Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building (18 page)

The flames crackled, considered, and finally quavered with laughter. ‘Very well then, my master,’ she said, sardonically. ‘Let us fight to the death. It will help pass the time. I suppose.’ The Domovoi 127

appeared to concentrate, and the black holes of her eyes narrowed evilly.

Tiermann heard a thump behind him. He jumped and swung his body round.

The Domovoi was wasting no time. What would she send after him?

The Servo-furnishings? No matter. Tiermann was ready to fight. He was ready to perish, doing battle with his own creations. . . It was all the same to him.

He balked then, frozen to the spot, when he saw what – or rather, who – it was that the Domovoi was sending to fight him.

‘Nooooo,’ moaned Tiermann, appalled.

His dead wife was sitting upright on the bloody chaise longue. She was like a puppet with half its strings snapped. She was animated by the sheer hatred of the Domovoi. The fleshly part of her form hung limply. But that which was robotic was alert, deadly. . . and crackling with malign energy. . .

‘Ernest,’ Amanda said, in a curiously flat voice. ‘Come to me, Ernest, my love. . . ’

‘NOOOO!’ Tiermann howled at the Domovoi. The super-computer’s laughter rang shrilly in his ears. Amanda was standing now. She was lurching horribly towards her husband.

And he just knew that he would have to do battle with her. It was that, or give in to the Domovoi. And that was something that Ernest Tiermann was still not ready to do.

128

When they set off into the woods dusk was coming down. A dense mist was rolling between the trees and the air was crackling with frost.

The Doctor tried to jolly them along in his usual way, but he knew it was hard for Solin, Barbara and Toaster. Especially for the elderly robots, who had never been very far from home in all their lives. The two of them were wheezing and clanking through the trees, staring round at their new environment in frank, appalled amazement.

‘How far away did you say this ship of yours was, Doctor?’ asked Toaster. His blue bulbs flashed in the sepulchral gloom.

‘Not too far,’ grinned the Doctor breezily. ‘Not very far at all, actually. It was quite a pleasant little stroll yesterday, wasn’t it, Martha?’

She grinned at him, agreeing, though that wasn’t quite how she remembered it. She and Solin were busy helping Barbara to lift her bulk over a gnarled tangle of tree roots. ‘Oh dear.’ Barbara laughed nervously. ‘I don’t’ think I was built for gadding about in the jungle. . . ’

She tried to keep the despair out of her tinny voice. ‘What about a little rest? Crisps anyone? A Nutty-Coated Mint-Chocolate Crunch Surprise?’

129

They paused for a while, and Martha could see the Doctor becoming impatient and worried. He sniffed the air, and stared up into the interlaced canopy of branches, dark against the sky. How long did they have, he was wondering. How long before the Craw swept overhead, devouring everything in sight? He had estimated the middle of this night. But now that night was approaching, Martha could see how vague his estimate was. How many hours did that give them to hack their way through the trees, and back to the TARDIS? How long could they afford to hang around for the sake of the two robots?

Barbara must have caught Martha’s worried expression.

‘Come

along, then!’ the vending machine cried, with false heartiness. ‘We’d best be getting on.’

More laborious hours passed, with the Doctor leading the way through the miasma of wintry fog, and the thickets of savage thorns.

He regaled them with tales of Desperate Journeys and Foul Dangers he had faced before, in the course of his Very Long Life. ‘Of course, this is a complete doddle, compared with most of the hair-raising scrapes I get involved in. Isn’t that true, Martha? We’ve been through some quite revolting escapades together, haven’t we? They were much more anxiety-inducing than this one, weren’t they?’

She had to nod. ‘Oh, they were indeed,’ she said. ‘I’ve been stuck on the moon with the Judoon, I have,’ she told the others. ‘And caught in a gridlock in the year five billion and fifty-three, and just about plunged into the heart of a living sun. And you know what? There always comes a point – just before things start to work out – that you think there’s nothing you can possibly do to save yourself in time.’

