Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [115]
The light made her remember all these things, and many, many, many more.
* * *
Number Thirteen consumed the last of the ship, breaking down the metal and distributing the mass around its… well, around its body. Now it had swallowed all that raw matter, it was becoming solid. Not solid enough to stick to one shape, but at least it had all the materials it would need to build whatever body it finally chose for itself. It ate the power systems, carefully putting out the fusion fire that started in its stomach. It ate the environment core, the machines that put the Remote in touch with the biosphere of Dust, storing the blueprints in the spaces of its DNA in case the knowledge came in handy later on.
Finally Number Thirteen examined the world around it. There was a sky at last, room for it to move, air for it to breathe, should it wish to. The planet wasn’t exactly teeming with life, but down below it could see walls made of dead wood, and inside those walls there were animals. Complex animals. Number Thirteen crawled forward, making the oxygen burn and ripple in its wake, then peered down at the square below it through eyes that were as yet only potential eyes.
There were plenty of living things down in the square. Even apart from the viral life in the town, Number Thirteen could see more shiny black human figures, just like the ones it had eaten on the ship. They were all staring up at it, waving their weapons but not knowing what to do with them. One of the black animals – dearly the pack leader – was starting to back away, heading for the deeper parts of the town. He was saying something like ‘no, no, no’ as he went.
Then there were the others. The twelve showpeople, for a start. Number Thirteen was vaguely aware that they were just earlier versions of itself, and knew it couldn’t absorb them without creating some kind of paradox, but frankly it couldn’t help wondering what a paradox might taste like, so that wasn’t a problem. And there were two other complex animals in the square. One was a Time Lord, Number Thirteen noted, while the other was a basic human being. The Time Lord told the human to run as Number Thirteen looked down on them, and they began to move across the square as fast as their tiny legs could carry them. The Remote people hardly noticed them leaving.
Number Thirteen let them go. After all, it had more than enough biomass here to be getting on with.
It suddenly noticed that it was floating, in defiance of the local gravity. It was using up quite a lot of energy doing that, so it decided to stop. It felt itself dropping towards the square, and turned itself into a kind of vortex as it fell, a swirling helter-skelter of life and energy and matter.
* * *
Father Kreiner had made a decision, and the decision had been based on several centuries of experience. He’d decided not to look back.
The armour had never felt heavier on his limbs. He could feel the warmth of the lubricant on his skin, squishing and squashing between the parts of his body that were still recognisably human and the parts that had been replaced by the implants. It had been a long, long time since he’d had to run anywhere.
So he was only a few metres away from the square when he heard the crashing sound, and knew that the monstrosity had swept over the people in the square. He could hear it swirling against the walls, snatching up his troops as it went. Without the media systems on the ship, they were utterly helpless, not even having the sense to run when they saw something huge and nasty rearing up over them. Kreiner could hear them gurgling as they were consumed, their masks turning the sound into something flat, electronic and meaningless. He didn’t hear anything from the I.M. Foremans, not a single scream, and that was what annoyed him most of all.
He wondered how long it’d be before the monster started to flood the streets around the square.