Doctor Who: Shining Darkness (22 page)

They’d reached the gantry at the top of the staircase and Li’ian pressed the gun into the back of Donna’s neck as she turned her towards an open door.

‘Mechanicals!’ Donna heard Li’ian shout down into the chamber. ‘Deactivate audio and wireless links. Locate the five newcomers on the platform. And kill them.’

The last thing Donna saw before the door slid shut was the Doctor, looking up at her, as the robots began their advance.

‘OH MY,’ SAID
Weiou, scuttling between Mother’s legs, as if that might provide protection from the hundreds and hundreds of robots surrounding them.

‘Oh my, indeed,’ echoed the Doctor. ‘And Donna still has the sonic screwdriver…’

With a sinisterly synchronised stamping of their feet, the robots drew closer, the first ones already on the steps leading up to the platform. Their cold, blue eyes stared ahead of them, utterly free of any malice or compassion. They were simply doing as they’d been ordered. It reminded him of the Jaftee on Karris – only this time it was
him
that was at the heart of it all, and he had no Ginger Goddess to protect him.

‘Back!’ called the Doctor, gesturing towards the spiral staircase up which Li’ian had just taken Donna. ‘It’s the only way out. Move!’

The Doctor noticed how Mother was turning her head this way and that, clearly trying to work out whether she
could
protect the rest of them at the same time as fighting off as many of the robots as she could. But the Doctor knew it was an impossible task. And he knew that
Mother
knew it was an impossible task. They were approaching from all directions, and they had the sheer weight of numbers on their side, despite Mother’s bulk.

‘Weiou!’ the Doctor said turning to the little robot that was already clambering up the stairs. ‘You’re good at interfacing with stuff, aren’t you? Technology, machines.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Robots?’

‘Um,’ replied Weiou cautiously, rotating the upper half of his body so that it faced him. ‘Maybe.’

The sound of crashing came from behind him, and the Doctor turned briefly to see one of the robots flying through the air, a mass of tangled arms and legs. As he watched, Mother reached out and whacked another one, sending it careering into its fellows.

‘What can you tell us about these?’

Weiou’s cartoon face scrunched up in exaggerated effort.

‘I can access their ID tags, but that dreadful woman’s turned off all inputs, like she said.’

‘And…?’

More robots crashed behind him.

‘They’re Meeta-Corrin humaniform servitors, model DF181B. Lipanov rating 23. That’s about it. And then loads of dull stuff about the software they’re running.’

At Weiou’s words, there was a deep, electronic hum from Mother.

‘What?’ asked the Doctor, turning and looking up at
the
behemoth. She’d stopped battering the robots and they were again drawing closer. Boonie and Kellique were standing on the staircase a few steps up, looking confused.

‘Meeta-Corrin,’ said Boonie. ‘That’s the company that made Mother. It’s where we rescued her from.’

The Doctor turned back to Mother as her head turned slowly, as if she were seeing the robots in a new light.

Suddenly, in front of her – and just visible to the Doctor from where he stood – a rectangle of pink light flickered, like an old-fashioned TV set warming up. Mother had activated her projector.

>THEY ARE RUNNING SOFTWARE CONTAINING HEURISTICS DERIVED FROM ME.

It took the Doctor a second to realise what Mother was saying.

‘These are your
children
?’

>GRANDCHILDREN MIGHT BE MORE ACCURATE.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, suddenly realising that this revelation could place them in a very dangerous position: Mother was the only thing that stood between the robots and them, and now she’d discovered that they were her grandchildren.

‘You must be very proud,’ he said dryly, as Mother actually took a step back, away from the approaching horde of blonde hair and sharp tailoring. ‘Any chance you could, oh, I dunno, tell them to go to their rooms? Sometimes works, you know.’

>LI’IAN ANTICIPATED SUCH A POSSIBILITY, flickered the red letters. Beyond them, the robots drew closer.
HAD
SHE NOT DISABLED PRIMARY AND AUDITORY INPUTS, I COULD HAVE ACCESSED ROOT COMMAND STRUCTURES.

