Up a Tree (p.30)
“When you said you were going to bung a rock at it, Doctor, this isn’t what I thought you meant!” Rory yelled down.
All the safari group was high up in the trees, they’d hauled a huge boulder, the size of a car, up into the tree using a complex system of ropes, pulleys, and other smaller boulders roped in as counterweights. (Yblins didn’t go anywhere without rope, and coils of rope had been dug out of the bottom of every backpack and from the camping supplies.)
Despite the relatively clear area around the complex, the tall redwood trees actually overarched it, like a cathedral, especially on the far side.
They’d pried loose one of the forest’s huge boulders using young trees as levers, and managed to drag it, using the base of the trees as pulleys, to their chosen tree. Darvish and Erik had shown an unexpected aptitude for engineering. The Doctor had chosen a tower on the far side, farthest from the control room, as their target.
They’d found no other rooms inside, no other doors, inside or out. The structure appeared to be all one solid piece. “You’d think a research complex would have other labs, offices, something,” Darvish said.
“Maybe it does,” the Doctor said, as they surveyed the placement and angle of the boulder, to insure it would hit their designated target. “Maybe they can only be detected or opened by some electrical sense we don’t have. More likely, it’s all solid though.”
“What would be the point of that?” Darvish asked, as he helped the Doctor finish his survey, as the others jockeyed for position in the trees, carefully altering the angle and positions of the lines under Erik’s direction.
“It’s a transmitter,” the Doctor said, looking back and up admiringly at the star shaped, spired structure. “The whole thing, the base, the towers, the crystal connecting down into the minerals of the area, even the dish shape,” he waved around at the perfectly circular depression they were standing in, “all designed to transmit the device’s signal throughout the world.”
Darvish turned and gave him a grave, considering look. “So when it was attacked, and damaged, it fought back,” he commented. The Doctor nodded. “So you’re going to replicate that accident.” The Doctor nodded, clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly.
Darvish looked at him like he was crazy. “What makes you think it will scan you? We’re all helping.”
“Ah, but it already has humans in its database. As long as you keep your mind on what you’re doing it can’t touch you. I’m the only new element. My brainwaves are different. I’m betting it will single out that difference and focus on me.”
“What about after it scans you? What if it sends ghosts after us, like you said it did with the crash survivors? We don’t have ipods any more.”
“I turned off the defense systems, so that shouldn’t happen.”
“If it does?” Darvish asked.
The Doctor gave him a grim look. “Run.”
-----
They’d managed to manually haul the huge boulder sixty feet up into the tree and were all scattered through the branches holding the lines taught.
“Get a move on, Doctor!” Amy yelled down. “This thing’s heavy!”
She and Bill were holding onto a heavy line that was wrapped twice around the main bole, keeping tension to hold the boulder pulled back, awaiting release. Jute, Eldon, Pickles and Eula were arrayed around them above and below, holding side lines to angle it in the proper direction, while Erik and Rory held tension on the other main line on the branch on the other side of the bole.
Lines creaked, the tension was tight enough to break bones. A light darkling wind ruffled their hair, but no one could spare a hand to brush it out of their eyes.
It had taken all of them to manhandle the stones. With no one left to stand guard, their eyes darted around, keeping watch, they all had their weapons slung across their backs.
The Doctor and Darvish climbed up the ladder rope left dangling by the first hunter who’d leapfrogged, lumberjack style, up the tree. Darvish swarmed up using only his hands and powerful shoulders. The Doctor braced a foot on the bole and climbed up knot by knot.
Up in the tree the air sang through the lines. Sweat dotted faces, hands ached, but everyone refused to acknowledge it. Baby Bear, Mama Bear, and Papa Bear, (the three graduated size boulders which the Doctor had dubbed, as they added successively larger ones to help haul the boulder higher into the tree,) swayed slightly in the breeze to one side, like a giant’s bracelet.
“You sure this is going to work?” Erik demanded, as he strained against his rope, one foot bracing the rope against the treetrunk to add more leverage.
The Doctor shoved his hair out of his face with both hands. The complex looked smaller from up here. A plate sized jello mold of sharp black glass, already half crumbled. The bowl shape around it even more apparent from this height. Their chosen onion domed spire was right in front of them, radiating off to one side of the main building on a corner where the debris would fall away from the building, rather than on it and chance damaging the equipment.
“It’ll work,” the Doctor said, with more confidence than Rory’s expression showed at the comment. The Doctor ignored him. “We just have to make sure everyone releases at the same time, and nothing snags.”
Erik grunted. “Leave that to us. We know ropes.”
“I’m sure you do. Watch out for whiplash too, when the lines release,” the Doctor added, distractedly as he concentrated on the building below.
Erik glared at him.
The Doctor turned his back to Darvish. “Check my chute, will you Darvish?” he asked quietly. But not quite quietly enough.
Rory’s head whipped to him. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
The Doctor ignored him as he checked his chute clips and straightened his shirt. He could feel Darvish tugging at the chute sewn into his jacket.
He didn’t look at Rory. “I’m making sure the monster goes after me, not you,” he said quietly. Rory started shaking his head.
Darvish patted the Doctor on the shoulder in confirmation. The Doctor scooted over the limb in front of Erik. “Hold tight,” he said quietly. He leaned over, grabbed the taught line that led to the boulder and swung out. He wrapped his legs around the line and started sliding outward, handing himself along the taut rope to the suspended boulder.
“What are you doing!” Amy screamed.
The Doctor didn’t answer her, he just kept sliding, hand over hand, pant legs ruching up, down the line until his bum hit the boulder. It wobbled under him.
“Doctor!” Amy screamed. She juttered, wanting to go drag him away, but not daring to let go of her rope.
He grabbed the main support rope and stood up, feet straddling the other lines on the stone. It tilted and wallowed under him. He half turned, “It’s the only way, Amelia. We’ve only got one chance at this. I have to make sure the monster fixates on me. The only way is to ensure it thinks I’m the invader.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed!” she yelled back. Her face was red, part from anger, part from fear, part from the strain of holding the rope so tightly.
“I’ll parachute off at the end. I’ll be fine!”
“You’re not going to have far to deploy your chute,” Bill yelled over.
