Godengine by Craig Hinton

Author:Craig Hinton [Hinton, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426204732
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1996-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Aklaar held up his clamps to stop the party, although that wasn’t really necessary: they were approaching a solid rock face which McGuire suspected was another bloody irritating trap. The idea that they could only reach the North Pole with the Greenies’ help was gnawing at him, although not as much as he would have thought. ‘What’s the problem now?’ he groaned. The corridor had no other obvious means of passage, although ‘obvious’ was not a word he associated with Martians – they were too damned secretive for their own good.

The Abbot gestured to the face, a barrier of blurred and molten rock that was obviously artificial. It wasn’t completely unbroken: there was a large plug of the same material set into it. ‘Can any of you identify this?’ The question was obviously aimed at his pilgrims, but it was the Doctor who answered.

‘Utt-keth-Johith, perhaps?’ he said in a bored tone. Not for the first time, McGuire found himself confused by the Doctor; the man possessed an encyclopaedic familiarity of Martian culture, and yet he seemed to view them with almost as much distrust than McGuire did.

Aklaar nodded. ‘Once more, I am impressed by your knowledge, Doctor. For those unfamiliar with the High Tongue, this is a Plague Seal. The city of Sstee-ett-Haspar – the Labyrinth of False Pride – has been cut off to prevent further infection.’

Sstaal stepped forward and examined the molten rock, paying special attention to a small carved glyph in the centre.

‘Our information was correct, Lord Abbot; the city was sealed over five centuries ago,’ he explained hesitantly. ‘An outbreak of sleeping fever.’

‘Oh, great!’ snapped McGuire. ‘Your bloody traps weren’t bad enough, were they? Now we’ve got to expose ourselves to some Greenie disease.’

‘Is it catching?’ asked Carmen.

Aklaar sighed. ‘Sleeping fever is a purely Martian infection, Miss Santacosta. Even if the disease were still virulent, it would pose no threat to your kind. But fever is not the problem.’

‘After five centuries, the disease will have died out completely,’ explained Cleece. ‘Our geneticists chose sleeping fever as the basis for many bacteriological weapons because it burns itself out in less than a decade, leaving the city intact but uninhabited.’

‘Chose?’ Roz was frowning. ‘Are you saying that this city was the target of germ warfare?’

McGuire felt something hard tightening in his stomach at yet another example of the Martian obsession with death and killing. Then the female Greenie stepped forward.

‘Once again, Pilgrim Cleece’s fixation with our race’s military exploits both confuses and confounds,’ explained Esstar. ‘Cleece refers to such events as the bacteriological attack on the Dwellings of Triumphant Majesty, over a hundred thousand years ago. He wishes that he could have been there,’ she added, her tone making it quite clear that she wished he had been there as well. ‘The sleeping fever still occurs naturally, despite the Warrior caste’s attempts to subvert it for their own purposes. This benighted city is an example of the harshness of nature.’

‘You knew it was sealed, then?’ asked McGuire.

‘Naturally,’ replied Aklaar.

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