Текст книги "Doctor Who- Beautiful Chaos"

Автор книги: Gary Russell

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‘But…’

Wilf stepped up to the plate. ‘Go on, Donna, don’t argue with the man. When’s he ever let you down?’

Donna went.

‘Might not have been the best choice of words, Wilfred.’

‘You ever let her down, Doctor?’

‘Well…’ the Doctor considered. ‘No, actually, but it’s been close once or twice.’

‘Cos if I ever thought you’d let my little girl down, you’d have me to answer to.’

Their eyes met, across the room and, for the tiniest second, a fragment of eternity, the Doctor knew never, ever to let Donna Noble down.

‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘In fact, Wilf, I should say “we”

won’t, cos you’re important right now. To Donna. To me.

To the whole wide world. And most of all, to Henrietta Goodhart.’ He suddenly stood up. ‘Don’t do it, Caitlin.’

Wilf realised the Irish girl was over by a wall, next to a junction box, holding a silver pen. With a blue tip that was glowing. ‘What’s she up to, then?’

‘You don’t know how to use it, Caitlin,’ the Doctor said slowly. ‘And Madam Delphi’s gonna be up and running again in a second. She’ll stop you.’

‘Let her try,’ Caitlin said. ‘And you’re right, I don’t know how to use it, but I reckon if I push this, twist that and shove it all in there…’

‘Cait, no!’

It was too late. As the sonic screwdriver suddenly shrieked with power, too much power, mishandled, used by untrained hands, Caitlin shoved it into the now-exposed junction box, and right into the fibre-optic cables that Johnnie Bates had died linking up only a few days earlier.

There was a flash of purple fire and Caitlin was gone, reduced to atoms along with a chunk of the wall, the cabling and the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.

‘Right idea,’ the Doctor said mournfully, ‘but there had to be a better way.’

‘That computer’s gone off,’ Wilf said.

The Doctor looked at the screens, and dived down to examine the server. ‘Dead as a doornail,’ he confirmed.

‘We won?’

‘Oh, not at all.’ The Doctor looked at Wilf. ‘I lied to Donna,’ he confessed.

‘I know,’ Wilf said. ‘But you made sure she was safe.

Thank you.’

‘Caitlin cut off the Mandragora energy from the computer. To all intents and purposes, Madam Delphi is gone. Erased. Destroyed.’

‘But that Mandragora energy stuff, it’s still there, isn’t it?’

‘Trapped.’

‘Where?’

‘In this room. And right now, it’s looking for a new home. I reckon we’ve got about three minutes.’

‘It won’t choose me, that’s why you kept me here. I heard what you said. I have a heart condition. I’m gonna die.’

‘What?’ The Doctor frowned, then remembered what he said earlier to Madam Delphi. ‘Wilfred, I have no idea

about the condition of your heart one way or another.

You’ve could have a couple more decades in you at least, for all I know. I was just saying that because – well, doesn’t matter right now.’ He glanced at the missing chunk of wall where Caitlin had been standing. ‘Now, I doubt it can bring back the dead, so I’m hoping it goes for the easiest target, the path of least resistance.’

Wilf followed the Doctor’s point of view to Netty, stood smiling serenely beside him.

‘No…’

‘It’s the most likely vessel.’

Wilf was shaking with sadness. ‘But it’s my Netty. We were going to see the world, go on a cruise, do South America, Canada, the Indian Ocean. Doctor, she’s my life.

I never thought anyone could replace my wife, God rest her soul, but Netty Goodhart came along and showed me that there’s more to living than sitting in a vegetable patch listening to Dusty Springfield. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose another lady from my life. I love her!’

‘I know you do, and I’m really sorry to ask this of her, but I have to.’

‘You can’t ask her, she’s… she’s shut off right now. It’s the illness, the dementia. She can’t speak for herself.’

The Doctor reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper.

Wilf looked at it.

My Darling Wilfred.

You told me once you trusted the Doctor with Donna’s life. Now trust him with mine. I don’t know what he’s going to do, nor what state I’ll be in when he does it, but if

you trust him, that’s good enough for me.

HG

‘It’s your special paper,’ Wilf said. ‘Shows me what I want to see. Donna told me about it, ages ago.’

The Doctor mouthed a silent ‘oh thank you very much, Donna’, then produced his leather wallet with the real psychic paper in it. ‘No, Wilfred, the letter’s genuine.

