Superior Beings Read online

  SUPERIOR BEINGS

  NICK WALTERS

  Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,

  Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane

  London W12 OTT

  First published 2001

  Copyright © Nick Walters 2001

  The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC

  Format © BBC 1963

  Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC

  ISBN 0 563 53830 9

  Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 2001

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton For Paul Vearncombe

  Chapter One

  Almost Human

  As she stared out over the curving sea, a light breeze messing with her hair, Aline Vehlmann felt better than she had for days. More herself, more human. She was tired, her back ached, she was a little drunk, and she felt homesick. On top of this she was beginning to feel daunted by the size of the project she’d taken on. Once more she wondered if it had been too early to return to work - not that this current assignment was anything like real work. More like an extended holiday, an unending splurge of indulgence. Her Eknuri hosts seemed to forget that her human-basic body wasn’t used to unfettered hedonism. Her poor human mind couldn’t handle Eknuri levels of stimulation. Her therapist hadn’t foreseen that when she’d suggested this as a good way of resuming her career with minimal risk to her still-fragile psyche.

  Aline looked down at her feet, pale hostages to the strappy bondage of Eknuri fashion. A thought kept bothering her: it just wouldn’t go away. What if this ‘gentle easing back’ turned out to be a violent wrench which threw her right back to square one?

  Making a conscious effort to lighten her thoughts, Aline filled her vision with ocean, as if to cleanse her mind. The pronounced curvature of the horizon was an alarming and constant reminder of the tiny size of the planetoid. And of the brio, bordering on arrogance, with which the Eknuri deployed their technology.

  The artificial air was zingy and fresh and Aline felt her head beginning to clear, her thoughts crystallising into a plan. Maybe she would pull out of the party, go back to Eknur 4, write up her notes. But that meant real work, and really thinking about the alien-ness of the Eknuri. She felt almost afraid of both, and the prospect of leaving the little pleasure-world saddened her.

  She looked down at the white strip of beach below, the slow unfurling of the waves. The sight soothed her, postponed any decision, helped her relax in the moment.

  Then she sensed a presence behind her and whirled round, startled.

  An Eknuri towered over her, all bare flesh and bonhomie. Aline found her eyes drawn to the tattoo on his broad chest, and the almost-but-not-quite-indecent leather thong that barely hid his manhood.

  Athon. The host of the party. The man who wouldn’t take

  ‘No’ for an answer - or more precisely, the man who wouldn’t take ‘Get lost!’ for an answer.

  Aline found herself backing against the low balustrade, arms folded in front of her like a barrier. ‘Hello, Athon. Party going well?’

  He smiled, revealing - what else? - perfect white teeth. ‘Yes, wonderfully!’

  Behind Athon a sheer curtain of red stone cliffs rose to meet rose-pink sky. They were standing on the outermost edge of an intricate network of balconies of smooth white stone, inlaid with shifting mosaics, arranged around a waterfall that fell in a shimmering ribbon from a shallow V in the clifftop. The focus of the party was an auditorium through which the Eknuri had managed to persuade the water to fall in a complex double spiral symbolising their augmented DNA. They liked to boast, but in such a beautiful way.

  Athon took a step towards her, suddenly serious. ‘I’m a little concerned you’re not enjoying yourself to the full.’

  Not again. Aline smiled and slipped sideways along the balustrade, out of his reach. Fear began fluttering away in the pit of her stomach. ‘Athon,’ she said, her voice harsher than she meant it to be. ‘I’m just a little partied out, that’s all.

  I would prefer to be left alone for a while.’

  ‘Partied out?’

  From where Aline stood, the shimmering corkscrew of the waterfall seemed to disappear into the top of Athon’s head of dark curls, making his confused expression all the more comic.

  ‘Just a term we have back on Earth. I’ll be all right in a minute.’

  He’d moved closer to her, the tattoo on his bronzed chest shifting like a living thing. ‘I hope you’re going to rejoin us soon.

