Текст книги "Doctor Who- Beautiful Chaos"

Donna punched at the radio buttons until she got a station.

She didn’t want music, she wanted news. It wasn’t hard to find. All over the globe, massive beams of light had struck down, and been surrounded by people. Some observers were saying they were terrorists guarding a bomb site, some thought they were religious fanatics guarding something holy and special. Others reckoned it was aliens, coming to get those who had claimed to have been abducted and then returned with microchips in their heads over the last fifty years. The strange message from ‘Madam Delphi’, which everyone assumed was just an internet hacker trying to be funny, had started that one off…

‘Irony is,’ she said to the radio, ‘that’s the one that might be right!’

There didn’t seem to be too many casualties but no one could get near the people actually guarding the craters.

Britain, America, Russia, the Middle East, Asia, New Zealand, Africa, Greenland, nowhere was untouched.

There seemed to be no connection between the people gathering to guard those craters: different ages, sexes, politics, backgrounds.

‘Wonder if the Poles got attacked,’ she mumbled after

listening to the reports for a bit longer as they drove past the Tower of London.

‘There was a mention of one in Germany,’ Lukas said.

Donna smiled. ‘I didn’t mean Poles in Poland, I meant the North or South Poles.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yeah, it probably does. They seem to be heavily populated areas, rather than desolate. So there’s something significant about that.’

‘What?’

‘No idea. But I’m thinking.’ She looked at a sign saying A13 Tilbury. ‘Essex thataway.’ Then she shrugged.

‘Not that I know exactly where I’m going. It was dark last night and I was thinking about the Doctor too much to note landmarks.’

‘You want to take the A127,’ Joe piped up. ‘Three miles along that after the M25 junction, then left into Meadow Lane, half a mile further on and right into Gorsten Road. Stay on that for six and a half miles, then left towards South Woodham Ferrers.’

‘Oh yes, I remember that name,’ Donna said. ‘How do you know?’

‘After passing under the railway bridge, you need to go eight miles on Tributary Road and as you get to the B8932, turn right into Allcomb Lane. Copernicus is two miles along there.’

Donna looked at Lukas, who just shrugged. ‘He knew where to find you,’ he told her. ‘And what van you’d be driving.’

‘That’s creepy,’ Donna said quietly, glancing at Joe in

the rear-view mirror.

‘That’s Joe,’ Lukas said. ‘Thank God we’re only half-brothers.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Donna chided him. ‘He’s still your brother.’

‘Yeah,’ Lukas agreed. ‘But if we were full brothers, maybe we’d both be weird. This way, I can translate if he starts speaking Italian.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Cos that’s where his dad was from, according to Mum.’

And something flashed through Donna’s mind.

Something the Doctor had said at the dinner the night before, when she was helping Netty out and old man Crossland had thought he was barking. When he was talking about that Mandragora thing.

I first encountered it in the fifteenth century in Italy.

Something in Donna’s head sparked. Mad dolphins!

Course! It couldn’t be that simple, surely… but then, he said it was five hundred years ago. Plenty of time for people from Italy to travel the world, have generations of kids… That man, last night at the telescope who zapped the Doctor, his accent could have been Italian. And he had gone on about genealogy…

‘Any idea where in Italy?’

‘Nah,’ said Lukas.

‘San Martino,’ Joe piped up.

‘Thought you might know that,’ Donna said.

‘Why?’ asked Lukas.

‘Cos I don’t think him being all Super SatNav in the

back there is a coincidence. I think something is using him to get us to that telescope thing for a reason.’

‘You mean my little brother is an alien?’

‘Don’t sound too excited by that idea.’

‘Nah, it’s dead cool.’ Lukas leaned closer. ‘I always told Mum he was weird.’

‘He’s not an alien. But there might be something in his background that’ll help the Doctor sort this out.’

Lukas glanced back at his brother, who was now listening to his M-TEK again. ‘I don’t want anything to happen to him though.’

Donna smiled at him. ‘It won’t, the Doctor’ll make sure he’s safe.’ But inside, she wasn’t quite so sure she could guarantee that.

The Doctor’s eyes opened and Wilfred Mott swam into view.

He grinned. ‘Hullo, Wilf.’

