Up a Tree p.10
"You mean he's just... suspended?" Rory asked. "How is that possible?" He continued pumping on Aaron's thin chest.
"I don't know, it shouldn't be," the Doctor said. "Keep working,"
Rory nodded and went back to doing artificial respiration.
A few minutes later a group of medics pushed through the worried crowd, carrying a gurney and toting an incongruously high-tech medical pack.
"I'm the local doctor," a sandy haired young man thumped to his knees beside them. "Any response?"
Rory shook his head and kept working.
"He needs full life support," the Doctor said, taking charge, shoving his sonic back in his pocket. "Heart, lungs, nervous system, the lot."
The young doctor didn't argue, he turned and spoke to his aides. They opened their medpack, it unfolded like a flower, full of collapsible trays and secret compartments.
The physician nudged Rory aside. Rory gratefully rolled out of the way and sat up on the rough deckplanks, head whirling. He'd been getting dizzy.
The physician ripped open Aaron's coverall and attached a palm sized, triangular device over his heart. He calibrated it quickly and flipped a few switches, lights began to blink and Aaron's chest started to rise and fall on its own.
Nelda held onto Amy and stared.
"Brainwaves?" Rory asked, getting his breath back.
The physician consulted a handheld computer and shook his head. "I'm not finding any brain damage. There's some bruising on the skull but I wouldn't have thought it would be enough to cause this." He set aside the scanner and ran his fingers through the old man's thick white hair, checking physically. He shook his head at whatever he found.
"What about his arm?" Amy asked.
The blond doctor looked at her, then at the Doctor who nodded down at the bloody semicircle of teethmarks on Aaron's ropy forearm. The physician scowled and picked up the arm, reaching for his scanner. "How did this happen?" He wiped away the dots of blood and examined the wound, he said something to an aide and was handed an aerosol can which he sprayed over the arm.
"Zeke bit him," Amy said.
The young doctor looked up with incredulous eyes. "Bit him?" he said in disbelief.
Amy nodded.
"Is there any chance of infection?" Rory asked, watching professionally. The young doctor stared as if coming out of a daze. "Could the Trelwin have given him something to account for this?" Rory asked, waving at the inert body.
The young doctor consulted his scanner again but shook his head. "I don't know. We'll have to run tests. I'm not aware of any disease that humans can catch from Trelwins, but this is still a new planet." He looked up at them, looking back and forth between Rory and the Doctor, face serious. "I hope it's nothing but a bump on the head." The crowd muttered around him, words like "disease" and "rabies" flashing from person to person.
The Doctor glared at Rory. Rory grimaced and shrugged.
"We'll have to take him in for observation," said the physician. "Run a full battery of tests. For all we know he's just got a swollen head and will wake up in the morning," he said loudly. With that bit of audience repair done, he turned to his assistants and they started preparing Aaron, shooing everyone out of their way.
Everyone watched as the medics maneuvered the old inventor onto the gurney and carefully carried him away up the stairs.
-----
The Doctor, Amy and Rory worked their way to the back of the crowd. Sondherson organized search parties. People were talking excitedly, milling around, confused, scared.
"Why didn't you tell them what's wrong with Aaron?" Rory demanded, under cover of the crowd.
“Tell them what, Rory?” the Doctor said. “We have no idea what this is, how it happened, or how to stop it. There’s no damage, no malfunction of the organs. No indication of poison to inhibit the chemoreceptors. The electrical impulses to the nerves and neurons have just stopped, midstream. Neither here nor there.
“Not dead, but not alive," the Doctor said. "All we can do right now is put him on full life support. We could wait until tomorrow, retrieve the Tardis and get some more sophisticated diagnostic equipment. But right now, I don't like how they're talking about Zeke."
Amy and Rory looked around and saw and heard a lot of frightened, macho posturing going on. This had all the makings of a lynch mob.
Nelda yanked on the Doctor's sleeve. He looked down and she signed up to him. Rory's eyes widened. He'd heard she could do that, but it was different seeing it.
"What's she saying?" he asked.
"She's saying, 'the monster killed my father.'" The Doctor crouched down and patted her shoulder. "It's all right, Nelda, the monster's gone," he said kindly.
She shook her head, and signed some more. He frowned, slowly translating, "The monster waits."
