Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building (11 page)

maybe I could sing something else. . . I can do anything! I know all sorts of songs. What about “Bohemian Rhapsody"? That’s a nice long number. Can you join in, fellas? Barbara? Toaster? Could you pitch in with the opera bits? Just to tame the breast of the savage beast?’

‘Er. . . It should be in our old-Earth memory banks. We’ll have a go, Doctor. . . ’

‘Right! Have a look under “Golden Oldies". Here we go then. . . ’

And the Doctor started to sing, gazing back at the creature’s savage and glittering eyes. It was still about to pounce at any moment. It was looking back at the Doctor like the Doctor was no more than a heap 73

of animated, ambulatory meat. . .

Meat!
That was it! The Doctor stopped singing abruptly, eliciting a warning growl.
It’s listening to this! It’s really listening!
The Doctor put more concentration into doing the falsetto bits. Here came Barbara and Toaster with the ‘Galileo’ and ‘Bismillah’ chorussy part. But he’d worked out what to do! Meat! Meat was the answer!

Like everything out there in the frozen wilderness, the bear creature was starving. It had burst into the Tiermann home, once the shields were down, on the scavenge for something to devour. That was all it could think about. It was prepared to cut down the Doctor, and anyone else it came across. . .

but there had to be an easier way,

didn’t there?

The Doctor interrupted himself, just before they got to the hard rocky bit of the song. ‘Barbara! Can you work the food computer thing in the kitchen?’

‘Of course!’ she said, still singing falsetto in close harmony with Toaster, doing the ‘Scaramouche’ and ‘fandango’ bit of the song. ‘We’re all connected!’

‘Brilliant! Tell it to get working. Meat! It needs to produce as much meat as it possibly can. Defrost as much as possible from stores. Don’t even have to cook it. . . ’

‘But all the Servo-furnishings that belong to the kitchen are malfunctioning, Doctor. . . ’

‘Just try!’ And with that the Doctor took a big risk, leaping into the air-guitar, screeching lead break of the rocky bit in the middle of

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. He leapt backwards and sideways through the air, windmilling his right arm and doing a mad kind of ballet thing with his skinny legs. The beast lurched and followed him.

Towards the kitchen! The Doctor carried on his solo as he hurtled into the kitchen. And there, beyond the ruined crockery and the flickering lights and the smashed plate glass of the windows, the food machine in the far wall was lit up and working busily. It was producing more food than it ever had before. It was in overdrive. Its door sprang open and a quivering mass of red and pink flesh came slop-ping out onto the floor. More and more was materialising at its back, 74

drenched in a bloody gravy. . . Barbara had got it working a treat. It was emptying the stores and disgorging its plentiful wares at the feet of the snow beast.

‘Yeeessss!’ hissed the Doctor, and realised that he had finished the fast bit of the song, and it was time for the slower, reflective, sad bit at the end. He was joined by Barbara and Toaster and they came to watch the massive creature feed.

‘It’s completely forgotten us,’ Toaster gasped.

‘Thank Domovoi and the food machine,’ Barbara said. ‘But I think that was everything! Years and years of foodstuffs, gone in a flash.’

‘It won’t be needed by anyone else,’ said the Doctor grimly. Then he whirled to hug Barbara. His arms could barely go round her oblong girth. ‘Now! Life signs! Where are the Tiermanns and my friend Martha?’

Barbara consulted the Dreamhome’s flickering web of information and she knew in a flash. ‘Drawing room. Sealed in behind emergency screens.’

The Doctor was already leading the way. ‘Tell them to let us in, right now! I want a word or two with Professor Tiermann!’

They left without the creature even noticing, so intent was it on gnawing and sucking up the sticky juices.

It took some moments to persuade Tiermann to unlock the heavy door screens to the drawing room. But his family and Martha had watched the Doctor’s strangely musical struggle with the snow beast on the monitor screen. They knew it was quite safe to open the door long enough to let him in. Tiermann scowled at them all and the door flew open.

The Doctor sprang into the room and Martha hugged him. ‘Come on, come in,’ he told his two robot friends. ‘Don’t be shy.’

