Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [69]
‘But what was it doing? And what caused it?’
‘I think I know what caused it – it’s just a shame I can’t remember. But as to what it was doing. . . I think it was breaking everything organic down that it touched, and rebuilding it. What’s more puzzling is why it didn’t do the 125
same to me.’ He stopped, a horrible thought occurring to him. ‘Unless it did, of course.’
Calamee shook her head. ‘You’d still be a blob of slime, wouldn’t you? It didn’t look like anything happened to you when you fell – the grey thing just passed over you.’
‘Now, isn’t that odd? We have a phenomenon that seems, indiscriminately as far as we can tell, to break down and rebuild organic matter, and it leaves me untouched. Now why would that be?’
Calamee gave a heavy shrug and smiled. ‘I’m the one with the questions, remember: you’re here to provide the answers.’
‘Oh. . . ’ The Doctor slapped his hand to the top of his head. ‘There was something else. I had a flashback. Or maybe a dream – or perhaps it was a flashfor–’
‘OK, OK – we get the idea.’
‘I saw a cat. And something happening to my body, some sort of transformation. Clothes as well as me. And I saw. . . ’ His voice tailed off as he screwed up his eyes, trying to remember what it was he’d seen. He whirled suddenly, jabbing his finger towards her in the dark. ‘I saw you – from up there. And I saw the barn from outside. And I saw. . . something else. A big, shapeless blob. I think it was a spaceship, a melted spaceship.’
‘A spaceship? Where?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea – but that’s not the point. I think I was seeing things through other eyes. Maybe birds or insects. And there was a sense of something else there, another mind, a presence.’
He fell silent, listening to the sound of the barn’s timbers, creaking gently like old lungs.
‘The sooner we get to the TARDIS, the better. Come on. I need to know what we’re dealing with. If this wave keeps on going, it’ll hit the city in probably less than four hours.’
‘But if it didn’t harm you, what’s the problem?’
They stepped out into the night air. It felt cleaner and fresher than it had done before.
‘I suspect that I was an exception. I don’t know why the wave didn’t rebuild me – but I have a horrible feeling that when it reaches the city, it won’t be quite so fussy. Now let’s find the TARDIS.’
‘Uh?’
Calamee just stood and stared as the Doctor breezed on into the room, heading for a six-sided control console at its centre. The room was huge, thought Calamee in wonder – some sort of optical illusion, probably. Holograms, perhaps. She wondered, briefly, how he managed to move so far away from her, 126
though, but put that down to more technical trickery. So it was totally reasonable that something the size of a portable toilet should be as big inside as her school hall. She looked up, and saw the arch of the night sky above her, dotted with stars. Did the TARDIS not have a roof? Calamee scanned down until she saw where the ‘sky’ met the pale, wooden walls, inset with recessed circles, and spotted the fuzzy line where they joined. Another hologram, then.
Or maybe the walls were the hologram, and the open ceiling was real.
She shrugged her way out of the Doctor’s coat and hung it over the back of a twisty wooden chair. Nessus climbed sleepily from the pocket and dragged his way up into her arms.
The Doctor was flicking switches casually, peering at little vidscreens set into the control panel. He gave a shrug, leaned back, and called out for Fitz and Trix over his shoulder, before seemingly forgetting to listen for an answer and dashing back to Calamee, alone and dazed in the doorway.
‘Welcome to the TARDIS,’ he beamed. ‘My home. Like it?’
Calamee wobbled her head uncertainly.
‘It’s. . . big.’
‘Everyone says that, he said, grinning, pulling out the jar of night beast jam from his coat pocket. Apart from the ones who think it’s cool to pretend they haven’t noticed.’
‘Is it holograms, then?’
‘Um? Oh no no no. Nothing so naff. Transcendental thingummyjig.’
‘Meditation?’