That"s right," said the Doctor gently as if speaking to a nervous but potentially dangerous animal. "I"m the Doctor and I"m one of you now. We are all Xaranti."
Though he could feel the infection making inroads into his system, for the moment the Doctor was able to control it, to use it. He made his eyes go black simply by letting go, giving in to it for a moment. "We are all Xaranti," he repeated softly, "and I"m on a very important mission. I"m going to see the queen."
The four hybrids looked mesmerised for a moment, then the denim-shirted one shook his head like a dog with a flea in its ear.
"No," he growled, the effort of talking apparently difficult for him. "You... come... with... us..."
"I can"t do that," said the Doctor firmly. "I"m going to see the queen. I"ve been told told to see the queen. If you try to stop me, it will be bad for you." to see the queen. If you try to stop me, it will be bad for you."
The Doctor could sense the hybrids" confusion. They understood that he was indeed Xaranti, and that the Xaranti were all one. However they were unaware of the orders he claimed to be following, knew only that their their instructions were to find and capture him. The Doctor knew he was fortunate that he had run into this group and not into one which was more fully integrated into the Xaranti communal mind. Not only would those in a more advanced metamorphic state have been aware that he was lying, but they would also have been able to send a telepathic message to every other hybrid and fully-fledged Xaranti in the vicinity, detailing his whereabouts. instructions were to find and capture him. The Doctor knew he was fortunate that he had run into this group and not into one which was more fully integrated into the Xaranti communal mind. Not only would those in a more advanced metamorphic state have been aware that he was lying, but they would also have been able to send a telepathic message to every other hybrid and fully-fledged Xaranti in the vicinity, detailing his whereabouts.
"You"re confused," the Doctor said gently, allowing a soothing telepathic pulse to accompany his words. "Your minds are still clouded. You are not yet fully Xaranti. You still speak in a human voice."
The Doctor was taking a gamble that the scintilla of human reason that remained in the hybrid"s mind was still active enough to enable the creatures to understand his words, but no longer a.n.a.lytical enough to think them through. If it was, it would show the hybrids the loopholes in his argument - the fact that he himself was still in the very early stages of infection, for example, and thus presumably even more p.r.o.ne to confusion and misinterpretation than they were. He needn"t have worried. Almost immediately he sensed the hybrids struggling with his arguments. He stepped forward and spread his arms, pressing home his advantage. "The queen wants to see me. I"m going to her now. The only way you"ll stop me is to kill me. So if you"re not sure, kill me now, and face the consequences later."
The female drew herself in and glanced nervously at her companions, her pink - still very human - tongue darting out to lick her lips. The other hybrids hung back, their minds a stew of conflicting thoughts and emotions. The Doctor looked at the leader, keeping his face impa.s.sive, trying to project an air of authority not only with his demeanour and his unblinking stare, but also with the steady, uncluttered thought-waves he projected towards them.
The leader groaned and rose from all fours to his feet; it no longer seemed his natural state. He stretched out an arm, the hand blackening, gnarling, and he pointed towards the sea.
"You... go..." he said.
Hybrids, both military and civilian, spread out into the streets around the Lombard Hotel, looking for Turlough. The Brigadier, scratching his chest, feeling the Xaranti spines rasp against his clothing, walked beside Benton. Benton had taken a long time to succ.u.mb, but now that the infection had taken hold it was rampaging through his system. His face was red and mottled where the spines were lurking beneath the surface of his skin, preparing to break through, and even his back was a little more hunched than the Brigadier"s, who himself had begun to feel a pleasurable tingling between his shoulder blades.
The Brigadier could not now understand why he had resisted the call of the Xaranti for so long. Trying to hang on to the disparate mess of his human thoughts had led only to fatigue and confusion. Finally allowing the Xaranti access had been like seeing the light, admitting a new and astonishing clarity into his life. He was born anew, felt a fresh and glorious future rising from the ashes of his past.
He was Xaranti. They were all Xaranti. They were all one.
Despite their failure to apprehend the boy, and the fact that the Doctor was still at large, the Brigadier felt that their plans were moving inexorably forward, coming to fruition.
The boy would be apprehended soon enough and he would lead them to the Doctor, or at least to the Doctor"s TARDIS.
With that in their possession it would only be a matter of time before the Doctor succ.u.mbed. And when that happened the Xaranti would be invincible. They would spread out across the stars, engulfing planets and populations. They would a.s.similate the Zygons into their number and any other species that dared to oppose them. And those races impervious to a.s.similation - the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Movellans - would be wiped out by the awesome, devastating forces at their disposal, forces that the Doctor would give them knowledge of and access to.
