Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [71]
Two. Three. Four. Five. Slip-slop. Slop.
The prisoners were being taken for interrogation. Erskine wasn’t sure exactly where they’d be interrogated, or by whom, but it was quite clear that asking them questions was what the Renewalists should be doing. They were clearly guilty of something; why else would they have resisted, for bastard Saint Michael’s sake?
Damnation, Erskine, isn’t it funny how things transpire?
Just this morning you would never have believed that diabolism was so widespread in this town. By Jesus Christ’s little Chinese brother, you wouldn’t have believed in it at all.
Don’t think about that just now, though. Just keep marching.
Two. Three. Four. Five.
‘They can’t do that,’ said Daniel, and his voice sounded as hollow as a Drahvin’s defence at a war-crimes trial.
Roz turned to see what he was looking at. He was staring into the shadows – at least he was blinking normally, Roz noted – his eyes probing the collapsed masonry in the corner of the old pub. Roz looked down at the amaranth in her hands.
It was spinning faster now. Was it doing what the Doctor had said, trying to reorder everything? And if so, why?
‘Did you hear me?’ whined Daniel. ‘They can’t do that.’
‘Daniel –’ Roz began, and she was going to tell him that it was all right, that he didn’t have to worry. Then she realized what he could see.
The shadows were moving in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, growing and flickering regardless of the illumination from the few lamps they’d managed to light. The silhouettes were congregating around an archway in the corner that led deeper into the building, an entrance that must once have led to some kind of storage area.
And there was a shape at the centre of the darkness. The shadows were spiralling around it, and Roz was reminded of the way water dances around a plughole, just before it disappears. It took her a few moments to realize the simple truth of what was happening. It wasn’t some multi-dimensional thing materializing out of the darkness, it was just a man, stepping out from the archway. He wasn’t particularly tall or short, wasn’t particularly slight or well-built, wasn’t particularly attractive or ugly. His skin looked grey even in the orange lamplight, and his clothes looked as if they’d just been pressed, despite the fact that his jacket was caked with dirt and his white knee-length socks (very fashionable in this time, for some stupid reason) had been splashed with large quantities of mud.
It took Roz’s ‘instinct for law-enforcement’ a mere nanosecond to notice the weapon the man was carrying. It didn’t take the rest of her brain long to catch up. The man blinked, a loud, clicking blink.
He aimed the gun at Roz. Her muscles tensed.
‘Catcher,’ she hissed.
‘Clean it up,’ said Catcher. ‘Clean everything up.’
She looked into his eyes, glassy pebbles pushed deep into his shapeless face, and saw right through them. Disintegrating machinery on the other side. In her own time, she might have mistaken him for a robot, one of the illegal ‘fraudroids’ that had been built to mimic human speech and movement; but Catcher was flesh and blood, she was sure of it. Human, but drawn so far into this mess that he was unstable right down to his soul. Or whatever he had instead of a soul. The amaranth was spinning, faster and faster, trying to come to terms with the madness the man had brought with him. The shadows solidified, until Roz could see metallic joints and clock-faces there in the corners of the pub. Bogeymen. Products of Catcher’s distressed mind. WATCHMAKERS.
Now, where had that word come from?
She remembered that Catcher had owned the amaranth, and that part of him – or part of his UnTARDIS – was still in contact with the Doctor’s own ship. She wondered if there were clockwork ghosts in the corridors of the TARDIS as well, taking her quarters apart with their razor-fingers. She even imagined Chris, lying still