Angrily, Talib thrust his face up against Solomon"s. "If we do not get more we will have no need of the food. Because we will all be dead."
"I"m sorry." Solomon shook his head. "I can ask Basel to speak to his friends at the Iniko camp. . . "
"Your father would be ashamed," Talib sneered. "You say you want to help your village, but "
"I left Gouronkah fifteen years ago, yet still I"m risking everything to help you!"
"You are Fynn"s now."
Solomon didn"t react. "On Sunday," he said slowly, "there will be food left as usual in the marked cavern. If I think I can safely increase the amount, then I will. Now, go."
Talib turned and stalked away, soon swallowed by the shadows. For a good minute, Solomon stood listening to the sound of Talib"s footfalls echoing away to nothing. When he was satisfied the man had gone he started to follow him, then squeezed himself into a narrow side tunnel. The floor was uneven, coated with welled-up lava. The ceiling was festooned with evil-looking stalact.i.tes left from the cooling of the molten roof. Solomon wasn"t bothered by claustrophobia but in some of these pa.s.sages it felt as if he was trapped inside an enormous instrument of torture.
Perhaps because he was nearing the machine.
Solomon had found it while looking for a less difficult path through the crumbling labyrinth of lava tubes; the faster he could smuggle food from out of the agri-unit, the safer for all concerned. That had been his plan.
Only now something had woken up, no one was safe.
Kanjuchi was dead, and Solomon felt sick with the certainty that he would not be the last.
38.He turned left into another tunnel. The walls sagged here; halfmelted, they mirrored his resolve. And at the end of this long, dark tunnel he could already see the magma-like glow of the machine. Why had the d.a.m.n thing started glowing?
Because you found it, he told himself. Because you woke it up. Because you woke it up. He turned off his torch. The excavating work in the catacombs had weakened the whole area and a crack had become a fissure. Solomon had worked on the split, enlarged it, forced a way through in the hope of finding a short cut. Instead he"d stumbled upon a secret burial chamber for. . . this. He turned off his torch. The excavating work in the catacombs had weakened the whole area and a crack had become a fissure. Solomon had worked on the split, enlarged it, forced a way through in the hope of finding a short cut. Instead he"d stumbled upon a secret burial chamber for. . . this.
Solomon stared at it: a large rectangular panel in the floor, the size of a cinema screen and made from the same gleaming, golden material as Kanjuchi and the vulture. It had been laid into the smooth surface of an ancient pool of lava and weird sculpted controls lay shimmering like molten metal on its surface. A strange, muted thrum, somewhere between the rush of a stream and the hum of a generator, sang like freshness through the fetid air. As if the panel was somehow new not hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old. He should have told someone, of course. Told Fynn, let it be his problem. But Fynn would want it studied, the tunnels would be crawling with experts and scientists, and he"d be lucky to get a tin of beans out to Talib once in a blue moon.
His tools still littered the tunnel. Solomon picked up his hard hat and a shock hammer and stared at the golden panel, which was glowing and humming serenely. "Time you were hidden from sight again,"
he murmured. Just a few hammer blasts and he could bring the roof down. Maybe then things would be better.
Solomon took a deep breath and released a hammering shockwave up at the ceiling of the chamber. The whole place shook around him. He risked bringing the roof down on his head as much as on the panel, but there was no alternative. Gritting his teeth, heart pounding, he fired again. This time huge clumps of the ancient rock were knocked free from the roof to shower down over the panel. But they couldn"t smother its shimmering, molten light.
An awful wave of self-doubt thundered around his mind like the 39 aftershocks of the fall-in it"s not going to work, you"ve screwed up but he"d come too far to stop now. He bit his lip and blasted again, felt his bones jump and rattle as, with an ear-splitting crack, the roof of the chamber gave way completely. Debris rained down around him. Solomon wasn"t sure if it was his nerve that had broken or a spell the machine had cast over him. But suddenly he was running for dear life through the tunnel, playing his torch beam around the weird, warped walls of twisting pa.s.sageway, praying the shockwaves wouldn"t cut off his only way out.
He was running so fast, he didn"t see Adiel watching him from the thickest shadows, her fingers toying with the beads about her neck. 40 [image]
Rose followed Basel into the entrance to the growth chambers. The cave was cool and dry, and it didn"t smell too good. He took a torch from a hook on the wall near the doorway and flicked on a beam of dull crimson light.
"Don"t wanna disturb the bats." he explained. "There"re thousands of them living up in the ceiling."
"You take me to all the best places, don"t you?" Even as she spoke, her foot knocked against something. "What was that?" She recoiled, took a step back and trod on something else. "Ugh! And that. Give me the torch!" She swiped it from him and pointed the beam down at the cavern floor. Small, golden figures lay scattered over the slimy floor.
"Oh, G.o.d," Basel murmured. "You know what I said about bats in the ceiling?"
She nodded. "Looks like they"ve come down in the world." Suddenly one of the little bodies started to twitch. "Uh-oh."
"Just like the vulture." said Basel. They"re coming back to life! Let"s get out of here."
"But there"re thousands of them, you said. If they start flying up and dive-bombing everything, the Doctor and Fynn won"t stand a chance!"
Rose hobbled on into the cave, but the tiny bodies lay like a thick 41 golden drift across the floor. "Doctor!" she yelled, trampling over the bodies. "Can you hear me?"
"Rose." Basel shouted, "whatever did this to the bats will do the same to us if we let it!"
An eerie chittering and the scissor-blade swish of wings cut through the darkness. "Doctor, are you in there?" Rose persisted, feeling the ground start to squirm and writhe beneath her feet. A small shape went whizzing past her shoulder and she flinched. "Doctor!"
"Yeah!" came his happy shout. "I"m in here with Fynn. But we"re coming out."
"Hurry it up we"ve got a bat situation here!" More shot past. One snagged her hair with its wings or its claws, and she swiped blindly, desperately to knock it clear.
"Look out!" Basel yelled.
There were bats everywhere, burning with fiery light. Something had sent them into a frenzy. Rose saw the Doctor dragging Fynn along by the sleeve and racing for the exit. Satisfied he was OK, she pulled her top up over her head and fled too, as fast as her throbbing ankle would allow. The air was thick with bats, snagging on her clothes, smacking into her arms and legs. They"re just mice with wings They"re just mice with wings, she told herself. Weird, mutant golden mice with wings, yeah, but. . . Weird, mutant golden mice with wings, yeah, but. . .
She felt dizzy, disorientated, and was desperately clinging on to consciousness for fear of falling headlong into the mess of writhing bodies on the ground. Then suddenly she felt arms about her, guiding her along. "Doctor?"
The next minute Rose felt the heat of the sun on her bare arms, baking her gooseflesh in moments. She saw Fynn dabbing at a cut to his cheek, Basel lying flat on his back on the ground, chest heaving and found the Doctor grinning into her face. "What were you doing, coming in after me?"
"Don"t say anything about me being batty," she warned him. He looked wounded. Then he started to open his shirt and she saw he was wounded. "How"d you get that bruise?" she asked him.
"More interestingly, how did I get this little feller?" He pulled out 42 a small, golden creature from inside his shirt, cupped in one hand, "Funny you should ask! Well, when I was younger I was a demon batsman. Handy in later life when you meet demon bats." He pulled out his gla.s.ses, flicked them open and pushed them into place. "Think I"ll call him Tolstoy. Looks like a Tolstoy, don"t you reckon? h.e.l.lo, Tolstoy! who"s a pretty little golden boy, then?" He grinned at her.
"Easier to study than the vulture and packs less of a punch than Kanjuchi."
Basel looked over at them. "The vulture got away."
"We know." said Fynn shakily.
"And this lump of gold stuff," Rose continued, "must be the stuff Adiel was talking about it attacked us."
"It wanted to convert you." the Doctor said.
"We trapped it inside a billycan." said Basel.
