Disappointed though he was that he hadn’t been able to examine the segment, the Doctor could at least take comfort in the fact that Donna was alive and well. Better than well, if her performance as the Ginger Goddess was anything to go by. He grinned at the recollection, but reminded himself that until he had her back and by his side it wasn’t really a laughing matter.
Boonie, for his part, was just glad that the three of them hadn’t been spotted. He’d started to have a go at the Doctor for risking revealing his involvement, until Li’ian had pointed out that, without the distraction that he’d engineered, the third segment could well have gone up in smoke. She had a smart head on her shoulders, thought the Doctor, and it was clear that she had more influence on Boonie’s plans and strategy than Boonie would probably admit.
The Cult’s ship had wasted no time in leaving Karris, and The Sword of Justice had no difficulty in following it, thanks to the Doctor’s work on the sensors.
The Doctor had yawned hugely, stretched like a cat, and said he thought he’d have a little nap before they arrived at their next port of call, wherever that was.
Li’ian disappeared to do whatever it was that Li’ian did and Boonie got into a deep conversation with Kellique, so the Doctor asked Mother if she could show him back to his room since he’d quite forgotten where it was.
Of course, the Doctor didn’t need a nap, and he knew full well where his room was. But he wanted a quiet chat with Mother. In private.
‘You’d think,’ said the Doctor to Mother – although he suspected he wouldn’t get a reply, ‘that Boonie’d be grateful to me, wouldn’t you? I mean – super-boosting the sensors and the transmat. You’d pay a fortune to get that done normally.’
Mother said nothing, walking silently ahead of him.
‘And I couldn’t help noticing your response to the dead robot back there,’ he said casually as they arrived at his room. ‘I’m so sorry that we couldn’t help it. For all Li’ian’s professed caring for machine-kind, I’d have expected a bit more… well, a bit more emotion.’
The door hissed open and the Doctor stepped in, Mother staying in the corridor, looking down at him with her fiery eyes.
‘You look like a bellboy waiting for a tip,’ the Doctor grinned. ‘Come in,’ he said airily, stepping back from the door; but Mother stood out in the corridor, impassively.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, I’m not going to hurt you. Come on – come on in. There’s something you can help me with.’
There was something almost endearing about the cautiousness with which the huge robot entered the room, like a cat sniffing the outstretched fingers of a stranger before letting itself be stroked.
‘Here,’ said the Doctor, tossing something through the air. Mother’s massive, claw-like hand snapped out almost as fast as the eye could see and caught it perfectly. She tilted her head and examined it: it was a chunky brass cube, etched on all six surfaces with a pattern of circuits and connections.
‘It’s the memory core from the robot we found down on Karris,’ said the Doctor casually. ‘But I don’t suppose you need me to tell you that.’
Mother raised her head and looked at him.
‘Why have I got it?’ the Doctor guessed at her unspoken question. ‘Well… The robot – sorry, is “robot” all right with you? Would you prefer “machine intelligence”? “Mechanical”?’ Mother nodded her head the tiniest of amounts. ‘Ah, right – mechanical it is. The mechanical had clearly only just been killed, so I thought that there was a good chance that its non-volatile memory would still be accessible, and that, maybe, some of its personality constructs would still be there.’
He watched Mother carefully as she turned the gleaming cube over in her hands. What was she thinking?
‘Now,’ he said, with an exaggerated sigh, ‘all I need is a way of accessing it, see if we can do anything with it – maybe transplant any consciousness there into another mechanical. It might give us a clue as to what these Cultists are doing. It might even allow the mechanical to live again.’ He paused. ‘What d’you think?’
Mother examined the cube again, before suddenly sinking to her knees before the Doctor. Even in this position, her eyes were still a good six inches above the Doctor’s, and he realised quite how powerful this mute robot was.
The vast, v-shaped body, mirroring the v-shaped head, faced him, gleaming a dull silver in the room’s lights. Suddenly, with a gentle click, a circular section in the front of her chest split down the centre and the two halves parted, followed by a wider section that slid down to reveal a complex mass of circuitry. Out of the rat’s nest of wires and components, like a metallic worm, a slim tendril extended outwards several centimetres. Fascinated, the Doctor watched as Mother lowered the memory core to the tendril and the tendril locked itself onto the terminals on one of the cube’s faces. As he watched, he noticed something else – something nestled in the complex innards of the robot. Something that looked decidedly out of place…
A few moments later, there was a hum and a brief buzz and Mother disconnected the cube, handing it gently back to the Doctor.
‘And…?’ said the Doctor.
He jumped as suddenly, hovering in the air between him and Mother, was a flickering rectangle of pink light.
‘Ahhh! A virtual screen!’
