Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [36]
‘I’m not at liberty to discuss the Colonel’s tactics, Doctor. If you feel your security clearance isn’t good enough, you’ll have to take the matter up with the Marshal.’
‘You mean, he did have inside help?’
General Tchike growled at her. ‘Dr Martinique, you’re here as a consultant on extraterrestrial concerns. I’d hoped you’d be more interested in the body than in UNISYC’s American connections.’
Martinique sighed. ‘What do you want me to say? Presumably, it came out of that casket. But it’s a corpse, I can’t see what use it’ll be to the Americans. It’s not going to be telling them any secrets, is it?’
Tchike grinned his most hostile grin, and reached into the top pocket of his uniform jacket. ‘No? Then you don’t believe the alien’s DNA might be of value, for example?’
‘Well... if you’re a research scientist, maybe.’ Martinique narrowed her eyes. ‘Why? What do you know?’
‘I know, Doctor, exactly what that alien is. And I know exactly what it represents. Shortly after Kortez returned to Geneva, we received this. I found it on my desk. Nobody knows how it got there.’
Tchike drew the card out of his pocket. Even in the dim light of the War Room, it sparkled. The same way the casket in the cinevid had sparkled.
‘An invitation,’ he said, before anyone could ask. ‘This card tells us the exact nature of the body in the Colonel’s film. It doesn’t give us a name, but it gives us enough clues. And it tells us how we can get our hands on it, even though the Americans have moved it to the Toy Store. What I want to know is, what kind of creature would send us something like this?’
4
DEATH, DEATH, AND – GOOD GRIEF – MORE DEATH
The hall was full of dead people, although the Doctor wasn’t sure if they knew they were dead. They certainly didn’t seem too perky, anyway. They were pale, even the ones who hadn’t been white while they’d been alive, and their clothes had been worn down to nothing, bleached of all humanity by Time, Motion, and the sundry other forces governing this part of the universe.
One of the dead men shuffled up to the Doctor, and kicked him over with the toe of his boot. The Doctor rolled onto his back. He couldn’t see the walls of the chamber, not from down here on the floor. The edges of the room were in shadow, and he was sure the corners were shifting around of their own accord, defying all the known laws of architecture while they knew nobody could see them. Ominous shapes hovered just outside his field of vision, their faces concealed by the darkness. The Doctor squinted, tried to bring them into focus, but all he could make out were the silhouettes of high collars and black robes.
The darkness, he realised, was what the shapes had instead of fashion sense. They had to remain unseen. If they were seen, they’d be real, and if they were real, they’d lose their power. The dead were their slaves, the ones who moved in the light while the puppet-masters slithered around in the corners.
The whole scenario was familiar. The Doctor wondered if it was all a memory, dredged up from one of his past lives. Or even...
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me it’s a premonition.’
‘Is he human?’ inquired a voice from the back of the hall.
The slave, the puppet, the dead man, looked down his nose at the Doctor. He was Caucasian, his skin tinged a nasty green. Not Martian green, just nausea green. His hair was slicked back, yet somehow messy at the same time. Space-time anomalies I can deal with, the Doctor told himself, but paradoxical hairstyles?
‘I told you,’ the dead man said. His voice made the Doctor think of dying slugs. ‘The security in this place is a mess.’
‘It’s all right,’ the Doctor told him.
The dead man looked alarmed. ‘What?’
‘It’s all right. I know how you feel. I was a slave, too.’ He had no idea why he’d said that, but it seemed to fit the situation.
The dead man turned, towards the shadowy figures in the shadowy corners. ‘He’s mad. What did you do to him?’
‘Nothing. He passed out as soon as I took him on board myself. If he’s that sensitive to my secure array, he must be time-aware.