  The storm is on its way.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to miss that.’ Aline was distracted by a sudden light pressure on her body. She looked down. Athon’s hand was like a thing carved out of brass and marble, his fingers moulding her ribcage, dwarfing it. Aline was swamped by feelings of panic and helplessness. Fear gathered strength, creeping over her like pins and needles. Making an effort to control herself, she looked him in the eye - she had to crane her head back to make contact - and shook her head. ‘Athon, I thought I’d told you. I thought you understood.’ Her voice wavered, betraying her unease.

  He took his hand away and stepped back, staring at his sandalled feet, like carved wood blocks on the shifting mosaics.

  Once there was some distance between them Aline felt herself begin to return to normal. They may look human, a voice inside her mind insisted, but they’re not. Another taunted, It’s not working - you’ll be living in fear for the rest of your life.

  Aline shook her head, dismissing her inner demons. Easy enough in the sunlight but she knew they would return once she was alone in the dark.

  Athon’s handsome features were clouded with hurt. Aline felt guilty, as if she’d been in the wrong. ‘I thought I’d explained that I don’t want to participate in the more intimate Eknuri customs. I’m here as an observer, remember?’

  He nodded, dark curls bobbing. He looked like a guilty child. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just curious. It’s just that I’ve never met an Earthwoman before.’

  Aline doubted this - there were plenty of curious Earth visitors to Eknur 4, and tourists were becoming a bit of a nuisance. ‘That’s all right, Athon. Just try to control yourself in future.’

  He flashed her a boyish smile. ‘I will. Come and join us soon -don’t miss the storm.’ Then he was gone, out of her sight in just a few strides.

  Aline felt absurd, as if she had been a mere mortal admonishing a God. Which wasn’t too far from the truth, she reflected. There was something classical about the Eknuri physique. Their limbs were long and sinewy, their waists narrow, shoulders wide. Their features were handsome rather than beautiful. They’d be a worrying prospect, a potential über-race bent on domination, if they weren’t all pacifists. Or, more accurately, hedonists, thought Aline. The pursuit of pleasure, not glory or power, was the Eknuri driving force. She could go with that - up to a point.

  They still unsettled her, which was stupid, she knew. All her life she had worked so hard to contact aliens, to be with aliens, to be inside alien minds - and now she was terrified to be with a bunch of overgrown kids who were hardly different from humans. She told herself it wasn’t her fault, it was the after-effect of the Encounter. But hadn’t that event come about precisely because of her desire to know, to understand? Was the pursuit of knowledge ultimately destructive?

  Aline became aware that someone was watching her, from further down the crescent-shaped balcony. A tall, dark figure was leaning against the staircase which led up to the waterfall, arms folded across her chest. She frowned. How long had Taiana been watching her? Had she seen Athon’s little misdemeanour? The last thing she wanted was to be the cause of jealousy or resentment. After all, she was trying to maintain an academic distanc
e from her subject.

  Taiana unfolded herself and loped across the flagstones. She was the strangest Eknuri that Aline had met so far. An athlete, one of the best Eknuri sprinters and zero-g gymnasts, Taiana was literally super-human. Her skin was almost jet-black, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her lithe body and she wore a shining black garment that fitted her like a second skin.

  Her eyes were orbs of gold, and she wore a skullcap that shifted with colours like a patch of oil. There seemed to be three podgy flies buzzing around her head, orbiting like crazed satellites.

  Servitors, Aline knew, linked to Taiana’s cortex, with access to the Eknuri datanet. Taiana carried them everywhere with her. She liked to keep in touch.

  Taiana came to a halt before Aline. ‘Athon been at you?’

  Her voice was flat and featureless, making everything she said sound like a statement. It took a second or so for Aline to work out what she meant. ‘Yes, but he didn’t mean it.’

  Taiana snorted, turning her bullet-black head towards the sun and squinting. ‘He means it all right. Watch yourself.’