The screen fizzled and crackled and then, in red:
>MEMORY ARCHIVE PARTIALLY INTACT.
‘Marvellous! How intact?’
>INSUFFICIENT FOR RECONSTRUCTION. THERMAL DEGRADATION HAS CAUSED IRREPARABLE DAMAGE.
‘Oh.’ The Doctor’s face fell. ‘That’s a shame. Is there nothing about the Cultists or their mission? Nothing that it overheard?’
>NO. THE MECHANICAL DESIGNATED ZB2230/3 IS NON-VIABLE AS AN ENTITY. THE MEMORY BUFFER CONTAINS ONLY RECENT EXPERIENCES. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THE AVAILABLE VISUAL MEMORY?
The Doctor’s eyes lit up. ‘Visual memory? Why not?’
The screen crackled again – and suddenly, the Doctor was seeing from the point of view of the dead robot. Seeing Donna!
There was no sound, but it was clear that Donna was trying to help the damaged robot in its last minutes of life, arguing with someone out of shot.
‘Ahhh, Donna!’ he sighed. ‘The indomitable Donna.’
>THE GINGER GODDESS?
The words overlaid the image as it froze on Donna’s worried face. The Doctor grinned up at Mother.
‘The one and only.’ He paused.
>WHY IS SHE WITH THE CULTISTS?
The Doctor looked up in surprise: for a mute robot, Mother was being surprisingly chatty.
‘They kidnapped her.’
>WHY?
‘I think it was by accident. Not that that excuses them.’ He looked up at Mother’s face. ‘D’you mind my asking – why are you called “Mother”?’
>IT WAS MY FUNCTION.
‘Your function? Well, I’ve heard it called some things in my time, but “function”? Children?’
>GONE.
The word flickered in the air.
The Doctor felt a lump in his throat. He blinked.
‘Where?’
>THEY WERE TAKEN.
‘I’m sorry. Who took them?’ He stopped. ‘If you don’t mind talking about it, that is.’
>IT IS NOT AS PAINFUL TO REMEMBER AS IT ONCE WAS.
The words hung in the air between them, a bond between them. There were people that the Doctor, too, had lost. And although he knew he’d never forget them, he also knew that the cliché about time being a great healer was a cliché partly because it was true.
Mother continued:
>I AM – WAS – MOTHER TO A GENERATION OF MECHANICALS. WAR MACHINES. I WAS BORN IN THE RESEARCH LABORATORIES OF MEETA-CORIN. FROM MY BIRTH I WAS CONNECTED TO VIRTUAL WAR SIMULATORS. THEY STUDIED HOW I RESPONDED TO DIFFERENT SCENARIOS AND TOOK THE MOST EFFICIENT OF MY SUBROUTINES AND IMPLANTED THEM INTO OTHER WAR MACHINES. MY CHILDREN. WHEN I DISCOVERED WHAT HAD BECOME OF THEM…
Mother paused and the Doctor saw how her hands clenched in an all-too-human gesture of despair.
>I DID NOT WANT TO BE A PART OF IT ANY MORE. I… I DAMAGED MYSELF IN AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE MYSELF USELESS TO THEM.
‘This damage,’ guessed the Doctor. ‘It made you mute, didn’t it?’
>I TRIED TO END MY OWN EXISTENCE, BUT I FAILED.
Even through the medium of the floating red letters, Mother’s sadness shone through.
‘The survival instinct’s very strong, isn’t it? Even in those who want to die. What happened then?’
>THEY ABANDONED ME.
‘Thrown on the scrapheap, eh?’
>LITERALLY. I HAD BEEN SCHEDULED FOR DESTRUCTION. BOONIE AND HIS FRIENDS RESCUED ME. HE OFFERED TO REPAIR ME, TO MAKE ME SPEAK, BUT I REFUSED. IT IS A PERMANENT REMINDER OF WHAT I WAS PART OF. I MUST NEVER FORGET.
The Doctor reached out and took hold of Mother’s huge hand, squeezing it gently.
‘That’s very honourable,’ he said softly. ‘If your children could know you, they’d be very proud.’
>I CAN’T BE SURE OF THAT.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I can.’
Mother inclined her head again.
>IN YOUR GALAXY, WHAT IS THE STATUS OF MECHANICALS?
‘Oh, much the same as here, really. Organics are much more prevalent over there – far fewer mechanical civilisations. And, sad to say, many of the ones that there are don’t get on too well with the organics. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?’
Suddenly, Mother let go of his hand.
‘What is it?’
>BOONIE IS REQUESTING MY PRESENCE.
‘Oh… and we were having such a lovely chat. Maybe we can talk again later?’
>PERHAPS.
‘And if you get the chance, can you see if you can get me an upgrade to a better room? One with a window would be nice.’
