Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition (33 page)

Hold up, he’s looking at his paws again. They look like they’d fit round our neck a treat. Nice one.

We have a quick butchers at the world according to Tovel. It’s getting a bit misty. You can’t be optimistic with a misty optic, our
old
mum used to say. And she never even wore glasses, daft cow.

What we wouldn’t give to see her now.

‘You all right, mate?’ we say, keeping the noise down. Tovel keeps looking at us like he don’t really see us. ‘Tovel?’

‘I’m a good pilot,’ he says suddenly. His voice, which used to sound quite posh compared to the others, is getting rougher. Like he’s not working his tongue so well. He’s like an old man suddenly, going downhill fast. We hope he isn’t noticing all this kind of stuff as he goes. ‘Did you hear Haunt say that?’

‘Yeah, course,’ we say. We can’t remember to be honest.

Tovel shakes his head, like he can work loose the Schirr patches, send them flying off like bits of blancmange. ‘“Turn this thing around,” she said. Do you remember back in the control room? “Turn this thing around before…” She never finished.’

He stops still. Looks like he might lay an egg. Finally, he just takes a big, deep breath: ‘And I couldn’t finish it for her either.’

We don’t know what to say. What can we say to that? ‘That’s because you were turning into a ruddy monster, mate’? The Doctor would have something clever to say, we reckon, but no chance of reaching him.

‘It ain’t over yet,’ we say finally.

In a whole load of ways we wish it was. But you’ve got to keep plugging away, ain’t you? Go the distance. Jeez, now we’re quoting our old man.

Tovel don’t say nothing. We don’t even know if he’s heard us. His eyes, piggy under his big brows, have sort of glazed over. He don’t look too steady on his big pins. Then he falls.

We yell his name, try to pull him back up. Feel how clammy, how
dead
all this new skin on him feels to the touch. We can’t shift him.

Time to close our eyes and tap the ruby slippers. ‘What do I do?’ we yell with our head. Nothing comes back to us. Try again. ‘Tovel’s collapsed. He’s not right. I can’t move him.’

The Doctor’s there. His voice is crackly like an old record.

‘You’re very faint, Ben.’

‘So are you. Listen, Tovel’s fainted, or something.’

A pause. Has he gone, or – ‘He’s fighting against the infection, my boy. You can’t help him.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘Go on alone,’ the Doctor says, like it’s no big deal. ‘But take Tovel’s communicator. You may need it.’

‘What if
he
needs it? He’s helpless, ain’t he?’

‘Don’t argue, my boy. We have to find the life-support systems, and find the navigational crystals. We’re doomed if we do not. You are able bodied and Tovel is not. You must leave him.’

We know the Doctor’s right. Even before he’s finished his spiel we crouch beside Tovel and slip off his little bracelet. It takes some doing, his wrist has swollen up and the communicator doesn’t come easily. Tovel doesn’t even notice, just stares into space. The lights are on but nobody’s home any more.

We get back up, put on the wrist thing. ‘Be lucky, Tovel,’ we mutter. ‘We’ll soon have you moved back in.’

Then we’re off, on our own again.

We don’t know why but we’re thinking about Haunt.

Switch to Haunt’s viewpoint. Select section 9 on
here

26

Shade

Polly bouncing along beside us, we set off back the way we came.

Then a voice presses down on our senses. Seductive and sibilant, proud and gloating. A Schirr voice, powerful, it’s like it’s trying to crush our thoughts into the ground.

Polly’s staring round, wide-eyed. We grab hold of her, pull her on down the tunnel.

We can’t just stop here when she’s got our one and only chance of escape in her hand. We have to keep moving,
moving
–

To witness these events from Polly’s viewpoint, select section 19 on
here

To switch to Creben’s viewpoint, select section 15 on
here

To switch to Ben’s viewpoint, select section 10 on
here

To switch to Tovel’s viewpoint, select section 23 on
here

Or you may withdraw from the neural net – but only after experiencing Frog’s perspective. Select section 27 on
here

27

Frog

We hear something. Something soft, a whirring kind of noise.

We stop singing.

Our eyes are stinging. Watering. We think that’s why the ceiling seems to be blurred at first.

No.

No, there’s something pretty weird happening. All the glass is sparkling. Around where Roba shot at the stuff. You try and look at a piece and it shifts, becomes another piece. Like there’s a blindspot somewhere in our vision, and God knows, there probably is by now.

