Night Of The Humans Page 4

  'It's a ship,' breathed Ahmed, his hands and face pressed up against the window.

  'Yes, Corporal Ahmed, we can see that,' said Captain Jamal.

  'No...' said Ahmed, turning around to face them. 'I mean, it's a ship. We're rescued! We're actually rescued!'

  Before Captain Jamal could say anything further, Ahmed and Charlie had raced out from the bridge. After a second's hesitation, Amy, Captain Jamal and Dr Heeva followed them.

  'It just had to be humans, didn't it?' said the Captain. 'And you know, we'll never hear the last of it.'

  'Quite,' said Dr Heeva. 'And of course, the way they'll talk about it, it won't just be us these humans saved. It'll be the whole flipping galaxy.'

  Amy scowled at Dr Heeva and the Captain, and followed after Ahmed and Charlie as they ran

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  down several flights of stairs to the loading bay's entrance.

  Ahmed was carrying his rifle.

  'Well...' he said, noticing Amy's disapproving glare, 'you never know, eh?'

  They left the hull of the Beagle XXI and ran out across the plain to where the yellow spaceship had landed. Written in dashing calligraphy along its hull was the ship's name: The Golden Bough.

  For a moment, Amy and the crew of the Beagle stood around the ship, gazing up at it in silenced awe. Under the very thin veil of dust that had coated it upon landing, its canary-coloured hull still shone. It could not have looked more incongruous, in the bleak and barren landscape of the Gyre; like a glittering diamond in a mound of coal.

  When a door in the hull hissed open, all five of them jumped and took a step back. The door lowered itself with hydraulic grace, revealing a flight of gleaming chrome steps, and there was a moment's pause before there appeared, at the top of the stairs, a man in a shining silver spacesuit. Faced by Amy and the Sittuun, all of them covered in grey dust, the new arrival looked strangely glamorous and unfazed. He ran down the steps, his beaming smile revealing perfectly white teeth.

  His hair was styled in a way that reminded Amy of the kind of film stars she had seen in old movies, and his upper lip was adorned with a thin and rakish moustache.

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  'Afternoon!' said the stranger, as he stepped down onto the Gyre.

  The Sittuun looked at one another, then Amy, and then back to the stranger, who walked straight up to Captain Jamal, holding out his hand.

  'Dirk Slipstream at your service,' he said. 'You must be Captain Jamal al-Jehedeh. Am I correct?'

  Captain Jamal nodded. 'You are! he said, a little awkwardly.

  'Jolly good. So... Seems you chaps have run into a spot of bother.' Dirk Slipstream gazed up at the wreck of the Beagle XXI 'Blimey. She's looking a bit worse for wear, what?'

  'I'm sorry! said Captain Jamal. 'But... who... are you?'

  Slipstream's gaze snapped back to the Captain, his eyes growing wide. He looked offended in some way.

  'I'm Dirk Slipstream! he said, as if that were explanation enough. 'Formerly of the Terran Airborne Division. Won four Silver Buzzards at the Battle Of Krontep?'

  Captain Jamal said nothing.

  'Well, anyway! Slipstream continued, 'I've gone freelance.

  Search and rescue mainly. Heard you fellas were having some trouble out here in the back of beyond, so thought I'd come and offer you a lift out of here.'

  'That's... that's brilliant! said Dr Heeva.

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  Though Amy wasn't even sure if they could, she thought the Sittuun doctor was about to cry.

  'Excellent! said Slipstream. 'Well, chaps and chapesses...

  You'd best get your bags packed. You are being rescued!'

  Charlie and Ahmed cheered, and Captain Jamal and Dr Heeva gently embraced one another.

  'But...' said Amy. 'What about the Doctor?'

  The Sittuun turned to face her, their expressions grave.

  'What?' said Slipstream. 'Doctor? Which Doctor?'

  'He's my friend,' said Amy. 'And the humans kidnapped him. They've still got him.'

  'Humans, you say?'

