Tyran straightened up on the edge of his desk, and Fitz caught a quick glance that pa.s.sed between him and his bodyguard, who stepped forward to press the muzzle of his gun to the Doctor's temple.

215.

' "I am a pa.s.sionate, obstructive man",' Tyran said quietly. 'Your own words, Doctor. Obstructive, certainly. Now let's see how pa.s.sionate you can be, shall we?'

He stood and made his way round the desk to take a rifle from one of the troops in front of Fitz. The others moved into position with their weapons raised either side, while Tyran swung the rifle from Bains to Ayla to Fitz, gazing across the desk at the Doctor still slumped on the little seat with the bodyguard's gun at his head. As Tyran's rifle bobbed about in front of them, Fitz saw the anguish in the Doctor's eyes. He recognised the look of hopelessness in his friend and then he saw the rifle settle on his own chest.

There was a brief pause of silence, then the Doctor roaring for all he was worth.

' Nooooo. . . Nooooo. . . ' '

Domecq had arranged them on specially erected lab benches in Tyran's private rooms. The creatures now were barely alive, but he hoped he could still retrieve vital information from them. He was particularly interested in the grey matter contained in their skulls. If he could get open access to one of the brains, it might be possible to run in-vivo tests that could reveal the secret of their telepathic abilities. There was most probably a specialist area in the brain that dealt with those powers.

Choosing one of the creatures at random, he unfurled a pack of medical instruments on the bench beside it and set up his com to record the operation.

He would start by peeling away the scalp. A simple circ.u.mferential incision should reveal the bone structure in the top of the head. If the children were only two months old, the fontanelles should still be soft enough to allow very easy access into the cranial cavity without producing too much distress.

He had thought about anaesthetising the creature for the op, but it was so weak he didn't want to risk losing it before he'd started. Better to seize what information he could as expeditiously as possible while they were still holding on to life.

Reaching into the pack of instruments, he chose a scalpel and leaned over the creature to make his first cut. He could feel its soft warm breath on his cheek as he neared it. Testing the skin on its forehead with his fingers, kneading it to check elasticity and density, he touched the scalpel to the surface but stopped before he applied any pressure.

He'd become abruptly aware of a distant susurration. Like a thousand far-off voices whispering all at once. He checked his com for interference, and was 216certain the com wasn't the cause. Then he heard a scratching sound behind the walls, mixed with the hissing whispers.

He felt the touch on his sleeve. Hardly a pressure at all. He found the creature's eyes locking on his. Found he couldn't tear his gaze away. The whispering was getting louder and the black eyes were oozing like slicks of oil.

Then the sheer terror took him from nowhere, gushing through him like freezing cold water.

As the Doctor's scream echoed to silence, the lights abruptly dipped and flared.

Tyran pressed the trigger again, but still the rifle refused. He indicated one of the soldiers, who stepped forward to execute Fitz, but his gun was jammed as well.

There was a fray on the other side of the desk and Fitz saw the Doctor standing with the bodyguard now pinned on the end of his own pistol. The man raised his arms in the air.

The lights were flickering wildly now. Then Fitz heard the hissing, like he might get from a radio that was miles off-station.

There was movement on the far side of the ceiling. Dark shapes scurrying across the panels. They looked like rats as big as cats.

Then the panels began to glow and Tyran began to scream, grasping his head and stumbling about the room, falling across the desk and scrabbling for the mind probe that he'd discarded earlier. He'd almost reached it when he shrank into a tight little ball, screaming louder than ever.

The ceiling panels were alive, quick-scurrying shadows pa.s.sing behind them and images flickering across their surface. Fitz saw hundreds of faces in quick succession. People screaming, people writhing in obvious pain, people with their hands to their heads, people with tears in their eyes, great thick shapes of human suffering.

'It's Tyran's mind,' the Doctor said. 'It's taking his memories.'

Fitz saw Bains stumble beside him, grasping the desk for support as he watched one of the images that was being repeated over and over in the centre of the ceiling Bains was stunned. He'd witnessed Carly's death, whisked up among the many others, but there was much worse. There at the core of all the images he saw one of his own memories. There was Jazz in the bottom of the wardrobe where he'd found her all those years ago, her face vacant of feeling and reason.

Eyes wide open n.o.body home. Autonomic pilot. Her empty eyes were the most 217 217 terrifying thing he'd ever seen. But the wardrobe swung shut and Bains found himself staring not at his own reflection in the mirrored door, but at a reflection of Tyran. He was holding a mind probe loose in his grasp, lost in his own emotionless gaze. The image of the eyes began to grow as the rest of the ceiling surged with other people's deaths. And Bains found that he couldn't take his eyes from Tyran's. But the wardrobe swung shut and Bains found himself staring not at his own reflection in the mirrored door, but at a reflection of Tyran. He was holding a mind probe loose in his grasp, lost in his own emotionless gaze. The image of the eyes began to grow as the rest of the ceiling surged with other people's deaths. And Bains found that he couldn't take his eyes from Tyran's.

