InsidersEpisode 4 |
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For a moment, neither Sarah Jane nor the shimmering cluster of faint light moved. Another whiff of the dry, acrid breeze touched her, and she realized that she was sweating. She took a cautious step away from the Insider, and it advanced an equal distance. Why, she wondered, did it not attack? It had already entered her once.
She took another step back, and it advanced again to compensate. She realized, in spite of the fact that it had entered the Doctor at his invitation, and exited him quite against his will, it had required her to be close to death, her nervous system impaired, before it could come into her. And the disturbance of the light ray had prompted it to leave her hurriedly, into the willing Doctor.
Part of it, perhaps, could act only by instinct, and in some ways it was limited. The Doctor's superior control over his nervous system must have made him more able to accept the invader without his body's electro-magnetism rejecting it. But for a human, that nervous system protective response had to be greatly diminished by external forces---or death---for the nervous system to allow the invader to come inside and take over. And apparently the invader was drawn by instinct to a better environment. As soon as Sarah's system had been exposed to the light wave, the Insider had sought the Doctor.
That meant, she thought, that it could not really hurt her, not by a direct strike. It could only wait until she came close to death or crossed the fatal threshold. Then why had it left the Doctor? It obviously preferred being inside a host, able to use the host's sensory experiences and nervous system. It could use a dead body for several weeks, according to the Doctor, before it had to abandon the deteriorating system. So with the Doctor still alive, why would it leave a sure thing on a gamble? Perhaps it had tired of the struggle, or perhaps in some way she was a much more sure thing to it than the Doctor.
For the first time, she wondered of the Doctor had died in his final struggle against it. Had the Doctor, in a moment of resolve and freedom, sent the TARDIS here so that she could escape? Or had the creature directed the TARDIS without his knowledge? Was this a place where the creature knew she would die under ideal conditions, so that he could take her easily?
There were no answers to any of the questions. She finally shouldered the pack and turned away. She had to find shelter and explore the possibilities of surviving here. And she had to stay nearby, in case the Doctor came back for her.
As Sarah Jane trudged away, the shimmering presence followed her. She could not resist turning to look at it every few steps, but it presented no threat to her.
* * * *
Liz Shaw was pulling and tugging on the Doctor's sleeve. She gripped his wrist with both hands, set her feet, and desperately tried to pull him up---a ridiculous attempt.
She shouted at him, her voice urgent, but there seemed to be a wall of water between him and her. Her words were garbled. But she was insistent. She pulled and tugged on his arm and called to him. Obviously, something was wrong, he thought. But what? After all, Liz was back at university, doing research. And not much had been going on at UNIT.
"This is just a dream," he tried to say to her, but the pressure of the water between them would not let him open his mouth. He waited. The dream of Liz faded, and he opened his eyes.
He was drenched in sweat, and there was no sensation in his legs. His chest ached. He lifted his head, and the room swam. Even without the dream version of Liz there, he knew that something was wrong. But his body had been torn. Something had ripped through him. He was in the TARDIS, so that was all right. It throbbed around him, and after a moment, his attention wavered. His head fell back, and his eyes closed. In a moment, he was unconscious again, his skin pearly white, and his body temperature very low.
* * * *
How long does night last here? Sarah Jane thought.
It was certainly getting dark, and she had no light and no matches, and there were no materials to give her a hope of making a fire.
She had determined that the rocky ramp that led skyward was the best place to travel in search of safety. There were rocky spurs and craters in it where she could find shelter, and there were places that she could use as look out points.
She became so engrossed in surveying the alien landscape and in finding a safe encampment that she forgot about her airy pursuer. As the red sky deepened in color and began to blacken, she realized that she had to quickly settle in for the night. There was no sound of animal life around her, and no sign of anything moving nearby.
She found a rounded niche, rather like a shallow crater, and it was situated close to the edge of the ridge, so that it commanded a view of the broad, rocky landscape below. The apparent absence of plant life on this planet depressed her, and at the back of her mind was the fear that there was no water. But she was too tired at the moment to let herself worry yet about thirst. She sat down against the rock lip of the small crater and opened her pack. In the quickly dying light, she drank a cartridge of water and chewed a compressed food bar. She carefully stowed the wrappers and closed up the pack. She cradled it on her lap and folded her arms over it.
