Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (32 page)

‘Well I had plenty of time on my hands,’ she muttered angrily.

The Doctor winced at the barbed comment. He was about to reply when there came a crash from somewhere above them.

‘They’re coming through,’ Jack cried and jumped out of the circle.

‘Jack! No!’ the Doctor bellowed.

Gilliam had already activated the device, her fingers dancing over the surface of the globe. It was too late to stop.

The emerald fire burnt brightly in the centre of each of the glass spheres, filling the cavern with icy white light, blinding the Doctor momentarily. When the lights returned to normal the circle was empty. He glanced at the symbols on the surface of the nearest sphere. Tiny images of animals danced and shifted position across the globe. The corridor was stable. Tilda, Harris, Julia 185

and all the dormant Toys would already be in London. The Doctor nodded slightly to himself in satisfaction. ‘At least they got away.’

Figures with spears were making their way down the steps near the roof of the cavern. It wouldn’t take the creatures more than a couple of minutes to reach them. Gilliam and Jack were standing close by, looking at him expectantly. Waiting for him to weave some magic.

‘So, what’s the plan?’ Gilliam asked. Jack observed that a truce appeared to have been declared in the face of a greater danger.

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘Not Plan B?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘What’s Plan B when it’s at home?’ Jack asked, puzzled.

Gilliam sighed. ‘Boy, do you have a lot to learn.’

Jack ran until he was pinched by a stitch in his side. Progress was difficult in the low tunnels and he was relieved to see that the Doctor’s old friend was looking equally exhausted. Only the Doctor, typically, showed no signs of fatigue. The Doctor shone his pocket torch back down the tunnel the way they had come.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ the Doctor muttered, his head cocked to one side.

‘But I can’t think of one good reason for them not to follow us.’

Gilliam perched on a fallen boulder and put her hands on her knees, leaning heavily upon them. ‘I’d forgotten about all the running about in dark tunnels.’

She turned to Jack. ‘He promised me a tour of all the wonders of the Universe, but it amounted to an extended pot-holing expedition.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ the Doctor scolded, as he fiddled with the torch.

‘Don’t tell me that I’m exaggerating, Doctor!’ Gilliam snapped, standing up.

Jack was surprised at how upset she sounded, as if their bickering had ignited a smouldering anger. ‘You almost got me killed in the sea caves on Thoros-Beta –’ She stopped speaking suddenly. ‘And then you left me there,’ she said, her voice suddenly small and vulnerable. ‘You left me behind.’

The Doctor froze, unable to meet her gaze. After a long moment, he said, ‘I think we’ve rested for long enough. We ought to press on.’

They were about to move when several figures floated out of the darkness ahead of them.

Jack glimpsed misshapen, bloated faces beneath the veils. The women stood all around them dressed in filthy dark robes.

‘Whoever you are,’ the Doctor said, ‘we mean you no harm.’

One of the women stepped forward. ‘We know. We’ve been watching you, Doctor.’

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‘You know my name.’ The Doctor leant forward, intrigued. ‘You have the advantage of me, I’m afraid. I don’t know who you are.’

The woman lifted her veil for a moment. It was all Jack could do to prevent himself from crying out in disgust. The woman’s features floated loosely on her face, as if there were no cartilage or bones to anchor them beneath the skin. Her eyes, nose and lips were distorted and swollen, and quivered sickeningly when she spoke.

‘Are you sure that you do not know us?’

The Doctor reached out to her, gently caressing her face with the back of his fingers. ‘The Petruska Programme. You’re the results of his experiments, aren’t you?’

‘We are Petruska. All of us. We are the brides of Moriah,’ the woman replied. She took hold of the Doctor’s wrist and pushed it away from her face, replacing her veil. ‘We do not require your sympathy, Doctor.’

‘I only wanted to show you that –’

‘We know what you wanted to do. The gesture was unnecessary and misplaced. We do not need your sympathy or your comfort.’

‘Then what do you want? What do you want of me?’

‘Only for you to continue to fight him. For you to become the agent of our revenge. Destroy him for us.’

The Doctor glanced away for a second, before meeting the woman’s gaze. ‘I will try to stop him. I will do my utmost to prevent him continuing his work.’

‘But you will not take his life?’ she said, as if she had suspected this all along.

