Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 1
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Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 1

SET PIECE.

by Kate Orman.

Introduction.

'Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

'Once upon a time, the mighty and wise general, Sun Tzu, made an unusual proposal to the Emperor of China. Sun Tzu claimed that he was so wise and so mighty that he could teach anyone to be a soldier, no matter how weak or foolish they were. Why, even the Emperor's own harem could become a crack fighting squad.

'The Emperor, laughing at his general's folly, ordered the one hundred and eighty ladies of the court to attend Sun Tzu's military lessons. The general lined the women up in the palace courtyard and began to teach them how to respond to the drums of war. One drumbeat meant they should stand at attention, two drumbeats meant a turn to the right, three meant a turn to the left.

'No, no, no. This is is relevant. relevant.

'When he had finished explaining, Sun Tzu gave the signal for the practice to begin. But as soon as they heard the drums, the courtesans started laughing.

'Sun Tzu, managing to stay calm, explained everything to them again. Once again the drums began. And once again, the harem fell about laughing.

'Still calm, Sun Tzu announced that the courtesans had broken the rules of war, and that he would execute the Emperor's favourite concubines as punishment. He cut off the two princesses' heads with his own sword.

'Now, when the drumbeats started, the concubines marched in silence.

'Yes I have finished.

'Now tell me: what do you think is the moral of the story?'

1.

First Piece

To Break a Butterfly upon a Wheel Wa-ma yinub al-mukhallis illa taqti' hidum-uh.

All the intervener gets is torn clothes.

(Arab proverb)

Chapter 1.

Initial Conditions

Run! Run! As fast as you can!

You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!

(Traditional) Ms Cohen remembered.

It began with a hissing sound. It grew louder and louder, penetrating the blackness, a stinging rush of noise pressing on her eyes and ears. Her lips and toes began to feel the cold.

Those were the first things she remembered.

She blinked eyelids still half-glued together with frost, and looked out through a curved wall, made of some translucent, rough-looking material, covered in condensation.

The cold liquid sparkled, blue light refracting through it into icy rainbows. Her eyes locked onto one of the droplets as it fattened, swelled, finally ran down the glass in a chilling flash of light.

And when the muscles in her eyes had thawed, she focused through the droplets, through the wall, and saw the Ant.

Ms Cohen screamed a frozen scream.

Then the door began to open.

The man wore a uniform made of thick dun fabric, topped with a little peaked cap. He had a face you wouldn't remember, fringed with pale blond hair. He took her out of the capsule, away from cold storage, and into the medical laboratory. He checked her blood pressure, her reflexes, her liver function.

And then he left her, surrounded by glistening green walls which looked like the inside of a huge pepper. He didn't say a word.

Ms Cohen huddled in a silver heat-reflective blanket, shivering with cold and fright. She wished she had a cup of cocoa. She wished she knew where she was and what was going to happen to her. Marshmallows were all she could think about, white smears of sweetness bobbing to the surface.

Ms Cohen remembered the Cortese Cortese.

The starliner had been cruising at eight times the speed of light, the universe bending around its hull. If you wanted to watch the relativistic effects, there was the observation deck, where tourists starbaked and argued arm-chair physics and saw something they wouldn't be able to describe to their grandchildren.

5.Ms Cohen spent her time reading, playing computer games, brushing up on her zero-gravity squash. One of her opponents teased her that she was missing the whole point of the trip. 'If you don't want to see hyperspace,' he said, 'you take a cheap fridge ship. Otherwise, why bother?'

But Ms Cohen was as afraid of suspended animation as she was of hyperspace. She had to take this trip, but she didn't have to enjoy it, and anyway, the corporation was paying. So she stayed below decks for two months, until boredom and peer pressure drove her up to the deck.

