Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [94]
Santi looked over at the Indio who was smoking the fat bamboo pipe and watching her amorously, quite content in his cannibal world.
‘Santi tell him. And she not stupid. She know how to make cannibal not want her.’
‘Well do your best. It might just save both our lives.’
Tigus was right behind the Doctor as he pulled himself up into the dark antechamber. The time traveller struggled to accustom his eyes, the splinters of sunlight from the chinks in the wall showing him the dirty curtain that divided the upper storey.
Tigus hauled himself up to join him. The Doctor turned nervously to confront the guerrilla leader. ‘Ah, perhaps this wasn’t such a wonderful idea. Maybe he can send me a letter.
Preferably when I’m back in Batu!’
‘I think you are brave man, Doctor. Do not prove me wrong.’
‘Hmmph! Well, yes, I wouldn’t want to disillusion anybody I suppose.’ He took a mincing step towards the curtain. ‘Behind here, I presume..?’ His face was like a frightened child and an inquisitive scholar all at once. ‘Are you coming with me?’
Tigus shook his head, and ushered the Doctor forward with one hand. ‘Krallik want see you alone, Doctor.’
‘Well, I’d better not keep him waiting then, had I?’
He plucked at the curtain, looking for the parting, and only managed to get himself tangled up in the folds. ‘Oh crumbs!’
he said, unravelling himself and making for the ladder again determinedly. Tigus barred his way. The guerrilla leader pointed to the edge of the drape and tapped the hilt of his machete meaningfully.
‘Let us hope you return from your audience, Doctor. The last man go see Krallik did not.’
‘Yes, well, we must always look on the bright side, mustn’t we?’
The Doctor sighed and pulled the curtain aside. He took one look back at Tigus and then stepped through the gap.
More darkness. And a smell. The Doctor had been aware of it out in the antechamber, but here it was far stronger. the stink of rotting meat. Sunbeams picked out patches of bamboo and wicker that formed the floor, and the face of a young Papul man lying on it, staring up at the ceiling. The Doctor strained his eyes to see further into the room, and could make out a hunched shadow at the centre, flanked by two thinner silhouettes. He looked again at the face on the floor. Stooping closer, he saw that the young man’s body was severed messily in half at the waist. The Doctor straightened up quickly and his foot slipped on something moist and slimy on the floor. He let out a cry and pinwheeled his arms.
‘Are you enjoying making a fool of yourself, Doctor?’
The voice came from the dark shape in the centre of the room. Except it didn’t sound so much like a voice, but more a tremble of echoes creeping through a coffin lid under six feet of earth. It was like a whisper from the other side of the greatest divide; a signal emanating from behind the last taboo.
The Doctor straightened himself with as much dignity as he could muster, and puffed his cheeks defiantly. ‘The Krallik, I presume? Well, I don’t think much of your hospitality... or your domestic tidyness!’
‘What...’ A hiss, as if the voice were fading through time and distance, ‘do you hope to achieve with your puerile jokes, Doctor?’
The Doctor was squinting at the two thin figures slumped on either side of the main shadow, but he could not make out what they were. He ignored the question, and came back with one of his own, holding onto his frockcoat with both hands, and inflating his chest.
‘So this is your ultimate solution, is it?’ He tried to sound as unconcerned and bold as possible. ‘Regression to savagery and cannibalism. Mass murder. Headhunting.’ He glanced at the torso beneath him. ‘Atrocity upon atrocity!’
‘Of course,’ the echo