The image bloated, growing slowly bigger until only the eyes filled the entire expanse of the great arched ceiling. Finally there was just one huge eye in close-up, the pupil a black hole at the heart of an enormously exaggerated iris full of delicate swirling colours.

Tyran killed Jazz. What did it mean? What did it mean? He remembered her call, her last desperate cry for help. She'd been terrified of something, somebody coming after her, and it was something she desperately wanted to tell Bains about. He remembered her call, her last desperate cry for help. She'd been terrified of something, somebody coming after her, and it was something she desperately wanted to tell Bains about.

What did it mean? Then he remembered the cat-and-mouse games with Tyran. Then he remembered the cat-and-mouse games with Tyran.

How baffled he'd been that Tyran hadn't simply killed him outright. What did What did it mean? it mean?

The whispering voices filled his head, took hold of his thoughts and moulded them. And abruptly he knew. He knew what Jazz had wanted to tell him. Why she'd been so desperate for them to meet after thirty years apart.

He knew, as if in a flash of divine inspiration, that Gaskill Tyran was his son.

The lift had reached toplevel when the lights started to fade and flare. The doors jammed half open, and Josef grasped them desperately as they began to jerk shut again. Managing to force them apart, he allowed Veta through first with the girl, before tumbling out himself into the vast reception area outside Tyran's offices.

The whole city-machine had begun to reverberate, as if the engines were striving to grumble into motion. The huge holowalls showing idyllic vistas were flickering crazily, the pictures oscillating between 3-D and 2-D, as if the distant horizons were being flipped forward to slap Josef in the face. The effect was disconcerting but fascinating. There were shadows dashing behind the walls. Scurrying dark shapes. They flashed by one after another, running in all directions like things in a state of frenzy.

The girl in Veta's arms collapsed with a groan and Josef helped to lift her up.

'Where are they?' Veta demanded.

The girl gazed about deliriously, her black eyes strangely devoid of reflection.

'Near,' she gasped. 'But we're not going to make it.'

218.Dragging the girl to her feet, Veta grasped her by the scruff of the neck and shook her violently.

' Where are they? Where are they? ' she shrieked. ' she shrieked.

The girl's head tossed from side to side, as if she were listening to a thousand conflicting messages that n.o.body else could hear.

'It's coming,' she gasped. 'Oh G.o.d, it's here.'

'What's coming?' Veta yelled.

'The dark '

The holowalls exploded with a huge crash of shattering gla.s.s. The area was flooded with dark rushing shapes. Hundreds of rats like a river of black fur.

The lights flared. The girl screamed. Josef gave in to the sheer tide of terror that had been clawing at his throat.

With a final agonised cry, Tyran fell still, his lifeless body sprawled across the desk. His eyes were wide and vacant.

The boom that had been gradually building for the last few minutes suddenly detonated into an ear-splitting crash as the entire ceiling burst in on them.

There was a series of deep explosions that rocked the city. As Ayla ducked for cover, she felt the clatter of detritus on her back, then the brush of warm fur on her hands and the side of her face. Something s.n.a.t.c.hed at her hair and she opened her eyes to find the floor seething with rats. Blind hysteria ripped through her, then she felt herself being carried, swept towards the door through the turmoil of sound and dark motion.

She was being supported by Fitz, then by the Doctor, as they crashed through the door into the reception area outside.

'Where the h.e.l.l did those things come from?' she asked as the rats ran amok at her feet.

'They're constant companions to the human race,' the Doctor replied. 'They go everywhere you go. They used to share sea voyages with the early mariners.

They're a species every bit as devious and adaptable as human beings.' The man was actually grinning in admiration at the tide of black fur. She found his eyes sparkling enthusiasm in his pummelled and still-b.l.o.o.d.y face.

Then there followed a chain of confused events that battered her like a storm.

The Doctor and Fitz crying out in recognition of Anji. The woman supporting Anji hysterically yelling about the children. Anji falling into the Doctor's arms, muttering senselessly. The Doctor grasping her by the face, forcing her to look into his eyes. The lights were flaring and dimming. The rats were tugging at her ankles while the whole city was shaking and breaking up. Ayla was 219 certain that underneath all the surface commotion, she could hear the murmur of thousands of whispering voices.

'Show me,' the Doctor's voice was soft but intensely compelling as he spoke to Anji. 'Concentrate. . . Come on. . . Show me where they are. . . '

Then they were moving.

Forcing their feet through the thick carpet of screeching rats. Fitz with his arms tight around her. Doors swept open in front of them. As they progressed the tumultuous chaos seemed to be dying, the rats dispersing, the whispering voices spluttering into silence.

Then they were in a large room filled with temporary benches. There were great dark holes where there should have been ceiling, fast-moving shapes as the rats dispersed. Ayla sensed everybody round her standing in awe and then she saw what they were looking at.

The floor crunched underfoot as he stepped into the room and Fitz was stunned at the devastation. On the benches lay the lifeless grey shapes of the children, picked out in dull yellow light. They were covered in fallout from the shattered ceiling, jagged lumps of debris and dirt that layered everything.

