Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [55]
But the Doctor was asleep.
Kley looked across the clearing at Leela who was standing close to the rocks. She was quite still, staring at the ground.
Kley remembered what the Doctor had said about the attacks in the open areas where the ships had vanished.
Fermindor snorted. ‘The strategy is developing. It’s gone from “do nothing” to “do nothing and sleep”.’ He took another small sip from his canteen. ‘Is it getting hotter?’ he asked no one in particular.
‘Leela?’ Kley called. Maybe this wasn’t where a ship had vanished but then again maybe it wasn’t so different. ‘Leela?’
she called again, but the girl ignored her and continued to stare at the ground. ‘Leela!’ she shouted more urgently. ‘Get off the open ground!’ This time the girl gestured at her to be quiet. Kley was too tired to get to her feet again. She looked up at the clear cloudless sky. There was no threat that she could see in that bright emptiness out beyond the unmoving tree fronds. She listened. Apart from her companions, nothing else stirred. Nothing seemed to be moving anywhere.
Not a rustle, not a murmur, not a click. Automatically she pulled her gun and checked it again, just to be sure. It was dead. It was useless. Like her.
She put the gun back in the holster. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement. A jolt of shock thrilled her sharply awake. She gasped for a hollow breath as she looked up, momentarily alert. Leela was running towards her. Kley tried to get to her feet, tried to understand what it was the girl was running from. Fermindor had turned to see what it was she was looking at. Now Pertanor and Belay were turning too. And then Leela vanished. One moment she was running straight at her, sprinting, face clenched, arms and legs rhythmically driving, and then she was gone. How? What had taken her? Where was she?
Then she saw it. Slashing black and ripping hugely through the flat ground towards them, falling in on itself, collapsing in a monstrous V-shaped slice, point rushing at them, pointing the way for the ever-widening all-swallowing crack which came carving through the surface to drop them into a churning, falling maelstrom.
The Doctor woke to total darkness. Only the sound of his own breathing told him he was still alive and that he was probably conscious. If this was a dream or a hallucination he decided that it would make little difference to his actions, so he would lose nothing by dismissing the possibility from his mind. If he was unconscious he would wake up in due course and in a new set of difficulties. If he was not unconscious then he was already in trouble.
A more thorough exploration of his situation suggested that the air was breathable and the ambient temperature was tolerable, but that all he seemed able to move were his hands and feet. He thought about this for a while, listened to the whisper of what was possibly an air-conditioning system and then, since there was nothing much else he could do, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Hello? Is anybody there?’
Someone cleared their throat and a voice said, ‘Hello? Is anybody there?’
The Doctor waited a moment and said, ‘I’m the Doctor.
Who are you?’
‘I’m the Doctor. Who are you?’ the voice said.
‘Lights?’
‘Lights?’
‘And God said: “Let there be light”,’ the Doctor proclaimed.
‘And there was light. And you could see for miles.’
‘And God said: “Let there be light”, and there was light.
And you could see for miles.’
An automatic response of some sort, then, the Doctor thought, but was it a recorded playback, or a more complex simulation?
He tried singing and was entranced to hear how sweetly tuneful the copy seemed to be. He made animal noises and was disappointed to think that if the voice was copying him exactly, then his talent as an impressionist was limited.
Finally it occurred to him to wonder what would happen if he spoke over the other voice as it was repeating his words.
Could whatever it was unscramble the two lots of speech or would it simply ignore the interruption? Its reaction might