In spite of the stark solitude, the ordeal of the last two days had been far worse than this, and she felt peaceful as she surveyed the landscape below.
And then, gently and silently in the distance, a light of fire suddenly came to red life. It was unmistakable. It was a camp fire. She squinted at it and was suddenly filled with both dread and hope. But whether the builders of this fire were friendly or hostile, their presence spoke of some means of survival in this dry, stony place.
With the night so clear, and her altitude above the land below fairly high, Sarah Jane estimated the camp fire to be at least a couple miles away. It was burning in an open space, free of all obstruction, so that it shone like a bright red button. The night closed down around her, perfectly black except for the single fire below, and all was silent. She rested her head on her knees and on the pack.
For some reason, her hands and ankles were tingling with a ticklish sensation that faintly, almost pleasantly, itched. But these sensations did not keep her awake overly long. She soon fell asleep.
* * * *
Alarms were going off in the TARDIS. She was spinning out of control, with so much force that the interior was also caught up in the centrifugal whirl. Loose bits of equipment, the stretcher itself, and the discarded water bag were flung to the walls as the intensity increased beyond what a human could have endured.
The Doctor woke up with a start and lifted his head. But the TARDIS was completely still, though he knew that they were traveling through the vortex. But there were no alarms and no spinning. Everything was quiet except for the throbbing of the engines. He had been dreaming. But in the stillness, he knew that something was wrong.
Shakily, he stood up and glanced around. "Sarah Jane," he said quietly. And then he called for her. "Sarah Jane? Sarah Jane?"
He stumbled from the room and called again. "Sarah! Sarah Jane?"
He searched the labs and several of the wardrobes. He realized that she must have been hungry after her imprisonment, and he checked the pantries. The rucksack, he noted, was gone, and there were some few emergency supplies taken. Had she gone into hiding aboard the TARDIS?
He paused in his search and tried to reconstruct what had happened. He remembered the tearing as the Insider had left him against his will. His own nervous system had tried to incorporate the parasite into itself---the best way to imprison it. But it had forced itself out. He remembered the agonizing pain as the creature's flimsy body had passed out of him, through his skin.
But where had it gone? And where was she?
The idea that the TARDIS had stopped briefly a few hours before, that he had felt it come to a halt just as he had been struggling with the Insider, niggled at him. He returned to the control room.
For an instant he was his confident self as he entered and laid his hands on the console. But then he went blank. The controls waited, like some puzzle that should have been put together. He stepped back, his mind unable to grasp familiar concepts.
"Home, then," he said after a moment. "Where my notes are. They'll help me find her."
He reached out an uncertain hand, but he could not consciously recall how to re-set the navigation.
"All right," he said again, soothing himself with his own voice. "If not by intellect, then by feel alone. I've done this a thousand times." He closed his eyes and trailed his right hand along the main panel.
"Come on, old girl. We know each other very well, you and I. Get me home." He stopped talking and let his mind go blank. There was a perfection to everything, including the perfection of the rhythm of navigating the TARDIS home. If he could not reason it out, he could feel it, and his muscles could recall the rhythm of setting controls and engaging them. His skimming hand touched a toggle, bypassed it, and flipped another toggle. He traced his hand back and, without needing to open his eyes to find it, he located and threw a switch. He felt sure that he had done it. He opened his eyes The piston in the center of the console pumped up and down for a moment, and then stopped. The doors opened. He looked through them and saw a city street. The faint noises of vehicles reached him, and the growl and rumble of many different species as they passed back and forth.
The TARDIS had brought him somewhere, but it was not UNIT headquarters.