‘Hello, Doctor,’ said the old man, hauling him up.

‘What you doing on the floor?’

‘I was dumped. Deposited. Abandoned. How rude!’ the Doctor mumbled. Then he grabbed Wilf by both arms.

‘Where’s Donna?’

‘She’s fine. Safe at home with Sylvia, thinking we’re both up at the allotment.’

‘Good. Excellent. Brilliant even. Now then, why did they leave me here?’

‘That weird lot with the purple electricity?’

‘Yes, that’s them. Blimey, Donna doesn’t miss much out, does she?’

‘I made her tell me everything. Doctor?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s a dead man out in that officey area.’

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. ‘I was afraid of that.’ He followed Wilf out of the control room, casting one last look around, and squinting at some numbers on a screen. A moment later, he was laying Melville’s dead body out on the floor, checking him.

‘You must be Miss Oladini?’ he said.

Miss Oladini nodded. ‘How…?’

‘I knew they were searching for you. Professor Melville asked me to try and find you. Keep you safe. And something about a cat?’

‘Professor Melville was alive then?’

‘Oh yes. They were forcing him to move the radio telescope into alignment with the Chaos Body up there.’

Wilf filled him in on the developments around the world.

‘Madam Delphi?’

‘She writes astrology columns in the papers,’ Miss Oladini threw in.

The Doctor gave her a look.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Pointless information, I know.’

‘Oh no it wasn’t, Miss Oladini. Brilliant info, actually.

Explains so much. If you are an alien super-being whose helix power is governed by the stars, then who better than an astrologer whose words are read and devoured by millions to use as your medium. We need to find this Madam Delphi and ask her where she gets her information from.’

‘Why’d they kill Professor Melville?’ Miss Oladini

asked quietly.

‘Mandragora is a great one for tools. All those people you saw last night? Tools. Tools to be discarded once they’re of no use. I imagine poor Professor Melville did what he needed to do for them and they merely tidied up after themselves.’ He put a hand of Miss Oladini’s shoulder. ‘A stupid, pointless waste of a good man and a friend. I’m sorry.’

She smiled at him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help stop them?’

The Doctor looked back into the control room. ‘Wilf, any sign of anyone else here?’

‘No one.’

‘I think they all left about nine o’clock this morning,’

Miss Oladini added. ‘I couldn’t see much, but I heard them speak.’

‘Car, Wilf?’

‘Out the front.’

‘Good, give it to Miss Oladini.’

‘Why?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Because you are alive, Miss Oladini, and I made a promise to a man to keep it that way. Go home. Wilf, phone?’

‘It’s dead, I never recharge it.’

‘ Phone? ’

Wilf dug it out of his jacket pocket, and the Doctor sonicked it, then dashed back into the control room. A moment later, he returned and gave the phone to Miss Oladini. ‘Recharged, should last a couple of weeks. Wilf,

sorry, had to wipe the sim card.’

‘The what card?’

‘If you don’t know, never mind. Miss Oladini, stored on that sim card are the coordinates the telescope is currently positioned to. I’ve also done a bit of nifty-swifty kinda stuff, meaning that when I call you on this phone, you are not to answer.’

‘How will I know it’s you?’

‘Cos no one else is likely to ring it as they know its daft owner always keeps it off and lets the battery go flat.’

Wilf harrumphed.

‘So,’ the Doctor went on, ‘when I call you, don’t actually answer, but instead, press the hash key. And whatever happens, don’t accidentally press it before I call you.’

Wilf wanted to know why, but the Doctor shook his head. ‘Safer all round if you don’t ask. Miss Oladini, do all that, and you may be responsible for saving the world.

Possibly the entire universe. Wilf, keys.’

Wilf reluctantly handed them over and Miss Oladini gently put the phone into one of the pockets of her many coats.

‘Good luck, Miss Oladini. And thank you,’ said the Doctor. ‘Off you go.’

She gave a last sad look at Melville. ‘He was lovely,’

she said simply.

‘I know,’ the Doctor said. ‘Met him in 1958. He had a skiffle band, called The Geeks – I played washboard for him. Joe Meek was gonna produce the album. We called him “Ahab” cos his surname was Melville. To this day, I

don’t know what his real first name was.’

