Doctor Who: The Many Hands (13 page)

'The imperfection remains,' Kith said softly. 'But
now I am alive, I can correct it.'

'Correct it?' Martha asked, looking at the Doctor.

The Doctor didn't catch her eye.

'He needs an injection of new genetic code,' he said,
before looking up at the grey giant. 'You'd have to be
choosy this time though, wouldn't you? Sift through
and make sure you only took the right sections.
Wouldn't want to make the same mistake again. How
many different samples would you need?'

The massive creature blinked.

'Eighty thousand,' it answered calmly.

'And these samples,' Martha said, standing and
staring the creature in its strange eyes. 'They can just
be any old DNA? If it's going to save the world, I can
face a haircut.'

The Doctor shook his head.

'I'm afraid not,' he said. 'Like I said, he'd have to
sift through the code very carefully. The
bad
kind of
sifting.'

'You're talking about killing 80,000 people so that
you don't die? That's...'

'Edinburgh,' the Doctor said coldly. 'All of it.'

There was a cold silence.

'Of course,' the Doctor said conversationally, 'the
material would keep degrading. I'd give it another
century or so, but I suppose there'd always be Glasgow
then, wouldn't there?'

'I am alive,' Kith said.

The way he said it, the Doctor had no doubt that
it was all the justification Kith needed. It was alive,
and it wanted to remain so. There was no way that
he could let it carry out its plan, no way in the world
– it wouldn't stop until it had sifted its way through
the entire human genome. Trouble was, modular
organisms were depressingly hardy, so stopping Kith
wasn't going to be as easy as all that.

'There is another way,' the Doctor said.

The creature sensed treachery at that, and reared
up again. Its massive shoulders pushed up through
the roof, sending wood, dust and rubble raining to
the floor. Its hands flexed, not yet threatening anyone,
but making it clear that, if it chose, there would be no
mistake.

'I live,' Kith growled. There was a touch of fear in
his voice now. 'I cannot die.'

The Doctor held both his hands up.

'What if I could find you some genetic coding that
was special?' he asked. '
Very
special: genetic code that
was constantly adapting and regenerating so that it
wouldn't degrade. Well, not for another few thousand
years, at any rate. You wouldn't need quite as much of
that, would you? Say, about one person's worth?'

'You?' Kith asked, an eyebrow raising.

'As long as you let Alexander and anyone else
you've got floating around in there go,' the Doctor
said. 'Me.'

'No!' Martha said, pulling at the Doctor's arm. 'You
can't do that. Let me. Take me instead.'

The Doctor shook his head sadly.

'Time Lord DNA,' he said.

Tears were starting to prick the corners of Martha's
eyes. They glistened in the burning lamplight.

'Look, there'll probably be something left of me
when Kith's finished,' the Doctor said with careful
cheerfulness. 'I need you to do something for me.
Martha?'

'What?' she asked quietly.

'Take me to the TARDIS,' he said, looking
imploringly into her eyes. 'Tell it you're activating the
Laika Protocol. She'll tell you what to do next.'

'A hologram?' Martha asked.

'Yes, a...' the Doctor paused for a second.

'What?'

'Doesn't matter.'

'Doctor?'

'Nothing,' the Doctor said, waving his hand. Martha
fixed him with a glare. 'Just... well, just don't take it
the wrong way if it calls you Rose.'

Martha's glare deepened and, for just a moment,
the Doctor thought he needn't worry about Kith
killing him.

The Doctor gave Martha a hug, and whispered in
her ear. She nodded quietly and stepped back, her
tears drying. He gave her a smile, and she tried to
return it. Neither of them said goodbye. The Doctor
gave a quick salute to McAllister, which he returned
sharply, and then the Doctor turned back to the grey
giant that stood silently watching them.

He held out his hand to the creature.

'Well?' he said. 'Take my hand?'

