Night Of The Humans Page 8

  In the throne room, Tuco stood on the raised platform and held his staff aloft.

  'In the beginning was the dark blue night and the silence and the empty and the none. And into this came Gobo. Chosen is he who rules this Earth. Chosen is—'

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  'Yes yes yes. Get on with it! said Dirk Slipstream. 'I haven't got all day.'

  Tuco scowled at him. 'All hail Django!' he snarled, bringing down his staff with a triumphant thump.

  Slipstream smiled knowingly, rubbing the palms of his hands together as if he were awaiting a prize.

  Seconds later, Django entered the room followed by his guards. He climbed up onto the platform, and sat on his throne, looking down at Slipstream with an air of wild-eyed curiosity, as if caught in the middle of some mind-bending trance.

  'Who are you?' he croaked. 'Who sent you?'

  'Oh, nobody sent me old chap. This is more of a solo venture. You see, I believe I have information you fellas may find interesting.'

  Django looked at Tuco, raising one eyebrow, and Tuco shrugged in return. Django's lunatic gaze returned to Slipstream.

  'Yes? And what is this information?'

  Slipstream smiled, his snow-white teeth twinkling in the dim glow of the torches.

  'The Sittuun hideout. I know where they are. I know where their bomb is kept. You know about their bomb, don't you?'

  'The bomb is the work of the Bad!' Django roared. 'They wish to destroy the Earth.'

  Slipstream cleared his throat, trying not to 117

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  laugh. 'Yes. Well, quite. And I know where it is.'

  Tell me!'

  'Easy, old boy. You see... There's something you can do for me in return.'

  A deathly silence fell over the room and Django sat back on his throne, scratching at his straggly beard with long, bony fingers. His breathing grew heavy, a wheezing death rattle, and his lips curled back from his crooked, ashen teeth.

  'What is it you want?' he asked.

  'I want to go into your tower,' said Slipstream. 'This tower with... whatsisname... Gobo on the side of it.'

  'Why?'

  'Well, old chap... Just so happens there's something I want in there. It's nothing of interest to you, but it's very valuable to me.'

  Django's expression darkened. 'Nobody goes into the tower,' he said. 'Nobody.'

  'Ah, but then of course I do know where the Sittuun are hiding. Don't I? I thought maybe, on this occasion, you could make an exception.'

  Tuco glanced anxiously from Slipstream to Django. He hunched himself over at the side of the throne and whispered into Django's ear:

  'Master... He may be right. We need to find the Sittuun.

  Gobo grows greater by the day; his light gets ever brighter. If they explode the bomb... boom! What then?'

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  Slowly, Django began to nod. 'Yes! he said. 'Yes... Maybe he is right.' He turned to Slipstream. 'Very well. You may go into the tower.'

  Slipstream beamed. 'Ah, marvellous. I knew you'd see sense. Now... I'll need two things. First, a guide. Is there anyone who knows their way around the ship... I mean, the tower?'

  Django and Tuco looked to one another. Tuco nodded, as if he understood some unspoken sentiment.

  'There is one,' he said. 'The Wordslinger, Manco... the heretic. He has been into the tower.'

  'Jolly good. I'll take him.'

  'But he is our pris—'

  'I won't hear a word of it. That tower of yours is a quarter of a mile tall. I'll need a guide, so I'm taking Manco...'

  Tuco looked at Django, who gave his consent with a dismissive gesture of the hand.

  'And this other thing?' Tuco asked. 'What is this other thing you need?'

  They had left the city on its far side, behind the great towering hulk of the Gobocorp ship. Looking out into the distance, the Doctor saw another seemingly endless landscape of jagged and misshapen metal; mountains of debris, and valleys and canyons etched out of refuse.

  'Tell me something, Sancho,' he said to his 119

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  guard. 'Your city... and your tower... is it by any chance the centre of the world?'

  Sancho looked at him with a quizzical frown. 'Hmm?'

  'Your tower. Is it slap bang, right in the middle of the world? Dead centre? Like a bulls-eye?'

