Doctor Who BBCN08 - The Feast of the Drowned Page 9

  ‘No. No, I stopped myself.’ She shrugged. ‘I never even knew Jay that well. It was just a sort of crush.’

  ‘You said that when he first appeared in the flat, he was speaking to Keisha. But then he noticed you too?’

  ‘And he recognised me, yeah. That’s when he asked me along to this feast thing like it just occurred to him. Like an afterthought.’

  He nodded. ‘How did that make you feel?’

  ‘I was too busy being scared to death at the time to feel anything.

  But maybe I was a bit. . . I dunno, hurt.’ She looked at him. ‘’Cause, well, he never took me seriously, did he? No one wants to feel like an afterthought. . . ’

  ‘That feeling may have saved your life.’ The Doctor fidgeted in his seat. ‘Are we there yet?’

  Vida didn’t turn round. ‘Five minutes.’

  Rose nudged the Doctor. ‘What d’you mean, saved my life?’

  ‘When the apparition of Jay came to you again. . . maybe a subcon-scious trace of that resentment made you wary. Stopped you trusting him absolutely, the way Keisha does. The way Anne trusted her son.’

  His angular features flashed in and out of streetlight and shadow. ‘We trust the people we love to tell the truth. We trust them not to harm us. And something, some force, is trading on that.’

  ‘But to do what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He pulled something from his pocket, a little plastic bag full of water. ‘That’s what we’ve got to find out.’

  The London premises of the European Office of Oceanic Research and Development were in Clerkenwell, a couple of floors in a tall, anonymous blackened-brick building. Vida waved off the cabbie with some extra notes and hurried up the steps to a large green door. She glanced all around before swiping her card in the thingy beside it.

  ‘I don’t think we were followed,’ the Doctor offered.

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  Vida forced an awkward smile. ‘Paranoid.’ She led the way inside.

  It was all high ceilings, white corridors, deep-pile carpets – efficient and businesslike, but not too unfriendly.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of my boss,’ Vida went on. ‘Andrew Dolan, the man who swung me a place at Stanchion House, despite fierce opposition.’ She brushed her hair from her face. ‘Didn’t know what fierce was, then.’

  ‘Got a lab round here?’ the Doctor asked abruptly.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, we have several.’

  ‘Show me the biggest. Biggest and shiniest!’

  ‘All right.’

  Rose found herself feeling sorry for Vida. She remembered how she’d felt when she’d found out just how many nightmares skulked in the shadows of her familiar world. She placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Are you worried about him? Your boss, I mean?’

  She looked grateful that Rose had bothered to ask. ‘Crayshaw told me he’d talked with Andrew today. I haven’t been able to get hold of Andrew since, not on any of his numbers, So what do I do now? Go to the police?’

  ‘Wouldn’t recommend it,’ chirped the Doctor.

  Vida put her hand to her head, scrunched up some hair as she thought. ‘Will the navy high-ups be in on all this, d’you think? It was a Commodore Powers who put Crayshaw in charge of this inves-tigation. If we went to him and told him what’s been going on –’

  ‘Even if they believed us, what could they do? They might hold an inquiry, wait a couple of months while they study the evidence. . . ’

  ‘While whatever’s waiting to kick off gets right under way,’ Rose added.

  ‘Well, I should surely warn Kelper –’

  ‘The powerful vice admiral from Norfolk,’ the Doctor elucidated.

  ‘– when he gets over here. He’s meeting Crayshaw first thing, inspecting that wreck. And, oh joy, I’m supposed to be there with him.’

  ‘I went on holiday to Norfolk, once,’ Rose announced. ‘Caravan in Cromer. Very flat.’

  Vida sighed.

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  ‘Let’s see what we can find to tell him before he arrives. Big shiny lab through here, is it?’ The Doctor tried a set of large double doors but they were locked.

  ‘Letting you in here without authorisation.’ She shook her head as she entered another passcode. ‘I’ll get shot.’

  ‘Cheer up. You’ve dodged the bullets so far tonight.’

