Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead Part 22

'Right.' Stephanie finished fastening her hair and set off for the tunnel mouth, jogging across the flat expanse of mud and concrete. The mountain wind stirred debris from around the site and sent fragments cartwheeling after her styrofoam packing from a computer box, an empty softdrink can, some autumn leaves. Mulwray watched her go. His eyes were redrimmed in a slack grey face.

'I understand the general concept,' said O'Hara, looking at the Doctor. He seemed excited, eager to talk. 'I understand that you've constructed a twocomponent weapon to use against us. This girl and this boy. They're like a bomb made up of an explosive and a detonator.'

'That's one way of describing it,' said the Doctor.

'But the boy has a unique power. What is it that makes the girl so special?'

'Ask her.'

'All right,' said O'Hara, beginning to move eagerly towards Justine, then thinking better of it. He remained standing beside Mulwray. 'What is it you have?'

'It's a hit hard to explain,' said Justine. 'Let Vincent come over here and I'll show you.'

'I don't think so,' said O'Hara.

Justine said something else but Ace wasn't listening. She was looking at the police helmet on the ground. It was similar to the one she had used in Turkey. Ace was measuring distances, wondering if she could get to it before they could fire at her. There was no way she could expose the laser sighting system in that kind of a hurry. But the helmet was heavy enough to use as a weapon in itself. If she could get it and throw 'Go!.

Someone was shouting.

Ace was so deep in concentration that she missed the beginning of the action.

O'Hara was already falling headlong into the mud, his gun flying from his hand. Mulwray's arm was still swinging with the force of the blow that had knocked the other man to the ground. Mulwray's face was still contorting as he shouted. Vincent was gaping at him, seated on the steps. O'Hara was pulling himself out of the mud now. Mulwray grabbed the teenage boy and flung him towards Justine. 'Go!' he yelled again. O'Hara was groping for his gun in the mud. Now the boy was running towards Justine, and she was running to meet him.

O'Hara had found his gun. As she ran Justine saw him pick it up, clutch at the muddy handgrip, and drop it again. Vincent was perhaps twenty paces away from her now. Mulwray was striding over to where O'Hara was thrashing in the mud. Fifteen paces. Mulwray stood over the other man. O'Hara was fumbling on the ground for his gun. Ten paces. Mulwray aimed his own handgun at O'Hara's back. Five paces.

Vincent heard an incoherent shout of rage and he glanced back over his shoulder as he ran. He saw that Mulwray was pointing his gun, pulling the trigger again and again, but the gun wasn't firing.

It didn't matter.

He had Justine back. She ran straight into him, colliding so hard they almost fell.

Contact.

They wrapped their arms around each other. Vincent had her back. The weight of her was real in his arms. He could smell her, the leather of her jacket and the scent of her hair and face.

And he could feel the detonating pa.s.sion surging out of her, the huge muscles of her emotion flexing and moving in his own skull.

The power had been building in Vincent ever since he'd been brought to this place, building in the long hours he stayed handcuffed to a child's bed in a child's room.

Now he twisted around, moving with Justine like two clumsy dancers in the mud. He whirled to face the tunnel mouth, whirled to throw the huge bolt of energy straight into the excavation site, to scour it off the mountainside forever.

Vincent squeezed his eyes shut and shouted with sheer exhilaration, bracing himself for the rush of images from Justine, bracing himself for the thunder of destruction.

But he could feel her emotions already, and immediately he knew that something was wrong. There was no blossoming rage, no gasoline stink of aggression. The hatred was there, and so was the need to smash and burn. But they were faint echoes lost in the background.

The emotions that surged into him, dominating everything else, were keen sadness, fear, and now, rising above the others, a simple powerful joy.

The memories that rushed out of Justine were a single unstoppable image, repeated over and over. A little girl was standing by a roadside. There were people all around her, pa.s.sing her every second, but she was alone because the people were sealed inside cars. The traffic poured past the little girl and the little girl stood there all alone. The little girl had had a friend. The friend had held her hand just a moment ago. But now the friend was gone. There had been a screaming of breaks and her friend had disappeared. She could still feel the pressure of that hand in hers. The girl didn't really understand where her friend had gone. She never would understand. She understood only that no one was holding her hand now. That she had been left alone.