But then we see the angel come swooping into our field of vision and we know we ain’t just imagining all this.

We can’t move. Even if we could we’d be too scared stiff to move a muscle. We’re helpless. That angel thing knows it. Behind it there’s a crack in the wall that was never there before.
A
black split, in and out of focus. Secret passage. But it can’t keep our eyes off the angel.

We watch, stuck like we’re made of stone as it hovers just above us. Its wings flap. We feel the breeze they make, it’s like a summer wind. The angel shifts just a little. We follow it with our eyes, wishing we could fly too. Is this us thinking, or is this what we’re becoming, but the angel thing’s kind of beautiful.

It hovers above the bodies. Reaches out to what looks like a frozen drop of water sparking in mid-air just above one of them pool ball heads.

The lights take a dip. And the Schirr on the platform start twitching like they got a few of them flea bugs under their nightgowns.

We wanna run screaming but we’re stuck here watching.

And we hear the scary bitch voice of one of them speaking loud. We hear it in our head before we hear it in our ears, and then the echo of the voice after it. Like there’s more than one Schirr talking. We’re feeling like there’s all kinds of stuff hiding in this web that we never knew about. And we wanna scream or something, but we know we’d never be heard over these words.

‘Please remain still,’ the Schirr says.
DeCaster
says. ‘You’re not going to die, humans. You’re going to live forever…

‘
We
are going to live forever.’

WEBSET ONLINE INFORMATION SYSTEM DEACTIVATED

You exit the neural network

Now turn the page

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

P
ARTNERS IN
C
RIME

I

THE DOCTOR PAUSED
outside the control room, trying to focus. Frog, of course, must be trapped inside with the emerging Schirr. He had tried to contact the others in the network, but without success. Still, he had done all he could for them. If they weren’t here already, he knew they soon would be. Where else could they go?

Steeling himself, he strode with all the dignity he could summon into the pentagonal chamber.

It seemed to have come alive. The golden trellises high in the walls glowed like neon, and the light was caught and reflected all ways by the glass in the ceiling, brightening the place considerably. The air was warmer, and shot through with a sickly-sweet stink like dustbins left unemptied for too long.

‘Well, well,’ the Doctor said. ‘Quite a gathering, I see.’

The Schirr corpses on the sullen stage were heaving for breath, laboriously. They looked weak. Their pink-white eyes rolled in their sockets as they acclimatised to life again. It seemed to pain them.

In front of them stood DeCaster, an altogether more powerful creature in long white robes. His fleshy brows were knitted together in a dark frown. The red pinpoints of his pupils fixed on the Doctor. The nose was a jammed-up snout, like a pig’s, except it waxily joined a huge, broad top lip that drooped down either side of his face. The chin was dominated by a thick, trembling lower lip.

Beside him, easily as tall but more massive than the Schirr
leader
, stood one of the Morphiean constructs. It stood still as the statue it resembled.

‘Of course.’ The Doctor chuckled darkly with satisfaction. ‘You didn’t steal the secrets of the Morphieans’ dark sciences. They were supplied to you.’

DeCaster said nothing, but he watched the Doctor closely.

‘Well, what of Denni?’ the Doctor asked, stepping closer. ‘As your accomplice, should she not be present here, at the end, hmm?’

DeCaster’s fleshy lips stretched back into a wide smile. ‘Denni,’ he said. His voice was like that of a woman’s, sensual and soft. ‘Human female. She was offered in ritual, fed to the propulsion drives.’ He pulled something from his robe and threw it at the Doctor’s feet.

Blonde dreadlocks, still attached to a bloody slice of scalp.

The Doctor nodded sadly. ‘I suspected she would be dead. I suppose she had outlived her usefulness.’

As he spoke, a long crack appeared in the far wall, behind the platform and the TARDIS. The secret door became visible to the Doctor as it opened, its edges blurred with strange energies.

Through it, silently, stepped Marshal Haunt. She raised a finger to her lips.

DeCaster’s mouth quivered. ‘Denni’s usefulness was as meat.’

The Doctor endeavoured to appear undistracted. ‘Er… Come now, surely you undervalue her contribution to your cause?’

Rifle raised, Haunt stole closer behind the Schirr.

