Doctor Who_ The Dying Days Part 33

Thousand-year-old eyes and a child-like expression gazed down at us, smiling angelically.

'I make history better.'

There was a pause that contained worlds and histories immeasurable to man. Then four words, each one louder than the last, each one drowning out the noise of the wind and the battle.

'I... '.

My eyes were watering.

'Am... '

The Brigadier lowered his binoculars, his eyes wide.

'The Doctor!'

And it was.

End of extract 114.

Chapter Fifteen.

Going Down in History

Extract from the memoirs of Professor Bernice Summerfield I tried to bring my breathing back under control. The Doctor was a hologram, twenty feet high, his hands behind his back. Xznaal had turned to face this vast apparition, which peered down at the Martian Warlord like a parent disciplining a naughty child.

And there was someone pulling me away from the block. Alexander Christian. He put a finger to his lip. Only my hands had been tied, and once I was upright I could hurry away under my own steam. I followed Christian towards the cover between two buildings. According to one of the signs we pa.s.sed, we were heading to 'The Jewel House'.

Behind us, the Doctor's voice was rumbling again, fil ing the air.

'I am in your warship. Come and face me if you dare.'

The Martian Lord was straining to look up at the ship.

Eve Waugh and Alan were waiting for us. I hesitated. A ma.s.s murderer and the two people that had betrayed the Doctor to the Martians. But why trap me like this, when the merest moment before Xznaal had been able to deliver the kil ing blow? Besides, Christian would never work for the Martians. These people were on my side, and there was a wall between us and Xznaal. I gazed out over Tower Green, saw the Doctor's grinning face filling the sky.

Eve had a small pair of wirecutters, and she was snipping through the bindings on my wrist, one strand at a time.

Lex Christian was reloading his pistols, with the help of Alan.

'It's not a trick is it?' I asked the American journalist.

'No,' Eve laughed. 'That's him. He got aboard this morning when they were loading up supplies.'

I could picture the Doctor ducked behind a stack of crates, smuggling himself onto the magnetic lift platform.

Sneaking around the Martian ship, avoiding patrols, opening up inspection hatches.

'But ... how?'

'When the Martians attacked your house, we only just made it out alive.' I decided that under the circ.u.mstances it would be churlish to point out that Eve had been the one who had tipped off the Martians in the first place. The last of the bindings fell away.

Another sonic blast detonated. Masonry and gla.s.s crashed. It had hit a building, then, rather than the crowd.

'We headed back down to Adisham, but there was this terrible cloud.'

I nodded, rubbing the circulation back into my hands.

Eve continued. 'We could tell straight away that the cloud was being controlled somehow. Alan was filming it, and it was seeking out people, killing them stone dead. Then we saw the Doctor.'

They'd got to the part of the story that I didn't know about.

'He was breaking into a shop with the sonic screwdriver. It turned out later that he was trying to save a cat who had got trapped. The cloud caught sight of him, and it was like a shark scenting blood. It kind of drew itself together and poured into the shop after him. We fol owed, and we found that the Doctor was standing there, with the gas swirling around him like a hurricane. He looked so calm, so collected, and then the cloud leapt at him, smothering him, pouring into his mouth and nose. It was horrible.'

Her voice was matter-of-fact, and there was no indication that she had been horrified, or had felt anything at al .

This was a woman whose job it was to report horrible things on a daily basis.

'As the last of the gas entered his body, the Doctor col apsed. Alan knows first aid, and he tried to help him, but there was no pulse and he was already cold to the touch. The Doctor had shut down everything that kept him alive: respiration, heartbeat, brain activity, lindal gland, reflex response. Apparently Time Lords can do that.'

'It was the bit after that I wasn't too sure about,' I informed her. 'The happy ending aspect.'

Another sonic blast hit the Thames, sending up a jet of steam. It was almost certainly the first shot that hadn't killed people. As the ship continued its ascent, we were getting more notice of the attacks - there was perhaps a two second delay between the sound of the blast coming and it hitting the ground.

'The Doctor had worked out that the cloud had been programmed to seek and kill him. When the gas detected no life signs, the program was complete, the gas had no other purpose and it deactivated.'

'Yes,' I said slowly, pointing over at the hologram, 'but this overlooks one small detail... '

Eve brightened. 'Well it was lucky for him that we were there. Alan kept trying, and managed to resuscitate him.'

'Only because of that Time Lord const.i.tution of his,' Alan called over. 'No human could have survived being dead that long. As it was it took him a couple of days to fully recover. We had to smuggle him out of Adisham in the back of Eve's car.'

'Gosh,' I said. 'How's the cat?'

'It made it,' Eve a.s.sured me. 'We got back to London and met up with Lex there.'

I frowned. 'So, with the greatest respect, what has the Doctor been doing for the last week?' Al this time, people had been dying, the country had been in a state of civil war and the Doctor hadn't even shown his face.

'Working to end the invasion,' Eve replied indignantly. 'He spent the first few days trying to find an antidote for the Martian gas. There isn't one. We went to Gatwick, freed hundreds of prisoners. We have no idea what the Martians were planning for them.'

I shuddered, remembering the tests conducted at the refinery in Reading.

'Xznaal's moving,' Alan called over.

End of extract 115.

'T minus three minutes,' one of the lieutenants called from behind them. The Brigadier barely heard him. He was at the bottom of the stairs now, and he could see the crowd ma.s.sed outside. It was a riot out there: windows had been smashed, cars overturned and set alight.

Another bolt of energy slammed home. The building shook, but the impact itself had been further away than the last, on the other side of the Tower. Hopefully the crowd was thinner over there. Ambulances were wailing their way across London, now.

There was something rising into the air from inside the Tower.

'It's Xznaal,' he called out. 'Snipers - '

The Brigadier didn't finish the sentence. The sky pulsed.

