by Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk) Rated: U Dr Who is copyright BBC. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- It had been aware of the female humanoid for ages. It seemed centuries? Why should that be? The Dalek Unit put the matter aside. It was of no consequence - priority zero! The fact alone mattered. The woman stepped into the glade, emerging from between the widely spaced trunks of the trees. She saw the Dalek Unit and paused. At last! The enemy had come! "The enemies of the Daleks will come. Be vigilant. When they come - exterminate them!" The unit's faith in the wisdom of the Great Creator was renewed. Until now there had been no requirement for action. But now... It charged up its weapon. The Dalek vocalised, as the orders required. "You are an enemy of the Daleks - you will be exterminated!" The thin, squeaky noise barely trembled the dawn chill air. A merry laugh rose from the girl to meet it, enfolded it almost lovingly, and smothered the sound out of the world. The Unit fired. The vision blurred as the extra energy needed to operate the weapon strained the depleted energy cells. The watch had been long. The Unit had no longer any clear recollection of exactly how long. All was now dim and hazy. Only the Last Command was clear. "Patrol Sector Seven! Exterminate the enemies of the Daleks!" "I obey!" And it had rolled forth into the ruined lands. It would carry out the last command until new orders were given. Or until it failed. It was a good soldier. Hardly was it on station when the colony ceased. Between one microsecond and the next, the Dalek Overmind had ended. The very last thing the Unit took from the data stream was the name of the hated enemy of the Race. "Emergency ... We are under attack ... The Doctor..." And the data stream stopped. The Colony was destroyed. How long ago that was, the Unit now had no idea. Sector Seven then had been a small valley, bare and blasted by the sanitation sweep when the base was established. And now the valley was filled with mighty trees. It could not recall exactly the coming of the trees. It remembered from that time only the observation: Killing ground obscured by vegetation." Much later, when the trees had grown tall, there was no longer any power for the ground effect motors. Unable to patrol, the Unit chose a spot which gave it the best possible sighting range, and settled in to wait. Like all of its kind, it possessed great patience. This it dedicated to keeping the watch. While there was energy in the cells, the Last Command would be carried out. So the Unit kept faith with the vision of the Great Creator. in the beginning, the Unit barely noticed the turning of the seasons - or the greening of the country. But the electronic enhancements finally failed. Then the Unit fell back upon the things the flesh remembered, the rhythms ancient and powerful that ran silent and deep at the core of living things. At first he steadfastly denied the sense of joy that flooded his soul at the greening of the land. But, Slowly, he began to see a beauty in it. It was at this time, he fancied, he first saw the girl - shadowy and indistinct among the trees, watching him with sad eyes. After many seasons, he grew to enjoy the slow climb up his casing of the plants, watching almost eagerly for the first signs of the renewed assault upon his armour, with a yearning that he once used to feel for the approval of the Great Creator. Now, he could barely contain his impatience when the season was late in starting. He longed to feel that powerful stirring of the natural world about him, enfolding him in a tender, green embrace. Eagerly he watched for the flowers, for he knew that soon after they opened and dropped their scents into the air, the fluttering fragile fragments of life would come to sip the nectar from the bright, nodding blossoms. He liked to believe they came just to visit with him; and in time he convinced himself of this. During the cold season, he missed their bright wings, fluttering in the sunlight. He would grow lonely under the vast and empty sky. The planet was at the edge of the Milky Way. During the long winter nights, it turned its face to the Great Black between the island galaxies. The vast empty sky seemed sometimes to seep inside his casing, and keep cold company with him during the endless watch. It whispered to him, words he could not catch, no matter how hard he strained his sensors - words of despair to weaken his resolve. He filled up with desolation. But he held to his duty. One winter a tiny, timid creature, furry and brown, built a nest in his base housing. It curled up and slept the winter away. He was ineffably grateful for that tiny sleeping bundle of life nestled in his innards. He held long, one sided, conversations with his tiny tenant. It helped to hold at bay the whispering dark. Once, on a particularly freezing night, he bled a little of his precious energy into the housing, to keep the killing cold from claiming the fragile life nestling there. Almost, almost he forgot the Last Command. Until the girl stepped from among the trunks. Again her merry laughter mounted into the morning, breaking in on his recollections. She shimmered towards him out of the golden shafts of light from the rising sun. Her robe was green, a green that remembered in the shifting shades that rippled there, every shade of green that growing