* * * *
There was no way to tell time on this strange planet, not in the sense of fixing a proper time for morning, noon, and night. Sarah Jane had no idea how long she slept, but as the black sky lightened to deep red and then suddenly was shot through with brilliant pink, she woke up. She had slept hunched over the pack, but now she stretched her cramped muscles and lay on her back. She watched the glorious dawn show in the sky. The rosy pink was like a solid roof, and then suddenly it flamed a burning gold with tinges of orange and rose in it, and then the gold slowly evaporated to an opaque white only touched with faint hues of rose.
It was fabulous. The sight of such beauty cheered her a good deal. This place could not be all bad. She sat up, and she noticed that her eyes were dry, and the skin around them was slightly tender. Probably, she thought, the faintly acrid tang in the air had irritated the membranes of her eyes.
She was ravenously hungry, and quite thirsty, and so she opened the pack and enjoyed a breakfast that was identical to her supper the night before. But she knew that she must get to the business of finding food and water. If there were any type of civilization nearby, she might be able to safely forage on it without making her presence known.
As soon as she stood, the tingling began again in her hands and around her ankles. She shouldered the pack and looked at her hands. Some effect of the light seemed to have faint, watery shadows rippling across them. This reminded her of the Insider. She looked around, but she did not see him.
The most essential thing, of course, was to track the builders of the fire down below. Sarah felt oddly uneasy about leaving this ridge for lower ground, but she decided it was best. And it would be best to approach with great caution. She moved away from the edge, where she would stand out in stark relief to any observers. Staying close to any cover that she could find among the tumbledown boulders and deep niches, she made her way lower, retracing her steps from the day before.
Her journey was not unpleasant, and there were moments in the early morning when the air was quite fresh. But she found that whenever a breeze should touch her face, her eyes would water far more than they did on earth, and the skin around them began to feel very sore. She tried not to rub at them, for if she had some sort of eye infection, she did not want to make it worse.
But as the day brightened further, she noticed that the rippling of watery shadows had not left her hands.
At last, she set the pack down, knelt behind a natural pillar made of rock, and looked at the backs of her hands more closely. The rippling, she realized at last, was in the flesh itself. Something faint and nearly microscopic was moving along her skin, a shadowy wave that tingled.
For a moment, panic and disgust made her scrub at one hand with the fingernails of the others, but though she scratched up the skin, she did not stop the tingling effect. Was this the Insider in another form? But just as she wondered this, she saw him further down below, barely visible in the stronger morning light. He was moving away from something, or perhaps being guided by a new breeze. Her eyes once again watered as this gentle wind touched her, and shallow trails of tears ran down her cheeks from the faint stinging. Had these tiny mites infested her eyes, she thought.
She remembered that the Doctor had said that the Insider could take over insect life. Had that merciless creature guided them into her? The cruelty of such a plan and her own imminent fate if this were true struck with a cold fear, but then she heard something that made her forget these realizations. Voices were speaking. They did not sound very pleasant. The Insider himself drifted back up the ridge and wafted into place behind the cover of a rocky mound.
Sarah Jane stayed where she was.
She could look down the ridge, almost unseen from her place of cover. As she waited and watched, two large figures, their heads appearing first as they toiled up the slope, appeared. Their heads were covered with thick, stiff hair, their eyes almost obscured by the unkempt, matted coverings. It was obvious, even by watching them at a distance, that they were navigating as much by their noses as by sight.
In fact, their noses were quite prominent, resembling snouts of pigs to a degree, and yet also the muzzles of wolves. The first resemblance was heightened by the presence of upward pointing tusks that each sported. These were decorated with gold etchings and rings, and the creature on the left seemed to have a small jewel embedded in one of his tusks.
But they also showed bright, prominent white fangs when they spoke to each other.
As they labored still higher, their heads occasionally casting about to catch scents, she saw that each carried a thick throwing spear in one hairy hand, and their wide leather belts were adorned with knives of several different lengths.
There was no doubt that they were fierce by nature, and aggressive, and even by the way they carried themselves, she knew that they were hunting for something, tracking it.
Something in the lower part of her body loosened, and she had an instant urgency in her mid section that she barely quelled. As though in answer to her sudden fear, one of them said, "I can't catch it. I don't think there's anything here. We're losing time. And what if there's not enough to share?"
