The concrete in the archway of the entrance collapsed. It was a better engineered material than was available in most planets, and when it collapsed it broke into smaller pieces and then disintegrated into sand. But half a ton of sand abruptly dropping onto the heads of the assassins was effective enough. Mags was suddenly buried, and the lead Tusker took the impact of the downpour onto his back. He fell onto his face.
Just then the Doctor, Kogrik, and Grag burst up from the stairs. The building shook again, and a column of pouring sand knocked Grag over. But Kogrik and the Doctor, bellowing, rushed the Tuskers just as Mags painfully lifted her head from her cover.
There was no time for a proper fight. Alarms were screeching, and a new explosion from above was accompanied by the sound of tearing girders. Outside the shattered facade, a tremendous avalanche of rubble poured down onto the street. The two Tuskers tried to flee, and the Doctor and Kogrik seized Mags by her booted feet and pulled her towards them. She had the presence of mind to snatch hold of the borrowed Ogron clothing she'd brought. The exit doorway was blocked with rubble and sand, and the Tuskers were stopped from escaping. They turned and scurried through the sudden fog of heavy dust, seeking a way out.
With a quick jerk of his arms, the Doctor flipped Mags across his back and raced for the stairs to retreat to the basement area and the TARDIS. Kogrik snatched up Grag and followed.
"Parman Nehven betrayed us. Gave us up to them Tuskers," Mags gasped.
"We're getting out of here. We'll deal with him later!" the Doctor exclaimed. "I'll see to your wound. Can you lay a course for Fomalhaut?"
"Sure. Can you fly that crate now?"
"I think so. Not through time, yet, but I know enough to push the red button."
* * * *
Quite suddenly, Sarah Jane found herself in the cathedral. She was on her feet. Athena was gone. A great coldness swept from the chamber that Athena usually guarded. It circled the great room. It was not a wind, but a ball of coldness, and there was a living presence in it. Sarah's skin tingled from it, and her knees went weak. She wondered if she should lie down before she fell down to the stone floor.
It circled around the stone cathedral again, drawing closer, filling the outer sections of the cavern with coldness. It was not yet touching her, but the coldness radiated inward towards her from the rock walls. The presence slowed down, and she could not follow it with her senses, but she knew that it was tightening its orbit, closing towards her.
She did choose to lie down before she fell, and as she did, a force like a powerful ripple ran up her shoulder, and the cold settled on her like a weight on her chest. She closed her eyes without thinking. The coldness turned to emptiness and stillness. The sense of being entombed in her own body awoke new fears in her, but she didn't move. After a moment, she couldn't move. And then the emptiness passed into her.
She's an empty mouth, Sarah Jane thought. She even told me that.
But she realized, to her horror, that it was not the nature of the creature to devour her and derive its life from her life, as she had first feared, but rather to empty her and make her completely open, empty, and receptive like itself. And this was far more horrifying than being devoured.
But her thoughts were becoming disjointed. She saw the Doctor leaning over her, and her eyes desperately tried to see his hands, so that she would know if they trembled or not. Was he the Doctor, or did the Insider have him?
"It doesn't really matter," the Doctor said. "Because now the Insider has you. You've been betrayed. They all eat people here: Tuskers, Insiders, and old women. Don't you know what a crone is? You're only food for whoever is hungry enough to get you."
He leaned over her. "You're nothing but food," he said. "My living food." And then he opened his mouth, and blew his breath into her mouth. Her lungs were filled with great suffocating heaviness. I want to die, she thought frantically. Please let me die. And then the Doctor was gone, and the overbearing fullness raced around her heart in the same way that the coldness had circled the cave.
The force of death here is just a natural wind, she thought. Both of them are death.
And then she sensed a radiating, electrical charge around her---neither warm nor cold. It was intensely aware and yet profoundly still. Perceiving it through the Insider's awareness, Sarah Jane had no sense of it as cold or vast or remote. Those perceptions had been hers, intertwined with her sensory perceptions. Through him, she felt only the electrical, tingling life of it, and its receptivity. It was gentle and mild, observant of all around it, frail and receptive and profound. In her own mind, she suddenly longed to be poured into this electrical presence, and for it to pour her out again as the honey was poured from Athena's mouth, to give life.
But then, through the Insider's awareness, she realized that this other presence did not have one single barrier of self defense built into it. Indeed, she realized for herself, a good lightning rod from earth would have undone it. It was less substantial than the Insider, but its ability to perceive was enormous, and it could receive anything. She tried to plead with him not to harm the presence, for she suddenly realized that the creature that had taught her so powerfully and yet so gently was materially frail and could be killed. Worse yet, it could be dominated and enslaved. Please spare her, she asked. When she's free, she does good, wonders of good.
