by Doctor Who
The man they had come to find sat with his back to them on an upturned barrel, not moving, not even breathing.
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What if he’s dead? The frightening thought struck the Doctor. If they had arrived too late, and Godlove had perished. . .
But then the figure moved slightly, turning on the makeshift stool.
Godlove peered over his shoulder at the Doctor, and a thin, snake-like grin threaded out across his lips. ‘You again,’ he said. ‘Hello, Marshal.
And lookee here. You brought the brat and that dusky little missy to boot.’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘Like I tried to tell you in the town, you’re mistaken. I’m not a lawman.’
‘Is that so?’ Godlove spoke slowly, measuring each word. ‘Well, now. Tell me then, if you didn’t come lookin’ because you carried a tin star, then why did you?’
‘I’m the Doctor,’ he said simply.
‘His face,’ whispered Nathan, lowering Martha to sit atop a crate.
‘Doctor, his face! He’s like death warmed up!’
The Doctor silenced the boy with a wave of his hand, but Godlove nodded. ‘The lad there has a point. In all honesty, I have been feeling rather unwell of late.’ Nathan was correct; bits of Godlove’s skin were puffy and peeling away from his cheeks. His eyes were hazed with dark fluid, his hair matted and greasy. He glanced around. ‘Pray tell, but where is that redskin of mine?’
‘He was shot,’ the Doctor explained. ‘Killed by two men who are here looking for you. . . Looking for what you found out in the woods.’
Godlove hesitated, a brief flicker of regret in his misted eyes; but then the emotion was gone and he nodded curtly. ‘Ah. Of course.
They’re close. I knew they’d come, sooner or later. It’s our way. It’s how we were made.’
‘ We?’ said the Doctor warily.
Godlove got up from the table and turned so he could face them.
The ornate waistcoat the Doctor remembered from the Pioneer saloon hung loosely now on the man’s wiry frame and his posture was all different. He was ramrod straight and moved a little awkwardly, as if his joints were stiff; and in his right hand, in the curled fist of slender, pallid fingers, was the slab-sided shape of a Clade Weapons Module.
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Festoons of wires as fine as human hairs connected the monstrous gun to Godlove’s flesh, burrowing and glittering just beneath the surface of the skin in the lantern’s light.
The weapon was a grotesque, top-heavy parody of a Peacemaker pistol, bloated to twice normal size, with a profusion of multiple muzzles glistening with oily residue.
‘As you can see,’ Godlove noted, ‘I have decided to defend myself.’
‘Holy cats!’ Nathan’s jaw dropped. ‘I never saw a shootin’ iron like that in my life.’
From where she sat, Martha rested against the stone, panting. ‘Are we. . . too late?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the Doctor grimly, slowly approaching the other man. ‘Who am I talking to now?’ he asked. ‘Alvin Godlove? Or something else?’
Godlove smirked. ‘Oh, as you might be able to intuit, there’s a goodly amount of dear Alvin still in here.’ He touched the gun hand to his chest. ‘Shall I be generous and say, oh, seventy-thirty?’
‘And the rest? A Clade. A command-grade incept, if I had to guess.’
‘Correct, Doctor,’ he nodded, intrigued. Godlove aimed the gun towards him, sniffing at the air. ‘I see. You’re like us, not native to this 127
mud ball.’ He paused, looking into the middle distance, as if he were listening to something unheard. Godlove raised an eyebrow. ‘Wait.
The Doctor? Oh-ho.’ He chuckled. ‘Well, of course. I should’a put two and two together. That name’s known to us. Oh yes, that name is known. Last o’ the Time Lords. . . Yeah, you’re like us all right.’
‘I’m not like you,’ the Doctor replied. ‘I’m not a killer.’
‘No?’ Godlove cocked his head and gave a mocking pout. ‘That might be what you say to these humans, but you and I know different, don’t we?’ He took a step closer and his voice thickened with venom.
‘Like knows like, Doctor. I can smell the blood on you. I can hear the echo of war that clings to your coat-tails.’ He closed his eyes and smiled, relishing the moment. ‘Such dark glory. I envy you.’
