Ten Little Aliens: 50th Anniversary Edition (34 page)

‘I thought you needed ten to make your magic work?’ Ben challenged. ‘You bumped off your mate. What happens once you get past the warm up and the match kicks off?’

‘We do not need the traitor,’ DeCaster hissed. ‘The neural network has united your minds. When we join with you,
our
minds will absorb yours. It will give us the power of many… enough for our purpose.’

Polly felt brave enough to speak up at last. ‘Purpose? What is your purpose?’

Haunt shook her head. She wasn’t saying.

‘So,’ the Doctor said, crumpled in the big Schirr’s crushing grip. ‘You always planned for the real-time neural network to be in place.’ He looked pitifully dejected. ‘And I made it possible for you.’

‘I had Shel marked out for that task,’ said Haunt. ‘But yes, Doctor, you were an excellent replacement.’

‘Well, we know how to balls up your little game, don’t we?’ said Ben, and he pulled at his webset.

It wouldn’t shift, no matter how hard he tried.

‘You’re doing this!’ Polly shouted at DeCaster.

He laughed and nodded. ‘You cannot remove the websets now.’

‘And your ritual cannot proceed unless I allow it,’ the Doctor said. His composure had returned, it seemed, and with it his innate sense of authority. ‘You said yourselves, these people should be paralysed by your powers. They are not.’

‘What have you done, Doctor?’ Haunt demanded.

‘You expect me to tell you when so much is still a mystery to me?’ He chuckled. Then he winced, struggled feebly against the monster’s tightening grip. His simple bravery made Polly well up as she watched. ‘The moment I tell you, I have nothing to bargain with.’

‘There is no bargain to be made.’ DeCaster pressed his upturned snout against the Doctor’s cheek and inhaled. ‘Your mind is fresh, but your body is old. It is
alien
.’ He glanced over at the statue, his pale eyes betraying a flicker of annoyance. ‘The Morphiean constructs should really have deliberated more carefully over who they culled.’

Polly stifled a cry as the stone cherub moved smoothly into life, swivelled its head round to view DeCaster. ‘Our instruction was to bring the numbers down to nine.’ The statue’s voice was brittle and dry. ‘This we have done.’

‘There is much you must learn about the body, Morphiean.’ DeCaster said, turning his attention back to the Doctor. He caressed the translucent skin of the old man’s cheek. ‘About the nature of
flesh
.’

‘So the Schirr gain Morphiea’s powers of the mind, and Morphiea regains the pleasures of the physical form.’ The Doctor laughed hollowly. ‘Is this your exchange? Hmm?’

DeCaster abruptly released the Doctor, who gasped in pain as he hit the floor.

‘Your sabotage is negating the onset of the ritual,’ the Schirr
leader
hissed. ‘Tell us what you have done.’

‘I will not,’ the Doctor insisted, ‘until I know the truth. I will not be a catspaw in your game,’ His voice became sly. ‘But tell me and I may willingly assist you.’

‘Doctor!’ Ben protested.

The Doctor wouldn’t look at him. ‘There’s nothing more we can do, my boy.’

Haunt looked at DeCaster for assurance it was OK to speak. ‘All right,’ she said uneasily. ‘I came here with two doctored droids, neither able to kill, and nine personnel. Ten of us for ten of them. I didn’t know Pallemar had been executed until I got here. Whatever he told Pent Central about this place, or my involvement in setting it up, it must’ve been enough for them to check it out.’

‘They sent Shel,’ Polly whispered.

‘But when you arrived, one of your squad was considered surplus to requirements and executed,’ the Doctor deduced. ‘Poor Denni. Fed to the propulsion units, I suppose.’

‘You can’t have been happy when we turned up,’ Ben said cockily.

‘The presence of any excess organisms in the complex would destabilise the ritual,’ DeCaster said in his flesh-crawling voice. ‘Three more had to die.’

‘It might’ve been Frog if she’d managed to kill herself,’ Polly murmured. ‘But when Haunt saved her, you killed Joiks instead.’

Creben turned to Ben and indicated the giant angel. ‘Lucky for your party those things couldn’t distinguish between us and you.’

Haunt nodded, her voice still devoid of any feeling. ‘Denni’s webset was destroyed with the rest of her. I didn’t think we’d need it.’ Now she actually addressed Polly directly: ‘When the construct took Lindey instead of you, I made sure we kept the webset safe.’