Without so much as a qualm, the Brigadier and Benton walked past the smashed remains of the soldier who had fallen from the ledge above. When they had entered the boy"s room and discovered his escape across the roof, the man had gone after him, but the human detritus that still cluttered his mind had resulted in a lack of concentration and he had plunged to his death. It didn"t matter. Individuals were of little importance; the man was simply a tiny part of the Xaranti, the equivalent of a human cell, thousands of which died and were constantly renewed. The Brigadier, who at this juncture was still exercising the human convention of individual hierarchy, decided that their efforts would be best served searching for the boy at ground level, that if he hadn"t already made his way down on to the streets, he would have to do so eventually.
Suddenly the Brigadier and his fellow hybrids within the immediate vicinity stopped dead, their faces blanking over.
As one they turned slowly to face an adjacent street before blinking and swaying as though roused from a trance. There was no need for speech, no need for confirmation; the message each of them had received was clear and unequivocal. Without hesitation, the Brigadier, Benton and their motley crew of infected soldiers and civilian hybrids converged to swarm towards their target.
Sweat rolled down Turlough"s face and dripped on the tarmac beneath the car. He was shaking as if with fever. The two Xaranti were motionless, their spiny legs so close that Turlough could have reached out from his hiding place and jabbed the meat skewer in to one of them. Surely the creatures knew he was here. Why else would they have stopped?
But if they did did know, why hadn"t they attempted to root him out? In some ways he wished they would just get it over with. Maybe they wanted him to make a break for it so they could pursue him, hunt him down. He heard movement at the end of the street and twisted his head to look. know, why hadn"t they attempted to root him out? In some ways he wished they would just get it over with. Maybe they wanted him to make a break for it so they could pursue him, hunt him down. He heard movement at the end of the street and twisted his head to look.
Dozens of feet, many of them wearing black boots into which were tucked green army fatigues, were approaching his hiding place. They did not hurry, had no need to do so.
Turlough knew that all was lost, but still he couldn"t bring himself to crawl out from under the car and give himself up.
He wished he could sink into the ground. His stomach cramped with dread. A pair of boots broke off from the rest and approached the car. They stopped in front of the vehicle.
The owner of the boots dropped down on to one knee and peered under the car. Turlough found himself face to face with the Doctor"s friend, Sergeant Benton. Benton"s face looked red and blotchy as if he had been out in the sun too long. There was a cloudy darkness, like the reflection of storm clouds, swimming in his eyes.
Benton grinned and saliva gleamed on his blocky white teeth.
"Boo," he said in a rasping voice.
Since entering the R and D unit Tegan had barely said a word. Mike, keeping a surrept.i.tious eye on her, had noticed her clenched, troubled expression. He had noticed the way she moved too, slowly and tentatively, like someone in pain who was determined not to show it. Several times he had asked her if she was OK, and had received a brief nod and a preoccupied, "Fine." Now she was sitting against the wall in the dormitory area, staring into s.p.a.ce and taking deep breaths as though resting after an exhausting journey.
"Is your friend all right?" Charlotte asked, glancing across the room. "She looks very pale."
Mike had been helping the medical staff tend to those patients most in need of care and attention. He started to nod, then glanced around and drew Charlotte aside.
Speaking quietly, he said, "Well, actually, no she"s not. She"s been infected by this... this virus or whatever it is."
Charlotte looked alarmed. You mean she"s changing into one of those things? Like my Dad did?"
Mike pulled a face. "Keep your voice down. We don"t want to start a panic."
"Sorry," whispered Charlotte. "But what"s going to happen when she becomes... uncontrollable?"
"We"ll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Mike. "For the moment she"s harmless enough."
Tegan chose that precise moment to give a loud groan and slump sideways in a dead faint. Mike rushed to her, Charlotte close behind him. Placing his hand gently beneath Tegan"s head he lifted her back up into a sitting position.
"Tegan," he said, quietly but urgently, "Tegan, can you hear me?"
Her lips moved soundlessly for a moment, then in a thick, clotted voice, she said, "We are Xaranti." Her eyelids fluttered, then parted. The eyes beneath were completely black.
