Doctor Who_ Silver Nemesis - Kevin Clarke [25]
Karl gestured slightly with their two machine-guns. It was not lost on the Cybermen. The Leader replied without hesitation.
‘We accept,’ he told them. ‘Destroy the woman and her servant and we will divide the planet into your slave groups and ours. But remember, any betrayal will be fatal.
We are invulnerable to your weapons.’
‘Not so the woman and her servant,’ replied De Flores smugly. He snapped his fingers at Karl, who handed him the machine-gun. De Flores weighed it appraisingly in his hands for an instant, then snapped back the safety catch.
‘Ah,’ he said with nostalgia. ‘I feel young again. Come.’
He led Karl off at a sprightly pace into the trees, towards the tower. As soon as they were out of earshot, the Cyber Leader turned to the waiting Cybermen. ‘As soon as they have the statue and the arrow,’ he intoned, ‘destroy them.’
With the monitor speaker switched off, the tape played on silently. Above the ghetto blaster the hologram remained blank, looking like a small globe of mist immediately on top of the machine. The Doctor drummed his fingers.
‘Nothing there?’ he asked in frustration.
‘See for yourself,’ replied Ace.
The Doctor glared at the hologram. ‘That handful back there weren’t the only Cybermen in the universe,’ he insisted. ‘We’ve only got to find out where the others are.’
Ace sighed. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘This is the computer’s reading of where their transmission signal is being received. Right?’
‘Quite,’ replied the Doctor.
‘But according to the scanner,’ continued Ace patiently,
‘nothing is there.’
The Doctor gave a howl of rage. ‘Then the scanner’s wrong,’ he yelled. He calmed himself with difficulty and spoke in a restrained manner. ‘The ones we’ve seen are only the advance party. Out there somewhere,’ he waved his arm across the sky, ‘is the entire Cyber force and they want the Nemesis more than anything else in space.’
Ace looked at him doubtfully. The Doctor did occasionally make mistakes after all. ‘How can you be so sure?’ she asked.
‘Because,’ said the Doctor with great self control,
‘validium is more incalculably destructive than I could possibly convey to you. It generates evil. It had to...’ He stopped himself. Suddenly he looked at Ace anew. ‘And because it’s 1988,’ he finished. There was a pause. Ace sensed there was more that he wanted to say and that it was difficult for him. The Doctor took a deep breath and continued. ‘When I launched the Nemesis, the orbit I gave it brought it back past the Earth every twenty-five years.
Look back over your own century. It first appeared in 1913..’
‘The eve of the First World War,’ said Ace in wonder.
‘Twenty-five years on...’ the Doctor prompted her.
‘1938...’
‘Hitler annexes Austria.’
Ace was beginning to see the pattern. ‘1963...’ she began, but the Doctor completed it for her.
‘Kennedy is assassinated.’
Ace looked at him with real fear. She hardly dared ask, but knew that she had to do so. ‘1988?’ she said quietly.
‘Check the scanner again,’ said the Doctor.
Out of the corner of his eye, Richard sneaked a glance at Lady Peinforte. She had still not stopped gazing at the statue of Nemesis; she seemed to be communing with it in some silent, mysterious way that he could not begin to understand. The arrow and the statue now glowed as one with an almost blinding intensity.
‘How perfect you are,’ breathed Lady Peinforte ecstatically to the statue. ‘Oh, how perfect. Immaculate beauty carved in absolute evil.’
Richard could not bear it any longer. He had to tell her what was on his mind. ‘But where lie your bones my lady?’
he asked desperately. Lady Peinforte did not give any indication of having heard. ‘They must be buried,’ he added emphatically.
With an enormous effort, Lady Peinforte appeared to wrench her attention away from the statue. ‘What matter?’
she hissed. ‘They are dead. But I live. And soon I’ll have the bow...’ she shuddered with pleasure, ‘and my Nemesis will be complete.’
Richard was shocked at the change that had come over her. It was as though the statue’s presence had induced in her a trance-like