Part 44 (1/2)

'The tableau, the mystery... once we were here, you needed time to prepare yourselves for us.'

The Doctor nodded with some difficulty. 'So they stayed hidden in plain sight... fooling us all.'

'I thought you needed ten to make your magic work?' Ben challenged. 'You b.u.mped off your mate. What happens once you get past the warm up and the match kicks off?'

'We do not need the traitor,' DeCaster hissed. 'The neural network has united your minds. When we join with you, our our minds will absorb yours. It will give us the power of many... minds will absorb yours. It will give us the power of many...

enough for our purpose.'

Polly felt brave enough to speak up at last. 'Purpose? What is your purpose?'

Haunt shook her head. She wasn't saying.

'So,' the Doctor said, crumpled in the big Schirr's crus.h.i.+ng grip. 'You always planned for the real-time neural network to be in place.' He looked pitifully dejected. 'And I made it possible for you.'

'I had Shel marked out for that task,' said Haunt. 'But yes, Doctor, you were an excellent replacement.'

'Well, we know how to b.a.l.l.s up your little game, don't we?'

said Ben, and he pulled at his webset.

It wouldn't s.h.i.+ft, no matter how hard he tried.

'You're doing this!' Polly shouted at DeCaster.

He laughed and nodded. 'You cannot remove the websets now.'

'And your ritual cannot proceed unless I allow it,' the Doctor said. His composure had returned, it seemed, and with it his innate sense of authority. 'You said yourselves, these people should be paralysed by your powers. They are not.'

'What have you done, Doctor?' Haunt demanded.

'You expect me to tell you when so much is still a mystery to me?' He chuckled. Then he winced, struggled feebly against the monster's tightening grip. His simple bravery made Polly well up as she watched. 'The moment I tell you, I have nothing to bargain with.'

'There is no bargain to be made.' DeCaster pressed his upturned snout against the Doctor's cheek and inhaled.

'Your mind is fresh, but your body is old. It is alien'. alien'. He glanced over at the statue, his pale eyes betraying a flicker of annoyance. 'The Morphiean constructs should really have deliberated more carefully over who they culled.' He glanced over at the statue, his pale eyes betraying a flicker of annoyance. 'The Morphiean constructs should really have deliberated more carefully over who they culled.'

Polly stifled a cry as the stone cherub moved smoothly into life, swivelled its head round to view DeCaster. 'Our instruction was to bring the numbers down to nine.' The statue's voice was brittle and dry. 'This we have done.'

'There is much you must learn about the body, Morphiean,'

DeCaster said, turning his attention back to the Doctor. He caressed the translucent skin of the old man's cheek. 'About the nature of flesh.' flesh.'

'So the Schirr gain Morphiea's powers of the mind, and Morphiea regains the pleasures of the physical form.' The Doctor laughed hollowly. 'Is this your exchange? Hmm?'

DeCaster abruptly released the Doctor, who gasped in pain as he hit the floor.

'Your sabotage is negating the onset of the ritual,' the Schirr leader hissed. 'Tell us what you have done.'

'I will not,' the Doctor insisted, 'until I know the truth. I will not be a catspaw in your game.' His voice became sly. 'But tell me and I may willingly a.s.sist you.'

'Doctor!' Ben protested.

The Doctor wouldn't look at him. 'There's nothing more we can do, my boy.'

Haunt looked at DeCaster for a.s.surance it was OK to speak. 'All right,' she said uneasily. 'I came here with two doctored droids, neither able to kill, and nine personnel. Ten of us for ten of them. I didn't know Pallemar had been executed until I got here. Whatever he told Pent Central about this place, or my involvement in setting it up, it must've been enough for them to check it out.'

'They sent Shel,' Polly whispered.

'But when you arrived, one of your squad was considered surplus to requirements and executed,' the Doctor deduced.

'Poor Denni. Fed to the propulsion units I suppose.'

'You can't have been happy when we turned up,' Ben said c.o.c.kily.

'The presence of any excess organisms in the complex would destabilise the ritual,' DeCaster said in his flesh-crawling voice. 'Three more had to die.'

'It might've been Frog if she'd managed to kill herself.' Polly murmured. 'But when Haunt saved her, you killed Joiks instead.'

Creben turned to Ben and indicated the giant angel. 'Lucky for your party those things couldn't distinguish between us and you.'

Haunt nodded, her voice still devoid of any feeling. 'Denni's webset was destroyed with the rest of her. I didn't think we'd need it.' Now she actually addressed Polly directly: 'When the construct took Lindey instead of you, I made sure we kept the webset safe.'

'And once it became apparent that Shel was an artificial intelligence, he was next to be slaughtered,' the Doctor said, looking sickened. A cyborg simply wouldn't do.'

'It turned out well that the three of you came here from nowhere,' Haunt admitted. 'You could wear the web as well as anyone else.'

'And a good thing for you that the cleansing process happened to drive out your cyst, hmm?' Haunt didn't react, but the Doctor nodded. 'You fell desperately ill. A most ingenious way of diverting suspicion away from you. Yes, you've been very clever,' he proclaimed graciously, as he painfully stood back up. 'But are you really so keen to give your body to one of these creatures, hmm?'

'There's been no going back for me, Doctor,' Haunt said coldly. 'Not for a long, long time.'

The Doctor clicked his tongue, then turned his back on Haunt and addressed DeCaster as he would a waiter who had given poor service. 'But isn't all this a little small-scale, hmm? I can believe your ragged band of Schirr dissidents might need to skulk in the shadows like this, but the Morphieans have the might of an entire quadrant...' He tailed off, a wily smile on his face. 'Only they don't do they?' He turned to the construct, gripped his lapels and tipped back his head. 'You're dissidents yourself, aren't you!'

The cherub looked at him blankly.

'The old links between our peoples never truly died,' said DeCaster. 'Certain factions in Morphiea have been pressing for the expansion of the Morphiean empire on a corporeal level. We have let them taste the feel of flesh. Naturally, they want more.'

The Doctor would not look at him. He concentrated on the giant stone baby. 'Will you not speak to me, sir?'