pSome time after neither of them had said anything, Chris noticed how silent the cavern was. The oil was rippling in a way that made no sound, and Bol was breathing in a way that couldn't be heard. Beyond that, there was nothing— no movement, no life, no excitement./p
pSo much of space and time would be like this, Chris thought, with nothing ever happening at all. She wondered what would happen if the Doctor got stuck in any of those places, and if even she could find a way not to get bored./p
pShe was still lost in her thoughts when they were broken by a noise: the distant sound of two extremely angry voices. As she tried to ignore what they were saying Kala and the Doctor burst through the entrance to the cavern, each looking embarrassed at being caught in so great a rage./p
p"Chris!" said the Doctor, her anger subsiding. "You're unharmed! Told you she would be," she added as Kala scowled./p
p"Of course I am," said Chris, "the oil man hasn't come back."/p
p"Kala here thought Bol might be more of a risk to you, after what that oil person did to their friend. That he'd think you had something to do with it."/p
p"Bol?" said Chris. "We've just been talking."/p
p"It's been interesting," said Bol. "I've been learning so much about Hume."/p
pThe Doctor looked alarmed to hear that, but before she could say anything Kala was shouting at Bol, somehow even angrier than she'd been a few moments before./p
p"Have you forgotten?" she snapped at him. "Drocks is emdead!/em We've got nothing we've come here for and there's a dangerous animal on the loose, and as you know it looks exactly like emthem./em This isn't the Bol I trained with," she said. "It's not like you to be so trusting."/p
p"I've trained enough," Bol said with lead in his voice, "that I know who I'm able to trust."/p
p"You're saying you trust both these people when"—/p
p"I'm not. Chris is an innocent, but you're right not to trust the Doctor. I'd shout at her too, and maybe more."/p
pHe looked over to the Time Lord and spoke like ice./p
p"You're putting your friend in danger," he said to her. "We might eat our children, but what you're doing to her is worse. You must know we're not people you should get on the wrong side of. You're lucky it was me who got left with her. If Kala had, we might've had more than one death here today./p
pChris didn't like how the three of them were talking as if she wasn't there. None of them were human adults – she didn't know how old they even were – but the argument they were having still felt very familiar. She was almost more irritated by it than she was frightened at the talk of them harming her. She'd become used to being in danger, but you never got over being treated like you didn't exist at all./p
pShe tried to tune it all out, to focus on something other than the arguing. When adults argued at home she'd often concentrate on what was happening around her, but that was hard in a totally lifeless place like this./p
pAlthough something emwas/em happening to the lake, she noticed as she flashed her light over to look. There were circular ripples forming in it like someone had dropped a stone, and for a second she wondered if one had splashed in from the cavern roof high up above. But the ripples didn't stop like if something had fallen in— they did the reverse, pulsing faster and faster until the whole of the lake was quivering. The motion made it seem like all of it was alive, and at the centre of the ripples a smile was beginning to rise./p
pem"Look!"/em said Chris, although only the Doctor did, straight into the grin of the Inverine as it rose. When she saw the face it was wearing her own face changed just a bit, and from the expression Chris could tell she was confirming a disaster she'd already expected./p
pThe Inverine wasn't bothering with a rock, not this time. It was floating above the oil in its suit that was just as black, and around it the liquid creatures were once more beginning to rise. Drocks was among them now, Chris could see; just a cast of his body without any spacesuit at all. Seeing him among the animals was terrifying, but much worse than that was
that the Doctor didn't seem slightly surprised./p
pem"What's the matter with you!?"/em laughed a voice from nowhere. em"You look like you've seen a ghost!"/em/p
p"Who was that?" snapped Kala. "Are there more of you? emDoctor,/em" she shouted. "Are there more of you Humans here?"/p
p"Look," said the Doctor weakly. "Please, Kala. You need to look at the Inverine."/p
pChris had gone white, and Bol's expression had gone grey. Despite herself, Kala followed the Doctor's outstretched hand where it was pointing, towards the figure stood straight at the centre of the oil. Its grin was exactly same, but it no longer wore a human face./p
pFrom the middle of the lake, Bol's eyes twinkled on a head that had never been his./p
p"That's me," said Bol. "How can that be emme?/em"/p
pHe never got the chance to hear an answer. Before the Doctor could respond he'd been grabbed by an oil thing frilled like a fern, and all four of them cried out in horror as he was thrown back into the lake. They were shouting at each other as he was handed from one oil creature to another, between tentacles and giant bacteria and something that looked quite like a termite mound. But there was another, higher voice that cut above them, which sounded even more scared than the rest.
