I.
"Keep away," Shade shouted in warning, as the Schirr dragged themselves closer.
Ben could see why their pale, bloodshot eyes held such a hunger. Their skin was baggy and pallid, muscles all over their bodies twitched uncertainly. They were weak, so they were going to take strength from him and Polly, and the others.
"Ben," Polly murmured breathlessly in his ear. "I just realised what the Doctor said, about still being able to turn things round."
"Oh yeah?" he whispered back. He shut his eyes. He just wanted to enjoy holding her close for as long as possible.
"He meant I still have the navigational crystals," said Polly.
"We can turn this whole rock rock around, literally. If we were travelling around, literally. If we were travelling away away from Morphiea, maybe the infection would fade." from Morphiea, maybe the infection would fade."
"Where do we need to put the crystals, then?" asked Ben, looking over his shoulder now at Creben and Shade.
"Tovel"s the pilot," said Creben. "I understand the basic principles, but..."
"Even if we did know, we wouldn"t stand a chance," Shade muttered. "D"you think they"ll just stand there and watch us try?"
"What have we got to lose?" Ben kept his voice low. "We can either die for these things or die fighting against them."
"Wait - they can"t can"t kill us, can they?" Creben reasoned. "Or there won"t be enough of us to go round." kill us, can they?" Creben reasoned. "Or there won"t be enough of us to go round."
"You cannot die," said one of the Schirr, its voice a wet hiss like air escaping a punctured tyre. It may have been old but it wasn"t deaf. "Our cellular hold on you is too strong."
"Well then," said Ben, glaring at the exhausted creature.
"There"s nothing you can do to us, is there?"
"But you can feel pain," said another, the one with the chain-smoker"s voice. "Terrible pain. Must I slit you open, right down the middle? Force you to watch your wound as it slowly, agonisingly heals?"
The stone angel padded lightly towards them. Ben froze. He felt like he he was the statue under its cold, blank stare. was the statue under its cold, blank stare.
"Pain," the cherub said, its voice dry as deadwood as it leaned in closer to Ben. "Yes, we enjoy the study of pain."
Ben flinched from the cold bulk of the angel, picturing its face covered with Joiks"s blood. As he pulled back, he heard the sinister sound of stone wings scything through the air, getting closer. Seconds later, two of the cherubim swept into the room through the pentagonal doorway. One held Roba in its arms like a sleeping baby, the other dangled Tovel by his arms. But Ben was only able to tell them apart by the colour of what little human skin remained. The shiny, hairless sticky flesh of the Schirr had swamped them, bulged through rips in their combat suits.
The angel turned away, distracted by the newcomers. Tovel and Roba were placed gently on the ground.
"That settles it," said Creben savagely. "You think we stand a chance with three of those things in here?"
"There"s got to be a way," said Ben. But he saw his right hand going the same way as his left, swelling, his fingers like frying sausages filling with hot fat.
Polly shook her head. Ben saw her face was getting bloated, her lips thickening to the size of slugs. "It"s no good, Ben," she slurred. "Not this time."
Ben didn"t want to believe it. He looked over at the grisly remains the angels had brought in with them. Roba was lying in a twitching heap on the floor, but Tovel was on all fours, staring around dumbly.
"Oi! Tovel!" hissed Ben.
The soldier looked up at the sound of his name, and Ben breathed a sigh of relief. There were still human eyes beneath the thick brows. Tovel shuffled over on his hands and knees.
The Schirr, and the angels, watched him go. They seemed fascinated, like children watching where a clockwork toy will go next.
"Tovel," Ben whispered, as he crouched to help him up. He realised he couldn"t even feel his hands anymore. "Listen.
Those navigational whatsits, can you still work them?"
Tovel stared at him blankly. Ben signalled that Polly should show him one of the gemstones. She wriggled her sleeve and one fell into her palm.
"We"ve got the crystals, do you remember?" Ben whispered.
"If we make a distraction, you can steer this rock out of here!"
Tovel looked at Ben helplessly. He was hairless and mute, his features distorted beyond all recognition. That"s me, That"s me, thought Ben. thought Ben. That"s going to be me, any time now. That"s going to be me, any time now.
Then Tovel nodded. His eyes were gleaming.
That"s going to be me, Ben thought again, determined now.
Never giving up.
II.
Haunt looked dead ahead as she led the Doctor along the secret tunnels that branched off to the propulsion chamber.
She"d spent so much of the last day scurrying around these pitch-black pa.s.sages. Doubling back on herself, setting the asteroid complex in motion, hiding the navi-gems as instructed... wishing sometimes that she could hide too. But no matter how dark a corner she found, there was, predictably, no escaping from herself.
Nor, it seemed, from the Doctor"s questions.
"You"ve explained what you have done," he said to her, "but not why."
Haunt didn"t turn round. She could hear the heavy, measured tread of DeCaster following on behind them. "Does it matter?"
"It seems that nothing matters to you. Nothing at all. Can that be true?"
She walked on in silence.
"You"re betraying billions of lives. You know that, and yet it would seem to make no difference to you. I"m curious as to why."
It wasn"t much further to the propulsion units.
"I witnessed your entombment on Toronto," the Doctor said gently. "I couldn"t help but overhear." He sounded tired, strained, not just in the way he struggled for breath, but in his speech. She found she slowed her pace a little to let him draw closer. But she kept her gun c.o.c.ked and ready.
