Doctor Who BBCN13 - Sting of the Zygons Page 9

  Too late, the Doctor felt the coldness of a shadow fall over his back.

  He whirled round.

  But the Zygon was already bringing a rock down against his head.

  As Victor pulled up outside Mrs Unswick’s lodge, Martha felt Ian grip her hand tighter. Then she saw why.

  Nanny Flock was standing outside the front porch.

  Victor tipped his cap, but the woman ignored him. She was rubbing her hands together, like she was relishing the thought of the coming confrontation.

  The moment Victor cut the engine he called overto her. ‘What’s wrong? Has anything happened at Goldspur?’

  ‘His mother’s almost worried herself to death,’ the nanny retorted.

  Her narrow eyes flicked between Ian and Martha. ‘I thought I’d find you here, young man,’ she said smugly. ‘Chasing after her again. Your mother refused to believe you could be so irresponsible. . . ’

  ‘Wait here a moment,’ Martha told Ian, and she climbed down from the back of the car. ‘Whatever your problem is, Miss Flock, we’ve got bigger ones. All this can wait while we call the police.’

  ‘You’ve just missed them,’ the nanny informed her.

  They were collecting a Frenchman’s cinema films. It all sounds very unsavoury.’ She glared at Martha. ‘In any case, I’m the one who should be calling the police. You’ve led this weak-minded boy astray with your funny foreign ideas!’

  ‘Really, Miss Flock,’ said Victor. ‘There’s been a serious accident barely a mile from here –’

  ‘The phone’s out of order, in any case,’ the nanny informed him. ‘Or I’d use it now to tell the mistress where her little horror’s gone. Quite 89

  beside herself with worry, she is.’

  ‘How do you know the phone’s out of order?’ asked Martha.

  Nanny Flock bristled. ‘I asked the owner, didn’t I?’

  ‘Where is she?’ Martha realised the front door was ajar and made towards it. ‘Mrs Unswick? I’ve got some bad news about –’

  But Nanny Flock barred her path. ‘Don’t think you’re walking away from me again. I’ve not finished with you yet.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Ian fiercely.

  ‘Er. . . let’s all keep our heads, shall we?’ said Victor, hurrying to intercede. But Martha had already pushed past the bony woman and opened the door.

  She saw the old-fashioned telephone standing on the hall table beside a pile of unopened mail. But the connecting wire had been yanked out of its socket.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Martha. ‘Mrs Unswick?’

  Nanny Flock entered the hall after her. ‘She said she needed to lie down. Bad for her nerves, I shouldn’t wonder, the police coming to call. . . ’

  ‘So she opened the door and gave a total stranger the run of the place?’

  ‘Perhaps she recognises a respectable person when she sees one,’

  sniped the nanny.

  But Martha was already running up the stairs and along the landing to Mrs U’s room. ‘Hello?’ She knocked on the door. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but. . . ’

  No reply. With a shrug, Martha opened the door to the bedroom.

  The bed was empty and unmade. There was a strange smell in the air. The same earthy, iron smell she’d caught when. . .

  ‘Uh-oh.’ Swallowing hard, Martha ran out of the room and back down the landing. As she reached the stairs she saw that Victor and Ian were crouched beside the broken telephone. Nanny Flock was closing the front door, eyeing Martha malevolently.

  Martha stopped at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Victor, Ian, get away from her,’ she said, licking her lips. ‘She’s not what she seems. She’s not human!’

  90

  ‘You poisonous creature,’ sneered Nanny Flock. ‘You should be horse-whipped for saying something like that to an Englishwoman!’

  ‘The Doctor says those creatures can change their shapes to look like us.’ Martha backed slowly away, as Nanny Flock walked purposefully towards her. ‘I think she’s one of them!’

  Her face twisting with rage, Nanny Flock broke into a prim little run

  – but as she passed the door to the sitting room, a brass blur flashed out and struck her on the forehead with a resounding crash. Poleaxed, she fell to the floor.

  Ian stared, open-mouthed, while Victor blinked in disbelief.

  ‘I

  say. . . ’

  Martha stared in amazement as an ill-looking Mrs Unswick shuffled out of the sitting room, wielding a bed-warmer by its long iron handle.

  ‘Not human, you say, dearie? I’ll not have any of that in my house!’