  Sancho shrugged. 'S'ppose so.'

  'Right. I... see. Interesting.'

  They took him out across a vast plain of copper that had turned green with rust; a single concave sheet of metal perhaps half a mile across that may have looked, from some distance, like a pasture, until they came at last to the lake's edge. The lake itself was immense, a bubbling cauldron of dark and toxic waste that hissed and fizzed at the shoreline.

  Jutting out over the lake's surface was a long, sturdy panel that was riveted into the ground at its base.

  'You're making me walk the plank?' said the Doctor. 'You know, not even pirates made people walk the plank. Well...

  Earth pirates didn't, anyway. Common misconception.'

  'You walk up there,' said Sancho, gesturing towards the iron jetty with his spear.

  The Doctor sighed. His hands were still bound with rope, and, despite several surreptitious attempts to free himself using every trick in the book, he'd had no success. However devolved these humans were, they certainly knew how to tie 120

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  a good knot, he had to give them that. Of course, he could always try and make a run for it. None of them had firearms.

  He'd just have to hope their aim with arrows and spears wasn't particularly good; but then he doubted that very much.

  'Sancho! he said softly. 'You don't have to do this. I can help you. If you'd just—'

  Sancho jabbed him in the back. 'You walk up there!' he barked, more insistently than before. The other guards were growing restless, rattling their spears threateningly.

  The Doctor nodded, and began walking up the ramp, out over the lake, with Sancho following him every step of the way.

  When he had reached its end, the Doctor looked down into the acid of Lake Mono and took a deep breath. He had faced so many dangers before, found himself in so many situations from which there had seemed no obvious way out, and yet now he found himself stuck in a tight spot by some rope handcuffs and a handful of angry humans armed with spears. In his many lives he had fallen great heights and been shot. He'd lost a hand and grown it back. He had seen the end of the universe, and lived to tell the tale. But acid... Acid was something else. Acid would rule out a regeneration. Acid would be final.

  'You will die now! said Sancho, nudging him with the spear once more.

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  The Doctor closed his eyes. He thought of Amy, and he wondered where she was. Maybe there was some way out of this for her at least. Maybe the Sittuun would take her away, somewhere safe. Perhaps he could draw some comfort from that. He opened his eyes again, his toes now inching over the jetty's end. He could feel the chemical warmth rising up from the lake's surface, the noxious fumes stinging his nostrils.

  Looking back across the curved field of verdigris, he saw a single dark figure making its way towards the edges of the lake.

  It was Tuco. He had no doubt come here to witness the Doctor's execution and gloat.

  'You will die now! said Sancho.

  The Doctor nodded. Looking down, he saw his reflection warped and shimmering in the surface of Lake Mono, and he prepared himself for death.

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  12

  Captain Jamal sat at the control panel, his hands held over its many buttons and dials. His eyes were closed and he breathed slow and deep, holding each breath a few seconds at a time.

  He opened his small, ink-black eyes and looked up at the bomb casing itself: the giant drum fixed in place by rigid brackets; the words GENETEC-KHALID SYSTEMS printed on its side in blood
-red lettering, and below them the instructions

  - how to activate and deactivate the bomb.

  'Captain...'

  Turning in his chair, he saw Dr Heeva in the entrance to the bomb chamber, her expression fraught with anguish.

  'Yes, Dr Heeva?'

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  'Captain... I've been outside. The drums are getting louder.

  Something's happening.'

  'I know.'

  'We have to act now.'

  Captain Jamal nodded. 'Yes. I know.'

  'Have you heard no word from Charlie? I mean... Baasim?'

  The Captain shook his head. 'No! he replied despondently.

  'No... He's so wilful sometimes. He takes after his mother.'

  Dr Heeva looked down, as if in shame.

  'And what do I tell her?' asked the Captain. 'When we get home, I mean? How do I tell her that I just left him here, to die?'

  Dr Heeva crossed the room, placing one hand on the Captain's shoulder.

