Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition (17 page)

Joiks shook his head. ‘You weren’t there. I heard Denni’s screams. She wasn’t walking anywhere.’

‘Same for Lindey,’ said Shade.

‘They have to be somewhere,’ Tovel reasoned. ‘In hiding, maybe. Alive or dead.’

Haunt snorted. ‘Why would a droid deliberately hide the bodies of its victims?’

‘To keep the element of surprise?’ Tovel suggested.

Creben looked round at the others, with the crafty look of someone about to put a cat among the pigeons. ‘Or maybe it had a use for them.’

‘What sort of a use?’ demanded Haunt. When Creben didn’t answer, she didn’t bother to hide her disappointment. ‘You’re funny. Well, whatever the reason, we need to find those bodies. We’re taking them home. And not just that, we need some answers. Denni’s webset must still have been recording when she was taken. The information could tell us a lot.’

Ben clocked Joiks. He looked suddenly shiftier than usual.

‘So what are we waiting for,’ said Shade, pulling his hands away from his face. The black ridges seemed to bubble under his reddened skin in the half light. ‘Let’s get this finished.’

‘You don’t look too good, man,’ Tovel said.

‘I’m fine,’ Shade answered tersely. Even Ben, who hadn’t known the geezer for more than a few hours, could see that wasn’t true. He seemed short of breath, swaying slightly, and his eyes stared wildly out of his sweaty face. ‘Come on, let’s
do
this. We can do this.’

‘You’re in pain,’ Haunt said dispassionately. ‘A lot of it. What’s wrong?’

Shade looked like he’d been slapped. ‘It’s nothing,’ he insisted, like a kid on the verge of tears, trying to be brave.

Haunt reached out a hand and pinched Shade’s cheek. He screamed.

‘You’re very funny,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve seen people in more pain than you know how to feel, Shade.’

‘I’m sorry, Marshal,’ Shade said stiffly. ‘I don’t know… It’s my face… Feels like it’s bursting open –’

Shade’s confession was cut short by Shel’s voice bursting through Haunt’s communicator.

‘Marshal.’ There was a tinge of urgency to his usually neutral tones. ‘I… I think you should come to control. Immediately.’

‘Problems?’ Haunt asked.

A pause. ‘Something’s happened.’

Big problems, then. Ben felt a tingle up his spine. He scratched it, like he was scratching the rest of his back. It was like he had sunburn or something, a tightness, a tickling soreness of the skin, spreading all over.

‘’Ere, the Doctor and Polly are all right, aren’t –?’

Haunt shut him up with a warning look. ‘All right, Shel,’ she said quietly to her sleeve. ‘I’m on my way. And I’ll be bringing Shade with me. Out.’

Shade looked down at his feet, embarrassed. ‘Marshal, I don’t need special attention.’

‘That’s enough out of you.’

Lovely bedside manner, thought Ben.

She turned to Ben and the others. ‘The droids are gone, but there are still a lot of unknowns here. We don’t know where we’re going, or why. Organise yourselves into groups. Get searching. I’ll be in touch.’

Shade followed his marshal into the gloom of the tunnel in the far wall. Ben wished he was going back too. How had he suddenly become part of Haunt’s outfit?

‘There he goes, Haunt’s little shadow,’ muttered Roba, unmoved by Shade’s suffering.

‘What’s with Shel and the secrecy?’ Tovel wondered aloud. ‘Why not just tell us?’

‘Morale, innit,’ said Ben. ‘He’d rather you heard it from Haunt once she’s had a chance to work out the words, than to take it from him off the cuff.’

‘Shel was the one who got us into this in the first place,’ said Joiks.

Tovel looked at him. ‘What’re you talking about?’

‘Who decided we’d fly to this stinking rock?’

‘Pentagon Central.’ Tovel gave him the kind of smile you save for simpletons.

‘And who programmed the computers with our stats?’ said Joiks pointedly.

There was a moment’s uncertainty. Everyone exchanged glances.

Roba nodded. ‘Like the old man said – the computers only pick a place ’cause of what’s fed into them.’

‘Well, you’re feeding
us
bull, Joiks.’ Creben shook his head as if amused by some private joke. ‘Since Toronto, Pent-Cent computers are guarded like spectrox. You think it’s likely Shel sneaked in and reprogrammed them just so they’d assign this place to us here and now?’

Joiks spat on the floor. ‘Is it any likelier that DeCaster and Pallemar show up too, “here and now”?’

