Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [78]
She’d obeyed the voice without question. She’d been weak. In shock, maybe, after what had happened in the shrine. The voice had latched onto that weakness, had used it to pull her here through the corridors of the ziggurat. Now she was waking up, at last, only to find that she had no way of getting out again.
Come to think of it, why had she gone to the Faction’s shrine in the first place? Had the voice led her there, too? Had she ever been in control of her own body?
At her feet, a cluster of saplings reared up out of the floor, their buds swelling in front of Bregman’s face until each one was the size of her head. The buds were the colour of scar tissue. They weren’t plants, Bregman realised. Back at the gate of the Unthinkable City, Kortez had told her there was a bio-induction system in place on this island, pumping new genetic material into the ecosystem. The same kind of device was at work here in the vault. Something was seeding the area with living matter, squeezing blood out of the stone. No human-made machine could have done the job this fast, though. It took months, years, for a bio-induction system to have a visible effect on an environment. Not seconds.
The first of the head-sized buds opened up in front of Bregman. There was a potato-shaped lump of biomass at the centre of the flower, covered in bumps and indentations, a sticky layer of skin stretched across the surface.
A face. A half-formed human face, too flawed to be anything but ugly. Even if the features had been given time to develop, the nose wouldn’t have been streamlined enough, the eyes wouldn’t have been quite the right shape. And the hair, stuck to the head in slippery wet clumps, was a complete mess. The other buds began to unfold, and one after another, the head-flowers opened their eyes.
All the faces were identical, crude copies of Bregman’s own. She wondered if this might be a good time to start screaming like a bastard.
***
The sky was as grey as ever, but after the interior of the spaceship it looked positively sunny. The Doctor noticed, with more than a little satisfaction, the look of shock on Qixotl’s face as the man shuffled out of the ship after him.
‘Told you so,’ said the Doctor, out of the side of his mouth.
Qixotl blinked at him. ‘Told you so what?’
‘Told you it wouldn’t go according to plan.’ The Doctor nodded towards the Kroton, which was even now striding down the ship’s gangway, its spindly legs shaking under the weight of its body. Its feelers were wobbling excitedly, and the Doctor got the impression it was trying to decide whether to start shooting at the plants floating around the roof garden.
The Doctor saw Qixotl’s teeth clench. ‘You’ve met these things before, right?’
‘Twice. This is the first time I’ve seen one in its low-gravity form, though.’
‘And, uh... do they like cheesy nibbles, at all?’
The topmost protrusion of the Kroton’s body, the geometric crystal that could, loosely, be called its head, swung around to face them. At least, that’s what the Doctor assumed it was doing, although the creature didn’t actually have a face, as such. ‘The-av-i-an-life-forms-are-dis-turbed.’
Qixotl looked at the Doctor. The Doctor shrugged. ‘Er, that’s right,’ Qixotl mumbled. ‘The toucans, yeah? It’s your ship. They’re reacting to it a bit badly. You know how avian life-forms are. Listen, there’s a guest room all laid out for you downstairs, if you want to freshen up. Or whatever it is you do. I mean, if you don’t mind the furniture.’
‘The-auc-tion-will-proceed-as-soon-as-poss-i-ble,’ the Kroton insisted. ‘There-will-be-no-de-lays.’
‘No, no, of course not. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of important things to do back in, er, Kroton-space.’
‘My-des-ig-na-tion-is-E-Ko-balt-Prime-of-the-Kro-ton-Ab-sol-ute. Command-un-it-of-the-Kro-ton-Fifth-Latt-ice.’
‘Well –’ Qixotl began. But the Kroton hadn’t finished warbling yet.
‘This-vess-el-was-int-er-cept-ed. The-in-vi-ta-tion-was-dis-cov-ered-in-the-poss-ess-ion-of-its-crew.