The Revengers;Always the Third Doctor!;Jo Grant;Katy Manning;Jon Pertwee;UNIT;TARDIS;The Revengers Episode Five
The Revengers
Episode Five
Written by Jeri Massi
Before she knew what she was doing, Jo was running away. Not from the horror, but from the wave of stinging, burning air that rolled from the car. She sprinted halfway across the short lawn and then fell to her hands and knees. Without a warning sensation, she vomited onto the brown grass. She lurched away and fell on her face onto the tiny lawn.
Her body had been acting without her mind directing it, instinctively fleeing the poisonous air. She breathed through the filter of the grass and loose soil beneath her, and her wits came back to her. But she was afraid to lift her head. She heard footsteps from the street and on the grass, and then exclamations as people backed away Down on the ground she was safe, but she did not know if the poisonous vapor that had killed Len was lingering over her.
She crawled forward on her face and afforded herself a look back. There was a gentle breeze, and the car door remained open, with Len's body spilled out of it, his shoulders on the curb, his sightless eyes staring at the evening sky, his legs still under the steering wheel. Whoever had killed him could be waiting for her in her own flat, she realized. She crawled to the iron fence that ran from the side of the building to the next building. Only then did she lift her head. The air was clear. Gripping the fence for support, she pulled herself up. Her vision swam, but she knew it was more from the shock and the sickness of whatever she had inhaled. Her lungs hurt. Clinging to the fence, she waited, frozen, until she heard the sounds of sirens.
When the police came, they were able to approach the car and extricate Len's body. They saw her, clinging to the fence, and tried to help her to the ambulance, but she refused. "Take me to UNIT headquarters," she told the constable. "I've got to get there. This is related to an investigation."
They wanted to take her to the hospital, but she was insistent. She knew exactly what she wanted and needed: the Doctor.
At UNIT headquarters, the medical personnel saw to Jo with their efficient inefficiency. They told her that her sinuses and throat were slightly burned from a chemical vapor, that she would be uncomfortable for the next couple days, and they gave her a pain reliever and instructions to drink water frequently. It was late on a Saturday night, and the usual day shift people were off-site, spending the evening in town. The Doctor was no where to be found.
She retired to the tiny cubbyhole that she had appropriated for herself over a year ago in the predominantly male environment. It was nothing other than a supply closet that she had cleaned out. She had coerced Mike and Sgt. Benton to haul in one of the slightly better military cots for her use, and the maintenance crew had supplied the nook with a bar where she could hang clothes and a single shelf for her belongings. A crate that she had scrubbed clean and painted served as both nightstand and mini cupboard. A tiny lamp purchased at a sale accommodated a sixty-watt bulb and sat atop the make-shift night stand. Mike sometimes jokingly referred to the closet as the "Women's barracks," but it afforded her with a place to sleep and some privacy during the round-the-clock stretches at UNIT.
Jo sat on the edge of the cot and buried her face in her hand. Her throat burned and her eyes still stung. If she had met Len when he wanted, or referred him over to the Doctor, he might still be alive. But right in the middle of worrying over her own safety, she had brushed off all concern for his. A shudder went through her, all the way to her stomach. Her upper arms raged with pain. Why had she performed that outrageous lift? She didn't want to break any more boundaries. She liked boundaries. What would the Doctor say when she told him that Len had been killed on her own doorstep while she had been elsewhere? She might have saved Len if she had only met him in time, before somebody else had found him. And why was her throat so parched and burning?
Somebody tapped on the door of the cubbyhole, and a voice called, "Jo?"
She leaped up, opened the door, and pushed herself into the Doctor without a single word. She began to cry and was ashamed, because she was crying more because her throat and sinuses hurt so much, and her arms burned, than because Len was dead.
The ghost of a suspicion that the Doctor could read her thoughts had sometimes been raised in Jo's mind. He had never gotten any detailed information from her except through the conventional means, but now--as at other times--he knew exactly what she thought and felt.
He didn't rebuke her or tell her to calm down. Instead, he stroked her head and his skilled hand touched a place under her jaw, right at the corner under her lower ear, and the pain in her throat subsided slightly. The parched feeling moistened. She could swallow more easily. She did and then gasped in her breath, but she couldn't speak, not easily.
"Come to the lab," he whispered. "We'll get you fixed up."