  Aline felt a stir of annoyance. Despite her problems, despite only being human, she wasn’t an invalid. ‘Has he ever “been at”

  you?’ Taiana’s head whipped round like a weapon sight. ‘He wouldn’t dare,’ she intoned.

  Aline felt she was on the verge of something interesting.

  Sex, to the Eknuri, was a communal event, almost a sport.

  They didn’t bond for life, and as they were all physically compatible there didn’t seem to be preference for one mate over another. Eknuri sexual customs were going to form a large part of her paper, but this was something new.

  Animosity between a male and female Eknuri? (They didn’t change sex as far as Aline knew.) Evidence that, for all their incredible advances, human emotions such as jealousy and contempt still churned in their breasts?

  Aline was about to form a question when the air was filled with a sudden, violent sound which seemed to pull at her mind. A roaring, tearing, rising-and-falling noise straining towards an eternally out-of-reach climax. She was unable to move

  - the sound awakened emotions she thought she’d locked away for good. She felt that she was about to be shown something so big her mind couldn’t take it - not again.

  Aline tried calling out to Taiana but her voice was stuck in her throat, like in those dreadful nights of sleep-paralysis that used to plague her. In slow motion, she saw Taiana run to the inner curve of the balcony that overlooked the central auditorium. Aline tried to follow but her feet wouldn’t budge.

  Then, with a jolting sensation, all was back to normal.

  Aline almost fell after Taiana, her senses jangling, slapping her hands on the balustrade just as the noise began to spiral away into the upper registers of her hearing.

  In the exact centre of the auditorium, in front of the aperture through which the waterfall spiralled, something was forming. A ghost shape.

  Aline held her breath. She felt as though she was on the verge of discovery - and madness. A small part of her was resigned to it, always knew she would fall again. She’d always suspected her sanity was temporary.

  Aline screamed, a whoop of terrified exhilaration, as before the waterfall, watched by a gathering crowd of cheering, applauding Eknuri, a strange blue box solidified into existence with an echoing thump.

  The TARDIS was home now. Peri had come to accept that.

  But sometimes it really freaked her out, like the way the layout seemed to change around without her noticing. One day the third door on the left from the console room would lead to her room, another time it would lead to the john. Even creepier, from time to time objects would appear in her room -

  items of clothing, ornaments, books - that she couldn’t remember fetching for herself. The Doctor swore blind he didn’t put them there. He’d never go into her room without her permission anyway and she trusted him on that. She had to trust him on everything. Lucky for her he was such a charming guy and so easy to get along with. Hard to believe he was a centuries-old alien. Most times he seemed as human as she was.

  So if it wasn’t the Doctor leaving her little gifts (a first edition of The Catcher in the Rye, a small cactus in a glazed earthenware pot, an ice-cold can of cream soda), then either there was somebody else living in the TARDIS, or the ship was somehow doing it by itself. Creepy. The Doctor had assured her there was no one else in the TARDIS, as far as he knew, and told her not to worry about the gifts. ‘Probably the TARDIS’s way of welcoming you aboard,’ he’d said, frowning. ‘She doesn’t leave me presents any more. Better let me know if anything else appears - you never know if these things are important.’

  Hardly reassuring, but the Doctor hadn’t seemed too worried, so Peri began to get used to the TARDIS’s little quirks. At times she wondered if the ship was trying to tell her something, but it beat her as to what. Like dreams - hard to work out whether they really meant something or whether they were just a load of unrelated junk the mind was sorting through. She wondered if, somehow, the TARDIS was reading her dreams, providing her with objects it found within her sleeping mind...

  She decided to test this theory. She’d left her only pair of sunglasses in Lanzarote and so as she settled down to sleep every night she’d bring them into her drowsy mind, hoping that the TARDIS would provide in the same way it had obliged with J. D. Salinger. But the TARDIS proved no Tooth Fairy and so one morning Peri set forth into the wardrobe to dig out a pair for herself.

  This time it only took her three attempts to find the wardrobe.

