Doctor Who_ Silver Nemesis - Kevin Clarke [24]
The brilliant silver figure of the statue of Nemesis lay inside. Lady Peinforte was ecstatic. Richard, however, had other concerns. ‘But my lady,’ he asked, ‘where are your bones?’
Lady Peinforte picked up the arrow and held it out to the statue, staring down into the sarcophagus with an expression of childlike wonder. The statue gave an intense sudden glow of silver light which shone from the entire surface of its body.
‘What matter?’ Lady Peinforte replied tersely. The arrow, in her hand was flashing like a beacon, dazzling them with its bright silver light. As if in response, the statue began pulsating simultaneously.
Arriving back outside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ace stopped for breath. The Cybermen were a safe distance behind and, for the moment, were not an immediate threat.
Noticing that Ace was unusually subdued, the Doctor looked quizzically at her. There was a pause.
‘They killed them,’ Ace eventually said. Her voice was shocked. ‘Just because I blew up the ship.’
‘They’d already killed them,’ said the Doctor firmly.
Ace looked at him in surprise.
‘Cybermen create other Cybermen out of human beings by first enslaving their minds,’ the Doctor continued. ‘The ones on guard there were only partly processed. Mentally, they were destroyed a long time ago.’
The full horror of the Cybermen’s evil struck Ace for the first time.
‘You mean that’s why the Cybermen saved my life?’ she asked. ‘So they could do that to me?’
The Doctor nodded sadly. ‘They used to be like human beings themselves,’ he said. ‘Quite a few people have tried to follow their example.’ He dismissed the Cybermen from his mind. ‘Enough of them,’ he said briskly, and turned his attention to Ace’s ghetto blaster. Looking up again a moment later, however, he could see she had still not managed to forget the frightful scene she had witnessed.
Ace looked up at him, saw the thought in his eyes and nodded in confirmation.
‘I still don’t like it,’ she said.
‘Nothing about the Cybermen is likeable,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Are we still jamming their transmission?’
Ace looked. ‘The tape’s still running,’ she responded.
‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now let’s find out who’s listening to it.’
He turned up the volume. Jazz blew once again across the English woodland.
‘Mmm,’ murmured the Doctor appreciatively. ‘Sweet.’
He switched on the machine’s holographic projector.
Two of the kind of people the Doctor had described as trying to follow the example of the Cybermen were at that moment only a few hundred yards away. De Flores and Karl stood waiting as the Cybermen approached them. The Cybermen stopped. De Flores held up a hand in greeting.
‘We want to talk to you,’ he said. The Cybermen waited.
De Flores, apparently unabashed, continued. ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with Wagner’s The Ring,’ he said, with all the social ease of a man conducting an interval chat at a Vienna Opera House. The Cybermen, as ever, looked blank. De Flores explained. ‘We,’ he said, ‘are supermen.
But you... you are giants. Wonderful creatures.’
‘Of course,’ returned the Cyber Leader. ‘But why should we form an alliance with you?’
De Flores became animated. ‘We had a leader once,’ he said. His eyes gazed far off. He was suddenly looking back fifty years. ‘He predicted your coming. Now, together, we shall fulfil his vision and enslave the world.’
‘Together?’ The Cyber Leader would have laughed in contempt had he been capable of laughter. ‘Cybermen need no help from any race.’
‘But,’ Karl interrupted, ‘a woman who is almost less than human now holds the statue.’ The Cybermen looked at Karl for the first time.
‘While we have the bow of Nemesis,’ continued De Flores smoothly. ‘She now holds the arrow and the statue itself, yet she is armed,’ he permitted himself a complacent chuckle, ‘with only primitive toys.’
‘You insult us?’ the Cyber Leader asked, without a trace of expression.
‘Of course not,’ replied De Flores hastily. ‘But whatever your...’ he searched for the most diplomatic phrase,
‘unfortunate vulnerability, it does not affect us. We can remove her