She knew that he could do a better job than UNIT's medical people. Down in the lab, she sat on a lab stool and let him connect his frequency generator. He snapped a lead to a rubber patch of the sort used on EKG machines. He pressed the pad to the same point under her jaw where he had eased her pain with his touch. The Doctor was a keen advocate of Chinese acupuncture and had recently adapted it to modern science. Though the Brigadier had scoffed at the idea of meridians and the flow of energy in the body, he and Jo had both been witnesses to some of the Doctor's early experiments in controlling pain. As the Doctor adjusted the tuner of the machine, the pad hummed slightly, and she felt the same moistening in her throat. It spread down, easing her breathing, and then it spread slowly up into her sinuses. She coughed. He affixed a second patch on the other side of her throat, closer to her larynx, and then set about making tea. She watched him, his hands deft and efficient, his movements quick, attending to the details of making her comfortable with his precise energy. She was only half surprised when big tears popped out of her eyes a second time.
He set up the electric tea kettle, arranged the cups and tea bags, and then returned to her. "Can you talk?" he asked. She nodded. But he didn't ask her anything. He leaned against the workbench, standing near her, arms folded, and waited until the water had boiled. Then he poured tea, put too much sugar in hers as always, and brought it to her.
She took a long drink of it and then gasped, "Len is dead, Doctor." Her voice was hoarse and quiet from the burns. In a whisper, she told him about the events of the morning, and Mark's rescue of her. "Len helped him" she added. "Len threw those men out of the gym. He tried to protect me, and he wanted to tell me something. And now he's dead."
"I know." He handed her the tea and stroked her hair back. "The duty officer told me when I came in. They said it was prussic acid. Very deadly. A home made canister was found under the passenger seat of the car."
"Like a time bomb?" she whispered.
"Probably a short interval thing," he said. "Not done with a timer, but perhaps a plunger made of waxed cardboard that quickly dissolved and brought the acid in contact with water. It would have made an instant mist. I'm sure that the poor man died the instant he inhaled it."
"But how did it get into the car?" she asked.
He shook his head to show he was not certain, but he offered the best theory: "Somebody got into the car with him, planted the canister, and then left within a minute, before the plunger was dissolved by the acid. It was a narrow thing."
"Sounds like an expert," she said.
"A very cool killer, indeed." He glanced down, saw that she was still shaken, and put his arm around her. "It's not your fault," he said. He drew her in, his big hand across her head. "Don't blame yourself."
"But if we knew what he had to tell me, we might at least have an idea of who killed him," she whispered.
"You think it was somebody from the weight room?"
She glanced up at him. "Don't you?"
"Did anybody else know that he was going to see you?"
"No," she told him. "Right after he called me, I went straight to the college weight room to meet Mark. I didn't talk to anybody."
He nodded. After a moment of staring into his cup, he said, "You should stay here."
"I will."
He tightened his arm, a hint that she should be silent and spare her throat. She complied. He said nothing for a long moment, only took a drink of his tea now and again and waited, holding her head against the hollow between his shoulder and chest. Finally, the quietness in him seeped into her. She thought again about the ways he was re-making her. She realized that during the entire week, she had missed him. Some part of her had been constantly aware that he was gone, not longing for him with grief or sorrow, but missing him with a constant awareness that he was removed from her. It had been a little like going some where and leaving her wrist watch or medicine at home: a sense of being not quite complete, of missing something.
She would have been glad to have stayed just as she was, safe and protected against him, but as her tears stopped and she became calmer, he took her under the elbows and set her back on the lab stool. "Now sit quietly, and drink your tea," he said. "We'll let those patches do their work for another twenty minutes or so." He returned to the tea kettle to refill it. "And while you are resting, I will tell you what I discovered tonight."
She glanced at him.
"We have a probable third victim," he announced. "Still alive, though sinking fast. Symptoms are just about the same as John Wilson---the first man---the one who was shot by his brother David.""
"Blindness?" she whispered.
The Doctor nodded. "Blindness, extreme dementia, inexplicable pain. He's lapsing into a coma. I expect it will be any time now. Onset of symptoms was about 12 weeks ago."
He came over to check the tuner, frowned at it a moment, then nodded to himself and took her cup to re-fill it. "He is not a weight lifter," he announced. "But he is the same age as the other two. I think it's time to start searching their histories for common events."
