Shining Darkness Read online

  He stopped. All eyes were on him.

  ‘OK, so now I’m just babbling. But it has given me the chance to examine your control room and to work out that, if you are the art police, then art crimes aren’t at the top of the local police force’s list of priorities. This ship is ancient and falling apart,’ he continued, despite the frowns and looks from Boonie and Kellique, ‘and is clearly more of a private venture. And, financially, not a very successful one.’

  He slapped his palm against his forehead.

  ‘Of course! You’re art thieves, aren’t you? You were casing the gallery when someone slipped in before you and lifted it. That’s how you knew what had happened, and how you were waiting for me at the TARDIS.’

  ‘Would it shut you up,’ Boonie said, ‘if I told you that no, we’re not art thieves?’

  ‘It might,’ replied the Doctor cautiously. ‘Of course, it might just throw up more questions. And if there’s one thing I like, it’s questions. Prefer answers, mind you, but questions’ll do for starters. Like… shouldn’t you be following that ship?’

  The sudden urgency in the Doctor’s voice made the two of them turn sharply to the screen set into the arm of Boonie’s chair to which the Doctor had pointed.

  The moment their attention was off him, the Doctor was sprinting towards the door and past Mother – but the door had barely begun to scrape open when Mother’s huge mechanical hand had grabbed his collar and lifted him off his feet. He swung there for a few moments as Mother turned him round to face Boonie.

  ‘Nice try, Doctor,’ the boy almost grinned.

  ‘Well,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘You know what they say: you don’t try, you don’t win.’

  ‘And where were you planning to go?’ asked Kellique.

  The Doctor waved feebly and awkwardly, still dangling from Mother’s hand.

  ‘Oh, you know… back to my ship. Out into space. To find Donna.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Boonie, getting out of his seat. ‘Not yet, at any rate. Mother, have his ship – the blue box thing – locked in the hold where he can’t get at it. And if he tries anything, hit him. Until he stops.’

  Mother lowered him gently to the floor and the Doctor straightened out his crumpled suit.

  ‘Good!’ he said, mustering as much dignity as he could. ‘Glad we’ve got that one sorted out.’

  ‘You kidnap me, lock me up in a room without a window – without even a TV! – and now you expect me to have a cosy little chat, do you?’ Donna stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Garaman. ‘You heard of psychological abuse?’

  Garaman had turned his back on Donna and was strolling around the room, trying to act all cool and casual.

  ‘The Doctor,’ he cut in. ‘This friend of yours. Tell me about him.’

  ‘I’ll tell you about him,’ said Donna, ‘when you tell me exactly when you’re going to put me back where you found me.’

  Garaman looked over his shoulder at her and made a sucking noise with his teeth.

  ‘That might be a bit of a problem.’

  ‘What kind of a problem?’

  ‘Well… seeing as we’re now heading out of the system and I can’t imagine any reason why we’d come ba—’

  ‘Sorry,’ interrupted Donna, jabbing a finger at him and wiggling it, pointedly. ‘Heading out of the what?’

  ‘The system – we’ve got what we need from there and now we’re—’

  ‘No, no. You’re not listening: heading out of the what? The system?’

  ‘The planetary system. We’ve broken orbit and now the Dark Light is en route to… to our next port of call.’

  Donna took a couple of steps closer to him and drew herself up to her full height, which made Garaman look like a Munchkin.

  ‘So, kidnapping me wasn’t enough? Now you’re flying me off to god-knows-where, leaving the Doctor behind?’

  If it wasn’t bad enough that she’d been separated from the Doctor, that separation was now getting greater by the minute.

  ‘Is everyone from your planet quite so sharp?’ asked Garaman. ‘Only I’d hate to cross them, I really would. Where are you from?’

  ‘It’s called Earth, and you don’t want to mess with us, you really don’t.’

  ‘Never heard of it. And what’s so special about this Earth, then?’

  ‘What’s so special about it is that, if you pulled a kidnapping stunt like this back there you’d be in jail so fast that your feet wouldn’t touch the ground.’