Amy and Rory felt a thrill of terror run down their spines, they looked at each other, then out at the sea of leaves where Zeke had disappeared.
The Doctor shook his head and ran a reassuring hand down the creature's trembling back. He waved an arm out toward the tree. "It's okay. Zeke's gone," he told her.
Nelda looked up at him solemnly and signed again.
The Doctor's eyes opened wide. He stared up at Amy and Rory, translating. "Zeke's not the monster."
-----
The Doctor wove his way across the crowded boardwalk to where Sondherson had set up a command table in front of the tree bole store. He was giving instructions to his second in command, and tucking supplies into his belt, getting ready to lead a search group of his own.
"Mr. Sondherson," the Doctor said, "I'd like to join your team. I'd like to learn why Zeke would suddenly attack someone."
Sondherson scoffed. "Unless you can speak Trelwin, Doctor, I don't think that's going to do much good."
The Doctor pointed down at Nelda, who had ambled along with him. She sat and looked up at the two men, strangely calm, but focused. "Nelda can speak Trelwin, she can translate for us."
"Doctor, Aaron was the only one who could understand that hand talk he taught her."
"Well then it's a good thing I'm here then," the Doctor said, smiling ingratiatingly. He flashed a hand sign down to Nelda, she signed back.
Sondherson looked back and forth between the Doctor and the crouching Trelwin. "Do you think they're really smart enough to testify, Doctor?" he asked, with a faint tinge of hope in his voice.
The Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets and gave the administrator a serious look. "Zeke must have had a reason for attacking Aaron. If we don't ask, we'll never know."
Sondherson wiped a tired hand down his lean face, his hair blazing red in the afternoon sun. "I would dearly love to know that there was a reason for all this," he said quietly. He stared down at the Trelwin, she looked back up at him, expressionless.
"Fine," Sondherson said, handing him and Rory both an electric torch from the stash on the table. "You proved yourself useful against the treecat. Just keep that damned whistle device in your pocket. Or I might just let Erik throw you out of the tree. And you follow orders."
"Yes sir." The Doctor saluted smartly.
Rory handed his torch back to Amy and took another from the pile. Sondherson noticed. "You sure you want her to come along?" he asked.
Rory gave him a blank noncommittal stare. "She can keep up."
"Thank you!" Amy said snarkily under her breath, testing her torch.
-----
The search took them high into the trees. The mingled canopy was dense with smaller branches and leaves. The Yblins moved from branch to branch by hand and foot almost as agilely as the Trelwins.
The searchers yelled instructions back and forth as they combed the branches, looking for a telltale dappled gray hide.
The Trelwins were thick up here, flashes of brown and gold and red and white hides darted from branch to branch as the Trelwins, picking up the humans' nervousness, herded their young away, scattering out of the humans' path.
Suddenly, creatures the Yblins had indulgently treated as harmless mascots had taken on a sinister edge. The humans were nervous and leery, many of the young men boasting loudly, as a way of whistling in the dark.
"Surely something like this has happened before?" the Doctor asked Steve, the young man they'd first met, who was walking beside him. Amy, Rory and Sondherson ranged ahead.
Steve, shook his head. "Never. I haven't ever heard of a Trelwin attacking a human, except in self defense," he said, wide eyed.
"They need self defense a lot?" the Doctor asked, pushing aside a leafy branch and watching as a mother Trelwin herded a spotted chubbling ahead of her, keeping herself between the humans and her child.
Steve saw the direction of his gaze. "There's always a few idiots," he said, shamefaced, trying to ignore the shouts around them. "I don't understand," he said, with the hurt, bewildered look of someone's who's just discovered the world isn't a nice place. "We've always got on well with the Trelwins. They even help me, out on the generator branches, when I'm changing out the batteries and checking the spindle rotors. They've never tried to hurt me!"
"Just keep that in mind," the Doctor said, patting the young man on the shoulder. "That's why we're out here. Not to hurt anybody, just to find out why."
-----
There was a crashing of foliage and a yell from Erik several stories down. A large, silver-gray body flashed past the Doctor's nose. He jerked back and recognized the old artist Trelwin even as he felt his center of gravity decide to go on vacation.
He fell. His heel skidded on the rough bark of the branch, he felt Steve grab at his wrist and his hand glance bruisingly away as gravity dragged him down. Somewhere in the distance he heard Amy scream his name.