  ‘Oh, thank god you’re all right,’ said Martha, coming to join her on wobbly legs. ‘When I couldn’t find you upstairs. . . ’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, dear,’ said the large woman kindly, putting down the brass bed-warmer. ‘Worry about yourself.’

  Martha had a fraction of a second to register the cold glint in Mrs Unswick’s eyes. By that time, plump fingers were already digging into her arm, pulling her closer. With a half-strangled gasp, Martha found herself caught in a headlock.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, woman?’ Victor demanded.

  ‘Let Martha go,’ Ian added, his cheeks flushing.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Mrs Unswick ordered. ‘Or I’ll snap her neck.’

  She tightened her grip. ‘The girl was right to warn you. But that woman on the floor is perfectly human. . . It’s me who isn’t.’

  Martha could hardly swallow as the flabby arm around her throat began to bubble and glow and thicken. A fierce red light shone from alien veins as they forced their way to prominence. The woman’s breath was getting shallower, wheezier.

  The stench of earth and

  iron flared in Martha’s nostrils. She looked down and saw Mrs U’s white skirts blacken and shrink away like burning paper. Orange legs showed beneath, ridged with strange bones and muscles.

  91

  Ian clutched his stomach, transfixed with horror. ‘She’s one of those things.’

  ‘We are Zygons,’ the creature rasped in its sinister whisper. ‘You will not alert others to our presence here. Not now our gambit to take control of this world has begun.’

  92

  The Doctor’s head felt like an old TV set warming up. Sound came first – an eerie, pulsating thrum of energy, rhythmic and monotonous, underpinned by echoing, dripping noises. It was a sound he recognised but couldn’t place. He only knew it spelled danger.

  He opened his eyes and sight started to return, fuzzy at first. He was lying on something spongy and damp, something that shook softly with the pulse of a giant heartbeat. Then a red-orange glare burned fiercely into his senses.

  ‘The prisoner is awake,’ came a hissing whisper.

  ‘The prisoner is an idiot to be suckered by the little-girl-distracts-him-while-the-big-Zygon-lamps-him routine,’ the Doctor muttered.

  Strong hands slipped under his arms and hauled him roughly to his feet. The two Zygons who had hold of him were nothing to look at so he focused instead on the lights that were coming from somewhere inside the fibrous walls, softly growing and fading in intensity. I’m in their spaceship, he realised.

  The entire control room looked to have been grown rather than made, with gnarled, glutinous control consoles and instrument hanks.

  Vines and creepers lay bundled in place of power cables. Roots and protuberances took the place of levers and switches. The sour tang 93

  of blood hung in the air, though the Doctor decided that by rights it should smell like an Italian restaurant; everything seemed covered in bits of pizza and spaghetti, even the big screen on the wall that was showing. . .

  ‘Martha?’ The Doctor shook his head to try and clear it, and stopped when he discovered how much that hurt. But the pain helped him focus. He saw that Martha was standing in the sitting room of the Lodge – they must have a communications link there somewhere. She was staring into the screen imploringly as if she could ac
tually see him, a Zygon’s hand pressed against her cheek. ‘Martha!’ he shouted.

  ‘Doctor?’ her voice sounded strained.

  ‘Are you OK?’ They both said it at once, both half-smiled.

  ‘Be silent,’ hissed the Zygon on the screen, holding its hand harder against her cheek.

  ‘It’s Mrs Unswick,’ Martha cried. ‘She’s one of them now.’ She gasped as one of the fingers stroked her temple. ‘Get off, that burns!’

  ‘What’re you doing to her?’ the Doctor shouted, straining towards the screen. But strong arms held him back. ‘Let her go! If you harm her. . . ’

  A squat, burnt-orange Zygon walked in front of the screen, staring at him from beneath broad, sweaty brows. ‘I am Taro,’ she hissed, every whispered syllable as sticky as the ship she lived in.

  ‘I don’t care what your name is,’ the Doctor snapped. ‘I want to talk to Martha.’

  Taro squeezed a spongy nodule protruding from the console. ‘The audio link has been cut.’

  ‘Then find another. You must have loads of those things dotted around the place, keeping in touch –’

  ‘The link was cut deliberately,’ Taro said. ‘And your friend’s throat could quickly follow. Her life is in your hands. Be assured Medri shall sting to kill at the first sign of betrayal.’