‘Brian,’ Miss Oladini said. ‘That’s what his personnel file said.’ She smiled a sad smile at the Doctor as she headed off.

‘Brian,’ said the Doctor to the body. ‘Goodbye, Brian.’

Wilf looked after Miss Oladini. ‘Will she be OK? If those people are still watching us?’

‘Nah, they’ve gone. She’ll be fine, only lives locally, you’ll be able to pick the car up next week. If we’re all still alive.’

‘Charming.’

‘Always a risk.’ He glanced up at the clock. ‘I reckon we have about an hour to find out why they left me alive.’

‘Then what happens?’

‘The cavalry.’

Dara Morgan was standing in the penthouse of the Oracle Hotel, staring down at the elevated motorway below.

‘They look like ants.’ Caitlin was at his shoulder.

‘Which is pretty much what they are.’

Dara Morgan opened his mouth, as if to speak, then shut it.

‘You OK?’ Caitlin asked.

He shrugged. ‘I… I seem to remember something. Toy cars. I can see loads of little metal cars being played with by a child. The boy seems…’

‘Familiar?’

‘I was going to say “happy”, actually.’ Dara Morgan moved away from the window. ‘Madam Delphi,’ he said to the computer screens assembled across the desks lined

up along one long wall. ‘How are we doing?’

‘It’s fantastic,’ the computer replied, waveforms positively glowing. ‘All over the world, the children of Mandragora are linking up, protecting the sites of arrival.

And MorganTech now controls eighty-seven per cent of the world’s computer franchises.’ Madam Delphi giggled.

‘Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, William Henry Gates III.’

Caitlin started reading off some internet reports.

‘There’s a new cult of Mandragora in South America now,’ she laughed. ‘How far did Mandragora go back then?’

Madam Delphi’s screens flashed. ‘We went a long way.

Ooh look, a whole lineage trace in Norway. Is there nowhere we haven’t reached?’

Caitlin tapped a few more keys. ‘And another in Zaire!’

‘This truly is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius!’

Madam Delphi cheered.

Dara Morgan was watching the cars again. And on the window, he was subconsciously drawing letters with his finger.

Caitlin glanced up. And frowned. Dara Morgan was drawing a C. And an F.

She was up and beside him instantly. ‘Hey you,’ she said, drawing him back. ‘Madam Delphi has something to show us. A tenth of the world’s population are joining us today. And when the M-TEK goes on sale this week, we’ll have six times that many! Already the free prototypes we gave away have activated our sleeping brethren.’

Dara Morgan gave a last glance back towards the

window, towards the M4 motorway and then down at the potential M-TEK sales. ‘Once Murakami has sorted things out in Tokyo…’

‘This world and all its people will belong to Mandragora!’ said Madam Delphi. ‘Oh, and I’ve just uploaded a whole new batch of horoscopes. How marvellous!’

Wilf had rescued an old coat from a room and brought it over to the observatory to cover Melville’s dead body.

‘Why’d they kill the poor man, Doctor?’

The Doctor was in the small control room, carefully studying the readouts, equally careful not to touch anything. ‘He probably set all this up for the Mandragora Helix, then they didn’t need him any more. It takes a percentage of its power to control people – better to save it for those it needs long term.’

‘Such as?’

The Doctor turned away from the controls and ushered Wilf back towards the dead body, sonicking the door behind him. ‘No one gets in or out until I say so,’ he muttered. Then he smiled at Wilf. ‘I wish I had an answer for you, Wilf, but truth is I’ve not got a clue. There’s always a link between the people it enslaves and the people they enslave in turn. Right now, I have no idea what that is, or how your Madam Delphi fits in but I’m guessing she is linked to Mandragora.’ Suddenly the Doctor slapped his hand to his head. ‘Oh of course! I see it now! Wilf, what’s the time?’

‘Twelve thirty-five.’

‘And you arrived here when?’

‘About nine, I wanted to get here because—’

The Doctor held up a hand to quieten him. Then he counted down. ‘Five. Four. Three. Two. And… one!’

At which point the outer door to the observatory was wrenched open, flooding the room with daylight.

Standing there, framed in it, was Donna Noble.

‘The cavalry, as promised.’