It was a strange feeling, all in all, and one that the
Doctor could probably have missed out on quite
happily. Kith's flesh was cold to the touch, even
for him, and, as soon as one hand had grasped the
Doctor's, others began to detach themselves from the
hand-man's body and crawl over him. The Doctor
dropped his lamp, and it rolled to the corner of the
room, throwing strange shadows across the walls
until the hands closed over his eyes. The last thing he
saw was Martha.

She'd get over losing him. Eventually.

As the hands closed over his flesh, he felt that
strange disassociation that he always felt whenever
he had other people over to stay in his head. The
uncomfortable feeling of another intelligence barging
you out of the way and slowly taking control of all the
bits you never thought about being in control of until
you weren't. He could feel Kith taking stock of his
new possession – or was it possessee? – and sifting
through every bit of it, inch by inch.

The Doctor could feel the hands around him
starting to draw out little pieces of his biodata,
turning them over and pulling them apart to see how
they worked. To see what they could use. By the time
they had finished, the little creatures would have
taken the best of him: he would be nothing, and they
would be running around regenerating to their little
hearts' content. It was ironic. Here he was, the last of
the Time Lords, but when he was dead there would
be practically thousands of them again. It was almost
satisfying.

He winced as the hands started to dig deep.

Kith had reached his memories, and was carefully
dredging through them all, even the ugly ones. There
were things there that even the Doctor didn't want to
see again, but Kith was nothing if not thorough. He
was going to find the use of every last strand of DNA,
RNA and any other three-letter acronyms he might
come across.

Dying to save Edinburgh, the Doctor thought. It
could be worse.

Suddenly, the Doctor felt the hands that covered
him twitch as one, and something related to both
light and pain flashed across his brain. This was it,
after all this time. Time to say goodbye. He felt all the
heat leech from his body, and could smell a musty
scent all around him. There was a light burning in the
distance, and he tried to head for it, but he remained
stubbornly where he was.

A moment passed.

'Doctor?' asked a voice, light and feminine.

This was it.

'Doctor?' echoed another voice. Deeper and
gruffer.

Was he hallucinating, or was that...

The Doctor opened his eyes, and was nearly blinded
by his own lamp burning just inches away from his
face. As he recoiled, the lamp was pulled away and
three blurry red shapes resolved themselves into the
faces of Martha, McAllister and Monro. The Doctor
blinked up at them for a moment, and then turned
his head. He was lying on his back on the cold dusty
floor. There was no sign of Kith anywhere about.

'What happened?' he asked, his voice cracking.

'Careful!' Martha warned, still the doctor, even
with him.

He ignored her. He was, after all,
the
Doctor.

'What happened?' he asked again, pulling himself
upright. 'Where's Kith?'

'I don't know,' Martha said. She glanced to
McAllister. 'He was all over you – it looked like he
was going to smother you – and then... Then he just
stopped and let you go. He ran off back up the street
and left you lying there. How do you feel?'

'No no,' the Doctor complained. He realised that
the musty smell was his own damp clothes; he really
needed to find a dry cleaner. 'He wouldn't just go. His
genetic structure's unravelling – he'll be dead inside a
week. He needed my DNA to repair himself.'

'And he doesn't have it?' Monro asked.

The Doctor tried to make allowances for the
fact that this was a good hundred years before the
discovery of 'nuclein'.

'No,' he said. 'He doesn't.'

'Then clearly he doesn't need it,' McAllister said.

'But he does!' the Doctor protested. 'If he...
unless...'

Oh no.

'Unless he found out about a better option!'

The TARDIS!

Monro rubbed his sore wrists to try and get the blood
pumping back into them, and only then looked to
his rescuers. They hadn't needed to go far to find
which way Alexander had gone: the walls of the
houses nearest to them were crumbling, stones and
dust raining down on them. He had clearly taken
the shortest route back to the High Street, climbing
straight up the sides of the buildings and across the
rooftops. The sound of the screaming had reached
them even down in the darkness of the Close. Monro
looked to Martha and the stranger, and wondered
when his life had become this confusing nightmare.

