Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [93]
Trix looked around the spotless, barricaded kitchen. ‘Can you cope on your own?’
‘I keep leaving food out for Binks, the cat, but she hasn’t eaten anything. I think the monsters must have got her.’
‘Cats sometimes turn up after months. Don’t give up hope yet.’ Mrs Winfield nodded politely. ‘Best to move on, I think.’
Trix had known this woman for ten minutes, and she couldn’t yet work out whether she was in a healthy, pragmatic state or in almost psychotic denial of what was happening.
‘You still speak about him as though he’s alive,’ Mrs Winfield noted quietly.
‘He’s gone.’
Trix started crying then, great uncontrolled sobs that started somewhere in her gut and choked their way up into her mouth, nose and eyes. She felt Mrs Winfield’s arms around her, telling her it was all right. She imagined that if Fitz was here he’d be telling her not to cry. If he was here, she wouldn’t need to. As she sobbed, she got angry with herself, embarrassed that she couldn’t contain herself.
She sat up, took deep breaths. It was several minutes before she was cogent again.
‘We’re all going to need counselling, aren’t we?’ Mrs Winfield sighed. She’d been crying herself.
‘Who lives next door?’ Trix asked, determined to change the subject.
Mrs Winfield told her about the mysterious old author next door, the one who wrote stories. She even managed to fish out one of his old books, the Scope sticker still on it. Science fiction.
‘I need to investigate Marnal’s house,’ Trix said.
‘Why?’
‘My friend, the Doctor, might be in there, or there could be a clue to where he went after that.’
‘Trix, dear, he was probably eaten by the –’
‘I know what might have happened. But. . .
No. It’s the Doctor. He’s
somewhere else, he’s fighting them.’
Mrs Winfield smiled indulgently. Trix was sure she would have done the same if their positions were reversed, and that Mrs Winfield would feel just as patronised.
∗ ∗ ∗
192
The air ripped open and the TARDIS fell into it, steam swirling off every surface.
After a moment, the lamp on top stopped flashing and the door opened.
The Doctor stood in the doorway, looked around and then looked down.
‘Very uneven terrain, K9. I think you’d better stay inside.’ Now, that did ring a bell. ‘Monitor the TARDIS repairs. Help the old girl, if she needs it.’
The Doctor stepped out, closed the door and carefully locked it. A great subterranean chamber complete with stalagmites and stalactites, arches and chimneys. The air was warm and damp, filled with a deeply unpleasant smell, or mix of smells. There weren’t any monsters, not that he could see, but there was little light. A layman might mistake this for a natural landscape, but then people often looked at fields and hedgerows and thought the same. The living rock had been carved and worn down by something with a real sense of purpose. These weren’t random channels; these were surface conduits and lateral connectives.
A termite mound or an anthill.
Yes, that was what this reminded him of. He’d seen a termite mound in Africa, once. A spire of mud as tall as a tree, and – like a tree – extending just as far underground. A community with more citizens than any human city, all living in eusocial harmony. – with each other, at any rate. Humans thought the Earth was theirs, but they were recent tenants of a world dominated by grasses, bacteria, plankton and nematodes. The termites had been around a thousand times longer than humans and there were countless numbers of them – never mind population size, by sheer weight they outnumbered people in Africa.
The Doctor had already known from the glimpse of leg that he was dealing with an insect species. Insects the size of men, and social insects by the look of all this. He mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking the Vore were exactly like termites, though. He racked his brain for scraps of information he could use.
He needed to get some idea of the layout