  The first door she opened led into a potting shed, occupied by a solitary garden gnome, the second into the laboratory, but the third time she came up trumps.

  The wardrobe was mind-boggling. There were no walls, only a white nothingness, and the racks of clothes stretched in parallel lines into infinity, surrounded by jumbles and piles of stuff. There were hat-stands, shoe racks, tie racks, tailor’s dummies and even a half-dozen wedding dresses suspended from a wire frame, like some bizarre mobile. She was sure that hadn’t been there on her fast visit. Something to ask the Doctor about.

  Despite the wardrobe’s vast size, Peri soon found what she was looking for. A pair of genuine Ray-Bans were perched on the nose of a rather dilapidated-looking teddy bear.

  ‘Hey there, little guy,’ said Peri, picking it up. ‘One cool dude bear.’

  The toy felt heavy and soft in her hands. Comforting. It had an old, musty smell. She wondered how long it had lain neglected, who had snuggled up to it on cold winter nights. The Doctor?

  Peri giggled at the image. Supporting the bear in the crook of her arm, she slid the sunglasses off its face. She gasped in dismay. The bear had no eyes, just limp threads of frayed cotton.

  Shuddering, she put it back where she’d found it, on a deckchair beside a looming mahogany chiffonier. Next to this monstrosity the bear looked forlorn, its arms drooping in its lap, its sightless gaze somehow seeming to reflect on the infinite space within the wardrobe.

  Peri looked around. Was this deliberate or was the TARDIS

  fooling with her again? And if it was deliberate what possible event could a teddy bear with no eyes prefigure? She shook her head, telling herself to stop analysing everything and just go with the flow. She fiddled with the Ray-Bans. No wonder someone had seen fit to cover up such a sad disfigurement.

  She avoided the bear’s sightless gaze. How could she wear them now, and deprive the toy of its dignity?

  Then she had an idea. There had to be a billion buttons in this place - all she had to do was find a couple of shiny black ones, some needle and thread and she could restore the bear’s sight.

  She slipped the shades into the pocket of her cotton shirt and was about to stride off into the endless alleyways of diverse couture when the Doctor’s voice rang out.

  ‘Ah - there you are!’

  He was standing at the entrance to the wardrobe, looking serious, brisk, excited and annoyed, a
ll at once.

  Peri grinned. ‘Yep, here I am!’

  The Doctor looked around curiously, as if he’d never seen the contents of his own wardrobe. ‘What are you doing in here?’

  She felt herself blushing, not wanting to tell him about the bear. ‘Doctor, I’m a nineteen-year-old girl.’ she waved her hand around the racks of clothes. ‘We have this thing called fashion?’

  The Doctor stared over her shoulder, his eyebrows disappearing into his fringe of blond hair. ‘I try not to think of some of the things I’ve got in here. Come along, we’ve landed.’

  Peri’s gaze flickered to the blind bear and back to the Doctor.

  ‘Where?’ She found it odd that their voices didn’t echo in such an enormous space.

  The Doctor frowned. ‘I’m not sure exactly where but we’ve got quite a reception committee,’ He made to turn away, then whirled back with a flap of fawn coat, as though he’d suddenly remembered something. He wagged a finger and said awkwardly: ‘You know I think that outfit really suits you.’ And then he was gone.

  Peri grinned. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to treat an American girl in her late teens, but his attempts were so sweet.

  The bear’s sightless gaze caught her attention and her smile faded. No time to fix you now, she thought. She picked it up and gave it a cuddle. Then, telling herself not to be so sentimental, she followed the Doctor’s receding footsteps, squeezing past a rack of ball-gowns, rustling silk shirts and ghastly sequinned things that could never have been fashionable, at any time, on any planet, ever.

  Chapter Two

  Uninvited Guests

  The Doctor looked up as Peri entered the console room. ‘Who were you talking to just then?’

  ‘No one. Myself.’ She still didn’t feel like telling him about the hear.

  ‘Well, make up your mind.’