Shining Darkness Read online

  She turned back to see Mesanth skipping away across the sand, some sort of device in his hand bleeping and twittering. Ogmunee scowled at her and followed him, the robot at his tail.

  ‘So where’s this segment thing, then?’ Donna gasped, racing to catch up with them. Ogmunee pointed downwards.

  ‘So why not just beam us straight down there, then? Giving us the scenic tour, are you?’

  ‘Too risky,’ said Ogmunee laconically. ‘The sandstorms are generating too much electrostatic interference for us to be sure that we’d materialise at all. And we haven’t mapped the tunnels yet.’

  ‘Oooh!’ said Donna sourly, pushing back her hair as it whipped around her. ‘Tunnels! You know how to spoil a girl, don’t you?’

  ‘Why did we bring her?’ Ogmunee asked Mesanth tiredly as the creature rotated on the spot, scanning the ground beneath them with his squeaking device.

  ‘Despite what Garaman thinks,’ Mesanth said, ‘I believe that Donna has more in common with us than she might believe. It’s only courteous to include her in our… activities.’

  Ogmunee just grumped and scowled at Donna – who wasn’t sure she swallowed Mesanth’s explanation. She wondered if it were more to keep Donna out of Garaman’s face. Suited her fine.

  ‘She’s more likely to be a liability than an asset. Garaman’s losing his mind,’ he said.

  A second later, Mesanth let out a little hiss. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘The entrance! About five metres this way.’

  And off the three-legged lizard went, Donna and Ogmunee and the robot in hot pursuit. Mesanth paused a few seconds later at what looked like nothing more than a flattish, sand-coloured rock lying on the ground. In the midst of the sandstorm around them it was almost invisible. He pushed at it with one of his feet and it slid effortlessly aside, rotating as if pivoted at one corner.

  ‘You’re stronger than you look,’ Donna said, casting a sidelong glance at Ogmunee. ‘Should’ve got Mr Muscles here to do it.’

  ‘No strength involved,’ said Mesanth, slipping the scanner into one of the pouches of his shoulder belt. ‘It’s counterbalanced.’

  As the rock continued to swing out of the way, Donna saw a flight of rough-hewn steps, the colour of the sand, descending into the darkness. With a glance at her and Ogmunee, Mesanth stepped down into the shadows.

  Khnu em Llodis had been a genius. Well, that’s what she told everyone. And from what the Doctor gathered, it sounded like pretty much everyone believed her.

  ‘One of our greatest roboticists,’ Li’ian said as the Doctor scanned the scrolling display in front of him.

  She’d taken him to the ship’s ‘library’ (little more than a storeroom with some rickety shelves and a desk) and shown him dozens of documents and transcripts relating to Khnu, stretching over more than a decade, when the scientist had been at her height.

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  He spun in his seat to face Li’ian. She shrugged.

  ‘Some say she just went mad.’

  ‘Happens a lot,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘Scientists. Always going mad. Especially the top-class ones.’ He paused and looked up at Li’ian. ‘You never hear of the second-rate ones going mad, though, do you? Always the geniuses. Funny, that.’

  ‘Some say she discovered a truth that threatened the entire galaxy.’

  ‘That’ll be what she meant by this bit, then,’ he said, turning back to the display and reading aloud. ‘“But there is a dark heart to our shining empire, a dark heart that, until now, we have chosen to ignore. A dark heart that, if not addressed, will rise up and destroy all that we have built.”’ He spun back to face Li’ian. ‘What d’you reckon she meant by that?’

  Li’ian nodded thoughtfully and folded her hands on her lap. ‘Everyone assumed that she was talking about machine intelligences,’ she said simply. ‘That speech was the last one she ever gave. En route back to her own planet, after the conference, her ship was destroyed.’

  ‘Mysteriously destroyed,’ corrected the Doctor, pointing to the screen.

  ‘Mysteriously destroyed,’ agreed Li’ian. ‘There were rumours that she was killed because she was speaking the truth.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a very flexible thing, the truth, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for her,’ Li’ian said. ‘For Khnu, it was always very clear. Very black and white.’

