Doctor Who: The Blood Cell (12 page)

*

The cell bore no indication of recent habitation. It had been thoroughly cleaned by a Custodian. But that was little consolation. The previous inhabitant’s desperation and hopelessness hung around it, filled what little space there was. There really wasn’t that much room left for my own despair.

Occasionally a Custodian would come and remove me for an interview. I lost track of how much time had passed. Had I been in there a few minutes or days? It seemed so meaningless. I noticed the lights were dimmer, the air more stifling. I asked if they’d managed to recover the systems, but no one answered me. No one acknowledged me at all. But then, I was no longer Governor.

Lafcardio was one of the prisoners who’d stayed behind. He’d been head of the Law Faculty at a University. I asked for him to be my lawyer. He was shown into my interview cell. His voice was still husky from the fire in his library. He’d come from sickbay.

By law recordings between accused and counsel are privileged and not to be recorded. Here is the transcript:

I don’t know how much later the hearing was. Possibly only a few minutes. It was fairly straightforward. Bentley sat opposite me with two more Guardians flanking her, and two Custodians behind me. Up close, I realised how intimidatingly blank they were. When they produced an antenna, you had no idea if
it was to restrain or blast, to feed or inject. Whenever one came close, I instinctively flinched.

Bentley read everything out. All the charges.

How I had overridden Protocol, allowing 428 to place Level 7 in jeopardy. How I had allowed him to steal prison property in order to sabotage the safety retainers of Level 7. How I had given instructions that Level 7 was to be loaded with prisoners, and then ordered it to fly past the Defence Array.

It was useless to protest that the Defence Array had malfunctioned, that it wasn’t supposed to fire on the ship. It was put to me that the whole prison had suffered a cascade failure and that, as such, direct control over the Defence Array could not be anticipated. I was asked if I had even checked what the status of the Defence Array was. I had not. Of course I had not. In the excitement of thinking I’d saved some lives, of course I had not.

‘There wasn’t time,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I mean, if I’d known, of course I would have.’

Bentley had looked me in the eye then. For the first time ever. ‘There were 300 people on board Level 7 along with a further 235 prisoners.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And I am sorry. But listen, can’t we just …’

Nothing. I mean, a whole lot more was said, but nothing of interest.

*

I went and sat back in my cell. It felt utterly helpless. The air already had a stale, unpleasant taste to it. But maybe that was just me. I can’t believe that, after all I’d just done, I sank into self-pity, but I did. I blamed 428. It had all been his idea. I had simply been following orders. That was all. Surely they’d see it. At any moment, and then they’d surely release me?

I wondered if I should pen a justification of my actions, and account for them. I began work on it. Putting to one side the horrific crimes of 428, you had to admit that the man was very persuasive. It was easy to fall into line with what he wanted. I suddenly saw, sharply and horribly, that I had become another of his victims. Is this what he’d been planning all along? To use me as a tool in order to kill off the people on the ship?

What had he said? ‘Give me a big enough lever and I can move the world.’ That was it. That was all I had been to him. A lever to allow him to pull off one last, audacious slaughter. I had been made a fool of and used, but I had been genuinely acting from the best of intentions. His last victim.

My account also brought the Oracle, HomeWorld and Bentley in for a fair amount of criticism, but it really was the Doctor who bore the brunt of it. What, I thought, I wouldn’t give for another chance to see him.

It was a pretty pathetic document. I re-read it and
felt sick at myself. It was the kind of thing a coward would write. One who wouldn’t take responsibility for his own mistakes.

I read it again, and actually, it didn’t seem so bad.

But still, the fact remained, the one person who could help me out of all this was the one person who couldn’t. Because the Doctor … because 428 was dead.

The door to my cell swung open. Standing there was the Doctor.

‘Oh,’ I said.

To my astonishment I started crying.

‘ “Hello” normally does just fine.’ The Doctor looked embarrassed.

Obviously, I did a reasonable amount of inarticulate babbling. The Doctor didn’t have much time for that.

‘Listen, Governor,’ he said. ‘I’m springing you out of your own prison. If you want to actually enjoy the irony of that, I suggest you follow me sharpish.’

‘Where to?’ I asked.

‘The last place anyone will think of looking for you,’ smiled 428. ‘My old cell.’

We got there, I later learned, because much of the CCTV had gone permanently off-line in the cascade failure. The system was keeping nearly all it could to
itself to keep life support and gravity just about going. Even most of the Custodians had simply slid to a halt. Their Docking Stations still seemed to be working, but the power-up cycle refused to release them.

This meant that the remaining prisoners were having to be looked after by the human Guardians. Who were also rushed off their feet trying to hack back into the Prison systems.

Basically, the current regime was pretty lax. I made a note of all the various failings, should I need to counter-accuse Bentley of anything. ‘You could get away with murder here,’ I said.

‘Probably not the best thing to say in a prison, you know,’ answered 428, sliding the door of his cell open with a pretty nifty skeleton key.

‘Where did you get that from?’ I asked.

428 shrugged. ‘You said I could take what I want from the workshop. Well, I did. I’ve been busy.’

‘How long … how many days have I been in custody?’

‘About four hours,’ said 428. He shut the door of his cell behind us, and indicated we sit down on the bunk.

He plonked himself next to me. I flinched a little. Was I still afraid of him? Disgusted by him? Or somehow, despite everything, terribly pleased to see him?

‘So,’ said 428. ‘Let’s deal first of all with the good
news. Which is my remarkable escape.’