  Garaman’s eyes widened in mock fear.

  ‘Oooh, you’ve got me trembling now! I’ll have to make sure I don’t cross these Earthons!’

  ‘Humans,’ corrected Donna. ‘We’re called humans.’

  ‘How confusing. Delightfully quirky, but confusing. Now – the Doctor. Tell me about him.’

  Donna folded her arms sullenly and clamped her lips shut, staring away into the middle distance pointedly. Garaman sighed, clicked his fingers at the bimbot standing in the corridor. Silently, it stepped into the room, its hands clasped formally in front of it.

  ‘Start with her fingers,’ Garaman said with the air of someone who had a hundred and one things to do and needed to start somewhere, just to get things moving. The robot reached out and, despite Donna’s protestations and struggles, effortlessly raised her left hand. The skin of the machine was matt and smooth – skin-coloured but lacking any texture or veins. She felt sick as she realised what was going to happen.

  ‘The little one first, I think,’ Garaman said, turning away as if he really didn’t want to witness the robot’s next actions. ‘Break it.’

  The Doctor didn’t bother banging on the cell door. They hadn’t thought to take away his sonic screwdriver, and he knew he could probably be out of there in a couple of seconds. But he suspected that they’d put someone on guard outside: probably a robot, possibly even Mother. And whilst he reckoned that a quick blast from the screwdriver might be enough to scramble the brains of a robot, that seemed a bit of a drastic step, at least for now. Besides, if he tried anything like that, they’d have the sonic off him in seconds; and, just for now, he’d rather keep a hold of it.

  The main thing, though, was that Boonie’s ship was following Donna’s. As long as they didn’t lose it, he was happy to have a few minutes’ quiet thinking time to himself.

  The exhibit in the art gallery was definitely more than just a piece of art: there were some rather advanced resonance coils inside it, if the readings from the sonic screwdriver were anything to go by. He’d need to have a good poke about in it to work out what it was actually for, but if someone had gone to such lengths to steal it (and if Boonie and chums were at such pains to track it) then he suspected that it wasn’t anything good. People didn’t go to such efforts to steal – and track – the latest in toasters or hair-straighteners.

  He glanced around the room they’d locked him in: it matched the rest of the ship – smelly, grimy and poky. If he’d been told he was on board a Second World War submarine, he’d have believed it. A rough bed with grubby blankets was in one corner and he wondered whether it belonged to one of the ship’s crew. There were no knick-knacks or ornaments or other personal possessions about, so maybe they’d made up the guest bedroom specially for him. How kind.

  A cup of tea would have gone down quite nicely round about now, too, although he didn’t hold out much hope for room service.

  It was a long time since the Doctor had been to the Andromeda galaxy, and he felt a little out of his depth: there was so much he didn’t know about the civilisations here, which was one reason why he’d brought Donna. She’d been complaining that he always knew more about what was going on than she did, that it made her feel like a schoolgirl on a field trip with a particularly knowledgeable teacher. So he’d taken her somewhere that his own ignorance almost matched hers.

  Maybe that had been a mistake.

  He looked up as the door screeched open.

  ‘Need some oil on that,’ he muttered as an eld
erly woman stepped silently into the room. In one hand there was a tray.

  ‘Ah! Breakfast!’ proclaimed the Doctor, jumping up. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere!’

  ‘Stop!’ barked a strange, musical voice.

  Donna risked opening her eyes, half afraid that she’d open them just in time to see the robot snap the little finger that it now held so firmly in its cold grip. She felt her stomach clench.

  ‘She’s proving particularly intractable,’ said Garaman peevishly. ‘I thought that a little—’

  ‘A little torture would help? Really, Garaman!’

  The voice was coming from the doorway, but her view was blocked by the robot. Although it didn’t release her, the pressure on her little finger lessened. She peered around the machine to see a particularly strange figure.

