Doctor Who (23 page)

Snapping back upright, the Doctor tried to pull
himself together. He stared back at the Dalek Litigator again and, to his horror, he realised it had transformed into something else. Another Dalek, but a Dalek whose casing seemed to shift constantly in colour and shape. Across the grating, rotating rings, like compressed versions of those of a gas giant planet spun unfathomably.

‘The Dalek Time Controller,’ the Doctor said, the words almost choking in his throat. ‘I should have known.’

‘You – know – me?’ the Dalek Time Controller asked, with a far less mechanical voice than any other Dalek known to the Doctor.

‘Oh yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘But don’t expect me to tell you how or why. That’ll be for you to find out, one day. Sorry, secrets of a Time Lord, I’m afraid. So, you were behind all this. Of course you were.’

‘Now, you will activate the toy,’ instructed the Time Controller.

‘The funny thing is,’ said the Doctor, starting to chuckle to himself, ‘I don’t actually know how it works. When we were here before, it must have just sort of started doing stuff. We didn’t do anything clever, did we, Ollus?’

Without warning, Ollus leapt forward towards the Doctor and snatched the toy from him. He raised his hand high in the air as if to smash the little spaceship down, then froze, as if all his nerves and muscles had locked into place.

‘No, Ollus!’ the Doctor called out. ‘You idiot! You’ve touched it!’

All at once, a deep rumbling sound erupted from behind them all. The Doctor, the Time Controller and everyone else turned to the Cradle of the Gods. The giant stones were shifting. Shafts of light were bursting forth from it. Energy was fizzing all over the structure. The power was growing and growing as every minute passed.

‘It wasn’t just the toy,’ said the Doctor to Ollus and Sabel. ‘I felt it … when this happened before. It gets into your mind. The toy is just the conduit. The technology of the Cradle is activated through your minds, through all the fragments of your parents’ research hiding in there, in long-forgotten memories. The actual codes your father recorded and put in the toy’s simple little memory form the key that unlocks those fragments. Mental power is what the Cradle feeds on!’

Ollus winced, cried out and then collapsed, still holding the toy. He started to sob. Sabel was putting a hand to her head, clearly experiencing some pain too.

‘It’s affecting both of you,’ said the Doctor, kneeling to comfort Ollus. The Doctor threw a glance at Jenibeth, who had been standing stock still throughout, as if her mind had been switched off. For a moment, he thought he saw her face twitch.

Then another crash from the Cradle drew the Doctor’s attention away. The stones had moved and locked into an entirely new formation. At the front of the monument, facing them, was a large alcove, covered in glowing symbols.

‘Hogoosta’s research gave us the way of programming the Cradle,’ announced the Time
Controller, triumphantly. It began to glide towards the control alcove. ‘All we needed was the activation code.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ shouted the Doctor at the Controller’s back. He was now steadying poor Sabel, who had fallen to her knees, sobbing.

‘Once programmed, the Cradle will transmit an energy wave across the Sunlight Worlds, converting the raw atomic material we invested in those planets into a billion Skaros, teeming with Dalek life!’

The Time Controller reached the alcove, clamping its suction cup in sequence to the many and varied control indentations. Immediately, the Cradle started to react, with deep rumbles of power shuddering through it.

‘Atomic material,’ muttered the Doctor in disgust. ‘That’s all those people and their ideal Sunlight Worlds were for you, weren’t they? Just a collection of matter, some of it intelligent and organic, to be reprogrammed by this … this obscenity!’

The Dalek Time Controller continued making its adjustments, ignoring the Doctor now.

‘I remember.’

The Doctor, Sabel and Ollus turned. It was the voice of Jenibeth.

‘I remember being here before,’ she muttered, a tear falling down her face. She turned to face the others. ‘Sabel! Ollus!’ she uttered, in sheer joy.

‘She remembers?’ asked Ollus. ‘Is that possible, after what the Daleks have done to her?’

The Doctor glanced from Jenibeth to the Cradle and back again. ‘Yes,’ he proclaimed, a broad smile growing across his face. ‘Yes! It’s the energy from the Cradle. It’s
getting into her mind. A mind preserved by the Dalek nanogenes. A strong, young mind.’

‘I remember … everything sparkled here,’ said Jenibeth. ‘Then you all left me. I was all alone for so long. So very long.’