  The Doctor took a deep breath.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Enough of the official documents. What do you think?’

  ‘Me?’ Li’ian seemed surprised.

  ‘You’re aboard a ship, tracking people who – I assume – think like Khnu did. This Cult of Shining Darkness. They’ve stolen a whopping great lump of technology from an art gallery, and now they’ve stopped off at a planet that doesn’t seem to have much more going for it than Lanzarote. And you’re still following them. You must have some idea of what they’re doing.’

  Li’ian took a breath and glanced around the empty library room as if she thought she might be being overheard.

  ‘Boonie will probably have me raked over the coals for this,’ she said eventually, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘But we think they’re collecting the parts of something. Some sort of device or maybe some sort of map.’

  ‘Really?’ The Doctor was all ears.

  ‘When Khnu was killed – when she died, whatever – her little band of followers went quiet for two years. Most of them just disappeared. Possibly killed by whoever killed Khnu. But then rumours began to circulate that she’d been working on something before her death – something connected with her research field.’

  ‘Robotics?’

  ‘Robotics. Despite being a genius in artificial intelligence, Khnu refused to believe that machine intelligences, mechanicals, whatever you want to call them, were truly intelligent. Her speech, thinly veiled as it was, was aimed at those who considered machines intelligences to be on a par with organic ones. She believed that they simply mimicked intelligence, and that the organic races of the galaxy had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. It’s reported that she foresaw a time when the galaxy’s machine races would rise up against the organics and slaughter us all.’

  ‘That’s what she meant by “the darkness”?’

  ‘That’s what they say. And the rumours are that these things they’re collecting have something to do with it.’

  The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck.

  ‘Interesting.’ He paused and stared thoughtfully into the distance. ‘So these artefacts – part of a device, or a locator or something maybe? Like one of those partwork magazines: “Builds week by week into the ultimate robot defence”? How many instalments are we talking? A little one like Delia’s How To Boil Water or a whopper like The Star Trek Files?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  The Doctor grinned.

  ‘D’you reckon the cultists have got all the bits already, or are they going to be searching for ever?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Doctor. All we know – all we believe,’ Li’ian corrected herself, ‘is that when Khnu died, the Cult went into a panic and scattered the pieces of the thing around the galaxy, scared that robot sympathisers would find them and destroy them.’

  ‘Ahhh…’ The Doctor smiled. ‘That’s why you didn’t want to go barging in, isn’t it? You lot want them to find all the bits, put it together, and then you can go barging in and collect the whole set, ringbinders and all!’

  ‘Ringbinders?’

  He waved his hand.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He leaped out of his seat suddenly, making Li’ian flinch. ‘Right! Let’s get this party started!’

  And before Li’ian could stop him he was halfway to the door.

  * * *

  ‘Thanks for not telling me to bring a cardy,’ Donna muttered as the rock above them swung back into place, cutting out not only the drizzling sand and the gusting wind but the searing heat of the red sun. It suddenly felt cold and clammy. Mesanth produced a torch from his shoul
der belt and flicked it on, illuminating broad, sand-silted steps leading down into the Stygian darkness.

  ‘You humans are remarkably susceptible to changes in environmental temperature, aren’t you?’ he said over his shoulder as he began the descent.

  ‘Some humans,’ grunted Ogmunee from behind Donna.

  ‘At least some of us have the decency not to go around half-naked,’ muttered Donna. ‘Anyway, what’s this segment thing look like?’

  ‘You’ve already seen the second one – the artefact from the gallery.’

  ‘Oh, that! Right. So we’re looking for another one of those, are we? Shouldn’t be hard to spot. And why’s it here?’

  ‘Safekeeping,’ said Mesanth cryptically, and then fell into silence as, out of the darkness beneath them, came a hideous roar that echoed on and on and on.

  Donna took a deep breath. ‘That sounds very safe.’

  ‘You said this place smells of home,’ Donna whispered as they descended. ‘Where’s that, then?’

  ‘It’s called Lota. Lovely planet – dry, dusty.’ Mesanth gave a little sigh.

