The Lowell woman was being lead past by old Phil Downey - apparently he knew the woman. Locked inside with her personal trauma, she looked like she"d need leading around for the next ten years of her broken life. At least.
As Martha was carried by on a stretcher, all jittery under her blankets. Makenzie decided to follow her inside, sit with her awhile. They were all waiting on the word from his brother anyway, and Makenzie couldn"t think of any better place to wait than inside the church.
The Doctor whipped out a plastic folder full of doc.u.ments, then cast his coat over the armchair, (apparently) forgetting it was occupied. Flopping indecorously on the couch alongside Leela"s bed. he swung his long legs to make himself perfectly comfortable.
Predictably. Parker leaped up, fit to explode. Drawing on all her reservoirs of patience. Melody coolly dismissed Pydych and wandered over to perch on the edge of the couch. She waited there with the needle, while the Doctor rolled up his shirtsleeve.
"I do hope you"ll be gentle," he said, settling back to read.
"You won"t need much. About an armful. I should think."
"So," Melody hazarded, "you found some time to browse our computer files."
"Well, there was a great deal of non-standard software which started me wondering," he answered, skimming the top sheets of the doc.u.ments. "Too many files relating to things extraterrestrial and not much else, that sort of thing. Of course I had my suspicions, both of you wearing sungla.s.ses without b.u.mping into things. And you"re really too intelligent for intelligence agents, for another thing. Well, one of you is."
Parker"s shadow tensed, but Melody waved him off. "Then Mr Theroux here chose to refer to the Stormcore by its original designation - Prism. Over thirty years out of date."
"Quite, well, we have been here a long while," conceded Melody tightly. "Anyway, you must have seen the files we"ve collated on your good self, Doctor. Your UNIT file."
"Ah, blackmail is an ugly word, but it never seems to stop people using it."
"No, that"s not what I"m getting at." Melody waited for him to look up from the pages. "Doctor, we"ve been stuck here for longer than I care to say. Our best chance of finding some means of transportation home lay in securing positions within the government."
"The government that brought our craft down in the first place!" complained Parker.
"Ah, well at least you"re a species who appreciates irony.
That"s something."
"Anyway, Doctor," Melody smiled patiently, "we came across your file years ago, and it didn"t take much to work out your race of origin. All your different guises, as it were. And there"s no way you stayed on Earth voluntarily - not for that long-term stretch you did. So I"m betting you understand - what it"s like to be stranded, unable to get home or even just leave, travel where you want."
"Oh, I don"t know, there was always plenty to see and do."
But Melody saw straight through the glib front that time.
"Oh, all right," the Doctor dropped the doc.u.ments in his lap grudgingly. He searched her gaze like he was scanning a familiar star chart. "Well, since we have so much in common, we really should be playing on the same team, wouldn"t you say?"
"I"m all for that, Doctor," Melody stood, openly relieved.
"Where do we start?"
Behind her Parker remained silent. Sulking, no doubt.
"Garvey." Morgan clapped a hand on the older sergeant"s back as soon as he"d found him. The man looked like he"d had a rough time up on the mountain, and his depleted squad had only rolled into town on the snowmobiles a short while ago.
"Take two of your men and break me a trail out over the lake."
He brought his arm down like a knife, cutting a line out past the church, where he had sent his brother to gather in the flock. "South west heading. Make d.a.m.n sure we"ve got a minimum eight inches of ice all the way. otherwise those people are heading out on foot."
"Sir, I"d like to respectfully request-"
"Denied. Get moving. When you"re done you can come back and guide the convoy across."
Morgan spun on his heel and marched off, mad at the guy for wanting to be a hero. n.o.body in their right minds would ask to stay behind and defend this place. n.o.body.
Parker refused to pace the room - he wasn"t an expectant father - but he was rapidly getting bored of watching the Doctor"s blood meandering through the tubes, its course diverging to each of the beds. Melody reckoned on an hour or more to infuse the two patients and it was starting to feel like double that, when the Doctor leaped off the couch like Archimedes out of his bath.
"What have we got?" Parker darted forward.
The Doctor shushed him while he leafed through the papers a second time. "Melody, would you be so good as to check on our patients?"