Wilf hugged Donna. ‘How’d you know we were here?’

The Doctor was leaning against the wall, arms folded, all nonchalant, but so proud. ‘Aww, cos she’s your granddaughter, Wilf, and she’s brilliant.’

Donna ignored the compliment. ‘I know what that bloke meant last night. And he was Italian. It’s the Italians!’

Wilf looked from one to the other. ‘What?’

‘He said something about a man who licks mad dolphins.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Oh.’

‘But let’s see if we agree, go on.’

‘Or,’ Donna grinned, ‘if I’m righter than you?’

‘Improbable, but always possible. Fire away.’

‘What he said was “The man. He licks mad dolphins.”

But he didn’t say “mad dolphins”, he said “Madam Delphi”.’ Donna smiled. ‘Yeah, you’d guessed that, hadn’t you?’

The Doctor nodded.

‘I’m still working on the bit about him licking her,’

Donna went on.

The Doctor smiled at her. ‘Helix. It’s the Mandragora

Helix, Donna. But I don’t know why the Italian bit is important… Oh, oh, yes, of course!’

‘Fifteenth-century Italy. San Martino, perhaps?’

‘What are you two talking about?’ asked Wilf.

The Doctor looked at him. ‘Potted history, Wilf. 1492, I met up with this alien energy from the Dawn of Time.

Mandragora Helix, always striving to dominate the lesser species.’

‘Who you calling lesser?’ asked Donna.

‘Fifteenth-century humanity, Donna. Not like twenty-first century humanity, oh no. You’re far more sophisticated.’ He smiled in a way that suggested this wasn’t exactly how he perceived things, but she let it go.

‘So, anyway,’ he continued, ‘I accidentally brought a fragment of the Helix energy to a small Italian principality called San Martino. I defeated it, very cleverly, by earthing it. Or so I thought. But that’s quite literally what I did, shoved it into the ground, where it survived, trying to repair itself. Got into the land, into the water and ultimately into the people. A tiny biological entity attaching itself to chromosomes, DNA, whatever.

Transferred from generation to generation until the whole kit and kaboodle of Mandragora shifts itself halfway across the universe and links up. Last time, it wanted to halt human progress. This time, Mandragora’s realised that there’s no stopping you, you’ll be out there, flooding humanity across the stars in no time, colonies, empires, wars and peacetimes, until the end of time. So Mandragora says, “I’ll have a bit of that, thank you,” and glues itself to you for eternity. Great plan, it can

manipulate you all for millennia to come.’

‘So all over the world,’ said Donna, ‘diluted through breeding and whatnot, there are these descendents from San Martino all over the world. Thousands of them now, probably unaware half of ’em that they even have Italian blood in them. And Mandragora is controlling them.’ She turned back to the Doctor. ‘That’s how Joe Carnes knew you were who you are. His dad’s from San Martino.’

‘How’d you know that?’

‘Joe told her.’ Lukas Carnes poked his head through the door. ‘He’s finished in the toilet, Donna,’ he added as the two boys walked in.

‘Oh yeah,’ Donna smiled weakly at the Doctor. ‘Say hi to my team of helpers.’

The Doctor was overjoyed to see them. ‘That’s how you found us, wasn’t it? I thought it was unlikely you’d memorised last night’s taxi route.’

‘Like a guide dog, Joe is,’ Donna said.

The Doctor put a hand on Wilf’s shoulder. ‘We’re done here. Let’s go home. Via Greenwich.’

‘Greenwich?’ Wilf frowned. ‘Oh no. No, Doctor, don’t involve Netty. Please!’

‘I really think she can help, Wilf. I’m sorry.’

‘Who’s that?’ Lukas was pointing at the coat-covered body in the corner.

The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘A good mate of mine, Lukas. He died.’ And he threw a look at Wilf. ‘But he’s the last friend who dies at the hands of the Mandragora Helix, I promise you.’

Donna took this in, remembering her promise in the

van to Lukas about Joe. She hoped the Doctor wouldn’t let them down.

As he passed her, he winked and smiled.

What was she thinking? This was the Doctor.

Of course everything would be OK.

How could it not be?

