Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building (6 page)

35

He leapt into the shrubbery at the edge of the lawn and started thrashing through the thick undergrowth. There had to be a set of controls here somewhere! There just had to be! Otherwise. . . no one could get out, could they? And Solin had managed to get out into the wilderness, hadn’t he? So there had to be. . .

And he found it. Hidden behind the overgrown branches and thick grass. Another pillar box. It was as if it wasn’t meant to be found.

As if no one living in the Dreamhome had any business venturing out into the wicked woods.

Well see about that,
thought the Doctor grimly. He flung open the control panel, set his sonic to full power, and started messing about with the intricate innards of the box. A shower of sparks shot out and he laughed jubilantly. The crackling of the force shield increased in pitch. The Doctor jabbed at the wires a few extra times for good measure, and stood back slightly, nodding with satisfaction as a door-shaped aperture started to appear in the gauzy shields before him.

This was it. It was opening up for him.

‘Doctor! Stop!’

His head whipped round. ‘Whaaaat?’ And he cursed with frustration.

‘Doctor!

This is forbidden!

You may do anything you like in

Dreamhome. . . but tampering with the force shield is expressly forbidden! Stop and desist!’

The Doctor pulled a sullen face. ‘Are you sure, Stirpeek?’

The bulky robot was hurtling across the lawn towards the Doctor, putting on a surprising turn of speed. He was accompanied by several other, very determined and outraged-looking Servo-furnishings. Their eyes were glowing an indignant red. All of them were shouting now; telling him to stop. Behind them, lights were popping on all over the Dreamhome, as alarms went off, and family members woke, alerted by the noise.

How embarrassing,
thought the Doctor. And then: ‘Oowwww!’ he cried out, as a hot laser bolt sizzled through the air. It knocked him back from the controls and made him drop his sonic in the grass. ‘Hey, hang on. . . ’ he shouted. That REALLY STUNG!’

36

Stirpeek and the others ringed him around and, all of sudden, they were menacing rather than comic. Stirpeek glided right up to the Doctor, who was forced to stare back at the ticking wheels and cogs of the robot’s brain. ‘Professor Tiermann has instructed us to punish anyone,’ Stirpeek told him politely, ‘who breaks the fundamental rules of Dreamhome. And what is more, we are fully authorised to kill.’

37

HewasledindisgracebytheServo-furnishingsbacktotheTiermann homestead. By now the whole Dreamhome was ablaze with light, and the whole family would be up, waiting for him.

The Doctor hung his head as Stirpeek and the others led him along.

Several of them had spiky metal appendages hooked into his clothes.

When he tried to surprise them by bolting, whirling and trying to run, all he succeeded in doing was tearing one of the pockets of his coat, which made him even crosser.

‘I think you’ll find that it’s possibly rather better not to resist, Doctor,’ Stirpeek pointed out helpfully.

Back in the drawing room, the Doctor was confronted by the whole Tiermann family, plus Martha. All were in dressing gowns and wore a range of expressions from outright fury to dismay and disappointment. Martha gave him a quizzical look and all he could do was shrug at her.

At the moment all the Doctor could think about was the TARDIS.

Now Tiermann would see to it that it would be impossible to get out there to retrieve it.
I’ve really messed up,
thought the Doctor glumly.

39

‘We trusted you, Doctor,’ Tiermann thundered. He was wearing a very glitzy golden dressing gown. ‘We took you into our home and, though we knew you were quite disapproving of the way we lived, we made you our guest. And you repay us like this! By sabotaging our defensive force shields!’

Amanda Tiermann sat carefully down on an armchair, looking very sorrowful indeed. She looked as if the Doctor had been caught com-mitting the worst crime imaginable. Her son sat by her, looking similarly woebegone.

‘Rubbish,’ the Doctor protested. ‘I wasn’t sabotaging anything!’

Stirpeek spoke up, ‘He was jabbing that sonic device into the force-shield mechanism, sir. I believe that he was trying to break through to outside.’