"If it stayed stayed trapped, it had a good reason." The Doctor looked down at his bat. "Better get this little fella somewhere secure. Fynn, now"s your chance to play the good boss. Send the staff away for their own protection. Send them home. Nice early night and a cup of Horlicks, oooh, lovely." There was a steely edge to his tone. "This place has to be shut down." trapped, it had a good reason." The Doctor looked down at his bat. "Better get this little fella somewhere secure. Fynn, now"s your chance to play the good boss. Send the staff away for their own protection. Send them home. Nice early night and a cup of Horlicks, oooh, lovely." There was a steely edge to his tone. "This place has to be shut down."
"I"m not going home!" Basel protested.
"And I can"t shut this unit down." said Fynn. "The work is too important." He sighed. "But I suppose non-essential personnel can be dismissed for the day. . . "
Rose looked at him. "Think this will all be sorted by tomorrow morning, then, do you?"
"Not by standing round here talking about it," Fynn said drily. "Doctor, that creature "
"Tolstoy."
"must be a.n.a.lysed quickly, before it can mutate and enlarge. We must take it to the laboratory. Adiel can help prepare. . . " He frowned.
"Is Adiel all right?"
Basel was getting to his feet. "Left her in the common room. She was sleeping."
"Not any more." Rose observed.
43.Adiel was hurrying down the bark-chip path towards them, dreadlocks bouncing about her shoulders, face clouded with confusion.
"What"s been happening?" she asked.
"You"re supposed to be sedated." Basel told her. "I gave you a p-pill!"
"Yeah, in a fruit shot that"s half-caffeine, half-taurine," Adiel shot back, "like that"s going to work. I wake up and suddenly everyone"s gone, the common-room window"s shattered, n.o.body"s about. . . " She looked at Fynn. "Kanjuchi is he all right?"
"No." The Doctor smiled sympathetically, but shook his head. "I could be kind and say Kanjuchi"s not himself. But I don"t want to patronise you, don"t want to give you false hope and I don"t want anyone to think there"s the slightest chance of survival if one of those golden blobs touches you."
"So he"s really dead, then." said Basel quietly. "Dead and gone."
"Not gone." said the Doctor. "Something else is controlling his body now. Something with a very particular purpose that"s woken up under that volcano, thinking it needs to recruit sentries. We need to know more about it and fast before anyone or anything else leaves this world with a golden handshake." He marched up to Fynn and shook the bat in his face. "Shall we get on?"
Rose sat in the laboratory, waiting for the Doctor to dazzle his dwindling audience with the results of his poking about. He was using the sonic screwdriver on the dataget, trying to get more out of it, she supposed. Frantic thumping and scratching were coming from a lead-lined box as the bat did its best to escape from captivity. Fynn was hunched up over a funny-looking microscope, checking stuff out, while Adiel got busy mixing and fixing solutions in beakers. All Rose could do was clock the way Adiel acted around Fynn; her whole body seemed to go rigid any time he came near her. Maybe something had happened between them unhappy romance, or maybe he"d pa.s.sed her over for promotion, or. . . Rose sighed. What did it matter? She hated feeling so useless, but suspected that even had she pa.s.sed Chemistry GCSE she would still be just a mile or two out of her depth. She wished now she had 44 gone with Basel and Solomon, rounding up the workers and sending them home early before finishing checking the unit for dodgy mutant wildlife. But she had an ankle slathered in twenty-second-century miracle cream and it was already feeling a lot better for being rested on a lab stool.
"So this golden stuff." she began.
"Magma form." the Doctor corrected her.
"All right, this magma form. Will it come after us? Are we gonna be invaded by golden blobs?"
The Doctor buzzed a bit more with the screwdriver. "Know what I think? I think that it thinks that we we are the invaders." are the invaders."
"Can you reverse the effect turn the bat back to normal?"
"Dunno." He put down the dataget. "These magma forms must secrete some substance that alters the host DNA entirely, converting the skin into a kind of flexible metal. And when the secondary mutation kicks in. . . "
Taking that as a cue, Adiel called up the output from an X-ray scanner pointing at the lead box. Rose shuddered at the image on the plasma screen.
