Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [54]
'No! Leave him alone!'
The Doctor's blue-green eyes flashed angrily at him.'It's not in my nature.'
'But the demon!' The old man sounded pathetic and desperate.'He is purging himself.You must not interfere!'
Anstaar straightened up in disbelief. 'You're saying this man put himself in this condition?'
The old man swung up his head on its wizened cockerel neck to look at her. 'There is no alternative. We come out here, to the wilderness, the mentor and the child.'
'And then you push nails into him?' The Doctor's voice was quiet.
The old man with his bent little head looked alarmed at the questioning, his fingers drumming on his bare blue knees. 'Keep evil away. A self-written mantra through the screams of our suffering. We all have the demon.' He looked from the Doctor to the ground, mumbling some kind of guttural rhyme with his eyes shut tight.
'He must be mad, Doctor. What's he talking about?' Anstaar held her hands up to her ears as another wail of suffering rose from the injured man.
'Anstaar, can you remember if any religious extremists rented space on Hirath?' The Doctor looked sadly down at the whimpering body in his arms.
'People endure much for their beliefs.'
Anstaar looked appalled.'Are you condoning this?'
'Of course not! But we're only observers, passing through.' His eyes sought her understanding.'Can we impose our own code on them, in this place?'
'But this could've happened against his will.'
The Doctor looked helplessly down at the suffering man's bulging eyes, scanning them intently as a low penetrating moan died away into the frightened, fragile whimpers of a thing close to death.'His mind's gone,'
whispered the Doctor, softly, stroking the thick, black, muddied hair.
Anstaar moved round to join him.
The man gave a sudden roaring shout of pain that shocked both the Doctor and Anstaar. They looked up; the old man still held the bloodied rock he had just cracked through the bruised ribs of his helpless victim. He toppled over with a squeal of laughter on top of the mutilated body. The Doctor was knocked backward on to his behind, staring, incredulous and hurt, in silence. Anstaar jumped behind the wizened attacker and tried to pin his skinny arms behind his back.
The old man giggled helplessly in Anstaar's grip. 'You're nice, you are!' he chortled, rubbing the bristly back of his head against her chest, enjoying her shuddering against him. 'I'll keep you!'With a grunt of horrified distaste, she let him go and went to help up the Doctor, but he waved her back. 'No no no no no no no,' he muttered, staring at the terrible gaping wound in the man's chest. Anstaar reluctantly looked too, feeling her stomach heave, and then she realised what the Doctor had noticed.
There were hundreds of tiny electrical components spilling about in the man's insides. Small implants shone out of the fractured ribs through the watery blood.
'What in the deity's name is going on here?' whispered Anstaar. A sudden breeze ruffled her thick black hair. 'Is it a cyborg?'
'Half man, half machine? No, I don't think so.' He reached gingerly into the cavity in the man's chest and fished out one of the tiny implants, simultaneously pulling a jeweller's glass from his pocket.
It seemed that only a few moments had passed before the Doctor gave his diagnosis.'I would say these implants were turning his blood into a synthetic fuel, an alternative energy source to power his organs. They're also showing signs of severe decay, as if exposed to some Yast temporal embolism.' He looked up at her blank face. 'Time disturbance, in other words.' The old man was still laughing hysterically on the muddy floor. The Doctor passed the implant and glass to Anstaar.'What would you say?'
She didn't bother to look.'I would say you were scaring the absolute hell out of me, Doctor.'
***
Sam looked around her, biting at her nails.