  ‘So how come you got mixed up with Garaman?’

  ‘I worked with one of his associates a few years ago. She … introduced me to Garaman and Ogmunee here and the others. She offered me a job.’

  ‘Headhunted, eh? Better than temping, I bet. What kind of work?’

  ‘Are you always this full of questions?’ grunted Ogmunee from behind her.

  ‘Only when no one’s bothering to give me answers, yes. Why? Got a problem with that? Something to hide, maybe?’

  ‘Stop it!’ warbled Mesanth.

  ‘You don’t like conflict, do you?’ asked Donna as the stairs began to curve around to the right.

  ‘The Lotapareen have evolved from highly communal herbivorous ancestors: violence and conflict are alien to us.’

  ‘Must make all this adventuring a bit of a nightmare.’

  ‘Mesanth knows what has to be done,’ came Ogmunee’s voice again.

  ‘And what is that, exactly?’

  No one answered her. Abruptly, the steps ended and Mesanth’s torch beam revealed that they were in some sort of antechamber, blank stone surrounding them. As the ellipse of light from the torch flitted about the walls, Donna caught sight of something.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, taking the torch from him.

  Most of the wall was taken up with a primitive, scribbled drawing of a huge, tentacled mass with a single, monstrous eye and a slavering mouth. And, to give some sense of scale, four of its tentacles held what looked like squat little stick figures. One of them was being thrust into the toothy mouth.

  ‘Tell me that this isn’t one of those “Beware of the dog” signs,’ she said.

  ‘The Jaftee probably worship this creature as a god,’ said Mesanth with a vague air of fascination.

  ‘The Jaftee?’

  ‘The inhabitants of Karris. Primitive ape-like creatures. No offence,’ he added with a sidelong glance at Donna.

  ‘None taken – I think.’

  ‘We don’t anticipate any problems with the Jaftee,’ Ogmunee said. ‘We seeded their culture years ago. They should see us as even greater gods than this thing.’

  ‘So,’ said Donna, handing Mesanth his torch. ‘Not too bright, then, these Jaftee.’

  ‘Simple creatures,’ agreed Mesanth, scanning the wall in front of them and running his two spare hands over its surface. ‘Ah!’

  At this exclamation, there was a dull clunk and the three-legged creature stepped back. A deep, teeth-aching grinding noise started up and the chamber around them began to vibrate. Little whorls of sand drifted down in the torch’s path as a segment of the wall swung back and away.

  ‘So why the robot?’ she asked Mesanth as they set off deeper into the bowels of the planet. ‘You said you had these Jaftee people trained to think you’re gods.’

  ‘Insurance,’ said Mesanth simply, and Donna saw his huge eyes dart briefly to the wall painting of the tentacled thing. If the little stick figures being crammed into its dribbling mouth were even vaguely human-sized, she wasn’t sure that a robot – even one as strong and silent as the one they’d brought along – would be enough to fight it off.

  ‘I don’t know what you did to the sensors, Doctor, but we’ve actually managed to pick up a signal from beneath Karris’s surface.’

  Kellique smiled appreciatively as the Doctor and Li’ian entered the control room. Boonie was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Marvellous! Picked up what?’

  Kellique gestured for him to come and look.

  ‘Hmmm…’ said the Doctor thoughtfully. ‘If I didn’t know any better – and obviously I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be saying this – I’d swear that that’s a similar energy profile to the segment that they stole from the art gallery. And this other signal – here – looks like the same transmat energy signature that whisked Donna and the segment up to the Cult’s ship.’

  Kellique nodded – and did a double-take, before throwing a sharp look at Li’ian. The Doctor noticed and gave a gentle shrug.

  ‘Li’ian here told me all about Khnu and her little band of followers.’

  ‘Oh…’ said Kellique, looking a little worried. ‘Boonie’s going to be pleased about that.’

  ‘Pleased about what?’

  They all turned at the sound of Boonie’s voice: he stood in the doorway, his face hard and angry.

  Li’ian stepped forwards.

