Part 24 (1/2)

Instead he turned to Max and Tegan and held up a finger.

'One moment. I've just seen a friend of mine.'

He crossed to her and waited until the old man had finished drinking and Charlotte had lowered his head carefully back down to the floor. Then he said, 'h.e.l.lo, Charlotte.'

She looked up, startled, and her face broke into a grin.

'Mike!' she exclaimed. What are you doing here?'

He gestured across to the Doctor slumped in the wheelchair, behind which stood Tegan looking tense. 'I've brought an injured friend here for treatment. The whole town is under attack.'

The grin slipped from her face. 'I know. What's happening to everyone, Mike? What's making them change like this?

Like my dad did?'

'It's a long story,' Mike said, and quickly changed the subject to avoid having to tell it. 'How's the baby?'

Charlotte touched her stomach and glanced quickly around, evidently not wis.h.i.+ng her pregnancy to become public knowledge. 'Fine, as far as I know.'

'And your mum? How's she?'

'Well, she's alive at least. She's over there.'

Mike looked across to where she was pointing and saw a woman sitting against the wall with her face in her hands, so still that he was not sure whether she was awake or asleep.

'Is she -' he began, but was interrupted by a blurted word from Max: 'Jesus!'

Mike turned and saw that whilst he had been talking to Charlotte a little group had gathered around the Doctor. As well as Tegan and Max, there was a doctor who looked young enough to be fresh out of med school and a nurse who looked old enough to be the young doctor's mother. It was immediately evident what had caused Max to react so vehemently. The young doctor had begun to remove the makes.h.i.+ft dressing around the Doctor's wound in order to take a look at the damage, when the Doctor had abruptly woken up. His eyelids had parted to reveal eyes that were completely black.

Mike caught only a glimpse of them before the Doctor closed them again in a slow blink. When he re-opened them a moment later they had returned to normal. The damage had been done, however. Stumbling back a few paces, Max pointed a fat, rigid finger at the Doctor. Fresh sweat bursting from his cheeks, making them s.h.i.+ne like mahogany, he cried, 'He's one of them!' them!'

Before Max could say anything else, Mike strode forward and grabbed his arm, screening the Doctor from the others in the room.

'Keep your voice down. Do you want to upset everyone everyone?' he hissed.

Max turned on him, furiously. 'You knew he was turning into one of them things! You knew it and you still brought him in here. You've put us all in danger.'

'This is probably the only man in the entire world who can help us get out of this mess,' Mike said calmly.

'But he's not a man any more. He's one of those freaks!'

'No, he isn't.'

'Don't pull my cord, man!' Max said. 'I saw his eyes. We all did.' Max said. 'I saw his eyes. We all did.'

'Look at his eyes now,' Mike replied reasonably. 'They're fine. He's He's fine. There's nothing wrong with him.' fine. There's nothing wrong with him.'

'Oh, I'm afraid there is,' the Doctor muttered.

Max and Mike stopped and stared at the Doctor as if he was a chimpanzee who had just displayed an astounding apt.i.tude for human speech.

It was Mike who found his voice first. 'Are you... all right, Doctor?' he asked.

'Not entirely,' said the Doctor, and raised a hand in Max's direction. 'The gentleman here is right. I'm metamorphosing.'

'See!' Max said, thrusting his chin aggressively at Mike.

'The guy admits it. We should never have let you in.'

Before Mike could respond, the Doctor said almost heartily 'Quite right. In fact, I suggest you let me out of here before I lose control and kill you all.'

Tegan, who had not spoken a word since they had entered the R and D unit, suddenly said in an anguished voice, 'You can't go, Doctor. We need you. You re our last hope.'

The Doctor flashed her a rea.s.suring smile. 'Believe me, I'll serve you better on the outside.'

'They'll find you,' Mike said. 'There's too many of them.

They'll use what's in your head and turn you into one of them.'

'That'll happen anyway if I stay here,' the Doctor said, and suddenly, to Mike's astonishment, he was holding Mike's gun in his hand, pointing it at his own head. 'Now,' he said almost cheerfully, 'are you going to let me out or do I have to kill myself so that I don't kill you all later?'

For every second of the three minutes it took Turlough to climb up on to the hotel roof, he was petrified. Petrified of being shot at; petrified of the hotel's old but stout metal drainpipe giving way; petrified that one of the fully grown Xaranti patrolling the streets below would spot him and scuttle up the wall after him like a spider.

The ledge below his window, along which he had shuffled to the drainpipe, had been just about wide enough, but old and a little crumbly. He sidestepped along it with his back to the sun-baked wall of the hotel, trying not to look down, trying not to rush, trying not to panic, and in the event probably doing all three.

When he reached the drainpipe, he swivelled at the hips, taking care to keep his feet firmly planted on the ledge, and grasped it gratefully with both hands. He would have liked to have rested there for a few moments, but he was afraid that if he stopped he might never start again. He was grateful that the drainpipe was st.u.r.dy and not one of the flimsy plastic variety that humans seemed to favour on their buildings in this time period. It was attached to the wall by stolid, chunky brackets which would serve as precarious foot-and handholds.

Turlough manoeuvred himself carefully round, his heart pumping fast as his left leg swung out over empty s.p.a.ce before clanging against the pipe. He looked up to see how far he had to go, and immediately felt dizzy. The wisps of white cloud slipping beneath the horizon of the hotel roof gave him the impression that the building was toppling over. Turlough gripped the pipe even harder and squeezed his eyes tight shut for a moment, though he had seen enough to know that he had a distance of around twenty feet to climb.

It took him no more than half a minute, but it seemed like an eternity. When he finally reached the overhanging lip of the flat roof, his arms and legs were trembling and his body was drenched in sweat. This time he did did have to rest in order to summon up the energy to haul himself over the ledge. have to rest in order to summon up the energy to haul himself over the ledge.

Finally, first with one hand and then the other, he reached up, grasped the edge of the roof and pulled himself up.

There was an awful moment when he didn't think he was going to have the strength to do it, when his feet pedalled at empty air and his arms began to tremble with the effort.

Somehow, though, simply through fear of what would happen if his strength did did give way, he managed to scramble up and over. give way, he managed to scramble up and over.