Part 35 (2/2)

Bannen did not answer the Doctor's question, but sank instead to the floor and embraced his son. Tears flooded from his eyes.

Ace stepped forward. 'Let me have my gun back, Doctor. There's more than one way to switch off a computer.'

The Doctor turned away from the poignant display. 'But how many safe ways are there? The Mushroom Farm is controlled by emotional feedback. Between Bannen's emotional instability and the partial destruction of Moloch, who knows what the Lucifer System is capable of?'

Bernice was appalled. 'Can't the Angels stop it? After all, they built the d.a.m.n thing.'

'The Angels don't know that IMC have destroyed Moloch's forest. They think that the feedback mechanism will cut in, like it did the last time that Bannen fiddled with the controls.'

He sighed theatrically. 'They're leaving it up to the last Angel.'

'What do you mean?' Bernice asked. 'It looked to me like the Angels were all tied up with their black holes.'

'The mathematics of morphic fields are too complex for any machine,' the Time Lord answered, 'no matter how sophisticated. It requires an imagination capable of leaping through mathematical flights of fancy without requiring rigorous proofs all the time. It requires a living mind.'

Bernice was horrified. 'You mean...?'

'The forest, the undulants they were an Angel. Or had been. It had been transformed into the necessary form to work as part of the mechanism.'

Ace frowned. 'How did it change itself into the forest if the machine wouldn't work without it already being the forest?'

'An interesting bootstrap question,' the Doctor answered, scowling, 'which I shall consider at a slightly less fraught moment. Besides, I might be wrong. Ace tells us that an exclusion zone will form around the Lucifer planetary system in the short*term future. Perhaps the Angels don't care what's happening in the universe at large, in h.e.l.l, as it were, so long as they can preserve the integrity of their local area of s.p.a.ce. They've got the singularities. That's all they want.'

'Like I asked before,' Ace said, 'why do the Angels want the singularities?'

The Doctor sighed. 'Is this important, Ace?'

'It might be.'

'The Angels can rewrite s.p.a.ce and time the way they want but...' His voice trailed off as he realized what he was saying. 'But singularities are beyond their grasp. s.p.a.ce and time don't exist inside singularities. They wors.h.i.+p them. They think that's where their G.o.d lives.'

He stared past Ace, overawed by the thought, and shuddered. 'I don't know whether they took advantage of IMC's presence, or whether they somehow arranged for Legion's race to be brought in as subcontractors to IMC, but either way it's a scary thought.'

There was a moment's silence filled by the crackling of energy around the Mushroom Farm and Bannen's racking sobs.

'Still doesn't explain what we're going to do about it though, does it?' Ace stared at the Doctor. 'Well?'

The Doctor took a deep breath. 'There is a way. But you have to trust me.'

He gazed at each woman in turn. 'Especially you, Ace.'

A deep rumble shook the Mushroom Farm. Arcs of energy blazed in a complex web around the kneeling form of Bannen and his son. He seemed larger than she remembered him, more muscular.

'Bannen!' the Doctor shouted above the harsh noise of the Angels' machinery. 'Bannen! You have to help us! The machinery is linked with your brain now.'

Bannen looked up. His face was a glowing mask. 'I can't operate the machine. You told me that.'

'No human can.' The Doctor indicated his companions. 'But we can, between us.'

'And what about the feedback control mechanism that IMC destroyed?'

The Doctor's face was harsh. 'That, I'm afraid, is up to you.'

Bannen stared into the Doctor's eyes for a long moment, and then nodded. 'It's all my fault, isn't it?' He looked at Mark, then reached out and ruffled the boy's hair. 'I could have gone back,' he whispered. 'Perhaps this time, I can.'

He pulled his son to him, and nodded again. 'Let's go.'

The Doctor took Bernice's hand, and looked over gravely at Ace. Ace turned away. Bernice obviously trusted the Time Lord, as Ace herself once had. How hard was it going to be to recover that trust? What might happen if she didn't... or couldn't?

Abruptly, she turned back. 'What the h.e.l.l. Family's where, when you come back, they've got to take you in. Like it or not, you're my only family.'

She reached out and took his hand.

Cheryl saw the main airlock up ahead as she felt Sonny Lopez's three*fingered claw slip from her hand. The scream came as she knew it would. She didn't even look back. Couldn't. Mustn't. If she did...

Ahead, Piper slapped her fist against the emergency controls, punching the doors when they were slow to open, driving them apart by force of will. Cheryl was practically crying by the time the airlock slammed shut behind them, imprisoning them in the blessed cool darkness of the starsuit chamber.

'Suits on, everyone. And be snappy! We don't know how long we've...'

Cheryl looked up as Piper faltered. The doors were glowing. Light was seeping through in fizzing runnels.

The new reality had reached them.

Ace flinched. The Doctor's grip was firm and warm. Hot, in fact. She tried to pull her hand back, but his grip was too tight and she couldn't let go.

Glancing across at Bernice's face, she saw the same seeds of panic that she herself was feeling. The heat in her hand was painful now. She looked down, and felt cold waves of horror lapping across her mind. Her flesh had flowed into the Doctor's; their hands had vanished into each other to form a k.n.o.bbly knot where their wrists joined.

'Trust me.'

Miles clutched his glowing medicine wheel as the new reality began to weave around them. Light interacted with light. There were screams. His mind turned briefly inside out. As if from a great distance, he was aware of hands clutching at his body, moving him, pus.h.i.+ng him into a starsuit.

'No good...'

'Shut... up... and... run run.'

The Doctor's other hand had run together with Bernice's, and Ace could see their flesh rippling as it drew them together. Rather than pulling away, Ace reached out on impulse to the older woman. Bernice extended her hand hesitantly and touched Ace's fingertips. Their skin flowed like treacle. It was as if Ace had dipped her fingers into a perfectly still pool and watched herself and her reflection merge, except that instead of the coolness of water there was the heat of... Of what?

The Doctor was joined to her up to the elbow now. Even their clothes seemed to be running together in a bizarre melding of corduroy and battle armour, tweed and lycra.

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