Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias Part 11

Chapter Seven.

Sooal stepped through the transmat, materialised in the corridor of the ship and paused as an idea struck him; he turned back and crouched down by the transmat's control box. With a few deft movements, he deactivated it: if there was anyone still aboard, he doubted that they'd be able to reactivate it. They were trapped.

As he reached the first chamber he paused and scanned the gloom ahead. Despite its condition, the ship still felt more like home to him than Graystairs. He knew it probably wouldn't last much longer the crash had done considerable damage to it, and he doubted it would manage more than one short, final flight. But that was all it needed to manage. And for the time being, it served as an ideal research centre, well away from prying, senile eyes.

Ace stood in the centre of the chamber and wondered who she should try to bring round next. As she'd noted before, most looked like they could have been residents of Graystairs. Ace paused: could it be that this was the magical treatment that was curing them of their Alzheimer's? She wondered if she'd done the right thing in disconnecting the others: maybe she'd set their treatments back; maybe even ruined them completely. But Joyce had been wired up, and she wasn't suffering from Alzheimer's.

She might have been snooty and ungrateful for Ace's rescue, but there had been no sign of dementia.

With renewed determination, Ace headed for one of the younger men and began to feel around behind his neck.

Jessie and Connie had locked themselves in Jessie's room, and now sat on the bed, holding each other through scared, uncertain tears. The woman Joyce? had told them to set out of Graystairs, to go as far as they could. But where was there to go?

And then she'd gone and left them.

'Wasn't that Norma's daughter?' Jessie asked as Connie dried her tears.

'Which one?'

'The young woman not the girl. She was here earlier, asking about Norma.'

Connie shook her head. 'D'you think she knows what all this is about?'

Jessie shrugged weakly. 'I'm so scared, Connie. What's happening?'

Connie could only shake her head again. She stared at the door, as if expecting someone to break it down and drag the two of them away. Somewhere in the back of her mind, numbers raced past in an incessant stream. Through the curtains, she could see the faint traces of dawn. At her side, Jessie started to cry again.

Megan paused at the foot of the stairs, the bag of frozen peas still pressed against the side of her face. She was sure she'd heard the scuffle of footsteps.

'Who's there?' she called up. There was no answer. That d.a.m.ned girl or the Doctor!

She turned back to the kitchen, crossed to a drawer and found the biggest, sharpest knife that she could. Her jaw clenched, she opened the door at the foot of the stairs and began to ascend into the darkness.

'Stop right there!'

Ace whirled, her heart pumping as the voice barked out, ringing metallically through the chamber.

Standing in the doorway was a dwarfish-looking man in a light grey suit. His head was completely bald, his features thin and spiteful, skin wrinkly and paper thin. His most disturbing feature, though, was the gun in his hand.

'You won't shoot in here,' Ace bluffed, feeling her voice quaver.

'And why would that be?'

'You wouldn't want to do any more damage to this beautiful ship of yours. I reckon a misplaced shot or two could bring the whole thing crashing down around us.'

'Perhaps,' the man considered, his thin, bloodless lips curling into a cruel smile, 'But it would only take one well well-placed shot to bring you you down. Now move away from the bench!' down. Now move away from the bench!'

Ace shook her head and reached out for the cylindrical pillar of electronic equipment that stood, winking silently, near the head of the man she'd been about to revive. The pale man's reaction told her all she needed to know and now, at least, she knew for certain that it was a s.p.a.ceship.

'If you don't step away from the processor I'll take a risk with the ship and shoot you.'

She shook her head, emboldened by the fact that he hadn't shot her... yet. 'Uh uh. If you were going to do it, you'd have done it by now. You don't want to risk damaging this.' She put her hand on the electronic pillar's chromed dome and wobbled it. The man pulled his lips back from his tiny, white teeth and hissed, catlike. 'I'm warning you...'

'Warn all you like, pig-eyes. If you come a step closer, I'll pull this over. And by the time you manage to shoot me, I'll have pulled this one over too.' She stretched out her arm and placed her palm against the column at the head of the next person along a woman with wispy grey hair.

'So we're at something of an impa.s.se. What do you suggest?'

the man said, moving slowly into the room. His pale eyes darted around, a.s.sessing the situation.

'What I suggest is that you put that gun down.'