She had been left alone for a very long time.

But she wasn't alone now.

A hand holding hers again. Vincent could feel it in his mind. His hand in hers.

He felt Justine's loneliness like a twentyyear headache that was suddenly gone. A rigid muscle unclenching.

Images of relaxation. Calmness and peace rushing out of Justine now. Rushing into Vincent.

Giving the power inside him no purchase, nothing to grip. Like a storm roaring over smooth stone. Nothing to pick up and throw. Nothing to smash with.

No way of destroying the project site.

Mulwray was standing in the mud at the bottom of the footpath, standing over O'Hara as he scrabbled for his gun. Mulwray was firing his own gun again and again. But nothing was happening. The firing pin had been disabled and nothing was happening. Mulwray had seen the boy and girl run towards each other, meet and embrace. In the following second he had expected the project site to be wiped out by a force like the wrath of G.o.d.

But it seemed the firing pin had been wrecked on that, too.

Now O'Hara had picked up his gun from the mud and he was rolling over, aiming at Mulwray and firing. Mulwray actually saw the bullet racing up towards his face, a dark blur like a fat bee moving with impossible speed. Straight up towards his eye.

He never heard the sound of the shot. He never felt the bullet go in. As his brain came apart the last thing he thought of was a small boy in a room full of toys, the boy's face disappearing into a mist.

O'Hara climbed off the ground, wiping mud from his face with one hand. The other hand held the gun. He stepped over Mulwray's body. He aimed the gun at Justine and Vincent, and then at the Doctor and Ace.

'It looks as if your weapon is broken,' he said.

'Vincent,' said the Doctor, speaking in an unhurried, conversational tone. 'Let go of Justine. Let go of her now. And run.'

'Stay exactly where you are,' said O'Hara. But Vincent wasn't listening. He was looking over Justine's shoulder at the Doctor, listening to what the Doctor said. He turned away and began to run. He was weak from months in the barrel and drugs and captivity. He stumbled clumsily through the mud. O'Hara ran after him.

O'Hara was well fed and well rested. Muscled with years of exercise. He caught Vincent easily.

He grabbed the boy.

Locked a hand on to Vincent's shoulder.

Contact.

'Oh my G.o.d,' said Ace.

Stephanie was in her suite of offices deep in the tunnel. Sitting across the desk from her was the chief electrician from the Korean technical team. He was a chubby, smiling man wearing a white paper hat and white overalls. From his personnel records Stephanie knew that he had once worked with the South Korean security services, on interrogation a.s.signments. He would be the ideal choice for help with the current problem. There would no doubt be some more burials in the quiet woods up above O'Hara's house, but first they would need to ask certain questions of the man called the Doctor and the two girls.

Stephanie had just begun to explain the situation when she heard the noise outside.

It was hard to believe it wasn't some living thing howling up at the mouth of the tunnel. But the sound was too gigantic, and mixed in with it was the echoing tumbling sound of big objects being thrown around. The Korean was staring out the window, perplexed, but Stephanie recognized the sound from her Midwestern childhood. It was the sound of a prairie storm, but bigger. Considerably bigger.

The Korean electrician was opening the door of the hut. Stephanie wanted to tell him to stop, but it was too late. She wondered what could have gone wrong. She glanced out the window and just had time to hope that O'Hara was all right. The Korean had begun to open the door, but he only pushed it outwards a fraction before the door was caught by the wind and torn off its hinges. He had been holding on to the handle as the door went and his arm went with it, torn off at the shoulder. Stephanie was retreating to the rear of the office and she managed to get through the inner door as the Korean was sucked out into the wind, screaming and bleeding.

