Doctor Who_ Grave Matter Part 21

'Oh, I don't think so.' There was a scuffling noise, which Peri decided must be the Doctor getting to his feet. 'They don't need us, but I think they do still need Mr Sheldon here.'

'Are you sure, Doctor?' Sir Anthony asked out of the darkness.

'Wheelchair,' Sheldon's quiet voice followed Sir Anthony's question.

'And I say potato,' the Doctor added.

But the end of the word was drowned by the metallic sc.r.a.pe of a bolt being drawn on the other side of the door.

'Ah, about time too.' As the light flooded into the room round the edges of the opening door, the Doctor pulled his coat about him, b.u.t.toning it up, and stepped towards the light.

'Have you any idea how long we've been waiting down here?'

he demanded.

'Have you?'

There was a figure silhouetted in the doorway, frail and slight. Sagging as she dragged the heavy door open.

'Janet!' Peri exclaimed. 'Janet, are you all right?'

'Not really no.' Her voice was strained and hesitant. 'Not sure how long...how much longer...' She stepped aside to let them out.

The Doctor paused to help Sheldon up the short flight of steps to the door. As he entered the light, Peri could see that his left arm was complete now to the elbow. He looked at Janet as he pa.s.sed her, a flicker of recognition on his face.

'Oh G.o.d, Christopher,' she said quietly, hesitantly. 'What has he done to you?' Her pale body seemed to sag further.

'What have I done?'

'Don't blame yourself,' the Doctor said kindly, his tone a contrast to his shouting on the jetty earlier. 'Now, what's the best way out of here?'

Janet pointed up the corridor and led the way. 'Not easy...'

she said. Her voice was strained. 'Words, not easy. Think, say, different.'

Sir Anthony was helping the Doctor to drag Sheldon's weak form after her. Steps led up from the corridor to the ground floor of the house. The corridor itself continued onwards. 'Where does that lead?' the Doctor asked.

'Labs,' Janet gasped. 'Secure. Sealed.'

'I see.'

At the top of the stairs was a heavy metal door. It was standing open. The Doctor ushered everyone out and into the hallway beyond.

'How are you doing?' he asked Janet when they were all in the hallway.

'Can't...can't speak easy,' she stammered. 'Diff-difficult.'

'I imagine the Denarian is taking control of your physical form,' the Doctor said. 'Muscles, nerves, bone, everything.

Even your vocal cords. It will get to the mind last of all - for a while you'll be a prisoner inside your own body.'

'And...' the words were a struggle, '...then?'

'And then you won't have to put up with this sort of moral dilemma.' The answer was loud and harsh. It came from in front of them. From Logan Packwood as he stepped out of an alcove and raised a pistol.

'Oh, you can run, Janet,' he said as she stiffened. 'But where would you go? You can't hide from yourself, now can you?' The gun swivelled to cover the Doctor as he too tensed, bracing himself to fly at Packwood. 'No, Doctor, I really wouldn't advise it. I don't need to aim, I can fire indiscriminately until I hit you. Anyone I'm concerned about keeping alive will soon recover from a mere bullet.'

Packwood's smile widened, his pale eyes glistening in the light from a nearby gas lamp. 'Now since you don't seem to care for the accommodation I had prepared, perhaps we should continue our discussions in the drawing room. Mmm?' He motioned for them to continue down the corridor. 'I've asked Rogers to bring in some tea,' he added.

It was grotesque and bizarre. Packwood stood in front of the roaring fire in the drawing room, drinking tea from a cup that seemed miniature in his ma.s.sive hand. The saucer rested on the mantel shelf behind him.

'I really can't see what you find wrong in all this, Doctor,'

Packwood said.

The Doctor and Peri were sitting on a chaise longue chaise longue, the Doctor with his feet stretched out, Peri hunched up on the edge of the seat. Janet was sitting upright and stiff on a chair. Sir Anthony looked at home in an armchair, and Christopher Sheldon was slumped into another armchair beside him, curled up and shivering.

Rogers stood in the doorway, shotgun over his arm, watching the proceedings. And the pale, bloodless corpse of Bill Neville handed them tea.

Peri shrank away as the cadaver offered her a cup. The Doctor leaned across and took it instead, giving a little smile of grat.i.tude. He sipped appreciatively at the tea before setting it down on an occasional table beside the chaise longue chaise longue. There was an oil lamp on the table, giving out a flickering orange light that supplemented the pale glow from the gas lamps round the walls.