He shook his head. 'Not a wise move. Besides, if you damage that equipment, you'll be condemning those people to die. Horribly.'

'Yeah, like you care. I take it you're Sooal? Is this ship yours?'

'Yes, my name is Sooal; and, yes, this ship is mine.'

'One careless owner,' Ace smirked, trying to act with more bravado than she actually felt. She glanced round the chamber, realising that she was running out of options. Her arms were starting to ache from stretching out. Sooal could just bide his time and then shoot her when she tired. She watched his pink eyes, trying to outstare her.

'Tell you what,' she said, dropping her right arm. 'I'll do you a swap.'

Sooal c.o.c.ked his head on one side again.

'Your gun,' Ace said, lowering one hand, 'for this.'

And in an instant, she brought out the torch from her pocket and shone it full in his eyes. with a squeal, he threw his hands up over his face and turned away. Yes! Ace thought exultantly and took her chance. With water splashing around her boots, and the sounds of Sooal grunting and hissing, she sprinted through the chamber's other exit and disappeared into the darkness.

Megan climbed the stairs slowly, the knife held out in front of her like a charm to ward off evil.

The side of her face still throbbed. Her memory of the incident was still a bit fuzzy: she'd smelled bacon cooking, heard noises in the kitchen, and come down to investigate. As she'd reached the foot of the stairs and peered round, someone had hit her with the pan, and the next thing she knew, she was looking up at Sooal. Someone was going to pay. Ahead of her, in the darkness of the stairwell, she heard footsteps. With a sudden spurt of speed, she bounded upwards, raising the knife.

Silhouetted in the doorway at the top of the stairs was a man. She lunged forwards as he stepped away from her, into the corridor.

It was Sydney. At the very last moment she pulled back, lowering the knife with a deep and disappointed sigh. 'What the h.e.l.l are you doing here Sydney? It's the middle of the night!' she ranted. The man turned around, as if he hadn't known she was there, and stared at the knife in fascination and horror.

'I heard a noise,' he said. 'I heard voices. Downstairs.'

'Go back to bed Sydney. Now.' She could barely restrain her anger and frustration. Sydney gave a pathetic little nod, and Megan fought back an urge to slap him. She watched him shuffle away along the corridor for a few moments, the heels of his slippers flopping on the carpet, and then headed round the corner to the top staircase. There were some painkillers in her room, and boy did she need them.

'Thank you, Sydney,' the Doctor said, poking his head out of Sydney's room as the man reached him.

'I don't understand,' he said.

The Doctor could see the confusion in his eyes. Sometimes, thought the Doctor, it was easy to forget that the rest of the universe wasn't constantly running up and down corridors being chased by killer robots or zombies. 'It's alright Sydney. You did well. I hate to think what Megan would have done if she'd caught me instead of you.' He glanced up and down the corridor.

'She had a knife,' Sydney said, his hair catching the dim glow of the night-lighting, a snowy halo around his thin face.

'Now why doesn't that surprise me? I think you'd better go back to bed, Sydney. Keep out of the way for a while.'

'What's going on? Who are you, anyway?' His eyes narrowed.

'I'm the Doctor, Sydney a friend.'

'Are you here to make us better? Where's Doctor Menzies?'

'Probably in bed, Sydney, where you should be. Come on.'

The Doctor helped Sydney into his room, and whilst Sydney tugged his slippers off, the Doctor pulled aside the curtain and peered out into the pearly, grey dawn. A fine mist lay over the lawns, the heads of the statues along the edge of the loch poking through it like the ruins of some shattered city, peeking out from the surface of the sea. He turned as Sydney put his other slipper on the floor, placing it neatly alongside the first. On the chair by the bed, the Doctor noticed a large, orange sc.r.a.pbook, its pages thick and crinkled with paste, dog-eared little corners of magazine and newspaper cuttings sticking out at clumsy angles.

Scrawled across the front were the words Sydneys Book Keep Out Sydneys Book Keep Out.

A skull and crossbones had been drawn underneath them. He felt an odd chill as Sydney caught him looking at it and draped a towel over it.

'Something very disturbing is going on here, Sydney,' the Doctor said, abstractedly. 'Maybe I'm just imagining it...' He let his voice tail away as he surveyed Sydney's meagre a.s.sortment of possessions, lined up with military precision on his dressing table. 'What do you know about a Stacy Chambers? Is she a resident here? Or a member of the staff?'