'We have to follow,' the guardsman said. 'If we lose
it—'

'It's heading for the Castle,' the stranger said
grimly.

'How do you know?'

'Because that's where the TARDIS is,' he answered.

Martha looked shocked.

'The TARDIS?'

'Which would you rather be?' the stranger asked
her. 'A Time Lord stuck on a primitive world for the
next thousand years, or his living time ship with the
whole universe to explore?'

Monro hoped it wasn't a question he was going to
be asked.

'What are we going to do?' Martha asked.

The stranger was reaching into his dripping coat.
He pulled out a short metal tube with a glowing end.
His fingers danced across it for a moment, and the blue
light glowed a little deeper. It caught his face, lighting
it from below and giving him a ghastly pallor. His face
was full of grim anger, and Monro knew that there
was nothing that he wouldn't do to stop Alexander,
himself, his son. He felt afraid, and wondered if this
was how others had felt as they'd seen the corpses
walking.

'I might be able to disrupt the electric field that
holds the hands together,' the stranger was saying. 'I
haven't got the power to do any permanent damage,
but it will hurt.'

Monro looked at him.

'Hurt?' he said. 'Hurt Alexander?'

'Alexander?' the stranger asked.

Martha stepped forward and put a hand on the
stranger's arm.

'Alexander's his...' She trailed off. 'It's complicated.
But he's inside that creature.'

The stranger fixed Monro with steely eyes.

'I'm so sorry,' he said.

The screams grew louder, and they all looked up.
They wouldn't wait any longer: they would give chase,
and they would hurt Alexander. Monro remembered
holding him as a babe, the way he had looked up at
him knowingly and squeezed his finger so tight. It
was strange, because he knew that inside his head,
Alexander was him. Perfectly him. But he had also
been a child, and Monro had been his father. And the
stranger would kill him if it would save his 'TARDIS'.

Monro jumped forward and snatched the tube
from the stranger's hand.

'Hey!' the stranger shouted, but Monro was already
gone.

He ran down the slope of the Close so fast that he
feared his feet might overtake him and he would end
up falling, but by some good grace he kept going. The
tube felt hot in its hand, perhaps angry that it had
been taken from its master. He had to keep it from
him, to protect Alexander. He had to find him, and
protect him. Or join him.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Martha was giving chase.

McAllister pulled the Doctor with him as they raced
up the rickety stairs to the High Street: they were both
starting to tire, so perhaps it took them longer than it
should have done. It would be good to finally lie down
at the end of all this, even if it was to be in death. The
Doctor had struggled for a brief moment, wanting to
join the girl in chasing down Monro, but McAllister
wouldn't allow it: the Doctor was perhaps the only
one who knew exactly what this enemy was, and if
he was going to protect the Castle from it, McAllister
could only do it with his help.

'You can stop it?' McAllister panted as they ran.

'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted.

They burst out of the Close and back onto the High
Street, where people were either running as fast as they
could away from the Castle, or else lying insensible in
the street. McAllister didn't want to guess how many
of them might never get up again. Even one would
be too many. Looking up the street, more people
were racing towards them in panic. Bouncing across
the rooftops, scattering tiles and stonework to the
ground in a deadly shower, the massive grey shape of
the creature moved.

'Sir,' came a crisp voice across the chaos.

McAllister spun. A young soldier in a dirty red coat
saluted.

'William Marsden Howkins,' he announced.
'Reporting for duty.'

McAllister found himself smiling, just for a
moment.

'You evacuated the church?' he asked. 'Were there
any losses?'

'None, sir,' Howkins answered. 'We regrouped at
the Tolbooth, awaiting orders.'