Then there was just the rushing of wind in his ears and the sickening feeling that he'd been here before. There was a split second of blind panic, he wasn't touching anything, there was nothing to hold onto. Branches flashed past, the horrified stares of other watchers were there and gone before he could register them. Twigs slapped and scratched at him, he grabbed for them but they sliced away before he could get a grip.
Suddenly his mind cleared and he remembered the screamer. He slammed a hand on his lapel and the screamer button started shrieking, drowning out the sound of the wind, the yelling of would-be rescuers.
He reached for his chute, then stopped, they were so high, and the branches so thick here it would be almost suicide to deploy a chute among all these close sharp branches. He'd have to wait until he was lower, in more open air.
On the other hand, there were all these close sharp branches. For a second he was glad he was facing upward and couldn't see what was approaching him from below.
With a grimace, the siren screaming in his ear, wind whipping his lapels so they slapped him in the chin, he twisted. Best to see what was coming.
Something slammed into him.
He grunted and felt himself rammed sideways into a thick branch. His chute deployed with a kicking "Pfft!"
With a jerk, he slipped down and found himself dangling from his chute lines, the limp billows of his parachute wafted over the branch above him and brushed against the back of his hair.
Zeke hung down by one hand from a smaller branch a few feet in front of him.
"Oh, hello," he said.
His head stopped whirling and his eyes focused properly. The elder Trelwin cocked his head and looked at him. By the shouts coming from above, he'd fallen below the level of searchers. The Trelwin calmly leaned forward and pushed one long suedey finger on his lapel. The siren cut out.
"Thank you," the Doctor said. "That's much better." He was swinging gently in the breeze, the chute harness pinching slightly in delicate locations. He ignored it. "Can you understand me?"
The breeze shifted and wafted a scent of burnt cinnamon and licorice and, strangely, butterscotch, to him.
"Oh," the Doctor said, "So that's how you communicate?"
Suddenly there was a huge blast of the smell of red. He had no idea how something could smell red, but it did. As his eyes watered at the intensity of the smell, he felt something tug at his chute.
He looked up. A big, burly, completely black Trelwin was gathering up his parachute and tugging on his chute harness.
"Oh, uhm..." his feet pedaled helplessly in the air. "I really don't think you should do that," he commented, his voice much calmer than the sudden frantic beating of his hearts. The sound of the searchers was descending toward him, but was still too far away to help.
Another large brownish-red Trelwin, with one white foot (he noticed for some unfathomable reason) joined the black one and together they bundled up his chute in a wad and grabbed his chute lines, holding him out over the endless drop.
"Really," the Doctor said, looking at the dispassionate gray face in front of his, his hearts fighting for space in his throat, "I only wanted to ask you a few questions."
The burly Trelwins yanked.
He screamed.
Just a little bit.
-----
The Doctor's feet set down on a wide branch. Amy engulfed him in a bone crunching embrace, almost setting him off balance again.
The Trelwin above him steadied him, waited until he'd caught his balance, then dropped the chute lines and his limp parachute on top of his head.
He fought loose of the silky material. Very carefully. He could hear Rory yelling something from beyond its muffling folds.
"What?" he shouted, finally getting the silk to let go of his hair and fall down his back.
"I said," Rory said, disgustedly. "Just shrug your shoulders."
The Doctor looked at him blankly, then shrugged his shoulders with a deliberate cartoony motion. There was a "zipping" sound and a feel of vibration against his shoulder blades, and the parachute sucked back into its casing, sealing off with an audible "shloop."
"Oh!" he said, with a wide surprised grin. "That's nice!"
"You forgot," Rory said, staring in disbelief. "After all those parachute lessons, you forgot."
The Doctor shrugged again and stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. Everyone was staring at him. "Wasn't much chance to use it before."
Sondherson stood behind Rory, staring over his shoulder. "What did you say to them?" he asked in disbelief.
The Trelwin had ferried him up the tree, hand over hand, passing his chute lines from one pair of Trelwin to the next, carrying him up the tree like some sort of bucket chain, before setting him back down on the branch beside his friends.
"There must have been dozens of them!" Steve said, gaping.
"Yes, well," the Doctor said, "It's always nice to have good neighbors."
"You could have been killed!' Amy said, slapping him on the shoulder.
"Yes, but I wasn't."