'Take cov-'

The blast of energy slammed into the building behind him. Every pane of gla.s.s in the block shattered, the supporting walls burst open. The Brigadier grabbed Bambera and tugged her down, then pulled his hands over his head. They were thrown forwards, masonry and gla.s.s crashing around them.

Lethbridge-Stewart's earpiece crackled. 'T minus two minutes.' He could hear the words, so he was alive.

He pul ed himself up, coughing and laughing. 'That was a close one. Is everyone OK?'

As the brick dust began to settle, he could make out Bambera on her hands and knees, shaking debris from her hair. Standing behind her were half a dozen soldiers, with machine guns.

They weren't his men. They were Provisional Government troops.

The hatchway dilated closed, and Xznaal stepped from the lift platform into the main hold. He had spent a week in the Tower, with its crude human attempts to replicate the temperature and humidity of Mars. The genuine Martian atmosphere tasted odd: too dry, not rich enough. It was dark here, dul Martian lighting simulating the conditions of his native world, and also the paucity of its energy reserves. Al around were silos and cylinders full of raw materials brought from refineries and mines the length and breadth of this land. With the wealth of the Earth he could have rebuilt the Argyre. The diseases that racked the bodies and minds of his people would have been cured, there would have been food and fuel for all. He pictured Mars how it might have been: dry fountains running with water again, the zoos and parks teeming with life.

The ceiling above him clattered. The hold of the Martian ship was vast, large enough to contain the plunder from an entire military campaign. The pressurised vessel took up the entire roofs.p.a.ce. The Red Death was inside, impatient to start its work, possessed of an overwhelming urge to be released. Xznaal listened to the glorious sound, imagining the moment when he would pul the lever that freed the gas, the action that would destroy all human life. First he would destroy the Doctor.

He realised that the warship's cannons had been silent since he had stepped aboard.

'Gunnery officer, why have you stopped firing?' he barked into the air.

Something darted outside the chamber, behind the gla.s.s door. It was impossible to see it clearly. The door retracted.

Standing framed in the doorway, bathed in red light, was the Doctor. He resembled a human male, with a long, s.h.a.ggy mane of fur. According to al the legends, the Time Lords were able to select their physical frame. Why did the Doctor wear such a body, when he could choose the most magnificent armour, or a form that glittered or shone like gemstones?

'Well, it might be something to do with this.' The Doctor tossed over a crystalline ball. Xznaal caught it, seeing that there was a delicate mechanism at the globe's core. It took the Martian a few seconds to identify the device as the main processor of the gunnery computer. The Gallifreyan's face was twisted so that his teeth were bared. Vrgnur was behind him. But Xznaal's scientist was not the Doctor's captor, rather his stance resembled that of a bodyguard.

The Martian Lord drew in a deep breath. 'Vrgnur, what is the meaning of this treachery?'

In his paw, the Doctor was holding a small holocamera, the device he had used to project his image. He put that device in the pouch of his robe as he began walking the length of the room over to Xznaal. Inside its storage vessel, the Red Death began scattering around, excited by the new arrival. Xznaal could hear it scratching and clawing at the wal s of its prison.

The Doctor glanced up the storage tank lining the ceiling before brandishing a small codex. 'I've made some calculations.' He opened up the cover and began leafing through the pages of handwritten notes. 'I even got your scientist here to check my working.'

'And what are your conclusions?' Xznaal growled.

Vrgnur stepped forwards. 'Lord Xznaal, the Doctor is a scientist of great skill. His calculations confirm the results of the tests that I conducted on soil and water samples from Adisham. They show that the Red Death hunts all Terran DNA, not just that of the humans.'

Xznaal grunted his satisfaction.

'If we were to release enough of the Red Death to wipe out the human race, it would eradicate the entire Terran biosphere,' Vrgnur concluded.

116.

'The weapon is more effective than first we thought. Excellent. Shall we test your hypothesis?' He reached for the release control.

The Doctor whirled to face the Martian Lord, his arms flailing. 'Once it has finished feeding, Earth wil be a barren rock, without even the smallest bacteria in the soil or microbe in the air. The Death wil have consumed even itself.'

'I care little for life on Earth.' Xznaal hissed, baring fangs glistening with saliva.

'You've lost control of the Earth, so you destroy it?' the Doctor shouted. 'That's the behaviour of the playground, not the parade ground. You're not a warrior, Xznaal, you're a spoilt child.'

The Martian's claw s.n.a.t.c.hed the release control.

The man in front of Lethbridge-Stewart was surely too young to have been a real general, despite the uniform.

There were six soldiers with him, eager young types.

'I am General Maybury-Hil , commanding officer of the government security forces,' he announced. 'I offer you the unconditional surrender of myself and al my men.'

The general handed over his machine gun. The Brigadier rubbed his moustache. 'Accepted,' he said finally.

'I will, of course, take full responsibility for my actions and those under my command. We will place ourselves under - '

Lethbridge-Stewart held up his hand. 'With the greatest respect, General, you will do no such thing. What you and your men wil do is open the gates of the Byward and Middle Tower and you will do it in the next thirty seconds.

Step to it!'

Maybury-Hil saluted and hurried away to find a walkie-talkie.

Bambera watched him go. 'Technically, sir, he does outrank you.'

The Brigadier pulled the bolt on the machine gun he had been handed. 'Technically, Winifred, I'm retired.'

'No,' Vrgnur called, lifting his arm to block Xznaal's.

The Martian Lord was stronger than his scientist. Xznaal brushed him aside. Vrgnur responded by raising his claw and firing at his Lord.

The Doctor shoved into Vrgnur, barely budging the Martian, but throwing off his aim. The energy bolt struck the floor, blowing open a large hole. Bare electrical wire was exposed, and began sparking.