  Vida’s glare was probably hard enough to open the lab doors un-aided, but the Doctor gave them a helping hand. ‘Oi, before you get all boy-with-a-train-set in there,’ Rose said, producing her mobile, ‘I’m just gonna call Mickey, see how him and Keisha –’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Get him to drive her over here. Now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m worried.’

  ‘OK, but why are you –’

  It was no good. The Doctor had already vanished inside.

  Vida followed him, shaking her head, and Rose knew exactly how she felt.

  ‘So he wants us over there on the double, does he?’ said Mickey, jotting down the address, the phone warm against his ear. He glanced over at Keisha, still sleeping on the sofa. ‘Nice to feel wanted for once.’

  ‘Is Keisha OK?’

  ‘I think she is now. She was going crazy, but then her mum called.’

  ‘But her mum’s a cow!’

  ‘Can’t be all bad. When Keisha heard her mum’s voice it stopped her fit. She’s resting now.’

  ‘Sorry I had to leave the two of you alone, when you don’t. . . well, you know. You’re so sweet, though, doing that for me.’

  ‘Well, she’s your mate, ain’t she?’ He paused. Maybe he should just come out and say it. Tell Rose the real reason for the awkwardness, the bad feeling –

  ‘Anyway, it’s not just the Doctor – I want you here too, Mickey. I need someone to bunk off with.’

  ‘You what?’

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  ‘I mean, I think I’m in for a chemistry lesson. And I always used to bunk off Science.’

  ‘Bad girl.’

  ‘You love it.’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll get there as soon as I can. See you soon, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She rang off. Mickey stared at the phone for a full minute before he shoved it back in his pocket and gently shook Keisha awake.

  Her green eyes snapped open and she tensed, sat bolt upright.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Mickey. ‘It’s only me.’

  She relaxed, but just a little, something unsteady in her gaze. ‘It was me what woke you up last time, wasn’t it?’

  Mickey looked away. ‘We’d better get going. Rose and the Doctor want us to go and see them.’

  ‘But Mum’s coming!’

  ‘You can leave her a note or something.’ He hesitated. ‘Look, I know you haven’t seen her in years. . . but she won’t be here before morning, will she? And I’ll have brought you back home by then.’

  She looked at him. ‘My personal chauffeur?’

  He shrugged. ‘S’all right.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You really are feeling guilty, aren’t you?’

  He turned angrily away, but she jumped up and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘No, wait. I’m sorry.’

  Her hand felt cold through his shirt. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I was out of order. I’m just. . . ’ She crossed round to stand in front of him, and he could see fresh tears in her eyes. ‘I’m just so, so scared, Mickey. I’ve never had much, and Jay was so precious to me and now. . . now he’s gone and Mum says she’s coming down and. . . what if I mess this up?’ She crumpled into his arms. ‘Mickey, I drive people away and I just mess everything up.’

  He stood there while Keisha held on to him, pressing her wet face against his neck. But all he could really feel was the heat in his ear from the mobile.

  ‘We’d better go.’ He patted her back, then stepped carefully away.

  ‘We’ll talk about it more in the car, yeah?’

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  She wiped her nose on a wet tissue and forced a tiny smile
. ‘Yeah.’

  They crossed to the front door and left.

  Beside the sofa, in her abandoned handbag, Anne’s mobile phone bleeped an electronic ‘Greensleeves’ as somebody called. The tune played on, plaintively, in the empty flat.

  Rose slipped the phone back into her pocket and wandered inside the big oceanic research lab. It was shiny all right, white and modern, well kitted out. The Doctor had got busy, assembling stands and beakers and Bunsens on a bench, together with loads of stuff she didn’t recognise.

  Vila was watching him warily. ‘Help yourself, by the way.’

  The Doctor flashed her a dazzling grin. ‘I will, ta. Hey, here’s Rose!

  Hello, Rose. Keisha on her way in?’

  ‘She will be.’ Rose stared at some charts on the wall, which showed loads of tiny dotted paths against a deep-blue background. ‘What d’you do here, Vida? I mean, what do you research in the ocean and that?’