When we were at that burger place I explained to Netty what might be needed. Why she was a potential target and a potential—’

The Doctor broke off, and Wilf saw a momentary purple flash of fire shoot through his eyes. He then screwed them tight and opened them again. Brown. As always.

The Doctor blew air out of his cheeks. ‘That wasn’t fun, but it won’t try me again.’

‘No need,’ said Henrietta Goodhart, quietly but with a familiar menace to her tone. ‘I have a new home. A new body. One that can move, and talk, and feel.’

‘Get out of my lady-friend,’ Wilf snapped.

Netty just laughed. ‘You poor pathetic deluded man.

This is my vessel now. Mandragora lives. I shall reign down destruction upon this world, I shall have my revenge. This entire cosmos will fall into ruin and chaos and I shall feed off it for centuries. Beautiful chaos!’

Wilf took a step towards Netty, but the Doctor pulled him back, gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

‘Wait.’ The Doctor looked over at the burnt wall where Caitlin had died. Then at the computer, now useless and dead. At Callum Fitzhaugh’s body, so consumed by rage

and despair once upon a time, he had given succour to a universal blight that was about to destroy Earth, given a chance. And at Henrietta Goodhart’s body, inhabited now by an alien power so great, it had survived since the Dark Times and was now ready to wreak a wave of annihilation across the known galaxies.

Unless he had got his calculations right.

Netty walked around the room, as if nothing were wrong with her, a strong, fit woman in her late sixties, who should have been yomping across the Yorkshire Dales or sunning herself on a Caribbean cruise, Wilfred Mott as her companion, at her side.

Instead, she coughed. She staggered.

Wilf went to help, but the Doctor yanked him back.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t begin to imagine how hard this is for you,’ the Doctor told him, ‘but you have to let it play out.’

Netty, or rather the alien life force currently inhabiting her mind and body, grinned at them. It was a grin neither of them liked much. It twisted Netty’s face in a way that demonstrated absolutely that this was not Netty at all.

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she gloated. ‘You have given me a whole new lease of life. I always knew the computer was a means to an end, that one day the right host would come along. Having studied this ridiculous planet, I’d rather hoped it’d be a young, sexy, male body. Like a TV soap star or a sportsman. But hey, little old ladies will do for now. When this one is burned up, I’ll move on to another.’

‘Burned up?’ Wilf looked at the Doctor, but the Time Lord’s gaze was firmly fixed on Netty. Whether this was for a reason other than not being able to deal with Wilf’s

accusatory stare, Wilf had no idea.

‘Oh, didn’t your alien mate here tell you about that side of things? I wonder if he told Henrietta Goodhart when he made the deal with her. You see, Wilf – I may call you Wilf, mayn’t I? Only Netty is terribly fond of you, and I think it makes things easier if we communicate casually.

Mr Mott is terribly formal.’ The rictus grin got wider.

‘Anyway, the human body can only withstand Mandragora energy for a short time before it evaporates and I have to find a new repository. Ultimately, it will be the Doctor.’

‘Will it? Oh joy.’

‘You know it will.’

‘But you need to weaken my defences first, of course.

Batter me down, break my spirit. How’re you going to do that, then?’

Netty laughed – it was a sound utterly devoid of warmth or genuine mirth. ‘By destroying everyone you know.’

She suddenly looked unsteady on her feet, and reached out to Wilf for support. He was about to supply it when the Doctor bounded across the room, knocking Wilf’s arm away.

‘Oi!’

‘Oh, don’t you start,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘Let her stand on her own two feet.’

Netty was steady again. ‘Starting with this old man with the bad heart.’

Wilf was about to speak – and then it dawned on him why the Doctor had made up the stuff about his heart.

He’d wanted it to take Netty’s body, not Wilf’s.

Why?

‘Once upon a time, Doctor, we saw this world as a threat, it had so much potential. We tried to stop it developing, hold back its early sciences. But look at it now! We were wrong, we should have encouraged it further. It has the ability to communicate. With one tiny computer virus, Mandragora can touch the world. There are almost seven billion people on Earth, Doctor. In a couple of years, two billion homes will have a personal computer within them, accessed on average by three people. Add to that infiltration into the workplace and it will take Mandragora less than an hour to effectively dominate the majority of people in this planet, to use human technology to spread Mandragora across the galaxy far more efficiently than I can do it alone. In twenty years, I could have humanity building farms on Mars. In a hundred years’ time, we could colonise Alpha Centauri. A new Mandragoran Empire, combining Helix energy, human physicality and communications science.