The Cortese Cortese was the last word in luxury; it had to be, for a trip that could take half a year. The floors were carpeted, the walls studded with video screens and hung with real paintings. Ms Cohen could imagine that she was in an office building, back on Terra Firma (and the firmer the better, ha ha). But not when the doors to the deck slid open with a hydraulic sigh of resignation. was the last word in luxury; it had to be, for a trip that could take half a year. The floors were carpeted, the walls studded with video screens and hung with real paintings. Ms Cohen could imagine that she was in an office building, back on Terra Firma (and the firmer the better, ha ha). But not when the doors to the deck slid open with a hydraulic sigh of resignation.

She had hovered for a moment, eyes adjusting to the brighter lighting.

Holographic video games flickered and danced in the air. Deckchairs were scattered about at strategically random locations. The smell of chlorine came from the Olympic-sized pool.

It was a beach, a five-kilometre, sandless beach. The crowd was a beach crowd, tipsy and aimless. Reassuringly normal. Unlike the view.

One entire wall and the roof of the observation deck were transparent. It looked as though the entire area was open to space. Ms Cohen stood gaw-ping at hyperspace until she started to feel self-conscious. No-one else was bothering with the view. Blinking, she moved into the crowd.

It was like jumping off a cliff and discovering a mattress at the bottom.

Hyperspace was just a black blur, not even any stars. Unless you looked at it for long enough. Then you started to notice . . . the black had colours in it, sort of . . . blurring and jumping and . . . doing the thing they were doing, whatever it was. Ms Cohen had no words to describe it, so she stopped looking at it.

She had a swim and joined a game of shuffle and drank cocktails with some of her acquaintances. She wished she had a friend with her, someone she could discuss her work with. She couldn't even keep up with the jour-nals; communications travelled more slowly than the ship. There'd be a lot of catching up to do after planetfall.

She stood with a Martini in her hand, slowly scanning the crowd, looking for a single upturned face. Nobody cared. When someone worked out how to put non-Euclidean images onto postcards, the passengers wouldn't bother even to come up here any more. In five kilometres, she found one man looking at the sky.

Had he seen the other ship as it dived towards them, moving thirty-two times as fast as light?

6.The crowd on the deck had swelled as the word passed around the ship.

There was a long streamer of light in hyperspace, like a smudged line on a blackboard. It was beautiful, a tinsel comet, following them through the night.

There was no announcement, no sirens. Just a lurch in the pit of her stomach as they dropped back into normal space. And a second lurch as she saw the huge ship looming above the deck, dwarfing the Cortese Cortese. It didn't look like a ship. Its shape was curvy and irregular. It looked alive.

She had been one of those sensible enough to get off the observation deck.

When the other ship had crushed the viewing wall, a thousand people had found themselves riding a tornado out into space.

Life support failed an hour later. The last thing she remembered was hiding under the bed in her cabin, her unprotected arms just beginning to freeze to the floor.

His name was Meijer. His uniform was crumpled and stained. It looked comfortable on him, as though he'd been wearing it for a hundred years.

'The Ants,' explained Meijer, 'are collectors. Some species go about the galaxy collecting minerals, or slaves, or exotic foods. The Ants collect minds.

That's my theory. We're certain of this much: they siphon off knowledge and thought patterns and use them in the construction of new Ants.'

An Ant was watching them. It was four foot high at the shoulder, made of some reflective metal, silver with bronze highlights. Its eyeless head was festooned with antennae and jointed tools that pivoted and twitched, like a Swiss army knife brought to life. Why was it metal when the ship was flesh?

'The Ants claimed five hundred and six people from the wreckage of the Cortese Cortese,' Meijer was saying. 'They're in cold storage now. Thirty-nine have been processed, and processing is continuing.'

Ms Cohen's head spun with questions she was too scared to ask. Is that why you've thawed me out? Does anyone know you're doing this? Why are you helping them? Did you build the Ants? Or are you working for them? What happens to the people who are processed? Why me? Why is this happening to me?

When she didn't speak, Meijer went on. 'We need your help with subject 24,' he said. 'We know you're a neurologist. Now, if you help us to process 24, we won't kill you.'

Why is this happening to me? Why do you need my help? How do I know you'll keep your word?

