Steve Cole - Doctor Who - The Knight, The Fool and The Dead

‘What? Nah! Course Death can be cheated.’ The Doctor sat back down. ‘You’ve just got to keep moving afterwards. Make sure Death never catches up with you. And if Death does, make sure you’ve got something more than your arm up your sleeve.’

‘Death is not an enemy or a failure. It is simply the wax stamp at the end of Life’s contract. It is hubris to believe you are right to prolong life.’

‘It’s a surrender not to try. You can keep trying to stamp that wax on the contract if you like, Brian. I’ll keep looking for escape clauses.’ The Doctor lay back, stared into infinite space, wondering what was waiting for him across the parched dust of the desert outside. ‘There are all kinds of ways to turn a bed around, Brian. All kinds of ways.’

Brian nodded. ‘And there are many more places that Death may stand.’

Chapter Ten

Fallomax sat in her workshop on board the Polythrope , with Estinee, the Doctor and the Ood assassin. Necessity made strange bedfellows, she supposed. And so did getting busted.

She was just glad it was only house arrest for now and not the real thing. There must be some way I can get out of all this , she thought. Some way of busting loose and starting again … again .

Chalskal had been thrown into panic by the news that his world was due to fall to the Kotturuh with no viable defence. Except, weirdly, it seemed to be the Lifeshroud’s current shortcomings that had shaken him the most. The High Ambassador had left everyone locked up together while he consulted his precious alliance and his president on a course of action.

The Doctor, who’d been pacing with his hands in his pockets, suddenly kicked the wall. ‘What’s keeping Chalskal!’ he snapped. ‘Every second we wait around here we’re losing time.’

Time , thought Fallomax. I’ve spent so long tricking people into giving me more of it . She felt a mess of emotions: a sense of guilty relief to have been discovered at last, fear now of the consequences, hope of maybe finding some way to make Lifeshroud work for real, for billions. Could she actually make a go of things? If Chalskal could actually give her proper funding … If this crazy Doctor knew just one-tenth as much as he reckoned he did …

‘Chalskal’s a total creep,’ was Estinee’s opinion. Her skin was well on the way to recovery but she kept rubbing her sticky burns like they would scratch off. ‘Did you see his face when I told him about his ambassador? He almost fell on it!’

‘I’m impressed you could recall all that astronav data,’ said the Doctor.

‘When the Kotts took me to Mordeela, I had nothing to do but listen to the revenants. I used to write their words on the walls. Learn them and sing along.’ She looked down, self-conscious. ‘Silly.’

‘Brilliant,’ Fallomax corrected her. ‘Makes you the only person in the universe with an inkling of the Kotturuh Design.’

‘A considerable asset,’ Brian declared.

‘Don’t try and butter me up after shooting me, maggot head,’ Estinee retorted. ‘You don’t know a thing about it. The Kotts said they would keep me there for ever. Drain off my life to help feed the revenants. Everyone has a place in the Design.’

The Doctor muttered some names and numbers under his breath; something to do with Andalia. Fallomax thought of their last show there, of the way she’d taken off long before Estinee could’ve made it back to the Polythrope. But if the Kotts ever find me … I’m dead . She wasn’t proud of herself for leaving, but she also wasn’t sorry. It stood to reason: first priority, number one; second priority, whoever was most useful to you.

Her eyes flicked between the Doctor and Estinee.

The Doctor caught her gaze. ‘If we’re going to make the Lifeshroud work, I’m gonna need information. What’s the deal with those crystals you took from Mordeela?’

‘They’re infused with power,’ said Fallomax. ‘I believe that Mordeela is more than just a gateway to our universe from the Kotturuh realm. It acts as a conduit, a siphon, for the energies they use to unleash their mutative change on a species.’

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘You think there’s a well of energy the Kotturuh draw upon, using those crystals?’

‘If you like. A well of Death Energy. Kott bodies must generate a charge that energises those crystals. Then they direct the energy through all life on a planet in a kind of genetic wave.’

‘A wave goodbye to millions of years of natural evolution.’ The Doctor looked at her. ‘How d’you come to know so much?’

‘She’s the only survivor of the Eloii Judgement,’ said Estinee, with the air of someone who’d heard a story more than once. ‘It’s why she wears that super-sized Lifeshroud.’

‘I am not super-sized!’ Fallomax protested.

‘What was the Kotturuh Judgement on Eloii?’ asked Brian.

‘They made us short-lived and sterile so we’d die off. Eloii was given over to grasses and lichens – a clean, unpolluted world for one of their preferred races to colonise some day.’

‘Preferred races,’ Brian mused. ‘No wonder some populations try to deal with Death.’

‘How do they go about it?’ the Doctor asked Fallomax.

‘They don’t get much say. Sometimes the Kotts will visit a planet and kidnap someone important … or just a random individual.’

‘The tunnels of Mordeela are full of them,’ Estinee added.

‘Sometimes, powerful ambassadors will come to Mordeela to parley.’ Fallomax paused. ‘Not all of them leave again.’

‘Incorporated into the Kotturuh Design,’ the Doctor noted. ‘How did you survive their Judgement?’

‘Her papa was a big scientist,’ Estinee cut in, ‘and they hid in outer space running experiments on Kott crystals.’

‘Papa was an exochemist and exogeologist,’ Fallomax said, ‘part of a scientific research team who’d been analysing a weird meteor for almost a century. But Papa had heard the legends of the Kotturuh across space, and was sure the meteor was a chunk of Mordeela.’

‘Perhaps it broke off when the Kotturuh built their gateway there,’ Brian suggested.

‘Fits as well as any other theory,’ said Fallomax. ‘The crystals allow the Kotts to overturn aeons of evolution in minutes, but Papa believed that running a similar charge through the crystals in the Lifeshroud could counteract the Wave and shield the wearer from its effects.’

‘See, it’s not meant to stop you dying from just anything .’ Estinee gave Brian a sour look. ‘That’s just something we say in the fundraisers. Its real job is to protect you from Judgement.’

‘But we only had enough crystals to power one Lifeshroud.’ Fallomax patted her own protective clothing. ‘Papa chose to save me, and when the Wave caught up with him …’ She paused. ‘I wish I could say I kept working on the Kott crystals to save as many people as I could. To honour his sacrifice. But, the power drains from the crystals, and if they’re not replaced … You know?’

‘I get it,’ said the Doctor quietly. ‘What about Estinee. How’d you hook up with her?’

‘The Kotturuh made me their prisoner on Mordeela.’ Estinee grimaced. ‘Fallomax happened to run into me there – or her mining machine did at any rate, scraping out crystals from the walls.’

Brian inclined his head. ‘The Kotturuh didn’t notice you, Professor, stealing their crystals?’

‘The Kotts take no interest in anything that doesn’t live,’ said Fallomax. ‘My machine scrapes up whatever it can, and I send it in whenever I can, through those tiny punctures in the shield …’

Brian held up a hand for silence. ‘Mr Ball hears Chalskal approaching.’