Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [152]
‘And it doesn’t originate on this planet.’
‘Fascinating.’
‘And it wants to go home.’
‘Go home?’ Harrigan snorted.
‘That’s why it’s been trying to reach me,’ said the Doctor.
Harrigan chuckled. ‘The only one that’s going home is me. Moving to a new home.’ The liquorice smell filled the kitchen now, pungent and intense. The big Texan nodded at Creed. ‘Get ready to clear out, boy. I’m moving in. I’m taking over.’ The old man’s voice was dropping to an incantatory cadence, low and hypnotic. ‘Like a two‐ton steer pawing the ground. I’m about to charge and chase you out! Right,’ he hissed. ‘It’s about to start.’
‘Fine. Proceed any time you’re ready,’ said the Doctor. And as he said it, Vincent reared up off the tiled floor and grabbed for the old Texan.
Harrigan fired his gun but Vincent had already driven it up with one hand, so the Colt discharged harmlessly overhead, blasting a shower of plaster off the ceiling.
Vincent reached out his other hand for the big man’s throat. The Texan’s eyes were eerily dark and wide and liquid. His pupils were hugely dilated. The warlock was obviously strong in him. His breath stank of liquorice as Vincent grabbed and squeezed, making contact.
It was Harrigan’s throat that he grabbed.
But it was warlock’s mind that he made contact with. Memories.
Memories of the journey. The long journey. Hurtling through space with the many selves contained in the neat patterned structures of the vehicle.
The bright energy web of that vehicle twisting like a living flame. Weaving through different dimensions of possibility, existing in many different places at once and nowhere at all. It flies between the galaxies. It dances on the edge of existence, carrying ourselves vast distances for a reunion with a far‐flung branch of the Family.
Carrying our anticipation of the reunion like a bouquet of the rarest blossoms. Carrying our excitement across unimaginable distances. Shooting through space faster than thought, keening with the joy of reunion.
Then the unheard‐of happens.
System failure. The energy flux of the ship ripples out of control. We scream back into the hard reality of the physical universe, torn and smashed and cut by the transition.
Dropping from space, drawn by the strong gravity of a nearby planet. A looming blue‐green planet. A cool, ocean‐rich giant that fills the sky as we are sucked into its atmosphere.
Slicing through continents of cloud as we fall, out of control, from a great height.
The vehicle now scorching with friction as it returns to mineral form from raw energy, its molecules slowing and reconfiguring. The vehicle screaming out of control as it wrenches out of the long journey along the ghostly paths. Dropping back into the lower realms.
Falling to the earth.
Through cooling clouds, water vapour scalding to steam at the touch of our cherry‐red hull, superheated now it has solidified into mineral form.
We fall, steaming and twisting. We scream through the sky, a scorching hot new comet in the heavens of this world.
Falling towards the vast green seas of its surface. Towards the strangest maps of its land masses. Falling across half the globe. Falling into night. The dark ground rushing closer. Falling faster and spiralling, using a last powerful thought of the living vehicle to steer itself toward a promising landing site.
Native vegetation. Trees. Thick masses of green to be ploughed into as you plunge from the sky, having dropped from the greatest height thought can comprehend.
A falling stone, burning and screaming and flashing miles of forest into flame at your touch. Tearing into the earth with a sound like thunder, blasting the night open for miles around, forest fire blasting up from the torn earth as horses start kicking down stable doors in villages twenty miles away.
And the whole great slab of this segment of rural Russia shakes with the seismic impact of the ‘meteor’ that falls this night.
And then the pain. The slow crawling out of the tangled wreckage of the ship, a slender trickle of surviving life and intelligence. A tiny thread