Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [49]
‘Pictures? Of what?’
The Doctor had reached the very centre of the square and he stopped dead, spinning around on his heels.
‘Swamps, water, otters – just the usual holiday snaps. And a very nice postcard of your old city.’
‘The settlement? Why?’
‘I think they’re curious,’ he whispered. ‘Very curious.’
‘The slime creatures? About the settlement?’
‘About us and about what’s in the settlement. Remember what Col said about them wanting our intelligence? Well intelligence is only useful if directed towards a goal. If it’s used for problem-solving. So we need to think along the lines of what problems the slimeys might have. If we can keep one step ahead of them, if we can out-think them, then maybe we’ve a chance of stopping them. What is in the grey building, by the way – the one nearest the bank, the one they were poking around in as I left.’ Ty frowned.
‘You mean. . . the technical services unit?’
‘Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it,’ he murmured, ‘The “technical services unit”. What’s a “technical services unit” when it’s at home, then?’
‘It’s where all the plans for the Sunday City were kept, where all the power and communications were controlled from. Sort of a nerve centre.’
‘Ahh. . . ’ the Doctor said mysteriously. ‘Now that’s more like it: a nerve centre. In fact, I think it deserves capitals. A Nerve Centre! And an exclamation mark.’
‘Why would the otters want the technic–’
Ty stopped and rolled her eyes as the Doctor raised a finger and an eyebrow.
‘Why would the otters want the Nerve Centre?’ she said wearily.
‘No idea.’
‘And what,’ said Ty, planting her hands on her hips, ‘are we going to fight them with?’
‘One of the greatest all-purpose tools that evolution’s yet come up with,’ the Doctor grinned. He paused, clearly hoping someone would come up with the answer. There was silence.
‘I imagine,’ he said eventually, ‘that the irony of the fact that I’m talking about the human brain will be lost on you both.’
Ty and Candy looked at each other.
‘Honestly,’ he sighed, ‘my wit’s wasted on you people, it really is.’
Martha felt the woven ball move slightly in her hands as the thing inside it shifted again. The dim moonlight filtering in through the roof of the otters’ nest caught it. It was about the size of a fist but blobby and shapeless. Martha made the instant connection between it and the slime-things.
‘It’s a baby isn’t it?’ she said in a whisper. ‘A baby slime creature!’
The otters squeed and chattered, and little groups of them joined hands as if for mutual support. ‘Broken,’ said one – the one with the grey smudge on its ear. ‘Broken leader.’
Martha didn’t understand. Was it ill? Is that how they’d managed to catch it?
‘Look,’ she said firmly. ‘Thanks for the show ’n’ tell. But I’m not sure what you want me to do with it.’
‘Make broken,’ said the otter. ‘Make broken.’ Others joined in and, within seconds, they were chanting in unison.
Martha sighed, setting the ball down by her knee. She was starting – a bit unfairly – to feel irritated by this half-speech that the otters were giving her.
‘You want me to make this more broken?’ she asked, gesturing to the shaking ball.
‘Leader,’ said the one with the smudged ear. ‘Make broken.’
Only then did it suddenly hit her: the otters wanted her to do what they couldn’t. They wanted her to make the ‘leader’ – the parent of the thing in the basket – broken.
They wanted her to kill it!
Marj Haddon felt as though she were drowning in slow motion.
Every breath was laboured and painful, like she was breathing trea-cle. And everything around her was blurred and smeared, as though through a rain-drenched window.
And there was something in her head with her.
She tried to focus – tried