Part 21 (1/2)

'Oh, I don't think so.' There was a scuffling noise, which Peri decided must be the Doctor getting to his feet. 'They don't need us, but I think they do still need Mr Sheldon here.'

'Are you sure, Doctor?' Sir Anthony asked out of the darkness.

'Wheelchair,' Sheldon's quiet voice followed Sir Anthony's question.

'And I say potato,' the Doctor added.

But the end of the word was drowned by the metallic sc.r.a.pe of a bolt being drawn on the other side of the door.

'Ah, about time too.' As the light flooded into the room round the edges of the opening door, the Doctor pulled his coat about him, b.u.t.toning it up, and stepped towards the light.

'Have you any idea how long we've been waiting down here?'

he demanded.

'Have you?'

There was a figure silhouetted in the doorway, frail and slight. Sagging as she dragged the heavy door open.

'Janet!' Peri exclaimed. 'Janet, are you all right?'

'Not really no.' Her voice was strained and hesitant. 'Not sure how long...how much longer...' She stepped aside to let them out.

The Doctor paused to help Sheldon up the short flight of steps to the door. As he entered the light, Peri could see that his left arm was complete now to the elbow. He looked at Janet as he pa.s.sed her, a flicker of recognition on his face.

'Oh G.o.d, Christopher,' she said quietly, hesitantly. 'What has he done to you?' Her pale body seemed to sag further.

'What have I done?'

'Don't blame yourself,' the Doctor said kindly, his tone a contrast to his shouting on the jetty earlier. 'Now, what's the best way out of here?'

Janet pointed up the corridor and led the way. 'Not easy...'

she said. Her voice was strained. 'Words, not easy. Think, say, different.'

Sir Anthony was helping the Doctor to drag Sheldon's weak form after her. Steps led up from the corridor to the ground floor of the house. The corridor itself continued onwards. 'Where does that lead?' the Doctor asked.

'Labs,' Janet gasped. 'Secure. Sealed.'

'I see.'

At the top of the stairs was a heavy metal door. It was standing open. The Doctor ushered everyone out and into the hallway beyond.

'How are you doing?' he asked Janet when they were all in the hallway.

'Can't...can't speak easy,' she stammered. 'Diff-difficult.'

'I imagine the Denarian is taking control of your physical form,' the Doctor said. 'Muscles, nerves, bone, everything.

Even your vocal cords. It will get to the mind last of all - for a while you'll be a prisoner inside your own body.'

'And...' the words were a struggle, '...then?'

'And then you won't have to put up with this sort of moral dilemma.' The answer was loud and harsh. It came from in front of them. From Logan Packwood as he stepped out of an alcove and raised a pistol.

'Oh, you can run, Janet,' he said as she stiffened. 'But where would you go? You can't hide from yourself, now can you?' The gun swivelled to cover the Doctor as he too tensed, bracing himself to fly at Packwood. 'No, Doctor, I really wouldn't advise it. I don't need to aim, I can fire indiscriminately until I hit you. Anyone I'm concerned about keeping alive will soon recover from a mere bullet.'

Packwood's smile widened, his pale eyes glistening in the light from a nearby gas lamp. 'Now since you don't seem to care for the accommodation I had prepared, perhaps we should continue our discussions in the drawing room. Mmm?' He motioned for them to continue down the corridor. 'I've asked Rogers to bring in some tea,' he added.

It was grotesque and bizarre. Packwood stood in front of the roaring fire in the drawing room, drinking tea from a cup that seemed miniature in his ma.s.sive hand. The saucer rested on the mantel shelf behind him.

'I really can't see what you find wrong in all this, Doctor,'

Packwood said.

The Doctor and Peri were sitting on a chaise longue chaise longue, the Doctor with his feet stretched out, Peri hunched up on the edge of the seat. Janet was sitting upright and stiff on a chair. Sir Anthony looked at home in an armchair, and Christopher Sheldon was slumped into another armchair beside him, curled up and s.h.i.+vering.

Rogers stood in the doorway, shotgun over his arm, watching the proceedings. And the pale, bloodless corpse of Bill Neville handed them tea.

Peri shrank away as the cadaver offered her a cup. The Doctor leaned across and took it instead, giving a little smile of grat.i.tude. He sipped appreciatively at the tea before setting it down on an occasional table beside the chaise longue chaise longue. There was an oil lamp on the table, giving out a flickering orange light that supplemented the pale glow from the gas lamps round the walls.

'You can't see what's wrong with this?' he asked, nodding towards where Neville was now pouring tea for Sir Anthony.

Packwood watched for a moment, cup raised. Then he took a sip of tea. 'An unfortunate side effect of the process. But where's the harm?' he asked easily. 'The symbiotic partners.h.i.+p is made rather one-sided by the loss of the brain of the human host. But where is the problem? One of the partners in the arrangement survives. Life goes on.'

'A partners.h.i.+p implies choice,' the Doctor said levelly.

'What choice did Neville have? Did you ask him to agree to - this?' He pointed across the room at the walking cadaver.

'Of course not. But what would he have said? Given the choice between a body that can renew and repair itself, or being merely human?' Packwood set down his cup on the saucer on the mantel. 'What would you say, Doctor? Given that choice.'

Peri looked at the Doctor. He seemed frozen in position, his mouth hanging open.

'Well?' Packwood prompted.

'Well, that's not the point,' the Doctor said. But there was a bl.u.s.ter, and uncertainty in his voice now.

'Isn't it?' Packwood demanded. 'Then what is the point, my dear Doctor, if not the a.s.sured health and happiness of every human being on this planet? Tell me that.'

The Doctor pointed across the room to where Neville was standing beside the tray of tea things, erect and still and silent.

'That's the point,' he said.

Packwood shrugged. 'But he would have died whatever happened. It wasn't the Denarian that killed him. It was an accident. This way something survives. Oh, there will be social problems to work through, I'm sure. How to cope with the increasing population once death is a rarity. But offset that against the reduced health bills and pensions. Offset that against the suffering that will be banished.'

'But at what cost?' the Doctor shouted at him. 'Think about it, Packwood. How do you know the real, human, internal mental cost?'