The Doctor shot the robot a venomous glance. ‘Well, that’s quite true. But I was just trying to get out so I could get to my ship. . . We left it out there. I wasn’t trying to damage your shields. . . ’

‘Sir,’ Stirpeek piped up again. ‘Sensors indicate widespread damage and fluctuating effectiveness of the shields across eighty-four per cent of the dome.’

‘What?’ cried Tiermann. Amanda jerked in her chair, her face stricken with fear. ‘We are almost defenceless!’ her husband bellowed.

He marched up to the Doctor and glared down into his face.

Martha darted forward. ‘The Doctor would never have done anything like that on purpose. Believe me! That’s not what he’s like. . . ’

‘How do we know?’ cried Tiermann. ‘He comes here, we welcome him. He tampers with our defences. . . ’

The Doctor broke in, enunciating very carefully: ‘I didn’t do any harm to the force shields. The fluctuations and the damage are caused by the approach of the Voracious Craw. Electronics often go haywire as the Craw comes nearer. It is a well-recorded fact. That’s what’s happening here.’

They all stared at him. ‘Funny,’ Tiermann said, in a quieter, infinitely more threatening voice. ‘How all of this. . . disaster arrives alongside you, Doctor.’

‘Hilarious, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor grimly.

40

Martha tried again: ‘He means no harm. Neither of us do. We just came here to help. . . ’

Amanda Tiermann spoke then, startling them all. ‘But, my dear, he was sneaking out in the night, back to his ship. He was quite content to leave you behind here. What about that?’

Martha frowned in confusion. ‘But, he wouldn’t! That’s not what he was doing!’

‘I was bringing the TARDIS here, under the shields,’ the Doctor said.

‘Or at least I would have, given half a chance. These robots of yours are very annoying, Tiermann.’

‘Take him,’ Tiermann instructed, making a lofty gesture.

The

ramshackle collection of robots surrounded the Doctor once more.

They would have been laughable in their incongruity, if the Doctor hadn’t also been aware of how incredibly strong they were. He felt himself grasped and pinioned by Stirpeek, the canapé robot and the spindly robot responsible for making sure all the high windows were closed at night. The Doctor wasn’t able to budge an inch as the Servo-furnishings waited to hear what Tiermann was going to say next.

‘We need to put him out of the way,’ Tiermann said thoughtfully.

‘Until it is time for us to leave. The Doctor has proved himself to be a meddler. And we cannot allow him to interfere with our escape.’

‘But he wouldn’t!’ Martha cried out.

‘Ssh, Martha,’ Solin said, stepping up to gently take her arm. He knew that there was no use arguing with his father in this mood. Tiermann had become imperious and hectoring. He was used to getting his own way.

The Doctor had stopped trying to escape from the robots’ many arms. He simply stood there looking cross – with himself, more than anything.

‘Put him down in the cellars, deep under Dreamhome,’ Tiermann said at last.

Martha could have sworn she saw the robots shiver at these words.

But could robots really shiver with fear? ‘The very bottom,’ Tiermann added, as the robots started dragging the Doctor towards the elevator doors. ‘Level Minus Thirty-Nine.’

41

Martha felt Solin jerk in surprise at this. ‘What’s Level Minus Thirty-Nine?’ she asked.

‘None of us go there,’ Solin said. ‘It’s where we put old stuff. Useless stuff. Stuff we’ll never need again.’

‘Oh great!’ cried the Doctor, as the elevator pinged and the doors whooshed open. ‘I heard that! So, what? You’re going to shove me in your old lumber room? Your basement dump? Your junk room at the centre of the world? And then you’re going to conveniently forget about me, eh?’

The robots dragged him into the small lift.

‘Doctor!’ Martha cried.

‘Don’t,’ Solin told her. ‘At least he’s still alive.’

‘What?’ Martha gasped.

‘We’ve got other things to concentrate on, Doctor,’ said Tiermann.

‘We need to plan our departure. We don’t need to hear any more from you, thank you. Some posturing know-it-all. . . ’

‘Martha!’ The Doctor yelled, as the doors started to close. ‘I’ll –’

And with that, the doors closed on him.

The lift plummeted down the shaft. They could feel the vibration of it through the living room floor as it whizzed down thirty-nine levels.

