Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [49]
‘Just send me to prison!’ exclaimed Abbas suddenly, his voice cracking. ‘Don’t send me there!’
The judge paused, glancing down at some notes. ‘You showed no remorse towards your victim, and deliberately misled the subsequent police investigation. You are a man entirely lacking in compassion, pity and forgiveness. You have forced civilised society to treat you in the same way. I can show you no pity, no compassion – nor would I want to. Benjamin Michael Abbas, you are evil, and a menace to all right-thinking people. I’m pleased to say that no one in this room will ever have to see your face again.’
He paused, then nodded to the guards.
‘Take him down.’
Martha nodded in the direction of Saul’s wife. Sara was motionless now, as if in a trance, her eyes looking into the middle distance and seeing nothing.
‘How is she?’
Kristine shrugged. ‘You always think your own child is going to be safe – even if everyone around you is in danger, you think, you hope, you pray… that you’re uniquely blessed – or that your children are, at least.’ Kristine glanced down. ‘When we lost Thorn…’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Martha, knowing the words were inadequate but not knowing what else to say.
Kristine stared at the candle that guttered and spat on the table at her side. She and Martha had found a quiet corner close to Saul and Petr, who stood whispering. Occasionally their voices rose in disagreement, but mostly their heads were together, conspiratorial and anxious.
‘Thorn’s first word,’ said Kristine, indicating the candle, and the stars cape of lanterns that flickered the length and breadth of the room. ‘Light! He just came out with it one day. I was sitting down to bathe him, and was just pouring some water when he pointed at a candle. “Light!” he said, as clear as day, and then he gave me the biggest smile you can imagine. He could be difficult – all children have their moments! – but for the rest of that day he seemed content, as if he’d done all he set out to.’
Martha thought of family gatherings, of weddings and parties terrorised by out-of‐control children – but knew that any parent, for all their scolding and exasperation, would be hurt beyond words if the boy or girl were suddenly snatched from them. ‘You must miss him awfully,’ she said, again cursing her bedside platitudes but not sure she had the vocabulary for anything else.
Kristine nodded silently. Martha rested a hand on Kristine’s arm.
‘I’m intrigued,’ said Martha. ‘You said you prayed for Thorn’s safety. Saul said something about a place where you believe the dead go… But I haven’t seen any churches here.’
Kristine smiled. ‘We believe in a church not made with hands,’ she said simply. ‘What sustains us is everywhere, and in everything – or it’s nowhere at all.’
Martha nodded, thinking of the Doctor on the Castor, wondering if he had yet discovered who – or what – had created, and was now sustaining, this bubble of life. For all the Doctor’s talk of the unreality of this place, she couldn’t help but think of everyone that surrounded her as being real. When you’re presented with suffering, she thought to herself, you react to it on a human level – with sympathy. You’d be something less than human if you didn’t. And did it really matter that these people had been birthed by some sort of technology locked away in a human space station that they had never seen? They had grown, evolved, matured – seemingly become sentient and able to love and hate in equal measure – and she could not abandon them now.
Martha got to her feet, desperate to do something, desperate to make things better for the people around her. She moved past the stiff and upright form of Sara, who shuddered silently, her arms still wrapped