He turned to Sondherson. "I saw Zeke. He's the one who stopped my fall. He arranged all this. Whatever happened with Aaron, I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to kill him."
Sondherson just shook his head, his hair blazing even redder in the setting sun. "I'll pass word not to shoot first. This exhibition might calm down some of the more radical elements. But we still have to capture him, if only so we can test him to see if he gave anything to Aaron."
He turned and whispered something to a brown haired young woman beside him. She nodded and trotted off down the branch.
Sondherson turned back. "Where's Zeke?"
The Doctor looked down through the branches, from this height he couldn't even see the ground. "I don't know, I haven't seen him since they started hoisting me up." He looked around. "Where's Nelda?" She'd been paralleling him before his fall.
"She took off as soon as you fell," Amy said. "I think she was trying to catch you." She looked around. There were no Trelwin anywhere around them now. "They can really propel themselves with those long arms of theirs," she added, inconsequentially.
"Oh, yes," the Doctor said, looking down into the misty depths, ignoring his left heart, which was still trying to crawl up his windpipe. "Lots of leverage with those arms."
-----
The search continued until moonrise. The sunset faded. They traced their way back down to where the Doctor had been saved by Zeke. But there was no sign of the elder Trelwin.
The moonlight was bright. There were a billion stars adding their cool light. The branches turned silvery under their feet in the moonglow, the air darkening to a crystal clear indigo.
In the thickets, where the moonlight didn't penetrate, people started turning on their electric torches. The branches and occasional Trelwin face took on a demonic aspect as they were caught briefly in the torchbeams.
Amy's foot slipped. She clutched at the Doctor's jacket and almost pulled him over again. Rory grabbed them both.
Sondherson, who was following behind them, spoke up, "You three get back to the guest hall."
The Doctor started to protest. Sondherson held up a hand, all but invisible in the dark. "You're due on safari in the morning. You'll need your sleep. Leave this to us. We'll either find him, or run him out of the tree. Either way, it's not your problem any longer.
"Steve," he said before the Doctor could interrupt. "Escort these three back to town." He handed the young man his torch. "Take the easy way, and if you see Erik and his crew, tell them to knock off for the night. And remind everyone to bar their windows and doors."
"You really think that's necessary?" the Doctor asked as Steve waved Amy and Rory after him.
Sondherson gave the Doctor a weary shrug, "We still don't know why Zeke attacked Aaron. We've no guarantee it won't happen again. I've got a lot of nervous people back in town. Better safe than sorry."
-----
Jake closed the hall doors firmly behind them. He dropped the bar across its brackets. He indicated the sandwiches behind the bar and told them to help themselves. Then he took himself off into the tunnels, apparently going up to his mother-in-laws quarters.
They sat and ate their sandwiches in a depressed silence. The whole town was silent, people hiding behind locked doors.
"Right," the Doctor said, after they'd cleaned up, clapping his hands together. "You two get some sleep, we've got a big day tomorrow, I think I'll just go for a walk," he said innocently.
"Oh, no," Amy said, grabbing his arm. Rory moved deliberately between the Doctor and the door.
"We're not sleeping unless you are," Rory said. He looked at Amy, she nodded back.
"But I don't need as much sleep as you do," the Doctor pointed out reasonably.
"No, but you've had a busy day. You can nap," Rory said, repressively.
The Doctor put his hands on his hips and stared down at the nurse. A neat trick, Amy though, considering they were the same height.
"I am too old to be put down for a nap, Mr. Pond," he challenged.
"This, from the man who was almost killed by a mosquito bite?" Amy asked, giving him a mocking look.
The Doctor dropped his head with a sigh. He turned and looked at her. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?" he said.
"I might," Amy said. "If you promise to stay in the room while Rory and I sleep."
"Amelia, you cannot blackmail me with a mosquito bite!"
"No," she gave him a triumphant look. "But I could tell River."
He stared at her, aghast. "You wouldn't."
"Try me."
-----
The Doctor lay in his alcove, on top of the blankets, his arms crossed over his chest, he kicked at the bed curtain.
"I'm not sleepy," he said petulantly.
-----
Out in the hall, a shadow passed over the moonlight streaming in through the slats of the transom window. The window squeaked open. A Trelwin's pale head poked inside, its nostrils flared as it scented the air. Its eyes homed in on the bouncing curtain up on the fourth tier of bed alcoves.
