Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [36]
‘Of course you would. Well, as soon as I find out, you’ll be the first to know.’
Pallister was thrown.
‘You don’t know why you’re here?’
‘Oh, I know why I’m here.’ The Doctor leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘ Trouble,’ he said simply.
‘Trouble? What sort of trouble?’
The Doctor looked around, as if they might be overheard.
‘The worst kind of trouble, if you take my meaning.’
‘And, erm, what would that be, exactly?’
‘There’s something bad going on here, Mr Pallister. Something very bad indeed – and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’ He paused again for effect. ‘It’s what I do.’
With that, he clasped Pallister’s clammy little hand firmly, gave it a shake, and rushed off to the zoo lab, leaving Sunday’s Chief Councillor standing, dumbfounded, in the middle of the square.
The Doctor was quite impressed at the level of technology that the Sundayans had managed to salvage from the flood. He was less impressed with the breakfast. He was still picking bits of what they laughingly called tomatoes out of his teeth as he carried the otter to the examining table and swung the huge lamp into position over his head.
He held out his hand, palm up, to one side. ‘Swab,’ he said sternly.
‘What?’ Ty stared at him. ‘Sorry. Getting carried away there. Just pass those scissors, will you?’
Ty’s stare became wider.
‘Just a little short back and sides,’ he explained.
Ty handed him the scissors and he set about clipping the hair around the otter’s ears.
‘Well, sir,’ he said in a cheery tone of voice. ‘Going anywhere nice for your holidays? Really? Lovely! See the game last night?’ He snipped and tutted, rolling his eyes. ‘We were robbed, weren’t we, eh? That last-minute penalty, eh?’
‘What are you on about?’ said Ty, helping to pick away the tufts of the otter’s hair as the Doctor reached the skin.
‘Hairdresser’s banter,’ grinned the Doctor. He paused and squinted at his handiwork. ‘He’s not going to be too happy with that when he comes round. Never mind – a bit of gel’ll sort it out. Maybe some extensions. Oooh, there we are: look!’
Ty peered closer: speckling the surface of the skin, in a broad band across its head, stretching from ear to ear, were tiny, dark-red dots.
‘It’s the same as on Martha, isn’t it? What are you doing?’
The Doctor picked up a syringe and handed it to Ty.
‘Like to do the honours? Cerebrospinal fluid, please – five millil-itres.’
Ty took the syringe, tipped the otter’s head to one side, carefully inserted the tip of the needle into the back of its neck and began to withdraw the plunger. The syringe filled up with a brownish-pink fluid.
‘What are we looking for?’
‘I’ll tell you that when we’ve found it. Right!’ He took the syringe from Ty and held it up to the light. ‘Let’s get this over to the bio lab –
I’ve got a feeling this might be just the breakthrough we need.’
‘It’s incredible,’ said Ty, her eyes scanning the screen set into the large, glossy desktop.
The bio lab, situated on the other side of the square, was a consid-erably more impressive building than the zoo lab. The settlers had been lucky that all this hadn’t been lost in the flood too – although it couldn’t begin to make up for the lost settlers themselves. On the outside, it looked much the same as the other buildings – a single-storey log cabin. But inside the walls had been lined with smooth, white plastic sheeting, heat-sealed and brightly lit to create a series of rooms that resembled the inside of a fridge. Cool, clean and clinical, even the air smelled sterile.
Three or four white-coated technicians busied themselves at various pieces of equipment on the benches arrayed around the room. Along with the reassuring beeping and whirring of machinery, there was a low hum of air conditioning. At the centre of the room was a table the size of a barn door, its surface dark and glass-smooth with half a dozen big screens set into it and a host of touch-sensitive panels and buttons around them.
The Doctor peered over her shoulder at the full-colour, computer-augmented