The robots were now moving across the platform, their steps still eerily in sync, their eyes cold and dead. Mother took a step forward and swiped another three of the robots off the platform and into their comrades. The others stepped over the fallen ones and kept on coming.

‘Mother’ said the Doctor quietly, putting his hand on her steel arm. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know. Not now we know…’

>I KNOW.

The letters winked silently for a second.

>IF I DO NOT DEFEND US, WE WILL BE KILLED.

‘They’re your grandchildren,’ the Doctor reminded her, waving Boonie, Kellique and Weiou further up the staircase.

>THEY ARE ALSO NON-SENTIENT MECHANICALS. THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF FEELING PAIN OR DISTRESS OR BETRAYAL.

‘I know,’ said the Doctor gently. ‘But you’re not.’

Another robot got within reach of Mother, and with a disturbing casualness, she reached out and swatted it away: it went flying into the ones behind it, scattering them like bowling pins. Silently, they clambered back to their feet and resumed their advance. It seemed like Mother had made her decision.

>GO, Mother flashed. STOP LI’IAN.

‘I’m not leaving you. There must be—’

He stopped dead as something occurred to him –
something
, in hindsight, that seemed blindingly obvious. Ironically so.

‘Mother!’ he said urgently, his words tumbling over each other. ‘Access to their command pathways – how do you get it? I mean, what would you have to do – alpha-numerics?’

>A 256-CHARACTER STRING TRANSMITTED TO THEM.

‘Ha!’ cried the Doctor triumphantly.

‘What’s with the “Ha!”?’ scowled Boonie from the top of the staircase. ‘They’re not accepting wireless commands and they’re as deaf as posts—’ Boonie stopped as he realised what had occurred to the Doctor. A grin broke across his face. ‘But they’re not
blind
!’

‘Correctamundo – oh…’ The Doctor’s face fell. ‘I was never going to say that again. But yes, they’re not blind. That’s one input that Li’ian couldn’t disable – not if she didn’t want them walking into walls. Mother! Is there any chance that you could have a word with the grandkids –
show
them the access code?’

‘Doctor!’ Boonie called down the staircase. ‘You realise that it won’t just send the servitors to sleep, don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘If Mother sends the code, they’ll shut down – for good.’

‘Oh.’ The Doctor ran his hand through his hair and looked up at Mother. ‘Your call,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll understand if you don’t want to, you know.’

>YOU THINK OF THIS AS MURDER?

The Doctor didn’t know how to answer.

>THINK OF THEM AS OUT-OF-CONTROL LAWNMOWERS.

‘Well,’ said the Doctor, not at all convinced. ‘When you put it like that…’

Mother gave a satisfied little hum – as she felled another couple of the blonde robots – and suddenly a great long string of numbers and letters flickered across her holographic screen, faster than the eye could follow.

‘Don’t worry,’ the Doctor called up to the others. ‘They’re fast readers.’

The code continued to scroll along the screen, the characters just a blur now, as Mother turned on the spot, at the very foot of the staircase, to make sure all the supermodel robots had seen it.

In waves, the robots just stopped.

No fuss, no noise, they just
stopped
.

First the ones at the front, the ones who had the best view of Mother’s projection. And as she turned, more and more of them saw the command string. Silently, and instantly, Mother’s code infiltrated the robots’ processor cores, and turned them off for good.

The silence was deafening.

‘I’m sorry you had to do that,’ the Doctor said, looking up at Mother. ‘But thank you. Who better than a grandmother to know what buttons to press to shut the grandchildren up, eh?’

‘Oh,’ said Weiou, peering out from behind Kellique. ‘Yes!’

He punched the air.

‘You know what
really
gets me,’ said Donna as Li’ian pushed her through the door into a room, ‘is that I fell for it.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ Li’ian said with a cold smile, motioning with the gun for Donna to move away. They were in a brightly lit room, more like an operating theatre than the grungy industrial theme that the rest of the station seemed to have been decorated in. It lay off a long corridor at the top of the staircase. From down below, Donna could still hear the sound of the robots, stomping and crashing. So far she’d heard no screams or sounds that anyone had been hurt – anyone organic. But with the sheer numbers of supermodels, that could only be a matter of time.

