The light was coming from a couple of holo projectors strung up on the ceiling. Set on neutral they produced big boxes of pearly static. It reminded Kadiatu of the rainy season in Makeni, sitting on the verandah with her father as the daylight was filtered through the falling water.
'Looks like somebody was having a party,' said Kadiatu. Spilled food stained the white linen over the trestle tables lining the walls. Some of the tables had been knocked over. Empty canons littered the floor. Kadiatu nudged one over with her foot, exposing a picture of a Black Forest gateau printed on the other side.
'Junk food,' said the Doctor.
Kadiatu thought that was a strange expression. How could food be junk? 'Chocolate cake and ice cream,' said Kadiatu. 'Nothing wrong with that.'
'Carbohydrates, sucrose,' said the Doctor. 'High-energy foods for people who use up their glycogen in industrial quantities.'
'Maybe they've got a fast metabolism.'
'Or an accelerated one,' said the Doctor.
'Maybe they just like cake and ice cream?'
'There it is,' said the Doctor.
It looked just as she remembered it from Kings Cross station and the Stone Mountain archives, right down to the words 'POLICE BOX' stencilled below the roof in white letters. It was opposite the entrance to the cavern of course, embedded in the wall. It had sunk all the way in, leaving about two centimetres clear of the rock.
The Doctor rushed over and put his hand against its side. 'My old friend,' he said, 'what have they done to you?' He patted the side again. 'Don't worry, soon have you out.'
Kadiatu put her own hand against it. She wasn't sure what she expected it to feel like, gritty perhaps, like all weather paint on concrete or wood. Instead the texture was rough, warm and organic like elephant skin. She felt a threshold vibration under her palm.
'It's called a TARDIS,' said the Doctor.
'I know.'
'What do you think of it?'
'It's smaller than I expected.'
'All we have to do now,' said the Doctor, 'is get it out of the wall.'
'Can't we just move it?'
'Of course,' said the Doctor. 'It would be a simple matter once I got inside to dematerialize for a short jump. Unfortunately there's a problem.'
'What's that?'
'The door's on the other side.'
Lowell Depot (Central Line Terminus)
The train doors hissed open and Old Sam jumped out. Blondie saw terrified faces falling back as he followed the veteran out. They went up the platform at a fast dog trot, refugees scattering out of their way. Blondie hardly noticed; sweating in his half-armour he concentrated on keeping up with Old Sam.
Old Sam stopped by a tall African wearing a dayglo orange jacket and carrying a clipboard. The African looked critically at Old Sam.
'What's with the rig?' he asked.
'Got a mission,' said Old Sam. He held up a snap projector; it put a four by six 3D image into the air above. A six-second loop of Kadiatu's head and shoulders. The image must have been sampled at the party because you could see Credit Card dancing in the background. 'You seen this?' asked Old Sam.
'Ran through here half an hour ago,' said the African, 'with some
mwngu,
claimed they were
bangjacks.'
'Which way?' asked Old Sam.
'Up the end of the station.' The African raised his hand briefly to his temple. It was a hesitant, unconscious gesture and Blondie saw he had a military-issue jack implanted there, just like Old Sam's.
'Who did you serve with, friend?' asked Old Sam.
The African's hand snapped away from his temple. 'I don't remember my unit, I have forgotten the war.' He said it quietly and it sounded to Blondie like an incantation.
Old Sam said nothing, then he turned and ran up the platform, Blondie glanced back as he followed. The African's hand was back at his temple, finger running around the ceramic ring of his jack. An itch he couldn't scratch.
'First in.' muttered Old Sam as they reached the end of the platform. 'Day one, boy,' he said to Blondie. 'Third Tactical Response Brigade, Irish and Ethiopians. Dropped on to the mountain and got cut to bits by the Greenies on the way down. First in.'
There was a two-metre hole in the far wall.
'Listen,' said Old Sam.
Blondie heard sounds, metal sounds reverberating down a long tube.
'Visors down boy,' said Old Sam, 'and in we go.'
Blondie sealed the helmet, the charger whine scaled up into the ultrasonic and the world went videogame again.