“I’ll deploy it as I jump, it’ll serve partly as drag chute, partly to slow my descent. I can survive a harder fall than a human can, it’s not that far down.” He repressed the shudder that ran down his spine as he remembered other falls. This was nothing compared to those, he reassured himself. Not nearly as far down. And he had a chute, and he was aiming for that thicket of ferns to cushion his fall. Nothing could go wrong.
“You better be right, you’re the only one we’ve got that can reprogram that thing,” Erik yelled in a gruff voice that showed a bit more concern than he probably cared for.
“Then we better get started,” the Doctor yelled back. He looked around, when he wasn’t concentrating on the height, there was actually a magnificent view from up here, unobstructed by trees or buildings, suspended in midair with a cold breeze ruffling his jacket, he could see in every direction, a panoramic view of the whole area; complex, trees, ferns, crashed transport, the surrounding bowl. He grinned, suddenly feeling free, looking forward to the high swing and release, like a kid on a swingset. “It’ll be fun!”
“Is he really that mad?” he heard Erik whisper over his shoulder to Rory.
“Yes.”
The Doctor grinned. “On three!” he yelled back, positioning himself in front of the load rope, feet on either side of the ropes holding up the boulder, hands gripping the upright rope behind him with both hands.
He heard them all inhale at once. “One.” Ropes creaked, he could hear knives swishing out of sheathes. “Two!” The whole world stood still, except for the slight twist of the boulder underneath him. “THREE!” He braced himself. Knives slashed. And suddenly he was soaring.
G-force and wind whipped his hair back behind him and stung his eyes, his cheeks flattened and flapped as the load line pressed into his spine.
“Whoooohooooo!” He could no more hold back that primal scream than he could stop the huge grin that plastered over his face.
His stomach tingled and dropped as the stone plummeted down and swung powerfully forward, building momentum, the black glistening onion dome rushed toward him, he tensed, he hoped he’d calculated the trajectory right, or he was about to get bodyslammed into a solid ton of black glass.
The boulder tipped up at the end of its rope, he crouched and bent his knees. The lower half of the boulder crashed into the top of the tower.
Instantly he was airborne, shattered chunks of black glass exploding all around him. He rammed his hands forward, his chute deployed, jolting him. He swung down, and aimed for the ferns. A loud CRACK sounded behind him as the tower broke, and a chunk of black glass whistled past, slicing a gash in his chute. He dropped. He overshot the ferns, and yowled as he headed for the spiky bushes. He drew in his arms and legs to protect himself and prepared to roll. Something snagged him and whipped him backward and up.
The world flipped. Everything tangled. He fell and bounced, upside down, chute lines and parachute silk wrapped around him. Parachute lines completely encased one leg, cutting off the circulation. Parachute silk blew into his mouth. His leg screamed.
He batted the silk out of his face, digging his way out of the billowing folds as he swung upside down.
He hung from the only sapling in the whole area. He crossed his arms and dangled, hair streaming down, and watched the safari group run toward him, looking as if they were running on the sky.
Zeke swarmed up the small tree and started to work him loose. Darvish didn’t bother, he just unlimbered his ax and chopped down the young tree with two strokes.
The Doctor landed like a Sunsail cocoon. He could hear Bill laughing. Erik grumbled about paperwork. He could feel Amy bouncing with suppressed chortles as she and Rory helped cut him free.
Suddenly there was a huge blast of blinding invisible light. They all stopped, frozen in shock. “I felt that,” Erik said, like a man who’d just been punched in the solarplexus.
The Doctor’s head tingled. “That’s it! The scan. Get me out of here!” He struggled against the chute lines. Eula reached in and yanked his jacket off him; slapped the main buckle and freed him.
The Doctor bolted up and ran like a shot, the others dashing after him.
They all scrambled up the scree and into the hole, ignoring the new landslide of shards and boulders on the far side that was still rumbling down. The far tower fell with a crash that bounced them all on their heels.
They ran down the hallway, new fractures opening up cracks of light into the tunnel, and skidded through the debris into the control room. The brain was flashing faster and brighter than ever.
The Doctor’s head felt like it was full of ants.
The Doctor ran for the control wall and interface. “Zeke!” he yelled. The older Trelwin scrambled after him at a fast lope, knowing what was needed of him.
Behind him, Nelda entered the control room for the first time, and saw the monster.
-----
Time slowed down.
The monster, the bane of her species, the thing that had almost killed her gentle father.
Chitchi looked at it dispassionately. Everyone else piled in behind them, concentrating on the Doctor and Zeke.
Nelda looked up at the giant brain, the beautiful colors, the zip and sizzle of energy, her eyes widened, her lips curled back over her large teeth, hate, she charged forward, arms waving over her head, hands curled like claws, attacking.
And abruptly fell flat on her face on the crystal floor, arms still outstretched over her head.
"Nelda!" Amy yelled. The Doctor’s head whipped around. She and Rory ran over and turned the simian over. Rory laid his head on her white suede chest. "No heartbeat." He knelt and immediately started CPR.
Amy looked around in despair. "We don't have any life support units!"
Eula rushed up, dropping off his backpack and rummaging around in his larger medical kit, he pulled out a mouth funnel and placed it over Nelda's mouth and nose, since Trelwin mouths were too wide, and noses too flat for regular human CPR.
"Hurry up, Doctor, and stop this thing before it claims any more lives," Jute yelled, looking on the creature that had been raised with him as part of his family.
The Doctor dithered, looking back and forth from Nelda to the control wall. His brain was starting to itch.
"Doctor!" Erik barked, startling the Time Lord. "That thing is already processing you, if it closes before you get in, we're all done for."
"Yes, right," the Doctor said distractedly, he abruptly ran down the control wall. "Bring her over here!" He ignored the scratching on his brain that was starting to become painful.
He touched a metallic swirl, and a long slab extruded from the bottom of the wall.
Erik and Darvish didn't waste any time, they ran over, knelt, picked up the simian's body and ran her over to the slab, Eula and Rory right alongside, ready to start CPR and respiration again as soon as they laid her down.
They resumed their ministrations with minimal interruption. The Doctor pulled a long, V shaped cowl out of the wall, and laid it over her head and down her chest and abdomen. He did something to the wall and the cowl started to lift and fall, a faint whooshing sound showing she was breathing. After a moment, her eyes blinked open. Before she could jump up, Zeke and Chitchi were there. A huge melange of scents rolled off them, as they held her shoulders down.
