Doctor Who: Combat Rock (24 page)

Something glinted from amongst the dirty white bones, and in spite of his revulsion, he stepped forward to examine the gruesome tree shrine more closely. The spinal column dangled loosely against the bark, and the glint came from an object twined around the vertebrae. A rosary.

‘Preacher men always disappear in jungle,’ Santi said with a small voice.

‘Well now you know what happens to them.’

‘Hey, you shut up your mouth! Santi not like. Bad spirits here.’

‘I thought you Indoni were above all that superstitious nonsense, remember?’ But he could see she was obviously frightened, and patted her comfortingly on the arm.’

‘
Cannibal
.’ She pronounced the last syllable to rhyme with ‘pal’, just like seemingly everyone else in this damn jungle, thought Jamie, a little unnerved nevertheless.

‘We must leave here. This place no
good
!’

‘I know: hatty hatty.’

Santi was already marching across the glade, heading for a gap in the trees across from where they’d entered. She was just about to push aside a large leaf bending outwards like a huge green tongue when a hand beat her to it. A brown hand, belonging to a brown man who appeared from behind the leaf.

He had short tight curls, a flat nose, and staring, staring eyes.

He wore nothing apart from leaves gummed around his penis.

In his right hand he clutched a gnarled bone knife; in the other, a bow. On his back he carried a sheaf of long makeshift arrows.

Jamie snatched Santi’s hand and pulled her hurriedly in the opposite direction. Three more warriors emerged from the bushes to bar their way. One of them placed an arrow to his bow, the animal gut string pulled back behind his ear. The tip was pointing right at Jamie’s heart.

The river was a wash of gold in the late afternoon light, and Wemus was in love.

He could barely take his eyes off Wina, and his rowing was suffering as a result. She smiled coyly back at him every time he grinned at her, and more than once he reached out to touch her hand fleetingly. He must be more handsome than he had thought, he congratulated himself warmly. He’d always known he was witty and charming, adventurous and bold; but he was obviously a sexual magnet too.

‘You’re a buffoon, Wemus.’

Kepennis was shaking his head at his friend in disgust.

‘Hey, you should be happy for me!’

‘That whor–’ he stopped himself with admirable self-control, ‘That
woman
will see you dead.’

Wemus ignored him and, resting his oar, reached for Wina instead. She welcomed his embrace, her eyes flashing. They kissed, and Wemus was on fire. His lips felt alive and throbbing as he briefly moved his mouth away and then went back for more.

Thunk!

Wemus collapsed against the side of the canoe, his head an explosion of pain. One of the guerrillas had finally had enough of his amorous interludes and was now making a point of reminding them they were hostages and not on a love cruise.

‘Row!’

Wina leant forward to rub Wemus’s head for him, only to be pried away by the same oar that had interrupted their passion. A snickering came from behind. Drew was guffawing openly, leaning over his oar to enjoy the show.

Wina stood up in the canoe, rocking it dangerously. She trembled with rage as she pointed a finger at the white man.

‘Hey, screw you man! You not even man. You rat worm
rubbish
! You make my friend killed. I kill
you
now!’ She looked as though she would do it too.

‘Enough!’ The voice came from aft of the canoe. Tigus was stepping over the sacks of provisions towards them, a rifle pointed at Wina.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ added Drew. ‘Sit down, shut up. And you sound more and more like your buddy Santi all the time.

What happened to your etiquette, bitch?’

Tigus moved the barrel of his rifle so it nestled behind Drew’s ear. He shut up and resumed rowing. Wemus pulled at Wina’s hand and she grudgingly sat down again.

‘Tigus!’ It was the Doctor, calling from the rear of the canoe, anxious to resume the debate they’d been having. ‘You really must listen to what I’m saying!’

Tigus swept the hostages with a final warning glare, and made his way back to join the Doctor. ‘You say nothing that help our people,’ he said, gazing out across the river at the moss and vine-strangled shapes of trees lining the bank.

‘Your guerrilla tactics will never have a serious effect on the Indoni dictatorship, Tigus,’ the Doctor said, his eyes narrowed with grave wisdom. ‘Peaceful and diplomatic means are the only way you will secure offworld sympathies for your cause.’