It silently crept down the wall.
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"I don't know, it shouldn't be," the Doctor said. "Keep working,"
Rory nodded and went back to doing artificial respiration.
A few minutes later a group of medics pushed through the worried crowd, carrying a gurney and toting an incongruously high-tech medical pack.
"I'm the local doctor," a sandy haired young man thumped to his knees beside them. "Any response?"
Rory shook his head and kept working.
"He needs full life support," the Doctor said, taking charge, shoving his sonic back in his pocket. "Heart, lungs, nervous system, the lot."
The young doctor didn't argue, he turned and spoke to his aides. They opened their medpack, it unfolded like a flower, full of collapsible trays and secret compartments.
The physician nudged Rory aside. Rory gratefully rolled out of the way and sat up on the rough deckplanks, head whirling. He'd been getting dizzy.
The physician ripped open Aaron's coverall and attached a palm sized, triangular device over his heart. He calibrated it quickly and flipped a few switches, lights began to blink and Aaron's chest started to rise and fall on its own.
Nelda held onto Amy and stared.
"Brainwaves?" Rory asked, getting his breath back.
The physician consulted a handheld computer and shook his head. "I'm not finding any brain damage. There's some bruising on the skull but I wouldn't have thought it would be enough to cause this." He set aside the scanner and ran his fingers through the old man's thick white hair, checking physically. He shook his head at whatever he found.
"What about his arm?" Amy asked.
The blond doctor looked at her, then at the Doctor who nodded down at the bloody semicircle of teethmarks on Aaron's ropy forearm. The physician scowled and picked up the arm, reaching for his scanner. "How did this happen?" He wiped away the dots of blood and examined the wound, he said something to an aide and was handed an aerosol can which he sprayed over the arm.
"Zeke bit him," Amy said.
The young doctor looked up with incredulous eyes. "Bit him?" he said in disbelief.
Amy nodded.
"Is there any chance of infection?" Rory asked, watching professionally. The young doctor stared as if coming out of a daze. "Could the Trelwin have given him something to account for this?" Rory asked, waving at the inert body.
The young doctor consulted his scanner again but shook his head. "I don't know. We'll have to run tests. I'm not aware of any disease that humans can catch from Trelwins, but this is still a new planet." He looked up at them, looking back and forth between Rory and the Doctor, face serious. "I hope it's nothing but a bump on the head." The crowd muttered around him, words like "disease" and "rabies" flashing from person to person.
The Doctor glared at Rory. Rory grimaced and shrugged.
"We'll have to take him in for observation," said the physician. "Run a full battery of tests. For all we know he's just got a swollen head and will wake up in the morning," he said loudly. With that bit of audience repair done, he turned to his assistants and they started preparing Aaron, shooing everyone out of their way.
Everyone watched as the medics maneuvered the old inventor onto the gurney and carefully carried him away up the stairs.
-----
The Doctor, Amy and Rory worked their way to the back of the crowd. Sondherson organized search parties. People were talking excitedly, milling around, confused, scared.
"Why didn't you tell them what's wrong with Aaron?" Rory demanded, under cover of the crowd.
“Tell them what, Rory?” the Doctor said. “We have no idea what this is, how it happened, or how to stop it. There’s no damage, no malfunction of the organs. No indication of poison to inhibit the chemoreceptors. The electrical impulses to the nerves and neurons have just stopped, midstream. Neither here nor there.
“Not dead, but not alive," the Doctor said. "All we can do right now is put him on full life support. We could wait until tomorrow, retrieve the Tardis and get some more sophisticated diagnostic equipment. But right now, I don't like how they're talking about Zeke."
Amy and Rory looked around and saw and heard a lot of frightened, macho posturing going on. This had all the makings of a lynch mob.
Nelda yanked on the Doctor's sleeve. He looked down and she signed up to him. Rory's eyes widened. He'd heard she could do that, but it was different seeing it.
"What's she saying?" he asked.
"She's saying, 'the monster killed my father.'" The Doctor crouched down and patted her shoulder. "It's all right, Nelda, the monster's gone," he said kindly.
She shook her head, and signed some more. He frowned, slowly translating, "The monster waits."
Amy and Rory felt a thrill of terror run down their spines, they looked at each other, then out at the sea of leaves where Zeke had disappeared.