The humans backed away, waving at their faces.
Nelda calmed, and lay back under whatever they were telling her.
The Doctor winced as the scratching became jabs.
"They were bound to have emergency medical equipment of their own, in case of accidents," the Doctor explained, his voice starting to sound labored, and high.
"They've got her," Erik said. "Now, quick, Doctor. Get in there!"
"Yes." The Doctor turned, hands wringing, harried. Trying to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything as the jabs intensified, probed deeper. It was getting harder to think. "Amy, Rory,” his voice squealed a bit, “if the monster gets me before I stop it, get back to the Tardis, the emergency protocols will take you home after five hours."
Amy shook her head, protesting. 'If it turns you off, won't you just regenerate?"
"No,” he blinked, and shook his head against the pain, pressing the heel of his hand against one eyebrow, forcing himself not to block the connection, “that requires residual electrical impulses in the body, this stops that," he flung a hand at the floating brain. He bent over, starting to pant.
"Can't we use this on you?" Rory asked, pointing down at the slab Nelda still lay on.
"That only works on Trelwins." He started to sweat.
"DOCTOR!" Erik bellowed.
"Yes, right.” He gathered his focus. “Wish me luck, Ponds." The Doctor turned and beckoned. "Zeke." He winced and squeaked, squinting his eyes.
The gray Trelwin left his friends and loped over, he crouched and allowed the Doctor to hook him up. The Doctor fumbled a bit, but got him attached. He was laboring now, his head felt like it was on fire. He plopped down on his bum and reached blindly for the Trelwin’s temples.
And then he seemed to stop breathing.
"Doctor!" Amy yelled. Erik grabbed her before she could grab the Doctor. Rory quickly knelt and put his ear to the Time Lord's back. Amy watched, eyes wide...
They all held their breaths.
Rory leaned back and held his hand under the Time Lord's nose. Then he sat back. "His hearts are still beating, and he's breathing, just really shallow."
Rory held his hand in front of Zeke's nose. "Him too, but he seems to be breathing normally."
The Doctor sat, pale as death, sweating, barely breathing. He looked as tense as elastic. His arms apparently held up by main force.
They all stood around, and stared at the Doctor, stared at the brain, trying to see if there were any changes.
Nelda brushed off the cowl, despite Eula's protests. She turned and looked at the brain dispassionately, then deliberately turned her back on it, sitting, watching Zeke and the Doctor. Chitchi ambled over and sat at the intersection of the control room and the sterile white room beyond, watching the giant floating brain, thinking his own thoughts.
Forty minutes in, Rory thought the air of the room was so tight it would crack. He stayed beside the Doctor, keeping an ear cocked for the rhythm of his shallow breathing. He’d carefully loosened the Time Lord’s precious bow tie. He'd have liked to keep a hand on his wrist to check for a pulse, but didn't dare touch him.
Nelda ambled over and took Jute's hand. The laconic, soft-spoken hunter crouched down and hugged her tightly.
Erik drummed his fingers on the butt of his rifle.
Brilliant colors flashed around them as the brain zapped and sizzled behind them, more active than ever. Purple, hot pink, white, neon blue.
Suddenly there was a flash of crystalline dark, a wash of black behind their vision that flew away, leaving shadowy afterimages.
The Doctor slouched, melting bonelessly, and toppled over backwards. His hands falling from Zeke's face. Rory barely caught him before his head cracked down on the crystal floor.
He was pale as wax, blue veins showing in his throat and eyelids, his baby boy lips and eyebrows sitting awkwardly on the mask of his ancient bones. Amy scrambled over, a whining scream reverberating in the back of her throat, loud in the silence, as she threw herself down beside her Raggedy Man.
“Doctor?” she said, almost timidly.
The Doctor opened his eyes and raised a hand to his head. "I have got the worst headache," he commented.
He inhaled deeply and blood and vitality seemed to flow back into him. He sat up and rubbed both hands over his face, and demanded a canteen. Rory gave him his. The Doctor took it and poured the water over his head.
Amy stood up, watching him, unusually subdued.
Pandemonium broke out, sighs of relief, questions, and demands. Erik's voice boomed out over the babble. "Did you do it?"
The Doctor looked up, dripping, he took a swig of the canteen, then handed it back to Rory. He noticed his bow tie dangling undone and retied it.
Erik gritted his teeth at the Time Lord’s delaying tactics. “DOCTOR?!”
The Doctor jumped up and shook his wet hair, spry as a thistle, although Rory saw him wince at the headache.
"All done. The tiger's teeth have been pulled. No more problems here." The Doctor grinned, that particularly infuriating grin that no one trusted.
Zeke blinked his eyes open. The Doctor held down a hand and helped him up.
Everyone stood in silence, shellshocked.
"Is that it?" Rory asked.
"Yep," The Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets with a satisfied air, collar limp and soggy. He bounced lightly on his toes.
Everyone looked at everyone else, not sure what to do with themselves.
The lightning brain still pulsed with complex flashes of activity, throwing multicolored light over the room.
"But," Rory protested, looking between it and the Doctor. "How do we know if it worked?"
"Dunno," the Doctor shrugged lazily. "I guess we'll have to test it." He abruptly turned and slapped Amy.
Amy stared at him, mouth agape, a red handmark showing on her cheek. "Why you, son of a..!" she screamed and leaped at him. "I'll kill you for that!" She slapped him with one clawed hand, he whirled with the force of the slap, ducking and laughing as Rory struggled to restrain her, her hands still slapping at him. "I'm going to wring your neck with that bow tie!" she yelled.
Rory grabbed her around the waist and picked her up, she kicked at the Doctor with her long legs. The Doctor scuttled aside and laughed.
"Well," Erik said, arms crossed over his chest. "I guess it worked."
-----
They gathered everyone back inside the control room, including those who had gone outside on guard. It had been a long day for all of them.
"We may as well sleep here for the night," Erik said in his rumbling voice, addressing the entire group. "The building is safe enough, and easy to protect from predators. We can start back in the morning."
“We can collect the flight recorder, and whatever personal items we can find in the morning from the transport.” Darvish said, rubbing his face. “We can bag up the bodies and take them home, their relatives deserve that much at least.”
“What about the treecat?” Rory asked.