Sydney shook his head, seemingly forgetting about the Doctor's attention to his sc.r.a.pbook. 'Hmm... the name sort of rings bells, but I don't think there's anyone here called Stacy. But things have seemed a bit... peculiar around here recently, if you take my meaning. People acting strangely, noises in the night that sort of thing. Take Doris next door, for instance,' he gestured to the wall. 'Making weird noises a few hours ago, she was. It's like...' He struggled with his words, clearly frustrated that he couldn't enunciate this thoughts as clearly as he was once able. 'It's like there's something bubbling under the surface, something bad.' He looked up at the Doctor and shrugged. 'I'm probably just t.i.ttle-tattling and I've never been one for that but,' he leaned closer and looked round the room, as if scared of being overheard, 'a few of the residents here have been acting a bit funny.' He tapped the side of his head knowingly.

The Doctor fell silent and turned back to the window as Sydney removed his cardigan and turned his attention to his socks. The pale disc of the sun was creeping into the sky, painting the landscape lemon and grey. He glanced at Sydney's bedside dock. 'I think I should leave you in peace. You've been very helpful, Sydney, thank you.'

With a nod, the Doctor slipped out of the room. In the corridor, he paused outside Doris's door. Silently, he opened it a crack and listened. With a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realised that he couldn't hear Doris breathing, couldn't hear any of those tiny little sounds that people make in their sleep. He pushed opened the door and stepped into the room.

She lay sprawled on the bed, arms thrown out at her sides.

Her eyes were wide, dry and dead, her face a portrait of unbelieving horror, preserved in aspic. By the side of her head was a scrunched-up pillow. He gently closed her eyes and examined her fingers, curled up like autumn leaves, stiff and cold. He'd seen death a million times, but there was something more pitiful, more disturbing about this one. No doubt the official verdict would be 'old age', maybe a heart attack. But the look on her face and the pillow by her head, still bearing the indentations of a strong, determined pair of hands, painted another, much darker picture. That someone was capable of such a merciless and calculating act against a defenceless old woman...

Quietly, he rearranged her, made her a little more decorous if such a thing was possible. As he positioned her hands on her lap, he noticed something else: a thin trickle of blood running from her left ear. He touched it, wondering what could have caused it. Glancing round the room, puzzled, his eyes alighted on a large, fluffy ball of emerald wool sitting on the dressing table.

Speared through its centre was a lone knitting needle.

Ace knew she hadn't shaken Sooal off just given herself a breathing s.p.a.ce. She pressed herself into a shallow alcove in the corridor wall, flinching as she felt cold water drip down her neck.

Sooal had the advantage that he knew the ship. And that he seemed better able to see in the dark. And, of course, he had a gun. Apart from that, she comforted herself, she held all the cards.

She peered back along the corridor. She'd spent the last ten minutes clambering up and down ladders, doubling back on herself when she realised she was leaving wet footprints all over the place and racing up and down corridors. So no change there, she thought grimly. It began to occur to her that all Sooal needed to do was to sit by the transmat and wait. Of course, she should have gone straight back to the transmat when she'd escaped from the sleeper chamber; but a) she didn't know how to get back there, and b) if Sooal had any sense he'd have turned it off himself.

The thought occurred to her that maybe he'd altered the settings so that the next person to use it would get beamed into s.p.a.ce or inside a rock or something. She swallowed dryly.

Away in the distance, huge and echoey, she could hear the sound of footsteps. Checking she still had her torch, Ace moved on into a chamber which judging from the arrangement of mildewed seats and cracked viewing screen had been the ship's bridge. One or two of the control panels glimmered faintly: essential systems, lighting, air that sort of thing Ace a.s.sumed, glancing at them. But was there anything she could use? She scanned the displays again: she could try turning the power off, but that would just plunge the two of them into darkness, and Ace had a pretty good idea who would work best in those conditions.

'Isn't this getting rather tiresome?' came a voice, distant and hollow, the sibilants rattling off the ship's walls, like the hiss of escaping steam. Ace crouched down behind the control panel and peered back along the corridor. A long, dark shadow crawled along the wall towards her. 'Maybe we can come to some arrangement. '

Still crouching, Ace backed towards one of the two exits to the bridge. Maybe this would throw him; maybe he'd take the wrong one.

