Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [107]
Trix wiped away a tear herself.
‘I tried calling out to you,’ he said. ‘Touching you, blocking your way, writing you a note. I even texted your mobile but you didn’t have it on.’
‘The battery had gone. I never know how to recharge it. You do all that.’
(‘I wrote to you in lipstick on the bathroom mirror,’ said Fitz. ‘You never saw the notes I left you. I shouted until I was hoarse, I grabbed your arm. I 223
tried to hug you. I sat next to you in the car, you couldn’t see or hear me.’)
‘Then I thought, well, perhaps I was a ghost. So I followed you around. I didn’t know what else to do.’
(‘That’s what I did,’ Fitz told Trix.)
Mr Winfield hugged the Doctor. ‘How do I thank you?’
The Doctor shrugged, a little embarrassed. ‘It was nothing. Now, find yourself somewhere safe. This isn’t over yet.’
They nodded, still dazed, but with the presence of mind to do what he suggested. They hurried next door, still holding hands. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix went back inside Marnal’s house, where Rachel was waiting for them.
‘“It was nothing”?’ Trix echoed.
‘I don’t like to blow my own trumpet.’
‘As opposed to the Last Trumpet?’ Fitz suggested.
‘Oh, I get that. That’s good.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You are going to explain,’ Trix told him.
‘Of course, he’s going to explain,’ Fitz said. ‘It’s got something to do with parallel universes, I reckon. Usually when stuff around here makes no sense it’s –’
‘Beehives,’ the Doctor said smugly. Not that he wasn’t within his rights to look a bit self-satisfied.
Trix rolled her eyes. ‘And that would be the explanation? Well, I suppose at least it’s light on technobabble.’
‘Dead bees, specifically. When a bee dies it needs to be cleared out of the hive. There are bees whose only job is to tidy up. A dead bee secretes oleic acid. You can probably work out the rest.’
Trix smiled sweetly. ‘Humour me.’
‘The acid is the chemical signal that tells a bee that another bee is dead. So far, so good. If you daub a live bee with oleic acid, though, the other bees assume it’s dead, and carry it out of the hive. Even if it’s struggling. It’s not that the bee smells dead – to the other bees, it is dead. They treat it exactly as if it’s dead, their brains block out any evidence that contradicts that. The Vore must have evolved along the same lines – they have to know when to clean their nests – but they’ve refined the technique into a weapon they can use on others. They daub some equivalent of oleic acid on a person and that makes everyone else think that person’s dead. Smells like fly spray. Our brains are easily tricked, especially if all the senses are being deceived. If reality doesn’t seem to match up with what our eyes and ears tell us, our brain ignores enough reality until it does. . . or we go mad, of course. Meanwhile, the Vore’s enemies are completely demoralised and thrown into complete chaos, 224
leaving the Vore free to concentrate their efforts on achieving their aims, not on fighting their enemy.’
Trix was shaking her head. ‘I saw Fitz die.’
Fitz waved at her. ‘Alive,’ he pointed out.
‘It’s all right, I know you’re not dead, but I. . . I saw it.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘Your eyes have played tricks on you before now. You’ve been fooled by optical illusions. You’ve been scared watching a horror video –
that’s just pixels on a TV screen. All around the world, millions of dead people who couldn’t see each other, who couldn’t understand why no one could see them. All trying to attract attention, none able to break down the doors of perception.’
Trix shivered. ‘How much more reality is my brain blocking out for me?’
‘Well, only you can answer that one,’ the Doctor grinned. ‘The Vore are adept at warping space, and it seems they can warp perceptions just as easily.’
‘So how did you know?’
‘They clearly had to tailor their chemicals to one life form, and that was humanity. I suspect they abducted humans early