Doctor Who_ The Paradise of Death - Barry Letts [37]
Now the Doctor was adjusting some dials, and the outside doors were shutting. He looked up and saw Jeremy.
‘What are you doing here, boy?’ he said.
‘You asked me to bring the tools,’ Jeremy said plaintively.
‘Yes, well, it’s too late now. I’ve activated the coordinates. You’ll have to come too.’
A thingy in the middle of the thingy-in-the-middle started to go up and down, and a noise came from nowhere, from everywhere, that sounded like the trumpeting of a demented elephant.
‘What’s happening?’ gasped Jeremy.
‘Next stop: Parakon!’ said the Brigadier.
Sarah closed her eyes and took a series of deep breaths.
When the swimming in her head cleared a little, she tried to force herself to be objective about her situation. What was it they always said you should do if you were taken hostage? Try to see things from your captors’ point of view; treat them as rational human beings in the hope that they would begin to see you as human too? That was it, wasn’t it?
‘I don’t think you’ve thought this through, Mr Tragan,’
she forced herself to say.
He seated himself on the sofa and stared at her with his empty eyes. ‘Really? Do tell me’
‘You said that I would be an embarrassment to you on Parakon. Wouldn’t a, a corpse, or a... a...’ She couldn’t find the words.
‘A mouthing white-faced creature scared literally out of her wits?’ supplied Tragan.
Sarah gulped. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t – one of those –
be even more embarrassing for you?’
He didn’t answer for a long moment. Could she really be getting through to him? At last he spoke. ‘Have you ever travelled through space before, Miss Smith?’
Sarah hesitated. Would telling a lie help? What was the truth anyway? Did travelling through time count as space travel?
‘No,’ she said, hoping it was the right answer.
‘It’s very big, you know. And our garbage disposal system is very efficient. But I do appreciate your concern, believe me.’
All hope fled. ‘How can you be so inhuman?’ she cried.
‘Oh but that’s exactly what I am,’ he answered, as if he were surprised that she hadn’t realized the fact. ‘Indeed, unlike Chairman Freeth and his compatriots, I am only humanoid in the literal sense, in the shape of my body.
That is why, when I go on trips such as the present one, I have to wear this.’
Tragan put up his hand and peeled off his face.
Sarah had thought that nothing could ever make her feel worse than she did when she saw the monstrous dog creature. But now, as well as being frightened, she felt as if she were going to be sick. Yes, the face underneath the face had eyes and mouth in the same relative positions as a human, but there the resemblance ended.
A sickly pale purple, the skin was covered with warts and what appeared to be suppurating pustules. As if melted by some unburning flame, the substance of his face sagged in liquid folds, which changed shape as Tragan moved.
Unlike the passivity of his pseudo-face, which now hung limply from his hand, his expression constantly changed –
as if the subcutaneous flesh had a life of its own – but if there were any emotional content, it was so alien as to be unreadable.
Sarah, hanging on to consciousness with an almighty effort, turned away her head and screwed her eyes shut; and behind the high white noise ringing in her brain she heard him laugh. For the first time, she heard him laugh –
and she prayed that it might be the last.
Chapter Thirteen
Travelling through space wasn’t at all how Jeremy had imagined it would be.
To start with, they didn’t all get into special lying-down seats and have their faces pulled out of shape. In fact, the TARDIS didn’t seem to be moving at all; and though the Doctor and the Brigadier kept up a desultory conversation about worm holes through space-time and stuff (worm holes!), it was difficult to tell exactly how long the trip took. It was sort of the