Doctor Who_ Beltempest Part 5

Twenty-three people sat, heads bowed, on the stone floor. Not for these the comforts of modern churches. No pews offered relief for tired muscles. Tiredness was a product of toxins, the pain bringing the acolytes one step closer to their Endless State. The acolytes were young adults ranging from sixteen to twenty-five. They were silent now - not even their breath disturbed the chill stone grotto.

Denadi watched them. As he watched the Priest administer the last rites.

Saketb was a tall man, with piercing eyes and a neat beard. His body was taut; even beneath the robes he wore it seemed fit, a body that could carry a soul far indeed. For ever, maybe. When be broke the silence in prayer bis voice was the roll of timpani, sunrise across n.o.ble mountains. His words went almost unnoticed among the rich timbre of that voice - but then it was not the words that were important. The words were simply the messengers. The message was the soul, the desire to attain Endlessness.

Outside the drone of police flyers increased.

A voice smashed into the cathedral silence: 'This is the Police. You are in violation of State Order 173-A.You will now surrender to our authority.'

The drone of the Priest's voice did not falter. The congregation did not move.

The distorted voice from outside said, 'I repeat: you are in violation of State Order 173-A. Surrender now. Don't make us come in and get you, boys.'

Nothing. No movement, no sound beyond Saketh's voice. Then even that was gone.

A moment pa.s.sed in silence.

The moment became one, two, five, ten.

No one spoke, no one breathed.

The congregation did not move.

Silence.

The wall exploded.

Fragments of stone fell around the congregation with a pall of smoke. They did not move. When police dressed in riot gear clambered into the church there were only two people left alive. Both were arrested. Denadi was given two years' hard labour followed by psychological counselling.

Saketh was charged with incitement to commit suicide.

He was sentenced to life.

Father Denadi was disturbed by the sound of somebody entering the observation lounge. He recognised the uncertain footsteps without having to turn around to look.

Sam moved alongside the priest, her attention also captured by the brilliantly lit planet above. 'Join the Dots,' she said staring at the densely packed lights of the many cities glowing through the clouds and streaking them with fire.

Father Denadi gave her a sideways glance. Sam let her eyes flicker sideways briefly to meet his gaze.

'Dots,' she said.'Join the Dots. I used to play it when I was a kid.' She searched the older man's face for any glimmer of expression. 'You never heard of Join the Dots?'

'I've no idea what you're...' Father Denadi's voice tailed off. He looked back out of the window at the planet. Sam waited to see if he would finish his sentence. He did not speak. Belannia Vin grew bigger, its curved edge flattening into a recognisable horizon.

'I was a child like you once.' The words were hushed, so quiet she almost missed them. The upper layers of threadlike clouds drifting past the window might have had more impact. 'I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know who I was. And you know, I didn't care. Then I realised there were questions to be asked, answers to be sought. For a long time I thought I knew the best questions to ask. I thought I had the only answer I would ever need.'

Sam said quietly,'You've played Join the Dots.You just don't like the picture you've made any more.'

Father Denadi made a curious sound - not quite a laugh and not quite a sigh. He shrugged ever so slightly. 'Saketh thinks he has found a new picture. He wants to show it to me. He wants to let me see.'

'The thing is,' said Sam, lifting her finger to poke at the window over the places where the city lights were moving slowly past, 'you can make any picture you like just by joining different dots. But the dots themselves don't change, do they?'

Again she waited for an answer. Clouds billowed up past the window and light from the cities streaked up through the clouds. Sam studied the lines and sharp planes of her companion's face and wondered if she ought to push the point. Father Denadi seemed like a man still searching for answers. She knew what that was like. She'd done quite a bit of searching for answers herself over the last few years. Her time spent away from the Doctor had shown her a fairly obvious truth, which was that being able to ask the right questions was often far more important than finding answers you couldn't use.

Sam smiled faintly as she found herself wondering how many other people had figured that out before her. Then she remembered the faces of those she had seen die, and stopped smiling. There were some things that made both question and answer - any question and answer - irrelevant.

'This is planet number eight, right? Where I come from we've only got one planet we can live on. How many planets are there in your solar system, anyway?'

'Twenty-three.'

'How many of them inhabited?'

'All of them except one,' said Father Denadi. "The one to which we go to die,' and he made the sign of the Ankh.

Sam said, 'Belannia II, that's where Saketh went, isn't it? Have you ever thought about going there yourself?'

