Doctor Who_ The Blue Angel Part 4

When They Come it Will be Across the Waves...

When they come it will be across the waves.

Washed clean by the waves, washed supple and bright, gleaming gimcrack, crazed with veins of light.

The Men of Gla.s.s will be clean, naturally, with only a slight rinse of salt and silt and sand caked on their cool skin.

Their chairs, metal, will be covered with barnacles, encrusted, deep-sea ferns and weed choking their spokes.

Quite a struggle for them as they manoeuvre clumsily out of the surf and up beaches, crunching their gold-rimmed tyres on sh.e.l.ls. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

White in the winter sun, only their hearts untouched by frosty salt water. Their hearts the sea has left warm, pumping red, vital, grimacing. Unaffected, una.s.suaged by the currents and crosscurrents they have traversed.

The faces on the hearts clenching in anger, like fists.

They leave the sea behind them and now they are here.

From the bottom of the sea, from the back of beyond, from, perhaps, some other world.

And yet, we are always told they come from such a great height. A land far loftier, far more remote than any height we will ever attain.

It is winter and we have been brought into the dangerous...o...b..t of the Gla.s.s Men.

Their wheelchairs glisten and settle on the sugar-soft sand of the beach.

Weary conquerors contemplate the infinite grains.

Look back at the expanses of water.

'Come...'

'Come on...'

'Come on up. Time's over. We'll finish up the job.'

'We must...'

'We must head...'

'We must head on.'

'Not...'

'Not much...'

'Not much daylight left.'

'This is...'

'This is how...'

'This is how we seek shelter. We cannot stay out in a storm.'

So fragile. So caring of each other. So delicate with the gla.s.sy perfection of their collective selves.

They wheel themselves up, achingly, cautiously, on to the mainland.

'There...'

'There is...'

'There is a fresh wind. Quite pleasant really. Drying out like this.'

The Gla.s.s Men pretend to have sensation.

Fake their responses to the stimuli of this new world.

But they have no nerve endings. Or their nerve endings were frozen and cauterised when they were turned to gla.s.s.

Still, they pretend to register these sensations. A game and a complicity that pleases them.

They each of them hum and whistle, pleased with the chilling draught that comes in behind them, off the sea.

Here they are now.

They have arrived.

Chapter Eight.

At Last the Captain Deigned to Come Out...

At last the captain deigned to come out of the relative sanctuary of his oval office. As the doors swished open he tugged his mustard polyester top straight and glared round at the a.s.sembled heads of department. No one turned to look at him. They were all fixated on the image of the glittering city of gla.s.s suspended on the viewscreen before them.

It was like a wedding cake, an ocean liner, a mountain of ice. And it had to be dealt with. The Feds wouldn't be pleased with an anomaly like this hanging about. It was Captain Blandish's sworn duty to smooth out ructions such as this...

He stepped up to the raised dais and his cushy captain's chair. The small huddle of officers noticed him at last and Garrett whipped around. 'Captain on the bridge,' he noted with just a hint of that insufferable sarcasm of his. Beside Garrett, tapping away at a bank of sensors and looking perplexed, was the Doctor.

'Who gave that man permission to carry out a scan?' barked Blandish.

'Captain, Captain, Captain...' grinned the Doctor, hurrying over. He had loosened his cravat and to the captain's eyes he looked crazy. His two unauthorised companions were hanging about, staring at the city on the screen. The scruffy-looking man they called Fitz was talking to Belinda and she was gazing dreamily up at him.

'Captain,' said the Doctor, grabbing his hand and shaking it. Blandish s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back. 'I'd like to take a... um, party down there, to the city. See what's going on.' There was a gleam in the Doctor's eye.

'Mr Garrett,' said Blandish in a carefully controlled tone. 'Do you realise how much a sensor scan like that actually costs? You're letting an untrained man dabble with our most sensitive and expensive '

'I am well aware of the cost, sir,' purred Garrett. He gave his captain a swift glance up and down and produced the small and incredibly complex calculator on which he habitually computed the Nepotist Nepotist's budget. Every laser fired, every minute calibration and acceleration, every transmat operated, Garrett would plug it all into his s.h.i.+p's Kitty. 'But the Doctor knows precisely what he is doing. I saw it as a necessary expense.'

The Doctor beamed.

'If people are going down there,' said Compa.s.sion suddenly, 'I am coming too.' She was looking at the city rather strangely. 'You will need my help. I'm hearing all sorts of interesting things. I'm more useful than this ' she nodded curtly at Belinda 'communications person. I'm picking up messages that she never would.'

The Doctor frowned at her quickly. Of course. Her earpiece. He tried to signal her to keep quiet but she went on.

'I am going to come with you. Obviously.'

Fitz snorted. 'Well, I'm not. I'm going back to the TARDIS.'

'Neither of you is coming,' said the Doctor, rather sternly. You can wait here on the s.h.i.+p. I'm taking the TARDIS.'

'No, you're not,' Blandish put in smoothly. 'You're transmatting down with me. I'll head the away team and I'll consent to let you advise.' He glared at the Time Lord. 'And no funny business.'

Minutes later Belinda was das.h.i.+ng into the corridor, heading for the lift. She had a bag to pack, her hair to wash, and she had to change into planetside gear. She had been chosen, as communications expert, to join the team. She was thrilled.

