Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [14]
When she had staked four more and killed ten outright Leela was satisfied that, for this squad snake, the hunt was over. The right flank of the formation, which had sustained all the damage, was wrecked and the left flank was instinctively folding round it in a tightening defensive loop. The hunting mind sound which sapped the will of terrified prey was gone and now was the time to destroy the snake for good. But that would take too long and she had more pressing problems.
She ran round the collapsing animal and headed back to the temperate forest.
Rinandor stirred and woke up. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.’
The snake’s stopped. It’s gone. Where’s the snake gone?’
‘She killed it,’ Pertanor said, unable to keep the astonished awe from his voice. ‘With a bunch of sharp sticks and a knife.’
‘It is not dead,’ the thin aboriginal girl said. ‘But it is in a lot of pain.’
‘Thank you,’ Rinandor said and smiled at her. She reached out a hand but the girl flinched back slightly. It did not seem to Rinandor that this was personal; it seemed more like a trained response, a conditioned reflex.
‘It’s all right, Ri,’ Pertanor said. ‘You’re not hallucinating.
She’s real.’
‘You have to think of anything that runs in a pack as one animal,’ the girl said. It affects the way you fight it. If it is one animal you can see what it does and use that against it.’
‘Leela used the telepathic spike. The bit that links it all together. It’s so simple when you think about it,’ Pertanor enthused.
‘It’s difficult to think about anything when you’re scared crapless,’ Rinandor said wryly.
‘The Doctor says that is why fear is destructive,’ the girl said. ‘It gets in the way of rational thought and if you cannot think rationally you will always be afraid. He says it is a vicious circle.’
‘So you are Leealor?’ Rinandor asked, revising her first impression of the primitive-looking girl.
As she watched Ri-rinandor, Leela was suddenly aware that the plump young woman was looking at her with careful eyes.
It was almost the look of a hunter. ‘Leela,’ she corrected her, unsure why she had lengthened the name and added an extra sound to it.
‘Leela. Have you always lived here, Leela?’
‘I do not live here. I travel with the Doctor,’ Leela said guardedly.
‘Thedoctor?’ She pronounced it as one word. ‘What does he do exactly?’ She tried to get to her feet.
Pe-pertanor moved to help his companion, murmuring,
‘Begins to sound like an interrogation, Ri. Do you think this is a good time?’
‘Leela saved our lives,’ she said. ‘I’m interested, naturally.’
‘The Doctor is just the Doctor,’ Leela said. ‘He travels in...’
She hesitated. Something told her that these people would find it hard to believe in the TARDIS hut. ‘He travels,’ she finished lamely.
‘And you travel with him,’ Ri-rinandor prompted with a forced smile.
Leela wondered why the woman was feigning friendliness when everything about her suggested wariness. ‘I am his student,’ she said, using the term the Doctor had suggested was the correct way to describe their association.
‘You obviously come from First Planet,’ Ri-rinandor persisted.
‘Do I?’ Leela said.
‘You have the name, you have the frame and you sound the same.’
It was an echo of the sort of chant used by the children of Leela’s tribe to mock the privileged ones that they envied. Did she sound like one of these First Planet people, she wondered. She seemed to be able to speak their language.
She had asked on one occasion how it was that the Doctor could speak whatever language was used wherever he found himself. The explanation was his usual stream of incantations and gibberish, which he made up on the spot no matter what the question was, because, she suspected, he did not know the answer and he wanted to keep her quiet. It seemed to come down to: the TARDIS does it: which was obvious nonsense. He might enjoy pretending that the travelling hut was the source of all his shaman’s power, but how did it work when they were not in it?