Iceberg by David Banks ‘Depends on how you define alien,’ the Doctor said simply. ‘They were human once.’ In 2006 the world is about to be overwhelmed by a disaster that might destroy human civilisation: the inversion of the Earth’s magnetic field. Deep in an Antarctic base, the FLIPback team is frantically devising a system to reverse the change in polarity. Above them, the SS Elysium carries its jet-set passengers on the ultimate cruise. On board is Ruby Duvall, a journalist sent to record the FLIPback moment. Instead she finds a man called the Doctor, who is locked out of the strange green box he says is merely a part of his time machine. And she finds old enemies of the Doctor: silver giants at work beneath the ice. Full-length, original novels based on the longest running science-fiction television series of all time, the BBC’s Doctor Who. The New Adventures take the TARDIS into previously unexplored realms of space and time. As an actor, David Banks is best known as the obsessive lawyer Graeme Curtis from Brookside, as well as for his portrayal of the Cyberleader in Doctor Who throughout the 1980’s. Iceberg is his third book; the first, the highly acclaimed Cybermen, might best be described as an insider’s guide to the Cyber race. • Author’s Acknowledgements • 1 Somewhere • 2 Summer in the 70s • 3 Winter ’86 • 4 No Time, No Place • 5 STS, 2006 • 6 Beyond the Rain • 7 No Name, No Blame • 8 Sexual Politics • 9 Over the Rainbow • 10 No Beginning, No End • 11 Skies are Blue • 12 Wake Up! • 13 Attaining Emptiness • 14 Dreams that You Dare to Dream • 15 Where You’ll Find Me • 16 Who? • 17 Suitable for Conversion • 18 Bluebirds Fly • 19 A Spanner in the Works • 20 Lemon Drops • 21 Behind Me • 22 Once in a Lullaby • 23 Why Oh Why Can’t I? To Ruby who will come of age in the year 2006 The events of this story are contemporaneous – if such a word can be used to describe the activities of a Time Lord and his companions – with those of the New Adventure Birthright. Author’s Acknowledgements T S Eliot is quoted on the following page from his poem Four Quartets by kind permission of Faber & Faber. E Y Harburg and Harold Arlen are quoted on page [138] from If I Only Had a Heart, the Tin Man’s song from the MGM film The Wizard of Oz by kind permission of SBK Feist Catalog Inc. William James is quoted on the facing page from his book The Principles of Psychology (Vol 1) by permission of the Cambridge University Press. Jeff Barry and Elle Greenwich are quoted on page [74] from the lyrics of their song Do Wah Diddy Diddy, used by kind permission of Carlin Music Publishing Corporation, Iron Bridge House, 3 Bridge Approach, London NW1 8BD. Andrew Motion is quoted on page [75] from his poem In Broad Daylight and is reprinted by permission of the Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd. Passages from the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, the I Ching and The Passions of the Soul by René Descartes are my adaptations. A note on Cybermen The word cybernetics was coined (from the Greek kivernitis meaning ‘governor’) by Norbert Wiener in 1948. He used it to describe the science of automation which he developed. The cyber -prefix soon became absorbed into the language. The Cybermen were created by Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis in 1966 and first appeared in the Doctor Who television adventure The Tenth Planet. The Cybermen are used in this novel by kind permission of Pedler/Davis estates. Significant, if not always consistent, additions were made to the idea of Cybermen in further Doctor Who adventures over the next two decades, most notably by television writers David Whitaker and Derrick Sherwin (using storylines by Kit Pedler), Robert Holmes (in collaboration with Gerry Davis) and Eric Saward. In 1988 I attempted in my book Cybermen to draw together the disparate elements of the Cyberman mythos under a cohesive historical and conceptual theory. It is on that theory that the Cybermen in this novel are based. ‘People whom the passions move most deeply enjoy life’s sweetest pleasures.’ René Descartes ‘Namelessness is compatible with existence.’ William James ‘This is the use of memory: For liberation… From the future as well as the past’ T S Eliot 1 Somewhere LogOn 22:23 Friday 22 December 2006 File: Story Talk. Talk to Nano. Keep out the probing. Say anything. Tell the story. No one will get to read it. No one will read the file. Unless they do. But they’re reading it now. Reading me. Probing me. Keep out the probing. Talk. Keep talking. Can’t think straight. I trusted him. And he betrayed me. Didn’t he? How could he? How could he go over to them? You’re still with me, Nano. Aren’t you? Taking in my every word. I can see the glow of your monitor light, flashing at every word I speak. Every whisper. I’m surprised they didn’t take you from me. They will. When they return. They’ll take you apart, Nano. Destroy your software. Recycle you. Then they will take me apart. They’ve got him. They’ll have you. They’ll take away everything. Sooner or later. When they return. Mustn’t think of that. Talk. Keep talking. Tell the story of what’s been going on. Perhaps I can hide you somewhere, Nano. When they take me away. Someone might find you. Sometime. Buried in the ice. A million years from now. If I don’t get out of here. As me. This is Ruby Sara Duvall. Sunday Seeker correspondent. Somewhere under the Antarctic. In a bit of a tight corner. 