'You can't see what's wrong with this?' he asked, nodding towards where Neville was now pouring tea for Sir Anthony.

Packwood watched for a moment, cup raised. Then he took a sip of tea. 'An unfortunate side effect of the process. But where's the harm?' he asked easily. 'The symbiotic partnership is made rather one-sided by the loss of the brain of the human host. But where is the problem? One of the partners in the arrangement survives. Life goes on.'

'A partnership implies choice,' the Doctor said levelly.

'What choice did Neville have? Did you ask him to agree to - this?' He pointed across the room at the walking cadaver.

'Of course not. But what would he have said? Given the choice between a body that can renew and repair itself, or being merely human?' Packwood set down his cup on the saucer on the mantel. 'What would you say, Doctor? Given that choice.'

Peri looked at the Doctor. He seemed frozen in position, his mouth hanging open.

'Well?' Packwood prompted.

'Well, that's not the point,' the Doctor said. But there was a bl.u.s.ter, and uncertainty in his voice now.

'Isn't it?' Packwood demanded. 'Then what is the point, my dear Doctor, if not the a.s.sured health and happiness of every human being on this planet? Tell me that.'

The Doctor pointed across the room to where Neville was standing beside the tray of tea things, erect and still and silent.

'That's the point,' he said.

Packwood shrugged. 'But he would have died whatever happened. It wasn't the Denarian that killed him. It was an accident. This way something survives. Oh, there will be social problems to work through, I'm sure. How to cope with the increasing population once death is a rarity. But offset that against the reduced health bills and pensions. Offset that against the suffering that will be banished.'

'But at what cost?' the Doctor shouted at him. 'Think about it, Packwood. How do you know the real, human, internal mental cost?'

Packwood spread his arms. 'I am exactly as I ever was.

My mind is my own. You may disagree with my opinions, Doctor, but they are mine. Not some alien material's ideas, my own. The ideals I live and stand for. The ideals that Christopher Sheldon professed and gave so much for.' He gave a short laugh. 'I still fail to see where the problem lies.'

The Doctor took a deep breath. 'You have experimented, without their consent, on a whole population.'

'We needed a controlled and controllable environment with a stable population, Doctor. And it had to be isolated in case there were problems.'

'Problems?'

'But there are no problems. You are being alarmist.'

'But you didn't ask them. People have died.'

'There's no reason to suspect they would not have died anyway. Nothing to link that to the experiment, Doctor. And look at what we have given them in return. Their island is once more their own, not some giant theme park. Surely you can't disagree with that? We are returning to them their freedom and self determination, not taking it away. And we're giving them the first chance to become better, healthier, more robust and fit individuals than ever they were before. As for asking them? Well, I'm sure you know as well as I what Heisenberg would have said about that and its effects on the experiment?' He smiled, the open, generous smile of a man totally at peace with his conscience. 'More tea?' He held his own cup out and allowed the walking corpse of Bill Neville to fill it.

The Doctor rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers, then drew his hands down his face. 'You maintain that you still have free will, that your mind is unaffected?'

'I do.'

'How do you know?'

Packwood smiled. 'Ah, that old chestnut. If my mind was not my own, then I would never be permitted to believe that there was any problem, is that your point?'

The Doctor nodded.

'But how can you say the converse, Doctor? How can you suggest that my mind is not my own? On what evidence? In fact, how can you ever be sure about free will under any circ.u.mstances given that argument?' He leaned forward slightly. 'Why won't you believe that things are exactly what they seem? That this is as good as it gets? That there is no sinister threat or problem here at all? Have you no trust, man?

No sense of proportion?'

'Sense of proportion?' the Doctor fumed. 'Sense of proportion!' He turned suddenly to Peri. 'Tell him,' he snapped. 'You tell him.'

'Tell him what, Doctor?' She was confused, unsure.

'When I was seven,' she said slowly, 'my Auntie Janice died.

It was a long illness. I never really understood why it happened. Why it had to happen.' She looked at him, could see the expression of surprise and sudden worry frozen on his face. 'I don't understand now,' she said.

'It should never have happened,' Packwood said quietly.

'And now we can make sure it never happens again. We can never erase your suffering, my dear. But we can save countless thousands, millions even, of others from the same fear and sadness and pain.' He took a step towards the Doctor. 'What right do you have to deny them that, Doctor? Who gives you the right to decide on a whim what is right and what is wrong?'