  It looked a bit like something off Walking With Dinosaurs, except that it had three, thick legs, arranged like a tripod, a slim, upright body and three arms. Its head was a tall, oval shape with two wide, saucer-like deep blue eyes either side of a stumpy snout. The skin was lizardy, somehow, shading from grey at the top down through a beautiful, jewel-like turquoise across its chest and stomach down to an acid yellow at the feet. Slung across its shoulder was a broad belt with numerous pouches fastened to it. Other than that, it was naked. But then, it was a lizard.

  ‘Torture doesn’t work, Garaman,’ said the creature, moving around so that Donna could see it properly. It walked oddly – well, perhaps not oddly, considering it had three legs – hopping from one leg to another, and then another. A bit like some injured insect. ‘Torture someone and all they’ll tell you is what they think you want to hear. What kind of animals are we if we have to resort to that?’

  The creature looked Donna up and down with its huge, unblinking eyes, and one of its arms – the one sticking right out of the front of its chest – waved sinuously like a snake.

  ‘This is not the way to treat organic-kind, Garaman. I am disappointed in you.’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ hissed Garaman testily, waving the robot away from Donna. It dropped her arm instantly.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Donna, only then realising how she’d been holding her breath, waiting for the snap and the pain.

  ‘Not at all,’ said the lizard. You must be Donna. I’m Mesanth.’

  It raised its front hand and spread its fingers – all three of them. It took Donna a few seconds to realise that this was some sort of handshake. But she was in no mood to be shaking hands with people who’d just tried to truncate one of her own.

  ‘Where are you from?’ asked Mesanth, lowering its hand when it realised Donna wasn’t going to play nicely.

  ‘Somewhere called Earth,’ Garaman said. ‘But she’s simply called a “human”.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Mesanth, its voice somewhere between male and female. ‘That word is generally used to mean bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical, mammalian organic-kind in our galaxy.’

  ‘Bi-what?’ asked Donna, still playing catch-up with the weird creature’s words.

  Mesanth’s mouth twitched and it gestured at Garaman.

  ‘Humans, you mean?’ asked Donna, realising that Mesanth was talking about people like her and Garaman.

  Mesanth gave an odd little chuckle from deep in its throat.

  ‘Look, sunshine,’ said Donna. ‘Don’t start getting all clever-clever, right? Just because you stopped this animal from…’ Her voice tailed off as she was reminded of exactly what Mesanth had stopped Garaman from doing.

  ‘Oh, please, no,’ said Mesanth hastily. ‘You misunderstand – I was not laughing at you. It is refreshing to get another perspective on ourselves. This Earth: where is it?’

  ‘The Solar System,’ said Donna through gritted teeth.

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘And, erm, which solar system would that be? What is the name of its primary?’

  ‘Its what?’

  ‘Its star.’

  ‘It’s called…’ Donna sighed, realising that, if these two thought she was a shilling short of a pound, she wasn’t doing much to correct their impression. ‘It’s called the Sun.’

  ‘How charming,’ said Mesanth gently, like a slightly bemused posh aunt. ‘The Sun.’

  ‘You Earthons – humans,’ interjected Garaman. ‘Are you a newly emerged world?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Have you had much contact with other races in the galaxy?’

  ‘Oh, loads,’ Donna bluffed nonchalantly, not wanting to appear like some sort of backward country yokel. ‘The Ood, the Magentans, the Racnoss, the… the lizard men of Wongo.’ She shrugged casually. ‘We’re major players.’

  ‘Never heard of any of them,’ Garaman said sniffily.

  ‘Well maybe you need to get out more,’ Donna said. ‘Besides,’ she added, remembering what the Doctor had told her. ‘Earth isn’t even in this galaxy.’

  Garaman’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Our galaxy is miles away.’

  ‘Literally, I imagine.’ This was Mesanth, sounding – again – as though it were laughing at her.

  ‘Yes,’ Donna retorted. ‘Millions of them.’

  She caught a glance between the two of them.

