Shining Darkness Page 18
‘Five minutes,’ said Mesanth. He didn’t look happy. Li’ian threw him an angry look.
‘Doctor!’ called Donna. ‘I’m sure you’ve got everything well in hand out there; but all this talk of bombs and stuff is making me just a bit edgy.’
‘He’s bluffing,’ said Li’ian. ‘I know his type.’
‘And you’re very good at that, aren’t you,’ the Doctor said sarcastically, ‘knowing types. That’s how you think, isn’t it? Forget individuals, forget people – everyone’s just a type to you.’
The Doctor noticed the look of concern that passed across Li’ian’s face. Keeping the gun aimed at Donna, she moved over to join Mesanth at his workstation and whispered something to him.
‘Whisperers tell lies,’ the Doctor taunted.
Li’ian ignored him.
‘By my watch,’ the Doctor said, looking at his wrist, ‘I’d say we’ve got about four and a half minutes before Mad Mary in there flicks the switch. How long is the timer on the bomb?’
Boonie lifted his eyes from the floor. ‘A minute.’
‘Okaaaay,’ said the Doctor. ‘So we’ve got three and a half minutes to bicker and argue and point blaming fingers before we have to decide.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Good – plenty of time then – off you go: bicker away!’
He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. Everyone stared at him in silence.
‘Go,’ Boonie said suddenly. ‘All of you, go, find a shuttle – me and Mother will stay.’
The Doctor’s shoulders fell.
‘Not the heroic sacrifice bit?’ he said wearily. ‘Isn’t that a bit old hat?’
‘Just go,’ Boonie repeated. ‘We’ll finish this place off, won’t we, Mother?’
He looked up at her, and the Doctor could see that there were tears in his eyes again.
>YES, she said, after a moment’s consideration. I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT THE DECEPTION, BUT YES, WE WILL. THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EITHER OF US.
‘All of you,’ Boonie said urgently. ‘Go.’
The Doctor took a deep breath.
‘Well it’s very nice of you to offer to blow yourselves up, but we’re all in this together, aren’t we?’
‘Are we?’ squeaked Weiou worriedly.
‘We are,’ said the Doctor firmly. He looked through the window at Donna.
‘You ready to be blown to smithereens to preserve galactic peace, Donna?’
‘Oh yeah,’ she called back blithely. ‘Always. Just like Pompeii all over again, isn’t it?’
‘Go on, then,’ said Li’ian, smiling again. ‘I dare you.’
‘D’you hear that, Boonie? Mother? Li’ian’s daring you! Not going to let her get away with that, are you?’
Boonie looked up at Mother and then around at the little group gathered in the corridor. He caught the Doctor’s eyes.
‘Activation code,’ Boonie said, his voice audibly trembling. ‘Shining Darkness 111.’
Mother’s virtual screen flickered: >CODE ACCEPTED. CONFIRM?
For a moment, Boonie paused, and the Doctor wondered if he was actually going to go through with it. ‘
Confirm,’ he said.
Abruptly, Mother’s screen flickered again and turned blood red. In large digits, the number 60 appeared in white, and as they watched, flicked over to 59. Mother turned so that Li’ian could see the display
‘It’s a bluff,’ she said, although the Doctor could see that she suddenly wasn’t so sure.
‘Your choice,’ said the Doctor. ‘Fifty five seconds to decide whether it is or it isn’t. You might be right – it might all be a clever plan cooked up between us.’ He examined his fingernails. ‘Or it might not.’
Li’ian leaned in close to Mesanth and said something urgently, although the Doctor couldn’t catch the words. Donna, he saw, was looking for a chance to grab the gun from Li’ian, but when she caught sight of him, he gave a tiny shake of his head.
‘You’re right,’ said Li’ian suddenly, moving to another control panel. ‘It might – and it might not. And the moment I surrender, I imagine you’ll cancel the countdown.’
‘It can’t be cancelled,’ Boonie said grimly.
‘What?’ wailed Weiou. ‘But I thought that was the plan! Oh my!’
‘Seriously?’ asked the Doctor, his eyes wide.
‘Seriously,’ Boonie said.
Kellique’s eyes matched the Doctor’s.
‘We’re going to die,’ she gasped, grabbing Mother’s leg for support. ‘What about escape shuttles?’
‘Sorry,’ said the Doctor. ‘I don’t think –’ he checked his watch again ‘– eighteen seconds would be enough to get to one.’
There was a flurry of movement from within the room. Li’ian and Mesanth were unplugging bits and pieces from the console and gathering them up, including the waspy cylinder of the activator.
‘Probably not,’ Li’ian said grimly. ‘But it’ll be enough to transmat back to our ship. With this.’ She held up the activator as she jabbed at a control panel and spoke at it.
‘Bring us back!’ she said, her eyes glinting triumphantly.
‘Oh great!’ enthused the Doctor – without much enthusiasm. ‘Just when the party’s getting started!’ He folded his arms grumpily. ‘Go on then, off you go. Leave us here to clear up the cans and empty the ashtrays.’
