Doctor Who: Festival of Death: 50th Anniversary Edition (4 page)

‘Of course.’ Dunkal studied the photo of Metcalf’s wife. ‘And you’re in charge of everything that goes on here?’

‘Yes. And no. The Beautiful Death was under the direction of Doctor Paddox. It was his project, really.’

‘And this Doctor Paddox is…?’

‘Is missing, assumed dead, as well,’ Metcalf nodded. ‘Deeply regrettable. But were he alive, I am sure he would admit responsibility.’

‘Convenient,’ said Rige, helping himself to a seat.

‘Right.’ Investigator Dunkal leaned forward. Metcalf could smell the tobacco on his breath. ‘So. This saboteur of yours. The one behind the catastrophe. Can you describe him?’

Metcalf described him.

‘The morning after, and all around is despair,’ began Harken Batt. ‘Here, in the medical bay of the G-Lock, I am surrounded by the victims of the recent disaster. The deceased, the dying, and the injured.’

He beckoned his holocameraman down the aisle of beds. ‘Less than twelve hours ago these people were having the time of their lives. Little did they know of the tragedy that fate held in store for them like a bleak surprise.’

Harken fixed his eyes on the holocamera. This would be the clip that would be replayed at endless award ceremonies. He imagined his face in the viewfinder; lined but distinguished, easily passing for that of a forty-year-old. The face of the greatest investigative reporter of his generation.

‘Throughout this episode, one man alone managed to get an exclusive insight into the true nature of events as they happened. Not only discovering the cause of the danger, but also proving to be crucially instrumental in its defeat.’ After a measured pause, Harken delivered the final blow. ‘The harrowing events of the last
twelve
hours is not just the story of the people gathered here today. It is also my story. This is Harken Batt, reporting from the G-Lock –’

‘Excuse me, would you mind?’

*

The Doctor settled the black-robed man on a bed and waved a medic over. With his help, the medic placed an oxygen mask over the man’s face and applied compresses to the wounds.

‘Would I mind? You just ruined that whole sequence.’

The Doctor looked up. A bald, sullen-faced man in a grey mac was folding his arms at him. The man, in his late fifties, had been talking to himself in a ludicrously self-important manner, and the Doctor had disregarded him as a matter of course. ‘What?’

‘You just interrupted a most important section of my documentary.’

‘Documentary?’ The Doctor whirled to face a tubby gentleman resplendent in a jacket, tie and Hawaiian shorts squinting through a camera. Realising what had happened, he broke into a gregarious smile. ‘I’m terribly sorry, will you have to start all over again?’

The man in the mac tutted. ‘I daresay it will come out in the edit, it usually does. I was just running over the events of the last few hours.’

‘Really?’ The Doctor caught a glimpse of Romana on the other side of the medical bay where she was tending to the injured. ‘Bit of a problem with the walking dead, I hear.’

‘That’s right, Doctor, I was –’

‘Doctor!’ The Doctor almost jumped out of his coat. ‘You called me Doctor!’

The man breathed deeply, as if to humour him. ‘Yes, Doctor. As I was saying, I was about to –’

‘How do you know I’m the Doctor?’

‘How do I know you’re the Doctor, Doctor?’ the man replied. ‘After all we’ve been through?’

‘Have we?’

‘You saved the G-Lock.’

The Doctor boggled with delight. ‘Did I? Did I really?’

‘You don’t remember? You rescued it from certain and terrible destruction.’

‘How marvellous.’ The Doctor grinned. ‘That’s just the sort of thing I would do. Sorry, and you are?’

‘Harken Batt.’ He indicated his colleague in the shorts. ‘And this is my new holocameraman, Jeremy. You mean you really don’t know who I am?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I’ve never seen you before in my life.’

The ceiling lights brightened to usher in a new artificial day. Across the room, the Doctor was still talking to that fool in the overcoat. Romana tutted and turned to the occupant of the next bed.

It was an orange lizard, about the size of a juvenile human, lying on its side. It had a dazed expression, its two bulbous eyes rolling about behind circular sunglasses. Instead of hair it had a crenellated membrane, and around its neck were numerous amulets and beads. It groaned. ‘Oh. My freakin’ loaf.’

‘Are you in any pain?’ asked Romana.

‘My grey area is throbbing like an amp on eleven,’ said the lizard. ‘I am totally medicined.’

‘Are you in pain? Yes or no?’