They all turned to stare at him. He shrugged. “I locked it in the hold, we can’t just leave it there to starve.”
“We could tranq it,” Jute suggested in his quiet voice, a hand still on Nelda’s shoulder. "Knock it out for a day or two, then leave the hold door open. That would give us enough head start, and he'd probably wake up hungry enough that finding water and food would be his first priority, rather than following us."
Bill nodded beside him in agreement, and started rummaging in her beltpouches. "I'm pretty sure I've got a few darts that survived."
Suddenly all three Trelwin sat up straight, their eyes darted around, if they’d had fur it would have been bristling.
“What’s wrong with them?” Amy asked.
“Is it the monster?” Pickles asked, staring over at the lightning brain. “Did it not work?”
The floor started to rumble, the vibration crawling up their legs, the crystal cracked all around them, the whole building started shaking, cracking, falling down around them.
“Out! Out, out out!” the Doctor yelled, herding everyone in front of him, the Trelwin led the way, loping like grayhounds.
Everyone ran out, only to emerge into red evening light, to find the whole bowl area cracking, faultlines radiating outward up the slopes, slabs of crystal-imbued ground jutting up from the pressure.
They fell and tumbled down the scree.
“What’s happening!” Amy yelled, over the thunder of the ground cracking open.
The Doctor smacked his forehead with one hand. “Turning off the ‘monster’ program must have destabilized the energy matrix in the underlying crystalline substructure.”
“What?” Erik yelled.
“Earthquake!” the Doctor yelled back.
They jumped as the black glass of the building ruptured and half the wall crashed to the ground behind them, shattering into huge chunks.
The entire crystal structure, and all its towers, started swaying, cracking and popping, grinding itself into fragments. Huge fissures ripped the ground outward, the land heaving and undulating like a nightmare fairground ride.
“RUN!”
They all scrambled, half launched away from the structure by tilting plates of ground.
The area right around the castle cracked and sank, the black building crumbling into a pit. The pit widened, edges crumbling and falling into an abyss, revealing huge veins of crystal in the sheer cliffs it left in its wake.
Everyone scrambled, the land shrieked. Nelda and Chitchi saved hunters from sliding backward into the chasm, their long arms snagging them and throwing them farther up the sudden incline.
The land crumbled behind them, seeming to chase them. The transport tilted with a scream of metal and tumbled into the abyss.
“Run! Run! Run!” the Doctor kept yelling, scrambling and pulling Amy and Rory up after him. Pushing Bill and Erik ahead of him, looking to the side to see Darvish plant his ax in the tilted ground and use it to haul himself upward. Eula using his daggers as pitons beside him.
They ran, scrambling, uphill on what only minutes ago had been level ground. Sand and dust slid downward, making footing treacherous. Plants screamed as roots tore out of the soil, trees toppled, a fluffy ‘Nuisance’ tumbled down into the abyss like a tumbleweed, wailing like a siren.
A giant redwood screamed as its roots tore out of the ground, it twisted on its bole and bore down on them, like a giant brush ready to sweep them away. At the last minute the branches hit above them, and bounced, the entire giant tree arching over them, like a meteor made of branches, limbs reaching toward them. It crashed into the slope below them, jarring them, and slid, screeching, out of sight.
The very land crumbled from under their feet.
They hauled themselves to level ground and ran, hearts pumping, lungs tearing in their chest, as the collapsing ground raced after them like a hungry god.
They saw the Herbivore lying on its own at the edge of the jungle, no apparitions marked the boundary of a fence. They dove into the trees, and ran, batting and pulling at swaying, trembling ferns as shockwaves undulated through the forest ahead of them.
The world was one huge bass crescendo. So loud they couldn’t hear themselves screaming, only feel the vibration of their throats.
Then it stopped.
The trees stopped swaying, the ferns stopped whipping. Suddenly screeching, terrified birds were audible. The world stilled, the occasional loud crash of individual boulders, the slither of sand, an underlying groaning, like the lament of a planet-sized pregnant woman moaned under their feet.
Slowly fading away.
“Is everyone all right?” Darvish yelled in his trollish voice.
Everyone looked around, their ears ringing. They all checked that they were all there. Weapons had been discarded in their scramble. There were a proliferation of cuts and bruises and scrapes, but everyone seemed to be present.
Amy looked up, even Zeke and Nelda and Chitchi had returned to the haven of the trees, now that they weren’t swaying.
“George! Garon!” Eldon suddenly yelled. He ran back the way they’d come, yelling for his brothers. The others followed, hearts leaping back into their throats.
Garon found the boulders his brothers had been sheltering under. The small twisted tree lay on its side, the boulders had shifted, there was no cave, no crevice, only a solid pile of collapsed stone.
“NO!” Eldon screamed. He ran toward the stones. The others ran with him, Amy scanned the ground for blood.
“Here!” a voice yelled out of the ferns.
Garon stood up, streaked with dirt, with stone chips in his hair. “We’re over here!”
Eldon ran and grabbed his brother. The two clasped tightly to each other, shaking, tears streaming down their cheeks.
“Where’s George?”
“Here,” Garon waved down at the ferns beside him. “I had to drag him out when the ground started shaking.” The twins knelt down to check on their triplet.
Everyone else stood and stared.
Where the line of the fence had stood was now the edge of a vast chasm. It looked like the caldera of a volcano. A perfectly circular subsidence that came right up to the edge of the fence and stopped.
For the first time in days they could see sky. The setting sun hung in the distance, a disc of brilliant tangerine, throwing its bloody light over the scene.
Crystal shards glinted among the stones, trees poked out of the landslide at drunken angles. There, a giant deer limped its way slowly upward across huge broken chunks of land.
“Well,” Darvish leaned on his ax, “I’d say the monster is now definitely dead.”
“It’s a shame,” the Doctor said quietly, staring down into the devastation with a melancholy expression.
Everyone else turned to stare at him.
He looked back. “What?” He waved a hand at the rubble. “That was the last of a once mighty and amazing civilization.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “One less Wonder in the universe.”
“Yes, well, not to be blunt, Doctor. But good riddance,” Erik said. He hefted his gun that he had somehow managed to keep hold of. “This world has dangers enough.”
The Doctor looked up into the trees. The Trelwins stared out over the sinkhole with unfathomable eyes. Then they turned their backs on it and swung away.