Straight ahead in the centre of the room, where two huge ceiling joists intersected, was the body of Dr Domecq. His arms were pinned out sideways, fixed to the beams with what looked to Fitz like a pair of scalpels through the palms of his hands. Dark blood dribbled from the wounds, and his cheeks were traced with trickles of blood from his eyes.

As he stared in rapt fascination, Fitz became vaguely aware of the Doctor moving nearby, clattering through the detritus to bend over one of the children.

He grasped the child's hand and gazed into the huge black eyes, and when it came his voice was less than a whisper.

'Macavity, it's me,' he said. 'Can you hear me?'

Macavity briefly raised his hand, but it was too much effort to sustain. The hand fell limp by his side and the Doctor abruptly lowered his head, his brown hair falling like a mane to obscure his face and his emotions.

He didn't straighten up, didn't turn to face them, didn't say a word.

Josef couldn't bring himself to enter the room. From the doorway he watched the small group that had gathered there speechless and inert. The Doctor stood with his head bowed in silence, refusing to look them in the eye. And then Josef became aware of Veta nearby. Despite her closeness to him, she stood alone in a void of sorrow.

Weeping softly.

220.Bains could see Macavity's eyes from where he stood. He saw them glaze as the hand fell limp. And he knew they were too late. The other children were exactly the same. Corpses. Small things still and silent.

Abruptly the Doctor was an outburst of frantic motion, scooping Macavity up in his arms and stomping over to grab one of the others as well.

'Help me,' he yammered. 'Bring them all. Follow me.'

Bains and the others rushed forward to pick up the remaining bodies, finding them light as empty sh.e.l.ls, and the Doctor led them all from the room, hurtling up the maintenance stairs until they emerged on to the city roof. Bains was stupefied to find the storms completely calmed and the sky above full of clear silver stars.

'Quick,' the Doctor yelled, making a dash for the chopper bays. 'I don't know how much time we've got,'

They loaded two choppers with the children and adults, and the Doctor and Bains jumped into the c.o.c.kpits. Bains fired up the engines and the monitor asked for his pa.s.scode. He glared at it for a moment frozen in horror. Then he found the system overridden by an emergency protocol, accepting messages from the Doctor's chopper that allowed Bains to lift the craft into the air and follow the Doctor down to the surface.

They touched down in the dirt and frantically scrambled out with the corpses, the Doctor and Bains leading the way and the others helping with the bodies.

The Doctor was frantically digging with his bare hands, clawing the soil until he'd created a shallow cavity. Veta watched him with a numb sense of bewilderment as he laid one of the children into the recess and pushed the loose soil back around the corpse, not burying it but leaving it protruding out of the ground.

He scrambled back to the chopper to bring out another body, yelling as he went.

'Help me,' he gasped. 'Get them into the ground.'

There was a bustle of activity as the others did what he ordered, but Veta found it impossible to move. The entire universe spun on this perfectly still moment, whisked about her in its furious fire of activity. She could only gaze through her tears at the small pale shape that the Doctor had covered in dirt.

She dropped to her knees in the mud, and a tornado of emotion raged through her as she reached out with quivering fingers to touch the boy's face. She was sobbing helplessly, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. She began to trace 221 the outline of the body, feeling it cold to her touch. They were such frail little things. Slender arms and delicate hands with three fragile fingers like twigs.

Lifting the small hand out of the soil, she wrapped the fingers around her own, bending them and holding them tightly in place. Months' worth of sorrow and fear were surfacing, bubbling up and forcing their way out of her throat.

Then she felt the small fingers spasm round hers, saw the head jerk in the mud. The chest heaved, and as she looked on in wonder the eyelids flickered open. She saw large black eyes underneath.

Eyes she suddenly understood that she'd known for ever.

The lips twitched as their eyes met.

A fragile smile.

The mouth opened.

She heard a small breath of air that carried a word.

' Mama. . . Mama. . . ' '

Epilogue.

The meadow was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with wildflowers, and over at the distant horizon the sun was sinking at the end of a lovely day. A day full of nothing. A day full of rest. A hazy, lazy, Sunday kind of day. Somewhere, there was a skylark singing.

Somewhere else, there were cattle lowing and goats bleating. Somewhere, perhaps far off in the back of her mind, in the depths of her dreams, in the quixotic corners of her soul, she could hear Bill Withers singing.

A door opened nearby, and beyond she briefly caught sight of a TARDIS corridor that reminded her where she was. The Doctor stepped on to the meadow and the door sliced shut behind him to become a tall slender sapling that oddly never moved in the breeze.

He came over and plonked by her side with a smile.

'How are you feeling?' he asked, scanning the improbably beautiful landscape.

'Better,' she said.

He peered into her eyes and nodded a satisfied nod.

'You look look much better, I must say.' much better, I must say.'

'How's the TARDIS?' she asked.

'Getting there,' he said. 'To be honest I'm just leaving the old girl to it. She's pretty good at repairing herself following that kind of damage.'