Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [64]
‘So you started with Inspector Mackenzie,’ observed the Doctor.
Ace dropped the spoon and turned away repulsed. From beside the fireplace came Josiah’s laughter. ‘The cream of Scotland Yard!’
With a nod, the Doctor concurred, ‘The most precious substance in the univers: primordial soup, from which all life springs.’
The tureen slid along the table towards Light and the ladle swivelled round into the angel’s outstretched hand. It raised the spoon and watched the soup trickling slowly back into the dish. A scum of bubbles had begun to form on the glossy brown surface of the liquor.
‘Merely sugars, proteins and amino acids... But it would soon evolve again. It’s already starting.’
Light’s voice had a quietness that was too controlled, too ethereally calm. But the illusion was spoiled by the alarming burr of its aura. Its finger stabbed down.
‘But I’ll stop the change here. All organic life will be eradicated in the firestorm. I’ll leave the archaeologists a simple, sterile, charred cinder to puzzle over. And when this world is destroyed... No more change. Never again. No more evolution. No more life.’ It dipped its finger into the turgid brown soup. ‘No more amendments to my catalogue.’ It sucked the coating of greasy liquor from its finger and smiled with satisfaction.
The Doctor was forced to observe Light objectively. It was the only way to restrain his anger at its final solution.
The creature, force or phenomenon, what ever it was, had no physical rest mass but it did have pressure. As a mind, it existed on the brink of insanity, he was sure of that; its catalogue was the obsession that had driven it there. That might have started as a work of love, but if Light was as old as this universe, the rich diversity of its work had become an unrelenting task and then a tortuous, grinding labour; it could never be relinquished. There would always be more new subjects to catalogue. It could never cease while the superstrings of existence grew ever more diverse.
Madness in so awesome a creature meant that more than one world would get hurt: Earth would be only the first planet crushed by Light’s frenzied wings. Searching frantically for a defence, the Doctor saw only one alternative to Light’s antagonized fury of revenge and that was cold despair.
‘You evolve too, Light,’ he said quietly.
‘Nonsense!’ Light’s voice immediately took on an edge.
At the heart of the aura, the image of the angel tremored slightly. The Doctor felt the full concentrated force of its analytical scrutiny.
‘Of course you do. All the time you adapt and change: your attitude, your place, your mind. Just look at you now.
That’s not your original shape.’
Ace could only watch the showdown. Light loomed over the Doctor, its eyes darting in confusion. The monstrous presence was clumsy and unimaginative compared with the quiet goading of its adversary, but it still might crush him in a fit of pique.
‘I don’t think much of your catalogue either,’ added the Doctor. ‘It’s full of gaps.’
‘All organic life is recorded!’ Light threw an angry glance at Josiah, who swallowed hard.
The Doctor sniffed dismissively. ‘Then where are the griffins and the basilisks? You missed the dragons and bandersnatches!’
Light’s aura died away, or retracted, leaving the bitter cold shape of the angel like a silvered husk staring as the Doctor backed out through the doorway. The prospect of yet more subjects to index and more errors to correct deadened its weary soul.
‘And what about the slithy toves and the Crowned Saxe-Coburg?’
The tormentor’s voice faded down the passage leading to the hall, where Light was already scanning its chattering index on the stained-glass window.
‘Where are these items!’
Really Light was pretty dim. It had about as much imagination as a pocket calculator. ‘I can’t think how you missed them,’ goaded the Doctor. ‘You must complete the catalogue before you destroy all life here.’
Streams of data began to spill from the area of the window screen across the walls and into