Doctor Who: Combat Rock (32 page)

‘Not... possible...’ he gasped, hands shaking uncontrollably in his exertions to free himself from whatever was controlling him. ‘I have... the stronger mind. You cannot...’

‘It doesn’t seem that you do, Kepennis,’ the Doctor said gravely, withdrawing slowly from Victoria’s embrace and approaching the rebel guru.

Kepennis sank to his knees. ‘The horror...’ he said.

‘The horror,’ the Doctor finished for him, releasing his hold on Kepennis’s mind. ‘Jamie, perhaps you’d like to get your new friends to look after the Krallik for us.’

Jamie had regained his feet, and was looking both embarrassed and utterly clueless, a combination actually quite easy for him. ‘The Krallik?’

Santi took over for him, speaking to a cannibal with grey tight curls and crazy eyes. She pointed at Kepennis. The Indio chief motioned to his men, and soon Kepennis was being pulled roughly to his feet, the natives dragging him away from the uncoiling nest of snakes on the floor.

Victoria came up behind the Doctor, coughing as smoke drifted into her lungs. ‘Doctor,’ she spluttered. ‘What did you do?’

‘Come on, this whole place is burning up!’ Jamie bellowed, as the cannibals hauled a silent Kepennis into the antechamber. Santi seized Jamie’s arm to encourage him to follow. Her eyes widened momentarily as she spotted Pan’s corpse.

‘Oh, nothing really, Victoria,’ the Doctor said, taking her hand and ushering Jamie to carry on ahead. Just something I should have thought of doing a lot sooner.’

‘But what?’

‘Well, don’t you see: Kepennis controlled people’s minds by relaying his own thoughts to them via the fungus organisms in both his and the recipient’s minds. Because he had digested more over a longer period, and because he had learned how to do it, he was able to control whoever he wanted. But I’ve been subjected to this kind of manipulation before, haven’t I? I finally realized I should have a go myself, seeing as I had already digested some of the fungus.’ He looked quite pleased with himself and patted Victoria’s hand as they waited for the tribesmen to descend the ladder to the ground floor of the temple. Then his face dropped. ‘But I didn’t think of it in time, did I? Maybe I could have saved poor Wina, and Wemus too!’

Outside the temple, the jungle island burned.

The flames seared the travellers’ faces and hands, and the natives were whooping agitatedly at them to move quickly.

Victoria looked around at all the corpses, noticed Santi passing them blithely by, without even flinching. Jamie seemed quite close to her, she found herself thinking with a bite of what could have been jealousy. She chided herself. She had believed the highlander to be dead, so she should hardly be angry he’d got himself a girlfriend instead, should she? Even if the girlfriend was Santi, the foul-mouthed dancing girl from Batu.

They stumbled through the banks of smoke, past trees roaring with flame, and reached the dock. The mercenary’s cruiser was still parked clumsily on the wooden landing. The cannibals were pulling Kepennis towards a long painted canoe. Still he said nothing, following them meekly without struggling.

‘Wait, Jamie!’ the Doctor said as they stood on the dock.

‘What are they going to do with Kepennis?’

Jamie shrugged, looked a little sheepish. ‘I didn’t know the Krallik would be Kepennis, did I? We had a bargain – they would spare me and...”The Soiled One” here – ow!’ Santi interrupted him at this point with an elbow in the ribs.

‘Go on,’ the Doctor said darkly.

‘Well, the chieftain promised not to eat me and marry Santi if we delivered someone to them that possessed great spirit and courage. It looks like they found their man.’

Kepennis was sitting facing them in the canoe. The last of the cannibals was already leaping in to the vessel which was being paddled away from the pier as they spoke.

They were alone on the smoky dock.

The Doctor gazed at Kepennis’s dwindling face helplessly, guiltily. There was no reaction, no sign of understanding.

Kepennis was immobile, lifeless, just like a mannequin. .