‘I still think you’re bluffing, Doctor,’ Li’ian said, making sure she had all her bits and pieces. ‘But if the station hasn’t blown up in a few seconds, we’ll be back. And if it has…’ She gave a great big shrug. ‘It might take us a few weeks or months to hook the activator into another transmitter powerful enough to do the job, but we’ll get there. We’ve come too far to be stopped now.’ A shimmering, snowy glow enveloped her and Mesanth. ‘And when we’ve finished in our galaxy,’ she called, her voice fading into sizzling static, ‘maybe we’ll pay a visit to yours…’
The glow built to a crescendo and then faded abruptly. Li’ian and Mesanth were gone. Everyone turned to Mother and her countdown.
>5, it said.
‘Stop it!’ cried Weiou. ‘Stop it! Go on – I know that’s your plan. I know it is!’
But the Doctor just looked down at the little robot and shook his head.
‘Sorry, Weiou. Boonie was right. I can’t.’
>4
>3
>2
Inside the room, Donna rushed to the door, jabbing at the buttons to open it.
>1
>0
‘What happened?’ asked Ogmunee, the moment that Mesanth and Li’ian materialised.
‘View screen on,’ Li’ian barked. ‘Show me the station!’
Ogmunee pulled a sniffy face but turned to the display controls anyway.
‘Oh,’ he said, suddenly remembering something. ‘This thing I took from the Doctor.’ He picked up a shiny red sphere, the size of a tangerine, from the console. ‘I’ve not been able to open it. It’s just started flashing. Any idea what it—’
In the vacuum of space, exploding spaceships make no sound: there’s no air to carry the vibration. But anyone watching the Dark Light wouldn’t have needed to hear it to know what immense energies had just been liberated.
Within the red sphere, a magnetic containment field cut out, and a few billion atoms of matter were allowed, at long last, to mingle with a few billion atoms of antimatter. It was like long-lost friends meeting at a party. A very loud, very noisy party. The sort of party that has the neighbours banging on the walls.
A flower of intense blue-white light erupted at the front of the ship, expanding like a star, expanding outwards and outwards, consuming the rest of the vessel in less than a second, blasting the remains far, far out into space until, like dying sparks, they flickered and went dark.
Not even looking at Mother’s screen, not wanting to know the exact moment that her life ended, just wanting it to be quick and painless, Donna pressed herself against the Doctor in a hug that nearly knocked him off his feet. She buried her fa
ce in his chest, holding her breath, waiting for the end.
As she waited, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and looked up to see the Doctor looking down at her. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.
‘Oh you git!’ she said after a moment, pulling away and punching him in the chest. ‘It was a bluff, wasn’t it?’ She stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘You complete and utter git!’
‘No,’ he said, the smile subsiding. ‘It wasn’t. And yes, I probably am.’ He grinned rakishly. ‘A bit.’
Donna looked up at Mother. Her screen had vanished. She looked around. Everyone was either staring in shock or just looking puzzled. And of them all, Boonie looked the most puzzled.
‘How did you…?’ he said to Mother.
‘She didn’t,’ answered the Doctor, popping on his specs and slipping past them to enter the room where Li’ian and Mesanth had been working on the activator. They followed him in.
‘So we’re all dead and this is… the final upload?’ whispered Weiou. He glanced at the Doctor and then, magically, a pair of glasses just like the Doctor’s, appeared on his cartoon face. He reached out to touch a wall as if he thought his fingers might go through it. ‘Oh my.’
‘If it is,’ said the Doctor, playing with the controls, ‘it’s a bit unimaginative, isn’t it? There!’ He waved at a screen on the console.
The screen showed the blackness of space, peppered with a few cold, hard stars.
‘What’s that, then?’ asked Weiou.
‘That’s what’s left of the Cult of Shining Darkness. Ironic, eh?’
‘Uh?’ Weiou leaned back to look up at him, peering over his specs.
‘They’ve gone?’ said Kellique. ‘Where?’
‘Where we’re all going to go in the end.’ The Doctor sounded almost regretful.
‘They’re dead?’ asked Donna.
The Doctor just narrowed his lips.
‘The bomb,’ said Boonie. ‘Mother’s bomb. It was on their ship, wasn’t it?’
‘I did tell Ogmunee that he really, really didn’t want it,’ said the Doctor, but there was no humour in his voice. ‘But some people just won’t listen, will they?’
‘How?’ Boonie shook his head. ‘I mean, when…?’
‘When I found it inside her. It didn’t fit. Not just physically, but it was all wrong for her. So I…’ He pulled a slightly sheepish face. ‘Pocketed it. She didn’t even notice it was there, never mind when it wasn’t. And then Ogmunee took it off me.’
Donna’s eyes went wide.
‘Can I just say,’ she said, ‘that if you’re ever checking me over and decide to remove one of my internal organs, on a whim, I’ll have you struck off.’ She fixed him with a twinkly glare. ‘You remember that, Doctor.’
‘That’s one thing you can say for organic life forms – they don’t cope well with having bits of them taken out.’ The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘Still…Live by the sword, die by the sword.’
