Doctor Who_ The Deviant Strain Part 5

'So what happened to Valeria is a bit of a shock. The legend comes home to roost.'

'They know it's just a story,' Minin countered. 'They've serviced and repaired the most advanced and dangerous weapons in the world down here. They're living with the remains of them rotting away within sight. They don't really believe in this thing, this monster. They know there's a proper explanation for what's happened. It's just that no one has found it yet.'

The Doctor waited, but Minin seemed to have said his piece and sat down again.

'Is that what they think? Or what you think?' the Doctor wondered. 'And if it's just a story and this is unexpected and unconnected, what's in that file?'

Minin did not reply. Instead he picked up the file, weighed it in his hand and then pa.s.sed it across the desk to the Doctor.

'It's the post*mortem and military police report from when it happened while the base was fully open. A corpse drained of all binding energy and with the bones turned to slush.'

The Doctor opened the file and leafed through the pages gathered inside.

'And also copies of local police records for the twenty years before that,' Minin said.

There were photocopies of handwritten reports and pages from ledgers. A telegram, yellowed and brittle with age.

'Accounts of the original legends. A letter from one of the whalers to his sister in St Petersburg St Petersburg describing a death in 1827. All manner of other reports and descriptions from local records, journals. Even a page of a log from one of the submarines, together with the order of transfer for the captain who was foolish enough to write it.' describing a death in 1827. All manner of other reports and descriptions from local records, journals. Even a page of a log from one of the submarines, together with the order of transfer for the captain who was foolish enough to write it.'

The Doctor held up a single page printed out from a computer file. The printer had been almost out of ink by the look of it. 'And this.' It wasn't a question.

'And that, yes. It was ignored, of course. Like the rest. Sofia Barinska's report from two years ago. From last time it happened.'

Rose's attempts to engage Sofia Barinska in conversation met with little response. The woman's mind was obviously on other things, though whether it was the unexpected arrival of three dozen soldiers together with the Doctor, Jack and Rose or the unexplained attacks on two young people was not clear. Probably a bit of both, Rose decided.

'So, you grew up here?' she tried.

'Here, you are born grown*up,' Sofia replied.

Well, it was a start.

'I guess it's tough.'

This earned a sideways look as the car b.u.mped over the join between two enormous slabs of concrete. The road seemed to have been dumped and left to fend for itself. Gra.s.s was poking through the crumbling surface. There were no visible lines or markings at all.

'You could just leave,' Rose said quietly. She could hear the frustration in her own voice and she didn't even live here.

'I'll catch the next train,' Sofia said, her voice devoid of emotion.

'There's a station?'

'Not any more. The last train left over twenty years ago.'

'Oh. Right... Where are we going?'

Sofia did look at her now, and for longer than Rose thought was probably safe as they b.u.mped across the decaying road surface. 'First to the police station, which is also my house, to check for messages. Then I have to tell Pavel's parents what has happened,' she said. 'After that, even if you don't, I'll need a drink.'

The Doctor read through the autopsy report at a glance. He flicked through the other papers and then handed the file back to Minin.

'Aren't you going to read it all?'

'I have read it all.'

'And?'

'And I think you'd need to exhume one of the bodies and examine it to be sure the cause of death is the same.'

'It sounds the same. Anyway,' Minin went on, putting the file away in a drawer of his desk, 'you can't go digging up old bodies, not without a permit. You'd need permission from Barinska and the next of kin at least. Otherwise it's illegal.'

'And sucking out people's bones and life essence isn't?'

Minin sighed. 'You know what I mean.'

'I know what you mean. Now, where's that microscope?'

Minin sent the Doctor to find Catherine Kornilova. She had her own lab on the other side of the building, with equipment including a powerful electron microscope, Minin a.s.sured him. To get there the Doctor had to take the corridor that ran just inside the outer wall of the large building. Strangely there didn't seem to be any way to cut through the middle.

She was sitting at a workbench tapping away at the keyboard of a laptop computer when the Doctor arrived. He watched her for a moment from the door before stepping into the room. Mid*twenties, dark hair tied back, white lab coat. She was wearing gla.s.ses that had a string attached so they would hang round her neck when she didn't need them. A sensible, practical woman.

'All mod cons,' he observed.

She didn't look up. 'Hardly the latest model, but it serves.' She finished the sentence she was typing, then looked up and smiled. 'What can I do for you, Doctor?'

'Come to beg the use of a microscope.'

'Help yourself.' She nodded across at the equipment set up on a table at the side of the room. 'Again, it's hardly the latest model, but it should do. What do you want it for?'

'Want to look at this.' The Doctor held up the sliver of rock in its gla.s.s tube. 'From one of the standing stones.'

'Granite, with quartz embedded in it.'

'You know that for a fact?'

'Seems likely.' She closed the lid of the laptop and came over to join him at the microscope. 'You need a hand?'

'Thanks.'

'Mind you, I'm a biologist not a geologist.'

'Really?' The Doctor put down his rock sample. 'So, tell me about the monkeys.'

She hesitated only a second, but it was a hesitation nonetheless. 'There are no monkeys.'

'Oh?'

'Never have been.'

'Really? Then why do Boris and the others keep mentioning them?'

'They're teasing Alex. I wish they'd leave him alone. Here, let me do that.'

She took the rock sample and started to prepare a slide, reaching for a scalpel to sc.r.a.pe away a surface layer for examination.

'So what's the big joke?'

'They're just getting at Alex for his pedantry. He's always after them for filling in forms and getting reports submitted on time and in the right format. Well, that's fine by me he's right. If we give those clowns in Moscow any excuse they'll ignore us. But Klebanov and Boris and the villagers who remember how things used to be, they resent Alex even being here. There was even a death apparently. A suicide. So they take the mickey whenever they can, right?'

