Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [71]
‘The spawning time is here and you have interfered. You will interfere no more.’
And with that, two huge tongues of oily flesh licked out from around the building and lunged for them.
‘Wait!’ shouted the Doctor, raising his hands. ‘Wait! Listen to me!’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Martha scathingly. ‘That’s going to w–’
She stopped, mid-sentence, as she saw, miraculously, the tendril pause in mid-air, hovering like it had done in front of her back in the otters’ nest. Orlo, Ty and Candy were staring at it in silent horror.
‘Why?’ said Pallister slowly.
‘Because I can help you,’ the Doctor said.
‘You what?’ Martha found herself saying.
‘Shush!’ the Doctor snapped without turning round. ‘I can help you find other planets to colonise,’ the Doctor said loudly, addressing Pallister. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? To blow yourself into pieces, to give your children a lovely little start in life, eh? Well let me help.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘How?’
Martha saw the tentacles flick lazily in the air, like lizard’s tongues, as if they were tasting the Doctor’s statements for truth.
‘My spaceship – the TARDIS.’
‘What is that?’ asked Pallister, his voice flat and dead.
‘It’s how I got here – how I came to this planet. A blue box. You’ve seen it: you pulled Martha out of it, remember, under the water? The otters picked up the image of it from you.’
‘This. . . ?’ said Pallister. And, before their eyes, the tip of the tendril reshaped itself into a rough, featureless approximation of the TARDIS.
‘That’s it!’ cried the Doctor eagerly. ‘You know where it is – if you get it out of the swamp, I can use it to take your little slimey babies to a dozen planets.’ He shrugged. ‘Why just a dozen? Make it a hundred –
no, a thousand! I can spread your children across the galaxy better than you could ever do yourself. None of that wasting ninety-nine per cent of them just for the sake of the one per cent that land near a good school.’
It’s a trick, thought Martha instantly. There was no way the Doctor would offer to help the creature infect other planets, otherworlds. Not even to save her. He’d trap it in the TARDIS or eject it into the sun.
Something like that. She’d seen what he’d done with the Family, back in 1913.
‘Why?’ came the rasping gurgle from Pallister’s mouth.
‘Why? Because I’m like that – always stopping for hitchhikers, aren’t I, Martha? And because it’s the only way to make you leave this planet – and leave these people.’
Pallister just stared at them – or the creature behind it did. Martha had no idea whether it understood the concept of a double-cross. If it was filtering everything through what was left of Pallister’s brain, it must have known the Doctor might be trying to trick it.
But maybe it was like the Doctor had said earlier: instinct versus intelligence. Perhaps the creature’s instinct to reproduce was just so strong, its own intelligence so pitiful, that it wouldn’t be able to see beyond its own blind drive to make more swamp creatures, to fill the universe with copies of itself. Was this some bizarre, twisted version of motherhood (or fatherhood, she supposed)? Is this how any parent would be when faced with the survival of its kids? People went to such lengths to have babies back on Earth, didn’t they? Not that most people would condemn a whole world for one. But still. . . It was a powerful drive.
‘Yes,’ said Pallister suddenly. Without warning, the green tendril that still held the shape of the TARDIS flowed out into a grasping funnel and clamped itself around the Doctor’s head. Ty screamed and staggered back.
‘Yes,’ repeated Pallister soullessly as the rope of alien flesh spread out and began to engulf him. ‘You will help me. You will be me. I will take the TARDIS. I will be everywhere. Now. . . show me how!’
‘No!’ yelled Martha, racing after the Doctor