Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (31 page)

The Petruska Programme, you were the one that escaped.’

Tilda raised an eyebrow and curtsied, a parody of modesty. ‘The very same,’

she said, curtly. She pulled a fresh Guilloise from its soft packet and tapped one end of the cigarette on the back of her hand. The flames of her petrol lighter illuminated her face from below, highlighting her chiselled features.

Moriah took a step towards her. ‘You are the image of her,’ he said, his voice full of longing and awe. ‘It is as if Petruska is standing before me. I could almost believe it is true.’

Julia watched him extend his arm to touch the woman’s face, tentatively.

Tilda grimaced and stepped back out of his reach; Moriah only received a cloud of smoke in his face. ‘Bugger off,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve had enough of being felt up by sad old men. And I’ve had enough of you.’

Moriah retracted his hand, as if it had been scolded. His face creased with the pain of rejection. ‘No!’ he whined, pitifully. And then the hurt in his face was transformed into anger. He swung his body forward, putting his entire weight behind a punch that sent Tilda flying backward across the room. She hit the far wall, making a small noise in her throat before crumpling, limply, to the floor.

‘I made you!’ he hissed through gritted teeth, as he staggered forward to where Tilda lay motionless. ‘You have no life of your own. Can you not understand something as simple as that? No life without me.’

Shocked by the sudden violence, Julia froze, feeling her breathing spiralling out of control as she started to hyperventilate. She forced herself to breathe more slowly and more deeply, before beginning to move to where Tilda lay.

The Doctor’s reaction was far quicker than Julia’s. He placed himself directly in Moriah’s path, holding up the flat of his hand. ‘Stop,’ he commanded.

‘I will not permit this violence. It’s over, don’t you understand? Whatever you were hoping to achieve here with your obscene experiments is at an end.’

Moriah paused, his sudden burst of wounded rage had passed and he was calmer now. He looked down at the little man in front of him like Goliath amused by David’s audacity. And the Doctor didn’t even have a slingshot.

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‘Ah, it is the little Doctor, I wondered if we would finally meet. What am I to make of this strange man who is so anxious to involve himself in matters which are of no concern of his?’ The amusement left Moriah’s face. ‘This is a private matter. It is none of your business. Stay out of my affairs.’

‘This
is
my business. You’re interfering with the lives of people I care about.

That makes this my business. Now, I’m warning you, Moriah, stay away from my friends.’

Moriah shook his head, as if he felt that the Doctor had genuinely misun-derstood the situation. ‘That woman is mine to do with as I see fit. I gave her life. If I choose to bury her then so be it.’

The Doctor stared with incomprehension at the muscular man before him.

‘But why? Why create something so precious only to destroy it?’

‘She is flawed,’ Moriah spat with distaste. ‘Just another failure. I have worked unceasingly to return my betrothed to me. I have searched for longer than you have lived. Searched for longer than any of you can possibly imagine.’

Julia looked up from Tilda’s unconscious body. Finally, she understood what the work at the Institute was really about. She snorted, bitterly. And she’d thought that the Petruska Programme was merely an addition to the main work. But instead it was the task. ‘And all our years of work?’ she said.

‘A means to an end, Doctor Mannheim. Nothing more. You think I care for the disturbed of this world. The bodies of humans have provided the fertile soil on which I have laboured to bring back my bride. That is the extent of my interest in them. Death took my love from me, and it
will
return her.’

Something broke in the little man standing before the giant. The Doctor suddenly had to use his umbrella to support himself as if he were an old man.

Tears filled his eyes, which glistened brighter than ever. The transformation was shocking. Somehow, Julia had never expected to see the Doctor cry.

‘Death doesn’t give us second chances, can’t you see?’ the Doctor pleaded, his voice shrill, as if he were desperate to be understood. ‘If it did, don’t you think that I would have changed the past a thousand times. Don’t you think that I would have brought back all the friends I’ve lost? We have to face losing the people we care for. We can’t avoid it. And it hurts.’ The Doctor pressed his hand against his breast, as if he needed to support his heart. ‘Sometimes it hurts so much I can hardly bear it.’

‘Don’t waste your words on him, Doctor,’ a new voice commanded.

Julia whirled round to see a woman striding into the room, moving with natural authority despite being dressed in workmen’s clothes. Her skin was tanned and her hair blonde and bleached by the sun. Despite this, she looked completely exhausted. Julia Mannheim placed her accent immediately, one hundred per cent New York.

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‘Moriah’s not telling you the whole truth. Petruska didn’t just die. She killed herself. It was the only way to be rid of the man who had made her life intolerable.’

‘No!’ Moriah roared in anguish, and collapsed to his knees, clutching his face.

Gilliam felt a wave of satisfaction as Moriah knelt in front of her, sobbing like a lost child, oblivious to everything but his hurt. She had never even considered the possibility that he might still be alive after all this time. The legends on Kr’on Tep called him the man-god, and perhaps he was immortal.

He certainly must have lived for uncountable centuries. Thousands of years spent mourning a woman who hated him with every ounce of her being.

He was so different to how she had imagined him. She’d thought of him as a warrior, with a fighter’s body, a hard cruel face and dark eyes. In reality, whilst he was muscular, he wasn’t a warrior. He was a huge man, bulky and bulging beneath his suit – perhaps he’d gone to seed over the ages. For all his years, his face was unlined and curiously ageless. Only his eyes betrayed his age. As if fatigued from always being focused on events beyond the range of human senses.

She’d seen eyes like those before.

The little man in the tweed jacket, with eyes full of tears, had leapt into action after Moriah had crumpled in distress. Calling over a sandy-haired youth of about sixteen and a middle-aged man in an overcoat and hat whom he referred to as ‘Inspector’, the three of them had bound Moriah’s hands and feet.

Gilliam just stood there watching the strange proceedings. Only now did she fully take in her surroundings. She was in some kind of hospital. It looked old fashioned and uncared for. Forgotten. The abandoned ward was occupied with the strangest mix of people. Gilliam grimaced at the strange, faceless creatures which had stumbled, disorientated, to the floor after she had confronted Moriah. They now lay twitching and spasming on the linoleum floor.

Puppets with their strings cut.

But despite all this strangeness, Gilliam knew that she had come home. This was Earth. Probably the twentieth century, although she couldn’t say exactly when.

She was home.

The little man in the tweed jacket came bounding over, then stopped a few feet in front of her, reigning in his enthusiasm. There could be no mistaking him. He’d changed of course. There wasn’t anything left of the man she had known and travelled with. She wouldn’t have recognized him from a description or even a photograph. But when she had walked into the room 182

and seen him confronting Moriah she had known immediately. Well after all, who else would be confronting a monster with only an umbrella for a weapon?

Only the Doctor. The person who had abandoned her without a word on an alien planet with a man she didn’t love.

‘Hello, Doctor,’ she said, careful to keep her voice even.

‘Hello, Peri,’ the Doctor replied, stepping forward a little cautiously. ‘How are you?’

She slapped him so hard that he tumbled to the floor.

After the last of the dormant Toys had been carried through the secret doorway in Moriah’s quarters, they had barricaded themselves in the underground cavern. There was nothing to do now but wait for the Doctor to fix Moriah’s glass spheres so they could transport everyone back to London.

Jack rubbed his aching arms as he sat quietly, watching the Doctor busy himself with the strange fiery spheres. It had been hard work moving all the dormant Toys. It took two people ten minutes to carry one of the frozen mannequins from the ward down to the circle of glass spheres in the cave. If anyone remained in contact with a Toy for more than a few minutes, it would start to come alive, empathically responding to them. Preparing to transform itself into. . . Jack shivered and tried to put the thought out of his mind.

They’d left Moriah in a straitjacket in the same cell in which Jack and Mikey had been imprisoned. Jack grinned to himself, pleased that their enemy was getting a taste of his own medicine.

The woman who called herself Gilliam was sitting on an outcrop of rock a few feet away from Jack. She and the Doctor had barely exchanged a word since she had slapped him across the face. Every few minutes the Doctor would sneak a look over to where the woman was sitting, but she never once met his gaze.