  'Yes. There are humans here, but they're not... they're not like us. They're different. They captured the Doctor and they took him away.'

  Slipstream thought on this a moment, pacing back and forth in the dust and stroking his chin between forefinger and thumb.

  'Humans, eh?' he said eventually. 'Must be that settlement I passed when I was coming in to land. Few miles east of here, if you can call it east. Blasted thing's as flat as a pancake and twice as round. Most confounding. So who's this Doctor chappy then, eh?'

  'Like I said... He's my friend. And he's my only way home.'

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  Slipstream nodded sympathetically. 'I see! he said. 'Well... I do hate to see a young filly all upset. Breaks a chap's heart.'

  'What are you saying?' asked Captain Jamal, suddenly concerned. 'You're not seriously thinking of-'

  'My dear Captain, back where I'm from we have a little thing called honour. If there's a poor chap being held by those savages, it's my job to rescue him. Now who's with me?'

  Slipstream turned to face Charlie, Ahmed and Amy. The younger Sittuun looked at one another.

  'We should,' said Charlie.

  Ahmed didn't seem so sure. 'Really? But we could just fly out of here. Right now. We could be gone. We'd never have to see this place again...'

  'But we left him there! said Charlie, looking across at Amy. 'Her friend. And he could have helped us, but we left him there.'

  Amy didn't have to think twice about it. She turned to Slipstream. 'I'm in! she said.

  'Jolly good. Now, the only trouble is, the Golden Bough won't take us out that far. The magnetic pole here plays havoc with her navigation. We'll have to go on foot. Best get everything you need, and we'll be off in a jiffy. Yes?'

  Captain Jamal began shaking his head. 'No! he said. 'No, this is insane. Mr Slipstream—'

  'You can call me Dirk, old chap.'

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  Captain Jamal huffed. 'Dirk... In a few hours' time a comet will smash into this world. Our mission is to destroy the Gyre before that happens. We do not have the time for you to launch some half-baked rescue mission. You have a working ship.

  Let's activate the Nanobomb and get out of here.'

  Slipstream raised one eyebrow laconically. 'Steady on, old chap! he said. 'Y'see... The thing I've learned over the years, Captain, is that there's nothing like bad press to ruin a man's career. Let me explain... When we get off this barren, godforsaken world and back to civilisation, do you really want to be the man who left a fellow traveller to die in the clutches of those brutes? Do you? No. I thought not. Now you run along and gather your belongings. I'm rescuing the Doctor.'

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  Chapter

  5

  From the upturned shuttle near the city gates, the Doctor was taken by his captors down into a subterranean network of damp, dark tunnels.

  They came eventually to a wrought-iron gate guarded by a short, plump man with a face like a bulldog.

  'Who is this?' grunted the guard.

  'He is a heretic,' replied Sancho. Tuco says to put him in a cell. Django will deal with him later.'

  The guard nodded and grunted once more and opened the gate. They took the Doctor through into the city's dungeons, the guard waddling in front of them, his heavy bulk shifting from side to side as he walked.

  'Say, Sancho,' said the Doctor.

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  Sancho looked across at the Doctor, his eyebrows furrowed.

  'What?'

  'We made a good team, didn't we? Earlier on? Us versus the Sollogs?'

  Sancho scowled at the Doctor. 'No team! he snapped. 'You were a prisoner.'

  'Yes, but still... The look on their faces... well, if you can call them faces... when I did the old trick with the pipe? That was priceless. Wa
sn't it?'

  Sancho's expression softened, and the Doctor was sure that for just one second he saw the traces of a smile beginning to appear.

  They came eventually to a vaulted chamber filled with individual prison cells, and the guard began rattling his truncheon along the bars.

  'Man-co!'

  he

  sang,

  tauntingly.

  'Maaan-co!

  Hey,

  Wordslinger... We've got a friend for you.'

  The Doctor looked through into one of the cells and saw a man sitting on a low cot with his head in his hands. He was wearing an ill-fitting navy blue blazer with tarnished brass buttons; a jacket that clearly hadn't been tailored for the wearer.

