Cold Fusion - Lance Parkin [98]
‘They are here,’ he whispered. ‘The invasion has begun.’
15
Downtime
There was the rumble of thunder outside. The storm had started over two hours ago, just as the hovercopter was coming over the Nightingale Facility, the very place the Doctor needed to take Patience. It had taken a little persuasion to convince the paramedics that they were passengers on the space freighter which had been hijacked by terrorists, that the criminals had brought the ship down in the frostlands and that they had made their escape with all their identification and belongings. But Chris and Patience clearly needed emergency help, and both Tegan and Nyssa were also injured, so the paramedics had accepted the situation. The Doctor and his companions had been loaded aboard the ambulance and rushed to the Facility. By the time they had arrived, the storm had begun to interfere with radio signals and so the staff there were unable to check the Doctor’s story with the Scientifica. By another stroke of luck, there were no Adjudicators stationed at the Facility, they’d been called away. For the moment at least, the Doctor and his companions were safe.
‘Doctor?’
He looked up at the word, aware that in a hospital it wasn’t always someone calling his name. The Head of the Facility, Director Fletcher, was standing over the Doctor, holding an electronic clipboard. He was a tubby little man with a nearly clipped moustache. His face was almost as florid as his medical tunic.
‘Your friends are all out of danger. Miss Nyssa was uninjured; Mrs Jovanka was suffering only from bruising.
Her husband’s injuries are healings nicely. Your own wife’s injuries were complex, involving a little brain damage. That has been repaired now, and she has regained consciousness.’
The Doctor decided that explaining his companions’
relationship to himself and to each other would both waste time and invite further questions, Instead he thanked the Director and asked whether he might see them.
‘Of course. Your wife is upstairs, but the others are in ward five, just down this corridor.’ He indicated the direction.
The Doctor struck up a conversation. ‘This seems a very unusual location for a hospital.’
The Director nodded. ‘We’re right in the heart of the old jabolite fields. We used to provide emergency care for miners. These days, we still have emergency facilities, but most of our work is medical research.’
‘In what area?’
The Director held a door open for the Doctor. ‘Mental illness. At any given time there are about two hundred patients here being processed for correction.
The Doctor could well imagine what correction involved and he doubted that any psychiatrist from Tegan’s time would recognize the conditions being treated.
No psychiatrist outside the Soviet Union, anyway. The concrete-floored corridor suddenly felt a lot colder.
The Doctor could hear Tegan, and she was grumbling.
As he turned the corner, he discovered why: she, Nyssa and Chris had been allocated beds in the same small ward.
She sat tightly wrapped up in one bed, Nyssa was sitting on the end of the young man’s. Both girls were wearing flannel pyjamas, Chris was only wearing his boxer shorts.
‘A unisex ward, I mean it’s just not right. I want somewhere to change back into my clothes.’ She held up her uniform blouse.
The Director tried to be soothing. ‘What precisely IS
your complaint, Mrs Jovanka? Offworlders sometimes have unusual customs regarding gender-segregation, I know, but what possible objection can you have to sharing a ward with your own husband?’
‘He keeps showing me his operation scars,’ Tegan muttered.
‘I don’t. That’s what I’m saying: there aren’t any. The skin’s just pink and hairless.’ The lad was practically bouncing up and down with delight. The Doctor found himself smiling at the enthusiasm.
‘I’d rather not know,’ Tegan told the room.
‘If you like,’ the Director suggested, ‘I could appoint a marriage guidance counsellor.’
While the two continued their discussion, the Doctor crossed the room and unclipped the simboard from the end of Chris’s bed. ‘You seem