Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [31]
‘Have I been poisoned?’
The Doctor said, ‘Those two just seem to be dozing, nothing more than that. I think the three of you may be intoxicated.
Leela sat up straighter. ‘Intoxicated?’
‘Something in the meat has affected your brain chemistry.’
Leela held up a finger and smiled. ‘You do not know what it is and that makes life tolerable.’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Perhaps alcohol or something of the kind is a by-product of metabolism. Whatever it is, I’m sure the effects will pass. You already seem to be stabilising.’
Leela said, ‘I did not get a chance to eat very much.’ She peered at Rinandor and Pertanor, who were both snoring gently. ‘Lucky they were so greedy.’
The Doctor stood up and stretched. It was already almost full daylight. ‘They weren’t greedy,’ he said. ‘According to their culture greed makes you thin.’
Leela got to her feet, rather shakily. ‘What are the right circumstances for that to make sense?’ she asked.
The Doctor was no longer listening. He moved to look more closely at the sleeping faces of Pertanor and Rinandor.
‘It’s possible those animals were never meant to be eaten by anything,’ he said. ‘It’s possible they were designed that way.’
‘Everything gets eaten by something,’ Leela said. ‘That is how it works.’
‘It?’
‘The world.’
‘But supposing this isn’t a world,’ the Doctor said. ‘Help me wake these two up.’ He began to shake Pertanor by the shoulder. ‘We need to find the rest of their unit.’
‘Why?’ Leela demanded irritably. ‘Are these two not enough trouble by themselves?’
‘I think they hold the key to what’s going on here.’ He began slapping Pertanor’s face gently. ‘Wake up, Pe. Come on, Pe. Wake up.’
Pertanor came to slowly. He sat up smiling. ‘I feel wonderful,’ he said, and then his smile vanished from a palely sweating face and he rolled to one side and vomited.
They were all dead. Dozens of them lay around among the torn-up remains of the lizards. They were all identical except for one, which appeared to be bigger than the others. Kley had never seen a fur-bearing animal with six legs before.
‘Ugly brutes,’ she commented, poking the large one with her foot. ‘I wonder what killed them.’
‘Eating lizard meat?’ Belay suggested.
Maybe it was Monly, she thought, he was poisonous enough – and then she felt horribly guilty for thinking such a thing.
Sozerdor walked in a wary circle, keeping his distance from the carnage. ‘It looks as though Monly might have saved our lives,’ he said. ‘What d’you think about that?’
‘I think it’d be the first positive contribution he’d made to this mission,’ Fermindor said. He holstered his gun, since it was obvious there was no longer any threat from these lifeless monsters. ‘I’d like to know where they came from.
There was nothing like this in the recon data, was there, Chief?’
Kley tried to remember precisely what the briefing had included, given that all she seemed to be finding was what it missed out. ‘As far as I remember there was no mention of dangerous life-forms, jungles, or runners with carefully thought-out plans and powerful backup teams.’
‘You don’t think that’s what he’s got, do you?’ Sozerdor directed the question at Fermindor but the potential to undermine her authority made no difference to Kley now. She was too tired for the niceties of command structure and organisational dynamics. She hefted the pack higher on to her shoulder and led off towards the trail that would take them back the way they had come the day before, back to the ship or whatever was left of it. She was conscious that all they seemed to be doing was running backwards and forwards along the same route without any really discernible purpose. The image of experimental animals in a laboratory maze suddenly came into her mind. That is definitely paranoia of the worst kind, she thought. I must get back in control of this. I must have a plan of action.
‘Let’s make sure we keep together,’ she said, without looking back. ‘We don’t want to lose anybody else.’ It seemed a feeble rallying call under the circumstances.