Sabel struggled to her feet and ran to her sister, embracing her. ‘Oh, Jenibeth, how did you survive all this time?’

‘You told me to think of jelly blobs,’ said Jenibeth simply, starting to smile. ‘That’s what I did. All the time. I think … think of them all the time.’

Despite sounding like an old woman, her voice and manner had a childlike quality, the Doctor realised. Imprisoned by the Daleks for a whole lifetime, she had had no education, no adult life. All she had had to sustain her were childish thoughts of her favourite thing. Jelly blobs.

Sabel gripped her sister even tighter, looking over her shoulder at the Doctor, her tears still flowing. Another personal tragedy caused by the Daleks, the Doctor thought. They never stopped causing tragedies of any and every magnitude. It was their speciality and he hated them for it. Hated them like he knew he could never hate anything else.

‘What have you done?’ came the sudden, accusing, shrill tones of the Dalek Time Controller.

The Doctor turned round to see the Time Controller disengaging from the Cradle’s controls.

‘Oh dear,’ laughed the Doctor. ‘Having a bit of trouble, are we?’

‘Come here or I will exterminate you!’ commanded
the Dalek, its voice wracked with frustration.

‘Don’t help them,’ gasped Ollus, struggling to stand up as the Doctor walked slowly across the sand to the monument.

‘I won’t,’ whispered the Doctor as he passed Ollus, winking.

The Doctor walked right into the control alcove.

‘May I?’ he asked the Dalek Time Controller. The Dalek moved out of his way so that the Doctor could get to the controls. Taking a deep breath, he put both his hands on a couple of the glowing symbols.

Immediately, the Doctor felt the same, intrusive sensation in his mind that he had felt that last time he had been on Gethria, when the Cradle had started to activate then. Something was burrowing into his thoughts. But this time it was different, he was starting to see something, a thought solidifying into a solid image.

Then he started to laugh.

‘What is it?’ asked the Time Controller, clearly irritated. ‘Do not make that disagreeable noise!’

‘I’m sorry,’ gasped the Doctor, containing his laughter. ‘I just saw something in my head. Something this gigantic piece of planet-creating technology is singularly concentrating on. Something big and colourful and … juicy!’

‘I do not understand!’ said the Controller, its eye lens shining brighter than ever, the lights on its dome burning with rage.

‘This technology has fixed onto the strongest mind here containing fragments of its activation code,’ said
the Doctor, leaning close to the Dalek, spitting the words at it through gritted teeth. ‘Jenibeth’s. The mind you left in a childlike state for a whole lifetime. A mind you tortured through solitude and imprisonment. A poor young girl whose only escape from her endless incarceration was her one childish pleasure. Jelly blobs!’

‘Jelly …?’ the Dalek Time Controller swivelled its dome uncomprehendingly.

‘Sweets! Big jelly blob sweets!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘This great, planet-creating bit of ancient machinery is about to take all your carefully prepared atomic material on the Sunlight Worlds and turn it into a load of planet-sized jelly blobs! Not quite your plan, eh? Extreme Confectionary Death of the Daleks!’

‘Alter the programming immediately!’ the Dalek demanded.

‘No!’ said the Doctor. ‘Why should I? Anyway, I don’t know how. Oh …’

And then he suddenly realized …

‘A billion Skaros may have just been avoided, but the conversion of the Sunlight Worlds into giant jelly blobs is still going to wipe out countless billions of lives. Oh dear.’

‘So be it!’ Clearly the Time Controller had reached the same conclusion. ‘The Sunlight Worlds will be destroyed. The human empire’s economy and social fabric will collapse. Humanity will suffer!’

‘Oh, listen to yourself,’ the Doctor said in disgust. ‘Glorying in the suffering of others. You sicken me.’

‘Thus weakened,’ concluded the Dalek, ‘the human race will easily be conquered by the Daleks!’

‘Pretty happy with Plan B, then, are we?’ said the Doctor. ‘Well,
I’m not
!’

Straight away, the Doctor started working on the Cradle’s controls as the hum of its power started to rise in pitch and grow in intensity. It wasn’t going to be long now before the Cradle sent forth its deadly wave of matter-converting energy.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded the Time Controller.