Victoria shuddered. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s discovered the true horror of things, I should imagine,’ the Doctor said morosely. ‘Inside himself. Nothing anybody else can do will make him suffer more.’

‘Discovered? Or did you show him?’

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably at Victoria’s question and gave no answer.

A melodic jungle chant lifted from the Kirowai tribesmen as they rowed away across the lake.

‘But they’ll eat him!’ Victoria persisted.

‘Better than they eat Santi!’ the Indoni girl pointed out pragmatically. Victoria glared at her, but Santi had been glared at by more formidable foes than a prim Victorian Miss in her time, fierce Kirowai cannibals being one recent example. She pointed at the cruiser. ‘We go?’

Jamie nudged the Doctor who was still staring out across yhe lake at the receding canoe. The surface of the lagoon was relatively still now, volcanic activity evident only in very intermittent bursts of bubbles softly breaking the hush of the afternoon.

‘Well, Doctor?’

He looked at Jamie with a frown, struggling to collect his thoughts.

‘Yon flying thing: can we no travel back to the TARDIS in it?’ His tone was endearingly hopeful, but he knew what the answer would be.

‘You know I hate gadgets like that, Jamie.’ the Doctor said, as if repeating a doctrine to a child with learning difficulties. Then he beamed brightly, shaking off his earlier mood as he pointed at one of the OPG canoes still tethered to the pier. ‘That will be more than suitable.’

‘Och, ye’re no serious!’

‘You want row all way to Batu!’ Santi was incredulous too, and not a little peeved, which secretly warmed Victoria to the idea of using the canoe when she’d been just about to object herself.

‘Well, I’m sure we can find a proper motor canoe somewhere along the way,’ the Doctor said cheerily.

Victoria had thought of something; something it seemed everyone else was oblivious to.

‘But what about the fungus? Won’t others eat it and become insane like the Krallik – trying to control everybody and killing lots of innocent people?’

The Doctor sighed. ‘I’m afraid there will always be Kralliks, my dear. And not all of them will have the excuse of eating mind-distorting fungus. No, I think the lessons will be learnt from Agat; the people will return from the jungle and resume their earlier lives, but a little wiser for it. I think they will steer well clear of the growth from now on. And besides, he folded his hands together on his stomach and beamed at Santi. ‘We have a little advocate of sanity among us, don’t we?’

‘Uh?’ said the Indoni girl, squinting at him suspiciously.

She was already climbing into the canoe, impatient to be away from this island of horror.

‘Why, who better to propagate the word about the insidious effects of the fungus, than you, my dear? Yes, I think you might make rather an interesting missionary, don’t you?’

He unleashed a dazzling and slightly idiotic smile, obviously delighted by his own bright idea.

Santi turned to Jamie, now seated next to her in the canoe.

‘What rubbish he talking about?’

The Doctor’s face dropped. ‘Then again, perhaps not.’

He followed Victoria down into the canoe. Jamie pushed an oar against the side of the pier and the vessel moved smoothly out across the water.

No Mercy

Executions could get very boring, if you watched them too often.

It was like everything; you could always have too much of a good thing, Sabit thought, and supposed he was rather wickedly droll, as he prodded the pause button on his armchair panel. On the screen, the line of Papul men performed a little jig as the image flickered momentarily and then froze.

Sabit moved to the French windows opening onto the balcony of his palace. Outside, the sun was setting over Batu.

A glorious orchestra of colour, playing in the evening sky; purple, blue, lime green, screaming red. The crimson beach was sinking into shadow but the sea was irridescent with reflected beauty.

Life could be wondrous indeed...

The roar of pulse rifles made him jump. For a moment he thought the palace was being invaded as he spun around in shock. But the firing sounded decidedly too tinny to be real and his heart moved again as he realized it was merely his execution video playing again.

He peered through the open doors of his private chambers.

Someone was sitting in his chair.