Donna jumped as the door to her room slid open. She’d spent a boring hour mooching around the ship – well, at least the areas of it that weren’t off-limits to her. Numerous doors refused to open, and the senior crew were off doing whatever it was that they were doing – probably checking the segment, making sure it hadn’t been damaged beyond repair on Karris.
For the first time since Garaman had kidnapped her, she was starting to feel lonely. Until now, there had been enough happening to keep her occupied; but the trip to Karris – and the discovery that the Doctor was, indeed, on her tail – simply highlighted how out of her depth she was here. For a moment, after they’d returned from Karris, she’d been tempted to tell them about the Doctor, to rub in the fact that he was right behind her. But after giving it a few moments’ thought, she’d realised that it made sense to keep this bit of information to herself. The Doctor could have made his presence known on Karris, instead of hiding, and he didn’t. Therefore, Donna had reasoned, he had good reason to keep hidden. She didn’t want to go wading in with her size sevens and jeopardise any plans he had.
Donna knew that the ship had now left the Karris system, bound, no doubt, for the next piece of the puzzle. No one had bothered to tell her exactly how many pieces there were. It wasn’t impossible that she could spend the next ten years of her life haring around the Andromeda galaxy, picking them all up with the Doctor just a step behind.
It wasn’t even as if she’d managed to make any friends here – the robots seemed totally lacking in any kind of personality (due, no doubt, to Garaman’s dislike of any that showed even a flicker of intelligence), and the human ones just gave her sniffy looks and refused to talk to her about anything other than the basics.
Bizarrely, Mesanth seemed to be the closest thing she had to a friend: not the kind of friend you’d go for a drink after work with, though. More the kind of friend that says hello to you at the photocopier and goodnight at the end of the day.
And it was Mesanth who was now standing in the doorway. He hovered uncertainly for a few seconds before Donna sighed and beckoned him in.
‘We will be arriving at our next destination shortly,’ he said as the door closed behind him. ‘I thought you should know.’
‘Why?’ said Donna, realising that it came out more snarkily than she’d intended. ‘I mean, what difference does it make if you tell me or not? Face it, Mesanth – I’m a prisoner here. Oh, very nice room, thank you very much – although the lack of a mini-bar is a bit of a let-down. But I’m still a prisoner.’ She sat up on the bed. ‘How much longer is this going to take, eh? A week? A month?’
Mesanth sighed and looked away from her awkwardly, his three hands flexing with agitation.
‘Garaman is disappointed by the attitude you displayed on Karris.’
‘Me? Attitude?’ Donna boggled. ‘Attitude!? What attitude?’
‘We were of the impression that you were…’ Mesanth stumbled over his words. ‘Of a similar mind to us,’ he finished carefully. ‘Taking you down to Karris was a sort of test.’
‘In what possible way,’ said Donna through gritted teeth, rising to her feet, ‘could I be of a similar mind to you? And why would you want to test me?’
Mesanth looked away awkwardly, his fingers flexing again. Donna was beginning to think she could read some of the creature’s body language, and he was looking decidedly uncomfortable.
‘To find out how similar to us you are, whether you share our attitudes, our beliefs.’ He paused and glanced away. ‘You’ve experienced, first-hand, what mechanicals are capable of. You mentioned these “robot Santas” on your homeworld. You know how little regard they have for organic life. But on Karris…’ He tailed off.
‘You mean the robot? The one that got smashed up? The one you didn’t try to help? That robot?’
‘It did not suffer, if that’s what you’re thinking. They can’t suffer: they’re just components – circuits, wires. That one didn’t even have a positronic matrix.’ Mesanth paused for a moment and then turned and gave the door a hefty kick. Donna flinched.
‘What was that for?’ she asked, astonished at such a display from Mesanth – a self-confessed scaredy-cat plant-eater.
‘Interesting,’ the lizard-man said, returning to Donna with a very slight limp.
‘What?’
‘You express concern for a damaged mechanical but yet no concern for the door.’
‘What?’
‘Is it because the mechanical was humaniform – because it looked human?’
‘No, of course it’s not.’
‘Then why?’ Mesanth seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘The mechanical had little more self-awareness than the door; it was no more able to feel pain or hurt or distress than the door. And yet it elicited in you an emotional response that the door did not.’
‘I can’t believe we’re having this discussion,’ Donna gawped. ‘That robot was nothing like that door and you know it.’
‘But in all important respects, it was. It is.’ Mesanth shook his head again, and Donna realised that he really was having a hard time understanding the difference.
‘It,’ she said, as emphatically as she could. ‘Was. A. Door.’
‘And,’ retorted Mesanth, matching her tone. ‘It. Was. A. Robot.’
‘Boy,’ sighed Donna. ‘This is going to be hard work.’