Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [100]
‘Soon you will become part of us, Doctor,’ the figure said, its voices imbued with smugness. ‘Soon you will celebrate the fact that all life exists within us just as we celebrate it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ the Doctor replied quietly.
‘You have no choice, Doctor. You are becoming us.’
‘I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong,’ the Doctor countered. ‘I’ll never become you. I’ll never join you. I’ll never see life through your eyes. In fact, I’m here to offer you the chance to withdraw the infection you’ve set in motion on this planet and leave before I get cross. Rather sporting of me, I think you’ll agree.’
‘Withdraw the infection?’ The voices chuckled. ‘It is already too late, Doctor.’
‘There’s an old Earth saying - it’s never too late. But then you probably already know that.’ Steel entered the Doctor’s voice. ‘You know as well as I do how you can withdraw the contagion.’
‘Do we?’ the voices said innocently.
‘Yes. You can think it back.’
The Xaranti queen did not respond immediately and the Doctor smiled and nodded. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? There are no toxins, no germs, no bacteria involved in this infection of yours. It’s psychological warfare, a thought-plague. You simply release this gloop of yours into the water where it’s ingested or absorbed, firstly by marine and then by animal life. The gloop contains telepathic suggestions encoded at a molecular level, which then persuade the host body that it is metamorphosising. It’s an impressive feat, I’ll give you that, making people change physically simply by planting the belief that they’re going to do so inside their heads, but it’s ultimately flawed. Because when it comes down to it, it’s simply a question of mind over matter. All it takes is a stronger mind than your own to expose the whole process for the sham it is.’
The Xaranti queen spoke, and just for an instant its many voices seemed to coalesce into something deep and melodious, before splitting once again into its constituent parts. ‘You are a clever man, Doctor. How did you come by your discovery?’
‘Oh, process of elimination,’ said the Doctor airily. ‘There was nothing very clever about it really. I ran some of the infected material through an exhaustive programme of analysis in the TARDIS, but could find no physical reason why the infection was taking place. In desperation I dug out an old lash-up of mine which reproduces thoughts as images, and decided that if I couldn’t read the stuff physically I’d try reading it mentally.’ He smiled. ‘The results were extremely interesting, as I’m sure you can imagine. Improvisation has always been my watchword.’
If the figure had been human it might have shaken its head in dismissal. ‘Your discovery is not important,’ it said.
‘Nothing has changed.’
‘Oh, it has,’ the Doctor insisted, and, reaching into his jacket pocket, drew out a flask of clear liquid and held it up.
Did the eyes opening and closing lazily within the iridescent flux widen a little in alarm, or was that simply the Doctor’s imagination? Certainly its many voices sounded wary. ‘What is that?’
‘Antidote,’ said the Doctor brightly. ‘I threw it together in the TARDIS.’ He unstoppered the flask and drank the contents in three gulps.
The effects were almost instantaneous. The cloud of Xaranti infection faded from the Doctor’s eyes, the spines on his hands and neck withered and shrank until there was no evidence that they had ever been there, and the hump on his back deflated, enabling him to draw himself once more to his full height.
‘You see?’ he said, holding the flask up. ‘Mind over matter.’
‘There is no mind that can combat ours, and therefore there is no antidote,’ the figure said angrily. ‘It is a trick.’
‘You can’t deny the evidence of your own eyes,’ the Doctor retorted. ‘I believed that this was an antidote and therefore it became one. It destroyed your infection just as I can make you believe it will destroy you.’
The mouths and eyes were forming and fading more rapidly now, the flux quivering as if in agitation.