"But the steroids--"
"Jo." His voice was grave. He had been ready to pour her tea, but he stopped, set his hands on the workbench, and met her eye. "I've taken all kinds of blood samples. This one was not on steroids or other tissue enhancers. It was all a blind lead. The cause of this illness does not rest with steroid use. Your friend Len was right. Steroids could not produce those protein plaques. I cannot link anything that John Wilson or James Hughes took with dementia." He looked down and poured her a second cup of tea. "The police will go ahead with the sweep on Monday, but we may as well face it. We've followed this lead to a dead end. It's time to turn back."
He brought the tea to her and took up her wrist, checking her pulse in his usual way, with three fingers on the pulse line. She looked up at him as he concentrated for a moment. "Then why was Len killed?" she whispered.
Still holding her wrist, he met her eye again, his own eyes troubled at this piece of the puzzle, and gentle as he considered that she may very well have been a victim too. "I don't know," he whispered. "But why would the steroid dealers kill him anyway? They don't know about the sweep; they don't know that Len knew. All they know is that Len let them sell their wares without much interference. It would be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs."
"But he threw those men out," she reminded him.
He shook his head and released her wrist. "That's not enough provocation. Surely those people are used to bickering and shows of strength. Look, if they were afraid of losing their market, they would have killed you instead of just threatening you. You were the one who wanted to go to the police, not Len. They heard Len tell you not to blame these deaths on steroids." He shook his head again. "And the manner of death---acids like that are not used in the manufacture of steroids or tissue enhancers. So where would a steroid dealer get it? It's not the sort of murder those men would commit: right out on the street like that; with a risky device that could easily be mis-timed. To get right into the car with him, plant the thing, and then get out before the plunger dissolved."
"No," she whispered. "They'd be more likely to brain a person with an iron bar, or just shoot him, or corner him somehow and gang up on him."
He mused on it for a moment. "A subtle, careful killer with nerves like ice. Able to calculate risk."
He looked at her more sharply, ready to get things done, to solve this puzzle. "Tomorrow is Sunday. We'll go to Len's flat and look over his things. We can get the forensics report from the police. Maybe we can find something useful."
She nodded but looked down as it again came home that Len had become simply a part of their investigation. The Doctor hesitated and then asked, "How's the throat?"
"Better."
"I'll disconnect you." He switched off the machine and peeled one of the patches away from her throat. "Sleep is what you need. I'll give you another treatment in the morning if there's any pain."
She knew that he was dismissing her, now that he knew she was all right. That meant that he had work to do that was too complex for her to be of much help. He wanted privacy and silence. "What are you going to do?" she asked.
He peeled away the other patch. "What I should have done from the start. Analyze those plaques and see if I can trace their history. There's nothing bound in with them or attached to them. That's why we haven't been able to identify any toxin. They are not the residue of a chemical reaction in the normal sense of toxicity." He walked back to the bench, his mind already grappling with the problem at hand. "So off with you them; you are under orders to get a good rest and be back here at start of shift."
As she stood up, he turned and gave her a quick smile. "See you in the morning."
* * * *
She obeyed him and returned to her makeshift quarters on the floor above and one wing over from the main wing. She locked herself in, but this was more to ensure privacy than because she feared anything. In fact, she was under his spell again, she thought. She was relieved---in spite of having had a week to do what she liked---that she was back at UNIT, close to him and under his protection. Jo had learned not to investigate her own motives and feelings about the Doctor. It was enough that they were close, that they trusted each other and found happiness with each other.
Her throat was much relieved. She took a pain killer more for the sake of her sore arms and chest than her throat, found an old sweatshirt to use as a nightgown, and gladly curled up under the army issue rough blanket and immaculate white sheet on the cot. She felt safe and at home, aware of the Doctor's presence again.
Her eyes snapped open in darkness, and for a moment she wondered where she was. Then she remembered that she was in her windowless quarters at the base. She reached over the side of the low cot, found her keys, and fumbled for the tiny penlight attached to the key chain. She shone it on her wristwatch. It was five a.m. Time to go lift weights.
But Len was dead. The memory brought back to her all the rest: the gas, the Doctor, the previous evening with Mark and Neil and Ralph. She sat up and immediately coughed and hacked and coughed again until she had coughed up a hard, rough pack of dead skin and phlegm from her throat. But the soreness was gone. She spit the mess into a tissue, found her water bottle, and took a long drink. She was all right, she realized.
She threw on her clothes from the day before, gathered up her one set of clean clothes, and went out to get her shower in the HQ's women's locker room.
She was down in the lab before six. She entered to find the Doctor just emerging from the TARDIS, his lined face weary after a night's work. But he brightened at sight of her.