‘And once it became apparent that Shel was an artificial
intelligence
, he was next to be slaughtered,’ the Doctor said, looking sickened. ‘A cyborg simply wouldn’t do.’

‘It turned out well that the three of you came here from nowhere,’ Haunt admitted. ‘You could wear the web as well as anyone else.’

‘And a good thing for you that the cleansing process happened to drive out your cyst, hmm?’ Haunt didn’t react, but the Doctor nodded. ‘You fell desperately ill. A most ingenious way of diverting suspicion away from you. Yes, you’ve been very clever,’ he proclaimed graciously, as he painfully stood back up. ‘But are you really so keen to give your body to one of these creatures, hmm?’

‘There’s been no going back for me, Doctor,’ Haunt said coldly. ‘Not for a long, long time.’

The Doctor clicked his tongue, then turned his back on Haunt and addressed DeCaster as he would a waiter who had given poor service. ‘But isn’t all this a little small-scale, hmm? I can believe your ragged band of Schirr dissidents might need to skulk in the shadows like this, but the Morphieans have the might of an entire quadrant…’ He tailed off, a wily smile on his face. ‘Only they don’t, do they?’ He turned to the construct, gripped his lapels and tipped back his head. ‘You’re dissidents yourself, aren’t you!’

The cherub looked at him blankly.

‘The old links between our peoples never truly died,’ said DeCaster. ‘Certain factions in Morphiea have been pressing for the expansion of the Morphiean empire on a corporeal level. We have let them taste the feel of flesh. Naturally, they want more.’

The Doctor would not look at him. He concentrated on the giant stone baby. ‘Will you not speak to me, sir?’

‘Our rulers are not mindful of the Earth’s expansion.’ Polly shuddered at the return of the angel’s dry, dead voice. ‘They would let humans seed the entire Quadrant, content to operate
on
the intangible planes.’ The statue’s face remained blank – clearly the Morphiean hadn’t got much of a handle on emotion – but it made a horrible crackling sound, like bones breaking, that Polly took to be laughter. ‘We shall not surrender all claim to the physical for all eternity to make way for animals.’

‘There, you see?’ The Doctor looked at Polly and the others. ‘It is some wayward faction only that has been making these terror attacks on the Earth. In league with the Schirr all along.’

Creben had already cottoned on. ‘The rest of Morphiea couldn’t give a damn about us.’

‘This complex will travel to the heart of the Quadrant,’ DeCaster continued in his purring voice. ‘We will use the renewed strength your lives will give us and the amplified power from the joining ritual to crack the Morphiean mind force wide open, to suck out its secrets …’ He licked his lips with a fat leathery tongue. ‘With our allies then in dominance over all Morphiea we shall begin our assault on humanity in earnest.’

Polly saw two more Schirr had appeared in the new doorway behind the TARDIS, their raw, shiny skin gleaming in the bright light.

‘The prelude to the ritual is complete,’ said one.

As if this was some ominous signal, the rest of the Schirr shifted down from their platform, slowly and painfully, eyes sunken and white. They tramped past Haunt, who did not flinch, and took up positions at the various consoles. Polly held on tight to Ben’s hand, shrank into him as the creatures lumbered by.

The closest of them, staring at some sort of scanner screen, piped up in a rasping, forty-a-day voice: ‘We are nearing closest approach.’

‘Our time is at hand,’ said DeCaster. ‘Our powers reach their zenith. Doctor, we cannot delay.’ His pink eyes grew redder, and his voice rose. ‘With the work we do this day, we take the first step to liberate all Schirr from the ghettos, from the barbaric
constraints
of Earth repatriation. We shall have the means to take human stock and make them Schirr, then drive out their minds to give Morphiean intelligences a physical provenance.’ He paused, gloating. ‘Your empire shall be
our
empire.’

‘So, Doctor,’ Haunt said quietly. Polly saw she looked almost uncomfortable. ‘Will you let this end now?’

All eyes were on him.

He bowed his head and nodded. ‘Take me to the propulsion chamber.’

‘Why there?’ DeCaster demanded.

‘I will show you,’ the Doctor said tartly, ‘when we arrive.’

‘You can feel its pull, can’t you, Doctor?’ Haunt studied him closely. ‘Even here. Hypnotic, isn’t it?’

DeCaster nodded. ‘We controlled the tremors to block off all visible approach to the chamber,’ he hissed. ‘We feared its pull would lead you all to a premature death feeding its hunger.’