He was speechless with rage. One of his personal servants
daring
to enter his rooms without permission? But of course it wasn’t a servant. Sabit knew that before he even saw the jester’s hat, the latex nose, the white facepaint and ludicrous lipstick grin. The mercenary was wearing a full-blown clown suit now instead of combat dress – purple blouse, yellow braces, multicoloured checked trousers. Only the army boots remained.

He re-entered his chambers slowly, thinking hard and fast.

His initial outrage was cooling, replaced by the first stroke of fear. This was most unorthodox, and he’d made it plain on a number of occasions that the mercenaries were not to approach him in his private palace. What had happened to his security? He didn’t like the look of this, the way the man was casually sitting watching Sabit’s video without even bothering to turn as the president stepped up to him.

He managed to control the trepidation however, and his voice was smooth as ever: ‘I wasn’t expecting you. May I ask how you got in?’

The killer in the clown suit continued to watch the execution. ‘Does it matter?’ he said after a moment, when the racket of pulse fire had died away and the bodies lay still in the dust.

‘I suppose not.’ A handful of seconds, then, quietly: ‘What do you want?’

The clown didn’t move. ‘Can’t you guess?’

A bolt of true, hard terror shot through Sabit. Then his fears were realized.

‘I didn’t think it would be you.’

No reply to that.

‘I’ll pay you double what I promised.’

‘Thanks, but no.’

‘But why not? Your kind lives for money.’

The mercenary pulled a silenced Luger out from under his trousers. ‘Maybe because I just don’t like you,’ he said. ‘Or maybe because sometimes I just want to feel clean...’ He shot Sabit between the eyes. ‘Just to see what it’s like..?

Blood drip-drip-dripped down the screen of the monitor and onto the floor beneath.

Clown got up from the chair and moved to the balcony, just in time to see the last of the sunset.

About the Author

Mick Lewis likes cannibals. He feels he has a bit of an insider viewpoint after having stayed in Irian Jaya, New Guinea with so-called ‘reformed’ tree-house-dwelling cannibals a couple of years back, who turned out on a subsequent visit last year still to be practising their flesh-eating customs. His girlfriend is also descended from Javanese cannibals, and one of his friends is a female tattooed Dayak whose grandparents only recently kicked the habit. This probably explains where the idea for
Combat Rock
came from... He is currently working as a clown scaring the hell out of children for
Coco Pops
and is the proud owner of a Jelangkung, a black magic ghost summoner from Java that actually works...

I s’pose I’d better thank The Clash, really... Complete Control, even over this book.

Mum and Dad of course.

The Korowai cannibals for bones and crazy times and for not eating me.

Wina’s family for welcoming the first white man they’d ever seen (and I’ll admit, a strange one) into their house and feeding him locusts. Pak Edi, Mbak Min and Duwi for friendship.

Jayapura (can you run guns from England?) ‘Julius’ for info and tales.

Haunted, crazy Mas Amat for the Jelangkung and for having sex with a ghost.

Dunc Acidclown McKean (the Madcap laughs). Sanity someday, maybe...

Big hug for Catherine for Diamonds, Dinosaur Heads and graveyard shoots and for warning me about Jakarta floods.

Fi, for giving Wina such a big welcome, John and Numi for beers.

Justin, for believing this stuff, and Sarah for her enthusiasm.

All those who appreciated
Rags
enough to post good reviews.

The Wotton Arseholes. Moggy, you’re a drunken bum.

All my friends (yeah you, Tina, Nazel, Punky and the rest of you), ya Weirdos.

Steve and Lili for support and Phil out on his ranch.

The bloke from Computer Problem Solutions who saved a third of
Combat Rock
from being lost.

And finally, all the Java and Bali Whorez – the happy, and the not so happy...

• Front cover
  
• Rear cover
  
• Title page
  
• Copyright
  
• Contents
  
• Mercy
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• No Mercy
  
• About the Author
  
• Acknowledgements