"There's lots of creatures in the universe who wear the faces of their prey," the Doctor was saying to Kala, "but the Inverine takes the form of the prey that's still to be. The face of a creature that's yet to come into the world, staring down at you as you start to leave it. To make you feel the end of all of your kind, before you end forever in its gaze. I always feared that one day it'd come close to"—
"Hume," said Kala acidly, "by which I mean the Earth. They're the same thing, aren't they? And all those creatures were people. They're the ones that came before us, and humans are the ones who come next."
The Doctor sighed.
"It was all there in the name," she said. "'Human,' said the Doctor, from the ancient 'ghomon'. It meant a creature of the earth, and not of the sky. A dreadful secret hidden in clear view— that humans are really from Earth."
"We were only ever animals," said Kala. "Weren't we? There are animals that make burrows and ones that climb in trees. And sometimes there are animals who build cities and towers, and start to think that they're more than they really are. But all of us die, in the end. It's obvious when you see it from the outside."
"That's not how I see things," said the Doctor. "Having spent so much time on the outside."
"Then perhaps you're a better person than me," said Kala.
She looked over to the oil that now lay still, already beginning to thicken against the cold. It didn't look like anything special or exciting. It just looked dead, in the way her whole world soon would be.
"How does it happen?" she asked. "How do my people end?"
"Oh, for no very good reason. Someone somewhere did something very stupid, and everything spiralled out of control. Sometimes death just happens to people, doesn't it? No reason it can't be the same for a civilisation."
"But"— said Kala, and trailed off.
"You're right," she said. "I thought it'd be… like a movie, or something. But it wouldn't have to be, would it? Even the end of everything can be dull."
"It's nothing like the end of everything," said the Doctor.
Kala gave her an odd look.
"You said that with authority," she said. "Like you're someone who actually knows. Who are you, then? Who are you really?"
The woman in front of her sighed, and decided it was time.
"I call myself the Doctor," she said. "That bit wasn't a lie. But I'm not a television producer. I'm a fighter, and the things I fight are often very odd indeed. Like the Inverine, or these alien hairdryers—"
"What are hairdryers?" said Kala.
"Oh! Well, when humans get… their fur wet, on the top of their heads. They put that right with a hairdryer. But these ones, they were aliens. So."
"That is odd," said Kala, frowning. Is there anything like that who's attacking us?"
"I wouldn't know. I mostly spend my time some millions of years in the future and, um. At other points that are also some millions of years in the future. But there's a few hundred years each way, so it seems like a bit of a range."
"Sounds constraining," said Kala.
"The people who live there never really notice," said the Doctor.
"Those people are yours, aren't they?" said Kala to Chris. "Humans. You'll get saved again and again. But your friend's never going to save us."
"I can't save everyone," the Doctor said. "I had to make a choice."
"And would you have made the same one if you'd looked like me instead of her?"
"Yes. Though I know that you'll never believe it."
"Oh, I'll believe it if you like," said Kala. "I was wrong about everything anyway. Maybe the world's got so twisted even someone like you can be trusted."
"Trust won't be enough," said the Doctor. "I have a question for you. And it's an awful one, but I have to ask it anyway."
"Go on."
"Kala… do you still want to live?"
"What?"
"I worried that if you found out the truth about your world then you wouldn't want to be part of it anymore. I need to know whether I was right."
The world did seem different now, it was true. Kala realised she'd seen herself at the centre of everything, without even noticing that was true. Even as a scientist she'd never fully understood that the world wasn't built for her. But she knew it now deep in her bones, and it was a feeling she knew she'd not forget.
But it wasn't the only feeling that was in her now, as ancient chemicals in her brain rushed through her all warm and afraid. She was alert and very aware, and everything seemed bright and interesting even though it was still grey and dull.