Parker bit his tongue, irked to see Melody obliging without a word. He could see from here that the frozen lattice was clearing from both patients" complexions.
"Looks like your antibodies are doing the trick nicely, Doctor."
"Delighted to hear it." The Doc yanked the tube out of his arm and tossed it aside along with about half the papers. He made a beeline for the dresser, and cleared its surface of everything but the lamp. Then he set out several sheets of one doc.u.ment under its illumination.
"Take a look at this. Most of it"s some nonsense about a commando raid on a local observatory." Presumably the sheets he had left strewn over the couch and floor. "This is the interesting part: weather reports."
"Sure, they get me leaping out of bed every morning."
"When your enemy appears to be meteorological in nature, they should do."
Melody fetched a Band-Aid for the Doctor"s arm. Parker shook his head at the sight of his partner playing nursemaid, then moved to peer over the Doctor"s shoulder.
The fact that he didn"t care for wind and rain, and was rapidly losing what admiration he"d ever had for snow, was essentially the full extent of Parker"s meteorological expertise.
He"d seen radar pictures before though and the pages looked ordinary enough to him.
"See this area of low pressure," the Doc pointed, "driving a severe cold front in from the north-west. Here it runs into drier winds from Canada, and we get this cyclonic storm system that seems to be very taken with the state of New Hampshire." He whizzed his finger around in a hurricane-like spiral, then tapped the next snapshots in sequence. "But look: the key storm centres divide and multiply - into increasing numbers of microstorms."
"Like cellular division." Parker searched the others" eyes for confirmation.
Melody dropped into a crouch for a closer look at the last few frames. "No," she said. "The concentrations of nimbostratus increase with each division. It"s more like accretion."
The Doctor stood tall and straight, like a monument to the dead. "Precisely. Each storm centre ama.s.ses greater and greater energy as it forms and the cycle continues. Increased density and ma.s.s around gravitational centres, like the formation of star systems. Except this one is very much a living system."
"So. Where"s it getting its building blocks?"
"Parker, we already know how it acc.u.mulates ma.s.s." Melody rose slowly. "Bioma.s.s."
Parker was sorry he asked.
"There is where it"s formed its nucleus. Right above Melvin Village." is where it"s formed its nucleus. Right above Melvin Village."
"Let me guess. Doc - you pinpointed the Pris - the Stormcore, using our our device." device."
"It"s no more than you were hoping to do." The Doctor gave Parker pause to digest that, then he was off, headed for the door. "In any case, that"s our key. Come on!"
"Wait, Doctor." He didn"t, leaving both Melody and Parker to chase him along the landing. "What are you going to do?"
Melody was asking. "Try to communicate with it?"
But the Doctor ploughed ahead, launching his answers behind him like depth charges in the wake of a destroyer.
"No! Too many people have already tried that. The cult, Kristal."
"So what is it with this thing? Some alien intelligence that rejects all communication?"
"Who said anything about rejection, Agent Theroux?" The Doctor stopped at the head of the stairs. "No, I think it wants contact. Think about it: if a child reaches out to touch a flame, they"re very likely to get their fingers burned. But we can warn our children of the dangers, they can learn. But what if the fire reaches out to touch the child. What does it feel? What does it learn? Nothing. It just burns because that"s what it does when it touches."
"So that"s all it wants to do?" scoffed Parker. "Reach out and touch somebody"s hand?"
"It reached out to touch Amber Mailloux. Why do you suppose she hasn"t been burned? I"ll tell you what I think: I think it recognised something in her as a part of itself.
Something that had already been burned. It empathised. empathised. It found itself a friend." It found itself a friend."
"You"re saying this thing is emotionally charged?"
"Yes. and extremely needy. I don"t believe it"s sentient, not in the strictest sense. It"s self aware and it"s motivated, but only on a very fundamental, emotional level."
"So what does this sensitive icicle works want with the Stormcore?"
"What does anyone want with a Dimension Phase Multiplexer? You wanted it to help find you a way home. It"s a sort of navigational roulette wheel. It bands together interfaces between a multiplicity of dimensions into one central hub, then controls where the ball lands - and that"s the dimension your interstellar craft enters. It"s a pathfinder."