"Tea, Doctor?" she asked. It was the question that began every day in the lab.
He smiled at the familiar question, happy to be hearing it again, and she realized with a slight shock that he had missed her the same way she had missed him, that consciousness of absence, of not really being complete.
"Are you better?" he asked. "How's the throat?" Still smiling, he took her into his bear-like hug, welcoming her back in the sleepy morning. She looked up at him, bright and optimistic.
"My throat is much better. Thank you! I'll get you tea." And she hurried to the sink. She ran the water for a full minute and then rinsed out the electric kettle. "Have you found anything?" she asked.
"I think I have some biscuits 'round here," he said. He rummaged through the shelves of beakers and glassware. "I wanted to surprise you when you came back, so I hid them from myself." He stopped and scratched his head. "Now I can't remember the ingenious hiding place I selected."
She rinsed out the mugs and watched him. He opened the lower cupboard doors one after another, searching. He straightened up, scratched his head again, and wandered over to the wall of electronic equipment. "Frequency generator," he said, pointing at it on its shelf. He pointed at each object in turn as he called the roll of equipment. "Oscilloscope, sweep generator, DC voltage source, ammeter, Ah-ha!" He leaped forward in triumph and pulled a brown paper parcel from behind the ammeters. "The biscuits!"
"I meant, have you found anything about those plaque things," she asked.
He looked up. "Yes," he said emphatically. "Yes I have. Not enough yet, but a start."
"Is it a toxin, then?" she asked.
He hesitated. "I can see why Lowry was so convinced it was organic," he told her. "It has the characteristics of an infectious form. Long-term, I think. But yes, I still vote for a toxin, a poison. But a poison that imitates a virus with amazing results. These men weren't poisoned recently, Jo. They were poisoned years ago. Bring a plate, will you?"
She brought him a plate for the biscuits, made the tea, and then brought him his mug. He sat down across from her and deliberately sang:
My love has eyes the hue of corn
Blue fungus sprouts on every horn.
She sneezes phosphor in the night
And makes the darkness full of light!
"Now you're just teasing me," she said primly, sitting down with her mug.
"Have a biscuit?" He thrust the plate at her and then snatched it away as she would have taken one. "I say, is that a bug in there?" He peered at it and then shook his head and thrust the plate at her again. "Pardon me, my dear. You were saying?"
She knew that he was teasing her. She let her eyes snap at him, and then she said, "Will you tell Dr. Breed and Mark Lowry about this?"
"Not yet." He became more serious. She took a biscuit and munched on it while he ate three or four of them in rapid succession. Typical of him, he had forgotten to eat while carrying out his work in the TARDIS. She knew he must be ravenous. She took one more biscuit to tide herself over and let him have the rest.
"I need to document some things and check some items in the Neurofibrillary fiber structures," he told her. "There's a fairly uniform configuration of amino acids in each, with the same error recurring consistently in the proteins. But I'll need to do some verification before I report to them. Meanwhile, we do need to take a look at Len's effects, and I want to know what was found on him in the car."
* * * *
Jo had thought that the Doctor's presence at the police station might be the source of some concern, but they were used to him coming in and out of Inspector Jake's office. His request to see the reports and effects from Len's death was immediately granted. A rather fresh-faced young inspector led the Doctor and Jo to a quiet room and retrieved several folders and some polyurethane bags of odds and ends.
"Change, keys, the odd button," the young man said, throwing down the parcels. He extricated a separate small packet from a pocket and passed it to them. "Here's the item of note sir, miss." The Doctor opened the clear plastic packet and drew out a folded piece of paper.
We know what you've done.
We won't forget. We'll get you.
Where ever you go, we'll find you
and make you suffer. You'll die a
hundred times over for what you've
done.
---The Revengers
"It's like a rather bad joke," Jo exclaimed. "Like something out of a radio show!" She took the note from the Doctor and stared at the print. "Was this what frightened Len?"
The Doctor shook his head. "Hardly. Look at the folds in the paper, Jo. Give it here." She passed it back to him. He sniffed the face of it, then peered very closely at the ink, holding the paper less than an inch from his eye. The note had been printed with blue ink, the letters carefully and precisely made by hand, with the accuracy of a draftsman's lettering.
The Doctor handed it back to the young inspector. "That note must be at least five years old. Maybe ten. It's been lying folded up some where for years."
