Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [116]
As the Doctor dragged himself down the roughened tube of the peristaltic duct, forcing the now slack bands of muscle aside, he tried to make sense of what he’d felt when he’d touched Trix. It was almost as if there had been something else there, something cold and implacable staring out of her eyes.
But Trix herself was definitely still in there somewhere. He checked his pocket, and felt the hard metal disc of Trove’s weapon. He didn’t know quite what it did, and didn’t want to use it if he didn’t have to. It all depended on quite what Trix – or whoever was riding around in her body – was up to. It nagged at him, again, that there was something vaguely familiar about the Makers. But he’d learned to recognise the signs, the here be dragons notices that bordered his amnesia. He knew when to stop poking.
As he squirmed through the sphincter into the chamber, he was taken by the odour: sourer and fouler than before. Trix stood with her back to him in a curiously insouciant stance. She was saying something about ‘the Oon and their insane jihad’. Her voice was flat and cold, yet hypnotic.
‘Trix?’
She turned slowly, balletically.
‘She is not Trix,’ said the broken voice of Tain. ‘Her name is Reo.’
‘. . . and she dances on the sand,’ finished the Doctor before shaking his head. ‘So why are you using Trix’s body? What are you?’
‘I am a Maker,’ said Trix. ‘Thin is one of us. He is coming home.’
‘Is he? Maybe that’s a decision that should be left to him, don’t you think?’
‘I have no choice, Doctor,’ said Tain. The room gave a little shiver around then, like a wet dog drying itself.
‘Of course you have! There are always choices!’
‘The Trojan has control of most of my systems, Doctor. It is severely limiting those choices. It is attempting to take complete control, trying to halt the Gaian wave. It will fail. If the critical point is reached, I am hoping that the Trojan will exhaust its resources trying to gain control of the whole Gaian body, and I will be able to regain control myself.’
‘So what do you want?’ The Doctor looked at Trix.
‘I am here to take control of Tain,’ Trix said. ‘I can purge the Trojan.’
‘And what about the Gaian wave? Can you stop that?’
209
Trix – or Reo – paused.
‘Possibly.’
‘Possibly? Possibly?’ The Doctor shook his head. ‘We’re talking about millions of people here. Something a little more concrete than “possibly” would be comforting to hear. Tain – what happens if Reo does manage to stop the wave, and does gain control of you?’
‘Then I return to the Makers – perhaps I continue as before, perhaps not.
Reo has told me that the Makers have other possible uses for me.’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘Other uses that will no doubt entail more killing at some point.’
Tain didn’t answer.
‘I have no wish to harm you, Doctor,’ said Trix. ‘Nor the Esperons. You are not part of our battle.’
‘Oh, I think we are,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think we’re very much part of your battle. Tain came here for a fresh start – to stop killing, to do something more productive, more life-affirming than just making soldiers. Anyone that makes such a choice deserves my respect – and my help. Can’t you accept Tain’s choice? You must have hundreds of bioships that can do what Tain did. Why can’t you just accept that and let him stay?’
‘Your hypocrisy is curious, Doctor.’
‘Hypocrisy?’
‘How often did your former companion, Anji, wish to leave, to go home?
How many times did she tell you that? And how many times did you ignore it?’
‘You’ve got that from Trix have you? Not exactly the most reliable of narra-tors at the best of times. Anyway, that’s different. And we’re talking about you and Tain here, not me and Anji. Anji’s happy now: she has what she wants.
Why not let