The Doctor shook his head and ran a reassuring hand down the creature's trembling back. He waved an arm out toward the tree. "It's okay. Zeke's gone," he told her.
Nelda looked up at him solemnly and signed again.
The Doctor's eyes opened wide. He stared up at Amy and Rory, translating. "Zeke's not the monster."
-----
The Doctor wove his way across the crowded boardwalk to where Sondherson had set up a command table in front of the tree bole store. He was giving instructions to his second in command, and tucking supplies into his belt, getting ready to lead a search group of his own.
"Mr. Sondherson," the Doctor said, "I'd like to join your team. I'd like to learn why Zeke would suddenly attack someone."
Sondherson scoffed. "Unless you can speak Trelwin, Doctor, I don't think that's going to do much good."
The Doctor pointed down at Nelda, who had ambled along with him. She sat and looked up at the two men, strangely calm, but focused. "Nelda can speak Trelwin, she can translate for us."
"Doctor, Aaron was the only one who could understand that hand talk he taught her."
"Well then it's a good thing I'm here then," the Doctor said, smiling ingratiatingly. He flashed a hand sign down to Nelda, she signed back.
Sondherson looked back and forth between the Doctor and the crouching Trelwin. "Do you think they're really smart enough to testify, Doctor?" he asked, with a faint tinge of hope in his voice.
The Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets and gave the administrator a serious look. "Zeke must have had a reason for attacking Aaron. If we don't ask, we'll never know."
Sondherson wiped a tired hand down his lean face, his hair blazing red in the afternoon sun. "I would dearly love to know that there was a reason for all this," he said quietly. He stared down at the Trelwin, she looked back up at him, expressionless.
"Fine," Sondherson said, handing him and Rory both an electric torch from the stash on the table. "You proved yourself useful against the treecat. Just keep that damned whistle device in your pocket. Or I might just let Erik throw you out of the tree. And you follow orders."
"Yes sir." The Doctor saluted smartly.
Rory handed his torch back to Amy and took another from the pile. Sondherson noticed. "You sure you want her to come along?" he asked.
Rory gave him a blank noncommittal stare. "She can keep up."
"Thank you!" Amy said snarkily under her breath, testing her torch.
-----
The search took them high into the trees. The mingled canopy was dense with smaller branches and leaves. The Yblins moved from branch to branch by hand and foot almost as agilely as the Trelwins.
The searchers yelled instructions back and forth as they combed the branches, looking for a telltale dappled gray hide.
The Trelwins were thick up here, flashes of brown and gold and red and white hides darted from branch to branch as the Trelwins, picking up the humans' nervousness, herded their young away, scattering out of the humans' path.
Suddenly, creatures the Yblins had indulgently treated as harmless mascots had taken on a sinister edge. The humans were nervous and leery, many of the young men boasting loudly, as a way of whistling in the dark.
"Surely something like this has happened before?" the Doctor asked Steve, the young man they'd first met, who was walking beside him. Amy, Rory and Sondherson ranged ahead.
Steve, shook his head. "Never. I haven't ever heard of a Trelwin attacking a human, except in self defense," he said, wide eyed.
"They need self defense a lot?" the Doctor asked, pushing aside a leafy branch and watching as a mother Trelwin herded a spotted chubbling ahead of her, keeping herself between the humans and her child.
Steve saw the direction of his gaze. "There's always a few idiots," he said, shamefaced, trying to ignore the shouts around them. "I don't understand," he said, with the hurt, bewildered look of someone's who's just discovered the world isn't a nice place. "We've always got on well with the Trelwins. They even help me, out on the generator branches, when I'm changing out the batteries and checking the spindle rotors. They've never tried to hurt me!"
"Just keep that in mind," the Doctor said, patting the young man on the shoulder. "That's why we're out here. Not to hurt anybody, just to find out why."
-----
There was a crashing of foliage and a yell from Erik several stories down. A large, silver-gray body flashed past the Doctor's nose. He jerked back and recognized the old artist Trelwin even as he felt his center of gravity decide to go on vacation.
He fell. His heel skidded on the rough bark of the branch, he felt Steve grab at his wrist and his hand glance bruisingly away as gravity dragged him down. Somewhere in the distance he heard Amy scream his name.
