Doctor Who: Shining Darkness (2 page)

‘OI!’ SHOUTED DONNA
as the glare subsided, leaving sparkly traces on her vision. ‘What was—’

She stopped as she realised that somehow they’d managed to redecorate the art gallery in the few seconds that she’d been blinded. Instead of a wide, airy space with a shiny black floor and white walls, they’d turned it into a lower, pokier space, all purply-black swirls. The walls around her curved, giving the impression of being inside half a hard-boiled egg. The display case and the supermodels were still there, although the lights inside the display case had gone out, leaving the diamanté truck wheel looking even more like a piece of old junk than it had before. It began to dawn on her that maybe – just maybe – she wasn’t in the gallery any more…

Donna spun on her heel as a door hissed open somewhere behind her.

‘Oh marvellous!’ deadpanned the little fat man with curly blond hair who came striding in. He glared at the
three
supermodels. ‘Absolutely marvellous! Who’s
she
?’ He plonked his hands on his ample hips and looked her up and down.

‘
She
,’ snapped back Donna, ‘is the cat’s mother. Who are
you
?’

‘Hold her,’ said the man, sneering up at her. Suddenly, Donna felt steel bands tighten around her upper arms and looked to see that two of the supermodels had grabbed her. No one, she thought, least of all supermodels, should be able to hold
that
hard.

‘Gerroff!’ she grunted, squirming. But their grip was unbreakable. The third supermodel stood on the other side of the display case, observing her with cold, dead eyes.

‘Who is she?’ asked the man, almost as if she weren’t there.

‘I’m a woman who happens to know a man who’s going to be very unhappy when he gets back and finds out what you’ve done.’

‘She entered the transmat area as we activated,’ intoned one of the supermodels in a dull, emotionless voice, ignoring Donna.

‘I am here, you know,’ snapped Donna. ‘I can speak for myself.’ She paused. ‘Transmat? I’ve just been
transmatted
?’

‘Clearly,’ said the little man in a weary voice. He stared at her with pale blue eyes that were almost as cold and dead as those of the supermodels. He wore a lapelless, dark grey business suit with a crisp shirt, striped with pink and white horizontal bands. Something about him made Donna think of estate agents.

‘Who are you, anyway?’ Donna demanded. ‘When the
Doctor
finds out, you’re going to be in big trouble.’

‘The Doctor? Who’s she? Or he?’

‘Oh, ha, ha. Very funny.’ Donna twisted her neck around to try to find the Doctor, but she realised that she’d been transmatted alone.

Her head snapped back round to face the little man.

‘What have you done?’ she growled. ‘Where am I? Who are you?’

The man paused, his eyes narrowed.

‘My name is Garaman Havati, and you’re aboard the
Dark Light
, my ship. Who are you?’

‘Donna Noble. Spelled T R O U B L E if you don’t put me back
exactly
where I was. Now.’

Garaman chewed thoughtfully at the corner of his mouth.

‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t think so.’

His eyes flicked to the supermodels flanking her.

‘Put her somewhere safe.’ He looked back at her. ‘I’m tempted to have you killed now, but something makes me think I should keep a hold of you for a while.’

‘Oh, mister,’ said Donna, struggling as the supermodels began to lead her away. ‘You have made one helluva mistake. Just you wait ’til the Doc- ow! Get your hands off me!’

But the supermodels took no notice, and half led, half dragged her from the room.

The Doctor had barely gone five paces when the flare of light behind him made him spin on his heel. Where, moments ago, there had been the display case, Donna
and
the three humaniform robots, there was now just an empty space and a shallow, rectangular hole in the floor.

‘Not again,’ he sighed, and then caught sight of the art gallery’s attendant, rushing in from the next room to find out what the flash of light had been.

‘Excuse me,’ said the Doctor to the attendant, a slim man with permanently arched (and, the Doctor suspected, dyed) eyebrows and a look of utter disdain on his face. ‘But what just happened there? You don’t use Huon particles for anything, do you? I hope she’s not going to start making a habit of this.’

‘I was hoping,’ drawled the man, arching his eyebrows even further as he cast a glance around the room, ‘that you would be able to tell
me
.’

‘Well, judging by the flash and the missing bit of floor, I’d say you’ve just been heisted.’

‘“Heisted?”’

The Doctor nodded, squatting down on the floor where the display case had been standing and taking out his sonic screwdriver. He activated it and waved it around in the air for a few seconds.

‘Heisted,’ he said simply. ‘By transmat. At least it’s
not
Huon particles, then.’ He sprang to his feet. ‘Someone’s just spirited away a valuable treasure.’

‘Hardly valuable,’ said the attendant dismissively.

The Doctor fixed him with a glare.

‘I was talking about Donna. But now you come to mention it, what exactly was that thing? The one in the case.’

The attendant shrugged elegantly.

‘Art,’ he said simply, as if that were all the explanation that was needed.

‘Oh, I think it was more than just
art
, wasn’t it?’

‘This is an art gallery,’ the man said. ‘We display art.’

‘What you were displaying there,’ said the Doctor, ‘was a very sophisticated piece of technology, judging by the readings I picked up from it.’

He stopped, suddenly, as he realised that whilst he was standing here, wasting his time debating the gallery’s displays, Donna was still missing.

‘If you ask me,’ he said as he headed for the door, ‘you need to boost your transmat scrambling field. This would
never
happen at the Tate Modern, you know.’

And with that, he was gone.

‘Scuse me! Thank you! Oops! Ta!’

The Doctor raced out into the street, nipping smartly between the passers-by, until he stood at the edge of the pavement, watching the never-ending stream of traffic and machinery as it flowed past like a river.