‘Had you planned it?’

‘No. Well, not exactly. But if Clara asks, do say yes. I’m just quite a quick thinker. Especially when I’m running. Exercise really sharpens the synapses. You see, I went into that tunnel knowing that I was basically going into the exhaust duct for Level 7’s Baxter Drive. It all had to go somewhere. Now, then, you’ll remember I took that blowtorch with me? Well, once I’d used it to soften up the clamps, I left it running.’

‘Starting that small fire and all that smoke? Hardly a clever move.’

‘You think not?’ 428 arched an eyebrow. ‘On the contrary, it was very clever. It’s a powerful blowtorch. I turned it down to a lower setting so that anything flammable would smoulder and smoke, not burn. I needed smoke.’

‘Why?’

‘For the fire alarm. Remember it sounding? Well, I’d remembered what Bentley had said, that there was an ordinary fire alarm. And then there was the Flashpoint alarm, which went off thirty seconds prior to the section being sealed and the air from it being vented. I triggered the Flashpoint alarm. I’d done the maths in my head. If I could get myself vented far enough into space first then I wouldn’t be poached, fried and scrambled by the Baxter Drive.’

‘Oh.’

‘Good, isn’t it?’

‘Well, wouldn’t you still be in space?’

‘A little. But there’s an air-shell around the asteroid. Not much of one, I grant you, but enough of a safety net. And also, on my admittedly hurried way out, I did grab the blowtorch.’

‘Did you?’

‘All right then, fine, I’ll admit, none of us had much of a choice. I ended up floating in space with all the tools I’d grabbed and that silly anti-grav trolley – which turns out not to be so silly when you’re floating in space. Since tools are useful, I loaded as many of them as I could onto the trolley, and then fastened the blowtorch to the back of it. I turned the setting of it up to … 11. And then I escaped back into your prison.’

‘What?’

‘The Level 7 loading bay doors. Actually quite the weak spot. You should make a note of that. I just flew my trolley up to them and then used the blowtorch.’

‘Can I just stop you. You broke into my prison on a flying trolley?’

428 grinned. ‘Why not? I’ve escaped from it enough times using just a spoon.’

I hit him.

He looked surprised. ‘That was … Well, that was ungrateful.’

‘A lot of people have died,’ I said.

‘Yes … about that.’ 428 stared at me. ‘Didn’t you think that was odd? The Defence Array firing like that?’

‘Well, yes. But—’

‘It wasn’t doing what it was supposed to.’

‘No.’

‘And the Oracle didn’t predict it. Funny, that.’

‘No. Not funny. Not funny at all. You can’t carry on running around like the world is just a grim joke to somehow laugh at. You’ve got to …’

‘What have I got to do?’ 428 rubbed his jaw, tired again. ‘I really don’t think you get to tell me how to behave any more, Governor. You’ve lost control of your Prison. Admit it. The Defence Array should have told you the game’s up.’

‘What do you mean?’

428 shook his head. ‘You’ll see in a bit. I’m very much afraid you will. But listen, just for the moment, let’s stop thinking about the children, let’s put the destruction of Level 7 to one side, shall we?’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’ll stop you thinking clearly. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty much all even my head can think about, and that’s not helpful, is it?’

‘No,’ I said. I couldn’t. Not for a moment. I would never.

428 tapped me on the forehead and my thoughts cleared.

‘Good,’ said 428. ‘So, we’re going to find out what’s really going on here. And I think that’ll tell you why the Defence Array blew up Level 7.’

The Prison seemed eerily deserted.

‘Well, that’s wrong,’ I said. ‘There should be about a hundred prisoners remaining.’

428 nodded. ‘And we need to find them. Is Lafcardio still here?’

‘Yes. But he’s not talking to me.’

‘Ah.’ 428 smiled. ‘But he will to me.’

We found the old man carrying some tattered books. ‘When the prisoners fled, they left them behind,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘I knew they needed looking after. I just thought I’d collect them up and take them to the library. I was thinking of starting up again.’

‘But this place is finished,’ I did not say. ‘OK.’ That’s what I said. I noticed Lafcardio wasn’t looking at me. He was barely looking at 428. He was barely looking at anything.

‘Who is left?’ 428 asked him.

Lafcardio turned, focused with difficulty, and beamed at him, smiling. ‘Delighted, genuinely delighted.’ He pumped 428’s hand enthusiastically.

428 detached himself and took one of the books from Lafcardio. He leafed through it. ‘
The Barber of
Seville
? It really is funny what survives down through history, don’t you think?’

Lafcardio nodded, seriously. ‘There was a time, less than a millennium ago when it was still possible to have read every important book and most of the trivial ones. To quote from and discuss intelligently all of them. Now, oh now …’ He laughed. ‘It’s not possible. It just isn’t. One of the things I’ve liked about this place. So few books. Actually a blessing. It’s made knowledge a finite thing. We had fewer than five thousand books. That’s about half a dozen each at a time. But it’s an easy sum for anyone to work through … Why, for the first time in my life, I found I actually had something in common with people from the Southern Worlds. If you’d asked me that a few years ago, I’d have laughed. But it turns out, no matter what colony you’re from, you’re in broad agreement that
Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less
is Jeffrey Archer’s best work.’ He beamed at us both. ‘And the classics! Why, the most surprising people spent their nights reading
The Arabian Nights
and dreaming of escape on a flying carpet.’