‘And what’s worse,’ she added, fixing the surprised Mesanth with a hard glare, ‘is that the Doctor did too.’

‘Which only proves my point,’ Li’ian said. ‘If it’s that easy to make you think that
I
believe that mechanicals are sentient, why is it so hard for
you
to believe that
they
’ve pulled the same trick with organics. I fooled you; they are fooling everyone. Well,’ she added with a smug smile. ‘Not everyone. Mesanth – how’re you doing?’

The lizard was standing at a complex-looking console, all three of his hands moving over the controls. Donna could see the striped cylinder of the activator, looking like a cross between a wasp and a particularly large sausage, on the console in front of him.

‘I’m not happy,’ he said, his normally animated voice flat and controlled.

‘You don’t have to be happy,’ Li’ian said, waving the gun casually, making a point. ‘You just have to do the job.’

‘No, Mesanth, you don’t,’ cut in Donna. ‘You don’t have
to
do what this mad cow says at all.
Come on!
Think about it – think of all the death—’

There was a sharp, high-pitched buzz and a section of the wall alongside Donna exploded in tiny sparks, leaving an acrid smell in the air and a wisp of smoke.

‘Shut up,’ said Li’ian, waving the gun that had just almost killed her. ‘Mesanth might have scruples about killing you, but I don’t.’

Donna glared at her, and then looked back at Mesanth, imploring him with her eyes not to continue.

‘Where’s Garaman?’ asked Mesanth, casting his eyes to the window that ran along the length of the laboratory.

‘He got cold feet,’ Li’ian said, holding Donna’s gaze as she spoke, unspoken threat in her eyes.

‘About what?’

‘It doesn’t matter now – he’s no longer part of the plan. And the plan’s… changed.’

‘How?’ Mesanth’s voice was getting higher in pitch. Donna could tell he was on the edge of being hysterical again. His hands trembled as he operated the controls in front of him.

‘We’re not just going to turn off the mechanicals,’ she said, keeping her eyes steady on his. ‘We’re going to take control of them.’

‘What? Why? What was wrong with Khnu’s original plan?’ Mesanth’s voice shot up half an octave.

‘Oh, you idiot, Mesanth,’ sighed Li’ian. ‘That
was
Khnu’s original plan.’

‘What?’ Mesanth’s voice jumped up another half an octave.

‘Well,
our
plan. She thought it through: turn off all the mechanicals and before you know it, someone would come up with a workaround. Days, weeks – and we’d have a whole new load of mechanicals immune to the activator. We’d be back where we started. Khnu knew that this was the one chance to gain control – and
keep
control.’

‘But we could do something,’ he said plaintively. ‘Work something out…’ He tailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

‘You’re starting to think like the promechanicals,’ said Li’ian tiredly. ‘Before you know it you’ll be starting to doubt your own convictions. This is how they work, Mesanth.’ She tapped the gun against her own temple. ‘They get in
here
, start making you doubt what you believe.’ She waved the gun at the console and the activator. ‘Just finish, Mesanth, and then we can leave here – go out into the galaxy, heads held high. Liberators.’

Donna opened her mouth to say something, hoping that the embers of decency that she’d seen in Mesanth could be fanned into a flame; but Li’ian saw her and aimed the gun fair and square at her head.

‘One more word,’ she said softly.

The Doctor shooed Kellique, Boonie and Weiou up the stairs ahead of them.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Mother, surveying the chamber full of fallen and frozen robots. ‘If there had been another way…’

>NO APOLOGIES NECESSARY, flashed Mother. THEY WERE NOT SENTIENT AND THERE IS MORE AT STAKE
THAN
MY FEELINGS.

The Doctor shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand the machine mind.’

>I KNOW, replied Mother. WE ARE MUCH MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU ORGANICS.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes.