Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building (16 page)

The Doctor and his friends stepped cautiously out onto the rooftop.

After their incarceration deep in the bowels of the building, the open air felt very strange indeed. Martha looked around and the size and brilliant white of the sky seemed far too wide and endless. Her legs wobbled slightly as she followed the Doctor across the metal floor towards the shining ship.

All around them lay the buildings and the grounds of the Dreamhome. All of it was in chaos. Tiermann’s impromptu barrier of fire was still burning away, and churning up plumes of noxious smoke. Several outer buildings had succumbed to its steady fury.

Other parts of the Dreamhome appeared to be in chaos, too, seemingly a result of the Domovoi’s madness and her systems breaking down. Servo-furnishings were dashing, hither and thither, across the grounds. They staggered and lurched without purpose between buildings. Above their heads, the tattered remnants of the force shields crackled and sparked with faint energies.

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And beyond the perimeter of the Dreamhome grounds lay the dense canopy of the frozen forestlands. From here, just one storey up, Martha could see how the wilderness spread out for many hundreds of miles. She could see the pale purple mountains at the horizon in every direction, too. And she could appreciate how sheltered they were here, in this environment. But also how, to something like the Voracious Craw, they were a sitting target.

Martha felt Barbara tugging at the sleeve of her maroon leather jacket. ‘Are you all right, Martha? You seem very disoriented. . . ’

‘I am,’ Martha told her. ‘But what about you, Barbara? You can’t feel the Domovoi coming back to life yet, can you?’

Barbara shook so that all the cans rumbled inside her. ‘Oh no. Not yet. But it can’t be long. We’ve had nearly thirteen minutes of peace from her. We can only expect another handful, at most. . . ’

The Doctor heard this, and gave them both a nod. ‘Ernest,’ he said.

‘You’ve got to get that crate of yours ready to go. Did you hear Barbara? Only a couple of minutes left.’

Martha thought that Tiermann made a pitiful sight, stooped over, and observing the wreckage of his homestead. He was a ghastly grey-green colour and, she saw, he was bleeding again. He was being propped up by Solin and Amanda.

Tiermann nodded and coughed harshly. ‘I know. We have to be quick.’ He slipped a slender remote control device out of his inner pocket. ‘I. . . It pains me to say this to you, Doctor. B-but, thank you.’

The Doctor pulled a comic face. ‘Thank me? I thought you couldn’t stick the sight of me.’

Tiermann smiled grimly. ‘But I thank you, nevertheless. We would never have made it out of the Dreamhome without you.’ He snapped the buttons on his remote control and suddenly the ship was lighting up brilliantly, and a hatch was smoothly opening. ‘My whole family will remember you and honour your name.’ As he started moving towards the waiting ship, his wife and son had to help him hobble his way there.

‘Err, Doctor,’ Martha said pointedly. ‘I’d watch out for him.’ Now the Tiermann family were several metres away. The gap between them 114

and the Doctor and Martha was opening up.

The Doctor turned to beam at her. ‘And why’s that, Martha?’ He looked bemused. ‘Do you think Professor Tiermann might be about to run out on us?’

Toaster was alarmed. He jolted forward, with his innards making a horrible clanking noise. ‘Doctor! Look at the old chancer! The way he’s scooting up the ramp!’

Barbara was shrill, clutching at the Doctor: ‘The old devil! He’s abandoning us!’

But the Doctor rocked on his heels and chuckled. ‘Yes, I thought he might. Did we really expect him to do anything else?’

Martha was appalled. She glanced again at the terrible wilderness all around them. She felt a tremendous urge to run after the Tiermanns and get aboard their craft. ‘But you can’t just let him get away. . . !’

‘Oh, I don’t see why not,’ winked the Doctor.

Now there was a scuffle at the entrance of the sparkling escape craft.

‘I don’t think it’s going to be such a smooth trip, after all,’ the Doctor said.

He was right. Over near the spaceship, Solin had become furious at what he suddenly realised his father was doing. Now his tone was heated and he was arguing with the old man. His mother was similarly riled up, and both were refusing to get aboard the ship.

‘But they saved our lives!’ Amanda was insisting. ‘We can’t just leave them here to that terrible thing. . . ’

‘Why not?’ spat Tiermann harshly. ‘And besides, it was me – Me! –who saved your lives!’