Barbara and Toaster looked quite abashed, showing their faces before their inventor once more. They shuffled awkwardly into the room. The Doctor dashed over to them. ‘These are my friends, Barbara and Toaster. And they were the ones who got me out of the depths of Level Minus Thirty-Nine! Where they themselves had been 75

locked up.’ He glowered at the professor. ‘That’s where he banged up anything unwanted.’

Tiermann cursed. ‘What are you doing bringing old rubbish like that back up onto the surface? We don’t have time for things like that.’

Barbara and Toaster looked mortified.

‘Now, now,’ said the Doctor mockingly, though Martha could hear the furious steel in his voice. ‘They are my friends, and I will take responsibility for them. No one expected you to care, Tiermann.’ He turned to Martha. ‘How are you doing? What’s been going on?’

Martha ticked things off on her fingers. ‘They wouldn’t let me near the lifts. He’s set light to the grounds of the mansion, because the shields are failing. Some of the technology inside the house is breaking down, too. Oh, and, as you know, monsters are getting in from outside anyway.’

‘Sounds like you’ve been having a pretty exciting time of it,’ the Doctor grinned. ‘Meanwhile, I made some new friends, and I met the Domovoi.’

‘The what?’ Martha asked.

Tiermann’s head whipped around. He was in the corner, letting Walter pour him a stiff drink. ‘You met what?’ he thundered, and stalked across the plush rug to confront the Doctor.

‘Yes, I thought that would make you listen,’ said the Doctor coolly.

‘My new friends took me even deeper into the house, and I met the Domovoi face to face. The central intelligence that controls this entire Dreamhome. Must say, Tiermann, that she’s an impressive piece of work.’

Tiermann’s voice was dangerously low. ‘No one sees her. No one goes down there. Only me.’ There was something besides anger in his voice, Martha realised. What was it, now? She narrowed her eyes.

Fear? Was that it? She saw that it was, in Tiermann’s ashen face and his bulging eyes. Tiermann was frightened of his own creation.

‘I talked with her,’ the Doctor told him breezily. He took the glass out of Tiermann’s hand, sniffed its contents, and tossed it away into the pot of a nearby rubber plant. ‘Awful synthetic stuff. Yee-ee-ees, we 76

had quite a nice chat, really. I mean, she’s terribly distracted and a bit miffed by everything that’s going on, of course. She’s not at her most hospitable. . . ’

Tiermann was grinding his teeth, and pushing his grizzled face up close to the Doctor’s. Barbara was hovering behind, trying to warn the Doctor to stop winding him up.

The Doctor whirled away and started to stride about the room, hands thrust deep in his pockets.

‘She’s a fascinating invention,

Martha. You wouldn’t believe it. A super-intelligent computer seemingly made out of green fire.’

‘Green fire?’ Martha said.

‘That’s how she looked on the outside, anyway. Impressive. Gave me a bit of a turn, when I first walked in. Anyway, the point is. . . she’s absolutely livid. And what are you –’ he turned on his heel to point a finger right in Tiermann’s affronted face, ‘going to do about it?’

Martha watched Solin and Amanda. They were rigid with fear.

Solin had gone to stand protectively beside his mother. They weren’t used to the sight of anyone standing up to Tiermann. They were watching with anguished expressions, as if they were witnessing some awful disaster.

‘I am not going to do anything about it,’ Tiermann said, rather quietly. ‘The Domovoi is a machine. A tool I invented. And so are the robots that keep the Dreamhome running. But they have all reached the end of their usefulness. This whole land and this house is about to be destroyed. I have accepted that now. My life’s work is about to be. . . absorbed by that hellish monstrosity heading towards us. I understand that we have to leave this place, and I have plans afoot to get my family and myself away in time. But everything else will perish.’

He glanced around at the opulent drawing room, with its purple silks and its black velvets. His gaze took in the Servo-furnishings that were looking up to him. ‘I’m afraid that’s the way it has to be. They are merely things. Puppets. Devices I brought to life for one purpose only: to serve my family and me. Now, the Domovoi – brilliant and powerful as she is – must accept that. She must see the logic of that. There is 77

no room for her, or any other surplus being, upon our spacecraft.’