The Doctor’s expression became hard and cold. ‘Don’t speak about that again.’ There was such quiet force in his voice that Godlove fell silent for a moment. ‘I want to talk to Alvin,’ the Doctor continued.
The other man shrugged. ‘I’m afraid I cannot accommodate you there, sir. I’ve taken up too much of him, y’see. Mixed and mingled, you might say, become a unity of purpose. . . ’ He smiled again and tapped the back of his head. ‘Oh, there’s a mite left over, walled away in here, left to screaming like a wounded child, but that’ll fall silent soon enough.’ He sighed. ‘I had to move things to the next stage, you understand, Doctor? Poor Alvin, he tried to interfere with my function by his imbibin’ of that filthy hydrocarbon swill he called liquor. And here in this place, why he even considered destroying me.’ Godlove held up the gun to his face and turned it in the light. The Doctor had the sudden sense that the Clade was examining itself, preening like a vain person before a mirror.
Martha moaned quietly, and Nathan bent to see to her. Godlove – or whatever he was now – glanced in her direction. The Doctor moved, standing in his way. ‘I want you to heal her,’ he said, without preamble. ‘She was hit by a Clade energy-matrix weapon set in an organic-disintegration mode.’
‘The envenomed blade,’ Godlove said airily. ‘I do so enjoy this host’s way with words.’
‘I know you can do it,’ he continued. ‘Help Martha.’
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‘Oh, I surely can,’ came the reply. ‘That much is certain.’ Godlove panned the gun over the Doctor once again and a faint orange aura issued out from it, wafting over the Time Lord, then Nathan and Martha. ‘But what’s in it for me?’ He turned and walked away. ‘You know the Clades, Doctor. Do you know how the Command Incept travel across the void?’
‘Through hyperspace in hard-pods,’ he gave a clipped reply. ‘You deploy your basic combat units, then send in the upper ranks to get the mayhem really rolling.’
‘Quite. But for a Command Clade, well. . . Each battle for us is like the first. We emerge from the pods, newborn, all pink and mewlin’!’
Godlove chuckled at his own words. ‘Our battalions imprint us with the tactical data for the war zone and we lead on. . . But me? Me?
I’ve had a different upbringin’, if you follow my implication.’
The Doctor was silent for a moment. ‘Yes. The crash was an acci-dent. The Clade was awakened from stasis before it had been fully programmed. . . Its personality template would have been unformed.’
‘Please don’t talk of me like I am not here,’ hissed Godlove. ‘Alvin, dear Alvin, he was there at the right moment to provide me with a surrogate template instead. Thanks to him, I have become more. . .
self-determinin’. Heh.’
‘Imprinting. . . ’ managed Martha. ‘Like a chick. . . Follows the first thing it sees. Thinks it’s the mother. . . ’
‘Hardly,’ Godlove seemed insulted. ‘Far more sophisticated than some mere mammalian instinct.’
‘You’ve developed your own persona,’ The Doctor nodded as he pieced it together. ‘Alvin was the on who made the first direct con-tact with the Clade’s main functions. And in return for doing what he wanted, for using the bio-engrams to heal people, it copied him. All the time he was using the Clade, it was using him, absorbing all his traits.’
Godlove gave a shallow bow. ‘And here I am. Behold the Clade.’
Nathan spat into the dark. ‘Alvin Godlove ain’t no man for anyone to design himself upon! Nothin’ but an amoral soul, steeped in greed and avarice!’
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The gun came up. ‘What is that? The squealin’ of a piglet I hear?
<
br /> You are a pathetic little example of your kind, boy. You’d be cold and dead flesh right now if not for me! Or have you forgotten what it is that saved you from a chokin’ death of smallpox?’
Nathan was on his feet in an instant. ‘You stinkin’ highbinder! You cursed me, that’s what you did! Tormented me with visions of hell and then sent those outlaws to murder my pal.’
Godlove made a contemptuous face and turned away. ‘Y’all should be on your knees, begging to give me all you have in gratitude.’
‘All I got for you is this!’ The Doctor saw the flash of hate in the boy’s eyes as he surged forward, pushing past him in a rush.
‘Nathan, don’t!’ Martha called out.
Nathan’s hand came out from under his waistcoat with a small block of metal in his trembling grip; before the Doctor could stop him, the teenager had it pressed against the back of Godlove’s neck.