The Doctor wandered casually towards the scene of this domes-tic struggle, seemingly without a care in the world. Martha and the robots came after him. Martha could tell that Barbara was agitated.

She was whispering to herself in her hollow, electronic voice: ‘She’s coming back! She’s on her way back!’

Now the Doctor stopped, with a final few metres between himself and Ernest Tiermann. He coughed mildly, in order to gain their atten-115

tion. ‘I knew you’d do this, Ernie, me old mucker. I knew you’d sell us out in the end.’

Tiermann snarled and shouted back. ‘When it comes down to it, a man must look after his family. That’s all that matters.’

‘And your Servo-furnishings? Were they not part of your family, after all this time?’ The Doctor gestured to the damaged Toaster and the gibbering Barbara. They made a pitiful sight.

‘We’ve been through this,’ Tiermann said. ‘They were toys. Devices.

Not blood relations. Easily replaceable.’

Barbara was struggling with herself: with her conscience and her programming. She managed to burst out with: ‘You are a very horrible old man.’

Tiermann laughed at this. Then he spat out a mouthful of what looked to Martha like engine oil. ‘We’re going now. There isn’t long before the Domovoi seals this place up again. We’d best leave this world behind.’ Now he made a great show of looking ever so regretful.

‘If only we had more room aboard our ship. If only we could take a greater mass. But I’m afraid we can’t, Doctor.’

The Doctor shrugged and smiled pleasantly. Martha darted him a look. When he was this cocky it meant he had a plan. Didn’t it? She narrowed her eyes at him and wanted to shake him. He did have a plan, didn’t he?

Solin stepped away from the ship. ‘If you’re not taking them, I’m not coming either.’

‘Solin, no!’ Amanda yelled, grasping hold of him. ‘Ernest, you can’t let him!’

‘I mean it,’ Solin said, extricating himself. ‘I’m not going with you.

I’d rather perish here than set off aboard that thing with you.’

Amanda was wretched with tears. ‘Please, Solin, Ernest, please. . . ’

Tiermann sighed. He turned and punched his son in the face.

Martha jumped. The Doctor started to dart forward. But they were too late – desperation gave Tierinann extra speed. They could only watch as Solin sagged unconscious to the ground and his father took hold of him. Tiermann commanded his wife to help drag their son aboard the ship. Sobbing, horrified, she obeyed.

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Tiermann hit another switch on his remote and the ship’s engines started to purr. Very softly, but powerfully, the escape ship was powering up.

They heard Amanda raise her voice against her husband. Perhaps the first time she had ever mustered the courage to do so. ‘I won’t forget this, Ernest! May the blessed Domovoi forgive you for this!’

And then she and her son were swallowed up in the darkness of the ship’s interior. And then there was only Tiermann, standing on the ramp as it began to slide shut. He was grinning and waving at them triumphantly. ‘Goodbye, Doctor!’

‘You’ll regret this,’ the Doctor said, and even though his voice was soft, it carried across the windy rooftop. ‘No second chances, Tiermann,’ he added, resolutely.

Then the hatch clanged shut. The engine noise increased in pitch.

Martha turned to the Doctor. ‘You have got a plan, haven’t you?’

‘Er,’ he said. ‘TARDIS. Mad dash. Escape. Nick of time. That kind of thing.’

She blinked. Distinctly unimpressed. ‘Right. Is that it?’

‘It’ll do, won’t it?’

‘Doctor! Martha!’ Barbara called. She had to shout over the noise of the Tiermann ship by now. ‘The Domovoi! She is back online! Her influence. . . !’

‘Whoops,’ said the Doctor.

Just at that moment the sleek ship lifted smartly away from the rooftop. It hovered gently for a few moments. ‘Doctor!’ Martha yelled, noticing that the flickering of the ruined force shields was intensifying.

‘The Domovoi’s attempting to mend the shield again. . . ’ the Doctor gasped.

‘She’s going to prevent the ship from taking off?’ Martha said.

He nodded tersely. They all watched the shields crazing over with liquid purple flames. And the ship was starting to lift, and to strain against the sky. . .

‘She’s trying to bring them back down to earth again. . . ’ said the Doctor. Then he dived into action. ‘Come on! We can’t stay up here!

We’ve got to get down there. Back to ground level. When she realises 117

where we are, still alive, she’ll have our guts for garters! Come on, while she’s distracted by Tiermann’s ship! RUN!!’

