Doctor Who: Paradise Towers (17 page)

A strange, cruel smile crossed Kroagnon’s pallid features.

He had nothing to fear, after all, had he? Nobody could know Paradise Towers better than the Great Architect who built it.

The Chief studied the screens for a while. The Cleaners were visible on all of them spraying clouds of noxious smoke.

Another floor had fallen. One hundred and sixty three.

The absence of response was actually beginning to trouble Kroagnon’s devious brain. Surely there would be some opposition? He decided that it was time to take a look for himself at what the human garbage were up to in the Swimming Pool Zone.

He pressed the appropriate buttons on the control panel and sat back to watch. But nothing happened. The screens all went blank. He pressed again. Still nothing happened.

And then a recorded voice spoke. And it gave Kroagnon no satisfaction to recognise it as his own, recorded just before the completion of the Towers: ‘By express order of the Great Architect, Surveillance of the Swimming Pool is not allowed.

Repeat. Not allowed.’

The Great Architect gave a hiss of disappointment. He remembered now that he had wanted to ensure that the crowning joy of his creation, the pool, would never be overlooked by prying human flesh. How could he have known that he himself would have need of an over-view of what was happening there one day?

It was annoying but not too serious a blow. It was simply curiosity that made him want to see what his enemies were up to.

Not a very exalted emotion for such a brilliant brain. It was not as if their puny intellects could possibly come up with any way of stopping him.

‘We don’t have much time and we must think clearly. Kroagnon, as we must now call him, is firmly installed in your Headquarters.’ The Doctor turned to the Deputy Chief for confirmation. ‘Am I right?’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

The Doctor sighed and scratched his brow. ‘So we must find a way of getting him out again.’

‘Set a trap for him,’ Drinking Fountain put in.

‘Precisely.’ The Doctor looked round the assembled company. The poolside seating was occupied now by a motley collection of Kangs, Rezzies and Caretakers, all intent on finding a means of survival.

‘We used to set traps for the rats,’ Maddy began brightly but then, remembering Tilda and Tabby, she decided it wasn’t a very tactful area to discuss and retreated, blushing, into silence.

‘But what about the Cleaners?’ Mel put in. Nobody had yet come up with any plan for dealing with them although everyone agreed that they had to be stopped. Indeed the Doctor had already said on several occasions during the discussion that as many of them as possible had to be immobilised. If the Cleaners could not be put out of action then what hope was there for defeating their master?

‘Doctor –’ the Deputy Chief spoke in the subdued silence that followed Mel’s question, an idea apparently forming slowly in his brain.

‘Yes, Deputy Chief?’

‘Well, I know it goes against the rule book to say this but I suppose these are exceptional circumstances.’

‘They might be described in that way, yes,’ the Doctor agreed drily. The habits of a lifetime still pursued the Deputy, he noted, even when disaster stared him in the face.

The Deputy was now the centre of all attention and he knew it. ‘Well,’ he began nervously, ‘on the 245th Floor Sodium Street Corridor 75, there is a Secret Emergency Supply kept in case of pests getting out of control –’

‘An Emergency Supply of what?’ Mel asked, expressing the puzzlement many felt.

‘Explosive.’

‘Icehot!’ The Deputy’s news brought an immediate enthusiastic response from Fire Escape and the Kangs.

‘With explosives on our arrowguns, we could blow up the Cleaners no problem,’ Bin Liner proclaimed cheerfully, waving her crossbow in the air.

‘Send the Cleaners to the Cleaners!’ Drinking Fountain added, sending all the Kangs into fits of glee. The Deputy smiled primly. He had never experienced popularity like this before.

He knew he liked being liked but didn’t yet know how to respond.

But now Maddy and the Rezzies were getting excited too.

‘Most of the Rezzies make tablecloths,’ Maddy said brightly to the Kang Leaders. ‘We could throw them over the Cleaners to slow them down for you to shoot.’

‘Icehot, Maddy!’ The Kangs responded enthusiastically to this suggestion as well. Now there was a possibility of action, their high spirits were returning. Mel noticed sadly that only Pex was still not involved in the bustling, chatting, laughing group of people that now sat by the poolside.