It was a derringer, and the Doctor recognised it as the small pocket-pistol that Sheriff Blaine had kept locked in a glass cabinet in his living room. He chided himself; he’d seen the beginnings of a rush for revenge in Nathan’s eyes before they left Redwater, but he hadn’t thought the boy would carry a second weapon on him. He gave a disappointed sigh.
‘I’ll kill you, Godlove,’ spat Nathan. The gun was small, but it was made up of two very large calibre chambers. At point-blank range, even the healing capacity of a Clade Command Module might not be enough to repair the damage it would inflict.
The boy was trembling, his finger frozen on the trigger. The fact that he hadn’t shot Godlove straight away gave the Doctor a slim hope.
‘Nathan,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t do this. Just put the gun down and walk away.’
‘ Why?’ Tears streaked the young man’s face. ‘It’s because of him that my father is dead! He brought it all on us! Him and that godforsaken thing!’ He sucked in a shuddering breath. ‘They’re all killers. I’ve seen what they did, in the dreams a hundred times over in a hundred different places. They feed on hate, they’re parasites for misery – they don’t deserve to live!’
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Godlove was very still, the gun hand pointing away from the youth.
Any sudden movement, and the boy would jerk the trigger by reflex.
‘If I die, so will the woman. . . ’
‘Killing won’t bring your father back, Nathan.’ The Doctor held out his hand, palm up, ‘All that will do is make you like the Clades. Those nightmares you had, those belonged to someone else, and no matter how bad they were, you know they’re not yours. But if you pull that trigger, that won’t be true any more. You’ll be like them. Killing out of anger, out of spite and hatred. The blood will be on your hands.’
‘I can’t. . . ’ he gasped, holding back a sob.
‘You can,’ said the Doctor. ‘Put down the weapon. Prove that you’re better than them. Look past the hatred and think of your father. What would he want you to do?’
Nathan glanced at Martha and swallowed hard. ‘Look to those who need help.’
‘Yes.’ The Doctor stepped closer, his hand before him. ‘He’d want you to do what was right.’ He looked into the boy’s shining eyes. ‘Just say four words. I will not kill. ’
‘I will. . . not kill.’ All at once the tension came out of the youth and he let the derringer drop into the Doctor’s palm. The Doctor gave the weapon a severe look and tossed it away into the darkness.
Nathan went to a crouch at Martha’s side, begging the girl’s forgiveness. The Doctor caught an arch look of derision on Godlove’s face, and he stepped closer to the other man. ‘Don’t you dare ridicule him.
Everything he said was right. On another day, I might have turned my back and let him do it.’
‘But you didn’t,’ sniffed Godlove. ‘You were oh-so merciful, weren’t you?’
‘Because I want something from you,’ he said, steely-eyed. ‘I saved your life. Now you save Martha’s.’
Godlove took a step back and gave the Doctor a look up and down.
‘No, not just yet,’ he began. ‘First you and me are gonna deal.’
The vertical shaft was narrow and rough-hewn. Traversing down it scraped thin strips of flesh from the hands of the longriders, leaving 131
traces of watery, polluted blood on the rocky walls. Kutter fell hard the last few yards and landed poorly on a flat stone in the middle of the passageway. His leg snapped with a wet crack and he hauled himself up without any apparent evidence of pain. Tangleleg surveyed the mine tunnel they had emerged in as Kutter sat briefly, manipulating the mechanisms of his gun.
After a moment, he aimed the weapon at the broken bone and pulled the trigger. A haze of glittering energy washed over the leg and the bio-engrams worked at the damaged tissue and bone, knotting it back together. The process took longer than it should have; the hosts the two Clades had gathered for their operation on the third planet were of poor quality. The organic system of the two dead outlaws, already pushed far beyond their normal function, animated only by injections of brute power and alien technology, would soon reach the point of uselessness. Sustaining them, finding animal flesh to feed them, was becoming a problem.
