the Time Lord and failing utterly.
'Not you or any of your... servants?' insisted the Doctor, shooting a look at the attendant Stefan.
'Oh, absolutely,' replied the Mandarin, opening his arms in guileless innocence, which sent a shiver of apprehension right down to the Doctor's trans-dimensional toes.
Peri held her breath and moved forward as stealthily as she knew how. A miner stood in front of her, a rifle cradled in his hands, his back turned towards her. There was no one else around in this smaller gallery by the side of the track, the scene depicting some sort of stores depot. The route out of the ride, along the tracks and away from the boiler suits and miners following her, was past the miner. And that was that. Loathing the idea of what she had to do, she nevertheless edged forward, then froze as she thought she heard something further down the track, behind her and not far away. Whatever it was moved off at a tangent, and the sound was soon lost beneath the distant but ever-present strains of 'Darling Clementine'. If ever she heard that song again, she would be rather more than 'dreadful sorry' herself...
The miner's back was only a foot in front of her now. Heart thumping wildly, she raised the pinch-bar she held in her hands high over her head, then took a mighty swing at the hatted head before her. To her horror, the head bounded off the shoulders and leapt a dozen feet, coming to a rest by the side of a box of ammunition, and turned towards her, still grinning evilly. She clasped a hand over her mouth. In slow motion, the body keeled over, and her eyes, with a will of their own, followed it down. Then they widened in astonishment, and she knelt to examine the torso more closely. A tangle of wires, now torn off, spread from the middle of the broken neck, their other ends protruding from the head a dozen feet away. An android. A plain, simple, common-or-garden robot! Not some frightful will-o'-the-wisp or hobgoblin come unnaturally to life, but a mere artifact. She looked down on it in contempt. But they had been so lifelike, so evidently little people, living people... The latter half of the twentieth century, she knew, could never produce anything so refined, so fluid so... lifelike. She heard that noise behind her again, closer now. There was nothing to be seen, but she quietly slipped behind the stacked pile of boxes and waited as still as she could. If they caught up with her, she'd give as good as they could dish out, but if it was just another of these horrid mechanical gnomes, she'd soon show it what she was made of, now that she'd found out what they were made of.
DOCTOR WHO - THE NIGHTMARE FAIR Page 6