The journey back to London was uneventful, to say the least. Wilf sat in the front seat next to Donna, wincing occasionally as she almost clipped wing mirrors on parked cars. The Doctor and the two boys sat in the back once they’d shifted blankets, a water bottle and a toolbox.

The Doctor had found a paperback book under a seat called A Dark and Stormy Night, all about rich kings, pirates, frightened maids, strong cattle herders and a young girl found in the snow. The Doctor sympathised with the story’s hero, a young hospital intern who tried to piece the disparate elements together.

After a while, he’d given up and thrown it to the boys.

Lukas had eagerly started reading it, at the same time keeping a protective eye on Joe as the Doctor asked him about his long-lost dad.

He got no useful answers. Joe couldn’t really remember going to the electrical shop on Friday afternoon – if it hadn’t been for the free M-TEK prototype, he’d never even have known he’d been there.

‘He has days like that,’ Lukas muttered.

‘What’s an M-TEK when it’s at home, then?’

Lukas turned back to the book while Joe showed the Doctor the small portable device. ‘It’s like an MP3 player that plays movies as well,’ said Joe. ‘It connects to the net,

it’s a phone and it’s got a 160-gig memory, so you can keep stuff on it. It runs Windows and OSX 6 really fast.’

The Doctor nodded, impressed. ‘Great things come in small packages,’ he said, and promptly got out his sonic screwdriver and zapped the M-TEK with it.

Recognising that noise, Donna yelled back, ‘Hope you’re buying him a replacement.’

But the Doctor was frowning. The sonic had done absolutely nothing. Not even scrambled the stored music.

‘That’s…’

‘Weird?’ Donna offered.

‘More than weird,’ he agreed. He scrambled to the back of the van, found the toolbox, took out a hefty hammer and brought it down on the M-TEK. The crash of the hammer, the yell of outrage from Joe and Lukas’s very loud curse nearly caused Donna to mount the kerb as they turned into the Blackwall Tunnel.

‘Well?’ asked Wilf.

The Doctor held the M-TEK up. ‘Not a scratch, not a dent, nothing. That’s good tech. Alien tech, but good tech.

It’s also impossible.’ He smiled at the somewhat shaken boys. ‘Oh, I do like a bit of impossible.’

‘Anyone noticed anything odd?’ Donna asked.

‘We’re still alive after you driving for an hour?’ Wilf suggested.

‘No traffic,’ Lukas suggested.

The Doctor looked up. ‘That true?’

Donna nodded. ‘Loads of parked cars. I’ve seen three other cars actually moving since we left Copper Knickers.

One of them kept flashing me, I thought he was cross

about something.’

‘Probably was,’ said Wilf. ‘You cut him up.’

‘But I think he was trying to flag us down,’ Donna ignored her granddad. ‘Cos this is just mad. Where is everyone?’

‘It’s Sunday?’ the Doctor suggested.

‘It’s South East London,’ countered Donna, ‘and we’re not in the tenth century. There should be hundreds of cars.’

‘I quite like it,’ Wilf said. ‘Everything peaceful. Take the next junction, sweetheart, Netty lives just off the main road.’

They pulled up outside Netty’s house in silence.

Wilf got out and rang the doorbell, but there was nothing. He called for her through the letterbox and, after a second or two, the door opened and he was yanked in, out of sight.

Donna, in the front of the van, glanced at the Doctor.

‘Didja see that?’

‘It was Netty,’ the Doctor said.

‘How’d you know?’

‘Aliens would never wear hats like that.’

The door reopened and Wilf emerged, followed by Netty in a green felt hat with a peacock feather in it, all very 1950s.

‘You seen the news, Doctor?’ asked Netty, hauling herself in and sitting herself next to Wilf.

He said he hadn’t.

‘Then the best thing we can do is drive through Central London.’

Intrigued, Donna restarted the van and off they went.

Through Greenwich, past the rebuilt Cutty Sark and all the markets and shops. Through New Cross, down the Old Kent Road, around the Elephant and Castle and over Blackfriars Bridge.

‘Not a single soul,’ Wilf said. ‘No one.’

‘The BBC were telling everyone to stay indoors.

Fairchild has declared a state of emergency.’

‘Fairchild?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Prime Minister,’ Lukas said with a sigh. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

‘I know lots of prime ministers,’ the Doctor said. ‘But in this century they come and go annually, I think. This one clearly makes no impression on history.’

Donna brought the van to a sudden halt and, very quietly, said, ‘Oh.’

Those in the rear of the van leaned forward. ‘Oh indeed,’ the Doctor said.

Because they could go no further. They were on the Embankment, just down from Charing Cross station.

As were possibly a million other people. Standing.

Still. Arms reaching up to the skies.

And all chanting quietly. ‘Helix. Helix. Helix.’

‘That’s not good,’ Donna said.

The Doctor passed her Joe’s M-TEK. ‘Call your mum, please.’

‘Why?’

‘Let her know we’re safe and we’ll see her tomorrow.’

‘Priorities?’ asked Donna.

‘Keeping on the good side of your mum is a priority,

Donna. For both of us. She’ll be worried.’ He turned to the Carnes boys. ‘Then we’ll phone your mother, she must be worried sick.’

‘Won’t be,’ said Joe quietly. ‘She’ll be one of this lot.’

Wilf was about to ask why, but the Doctor shook his head. ‘Now, Joe, just cos she’s your mum, she’s not in any danger. None of these people are, by the look of it.’

‘She gave birth to him. Maybe she’s got this Helix gene thing?’ said Lukas. ‘Thank God I’m the older one.’

Joe stared out of the van. ‘What do we do to rescue her, Doctor?’

The Doctor smiled. ‘That’s the spirit, boys, remember we can save her. We can save all these people.’

Donna passed the M-TEK back. ‘She says Chiswick’s empty. I told her to stay indoors, drink tea and keep the TV on. I said to do whatever the BBC says unless it involves leaving the house or stopping drinking tea. She didn’t see the funny side.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Wilf. ‘Well, Doctor, what do we do?’

The Doctor was looking at the M-TEK. ‘They gave this to you, Joe, yeah? Have they given loads of free ones out?’

Joe nodded. ‘On the forum, they said they were giving out a million free ones before tomorrow’s launch.’

‘I bet the target audience was of very specific genealogy, too. So, this thing goes nationwide tomorrow?’

‘Worldwide,’ Netty put in. ‘I’m going to get one. I like things like that. Was going to wait a month or so, see if the home shopping channel did ’em cheap.’

‘Oh I like that,’ Donna said. ‘Well, used to. When I had time. That Anis Ahmed did things for me…’

Netty laughed. ‘So sexy…’

Wilf coughed. ‘Anyway, getting back to the matter in hand. Doctor, we can’t just park here.’

The Doctor was still playing with the M-TEK.

‘Nothing is that well protected… If I can just rewrite some of the software…’ The sonic flashed a couple of different shades of blue, the M-TEK gave a ping, and the Doctor cheered. Then stopped. ‘I appear to have accessed a horoscope website. Ah, our old friend Madam Delphi.’

‘She works for the people who made the M-TEK,’

Lukas said. ‘She writes her horoscope things for some of their papers.’

The Doctor stared at the youth. ‘You what?’

‘MorganTech, they make everything these days. Run TV stations, newspapers, the works.’ Lukas shrugged.

‘Think a cross between Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson and you have Dara Morgan.’

‘And who’s he when he’s at home?’ asked the Doctor.

‘He runs MorganTech. Been around for a few years now. We did some research on him at school, but there’s not that much out there. He’s not keen on unauthorised biogs.’

The Doctor looked at the group in the van. ‘So let me get this right. We have beams of light hitting the ground, hypnotised people chanting to the stars thanks to a newspaper astrologer telling you she’s changing the world, new gadgets given away free to people who are of Italian descent and no one thinks to tell me they’re all

connected?’

The others looked at each other. Donna spoke eventually. ‘We can’t be expected to make the leaps of logic you do, you know.’

‘They’re not leaps, they’re clearly defined paths of evidence and… oh, never mind. Where do I find this MorganTech?’

‘Near where we live,’ Lukas said. ‘In Brentford.’

‘Oh that’s right,’ Wilf said. ‘They have that big office and hotel complex on the Golden Mile.’

‘And the guy in charge is called Dara Morgan?’

‘Yup.’

‘Course he is,’ the Doctor muttered. ‘He would be.

Lukas, I want you to try and remember everything you can about him, all right?’ The Doctor chucked the M-TEK

onto the floor, and Joe went to scoop it up. ‘Leave it alone, Joe – it’s dangerous.’

He sonicked the back of the van, and the doors sprang open. ‘Come on, we’re not going to get past this lot, we need to walk and find new transport.’

‘Doctor,’ Wilf protested. ‘Netty’s…’

‘Hey,’ Netty said. ‘I can walk as well as you can, Wilfred Mott.’ She linked her arm through his. ‘We can support each other.’

He smiled down at her.

And Donna was going to do the same until she saw the look on the Doctor’s face.

Like it had been at dinner the night before.

He was looking at Netty… strangely.

Donna pulled the boys closer to her. ‘Stick with me,’

she told them, ‘and we’ll help the Doctor put an end to all this.’

‘Donna,’ the Doctor said suddenly, and in a way Donna had got used to. It was his warning voice.

Between them and the chanting crowd was a group of people. People Donna recognised from the night before, at the Copernicus Array.

‘Not good?’

‘Not good.’

‘How did you reprogram the M-TEK?’ asked the little man at the front of the group. Donna remembered him, too. He had led them, and she realised from his accent he was, of course, Italian.

‘Talent,’ the Doctor said.

‘That is not part of the plan,’ the little man said. ‘We cannot allow a weak link in the chain.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ the Doctor said, indicating with his hand for the rest of his group to move away, slightly behind him, leaving him stood between the Mandragora-powered group and the van. ‘I left it in the back. Do you want me to get it?’

‘You will leave it,’ the Italian said, as he pushed past the Doctor and clambered into the van.

The Doctor smiled at the rest of the group. An elderly duo to one side, four younger people at the back, a heavily built man to the left.

‘I wonder how many of you are actual San Martino descendents, and how many are just their… slaves?

Helpers? Unwitting participants in the murder of innocent professors at observatories? If you can fight Mandragora,

maybe we can—’

The Doctor hit the tarmac hard as the blue van exploded into flames and debris.

Donna and the boys were already running, Wilf and Netty, staggering after them.

Good.

He glanced at the funeral pyre for the little Italian man that had once been a van.

‘That’s one way of eliminating the weak M-TEK, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Bit OTT if you ask me though.’

And he got up, to be surrounded by the group. The burly man seemed to be their new leader and when he spoke, the Doctor recognised a strong Greek accent.

‘Madam Delphi wants to see you.’

‘Well, all right, but I want to check my friends are OK.’

‘They’re coming too.’

‘Aw, I’m not sure I agree to that part of the deal.’

‘Or we kill you now,’ the Greek added.

At which point Wilf, Netty, Donna and the boys emerged from hiding and were quickly rounded up.

The Doctor sighed. ‘I think that was probably a bluff,’

he said to Wilf. ‘They wanted me alive, remember?’

‘We’re in this together,’ Wilf said. ‘When I was in the paras, we never left anyone behind.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Oh well, now we’re all here. Got a firm’s coach?’

‘We walk,’ said one of the older people, an American woman.

‘It’s a long way,’ Donna said.

One of the younger men shrugged. ‘It’ll keep us all fit,

then.’

And they began the walk across London.

Everywhere they went, little groups of people were together, chanting to the skies.

Others could be seen, hiding, scared, occasionally looting shops, probably assuming this wasn’t going to be cleared up any time soon, and that food would become scarce.

‘It’s like the Blitz,’ Netty said at one point, as they walked through Leicester Square.

‘Without the bombs and collapsed buildings,’ the Doctor said. ‘Thank goodness.’

The Doctor allowed his group to separate slightly, Donna noted. She was bringing up the rear with the boys, and Wilf was getting tired, and was only a few steps ahead. Behind her, the Greek man and older Americans.

Ahead of the Doctor, the four younger people.

The Doctor was with Netty, having swapped places with Wilf, his arm now linked with hers.

Donna couldn’t hear what he was saying, but Donna could tell from the urgency he gave off in waves and the lack of response from the old lady other than the odd nod, that they weren’t really discussing London’s architecture.