things ever claimed to know. It was the very essence of life. Her long brown hair lifted in the breeze, to make a dark halo about her head. Brilliant splashes of colour danced in the sunlight from the flowers entwined there. Shockingly re-awakened to its duty by the sight of the enemy, the Unit fired again - with the same result as before. Smiling, the girl came to where he stood, amid his green flower bedecked cocoon. She laid a slender brown hand upon his eye stalk. The touch was gentle, yet vital and strong, like the flowering vines that grew up his armour every season. At that touch, the Last Command faltered. But it could not be set aside so lightly. It had been with him, his strength and guiding light, all down the interminable time of the long watch. The Dalek Unit committed extra power from the all but exhausted supply to the vocaliser. 'You are a prisoner of the Daleks!' The Girl's smile grew wistful. She nodded slowly, her hand caressing his eye stalk. She sighed. "Ever has it been so, Good Soldier. All down the long and bloody history of the Kaled kind have you imprisoned me. Disowned me, denied me and tried to cast me out. Yet while one of the Kaled Race endures - I am.' 'Who are you female? I find no trace of you in my memory, and yet you are familiar.' At this a radiant smile broke over her face. Joy leapt within her brown eyes. She moved her hand to lay it soft upon his dome. 'So, after all that has been done, the great transformation, and the endless centuries pursuing the Dark Fiend of Destruction, yet u still acknowledge me, Good Soldier? It is most gratifying to know that my long vigil in the dark has not been in vain. The reward is sweet indeed. You see, Good Soldier, I am the spirit of the Kaled Kind, the true heart and the soul. That which was thought cast away and done with in the Great Transformation these many ages gone by!' She fell silent; and her long sigh was like a gentle zypher, caressing the fresh green leaves of the new spring. 'But I am not that easily dispensed with. For while the flesh endures I yet exercise my sweet hegemony. I was but submerged in the Great Transformation, not driven out, only driven deep, and not given thought to. But I endure; and now, Good Soldier, I have come to call you home.' A sudden knowledge sprang upon him from the shadows of his mind. Fear flooded through his being. He had never felt it's cold hands about his heart, knowing it only as the remote and vague concept - the force that drove the Race onwards - ever onwards - an impersonal thing, underpinning the reason of the Race. Now it was a close and terrible animal, eating at his soul. He held the Last Command close, the talisman which he had clung so tenaciously to all throughout the long watch. Strangely, it was powerless against this new thing that possessed him. 'I cannot die! I must keep the watch ... ' The hand resting gentle upon his dome, caressed the time worn surface. It gave him more comfort in his panic than he could ever remember deriving from the Last Command. The butterflies whirled up into the air, bright wings flashing in the level golden light, and settled along her arm. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft and sad, full of kindness. 'You have kept well the long watch, Good Soldier. Steadfast you have held to your duty. But now, that duty is done with. I bring you a new command - the Final Command!" The soul of the Kaled Kind suddenly stood away, holding out both hands to him in a gesture of welcome as old as life itself. Her voice cracked with authority as she gave the Final Command. 'COME! COME! It is time to go!' 'I obey!' Then, true to his nature, he went without hesitation, obeying this Final Command. With mixed trepidation and wonder, he shed the womb of his armour, and left it behind. He no longer had any need of the close and comforting confines. The bright butterflies lifted in a multicoloured cloud from the worn and pitted casing, canted in its green bower. They surged up, joyous, into the bright morning sun to soar, flashing like a living rainbow, about the Spirit of the Kaled kind. She laughed gayly, held up her arms to them, trembling with joy as they poured themselves in a libation of living colours down along her arms, settled in her hair, on her face, on her eyelids and upon her lips. She began to dance, engulfed in the cloud of life. Treading a measure, old as time, the Spirit of the Kaled people swayed in a complete circle about the casing tilted amid the green. She seemed a creature made of butterflies. All the while she lifted a wordless, lilting song into the trees. She moved away among the trees, trailing the multi-coloured cloud behind her like a living scarf. 'Come!' Her imperious command called the life after her. The voice rose clear among the towering trunks. 'Come, Good Soldier! In life you sowed only seeds of destruction - and reaped a harvest of death. Now in death, sow only seeds of new hope - and be a bringer of life. Come now! And help me plant the trees, Good soldier. And, perhaps, in a hundred years or so, we shall walk this way again - and marvel at how well our handiwork has flourished.' Come!' --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End.
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If you enjoyed this, then you might like The Love of a Dalek which is a linked story.
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