Then there was just the rushing of wind in his ears and the sickening feeling that he'd been here before. There was a split second of blind panic, he wasn't touching anything, there was nothing to hold onto. Branches flashed past, the horrified stares of other watchers were there and gone before he could register them. Twigs slapped and scratched at him, he grabbed for them but they sliced away before he could get a grip.
Suddenly his mind cleared and he remembered the screamer. He slammed a hand on his lapel and the screamer button started shrieking, drowning out the sound of the wind, the yelling of would-be rescuers.
He reached for his chute, then stopped, they were so high, and the branches so thick here it would be almost suicide to deploy a chute among all these close sharp branches. He'd have to wait until he was lower, in more open air.
On the other hand, there were all these close sharp branches. For a second he was glad he was facing upward and couldn't see what was approaching him from below.
With a grimace, the siren screaming in his ear, wind whipping his lapels so they slapped him in the chin, he twisted. Best to see what was coming.
Something slammed into him.
He grunted and felt himself rammed sideways into a thick branch. His chute deployed with a kicking "Pfft!"
With a jerk, he slipped down and found himself dangling from his chute lines, the limp billows of his parachute wafted over the branch above him and brushed against the back of his hair.
Zeke hung down by one hand from a smaller branch a few feet in front of him.
"Oh, hello," he said.
His head stopped whirling and his eyes focused properly. The elder Trelwin cocked his head and looked at him. By the shouts coming from above, he'd fallen below the level of searchers. The Trelwin calmly leaned forward and pushed one long suedey finger on his lapel. The siren cut out.
"Thank you," the Doctor said. "That's much better." He was swinging gently in the breeze, the chute harness pinching slightly in delicate locations. He ignored it. "Can you understand me?"
The breeze shifted and wafted a scent of burnt cinnamon and licorice and, strangely, butterscotch, to him.
"Oh," the Doctor said, "So that's how you communicate?"
Suddenly there was a huge blast of the smell of red. He had no idea how something could smell red, but it did. As his eyes watered at the intensity of the smell, he felt something tug at his chute.
He looked up. A big, burly, completely black Trelwin was gathering up his parachute and tugging on his chute harness.
"Oh, uhm..." his feet pedaled helplessly in the air. "I really don't think you should do that," he commented, his voice much calmer than the sudden frantic beating of his hearts. The sound of the searchers was descending toward him, but was still too far away to help.
Another large brownish-red Trelwin, with one white foot (he noticed for some unfathomable reason) joined the black one and together they bundled up his chute in a wad and grabbed his chute lines, holding him out over the endless drop.
"Really," the Doctor said, looking at the dispassionate gray face in front of his, his hearts fighting for space in his throat, "I only wanted to ask you a few questions."
The burly Trelwins yanked.
He screamed.
Just a little bit.
-----
The Doctor's feet set down on a wide branch. Amy engulfed him in a bone crunching embrace, almost setting him off balance again.
The Trelwin above him steadied him, waited until he'd caught his balance, then dropped the chute lines and his limp parachute on top of his head.
He fought loose of the silky material. Very carefully. He could hear Rory yelling something from beyond its muffling folds.
"What?" he shouted, finally getting the silk to let go of his hair and fall down his back.
"I said," Rory said, disgustedly. "Just shrug your shoulders."
The Doctor looked at him blankly, then shrugged his shoulders with a deliberate cartoony motion. There was a "zipping" sound and a feel of vibration against his shoulder blades, and the parachute sucked back into its casing, sealing off with an audible "shloop."
"Oh!" he said, with a wide surprised grin. "That's nice!"
"You forgot," Rory said, staring in disbelief. "After all those parachute lessons, you forgot."
The Doctor shrugged again and stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. Everyone was staring at him. "Wasn't much chance to use it before."
Sondherson stood behind Rory, staring over his shoulder. "What did you say to them?" he asked in disbelief.
The Trelwin had ferried him up the tree, hand over hand, passing his chute lines from one pair of Trelwin to the next, carrying him up the tree like some sort of bucket chain, before setting him back down on the branch beside his friends.
"There must have been dozens of them!" Steve said, gaping.
"Yes, well," the Doctor said, "It's always nice to have good neighbors."
"You could have been killed!' Amy said, slapping him on the shoulder.
"Yes, but I wasn't."
He turned to Sondherson. "I saw Zeke. He's the one who stopped my fall. He arranged all this. Whatever happened with Aaron, I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to kill him."