  The man looked up, straight at the Doctor, and smiled weakly.

  'He's a heretic, just like you, Manco!' leered the guard. He unclipped a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked the cell opposite Manco's. 'Get in,' he snarled, and the Doctor did as he was told.

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  The door was slammed shut with a loud clang and, locking it, the guard peered in at the Doctor with a toothless grin and laughed through his nose. Sancho gave the Doctor one last look, a puzzled frown, and then they left.

  When he was sure they were far from the dungeon, the Doctor surreptitiously drew his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and aimed it at the lock. It chirruped and squealed, its thin green beam illuminating the lock, but nothing happened.

  He'd thought as much. Some locks were just too old and too alien for even his trusty screwdriver. Looking up, he saw his fellow prisoner looking across the dungeon at him from his cell.

  'What... what is that?' asked Manco.

  'This?' said the Doctor, holding up the sonic screwdriver.

  'Oh... This is just a screwdriver. Though what I wouldn't give for a file in a cake right now...'

  'You aren't one of us,' said Manco.

  'No. No... You could say I'm not from round these parts.'

  Manco smiled. 'And you're a heretic, they say?' he asked, a note of optimism and hope creeping into his voice.

  'Well... So they tell me,' said the Doctor. 'Not quite sure what I've done to earn the title, though. How about you? What did you say to get yourself banged up in here?'

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  Manco leaned to one side, peering out through the bars to check that the coast was clear. 'I questioned the Story! he said.

  'The Story? Which story?'

  'The Story of Earth.'

  'Right,' said the Doctor. 'Only, you see... that's the thing.

  This isn't Earth. You do know that. Don't you?'

  Manco shrugged. 'I'm not sure any more. When I was a child, maybe. They would tell us the Story, and I believed every word of it, but now...'

  'OK. Well... You've got me. I am literally a captive audience. What's "the Story of Earth"?'

  Gazing up at the ceiling, and speaking as if from some long-remembered recitation, Manco spoke:

  'In the beginning was the dark blue night and the silence and the empty and the none. Into this came Gobo, and He said,

  "There shall be a world here in this dark blue night and I shall call it Earth." And He created the Earth out of all the things the Olden Ones had left behind, and into the Earth He put mankind, and He created plants so that they might breathe, and animals so that they might eat, and water that they might drink. And around His tower He built a city in which they might live, and He made the salt plains to guard against the Sollogs in the West. And to this day Gobo looks down upon creation from His tower, and the people of this Earth wait for the day of His return, when He

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  shall take them to the land of El Paso.'

  Manco looked at the Doctor and nodded, clearly satisfied that he had remembered it word for word. "There is more! he said. 'But that's how it starts.'

  The Doctor was silent for a moment.

  'El Paso?' he said, at last. 'As in El Paso, Texas?'

  'Yes. You've heard of it?'

  'Heard of it? I've been there...'

  Manco shook his head. 'No,' he said. "That isn't possible.

  The Story says that only when we have proven ourselves here on Earth will Gobo take us to El Paso.'

  'No, Manco... listen... El Paso is on Earth. This isn't Earth.

  This... this is a great big disc of space junk on the outer edges of the Battani system. It's not Earth. But you know that already, don't you?'

  Manco held the bars of his cell, and stared down at the stone floor, nodding sheepishly.

  'Tell me, Manco... What do you know? Why have they locked you up?'

  Manco was now pacing around the cell, fidgeting and scratching his head. 'Inside the tower,' he said, his voice hushed and timid. 'I went into the tower. Nobody goes into the tower, but Django sent me there. When the great star appeared again.

  He sent me there to look for information. Anything that might tell us what it meant.'

  'The great star? You mean the comet? The one that's in the sky right now?'

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  Manco nodded. 'Yes. The Star Of The Green Tail. So I went into the tower, deep into its heart, but I found nothing about the star.'

  The human fell silent. He sat on the edge of his cot with his head in his hands, and the Doctor could hear him breathing, each breath shaking with emotion, as if he was about to cry.