‘Not while there is another way. While there is any other way.’

The woman nodded. ‘There is no time to argue. Our husband’s creatures are very close. Come, we will show you the way to the surface.’

The last stretch of the tunnel was an almost vertical climb. The tunnel narrowed towards the end, it was like trying to climb up the inside of a wine bottle. Twice Jack had been sure that he was completely stuck, and in danger of toppling back down. On both occasions, the Doctor had lowered his umbrella and allowed Jack to pull himself up on its handle. It was as if the Doctor could somehow sense when Jack was in difficulty.

They were nearing the patch of sky revealed at the end of the tunnel when Jack, who was bringing up the rear, caught sight of blank-faced mannequins below them. The creatures were moving quickly, scrambling up the sides of the steep tunnel with no care for where they found their footing. Several of them missed their grip and fell back only to start climbing again, immediately, their place on the rock face quickly taken by another creature.

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Jack felt a thrill of fear. They were like soldier ants, relentless and determined. He looked up at the mouth of the tunnel. He wasn’t going to make it.

If he tried to move any faster he was going to fall. Fall down amongst them.

He shivered and continued to climb.

He was within a yard of the top when he felt something grasp hold of his ankle. The grip was so tight it hurt.

‘Doctor!’

He glanced down at the empty face staring up at him. Despite having no mouth, the creature let out a whinny of triumph and started to pull him down.

Jack lost his grip on the tunnel wall and his fingers scraped over the rock, painfully. He reached up with his hand for the Doctor’s umbrella handle. It was just out of reach, the tips of his fingers brushing against it.

No chance.

‘Jack!’ The Doctor yelled, stretching down as far as he could. ‘Jack!’

When Jack caught sight of the look of impotent rage on the Doctor’s face, he realized that his friend didn’t know how to rescue him. The Doctor wasn’t going to be able to save him this time.

Bizarrely, Jack found himself wanting to apologize to the Doctor. The words were forming on his lips when something blocked the light from the tunnel mouth. At the same time, he was yanked down roughly by the creature which had now reached up and gripped hold of his belt. And then, seemingly from nowhere, strong hands gripped him under his arms. He heard the whine of a strange engine straining, and then he was shot up, out of the tunnel, like a cork from a champagne bottle.

‘It’s OK. I’ve got you,’ Gilliam said, as they bobbed up and down above the English countryside.

Jack looked down to see the Doctor staring up at them, a look of profound relief on the little man’s face. ‘You’ve got me?’ Jack asked incredulously as the wind whistled around them. ‘Then who’s got you?’ Was this somehow the Doctor’s doing? Part of his alien powers? ‘Has the Doctor got you?’

‘Yes. I guess he has,’ Gilliam said, hugging Jack tightly with one arm and adjusting the null-gravity belt controls with her other hand. ‘And he’s a lucky bastard.’

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13

Alone

Chris woke to find himself alone in the large double bed. He could hear the sounds of someone preparing food coming from downstairs. Was Patsy making him breakfast in bed? He was surprised. This was a side to her which he hadn’t encountered before.

His clothes were still scattered across the bathroom floor. Not bothering to search them out and dress, Chris made his way down to the kitchen. The elderly woman washing up took one look at his nakedness and started to scream. His immediate reaction was to move closer to the matronly woman as he tried to explain who he was. But the nearer he got the more panic-stricken she looked and the louder her screams became.

Chris was backing out of the room apologizing when he heard the front door slam. Patsy appeared a few seconds later, clutching two packets of cigarettes in her hand. She quickly stepped between them.

‘Goddess, Mrs Benham, I forgot it was your day today,’ Patsy exclaimed, and then glanced at Chris, a private, impish grin crossing her face as she ushered him out of the room.

Mrs Benham didn’t miss the look. ‘Oh I see how it is.’ Her panic vanished to be quickly replaced by outrage. ‘I’ll bet you forgot that it was my day for cleaning today! Didn’t want someone to come and disturb you in your bed of sin. What would your husband think? You little trollop. You’re dancing on Mr Burgess’s grave.’