McAllister nodded, and then turned his head
sharply as a terrible thunder came from further down
the road. One of the buildings that the creature was
dancing across wasn't as strong as the others, and
the whole roof had given way as soon as its feet had
landed. There was a shower of wood and stone and
slate, and in the middle of it was the creature, suddenly
spinning without footing. All of it landed with a loud
crash onto the cobbles below.

McAllister prayed that the street and the houses
had been empty.

Then he looked to the Doctor.

'Nothing I say will stop you,' he said to the Captain
grimly. 'But your men would do better to get the
townsfolk to safety. You're not going to do it any harm
with muskets and cannons.'

McAllister nodded briskly, and spun.

'Gather the men, Howkins,' he barked. 'And none of
your sloppiness: I want to see rank and file here before
I count to ten. Any soldier not here and carrying his
musket will be considered a coward and a deserter,
am I understood? Now MOVE!'

McAllister spun back to the Doctor, but he had
already gone.

God help them all.

Monro might have been an old man, but he could
move when he had to: he kept ahead of Martha all the
way down to the Loch and then along it, circling back
to the Castle. It was only as he started the steep climb
back up to the stone walls that Martha even managed
to get near him. She didn't know what she was going
to do when she caught up. Make him see reason,
somehow. Even though she knew there was no way
in the world her father would see reason if somebody
threatened to hurt her.

Then she looked up, and saw there was no chance.

Monro was still a good few yards ahead of her, and
he was shouting up at the Castle walls, throwing his
hands out in supplication. But he wasn't appealing to
God. He was calling to the massive creature that was
clinging to the side of the Castle, pulling itself up inch
by inch without even a glance behind it. A couple of
red-coated soldiers were standing on the walls, firing
their muskets down at the creature, but it was having
no impact at all. Martha shouted at them to run, but
they couldn't hear her.

Martha recognised the spot as pretty close to where
they had parked the TARDIS. Kith was going to make
it to the time machine before she even had a chance of
catching Monro.

The two soldiers disappeared briefly from the wall,
before returning hefting a large pot between them.
Martha's first thought was that they were going to
pour boiling oil over Kith, but instead it was the pot
itself that was thrown over the ramparts, striking the
creature a glancing blow as it fell. Kith barely even
noticed it but, as Martha ran, she saw four hands
detach themselves from his body and scuttle at speed
up the wall. She had to turn away for a second to jump
out of the way of the pot that was rolling down the
hill towards her. When she looked up again there was
no sign of the hands or the soldiers.

Kith just kept climbing.

Monro reached the foot of the walls, and looked for
a moment as if he might try to follow the creature up.
But he was old, and he was tired, and Martha doubted
that he had ever been rock climbing in his life: instead,
he jumped up and down at the bottom of the wall and
shouted up to try to attract the attention of his 'son'.
Martha was close enough now that she could hear
what he was shouting.

'Alexander!' Monro yelled, jumping around like
the ground was on fire. 'Please! Don't leave me here to
die! Take me with you: make me like you! Anything.
Just please don't leave me!'

Martha wouldn't have thought that there was
anything of Alexander left inside the creature, so she
was surprised when it stopped climbing for a moment
and looked down over its shoulder.

'Please!' Monro pleaded, quietly.

Kith held out a hand towards the anatomist, as if he
was going to reach down and pluck him up to safety.
Monro held both his hands high, straining to reach,
but Kith was still too high up the wall for the two to
touch. Instead, Kith's hand twitched and one of the
little grey disembodied hands that made it up detached
itself and fell to the ground. As Kith turned back and
continued his climb up the wall, the disembodied
hand fell onto Monro and started to throttle him.

As Martha reached Monro, he was already turning
blue. His eyes were wide and staring, panic already
well in control of him. He had his hands at his neck
trying to pull the grey hand away, but it had dug in
so tightly that its sharp nails were already sending
a steady trickle of blood down the old man's neck.
Martha quickly looked around her on the ground.
There!

'Don't worry,' she told Monro.

She scooped the sonic screwdriver up from where
Monro had dropped it and turned it on.