The cavern they were in was totally dead, and there was a way in which that wasn't true at all. A cavern wasn't anything if there was nobody there to see it; it was her mind that created the darkness and the space. The emptiness of the cave wasn't around her, but in her; it was only anything at all because there were eyes to see. Whatever she did, it would not be long before her eyes closed for good. But for now the deadness of the cave was pounding in her brain, and right now she was alive, she was alive, she was alive.
"Of course I want to live," she said. "If I have to lose everything, I want to cling to it much harder. I don't want to throw it away."
"Great!" the Doctor said with a grin. "I hoped you'd say that. You'll have a brilliant life back home with your friends and family, as long as. Well."
"As long as I get past the Inverine?"
"It's not interested in us. It can't be. Chris is from the future, I'm from somewhere really complicated. It feeds on whoever's from now. It's you who'll have to fight it, I'm afraid."
Kala looked at her like she would at a stupid child. "I know when a fight's beyond me," she said. "If all the oil here's made up of the people it's killed, then the Inverine's eaten a lot of astronauts by now. I'm no different to them; that's the whole point that it's making. There isn't any way that I'll survive."
"That doesn't have to be true," said the Doctor. "I can't be the one who fights it, but that doesn't mean I can't be any help."
She took a stick out of a pocket and grinned as she gave it to Kala.
"I can give you this," she said.
"You can give me a stick," said Kala flatly.
"It's a lot more than just a stick! It's a baton. In the water symphonies of the Aquopera they use these to make a whole new form of art. Shaping liquid into living sculptures to do whatever their conductor demands. They're a peaceful lot, the people who made this invention. But there's no reason you couldn't use it to do something incredibly violent."
"Use the oil," said Chris. "Make oil people, just like the Inverine does. Fight him in the same way that he's tried to fight all of you."
"Doesn't have to be people," said the Doctor. "The only limit's your imagination. And your fear, of course. That's always what limits us most of all."
"I'm terrified," said Kala, both quiet and sincere.
"But you need to be. The Inverine is primal; it feeds on what's deep inside you. Emotions that live far in the back of the brain, that're maybe even older than a brain could be. Everyone who died here felt that fear, whatever they looked like and whatever they were. The baton's not about fighting that. It's owning it, leaning into it. It's all about making it yours."
Kala looked skeptical, but still turned around to the oil. Holding the baton was strange, like she already knew how to use it. It felt natural as moving her arm to shape the oil in front of her, into the bald figure of the Inverine when it wore its fat human face. Kala stared at its glistening grin until revulsion overtook her, then with a snarl made the sculpture explode into oil. Chris winced as the freezing liquid slapped over her spacesuit, its cow patten now even more splotched with black.
"Stop that!" she cried. "It's not me that you're trying to hurt."
"And it won't hurt the Inverine," said the Doctor. "You said it yourself, Kala; it's powerful. You need to come up with a weapon that conquers despair."
Kala gave a hollow laugh. "Despair's all I have right now. Everything I've been fighting for will fail."
"Well, you know," said the Doctor uselessly. "I didn't say it would be easy."
"And you know," she added, as if it had just occurred to her, "that both me and Chris are here. That we'll do what we can, whatever that is. Because neither of us want you to die."
Kala looked at them. "I've been pretty rotten to you both. Nothing's stopping you running away."
"You've been horrible," said Chris. "But you don't deserve to die."
"What she said," said the Doctor. "Saving people just when they're nice, well. It's not a very nice thing to do."
"I'm scared," said Kala. "The universe is so huge and I feel so small, and I don't know how I could've ever felt anything else"—
"You're not small at all," said the Doctor. "Not in any of the ways that matter."
Kala gave her a very grateful look.
"Then I'll have to tell him that," she said.
"To the top?" said the Doctor.
"Let's," said Kala. "After so much death, I think it's made me see. How for as long as possible, I want to stay alive."
"Then let's go," said the Doctor, "and leave death behind on this rock."
The three of them left the cave full of oil and endings, all hoping their own ends remained quite a while away.