‘And it always works, doesn’t it?’ the Doctor grinned. ‘We always pull through in the end. Now. . . this particular forest. It doesn’t scare me! Not after seeing the likes of the dead forests of Skaro after the neutron bomb, or. . . ’

‘Erm, Doctor,’ interrupted Toaster, in a quavering voice. ‘Can you hear that?’

The Doctor seemed piqued at having his flow of reminiscence halted. He frowned. They all listened. There was a chattering noise, somewhere nearby. Getting closer, perhaps. A whirring, beating noise.

130

Like wings.

‘It’s nothing,’ said the Doctor. ‘Mind you, have you noticed how few animal and bird sounds we’ve heard in this forest? Yesterday it was alive with them! Seething with animal sounds, just like Prospero’s is-land! But today. . . zilch! Hardly a single beastie in the joint. They’ve all cleared out, haven’t they? They know what’s good for them. Got more sense than people, they have –’

Suddenly Solin rounded on him furiously. ‘Will you just shut up, Doctor?’

This made the rest of them jump. Solin looked furious. His fists were bunched at his sides. His body was braced for violence. He had chosen the jabbering Doctor as his target.

The Doctor stared at him, and softened his voice, ‘Solin. . .

I. . .

You’re grieving. You’re in shock. Look, come on. Don’t lose your rag now.’

‘I don’t need to hear you wittering on and on. . . ’ the boy yelled.

‘I know, I know,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s one of my worst traits, I think.

I get the verbal runs sometimes, don’t I, Martha? But I was just doing it to keep morale up. . . ’

‘Solin’s been through a lot, Doctor,’ Martha said. She approached them warily. She could see that Solin was near cracking point. And no wonder. Seeing his father go crazy like that. His whole home just about destroyed by the malign being at its heart. And, to top it all, to see his mother’s shattered, broken body dragged out of the wreckage.

It was a wonder he wasn’t a sobbing heap. ‘Come on, Solin,’ she told him. ‘You can do it.’

The boy’s eyes darted to her. ‘Martha, I. . . ’

‘I know,’ she said, and gave him a hug.

The Doctor stepped back and left them to it. He frowned at the robots. ‘Can you both hear that noise still? I think it’s getting louder, isn’t it?’

The robots tilted their heads and it was suddenly obvious. There was a steady kerfuffle of beating wings approaching their clearing in the twilit forest. Millions of wings. Millions of beating, leathery wings.

‘Birds?’ the Doctor said. ‘But they’re not singing or. . . ’

131

They were making a shrill, piercing song.

‘Bats,’ he said, and looked up into the trees.

‘Oh dear.’ Toaster said, ‘They appear to be giant albino bats, Doctor.

Very nasty, from all accounts.’

‘Just what we need. Do you think they’ll attack?’ Barbara was trying to contact the data banks she was still connected to. The info-rush was sporadic, but: ‘They live deep under the forest. They were the last to realise about the Craw’s approach. And they are absolutely ravenous.’

Now they were having to raise their voices above the noise of the roused chiropterans. The Doctor could see their burning red eyes and their shaggy, yellowish hides. The leathery skin of their wings was almost translucent as they ducked and wove on the murky air.

Martha managed to disengage herself from Solin who, she found, was hugging her for slightly too long. ‘Killer bats?’ she said.

‘I’m afraid so,’ the Doctor sighed.

She glanced around for inspiration. ‘What about igniting rotten and mouldy fungus with your sonic and making some kind of explosion?’

He raised his eyebrow. ‘Good thinking! But it’s all frozen, not mouldy.’

She thought again. ‘What about. . . um. . . running away?’

‘I think it’s our best shot,’ the Doctor said.

‘Wait!’ Solin jerked into life again. He turned to Toaster. ‘Did you say albino bats?’

‘I did, young master,’ Toaster said. ‘They’ve come up from the Lost Caverns beneath the forest.’

They were starting to dive-bomb now. One or two of the hungriest came scything down into the glade. Their wings ripped through the air, whishing like razors. The bats were as big as toddlers and they had horrible, baby-like faces, haggard with hunger.

Solin told Toaster: ‘Then it’s up to you to get rid of them.’

‘Me, sir?’ Toaster said, appalled.