He rushed his contempt into her, and then he sucked her breath out of her, and white hot fire tore her from head to foot. She heard the Doctor's drawn out scream from the TARDIS, and she screamed with him, for the Insider ripped her as cruelly as he could, to kill her before he left her. She was completely revealed to him, her mind open, everything vulnerable, and he pulled her apart. What he found most to deride was that she had ever taken it on herself to care about a frail cloud of receptive energy and give it a human name. Her entire mind of need and love and perceptions of herself were revealed to him, and he tore her gleefully. And then suddenly there was Jeanne, holding her, as though having shielded her from a great, strong wind. The moor was silent.
"He's dead," Jeanne said.
"You did that on purpose!" Sarah Jane exclaimed. "To punish me! Why don't you just admit that you wanted to punish me? You let him have me so that I would be punished!"
"No," Jeanne said.
"Yes! Because it was my fault! You can't know that and say I shouldn't be punished! But you could have told me the truth!" She descended into angry sobbing. And yet, in spite of her anger, she clung to Jeanne. "I hate this place!" she shouted. "I hate this cave. I hate being a stranger forever to you! I hate it!" And then she fell again into sobbing.
"That's the pain," Jeanne said. "But it's over now. I don't want you to be punished. I want you to open your mouth to the Water Bearer as I do, and receive the fullness of the universe."
"Jeanne, I almost could, but now I can't. When I knew you apart from my senses. But it was through him, and he was so wicked." The pain and humiliation of having had him overpower her, of having come to a better understanding of Jeanne's true form through that horrible parasite and not through her own ability, of having been helpless and exposed to him and yet enlightened at the same time, wrung her with grief. For she knew that she had gone to the limits of what she could know. She could not stay here. She could never stand before the true form of this creature that now held her in illusory arms. The presence of the kindly old woman was all illusion. The presence of this sunny moor, where she now found herself, was only a stage on which her illusions acted.
"No, it's all right," Jeanne whispered. "All right. You know more than you think you know."
"No, I failed at all of it. It's not because of what I did. It's because of what I am. There are things I can never understand!"
But Jeanne hushed her, and Sarah realized that she was being rocked. That was real. Whether it was materially the arms that seemed to be holding her, or in reality Athena rocking her to contribute to the illusion. But it was real. In this place of illusion and images, somebody on this planet wanted to comfort her.
"There are actually only a few great truths in the universe," Jeanne said. "And there is all eternity to learn them. They will not all come to you today. And you will not always be the creature you are at this moment. Everything in its time." She looked down at Sarah. "Yield to this apparent image of me," she said. "It isn't a lie. It's rather a translation that you can understand. Don't resist. I'm not going to hurt you or deceive you or veil these things in your mind. I want you to be happy in my presence."
That, Sarah Jane thought, had always been true. And so she yielded, and she accepted this image of the creature. And then she knew that, in some ways, this image of the bespectacled Scottish woman was more true than what she had perceived in the cold emptiness or the tingling receptivity. Only a human could have comprehended the concept of age and wisdom, the mixture of frailty and strength, austerity and richness, whimsical thinking and lofty ideals, all combined into one person who had to look at her through the proper spectacles to see her clearly.
Holding Sarah Jane in one arm as easily as though the young woman weighed no more than a leaf, Jeanne lifted her free arm, unwrapped her white shawl from her own shoulders, and wrapped the delicate mantle around Sarah Jane's shoulders, protecting her from the breeze. Sarah Jane pushed the side of her face against the soft bib of the jumper and pushed her eyes closed for a moment. She felt bruised and frightened, and part of the fear was the horror of knowing that Jeanne herself---or really, the creature that represented itself as Jeanne---was in itself quite fragile. The real power and protection came from something even more remote than the cold presence in the cave, something that filled that empty mouth and sustained it. In its own way, the creature that represented itself as the old Scottish woman was actually as helpless as Sarah Jane, receiving sustenance and life just as she did.
"All things are as they should be, Sarah Jane," Jeanne whispered. "When it was ordained that mercy should be poured forth, it was ordained that the open and empty mouths would receive it."
I can never understand this, Sarah Jane thought. But then, just as suddenly, she decided not to try. She wanted to recover from the final attack of the Insider, and Jeanne would help her. That was enough.
Jeanne adjusted the thick glasses and looked down at her. "I'm so proud of you. He wanted so much to break your will and your spirit."
"He almost did," she whispered. Even then, a part of her still ached from the tearing as he had left her to take the creature that was Jeanne. Somehow, he had shown her that---even at her strongest---she was never far at all from death. All human life sat on the edge of a precipice. It was a human illusion to be strong, but the Insider knew otherwise. Even knowing that Jeanne was also frail, Sarah couldn't let go of her.