And then… then…’

‘It’s impressive, I’ll grant you. Then what?’

‘What does any species do? It flourishes, it dominates it… sort of… keeps going.’

‘Oh, “sort of keeps going”, that’s very scientific.’ The Doctor sat on the chair in front of the now useless Madam Delphi set-up. ‘And? Tell me more of your plans. Wilfred here is desperate to know. So am I. And Donna, she’s just outside the door – hello, Donna, come back in – I’m sure she wants to know, too.’

Donna showed herself. ‘I thought I could be more help up here. All those weirdos, I ushered into the staff restaurant, told ’em I’d be back in a minute.’

‘Umm, Donna,’ the Doctor cautioned, ‘what’s to stop them running away?’

Donna held up a little silver key and waved it in front of his nose. ‘Cos I’m brilliant and locked ’em in.’ She grinned. ‘Oh, but I sent the Carnes boys home.’

‘Good, good. Mandragora here was just telling me how he/she/it is going to create a whole new empire. Like the Byzantine Empire, or, um, what was that other one?

Greek? No… Oh, what was it?’

Donna opened her mouth to suggest ‘Roman’ but the Doctor stopped her.

‘Now, now, Donna, let Mandragora work it out. Come on, you’ve got all that information at your fingertips, what’s the empire I’m thinking of? Something to do with a Decline and a Fall, wasn’t it?’

Netty/Mandragora paused. Then: ‘Roman. The Roman Empire.’

‘Oh yes, very good. How many billions of computers are there on Earth now? What was the market infiltration of the M-TEK, by the way?’

Netty/Mandragora frowned, and turned to Donna’s granddad. ‘Wilf? Help me…’

‘Netty…?’

‘No, Wilfred,’ the Doctor said loudly, his voice suddenly like a gunshot. ‘Sit down, leave Netty to work it out. Now!’

And Wilf settled next to Donna, on the floor.

‘Where is Mandragora from?’

Netty/Mandragora smiled. ‘A nebula, Doctor. We escaped the Dark Times and created a new home in the heart of beautiful chaos.’

‘Of course you did. What was it called?’

‘The… it was… I can’t remember…’

Netty/Mandragora staggered slightly. ‘We can’t remember…’

‘Come on, focus,’ the Doctor yelled suddenly, and he was up, circling Netty/Mandragora, firing questions as he walked around.

‘Tell me the speed of light? How many years did the Carrionite-Eternals war rage? Where is the home world of the Judoon? What’s the Twenty-Third Convention of the Shadow Proclamation? Who won the Bendrome/Sendrome War? How many beans make five?

Come on, come on…’ he clicked his fingers impatiently. ‘I mean, you can hardly take over the universe if you can’t think for yourself, can you?’

‘Give me a moment…’ Netty/Mandragora spat.

‘Give you a moment? Well, I could give you a moment, I s’pose, I mean, I’d give Henrietta Goodhart a moment or two happily, because she’s not well, is she? Oh, didn’t you realise? Hadn’t you sussed that bit out?’ And the Doctor roughly grabbed Netty’s shoulders and swung her round so they were face to face, noses almost touching. ‘You’ve taken on the body of a rather amazing lady, Mandragora, and you’ve locked yourself away in her mind, spreading out into her synapses and everything. Trouble is, the synapses are failing her. Each and every day the neurons

and synapses in her cerebral cortex are atrophying. And you’re speeding the process up in your hurry to acclimatise yourself and, sadly, you’re already breaking up. I mean you can’t think of words – that’s a touch of paraphasia coming on. Unsteady on your feet? Well, I think that’s apraxia. Temporal lobe, parietal lobe, decaying around you.’

‘You… you did something… tricked… you tricked me…’

‘Well… yes, I think I did. And the more you fight it, the more Mandragora energy you spend trying to repair those bits of brain, the more you’re actually losing yourself, because this lady has Moderate Alzheimer’s and that’s not curable, even by you.’

‘Then I shall, you know, change… move, swap bodies with… I shall…’

‘Yes? What? What will you do? Go on, tell me.’

Donna joined in. ‘Or you could tell us all about the stars, all those marvellous constellations, all the things that Netty knows about. Tell us where the Dog Star is? Or how to find the Big Dipper. What direction will I see Venus in at this time of year?’

Wilf grabbed Donna’s arm. ‘Stop it, Donna, you’re confusing her.’