Stephanie heard gunshot sounds from the office as she shut the door. She knew instantly what the sounds were. The windows in the office blowing out. The windows had been made of some kind of plastic which would simply bend and bulge and were normally impossible to break. But Stephanie had seen ice crystals forming on them as they froze down to some unimaginable subzero brittleness.

The corridor where Stephanie stood was as cold as a meat freezer already. There was a window at the far end, on the side of the hut facing away from the tunnel mouth. A small portion of the window was still clear of ice and Stephanie was able to look out. She saw lights exploding all down the tunnel's length and great curved panels of computer circuitry peeling off the tunnel walls. All the metal structures lining the excavation were shattering under the sledgehammer winds and the impact of temperatures that should never have occurred on Earth. A small group of j.a.panese mainframe consultants were sheltering in the jagged remains of some crane machinery, trying to fix themselves to the metal frames with belts. She saw them being plucked off one by one by the wind before the window blanked out completely, ice crystals growing across it.

The corridor was freezing now. Every breath was a cold stab deep in Stephanie's lungs. She pulled a bunch of keys out of her pocket and the metal of the keys welded to her flesh with the cold. She fought her way to the door in the centre of the corridor. This was an inner room with no windows. She might have a chance inside. Stephanie unlocked the door and entered.

Stephanie could hardly see now. The emergency generator under the prefab was still operating, providing light, but there was something wrong with her eyes. Crystals of frost had formed on her lashes. It was getting difficult to breathe. Her body was reluctant to take in the killing chill of the air. Stephanie turned to close the door as the mirror in the far end of the room exploded. As the mirror went it exposed an opening and through that opening was another room, with three windows in it. A fast wind found its way in those windows and knifed towards Stephanie. It picked up toys from the pale wooden floor of the room and lashed at Stephanie with them. Through the ice on her lashes she could see the far wall of the hut being torn open. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, but when she shut her eyes she found that she couldn't open them again.

Cold.

A cold like permafrost, extending forever in layers below. Into dark earth frozen hard as steel.

As soon as O'Hara touched him, Vincent began to feel the cold and to see the images.

He saw O'Hara as a child, a serious little boy sitting in a dusty backyard. His parents had just explained to him that one day he would have to die, like everyone else. In his rage O'Hara had beaten his hands raw against the fence in the backyard. Now he sat staring at his b.l.o.o.d.y knuckles, staring in disgust at the fragility of the skin. Hating his own flesh, the warmth and weakness of it.

Cold.

O'Hara sitting in a university library, working late. Refusing to go to sleep. Refusing to eat. Refusing to let the flesh win.

Cold.

O'Hara making love to his wife. Using his body like a machine. It was just a machine he lived in. He tended it and exercised it, but it meant nothing to him. It was just the flesh. It wasn't O'Hara. O'Hara was the mind that watched his wife's face, calculating when to move and where to move his body, timing each motion and controlling each muscle. He was the mind that watched her face strain sadly with pleasure and he was the mind that made his mouth kiss her afterwards.

Cold.

O'Hara in the delivery room of the hospital. Holding his newborn son and feeling disgust at the tough, living piece of muscle that writhed in his hands and cried.

Cold.

So cold that Vincent felt as if he had become frozen himself. Frozen at the centre of the great storm. The storm came from behind his eyes and went into the mouth of the tunnel, blowing across the deep ice of O'Hara's emotions, picking up the cold and carrying it along.

In the end, the cold was so intense Vincent wanted to let go. But he couldn't. A lifetime of emotions were tearing out of O'Hara, emptying him. O'Hara was fighting but it was doing no good. The storm in Vincent was sucking everything out. And Vincent felt it all travelling through him. It was like touching a bare wire, feeling a thousand volts running into you and being unable to let go.

But hands were pulling him loose.

He heard Justine saying, 'Is he all right?' And the Doctor saying, 'Get him up to the house.'

And Ace saying, 'Jesus, what a mess.'

