Doctor Who_ Infinite Requiem Part 10

He sighed, and leaned back in his seat. 'The Greek philosopher Epicurus, on 82 the other hand, claimed that if there were G.o.ds, there was no reason at all why they should be the least bit interested in mere mortals.' The Doctor smiled sadly, as if at some private joke. 'Intriguing, don't you think? The idea that we invoke greater powers because we just can't face the idea that we might all be alone.'

'I don't feel alone,' Nita said. 'Tilusha, she believes in the G.o.ds. But not in rituals, she never saw the point.'

'I make a point of studying cultures,' said the Doctor. 'Religious faith ceased to have any meaning for me, long ago, after seeing so much conflict. But I still respect those for whom it's important.' He made that urgent, gesturing motion again. 'Tell me, Nita. Keep talking.'

In her own way, Nita was beginning to understand. She cast a horrified look at Tilusha, then back at the Doctor, her heart increasing its pace, as the ambulance continued to judder through the city, rain clattering on its windscreen.

'You want me to help you block that that thing, don't you?' she said, fearfully.

'I'm too strongly telepathic. It's latching on to me as a kind of booster.' The Doctor was almost gabbling, his hands twitching in his lap. 'Talk to me.'

Nita took a deep breath. 'I didn't know what to do when Tilusha started seeing Phil. I had to see her in secret. Her family no longer knew her, to all intents and purposes. Her father, he's a good man, I still see him . . . '

Livewire's head hurt. She could not remember why she had come to this place, but she knew that she had to survive, that was what life in Banksburgh was about, that was what it had always been about. It was dog-eat-cat, dog-eat-vomit.

One of her phrases. Or was it? No, it was someone else's. The name, no the nickname what was a nickname? Polymer. Poly. Where was Poly? She had gone under, obviously. And Trinket. He would go under, too.

Of course. She remembered now. There was Shanstra, who had spared her and saved her and who was going to take her to a better place than this, because Livewire was strong, and a leader, and a survivor, and deserved it.

And Trinket and the ship from Earth and anyone else who wasn't needed, they would go under because they hadn't made the grade and it was all their fault.

She found her new friend in the rink. In the midst of a whirlwind of vapour, from which tendrils of light streamed out, sometimes fizzing with sparks against the vidscreens or the stalls. The ice was lifting from the surface, all turning to steam with a hiss like a million angry snakes. Or was it rain?

83.Shanstra was at the centre, glowing triumphantly.

Kelzen.

Livewire heard the name buzzing in her head.

KelzenShanstra.

'I hear you!' Shanstra screamed.

'She was going to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant by Phil. I told her not to. Can you believe that? I had this crazy notion that he might grow up to be a great scientist or politician.' Nita licked her lips. 'How am I doing?' she asked anxiously, sparing a glance at Tilusha. Her cousin, bathed in perspiration, was moaning, her head lolling from side to side. The nurse looked up, but this time her rea.s.suring smile seemed more fake.

'Don't stop!' The Doctor's voice was furious. His screwed-up face and un-masked anger caused the nurse to gasp out loud.

And then the window of the ambulance cracked right across.

Nita was jolted from her seat, with the sound of skidding tyres in her head.

The TR7 had been driven by an inconsequential driver whose car stereo was on at full blast, and who did not hear the ambulance until it was too late. In trying to get out of its way, he did not realize that the skilled ambulance driver had already compensated and was coming in for a safe pa.s.s on the wet city ring road.

Effectively, he swung his car right into the path of the ambulance, just too late to be avoided. The ambulance sheared across the soaking road and slammed into the set of traffic-lights which it was permitted to ignore. The slim pole gave way before the onslaught of the vehicle, allowing the jammed wheels to skid further still, across the right-hand junction. Then, carried by the wind and its own weight, the ambulance crashed over on to its side.

'No!' Shanstra leapt from her seat.

Livewire blinked in confusion as she saw the chaos all around her beginning to subside. There was the gentle cracking sound of a huge film of water refreezing at an incredible rate.

Shanstra's long-boned fingers covered her oval face for a moment, and when she looked up again, her expression was dark and terrible with anger.

'The connection has been broken,' she said in menacingly quiet tones.

Livewire frowned. 'So what's that mean?'

'It means our enemies have won another reprieve!' snarled Shanstra angrily, and she strode through the resublimating vapour, frost settling on her velvet hair. Energy rustled like a train behind her, and then split off into hundreds of tiny pieces like yapping dogs at the hem of her cloak. 'It means,' she said, 84 gazing past the girl and into nothingness, 'that we need a stronger unity of minds.' Talking more to herself than to Livewire, she raised a long finger.

'I need to know more about this place. About the blood. There are ' she frowned, and her lips pressed together in redness ' whispers here, like a conversation in the next room of my mind. All one voice, and yet ' a pause ' more. I need to find them.'

