Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [117]
‘We’re going?’ Sarah asked.
‘Just a short hop,’ the Doctor murmured. The column stopped almost as soon as he said it, and he reached out for the scanner controls. The shutters opened over the TV screen on the far wall, with their usual quiet moan.
She found herself staring at a whirlpool. There were lines of force on the scanner, currents of energy, spinning in a Catherine wheel that threw off new limbs and new patterns from second to second. Sarah could make out clumps of matter in the maelstrom, small patches of sanity that almost-but‐not-quite looked like living beings. Things the whirlpool had only half digested, maybe, or things it was trying to grow out of itself.
It was a picture of the town square. Number Thirteen, seen from above. The scanner didn’t provide any sound, but she could imagine the noise the thing was making anyway, the animal scratching sounds you could hear inside your head when you got too close to it.
‘We’re hovering,’ the Doctor explained, while he darted from one side of the console to another. He ended up in front of one of the less obvious control panels, pressing switches Sarah had never seen him play with before, and which quite possibly hadn’t been there this morning. She concentrated on the scanner again, squinting at the thing that she absolutely refused to believe had once been I.M. Foreman, trying to work out how many of the shapes inside its body were Remote soldiers.
That was when she saw the other shapes. About a dozen of them – no, exactly a dozen of them – standing at the dead centre of the whirlpool. People. Not moving. Not panicking. The life-energy thing was swirling around the walls of the square, Sarah saw, and the people at the centre hadn’t been touched by it yet.
‘Doctor,’ she tried to say. But she ended up shouting it. ‘It’s the people from the show. Look.’
The Doctor didn’t bother looking up from the controls. ‘Yes, I should think so.’
‘I thought they ran for it. I thought they left when we did.’
The Doctor shook his head while he tapped at his switches. ‘I don’t think Number Thirteen would have let them get away quite that easily. You are what you eat, you know. And you eat what you are.’
Sarah gave him her best gawp.
‘We’ve got to help them,’ she said.
‘My dear girl, that’s precisely what I’m doing,’ said the Doctor.
* * *
They’d formed a circle in the centre of the maelstrom, all twelve of them staring out at the carnival of life force that had swallowed up the Remote troops. I.M. Foreman couldn’t see anything of the square now, just wild flashes of life and energy, moving too quickly for him to follow without feeling distinctly ill. If I were seeing this through my eyes, he thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s being able to see the biodata patterns that bothers me.
Number Thirteen had decided to leave them until last. Well, that made sense. It must have known that its twelve former selves would be hard to digest, so presumably it had just been lining its stomach by swallowing the Remote forces first. It was ready for them now, by the looks of things. Number Thirteen reared up as it tightened the circle around them, turning itself into a great chimney of biomass and hormones, showering tiny droplets of itself down on to their heads.
I.M. Foreman tried to look the thing in the eye, but as neither of them had eyes, the gesture was purely symbolic. He didn’t see anything in Number Thirteen he recognised. Nothing that reminded him of himself at all.
God, what a destiny.
‘I’m sorry,’ I.M. Foreman told his final form. ‘I’m afraid we can’t let you do this.’
He wasn’t sure whether Number Thirteen could hear him. He was sure, however, that it didn’t really care about anything he might have to say.
* * *
The Doctor’s fingers were getting faster. Sarah could have sworn she felt the console shaking. On