Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [9]
‘Your daddy will be here in a couple of minutes. Okay?’
The girl nodded again. ‘Then I’ll take this sample, and you can go home. Doctor, will you come with me?’
The Time Lord, still muttering to himself, followed Byerley into the storeroom. Byerley waved a hand in front of his face.
‘Doctor.’
‘Doctor.’
‘Have you been able to draw any conclusions from your own infection?’
The Doctor leaned on a shelf, folding his arms. ‘There’s obviously a second payload in the virus. Not just DNA, but memory RNA. But whose RNA? Where did it come from in the first place?’
‘I still think it’s something native. It has to be. What are the odds of the virus’s protein coat matching that of Yemayan soil viruses?’
‘No, no. We’ve been over this. The protein’s Yemayan, the genes are Terran. Could it be a natural hybrid?’
‘Then how did it overcome our inoculation programme? It has to be manufactured.’
‘Not necessarily. There are some naturally occurring microorganisms which can affect psi ability.’
‘I wish more was known about the genetics,’ said Byerley. ‘Back on Earth, the only research is being done by big business, and that’s all kept under wraps. Listen, no-one else had symptoms like yours. I still don’t quite understand what that was all about.’
‘My own memories and personality were being overwritten by the viral memory RNA,’ said the Doctor.
‘You were being taken over?’
‘Not exactly. You couldn’t store an entire personality inside a virus. But the viral RNA was replicating itself out of control, probably as a result of my brain cells trying to make sense out of it, integrate it. If Cinnabar hadn’t plugged me into her computer, given me a chance to find the viral sequences and eliminate them, it would have driven me mad and then killed me.’
Byerley nodded gravely. ‘You should be immune now, at least.’
‘I should have been immune in the first place.’ The Doctor squinted, as though trying to see something in the distance. ‘Just as the inoculated colonists should have been.
After all the work we’ve done, all the research, I should have an idea of what’s going on here. I feel as if it’s on the tip of my mind...’ He shook his head. ‘My brain cells are probably still shaken up. It’ll come to me.’
‘Doctor,’ said Byerley, ‘if it does come to you, do you think we’re going to be able to cure it?’
The Doctor looked back through the door, where Bernice was trying to comfort the girl and her dismayed father. ‘Some people would consider these powers a miracle. They’d think we were looking a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘Most of these people are just plain terrified. They don’t even want to know what’s going on — they just want an easy solution. But it’s more complicated than we think, isn’t it?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘And we can’t do anything about virus or powers until we find out what’s really going on.’
‘You smell something burning?’ asked Chris.
Roz sniffed the air and shook her head. She was leaning on the tree he was sitting against, watching a gaggle of kids improvising a game with a saggy football. The trees here looked like gigantic celery stalks, dark green at the base and shading upwards to fiery orange at the top. Tiny, harmless creatures crawled over the succulent bark.
‘Look,’ said Chris. ‘They’ve worked it into the game.’ He pointed. ‘The tall girl with the black hair, she’s telepathic. She has to guess where the other person will throw the ball next.’
Roz saw the girl lunge sideways suddenly, snatching the ball out of the air. ‘And the red-headed twins are both psychokinetic. They’ve been throwing the ball around without their hands.’
‘They do seem to have pretty good control, for learners,’
said Roz. ‘So long as they don’t start throwing one another around.’
Chris shrugged. ‘It all looks pretty harmless to me.’
‘Don’t let your guard down,’ she told him. ‘You know how fast things can get out of control.’
‘So, urn... if one of us does become infected,’ said Chris,
‘what do we do about it?’
‘The