Mike didn"t realise they had drawn an audience until he heard the collective gasp from behind him. He turned to see the doctor and nurse who had tended the Doctor"s wounds, plus several curious patients, stepping back, shocked expressions on their faces. Next moment Max Butler barged through the crowd, looking hara.s.sed. "What"s going on here?"
he demanded - then he caught a glimpse of Tegan"s eyes a split-second before she closed them again.
"Oh my G.o.d," he breathed.
"She"s fine," Mike said hastily. "She just needs to rest."
"Rest?" Max said, eyes wide with incredulity. "She"s got the plague, man! You"ve got to get her out of here!" Max said, eyes wide with incredulity. "She"s got the plague, man! You"ve got to get her out of here!"
"There is is no plague," scoffed Mike. "This is a water-borne infection. It can"t be pa.s.sed from person to person." no plague," scoffed Mike. "This is a water-borne infection. It can"t be pa.s.sed from person to person."
"How the h.e.l.l do you know that?" Max demanded.
"I just do, that"s all."
Max shook his head. "No. You"ve got to get her out of here.
We can"t take the risk."
There was another collective gasp as Mike unholstered his gun and pointed it at the ceiling. "We can and we will. Tegan is my personal responsibility. And I a.s.sure you, Max, that if she tries to harm anyone here, I"ll shoot her. Is that good enough for you?"
Turlough sat on the sand with his back against the TARDIS door, the faint tingling vibration from the time machine like an echo of the trembling dread in his stomach. He had had no choice but to lead the Brigadier, Benton and four UNIT troops back to the fun-fair, where the TARDIS stood like a curio between two stalls. The hybrids had loaded the TARDIS on to the back of an army truck and driven it down to the beach, where it now stood, dwarfed on the outside at least, beside the vast dripping hulk of the usurped Morok craft.
Turlough and the TARDIS were bait for the Doctor - or at least insurance against his departure.
Once again Turlough glanced fearfully at the guns that the quartet of soldiers were pointing at his head. The soldiers"
metamorphosis was continuing apace; their eyes now contained a swirling blackness that came and went, like storm clouds scudding across the moon. Turlough tried to avoid eye contact with any of his captors for fear of antagonising them. He knew how violent and unpredictable those infected by the Xaranti virus could become and didn"t want to give them any kind of an excuse to blow his head off.
They had been waiting for twenty minutes and now Turlough was growing increasingly jittery. He wondered how long the Brigadier was prepared to hang around, what would happen if the Doctor didn"t show up at all.
At first, when the tingling in his back increased, Turlough thought it was due to the fact that he had been sitting in the same position for too long. Then the tingling became a shuddering, and an instant later was accompanied by the trumpeting bellow of the TARDIS"s engines. Irrespective of the guns that were being levelled at him, Turlough scrambled away from the TARDIS and twisted round just in time to see it fade and disappear, dragging the cacophonous din of its de-materialisation with it.
"Doctor!" Turlough called in indignance and despair, but it was too late.
The TARDIS was gone.
For a few moments Turlough stared at the place where the TARDIS had stood, unable to believe his eyes. He realised that the Doctor must have reached it before they had, must have been inside it all the time it was being transported down to the beach. His disbelief, however, was more due to the fact that his friend had left him at the mercy of this bunch of gun-toting lunatics. Surely it wouldn"t have taken much for the Doctor to have s.n.a.t.c.hed the door open and dragged him inside? He could have done it before the soldiers were even aware of what was going on.
He turned his attention once more to his captors, whose expressions of shock were almost comical. Then blackness swarmed into the Brigadier"s eyes as he turned them on Turlough and the surprise was replaced with cold, hard fury.
Like a chain reaction, the same expression spread through the soldiers and, as if responding to some unspoken command, they each tilted their heads to regard him.
Turlough, on his knees in the sand, cried out in terror as they threw down their weapons and rushed towards him.
The TARDIS had barely travelled any distance at all. The Doctor had merely allowed the pull of the Xaranti queen to guide his movements and had set the coordinates accordingly. As the TARDIS re-materialised, he patted the pockets of the spare jacket he had procured from the TARDIS wardrobe then pulled a lever on the console. When the doors opened with a faint hum, he drew himself to his full height and stepped determinedly out into h.e.l.l.
He was surrounded by Xaranti, by the stink of them, their bodies pressed together so tightly that it was like standing on a tiny island in a sea of dark, spiny flesh. Xaranti scuttled over one another, their legs pistoning the air; they clung to the walls like scorpions; hung from the metal roof-supports high above his head.