‘Maybe
they
did it,’ said Roba. ‘You know. Magic.’

‘Leave off!’ Ben protested. ‘Why would they want anyone to discover them here?’

‘There could be a reason,’ said Creben. ‘
They’ve
discovered a usefulness for us.’

‘
They
are dead,’ Tovel reminded him.

‘But we’re all travelling together. And where we’re going there could be anything waiting for us.’ Creben looked at each of them in turn, eyes unblinking. ‘Anything at all.’

A long paralysing pause stretched out like the darkness of the tunnel facing them.

‘Are we going to stand around scaring each other stupid,’ Ben said nervously, ‘or are we going to do what your guvnor told us to?’

Tovel nodded. ‘But screw splitting into groups. We stay together.’

‘Agreed,’ said Creben.

The others nodded, none faster than Ben, and Roba led them off down the gloomy passageway.

III

Polly was staying well away from Haunt. Upon finding another missing corpse from the collection in the control room, the marshal’s cosy theory of natural disintegration was strained to breaking point; much like her patience with so many events all beyond her control.

The Doctor was talking to Haunt now, quietly but forcefully outlining their recent discoveries and their position as he saw it.

Polly could see it well enough herself. They were being toyed with by some unknown power. Bodysnatchers, taking the living and the dead. She didn’t want to think too closely about the possible reasons for that, nor why Morphiea appeared to be the asteroid’s destination.

Nor why Shade and Shel, two soldiers who should’ve been in the peak of physical fitness, now seemed so sick.

Shel’s pain went beyond his injured arm. He was twitching all over on his invisible bed, like a cloud of the fleas outside had followed him in and were biting like devils.

Shade, on the other hand, was lying alarmingly still on the floor beside her. He had collapsed pretty much the moment he’d entered the room. It seemed Haunt had finally lost her shadow. Frog had burst open another force mattress to make him comfortable, but the scanner thing she’d brought out of the first aid box showed nothing untoward.

Polly decided the Doctor was right not to trust these people’s machines. The skin on Shade’s face was like sticky red polythene stretched tight over dozens of tiny black limpets. His green eyes flickered open from time to time, looked blankly up at her. She couldn’t help staring at the tiny computer sticking out of his pocket.
Lindey’s
computer.

Frog sat beside Shel, her scarred round head in her hands, looking bored. Occasionally Haunt would raise her voice at the
Doctor
, incredulous or angry, Polly couldn’t tell. And Shade’s eyes were closed. She reached her hand out to his pocket. No one would notice now if she took out the palm computer and had a little…

‘The Spooks have destroyed whole worlds to try and get their stupid secrets back!’ Haunt’s voice boomed out like gunfire as her patience reached its limit. Polly retreated from Shade and his secret for the moment as the tirade went on: ‘Why would they want to drag a tiny rock with ten soldiers in training to the heart of their empire?’

The Doctor gave as good as he got. ‘I am simply postulating, madam, as to why we should be going to Morphiea if not at the Morphieans’ behest!’ he thundered. She didn’t answer back straight away, so the Doctor pressed home his advantage. ‘If the Schirr were to be captured by Morphiea it would mean certain death.’ He gestured sadly to the bodies behind their invisible barrier. ‘Perhaps they saw what was coming, and arranged for their own destruction.’

Haunt nodded, suddenly subdued. ‘It’s possible,’ was all she would concede. ‘How long till we arrive?’

‘There’s no way of telling,’ the Doctor announced, shaking his head. ‘Now, tell me. How did the Morphieans make you aware that they were responsible for the atrocities they committed?’

‘They made…’ Haunt’s lip curled scornfully, and Polly noticed one hand was clutched to her side. ‘They made what our poor little frightened scientists called “constructs”. Fleshy things,
animated
somehow. Don’t ask me to explain. The constructs were projected direct to Senate. They gloated, threatened us… The Spooks don’t care how many of us they kill. We’re just animals to them.’

The Doctor looked at her steadily, ignoring her mounting anger. ‘They don’t have bodies as we do?’

‘Flesh is just a tool for their magic.’

‘So, the Morphieans have a mindforce of some kind.’
The
Doctor chuckled suddenly, and turned to Frog. ‘I was considering the old, old links between the Schirr and the Morphieans you mentioned. One born, perhaps, from cult of the body on one side, and an elevation of the mind on the other.’

Frog looked less than impressed with the Doctor’s theory. Shel, still convulsing silently with his lips bared back over his teeth, almost seemed to be laughing.

‘How would that ever bring them together?’ wondered Polly.