The transmat trace he’d picked up with the sonic screwdriver would be fading quickly. And, if he was right about where she’d been transmatted to, it could be just minutes before she was out of his reach for ever.

‘Taxi!’ he called, leaning out into the traffic and sticking out his arm.

Nothing happened – the cars and trucks and robots just rolled on past. He tried again, but had no more success. Finally, in despair, he shoved his fingers in his mouth and let out an ear-shattering whistle. On the pavement all
around
him, aliens, humans and robots stopped what they were doing and turned, astonished that such a little thing as him could have made such a noise.

The Doctor was in the midst of pulling an apologetic face when, with a crashing tinkle of bells, something that resembled an armoured, custard-coloured elephant shuddered to a halt in front of him. A golden eye on a stalk extended from the side of the creature’s head and came to a halt a few inches from the Doctor’s own.

‘Do I take it,’ said a low, sonorous voice, ‘that you are requesting transport?’

‘I did say “taxi”,’ the Doctor said apologetically.

‘Ah,’ said the yellow elephant. ‘You’re an offworlder, aren’t you?’

The Doctor looked himself up and down. ‘Is it that obvious?’

The eye blinked, its ‘eyelid’ a mustard-coloured iris.

‘You announced
yourself
as a taxi,’ the elephant said. ‘Think yourself lucky that no one took you up on it. You don’t look exactly built to carry passengers.’

‘You’d be surprised. Look, sorry to rush you, but I have to find a friend.’

‘Ahhh,’ said the elephant after a moment’s thought. ‘You’ll be wanting the companion district then.’

‘No no no, not
that
kind of friend. A particular friend…’ He stopped, thinking about Donna. ‘A
very
particular friend, actually. I need to get to my ship as quickly as possible.’

‘The spaceport?’

‘No, a lovely little square with a tall building like a hatpin.’

‘The Court of Tragic Misunderstandings. I know it well.’

And suddenly another custardy tentacle emerged from the elephant’s flank, wrapped itself around the Doctor’s waist, and lifted him effortlessly onto the creature’s back, where a comfy, form-fitting seat was already being extruded.

‘Two minutes,’ the elephant said, moving back into the traffic seamlessly.

‘Couldn’t make it one, could you?’ asked the Doctor.

‘Not without tampering with my speed limiter, breaking half a dozen city regulations and probably causing an accident in which dozens would die, no.’

The Doctor sighed as a seatbelt wrapped itself around him. ‘Two minutes it is, then.’

As the Doctor rode away into the traffic on the yellow elephant, he was being watched.

The observer, a raccoon in red hot-pants and a fez, narrowed its eyes, watching the stranger’s conversation with the elephant. Its hearing was acute, and it had caught the entire exchange: the offworlder was heading for the Court of Tragic Misunderstandings.

Quickly, the raccoon pulled out a little transmitter, pressed a couple of buttons, and began to speak.

True to its word, the elephant – whose name was Cherumpanch, the Doctor discovered, during the most terrifying race through traffic that he’d ever had – deposited him outside the Court of Tragic Misunderstandings in
just
a smidgeon under two minutes. Still slightly dizzy, the Doctor began to root around in his pockets for some sort of payment before Cherumpanch realised what he was doing and told him that public transport in the city was free. With its tentacular eye, it examined the rather unappetising item that the Doctor brandished in front of him.

‘It’s a peanut,’ said the Doctor brightly – if unhelpfully.

‘Thanks,’ said Cherumpanch cautiously, taking the peanut with another yellow tentacle and sucking it inside.

‘Earth delicacy,’ explained the Doctor, haring away across the grass to where he could see the reassuring shape of the TARDIS, hugged up in the shadow of a wall. ‘The only one in this galaxy!’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Yuck!’ said Cherumpanch, spitting the remains of the peanut out.

‘You’re welc- oh, hello!’

The yellow taxi-elephant was all but forgotten as the Doctor came to a halt a few yards from the TARDIS. Standing in front of it was a three-and-a-half-metre-tall robot – looking like the result of a high-speed collision between a truck and a steel-mill, with disturbingly red-glowing eyes – and a sulky-looking tanned teenager. It was clear that they had no intention of letting him inside the TARDIS.

The TARDIS that was his only way of finding Donna.

‘All out of peanuts,’ the Doctor said, holding his palms out to them. ‘Sorry.’

‘We don’t want peanuts,’ said the boy.

Despite looking like your average 16-year-old, the boy
had
eyes harder and wearier than any teenager the Doctor had met before. He had a thin, chiselled face, a tiny diamond set into the side of his nose, and a rather oversized blue and black striped coat on, despite the sunshine.

‘Well that’s a relief then. I might have half a ham sandwich somewhere, but I’ve no idea how long it’s—’

‘You were at the gallery,’ the boy interrupted.

‘Good eyesight!’

The boy ignored him.

‘You saw the exhibit being stolen.’

‘Well, not exactly
saw
. More turned around and it was nicked from behind my back. Along with my friend Donna, and if I don’t get back inside my ship in a minute or so,’ he said, gesturing towards the TARDIS, ‘her transmat trace will have faded. So, if you don’t mind…’

He tried to slip between the boy and the robot – which, so far, hadn’t moved or spoken or in any other way indicated that it wasn’t just a huge hunk of steel street furniture – as the boy tapped an ugly black brooch in the shape of a star on his lapel.

The Doctor felt the hairs on his arms stand up as everything glowed white around him.

‘Oh,’ he said with despair. ‘Not ag—’

And then the Doctor, the boy, the robot – and the TARDIS – were gone.