'I am not yet worthy to attain my Endless State.'

'You mean you're c.r.a.pping yourself. Well, I would be, if I thought I was going to a place like that to die.'

Father Denadi did not reply.

Sam said brightly,'But we're not, so that's OK, isn't it?'

Father Denadi continued to say nothing.

They stepped from the yacht on to the blasted concrete ap.r.o.n to the s.p.a.ceport and into a dangerously large crowd of refugees. The sound was deafening, an incessant, insistent clamour for attention. People were shouting, arguing: demands for food, demands for shelter, worried interrogatives from displaced family members, the tearful crying or awful silence of children. Fearful mutterings, agonised groans, the full spectrum of negative emotions.

Sam felt herself taken by the arm and pulled around. A wild face with tear-grimed cheeks thrust close as a woman asked,'Have you got any food? You must have some food. You must have something. What about your ship? You must have something on your ship. I've got money...' Grimy hands thrust forward, crumpled notes and sweaty coins protruding through clenched fingers. At that moment someone else knocked into the woman, who stumbled. Sam tried to steady the woman and was showered with coins as the woman fell screeching away.

The hubbub around her grew suddenly louder as more people pressed close with their own demands. Sam turned wildly this way and that, trying to find a way out of the crowd. But the crowd stretched as far as she could see, a sprawling log jam of restlessly turning heads, staring eyes, screaming mouths, waving hands, through which projected the metallic upper surfaces of berthed s.p.a.cecraft. Even as she tried to get away she knew the task was hopeless. There was nowhere to get awayto . She found herself having to lash out around her just to maintain her own breathing s.p.a.ce.

And then something else was pushing her, a force she could not resist. Impossibly, a gap was opening in the crowd, an invisible force pushing aside adults and children alike, expanding waves of angry people squashed aside as the grime-streaked hull of a garbage scow tucked itself neatly into the resulting s.p.a.ce and, pressor fields still grumbling on low power to hold back the crowd, began to disgorge even more refugees from its filthy interior.

Sam looked wildly around for Father Denadi. She could not see him. She cried out but could not even hear her own voice above that of the crowd. How could he hear her if she couldn't even hear herself? The stink from the garbage scow, added to the stink of the crowd, made her want to be sick. She had never considered herself either a claustrophobe or an agoraphobe but, well, this was different. This was both fears together - the fear of wide-open s.p.a.ces jammed shoulder to shoulder with angry people.

Sam felt her breath catch in her throat.Wnat was happening here? Why was everyone penned up like this? Why in the s.p.a.ceport? Wasn't it dangerous? Why wasn't someone doing something about it? They couldn't just expect everyone to stay here. Several hundred metres away the grumble of a pressor field sank into the subsonic range of frequencies. Sam groaned and pressed her hands to her ears in pain. A moment later the sensation was gone and a metallic bundle of modules was rising gracefully into the night sky. The crowd bulged, flowed. Sam found herself in a river of people streaming into the s.p.a.ce left by the ship.

What about radiation?

What about the subsonics?

What about the pressor fields?

Weren't they dangerous?

Wasn't anybodyever going to do anything?

Sam couldn't even tell if she was yelling her thoughts aloud rather than merely thinking them, so dense was the crowd and so great the noise and the fear that it generated. Already she was tired and wanted to sit down, but she knew if she did that she would be swept away or trampled underfoot. The crowd was like a big, slow animal, screeching for attention while it b.u.mbled around looking for food, never realising that is was crushing its salvation underfoot.

As Sam felt she was going to lose it completely, a voice came to her above the sound of the crowd. 'Please remain calm.' The voice was a magnified shriek, blasting down out of the sky. She looked up. A small blue and yellow vehicle hovered twenty or so metres above her head. 'This is a special message from the government of Belannia VIII. Due to the recent influx of refugees your ships have been rerouted to this holding area and you are to be billeted here for the duration of the emergency. Food and shelter will be provided shortly. Anyone with relatives on Belannia VIII or with recognised dual nationality or medical conditions requiring special treatment should make their way to the administration building in Sector 3-South-West-l 7 .'

'What about my children?' A voice yelled from some distance away.'You can't expect children to stay in conditions like this!'

The voice, which Sam realised now must be a recorded message, continued without break: 'We apologise for the inconvenience. Please remain calm. This is a special message... '

The vehicle drifted on, the message repeating without variation as it pa.s.sed slowly over the crowd.

