Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [15]
‘Nyssa and Tegan will be getting bored of waiting.’ The thought amused Adric.
‘I’m sure they’ll cope,’ the Doctor responded automatically.
Adric’s attention was drawn by a camera mounted on a stubby post about three metres away. It rotated, following Adric as he walked along.
‘We’re being watched,’ he announced.
The Doctor didn’t look up. ‘So we are. Try not to do anything illegal.’
Adric walked towards the post. The camera continued to follow him.
‘About time, mate. I thought I’d been stood up.’
The loud Australian had met up with another colleague, a local who was looking around nervously. Luckily he didn’t notice the two young women in the corner staring at them. The colleague was a small, rat-faced man, wearing a grey tunic. He was pacing nervously on the spot, his head turning from side to side.
‘G’day mate. Calm down, you look like you’re dying for the dunny. Pull up a stool. D’ya wanna drink? Something to wet yer wallaby?’
Tegan had been watching all this, her arms folded. over her chest. She was getting redder and redder by the minute. Nyssa could feel anger radiating from her. ‘He’s not an Australian,’ Tegan insisted, not for the first time.
‘But his accent is –’
‘It’s nothing like mine,’ Tegan snarled before Nyssa could even finish.
‘Your speech patterns share many characteristics,’ Nyssa pointed out reasonably, as she poured Tegan a cup of coffee and unwrapped another packet of complimentary biscuits.
‘The nasal whine, the use of colourful idiosyncratic colloquialisms and neologisms.’
‘Rack off! That performance is a crude, racist...’ Tegan’s voice trailed away. Nyssa had learnt that Tegan – and perhaps all humans – often found it difficult to put their emotions into words. ‘I’m surprised he’s not wearing a cork hat and hasn’t brought a sheep along to shear. “Wet your wallaby”?’
‘But why would he pretend to be an Australian?’ Nyssa asked soothingly.
‘That’s what I plan to find out.’ Tegan moved to get up.
‘Tegan!’ Nyssa gasped, pulling her back down. ‘What exactly do you intend to do?’
‘He’s up to no good, I know it. He keeps pretty shifty-looking company.’
Nyssa turned her attention back to the two men. The Australian was passing over a small paper bag. The rat-faced man weighed it in one hand, opening it up and sneaking a look before pocketing it. Finally, he handed over another package. Within seconds he had scurried away deep into the hotel, following a sign marked ‘Public Transmat’.
‘Whazza matter, cobber?’ the Australian shouted after him, making a few of the other guests turn. ‘Don’t ya trust me, sport?’
Tegan fumed.
‘What possible motive has he got?’ Nyssa asked again.
The question did not, appear to concern Tegan. She stood, shaking off Nyssa’s grip and stormed over to the Australian’s table.
But he had gone.
Staring up at the camera, Adric walked straight into a little man with a pinched face, who glared at him. Adric stepped back nonchalantly. The man stuffed his hands in the pockets of his tunic and walked up the platform. The woman had been waiting for him, Adric realized. Adric turned back to the Doctor, idly wondering where the man had come from.
‘It’s very high security for a... what is this place?’
‘It’s a skitrain station. That pedestal that the camera’s mounted on has the signalputer in it. The local network and points are controlled from that little box. I would imagine they’ve had a problem with vandals in the past.’
The Doctor waved a hand in the general direction of the roadway.
‘What’s a skitrain?’
‘It’s a cross between a bobsleigh and a steam train.’
Adric was none the wiser. The Doctor explained that a train was an engine that pulled a series of carriages behind it. On Earth, they would have had wheels, here everything ran on sleds and ski blades.
‘But what’s it for?’
‘Moving people and materials around.’
‘It sounds a very primitive form of transport.’
‘Mostly obsolete now,’ the Doctor said nostalgically.
‘But one can’t transmat everything.’ He indicated an ornate hut set in the park,