The Doctor looked round. Janet Spillsbury was still sitting upright and silent, watching. Sheldon was curled up, whimpering quietly. The Doctor did not look at Peri. Instead he spoke to Sir Anthony Kelso. 'You,' he said, his voice husky. 'Surely you understand?'

Sir Anthony cleared his throat. He was looking down at his hands as they lay in his lap. 'I'm not sure that I do, Doctor,' he confessed. 'When I was a lad, at school, I had a friend who had a terrible accident. He fell from a roof, retrieving a rugby ball. Terrible.' He looked up at the Doctor now, met his gaze. 'The poor chap broke both his legs, damaged his spine. They told him that for the whole of the rest of his life he would never walk again.'

He shook his head, his eyes moist at the memory. 'Just seventeen,' he whispered. 'His whole life...gone. What wouldn't we have given for him to regain the use of his legs.

We couldn't go back in time and prevent him going after the ball, we knew that. But we all felt the guilt. Every one of us who didn't go up there instead, or with him.' He shook his head. 'I kicked that ball up there, Doctor. Now you tell me that I must live with the consequences. Well, I can do that. I've been doing it all my life. But please, please tell me why?'

There was silence for a while, then Packwood said: 'We have the chance to change the world into a far, far better place, Doctor. Why do you fight against it? Join us, become part of this tremendous effort.'

The Doctor and Packwood stared at each other. Then at last the Doctor turned away. 'No,' he said simply. 'I can't. I won't.'

'And why not?'

'Because it's wrong,' the Doctor said.

At first it had been merely a trickle. A few people slowly, almost painfully, making their way towards the quay. As if drawn. But now it was a steady flow. They marched stiffly out of the pub, out of the houses, out of the misty night. They walked slowly and silently through the thickening darkness and filled the boats.

Liz Trefoil sat beside her father, his hair a ma.s.s of red exploding from his head. Old Jim sat stiffly beside them, his pipe clamped in his silent mouth. Across the bay, in a small fishing boat, Mrs Tattleshall clutched her handbag while Hilly Painswick stared out at the blackness of the horizon. Sheep milled round the quay, apparently uncertain what to do or where to go.

One after another the small vessels bobbed out of the harbour, low in the water, making their way ponderously towards Sheldon's Folly. Towards home.

With a sudden burst of energy, the Doctor leaped off the chaise longue chaise longue. 'Mike Neville,' he shouted triumphantly. 'What about Mike Neville?'

Peri's mouth dropped open. Of course, how could she have forgotten? 'They killed him,' she said. 'And then they came after us.'

'Exactly.' The Doctor's eyes were shining. 'If there's nothing wrong in your brave new vision, why was that?'

Packwood's pale eyes blinked. 'I...' he said. He blinked again, the slightest hint of uncertainty in his face. Then it was gone. 'We have to survive,' he said. 'That is paramount!'

'At any cost?' the Doctor suggested.

'At any cost.' Packwood's face seemed to have hardened.

Like putty setting. 'But as the Denarian spreads, so the rate of generation increases. It is a short-term problem.'

'Hah!' The Doctor was pacing up and down. 'And you still maintain that your mind isn't affected?' He stopped in front of Packwood. 'Balderdash!' he shouted in the man's face.

The sound of the Doctor's sudden shout seemed to wake Sheldon. He unfolded in the chair and swung his feet to the floor. His eyes were wild, darting to and fro. They fixed eventually on Packwood. 'I remember you,' he hissed. 'The knife. The saw.' His cheeks twitched, his forehead creased.

'The blood,' he coughed out suddenly, a cry of anguish.

'He's delirious, poor chap,' Sir Anthony said.

'I'm not sure.' The Doctor was beside Sheldon immediately.

'The broken gla.s.s,' the dishevelled man murmured. 'It saw its chance. Its chance through me. When you dropped the lab beaker. Cut your finger. That was when -' His voice choked off, and he thrust his knuckles against his teeth. 'That was when,' he said indistinctly around them. Then he turned and buried his head in the back of the chair.

The Doctor stood up slowly. He patted Sheldon's shoulder gently, then turned to face Packwood. 'Is that how it happened? How the Denarian infected you? A cut finger? You see, even you didn't get a choice.' He took a step towards the chaise longue chaise longue, Packwood watching him all the way.

At the door, Rogers levelled the shotgun, tracking the Doctor's progress, sensing trouble. His eyes were as pale and dead as his master's. Janet turned slowly too. Her own eyes still had a hint of colour in them, Peri could see. Her face was creased up, a mask of concentration, and Peri guessed she was fighting to control her body and her thoughts.