  The Doctor looked into the creature’s dark eyes. ‘I’m warning you, now. Just once. Hurting Martha would be a very, very stupid thing to do.’ He glanced round the rest of the control room, noting the exits, 94

  casually clocking the few controls he understood. ‘If Mrs U was really Mrs Z, why not bring me here sooner?’

  ‘It did not serve our interests.’ Taro’s bloated lips tugged into a smile. ‘This ship is submerged beneath Lake Kelmore. You came to our lair of your own free will.’

  ‘Well, apart from having a good gloat, what is it you want from me?’ the Doctor demanded. ‘I mean, you’ve ruined my plan, stopped me sending your Skarasen to sleep. You’ve got the old activator back now.’

  Taro duly held it up.

  ‘Tell us how you planned to subdue the

  Skarasen.’

  ‘Why d’you want to know?’ he asked, genuinely interested.

  ‘Tell us, truthfully.’ the Zygon insisted. ‘Or we shall kill your friend.’

  ‘All right.’ The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘I thought a burst of energised sound on the right wavelength might set the delta-wave generator resonating in harmony with the diastellic signal receptors in the Skarasen’s brain. Or in purely sonic terms: whirrrrr-wheeeee-brbrbrbrbrbrbr-Zzzzzzz.’ He made a snoring noise, then raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, you did ask.’

  ‘So the therapy would be non-invasive?’

  ‘You’d know more about invasions than me.’ He smiled. ‘So! I’ve answered your questions – here are some of mine. What’s going on with little Molly Melton? I mean, why impersonate a child just to have her point people towards your pet monster? And those cranes, the diggers in the barn – the best gear this century can supply for coping with a giant amphibious cyborg. . . I’m pretty sure you ordered them, not Sir Albert Morton – not the real Sir Albert, anyway. It’s almost like you wanted the humans to take on your Skarasen.’

  ‘Be silent, Doctor, or the girl –’

  ‘No!’ Angrily, he shook his arms free of the two Zygons and advanced on Taro. ‘You won’t kill Martha, because you need answers from me. And if you so much as scratch her I’ll never tell you a thing.’

  He slammed his hand down on the weirdly glowing console. ‘ Never.’

  ‘Are you so very sure, Doctor?’ she whispered. ‘We are sole survivors of a stellar calamity. Our ship has crash-landed here. We are alone on 95

  this planet. The nearest rescue ship is centuries distant.’ She heaved herself towards him. ‘We have so little to lose at present. That makes us very dangerous.’

  The Doctor saw actual pain in her eyes. He found himself nodding, stepping back down towards the two guards. They watched him beadily, but didn’t try to grab hold of him again.

  Suddenly a door in one wall slid upwards with a rush of foul air.

  The Doctor turned as a taller, hulking Zygon entered the control room with the swagger and scars of a bloody-minded general. The guards duly stood to attention.

  ‘Greetings, Commander Brelarn,’ said Taro. Though she held herself stiffly, a note of weariness still sounded in her voice. ‘I am questioning the Doctor.’

  ‘And he is proving difficult,’ Brelarn surmised. His dark eyes bored into the Doctor’s. ‘You will explain to us the principles of your device.’

  ‘Well, thing is, Mr Brelarn. . . ’ He frowned. ‘Is it mister, or am I underselling you? Brelarn, O.B.E.? King Brelarn?’

  ‘I am Warlord of the Zygons.’

  ‘Well, the thing is, your Warlordship,’ said the Doctor, ‘I haven’t been able to lock the wavelength harmonies in phase. And without that, the activator would send out conflicting signals – soothing the Skarasen one moment, stirring it up the next.’

  Brelarn turned to the larger of the two Zygon guards. ‘Is this likely, Felic?’

  Felic slowly inclined his huge domed head. ‘Yes, Commander.’

  ‘Then you must solve this problem, Doctor,’ Brelarn insisted.

  ‘Why? Surely the last thing you want is for others to be able to control your food supply?’

  The Warlord loomed over him menacingly. ‘Do not question us.’

  ‘Oh, wait a minute. . . hang on. . . ’ The Doctor looked between Brelarn and Taro. ‘You’ve lost control, haven’t you? Yes! Yesssss, that’s it! Your Skarasen’s slipped his leash, and you can’t get him back again. Dear, oh dear. To lose one Skarasen is unfortunate, but to lose two. . . How’d you manage that?’