"I've got the best nose in this business. I'm telling you, I smelled game. I don't know where it came from, but it's up here. The scent came down this morning when I was washing."
"It won't be more than a mouthful. Nothing can live here. Not with those little mites tormenting everything that's not injected. It will just cause trouble if we bring it back to camp. There won't be enough to go around."
"Then we'll skin it up here and have it for ourselves. I'm not above eating rats if that's the only alternative to those rations. I'm sick of them! I want something with a little blood in it. Something you can make a gravy from."
"And if it should have speech, then what, Dhunlup? We feast on it, and a few days from now its brothers and family come and avenge it. We almost got ourselves skinned at Vallore because we ate the sentry. We should have known from the uniform."
Dhunlup made a sound of disgust in his throat. "I spit on the bones of the sentry we ate, and I'll spit on this creature's bones. It wasn't old urine I smelled, but flesh. There's something alive up here that we can eat. Big enough to send its scent down to me. That's not a rat, but a proper rabbit."
She slipped further behind the rock pillar and did not make a sound. The breeze was kicking up again, working against her, for they were downwind of her.
But just then, the Insider slipped out on the cool air flow. He glided towards them. Sarah Jane watched him, and she heard the two monstrous creatures shout at sight of him. She risked the danger of peeping out at them.
Transfixed by this amazing sight of the shimmering and wavering faint light, both of the tusked bipeds, their booted feet frozen in place, stared at it. The more aggressive one hefted his spear warningly at it. But they were too intelligent to throw their weapons at this translucent manifestation. It drew nearer to them, and they backed up only a step, apparently not willing to retreat before anything.
At last it drifted away from them, leading them down the hill. They glanced at each other and the less aggressive of them said, "Is it some sort of spirit?"
"I've never yet met a spirit except in the stories of old fools," the creature called Dhunlup told him. "It's some trick of the light. I want to hunt."
"If it portends some disaster for the mission, then you and I and all the others will be killed for neglecting it. We can hunt later," the other said. "I'm not going on a mad pursuit for some meat that you smelled, and neglect this strange thing that I can see with my own eyes. We were sent to get the ore and protect the collection of it. That thing might be a danger."
Dhunlup, who clearly felt more inclined to follow his appetites, nonetheless yielded when his partner became more resolute. "All right then. Whatever is up here is heedless enough. We'll catch it later." And they cautiously followed the Insider, their spears ready by instinct, and their curiosity aroused.
Sarah Jane waited until the sound of their heavy, booted feet faded in the distance, and then she shouldered the pack and cautiously made her way down the ridge. She had to get off of this high ground. She had to find a place where the wind would not carry her scent across the landscape. And Dhunlup had mentioned washing. She had to find water and determine if it was drinkable.
* * * *
The Doctor emerged onto the hot, bright street. The light overhead was almost pure white. He squinted up and tried to remember where he was. It was not twentieth century earth, nor earth at any time, for the sun was of a different type. The buildings all around him, high, gleaming white, and filled with broad windows and walls of glass, twinkled in glorious consonance with the pure rays of light. It was just short of overpowering.
Not paying any heed to him, Ogrons of a better sort passed by, their tunics clean and new, their boots shining, their voices more articulate than what one usually heard from such creatures. Salafians also brushed past, their eyes purposeful and their dark black hair oiled back over their smooth blue flesh. Everybody had all his limbs, all his digits, all his teeth, and was well groomed. It was a clean, prosperous place, with an abundance of the best representatives of several interplanetary species. A human or two hurried past, clutching briefcases and document folios.
Two tiny roto sweepers whirled by in perfect formation with each other, their sensitive bumpers extended to assure pedestrian safety, their tiny whistles chirping at three second intervals. They were about waist high for the Doctor, and they amused him as they rotated past on their unending quest to keep the streets tidy.
"Guardian City," he said under his breath. The headquarters city of the Interplanetary Federation. Of course. The best of everything could be found here.