'First in,'
he heard Old Sam mutter again.
'And he wants to
forget, damn.'
The Stop
His mind was like an orchestra after a mix-up at the printers, each section playing from a different score. Someone, perhaps a flautist, was playing a clear lucid solo that spoke of life as organised patterns of energy. He could believe that, hadn't he met the occasional intelligent energy field in his time. It might be living in the tunnels, a pattern superimposed over the carrier waves - was that possible?
Hey Doctor.
The string section was playing a single chord, endlessly repeated in a thumping rhythm - Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'. Subterranean forces gathering out of sight, the pitch spoke of power, the rhythm of danger.
Hey Doctor. Why don't you?
The woodwinds were playing honky-tonk, gaily improvising around the polyphones. Spirit music percolating up from old Africa, work music, wedding music, funeral music. Smoky dens full of life in the orchestra pit of his imagination. He would have to get back on that one.
'Hey Doctor. Why don't you just stick your head up ...'
Sharp sounds from the percussion section, rim shots and rolls. Firecracker sounds with zips, whirrs and ricochets. Below that a drumming sound, coconut shells on damp earth. /
was sent to military academy as an orphan.
Horses' hooves on the overripe fields of Heaven.
I
wasn't very good at it, though. Because I was such a bad shot.
Some mad drummer hit the rim a bit hard because wood splintered. There was a smoking hole in the upturned trestle table six centimetres to the left of his head.
I've got much better since then.
'Hey Doctor. Why don't you just stick your head up so I can blow it off?'
Benny.
This is not the time, thought the Doctor, for extended metaphors.
There was another bang and another hole, this one to the right of where he was crouching and lower down. Whatever it was that Benny was firing at him, it went through wood. The trestle table he'd dived behind was only protection because she couldn't see him. He looked around for Kadiatu, but she was out of sight. She'd jumped in the other direction when the shooting started.
'Come on. Doctor,' called Benny, 'I haven't got all day.'
The Doctor judged from her voice that she was about thirty metres away, a little to the right. Standing by the entrance to the cavern. Somebody else was with her, he could hear another pair of feet shuffling on the floor.
The Doctor considered his options. If he stood up Benny might shoot him; on the other hand there was nowhere to run to and Benny could just walk over and shoot him anyway.
The Doctor sprang to his feet.
'Don't shoot,' he shouted. Not very original, he was the first to admit, but it had worked in the past.
'Why not?' asked Benny. She held the pistol in a one-handed grip, arm extended, elbow slightly bent to absorb the recoil. There was a trick to dodging bullets; it involved a detailed knowledge of the musculature of the forearm and precise timing. The Doctor wished he could remember it.
Benny's companion was a young woman with nervous eyes. It was obvious to the Doctor that she didn't like what was going on but wasn't about to get in Benny's way. He could understand that.
'Why?'
'Because I've been taken over by a fucking alien intelligence,' said Benny. 'Why do you think?'
'Fascinating,' said the Doctor. 'How did that happen?'
'You tell me. Doctor,' said Benny. 'I was stepping out of the TARDIS behind you and the next thing I know I woke up in a sewer.'
'What's it like, this possession?'
'Well, at first I thought I might have picked up a spore, one of those Hoothi things, but it doesn't feel organic enough. This is why you came here though, isn't it, Doctor?'
'No,' said the Doctor. 'Not this time.'
'But this is your kind of deal, your purvue so to speak.'
'Is that why it wants me dead?'
Benny smiled. It was her normal ironic smile, all the more sinister for being natural. 'Don't flatter yourself, Doctor,' she said. 'It doesn't even know you exist, I tried telling it ...'
'You speak to it?'
'Let's just say that there are channels of communication. Where are you going?'
The Doctor walked round the table and started towards Benny. 'It seems unnecessary for us to be shouting at each other.'
Benny's companion shrank back as the Doctor approached. 'Don't be alarmed,' the Doctor told her, 'she's the one with a gun.'
'Stop there,' said Benny. The Doctor obeyed. He was about one metre from Benny, half a metre from the gun's muzzle. It looked much bigger this close and just out of effective umbrella range.
'You were saying?'