"He never came nearly so close to success as you suppose." Jeanne stroked her hair behind her ear, and Sarah Jane accepted this judgement. For a long time they were silent. Distant birds called out to each other on the moor. The breeze picked up and made a winnowing sound. But the air was warm, and the delicate shawl was soft and comforting. Sarah Jane began to let go of how much it had hurt when the Insider had torn her. Perhaps she was a frail creature. But nothing dangerous could come into this world of the moor that had been created for her. The breeze and the sun began to make her drowsy.
"I haven't been near a human being in so long," she said at last, forgetting that Jeanne was not nearly human.
Jeanne smiled. "What a funny, vulnerable little creature you are," she said, her nearsighted eyes twinkling down at Sarah Jane through the thick lenses. "You are like the children that Athena has born, but before they venture out from their egg cocoon. Yet you venture out in this fragile form and are this way all your life." Protectively, she drew the delicate white shawl further up over Sarah Jane's shoulders. "A brave and curious being. So soft, and all your senses so finely tuned all throughout your flesh. Was there ever a more elegant little creature, so perfectly designed to receive mercy? Are you comfortable, my little mouse?"
"Yes, Jeanne," Sarah Jane said softly. All around them, the silence of the brilliant and sunny moor was interrupted only by the occasional cry of a bird, the rushing sound of a breeze across distant shallow pools of heather.
They seemed to be sitting on top of the dome of the world, Sarah Jane thought, the moor curving away in all directions towards the horizon, the great bare rock warmed by the sun. And there was nothing in this world, she thought, that could kill, for this was a world ruled and inhabited by the mysterious person that represented itself as the gentle and aged Scottish woman.. She was frail, and yet at the same, she was powerful.
Jeanne said nothing further, but she looked down at Sarah Jane as a grandmother looks down longingly on a favored child.
"Are you sad?" Sarah suddenly asked.
"Your friend is coming to take you home, little mouse. You will leave my cavern, like some bright little comet shooting through the heavens. You will not come into my presence again."
"Do you want me to stay?" Sarah felt a pang as she made the offer, and yet also a sincere desire to stay. "I will stay, if you like."
This offer startled Jeanne, as though she had not realized the possibility that Sarah might choose such an option. The old woman considered it, her eyes large and kind, and Sarah could see that she was pleased and deeply touched by it. She stroked Sarah's hair. "Yes, I want you to stay. But one does not intercept the little comet, or else it will be extinguished. Your departure is indicated, and I will accept this as I accept all things, and take it into my mouth and pour it out again as mercy. But I thank you. You have a sweet generosity, Sarah Jane."
The drowsiness was becoming heavy, and Sarah Jane knew that Jeanne, or perhaps Athena, was doing this to her.
"I'm sorry," Sarah Jane said. "I was wrong from the beginning."
"But determined to understand. And that was enough." The aged, wrinkled hand came down on Sarah's forehead. "We have shared mercy together. When you awake, your friend will be with you. Tell him that by the power that flows through me, the cavern will be closed off. The surface of the planet will be violently unmade. The tusked hunters will come no more with their mission of suffering. But all who remain here on the surface of the planet must escape quickly, or the cataclysm will destroy them."
What about Athena? Sarah Jane wondered, but she was so sleepy that she couldn't speak. In another moment, she was asleep.
* * * *
The key to remembering how to guide the TARDIS, the Doctor realized, was to let her go. Just set sail in her, and let her teach you and remind you. It had always been that way. Perhaps she had only taken him to Guardian City as a practice run, and meeting Mags at just the right moment had been a coincidence. But he discarded that thought. Sometimes he thought that all of existence was one huge coincidence. And other times he thought that there had never once been a single real coincidence in the entire universe over the course of eternity. At the moment, he was of the latter opinion. He had been intended to meet Mags.
"We're here," he said as the great piston-like rotor in the center of the console came to a halt.
Mags, familiar with the TARDIS interior from her last adventure with him, flipped on the view screen from the console.
"The second planet of Fomalhaut," she said.
He glanced at the console readings. "Looks like the radiation signatures of the terrain match the samples we took."
"So this is the place. And we ain't got no weapons," she said.
"I don't see any life. We shall have to go carefully." But he looked at her, his eyes concerned. He had bandaged her shoulder and given her an injection to temporarily stop the pain. But her entire home had just been destroyed, blown to bits in a botched assassination attempt.
"What about your offices and suite?" he asked.