The Doctor jolted and grinned. ‘He’s right! Of course, he’s right!’

‘How do you mean, Doctor?’ Barbara asked, just as perplexed as the sun bed was.

132

‘Toaster!’ the Doctor said. ‘Do what you’re best at. Do what you were made to do! Tan their hides! FLASH!!’

This was Toaster’s star moment, they all decided afterwards. He briskly took charge, and told his fellow travellers to hide themselves behind the bulk of a fallen log. Then he bravely took up position in the centre of the clearing and shouted to draw the attention of his enemies.

They were really nasty-looking things, Martha thought, as she peered around the edge of the frozen barricade. She had seen some pretty horrible alien nasties during her time aboard the TARDIS, but there was something particularly creepy about these pale and feral bat-babies dive-bombing them from above. They were shrieking with glee as they skittered and wheeled above Toaster. At first he merely waved his shaky metal arms at them, his joints clanking and groaning dreadfully. The creatures were wary and held their distance, before deciding that the old robot was no kind of a threat to them. He was just a nuisance, keeping them momentarily from the fleshy, blood-filled bodies hiding in the undergrowth. They would soon deal with the robot.

‘Shoo! Shoo! Get away! Avaunt and avast, demons from the deeps!’

Toaster was shouting gallantly. But the winged and fanged creatures were getting closer and closer to him. Their skinny claws were reaching out as they swept over his head and they were pulling at him, clawing him. With a sudden sickening feeling, Toaster realised that they had enough strength between them to tear him into pieces.

But he was here to protect the others. He had a very specific and important mission, and so he couldn’t lose his nerve now.

Martha hissed at the Doctor: ‘We’d better get over there and help him. He can’t withstand them much longer. . . ’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘He stands a better chance than the rest of us, with that metal body of his. And besides, he hasn’t tried his party piece yet.’ The Doctor coughed dramatically and raised his voice: ‘Now, Toaster! Do it now!!’

‘What?’ the sun bed cried back. ‘Ouf.’ One of the bats shoved 133

him sideways and clipped him with its scaly wing as they soared up again, laughing into the canopy of trees. Now all the bat-babies were treating Toaster simply as a joke. They were taunting him. Making him wheel about and stagger. They were enjoying themselves and his distress quite maliciously.

But then Toaster remembered what he had to do.

The bats came swirling around him in a tornado of white bodies with vicious wings. Toaster stared up into their burning eyes of pink and scarlet. And-

‘FLASH! FF-LLAAA-SSSHHH!’

He set off his light tubes at the highest possible setting.

Even his friends, hiding behind their log, had to duck and shield their eyes from that brilliant, incandescent blue explosion of light.

The whole forest clearing turned to searing white for a second or two.

And it took everyone’s eyesight a moment to recover.

‘Aha!’ Toaster bellowed. He was elated with his success.

His light bulbs had been far more effective than even he had expected. The bat-babies were wailing and shrieking and reeling, blinded, through the air. Some of the ones closest to the gallant sun bed had even had their delicate wings scorched.

‘I warned you!’ Toaster declaimed. ‘I’ll do it again!’ The bats gibbered and skittered. They tried to get away. Only a few foolhardy creatures snarled and tried, once more, to attack him, claws outstretched, wings unfurled. . . infant fangs gleaming. . .

Toaster did it again. ‘FFFLLAAASSSHHH!!!’

And, once more, the forest went white and black for an instant.

Bat screams filled the air. This time it had really been too much for them. There was a thump, thump, thump, as several specimens fell unconscious to the frosty ground. Others, luckier perhaps, managed to sweep themselves up, out of the clearing.

‘They’re giving up! They’re going!’ Barbara screeched, from her hiding place.

‘You did it!’ Martha shouted, jumping up.

‘Unbelievable,’ Solin said, shaking his head, with a rueful grin. The bats were really gone, apart from those few who lay with tattered 134

wings on the ground. They were gruesome, white-furred things. Horrible, puckered faces. Solin tried not to look at them as he dashed after the Doctor, Martha and Barbara, who were racing across the glade to congratulate Toaster.