"Right you are sir," the young man said with new respect. "Our lads make it out to be between eight and eleven years old. Came out of a plain notebook like those used in schools and offices. Impossible to trace. We don't know why he had it on him."
"He had it on him because he wanted Miss Grant, here, to bring it to me," the Doctor said. "But I don't know why. Look." He suddenly became brisk. "We want to search his flat. Do you fellows have any objections?"
"No, sir." The young man passed a set of keys over to the Doctor. "Inspector Jake said you could go where you liked. There's a lad over at the flat, keeping watch, but he's expecting you."
The Doctor nodded and took the keys, but as he and Jo left the police headquarters, he passed the keys over to her. "Look Jo," he said. "I've got to get back to that work on the proteins if I'm to draw any provable conclusions for Breed and Lowry. You get down to Len's place and take a look. Let me know what you find."
* * * *
Len had lived in an unimpressive block of flats not far from his small weight room. Jo might have been a tad nervous about the neighborhood if it had not been for the police constable stationed at the entryway. She showed him her UNIT ID and the key given to her, and he let her inside and then came after her.
"Have they taken anything away?" she asked him as she surveyed the front room. Glossy posters of pin-up girls in every possible state of undress adorned one wall. The policeman kept his eyes on the other wall and said, "No, miss. The place hasn't really been looked at. It was the car they were most interested in" She took a second look at the posters, hoping that they might at least be bodybuilding women in classic poses. Len had once told her that he found athletic, muscular women to be very attractive. But no, these were all of the fluffy, little girl variety of womanhood, lollipop eyed and giggly.
She was suddenly embarrassed for Len. He had lied, but she had no right to discover his lies. Not this way. She doggedly went about the room, looking at his collection of catalogues from fitness companies, his books on physiology, diet, and training. She found a huge stack of magazines, the source of the posters, and mimeographed sheets of drug information. A very worn sofa sat almost in the centre of the small front room, across from a lopsided coffee table that had a small television on it.
She sat on the sofa and looked around from that vantage point. She could see the posters easily, cast a glance into the tiny cooking area, and view the doorway to the bedroom in back. The magazines and mimeographed sheets were in easy reach of her right hand, the telephone in easy reach of her left. All in view of the telly. Experimentally, she leaned forward and put her hand under the sofa. Her fingers encountered something.
Thinking it was more of the girl magazines, she pulled out the paper bound item and saw that it was not what she had thought. It was old and loose, not well bound, the cover coming away from it. It was not glossy paper, but rather a paper that her fingers recognized before her mind placed it. She flipped it open, saw black and white pictures, and realized that she was looking at a yearly magazine from a school.
She reached under the sofa and pulled out another such magazine.
"Have you found something?" the constable asked.
"I don't know. He must have been looking at these shortly before his death," she said. "His younger cousin Jimmy just died. Just this past week. Maybe these are from Jimmy's secondary school."
She flipped the first one open and glanced through it. "Camera club, astronomy club, boxing club---" She stopped. A black and white picture showed a much younger Len, in his early thirties, his rugged face alight with good humor, lacing up a boy's glove as a knot of three or four others stood around him watching. It looked as though somebody had made a joke, and the photographer had caught them laughing.
"Len must have coached the boxing," she said. She pointed to one of the boys in the group. "I think that's Jimmy, his cousin. I only saw him that one day, but I think that's him." She had seen him as a raving madman, but in the picture from high school, he looked as bright and eager as anybody. "Poor boy. He's dead now, too."
She turned the page. "Donald Simms, corner man for the boxing team, assists Len Harden before the match for Tyler Sidonni," she read. She pointed to a tiny shot of Len and a young, chubby boy with pale cheeks lacing up the gloves for one of the boys.
"They let the fat boy be corner man," the constable said wryly.
"He's the one dying now," she said. . There was another page of photos. Apparently the boxing club had been a hot item that year, a medal gathering phenomenon that had risen in popularity in the school. She read off other names from the captions. There was a final photo of a tall young man with a narrow chest but huge biceps and shoulders. He was holding up his arms and had a medal around his neck. "Johnny Wilson survived three rounds against last year's champion to win the match by split decision," she read.
"Mean something to you?" the constable asked.
"Yes," she said. "Len was reading these magazines before he died. The two dead men were in the same boxing club in high school. The man who is dying now, Donald Simms, was in the club, too, as corner man. And Len was coach." She looked up at him. "I've got to take these back to UNIT," she said. "The Doctor must see them."
