Doctor Who - New Adventures - 33 - Parasite by Jim Mortimore

Author:Jim Mortimore
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780426204251
Publisher: London Bridge
Published: 1994-12-14T08:00:00+00:00

‘What –’ Bernice got no further before she became aware of a commotion from outside. Bearing in mind how large the tent was the commotion must have been fairly substantial. Then the tent lurched around her. She became aware that far away across the rim the material was bulging inwards, stretching. Before she could question the monkeys or think any further than the obvious word collision, the tent split open with a sharp tearing sound and a jagged piece of rock drifted through.

At once the monkeys were on the move. As one they swarmed through the tent. Elenchus and the old monkey grabbed Bernice and Midnight, towing them from the tent.

Outside, Bernice shielded her eyes from the brighter light. The building had drifted to the very edge of the city. The interior of the first chamber lay before them, the ocean, the rim forests, all strobing with colour, but partially hidden from view, their colours muted not by distance but by wind-blown rain.

The wind was up, tearing around the buildings, whipping a mess of loose trash into the air, bits of cloth, sticks, the odd lump of earth. The sky was full of moisture, rain which never fell but clung instead to the sides of the 120

buildings, filling the space between and beyond with a stormy fog through which drifted the shadows of denser particles: stones, tree branches, the odd monkey torn loose from its perch.

A chaotic mess for which Elenchus had a name. ‘There is a storm,’ he called above the wind. ‘We have to help move the city.’

‘Storm? It’s a ruddy cyclone!’ Bernice grabbed hold of Elenchus as he began to move through the storm of debris being blown into the outskirts of the city.

‘And how are we going to move the city?’

‘We must help unfurl the sails. Then the wind will do the work for us.’

Bernice nodded thoughtfully.

A hundred metres away a jagged rock

punched through a medium-sized tent. Screams and the sound of tearing cloth and flesh came from inside the tent as the rock ripped free and flung itself deeper into the city.

She looked around for Midnight but he had vanished into the chaos.

Screeching monkeys flashed by in all directions.

Bernice had a fleeting

glimpse of a clay cooking-pot tumbling past with several dead bodies lashed to it. Soup’s on, she thought hysterically. Hope we make it to the cheese platter.

Then Elenchus swung them around the billowing wreck of the building, through a crowd of monkeys, and there in front of them were the great sails.

Monkeys clung fast to the rigging, pulling at the cables, calm among the chaos. Elenchus broke free from Bernice and hurried to take his place among the riggers. As she stared around, she realized practically every other monkey in sight was busy lashing the buildings to the wooden framework she had seen on her arrival but whose function she had been unable to determine. Now she realized what that function was: a skeleton to which the tents clung like wrinkled flesh, held together by muscles and ligaments made of woven creepers.

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