  ‘I told him about Khnu and about what we think the Cult are up to.’

  ‘You did what?!’ exploded Boonie.

  ‘Oh, don’t blame Li’ian—’ began the Doctor, but Boonie cut him off with a wave of the hand.

  ‘Boonie!’ snapped Kellique. ‘We were the ones that brought him on board, remember? And his modifications to our sensors are amazing: come here and look. We’ve picked up similar readings to those from the second segment from the gallery.’

  Boonie was speechless; and, although he glared at the Doctor, he said nothing and went to check the readings.

  ‘So this is the third part?’ the Doctor said. ‘Still no idea how many of them there are? I mean, I know I’ve got a fairly long lifespan, but I wouldn’t want to think I’ll be chasing around the universe for the next forty years, looking for the other bits.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kellique, keeping an eye on Boonie for his reaction, ‘we think this is the third one. The second one was in the gallery and the first was hidden in a forest on Chao.’

  Boonie just glared.

  ‘Hmmm,’ the Doctor mused. ‘Shame I didn’t get a chance to have a proper look at the second one. I might have been able to work out exactly what the finished thing’s supposed to do.’ He paused. ‘But now that my little modifications have let you find the third one, why don’t we use your matter transmitter to pop down and take a look before they beam it away?’

  He stared at them all, eyebrows raised expectantly.

  ‘I mean,’ he added, shoving his hands into his pockets, ‘I know you’re waiting for them to collect the whole set before you swoop in, but if we were to just take a teensy little peek at it… Not take it; just a little look-see…’

  It was clear from Kellique’s expression that she didn’t think the idea was a bad one at all, but Li’ian shook her head.

  ‘The Cultists have been in orbit almost an hour already. They won’t waste time. That transmat trace means they’ve already sent a recovery team down – there’s too much electrostatic interference in Karris’s atmosphere for them to beam it out directly without using a signal booster like they did from the art gallery. They can just about make it to the planet’s surface, but from there they’ll be on foot.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Doctor, studying the floor thoughtfully and casually. ‘If you let me have a go at your transmat, you never know: I might be able to boost it like I did with your sensors. And then we could beam in, check it out, and then be gone before they even know we’ve been…’

 
; All eyes were on Boonie: as the head of this rag-tag mission, they clearly all deferred to him. Most of the time, anyway.

  The Doctor grinned wolfishly.

  ‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to know what they’re up to. And who knows? If we can work out what this thing does, before they’ve assembled it, you’ll have even more chance of stopping them from using it.’ He held Boonie’s gaze. ‘Go on! Live a little!’

  * * *

  Donna flinched – and, to her shame, grabbed hold of Mesanth – as another howling roar echoed out of the darkness ahead of them.

  ‘This thing,’ she said slowly. ‘This creature. What exactly do you know about it? I mean, you said you’d been here before and ponced about dressed up as gods or something, right? So, you actually saw it, right?’

  Mesanth’s eyes glinted in the torchlight.

  ‘Not… as such.’

  Donna rolled her eyes.

  ‘So for all you know, it could be waiting around the next corner to stuff us into its mouth – y’know, like on that mural back there.’

  ‘The robot will protect us,’ said Ogmunee. Donna peered over his shoulder to where the slender, blonde thing stood silently, its face cold and impassive.

  ‘No offence, Mr Muscles, but you’re out of your tree if you think that she – it – can fight off something the size of that creature.’

  ‘And I have this,’ said Ogmunee, holding up a slender, silver tube. ‘A thermal projector.’

  Donna relaxed a little. ‘That a fancy term for a space gun?’

  Mesanth said nothing, but Donna could tell from the way he glanced at Ogmunee’s gun that he wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be an idea if blondie went first?’ Donna added after a moment’s thought, indicating the robot.

  Mesanth considered Donna’s suggestion and agreed, waving the silent robot forwards.

  ‘Your type, then, is she?’ Donna whispered to Ogmunee as the robot took up position at the front. ‘Strong and silent.’

  Ogmunee opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by another roar – a roar that sounded distinctly closer than the last one had done.