  96

  Taro slumped back against her control bank and stared at him hatefully.

  ‘All that machinery at the manor – it’s not a trick, not a trap, is it?

  It’s a helping hand. You want the humans to catch your Skarasen for you.’ The Doctor turned to Brelarn. ‘You tried to make it as easy as possible for them to find it, even produced a ghostly little waif to point out the likeliest areas.’

  ‘A most successful strategy. Human beings arc superstitious creatures. Sympathetic creatures.’ Brelarn leaned in closer to the Doctor’s face. ‘Give them a tragic death to avenge and they fight all the harder.’

  The Doctor didn’t flinch. ‘That’s what you hoped. But you couldn’t be sure, could you? So you’ve been gathering intelligence. Peeping in diaries, scavenging journals, listening to gossip below stairs. . . ’ He frowned. ‘All a bit elaborate though, isn’t it? A bit pointless, too? Why rely on an “inferior" species to take care of things when surely you could have taken body prints of the hunters and caught the Skarasen yourselves a whole lot faster.’ He gave Brelarn a sudden smile. ‘I’m missing something, aren’t I? What am I missing? Go on, tell me.’

  ‘You must perfect your device,’ said Brelarn heavily. ‘We must regain control of the Skarasen.’

  ‘The girl is our prisoner,’ Taro reminded him. ‘And we are holding two others. Unless you have completed the device within the next two hours, we will execute one of them.’

  The Doctor looked at her coldly.

  ‘Two hours may not be long

  enough.’

  ‘We will give you no longer.’ Brelarn turned to one of the other Zygons. ‘Take him to the laboratory, Felic. Assist him in his work.’

  ‘Yes, Commander.’ Felic took the Doctor by the arm and steered him towards a door that slid upwards into the fleshy ceiling as they approached.

  The Doctor turned back round to catch a last look of Martha gazing out of the veined, pulsating screen. But the image was blank. She had gone.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  97

  The Zygon marched Martha out of Mrs Unswick’s sitting room and up to a closed door. ‘Unlock it,’ came the inhuman gurgle in her ear.

  With a shaky hand, Martha turned the k
ey and twisted the handle.

  As a reward she was shoved roughly inside, landing flat on her face on the floorboards. The door slammed shut and the key turned with an insolent shunk.

  Victor and Ian hurried over to help her up. They were in a dingy bedroom, lit feebly by a small oil lamp that sent smoky shadows shaking across the wall with every sputter of its flame.

  ‘What did that thing do to you?’ Victor asked, concerned.

  ‘Made a lot of threats, basically.’ Martha sat down miserably on the bumpy bed. ‘They’ve taken the Doctor prisoner. I heard his voice. . . ’

  Ian looked puzzled, and she sighed. ‘They had a kind of. . . magic telephone,’ she explained. ‘It let me hear him.’

  ‘Magic telephones, conjuring tricks. . . these brutes are a proper circus attraction.’ Victor sat down beside her. ‘I shall never in all my days forget the sight of Mrs Unswick turning into that. . . thing.’

  ‘She had me completely taken in.’ Martha shuddered. ‘She was kind, gave me clothes, even cooked for me. . . but all the time she was a Zygon. The Doctor was right. They’re good at what they do.’

  ‘Wish I’d thought faster,’ said Ian. ‘When that brute brought you inside, I could have charged the thing and stuck its own filthy knife into it.’

  ‘What?’ Martha looked down at the dagger-shaped lump of gristle in his hand. ‘You took this from the dead Zygon in the road. . . ’

  ‘Slipped it in my pocket,’ he confessed. ‘I thought you’d take it off me if you knew I had it. . . ’

  Martha studied the thing properly. It looked a bit like a root of ginger, covered with scabs. A drop of green ooze fell from the sharp end onto her finger. It smelt disgusting and she quickly wiped it on the blanket covering the bed.

  ‘I don’t think this thing is a weapon.’ she said slowly. ‘I guess it might be food, or something. Like those tubes of yoghurts kids have in their lunch boxes.’ be glanced up at two blank faces. ‘Never mind.’

  98

  ‘That dying monster was clutching on to the thing like it was gold,’