Doctor Who_ The Taint - Michael Collier [88]
***
The Doctor held his hands out over Sam. The last time he'd tried something like this it had been with a Waro - a bit like having a ferret give you a love bite. It had rather put him off the experience.
Even so, he had to find out more about the nature of this program if he was to stand a chance of making her well again. 'Stay with me, Sam,' he whispered to her. 'I need you on line...'
The hum of the various machines helped him concentrate, gave him a reference point as he began to slip away inside himself. He allowed intuition coupled with good old-fashioned mathematical certainty to help him reroute his own mind along the lines of the simulator. He had to hope then that Sam was fit enough to act as a conduit for the Beast. Only then could he communicate with them, to learn not only their purpose but also how badly Sam had been affected.
Focus... focus... The number of different permutations that Sam's ten billion brain cells could take would need a line of figures almost eighteen miles long to describe it. He knew: he'd written it out, once. He began to recite the figure, clearing his mind of everything but the calculation, and now he was travelling along that line of numbers standing proud like soldiers, mile after mile of them, jostling between digits and dendrites, swimming in streams of chemical transmitters, reaching out his consciousness to interact not with Sam's but with those who were gathered around her.
leave us. we feed
He heard himself speak the words, as if listening to someone else.
'You're the Beast?'
They so named us, once
It seemed to take lifetimes for the creatures to reply. He wondered if they were using Sam's brain to process the meaning of his questions. He felt the words he was delivering were more an impression of meaning than the actual words they used, and in between the syllables came a flurry of piecemeal understanding.
warmth, life, nourishment, survive
They were like bedbugs, fleas or head lice; simply doing what they did.
They happened to do it on a pan-dimensional scale. The Doctor knew then that the Benelisans were wrong. The Beast weren't evil - they lacked the calculating intelligence for malice.
now They have found us, They will kill us again
'You feel that?'
we have not yet enough energy to move on to new hosts. They always find us. They despise us
'They think you destroyed their race.'
the holes in the sky kitted them when They appeared, we go through the holes in the sky. They were few, we were many It was probably expecting too much of a flea that it should grasp interdimensional shift phenomena. 'A low population cannot support you?'
asked the Doctor.
we feed, when fed, we go
'Unless the exterminators arrive,' said the Doctor. He was quite surprised when the Beast signalled their understanding of his obscure reference.
this mind is poisoned with their taint, but it is slow, and she is but one The Doctor didn't understand. 'Sam's mind is slow?'
slow-poisoned.
A long pause. Then, another flurry of feelings and words.
fear. panic, the dark...
The Doctor started as if waking from a nightmare, losing contact with the Beast. His hands scraped along Sam's face as he did so, one of his nails nicking her skin. He covered his mouth as a scratch turned red, looked at her lying there, her face cold and damp.
'Sam. I'm so... Sam...'
He didn't even know what he was trying to say. The last intelligible words of the Beast before he'd been slipped out of contact were everywhere in his head. His voice couldn't articulate them.
she dies before us
***
The Doctor was just standing there when Fitz got back up to the lab. He'd only returned because he hadn't really known where else to go.
'Thought Sam might like some water,' said Fitz, waving a glass in the air.
'How's she doing?'
'Not well,' said the Doctor. 'I think she's dying and I've no idea what I can do to save her.' He thought hard, his eyes bright blue and intense. 'If I could