‘That’s the idea,’ she told him. ‘That’s what the Doctor’s doing this for, speeding up the confusion.’

‘But it’s Netty… you’re hurting Netty!’

Wilf couldn’t move. He knew that Donna and the Doctor knew what they were doing, but it didn’t stop him wanting them to stop. Wanting to do anything other than

have Netty used and abused in this way. But he didn’t.

Because, as he’d once read in a newspaper advice column, ‘sometimes the greatest good can come out of the smallest pain.’ Actually it had probably said ‘life’s full of hard knocks’, but that was how he’d chosen to interpret it.

He just hated it.

For one teeny tiny second, he almost hated the Doctor and Donna for doing it so… easily.

And then he made a decision.

‘When the stars begin to fall,’ he began to sing quietly, ‘Oh Lord! What a morning. Oh Lord! What a morning…’

His voice cracked slightly, so he cleared his throat and began again. ‘When the stars begin to fall, Oh Lord! What a morning. Oh Lord! What a morning. When the stars begin to fall…’

Gently, quietly, Netty’s voice responded. ‘Oh sinner, what will you do, when the stars begin to fall… Oh Lord!

What a morning…’

Wilf reached out and took her hand, trying to hide his tears as he did so.

This time the Doctor didn’t pull him away. Wilf started slow, stumbling dance steps with Netty, as the two of them sang quietly together the song that she so loved.

The Doctor eased Donna back. ‘It’s up to your granddad now,’ he whispered.

‘D’you remember where we first heard this song?’ Wilf said to Netty as they danced. ‘Who sang it? What was the name of the man who brought us dinner? Can you remember the car, all silver and shining? And was that the first time you’d ever been driven in a Rolls Royce? And

what I said at the end, as we drove through the streets, looking up at that clear, beautiful sky? And can you—’

‘I… I can’t… I can’t remember… I am Mandr…

Mandragora… I will rule the universe… somehow… I can’t…’

‘You are Henrietta Goodhart,’ Wilf said gently. ‘And you are ill, so terribly, terribly ill, and I’m so scared I’m gonna lose you and I don’t want to lose you. Please stay.’

‘Wilfred?’

The Doctor and Donna immediately perked up as Netty spoke his name.

‘You’re Wilfred… and I’m Netty… no, I’m the Mandragora Helix, and I… Oh Lord! What a morning…’

Wilf pulled her tightly to him, and hugged her more than he had ever hugged anyone since his beloved Eileen had passed away. ‘Oh sinner, what will you do,’ he sang back.

‘My head… I don’t understand… I can’t remember anything…’ Netty pushed him away. ‘Why can’t I remember? It’s not fair… It’s not fair! I can’t remember anything… it’s not fair!!’

Netty’s head dropped backwards and she looked up at the ceiling, bringing both her hands up to point in the direction she was looking. The others watched as screaming purple, blue, red light roared from her body, utterly vaporising a space in the ceiling as the Mandragora energy erupted from Netty’s human form and streaked up into the sky.

Then the noise and light cut off.

Mandragora was gone.

Netty’s hands fell limply to her sides, and her head lolled forward.

Wilf went to catch her, but Netty just shook herself and looked up at him, a huge smile of recognition on her face.

‘Wilfred?’ She looked around the hotel penthouse, saw the perfect hole in the ceiling, then spotted the Doctor and Donna.

‘Blimey O’Reilly,’ she said. ‘Have I been Sundowning again? Where on earth have I wandered off to this time?’

‘You, Henrietta Goodhart,’ the Doctor smiled, ‘just saved planet Earth. You’re brilliant.’

Donna nudged him. ‘Yeah. And you’re not so useless yourself, spaceman.’

A hundred miles. A thousand miles. A million miles.

Moving almost at the speed of thought, the fractured, disembodied Mandragora Helix shot across the universe, screaming inside, its mind falling apart, trying to find its way home.

But where was home? Surely it was… No, it was…

Where was home? Where was here?

Who am I? What am I? Why am I?

Who… what… where… how…

I think therefore I am…

I think therefore…

I think…

I…

What is ‘I’…

Nothing…

‘I’ is nothing…

I…

I…

i…

…

..

.

In the canteen, Donna had taken charge, and she soon had everyone relaxed and sorted out, which was a relief for the Doctor – she was much better at this human touchy-feely stuff than him. More importantly right now, she could lie far more convincingly, tell them it’d all been part of a computer virus sent out by MorganTech and that they could go back home as soon as it was daylight.

