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

A couple of seconds later, Fallomax could hear it too: springy steps slapping down on the metal walkway outside. The white plastic doors swooshed open and the warty, hairy little body swept into the hold on his three thick tails.

‘Gentlebeings,’ Chalskal began courteously. ‘May this decorous bow and my continued high diplomatic standing reward you for your patience—’

‘When can we start?’ The Doctor got to the point. ‘We’ve got to get our skates on – if we’re gonna get Lifeshrouds on your people.’

‘I’ve heard you have extremely advanced scientific facilities on Skalithai,’ said Fallomax eagerly. ‘I’m looking forward to—’

‘Out of the question.’ Chalskal cleared what passed for a throat. ‘You shall work from laboratories on board my flagship.’

‘What?’ The Doctor frowned. ‘With seven billion lives on the line?’

‘I dare not take the chance of the Kotturuh learning of your plans to counterattack,’ said Chalskal, ‘and attacking Skalithai prematurely.’

‘Mr Ball points out that the Kotturuh work to a Design,’ said Brian. ‘They are unlikely to change their schedule—’

‘I do not choose to argue with those who serve me,’ Chalskal declared. ‘The President agrees that the Functional Lifeshroud project – a project I named myself – must take place in absolute secrecy with a minimum of personnel so as not to, er, arouse suspicion.’

Fallomax looked at him. ‘We get one chance at doing this. We have to throw everything you have at this.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Chalskal agreed. ‘But in secrecy. Naturally, the laboratories are very well equipped.’ The doors slid open to reveal an entire squad of alien troops in grey protective suits. ‘There are guards waiting to escort you to your duties.’

‘Many guards,’ the Doctor observed.

At gunpoint, he, Fallomax, and Brian went with them. Holding her doll tight to her chest, Estinee followed them.

To no one in particular she whispered, ‘I told you Chalskal was a creep.’

Chapter Eleven

Days were passing and Estinee could tell that the Doctor’s mood was growing more desperate. While Fallomax experimented on improving the crystals’ energy retention, and Brian worked with Mr Ball on an abacus loom, crunching through chemical calculations (though was that all he was doing? There was always a conspiratorial air about the dapper assassin), the Doctor was following wild hunches and random leads. Unfortunately none of them had led him anywhere he’d wanted to go. And more and more, especially when concentrating, she’d hear him mutter a string of numbers and syllables under his breath – ‘ kaffa four-four-sky betel … ’ – and when she’d asked him about it he’d pretended to be lost in his work again.

Still, she felt happier with the Doctor than anyone else. With little to do on board Chalskal’s ship – and few areas of it open to her in any case – she’d often braved the yellow guards on the door to keep the Doctor company in the strange laboratory. It was a hot, smoky place, all bronze urns and cabinets of light, with flames that burned in many colours at the tug of a chain. The Doctor had taken equipment from his blue box, declaring it to be ‘ about a thousand times better than this antique guff, no wonder it’s taken you over a century of study to get this far, Fallomax, with equipment so primitive ’ and had looked at the crystals through that.

Each day she woke hoping he’d find good news in the patterns he saw. She could only ever see blurry blobs in the amber slides, but the Doctor … he could spy the universe in a speck of sugar. From the first, she’d seen something in him – a sadness and a sweetness, something to be trusted. A look that said, I’ll risk everything for you, whoever you are, and I won’t ask for a thing in return . But as the days had gone by, that look had grown harder, brooding. Eyes stared into space, and hands that used to wave about now stayed thrust deep into pockets.

‘Are you ever scared?’ she asked him.

‘Yep,’ the Doctor murmured without looking up. ‘Usually by deep conversations about feeling scared.’

‘Well, tough,’ said Estinee. ‘I’m scared. I’m scared of what happens if you and Fallomax can’t save everyone. Of the Kotturuh catching me again.’ She wiped crossly at her eyes. ‘I mean, they found me, didn’t they? Even while I was wearing my Lifeshroud.’

‘They found you by accident. It was me they came to see. At least, unless their Design told them that you’d be coming back to them?’ He sighed. ‘Wish I knew how that worked. Mordeela’s like some sort of organic computer running a prediction program on the minds of the dead …’

Estinee frowned. ‘What?’

‘If we could learn what the program was, maybe we’d find a way to corrupt it …’ The Doctor pouted. ‘Or if we could destroy the computer … or take out the operators …’

‘I thought you were meant to be making a working Lifeshroud?’

‘Well, yeah. The Lifeshroud might go some way to warding off the effects of a Kotturuh attack on the species at the top of the food chain, but the balance of life on each planet will fall out of alignment. Global warming, starvation, terror … Billions of people living at gunpoint.’

‘Yeah.’ Estinee nodded. ‘I can’t even die but I’m still so scared. All the time.’

The Doctor seemed to consider. ‘Not being scared would be worse. Because if you’re not scared, then you’ve got nothing left to lose. Even a short life is full of scary. But when it’s long, it doesn’t matter if you know you’ll survive everything you’ll ever go through. There are some days – some dark, boil-a-sun-away-to-nothing days – when you wonder if the pain is worth the keeping going.’

Estinee sensed the conversation shifting away from her. She got off her stool and stood beside him. ‘Pain?’

‘Yeah. Pain. Keeps showing up with different faces.’ The Doctor half-smiled. ‘You feel guilt over the ones who fell when you didn’t. Loss when you can’t get back to the ones you should’ve kept close. The pain of holding on because you know, despite it all, that life is meant to be lived, not just endured …’ He broke off. ‘Sorry. You’re only young. You don’t know what I mean.’

Estinee opened her mouth to say something. But she bit her tongue, and instead put her hand in his. He noticed after a few seconds, and looked at her.

‘So,’ she said, ‘the trick is to spend our days trying to live instead of trying not to die?’

‘It’s a good trick.’

‘So why do you basically run into danger any time you can?’

‘I don’t. But if I see something wrong, I try to fix it.’

‘And what if it can’t be fixed?’

The Doctor stared into the reflective surface of one of the slides. ‘Everything can be fixed,’ he insisted. ‘If you’ve got the stomach for it.’ The screwdriver thing he carried pinged and he stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! That’s the alarm. Got to see someone … about a something … somewhere.’ With a smile that barely reached his eyes, the Doctor got up and walked to the door. The two yellow guards were waiting outside. ‘Comfort break,’ he said, and pushed between them.

Estinee sat for a few moments. She’d seen the look in the Doctor’s eyes and knew that he really wasn’t afraid. Somehow, that scared her more than anything else. And she’d never seen him take a ‘comfort break’ before.

She sat alone in the empty laboratory for a minute. Then she crossed to the doorway herself and looked up at the guards. ‘I just don’t really want to be here?’

The guards looked at each other, shrugged, and let her pass.

Estinee walked through the flagship’s red and gold corridors. Everything was fancy and filigree. She missed her cabin on the Polythrope . Her room here was bigger and played pictures of natural scenes on the walls, even cropfields. But what was the point? There were no cropfields in space.