Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [62]
‘Zorg,’ said the Doctor, ‘meet Major Butcher and Ray.’
‘Greetings Zajor Zutcher, Zay,’ said Zorg politely, bobbing before the two astonished men.
Butcher turned his head and threw up. The vomit hit the floor and was almost instantly absorbed, disappearing into the fabric of the ship in a minia-108
ture storm of coloured light. It was a good thing too, because an instant later Ray also threw up. He watched sheepishly as the floor of the chamber cleaned itself again. ‘Sorry about that, cats. It was just Butcher barfing like that. It set me off, man.’
‘What is that thing?’ said Butcher in a high shrill voice made ragged by hysteria.
‘Hey come on Butcher, baby. It’s obviously an alien. A thing from another world, man.’ Ray spoke casually, dismissively. But for all his sang-froid, his hand trembled as he lifted the mescal bottle to his lips and drank with gurgling haste, as though to soften the impact of what he was seeing.
‘A thing from outer space?’ Butcher’s voice still rang with a ripple of incipient hysteria. ‘You mean we’re being invaded? By monsters?’
‘Don’t forget the peyote, Major,’ said the Doctor in a calm, reassuring, singsong voice. ‘The peyote, the peyote, the peyote. You were forced to eat that sandwich full of that nasty peyote.’
Butcher’s eyes shut, as if with profound gratitude. The note of panic evapo-rated from his voice, but there was a tremble suggestive of tearful relief. ‘The peyote! Of course!’
‘That’s right Major, there’s no need to be afraid of what you’re witnessing at this moment. Because. . . ’
‘Because it’s all just an hallucination. A fever dream brought on by that stinking Indian poison you fed me.’
‘Stinking Indian poison, precisely Major.’ The Doctor’s calm voice was now becoming bored. ‘The best thing for you to do is sleep it off, don’t you think?
Why waste time with any more of these absurd visions. This fever dream, as you so aptly put it, doesn’t merit your attention.’
‘I’m not going to waste any more time,’ said the Major. ‘I’m going to sleep this off.’ He lay down on the warm glowing floor of the chamber, curled up in a foetal bundle and promptly went to sleep.
‘That was very dapperly done, Doctor.’
‘The power of suggestion, Ace, the power of suggestion.’
‘Well we just lost another one,’ said Ace, prodding with her toe the prone, snoring body of Ray. ‘But in this case it was the power of mescal.’ The bottle was cradled in Ray’s arms, the last of its contents flowing steadily out to supplement the other stains on his shirt.
‘I fear my appearance was a little too much for your friends, Zoctor,’ said Zorg.
‘Please don’t be offended,’ said the Doctor. ‘Even though Ray had a twenty-first-century acceptance of the concept of an alien life form he couldn’t come to terms with its reality. And poor Butcher, who didn’t have the benefit of half a century of media acclimatisation to soften him up to the notion of creatures 109
from outer space visiting Earth. . . Well let’s just say that I thought I’d better intervene with that peyote nonsense. Before his mind snapped.’
‘Neat call, Doctor,’ said Ace.
‘Indeed it was neat,’ agreed Zorg, throbbing across the room on his pearly chitinous claws. ‘The Zoctor is a resourceful individual.’
‘But try asking him to give you the big picture. He’s definitely a need-to-know type. Only tells you what it’s convenient for you to know at any given moment. Convenient for him, that is.’
The Doctor kneeled by Major Butcher, taking the man’s pulse with his thumb and consulting his wristwatch. ‘Come now, Ace. That’s not entirely fair. I’ve explained everything to you –’
‘You never told me we were going to be wafted off in a spaceship with these two stooges in tow.’ She nodded at the recumbent Butcher and Ray.
‘The stooges will not be in tow, Ace’. The Doctor moved to check