Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [86]
She twisted her head around. The machine! She lowered his trembling frame to the floor and plucked up the tiny device. Its little lights were flashing and winking. Right. She raised it above her head.
‘Gn!’ The Doctor was reaching out his right hand. ‘No!’
She pushed the component into his palm, closed his fingers over it. He held it in both hands, did something to it. The flickering lights went out.
He relaxed suddenly, and the little device rolled out of his grip. ‘Doctor!’
Ace shouted, shaking him. ‘Are you alright? Can you hear me?’
His eyelids flickered. He looked up at her. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I remember the first time we met.’
‘What? Yeah, it was in that cafe, I was wearing a stupid black and white uniform, and – listen! Are you listening?’
The flutterwing was three metres long, a slender, legless insect. He didn’t dare touch the fabric of its wings, which were unbelievably fine, little more than a sheen of colour stretched over the rocky hillside. The stuff just went on and on, draped over scree and boulders, maybe twenty metres wide, maybe thirty.
He crouched beside the body, a small boy run away from home, lost in the landscape outside his house. Flutterwings were born in the sky, lived in the sky – they never touched the ground. Did the outsiders eat them? He looked at the long, thin body. It looked like a length of computer cable. The arrow seemed impossibly large. The creature trembled, sending a shimmer through its broken wings.
The arrow was distressing it. He tugged gently on the feathers at the end, and the arrow slid easily out of its body. There was no blood on the tip.
There were no medical facilities here, no drugs or equipment. Was the flutterwing dead? What was it thinking? Did it hurt?
He wondered what it felt like.
So he turned the arrow around and stabbed it into his palm.
∗ ∗ ∗
168
Ace was gently stroking the Doctor’s hair. ‘And then you said, “There are three rules. One –”’
His hand jerked out of her grasp. ‘Is that all?’ he muttered.
‘Nah, there were two more, you –’
‘Is it that easy?’
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Anybody home?’
He focused on her. ‘How long?’
‘Only a couple of minutes. You’re okay? What happened, then?’
He sat up and buttoned the top buttons of his shirt. ‘I evidently found the part of the Ant which allows it to communicate with Ship.’
‘So it was putting out a signal? Did they trace it, do something to you?’
He shook his head. ‘They did something to me a long time ago.’
Ace put her hand against the Doctor’s collar bone, gingerly, as though expecting to feel a kick. ‘Oh, God. They installed something, didn’t they?’
‘Their mistake. It makes everything so much more convenient.’
She gave him a long, critical look. ‘What are you planning to do?’.
‘Wouldn’t they like to know.’ He smiled sweetly. ‘What goes bang thud, bang thud, bang thud?’
There was a queue outside a butcher’s shop. It wasn’t moving. Benny joined the end of it, listened to the dialogue between the tired women. Empty baskets gripped in dusty hands. They didn’t say much, didn’t even complain about the wait.
She had been there almost an hour when Nicolas’s cart pulled up. She watched his reflection in the shop window. He was a big bear of a man.
Eating too well, not like the stick-figure soldiers, the skinny women.
He hefted a huge rolled carpet from the back of the cart, handling it awkwardly. Benny’s mouth was a little dry.
The building had been badly damaged by shellfire. A wooden sign hung at an angle over the front, the letters LACE TAPI visible through the plaster powder. The front doors and one of the shattered windows had been boarded up. Nicolas disappeared through a side door.
He re-emerged into the sunlight ten minutes later, still carrying the carpet, which seemed to have become lighter. He loaded it aboard, tied down the tarpaulin on the cart, and trotted away.
The ladies in the queue watched his horses with hungry eyes. Benny crossed the street while they were distracted. The side door was locked.