‘She has, after all, manipulated events very much to your advantage, has she not?’

Haunt circled the platform and crept right behind DeCaster and the construct.

But DeCaster must have heard her. He whirled round, bore down on her.

And turned back, his smile even wider.

Haunt pointed the gun at the Doctor’s head.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ the Doctor demanded hoarsely.

‘Can’t you guess, Doctor?’ Haunt spoke without any sense of triumph. ‘It was me who arranged all this. Not a training mission. A
rescue
mission.’

There was a sudden clattering of feet from the narrow passageway outside the control room.

DeCaster’s long, twisted ears twitched. ‘The humans should all be paralysed,’ hissed DeCaster. ‘We transmitted the disabling pulse along the network. How can they still move?’

Haunt looked uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know. A mistake in the ritual?’

‘Impossible,’ hissed DeCaster.

The Doctor tutted. ‘I’m afraid you got rather ahead of yourself, didn’t you.’

‘You?’ DeCaster’s brow furrowed further as he stared at the Doctor. ‘This is your work?’

‘Over here, Doctor,’ Haunt snapped. ‘Or I’ll blow your head off.’

The Doctor didn’t move. He gave her a pitying smile. ‘But you’ve expended so much energy to keep enough of us alive… I really don’t think your master would be pleased if you killed me now.’

DeCaster blasted out a hiss of breath from his snout, and stamped towards the Doctor with alarming speed.

The Doctor shrank back instinctively, but a moment later the Schirr’s huge arms had clamped around him. He was twisted about to face his friends as they ran into the room: Ben, Polly, Shade and Creben. The others must still be lying in dark corners, changing, unable to move.

‘Be still,’ DeCaster snarled, his breath hot and wet in the Doctor’s ear. ‘Drop your weapons or I kill this one.’

‘No!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘He won’t do it!’ Damp, fleshy fingers pressed down on his mouth and nose. He could barely breathe.

‘Haunt!’ Ben yelled, his amazement at finding her alive clear on his face. ‘Can’t you do something?’

She fired just above their heads. A yellow bolt of laser fire smashed into the wall behind them.

Ben looked shocked. ‘Not quite what I had in mind.’

‘Throw down your weapons like the Schirr says,’ Haunt bellowed. ‘And raise your hands!’

The soldiers obeyed, bewildered. Ben hesitated, but Polly looked at him imploringly, and he followed suit.

‘What
is
this?’ Creben snapped.

The Doctor managed to twist his face free of the thick, sticky hand. ‘Your marshal has betrayed the people of the Earth and their empire,’ he shouted. ‘She has used you all.’

He heard the Schirr’s rumbling laughter behind him.

II

Polly stared in horror at the tableau before her. Haunt pointing the gun at them. The stone angel as it floated forwards and trampled the soldiers’ weapons into scrap. The dark bulk of what used to be Frog, lying silent in one corner. The huge Schirr bodies
moving
, swaying, breathing in and out, and the frail form of the Doctor caught in the grip of the biggest one of all.

Shade was trembling beside her, his eyes fixed on Haunt’s. Creben was speechless. Polly wondered how it must feel for them, such a total betrayal.

‘Used us?’ croaked Shade. ‘Why?’ He still stared disbelievingly at Haunt.

Haunt regarded them coldly. ‘I have my reasons.’

‘Our bodies have been weakened by the rituals,’ DeCaster said. The contrast between voice and appearance made him all the more repellent. ‘Worn out, unable to heal. We need…’ He smiled again, bared huge square teeth. ‘We need your assistance.’

‘You’re taking our bodies to replace your own?’ Creben demanded. ‘One for each of you?’

‘No wonder she said no one dies without her say so,’ Polly murmured.

‘We
appreciate
human flesh,’ DeCaster told him, and licked his lips. ‘We have groomed your bodies, healed them, made them pure. Now we each shall be as one. Two of my disciples – you may have noticed their absence – they have been casting the prelude to the joining ritual. It is now complete.’ He grinned over at the motionless stone cherub. ‘A lengthy piece but a most satisfying one.’

‘That’s the reason for all this deception,’ Creben realised. ‘The tableau, the mystery… once we were here, you needed time to prepare yourselves for us.’

The Doctor nodded with some difficulty. ‘So they stayed hidden in plain sight… fooling us all.’