Chris had intended to slip back upstairs, but he found himself loitering in the passage, eavesdropping on the heated argument in the kitchen. He was shocked by the old woman’s reaction. He knew both from history and from his own experience of time travel that people were still incredibly sexually repressed in the Western nations in the mid-twentieth century. He could understand the cleaning woman being shocked and distressed on suddenly encountering a naked man – nudity being such a taboo in this period. It was her bitter anger that didn’t make sense to him. Why was she so angry for Patsy to have a sexual relationship with another man? It wasn’t as if Patsy’s husband was still alive and Patsy was having a secret affair. He’d been dead for five years.

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He could hear Patsy’s voice clearly from the kitchen.

‘What I do in my own house is no business of yours, Mrs Benham.’

‘
Your
house, is it? I’ve cleaned this house for seventeen years. Seventeen years I looked after Mr Burgess. Washed his clothes and ironed his shirts. I knew you were no good for him from the first moment I clapped eyes on you.

Just after his money. For what he could do for you. And I was right. Made you a big star he did, and this is how you go and repay him. The poor man hasn’t even been dead a –’

‘That’s enough!’ Patsy interrupted, angrily. ‘That’s quite enough out of you.’

‘Oh, no it’s not nearly enough. It’s time you heard a few home truths, my girl. You’re nothing more than a common slut.’

Chris leant against the wall of the hallway, debating whether he ought to return to the kitchen and offer Patsy some support. However, he suspected that in his present state of undress he’d only be pouring petrol on the already flaming row. He was about to make his way back upstairs just as he heard Patsy give the cleaning lady her marching orders.

Before he could sneak away, Mrs Benham bustled out of the kitchen and, too angry this time to be upset by his nudity, fixed him with a venomous stare.

‘I don’t know how you can bear to touch that. . . slut. The earth’s barely settled on his coffin.’

Barely settled? Chris frowned. ‘What do you mean? Whose coffin?’

Patsy hurried out of the kitchen just as Mrs Benham shrieked, ‘You mean you don’t know? A week her husband’s been dead. A
week
! And now she’s shacked up with you. The devil’s more shame than that cow.’ She caught sight of Patsy staring at her. ‘I’ll not step foot in this house again.’

Patsy marched past her and opened the door violently. ‘Seeing as I’ve just given you the sack you won’t ever have reason to, will you? Now get out.’

‘Oh I’m leaving,’ the old woman snapped, and marched out of the house.

Patsy slammed the door after her and then leant upon it. ‘I should have done that a long time ago. Mean old witch.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you know a good cleaner? It seems that I’m suddenly in the market for one.’

Chris stared at her, trying to make sense of what had just happened. ‘She said –’ he started, his mind racing. ‘She just said –’

‘Don’t pay any attention to her.’

With deepest sympathy on your recent loss,
the card attached to the wreath had read. It was all falling into place: the wreath with the funereal message; all the flowers in the sitting room; the cleaning lady’s outrage. Robert Burgess hadn’t been dead for the last five years, he’d died a week ago.

Goddess, what kind of person was Patsy to be capable of this? And even as he asked himself the question, another voice in his head was asking him how he’d been able to become involved with someone so quickly after Roz’s death.

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‘Patsy,’ he said, quietly. ‘When did your husband die?’

‘Just leave it, Christopher, all right.’

And then he knew for certain it was true.

Jack Bartlett finished packing the last bottle of Tilda’s cheap Italian wine into a cardboard box ready to be taken down the road to the nightclub Tilda had commandeered for the party. He collapsed into one of the sagging sofa’s in the Tropics. He still couldn’t believe that the Doctor’s response to all the trouble they were in was to organize a fancy dress party.

The sofa was warm and incredibly comfortable after the drive back from Healey in the back of Tilda’s car. The journey back to London had been without incident, but still filled with tension. The Doctor and Gilliam had barely said a word to one another for the whole trip. As soon as they had arrived in London they’d gone their separate ways. The Doctor had begun to plan the party and Gilliam had left, announcing that she was going to spend the day exploring the city. The Doctor had tried to appear unaffected by Gilliam’s rejection of him, but Jack could tell that the little man was deeply upset. Jack couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the intensity of feeling between the two of them.

Jack curled up on the sofa and pulled a cushion under his head. After the events of the last few days he felt ready to sleep for a week. Maybe if he stayed quiet Tilda wouldn’t notice that he’d finished with his latest task and he’d be able to catch a quick nap. He found Tilda a deeply intimidating person.