  'Don't ask me that,' she said. 'Please... You know how difficult it is for me, talking about her. How can I answer that question?'

  'No, Heeva... Please. This has nothing to do with... with US. I thought we'd agreed... What's happened here, in this place... When we've left, that's it. It's over. You know that.'

  Heeva nodded, tearfully. 'Yes. I know.'

  Captain Jamal closed his eyes and sighed. 'And the drums are getting louder?' he asked.

  Dr Heeva nodded.

  'And how long until the comet's impact?' Captain Jamal asked her.

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  'A hundred minutes, Captain. We have just one hundred minutes.'

  They hid behind a mound of sagging metal and torn plastic in one of the city's side streets, if it could be called that. Though almost everything on the Gyre had been manufactured at some point, time had weathered it down to a point where it appeared almost organic, as if the bizarre formations rising up around them had formed naturally over millions, rather than thousands of years.

  On the other side of the mound the humans were milling in all directions. There were people pushing wheelbarrows and people lugging barrels on their backs. Two men walked by with what looked like barbecued Sollogs on a long, metal skewer. From somewhere in the distance, Charlie and Amy could hear the sound of drums and tribal chanting.

  'OK...' whispered Charlie. 'I can't believe that actually worked.'

  'Well, drama was one of my best subjects in school,' said Amy. 'Natural performer, my teacher called me.'

  Charlie nodded, smiling nervously. 'Yeah,' he said. 'That was pretty good, I must admit. You had me scared for a moment. And that guy in the watchtower fell for it hook, line and sinker. You make a convincing human.'

  'Er... Excuse me? I am human.'

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  'Yeah, but... You know what I mean.'

  They heard the sound of marching. Peering out from the side of the mound, Amy saw a platoon of humans armed with spears trudging past. They were heading towards the main gate.

  'OK...' she said. 'What now?'

  Charlie glanced down and shook his head. 'I don't know,'

  he said. 'I've never been here before. And this place is massive. The Doctor could be anywhere.'

  Dr Heeva stood on the bridge of the Beagle XXI, and looked out through its windows at the desert of glass, and in the distance, the mountains. The fires there were growing brighter with every passing minute, and now she could hear the drums, even from inside the ship.

  What were the humans doing?

  She had been waiting for Captain Jamal for what felt like an eternity, having left him alone in the bomb chamber. She knew, or thought she knew, how difficult this must be for him. His only son was out there, somewhere - on his way to the human city, perhaps - and there was little chance of his return.

  It was almost impossible for her to separate her feelings from the urgency of the situation, the two were so entangled.

  She and the Captain had comforted one another in the months following the

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  crash. The rest of the crew were so much younger than them, and treated both the Captain and Heeva differently, with an almost parental reverence and distance, which left them somewhat isolated. It was only natural that, as the two most senior crew members, they would enjoy each other's company.

  Now that there was a chance for them to leave and survive this nightmare, she didn't know what to think. What would life back on their home planet be like? Would she ever see Jamal again? Would they be able to talk about anything that had happened on the Gyre? When he was back with his wife, would he find some way to blame Heeva for his son's death, some way to take his feelings of guilt and transplant them onto somebody else? A part of her, just a small part, wished that she had gone out there instead of Charlie. If she had taken the helipod, Charlie would have had no other option but to leave with his father. At least then nobody could have blamed her for anything.

  The entrance to the deck slid open with a hiss, and Captain Jamal stepped into the room. He braced himself against the door frame, his head hung in shame.

  'I can't do it! he said. 'He's my son. If we can just wait...

  Thirty minutes...'

  'But Captain...'

  'Please, Heeva. I'll prepare Slipstream's ship. Just let me wait another thirty minutes.'

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  Dr Heeva nodded and looked out from the bridge across the desert of glass. There, in the valleys to the east, she saw the orange light of distant fires flickering against the metal hills. Just thirty minutes, the Captain had said.

  But did they really have that long?

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  'Oh... We're back here, then?' said the Doctor.

  Sancho, his guard, sneered at him with a sideways glance.

  They were in the throne room at the top of the decaying and ramshackle tower, the torches and fluorescent tubes flickering around them. Django and Tuco were already on the platform, beneath the faded, grinning face of Gobo the Clown.

  'Your life has been spared! rasped Tuco. 'You are very lucky.'

  'Yes, funny that! said the Doctor, with sarcasm. 'You see, Sancho here was about a split second away from pushing me into a pit of acid (don't worry, Sancho... No hard feelings) and you still haven't told me why I was spared.'

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  He heard the sound of shuffling feet, a slow and steady march, and more humans entered the throne room, bringing with them a man in a silver spacesuit. The latter walked straight up to the Doctor, holding out his hand.

  'The Doctor, I presume!' he said with a gleaming smile.

  'Spiffing to see you again!'

  The Doctor frowned. 'I'm sorry...' he said. 'Have we met?'

  'Oh dear,' said the man in the spacesuit. 'Please don't say you can't remember me. That would be frightfully awkward, wouldn't it?'

  The Doctor's eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped. 'Oh no,' he groaned. 'Dirk Slipstream.'

  'At your service!' said Slipstream, still grinning. The Doctor still hadn't shaken his hand, so he dropped it to his side.

  From the platform, Tuco had been watching this scene with reptilian fascination and a quizzical scowl, but now he stepped down and approached them.

  'You... know each other?'

  The Doctor nodded and sighed. 'Yes,' he said. 'We've met before.' He turned to Slipstream. 'Last time I saw you, you were behind bars... rightfully behind bars... on Volag-Noc.'

  'I know!' said Slipstream, still smiling graciously. 'And you were the chap who put me there. Remember that?'

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  'Yes. Yes, I do. The Belaform Diamond Heist.' The Doctor turned to Tuco. 'This man crashed a passenger ship into a diamond depository on Belaform 9. Killed six hundred passengers and a hundred people at the dep
ository, just to steal some jewels.'

  'My finest work! said Slipstream, beaming proudly. 'The perfect crime. Or at least it would have been, if you hadn't interfered. Still, Doctor. Let bygones be bygones is my motto. After all, we've both changed. You've changed considerably. Had some work done?'

  The Doctor glowered at Slipstream. It was then that he noticed Manco standing behind him, surrounded by the small army of human guards.

  'Manco!' he said, suddenly a little more relieved. 'What are you doing here?'

  'He is your guide,' hissed Tuco, before Manco had a chance to speak.

  'Guide?' asked the Doctor. 'What do you mean, "guide"?'

  He turned to Slipstream, who winked back at him. 'Going on a field trip, old chap. And you're tagging along for the ride. You see, your services are of use to me. That's why I had to reel you in with the old trans-temporal distress signal.

  Knew you'd never come if I just asked politely.'

  'It was you...' said the Doctor, his brow furrowing with resentment.

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  'Oh yes. I knew if there was one man who'd pick that signal up sooner or later it was the Doctor. I stayed in geostationary orbit around the Gyre waiting to pick up your signal. And look... Here you are! And not a minute too soon.'

  From his throne, Django now rose to his feet. His tall, angular frame towering over the other humans as he stepped down from the platform, his grubby white robes billowing behind him. He brushed his way past his guards and approached Slipstream.

  'And now,' he purred huskily, 'you tell us where the Sittuun are hiding.'

  They had made it perhaps fifty metres further into the city before they had to hide again. Something was happening, that was for sure. The streets were a hive of activity now, with more and more armed soldiers gathering near the gates. What were they doing?

  Looking up, Amy saw that she and Charlie were at the base of the wrecked spacecraft. Its colossal bulk towered above them, piercing the wisps of grey-green cloud that drifted over the Gyre.

  Beyond the stark, black outline of the wreck, too bright to look at for more than a second, the Schuler-Khan comet grew bigger still. Just looking at it made Amy shudder. But there was something else in the sky. Something that seemed to break 132