Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [46]
It struck Leela that perhaps this was a religious ceremony.
The warrior cult trying to show defiance and scare off the demons that lurked in the trees. Warrior cults were stupid like that. She remembered her own initiation into the sacred mysteries of the warrior gods. She had been proud to be initiated and more than a little ashamed that it proved impossible for her to believe in the sacred mysteries. When she had tried to explain how she had felt to the Doctor, he had made her learn off by heart: ‘Useful, convenient or pleasurable behaviours become habits, habits become rituals, rituals become superstitions, superstitions become obsessive compulsive disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders become religions.’ She did not fully understand what it meant but the Doctor seemed to believe it had mystical powers, because he said she should repeat it to herself whenever she was tempted to stop thinking and give in to mindless mumbo-jumbo – it would protect her.
Without breaking cover, Leela stood up and, very stealthily, ghosted through the thicket to find a new position.
Maybe when these warriors had finished making themselves feel stronger and safer they would go back into the shaft in the rocks, and she could get a closer look at it. This might be exactly what the Doctor was hoping to find.
‘Excuse me?’ she heard his voice say from the other side of the clearing. ‘Uh, I couldn’t help noticing that access port.’
He was striding forward, smiling, his hands held out in clear view, palms upward to show that he was not armed. ‘Would you mind very much if I had a look?’ Leela reached for her knife. What did the Doctor think he was doing?
All three warriors turned to look at the Doctor. They fell silent as he walked past them and stepped up into the rocks.
He was already examining the cover on the access port when they seemed to recover from their surprise and started banging their spears on their shields and grunting fiercely.
The Doctor ignored them and pushed open the cover. He peered into the opening. To Leela’s surprise the warriors lost interest in him and returned to challenging the unseen enemies.
It came as a relief, but no real surprise, to the Doctor that the aggressive-looking bipeds were not really interested in him.
He had kept the distance between himself and them wide enough to allow him the chance to dodge and run if he had seriously miscalculated the situation, but he was fairly confident that if he did nothing to trigger their threat responses they would ignore him. The response to Leela would be different, of course. It was possible, probable in fact, that they were waiting specifically for her. He wondered how she was supposed to be lured to them. Leela was aggressive by nature and training, but she tried to be rational and controlled, and she wasn’t stupid. How was she to be brought face to face with these characters? Unless that was the test. To see if she was bright enough to avoid an unnecessary fight. But then how would they know she had declined the fight rather than simply missed it, simply not been aware of it in the first place?
Then another thought occurred to him: suppose he was the bait. Suppose this rather crudely designed access shaft was set up to lure him in, and he was set up to lure her. For a strategy like that to work it would have to be clear from a distance that he was in serious danger. One or all of the spiny spear-bangers would need to be creeping up on him or something of the sort. The Doctor stole a glance at the three fighters. They appeared to have forgotten about him altogether, and were practising some sort of martial exercise ritual.
He decided to go with his original plan and ignore them and concentrate on what he hoped might be an access route to whatever was controlling the systems that had taken the TARDIS.
He was bothered by the idea that taking ships was not a targeted procedure to trap them on the planet, but was a routine