  ‘Tell us more about your galaxy,’ Mesanth said, its arms waving around sinuously like lizard’s tongues. ‘These lizard men of Wongo sound fascinating…’

  The elderly woman that placed the tray down in front of the Doctor smiled tightly, apologetically.

  ‘The Sword of Justice doesn’t exactly excel at four-star cuisine, I’m afraid,’ she said, gesturing to the bowl of swirly green soup and mug of insipid tea. ‘Li’ian,’ she added, raising her palm. The Doctor matched it. She had long, grey hair tied up in a complicated knot on the top of her head and big, blue eyes. Sharp, intelligent eyes, thought the Doctor.

  ‘The Sword of Justice, eh? Bit of a pompous name for a ship, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s Boonie for you,’ Li’ian smiled.

  ‘I’d rather gathered that he could do with a sense of humour transplant. I’m the Doctor,’ he smiled, ‘but you probably know that already.’

  ‘Boonie told me. He can be a bit severe, but he’s not a bad sort.’

  ‘Rather young for commanding a ship, isn’t he?’ The Doctor took a sip of the tea and pulled a face.

  ‘Oh, he’s not as young as he looks – his race age slower than the rest of us. Sadly. He’s in his forties, believe it or not.’ Li’ian gave a little, twinkly smile. ‘I should find out what they put in the water on his planet, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘And what planet would that be?’

  ‘He’s from Dallendaf.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Doctor, none-the-wiser. ‘And you?’

  ‘Born on Poopop, grew up all over the place.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ exclaimed the Doctor with a grin.

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘Nope – but isn’t it marvellous that there’s a planet called Poopop! Anyway, what’s all this about, Li’ian – this little mission of yours. You’re not art thieves but you’re following someone who is. Not police, not with a ship and crew like this – no offence.’

  Li’ian shook her head sadly.

  ‘That’s up to Boonie to tell you. But we’re more interested in you.’

  ‘Really? Should I be flattered or alarmed?’

  ‘You appear from nowhere and just happen to be around when the exhibit is stolen. And your friend just happens to be stolen along with it.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘A bit of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I like to think of it as the universe making sure I’m in the right place at the right time. It has a habit of doing that.’

  ‘And you claim to know nothing about what the exhibit is.’

  ‘Other than it being not just an exhibit at all?’ Li’ian paused.

  ‘Boonie wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Does he indeed? Well, I’m always up f
or a nice chat.’ He glanced around his room. ‘My place – or his?’

  Donna knew that she wasn’t exactly wowing Mesanth and Garaman with her knowledge of the Earth’s galaxy. Short of naming a few of the planets she’d been to, and throwing in a bit of stuff the Doctor had told her (which, on reflection, she was sure she’d got half wrong) there wasn’t a great deal she seemed to be able to do to impress the two of them. But the important thing at the moment was to keep on their good sides, to make sure they didn’t decide she was a waste of oxygen and chuck her out of the airlock. She hoped that the Doctor was on her tail – she knew that he’d be doing all he could to find her, so all she had to do was to make sure that she was still alive when he finally did.

  Her kidnappers listened attentively, asked a few questions, but, ultimately, seemed a bit disappointed. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, they were after. Maybe, as they claimed, they were just curious. But she kept an eye on Garaman: after the stunt with her finger, she was in no mood to start trusting him just yet.

  The door hissed open suddenly, just as she was trying to explain about the Jant and their plan to hollow out Callisto, and a robot appeared. This time, it wasn’t one of the supermodels, but a much smaller one: milky-white and about the height of a small child, it had a weird-looking row of four tiny hands jutting from its chest and a featureless, spherical head. It made a weird, giggly noise.

  Garaman must have noticed her discomfort.

  ‘Not a fan of mechanicals?’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Give me a video recorder or an mp3 player and I’m fine – it’s just…’ She waved in the direction of the little robot. ‘Well, don’t you think they’re a bit creepy?’

  Garaman’s eyes flicked up to Mesanth’s.

  ‘Mechanicals are just tools,’ he said reassuringly. Then he turned to the robot. ‘What?’ he barked, and Donna winced slightly.