* * * *
Jo returned to the lab to find the Doctor slightly bemused. But he looked up as she entered and said, "I've set it up to meet with Lowry and Breed tomorrow. I think we have enough to at least rule out infectious agent."
"Do you know what toxin was used?" she asked.
"No, not precisely. I have an idea, though. I need to do some very conventional research at a good medical library."
"Can I help?"
"You can tell me what you've found," he said. "You're brimming with something important." And he smiled faintly.
She set the magazines in front of him. "Len was looking at these," she said. "I think he was looking at them when he called me. Those three men, all three of them, were in a boxing club together in high school. Len was their coach."
"So that's the link." He opened up the top magazine and flipped it open to the pictures of the boxing club.
She sat down on a lab stool. "Well, it's not much of a link," she told him. "I mean, who would hold it against them that they were on a boxing team?"
"Tomorrow you can go down to the old school and see who's still around from ten or more years ago," the Doctor said. "You may find some very useful leads." He closed the magazine. "Oh, and Mark Lowry called just for you. Wants to remind you that there's training scheduled for tomorrow."
She nodded.
"And," the Doctor added. "He's going to ask you to lunch."
"Doctor . . . "
"Ah, let me guess. You told Mark that you want to be just friends, and he swore to you that he's content with that, and you---being honest and naïve---believed him." The Doctor leaned his head against his fist and surveyed her with mock amazement.
"He hasn't asked me to lunch, and he's not going to," she said.
"Oh no? Well, I told him you would ring him back as soon as you got in, so you just go ahead and call him. And then we'll see."
She glared at him, but he was unflappable. "Go on then. Call him, or call a linguist. I've got you either way."
She burst out with a laugh at this and picked up the telephone. "I'll call him and prove what a useless romantic you are," she said.
"And there is a Garterbra-bra," he said.
"Hello Mark?" she asked into the receiver. "Jo Grant here. Pretty well. I suppose the Doctor told you about Len. Yes, I'm all right. Just shaken. It was a near thing." She frowned as she listened and glanced at the Doctor. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. "He thinks a steroid seller did it for revenge," she whispered. She turned back to the receiver. "Well, we're looking into it. But I did want you to know that I'll be there tomorrow. Yes, six is fine. I'm looking forward to it." She flashed a look of triumph at the Doctor and then caught herself. "Oh---lunch? Yes, if the Doctor doesn't need me to do any foot work for him. I'm back on duty. I'll see you tomorrow, then." She cradled the receiver and stared at the phone for a moment.
"I'm sure I can spare you from all that footwork," the Doctor told her. She let out a very audible sigh. He had been teasing her, but she changed the subject with more force than she usually showed. "What about the toxins?" she asked.
He realized that she was concerned about Mark, but he yielded to the question and answered her. "Have you heard of thalidomide, Jo?"
"Yes." She thought for a moment. "It's what deformed all those children, wasn't it? Pregnant women took it for morning sickness, and it hurt the developing children. Gave them---flipper arms."
He nodded. "It's been around for longer than that, though, and it has other uses."
"What other uses?"
"It can cause alterations in DNA coding, for one thing," he said. "Things have to be timed just right, and dosage has to be just right. But if you were to bind thalidomide to just the right structure, and subject a human being to it at just the right infusion, you'd have a poison that would act as a very effective time bomb."
"You mean it would change people's DNA?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. No, it altered the DNA coding only in fetuses that were exposed to it," he told her. "That's what I mean by timing. Thalidomide had one action on the unborn. What DNA is doing in a fetus is not quite the same thing as what it's doing in an adult. But what effects DNA in a fetus will effect DNA function in an adult. In this case, in a young adult."
She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just don't follow you."
"Well Jo, DNA is made up of proteins," he told her. "DNA has its own safeguards. Let's say that Thalidomide has already shown that it can break the security code of DNA. That means it can do things to proteins that most chemicals could never do. Combine it with just the right toxin, and you have something that is quite deadly in a large dose, but just as deadly in a small dose, except it takes longer to show up."
"You're saying these men were poisoned when they were just boys," she told him. "Well, who would have known back then: ten or twelve years ago, about DNA and Thalidomide?"
He leaned back, deep in thought. "Somebody knew something," he said. "That's why I have to go to the medical libraries. Somebody was making some pretty good educated guesses."
"But people didn't even know about Thalidomide except for what it did to fetuses," she protested.
"No." He shook his head. "Thalidomide was used in the war."
