Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [52]
‘If they think I’m going swimming,’ she said, ‘then they’re out of their tiny minds.’
‘Oh, I don’t think they have tiny minds at all,’ the Doctor said. ‘Not the slimeys at any rate. In fact I think they have rather large ones. Not their own, granted, but still pretty big. Think of them as time shares.’
He looked down at her and smiled.
‘SETI!’ Ty cried and snapped her fingers. ‘Not settee-SETI! That computer thingy. But that was abandoned years ago. My grandpa was really into it. Grandma kept complaining about him leaving the computer on all the time.’
‘Knew you’d get there eventually,’ said the Doctor. ‘SETI – the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. So, Professor Benson, tell me what you know about it while we wait for the sandwiches and cakes to arrive.’
‘This is just so’s you can look all smug and clever, isn’t it? Go on then: it was some sort of government scheme – American I think –
to look for alien signals, radio messages.’ She looked at the Doctor.
‘Right?’
He just smiled. ‘And ’cos it needed loads of computing to analyse the signals, they came up with a sort of time-share plan. People all around the world –
ordinary people with computers at home – sort of logged on to this network and let their computer do some of the work for them. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘Gold star, Professor,’ beamed the Doctor.
‘So you’re saying that the slimeys are like that – but with brains?’
‘It fits the evidence. And, as a scientist, you know that that’s what science is all about – looking at the evidence and coming up with a theory that fits it. In their natural state, I bet they’re pretty stupid –
tiny little brains. But when they land on a planet, they find some smart creatures and hijack their brains for a while – get them to do some of the thinking for them. They hive off some thinking, some processing, into – well, say, otters, or people or whatever they can –
and then, later, the otters or people go back to the slimeys, upload the results of all that thinking, and the slimeys repeat it again with other otters.’
‘Or people,’ Ty finished. ‘It’s horrible.’
‘It’s very effective, though.’
Ty was appalled at the Doctor’s attitude.
‘The slimeys use the resources of the planets they infect – no need to carry around whopping great brains of their own. And it means they begin with a head start, as it were. Who better than the natives to know how the local environment works, where stuff is, what the weather’s like, where the best coffee shop is. Instinct becomes intelligence – just like that! Straight to Mayfair, collect two hundred pounds. Brilliant!’
But the expression on his face changed as the waters before them began to swirl and churn. Ty took a step back – only to discover that the otters had enclosed them, trapping them against the shore.
‘You know what you said earlier,’ Ty whispered. ‘About the slimeys being aquatic, and how we’d be safe if we stayed away from the water. . . ’
Suddenly, the surface of the river was broken with a huge, foamy splash. A figure rose up from the water, drenching them all. Ty steeled herself for one of the tendrils that had attacked Martha in the nest.
But the thing that came towards them was the last thing she had expected to see.
It was Pallister.
Pallister stared at them with dead, black eyes, sparkling wetly like the carapaces of monstrous insects. His upright body swung limply, like a corpse, as it floated towards them across the water. Its feet dragged the surface, and they could see the huge tendril that supported him from behind. It split into three smaller ones, moistly green, piercing his skull at the back and the sides, like fingers stuck into a ten-pin bowling ball. They pulsed and throbbed, as if they were pumping fluids in and out of the man’s brain. Ty shuddered, realising that this must have been how Col had died.
‘You,’ said Pallister, his voice bubbling and dribbling from his mouth