Doctor Who - 04 - On a Pale Horse

.14. Not with a Whimper

"What did he say?" Kathryn asked.

Donna looked at her, suddenly even more scared than before.

"He's going to see to it that the world doesn't end with a whimper," she said slowly and turned to the Doctor. "Does it mean anything?"

"It's a poem," the Doctor murmured. "T.S. Eliot, 'Hollow Men', a brilliant poem, if you ask me... This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."

"I wish people would stop quoting to me," Donna growled. "You don't do that in normal life, you know. You don't go around quoting poems all the time. It's... It scares me like hell!"

"Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow,"1 the Doctor whispered.

"Have you heard what I've just said?!" Donna asked.

"What? Oh, yes, sorry. It's just so fabulous, good old T.S." The Doctor wiped a hand across his forehead. His hair was plastered flat to his head and he had a two-day stubble on his chin. His pale skin was bruised everywhere tiny capillaries had popped, and the whites of his eyes were stained red. His voice was dry and rasping. He moved slowly, cautiously, like an old man. Donna wouldn't recognise him anymore, but for his clothes, and the sonic screwdriver in his raised hand.

"Where did he go?" Kathryn asked. "Cuthbert?"

"I've lost him," said Donna. "It's dark in the corridors, and he was running. Kathryn... what he said... is it true? Is it going to spread all over the world and kill everyone?"

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned,"2 the Doctor quoted promptly. Donna's face twitched a little as she bit her lips.

"If we can't stop it..." Kathryn hesitated. "Yes. There are worlds in the universe that became barren because of the X-Factor. Whole planets devoid of intelligent life, dead."

"But if it kills everyone on Earth," Donna gasped. "It changes history. It changes the past. And the future. Because if the world ends today it means... It means that we were never born, we don't exist..."

"We're out of our timelines," the Doctor said, turning back to the lab table. "I guess it's the only thing keeping us alive."

"So, what? Are we going to vanish, like in that film, 'Back to the Future'?" Donna demanded.

"I don't think so," the Doctor murmured. "That'd be too easy, really."

Donna glared at the back of his neck for a moment, upset by his casual tone.

"How is your research going?" she asked finally.

"Good, good." The Doctor waved his hand at her, not even turning from the microscope and from the tangle of odd bits of medical equipment. "Bit slow. But good."

Donna raised her eyebrows at Kathryn. The short-haired woman sighed quietly and grabbed Donna's elbow. She led her to the corner of the room. For a moment she just looked at Donna with her lips pursed.

"It is not good, right?" Donna asked quietly.

"No," Kathryn admitted in a whisper. "It's not. We've been looking for a cure for hundreds of years. To hope he would find it within a day or two... It's just impossible."

"Nothing's impossible with him," Donna smiled. "Believe me."

"We don't have unlimited time here as well," Kathryn noted. "When the outbreak reaches the critical point and becomes an epidemic... Nothing stops it."

Donna swallowed hard. "And how long until...?"

"A few more hours."

"Hours?!"

The Doctor stirred by the table and shushed at them irritably.

"So, do you know what's Cuthbert's plan B?" Donna whispered.

"I can't be sure, but I think he'll try to blow up the town," Kathryn answered.

"What?!" Donna and the Doctor asked simultaneously, the later jumping from behind the lab table, a clean specimen slide in his hand.

"But he'll kill us all!" Donna yelled.

"That's not the problem!" yelled the Doctor. "The thing is he'll only make it worse!"

"He'll try to stop the disease from spreading by exterminating the affected population," Kathryn said, her eyes wide and face pale. "This is what you do, when all the other means of controlling the outbreak fail."

"That's people we're talking about here, not cattle!" Donna said.

"The blast will blow the X-Factor high into the atmosphere of the planet," the Doctor exclaimed. "Air currents will carry it all over the globe. The moment Cuthbert sets off the bomb, this thing becomes a pandemic."

"The explosion will kill every living organism within its range," Kathryn protested.

"It will pulverise living organisms, but the Factor is tiny, it is minuscule even when compared to a virus, and it is partially artificial, there's no way it'll be affected by the blast!" The Doctor clenched his fists, crunching the specimen slide in his hand. Donna winced at the sound.

"We have to stop him!" The Doctor looked around as if searching for an exit. "You have to stop him, Donna!"

"Me?!" She stumbled backwards. "No way!"

"Donna, I have maybe an hour left, and I need Kathryn here, and the patients need Svegrid, which leaves you to stop Cuthbert," the Doctor said quickly. "You know you can do it!"

"No, I don't know! I don't even know where he is!"

"My guess would be – underground," Kathryn said. "The dungeons. I mean, the cellars; they are not really dungeons, just storerooms, you know, in the basement," she added very quickly.

"The dun...?! The dungeons?!" Donna blinked in shock. "You want me to go and look for a madmanwith a bomb in the dungeons?! Alone?! You can't be serious?!"

The Doctor opened his hand and looked down at his bleeding fingers in mild surprise. He sighed.

"Donna..." he began.

"Yeah, all right," she interrupted, cold creeping up her cheeks. "You are serious. So, I'll just go there and... improvise, yeah? Just talk to him and, I dunno, distract him? In the dungeons. With the bomb. Wizard!"

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." She looked around quickly, picked up an iron candlestick from a shelf and weighted it in her hand. "You just hurry with the cure, ok? I've seen Allan and... and he's not looking good, you know?"

The Doctor nodded slightly. He reached into his pocket and fished up a small torch. He tossed it more or less in Donna's direction, but she was able to catch it anyway. She checked if it worked and blinked when bright beam of light caught her eyes. With a candlestick in one hand and the torch in the other Donna marched to the door and out into the dark corridor.

***

1 "Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

2 "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats