Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice Read online

  ‘Well, it’s for your own protection,’ Florian said, with apparent good humour. ‘This is either a crime scene or a war zone, depending on whether what’s disrupting our operations here is human in origin or alien, as you suggest.’

  ‘Pah! But besides, even if that’s so, don’t you have anything better to do? I really do feel your company has delighted me enough.’

  ‘If only you were as funny as you think you are, Doctor.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I have many things to do. Not least to monitor the progress of the latest trial bore. But you’ve managed to position yourself at the spearhead of events here. I feel I need to keep an eye on you—’

  ‘Never mind all that. What was that you said about a “trial bore”?’

  Florian replied, ‘We’re here for the bernalium. Amid all the nonsense you ought to try to remember that, Doctor. We’ve continued to run remote sensor sweeps, and we’re finding fresh lodes of the mineral and its ores throughout the body of the moon. But it’s clear that the strongest concentration is at the centre, where we’ve yet to reach. And so—’

  ‘And so you’re drilling? Even now? In the middle of this complex and fast-moving situation, when you have all that instability up on the Wheel, and a moon infested with an unknown alien technology? Even so, you’re still drilling? But that’s utterly irresponsible! Surely you can see—’

  ‘Surely you can see I’ve my job to do.’ She glanced at the animated map on a small display screen she carried. ‘Right at the next junction.’

  ‘Ah, but with people like you it’s more than a job, isn’t it?’ he said as they hurried on. ‘It always is. I’ve met your sort before, you know. What drives you on, Florian Hart? What makes you push others to such irresponsible risks? Dreams of wealth, is that it?’

  ‘Not that. My family is wealthy – more wealthy than you could possibly imagine, I should think,’ and she cast a dismissive glance over his shabby coat, the scuffed boots inside his transparent skinsuit.

  ‘Old money, is it?’

  ‘Not at all. My father started from scratch. His father came from a Parisian slum, but he was a man who worked hard, kept on the right side of the law, and gave his descendants a chance. My father got through university on a scholarship, and then began a start-up company developing quantum teleportation techniques. Small scale at first, but highly profitable. Then he joined an international consortium that developed a technology called the Travel-Mat Relay.’

  ‘The T-Mat!’ Zoe said.

  The Doctor gestured at her to stay quiet.

  Florian went on, ‘It was enormously successful. But then—’

  ‘But then,’ the Doctor said sadly, ‘it all went horribly wrong.’

  ‘My father didn’t lose everything. He’d always been wise in spreading his money, in other industries, property. We, his family, remained wealthy. But he’d lost everything he’d worked for, all his life. Why, he was even prosecuted for his part in the T-Mat crisis. I grew up in the middle of all this. Well, when the courts were finished with him he made sure we were secure, financially – my mother, and me, his only child. But then he disappeared. Perhaps he went back to the slum, to Paris. We’ve tried to track him down; he spent a great deal of money making himself disappear. He did not want us to see him a broken man.’

  The Doctor’s tone was almost gentle now. ‘But he was still your father. Surely you would have loved him even so… Ah. But you never had the chance to tell him that, did you? And so you take revenge on the world you think betrayed him.’

  ‘Don’t presume to psychoanalyse me, Doctor.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘Just be aware that I utterly reject the value system of a world that brings down such a man, whatever his flaws. For they were magnificent flaws.’ Florian seemed angry, as if she felt she had said too much. Zoe had seen the Doctor draw people out like this with his deceptively simple questioning many times before. Now Florian glared into her screen, evidently determined to focus on business. ‘Nearly there. Make sure your blasters are charged…’

  Zoe walked closer to the Doctor. ‘Of course what crashed the T-Mat was aliens. The Ice Warriors. Another alien infestation of a bit of human technology, just like this. So Florian must know about an alien presence on Mnemosyne as a theoretical possibility at least, despite all her denials.’

  ‘That’s insightful, Zoe.’

  ‘And you do wonder if too many trips through the T-Mat as a little girl might have scrambled her circuitry a bit.’

  ‘Now that, Zoe, is unscientific, unkind, and rather funny. But there is more at stake here than the battered ego of Florian Hart, I’m afraid. Now. We’re nearly at the nest of the Dolls that Jo spotted for us with her deep radar. Are you ready?’

  Zoe reached back to her pack, extracted the foldout display screen, and shook it out like a blanket. Then she tapped the comms control at the neck of her skinsuit. ‘MMAC. Can you hear me? This is Zoe Heriot calling Malenfant-IntelligeX Modular Autonomous Component Registration Number—’

  ‘Zoe! Guid tae hear yer wee voice! And ah’m ready when ye are…’

  29

  FLORIAN’S GUARD COMMANDER insisted that Zoe and the Doctor walk down the short final passage to the nest of the Dolls flanked by two guards, with more backing them up, and a party further back still to secure their escape route.

  The Doctor ignored all this. He was never very interested in guns. He made sure his skinsuit hood was well pushed back from his head, and he put his empty hands in the air, and fixed a smile on his face. ‘Now then, Zoe, here we go. I’ll go in first. You follow right behind me.’

  And he walked into the chamber of the Blue Dolls.

  Zoe followed the Doctor, taking care not to trip over the flag she was holding out before her. For now it was blank, giving off only a dull blue glow.

  The chamber was just another natural cavity in the ice. It had a rough floor, a lumpy ceiling, and shadowy breaks in the wall revealed more passages leading deeper into the moon. The air pumped down from the human plants on the surface had reached this level, and the ubiquitous light globes had attached themselves to the ice walls and ceiling.

  But the place was dark, because many of those lamps were covered by clinging blue bodies.

  It was just like the chamber where they had lost Sinbad. The Blue Dolls were everywhere, on the roof, the walls, much of the floor, like glued-on mannequins. Immediately the dread of her last encounter flooded through Zoe, and it took a real effort for her to follow the Doctor deeper into the chamber, until she was surrounded by the creatures once more, surrounded and helpless.

  The two Bootstrap guards who flanked her were tense, wary. ‘Don’t worry, girlie. We got your back.’

  ‘Yeah. Ben, if it all kicks off, you take the roof crowd and I’ll go for the walls.’

  ‘Right. It’s the charge that scrambles them. Set your blaster to wide aperture and—’

  ‘Will you two shut up?’ Zoe snapped. ‘Nobody’s going to “scramble” anybody. And I’m no “girlie”, thank you. If you want something useful to do, hold this.’

  She handed the guards a corner each of her display flag, leaving them standing there open-mouthed, like human flagpoles.

  The Doctor was in the dead centre of the room, his arms still held out wide, as if in welcome. He turned slowly, looking around, smiling his most engaging smile. There must have been hundreds of Blue Dolls here, and if any of them were looking back at him it wasn’t obvious to Zoe.

  ‘Do you think smiling at them is doing any good, Doctor?’

  ‘Well, it can’t harm. Remember, these were all imprinted from impressions of a human child. And even very small children do respond to smiles, Zoe. At least it’s better than waving a blaster around!’ He raised his voice for the last bit, for the benefit of Florian Hart.

  ‘Shall we run the experiment?’

  He nodded curtly, still smiling, still studying the inert Blue Dolls.

  Zoe tapped her collar. ‘MMAC? Are you ready to g
o?’

  ‘Aye. Linked in to yon flag.’

  ‘Go ahead please.’

  The flag, designed to display corporate motivational slogans and the faces of smiling workers, immediately lit up, with a shifting, panning image of colours and light, bands of varying thickness terminating in a razor-sharp shadow. The light from the screen bathed the chamber with colour, and picked out the blue forms on the walls and ceiling.

  The two guards, surprised, looked down at the screen they were holding. ‘That’s the rings,’ said one. ‘Saturn’s rings.’

  ‘Well spotted, genius,’ said the other sourly.

  ‘A live feed, in fact,’ Zoe said. ‘Now we’ll see if it works.’

  ‘Well, the theory’s sound enough,’ the Doctor said. ‘We know there is something in the core of this moon. We know that its motions cause tides that create ripples, patterns in the ring system. Here we are reflecting those patterns back to these Blue Dolls, who we suspect may themselves be artefacts of that central entity.’

  ‘Doctor…’

  ‘It’s all guesswork, of course. But if there is some unity to the design, a wider information-processing cycle—’

  Doctor!’ She pointed to the roof above his head.

  A Blue Doll had unpeeled from the huddling mass. It hung upside down, like a mannequin suspended by its heels. Zoe could not see what was attaching it to the roof. But its eyes were open, and in those black pits the gaudy colours of Saturn’s rings were reflected.

  ‘I think it’s working.’ The Doctor clapped his hands together in glee, and now his smile wasn’t forced. ‘By heavens, I think it’s working.’

  More of the Dolls unpeeled – yes, that was the right word, Zoe thought – they stood up on the floor with fluid movements, or hung down from the ceiling, not at all as a human would move, each of them like a bit of soft plastic recovering its shape after having been bent and twisted. Soon the walls and roof bristled with the blue bodies, sticking out into the air at all angles. All of them were staring at the flag.

  And those on the floor began to shuffle forward, their gait stiff, unnatural, efficient rather than graceful.

  The Doctor, hands outstretched, smiled and nodded. ‘Hello, hello. Welcome…’ He looked somehow at home, surrounded by these alien creatures the size of three-year-olds. Like an entertainer, a clown at a birthday party, Zoe thought.

  ‘Ha! Zoe, look at that.’ He pointed to one of the Dolls, shambling past him.

  At first glance it was indistinguishable from the rest. But when Zoe looked more closely she saw that it had yellow markings on its chest – crudely drawn, just concentric circles. ‘What do they mean? Do they represent some group memory of Saturn’s rings?’

  ‘Well, quite possibly. But two points are clear, Zoe. The first is that this is clearly an effort to differentiate – to stand out from the crowd. Quite a human impulse, don’t you think? And the second point is – that’s my chalk! The stick I used to mark the route last time we were down here, remember? I wondered what happened to it. Here, here.’ He dug into his pockets and produced more bits of chalk of various colours, broken and worn.

  One by one, cautious little hands took the chalk, fused fingers folding.

  Zoe, gradually feeling more confident, wandered through the slowly moving crowd. None of the Dolls paid the slightest bit of attention to her. But she soon saw that the Doctor’s chalk hadn’t been the start of these creatures’ impulse to decorate themselves. They had patterns scratched into their skin, or smeared in some purplish fluid, perhaps an organic-chemistry residue from the ice rock. Many of them wore some variant of the Saturn’s-rings design, but there were other markings, zigzags and spirals and figures of eight. Some had even marked their faces, with swirls around their eyes and mouths.

  She came to an exposed wall surface. On it were scratched more marks, circles and whorls and spirals, but in some places just simple lines cut into the rock.

  ‘Look at this, Doctor. They’re counting!’

  ‘Counting what?’

  ‘Who knows? The passage of time, perhaps. The numbers of their own kind. This proves it. These creatures are sentient, Doctor. And self-aware.’

  ‘Well, to some degree, yes. They’re trying to express themselves. I can’t say I’m surprised, Zoe. Mind, you know, consciousness, can be created like any other component. But a mind is not a spanner or a wing nut. A mind grows and changes by its very nature – well, it must, it has to process new information, or it wouldn’t be a mind at all, would it? And minds once created will flourish and complexify beyond anything dreamed of by their creator – hello, what’s this?’

  There was a commotion in a branching corridor. Another Blue Doll came running into the chamber.

  And skidded to a halt, as if in shock, right in front of the Doctor.

  The other Dolls turned away from the display flag and faced the newcomer. This one was different to the rest, Zoe saw. More important somehow, its bearing more imposing, though physically it was identical to the rest, and bore no markings, none of the chalk marks or the crude tattoos.

  The Doll was motionless for a moment. Then it raised its right hand, and with its left mimed scraping a mark on the upraised palm. It pointed to its own chest.

  The Doctor seemed confused. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘First,’ Zoe said. ‘Don’t you see? He’s mimicking the marks on the wall. First. I think he’s saying his name is First.’

  ‘Ah! Well done, Zoe. So we’ve found our leader, it seems.’ He looked at her sceptically. ‘But – he?’

  That confused Zoe; the Blue Doll was just as sexless as the rest. ‘But there’s something about him – I don’t know what—’

  ‘Perhaps the way the others are responding to it – him. There’s something of an elder brother about him. Well, if he was the first to be manufactured, I suppose that’s natural. I wonder what his story is…’ He knelt before the child-size creature, smiling. ‘Hello. I’m the Doctor.’

  INTERLUDE

  BLUE DOLL

  I

  Alive!

  That had been the start of his story. To find himself suddenly alive.

  In that first instant of existence his mind was a blank sheet of blue plastic, empty, unmarked, innocent. And yet immediately experience began to engrave impressions.

  A light above him. Not understanding what he was doing, he reached for the light. His arms lifted before him, into his sight. Long cylinders of blue, terminating in sketchy hands. His hands clenched into fists.

  He felt his face, his chest. He sat up. He saw his legs.

  He stood, impossibly, balancing. His slim body. He felt his face again, his eyes, his mouth. Himself, inside this blue case, a spark of awareness in his head. Not himself: all that was outside. Thus he began to map the universe.

  He looked around. He was in a hollow, contained to his left by rough walls of some pale blue-white stuff. And to his right, a curtain of shimmering light, light in patterns, curving lines of colours. Neither of these struck him as strange, unusual. Why not a crude blocky wall? Why not a fence of light?

  His mind fizzed. Why was he here? Why did he think, rather than not think? And why indeed was his head full of these questions? His own thoughts turned in on themselves in convolutions of self-awareness, and the blankness of his new mind disappeared in a scribble of recursive complexity.

  A sobbing sound.

  He whirled.

  On the floor beside him was a blue body. Identical to his own, but not his own. He was certain this had not been here a moment ago. Another!

  The other sat up. The other was staring at him. The other said, ‘Who am I?’

  Speaking! The other had spoken before he did. He felt an unreasonable stab of jealousy.

  The other repeated, ‘Who am I?’

  He replied, ‘I don’t know.’

  The other considered. ‘Then who are you?’

  He thought about that. ‘I am first.’

  ‘First. Help me.’

  He
was First!

  ‘Help me.’

  He thought about that. He extended a hand, and helped the other to stand.

  And then another sob. Another astonished gasp of existence.

  ‘Help me.’

  This time he was ready. He held out a hand, to help the new one up. ‘I am First,’ he said. ‘I will help you.’

  And another. And another. ‘I am First… I am First… I will help you.’

  Soon there was a host of them.

  The wall of light pulsed. Another voice. WELCOME.

  They turned as one and stood stock still, facing the light, their identical faces blank.

  First said, ‘Who are you?’

  I AM ARKIVE. AND THIS IS YOUR MISSION.

  ‘Our mission,’ they breathed.

  RESILIENCE. REMEMBRANCE. RESTORATION.

  ‘Resilience. Remembrance. Restoration.’

  MY MISSION IS YOUR MISSION.

  ‘Yes,’ First said. ‘Yes. Resilience! Remembrance! Restoration!’

  II

  Now First was in the upper levels of the moon. Trying to avoid the Others. Trying to steal their technologies.

  Trying to understand what Arkive wished him to do.

  Then he saw the Other – a small Other, only a little larger than he was. An Other without weapons, without the guns that crackled and stung and burned. One like himself, but made of pink flesh, not blue synthetic material. Like himself but complex inside, with beating pumps and closing valves and hot, rushing fluid. He sensed all this.

  The Other stared at him. The Other pointed. The Other laughed. ‘Dolly!’

  First fled from the strange noise, fled to the shadows, the small spaces where the Others would not see him. The rest followed.

  Waiting, hiding, a dozen of them huddled together. They became still. For a time First was there, and not there. Their backs glistened, blue, moist, unmoving. The light shifted.

  Then First was there again. The Others were gone. He could hear, smell their absence.