‘Tigus disgust with your pacifism!’ the leader barked, the gun in his hand lifting in his anger. The Doctor looked a little nervous as the barrel wavered towards his face. He put out a finger and moved it gently aside. Tigus continued, face screwed up inside his balaclava. ‘How can we be peaceful and
diplomatic
in face of torture, rape and plunder of our spiritual environment. Our gods inhabit the trees, the grass, the mountains. The Indoni fell them, dig them up and blow holes in them. Our gods are bloody: they scream for retribution. We must avenge them, and all orphans and widows crying over corpses of brave warriors murdered by Sabit’s beasts!’ His chest was rising and falling with the extremity of his passion.

The Doctor was humbled by his words, and in his heart could only sympathise with the rebels’ plight. Missionaries, greedy businessmen, politicians and prostitution were eating away, with varying degrees of spiritual damage, at the pure heart of a once unsullied Papul. He was at a loss how to respond.

‘Tigus sick of cultural pollution of our land as well as its physical rape.’ This was from Kepennis, who had turned to face them in the canoe, and was listening to the conversation with some interest. ‘And I begin to see what he mean.’

It was a mistake. Tigus’s mounting fury was expended on the Papul guide instead. He advanced on Kepennis, rifle shaking in his hands. ‘You want speak for me?’ Then again, almost shrieking: ‘
You want speak for me? You
, who are scum! You almost sound like Papul, but not enough to stop me kill you now.’ He would have done it too, had not a shout from a guerrilla sitting in the prow of the canoe stayed him.

The ‘pilot’ was gesturing at a tiny tributary emptying into the main river on their left. Apparently, this was what they had been looking for, because the vessel began to head towards the small mouth of what was really no more than a stream.

Barely ten yards in width, the tributary was choked with weeds and almost completely enclosed by trees overhead, so that thick gloom squeezed them as they commenced this new stage of their journey. Moist fronds wiped across their heads like dangling wet hair as they passed beneath the branches.

Tree roots blocked their way, and bumped at the canoe from all sides. Intermittent sunlight filtered through, sometimes picking out huge butterflies of gorgous hues that tripped through the air about their heads, but the majority of the long, twisting journey was dark and oppressive indeed, and soon all their spirits began to suffer. At one point, an orange snake as thin as the Doctor’s wrist swam alongside the canoe, and the trepidation with which the guerrillas regarded it signalled its deadliness. Another time, coils of reptile as thick as the Doctor’s body lowered themselves from the branches above them, a momentary streak of sunlight picking out the rainbow markings of their scales, the beauty of which did nothing to alleviate their terror.

The Doctor gazed ahead silently as the canoe continued its progress. Sometimes there would be no way forward at all; the guerrillas were forced to stand up in the canoe and hack a passage through the encroaching foliage. Whether they moved forward or not, it made no real difference to the Doctor, however. He was thinking of Victoria and Jamie, and wondering incessantly about the possibility of their still being alive. The chances were slim indeed, it seemed. And it was all his fault. He’d brought them here.

Insects droned, and hidden birds whistled and squeaked from the jungle all around him. This then, was his purgatory.

This was where he came to repent for all his sins, he thought gloomily. And there’d been enough of
those
, he supposed. He briefly pondered taking out his recorder to cheer them all up, and quickly decided better of it. Things were bad enough as they were.

The tree-house was in a large clearing, erected on top of four smooth tree trunks, and it had to be at least forty feet above the ground. Jamie and Santi were pushed towards it, having waded through swamps for the last half hour or so to reach it.

The tribesmen had said nothing to them as they guided them through the jungle, apart from chortling now and again at Jamie’s attire. Jamie had tried to convince Santi that they might not be responsible for the bone shrine in the glade, and even if they were, they might have just arranged the missionary’s bones there, and not necessarily have eaten him as well. Santi was having none of it. ‘Are you stupid? They cannibal, man!’ being her only response.

Jamie gazed up at the hut perched on top of the branchless trunks; it was made of thatch and wicker, patched with holes and hardly substantial looking. A series of notches were carved into the surface of one of the tree trunks supporting it; obviously the ‘ladder’ they were to use to gain access to the

‘house’. As he continued to stare upwards, something emerged from the opening that was the door; a head dwarfed by distance, old and wrinkly, peering back down at them with the kind of stoicism that extreme old age and a lifetime spent in the most unexplored of jungles will instil in your average cannibal.

A bone knife nudged Jamie’s backside, right where he’d been clawed by the Kassowark. He winced and turned to face the uncompromising glare of a tribesman. The meaning of the gesture was obvious.

‘Okay. Better follow me up.’ Jamie said, rubbing his hands together in preparation. He clasped his hands around the trunk and placed his right boot on the first notch.

Three yards up, he looked down and smiled encouragingly at Santi. ‘It’s easy!’

She didn’t look so convinced, but was following him up anyway.

Jamie had the impression he was climbing out of the jungle itself. He was rising up to the level of many of the tree tops fringing the clearing, and behind the tree-house he was now scaling, he could see another identical one, and that gave him some idea as to how high up he was. A burst of dizziness threatened to peel him from the trunk. He blinked a few times, focusing on the smoke issuing lazily from a hole in the grass roof of the neighbouring tree-house.

He looked up towards the doorway again, and the inquisitive head had vanished. Then he was level with the opening, and stepping onto the bamboo poles strung together that formed the porch. He risked a glance inside the hut, but could only make out the glow of a fire and a huddle of shapes slumped around it. Didn’t look very inviting. He reached down to pull Santi the rest of the way up and clung to her, reluctant to enter the tree house.

One of the natives below jabbered something incomprehensible to Jamie; although the meaning was clear.

‘They want us go in,’ Santi said.

‘Yeah, I guessed that much’

He held her hand and together they crouched under the low opening and entered the hut.

He’d loved her.

It was that simple, and that brutal. She’d been able to
quiet the storm, quell the rage in his head, bring warmth to the
coldness. All the clichés, yeah, but all the cliches that stopped
him killing.

She had never seen him kill before. She’d known he wasn’t
a saint, of course; she’d known him long enough. But when he
was with her he was always calm, could contain the urges, the
little psychopathies, as his skull-doctor had told him, while he
was still at school. He remembered that freak, yeah, with his
glib diagnoses and glibber phrases. Done him one night when
the prick was mincing away from school, after another day of
dosing out cleversounding little nothings. Pan had been on
leave from one of the system trawlers, and thought he’d do a
school reunion of sorts. Sorry, Doc, just one of my little
psychopathies, he apologised, as he bludgeoned the
therapist’s head into a smear with a crow bar. Just can’t help
myself you see; but got to indulge my whims or it ain’t healthy.

Can’t bottle these things up, can we?

Yeah, he’d loved her. She’d loved him. That’s how it’s
supposed to be ain’t it? Simple and cosy. No ifs, no buts. No
kills, no psychopathies. Good for me, baby. Always were. You
were the only one. Cool the rage...

So why didn’t you understand? The biker was rude, he was
ripping me off. Couldn’t she see that? So why did she just
scream as the blood ran red, red, red and the tattoo laser
needle was still in his hand waiting to produce more vibrant
colours of death.

Why couldn’t you see, baby...?

I was never any good. Mum and Dad knew that, you knew
that... but you didn’t care, because you loved me. When we
made love I was tamed, could frame your blonde head in my
hands and know the universe was safe both for me, and from
me...

So why’d you scream, baby, wby’d you scream and make
the universe no longer safe...

‘See the little monkeys run,’ Twist chortled with glee. He strafed another village hut, the fire bursting out from the thatch bright against the dark of the evening.

Pan stared at the back of the pilot’s head. An irritated scab had formed on his bald patch where Twist had repeatedly scratched it. Pan’s gaze was locked on the glint of metal beneath, although it didn’t particularly interest him. Twist’s plate was showing.

‘Jungle rock, monkeys! Hear the blood bloom, see the bodies rattle with the dying of them. Let’s all funk down with the psychedelic sounds of burn, burn, burn.’