‘Whacked and not so groovy.’ The lizard centred its soporific eyes on to her. ‘Oh, it’s you, Romana. So you got out safe with the cat in the hat, I take it?’

Romana was incredulous. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Last night, when all around was tribulation and trial,’ the lizard explained. ‘You and the good Doctor were the fifth cavalry. You saved my life.’

‘Harken Batt, investigative reporter? Leading insect-on-the-wall documentary-maker? One of the most famous holovision personalities in the galaxy –’

‘No, I’m afraid I’ve really never heard of you,’ the Doctor interrupted, fearing Harken might continue in this vein indefinitely.
‘But
I feel certain that if I we had met, it would have been quite… unforgettable.’

‘Well, this sudden memory lapse is most inconvenient,’ said Harken. ‘I had been hoping to interview you.’

‘Interview me?’ The Doctor pointed to his own chest. Taking his cue, Jeremy raised his holocamera and backed away to fit them both in the shot. ‘Whatever for?’

‘For my documentary, on how we… on how you averted the G-Lock’s destruction. And…’

‘Ah. I would love to help, but unfortunately I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. So this is the G-Lock, is it?’ The Doctor directed his attention to the injured. Some were quivering in shock, others weeping. Medics clattered in with more trolleys of survivors.

‘Yes, this is…’ said Harken.

The Doctor whispered in his ear. ‘You know, I hate to be rude, but I think perhaps we should get on with trying to save a few lives rather than stand around chatting, don’t you? Hmm?’ He shambled away to attend to the new arrivals.

Harken glowered, and gave a throat-slitting signal to Jeremy.

‘I saved your life?’ said Romana. ‘You mean you’ve already met the Doctor and me?’

‘Indeed that is so.’ The lizard licked its lips. ‘You know, lady, I wouldn’t half kill for a refreshener. My gullet’s as dry as a sand weevil’s bath towel.’

‘Of course,’ said Romana. ‘Try to remain awake, I’ll get you some water.’

‘Totally nice.’ The lizard’s head dropped back into its pillow.

Romana hurried over to the water-cooler in the corner of the room. It dispensed a cup of blue-tinted water. She was about to head back when she felt a hand tugging at her jacket.

The hand belonged to an old woman reclining on a trolley. The woman’s face was a mass of wrinkles; her skin sagged in folds and was covered in sores. She looked starved to near-death. Her eyes,
rheumy
and colourless, fixed on Romana’s with a burning intensity.

Romana strained to hear what she was saying. The woman licked her lips, and Romana could see that her tongue and toothless gums were completely black. Oily liquid started drooling out of her mouth, dripping from her chin and on to her clothes.

Stooping closer, Romana could feel the woman’s breath on her face. It smelt of ash. ‘What is it? What can I do for you?’

The woman did not reply. Instead, her hand lost its grip on Romana’s jacket and fell to one side.

‘I’ll get someone to see to you.’ Romana twisted away, and clutched the arm of a nearby medic, a bearded, heavily built man. ‘Excuse me, but can you help? This woman needs urgent attention.’

The medic shot Romana a look of confusion.

‘This woman here –’ Romana turned to face the bed. It was empty. Where the woman had been lying, there were just neatly folded sheets. There was not even an indentation in the mattress. It was as if she had never existed.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

THE ELDER SHUFFLED
into the chamber, and Nyanna followed a respectful two paces behind him.

The birthsayers and elders had assembled around the carpel, a long stem looping from the ceiling in a tangle of arteries. A mass of veins covered its surface, bulging as they pumped a phosphorescent green liquid through the wall capillaries. Suspended at the centre of the womb, floating within the carpel, was a large, transparent egg.

The birthsayers gathered their skins around them like baggy cloaks and turned their wizened faces to the new arrivals. The oldest one advanced on Nyanna.

‘Nyanna. We are yet an hour or so away before the sac breaks.’ The birthsayer pointed a gnarled finger at the egg; it was visibly swelling, the skin of the sac splitting under the strain and leaking natal liquid. Inside the egg, its body hunched over its knees, was an unborn baby.

‘The child is healthy, alive?’

The birthsayer tasted the air. ‘Oh, it lives. It can sense the rush of the approaching moment.’

‘Gallura,’ wheezed an elder. ‘The unborn shall be Gallura. He marks the end. After him, there is no more.’

‘Indeed, the end approaches,’ the birthsayer repeated grimly.

