Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [18]
She finally found the Doctor upstairs in the library, staring at a computer screen. The computer was an old fashioned Apple Mac stacked anachronistically on a pile of leather-bound books on an antique desk.
The library was a mess. Floor to ceiling, shelves were stacked with books. Learned treatises bound with antique leather, lurid paperbacks, highly technical science texts and children’s picture books lay randomly heaped on the dusty carpeted floor and on every available surface.
There was a billiard-table in here but Benny couldn’t remember it ever being clear enough to play on. The old battered silk Biedermyer sofa had, also, long since been buried so deep in books that you couldn’t sit on it. There were two fat floral armchairs, both succumbing slowly to the book cancer but still usable. The only piece of furniture which remained free of reading matter was an odd glass cylinder.
The cylinder was huge, perhaps two metres tall and as big in diameter as a bicycle tyre. It was seated on a black metal oblong with a few simple analogue controls and a green LED display. A faint electrical buzz could be heard if you put your ear against the cool glass. The sound of motors turning as they slowly stirred the green liquid in the cylinder.
In its murky depths you could intermittently see the shape of a pot-bellied, naked, middle-aged man.
Benny tried not to look at the man in the glass cylinder as she hurried into the library, over to the old desk where the Doctor sat.
He glanced up from the computer screen and smiled at her. Immediately Benny began to feel less spooked. She always took comfort in the Doctor’s presence. If ever there was someone you could turn to when weird shit happened, it was the Doctor. The strange howling she’d heard outside began to diminish in her memory. Had she really heard it?
‘Is something wrong?’ said the Doctor. ‘You look a little out of breath.’
‘Had to run into the kitchen. Supper was about to burn,’
she said. ‘I had to turn it down.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said the Doctor, looking up from the computer screen. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m afraid I’ve become quite absorbed. Was it ruined?’
‘No. I caught it in time. Absorbed in what?’
The smile faded from the Doctor’s face. ‘Look Benny, you’ve had a long flight. Why don’t we talk in the morning?’
‘I know that tone of voice,’ said Benny. ‘Something’s wrong.’
‘Well, it’s something that’s been brewing for some time,’
said the Doctor. ‘I’ve had to keep my eye on it, like the watched pot. Hoping it would never reach boiling point. But unfortunately, now it has.’ The Doctor looked at her, his dark eyes serious. ‘The pot is boiling and I’ve been forced to intervene.’
‘Is that why you’ve sent Chris off?’
‘Yes. He’s gone under cover to try and contain the situation. But I can see all this talk is worrying you. Why don’t we go and have supper? There’s plenty of time to talk later.
You look tired.’
‘I’ll be OK,’ said Benny. But in fact she felt a sudden rush of exhaustion. She put a hand out to support herself. But instead of gripping the dusty bookshelf she expected, her fingers brushed across smooth, cool glass.
Benny looked up and saw the tall cylinder full of green liquid. In it the pale body of the big man floated. Some stirring of the slowly circulating current had pressed his face against the curved glass. His fat cheek was bunched in a sneering one-sided smile and one of his eyes was pinched shut while the other was open, staring fixedly at Benny. The general effect was of a drooling lunatic winking salaciously at her.
Benny heard herself giggle.
‘By the way,’ said the Doctor. ‘Why did you come running up here? You seemed very excited about something.’
Benny had to think for a moment before she remembered the thing that had happened in the garden.
Then she remembered the howling that had risen out of the dark, summer night. As she remembered, the fear returned.