Doctor Who: Drift (32 page)

‘Okay,’ Morgan finally folded his arms, it’s been an entertaining routine, but spare me the encore. Whatever it is you people are hiding here, sort it out. Do whatever you have to do. Spill whoever’s blood it takes. Because we’ve drawn our lines in the snow out there and I don’t want any more of my people shedding theirs, do I make myself perfectly clear?’

The Doctor brought his leaden eyes to bear. ‘Crystal.’

Morgan drew a steely breath. He turned and exited quickly before the hollow wells at the corners of his eyes chose to fill.

The young man marching out through the hotel lobby looked nothing like Makenzie’s kid brother. Too tender about the eyes, too drawn and fatigued. Actually, yes, there was a resemblance to Morgan, that time after he had lost his first fight in the schoolyard.

He hadn’t wanted to talk then. He certainly wouldn’t now.

Makenzie barred him with a hand planted on his chest.

‘Morgan. I know a way we can get these people out of here.

Every one of them. Across that lake.’

Morgan regarded him for all of a second. Then shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. Too dangerous.’

Makenzie practically growled. ‘God, Morgan, come on! You can’t save this town - and don’t pretend you ever came here to do that!’ Makenzie raised a fist, but didn’t quite know what to hit. It hovered in the air uncertainly, then descended for a firm but controlled landing on his brother’s shoulder. ‘You left this town to save your own life, Morg. Can’t you just stop and think about saving some others for a change?’

Morgan’s gaze was starting to toughen up again. Makenzie took heart from that.

Lieutenant Hmieleski and the girl, Leela, were laid out on a couple of single beds, blank and lifeless, while Corporal Pydych busied himself setting up the tubes and saline drips according to Melody’s instructions and the Doctor supervised in a detached manner from the end of Leela’s bed. Parker stewed silently in the corner armchair, massaging his hand.

‘Our intruder attacks the nervous system,’ the Doctor had reasoned aloud, ‘so as long as my blood is operating outside of its normal jurisdiction, so to speak, the antibodies should start doing their work completely unopposed.’

He made it sound so simple, and yet he was so plainly wary of potential complications. If there was ever going to be a safe time to make amends, this was it, Melody supposed.

She sidled up to the Doctor. ‘Doctor, I’d like to apologise for my partner’s behaviour.’

The Doctor wheeled around. ‘Mm?’

Melody steered him gently out of Pydych’s earshot. ‘I tried to tell him there were far more civilised ways to request a simple blood donation.’ she laughed under a sigh.

Fingers gripped her wrist like a handcuff. ‘I would hardly call pickpocketing civilised.’

Melody swore under her breath. ‘Sorry.’ she said, easing her hand out of the Doctor’s pocket. But you must understand, as government agents we can’t allow things like blood samples to fall into the wrong hands. Someone less scrupulous than yourself might construe all manner of highly personal information.’

‘Ah, well. I’m not as scrupulous as all that.’ The Doctor let go of her hand and retrieved something from his pocket. He slapped the graviton distortion sensor into her palm. ‘But I do like to return things when I’ve finished with them. It’s more neighbourly.’ He turned to face her, cheerfully curious all of a sudden. ‘Do you suppose we could be neighbours? I mean, technically I’m of no fixed abode, so it’s difficult to say who my neighbours are, but I’m sure I must have passed through your area at one time or another.’

‘Excuse me?’ Melody fluttered her lashes, retreating behind a shallow smile.

‘Oh come on, I’ve complimented you on your intelligence.

Don’t insult mine.’ He dipped his face level with hers, ‘It’s not medical information you’re anxious to conceal. You’re worried I know enough to construct a DNA profile from that sample, a profile I might pass on to the relevant authorities - a profile the Captain might have to investigate, hmm? Come on. you can tell me. Am I getting warm?’

Melody’s smile evaporated under the heat.