‘Er … nothing,’ lied the Doctor, as he quickly operated the controls in the most illogical sequence he could think of. Suddenly, the image of jelly blobs in his mind changed to a raging, chaotic maelstrom of exploding energy. ‘Ah,’ concluded the Doctor. ‘Actually, I think I may have just set it to self-destruct.’

Immediately, the Dalek Time Controller aimed its weapon at the Doctor. Seeing this, the Doctor cringed helplessly and closed his eyes.

There was the searing, blasting sound of the Dalek gun firing.

Then …

Nothing.

The Doctor opened his eyes, surprised that he was still alive. The Dalek Time Controller was moving rapidly away. The Doctor looked around, bamboozled about what had actually happened.

Then he saw Jenibeth, standing close by, her hand outstretched, the Dalek gun protruding from it. She fired again and made a direct hit. A fizz of garish blue, sizzling energy engulfed the Time Controller. It clearly had extra force-field shielding, or maybe it was its connection with
the Time Vortex that was protecting it. The Doctor had no idea, but he could see that the Time Controller was anything but keen about being shot again.

‘Under attack!’ it was screeching. ‘Exterminate! Exterminate them all!’

The other Daleks started to open fire.

With remarkable agility, Jenibeth leapt up into the air, tumbling, firing repeatedly. Her beams lanced expertly into four of the six attacking Daleks, cutting open their casings and frying the mutant creatures inside.

The Doctor heard their shrieking death throes as he frantically recommenced his work on the ancient Cradle technology. The trouble was, he had just
stumbled
upon a way to make it blow up – he was good at making things blow up, he had had a lot of experience. But now, he had no idea what he was doing.

‘Get down, Sabel! Ollus!’ Jenibeth was crying out as she opened fire again.

The remaining two Daleks and the Dalek Time Controller immediately elevated, flying up into the air to gain tactical advantage, firing down at Jenibeth. An impact explosion behind her knocked her flat to the ground. She crawled for cover behind a rock, firing up and destroying her attacker with one blast.

‘Leave them!’ commanded the Dalek Time Controller, heading for the Dalek saucer. ‘Leave them all to die!’

The surviving Dalek drone obeyed immediately and headed straight into the saucer. Following it, the Dalek Time Controller swivelled its mid-section and fired back one shot before it disappeared into its spacecraft. The beam was still lancing towards its target as the saucer’s
power activated and the great ship started to lift off.

The beam bounced into the structure of the monument and then deflected downwards, hitting Jenibeth full in the chest.

Jenibeth could see the sky. She was cold.

Then faces moved in front of the sky. Three faces. One was a young man. The other two were old.

‘There’s only one chance,’ the young man was saying. ‘The Cradle may still be locked into Jenibeth’s mind.’

He had said ‘Jenibeth’. He must know her, she thought.

‘It may still be taking its atomic matter conversion settings from her. If she concentrates hard enough, she may be able to override the self-destruct,’ the man was saying.

‘What are you thinking about, Jenibeth?’ asked the old man.

‘Can you hear us?’ asked the old woman. ‘I think she’s gone, Doctor.’ The old woman cried. Her tears fell down onto Jenibeth’s face, splattering, wet.

‘Jelly blobs,’ Jenibeth felt herself say. Her voice sounded old and gravelly. Strange. ‘I’m thinking of jelly blobs. Sabel told me to think of them.’

‘We’ve got to get her to think about something else,’ said the man the old lady had called ‘Doctor’. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, seeming to be very pleased indeed. But everything was getting quiet now. The sky seemed to be getting darker. She couldn’t hear anything else the man was saying.

Then suddenly, just when she thought she would drift off to sleep, she heard a voice so close to her that she felt her eyes open with a start. Then another voice. A voice either side of her. Two old, kindly voices and they were saying such wonderful things.

They were telling her a story of worlds where the sun always shone, where the people were happy. Where you could live a whole life in contentment. They told her of their lives there and how happy and comfortable they had been.

They had, they said, only one sadness … That their mother, father and sister had been lost to them. And as she listened more and more to the lovely story the warm voices were telling her, she realised she was part of this story; that they were
her
parents that were lost and that
she
was the sister these voices had missed so much.

And just as everything seemed so cold and dark and that she would stop thinking altogether, she felt herself engulfed in such a warmth as she had never felt before. Yet, somehow, it felt right. It felt like the best kind of warmth and happiness there could ever be.

Suddenly, everything felt new.