  ‘We analyse the sea’s constituent elements over time.’ Vida seemed to brighten a little – perhaps because she was in safer, more familiar waters now. ‘Our research is pretty cutting edge actually. We help establish global ocean and deep basin circulation patterns, identify bio-geochemical processes in the ocean, explore the transport pathways of spilled materials. . . ’

  Rose turned up her nose. ‘Takes all the fun out of swimming in it, I’ll bet.’

  ‘You might not want to swim if you knew what was in the water.’

  ‘What. . . sharks and things?’

  ‘I was thinking on a less visible level.’

  ‘Always the most dangerous,’ the Doctor agreed, splashing some drops from his bag of water into a glass flask.

  ‘That bit about spilled materials,’ said Rose. ‘D’you mean, you check how pollution spreads in the water and stuff?’

  ‘Exactly.

  Identifying and measuring both natural and pollutant 90

  chemicals in the ocean.’ Vida nodded. ‘That’s one of the best ways of utilising our findings here.’

  ‘But there are others,’ said the Doctor. He had fixed his flask to the stand and was now riffling through some jars in a fume cabinet. ‘You use chemical tracers to study the spread of these pollutants, right?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And you release them from ships like the Ascendant.

  Sharing your findings with the military.’

  Vida nodded slowly. ‘We’re a civil organisation. But the US military have sponsored certain experiments. For this one we were using newly developed tracers – subatomic filaments in an aqueous base.

  Tiny organic transmitters and receivers, they can tell us wherever they are in the ocean. Harmless to all life of course –’

  The Doctor clicked’ his tongue. ‘In theory.’

  ‘And in practice.’

  ‘But practice doesn’t always make perfect.’ He crossed back to the bench with a few jars, widened his eyes at her. ‘Now, it seems to me you have a big American back admiral in your rear pocket – or something. Funny he should take such an interest in your pollution research.’ He sniffed one of the jars and recoiled. ‘Then again, depends on the payoff. Once you can accurately predict the spread of certain chemical agents in the water, well, the sky’s the limit. Or the ocean is, anyway.’ He poured some of the jar’s contents into his flask.

  ‘You can flood an enemy’s harbour or fishing grounds with those tiny subatomic filaments – in a suitable chemical solution, of course – and then all you need’s an activation signal. . . ’

  ‘And what would that be activating, then?’ Rose queried.

  ‘Oh, what d’you reckon, Vida? A corrosive element to destroy a fleet of ships or a berth of submarines?’ suggested the Doctor cheerily.

  ‘Biological agents programmed to wipe out certain indigenous fish, forcing a nation into unfair fishing agreements. . . ’

  Vida eyed him coldly. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The Doctor’s cheery look had soured too. ‘Come on, don’t say the possibilities haven’t occurred to you. Or to Kelper.’

  ‘Any theoretical research has a lot of potential applications.’

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  ‘I know,’ he said darkly, buzzing the sonic screwdriver at the water in the flask. ‘I’ve seen some of them in action. In just a few years from now.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Vida stared at him, then at Rose. ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘If anything we work against,’ said Rose. ‘Against bad people. Monsters.’

  ‘Well, Doctor whoever-you-are with your resourceful teenaged assistant, I’m sorry if my work makes me a monster in your eyes, but I’m really not in the mood for a personal attack right now.’

  Rose realised how her words had come out. ‘Look, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘No, don’t bother.’ Vida pushed out her chin defiantly, but her lip was quivering just a fraction. ‘I’m letting you abuse my abilities against my better judgement, but I’m damned if I’ll let you start abusing me. You two may stroll through days like these with happy abandon, but I am seriously stumbling here. So just. . . just get on with whatever it is you’re doing to that water, Doctor, so we can start getting our heads round some answers.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said the Doctor smoothly. Then he nodded to himself as he stirred the syrupy liquid in the beaker with the screwdriver and dabbed some of it on to a microscope slide. ‘And you’re right, of course. Any scientific technique can become a weapon where there’s a will for it. Just take hydrogen-fused anti-cellularisation. . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It reworks matter at an atomic level. Metal, machinery, flesh – all fair game. Somebody’s used it on the Ascendant – and its crew.’

