Doctor Who_ Island of Death - Barry Letts [86]
the conditioning, the attitudes... The whole personality, in fact.‟
„Exactly. I never felt that there was something gradually possessing me. I just became more and more aware of this inner core of experience and knowledge that was growing inside me, which was the collective mind of the Skang itself.‟
„At first I thought I was going mad; and then it seemed that I must be having some sort of a mystical experience. But in a very short time - just over six weeks it took - everything became clear. I was a Skang - and it seemed as if I always had been, and had only just found out; and more than that, when I made contact with my fellows and discovered how to become the real me, I found that I was nothing less than the Great Skang himself! And that... that wasn‟t an experience, something to categorise as good or bad. It just was. An utter liberation.‟
„I didn‟t give a damn whether I was Hilda Hutchens or not.
She went on existing as the complex of processes she‟d always been, with all the likes and dislikes, all the opinions and beliefs and prejudices that she‟d developed over the years.‟
„She never stopped knowing that she was Hilda Hutchens.
And I‟ll tell you something else. When I‟m presenting myself as her, I‟m as subject to the illusion of my physical solidity as you are. It‟s another evolutionary necessity. We‟d never get away with it unless we believed it utterly. So, does the “I” that was me before still exist? If you can answer that, Doctor, you deserve to win the next Nobel prize!‟
* * *
Jeremy was feeling far from chuffed. In fact he decided that he was definitely unchuffed. Or should that be dischuffed?
After all, you would think that twenty grand would make sure you didn‟t find yourself shoved into the middle of a mixed bunch of scruffy hippy types - yes, of course he felt full of loving-kindness towards them and all, but there were limits. They‟d been pushed and pulled around like a herd of cows.
At least he was standing near to Emma. Though she hadn‟t talked to him much today. She just sort of looked through him.
Even when he was in the sixth form at Holbrook, Jeremy hadn‟t managed to get the respect he deserved. Nobody asked him to be in the first eleven, for instance (or the second, for that matter), and when he sort of hinted at it, everybody fell about laughing. You‟d never think that Mama was in the prospectus as one of their patrons; and that hadn‟t cost a bag of salted peanuts either.
And there was that time he‟d tried to go to the front of the queue at dinnertime, and all those fags, a bunch of little blighters from the third form for crying out loud, they‟d just crowded him out. Giggling too. Admittedly he wasn‟t a prefect, but whose fault was that?
„You know,‟ he said to Emma, who‟d been jostled into a position right next to him, „I was really pleased when we first arrived on the island and we found that our lot from London were in the chalet thingies down at the bottom, near the sea.
I mean, for swimming and all. And sunbathing and stuff.‟
„I didn‟t realise it would mean being right at the back of the flipping queue. With my luck, by the time we get up there, they‟ll have run out of rewards. It jolly well isn‟t fair.‟
Emma at last deigned to look at him. „Oh, for God‟s sake belt up, you little twit,‟ she said.
„Ingurgitation? How disgusting. I much prefer the word we use, “assimilation”. But whatever you want to call it, Doctor, you‟ll have to make up your mind by the time it starts. You haven‟t very long. The time for the Prime Assimilation is non-negotiable, I‟m afraid.‟
Should he pretend to go along with her extraordinary offer?
It might give him a little more time to try to convince her -
though his tactics so far had been a shameful failure.
„Why is that?‟ he asked. The information could be useful.
Dame Hilda didn‟t answer at once.
„I suppose there‟s no reason why you shouldn‟t know,‟ she said, after