As he took a step forward, they regarded him balefully with their black, unblinking eyes, but they did not attack. Indeed, they edged backwards on either side as he slowly advanced, creating a narrow channel through which he could walk, increasing the crush of their already tightly packed bodies.
Perhaps they had orders from their queen to let the Doctor through, or perhaps they simply recognised him as one of their own. Certainly, his physical transformation was advancing rapidly. His eyes were swimming with blackness, the buds of spines were visible on the backs of his hands and on his neck, and the s.p.a.ce between his shoulder blades was already starting to bulge.
The room in which the TARDIS had materialised was large and functional, evidently some sort of security clearance chamber ahead of the energy core that was the ship"s heart.
Several hundred yards away, at the end of the channel that the Xaranti had created for him, the Doctor could see a door of dull metal, emblazoned with Morok symbols. Beside it was what had evidently once been some sort of security access panel, now a cannibalised jumble of wildly contrasting technologies. On the metal wall above the door was a large embossed symbol that resembled a flaming star, depicted in vivid purple.
The Doctor did not recognise the literal significance of the symbol, but he did recognise a danger sign when he saw one.
Nevertheless he strode forward calmly, confidently, almost regally, head held high, back as straight as the hump between his shoulder blades would allow, hands clasped loosely behind him. When he reached the door he examined the access panel and traced its meanderings to a bulbous metallic nodule that he guessed might have been Kraal in origin. He twisted it and the door slid open.
The corridor beyond was little more than a metal tube with a grilled walkway along its centre. At the far end was another door and another cannibalised control panel. Ignoring yet another star symbol - this one larger and situated right in the centre of the door - the Doctor again operated the access panel. This door, too, slid open and the Doctor stepped through.
The energy core that powered the ship"s engines was enclosed in a heavily shielded metal tube, like a vast central pillar, which ascended through a circular shaft in the floor and stretched up to the high ceiling. The grumbling throb of the engines themselves, ticking over somewhere below, made the floor vibrate beneath his feet. Dominating the wall-s.p.a.ce of this huge room was a densely packed ma.s.s of control panels, again stretching from floor to ceiling, which were accessible via a series of ladders and gantries set at regular intervals.
Intertwined with all this technology, smothering it, communing with it, becoming becoming it, was what the Doctor had come to think of as the Xaranti queen. it, was what the Doctor had come to think of as the Xaranti queen.
It was not a quantifiable life-form as such, but a vast formless ent.i.ty, an acc.u.mulation of the thoughts and emotions and memories of myriad races made flesh. The stuff it was made from was not solid, but free-flowing like liquid gla.s.s, iridescent patterns constantly swirling within it. It oozed and curled above and in front of the Doctor, aspects of the many different races whose minds it had absorbed over the years forming briefly within the malleable stuff of its being, as if attempting to break free, before sinking back into the flux. The Doctor saw eyes and claws and mouths; the suggestion of a fur-covered limb; a patch of warty flesh. The impressions were too swift and too vague for him to recognise any of the species depicted, but each and every one of them looked briefly familiar.
"Good afternoon," he said as the "queen" coiled and rippled.
"Any chance of a chat?"
The stuff quivered and then bulged in front of him, a vast bubble forming on its surface. The Doctor imagined it bursting and spattering him with goo, but he stood his ground.
The bubble elongated, formed into a gluey tentacle which probed almost hesitantly towards his face. It halted a few feet away from him and almost immediately the tip began to thicken and swell, as if the tentacle were a hollow tube and more of the stuff was being pumped through it.
Slowly, at the end of the tentacle, a shape began to form.
The effect was like an impressive display of gla.s.s-blowing.
The shape started as a blob, which eventually extended limbs of its own before beginning to acquire definition. Within minutes a perfect but featureless humanoid form stood in front of the Doctor, though, like a new-born, remained attached to the main body of the "queen" via a clear gel-like umbilicus.
The figure could have been constructed from clear gla.s.s and filled with colourless, constantly moving oil if it wasn"t for the facial features which drifted haphazardly within it, incessantly forming and fading and re-forming, as if attempting to settle on the correct location. Eyes of many different shapes and hues, as many as a dozen at a time, blinked lazily from the flux of the creature"s being. Several mouths suddenly opened in the figure"s limbs and torso, and one even opened in its head, albeit from the area where its left eye would normally be.
The mouths spoke in unison, though each used a different voice. There was a gruff male voice; a lilting female one; another that was s.e.xless and sibilant. "I trust that this form meets with your approval, Doctor?" the figure said.