Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building (21 page)

He nodded solemnly. ‘To the death, Domovoi.’

Again the Doctor stepped forward. He tried to interpose himself between the combatants. ‘What good is this doing? What’s the point of fighting, you idiots?’

Martha was holding the Doctor’s arm. ‘Leave them to it! Come on!

We have to get away. . . ’

He turned to look at her. His mouth fell open. Martha thought the Doctor was about to say something, but then she realised he was looking past her.

He was staring past the wreckage of the Dreamhome and its scorched grounds. He was staring beyond the tall frozen trees of the wilderness. Now he was nodding and saying, ‘Oh. Look.’

Martha turned. Barbara turned, and so did Solin. Even Tiermann and the creature composed of liquid flame turned to see what the Doctor was looking at.

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The wilderness was vanishing. The forest and everything in it was slowly being ripped out of the ground by its roots. Everything in the far distance, in the foothills of the mountains at the edge of the valley, was shimmering and shaking and coming away from the earth. It was being mulched and pulped and drawn into long strands and it was being sucked into the sky and into the mouth of the biggest monster any of them had ever seen.

‘It’s being eaten,’ the Doctor said hollowly. ‘Everything, It s all being eaten by the Voracious Craw.’

And there the Craw was, edging into the valley at last. With an open mouth the size of Wales and a ring of evil eyes about its head, squeezed tight in greedy pleasure.

Here it came. Massively and noisily.

Here it came at last to take them all.

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WhiletheotherswerestaringinshockattheapproachingCraw,the robot who had been Toaster seized his chance. Green fire flickered about his body as he rounded on his adversary. The last vestiges of Toaster’s mind felt the terrible voice of the Domovoi ringing through him. ‘You will die, Tiermann!’ And with that, the robot launched itself at its startled creator.

Tiermann fell into the savage embrace. He felt the flames licking around him and they were curiously cool and soft. He felt delirious with pain, confusion, and fury. The Domovoi had him now. She had him just where she had always wanted him. Ever since he had created her, in all her godlike genius and majesty, and locked her underground, far beneath his Dreamhome, this was the moment she had been waiting for.

The reckoning. She had longed for the day when she would be set free from her servitude and her incarceration. And she could face up to Ernest Tiermann. And destroy him.

‘I am the Domovoi,’ she shrieked. ‘But you made me your servant!’

Tiermann was locked in the robot’s arms. ‘You were all my servants!

My creations! My playthings! You were mine to control as I wished!’

Then there came a huge FLLAAAASSSHHH of ultraviolet light.

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The others whipped around to see. Each of them caught a glimpse of Tiermann and Toaster, standing there, locked in each other’s arms, skeletal and silhouetted in the incandescence. The last of Toaster’s tubes had ignited and gone off in the most brilliant burst of light he had ever mustered.

It was too much for Tiermann.

Solin cried out as he saw what was happening. He started forward to help his father, but the Doctor held his arm. ‘It’s too late.’

Ernest Tiermann’s charred and smouldering form fell away from his opponent’s, and clattered to the ground. Thunk. It lay there untwitching, unbreathing. Utterly dead and smoking.

Nobody could say anything. They were transfixed instead by the spectacle of Toaster, blinded, staggering about and still wreathed in green flames. The last murderous act that the Domovoi had pushed him to had been one step too far. He was swaying, he was buckling. . .

the green fire was dying away. . .

‘Toaster!’ cried Barbara, to the ancient robot.

For a moment the old sun bed was himself again. ‘Barbara! Doctor!

Martha. . . I am sorry. . . I have killed Tiermann. . . She took me over. . . the Domovoi. . . ’

And then the robot collapsed, stone dead, in the wreckage. The green flame shrank and disappeared. Barbara hastened to his side, gasping and wheezing with grief.

Martha turned to the Doctor. ‘Is that the end for the Domovoi, too?’