Next Chapter
Previous Chapter
Chapter Index
Unique Counter
All the safari group was high up in the trees, they’d hauled a huge boulder, the size of a car, up into the tree using a complex system of ropes, pulleys, and other smaller boulders roped in as counterweights. (Yblins didn’t go anywhere without rope, and coils of rope had been dug out of the bottom of every backpack and from the camping supplies.)
Despite the relatively clear area around the complex, the tall redwood trees actually overarched it, like a cathedral, especially on the far side.
They’d pried loose one of the forest’s huge boulders using young trees as levers, and managed to drag it, using the base of the trees as pulleys, to their chosen tree. Darvish and Erik had shown an unexpected aptitude for engineering. The Doctor had chosen a tower on the far side, farthest from the control room, as their target.
They’d found no other rooms inside, no other doors, inside or out. The structure appeared to be all one solid piece. “You’d think a research complex would have other labs, offices, something,” Darvish said.
“Maybe it does,” the Doctor said, as they surveyed the placement and angle of the boulder, to insure it would hit their designated target. “Maybe they can only be detected or opened by some electrical sense we don’t have. More likely, it’s all solid though.”
“What would be the point of that?” Darvish asked, as he helped the Doctor finish his survey, as the others jockeyed for position in the trees, carefully altering the angle and positions of the lines under Erik’s direction.
“It’s a transmitter,” the Doctor said, looking back and up admiringly at the star shaped, spired structure. “The whole thing, the base, the towers, the crystal connecting down into the minerals of the area, even the dish shape,” he waved around at the perfectly circular depression they were standing in, “all designed to transmit the device’s signal throughout the world.”
Darvish turned and gave him a grave, considering look. “So when it was attacked, and damaged, it fought back,” he commented. The Doctor nodded. “So you’re going to replicate that accident.” The Doctor nodded, clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly.
Darvish looked at him like he was crazy. “What makes you think it will scan you? We’re all helping.”
“Ah, but it already has humans in its database. As long as you keep your mind on what you’re doing it can’t touch you. I’m the only new element. My brainwaves are different. I’m betting it will single out that difference and focus on me.”
“What about after it scans you? What if it sends ghosts after us, like you said it did with the crash survivors? We don’t have ipods any more.”
“I turned off the defense systems, so that shouldn’t happen.”
“If it does?” Darvish asked.
The Doctor gave him a grim look. “Run.”
-----
They’d managed to manually haul the huge boulder sixty feet up into the tree and were all scattered through the branches holding the lines taught.
“Get a move on, Doctor!” Amy yelled down. “This thing’s heavy!”
She and Bill were holding onto a heavy line that was wrapped twice around the main bole, keeping tension to hold the boulder pulled back, awaiting release. Jute, Eldon, Pickles and Eula were arrayed around them above and below, holding side lines to angle it in the proper direction, while Erik and Rory held tension on the other main line on the branch on the other side of the bole.
Lines creaked, the tension was tight enough to break bones. A light darkling wind ruffled their hair, but no one could spare a hand to brush it out of their eyes.
It had taken all of them to manhandle the stones. With no one left to stand guard, their eyes darted around, keeping watch, they all had their weapons slung across their backs.
The Doctor and Darvish climbed up the ladder rope left dangling by the first hunter who’d leapfrogged, lumberjack style, up the tree. Darvish swarmed up using only his hands and powerful shoulders. The Doctor braced a foot on the bole and climbed up knot by knot.
Up in the tree the air sang through the lines. Sweat dotted faces, hands ached, but everyone refused to acknowledge it. Baby Bear, Mama Bear, and Papa Bear, (the three graduated size boulders which the Doctor had dubbed, as they added successively larger ones to help haul the boulder higher into the tree,) swayed slightly in the breeze to one side, like a giant’s bracelet.
“You sure this is going to work?” Erik demanded, as he strained against his rope, one foot bracing the rope against the treetrunk to add more leverage.
The Doctor shoved his hair out of his face with both hands. The complex looked smaller from up here. A plate sized jello mold of sharp black glass, already half crumbled. The bowl shape around it even more apparent from this height. Their chosen onion domed spire was right in front of them, radiating off to one side of the main building on a corner where the debris would fall away from the building, rather than on it and chance damaging the equipment.
“It’ll work,” the Doctor said, with more confidence than Rory’s expression showed at the comment. The Doctor ignored him. “We just have to make sure everyone releases at the same time, and nothing snags.”
Erik grunted. “Leave that to us. We know ropes.”
“I’m sure you do. Watch out for whiplash too, when the lines release,” the Doctor added, distractedly as he concentrated on the building below.
Erik glared at him.
The Doctor turned his back to Darvish. “Check my chute, will you Darvish?” he asked quietly. But not quite quietly enough.
Rory’s head whipped to him. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
The Doctor ignored him as he checked his chute clips and straightened his shirt. He could feel Darvish tugging at the chute sewn into his jacket.
He didn’t look at Rory. “I’m making sure the monster goes after me, not you,” he said quietly. Rory started shaking his head.
Darvish patted the Doctor on the shoulder in confirmation. The Doctor scooted over the limb in front of Erik. “Hold tight,” he said quietly. He leaned over, grabbed the taught line that led to the boulder and swung out. He wrapped his legs around the line and started sliding outward, handing himself along the taut rope to the suspended boulder.
“What are you doing!” Amy screamed.
The Doctor didn’t answer her, he just kept sliding, hand over hand, pant legs ruching up, down the line until his bum hit the boulder. It wobbled under him.
“Doctor!” Amy screamed. She juttered, wanting to go drag him away, but not daring to let go of her rope.
He grabbed the main support rope and stood up, feet straddling the other lines on the stone. It tilted and wallowed under him. He half turned, “It’s the only way, Amelia. We’ve only got one chance at this. I have to make sure the monster fixates on me. The only way is to ensure it thinks I’m the invader.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed!” she yelled back. Her face was red, part from anger, part from fear, part from the strain of holding the rope so tightly.
“I’ll parachute off at the end. I’ll be fine!”
“You’re not going to have far to deploy your chute,” Bill yelled over.