'Right.' The Doctor watched as she adjusted the controls and an image spluttered into view on a monitor screen a picture of the fragment of rock sample. It looked pitted and cratered like a lunar landscape. 'And the monkeys?'

'Before my time. And Boris's. Apparently Alex found some paperwork for a few live specimens. He went ape, if you'll forgive the expression.' She smiled at her own choice of words.

'An ethical man.'

'Oh, I don't think he cared what happened to the monkeys. He was just annoyed because the paperwork was all done and the money was taken out of the budget, but there were never any monkeys. No delivery. No one even seemed to know who'd sent the order in the first place or why.'

'Biological weapons research,' the Doctor said. 'You're a biologist, you can guess why they wanted them.'

'I'm not that sort of biologist,' she snapped. 'I'm researching vaccines and counter*biological agents.'

'Course you are. That's why it's all so secret.'

'That's why it's all so makes.h.i.+ft and amateur,' she replied. 'Anyway, Alex kicked up a fuss about nonexistent monkeys and they've never let him forget it. I think it was the same week that Chedakin died. Maybe that's why.'

The Doctor had turned his attention to the screen and was magnifying the image. 'Yeah, maybe.' There was something odd here, he thought. The impurities in the stone that everyone a.s.sumed were quartz... They didn't look like random strata, more as if they had been deliberately laid into the base stone. 'That remind you of anything?'

Catherine shrugged. 'Not really. I suppose it looks a bit like a printed circuit.'

'That's what I thought. Standing stones that are really silicon chips?' He clicked his tongue and changed the magnification again. 'So, who was Chedakin?'

Rose stayed in the car, cold despite being out of the wind. Sofia had the heater on full, but it didn't seem to take the chill out of the air. They had parked behind a digger a big JCB*type job. It was the first vehicle apart from Sofia's that Rose had seen and, like everything else, it was rusty and old.

She watched the policewoman at the door of the little square house, talking to the man and woman Pavel's parents. It was difficult to watch, but even more difficult to look away. The woman was crying, the man with his arm round her and his own face ashen*grey.

Then Sofia returned, and she drove in silence for a while. 'I'm going to the inn,' she said at last.

'You're right, we need a drink. You need a drink.' Rose struggled for something to say. 'What's the inn called?'

'Doesn't have a name. It's just the inn.'

'Right. It can't be easy, your line of work.'

'Easy? Usually it's boringly easy. But some days...'

'How did they take it?'

'Badly. But we're used to death and hards.h.i.+p out here.' Sofia's eyes were focused on the cracked road stretching ahead. The derelict cranes and gantries at the docks were looming closer, dark against the steel*grey of the sky. 'Vahlen Pavel's father his best friend was Chedakin. So for him it's another loss.'

'What happened to Chedakin?'

'He died,' she said.

The inn was just ahead of them now as they drove along the old quay. It was a square, concrete building distinguished from its neighbours only by the fact that there was light rather than wooden boards in the windows.

Sofia stopped in the middle of the roadway outside the door. Since hers was the only car, she could presumably park wherever she liked. In this case, next to a rusting submarine, its conning tower thrust up from the icy waters beside the quay.

'He shot himself.' The evening was drawing in now. 'He used to say what he really thought, not what he was supposed to think. We found it refres.h.i.+ng. But we kept warning him, everyone did.'

The sudden sound of laughter from the inn as they approached seemed out of place in the dreary, grey desolation.

'What happened?'

Sofia was ahead of Rose and didn't look back. 'He was ordered to Moscow, due to leave the next day. They were sending a helicopter for him. He killed himself rather than face that.'

'But how did they know?' It seemed such a different world where you could be taken away and locked up, or worse, simply for speaking your mind. Rose couldn't imagine herself or the Doctor surviving long in such an environment. And G.o.d help her mum.

'Same way they always knew.' The bitterness and anger were palpable in her voice. 'Alex Minin told them.'

On the other side of the docks, away from the noise of the inn, the water lapped gently and icily against the crumbling quay. The dry dock where the submarines were refitted and their hulls examined for weak spots and corrosion was flooded and useless. One of the subs was lying on its side in the water, having rusted through and toppled over several years before. It was held up only by the dark hulk of the next submarine.

Beyond this, there was a narrow beach of s.h.i.+ngle, then the jutting cliff at the edge of the bay. The sea pounded against the base of the cliff, gradually wearing it away. Eventually it would carve out so much rock that the land would crash down into the sea, pus.h.i.+ng the cliff back towards the stone circle.

Sergeyev had taken Jack to where the rest of his squad were waiting, at the edge of the docks. They were split into teams of three men, each team having a Geiger counter.

'The colonel and the Doctor don't think that it's a radiation leak, so there should be no danger,' Jack said before Sergeyev could speak. Time to a.s.sert his authority. 'But we have to check to eliminate the possibility.'

'There's a lot of background radiation, sir,' one of the soldiers said. He turned on the Geiger counter and it immediately started clicking. 'Not enough to worry about at the moment, but if it gets any higher...'

'How far have you got?' Sergeyev asked him, while glaring at Jack.

'We checked the warehouses on this side of the quay. Also the dry dock, though it is not dry any more.'

'Inside the subs?' Jack asked.

The soldiers shook their heads. There was little enthusiasm at the thought.

'We probably don't need to go inside.' Sergeyev pointed out. 'We can take readings from outside the hull.'

Jack thought about this. 'OK. But anything above the expected background, we check. Right?'

Grudging nods. So Jack repeated, 'Right?'