'How does the process work?' asked Ms Cohen.

7.The spacecraft was full of Ants, scurrying across the textured floors, their metallic bodies scattering the dull bioluminescence of the ship's veins. There were more men and women in uniforms like Meijer's. Had he been a prisoner, like her? Could she strike a deal to stay alive as long as him?

She got a uniform too, beige and long-sleeved like Meijer's, but without the stains and the peaked cap. Now she followed him through the corridors, past rough walls built out of enormous oblong cells covered in a tough organic sheath.

The stuff was cool to the touch plant, not animal. Even the computer screens were alive, irregularly shaped membranes lighting up from inside with alien symbols.

While Meijer stopped to chat with another hired hand, she watched a butterfly the size of her fist crawling up the wall. When she looked closer, she saw the metallic sheen of its wings, the tiny tools built into its face. It was repairing a piece of damaged organic circuitry, uncurling a proboscis into a slit in the stuff of the wall.

The design of the ship was economical, a doughnut sliced into sections one computer room, one processing area, cold storage, a shuttle bay, the kitchen and storage areas. Everything was interconnected by short, low, narrow corridors. It was an Ant farm, not designed for human occupants.

'Where do the Ants come from?'

'We don't know,' said Meijer. 'They've been doing this for a long time. There are thousands of alien minds in the computer.'

'They're still alive in there?'

Meijer shrugged. 'The process draws out memories, information, thought patterns. But in pieces. We don't keep the whole mind.'

'What do you do with, what do you do with the subjects when you've finished?'

'We don't keep the whole mind,' said Meijer again.

They had come to one of the pale-coloured sliding panels that indicated a door. It looked like a two-inch slab of skin stretched across the doorway, a complex growth of controls embedded in the stuff. There were two more hired hands outside the room, one smoking a cigarette with the Cortese Cortese logo, the other sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, watching the door. Ms Cohen saw that the clump of controls was loose? Damaged? Meijer said, logo, the other sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, watching the door. Ms Cohen saw that the clump of controls was loose? Damaged? Meijer said, 'We've had to replace that three times.'

He touched the panel and the door slid open. There was a shimmering in the doorway, like air over bitumen. Meijer did more things to the panel, and the force shield vanished.

She had expected something else. Something more, some hero resisting his captors with fierce defiance, not a pitiful lump under a silver blanket. Subject 8 24 huddled in the middle of the room, staring into nothing.

With a jolt, she recognized the man who had been staring into hyperspace.

Ms Cohen remembered.

He held a glass of sparkling mineral water in his hand. He lay in a deckchair with a blanket draped over his legs as he stared up at the see-through wall.

From time to time he took a sip of the drink, keeping his eyes on the view.

She watched him for a while. A woman came up to him, and they exchanged a few words. For a moment, the woman swivelled her neck skywards to follow his gaze. She was wearing a red jacket that Ms Cohen had seen in the ship's stores that morning, window-shopping to pass the time.

And here he was in this featureless, egg-shaped room. No there was a sort of bunk, a recess in the organic stuff of the wall, and some sort of facilities in the corner . . . but he was sitting in the middle of the cell, staring, not focussed on anything. Focussed on nothing. He didn't even know they were there.

Meijer passed her a handscan.

The little machine had come from the Cortese, but the Ants had done things to it. Metal and plastic had been fused with whorls of cellulose. There were three abortive legs growing from one side of the monitor screen, dry to the touch.

Number 24 had been scanned when he was defrosted. She had calibrated the handscan according to that initial data. Now she knelt down, perhaps ten feet from him, and activated the little machine.

'You do realise he isn't human,' she said.

Meijer grunted. 'The Ants have processed dozens of different species. But they've never come across one of him before.'

Ms Cohen let her eyes slide from the bleeping scanner to 24. He was wearing the same kind of uniform as the Ants' hired hands. There were laugh lines around his eyes and mouth; that face had done a lot of smiling. He was not smiling now.

'How many times have you tried to, to process him?'

'Seventeen.'