“I’ll deploy it as I jump, it’ll serve partly as drag chute, partly to slow my descent. I can survive a harder fall than a human can, it’s not that far down.” He repressed the shudder that ran down his spine as he remembered other falls. This was nothing compared to those, he reassured himself. Not nearly as far down. And he had a chute, and he was aiming for that thicket of ferns to cushion his fall. Nothing could go wrong.
“You better be right, you’re the only one we’ve got that can reprogram that thing,” Erik yelled in a gruff voice that showed a bit more concern than he probably cared for.
“Then we better get started,” the Doctor yelled back. He looked around, when he wasn’t concentrating on the height, there was actually a magnificent view from up here, unobstructed by trees or buildings, suspended in midair with a cold breeze ruffling his jacket, he could see in every direction, a panoramic view of the whole area; complex, trees, ferns, crashed transport, the surrounding bowl. He grinned, suddenly feeling free, looking forward to the high swing and release, like a kid on a swingset. “It’ll be fun!”
“Is he really that mad?” he heard Erik whisper over his shoulder to Rory.
“Yes.”
The Doctor grinned. “On three!” he yelled back, positioning himself in front of the load rope, feet on either side of the ropes holding up the boulder, hands gripping the upright rope behind him with both hands.
He heard them all inhale at once. “One.” Ropes creaked, he could hear knives swishing out of sheathes. “Two!” The whole world stood still, except for the slight twist of the boulder underneath him. “THREE!” He braced himself. Knives slashed. And suddenly he was soaring.
G-force and wind whipped his hair back behind him and stung his eyes, his cheeks flattened and flapped as the load line pressed into his spine.
“Whoooohooooo!” He could no more hold back that primal scream than he could stop the huge grin that plastered over his face.
His stomach tingled and dropped as the stone plummeted down and swung powerfully forward, building momentum, the black glistening onion dome rushed toward him, he tensed, he hoped he’d calculated the trajectory right, or he was about to get bodyslammed into a solid ton of black glass.
The boulder tipped up at the end of its rope, he crouched and bent his knees. The lower half of the boulder crashed into the top of the tower.
Instantly he was airborne, shattered chunks of black glass exploding all around him. He rammed his hands forward, his chute deployed, jolting him. He swung down, and aimed for the ferns. A loud CRACK sounded behind him as the tower broke, and a chunk of black glass whistled past, slicing a gash in his chute. He dropped. He overshot the ferns, and yowled as he headed for the spiky bushes. He drew in his arms and legs to protect himself and prepared to roll. Something snagged him and whipped him backward and up.
The world flipped. Everything tangled. He fell and bounced, upside down, chute lines and parachute silk wrapped around him. Parachute lines completely encased one leg, cutting off the circulation. Parachute silk blew into his mouth. His leg screamed.
He batted the silk out of his face, digging his way out of the billowing folds as he swung upside down.
He hung from the only sapling in the whole area. He crossed his arms and dangled, hair streaming down, and watched the safari group run toward him, looking as if they were running on the sky.
Zeke swarmed up the small tree and started to work him loose. Darvish didn’t bother, he just unlimbered his ax and chopped down the young tree with two strokes.
The Doctor landed like a Sunsail cocoon. He could hear Bill laughing. Erik grumbled about paperwork. He could feel Amy bouncing with suppressed chortles as she and Rory helped cut him free.
Suddenly there was a huge blast of blinding invisible light. They all stopped, frozen in shock. “I felt that,” Erik said, like a man who’d just been punched in the solarplexus.
The Doctor’s head tingled. “That’s it! The scan. Get me out of here!” He struggled against the chute lines. Eula reached in and yanked his jacket off him; slapped the main buckle and freed him.
The Doctor bolted up and ran like a shot, the others dashing after him.
They all scrambled up the scree and into the hole, ignoring the new landslide of shards and boulders on the far side that was still rumbling down. The far tower fell with a crash that bounced them all on their heels.
They ran down the hallway, new fractures opening up cracks of light into the tunnel, and skidded through the debris into the control room. The brain was flashing faster and brighter than ever.
The Doctor’s head felt like it was full of ants.
The Doctor ran for the control wall and interface. “Zeke!” he yelled. The older Trelwin scrambled after him at a fast lope, knowing what was needed of him.
Behind him, Nelda entered the control room for the first time, and saw the monster.
-----
Time slowed down.
The monster, the bane of her species, the thing that had almost killed her gentle father.
Chitchi looked at it dispassionately. Everyone else piled in behind them, concentrating on the Doctor and Zeke.
Nelda looked up at the giant brain, the beautiful colors, the zip and sizzle of energy, her eyes widened, her lips curled back over her large teeth, hate, she charged forward, arms waving over her head, hands curled like claws, attacking.
And abruptly fell flat on her face on the crystal floor, arms still outstretched over her head.
"Nelda!" Amy yelled. The Doctor’s head whipped around. She and Rory ran over and turned the simian over. Rory laid his head on her white suede chest. "No heartbeat." He knelt and immediately started CPR.
Amy looked around in despair. "We don't have any life support units!"
Eula rushed up, dropping off his backpack and rummaging around in his larger medical kit, he pulled out a mouth funnel and placed it over Nelda's mouth and nose, since Trelwin mouths were too wide, and noses too flat for regular human CPR.
"Hurry up, Doctor, and stop this thing before it claims any more lives," Jute yelled, looking on the creature that had been raised with him as part of his family.
The Doctor dithered, looking back and forth from Nelda to the control wall. His brain was starting to itch.
"Doctor!" Erik barked, startling the Time Lord. "That thing is already processing you, if it closes before you get in, we're all done for."
"Yes, right," the Doctor said distractedly, he abruptly ran down the control wall. "Bring her over here!" He ignored the scratching on his brain that was starting to become painful.
He touched a metallic swirl, and a long slab extruded from the bottom of the wall.
Erik and Darvish didn't waste any time, they ran over, knelt, picked up the simian's body and ran her over to the slab, Eula and Rory right alongside, ready to start CPR and respiration again as soon as they laid her down.
They resumed their ministrations with minimal interruption. The Doctor pulled a long, V shaped cowl out of the wall, and laid it over her head and down her chest and abdomen. He did something to the wall and the cowl started to lift and fall, a faint whooshing sound showing she was breathing. After a moment, her eyes blinked open. Before she could jump up, Zeke and Chitchi were there. A huge melange of scents rolled off them, as they held her shoulders down.