Martha hated to imagine the place they were taking him.

She whirled round to face Tiermann: ‘You’ve got it so wrong about the Doctor. And you’re going to regret this.’

Tiermann tutted at her. ‘I shouldn’t think so, my dear. And you should be glad that I’m not banishing you down there with him. You are his friend. You are not to be trusted, either.’

Martha sensed that Amanda was behind her. She touched the girl’s arm in support as Martha faced up to Tiermann’s crazy, vengeful leer.

‘This house will watch you,’ Tiermann promised. ‘If you lift a finger to help your friend, the Dreamhome will know. It will tell me! And I’ll have you sent away, too! Deep, deep, deep under Dreamhome!’

And then Tiermann stormed off back to bed. With an anguished glance at Martha, Amanda scurried after him.

Martha was left looking at Solin, who seemed quite shaken, himself.

∗ ∗ ∗

42

‘He’s cracking up,’ Solin said hollowly. ‘I told you he would. It’s the pressure. He’s really losing it.’

The two of them were sitting in the kitchen now that Solin’s parents had vanished to their rooms again. The kitchen was an incredible, spacious area filled with devices Martha couldn’t even begin to guess the purpose of. There was a corner with soft cushions and settees, and here she sat with Solin in the very early hours. Solin had one of the kitchen robots dial up some hot chocolate as a peace offering.

It was taking Martha some time to cool down. ‘You don’t understand. It isn’t right. You can’t just lock the Doctor up. . . !’

Solin kept his voice soft and calm. He said, ‘Just let my father compose himself, Martha. You see, he reacts like this sometimes. It is possible that he might see things differently in the morning. . . ’ Solin noticed that Martha wasn’t drinking her hot chocolate. He realised why, when he saw her eyeing the kitchen robots warily.

‘You don’t have to be scared of them, you know.’

She looked at him narrowly. ‘Hmm?’

‘The Servo-furnishings.’

‘They were pretty rough with the Doctor. The way they had a hold of him. . . ’

‘They are our servants. They do as we tell them. They can’t hurt us.’

Martha pulled a face like she wasn’t convinced. She sighed deeply.

She wasn’t convinced by any of it any more. The welcome they had received here at the Dreamhome. All the polite manners from Tiermann and his wife. It all just disguised the rottenness underneath.

Anyone who could treat the Doctor like a criminal; like a saboteur and a thief in the night. . . well, Martha didn’t think much of them.

‘I’m sorry, Martha,’ Solin said, leaning forward earnestly. ‘I know my father is wrong about your Doctor.’

This mollified her somewhat. She sipped her chocolate. It was deliciously thick and, even though it had come from a machine in the wall, not at all synthetic-tasting.

‘I’m sure we can sort this all out,’ Solin told her.

43

Martha nodded. At least one thing had come good out of tonight’s fracas. She and Solin were on decent terms again. ‘I need to get back to bed,’ she said.

Martha made sure that the house was quiet again before she got out of bed.

It was the dark before dawn and she was determined to use these last few hours of sleep-time to find the Doctor. She slipped nimbly out of her room and into the corridors that took her back to the large drawing room. She moved stealthily between deep pockets of cool shadow, and pale squares of fake moonlight. She dodged past Servo-furnishings and prayed none would burst into life at her approach and demand to know what she was doing. But the robots she passed near kept still and quiet. She wasn’t doing any harm. She wasn’t touching anything vital. They were letting her be, for now, and Martha was grateful.

Carefully, calmly, she made her way through the wide corridors of the house. Don’t let anyone wake and find me, she thought. Not even Solin. He’d be disappointed in her, she knew, after promising to help.

Here she was, going it alone.

But she had to try, didn’t she? The Doctor and Martha: they looked out for each other. They were responsible for each other. Smith and Jones. She couldn’t rest easy with him locked up somewhere deep, deep, deep underground.

Here were the doors to the lifts. Here, the elevator had swallowed the Doctor up, in front of her shocked eyes. He had been taken down to. . . what was it? Level Minus Thirty-Nine?