It was an unsettling experience for Livewire, but for once she thought she knew what Shanstra was talking about. It was something to do with the life she had just left behind, after all.

'The Phracs,' said Livewire.

'Phracs?' Shanstra turned her head very slightly, as if listening to something beyond what Livewire was saying. The vapour, swirling white, cooled around them. 'Of course,' she said slowly, realizing 'Those aliens.'

'The Phracton Swarm. They invaded the colony weeks ago,' said Livewire.

'Decimated the population and destroyed most of the city before something stopped them. Now, they just kind of patrol, looking menacing.' She frowned, as if she should not really have been remembering any of this. 'I've come close to taking out one or two. But it's hard, you're fighting your own kind too. Fighting them for a few looted cans of food.' Livewire's face was taut with strain.

'How very entertaining,' said Shanstra. 'Show me.'

She touched Livewire's forehead, as she had done before, and the screens around the ice-rink leapt into startling action. The stentorian voice of a news-caster, projected from Livewire's subconscious memory, filled the arena.

Shanstra was not very concerned with what the voice was saying, as she found the pictures evocative enough images of Gadrell Major taken from s.p.a.ce, and stock footage of Phracton vehicles rolling through creamy mud, blasting down all in their path. Human beings running across ridges of mud, some trampling one another, one or two stopping to grab rings and purses and bangles from the fallen bodies.

Shanstra removed her hand from Livewire's forehead, and the images slammed back into darkness once more.

'Very interesting,' said the Sensopath. 'I think we should go to the battlefield.'

Suzi watched them from the gla.s.s-fronted restaurant above the rink. Her headache was coming back, and she needed Colm. Shanstra had promised her Colm, and she intended to make sure that Shanstra kept her promise.

The girl Livewire had regarded Suzi with slight contempt ever since she had arrived. Ever since no. Nothing had happened. Suzi reminded herself that nothing had happened and that there was no need to go up into the 85 observation dome, no need to see the charred skeleton, because if she told herself for long enough that it didn't exist, then it didn't exist. That was what was so good about Shanstra. She took all the things which life had told Suzi she could never have, and promised them.

So, how to react to Livewire? She was a huntress, one of a kind with Shanstra. There was something about the girl, an edginess, a sharpness that made her look as if she could kill. As if she had killed. Suzi did not know who the boy had been, or where he had escaped to now. It did not matter.

Shanstra was going to unite them all in her love and her great scheme, and there was no need for worries or responsibilities.

A gap had been filled. Suzi felt the contentment, almost physically. She realized that what she had been needing all this time was the desire to worship.

To be abject for she had always suspected that she was, essentially, worthless and sinful and to adore something greater and more beautiful than herself.

She closed her eyes and filled her heart with love: for creation, for destruction, for the will of Shanstra.

86.

11.

No Escape from Reality

I know you can hear me.

Many voices had called to the Doctor in his dreams before, but none had been quite like this one. He was not entirely sure, for one thing, that this was a dream. He remembered the impact, the ambulance turning slowly, so slowly, and then There was a reddish blackness just at the edge of his vision, and an almost electrical tingling between his ears.

I am Kelzen. Help me.

The Doctor blinked. His eyes appeared to be open, but he could not feel or see his body. There was nothing but the blood-blackness, and beyond it this insistent voice that was a mixture of sound and feeling. It was, he decided, a female voice, tinged with nervousness and, maybe, kindness.

The Doctor licked his lips. 'So, you're the Sensopath who's been causing all the trouble.' He frowned, not sure that the words had actually come out of his mouth.

I am Kelzen. I am lost and alone. I came unwanted to this world and I took refuge in the mind of the half-formed. It seemed appropriate, as I was in need of refuge in the mind of the half-formed. It seemed appropriate, as I was in need of recuperation myself. recuperation myself.

'What happened? Why are you here?'

We floated, bodiless. I attempted to . . . experiment with my developing powers, and I found the child . . . receptive. There was no need to find another host. But and I found the child . . . receptive. There was no need to find another host. But now the mother and child are in danger. now the mother and child are in danger.

Tilusha, thought the Doctor. 'Can you do anything?'

I shall try. But there are others who may try to stop me. I cannot fully control myself alone. It is . . . difficult to explain. myself alone. It is . . . difficult to explain. There was a pause, as if the Sensopath were deliberating. Then the question bounced into the Doctor's head and fizzed there like an aspirin dissolving in water. There was a pause, as if the Sensopath were deliberating. Then the question bounced into the Doctor's head and fizzed there like an aspirin dissolving in water. Your mind is richer than that of Your mind is richer than that of these beings. Who are you? Where are you from? these beings. Who are you? Where are you from?

'I'm not prepared to tell you that, yet. But I'm the one who intercepted the distress call. The same signal from two sources at once fascinating. I had to follow it up.' The Doctor swallowed. 'Who exactly did you take with you in the vortex and drop off in the twenty-fourth century?'