The news stopped her cold. "The world war?"
"It was a component of nerve gas," he said. ""Part of a poison cocktail designed to bring about a most unpleasant death. The Nazis used it."
"Nazis?" She was incredulous.
"Look, let's keep this to ourselves," he told her. "I want to wait until I have more facts before I go spilling everything to Breed and Lowry."
* * * *
Monday morning at six a.m., Jo climbed the many stairs to the weight room. Mark met her at the doorway. "Jo," he said, his face calm but his eyes lighting up. "I am glad to see you. We've all been quite concerned after hearing of Len's death. Do come in."
Ralph and Neil were already inside. If anything, Ralph seemed more pompous and removed from her, but the tall and homely Neil actually took her hand. "Mark said you yourself were overcome by the gas in the car," he said. "So fortunate you were not hurt. I'm so sorry that you went through it."
She was surprised when Mark actually stepped between them. "There isn't much time," he said urgently. "You two had better start on the warm up sets while Jo does the treadmill."
It was, as before, an energetic workout. She maintained a fairly fast jog on the treadmill. Mark's sense of urgency did not go away, and he pushed her harder this time, with less encouragement, than he had shown on Saturday. But Jo was keenly attuned to them and their goals, and she wanted to stay up with their expectations.
At seven o'clock some of the college students came in to share the room. The effect was to lighten the tone overall. She realized that Mark was something of a local authority with the students, and twice they called over to him to ask him for help on checking their form. He was patient with them, and articulate as he corrected them and explained some of the biomechanics of each list.
He showed her how to do cable pulley flies for her lower pectorals, an alternative to the bench press that worked her muscles in a different way. She was glad of the variety, because she was even more sore today from the monumental lift she had done on Saturday.
"This will cause some neutralization of the lactic acid that's still sitting around your muscles," he assured her. "By tonight you'll feel like a new man."
Ralph laughed at the blunder.
"I mean woman," Mark said, and he laughed.
"So what does the Doctor think of all this weight training?" Neil asked her as Ralph took his turn at the cable pulley machine.
"He's the one that started me off," she told them. "Thought it would be good for me."
Neil smiled his wide, homely smile. "Were you just humoring him, or do you always do as he tells you?"
She smiled back, a quick smile of good humor. "Certainly not, but it does annoy him when I don't!"
"Thinks he knows what's good for you, eh?" Ralph asked as he pulled the cable with perfect form to a point past his sternum.
She was surprised at the comment. She did not know how to read Ralph. "Well," she said gently. "He is right most of the time. He's a brilliant scientist."
"Is he?" Ralph's voice was acid. He finished the set and turned around to use his other hand. They stepped around him so that he could see them. "Well what's he think about training for himself then?"
"The Doctor is quite accomplished," she said. "A very good martial artist and the strongest man I've ever seen."
Mark took up the pulley handle. He looked at her with some surprise. "Stronger than each of us? Stronger than Len?"
"Yes," she said simply.
Neil spoke up, his voice and his eyes gentle. She got the idea that Neil would admire and like her no matter what she said. "You're standing up for him because he's your friend," he said gently, with approval.
"But he really is quite strong," Jo told them. Neil smiled a gentle, admiring smile at her. She realized that none of them believed her, but Neil said, "Whether or not he's strong, he certainly is a lucky man, Jo."
It embarrassed her. Now she knew what made her sometimes ill at ease with them. They had not quite thrown off the fact that she was an attractive young woman. These were men, she realized, who did not know how to be themselves with women. Ralph was condescending and snide; Neil humble and almost fawning, and Mark reverted to his lecturer mode when the others were present. She remembered what they had said about being the bookish types in school. She felt some compassion for them, for she had always been liked and had enjoyed many friends. It was an advantage they had not enjoyed. But she also wished they would just accept her at face value.
They finished, and she hurried to shower and get to the day's work. She had been ready to attend to tracking down people at the school before having lunch with Mark, but just as she arrived back to the lab at UNIT, she realized that she had left her bag at the college showers.
She wanted to just leave it and get to her work, but she knew that it could very easily be stolen or even locked away in some lost-and-found closet which would take hours to locate and have opened. Her wristwatch and spare keys were in it. She decided to go back immediately.
The top floor of the building that housed the weight room was reserved for those activities that were the least popular. Aside from one or two weight training classes, it was usually pretty deserted. Jo labored up the steps. They were much harder to climb after a workout. She found the bag, exactly where she had left it outside the shower stalls, and came out to the hallway again.
It was then that she saw Neil. He took one look at her face and then disappeared into the men's showers.
Jo hesitated, and then she followed him. She had never been in a men's room before, and she was ill at ease until she realized that there was nobody else inside. Neil, still in his shorts and t-shirt, stood at the lockers. But his eyes were red. The items from his locker were pulled out in disarray.
"Neil?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be at work?" And then she saw the syringe in his hand.
"Jo, why did you come here?" he asked her. "What made you come?"
"What is that?" she asked. He glanced down at the syringe and did not answer her. "You should never have come here." And he started to cry again. "What will I do?" he asked. "Oh, I have committed a terrible sin!"
She was startled by the exclamation. She came closer. He sobbed for a few moments into his huge narrow hand. "Oh Jo, I used to blame God because I was so homely," he said. But she had the idea that he was half talking to her and half talking to deity. "I said it wasn't fair. I looked at pretty girls and handsome men, and I couldn't see why they were given good looks and I wasn't."
"But Neil---" There was no argument against his claim that he was homely. And yet there was a charm about him. She thought she might point it out to him
He seemed not to hear her interruption. "And then I met you." He held up the syringe. "So pretty," he said to it. "So gentle and sweet. And brave, too. You got right under that weight and lifted it."
She froze and calculated the distance she would have to cover to get to the door. But she knew that in two strides he would have her. Neil was even taller than the Doctor.
He glanced at her and saw that she was frightened. It startled him, and she saw a look of horror cross his face. "I'm not going to hurt you, Jo," he said. He glanced at the needle and lowered it. Then he abruptly plumped himself down on the bench. "In fact, you should leave. Now. You ought to go away."
"I---I can't," she said. "Why do you have that syringe?"
"You saved that fellow's life," he said faintly. "The Doctor. You stepped in front of him to save him. I think I fell in love with you just then, when you told us that. But he deserves you. More than I do."
She tried to protest again. "Neil---"
But he started to cry and put his face into his free hand. "Jo! I never had a right to be anything, and now I see it. I want God to forgive me. But I don't have the courage for the rest. I've done a terrible thing."
She knelt down in front of him, genuinely moved at his anguish. "Tell me what you've done," she pleaded. "Maybe we can find a way out of it."
He laughed a short laugh at her and then looked at her, tears streaming down his face. He rested his free hand on her head, but his hand was cold. The syringe was only inches from her, but she realized that he had no intention of using it on her, whatever was in it.
"You'd do that, wouldn't you?" he asked. "Help me. Make friends with me." He stroked back her hair in a gesture not unlike the Doctor's. "Jo, you should be very careful who you make friends with. In all my wasted life, it's the only truth I've learned. It's all I can give you. Go back to the Doctor and stay with him."
"I'm not afraid to make friends with you," she told him, all earnestness, her eyes big with fear for him.
"There's one other truth," he told her. "That God is real." He nodded to himself. "Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man." He looked down at her. "Go on, Jo. Call the police. There's a telephone just up the hall. Tell them you found me raving in the men's room, with drugs in my bag."
"Won't you give me that syringe?" she asked.
"If you go call the police, you can have it when you come back," he said. "I'll be right here."
"Neil, whatever you've done, I'll help you," she said. "I promise."
He only nodded. His tears stopped. He seemed calmer, and he lowered the syringe down to the bench. She hurried out to find the phone.
As she went out, she heard him go to the locker, and she hoped that he might be finding his clothes, to be better dressed before seeing the police. She found the telephone and called the police, giving them directions in a shaking voice.
She hurried back the way she had come, and she heard a crash in the locker room.
"Neil?" she asked. She rushed inside.
He had fallen backwards off the bench. His one arm was flung out, the other arm---still clasping the syringe, was across his chest. The syringe was empty. He wasn't breathing. She pulled his feet off the overturned bench and straightened him out. But even as she bent down to try to revive him, she knew that he was already quite dead. An open paper lay by his head. Jo had no time to pick it up and read it, but she saw the print, the blue ink, the faint lines of notebook ruling on it. Even as she blew air into his immovable lungs and then tried to push with both hands down on his sternum, she kept her eyes fixed on it and knew exactly what it said.
We know what you've done.
We won't forget. We'll get you.
Where ever you go, we'll find you
and make you suffer. You'll die a
hundred times over for what you've
done.
---The Revengers
