Doctor Who_ Peacemaker - James Swallow [42]
‘Godlove,’ said Martha.
The Doctor nodded. ‘I’m willing to bet he’s walking around with a Weapons Module in his pocket, maybe even a command-level unit.’
He smiled coldly. ‘Yeah, that would explain why those two have been sent to recover it. But it must have been damaged in the crash, otherwise its combat programming would have kicked in automatically. . .
But that won’t last for ever. Sooner or later, it will self-repair and start blowing things up.’
‘Talkin’ guns?’ Nathan shook his head. ‘You’re bug-house crazy!’
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But he said it without force, and Martha knew the teenager was remembering his horrific recurring dreams of warfare and bloodshed.
‘Godlove’s device is not a weapon,’ said Walking Crow. ‘It cures, it does not kill.’
‘Does it?’ said the Doctor darkly. ‘The Clades have a limited regenerative capacity built in, otherwise their flesh-and-blood hosts would fall apart too quickly, isn’t that right?’ He threw the question at Kutter. ‘Bio-energy engrams. I knew I’d seen that technology before.
It can repair damaged flesh from combat wounds, neutralise disease and toxins from germ warfare. Curing a smallpox infection would be a doddle.’ His gaze fell on Nathan. ‘But there is an unpleasant side effect. Mnemonic transference.’
‘The dreams. . . ’ breathed Martha.
‘The dreams,’ repeated the Doctor. ‘Only not. They’re memories, fragments of Clade battle reports from a million different campaigns across the galaxy.’ His expression was grim. ‘The telepathic imprint of never-ending war.’
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Walking Craw’s skin prickled as a deathly chill engulfed him. The Pawnee’s stomach tightened with a sudden nausea and he had to force himself to keep from spitting up the contents of his gut. All the horror and the heart-stopping revulsion came from a single thought that wheeled and turned in his mind.
What have I done?
He had listened to the words of the man who called himself the Doctor, and much of it had not been clear to him, the talk of other worlds and strange creatures; but there were other aspects of his story that struck Walking Crow with the terrible sting of truth. The mysterious metals and the fallen star, the dark shape of the gun lying in the middle of the ashen crater – all of that came flooding back to him.
He was starting to understand. The night sky itself and the gods that lived there had rejected these things, tossed them to the earth to be rid of them. It was the world’s misfortune that a man with the greedy heart of Alvin Godlove had found one of them.
Walking Crow looked at his trembling hands, remembering where he had touched the thing inside the smashed metal egg, the gun-thing that the Doctor called a Clade. It had been hungry. He felt it as clearly as if the hunger was his own, in that brief moment when he laid his 105
fingers upon it. Although he had eaten well, for an instant Walking Crow had shared the Clade’s yawning appetite, felt it like a hollow in his flesh. And it had not been a hunger for food; it was a hunger for fire and destruction, for murder and the red rage of killing.
I should have destroyed it, then and there, he told himself. Smashed it to pieces with a rock. But instead I was weak and hesitant. I let Godlove take it for himself.
At first, when Godlove had used the device to heal wounds, Walking Crow had thought he was mistaken. Perhaps it had only been him that the Clade reacted against; but eventually he realised that was not true.
Godlove grinned and crowed as he used the device, but the Pawnee could see the changes in the man, the darkening turns in his manner.
Godlove did not control the Clade – it only allowed him to think that he did.
Walking Crow stole a look at the longriders, gaunt and cadaverous in their saddles. They were death, pieces of the world beyond life that had been forced to remain behind, animated by the will of something sinister and horrific.
Walking Crow’s mouth was desert-dry. Yes, he understood now. The gun, the Clade, it was an evil Manitou, a demon. His tribe believed