She became ruthlessly offhand. "Good thing for us those stupid Tuskers set the explosives to detonate downward in a series rather than up from the main floor," she said. "Or I'd be past carin'. She waved it away with her good arm. "Kogrik an' me ain't never had nuthin' between us but brains and brawn. There was nuthin' of sentimental value up 'ere. Just stuff. I got back-ups of me files stored in a vault elsewhere. I'm still in business."
"Were you insured?"
She grinned a rueful grin. "You can't live in Guardian City without bein' properly paid up on taxes and insurance, Major. And the cops is my frien's. We'll be awright." She flicked a thumb at Grag. "We'll take care a' this youngster if he ain't got no nest to go home to."
He nodded and shot a glance at Kogrik. But the tall Ogron was expressionless. Kogrik wanted to go free the Ogron children who had been enslaved. At the moment, nothing else mattered.
Mags ran the scan to let the view screen pan over the surrounding area. Grag, now clad properly as an Ogron youth, pointed at it and said something sharp. Kogrik interpreted: "Path there to camp, near mine entrance. Always guarded."
"Ain't nobody guarding it now," Mags observed. The Doctor nodded at her, and she panned over it again. As they watched, a blue head appeared for a moment, ducked down behind cover, and then popped up again.
Grag suddenly exclaimed and chattered.
"His friend," Kogrik said.
The Doctor was puzzled. "Perhaps they managed to overpower their captors." He looked at them. "I know we've no weapons, but there's nothing to do but go out and take a look."
* * * *
In the cavern, Athena advanced on Sarah Jane's limp, relaxed body. Had Sarah been awake, the advance might have terrified her, even in spite of her new understanding of Athena. For Athena descended on her, taking her up in the great clamps of two of her legs. Athena did not lift her high. Instead, the great arachnid spun strand after strand of soft cabling around Sarah Jane. She held the young woman carefully, and with her legs and the appendages from her mouth, she fashioned around her a careful web, but with a stickiness in its fibers that did nothing other than form a gentle and padded cocoon. This was a labor of great care and time, and when it was complete, the great arachnid wove over all a soft, silken fiber, so that her human charge was carefully protected, only her face showing, her eyes closed peacefully in sleep, her cheeks faintly flushed.
At last Athena was finished. Moving with deliberate and perfect grace, she drew Sarah Jane under her great cluster of eyes, behind her dangerous, scimitar-shaped mandibles, to a safe place against the lower shields of her thoracic section. The clamps pressed her into place, snugly, to prevent the young woman's head from dropping, and then Athena moved forward on her other legs. Using a dexterity that she had not previously shown to her guest, Athena opened the clamps on the ends of her four remaining legs and climbed a side wall of the cavern until she located a wide cleft high in the rock wall where a crevice opened to the outside world. She lifted the body carefully and set it into this rock shelf, and she pushed the bundle well back, out of harm's way. No human could have crawled down into the cavern from that height, but the opening at one end led out onto the rocky ridge on the outside world.
* * * *
The Doctor had instructed that they must approach with great care, with him watching forward and Mags watching over their backs to check the rear.
But as they neared the place that Grag had indicated, the young Ogron boy suddenly let out a loud call. Kogrik clapped a hand over his mouth, but in reply five blue heads, their skin fringed with the white, downy Ogron hair, popped into view. For a moment these five youthful Ogrons waited, Even from that distance, the Doctor could see that they were untonsured males, and their faces were gaunt, their cheekbones pronounced.
Then Kogrik called to them in their own tongue, and even the Doctor understood that he was shouting that he had come to take them home. Grag added further claims to this and held up his wrists to demonstrate that his chains were gone.
These five then advanced, first in hurried steps and then more cautiously. But as they came over the short ridge of earth, it became clear why they were all together, for they were chained in a line by their wrists and ankles.
The Doctor had never heard an Ogron cry or show any profound emotion. But Kogrik let out a strangled sound that he took to be a sob of anguish. And the great Ogron ran to the captives, calling in his language.
As they realized that he was overcome with grief at the sight of their condition, they set up a howling and wailing.
But their cries were suddenly changed to shouts of terror as the ground shook. Everybody was knocked off of their feet. The young Ogrons fell and tried to cover their heads with their hands and arms. Kogrik quickly regained his feet, as did the Doctor and Mags.
"That was natural quake," Mags said. "I can hear it." Her Tark ears, sharper than any human's ears and even superior to a timelord's ears, could detect faint vibrations in the ground.
Kogrik spoke quickly, urging the captives to their feet and calming them. He looked at Mags. But the Doctor spoke. "Where are their captors? The Tuskers?"
Kogrik asked the question and then translated the reply. "Tuskers killed first one by one by little white creature. Frightened female. Lure them to forbidden part of caves and they never return. Soon all go to eat her and none come back."
"Why forbidden?" the Doctor asked.