Timon, too, had been picked by the surly Captain. This was usual. Blandish went nowhere without his heavily armed Timon. Timon took it for granted. Already he had gone off to put on his regulation red top.

Compa.s.sion and Fitz had been packed off to the Doctor's TARDIS. Fitz eagerly, Compa.s.sion seemingly in a fit of pique. As soon as they were off the bridge the Doctor had seemed to forget their very existence, applying himself to the matter in hand, evidently itching for the off. He bristled with curiosity, Belinda could tell.

By the time she got to her cabin she was huffing and puffing with exertion. She flung open the door.

Inside there was the usual strewn mess and gentle, coloured lighting from the lava lamps placed at intervals around her bed. Something was wrong, though. As the door whispered shut behind her she knew she was not alone in her room. For a second her heart leapt up and she wondered if Garrett had at last taken the hint and gathered the import of the various sly winks she had shot his way while they were on the bridge. Maybe he had secreted himself in here.

Then she became aware of a point of green light on the wall, about a foot above her headboard. It grew in size and intensity and Belinda was rooted to the spot, staring as a green shape started to materialise before her. Emerald smoke and fumes, coruscating lights. Someone trying to connect with the communications expert and, well trained as she was, she held her breath and waited until the message came through.

It was the head of an elephant. A peculiarly malevolent-looking creature with ears stretched wider than her headboard. Its tusks thrust two metres into the room, threatening to skewer her. Its eyes blazed with fury. It bellowed at her soundlessly and green fumes rolled around it. She was reminded of Ganesh, the Hindu G.o.d, who was said to always take this form. Garrett was the anthropological expert on board s.h.i.+p and for more than one reason Belinda wished he were there.

Then the apparition spoke. 'Your coming here will set events in motion. You do know that, don't you? It will be the step that makes the War inevitable.'

He tossed his gargantuan trunk at her with a snort of derision. He trumpeted down the intimidating length of it and the sound made Belinda's ears burn. It was the fanfare for the beginning of a war. Then the elephant's head faded away.

She didn't tell anyone about this. She was sure the eminently practical Blandish would prevent her coming on any planetside missions if he suspected she was going doolally.

The transmat room was clinically clean. They had to step through a number of locks and barriers to get anywhere near it. The Doctor had never seen so many precautions taken with such a device he who had been zipped and beamed and shot across the galaxies and through time by such a ramshackle a.s.sortment of rather hazardous means. But the crew of the Nepotist Nepotist dreaded anything going wrong with the transmat. They said a little prayer before shooting off anywhere. They evidently took to heart the alarming possibilities of disaster and prayed that their bodies, once dissolved and transported, would rea.s.semble neatly and properly at the other end. They found it all traumatic and, of course, it was fearsomely expensive. As the away team prepared themselves, going through the ritual solemnly to the Doctor's bemus.e.m.e.nt Garrett was totting up the cost of the sortie on his Kitty. dreaded anything going wrong with the transmat. They said a little prayer before shooting off anywhere. They evidently took to heart the alarming possibilities of disaster and prayed that their bodies, once dissolved and transported, would rea.s.semble neatly and properly at the other end. They found it all traumatic and, of course, it was fearsomely expensive. As the away team prepared themselves, going through the ritual solemnly to the Doctor's bemus.e.m.e.nt Garrett was totting up the cost of the sortie on his Kitty.

'Nothing ventured, nothing gained...' smiled the Doctor, hopping into the odd bathlike arrangement from which he gathered he would be beamed. Blandish, doing likewise, scowled.

They had to lie in these empty baths, one of them in each, and wait as the engineers in the gallery did their stuff, hovering over controls with crossed fingers.

The Doctor had never seen such an arrangement before. Usually, he mused, as he lay in the cold, dry tub, humanoid species invented upright contraptions to beam themselves from: stand on a luminous disk, walk into this cupboard-type contraption, and so on.

He shrugged and settled himself down to be transported.

Actually, it felt just like being swept down the plughole. There was even a disturbing gurgling noise. He steeled himself and looked forward to being reconst.i.tuted.

And then, the five of them Garrett, Blandish, Timon, Belinda and the Doctor were standing in the midst of a mild snowstorm, standing up to their knees in fallen snow. It was dark with the pitch-dark of s.p.a.ce all around them, and the sleek lilac shape of the Nepotist Nepotist looming above them. looming above them.

Ahead was the grand s.h.i.+ning spectacle of the City of Gla.s.s. Its turrets, minarets, its baubles and towers. And now they could see its glints of lights burning and they fancied they could see shapes flitting about in those thousands of apertures. Inside, the natives of this errant land were aware that they had visitors.

'We're here,' breathed Blandish, as if he couldn't quite believe it.

The Doctor rubbed his hands for warmth and grew expansive.

'It's like... the Emerald City! The City on the Edge of Forever! It's... Valhalla!'

And he set off at a run, stumbling through the snow.

Chapter Nine.

This is a Story About Winter...

This is a story about winter.

You've guessed it already, of course.

It is the kind of winter in which you will never be warm enough, no matter how you wrap up. You will still s.h.i.+ver down to your bones. It's the kind of winter that settles itself in and intends to stay. It will be unshakeable, sealing this town off from the outside world, forcing the cables and gutters and pipes that keep the building fed, clean and alive into a stifling, deadly, icy torpor. Everything will be made brittle and dead.