  Vida sounded timid and fragile: ‘And you say it’s aliens doing this?’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe they were after your super-duper new tracer.

  You know, the Subatomic Filaments in the Aqueous Chemical Base, TM.’

  ‘Why?’ wondered Rose. ‘You think they want to check the spread of something in the ocean?’

  ‘The filaments transmit. Maybe they want to use them somehow.’

  ‘But if they’re so advanced they can mess about with atoms –’

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  ‘Advanced is one of those funny words, Rose,’ the Doctor told her.

  ‘Some things come easier to some species than others. I mean, you couldn’t spin a web, but does that make you less advanced than a spider?’ He turned back to Vida. ‘You say you’ve never had days like these, but I reckon you’ve flirted with them. Back on the tug when I mentioned there being something in the water, that hit a nerve, didn’t it? You and Andrew found out something. What?’

  Vila, apparently rumbled, sat down heavily on a lab stool. ‘We sent survey boats out into the North Sea around where the Ascendant sank.

  Took samples from the water to see if the new tracers had been released before the ship went down.’ She paused for a few moments, as if transfixed by the bubbling liquid. ‘We studied the geochemistry of the samples. No sign of the tracers. But within a three-mile radius of the sinking, we found elements unheard of on Earth. Like salts and proteins, but completely unlike any previously discovered. The coding was. . . ’ She trailed off, shaking her head. ‘It can only be described as alien.’

  ‘A by-product of the fusion process?’ mused the Doctor, switching on a weird-looking microscope on the next bench. ‘Or something else?’

  ‘What is that you’re testing, anyway?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Water from the drainage pit beneath the cargo lift shaft. Smelled a bit fishy to me, so I. . . ’ He noticed Vida look away, bite her lip. ‘Oh, big fat reaction again, Vida.’

  ‘Andrew. . . my boss. When the wreck of the Ascendant was taken to Stanchion House, Crayshaw started being super-obstructive. We wondered what he might be hiding, especially after the weird water we found. So Andrew managed to get hold of the plans for Stanchion House – the underground part, I mean. We wanted to know if there was any other wa
y of getting to the wreckage – seemed about the only way we might find out what happened to our tracers.’

  ‘Sneaky,’ said the Doctor approvingly, as he slipped the microscope slide into place. ‘What did you learn?’

  ‘That the drainage pit was extended two months ago, by around 500 feet. Shortly before the wreck was recovered.’ Vida dabbed at the 93

  cut on her forehead. ‘It was about the first thing Crayshaw did after he was assigned to manage the affair.’

  ‘But why bother?’ said Rose.

  ‘We couldn’t ask him, could we?’ Vida sounded bitter. ‘All top secret, we weren’t supposed to know, which is why we were trying to arrange for Kelper to perform a surprise inspection ahead of the one he’d agreed with Crayshaw. Try to get past all the bull and find the truth.’

  ‘Come on, the truth’s obvious, isn’t it?’ The Doctor was squinting through the eyepiece of the microscope. ‘Once the new extension was built, that drainage pit was flooded. He’s been getting things ready.

  Building a little home from home.’

  ‘Then that’s where Jay’s being held,’ Rose realised. ‘And Peter.’

  ‘And quite possibly the rest of the crew, too. But what about the likes of Anne? Why would they want relatives and friends?’ The Doctor looked up crossly. ‘D’you reckon Mickey’s got lost? Where’s that Keisha?’

  ‘Why d’you need her?’

  ‘To see if I can find the same things in her that are in this water sample,’ he said, looking meaningfully at Vida. ‘Alien salts and proteins.’

  Vida nodded, a look of resignation on her face as she crossed to a sort of high-tech fridge in the corner. ‘I’ll fetch one of the North Sea samples for comparison.’

  ‘And some hypodermics while you’re at it. That OK?’

  ‘We should have some somewhere.’

  ‘So we’re fighting dirty water,’ Rose summed up. ‘That’s impressive.’

  ‘We’re fighting something that has an affinity with water,’ he retorted. ‘Something that can harness it, adapt it to suit a purpose –even borrow it from human beings in the vicinity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, that’s pretty much all you are, you humans – big bags of water.’