'I tried to explain that you were its primary danger but I think it found the concept difficult. It seemed to believe that you were in some way not
complex
enough to be a threat.'
'Why the gun then?'
'My fortune is linked to its fortune,' said Benny. 'Besides, I think it's in its nature to delegate these matters.'
'So why am I not dead already?'
'I was curious. Doctor. It's a characteristic you and I share. Why else would we be having this conversation?'
'I could be stalling.'
'You are stalling,' said Benny, 'but no one's coming to your rescue this time.'
'Apart from the party of heavily armed troopers coming up the tunnel behind you.' It didn't work. Benny's eyes didn't even flicker.
'Games,' said Benny, 'can only take place within a regulated framework.'
'Your bootlaces are undone?' tried the Doctor hopefully.
'Well, I've enjoyed our little chat,' said Benny, 'but we have to be going now. You know how it is, things to do, people to see.'
'NOBODY MOVE,' yelled an amplified voice from the tunnel.
The Doctor moved first. He brought his umbrella smartly round and smacked the gun out of Benny's hand. Her eyes followed the weapon as it skittered across the floor and then snapped back to the Doctor's face.
'I never made a stereo for you,' said the Doctor.
The cavern's entrance exploded into brilliant white light.
The Ice Maiden
Imogen turned out to be a German subsidiary of a Croatian conglomerate run by a group of expatriate Japanese shinjinrui from a technology park on the outskirts of Zagreb.
Francine made a pass with a dummy company registered out of Haiti. It made an unfriendly takeover bid for Imogen's parent with just enough capital to make it convincing. The parent made an immediate counter-bid for the Haitian dummy through the New York exchange. Francine watched the debt gearing of the parent shrink before her eyes. Money was pouring in from somewhere.
She upped the stakes by creating an imaginary consortium to back the Haitian dummy, a network of small private firms with a sudden burning desire to buy into the Balkans. Money continued to pour into the parent company and simultaneously Francine's companies began to suffer the attentions of the Fair Trade Bureau.
Francine smelt politics, and leaving the takeover battle to run on automatic she turned her attention to Reykjavik. One of the People's Deputies on the Trade Subcommittee had an old-fashioned taste in drugs and cashflow problems. Francine's organization took care of both and the PD started asking questions on their behalf. Six days later he was found face down in a bath in a notorious Reykjavik tea room with a neat hole burnt through his right eyeball. Local police acting on 'information received' arrested the bagman being used as the PD's contact. Luckily he was put under glass in a local prison where it was easy for Francine to have him taken care of.
Prancine realised that her organization had become too diffused, too legitimate to be effective. So far its actions had stayed well within tolerated business practice. Locked in the blindness of her own skull she called herself soft.
Subtlety wasn't working. It was time to see the Brigadier.
Francine flew to Africa in a variable-geometry ground-attack fighter. The jet was factory fresh from China, a wasteful extravagance bought especially for this trip. Structured hydrocarbons exploded around turbine blades that spun on shafts lubricated with liquid Teflon. Francine left a white contrail across the sky over the Saharan national park. The GEPA pollution permits cost far more than the avionics and the avionics had cost a great deal indeed.
It was the rainy season in West Africa; Navsat put the cloud base at one thousand metres, electrical storms likely. The avionics hardware in Francine's brain didn't output to her ruined optic nerve; she just knew the jet's position, engine status and altitude the same way she knew she was breathing.
She put the jet down within a hundred metres of the Makeni beacon, Navsat's best guess option on the Brigadier's house. Once down she popped the cockpit and waited for someone to ask her what the hell she was doing.
Water trickled into her lap; she assumed it was rain running off the front of the open canopy. She could hear it hissing off the green things all around, hi the distance there was music
She didn't have to wait long.
The airframe rocked as someone climbed on to the wing.
'Are you all right?' Young voice, a boy.
'Do you know the Lethbridge-Stewarts?'
'Sure,' said the boy, 'they live over there.'
'Go get him for me, will you? Tell him Prancine's back and she needs his help.'
The plane rocked once more as the boy jumped to the ground. She heard bare feet pattering away.