The Doctor was pleased by this turn of events. The plan to get rid of the Cleaners showed they were getting somewhere at last. But his lightning-quick brain had already moved on to the next problem. It took him a while to calm the bubbling throng down but he eventually succeeded in getting their full attention.

‘We ought to move on to the main problem,’ he announced.

‘How to persuade Kroagnon to leave his safety in the Caretakers’

headquarters and come to a place of our choosing where we can trap and defeat him.’

His words acted like a bucket of cold water on the excitement. ‘He’ll never leave there until we are all wiped out,’

the Deputy Chief returned gloomily. ‘And we’ll never manage to break in.’ He sighed. ‘I should know after all.’

No one spoke. No one made any suggestions. Just now the secondary problem had seemed soluble and people had quickly forgotten that as yet they had no way of destroying the primary one.

The Doctor, however, had not raised the problem to depress people. He did have an idea forming in his mind although he knew it was not foolproof. ‘There is one way that might just work,’ he told the group, sure now of their full concentration.

‘What’s that, Doctor?’

‘Well,’ the Doctor commenced, choosing his words very carefully, ‘Kroagnon is undoubtedly a very clever and very proud being. And, like many clever and proud beings, he probably likes to be appreciated by his intellectual equals. Even better if once they have appreciated his cleverness, they can be outwitted and destroyed.’ He paused to give his final words full force. ‘I think if he had the chance of meeting such a person, he’d leave his lair to do so.’

Not surprisingly it was Mel, who knew the Doctor best, who understood first. ‘Doctor,’ she protested, ‘you’re not going to –’

The Doctor held up a restraining hand to stop her. ‘I’ve no choice, Mel. I mean, in all honesty, I think I am the only obvious candidate.’

‘You’ll go out there and show yourself and be killed?’ she demanded.

‘Oh no, no,’ the Doctor answered swiftly. ‘That would be extremely futile. I will allow myself to be seen. And then somebody else will go to Kroagnon and offer to lead him to me.

Straight into our little trap. Now that person has a far more difficult and dangerous mission than I do.’

Everyone took in the Doctor’s words and pondered his plan.

For all its dangers, there was no doubt it was the best they had.

It was Pex who ended the silence by coming forward.

‘I will go to Kroagnon,’ he proclaimed proudly. ‘I am Pex and I am –’

‘A cowardly cutlet,’ put in Fire Escape cheekily. And all the Kangs laughed.

Pex turned on them angrily. ‘You all have tasks to do.

Caretakers, Rezzies, Kangs. Why should only Pex be left out?’

He drew himself up proudly. ‘Pex, the trained fighting machine, Pex the –’

‘The scaredy cat.’ It was Bin Liner who interrupted this time and now everyone was laughing at Pex’s discomfiture. Apart, that is, from the Doctor and Mel. When they realised this, the others fell silent.

Mel looked Pex squarely in the face. She had seen his courage fail so many times that she could not be sure he was serious this time. And much was at stake. ‘Pex,’ she demanded sternly, ‘are you sure you want to do this?’

But Pex’s gaze did not flinch this time. His sincerity could not be doubted by anyone when he nodded his head to show his willingness to go.

‘So be it then,’ the Docor said quietly. The die was cast and there could be no going back.

The screens showed the Cleaners steadily continuing their deadly work. Kroagnon crossed off another floor methodically on his plan of the Towers. Two hundred and thirteen floors all free of living flesh. He was already planning in his mind the magnificent redecoration he would initiate through the Cleaners once he had the building entirely to himself again. How much higher his imagination could soar when he no longer had the constraints of providing for dirty, noisy people to live and work in his masterpiece. Miracle City would be a plaything, a mere toy, compared with what he would achieve in Paradise Towers.

And then suddenly the reception faded on his central screen. And a strange face appeared. An intelligent face, it was true, but impish and insolent too with a batttered straw hat perched on its top. He stared at this visage on the screen, trying to place it. It was vaguely familiar but it was not someone with whom he had ever had dealings. Finally a hand came into view and raised the intruder’s straw hat politely and then the face began to speak.

‘Hello there, Kroagnon,’ it began without any proper deference. ‘This is the Doctor speaking. I don’t believe we’ve met though no doubt you’ll have heard of me.’

The Great Architect grunted savagely. The nerve of it! He may have heard of this Doctor, he may have not but that was hardly the point. The important thing surely was that the Doctor had heard of
him
.

‘I thought you had,’ the Doctor acknowledged cheerfully, guessing at the angry reaction at the other end. Despite not being able to see his auditor, he was beginning to enjoy his provoking role.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’d heard so much about Paradise Towers that I thought I’d come and take a look. And I have to say, I’m very disappointed. It displays exactly what everybody says is your usual failure as an architect. You don’t make any allowances for people having to live in these places.’ He smiled winningly in a way he hoped would have the Great Architect grinding his teeth in rage. ‘Still, I’m sure if we manage to work together, you and I, we might just about manage to make this place habitable.’ The Doctor’s face moved closer to the screen to whisper confidentially, ‘I’ve one or two ideas I might give you if you could be bothered to listen. Bye for now.’

And, with another raising of his hat, the Doctor was gone.

The screen went empty and a few seconds later the familiar images of the Cleaners at work returned. But Kroagnon no longer took them in.

The Great Architect sat there in a state of total fury. He had been so outraged by this upstart’s impertinent remarks that he had even neglected to trace where the intruder had been located in the Towers while making his broadcast. But there would be time for revenge. Plenty of time. A few ideas to make things better! No allowances for people! Nobody ever criticised the Great Architect like that and lived to tell the tale.

One beneficial offshoot of the Doctor’s perilous mission was that Kroagnon was too distracted with rage to monitor closely what was happening in the streets of the Towers. If he had, he would have had some nasty surprises. In Fountain of Happiness Square, for example, he would have seen a group of Red Kangs emerge from hiding to fire arrowgun shots loaded with explosives at passing Cleaners. And he would have seen them cheer as Cleaner after Cleaner was hit and then exploded.

He would have also seen scenes on the 209th floor which might have made him think that he had underestimated the elderly Rezzies. Maddy stood at one of the crossroads in wait for the Self-Activating Robots and when they came up she would step out and stop them.

‘Excuse me,’ she would say. ‘I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it but I think you’ve missed some rubbish in the street back there.’ And she would point back the way the Cleaner had come. Thoroughly confused by the contradictory instructions, the Cleaner would turn slowly. And, as it did so, two other Rezzies would emerge from hiding and the Cleaner would be enveloped in a large knitted tablecloth unable to move or unleash its armoury of devices.

And then Drinking Fountain or one of the other Blues would appear and fire at the immobilised Cleaner. The loaded arrow would stick in its metal body. And then, when Rezzies and Kangs were safely out of range, the shot would explode and the Cleaner would be blown to pieces. Way past the point of repair even if anyone had wanted to repair it.

A great number of Cleaners were disposed of in scenes like this. But there was even more frantic activity back at the Red Kang Brainquarters. This had been selected as the centre of the trap that was to be baited for the Great Architect. Inside, Kangs and Caretakers scurried around like ants stacking into every available nook and cranny in the room the rest of the explosive from the store on the 245th Floor. Soon it would be like a huge bomb needing only the right detonator to explode. And up the steps on ground level the Deputy Chief and Fire Escape were at work on that detonator – a complex mechanism that had to be built into the structure of the replacement entry door.

In the midst of all this, Pex, pale but collected, was receiving his final briefing from the Doctor and Mel.

‘You’re clear now what you have to do, Pex?’ the Doctor enquired.

‘And you’re sure you want to go through with it?’ Mel added, earnestly.

Pex nodded, his square jaw set. ‘I won’t be unbrave again,’

he reassured them.

‘The main thing to remember,’ the Doctor advised, ‘is to get him out of the Caretakers’ Headquarters as soon as possible so he doesn’t see what is happening to the Cleaners. We’ve been lucky on that so far but our luck won’t last for ever.’ Then the Doctor repeated once more the crucial part of the plan.

‘Remember, though, once he’s out, take as long as you can to get him here. Preparing all this is difficult and dangerous work and we need as much time as you can gain us.’ He put his hand on Pex’s shoulder to re-enforce the point. ‘No heroics, Pex. Just a cool, clear head.’

‘I can manage.’ Pex was very different now his mind was made up. He talked less and listened more. Impressed, the Doctor shook his hand and wished him well.