Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 25
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Doctor Who_ Set Piece Part 25

She looked as thought she could rip phone books in half. 'Where's Thierry?'

she said.

Benny picked up the port bottle and took a slow suck. She needed it. 'The place is under new management now,' she said.

'Where the hell did you come from?'

'Language,' chided Bernice. 'I brought the Doctor's TARDIS.'

'What happened to my ship?'

'Rather a lot has happened in your absence. The Doctor will explain everything. Mmm. Actually, that's pretty unlikely.'

'Where's my ship?'

'It's gone.'

'What!'

'I'm afraid it blew down.'

'It blew up?'

'No, it imploded. I'm afraid M Thierry was caught in the implosion.'

'Killed?'

Benny nodded. 'He was working for the Ants, you know.'

Kadiatu shook her head, slowly. 'You have wrecked everything. I don't believe it. You have mucked it all up.'

Benny waved the port at Kadiatu, but the tall woman just shook her head. 'I don't get drunk,' she said. 'If you'd just let the Ants take my ship, they'd have been destroyed. That was what I planned.'

'That'd be a bit of a surprise,' said Benny, 'given that you're working for them too.'

Kadiatu's hand went to the back of her neck. 'When'd he work that out?'

'Good question. You get used to it after a while, you know.'

156.

'I'd stay where you are if I were you,' said the Doctor, without turning around.

Ace hovered on the cellar steps.

He was back in his white clothes, bent over a table they'd dragged down from the living room. A couple of muon lamps from the TARDIS were fixed to the table.

Ace sat down with her back to the wall, hugged her knees. They'd talked for hours in the kitchen, but she still didn't feel as though she were up to speed.

And she hadn't told the Doctor or Benny about her nightmare. 'I want to ask you about the rifts,' she said.

The Doctor kept on doing what he was doing. She noticed he was wearing latex gloves, had a box of them on the table, like a box of tissues. 'Ask away,'

he said.

'Is the rift you came through in 1871 the same rift that Bernice came through in 1789?'

'Rift's not quite the right word. The rift per se is a fracture running through a four-dimensional area of space-time. The exit point keeps changing its temporal coordinate.'

'It's drifting back and forth in time.'

'That's right. It sounds as though the exit point you encountered in Egypt was doing the same thing. Other rift exits will be moving through space but not through time they will seem to appear in more than one place at once.

And still others may be moving through both space and time.'

'But they appear relative to the same place on the Earth's surface. How's that possible?'

'They've been anchored. It's child's play, one of the basics of time corridor technology. But time corridors are temporary they collapse when you cut their power. These holes will never seal up. Anything could come through them and threaten the Earth, future or past. And they put a constant strain on the space-time they pass through.'

'So it hurts space and time when the rifts move around like that?'

'Have you ever seen the magic trick where you slice a banana without peeling it first?' A scalpel flashed in the Doctor's hand, briefly.

'Tell me how it's done.'

'It's very simple. You use a needle and thread, moving the thread in a zigzag pattern through the banana skin, slicing up the soft fruit inside. Then, when you peel the banana . . . Gaps appear in the walls of the rifts, like holes in a tunnel, and the Ants can pop out into random areas of space-time to do a spot of piracy.'

'So how're we going to stop them?'

'It's not really a them. It's an it. Ship is a computer with a program that's 157 gone haywire. How would you stop a computer?'

Ace thought for a moment. 'Unplug it,' she said. 'Is Ship drawing power from the Vortex?'

'Very good.'

'Oh, thanks,' said Ace sarcastically. 'Then you have to change its programming. Find the right command to stop it. Or introduce a virus.'

'Very, very good. The only trouble is, organic computers are experts at dealing with viruses. They have to be.'

'I've used puters with organic components protein wafers and whatever but a whole spaceship made out of living matter?'

'An organic computer is a big advantage when trying to negotiate the Vortex,' said the Doctor. 'Like a living mind, the TARDIS can handle mathematics that would distort a normal computer.'

'Is Ship a TARDIS?'