Little Tolstoy had mutated like the vulture into a hideous, bloated caricature of its former self. Its wings were burnished gold, one almost twice the size of the other. Its teeth and claws had lengthened. Its eyes were wide and aglow like white-hot metal.
"Golem," announced the Doctor suddenly, whipping off his gla.s.ses.
"What?" Rose frowned. "The creepy thing from Lord of the Rings?"
"No, golem. A living being created from clay." He was staring at the shifting, blue-black shadows on the X-ray screen. "A crude, primitive servant. Not crude as in it goes round shouting "Knickers!" all the time; crude as in roughly made, unfinished. Once brought to life by mystical incantations, it acts unthinkingly, unswervingly, for its master."
Adiel watched him, her dark eyes wide. "You think that"s what Kanjuchi and the transformed animals have become?"
He nodded. "Only remade from magma, not mud."
"And using alien technology instead of magic spells?" Rose ventured. 45 Fynn stared at them both in despair. "You make it sound as if you deal with things like this every day!"
Rose and the Doctor nodded in perfect unison. "Yeah."
"Question is." the Doctor added, "how long has this stuff been cooking up? The tekt.i.tes on Adiel"s necklace legacy of that meteor. . . We"re talking old, really old. Really, really, really, really, reallllllllllly old."
Rose lowered her voice. "But what about that s.p.a.ce pollution the TARDIS picked up around here? That"s recent, isn"t it?"
" Really Really recent. Really, really, realllllllllly " recent. Really, really, realllllllllly "
"Which means there"s been a s.p.a.ceship in the area!" The Doctor grinned. "Which could explain why this stuff has started reacting! It doesn"t like technology; it hated it when I started sonicking. . . "
"What are you two talking about now?" Fynn demanded.
"We need to know why this stuff has decided to start shaping the local animal life into golems, right?" said the Doctor, rubbing his hands together. "So we need to know what"s in those uncharted caves."
"You can"t go back in there." Adiel blurted.
Fynn was quick to agree. "We barely got out alive the last time."
""S all right, keep your pants on!" The Doctor gave them both a c.o.c.ky smile and waggled the dataget. "I"ve fiddled with the scan-sensors on this, increased the range and sensitivity to full capacity. If we can insert some memory wafers, hook it up to an output screen, we should be able to build up a clearer picture of what"s sitting underneath that volcano."
"Those devices are extremely expensive, Doctor." said Fynn, s.n.a.t.c.hing the dataget and training it on Adiel. "If your tampering has. . . "
He trailed off as a keen whine of power bit into the atmosphere. He studied the meter. "Incredible. Even at minimum scan, the volume of data "
"will swamp its built-in memory, which is why we need the wafers."
The Doctor leaned in over his shoulder and stabbed a couple of b.u.t.tons, powering it down. "Well, well according to this. . . Adiel"s a little bit alien."
46."What?" Adiel stared at him, shifting on the spot uncomfortably.
"What are you talking about?"
"I"d say it"s those tekt.i.tes round your neck," the Doctor went on.
"Yep, the composition"s definitely alien, sure as eggs is eggs. Those stones weren"t formed in a meteor impact. They came from the forced landing of an alien s.p.a.ceship."
Fynn disentangled himself, his face disapproving. "Doctor, really. . . "
"Really, really, really, reallllllly. . . " His deep brown eyes were agleam as he walked up to Adiel. "You say you got those pretty stones from round here?"
She nodded. "The women at Gouronkah find them and sell them."
"Gouronkah?" Rose wondered. It sounded more alien than some of the places the Doctor took her.
"A backwards little settlement nearby," Fynn explained. "The locals tend to be. . . intolerant of staff from the agri-units. See us as violating the land, the old traditions." He frowned. "Why would you wish to consort with such people, Adiel?"
Adiel shrugged, and Rose caught the coldness in her dark eyes. "I believe my vacation time is my own, Director."
"May I see the stones?" the Doctor asked, holding out his hand. A little reluctantly, she pa.s.sed him the necklace. And as she did so, the lead box suddenly jumped with a violent sc.r.a.pe across the tabletop, making everyone skitter.