Dennis was still unconscious from the general anesthetic. He lay on the rough ground with his head resting on Mikey’s lap. Mickey smiled at Jack as he approached and the two boys sat and talked for a little while. Jack wanted to ask Mikey how he felt about his little ‘brother’ now that he knew who or rather what he was, but he couldn’t find a way of introducing the topic into the conversation.

Jack was surprised when the woman, Gilliam, wandered over.

‘Hi,’ she said, trying to sound amiable, although Jack got the impression that she was uncomfortable about something.

Jack looked up at her and smiled. She was a striking woman, probably in her early forties, maybe a bit older. Her face was heavily lined around her eyes from the sun.

‘I take it that you’re the latest?’ she asked in her nasal American accent.

183

Jack frowned. ‘Latest what?’

She nodded over to the Doctor. ‘Don’t you travel with him?’

‘Travel? Where to?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’ She was about to move away when something kept her from leaving. ‘Let me give you some advice, kiddo. If he offers you the trip of a lifetime, just remember that’s exactly what he means. A lifetime.’

Jack tried to work out what the woman meant. ‘You travelled with the Doctor? Did he take you into outer space in his spaceship?’

Gilliam seemed to find something amusing. She nodded. ‘Yeah, you could put it like that. I was only a couple of years older than you at the time.’

‘Wow! Really? Do you think –’

‘I wouldn’t if I were you. “A quick trip around the Galaxy,” he said. I was eighteen when we left; I just got back.’

The Doctor was gently putting the last globe back into place, when he looked up and saw Chief Inspector Harris hurrying down the last few steps into the cavern.

‘Doctor,’ the policeman called, a little out of breath. ‘They’re trying to break through upstairs. I don’t know how long the barricade will hold them.’

The Doctor surveyed his work: it was a bit of a lash-up, but then wasn’t it always?

‘Ah, Chief Inspector,’ the Doctor began. ‘Time for us to leave, I take it. I’m counting on you to make sure that the Scratons don’t give Tilda and her people any trouble.’

Harris nodded. ‘You don’t have to worry about that. What are you going to do about this Moriah fellow?’

The Doctor shrugged. ‘I really have no idea. Perhaps Moriah will leave the Toys alone now. My first priority is to get everyone away from here.’ The Doctor glanced over to where Peri was talking to Jack. ‘Perhaps if we can find out more about Moriah, then we could find a way to resolve the conflict.’

Harris followed the Doctor’s gaze and then said, ‘Women trouble?’

‘The trouble is all mine,’ the Doctor said, quietly. ‘I made a mistake and I hurt her. This was all a long time ago. I don’t know if I can make it up to her now.’

‘I see,’ the policeman said awkwardly and changed the subject. ‘So is this. . .

this device going to be able to get us all home?’

The Doctor smiled. ‘If I’ve got my sums right then everyone will arrive in Central London about three seconds after you leave here.’

‘After we leave here? Aren’t you coming with us?’

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‘I need to stay behind to make sure that the path through the Vortex remains stable for the whole trip. Artificial time corridors have a habit of collapsing or shifting their exit points a few light years without a moment’s notice.’

Harris blinked. ‘It is safe, isn’t it?’

‘Give me a definition of safe.’

‘Never mind. How will you get back?’

The Doctor pointed to the shadows at the far end of the cavern. ‘The Major told me that there are tunnels which eventually lead out into the grounds. It’s the route used by the Toys to escape from the Institute. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’

‘I want to stay with you.’

‘Yes, yes of course you do,’ the Doctor spluttered, shooing Jack into the circle to take his place with the others. ‘But you can’t. And I don’t have time to argue, Jack Bartlett. I’m putting my foot down. Right, is everyone ready?

Good.’

The Doctor traced the edge of several of the symbols etched into one of the glass spheres with his fingertips and looked up at the group standing, expectantly, in the circle of spheres. He felt like a photographer at a wedding.

Nothing happened. Tilda tapped her foot impatiently. ‘Technical difficulties?’

Gilliam sighed and stepped out of the circle and joined him by the sphere, deliberately avoiding eye contact with him. ‘It’s important to touch the last two symbols together, Doctor. The bird/globe was designed to be operated by two people.’

‘Was it really? Gosh, how did you ever discover that?’

For a moment the Doctor thought that her hard expression might melt under the warmth of his interest.