Part 34 (1/2)

O'Brien nodded. 'Two vents in the back of my skull. You can't just plug me into the d.a.m.ned mains!'

'Is that what they do?'

O'Brien nodded. 'My hydraulics are still working they can convert and use raw electricity but my flesh is wasting. Rotting on me!'

He drew his robe apart slightly at the neck. His torso was an even more elaborate filigree of intersecting wires. The effect might have been beautiful were it not for the great, hungry hollows in his flesh, and the patchwork of purple lesions and open sores that covered him.

'My body is dead but I remain alive, a prisoner of these savages!'

'Why can't you escape?' the Doctor asked. 'If your hydraulics are still working. I've felt your strength.'

O'Brien shook his gaunt head.

'You don't understand. When my s.h.i.+p crashed I damaged my legs.

These... barbarians... tried to repair them.'

He let his robe fall to the floor.

The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment in shock and sympathy.

'This is what they did to me.'

From the waist down O'Brien was a mess of metal plates and boxes, rubber tubes snaking in and out of them, industrial pistons, bolts and rivets.

He took a clumsy step forward, hissing and clonking, holding the wall for support.

'The operations...' he whispered. 'So many of them. Sometimes the pain's so bad I howl like a b.l.o.o.d.y animal.'

'If I can, I will help you,' said the Doctor. 'But first you must tell me what you were doing when you crashed.'

'High atmosphere engineering work,' said O'Brien. 'We were building a bridge.'

'A bridge...'

'A trans-dimensional bridge. We'd never tried it before. They'd had some success with smaller relays, but this was something new.'

The Doctor was open-mouthed.

'You tried to force a permanent, stable breach between dimensions...'

163.

'I'd opened the breach... everything was going smoothly, then there was an explosion from somewhere...'

'From the other side,' said the Doctor. 'This side. You were sucked through the breach.'

'I guessed that,' said O'Brien.

'But why?' said the Doctor. 'Aren't your people aware of the dangers of such an experiment?'

'The PM. himself told us it was safe,' said O'Brien. 'Said it was vital to the security of the realm.'

The Doctor's face creased in thought. He barely heard O'Brien's voice the other O'Brien echoing ghostly from the furnace.

'Doc,' he called. 'You up there? You've been rumbled.'

The Doctor's head snapped round with a sudden, horrified realisation. Davey's voice was getting louder and less reverberant. He was climbing the shaft.

'Davey, don't '

Too late. Davey O'Brien's soot-stained head appeared in the open hatchway. He started to haul himself through.

He hadn't yet noticed the third party in the room. He freed himself from the hatch and started dusting himself down, coughing.

'Neat ladder, Doc.'

'Davey '

O'Brien had seen. He froze, staring into the face of his hideous Doppelganger Doppelganger.

'So it's true,' he croaked. 'I knew, even from the sound of the voice in the stack.'

He let out a short, bitter laugh. 'Davey O'Brien, meet Davey O'Brien.'

'I know it's hard to take in,' said the Doctor gently. 'There are infinite numbers of us out there of every one of us. All us, but all different, with different fates and fortunes. We just don't normally get to meet them.'

'What happened to him?' O'Brien whispered.

'Your people did this to me!' his alter ego spat. 'They're killing me with their ignorance and savagery!'

'Why did you come up here, Davey?' the Doctor suddenly asked.

'G.o.d, yes...' O'Brien struggled to rea.s.semble his thoughts. 'They're on to you, Doc. They're searching the whole floor.'

The Doctor looked around the room. The door resembled that of a bank vault.

'So we're trapped,' he said.

'We should be safe up here for a while,' said O'Brien. 'I've left the hatch so it looks shut until you get right up to it. They won't think of 164 the chimney just yet.'

There was a coughing scuffling in the shaft. The Doctor shot O'Brien a sceptical glance. O'Brien tensed himself, fists clenched.

A pair of feet appeared in the hatchway, swung and slipped and tried to find something solid. The rest of the man followed. O'Brien sprang forward, arms swinging.

'Wait!' the Doctor shouted, jumping forward. 'It's all right, I know him.'

'You sure?'