Dr. Who - BBC New Series 25 (12 page)

The Indian man mimed resting his head on his hands.

‘We sleep… yes?’ he tried to explain.

‘The bedroom?’ Wilkins said, trying to help him out.

‘Beds?’

‘Beds, yes.’

Daker turned to one of the men. ‘Check it out, Barnes.’

‘Yessir.’

Barnes stomped across the room and yanked aside the sheet of material so violently that it fell off the wall. One of the children burst into tears.

‘Please, sahib,’ the man protested, raising his hands.

‘You frighten my…’ he gestured towards his wife and children. ‘We know nothing, yes?’

Daker’s eyes were glinting dangerously beneath the brim of his peaked cap. Wilkins noticed that he was swaying slightly from side to side.

‘You’re a liar,’ he muttered. Then suddenly he started to shout, making the other children cry too. ‘You people are all the same. All liars!’

Wilkins glanced at his colleagues. They looked back at him, shaking their heads.

Barnes emerged from the arch. ‘Nothing there, sir.’

A glazed look had come over Daker’s face. He turned his head stiffly in the Indian man’s direction.

‘Where are they?’ he said.

‘Please…’ The Indian man glanced at Wilkins, as if begging him for support.

Daker took a step forward, raising his revolver.

His voice was horribly low and silky, but it could still be heard above the crying of the children. ‘Tell me where they are.’

Wilkins swallowed and stepped forward.

‘Sir,’ he said.

Daker appeared not to hear him.

Wilkins raised his voice. ‘Sir, I don’t think these people know anything.’

Daker stopped dead. He stood swaying for a moment, and then he slowly turned to face Wilkins.

‘What?’ he said quietly.

Wilkins felt sweat running down his face. ‘I really don’t think these people know anything, sir.’

Daker’s face suddenly twisted. ‘Are you siding with the enemy, Wilkins?’ he snarled.

‘They’re not the enemy, sir,’ said Wilkins. ‘They’re just a poor family, trying to get by in difficult times.’

‘Traitor!’ screamed Daker.

He lunged forward, and suddenly shoved Wilkins out of the door.

Wilkins staggered backwards into the street. Blinded by the sun, he toppled over, landing on his back in the dust.

He lay for a moment, winded, and then tried to rise.

All at once a dark shape loomed over him, blotting out

the sun. Shielding his eyes, Wilkins saw Major Daker pointing a revolver at his head.

Staring into the circular black barrel of the gun, Wilkins wondered whether he would hear the explosion of the discharged bullet in the split-second before it ended his life.

*

‘Hnn,’ he grunted, clearly unimpressed. He made some minor adjustments to a row of rotating wheels of numbers that looked as if they had been cannibalised from an old adding machine, then held the device up again.

This time the detector began to ping in a steady, high-pitched rhythm. A grin spread across the Doctor’s face.

‘Captain Kangaroo, we have lift-off!’ he shouted to no one in particular, and ran off up the street.

Wilkins tried to remain calm. He forced his attention away from the barrel of the revolver and up to the flushed face of his commanding officer. Major Daker’s peaked cap plunged the top half of his face into shadow, so Wilkins concentrated on his mouth – his lips stretched tight over clenched teeth gleaming with spittle.

‘You’re not going to shoot me, are you, sir?’ Wilkins asked, amazed at the steadiness of his voice.

He saw the Major’s lips writhe. ‘Why not? At El Alamein we executed traitors and cowards.’

‘But I’m neither, sir,’ said Wilkins. ‘I was only offering an opinion.’

‘Insubordination!’ Daker screeched. ‘You were questioning my orders.’

‘You didn’t actually
give
any orders, sir,’ said a voice from behind Daker.

He whirled round. ‘What?’

The speaker was a blond, fresh-faced private called Joe Shaw. He looked terrified, but he cleared his throat and said, ‘You didn’t actually give any orders. Like Wilkins said, sir, he was just offering an opinion.’ He hesitated a moment, then swallowed. ‘And to be fair, sir, I agree with him… Wilkins, that is. I don’t think the family know anything either.’

There were mumbles of agreement from the rest of the men, all of whom had now gathered in the street.

Daker looked furious. He swung from one to the other, waving his revolver about, pointing it at each of them in turn.

‘This is outrageous!’ he screamed. ‘I’ll shoot the damn lot of you!’

‘What for, sir?’ asked Barnes.

‘For questioning my authority!’ Daker screamed, froth flying from his mouth.

‘But you can’t shoot us for that, sir,’ Wilkins said from his sitting position. Oddly, as his superior officer lost control, the more
in
control he felt. ‘You could put us on a charge, sir. Even court martial us. But you can’t
shoot
us,

sir. That would be…’

‘Murder,’ said Joe Shaw.

The rest of the men nodded.

Daker looked like a cornered animal, his eyes bulging in the crescent of shadow beneath his cap. He was still clutching his revolver, and suddenly Wilkins saw his knuckles whiten as his fingers tightened on the trigger.

‘Look out!’ he shouted, and the four standing men dived for cover, two to the left, two to the right. Just as his finger pulled the trigger, Daker jerked the gun up and the bullet went high, hitting the upper storey of a building across the road, sending stone splinters flying in all directions.

Wilkins wondered whether he should try jumping the Major, wrestling the gun out of his grasp, but there was no need. As though pulling the trigger had released all his pent-up fury, Daker suddenly allowed the revolver to slip from his nerveless fingers. A moment later he crumpled, dropping forward on to his knees and then slumping back on to his haunches. His men looked at each other, shocked, as he began to wail like a baby.