The corridor was short and ended in a roughly circular room. Two airlock doors were set into the far wall. She spun round, checking the room for other exits as she heard a high, nasal chuckle from the corridor.

'One dead end,' Sooal whispered, 'for one very dead little girl.'

After Ace had gone back through the transmat, Joyce had bundled Jessie and Connie off to their rooms, not knowing what else to do with them. And then she'd gone straight to her mother's room - only to find it empty. In a slightly befuddled haze, she'd stood outside the room, wondering what to do now: was the s.p.a.ceship where the treatments took place? Had she missed Mum being taken down there?

She turned sharply as she heard the sound of a door being opened, further down the corridor, and stepped quickly back into her mum's room. Through the crack, she watched a little man in a cream hat pad, catlike, down the corridor and out of sight. One of the residents, no doubt, off for an early morning const.i.tutional. She waited a few moments and then remembered what the girl, Ace, had said. The Doctor was here. He'd know what to do. Ace had said. they were booked in at the B&B. With any luck he'd be there now Then they could come back and find Mum. Get this whole mess sorted out. Silently, she slipped back out into the corridor and down the stairs to the front door.

From a window, a pair of impatient eyes watched Joyce leave. As Joyce vanished into the wood, the figure let the curtains drop back against the window. It wanted to leave the room, wanted to go downstairs: it had come here for a purpose, and it itched to get its job done. But it could not afford to be seen not yet.

There was a time and a place discovery was inevitable, but there were a few hours still to go before it could begin.

In frustrated silence, it lowered itself gingerly to the bed, a jolt of pain reminding it of the events of the night before. All it could do now was to stay out of sight and wait.

The morning air cleared Joyce's head after the almost suffocating warmth and perfumed air of Graystairs, and as she made her way towards the B&B, she went over and over her memories of her experience aboard the ship in the hope of fixing it clearly in her mind. She knew the Doctor, if she found him, would be able to make sense of it. As she walked up the hill to the B&B she was pleased to see Mary pulling back the downstairs curtains. She waved cheerily at Joyce and went to the door to let her in.

'Mrs Brunner!' she exclaimed. 'Where have you been?

Everyone and their aunt's been asking about you!'

Joyce shucked off her damp coat and Mary hung it on the coat-stand near the radiator.

'It's a long story and I'm not even sure if I believe half of it myself. There wouldn't be a pot of tea brewing, would there?'

'Of course there would, pet. You go through into the lounge and I'll bring it in. Pop the gas fire on if you like. The central heating hasn't kicked in yet, and it's still a wee bit nippy.'

Mary bustled off to see to the tea, and Joyce sank into the chintzy heaven of the sofa, slipping off her damp shoes and giving her feet a good rub. She closed her eyes, determined not to fall asleep, and was almost immediately subsumed in a torrent of numbers again, flashing past her, streaming away into the darkness. She forced her eyes open and stared at the mantelpiece clock, relieved to see that she'd only nodded off for a few minutes. Mary was setting the tea tray down on the teak coffee table. As she stood up, Mary's attention was caught by something outside the window, and she crossed to it. Pulling the net curtains aside, she turned to Joyce and beamed at her, 'A bit of a reunion for you, What a start to the day, eh?'

Joyce leaned forward in her seat. Strolling jauntily up the path was a familiar little man in a cream hat, a furled umbrella over his shoulder. Reunion? What on earth was Mary talking about?

Sooal almost laughed aloud. The girl had finally backed herself into a corner. There was silence from the airlock chamber as he crept towards it. He put on his sungla.s.ses she wasn't going to catch him by surprise like that again. He pressed himself against the corridor wall, 'There's no way out of the chamber. Maybe now you'd like to discuss the terms of your surrender?'

There was no answer. He hoped that she wasn't going to be awkward or put up a fight: he needed to reinstall the processors or find replacements. He crouched down and peered into the room. There was no sign of her. Where could she be hiding?

And then he saw a circle of red lights begin to cycle on a display panel on the far wall, and through the triangular viewing hole in.

the airlock door, he saw her. She was waving!

'Two sugars for me, I think,' said the little man brightly. 'It's been one of those nights.'

He removed his hat, placed it on the back of a chair, and sat down.