Considering this, Kutter buzzed the data to Tangleleg, who replied in the affirmative. It was important that they complete the mission within the next planetary rotation. After that point, they would need to co-opt new hosts and that could prove difficult. Already, they had clogged their memory systems and combat functions with the rem-nants of the human forms they had stolen. Kutter still thought of itself as Hank Kutter to some degree, even though all that remained of that man was dead and gone. All that existed now was just a walking corpse in thrall to an intelligent weapon, masquerading as a person –and Hank Kutter’s memories and personality were just a thin layer grafted onto the predatory mind of the Combat Module. It was pure chance that the outlaw was a being with the same kind of violent nature as the Clades. It made the control easier to facilitate, gave the Clades a way to conceal themselves among the dominant species of the planet.
While Kutter repaired himself, Tangleleg found where the tunnel branched, one route falling away down a shallow incline, the other staying level. The Clade weapon’s tactical computer calculated that the objective would most likely be on the lower levels of the mine, in 132
the zones deeper underground that afforded the most protection.
But it was important to be certain. Tangleleg dropped into a crouch, peering into the darkness with his heat-ranged eyes. Against the cool blue of the rocks he spotted a faint stripe of green; a small reptile hiding behind a stone, cold-blooded but still visible to him.
Tangleleg’s hand shot out and snatched up the rattlesnake, catching the animal in the cage of his fingers. Its mouth gaped and bit at him, curved razor fangs going deep into his bloodless skin. The longrider was dimly aware of venom being deposited in his flesh, but ignored it. The millions of hair-thin wires threaded through Tangleleg’s blood vessels by the Clade would doubtless absorb the toxins, anal-yse them, perhaps even store the molecular formula on protein chain data-strings for replication, if it proved lethal enough. The Clades were always looking for new weapons, after all.
Ignoring the snake’s angry clatter, the longrider held the reptile and placed the muzzle of his gun to its head. A dozen tiny sensor cords snapped out and stabbed the animal, rooting into its nervous system. Through a secondary information feed, Tangleleg drew sensations from the dying snake’s primitive mind. The process only worked on lower phylum non-sentient animals, and then it could only drag up data from recent, short-term memories – but it was enough. Rifling through the snake’s brain as someone might flip through pages of the book, Tangleleg searched for any moment where the reptile had been disturbed by human intruders.
When he found it, he buzz-communicated to Kutter, who stood testing his weight on the newly bonded leg. The others were below them, in a cavern.
Kutter nodded and drew his gun.
Tangleleg tore the rat
tlesnake in two and handed a piece to his comrade. They ate the raw meat in silence as they walked.
The Doctor folded his arms. From the corner of his eye he could see Martha’s chest rising and falling in shallow, panting breaths. Every moment that they wasted here, she was inching closer to death. He couldn’t help but think of the look her mother had given him in the 133
aftermath of that mad night with Professor Lazarus and his experiment. . . The sheer weight of blame in her eyes, putting it all on him.
He’d wanted to promise her that her daughter would not be hurt while she travelled with him, he’d really meant it – but that didn’t count for anything now. He’d failed Martha. She was at the edge of life, and it was because of him.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. No, he told himself, I’m not losing Martha, not like this. I’m going to take her home, whole and well.
He opened his eyes and saw Godlove watching him with a sly smirk.
‘Tell me what you want,’ said the Doctor.
Nathan gaped. ‘Doc, you’re not gonna make nice with this creep?’
‘Hush up, little boy,’ Godlove sneered, ‘the menfolk are talking now.’
He reached up and picked idly at some of the decaying skin on his face. ‘Well, well. What is it that I need, I wonder?’
‘Some deodorant?’ Martha forced out the words with a defiant grimace. ‘A nice exfoliating scrub?’
Godlove ignored the jibes. ‘What I require, in return for bringin’
that sarcastic little cat of yours to rude health, Doctor, is a change of attire, if you follow my meanin’.’
‘What the heck is he babblin’ about?’ demanded Nathan.
Godlove peeled a lump of pasty, crumbly flesh from his cheek and rolled it between his fingers, eyeing it with disgust. ‘Poor, poor Alvin.
Poor, weak human. His meagre frame just ain’t built to carry the weight of me, y’see.’ He gestured with the massive gun. ‘This body is riddled with imperfections, aches and illness. It won’t last me much longer. Why, I am almost embarrassed to be seen wearin’ it in good company.’