Sam looked around. Where was Sector 3-South-West-17? And how could she reach it? And wouldn't it be full of people claiming sanctuary, seeking asylum or claiming medical conditions -anything to get out of the holding area?

She had to try. This was just like Ha'olam again. Wasn't she a refugee along with all the rest? Homeless? Alone?

Once again, she'd lost the Doctor, lost the sanctuary of the TARDIS. She cursed loudly.

And so she was back to square one: what should she do now she was here? Behave like a refugee or try to help? Wait patiently for someone else to solve the crisis so they could all go home? Subscribe to the anger and fear running riot here? Or try to sort things out? Improve the conditions here while she worked out a way of addressing the bigger picture?

It was no question when she got right down to it. Make a difference, Sam Jones.

To do that she had to get out of the system.

Out of the holding area.

She had to find Sector 3-South-West-17.

There were no signs in a s.p.a.ceport, especially not on the landing ap.r.o.n. And even if there were she wouldn't be able to see them through all these people. Sam lowered her eyes to the ground. It was the one thing no one else was doing. They were all looking angrily at the sky, waving or shouting, trying to get the attention of the hovering vehicle. And so it was that Sam found herself looking at the very signpost for which she sought.

The ground was colour-coded. Arrows pointed to various sectors. Numbers delineated subsections within.

Sam grinned. She had a purpose now. She was beginning to feel better.

That was when she saw the blood.

She blinked. Spots of blood. Enough to frighten her again. Enough to make her realise how volatile the situation really was. Enough to make her realise how easy it was to fantasise, to carefully build a false view of things inside your own head until you couldn't tell which was real any more.

She cast around, following the blood, pushing back when she found herself in danger of being crushed or even attacked. Most people were just as frightened as she was. At the slightest sign of aggression they tended to back off. If they didn't, Sam just apologised, or turned and went another way. The psychos had enough people to pick a fight with. They could make do without her.

She found the source of the blood twenty minutes later. A boy, he must've been about eight. He was sitting on the ground near to a refuelling hatch which had been propped open by someone in the crowd. The hatch towered above the child, its greasy surface stinking of fuel. The little boy had been sick and was crying but was unable to leave the haven he had found himself in. He was sitting down on the refuelling nozzle's cap. His left leg was cut, quite deeply, the flesh bruised all around the knee. Sam wasn't sure the boy could walk. Blood caked his leg and hands, where he had rubbed the wound. Sam knelt quickly beside him, smiled a h.e.l.lo and examined the wound. 'Where's your mum?'

'Dunno.'

'What about your dad?'

'Dunno.'

'Do you have relatives here?'

'Dunno.'

'Is anyone looking after you?'

'Dunno.'

'What's your name?'

'Dunno.'

'I'm Sam.' She tried a smile.' "Sam I am. Do you like green eggs and ham?"'

'Dunno.'

Sam sighed. She remembered Dan Engers, the boy she'd tried to look after on the Cirrandaria, and that in turn triggered another memory. 'When I was your age I used to read these books about a little boy like you. He was always getting into trouble and having adventures. His name was Danny. Danny Dunn. I'm going to call you Danny, OK?'

'OK.'.

'So, Danny. Did you come in a s.p.a.ceship?'

'S'pose so.'

'Where did you come from?'

'Dunno.' This time he grinned with her.'My knee's killing me.'

Sam nodded thoughtfully.'Can you walk?'

Danny shook his head. 'No way.'

Sam narrowed her eyes.'You putting me on?'

'No way.'

'All right. Well we've got to get you to somewhere we can get that leg fixed. How stupid do you think you'd feel being carried by a girl?'

Danny looked around quickly.'What girl?'

Sam was genuinely surprised.'Me, stupid.'

'You ain't a girl. You're like my mum.'

Sam found herself grinning. 'You know what? I reckon you and me can be mates. What about it?'

'Don't care.'

'Cool. OK, partner, grab on.' She swung Danny on to her shoulders and winced as he grabbed hold of her short hair before wrapping his arms around her face, poking her in the eyes and nose before getting a secure hold on her neck.'Let's motorvate.'

There was a river of people outside the administration building. They were clamouring for attention and food, screaming and yelling. Sam wondered how she was going to reach the building. Was this a queue? It looked more like a riot. Where were the aid workers? Where were the government officials? Was anyone trying to help?