"Well, surely, if it"s got a navigator," said Melody, "what it needs now is a pilot."
The Doctor fell silent and stared into a multiplicity of dimensions.
This is it. General George Custer, eat your heart out.
When the first shots reached Morgan"s ears, he looked south. A diffuse ribbon of flame leaped up across that end of town, dissolving away in the blizzard. And yet, somewhere down there. Derm"s troops still had an enemy to shoot at.
Morgan looked out over his own line of defence.
The drifts had rolled in with the patience of the tide, but now a spray was curling up from the crests of those great waves, tempting the imagination to draw shapes in the mist.
Until the shapes left the imagination trailing and started to draw themselves.
White threads, barbed and entangled, wove surreal skeletons of crystal in the air. Only to dash the sculptures down from the drifts and reconstruct themselves anew in their advance on the barricade. Tumbleweeds of of ice rolled along spiking the air with lashing tongues. ice rolled along spiking the air with lashing tongues.
"Torch it!" yelled Morgan, and fired off the signal shot with his automatic.
Flares were lit, the bonfire roared up in several points at once and the raging flames raced to meet each other. The sculptures seethed and recoiled from the wall of heat.
Morgan, likewise, had to take a step back, an arm coming up to shield his face.
Somebody whooped in triumph. Morgan glanced right.
Past the premature sound of victory, a forte of crystal lightning stabbed through a deserted house, writhing over the timber facade like snakes. The strands converged and sprouted a thicket of ice across the driveway, cutting off the men posted at the back of the building.
Their defences were breached before they"d even begun.
Chapter Nineteen.
It was not a large church, but to Amber just then it seemed vast and hollow. The murmurs of a frightened congregation filled it to the ceiling and the colour had drained from the stained gla.s.s. She felt the eyes of every kid on her, as if they all knew who to blame.
Most of the grown-ups were comforting each other; or praying alone, like Janny Meeks, who had agreed to baby-sit while Makenzie went about his police business.
Makenzie was out front, kneeling over Mom, laid out on her stretcher. He"d promised Mom was going to be okay, and Amber wondered how he could make promises like that.
Shots cracked out, more like on the news than in the movies. Janny Meeks prayed louder, next to her in the pew.
Murmurs stirred all around the church.
"Settle down, folks," Makenzie rose to appeal to them.
"Everything"s going to be fine."
More promises. Not like the ones Daddy could never keep, but lies all the same. She stole a sidelong glance at the Meeks woman to make sure she was immersed in prayer, and she was sure then that she knew how to make everything fine.
She slipped out of the pew, making for the church door.
And the storm beyond.
The ice latched onto the next building, the th.o.r.n.y hedgerow severing Morgan"s front line.
He squeezed off a few bursts from the SMG, the suppressed fire shattering whole lengths of the gla.s.sy thicket with whispered blows. Sprays of shards forced Ray Landers to seek cover, tumbling behind a couple of trashcans, while the hedgerow started knitting itself together.
Time for that evac: Morgan called the retreat, and spun to make for the church.
Its spire, like a monument to this abortive battle, was fading in the thickening blizzard.
The Doctor continued briefing Melody and Parker all the way downstairs and across the hall. His voice boomed, but not so loud that they couldn"t all hear the sporadic gunfire outside.
"This creature concentrates ma.s.s around dispersed centres, but the maps indicate that it developed a nucleus before it laid claim to the Stormcore. In theory, all we have to do is apply our solution to that nucleus and the effects should be relayed throughout the entire creature. Like pain conducted through a nervous system; except of course our attack will be travelling from the centre outwards."
"Yes, but what is our attack? Where are we going to look for this miracle solution?" Melody was finding it frustrating, having to chase the Doctor and address his back.
Well, solutions usually originate in the forebrain, so I"d recommend-" Whatever his recommendation was, he apparently lost sight of it and instead fixed his gaze on empty-s.p.a.ce. halting suddenly just inside the laboratory. He snapped his fingers and flipped his hair back as if angry with himself. "Of course! I"ve been positively snow-blind."
Parker came around in front of the Doctor. "What have we got?"