"It wasn"t the Empire forces that tunnelled down and rescued you, was it?" he murmured. "It was the Schirr."
She nodded, and let out a long breath she didn"t realise she"d been holding. "Ashman died of his injuries. I was close to following him. Took the last of the pills as an overdose. But they found me." She stopped for a moment, tried to swallow down the tight band that constricted her throat. Heard the heavy footsteps and set off again.
"The woman, there. Killed when the grenade went off.
"They"re in," she said. She didn"t mean there were Schirr in the building. She meant they were inside our computer systems. Setting up this rock, everything, even then, ready for this time. And they needed someone on the inside to make it happen."
"You agreed?" the Doctor asked her.
"I was dying. Their physicians seemed to heal me, then they let me go. They never explained anything, never spoke. Just put me back in the ruins of that place."
They went on, step after heavy step.
"How could I tell anyone I"d been saved by the Schirr? That I"d let them kill my Ashman -" She clenched her fists, closed her eyes. "That I let them kill my commanding officer, and then allowed them to put me back together again? They"d have court-martialled me." Now she turned to the old man, angry at the memories, angry at him. him. "And I wasn"t through. "And I wasn"t through.
Not with the army, not with the Schirr. I tore through those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on twenty worlds. I made sure they"d regret keeping me alive. I killed thousands of them."
"And yet it was never enough," the Doctor said, like he understood, like he was some kind of shrink or something.
Step after step in the darkness. DeCaster trudging on too, getting closer.
"When I took out New Jersey," Haunt whispered, "when DeCaster and his stinking Spook sciences had us beat and there was no way out. When I pressed the b.u.t.ton and nuked the planet... I wiped out a million. Just like that."
"How many of your own kind did you kill in the process?"
the Doctor murmured.
She ignored him. "The Army couldn"t condone it, of course.
But I was too high-profile to be tried. They made me a marshal and retired me to training duties with the minimum of fuss."
Haunt recognised the blue tinge of the propulsion units bleeding into the blackness, quickened her step slightly.
"War changed," she went on, "I watched watched it change. No more battlegrounds. No more front lines. Just terrorists. Anywhere, everywhere. And who dies, in their thousands, every time? it change. No more battlegrounds. No more front lines. Just terrorists. Anywhere, everywhere. And who dies, in their thousands, every time?
Not the soldiers. Not the enemy. The innocents." She laughed mirthlessly. "How can we stop that? We can"t stop that."
They turned a corner in the pa.s.sage. The light was deepest blue, shot through with a harsh brightness like sunlight.
"But a war," said the Doctor, his voice harsher now, "a good old-fashioned war, with a foe you can see, an enemy you can touch and kill... That is acceptable, is it, hmm?" He seemed furious. "That is desirable?"
Something in Haunt finally broke. She muscled him up against the jagged slate of the wall and leaned in close. "If the Spooks want bodies, let em have bodies," she snarled in his face, mindful of DeCaster getting closer and closer. She realised she had her hand round the Doctor"s throat. "Least we can see them, then. Least we can kill kill them. They can burn just as well as us." them. They can burn just as well as us."
"That"s no justification," he said, fighting for breath. "You know very well it isn"t."
"I know your kind," she spat at him. "I knew it from the moment we met. The lump of b.u.t.ter that won"t melt in your mouth. The roses you come up smelling of every time." She sneered, shook her head. "I was d.a.m.ned the second the Schirr saved my life."
"No," the Doctor gasped as he clawed feebly at her hands, his eyes tightly shut. She slackened her grip. "No," he said more firmly. "You lost someone dear to you and never let yourself recover. You withdrew into yourself, withdrew from life, until nothing mattered at all. The Schirr didn"t cause that change in you. You did it yourself."
"Oh, you"re funny." She stared at him, breathless. "You think I didn"t know there"d be a price for my life? That they"d want something from me in return? It"s so obvious." Her hand slid down to her side.
The Doctor stared at her. "The cyst?"
"It was theirs," she whispered. "They grew it in me.
Malignant. No way to remove it save the way you saw."
He met her gaze, grave and unflinching. He acted like he understood now. Like he wasn"t afraid. "And over the years it"s slowly taken control of you. Led you to this pa.s.s." His bony hand gripped her wrist and he spoke urgently. "But it"s gone from you now! Now you can fight their conditioning, prevent this evil -"
DeCaster was approaching the tunnel bend. Coming into the light.
"No, Doctor. It"s for the best, all this." She let her forehead rest against the Doctor"s chest. "When we"re all a part of them... We"ll start a real war. A proper war, one we can can win." win."
She couldn"t suppress a sudden smile. "And even if we don"t... I won"t be scared any more."
"You"re mad," he said quietly in her ear. "Quite mad."
She heard the rasping breath of DeCaster as he rounded the corner. Straightened up, but a fraction too late. His pink eyes looked furious, the pupils dilated to red specks.
"Has he explained what he has done?" the Schirr enquired.
"No," she said, "he hasn"t."
The Doctor looked up at the Schirr and smiled weakly.
"Through here," he croaked. "I will show you, sir."
"Why so feeble," DeCaster wondered. His voice was sticky, seductive. "I smell youth in you. Can the body be so frail when the mind is so...?" He trailed off mid-sentence. Then he seized the Doctor by his coat and lifted him off the ground.