The humans backed away, waving at their faces.
Nelda calmed, and lay back under whatever they were telling her.
The Doctor winced as the scratching became jabs.
"They were bound to have emergency medical equipment of their own, in case of accidents," the Doctor explained, his voice starting to sound labored, and high.
"They've got her," Erik said. "Now, quick, Doctor. Get in there!"
"Yes." The Doctor turned, hands wringing, harried. Trying to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything as the jabs intensified, probed deeper. It was getting harder to think. "Amy, Rory,” his voice squealed a bit, “if the monster gets me before I stop it, get back to the Tardis, the emergency protocols will take you home after five hours."
Amy shook her head, protesting. 'If it turns you off, won't you just regenerate?"
"No,” he blinked, and shook his head against the pain, pressing the heel of his hand against one eyebrow, forcing himself not to block the connection, “that requires residual electrical impulses in the body, this stops that," he flung a hand at the floating brain. He bent over, starting to pant.
"Can't we use this on you?" Rory asked, pointing down at the slab Nelda still lay on.
"That only works on Trelwins." He started to sweat.
"DOCTOR!" Erik bellowed.
"Yes, right.” He gathered his focus. “Wish me luck, Ponds." The Doctor turned and beckoned. "Zeke." He winced and squeaked, squinting his eyes.
The gray Trelwin left his friends and loped over, he crouched and allowed the Doctor to hook him up. The Doctor fumbled a bit, but got him attached. He was laboring now, his head felt like it was on fire. He plopped down on his bum and reached blindly for the Trelwin’s temples.
And then he seemed to stop breathing.
"Doctor!" Amy yelled. Erik grabbed her before she could grab the Doctor. Rory quickly knelt and put his ear to the Time Lord's back. Amy watched, eyes wide...
They all held their breaths.
Rory leaned back and held his hand under the Time Lord's nose. Then he sat back. "His hearts are still beating, and he's breathing, just really shallow."
Rory held his hand in front of Zeke's nose. "Him too, but he seems to be breathing normally."
The Doctor sat, pale as death, sweating, barely breathing. He looked as tense as elastic. His arms apparently held up by main force.
They all stood around, and stared at the Doctor, stared at the brain, trying to see if there were any changes.
Nelda brushed off the cowl, despite Eula's protests. She turned and looked at the brain dispassionately, then deliberately turned her back on it, sitting, watching Zeke and the Doctor. Chitchi ambled over and sat at the intersection of the control room and the sterile white room beyond, watching the giant floating brain, thinking his own thoughts.
Forty minutes in, Rory thought the air of the room was so tight it would crack. He stayed beside the Doctor, keeping an ear cocked for the rhythm of his shallow breathing. He’d carefully loosened the Time Lord’s precious bow tie. He'd have liked to keep a hand on his wrist to check for a pulse, but didn't dare touch him.
Nelda ambled over and took Jute's hand. The laconic, soft-spoken hunter crouched down and hugged her tightly.
Erik drummed his fingers on the butt of his rifle.
Brilliant colors flashed around them as the brain zapped and sizzled behind them, more active than ever. Purple, hot pink, white, neon blue.
Suddenly there was a flash of crystalline dark, a wash of black behind their vision that flew away, leaving shadowy afterimages.
The Doctor slouched, melting bonelessly, and toppled over backwards. His hands falling from Zeke's face. Rory barely caught him before his head cracked down on the crystal floor.
He was pale as wax, blue veins showing in his throat and eyelids, his baby boy lips and eyebrows sitting awkwardly on the mask of his ancient bones. Amy scrambled over, a whining scream reverberating in the back of her throat, loud in the silence, as she threw herself down beside her Raggedy Man.
“Doctor?” she said, almost timidly.
The Doctor opened his eyes and raised a hand to his head. "I have got the worst headache," he commented.
He inhaled deeply and blood and vitality seemed to flow back into him. He sat up and rubbed both hands over his face, and demanded a canteen. Rory gave him his. The Doctor took it and poured the water over his head.
Amy stood up, watching him, unusually subdued.
Pandemonium broke out, sighs of relief, questions, and demands. Erik's voice boomed out over the babble. "Did you do it?"
The Doctor looked up, dripping, he took a swig of the canteen, then handed it back to Rory. He noticed his bow tie dangling undone and retied it.
Erik gritted his teeth at the Time Lord’s delaying tactics. “DOCTOR?!”
The Doctor jumped up and shook his wet hair, spry as a thistle, although Rory saw him wince at the headache.
"All done. The tiger's teeth have been pulled. No more problems here." The Doctor grinned, that particularly infuriating grin that no one trusted.
Zeke blinked his eyes open. The Doctor held down a hand and helped him up.
Everyone stood in silence, shellshocked.
"Is that it?" Rory asked.
"Yep," The Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets with a satisfied air, collar limp and soggy. He bounced lightly on his toes.
Everyone looked at everyone else, not sure what to do with themselves.
The lightning brain still pulsed with complex flashes of activity, throwing multicolored light over the room.
"But," Rory protested, looking between it and the Doctor. "How do we know if it worked?"
"Dunno," the Doctor shrugged lazily. "I guess we'll have to test it." He abruptly turned and slapped Amy.
Amy stared at him, mouth agape, a red handmark showing on her cheek. "Why you, son of a..!" she screamed and leaped at him. "I'll kill you for that!" She slapped him with one clawed hand, he whirled with the force of the slap, ducking and laughing as Rory struggled to restrain her, her hands still slapping at him. "I'm going to wring your neck with that bow tie!" she yelled.
Rory grabbed her around the waist and picked her up, she kicked at the Doctor with her long legs. The Doctor scuttled aside and laughed.
"Well," Erik said, arms crossed over his chest. "I guess it worked."
-----
They gathered everyone back inside the control room, including those who had gone outside on guard. It had been a long day for all of them.
"We may as well sleep here for the night," Erik said in his rumbling voice, addressing the entire group. "The building is safe enough, and easy to protect from predators. We can start back in the morning."
“We can collect the flight recorder, and whatever personal items we can find in the morning from the transport.” Darvish said, rubbing his face. “We can bag up the bodies and take them home, their relatives deserve that much at least.”
“What about the treecat?” Rory asked.