Kogrik asked, but he got no clear answer. The most that he could explain from their confused accounts was that the Tuskers themselves had called a section of the caves forbidden, and---where ever they had learned the history of this planet---the information had been passed to them that way.
The ground suddenly trembled again. Mags dropped down and put her ear to the ground. "There's somethin' goin' on below the groun'," she said. "We better get packin'."
"Is there a ship?" the Doctor asked, but the captives were already pulling them over the rise, and they saw before them a wretched camp site and groups of Ogron youths, all chained five to a line. But behind them was an impressive Ivorite ship, armed with guns.
"Fully loaded, no doubt, with silver," Mags said.
Their own escort began shouting to the others below, and Kogrik ran ahead of them to greet the captives.
"I want to check the ship," the Doctor said. "If it's in good condition, can you pilot it away? Get these children back to the planet of the Ogrons?"
She nodded.
"Let's check it then. I've got to find my friend."
Uncaring of her wounded shoulder, she jogged down the hill with him. And she said, "Major, this areas goin' unstable. It's settin' up for some almighty big earthquakes."
"I must find her."
"Then I'll help you."
The Tusker ship was built like a huge freight vessel. It was simply an oblong storage hull with a cabin in front. They clambered up the ladder and entered the cabin door. He slid into the pilot's seat---rank with the smell of Tusker---and examined the console. He flipped over several switches to test the systems.
"You've got to get these children out of here," he said. "I can manage better on my own."
"Look, I took on a job---" she began.
"Mags!" he exclaimed. He turned and glared at her, and then softened his eyes. "We neither of us counted on finding this lot." And he gave a toss of his head towards the captives. "There's a hierarchy to be observed. Kogrik can't get them home without you. He can't navigate a new course." He switched off the test system. "Everything is online. Get them aboard and get out of here. I'll ask them where the entrance to the tunnels is."
* * * *
Grag was willing to direct him to the tunnel entrance that they had used in their labors. And the Doctor was surprised when the youth offered to serve as his guide into the interior. The ground shook again as they conferred, and the timelord realized that all of the young Ogrons were terrified of this. But Grag remained firm in his offer. The little white female had been sighted by the Tuskers close to the mine entrance. She had wiggled away into a tiny hole in the ground. Grag would help him find it.
The Doctor suddenly, sharply realized that he had been unjust. Ogron-like in his thick headedness, Kogrik had never even noticed the Doctor's distaste for him, nor had he seen the efforts it had cost the timelord to be friendly. And the Doctor was suddenly glad for Kogrik's obliviousness.
The Ogrons were mercenaries, it was true, but there was some merit in the argument that they never even understood the causes for which they fought. In their outlook, as long as civilized people were going to make war, there was nothing uncivilized in hiring out to serve one side. Or both, if it paid well enough. But when it was a matter they understood, they apparently comprehended integrity and loyalty.
The Doctor declined the offer, and he wished Grag well. Then he strode out to search for Sarah Jane.
The ground shook again as he neared the mine entrance, and this was a very worthy earthquake. It knocked him over, and he covered his head with his arms. A great cloud of silvery dust suddenly blew over him. He looked up at the great ridge of stone and earth that housed the mine entrance. But though he could plainly see the track where many feet had walked back and forth, and where transport vehicles had driven to and fro, these now led to a heap of rubble and break down. The earthquakes had collapsed the main entrance.
Sarah Jane was, he thought, either as dead as her captors or else imprisoned by some race of creatures the Tuskers had not guessed at, perhaps the original owners of these tunnels.
He got to his feet and then walked along the foot of the great ridge. Grag had mentioned a hole through which she had escaped the Tuskers.
He found nothing in the earth at the foot of the ridge. But as he walked, a breeze struck him from above. He looked up and saw what seemed to be a perfect doorway, high above. The way was steep, and there was a broad sweep of loose stone to negotiate, but he thought he could manage it. Some great pieces of rock seemed firmly imbedded enough to provide him with hand holds and foot holds. He began his ascent.
* * * *
When the Doctor poked his head into what looked like a perfect doorway into the mountain, he instantly smelled a sweet fragrance: flowers, he thought, and a faint scent like clover honey. He crawled forward into a narrow tunnel that was open on one side and overlooked a sun-washed cavern below. And then he saw Sarah Jane, lying ahead of him, shrouded in soft white coverings, her face radiant with beauty.
"Sarah," he whispered, and he scrambled to her, coming onto his knees as the roof lowered, but the sweetness of the air and the sight of her face pressed a certain new reverence into him. His voice became still, but his hearts began to pound. "Sarah," he whispered again.
Her face had not changed its shape or features, and yet she was more beautiful than he had thought a human woman could be, and the sweetness that hung like incense in the passage was coming from her.