The three members of the Tiermann family were struggling hard to stay on their feet. Tiermann himself was clinging to the main bank of controls. He was jabbing away at the gleaming bank of inscrutable panels; trying to feed more and more power to the straining engines.

The whole, narrow interior of the jet-black ship was shrieking in the struggle. Conscious again, but woozy, Solin held onto the padded chairs for grim life with his mother beside him. Their ears were crackling and whining with the raucous din.

Tiermann was yelling something, they couldn’t hear what. The emergency lights were flickering madly. The ship bucked and lurched like a rodeo bull and Solin had guessed why.

The Domovoi wasn’t going to let them go without a fight.

She had cast the broken force shields over them like a deadly web.

She was exerting her tractor beams and snaring them. Trying to pull them back down. It felt like a vast, invisible claw had reached up from the depths of the Dreamhome to grab a hold of their furious little ship.

And they were being clawed back down to earth. . .

Solin watched as his mother held out her hand to him. She grasped his fingers for a moment and, even in all the terrible noise and confusion, managed to give him a tender squeeze of affection. It was like she was saying goodbye, he suddenly thought: this gesture, which was about as demonstrative as anyone in the Tiermann family had ever been.

‘Mum, no!’ he yelled out, straining over the noise, trying to guess what his mother was up to.

She was swaying on her legs as she stood up, against the sloping floor. She lurched from chair to chair, towards the bank of controls where Tiermann was working furiously.

‘Mum, what are you doing?’ Solin shouted again, but the whining cacophony of the ship had gone up a pitch and he had to stop.

All he could do was watch as his mother grasped hold of his father.

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She was trying to drag him away from the control console. But why? Why would she do that?

Ernest Tiermann snarled and turned savagely on his wife. ‘What are you trying to do?’ he shouted. ‘Leave me to –’

‘No, Ernest,’ Amanda howled in his face. ‘We can’t escape! It is too late now! We shouldn’t even try to escape!’

Tiermann’s face darkened and his features twisted in contempt at her. ‘This is the Domovoi speaking through you! You are letting her take you over!’

‘No. . . nooo!’ Amanda screeched, horrified at the very thought.

The ship’s sleek nose tilted again, and threw her slight body against her husband’s. He had hold of one of her arms and was twisting it, trying to push her away from the delicate controls. Could he be right?

Terrible doubt flashed through her mind. Was she being taken over?

Was she doing the right thing? More than anything, she wanted to do the right thing. . .

‘You are wrong, Ernest,’ she said, breathlessly.

‘You have been

wrong. . . about everything.’

And then, with an almost superhuman burst of strength, Amanda Tiermann thrust herself forward. She burst out of her astonished husband’s firm grip, and fell sideways onto the controls.

They flamed around her, instantly, on impact: all of that delicate coloured glass and crystal. She was a blackened, buckled silhouette, face-first in the spitting circuitry.

Tiermann was flung against his pilot’s seat. He knew in an instant that the damage to both his ship and his wife was irreparable.

‘Mum!’ Solin cried, leaping forward. He hadn’t heard his parents’

exchange. He had only seen the results.

What had she done?

‘She has murdered us all,’ Tiermann said, very quietly.

The Doctor and his friends had managed to make it down to the gardens in relative safety. The newly restored Domovoi was far too engaged with dragging the Tiermann spaceship back to earth to even notice that two humanoids and two robots were descending from the 119

roof, dashing through the corridors of the Dreamhome, and making their way out onto the lawn.

Martha felt a wave of giddy relief go through her. She was back on solid ground. Out of the house. It had seemed an age they had been locked inside. More than once she had thought that they would never get out.

Don’t celebrate too soon, she told herself. There’s still a burning force shield to get through; a wilderness of monsters waiting for us. . .

oh, and the Voracious Craw itself. Best not to get too complacent, eh?

She looked up. The sky was filled with horrible noise. It was black with evil-looking fumes and lances of pale flame. The silver ship of the Tiermann clan was straining and buckling. . .

‘Oh dear,’ said Barbara hollowly, as the Doctor came bringing up the rear.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, looking up also. ‘That wasn’t meant to happen!’

His face was riven with anxiety. ‘What’s happening to them? Why aren’t they getting away?’

‘The Domovoi is winning. . . ’ Toaster said gloomily. ‘She’s pulling them back down. . . !’