Doctor Who_ Transit - Ben Aaronovitch [116]
'You're too powerful in your own reality,' said Benny/Fred. 'Too dense. You change the frame of reference just by your presence, like matter warping space.'
'You make me sound like a singularity.'
'I'd be careful with your metaphors,' said Benny/Fred. 'Around here they have power.'
The Doctor thought the bangs and yells were growing closer.
'Nervous?' he asked.
'No,' said Benny/Fred.
It started as a sense of stillness somewhere behind the Doctor. He felt it build into a great roaring wall of nothing like a silent tsunami. The shrill voices of the Aces were swept away into nothing.
'That,' said Benny/Fred, 'was the Minister for Things That Go Bump in the Night.'
'Why don't you just integrate me now and be done with it?' asked the Doctor.
'I wanted to see what you'd do first,' said Benny/Fred.
'And?'
'I'm not impressed.'
Node Thirty-Six - The Border
The Aces were all gone, swept away by a sudden, massive adjustment in the systems-operating protocols. Only the vague echoes of their presence remained, the ghost of a ghost in the machine. There was just enough spirit left to mark the weak spot on the border.
The insect noises came first, followed by the damp smell of the forest floor. Millions of leaves rotting down to produce the rich mulch from which the trees could grow, creating the leaves that would also fall and rot.
The node changed colour, became the sea green of sunlight through the canopy of a rainforest. The light broken up by the shadows of phantom branches. Accelerated creepers twisted in and out through the pathways of the node like rough-skinned snakes.
A parrot with neon plumage whirred overhead.
The leopard ran down the forest track. Under her spotted fur her muscles bunched and flexed. Her eyes were yellow with slotted black pupils. Behind trotted two smaller cats shoulder to shoulder, one silver, one green. Cat grins brilliant in the green twilight.
'Wicked,' breathed the Aces as the last of their spirit evaporated.
The King's Buffer
Benny/Fred started with small probing attacks designed to test the Doctor's defences. They manifested as random images, a shower of gold coins, a swarm of hornets, a short localized rainstorm. The Doctor used his umbrella for everything except the rain; instead he used a memory of the Gobi desert, the driest thing we could think of.
'Aren't you going to fight back?' asked Benny/Fred during a pause.
'Fight back against what?' asked the Doctor.
The next attack was extremely powerful and this time invisible. Operating at some unimaginably deep level. The Doctor felt as if he'd stepped into a blast furnace. It forced him to think of ice and of the freezing vacuum of space. That was the trap: cold meant the lowering of a molecules energy state, inaction, brittleness. It left him weak and vulnerable.
Benny/Fred smiled up at him from the throne.
'I am so looking forward to finding out what makes you tick,' she said. The Doctor could feel forces gathering again,
'Look behind you,' said the Doctor.
Benny/Fred looked. The entire throne room was suddenly filled with rainforest. With a roar a leopard leapt out of the trees and devoured the Minister for Rare Data.
'I'd be careful, Fred,' said the Doctor. 'I don't think Italian suits are very filling.'
Benny/Fred turned away from the Doctor and focused on the leopard who was just starting on the Minister for Strange Logic.
'I see,' she said. 'The Aces were just a diversion. This is your real attack.'
The Doctor let his right arm elongate across the space that divided them and grasped hold of Benny/Fred's silver cap badge.
'That's the diversion,' said the Doctor. 'This is the real attack.'
The real Benny was in there, just as the Doctor had suspected. He could feel Fred struggling to hold her in check but there was too much raw emotion sloshing about. Working as hard as he could, Fred could only just hold the integration together.
The Doctor almost felt sorry for him. There was a draining sensation in the Doctor's head as the Hitchhiker moved out. His elongated arm bulged in a very