  'What did you find, Manco? What was in the tower?'

  Manco looked up at the Doctor, shaking his head as if he dared not believe what he was about to say.

  "They had screens! he said. 'Like the one in the Chamber of Stories, but made of glass, and there were hundreds of them.

  I tried to make them work, to make the pictures happen, but there was nothing. There was no power. I found papers, documents, in a room deep inside the tower. The things I read... the things that had been written down... his name...'

  'Whose name?'

  Manco looked across the dungeon, staring straight at the Doctor. 'His name was Zachary Velasquez of the Gobocorp Freight Company. He was the captain of the ship. His words said there had been three thousand of them, before they crashed. But then, after the crash, there were just five hundred. They were so scared, he said. All of them. So far away from home. From Earth.'

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  The Doctor stumbled back from the bars of his cell and fell into his cot, barely able to look at Manco, let alone speak to him. Though he had guessed at such an explanation for the humans' presence here, it felt suddenly so much more real to him. Perhaps it was knowing the name of the ship's captain, or that there were just five hundred survivors from the crash.

  Whatever it was, the cold, stark reality of it hit him in a juggernaut of emotion. He wondered how long it had taken the humans who had crashed here, employees of the intergalactic freight company Gobocorp, to give up all hope.

  How much longer for them to forget where they had come from? How much longer still for them to take the company's mascot - that grinning cartoon clown on the ship's hull - and turn it into a god?

  'It's true, isn't it?' Manco said at last. 'This is not Earth. We came from... somewhere else, didn't we?'

  The Doctor looked up at him and nodded. 'It's true! he said.

  'The tower that you went into... That was the ship. It was a freighter, carrying cargo from one end of the galaxy to the other. You are the descendents of the surviving crew.'

  'And what about Gobo...?'

  The Doctor sighed. How could he explain this without breaking Manco's heart?

  'Gobo was a symbol! he said softly. 'A drawing.

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  Something made up by people on Earth. He isn't real.'

  The human was now hunched over in his cot, sobbing. 'I knew it,' he said. 'And I told Django... about the words I had read, the Captain's words. Django told me it was a trick, a trick placed h
ere by the Bad.'

  The Bad? Who's the Bad?'

  'The enemy of Gobo. The dark one who is the enemy of mankind. The speaker of lies. Django said it was the Bad who sent the grey people from the sky, the ones who called themselves Sittuun. The Bad put those things inside the tower, to confuse us, but I knew he was lying.'

  'Did you try telling the others?'

  'I didn't have a chance. Django had me thrown in this place.

  Nobody else is allowed into the tower, and I'm the only one left who can read or write the language of the Olden Ones. It's the only reason I'm still alive.'

  'You're the only one who can read or write?'

  Manco nodded, and then, speaking once more as if remembering a passage of scripture:

  'And Gobo came amongst the people and He saw that they were given to sinful words, and He did take the words away from them, so that they might speak but neither read nor write, leaving but one who might still have that gift. The Wordslinger.'

  'And that's you?'

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  Manco nodded. 'It passes down through my family. My mother, and her father before her. But I have no mate, and no children, so I am the last.'

  The Doctor nodded. Manco's last words had struck a chord inside him, and he looked across the dungeon to his fellow prisoner with sympathy.

  'Tell me about these Sittuun! he said. 'You said there were grey people from the stars?'

  'Yes.' Manco replied. 'The Sittuun came here, to speak with Django. They said the star would hit this world and destroy it, and that there were other worlds, with other people, far away from here. They said the pieces of this world would be scattered out into the night, and that if just one of them were to hit another world, that it would kill millions.'

  'And is that why they were here? The Sittuun?'

  Manco nodded. 'They have a bomb,' he said. 'A bomb that could destroy the whole world, before the star comes. A bomb that would save all those millions...'

  'And what happened to them? The Sittuun who came here?'

  'Django said they were heretics,' Manco replied, his voice quiet and sombre. 'And he killed them for it.'