Little more than a mile. And yet, for all Makenzie could see past the church, it might as well have been the exodus to the Promised Land. The view was a silk screen, falling to pieces before his eyes and beyond it, maybe, the darker streak of ink was the wooded headland where they would find the small resort town of Winnipesaukee and salvation.

Meanwhile the folk of his town were filing past to assemble in the church, and he was starting to feel like the only usher at a mass funeral.

Men, women and children, collected in little bundles. Far fewer faces than there should have been. The congregation would be a severely diminished one.

The Lowell woman was being lead past by old Phil Downey

- apparently he knew the woman. Locked inside with her personal trauma, she looked like she’d need leading around for the next ten years of her broken life. At least.

As Martha was carried by on a stretcher, all jittery under her blankets. Makenzie decided to follow her inside, sit with her awhile. They were all waiting on the word from his brother anyway, and Makenzie couldn’t think of any better place to wait than inside the church.

The Doctor whipped out a plastic folder full of documents, then cast his coat over the armchair, (apparently) forgetting it was occupied. Flopping indecorously on the couch alongside Leela’s bed. he swung his long legs to make himself perfectly comfortable.

Predictably. Parker leaped up, fit to explode. Drawing on all her reservoirs of patience. Melody coolly dismissed Pydych and wandered over to perch on the edge of the couch. She waited there with the needle, while the Doctor rolled up his shirtsleeve.

‘I do hope you’ll be gentle,’ he said, settling back to read.

‘You won’t need much. About an armful. I should think.’

‘So,’ Melody hazarded, ‘you found some time to browse our computer files.’

‘Well, there was a great deal of non-standard software which started me wondering,’ he answered, skimming the top sheets of the documents. ‘Too many files relating to things extraterrestrial and not much else, that sort of thing. Of course I had my suspicions, both of you wearing sunglasses without bumping into things. And you’re really too intelligent for intelligence agents, for another thing. Well, one of you is.’

Parker’s shadow tensed, but Melody waved him off. ‘Then Mr Theroux here chose to refer to the Stormcore by its original designation - Prism. Over thirty years out of date.’

‘Quite, well, we have been here a long while,’ conceded Melody tightly. ‘Anyway, you must have seen the files we’ve collated on your good self, Doctor. Your UNIT file.’

‘Ah, blackmail is an ugly word, but it never seems to stop people using it.’

‘No, that’s not what I’m getting at.’ Melody waited for him to look up from the pages. ‘Doctor, we’ve been stuck here for longer than I care to say. Our best chance of finding some means of transportation home lay in securing positions within the government.’

‘The government that brought our craft down in the first place!’ complained Parker.

‘Ah, well at least you’re a species who appreciates irony.

That’s something.’

‘Anyway, Doctor,’ Melody smiled patiently, ‘we came across your file years ago, and it didn’t take much to work out your race of origin. All your different guises, as it were. And there’s no way you stayed on Earth voluntarily - not for that long-term stretch you did. So I’m betting you understand - what it’s like to be stranded, unable to get home or even just leave, travel where you want.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, there was always plenty to see and do.’

But Melody saw straight through the glib front that time.

‘Oh, all right,’ the Doctor dropped the documents in his lap grudgingly. He searched her gaze like he was scanning a familiar star chart. ‘Well, since we have so much in common, we really should be playing on the same team, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I’m all for that, Doctor,’ Melody stood, openly relieved.

‘Where do we start?’

Behind her Parker remained silent. Sulking, no doubt.

‘Garvey.’ Morgan clapped a hand on the older sergeant’s back as soon as he’d found him. The man looked like he’d had a rough time up on the mountain, and his depleted squad had only rolled into town on the snowmobiles a short while ago.

‘Take two of your men and break me a trail out over the lake.’

He brought his arm down like a knife, cutting a line out past the church, where he had sent his brother to gather in the flock. ‘South west heading. Make damn sure we’ve got a minimum eight inches of ice all the way. otherwise those people are heading out on foot.’

‘Sir, I’d like to respectfully request-’

‘Denied. Get moving. When you’re done you can come back and guide the convoy across.’