Hesitantly, he touched the folds of her covers. They separated at the pressure of his touch, and he found her hand. It was warm. She was alive. Alive and relaxed and peaceful. And radiant.
She opened her eyes, and as soon as she saw him, she reached up through the fibers that separated and put her arm around his neck. Tears of remorse sprang into her eyes. "Doctor! I'm sorry---"
It hardly seemed possible that this lovely creature meant to touch him, but she did, and the sweet scent of flowers rushed over him as she clung to him. He caught her. For a moment he was sharply tempted to bury his face against her and simply breathe her in. He resisted this.
"Oh I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did," she said, clinging to him.
For her part, the real touch of a friend, a familiar face that was real, the softness of his jacket, the smell of him, overwhelmed her. She might have known that he would find her. Of course he would. He had taken the Insider on her behalf. She began to cry. "I know that it hurt you when it took you. I'm so sorry---"
"All right, all right," he whispered, his voice kind, soothing her. "That was ages ago. I've been looking all over for you. Let me see your eyes."
He could not understand why the mites had avoided her, especially their favored target of the vulnerable eyes. He gazed at her, his face close to hers. But though she had tears trickling from her eyes, the tears were not from a mite infestation. He was about to ask her how she had survived, but Sarah---overwhelmed by her emotions as he leaned closer to look at her eyes---kissed him. It was a passion of gratitude and humility, and he knew it. For a moment, he felt the tears on her face against his face, and her lips against his lips, her arm around his neck. The sweetness from her hair, her tears, and her skin rushed over him all over again, and he more strongly resisted the urge to bury his face against her. But neither did he jump or back away. Instead, he held her so that she could have kissed him again if she had wanted. His eyes were kind and slightly puzzled, but tender. But she had startled him, and he didn't know what to say. The Doctor was not used to being kissed.
"You did everything to save me," she gasped. "Everything. I didn't understand anything."
"You understand quite a lot of things," he told her. "And I was glad to help you. Your life is precious to me, Sarah Jane."
"No but I never understood it that way. It's more than just great distances. The universe is a place. A place with a people of its own."
"Yes, it is a place," he whispered. He realized that she had come into contact with something overwhelming, something beyond human comprehension. He gave her a moment to regain herself. The sweetness that hung on her was lulling him, and every time she moved or spoke, the sweetness seemed to increase for a moment. The idea of comforting her tears, of closing out the rest of this inhospitable planet, of simply lying down with her in the white covers and breathing in the sweet fragrance began to make sense. He forced his mind away from this influence.
"Can you stand?" he asked. "I mean, can you move? I can lead you out."
He had to. In this closed in space, the fragrance was going to overwhelm him.
"Yes, I think so." She was suddenly calmer. She came away from him and shook herself out of the white coverings. Her clothing, he noticed, though torn at the elbows and knees, with buttons missing from the jacket, was perfectly clean. She, instead of he, led the way to the doorway of the outer world. As she moved away from him, the sweet fragrance lessened and became pleasant and bearable. He afforded a glance off to his left and saw the wide, glittering cavern below. "Have you been down there?" he asked.
"We have to get away," she said. She didn't turn around but scurried to the doorway. "The planet is going to be changed. There are going to be earthquakes and eruptions of the surface."
He did not question her further but followed her out.
As they came out onto the ledge of the doorway, a great light flared across the landscape. They shielded their eyes. There was a roar of engines, and the Tusker craft streaked into the sky like a long white arrow.
"Doctor, there are slaves---" Sarah Jane began.
"That was the rescue ship, taking them home," he told her. "And the TARDIS is that way. We can follow this path and see if it takes us down on a more gradual route."
"But we have to hurry!" she exclaimed. And she took his hand. He still felt the small shock that this lovely creature would touch him with such trust and confidence. But he also realized that her hand was now very warm.
They hurried along the path, but he said, "Sarah Jane, are you all right? I think you've got a fever."
"I don't want to leave because I never understood!" she exclaimed. "But we have to leave. So slaves can't be made to work here!"
He didn't answer this. The path did lead them down to level ground. The earth trembled again as they got in sight of the TARDIS. By now, her face was flushed, her eyes bright. They tried to run for the TARDIS doors together, but the shaking of the earth grew more violent, and they were flung down. When the Doctor stood up, he saw that she was unhurt from the fall but unconscious, with sweat on her forehead. He picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.
* * * *
"Well," a faintly familiar voice said as Sarah Jane opened her eyes. She was in a bed like a hospital bed, and the sheets had been washed in a chlorine solution to keep them pristine and white. Sarah Jane didn't like it. Her other bed, the one rich with flowers, had been much more pleasant.
