Doctor Who_ Wooden Heart - Martin Day [66]
‘Doctor!’ she cried out in unabashed delight, ignoring her surroundings, ignoring everything, and running towards him. She threw her arms around him, laughing.
The Doctor smiled, feigning a casual indifference. ‘I was wondering if you were going to turn up!’
‘Why?’
The Doctor did not respond. Instead, a voice, a whisper, pushed its way into Martha’s mind; as clear as a struck bell, as quiet as a recalled memory.
Now we are all together.
Martha saw Jude turn away from the pulsing creature at the centre of the room. ‘That voice,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘It sounds like the angel.’
‘It’s similar, yes,’ said the Doctor.
‘Angel?’ queried Martha.
‘There’s a creature on this station,’ explained the Doctor. ‘A dark angel, you could say – the sum of human evil.’
‘The moving signal on the scanner…’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Imbued with the life of two universes, the ship could – near enough – keep track of the creature. Just as it appears to hover between our reality and another, so the Castor’s instruments can pick up its intermittent signals.’
‘It’s attacked the Doctor twice,’ said Jude simply. ‘And me once,’ she added. She shivered. ‘It was horrible.’
‘We should have died, been torn apart by our own desires and fears and capacity for evil,’ continued the Doctor.
‘What happened?’ Martha asked.
The Doctor turned to the creature hanging in the centre of the room. Martha noticed that even he was unsure which appendage or protuberance he should be addressing; he made do with a little nod of courtesy. ‘I was hoping you could answer that,’ he said.
The creature shifted slightly, changing the angle of its eternal rotation.
Your friend decided to stay in the unreal world. I have rarely seen such bravery.
The Doctor winked at Martha. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, turning back to the creature. ‘You have only seen the very worst side of human nature. As I said before… I’m truly sorry.’
‘What’s going on?’ whispered Martha.
The Doctor turned on the spot, indicating the entire chamber with his outstretched arms. ‘This is the heart of the Castor – and this is its ultimate prisoner. Its ultimate experiment.’ He spat the last word with distaste.
I was a traveller through the dimensions. Creatures captured me, tortured me, kept me here.
‘Why?’ asked Martha.
The Doctor replied. ‘Our friend has many unique properties. One of them is the ability to soak up emotions and memories and instincts. If you’re a traveller or a researcher it beats taking notes, I suppose. Anyway, some human scientists captured him. They decided, if they attached the right technology, they could take people of unthinkable evil… and tame them. They wanted to hook them up, suck out the evil, and make them good again!’
‘But the Doctor believes good and evil are choices we make, not… flaws in our minds,’ said Jude quietly.
The Doctor nodded energetically, like a teacher commending a pupil. ‘Even if it had worked,’ he said, ‘you’re only making as many problems as you’re trying to solve. You strip away some memories, fair enough – but unless you replace the human mind with a robot brain, you’ve still got the problem of free will. As Jude says, life is all about the decisions we make – to flee from evil, or to confront it. To jump through a door, or to stay behind because someone needs you.’ And he smiled at Martha once more.
And I could not stand the evil that flowed into me…
The Doctor rested a hand on the insubstantial creature. It solidified, then seemed to disappear, then blinked back into existence again. ‘Our friend is more than a mere sponge,’ said the Doctor. ‘Imagine what it was forced to endure, to witness – to experience even. Every killing, every crime, every evil desire, lived and relived, over and over again.’
I had to get rid of the evil. I had to find a way to… stay sane.
Martha nodded. ‘And so this angel creature…’
As if on cue, a dark, shrouded shape flowed through the solid wall and pooled