Morgan spun on his heel and marched off, mad at the guy for wanting to be a hero. Nobody in their right minds would ask to stay behind and defend this place. Nobody.

Parker refused to pace the room - he wasn’t an expectant father - but he was rapidly getting bored of watching the Doctor’s blood meandering through the tubes, its course diverging to each of the beds. Melody reckoned on an hour or more to infuse the two patients and it was starting to feel like double that, when the Doctor leaped off the couch like Archimedes out of his bath.

‘What have we got?’ Parker darted forward.

The Doctor shushed him while he leafed through the papers a second time. ‘Melody, would you be so good as to check on our patients?’

Parker bit his tongue, irked to see Melody obliging without a word. He could see from here that the frozen lattice was clearing from both patients’ complexions.

‘Looks like your antibodies are doing the trick nicely, Doctor.’

‘Delighted to hear it.’ The Doc yanked the tube out of his arm and tossed it aside along with about half the papers. He made a beeline for the dresser, and cleared its surface of everything but the lamp. Then he set out several sheets of one document under its illumination.

‘Take a look at this. Most of it’s some nonsense about a commando raid on a local observatory.’ Presumably the sheets he had left strewn over the couch and floor. ‘This is the interesting part: weather reports.’

‘Sure, they get me leaping out of bed every morning.’

‘When your enemy appears to be meteorological in nature, they should do.’

Melody fetched a Band-Aid for the Doctor’s arm. Parker shook his head at the sight of his partner playing nursemaid, then moved to peer over the Doctor’s shoulder.

The fact that he didn’t care for wind and rain, and was rapidly losing what admiration he’d ever had for snow, was essentially the full extent of Parker’s meteorological expertise.

He’d seen radar pictures before though and the pages looked ordinary enough to him.

‘See this area of low pressure,’ the Doc pointed, ‘driving a severe cold front in from the north-west. Here it runs into drier winds from Canada, and we get this cyclonic storm system that seems to be very taken with the state of New Hampshire.’ He whizzed his finger around in a hurricane-like spiral, then tapped the next snapshots in sequence. ‘But look: the key storm centres divide and multiply - into increasing numbers of microstorms.’

‘Like cellular division.’ Parker searched the others’ eyes for confirmation.

Melody dropped into a crouch for a closer look at the last few frames. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The concentrations of nimbostratus increase with each division. It’s more like accretion.’

The Doctor stood tall and straight, like a monument to the dead. ‘Precisely. Each storm centre amasses greater and greater energy as it forms and the cycle continues. Increased density and mass around gravitational centres, like the formation of star systems. Except this one is very much a living system.’

‘So. Where’s it getting its building blocks?’

‘Parker, we already know how it accumulates mass.’ Melody rose slowly. ‘Biomass.’

Parker was sorry he asked.

‘There
is where it’s formed its nucleus. Right above Melvin Village.’

‘Let me guess. Doc - you pinpointed the Pris - the Stormcore, using
our
device.’

‘It’s no more than you were hoping to do.’ The Doctor gave Parker pause to digest that, then he was off, headed for the door. ‘In any case, that’s our key. Come on!’

‘Wait, Doctor.’ He didn’t, leaving both Melody and Parker to chase him along the landing. ‘What are you going to do?’

Melody was asking. ‘Try to communicate with it?’

But the Doctor ploughed ahead, launching his answers behind him like depth charges in the wake of a destroyer.

‘No! Too many people have already tried that. The cult, Kristal.’

‘So what is it with this thing? Some alien intelligence that rejects all communication?’

‘Who said anything about rejection, Agent Theroux?’ The Doctor stopped at the head of the stairs. ‘No, I think it wants contact. Think about it: if a child reaches out to touch a flame, they’re very likely to get their fingers burned. But we can warn our children of the dangers, they can learn. But what if the fire reaches out to touch the child. What does it feel? What does it learn? Nothing. It just burns because that’s what it does when it touches.’