A soft, cool cloth patted around her forehead and eyes. Earth cloth, she thought, earth water, earth ways of keeping things cool.
The detached but kind eyes of Liz Shaw looked down at her as the hand moved aside from patting her face with the cloth.
"You gave us quite a scare, Miss Smith," Liz Shaw said. She was smiling, exercising herself to be more genuinely warm than she knew how to be. But Sarah Jane didn't mind the detachment at all. In point of fact, the ethical and dutiful kindness of Liz Shaw, so unlike Sarah's own personal and emotional fits of warmth and compassion, was more like that of Jeanne and Athena. Kindness and skill, working together smoothly instead of gushing about uselessly.
"So you probably do know what mercy is," Sarah Jane said to her. "It has something to do with water."
Liz Shaw made her voice inviting and hospitable. "Would you like a drink of water?" She poured out water from a plastic carafe into a plastic beaker and helped Sarah Jane to drink from it. Sarah did drink, but more to taste the water. Yes, it was earth water. She was disappointed and nearly turned away from it. But then suddenly she realized that she was thirsty, and she drank it all. It wasn't bad, she thought, once you accepted it.
When she had finished, Liz set the cup aside, and then she resumed her patting work with the washcloth, but Sarah discerned that the medical doctor was using the exercise to check Sarah's glands around the throat. She seemed relieved at whatever they indicated.
"Do they tell you in medical school what it is?" Sarah asked.
The calm professional eyes fixed on her, and the intelligent face, slightly puzzled, tilted. "What water is?" Liz Shaw asked.
Sarah corrected her. "What mercy is."
The woman doctor asked a question in her turn. "Do you know where you are now?"
"Somewhere on earth."
"Yes, you're at UNIT HQ. The Doctor put you in quarantine and asked me to come and help him." Liz Shaw had not been impervious to the beauty and sweetness that radiated from Sarah Jane. And as Sarah's eyes filled with tears, the scientist felt a sharp pain. Something was disturbing the young woman. Uncertain about what was wrong, Liz rested her hand on Sarah's forehead. She made her voice reassuring. "The Doctor will be back soon. He only went to bring in some tea. He and I have both been very concerned for you."
"But what happened to me?" Sarah Jane asked.
"Your white blood cell count shot up. It was as though something passed through your lymphatic system. It gave you a high fever. You're all right, now."
"What passed through?" she asked.
"We're not sure. In fact it looked to us as though your body had suddenly decided to fight off all minor bacteria and viruses. As though something galvanized it. Once you recover from the fever, we think you're going to be healthier than you've ever been in your life. You may never catch a cold again.. At least, not for some years."
More tears appeared in the eyes of this beautiful young woman. "Maybe it was Mercy," Sarah ventured. "Could Mercy give a person a fever?"
"I---" Liz checked her voice from speaking too directly or dismissively. She made her tone gentle. "I really don't see how, Miss Smith. We don't attribute material properties to Mercy."
"No, not until you meet it face to face. And then you're still not sure. But how can I know if it was real? Is it really water itself, or is it something like water?"
It seemed appropriate to calm the young woman, but Liz realized that these questions were not the ramblings of a delirium. Sarah Jane wanted somebody to answer her question.
Liz tried a tack of her own. "Who told you about mercy?" she asked. "Did somebody on the planet that you visited tell you something about mercy?"
"Yes, but maybe it was just a dream," Sarah Jane said, and more tears spilled down her face. "How will I ever know?"
But the voice of Liz Shaw became professional and slightly analytical. "The Doctor told me that he found you on a distant, unvegetated planet in good health, Miss Smith. You were surrounded by a cruel force of creatures that would have enslaved or killed you, and they had brought a deadly epidemic to the planet. Yet you were unharmed after several days of being marooned. Obviously, somebody gave you food and water and sheltered you from danger. You didn't dream everything that you experienced there."
At Liz's calm, analytical assessment, the blue eyes of this radiantly beautiful girl fixed on her with sudden hope. It was actually daunting for a moment, and Liz Shaw felt a pang of amazement that she had given hope and comfort to this lovely, vulnerable young woman. Sarah Jane's eyes sparkled with a few tears, but she looked at Liz expectantly, hoping she would explain the situation further. Liz softened her voice. "Can you tell me what happened? How much do you remember?"
The hopeful eyes remained fixed on Liz. "That planet was her home. She said she was a mouth, and a water bearer poured water into her, and that was mercy. I just want to know if there's something in water that really is Mercy, or if Mercy is something else. Like water is just a picture of Mercy." A new rush of tears came to Sarah's eyes. "You see, I never got it right. She said she was a mouth, and she really was empty like a mouth. She even swallowed me whole, but it wasn't what you'd think. Because it saved me."