They found Mancuso lying in the kitchen of O'Hara's house, shot three times but still breathing. The Doctor hooked her up to the lifesupport stretcher they found in Patrick's bedroom. When the software reported that the wounds were too numerous and too complex, the Doctor tore out the motherboard from the medical computer and replaced it with a large computer chip, one with a luminous line glowing around it.

Ace sat in the child's bedroom, watching Mancuso breathe and occasionally getting a readout from the life support screens. She nodded off to sleep and woke to find herself on a bunkbed covered with decals of cartoon characters, a pair of handcuffs locked on to the frame above her pillows.

When she accessed the medical computer, asking for Mancuso's status, the reply was immediate: TOO.

MEA.

NTO.

DIE.

Ace wandered through the wrecked kitchen and into the living room. The Doctor was sitting, watching some kind of television programme involving three screens, each showing a person's face. One face was of an Oriental woman. She was saying, 'This is exactly what I was afraid of. I never had full belief in this project, or in his ability to manage it. Now we are in an extremely difficult position.'

On another screen was a teenage boy wearing ceremonial robes. 'Well, obviously we have no choice. There will have to be a policy U-turn. But don't be too disheartened. A cleanup on a global scale will require many years, and a great deal of money applied to technology. Your people can start selling that technology.'

On the third screen was the pink wrinkled face of an enormously old man. The old man was saying nothing. He was just weeping.

The Doctor was evidently enjoying the programme very much. He turned and smiled at Ace as she came into the room. 'Off,' he said, and the television switched itself off, cancelling each of the images in turn.

'Would you like to go for a walk in the woods?' said the Doctor. 'It's a beautiful day.'

Instead of going immediately to the woods they found themselves drawn by the noises from the cavern mouth. The ground outside the excavation was covered with an ellipse of brilliant white that extended from the tunnel like a tongue. What remained of O'Hara was lying at the outer edge of the frost, the black husk of his body presented in sharp contrast against the white ground.

The noises were loud this close to the tunnel. The sound of earth and steel collapsing as the tunnel slowly buried itself. While Ace and the Doctor watched a final landslide thundered up the axis of the tunnel and sealed the excavation with tons of dirt and rock. The fall punched the last air pocket out and a muddy cloud blew up to the surface, settling like a fine spray of ink on the frosted ground, destroying the pure white of the landscape.

The rush of air plucked at Ace's hair and the Doctor's hat. It lifted O'Hara's weightless corpse and sent it spinning up through the air. Ace remembered the taste of red wine and small sugared biscuits. Blue flame on tissue paper.

'Make a wish,' she said.

They walked in the woods until they met Justine and Vincent, coming back up from the old logging road. A boy was tagging along behind them and he smiled and yelled when he saw the Doctor.

'I'm sorry,' said Justine. 'We told him not to come up here but he followed us.'

'That's all right,' said the Doctor. 'Brodie and I are old friends.'

'My parents are back at the cabin,' said Brodie, approaching the Doctor. 'We're going to be here every weekend until Thanksgiving.'

'Well, you can go anywhere you want in the woods now. No one will bother you.' The Doctor sat on a wide stump beside Ace, leaving enough room for the small boy to join them. But Brodie was eyeing Ace with shyness and now he fell silent and remained where he was standing. The only sound was the stir of bare autumn branches and the occasional chattering of a squirrel.

'We'd better check on the cop.' Justine took Vincent's hand and they turned and started back up the path. They walked slowly through the deep fallen leaves, kicking red and yellow shapes aside with each step. As they moved away Brodie edged forward and hesitantly sat on the stump between the Doctor and Ace. He reached into the big pocket in the front of his jacket and drew something out. Two pieces of wood and a length of black rubber.

'It's the slingshot you made for me,' said Brodie.

'So it is,' said the Doctor.

'It's broken now.' The boy looked up at the Doctor hopefully.

But the Doctor wasn't looking at the little boy, or at the broken weapon in his hand. He was staring after Vincent and Justine as they walked away through the slanting sunlight, disappearing among the trees.

'It's probably broken for good,' said Brodie.

'Yes, but it's served its purpose,' said the Doctor. 'So that's all right.'