‘The end of us all,’ said a second birthsayer. ‘Gallura is the herald of our destruction.’

The birthsayer’s words filled Nyanna with dread. The same dread that had pursued her in her dreams had now become real. In the next hour, all their histories would be as nothing. She felt sick with tension.

‘Gallura,’ said the first birthsayer, ‘will be the last of the Arboretans.’

Above them, the baby revolved in its egg.

Romana returned to find the lizard asleep, his spines rippling back and forth contentedly. She placed the cup of water on the bedside table and tried to gather her thoughts.

Had it been an hallucination? Unlikely, she thought. Her mind was highly trained, not prone to flights of imagination. And she had felt the woman’s breath, her hand pulling on her jacket. Whatever it was, she refused to believe it could have been conjured up by her subconscious.

‘Wakened from uneasy dreams?’ The Doctor appeared beside her. He rubbed his nose. ‘Everything all right, Romana?’

Romana caught herself staring into nowhere. She put on a carefree smile. ‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘Do you know, I’ve just had the most curious conversation,’ said the Doctor.

‘Your friend in the grey coat?’

‘Harken Batt,’ he informed her. ‘He claims that I rescued this place, the G-Lock, from certain destruction.’

‘Really? It sounds like the sort of thing you would do.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘But you haven’t, have you? Rescued this place from –’

‘– from certain destruction?’ finished the Doctor. ‘No. At least, not yet. That’s the trouble with time travel, you never know whether you’re coming or going. But it’s nice to be congratulated before I’ve actually done anything.’ He ruffled his hair bashfully. ‘You know, when you go around saving planets as often as I do, I’m surprised that this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often.’

‘Doctor, you’re not the only person to have been recognised,’ said Romana.

‘Master, mistress, I have an urgent message to report,’ a small, metallic voice piped up from knee level. ‘We are in grave danger.’

Romana looked down. The origin of the warning was K-9. He
trundled
up to the Doctor, his wheel-motors whinnying.

‘I thought I told you stay in the TARDIS,’ said the Doctor petulantly.

‘Affirmative master. But the imperative to alert you took precedence over your previous instruction.’

‘I see. So you thought you’d just pop out and warn us?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘That was very good of you K-9,’ said Romana, ignoring the huffing Doctor. ‘What’s this message of yours?’

‘This construction is suspended within a hyperspace conduit…’

‘We already know that,’ said the Doctor.

K-9 whirred in irritation. ‘… within a hyperspace conduit. This particular structure is located directly on the hyperspace–real-space interface.’

‘You mean, this space station is at one end of the tunnel,’ said Romana. The theory of hyperspace tunnels, she reminded herself, dated back to the early twenty-second century, and was childishly simple. To facilitate faster-than-light travel from one section of the galaxy to another, the principle was to link them by creating a channel through an auxiliary dimension, known as hyperspace. One could then enter this dimensional conduit, travel a few miles, and emerge to find oneself in a solar system thousands of light years away. That was the idea, anyway. The Doctor would probably have explained it using sheets of paper and drinking straws and still have left no one any the wiser.

‘Precisely,’ said K-9. ‘It is also obstructing any passage through the interface.’

‘Stuck like a cork in a bottle,’ said the Doctor, wide-eyed.

‘Analogy rudimentary but adequate. However, geostatic pressure caused by blockage is approaching tolerance levels, leading to an imminent and total loss of hyperdimensional viability.’ K-9 rotated his ears smugly.

‘The tunnel is about to collapse,’ whispered Romana.

‘Taking everything here with it.’ The Doctor put a forefinger in his mouth and made a solemn ‘pop’. A thought occurred to him. ‘One thing, K-9. How do you know all this?’

K-9 paused. ‘That information is unavailable.’

‘What do you mean, “that information is unavailable”?’

‘My meaning was unambiguous. That information is unavailable.’

‘No,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘Why is that information unavailable?’

‘That information is also unavailable.’

‘So you’re telling us that this hyperspace tunnel is going to collapse, but you can’t tell us how you know this, and you also can’t tell us why you can’t tell us how you know this.’

K-9 spent a few moments unscrambling the Doctor’s syntax. ‘Affirmative, master.’

‘Well, I’m glad we got that clear,’ said the Doctor caustically. He crouched down. ‘K-9, I’m sorry for leaving you in the TARDIS. Next time, you can come outside with us. I promise. All right?’