‘Each extreme still needs the other,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now. So far we only have part of the puzzle. For the bodies to have vanished from this platform, the protective force field must’ve been breached somehow.’

‘By the minds of the Morphieans…’ Polly shuddered.

‘Perhaps,’ the Doctor agreed genially, ‘but I’d rather like to try myself.’ He crouched down with some difficulty to study the newly discovered junction box beneath the corpse’s console. ‘Yes, this perhaps could be what I’m after…’

Haunt looked on, rubbing her side more aggressively now. Maybe the insects had bitten her too. Remembering the pale, squashy fleas put Polly back in mind of her own discomfort. She gritted her teeth and resolved not to scratch.

As the Doctor cautiously tinkered with the junction box, Shel suddenly stirred from his feverish shaking. ‘No,’ he said faintly, then again more forcefully. ‘No, stay away from that.’

The Doctor looked up in surprise. ‘Young man, I assure you I am perfectly qualified to –’

‘Away.’ Shel got unsteadily to his feet. His eyes were narrow slits, his breath pushing out in sharp puffs.

He was aiming a pistol at the Doctor.

Polly opened her mouth, but couldn’t decide if she should beg him to put down the gun or just scream.

Haunt was looking apoplectic. ‘Shel, what the hell are you doing?’

‘It’s him.’ Frog held herself still as a statue, just a few feet away
from
the gun in Shel’s shaking hand. ‘He picked this place for us… he killed Denni and Lindey.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Haunt snapped. ‘Put the gun down, Shel.’

‘It
must
be him!’ gurgled Frog.

Shel said nothing. It seemed to be taking all his concentration to keep the gun pointed at the Doctor, crouched before the junction box.

The Doctor gazed fearlessly back at him. ‘What is the meaning of this, Shel? Answer me!’

‘Put the gun
down
, Shel,’ Haunt ordered, her voice rising.

Shel convulsed, his face twisted in pain. There was the sound of a gun firing, and Polly gave a short, high yell. But the Doctor was unharmed.

Haunt bellowed with rage. ‘No!’

Frog was clutching her own pistol. She’d shot the gun from Shel’s hand. His mouth flapped open and closed now as he stared down at the bloody stumps of his fingers. Frog stared too, apparently fascinated. Polly looked away, sickened.

Now Haunt leaped forward and held Shel in a necklock.

‘Be careful with him,’ the Doctor advised her.

‘Look!’ Frog moaned. ‘His arm.’

Polly looked automatically, and her hand flew to her mouth.

Metal points stuck through Shel’s gory finger-stumps. The skin hung away from a hole in the wrist, too, and Polly saw gleaming silver shafts and coloured wires.

‘He’s got an artificial arm,’ Haunt said, transfixed.

‘Away,’ Shel croaked. ‘Away.’ His cheek twitched faster and faster until a tiny metal coil burst through the skin, flecking his face with bright blood.

‘It’s not just his arm,’ Polly whispered. ‘It’s all of him. He’s a robot too.’

C
HAPTER
N
INE

N
EMESIS

I

SHEL’S FACE TWISTED
with anger. Polly bit her lip as he pulled Haunt’s arm from his neck and shoved her backwards with inhuman strength. She rolled over and over across the floor.

‘We’ve been set up! Shel’s gonna kill all of us!’ Frog brought up her gun and fired again. A spark leapt from Shel’s chest. He swayed, then bashed the gun out of her grasp. Frog overbalanced and knocked against the Doctor, who gasped as he tried to stop her falling. He staggered back against the body in the chair, which skittered away on its castors.

Shel swung round to face Polly.

‘Don’t hurt us,’ she pleaded. His eyes were unfocused, glassy – or perhaps just glass.

‘Leave Polly alone,’ the Doctor commanded. ‘Whatever your purpose here, this girl has done you no harm.’

Shel ignored him. He raised his rifle with his good hand. Polly backed away closer to Shade, who lay still and oblivious.

Haunt was back on her feet. Her own rifle was aimed at Shel’s twitching head. ‘Put down the gun.’

Shel lowered the rifle without bothering to turn round.

‘If you want to live, start talking.’ Haunt took a step closer. ‘Who sent you?’ Another step. ‘Who pushed you on to
me
?’

Polly wasn’t sure if Shel’s mouth was opening with any intent to speak, or if whatever machinery controlled his lips was giving out like the rest of him.

The Doctor slowly advanced on him, his arms raised. ‘Why are you really here, Shel?’