2 Summer in the 70s It fell on her skin like a drop of blood. Jacqui thought at first it was rain. She glanced at her hand. A small red bug sat motionless on her flesh. From nowhere, from out of the sky, it had chosen the back of her hand as a landing strip. She felt privileged. She was a student of natural history. She had a professional interest. On the café table her textbook was open at insect morphology. She had been taking notes when it landed. Enough of books, she would examine the real thing. She put down her pen. Inside the café, tinny music blared out from a small transistor radio, a product of International Electromatics. IE merchandise was everywhere these days, it seemed. The music seeped through the open door of the café and out to the paved-over street called St Paul’s Churchyard, where she sat in the shadow of the cathedral dome. From a hoarding overlooking St Paul’s, a giant face smiled down, one eyebrow raised: Tobias Vaughn, IE’s managing director. Underneath the picture a caption read: UNIFORMITY. DUPLICATION. IE. THE SECRET OF SUCCESS. Jacqui had got up at an insanely early hour to revise. The Turkish café owner had been flabbergasted to see her. She looked at her IE wristwatch. It was still only half past eight. She had been at it for an hour. She deserved a little break. She was grateful to that bug. She lifted her hand and examined the creature. As she classified the insect she made herself think in English, not in her native French. Morphology? Well, it was obviously a flying beetle. Of what class? Coleopterous. Of the family Coccinellidae. She was pleased with herself. Perhaps this afternoon’s exam would not be quite the disaster she expected. Next, topography. The evolutionary ancestors of this bug had once had two sets of wings. In the relentless pursuit of efficiency the front pair of wings had been converted to sheaths of shiny chitin. Red armour-plating to protect the delicate, functional wings that were folded underneath. Against her dark skin the exo-shell glowed like ruby. There were several black spots on the casing. She counted, in English: seven. It looked like some beautiful African bead the traders sold in the local markets near her Algerian home. When she was little she loved stringing such beads together to make a necklace. But this was living jewellery. She imagined a necklace of ruby bugs. She had been fascinated, and a little repelled, to learn that insects wore their skeletons on the outside of their bodies. But that is how they had evolved. That is how they survived. They were the ultimate survivors. They would thrive on radiation that would finish the human race. A nuclear accident, so likely in this Cold War climate, a nervous finger on a button, a simple misreading of a radar blip, and the insects would take over in the radioactive ruins. The tiny creature was on the move over her dark skin – a miniature tank on a mud-flat battlefield, the seven black spots a poor attempt at camouflage. A thought occurred to her. Perhaps this very bug would be the progenitor of some brave new world that had no people in it. She shivered. ‘Who’s the lucky one, then, love?’ Jacqui looked up at Thomas. The café owner was a silhouette against the already brilliant sky. His Turkish-Cockney no longer sounded bizarre to her. Since those difficult weeks last October, when she had newly arrived at the London college, he had provided coffees, and a great deal of comfort, too. He began to clear her table. The breakfast rush would soon be on. ‘Lucky? Why do you say lucky?’ Her English was fluent but its sound was softened by her French-Algerian accent. Thomas smiled down at her. ‘Well, that’s what it is, innit? To have one of them things land on you. I’ve seen lots of them already this year. It’s the heat that brings them out.’ He wiped the plastic tablecloth. She lifted up her books with her unbugged hand. ‘You mustn’t shake it off though, nor nuffink. You’ve got to wait till it flies off of its own an’ all.’ ‘We have these bugs in Algeria,’ said Jacqui, studying the beetle once again. ‘But there they are much larger. What do the English call them?’ ‘Ladybird, innit?’ he exclaimed, incredulous at her ignorance. His eyes glinted. ‘What, you got the giant versions in Africa, is it? Won’t catch me going down there, then.’ Jacqui smiled. A punk walked by, an IE radio held like a high-tech handbag close to her fish-net thighs. The pulsing music faded into traffic noise as she turned the corner and passed from sight. Somewhere, Jacqui could hear a distant hum. For an instant she imagined a thousand insects, flying in formation, buzzing. She blinked up into the cloudless sky. ‘Here, this is what you do,’ said Thomas. He brought his mouth close to Jacqui’s hand. ‘Ladybird, ladybird,’ he growled, ‘fly away home. Your house is on fire and the children have gone.’ He straightened and grinned at her, flashing a row of yellow teeth. Gold glinted in the sun. ‘You not having breakfast, then? Can’t do your study on an empty tummy, is it? Not wiv exams coming up.’ The thought of the exam made her queasy. ‘Just another coffee, please.’ ‘You’ll have coffee coming out of your ears,’ he quipped as he went inside to see to his other customers. The IE radio played a maudlin pop tune. The words mingled weakly with the sounds of the street: Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday. Jacqui looked at her hand again. The ladybird had flown. She sat back contentedly. The sun beat down on her from above the dome of St Paul’s. She enjoyed the feel of it on her face. It was going to be another hot day. No rain for weeks. Across the street a few early tourists were lining up for photographs. The cathedral steps were dry and dusty, just like the steps of the local church in her home town of Philippeville. She closed her eyes and listened to the street sounds: the footsteps of the passers-by; the excited babble of the tourists; the drone of the traffic. The buzzing was closer now, or louder. Not an unpleasant sound. London felt like home. She would stay here. She would pass her exams and become a lecturer and meet a nice man and settle down and have children and live happily ever after. In London. She was feeling warm and comfortable. Sleep was trying to pull her under. She had got up too early. She felt her resistance going. She was in a street called St Paul’s Churchyard, when she should be asleep in bed. St Paul’s Churchyard. The name expanded in her mind, gave way to horrid images. Decayed bodies stacked under slabs of pavement. Eyeless zombies walking stiffly through the crypt. A shadow fell across her face. She opened her eyes with a start. Thomas was placing a steaming cup of coffee on her table. He stifled a yawn. She saw a tourist, sitting on the cathedral steps, keel over and stretch out as if to sleep. Another, ascending the steps, dropped as if exhausted. The buzzing filled her ears. Was the transistor radio on the blink? Tobias Vaughn smiled down from the giant hoarding. He gazed at her with a cold, ironic eye. It was the last thing Jacqui saw before she fell into a kind of sleep. Her chin dropped down onto her chest. Her eyes stayed open, unseeing. Nothing moved in St Paul’s Churchyard. Nothing moved in London. Silence settled over the city like a shroud. She did not hear the clatter of the heavy manhole cover as it was flung aside, yielding to some upward force. She did not see the eyeless zombies marching down the steps of the cathedral, their gleaming metal surfaces glinting in the sun. She slept. While somewhere behind the moon a spacecraft watched and waited… CO-ORDINATOR NETWORK NODE. 1 EARTHTIME: 0834 All areas now covered by our transmissions. All humans under our control. Human agent Tobias Vaughn to prepare communications network. Human agent to transmit radio beam. Transporter ship to lock-on. Invasion vehicles to be guided to Earth. Human agent informed invasion to continue under his direction. THIS IS FOR CO-OPERATION PURPOSES ONLY. STATEMENT OF LOGICAL EXPEDIENCE, NOT FACT. Invasion continues at all times under central network control. EARTHTIME: 0846 Conditions suitable for immediate invasion. RE-PRIORITIZE. Invasion fleet to arrive in two waves. Phase One. Activate first invasion fleet. IMMEDIATE. Phase Two. Detach vehicles from transporter ship. Phase Three. First invasion fleet assumes formation pattern. Await transmission of radio beam from Earth. Phase Four. Lock-on beam. Proceed to Earth invasion. END RE-PRIORITIZE EARTHTIME: 1015 ALERT. First invasion fleet exposed to danger. Earth missile detected. Correction. Missiles. Five. Insufficient on present calculations. No serious depletion of initial wave will result. CORRECTION. Missile arrangement calculated as hostile. Cumulative chained event predicted. Event horizon to encompass entire first fleet. Fleet locked-on to beam. Alternative avoidance actions unavailable. NO EVASION POSSIBLE. WE HAVE BEEN BETRAYED. EARTHTIME: 1017 Event horizon as predicted. Data checked and confirmed. Entire first invasion fleet destroyed. Seeking cause of failure of invasion mission. Cause of failure attributed to human agent Tobias Vaughn. He betrayed us. He is of no further use to us. He will be eliminated. RE-PRIORITIZE. Destruction of life on Earth now necessary. Every living being. Forces already deployed will be sacrificed. Human opposition is useless. END RE-PRIORITIZE We will survive. We will surv– >>EARTHBASED CO-ORDINATOR NODE ATTACKED. 