pem"They're dead things and living things!"/em it was saying. em"Creatures that are with us and ones from long ago, but all of them come from the Earth. It must've been watching us, Baymiss! It's been watching our planet for a very long time"—/em/p
p"Who's Baymiss?" shouted Kala. "And who's saying that? This isn't a game, Doctor!"/p
pem"Earth's people aren't ones you should mess with!"/em said a voice that matched none of their own./p
p"I'm sorry," said the Doctor very quietly indeed./p
p"Where are they coming from?" said Chris, losing patience with her friend. "Doctor, you emknow/em whose voices they are, don't you?"/p
pThe Doctor didn't even respond. Her screwdriver was out as she tried to save Bol, its whines almost drowning out the voices. But nothing she was doing was having any effect at all./p
p"You really don't know who they are," Kala said dumbstruck to Chris. "Bol's right, isn't he? You've no idea what's going on."/p
p"Listen, Kala!" Bol was screaming as the final oil creature handed him to the Inverine. "They're not here to do us any wrong! They've been trying to protect us. I've been trying to protect emyou/em"—/p
pThey didn't hear the rest of what he had to say. The Inverine held him tight around the chest as it kept on grinning and grinning, its face just the same as Bol's casting a double reflection in his helmet. Bol was gasping as his suit seemed to start to bloat out and expand, and as it did the oil creatures were pulling to the edges of the lake, like they were a crowd in a colosseum watching a warrior win. But the ones that had faces had horror etched into their eyes, and now their lips were moving in time with the voices in the void./p
pem"It was the oil creatures! They've been speaking ever since we've got here"—/em/p
pem"Jan, the things oil are/em people; emthey're not like us, but they're all still/em people"—/p
pem"HOW MANY TIMES HAS THIS HAPPENED!? Get that grin off your face and tell me; how many times have people come here to die?"/em/p
p"No," said Kala. em"NO!/em There aren't… if there'd been people before then we'd emknow/em—/p
pAlmost all of Bol's spacesuit was taut now; blown up like a sausage thick with meat. The gray of the suit was staining black as oil seeped through it and out of it, dripping down from his body to the hungry lake throbbing below. But the lake itself wasn't black anymore: light was flickering across it to show something from millions of years ago. The Doctor knew there was no use fighting this now; there was no hope Kala wouldn't learn the whole truth of her world. All she could do was stand and watch helplessly as the Earthling's hope finally died./p
pThe Inverine was wearing Bol's face in the image, just as it was up above. But it wasn't a reflection the three of them were watching— the Bol in the oil was smiling at an astronaut that looked nothing like themselves. Her spacesuit was the same rough shape – two arms and two legs, – and his face wore the same expression that had pleaded with the Inverine so many times. But that face was duck-billed and covered in pinkish scales, and as Kala watched his tears start to slick with oil she understood everything that had happened here. That the astronaut in the oil was a member of the species that came before, that Chris was a member of the species that would come next. And as the spacesuit that had once contained Bol exploded into a giant gush of oil, as the Inverine's grin flicked back to a human face, Kala stared into its laughing eyes, and knew./p
pIt had been in front of her all along, if she'd been able to see the unthinkable.
Oil only came from living things, so why would it turn up on a small, dead rock? That was the question that living things had asked, over and over through the history of the Earth./p
pAnd the answer they'd got had always been the same:/p
pTheir planet had been around for a very long time. But it had always had people, and none of them ever survived. And close to the end so many of them had come here, and their last thought had been that they'd never reach the stars. The Inverine would show them how their futures would end suddenly and without ceremony, and all the stories that said otherwise had been lies. And as those people had collapsed in despair their bodies were crushed into oil, and there had been so many people on that asteroid that there was ever so much oil there now. Enough to make them think there was a future, and enough to drown them forever when it died./p
pThe Inverine has vanished and all its creatures with it. There was only the smooth black lake, and only death./p
p"It's gone from here," the Doctor said. "What's happened to your friends; it's just the prelude. It wants to feed on your hopelessness, so you can't"—p
pKala turned round at her and just stared, her face blank like an animal's, as if the person inside had just fled./p
p"They were people," she said. "All of them were people, and they came here, and they died."/p
p"Yes. That's the truth of what happened here. I'm sorry," said the Doctor, and she truly was./p
p"She didn't tell me that about either," said Chris./p
p"She was trying to save us," Kala said. "Both me and you."/p
p"From the horror of Hume," said the Doctor. "That one day the sun won't come up in the morning, and suddenly everything stops."/p
pKala didn't respond to her. Her composure had been cracking since she'd learned what the oil was, and now she let it break apart completely. A tiny sob slipped out of her mouth, and she turned to them both apologise for it— but before she did, it had turned into a howl, and she was roaring and screaming like no one could see her at all. She fell to her knees and started punching the firm rock of the ground, like she could bash the world back into shape with despair. She punched and punched until she'd rubbed the gloves of her suit almost raw, then gave a sob even larger than before./p
pKala had been cruel to Chris, contemptuous. She'd hated her for what she was and wasn't, and that meant that Chris hated her too. Yet nobody deserved to be where the Earthling was right now, seeing everything they'd worked and fought for turned to dust./p
pShe knelt down to the astronaut and hugged her tightly, pressing her small body as hard as she could against the cold plastic of the suit. And Kala hugged back and started crying harder, and suddenly trust was all that either had./p
p"You're warm," said Kala. "I'm glad you're warm."/p
pThey were points of heat in a coldness that didn't end./p