Doctor Who_ The Green Death - Malcolm Hulke [45]
‘It’s a complete dead maggot,’ said Benton in awe. ‘It must have killed itself smashing through the window.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the Doctor, inspecting the maggot. ‘They’ve withstood bullets and fire... It must have died from something else.’
‘Maybe something it ate,’ suggested the Brigadier.
Nancy pointed to a plate on the shelf next to the maggot. ‘Those sandwiches! Look, it’s been at my sandwiches!’ There was maggot slime on the plate of freshly cut sandwiches, and marks where the maggot had bitten into them.
The Brigadier put his hand to his stomach. ‘I’ve just eaten some of that stuff myself!’ He turned pale.
‘You’re not a maggot,’ said the Doctor. ‘In any case, this whole community lives on that fungus stuff.’ He spoke to Nancy. ‘How much of this fungus have you got?’
‘A whole pile of it in the outhouse,’ she said.
‘Wonderful,’ said the Doctor. ‘We haven’t a moment to lose.’
Yates sat on the floor of the empty office where previously he had rescued the Doctor. His left ankle was chained to a radiator pipe. He inspected the chain and padlock carefully. There was no possible way to free himself. Then the door opened and Dr Stevens entered with two guards.
Dr Stevens smiled. ‘I have been discussing you with my superior,’ he said, meaning Boss. ‘We have decided on your future.’
‘May I be told?’ asked Yates.
‘Indeed, yes. You will be one of the first to be totally processed.’
‘You make it sound like a compliment,’ said Yates. ‘What does it entail?’
‘You will become a slave,’ said Dr Stevens. ‘You will have no mind or will of your own. But, like any well-cared-for animal, you will be very happy. For a number of hours each day you will work, and for the rest of the day you will eat, or sleep, or sing merry songs. And you will have no worries about anything.’
‘God gave Man the right of free will,’ said Yates.
‘True,’ agreed the Director, ‘but it causes so much trouble. Wars, people going on strike for higher wages, all sorts of social problems. We shall create a new order in which everyone will be content.’
‘And if they refuse to be content?’ Yates asked. ‘If they don’t respond to your total processing?’
‘Let us not dwell upon the impossible.’ He turned to the guards. ‘Bring him along.’
While Dr Stevens waited outside, the guards removed the padlock and chain from Yates’s ankle, then marched him down the corridor to the lift. Dr Stevens pressed the lift button.
‘We are doing you a great service,’ said Dr Stevens as they waited for the lift to arrive. ‘Ten minutes from now you will be permanently happy for the rest of your life, because you will no longer be able to think. Thinking makes for unhappiness.’
The lift door slid open. Dr Stevens went in first. The guards were about to push Yates in ahead of them. He hesitated, put his hand to his head.
‘The pain,’ he screamed, ‘it’s terrible!’
The guards looked at him in astonishment, in that moment lessening their grip on his arms. Yates suddenly leapt into action, grabbed the two guards and shoved them on top of Stevens in the lift. While the three men thrashed about on the lift floor, he reached round, pressed a button inside the lift, then withdrew just in time as the lift doors closed.
He raced down the corridor, saw a coiled up fire hose. On one end of the hose was a big brass nozzle. He pulled the hose from its reel, used the nozzle to smash a window.
Then he paid out the hose, so that it hung from the window to the open ground below. Knocking out the last bits of jagged glass with the heel of his shoe, Yates climbed through the window and escaped down the dangling hose to the ground below.
The Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, and a group of UNIT soldiers stood at the foot of the slag heap as the Doctor drove Bessie up into the great swarm of maggots. Through his binoculars the Brigadier watched as maggots snapped at the wheels of the vintage car, and some tried to leap into it to eat the Doctor. The Doctor stopped the car, stood up, dipped his hand into a jar of brown powder, and cast the fungus over