A heavy silence descended on them all as they stared at the screen. Suddenly, the Doctor leaned forward and squinted at it, before his fingers did a little dance over the keyboard. The image leaped towards them: floating in the midst of the darkness was a familiar, welcoming shape.
‘Thank god!’ sighed Donna, staring at the tumbling blue box. ‘I was trying to work out how to tell you that I’d lost the TARDIS.’
‘She’s a hard thing to lose – we can use one of the station’s shuttles to pick her up. And sooner rather than later. Wouldn’t want her falling into Sentilli, now, would we?’
Donna linked her arm with the Doctor’s. ‘No, we wouldn’t. Let’s go home, yeah?’
‘Home,’ agreed the Doctor. ‘Give me a few minutes to get the engines going – we’ll send this thing back into Sentilli without its shields on. It’ll be gone before you know it. And after we collect the TARDIS and a quick stop-off to take our friends back to their homes, I think the old Milky Way beckons, don’t you? Where’s it going to be, ladies and gentlemen? Uhlala? Dallendaf? Or…’
‘Pasquite!’ cried Weiou suddenly. ‘Let’s go to Pasquite! Can we? Can we?’
‘What’s on Pasquite?’ asked the Doctor.
Weiou rolled his eyes behind his fake glasses.
‘D’uh!’ he said. ‘Only the bestest machine theme park in the galaxy. They’ve got a simulator that shows you what it’s like to be organic – all that Squidgie stuff. It’s really gruesome, with blood and innards and sick and—’
The Doctor raised a hand to cut the little robot off. ‘Sounds rather fun! Pasquite it is,’ he grinned.
‘Is that the end of them, then – the Cult of Shining Darkness?’
Donna and the Doctor stood by the TARDIS and watched the bizarre little group, led by a jumping, squeaking Weiou (who’d clearly become so attached to his new specs that Donna suspected he’d be wearing them for ever), head off into the distance. In the valley below them was the biggest theme park she’d ever seen. From a long way off, they could hear the cheers and screams from a thousand mechanicals, all keen to find out what it was like to be a Squidgie.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a state of mind more than an organisation. There’ll be millions more like them out there. Thinking the same, mean-spirited, tiny-minded thoughts. Scared of anything that’s different, that they don’t understand. And they’ll always be there, ready to blame someone else for the state of the universe.’
Donna sighed and linked her arm through his.
He looked at her. ‘You OK?’
Donna pulled a ‘maybe’ face, gazing down into the valley.
‘You go through life, you know,’ she said. ‘Thinking you’re a good person. Well, maybe not always a good person. Sometimes just not a bad person. You get up every day, go to work or college or whatever,’ she added. ‘You watch the telly, go on holiday. All that stuff. And you just assume it’s the way it is. What your mum and dad tell you, what you see on the news, what you read in the papers. You don’t question it, unless it’s something about Posh’s latest frock, or the Royals or what-have-you. You just, y’know, take it all in, thinking that anyone who thinks different is wrong.’
‘Welllll,’ said the Doctor slowly. ‘They usually are. Especially when you’re a Ginger Goddess.’
Donna banged her head against his shoulder.
‘Nah,’ she said dismissively. ‘It’s not all that, godhood.’
She paused and breathed in the alien air of Pasquite, so full of strangeness that it almost hurt. ‘Travelling with you…’ Donna stopped. ‘Travelling with you, seeing all this stuff, risking life and limb – it scares the willies out of me, you know that.’
The Doctor raised cautionary eyebrows.
‘We can always go home, you know. Back to Chiswick, back to temping, holidays in Egypt – although I’d recommend Mexico, by the way – back to normality…’
Donna smiled and shook her head.
‘Meeting all these robots – all these machines, all these aliens…’ She paused. ‘What is “normal” anyway?’
The Doctor pointed to little group, a few hundred yards away: two machines, looking a bit like upright sunbeds, were walking along. On their shoulders were two kids – two Squidgie kids – laughing and squealing as the sunbeds leaned this way and that, pretending they were about to drop them.
‘That’s normal,’ he said. ‘Just people, being people.’
They stood in silence for a while, watching Pasquite’s yellow sun drift towards the horizon, listening to the noise, breathing in the smells of food and flowers and oil.
‘People,’ echoed Donna. ‘Just people.’
Acknowledgements
Thanks, as ever, to my faithful proof-monkeys – Stuart Douglas, Simon Forward, Michael Robinson, Paul Dale Smith and Nick Wallace.
To Justin Richards for giving me another bite of the cherry.
To everyone who enjoyed my other Doctor Who novels.
To Mark Morris and Simon Messingham – welcome back on board.<
br />
To Steve Tribe for his eagle eyes.
And to Russell T Davies and his team for giving us all back such a wonderful playground.
Oh my!
David Tennant reads Pest Control
Written by Peter Anghelides
Launching a new series of audio exclusive stories from BBC Audiobooks
Also available from BBC Audiobooks
Abridged readings of the Doctor Who novels by cast members
from the BBC TV series, with bonus author interviews
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by Jacqueline Rayner
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by Stephen Cole
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Wetworld
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Peacemaker
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