He looked grim. ‘I don’t know. She was weakening, certainly. She’s losing her influence over things here. There’s hardly anything left for her to control. . . ’

Solin, who had been solemnly paying tribute over his father’s body, turned back to look at the Voracious Craw. Its dense mass seemed even closer. The very earth underneath them was trembling in an-ticipation of being churned up and stripped away. Rocks and chunks of masonry were starting to quiver. He stared back at the advancing maw and something of the sheer horror of this forced his glance away. It was hard to look at the immense creature for too long. The mind itself seemed to veer away from thoughts of its hugeness and 154

unstoppability. ‘Doctor. . . ’ he said, quietly.

The Doctor was on his feet. He looked straight into the distance, at the terrible view Solin had been taking in. And the Doctor grinned.

‘Do you know what? We’re going to stop it.’

Martha stood up. ‘Why? What’s left to save?’

‘Plenty,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s plenty here besides the Tiermann clan. Indigenous stuff. Lovely plants and beasties who never did anyone any harm, cosmically speaking. Let’s save them all! And besides.

I wouldn’t like to bet on our chances of getting away safely with the Voracious Craw sucking everything up. Even that little hop we just did wore the TARDIS out – it’s still being affected. So we still have to stop the Craw.’

‘How are we going to do that?’ Martha asked. She was longing to simply get inside the TARDIS and leave this place. But the Doctor knew what he was doing. If he said they had to stop the Craw first, then that was what they’d have to do.

‘Aha,’ grinned the Doctor. ‘Luckily, I’ve been working on my second secret plan for the last little while. Not bad, eh?’

‘What secret plan?’ Martha frowned.

‘Barbara,’ the Doctor said gently, touching the robot’s shoulder. ‘Any more pop left?’

Confused, she said, ‘Of course, Doctor.’

Seconds later they were all forcing down more carbonated drinks at the Doctor’s request. None of them were particularly thirsty, after everything he had made them drink, during the last hour or so.

‘What’s all this about?’ Solin asked, frowning.

‘How’s this a plan?’ said Martha, tipping more pop down her throat.

‘You’ll see!’ he grinned, pacing about and jumping up and down on the spot. ‘I’m trying to fizz myself up! Come on, you lot! Jump!’ Suddenly, he stopped and clicked his fingers. ‘Sound system?’ he asked.

The Dreamhome must have had a very advanced sound system, I’d have thought. Hidden speakers and microphones and stuff. That’s how the Domovoi was communicating with you all, and you with it.

Can you show me?’

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Solin looked around at the burning, shattered walls of the Dreamhome. ‘Of course. If there’s anything left, and still in working order. . . ’

The Doctor nodded. ‘Off you go! Quickly!’ He glanced at his watch, and then at the horizon, and made a few rapid calculations in his head. ‘If I’m right, we’ve got about twenty minutes until this whole place vanishes up into the rapacious maw of the Voracious Craw.’ He saw that Martha was staring at him and he grinned reassuringly. ‘You think I’ve gone bananas, don’t you?’

‘Why don’t we just leave?’ she said pointedly.

‘I want to try something out,’ he said.

‘Is this your plan to distract the Craw with the TARDIS?’

‘Uh-huh,’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve changed my mind. This is different! This is brilliant! My
other
plan! I’m going to put a stop to the Craw and send it on its way back into space. I’m going to make it leave this world alone.’

‘But why?’ Martha asked, exasperated. ‘It’s too late! Everything’s gone! Everyone’s dead! We don’t even know if the Domovoi herself is alive. . . ’

The Doctor looked serious and thoughtful. ‘What about the creatures, hmm? They were here before the Tiermann family arrived.

What about the trees and all that? And what about that sabre-tooth we saw right at the start? Her and her cubs? What about them?’ He swigged back his pop and reached for another bottle. ‘It’ the likes of her I’m doing this for.’

Solin gave a yell from across the ruins. ‘The sound system is working! What do you want me to do?’

‘Aha!’ cried the Doctor energetically, and went skipping over the wreckage, all skinny, excitable limb and whirling coat tails.

Martha stared back at the vast tapeworm thing in the sky. Less than twenty minutes. To her eyes it seemed like they would have much less time.