Liz Shaw took up the cloth again and gently patted away the tears. "All right," she whispered. "All right." She wanted to calm the girl, but she also had to cover her own surprise. This young woman was no scientist and was not a space traveler. But somebody had told her an accurate---and unexpected---piece of information.
"Did you ask the Doctor?" Liz asked.
"No," Sarah Jane said. "There wasn't time. But she saved my life from the mites, and she told me that she's a mouth."
Liz kept her tone professionally curious. "Did she say she was the mouth of the fish?"
The question abruptly stopped the tears, and Sarah Jane Smith actually sat up, no longer overwhelmed. Liz's answer had come home to her. "Yes. Yes, she did. She said she was the mouth of the fish. Do you know what that means?"
There was a clipboard by the bed that held Sarah's medical chart. Liz Shaw took this up, reversed the sheet of paper on the clipboard, and made a quick sketch. "The Doctor said that he found you in the Fomalhaut system," she said. "That dreadful Insider took you there."
"When you say system, do you mean a sun?" Sarah Jane asked. "Like a solar system?"
"Yes. A sun. A star. The star Fomalhaut." Liz quickly drew a sketch and then showed it to her. It was merely an outline of a fish with some dots marked in. And from the fish's mouth, where one dot was especially large, another series of dots led up in a slight curve. "The star Fomalhaut is in the constellation called the Southern Fish. And Fomalhaut is this star." She pointed to the large dot in the fish's mouth. "Fomalhaut is called the Mouth of the Fish, and in the heavenly display of the constellations, this arc of stars represents the stream of water that is poured into the Mouth of the Fish by Aquarius, the Water Bearer."
This explanation caused so much relief to the young woman that Liz Shaw felt a flush of gratitude and happiness for her, as well as a slight, unexpected pain.
"She said it was written in the heavens!" Sarah exclaimed. "What are stars then? Where do the constellations come from?"
"I---I don't know. I believe that some of the stars and constellations---I mean their names and their meanings---pre-date written history." Liz did not want to add that stars were large balls of gases. It seemed an inappropriate thing to say. This young woman was looking at them in a much more mystic way, and yet that mysticism had somehow touched her as reality.
Sarah Jane took the clipboard and stared at the simple sketch as though she were staring at the picture of a loved one. "May I keep this?" she asked. "Please!"
The request again touched Liz Shaw with a pang. "I'll get you a better drawing than that, Miss Smith," she said. "There are very good star charts I can easily find for you."
"Thank you." And Sarah lay back down, much relieved and at peace. But she kept the clipboard tucked under her arm, close to her heart. Liz decided that this could do no harm.
The young woman now seemed tremendously relieved and calmed, and inclined to sleep, but curiosity nudged at Liz Shaw. "So, do you better understand what mercy is?" she asked.
Sarah opened her eyes and looked at the woman doctor. "It's rather like complete emptiness. The water is what's poured into it and then poured out again."
"I see." Liz made her voice light, not wanting to argue but not able to endure what she thought was a contradiction. "How odd. I had always supposed that mercy had to come from complete fullness."
"Oh yes," Sarah Jane said. "But you can't have one without the other, you see. Not if you want mercy as the end result." And, satisfied by her own explanation, she closed her eyes.
Liz didn't move at all. She sat back and pondered the face of this young woman, who was soon sleeping peacefully.
The Doctor entered with a tea tray. He set it down on the bedside stand. "Any progress?" he asked.
"Oh yes. Fever's way down," Liz reported. "And she woke up. She drank several ounces of water. We talked for a few minutes. I think we should just let her sleep."
He sat in the one remaining ladder-back chair. "Will she want to travel with me again?"
She made her voice offhand. "Oh, I think so. I promised to send some star charts to her."
"You could come too, you know."
Instead of answering, she asked a question. "Are you sure you know what's out there, Doctor?"
He was startled. "Reasonably sure. At least in the places I travel."
"Never thought you might be missing a bigger picture?"
"Possibly. But how will I know unless I see all the separate pieces?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she glanced at her watch and then stood. "You don't need me any more. She's just about recovered. Please wish her well for me. And tell her I'll forward the charts to her. And you---" Liz smiled at him. "You look after yourself, all right?"
"Of course." He stood up as she went to the door. "And I do know what's out there, Liz," he said gently.
"All right then," she said. She went out and closed the door. He sat down in the chair closer to the bed. "Of course I know what's out there," he said again. And then he forgot about this as he looked at Sarah Jane and wondered---even as the unearthly quality of her beauty was returning to normal, bearable levels---what had given such rare beauty to her, and what had covered her with such heavenly incense?