He had no idea of what he could do in tis city to further his quest, but upon consideration, he recalled that they had excellent research facilities. Though he had encountered Insiders occasionally in his past, mostly as a passing and mildly disgusting curiosity, he knew little about them. A little research might uncover enough information to help him backtrack and find where Sarah Jane had been taken. And perhaps by then his memory would be clearer. He tapped a human on the shoulder as the human passed. "Pardon me sir---could you direct me to the Central Library?"
The human male, smartly dressed in that culture's equivalent of a suit and tie, shot him an annoyed glance, but answered him. People in Guardian City were unfailingly polite.
"Just down this street to the Broad Street, then to your right. You'll come to Library Circle in about a ten minute walk." And then he hurried away before the Doctor could even say thank you.
The timelord purposefully turned in the direction indicated and set out briskly. But a sudden, metallic hand thumped right into his chest and pushed him back.
"What the deuce---" he began. He found himself face to face with a Street Order: a robot designed to maintain public safety.
"Well?" the Doctor asked.
The Street Order was an upright, golden plank of metal, with input sensors where a human head would be. Appendages such as arms were ejected and retracted from its interior, as needed. With its long body and wider, wheeled base, it looked rather like a broom, though its plank-like body was about 15 inches wide. A cdalm, authoritative voice emitted from its speaker. "Parking on Main Street is forbidden. The structure must be moved to any location on Streets One through Thirty-Two."
"The drive on my machine is ruined. I can't budge her," the Doctor said. The truth was, he doubted he could perform such a finely tuned navigation of her. Not yet, not with his foggy memory.
"The structure will be impounded. Cost for the first day is two thousand gold koru."
It trundled purposefully towards his TARDIS and emitted a high pitched call. Four other Street Orders appeared from various buildings and rolled along towards the TARDIS on their wide, wheeled bases. One of them spewed out a whip-like chain from its midsection. The chain lashed around the TARDIS and locked into place, preventing entry.
"Look, you can't impound her!" the Doctor exclaimed. "And I'll have to go inside her to get the money!"
"Entry into impounded vehicles is forbidden. You may make payments at Street Order Impoundment Station Sixty-Eight."
"I tell you, all my money is inside my TARDIS."
"The word 'TARDIS' is not registered in my vocabulary. Press my white button if you would like to add the definition of this word."
The four other Street Orders surrounded the TARDIS at her four corners. They closed in on her in synchronization with each other, inserted shims under her that slipped from their lower sections, and lifted her smoothly and evenly. Their input sensors were wrapped all the way around their heads, and so without making any other adjustment, they began to trundle away with the TARDIS among themselves.
"Listen, you mechanized moron---" the Doctor began. On impulse, a bit of memory flashed through his mind. He fished out his sonic screwdriver. Deftly, he pointed it at the Street Order.
"Sir, I am impervious to weapons fire and other forms of abuse," it told him. Abruptly, its voice stopped, and it was arrested in its motion, frozen.
"Quite," the Doctor said gently. "Now, I'm not going to hurt you, old boy, but I think I'd better see about convincing you to let my TARDIS down and leave it alone."
He advanced on the unresisting robot, the sonic beam from the screwdriver pointing at its input sensors. With a quick twist of his wrist, he opened its sensor input plate.
Just as quickly, a padded, heavy tool like a sack of sand struck him across the back of his head, and an enormous, living body fell atop him and drove him face first into the white, marble-like pavement. "That's what we do to vandals in this city my lad!" a gruff voice said. "You're nicked!" The Doctor's wrists were pulled behind his back, and a pair of titanium handcuffs were locked around them.
* * * *
The way at the base of the ridge was clear, and Sarah Jane, ears alert and eyes scanning for any sign of life, made her way in the direction of the camp fire she had seen the night before. Though the other inhabitants of this plain were apparently dangerous to her, somewhere near their camp there was a source for washing.
Her eyes stung more smartly now, and the tingling was spreading up her arms and legs.