She forced herself to think more positively. The Doctor knew what he was doing. And, truth be told, he had shamed her, by having to remind her of the sabre-tooth, and the other life forms indigenous to 156

Tiermann’s World. Of course they had to do what they could to knock the Craw off course, and save them.

The Doctor called her over. ‘And Barbara, you can help too!’

Martha hurried across and found that he had fixed up a microphone and was gathering them around it.

‘Now, Barbara, you work the controls on this,’ he said. ‘You can’t do what the rest of us are going to do, because, well, you don’t have a belly or an oesophagus or anything.’

‘What on earth is going on?’ Barbara asked, taking hold of the microphone.

The Doctor winked at them all. ‘Hope you’re all feeling windy.’

Solin blinked at him. ‘What?’

The Doctor said: ‘On Barbara’s count of three, we’re all going to burp as loudly and as much as we possibly can.’

‘Burp?’ Martha nearly laughed. This was typical of him. ‘I thought you were going to make some solemn speech and broadcast it over the speakers. Something about protecting this planet and warning the Craw. Saying you were a Time Lord and so it better watch out and all that!’

‘No, no, no,’ the Doctor shook his head firmly. ‘Do you think that thing’ – he pointed wildly – ‘is going to take any notice of speech-making and diplomacy? No! Belching! That’s what we have to do!

It’s the only way!’

‘But. . . why, Doctor?’ Solin asked, utterly mystified.

Barbara – who had learned a thing or two about trusting the Doctor’s ideas – simply told him: ‘Just do it. And – one – and two – and
three
!’

The three of them belched as much and as loudly as they could into the microphone.

The Doctor was surprisingly, disgustingly eloquent with his burps.

They recorded a minute’s worth and then the Doctor instructed Barbara: ‘Right. Loop it. Amplify it. Distort it. Echo it. And get the remains of this house to broadcast it, loud as it can in the direction of the Voracious Craw!’

Barbara set busily to work.

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‘Do you know, my ears are ringing?’ the Doctor told Martha. ‘You’ve got a powerful set of lungs on you.’

‘Me?’ she gasped.

Solin was looking mystified. ‘What are we doing? I’ve watched both my parents die today. My home destroyed. And you are making us behave like children, Doctor. . . ’

Now the Doctor looked serious. ‘All in a good cause, Solin. You’ll see.’

Barbara had been communing with the rest of the shattered house.

‘Doctor! The Domovoi is completely dormant! Almost dead! She isn’t resisting at all as I take over the circuits, as I use the sound system. . . ’

‘Just as well,’ the Doctor said. ‘We don’t need her interference now.

OK, Barbara? Ready?’

The robot nodded. ‘All set.’

The Doctor turned to look up into the sky.

The Craw was almost directly above the forest in which the TARDIS

had materialised in the first place. The tree tops were rippling and their roots digging in for dear life. . .

‘Do it, Barbara!’ the Doctor commanded. ‘Do it now!’

Barbara played the short looped tape they had made.

The noise came blaring out of every speaker hidden away in the wreckage of the Dreamhome.

The Doctor and his friends covered their ears. The noise was terrific.

Martha felt as if her eardrums were going to explode. Every organ inside each of their bodies was vibrating fit to burst. The ground was quaking and shaking underneath them.

All around them bruited the horrendous, continuous noise of the biggest belch ever recorded. An almighty eructation was ripping out across the land.

Martha was ducking down beside Solin, and she watched the Doctor striding about, laughing madly, hands clamped to his ears.

Then she looked up at the horrendous underbelly of the Voracious Craw.

The effect of their recording on the creature was astonishing.

Its mouth had clamped shut.

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The forest lay still beneath it. The vegetation that had started to lift away from the ground slumped back down into place. The Craw was simply hovering ineffectually as the sound waves echoed through the valley.

Martha hurried over to the Doctor and tugged on his coat sleeve.

She tried to ask him what was happening, and why the Craw had stopped. But the noise was too fierce for them to say anything to each other.