They all turned to stare at him. He shrugged. “I locked it in the hold, we can’t just leave it there to starve.”
“We could tranq it,” Jute suggested in his quiet voice, a hand still on Nelda’s shoulder. "Knock it out for a day or two, then leave the hold door open. That would give us enough head start, and he'd probably wake up hungry enough that finding water and food would be his first priority, rather than following us."
Bill nodded beside him in agreement, and started rummaging in her beltpouches. "I'm pretty sure I've got a few darts that survived."
Suddenly all three Trelwin sat up straight, their eyes darted around, if they’d had fur it would have been bristling.
“What’s wrong with them?” Amy asked.
“Is it the monster?” Pickles asked, staring over at the lightning brain. “Did it not work?”
The floor started to rumble, the vibration crawling up their legs, the crystal cracked all around them, the whole building started shaking, cracking, falling down around them.
“Out! Out, out out!” the Doctor yelled, herding everyone in front of him, the Trelwin led the way, loping like grayhounds.
Everyone ran out, only to emerge into red evening light, to find the whole bowl area cracking, faultlines radiating outward up the slopes, slabs of crystal-imbued ground jutting up from the pressure.
They fell and tumbled down the scree.
“What’s happening!” Amy yelled, over the thunder of the ground cracking open.
The Doctor smacked his forehead with one hand. “Turning off the ‘monster’ program must have destabilized the energy matrix in the underlying crystalline substructure.”
“What?” Erik yelled.
“Earthquake!” the Doctor yelled back.
They jumped as the black glass of the building ruptured and half the wall crashed to the ground behind them, shattering into huge chunks.
The entire crystal structure, and all its towers, started swaying, cracking and popping, grinding itself into fragments. Huge fissures ripped the ground outward, the land heaving and undulating like a nightmare fairground ride.
“RUN!”
They all scrambled, half launched away from the structure by tilting plates of ground.
The area right around the castle cracked and sank, the black building crumbling into a pit. The pit widened, edges crumbling and falling into an abyss, revealing huge veins of crystal in the sheer cliffs it left in its wake.
Everyone scrambled, the land shrieked. Nelda and Chitchi saved hunters from sliding backward into the chasm, their long arms snagging them and throwing them farther up the sudden incline.
The land crumbled behind them, seeming to chase them. The transport tilted with a scream of metal and tumbled into the abyss.
“Run! Run! Run!” the Doctor kept yelling, scrambling and pulling Amy and Rory up after him. Pushing Bill and Erik ahead of him, looking to the side to see Darvish plant his ax in the tilted ground and use it to haul himself upward. Eula using his daggers as pitons beside him.
They ran, scrambling, uphill on what only minutes ago had been level ground. Sand and dust slid downward, making footing treacherous. Plants screamed as roots tore out of the soil, trees toppled, a fluffy ‘Nuisance’ tumbled down into the abyss like a tumbleweed, wailing like a siren.
A giant redwood screamed as its roots tore out of the ground, it twisted on its bole and bore down on them, like a giant brush ready to sweep them away. At the last minute the branches hit above them, and bounced, the entire giant tree arching over them, like a meteor made of branches, limbs reaching toward them. It crashed into the slope below them, jarring them, and slid, screeching, out of sight.
The very land crumbled from under their feet.
They hauled themselves to level ground and ran, hearts pumping, lungs tearing in their chest, as the collapsing ground raced after them like a hungry god.
They saw the Herbivore lying on its own at the edge of the jungle, no apparitions marked the boundary of a fence. They dove into the trees, and ran, batting and pulling at swaying, trembling ferns as shockwaves undulated through the forest ahead of them.
The world was one huge bass crescendo. So loud they couldn’t hear themselves screaming, only feel the vibration of their throats.
Then it stopped.
The trees stopped swaying, the ferns stopped whipping. Suddenly screeching, terrified birds were audible. The world stilled, the occasional loud crash of individual boulders, the slither of sand, an underlying groaning, like the lament of a planet-sized pregnant woman moaned under their feet.
Slowly fading away.
“Is everyone all right?” Darvish yelled in his trollish voice.
Everyone looked around, their ears ringing. They all checked that they were all there. Weapons had been discarded in their scramble. There were a proliferation of cuts and bruises and scrapes, but everyone seemed to be present.
Amy looked up, even Zeke and Nelda and Chitchi had returned to the haven of the trees, now that they weren’t swaying.
“George! Garon!” Eldon suddenly yelled. He ran back the way they’d come, yelling for his brothers. The others followed, hearts leaping back into their throats.
Garon found the boulders his brothers had been sheltering under. The small twisted tree lay on its side, the boulders had shifted, there was no cave, no crevice, only a solid pile of collapsed stone.
“NO!” Eldon screamed. He ran toward the stones. The others ran with him, Amy scanned the ground for blood.
“Here!” a voice yelled out of the ferns.
Garon stood up, streaked with dirt, with stone chips in his hair. “We’re over here!”
Eldon ran and grabbed his brother. The two clasped tightly to each other, shaking, tears streaming down their cheeks.
“Where’s George?”
“Here,” Garon waved down at the ferns beside him. “I had to drag him out when the ground started shaking.” The twins knelt down to check on their triplet.
Everyone else stood and stared.
Where the line of the fence had stood was now the edge of a vast chasm. It looked like the caldera of a volcano. A perfectly circular subsidence that came right up to the edge of the fence and stopped.
For the first time in days they could see sky. The setting sun hung in the distance, a disc of brilliant tangerine, throwing its bloody light over the scene.
Crystal shards glinted among the stones, trees poked out of the landslide at drunken angles. There, a giant deer limped its way slowly upward across huge broken chunks of land.
“Well,” Darvish leaned on his ax, “I’d say the monster is now definitely dead.”
“It’s a shame,” the Doctor said quietly, staring down into the devastation with a melancholy expression.
Everyone else turned to stare at him.
He looked back. “What?” He waved a hand at the rubble. “That was the last of a once mighty and amazing civilization.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “One less Wonder in the universe.”
“Yes, well, not to be blunt, Doctor. But good riddance,” Erik said. He hefted his gun that he had somehow managed to keep hold of. “This world has dangers enough.”
The Doctor looked up into the trees. The Trelwins stared out over the sinkhole with unfathomable eyes. Then they turned their backs on it and swung away.
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