1 ASSUMED DESTROYED. RELOCATE TO NODE. 2 RESUME NETWORK CONTROL.<< CO-ORDINATOR NETWORK NODE 2 RELOCATED AT TRANSPORTER SHIP. EARTHTIME: 1018 Network control resumed. Deployment of bomb to proceed. Prepare Megatron bomb. EARTHTIME: 1102 Projectile launched from within Earth Eastern Bloc. Moon trajectory calculated. Radiation detected. Probability of nuclear warhead 92%. Presume hostile. Evasive action necessary and possible. Radio transmitter beam still operational. Transporter ship to lock-on. Approach to within 50,000 miles of Earth. Megatron bomb to be deployed. EARTHTIME: 1417 Evasion tactics successful. Transporter standing off at 50,000 miles. Detach Megatron bomb. EARTHTIME: 1419 ALERT. Interruption of Earth radio transmitter beam. Transmitter presumed attacked and destroyed. ALERT. Hostile missile approaching megatron bomb. Bomb destroyed. RE-PRIORITIZE. Proceed with back-up plan. Activate second wave of invasion vehicles. Transporter ship to enter Earth atmosphere. END RE-PRIORITIZE EARTHTIME: 1427 ALERT. EMERGENCY. ALERT. Trajectory of hostile Moon vehicle realigned. Recalculating course of hostile Moon vehicle. Collision with transporter ship predicted. Three minutes thirty-five seconds to impact. ADOPTING EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. Detach all invasion vehicles. IMMEDIATE. We will survive. We will survive. EARTHTIME: 1430 All vehicles detached. Zero minutes twenty-eight to impact. Impact explosion predicted. Result: Forcible dispersion of all vehicles. Damage will be sustained. Damage probability 65–75%. YOU WILL SURVIVE. Dispersal random. Final destinations unknown. YOU WILL SURVIVE. YOU WILL PROLIFERATE. Zero minutes thirteen to impact. DISENGAGING NETWORK CONTROL. Activate vehicle co-ordinator nodes. Assume autonomous control of individual units. Zero minutes five to impact. DISENGAGE NETWORK. IMMEDIATE. WE WILL SURVIVE. WE – White. Jacqui was dreaming of white. At the edge of her vision there was something solid and dark. Everything was blurred. She tried to focus. She blinked. The white was shiny and patterned. She blinked again. She was awake. She had a headache. She was staring at the plastic tablecloth. In front of her was the cup of coffee Thomas had brought a minute ago. Her lips were dry. She reached for the coffee and sipped. Something cold and slimy touched her lips. She retched. A thick layer of congealed milk dribbled down her chin. The coffee was tepid. And hours old. She glanced at her watch. Two thirty-five. She’d been asleep for hours. Her exam was at three. She scrambled for her bag, left some money on the table, and ran off in the direction of the college. She might just make it. Through the window of his café, Thomas saw her go. He didn’t think much of it. She wasn’t the sort to do a runner. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t feeling well. He had a blinding headache. He worked too hard. He ought to give himself a break. He couldn’t think where the past few hours had gone. CO-ORDINATOR NODE . 38 DISENGAGED FROM NETWORK. EARTHTIME: 1514 – WILL SURVIVE. WE WILL SURVIVE. Autonomous co-ordinator control established. Located at Node . 38 Post-event assessment: Explosion has propelled us in direction of Earth. Damage: Minimal damage sustained. WE WILL SURVIVE. Data on other units: No contact currently established with other units. Many destroyed. Others propelled into deep space. Destinations non-computable with present data. We are being pulled into Earth atmosphere. Utilizing propulsion drive to control acceleration. Crash landing predicted. Polar region. WE WILL SURVIVE. WE WILL PROLIFERATE. 3 Winter ’86 That bloody bug was still there. Philip Duvall ripped off his thick-lensed spectacles and rubbed hard at his eyes, trying to get his brain round the neural network he had designed. He stared at the green blur in front of him, the lines of instructions displayed on the VDU. The algorithm was becoming hideously complex. His brain felt swollen inside his skull. He looked around. The open-plan office was quiet. Everyone had gone. The lines of desks, each with their computer, merged into the gloom. One or two computers here and there remained alert, chuntering to themselves, sorting data, taking messages, conversing endlessly with other machines over the phone lines. Philip stretched and took his first deep breath of the day. There was a clatter at the far end of the room. He squinted into the darkness. The office cleaner was doing her rounds. It must be late. He closed his eyes. Tried to take stock. Rubbed his temples where he could feel his thoughts, clotted and clumped, in their own neural pathways. The burgeoning program was in his head as well as in the computer in front of him. He had convinced his boss it was worth the company’s time and