Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [32]
Chapter Five
They were all dead. The squad snake was exactly where Leela had left it twisting round those painfully crippled members of the vestigial gestalt, but now there was not a single part of it left alive. ‘I do not understand,’ she said. ‘Was it the shock that did it?’
The Doctor turned one of the snakes over. There was no sign of decomposition – indeed he could find none of the physical signs, not even the first subtle ones, that death normally produced. And vet there was no doubt that it was no longer alive. ‘I think they might have served their purpose,’
the Doctor said.
‘And what purpose was that?’ Rinandor asked. She was resting against Pertanor, one arm across his shoulder. When they had set off to retrace their trail she had declined the offer of a makeshift crutch, preferring to lean on Pertanor when the pain in her leg got too troublesome, which to their mutual and obvious satisfaction seemed to be most of the time.
‘To kill us?’ Pertanor suggested. ‘They seemed to be very excited by the idea.’
‘That must have been part of it,’ the Doctor agreed.
‘Only part of it?’ Rinandor asked. ‘What else was it all for?’
‘That’s what I hope to find out,’ the Doctor said. He picked up another snake and examined it minutely. It was perfect and unblemished. Only the complete lack of any kind of animation confirmed it was dead. The Doctor had seen many creatures that routinely went into states of suspended animation to conserve energy, or to escape from predators, or to survive climatic catastrophe. He could affect a kind of physical shutdown himself, and knew how foolish it was to make assumptions about life and death, or anything else for that matter, on the basis of instinct or feelings. But despite all that he was certain this particular creature was never going to be revived. He dropped it to the jungle floor.
‘You don’t think we should try a couple of snake steaks, then?’ Pertanor asked.
The Doctor smiled cheerfully. ‘The venom is probably still toxic,’ he said.
‘I can’t help feeling there’d be an opening in the snacks market for food with the sort of kick that six-legged thing packed,’ Pertanor said and giggled. ‘Or should that be kicks?’
‘Now you want wealth as well as power?’ Rinandor teased.
‘I think you’ve got some firster blood in there somewhere.’
‘What’s wrong with wealth and power, Ri?’ the Doctor asked conversationally as they waited for Leela to point out the path they should follow.
‘That’s what I say,’ Pertanor said. ‘What’s wrong with wealth and power?’
‘You have to sacrifice most of your life to get them and that shows a stupid lack of imagination. Besides, if you’re not a firster it’s a waste of effort to begin with.’
The Doctor wondered again how rigid the system had to be to produce attitudes like that, or whether perhaps Rinandor was simply one of those stubbornly difficult outsiders you come across from time to time. The sort of person he had himself been accused of being, though quite mistakenly of course.
‘So which is it: a waste of time or a waste of life?’ Pertanor asked.
‘Isn’t it the same thing?’ Rinandor said.
‘Not necessarily,’ the Doctor murmured.
Leela had stopped listening and had turned her full attention back to the trail these irritating people had left. So far it had been as easy to find and to follow as she had expected it would be. Not too much time had passed since it had been crushed out by two terrified, plump and clumsy people in desperate flight. There had been no extremes of weather to obliterate the tracks or obscure the damage to the foliage.
The fact was it needed no skill to follow such a trail – a child could do it; the Doctor himself could do it. The skill lay in noticing what neither the child nor the Doctor would have noticed: that there was something not right about it. As far as Leela