87.There was a rippling of the strange environment, a pulsing in the Doctor's head, and the Sensopath's voice struggled to maintain its level tone. It was almost as if something were trying to break through.

You are mistaken. It was I who was abandoned in this barren place. Shanstra's powers were the greatest, and she was able to direct Jirenal and myself according powers were the greatest, and she was able to direct Jirenal and myself according to her will. To scatter us where she pleased. to her will. To scatter us where she pleased.

'Shanstra? Jirenal? There are three of you?' The Doctor's hearts were racing. He could feel reality surging in and had the strangest feeling that he was about to wake up. It was imperative, then, to get information while the link was still strong.

Yes. We are three.

'Kelzen is Shanstra dangerous? Is it her, in the twenty-fourth century?'

The answer began, like the sound of rain rustling against a sheet of gla.s.s.

It ended in the helpless, breath-giving screech of a new-born child.

The Doctor's last thought before he awoke was of Bernice, and of how he had been stupid enough to send her into the greatest of danger.

Cheynor sat alone in his briefing room. His beard had grown slightly thicker over the past 48 hours, and it gave his face an even more intensely brooding aspect than before. Leibniz and Hogarth, arguing about something as usual, had reported back within the last hour. All they had to do now was wait for the comsat to attain its optimum position. In the meantime, Cheynor was following up a hunch. It was the kind of a.n.a.lysis looking beyond the obvious that his old captain, Turin, had taught him.

'Computer,' he said.

'Internal systems only on-line,' the computer reminded him, in the soothing, adrogynous voice he had selected for his terminal.

'I know, I know. Access history files: Gadrell Major.'

'Information processing. Information accessed.'

'Cross-check with Dalek war, Cyberwars, porizium deposits. And give me a hard copy of all the major conflicts centring around, or related to, the mineral porizium.'

'Processing.'

Cheynor drummed his fingers on the table while he waited for his hard copy. He had a feeling it was going to be a very decisive doc.u.ment indeed.

It was like a great, thundering tide of metal pursuing them down the street.

Bernice had seen tanks before, but this one seemed to be almost alive, to slither over rough terrain like a hunting animal. She and the boy Trinket ran through the back streets of the near deserted city, their feet pounding the 88 muddy ground, gunfire echoing distantly, and the rumble of the great metal tank growing behind them with every second.

Bernice's lungs were burning. Mud splashed up on either side of her, great fountains of it. She kept running, and hoped that Trinket knew where he was going.

'Here!' The boy grabbed her arm and pulled her into the rickety entrance of a warehouse.

Darkness descended in front of Benny's eyes. She moved forward, confused.

There was the sound of a metal covering of some sort being opened, and then a light briefly smudged the darkness. She saw the shadowy form of Trinket, lit dimly from beneath, which confused her further still for a moment, until she realized he had opened a metal hatchway and she was expected to climb in after him.

'Service tunnels,' Trinket said briefly from beneath her.

Benny made the briefest of sounds to show that she understood. She could smell metal and oil as she lowered herself on to the ladder, and pulled the hatchway down behind her. It clanged shut.

She heard the rumble of the Phracton machine as it hurtled past on ground level, and felt the vibration in her fingertips.

After a climb down of about twenty metres, she found herself in a s.p.a.ce large enough to stand up. She rubbed her rust-smeared hands on her trousers, thankful that she'd been practical enough to change.

Trinket was leaning against a curved metal wall, under one of the dim panels that illuminated the pa.s.sageway. 'It could have got us, you know,' he said, looking at Bernice through his tangled fringe.

'I'd gathered that much. I presume you don't call them flamers for their sparkling conversation.'

'They fire a combustible gas and ignite it. It can trash anything up to about fifty metres.' Trinket took a deep breath and shook his head. 'The Phracs are playing with us. It's as if they only want us dead in certain parts of the city, and at certain times.'

Bernice squatted down, rummaging in her satchel. 'That sounds like the beginnings of a theory, Trinket.'

The boy shook his head, again with an almost twitchy response. Even in the dimness, Bernice could tell there was something not quite right with his eyes as if he were suffering from some kind of delayed shock, maybe.

She found her chocolate, broke it, offered half to Trinket. At first he backed off. Not used to being offered something for nothing, Benny reasoned. She bit off a chunk of her own half, offered again. This time he took it, with a brief smile of grat.i.tude.

89.'You see,' Trinket said, 'I dunno what's going on here any more. Not since that woman. I think I've seen someone else more dangerous than the Phracs.'

Bernice stopped chewing. Her eyes widened and she swallowed hastily.

'Trinket,' she said, 'tell me everything you know about this woman.'

Darius Cheynor believed in clutching at straws. Whether this was brave or stupid he didn't really care as, for once, it had worked. Minimal communications and monitoring facilities had returned to the Phoenix Phoenix.

He stood at the table of his briefing room, with Joca.s.sta Hogarth and Horst Leibniz once more at his side.