The Doctor had made a couple of quick calls to people he knew in high places (or maybe low ones) and announced that someone would be arriving very soon to give everyone air tickets and first-class reservations to wherever they wanted to go.

‘This is England,’ the old American man had muttered.

‘I always wanted to come to England. How on earth did I get here?’

The Doctor couldn’t answer that one but instead fobbed him and his lovely wife off by saying he’d arranged for them to stay in a hotel (not this one, thank God) in the centre of town, and they had a seven-day pass to explore the city. ‘Take the train out, go visit Bath, or Warwick or the Isle of Wight.’

‘Or Hull,’ Donna had added.

‘Donna, why would they want to go to Hull? What’s in Hull that they could possibly want to see?’

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been to Hull. But I

always thought it sounded interesting.’

‘Hull’s lovely,’ Wilf joined in. ‘Went there for a long weekend once, to see a match. Went out on a boat.’

The Doctor gave in. ‘All right,’ he said to the Americans. ‘Go to Hull, too. It has boats. Apparently.’

The elderly couple went off muttering about Hull, and the Doctor turned his attention to the students. Three guys and a girl.

‘What happened to the Professor?’ asked the girl.

The two guys at the back (oh, so a couple, Donna decided) nodded, but the other man looked downcast. ‘He died, didn’t he?’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Italian man? Yes, I’m sorry.’

The students all stared at each other. ‘I don’t see any point in going back to Italy.’

‘I do,’ said the smaller guy at the back, looking at the other.

Ahhh, thought Donna.

‘We should at least tie up loose ends out there,’ the third guy said.

And the group wandered off, muttering together.

The Greek man was apologetic, saying he had no recollection of what he’d done, but guessed it hadn’t been good. The Doctor explained it wasn’t his fault and that he should go back to his family and forget about London.

The man wandered off, muttering.

‘Suppose he did something back in Greece? Suppose any of them did? Or all of them?’ Donna said.

‘I can’t sort everything out, Donna.’ He sighed. ‘We can only hope that whatever has happened in their pasts, if

anything, they can come to terms with it. And they’re unlikely to actually remember.’

‘You’re thinking of your friend at Copernicus, aren’t you?’

‘One of them killed him. Broke his neck. Our Greek friend seems the most likely, but I’m not a policeman. And I can’t prove anything.’

Donna pondered on the morality of it when her mobile phone bleeped. A text.

‘Miss Oladini,’ Donna waved her mobile at him. She read the text.

‘Is she all right?’ the Doctor asked.

‘She’s ecstatic. What did you do?’

‘Dunno what you mean.’

‘Doctor?’

‘Well, perhaps while I was sorting things out with UNIT for that lot, I may possibly have mentioned how indebted we all were to her, too.’

‘She says here,’ Donna smiled, ‘that she’s had her visitor’s status upgraded and can now come and go as she pleases. No more hiding. Oh, and she also says to tell you she has a cat called Dolly, and that you know what that means.’

The Doctor beamed. ‘Good for them both.’

‘Thought you didn’t like cats much?’

‘I always liked Dolly. And she deserves a good home.’

‘Doctor? How many other people did Madam Delphi use and then chuck away?’

‘Mankind were just tools to the Helix, tools to be used and abandoned.’

‘Like Netty?’

The Doctor visibly winced.

‘I’m sorry,’ Donna said. ‘That was below the belt.’

The Doctor looked at his friend. ‘But true, and honest. I had to take the risk, Donna. Once, I might’ve done it with less conscience.’

‘My God,’ Donna said in mock horror. ‘What have I done to you?’

The Doctor was serious. He took her hands in his.

‘Made me a better person.’

Donna pulled her hands away, resorting, as always, to her standard jokes. ‘Now then, don’t touch what you can’t afford, spaceman.’

They watched as Wilf and Netty started walking towards the main reception area. ‘Let’s get them back to your mum, eh?’

Donna nodded. ‘You coming too, then? I mean, you know what she’s like.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yeah. An older version of her daughter.’

‘Oi!’ Donna laughed and linked arms with the Doctor.

‘Come on, spaceman. You’ve stared down Sontarans, Pyroviles and the Fishmen of Kandalinga. I don’t really think my mum’s that scary.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Nah. Unless it’s Monday. Mondays, she gets one of her ’mares on. Is today Monday?’

‘Today is indeed Monday.’

Donna held him a bit tighter. ‘My turn to protect you then, eh?’