'No. It's from the very far future. An Earth colony at the edge of the galaxy.

Their planet was destroyed. They decided to leave before that happened.'

'How was it destroyed?'

He hesitated, half turned. She saw the purple scar on his cheekbone, standing out sharply in the fierce light. 'I'm not exactly clear on the details. We haven't spoken often.'

'Why is it doing this to people?' whispered Ace.

'The colonists created a computer into which they could upload their minds.

They wrapped a spacecraft around the computer, to take it away from the dead world. And then this Ship fell into one of the rifts Kadiatu created. It was badly damaged. It could have happened to anyone, really.'

'Why didn't they just leave in the spaceship?'

'Their bodies were dying.' He put down his scalpel. 'Only their minds could be salvaged, stored in the gestalt of Ship's computer. Many of them opted to stay behind.'

'I'm not surprised.'

'The group mind wouldn't let them. The Ants were the colony's workhorses.

Ship used them to drag the others on board and process them.'

'Oh my God.' Ace opened her eyes. 'Ship is still trying to assimilate all the colonists.'

The Doctor nodded. 'That's all it does, that's all it knows how to do. As far as it's concerned, the rifts just give it better access to material which needs to be processed.'

'What about the people, the slaves?'

'More flexible and smarter than the Ants. Better machines.'

'Why don't they just stop? Oh. Because they're scared. If they all stopped at the same time, Ship would be helpless.'

158.

'But it's the prisoner's dilemma. If just one of them goes on strike, that person gets processed. Their best option is to cooperate with Ship. But if they cooperated with one another . . . '

'Are you finished yet?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Let's get out of here.' He snapped off his gloves and pushed them into a bucket.

Ace hesitated on the steps. 'Listen '

He shook his head. 'There's no way of knowing whether your Egyptian friend is still in cold storage, or whether he's been processed.'

'It's my fault he was taken. I have to get him back! I want to go there! I want to kill Ship!'

'I'm not ready yet,' said the Doctor.

She grabbed his arm. 'You're not ready?! There are people dying up there out wherever they are! Being tortured and dying! What are you going to do about it?'

'I don't know,' said the Doctor. 'I've forgotten.'

'You what? Have you lost your marbles?'

For the first time, she saw a hint of panic in his face. 'I did know, but I made myself forget. When the Ant came for me in Paris, it couldn't work out what I was planning, because I don't know myself.'

'You've finally done it,' Ace snorted. 'You've even managed to bamboozle yourself. Well, can't you figure it out?'

'Not yet.' His hands fidgeted. 'It must be a good plan, or I wouldn't have bothered to hide it. Kadiatu's been trying hard, but she hasn't managed to figure it out either.'

'You make it sound like she's the enemy.'

The Doctor raised thumb and forefinger. Just a tad. Just a tad.

'If she's on their side,' said Ace, 'I'll kill her.'

'I wouldn't advise that.'

'Hey?' said Ace. 'You don't have any objections, any moral problems you just wouldn't advise it?'

'Take a close look at her. Trust me, Ace.'

He pushed past her and up the stairs.

Ace reached into her pocket, felt the tiny bag, heard glass clinking on glass.

It couldn't be that simple, could it? She started up the stairs after him.

She couldn't help looking behind her.

The littleboy's components were neatly stacked in pieces on the table.

She managed to get outside the house before she threw up.

159.

Kadiatu came loping around the back of the house, stopped at the edge of the yellowing lawn.

There were trees that had grown backwards into saplings, flowers that had blossomed out of season. There was a huge crater in the lawn, smooth-edged, as though something had nipped a bite out of the Earth. At its edges, Thierry's orchard was a mess of apple blossoms and ripe apples and rotting apples.

There was no sign of Thierry. The Doctor's TARDIS stood at the edge of the crater.

'Shit,' said Kadiatu, with feeling.

A woman had just finished throwing up in the crater. She backed away from the edge, wiping her mouth with little, rodent motions, and turned around.

They stood perhaps twenty feet apart.