She knew that the Insider was intelligent, and that he could perceive his environment to some extent, even when he was not in a host. He had lured away the two hunters. Doubtless, having her killed and eaten would ruin his plans for her.
Once on low ground, she stayed in the lee of the great ridge of rock. It seemed that she had been walking with the pack for only a couple hours, but she was becoming more weary. She was unaccustomed to long distance hiking. But if she did not keep moving, they might get her scent again and find her.
The only encouraging thing was that they had scented her live, on the wind. She hoped that they did not have the ability to track her like bloodhounds would do. It did not seem likely. Neither had been inclined to stoop and pick up a trail. They had cast for her instead, seeking the breeze.
At last after another thirty minutes of walking, when the horizon did not seem to change at all, and the landmarks she had spotted seemed no nearer, she found another rocky spine that afforded her some shelter. She climbed behind its cover. She was hungry again, and thirsty, but she did not dare to eat or drink.
She hunkered down and peered around the rock to keep an eye on the ground she had covered. The base of the rocky ridge was behind her, and even though this place provided excellent shelter, it was also a natural trap.
It surprised her, hours later, to slowly wake up. No harm had come to her, and there was a new coolness in the air. The high point of the day had passed. She would have jerked open her eyes, but they were stuck together. Her involuntary tears had dried into a glue-like substance.
Restraining herself from making any sound of pain, she pried them open with her fingers. For the first time, acute fear went through her. Her eyes now ached and burned with pain, and her vision was tinted with a faint red haze.
But she forgot these troubles as she saw that the shimmering, airy form of her stalker was with her. Why had he come back? Was he waiting for her to die right now?
Just then, she heard voices again. She froze, but she knew that she was trapped. She was in a semi-circle of rock, it's open side facing the base of the steep ridge, and if these ravenous hunters closed in on her, she would not be able to escape.
But the voices that she heard were not conversing. As she listened, she heard a wail of pain, and then a cursing from another voice, and the words, "You'll get another if you aren't smart about it. We're getting mighty hungry watching you slags work. It might be time for another feast, and we'll pick the slowest from among you!" And then there was the sound of a whip cracking, voices of creatures in fear, and the footsteps, many of them, continued. They staggered past her.
She thought they had gone, and she nearly peeked out to see who had passed and how many, but two voices in conversation made her stop.
"He's not going to butcher one again, is he? They taste like mud. I'd hate to go through a feast like that again!"
The second voice spoke. "Eating one of them now and again is good for the morale of the others. Makes them work pretty smart for a day or two. They might taste bad, but they're good hands at loading that ore for us. You just have to keep them terrified."
"Maybe Sharn could find another way to fix them. Roasting's no good when their blood is that thick. It makes the meat taste rotten."
"Dhunlup swears there's something up on that ridge. Might be better than rations."
"Dhunlup would rather hunt air than oversee the mining of ore. Come on. If anybody's got a mind to slaughter one of them tonight, I'll vote against it. My stomach can't abide those creatures!"
She would have stepped out as their voices became more faint, but a breeze struck her. It came from the wall of rock at the base of the high ridge. This hardly seemed possible.
She squinted and knelt down. A tiny shaft of air hit her face and made her turn away as it caused her eyes to run with tears again.
She shook her head to clear her eyes, and then crawled forward and inspected the fissure in the rock slope. There was certainly a breeze blowing down below, and the hope of shelter in a cave, and perhaps an underground source of water such as might be found on earth, raised her hopes.
She pulled at the stones, and some of them came free. Setting the pack aside, Sarah Jane dug at the rocks and loose earth more enthusiastically. She widened the hole, but she could not see into it.
Just then, almost directly over head, a deep, bestial voice shouted. "There it is! Didn't I say I smelled meat? Look at it scrabble!"
She had one impression of the great beast she had seen earlier, the one called Dhunlup, and then she grabbed the pack by its strap and dived headfirst into the hole. She wasn't sure she could squeeze through.
"Look at it go! It is just like a rabbit! You'll not squeeze through there, little pet." And Dhunlup expertly pulled back the spear and drove it forward to impale his prey.
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