Sondherson just shook his head, his hair blazing even redder in the setting sun. "I'll pass word not to shoot first. This exhibition might calm down some of the more radical elements. But we still have to capture him, if only so we can test him to see if he gave anything to Aaron."
He turned and whispered something to a brown haired young woman beside him. She nodded and trotted off down the branch.
Sondherson turned back. "Where's Zeke?"
The Doctor looked down through the branches, from this height he couldn't even see the ground. "I don't know, I haven't seen him since they started hoisting me up." He looked around. "Where's Nelda?" She'd been paralleling him before his fall.
"She took off as soon as you fell," Amy said. "I think she was trying to catch you." She looked around. There were no Trelwin anywhere around them now. "They can really propel themselves with those long arms of theirs," she added, inconsequentially.
"Oh, yes," the Doctor said, looking down into the misty depths, ignoring his left heart, which was still trying to crawl up his windpipe. "Lots of leverage with those arms."
-----
The search continued until moonrise. The sunset faded. They traced their way back down to where the Doctor had been saved by Zeke. But there was no sign of the elder Trelwin.
The moonlight was bright. There were a billion stars adding their cool light. The branches turned silvery under their feet in the moonglow, the air darkening to a crystal clear indigo.
In the thickets, where the moonlight didn't penetrate, people started turning on their electric torches. The branches and occasional Trelwin face took on a demonic aspect as they were caught briefly in the torchbeams.
Amy's foot slipped. She clutched at the Doctor's jacket and almost pulled him over again. Rory grabbed them both.
Sondherson, who was following behind them, spoke up, "You three get back to the guest hall."
The Doctor started to protest. Sondherson held up a hand, all but invisible in the dark. "You're due on safari in the morning. You'll need your sleep. Leave this to us. We'll either find him, or run him out of the tree. Either way, it's not your problem any longer.
"Steve," he said before the Doctor could interrupt. "Escort these three back to town." He handed the young man his torch. "Take the easy way, and if you see Erik and his crew, tell them to knock off for the night. And remind everyone to bar their windows and doors."
"You really think that's necessary?" the Doctor asked as Steve waved Amy and Rory after him.
Sondherson gave the Doctor a weary shrug, "We still don't know why Zeke attacked Aaron. We've no guarantee it won't happen again. I've got a lot of nervous people back in town. Better safe than sorry."
-----
Jake closed the hall doors firmly behind them. He dropped the bar across its brackets. He indicated the sandwiches behind the bar and told them to help themselves. Then he took himself off into the tunnels, apparently going up to his mother-in-laws quarters.
They sat and ate their sandwiches in a depressed silence. The whole town was silent, people hiding behind locked doors.
"Right," the Doctor said, after they'd cleaned up, clapping his hands together. "You two get some sleep, we've got a big day tomorrow, I think I'll just go for a walk," he said innocently.
"Oh, no," Amy said, grabbing his arm. Rory moved deliberately between the Doctor and the door.
"We're not sleeping unless you are," Rory said. He looked at Amy, she nodded back.
"But I don't need as much sleep as you do," the Doctor pointed out reasonably.
"No, but you've had a busy day. You can nap," Rory said, repressively.
The Doctor put his hands on his hips and stared down at the nurse. A neat trick, Amy though, considering they were the same height.
"I am too old to be put down for a nap, Mr. Pond," he challenged.
"This, from the man who was almost killed by a mosquito bite?" Amy asked, giving him a mocking look.
The Doctor dropped his head with a sigh. He turned and looked at her. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?" he said.
"I might," Amy said. "If you promise to stay in the room while Rory and I sleep."
"Amelia, you cannot blackmail me with a mosquito bite!"
"No," she gave him a triumphant look. "But I could tell River."
He stared at her, aghast. "You wouldn't."
"Try me."
-----
The Doctor lay in his alcove, on top of the blankets, his arms crossed over his chest, he kicked at the bed curtain.
"I'm not sleepy," he said petulantly.
-----
Out in the hall, a shadow passed over the moonlight streaming in through the slats of the transom window. The window squeaked open. A Trelwin's pale head poked inside, its nostrils flared as it scented the air. Its eyes homed in on the bouncing curtain up on the fourth tier of bed alcoves.
It silently crept down the wall.
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