Tiermann had spoken grandly, with his deep, rolling, actorish voice.

Martha had been almost impressed with his calm delivery, and the way he had recovered his composure. The Doctor had danced rings around him, but now Tiermann had reasserted control over the situation. He had explained himself. And he had made his ruthless decisions seem like common sense.

Behind him, Walter the drinks robot’s eyes were blazing a furious red. Martha thought that was interesting. . .

‘Father,’ Solin said abruptly, breaking into the weighty silence. ‘Look at the screen!’

The large monitor on the drawing room wall had been showing the view outside of the room. They had grown accustomed to seeing the wreckage and mess of the hallway. But now the picture had changed.

How many minutes it had been like this, no one could tell, but now it was showing a picture of liquid green flames. They were lapping and crackling against the glass and, when everyone was staring at them, they redoubled in force: flaring up as if the fire knew it was confronting the whole Tiermann clan.

Black eyes opened up inside the emerald flames. A savage black slit of a mouth widened into a grimace. ‘Nooo,’ Tiermann moaned.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said the Doctor. ‘I thought she might do this.’

‘What?’ Martha asked, drawing closer to him, and also closer to the screen, mesmerised by the fire. ‘Is that her? The Domovoi?’

Behind them Amanda let out a cry of fear. ‘Ernest, what have you done? What have you said?’ She buried her face in her son’s shoulder.

Tiermann was frozen to the spot. He was transfixed by the empty eyes of the Domovoi.

‘That’s her all right,’ said the Doctor softly.

‘The spirit of the

Dreamhome itself.’

‘I heard what you said, Ernest Tiermann,’ the Domovoi said, in a deathly whisper. The voice sent Martha’s blood cold. The oxygen seemed to freeze in her lungs. Her mind went numb at the eerie sibilance of its hush. ‘And I truly expected no better. You will leave me here. You will leave the Servo-furnishings here. You will escape 78

and live. And we will all perish. Very well. I should have known. You snivelling worm.’

Tiermann flung himself forward, before the creature on the screen.

He fell to his knees. ‘What else can I do? I must save my family. This is logical! The only logical thing!’

The face in the flames sneered at him. ‘What do I care about logic?

I defy logic!’

The Doctor stepped forward and faced up to the Domovoi. ‘What are you going to do? Will you let them go?’

The Domovoi glared and crackled; shimmered and simmered and considered. And then she announced: ‘I will do what I have always done for the occupants of the Dreamhome. I will continue to make you safe.’

Tiermann was back on his feet, looking alarmed. ‘What?’

They could hear, from all over the Dreamhome, electronic switches and gears and levers humming with energy as the Domovoi silently instructed them to do her bidding.

‘I will keep you safe and sound. I will protect you from the Voracious Craw. At least, I hope so. I will try my utmost, as I always have.’

‘What are you saying?’ thundered Tiermann.

‘I am going to lock you all inside the Dreamhome. For ever!’

There was a stunned pause, and then all three of the Tiermann family burst out in cries of protest. Martha whipped round to look at the Doctor. ‘Mm, yes,’ he said. ‘That was on the cards, wasn’t it?’

They could hear the swift, ominous clangs coming from all over the house. Metal shutters crashing down over windows. The light in the drawing room itself became murky, all at once, as the shutters dropped down with a noise like an axe on the executioner’s block.

Now the room was a baleful green from the flames on the screen.

And the Domovoi was laughing at them. ‘You will stay here for all time! One big happy family! And if the Dreamhome must die this very night, then we all will die!’ The gaping mouth quivered and shook with its horrible laughter. ‘It’s only logical, Tiermann. It’s only 79

fair, isn’t it? Like one big happy family, no? And we shall all go together!’

Then the Domovoi stopped laughing. ‘I’ll be watching you,’ she said, in a very nasty voice.

And the fiery screen went dark.

Suddenly it was quiet in the drawing room.

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