‘It almost did,’ Ben muttered, turning to Tovel. ‘That weird hypnosis thing when we broke through the rockfall –’

He was cut off as the room echoed with a crazed, high-pitched shriek.

‘Frog? You all right, girl?’ Ben started forward, but Haunt fired another shot over his head, warning him back. She looked round in alarm.

Polly saw the corner where they’d left her was empty now.

Frog could move again. She was coming to their rescue.

One of the Schirr lurched to one side, fell face down on the floor. It choked and retched, it was dying. Polly’s heart leaped, Frog’s counter-attack had begun.

Only when it turned over, arching its back, thumping the floor with swollen fists in pain and frustration, did Polly realise the fallen Schirr
was
Frog. There was little that was human about her now, all but consumed by the blistering alien flesh.

‘See,’ DeCaster told his brethren over Frog’s whimpers of agony. ‘It is fascinating, is it not, to compare the differing speeds
with
which the metamorphosis occurs.’ He grinned evilly at Polly. ‘But you will all fall to us in the end. You have no choice.’

Polly, still holding tightly on to Ben’s hand, felt a creeping feeling under her palm. She looked down and screamed, let go of Ben like he was red hot.

‘My hand,’ whispered Ben, staring in horror. ‘Crikey, Pol, look at my hand! I’m changing!’

Polly didn’t need to look. She had felt the slimy, dead texture of the Schirr skin that coated it. She hugged herself tightly.

The Doctor looked anxiously back at them. ‘Fight it, my boy!’ he shouted. ‘You must fight,
all
of you.’ He looked meaningfully at Polly. ‘It is not yet the point of no return. We can still reverse this, hmm? Turn it around?’

Polly, her senses still numbed with shock, stared at him blankly.

‘No more talk,’ rasped DeCaster. He pushed the Doctor towards the secret door in the wall. Haunt was already walking through it, leading the way.

‘No, Doctor, come back!’ yelled Polly. She wanted to run after him, to somehow get him back, to explain exactly
how
they could turn things around. But he was already gone.

‘The old man will not delay us long,’ DeCaster announced solemnly at the threshold. ‘We shall return. Construct, see that the two humans in the tunnels are gathered and brought here. They are nearly turned to us. The joining shall be all the quicker.’ The stone angel nodded, and DeCaster turned his attention to his disciples. ‘Guard the humans,’ he instructed, and a smile almost split his face open. ‘Your new, exquisite bodies stand before you. Gloat over their good, clean flesh.’

The glass in the ceiling glowed brighter as he passed through the doorway. The split in the rock lingered on behind him.

The chamber fell quiet, save for Frog’s choking sobs, and the laborious breathing of the Schirr. Slowly, arthritically, the creatures shambled closer. The cherub looked on
dispassionately
, a statue in the centre of the room.

‘I’m changing,’ Ben said again in disbelief, his voice cracking. ‘What am I going to do? I’m
changing
.’

‘We’re all changing,’ whispered Creben. ‘The effect’s speeding up, the closer we get to the heart of Morphiea.’

‘No!’ Polly insisted, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘
I’m
not changing. I’m
not
!’

‘It’s on your neck,’ Shade croaked. He turned away from her, and she saw a clump of sticky pink flesh smeared over the back of his head like putty.

Polly threw her arms round Ben, crying for them both as the Schirr lumbered closer.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

T
OWARDS
Z
ERO

I

‘KEEP AWAY,’ SHADE
shouted in warning, as the Schirr dragged themselves closer.

Ben could see why their pale, bloodshot eyes held such a hunger. Their skin was baggy and pallid, muscles all over their bodies twitched uncertainly. They were weak, so they were going to take strength from him and Polly, and the others.

‘Ben,’ Polly murmured breathlessly in his ear. ‘I just realised what the Doctor said, about still being able to turn things round.’

‘Oh yeah?’ he whispered back. He shut his eyes. He just wanted to enjoy holding her close for as long as possible.

‘He meant I still have the navigational crystals,’ said Polly. ‘We can turn this whole
rock
around, literally. If we were travelling
away
from Morphiea, maybe the infection would fade.’

‘Where do we need to put the crystals, then?’ asked Ben, looking over his shoulder now at Creben and Shade.

‘Tovel’s the pilot,’ said Creben. ‘I understand the basic principles, but…’

‘Even if we did know, we wouldn’t stand a chance,’ Shade muttered. ‘D’you think they’ll just stand there and watch us try?’

‘What have we got to lose?’ Ben kept his voice low. ‘We can either die for these things or die fighting against them.’