Wilkins stood up, not sure what to do or say. ‘Sir,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I…’

But then Daker’s hands rose and began scrabbling at his head, dislodging his cap.

Immediately the men jumped back, their shocked expressions changing to horrified gasps.

As Daker’s cap dropped into the dust, they all stared at the bulging black growths sprouting from his skull like gnarled and poisonous toadstools.

The readings on the timey-wimey detector kept changing. Like someone having to constantly retune a car radio whilst passing through an area of bad reception, the Doctor had to stop and twiddle dials every couple of minutes to keep the pinging noise constant.

He knew what this meant. The sonic was on the move.

Clearly it was in somebody’s possession and they were carrying it about with them. He had configured the detector to home in on the residual artron energy from the Time Vortex that would be clinging to the sonic. Genius that he was, he had instructed the machine to phase out the larger concentrations of energy that he and Donna would be carrying about with them and to focus on the smaller stuff. Of course, the detector might ping excitedly away, only for the Doctor to discover it had tracked down his

lost sun visor or Donna’s sandals. But sooner or later it would find the sonic. It was just a matter of … well, time.

At the moment the detector was pinging away like billy-o. The Doctor ran down street after street in pursuit of the signal. He was only peripherally aware of his surroundings, hardly conscious of the curious stares he was receiving from locals braving the riot-torn but currently quiet streets, and British soldiers on foot patrol, alert for signs of trouble.

As far as the Doctor was concerned, they could stare all they liked just as long as they left him alone. He had entered the Intergalactic Staring Championships once on Acerlago Prime and was used to being gawped at. He had come away with bronze, but only because the Rallion Gestalt had cheated. He was remembering what a fuss he had kicked up at the time, and how such things had seemed important to him back then, when he rounded a corner and ran slap-bang into someone.

He bounced off, rubbing his nose. The man he had collided with was at least two metres tall and seemed almost as wide. Like many of the local men, he was wearing a white cotton kurta over a pair of salwar pants.

He had a bushy black beard and a tangled mass of black hair.

‘Oof, sorry,’ said the Doctor, and then he got his first proper
look at the man. He saw how the man’s body had ballooned and twisted with zytron energy, how his face had swollen and blackened, how the pigment had seeped out of his eyes, so that they now looked as yellow as a cat’s.

He saw too that the man was wielding a club which was thicker and longer than his own leg. A club which he was now raising into the air with the clear intention of smashing it down on the Doctor’s head.

The man roared and brought the club down in a savage arc. If the Doctor hadn’t leaped backwards, the blow would have shattered his skull. He saved himself, but was unable to save the timey-wimey detector. It was smashed out of his hand, bits of it flying in all directions. However, it didn’t actually stop pinging until it hit the ground and broke in two.

‘Oh,’ said the Doctor, looking down at the machine.

‘That was a bit—’ Then he threw himself backwards as the man swung the club again. The end swished past the Doctor’s face, so close that he felt the breeze of it ruffle his hair.

‘Whoa there, big feller,’ he said, raising his hands. He wondered whether a Venusian lullaby might help. He had quite a repertoire of those.

The man snarled, drool spilling from his lips, and came for him again. Once more the Doctor ducked, and once more the club narrowly missed his head.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ the Doctor said urgently, backing away. ‘You’re ill, but you can fight it – and I can help you. Because you’re not a violent man, are you? I bet you go all gooey at the sight of babies and small fluffy animals. I’m right, aren’t I? Cos underneath all that hair, I can see you’ve got a really kind—’

The man roared and charged. As he raised the club for another almighty swing, the Doctor’s heel came down on

a loose bit of debris – a rock or a chunk of wood – which flew out from under him. His left leg jerked into the air, and suddenly he found himself sprawling on his back in the dust. He was looking into his assailant’s yellow eyes as the man raised the club to deliver the killing blow, when a shot rang out.

Instantly the man’s hands opened, releasing the club. It fell to the ground, landing on its end before toppling over like a felled tree. A second later, the man collapsed too, legs crumpling as he fell forward. He would have fallen right on top of the Doctor if the Doctor hadn’t rolled aside.

Springing to his feet, the Doctor saw a young British soldier running towards him, carrying a rifle. The soldier looked down at the bearded man as though appalled at what he had done. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ he asked.

The Doctor slapped dust from his blue suit. Furiously he said, ‘What did you shoot him for?’

The young soldier quailed. ‘He… he was attacking you, sir. He might have killed you. I shouted for him to stop, but he ignored me.’

‘He’s sick,’ retorted the Doctor. ‘Can’t you see he’s sick? Isn’t it obvious?’

Stricken and pale, the young soldier shook his head.

‘Sorry, sir, I… I didn’t know.’

The Doctor glared at the soldier for a few more seconds, then his expression softened. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose you did.’ He squatted beside the bearded man, felt for a pulse in his neck, and listened to his chest before straightening up. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’ he

asked quietly.

‘Wilkins, sir. Private Wilkins.’

The Doctor nodded, his face grim. ‘Well, Wilkins, how does it feel to have killed someone?’

Wilkins looked down at the dead man. All the colour had drained from his face. ‘Not good, sir,’ he said in a small voice. ‘Pretty terrible, in fact.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said the Doctor. He walked over to Wilkins and patted him on the shoulder.

Wilkins seemed unable to stop looking down at the man he had killed. In a small voice, he asked, ‘What was wrong with him?’

‘His cells are mutating,’ the Doctor said, then corrected himself. ‘
Were
mutating.’