Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [89]
Kortez looked unmoved. ‘The Lieutenant is an officer of UNISYC,’ he intoned.
‘She’ll die!’
‘Life. Death. All part of the great wheel of karma. The cycle of existence. What passes must pass.’ The Colonel surveyed the hall, searching for someone to back him up on this. Qixotl didn’t know where to look.
The next thing he knew, he was being grabbed by the shoulders and vigorously shaken. ‘We’ve got to switch off the defences,’ the Doctor insisted. ‘Come on. We’re going back to the security centre.’
‘No,’ droned E-Kobalt.
The Doctor stopped shaking Qixotl.
‘The-sur-vi-val-of-the-hu-man-un-its-is-of-no-sig-ni-fic-ance,’ E-Kobalt said, swinging its tubes from side to side in a vaguely menacing fashion. ‘The-se-cu-ri-ty-of-the-Re-lic-will-not-be-jeo-par-dised. No-more-time-will-be-was-ted.’
The Doctor stared at the creature for a few moments. Then he turned back to Qixotl. Qixotl shrugged. ‘You heard the man,’ he said.
The Doctor spun on his heel, towards Homunculette. ‘Mr Homunculette...’
‘I agree with the Kroton,’ the Time Lord grunted.
‘I saved you from the Faction!’
Homunculette looked away, but didn’t answer. The Doctor turned to Kortez. ‘Colonel...?’
‘What passes –’
‘Must pass. Yes, I forgot.’ Before Qixotl could even blink, the Doctor was striding out through the main archway, a planet-sized grimace on his face. ‘All right,’ Qixotl heard him mutter. ‘All right. I’ll have to save them myself.’ And then he was gone.
There was a brief moment of silence.
‘He’ll miss the auction,’ Cousin Justine noted.
‘Is-he-a-threat-to-the-sec-ur-it-y-of-the-Rel-ic?’ queried E-Kobalt.
‘Not at all,’ Qixotl lied. He remembered the way the Doctor had strolled into the security centre before. Yeah, the old bugger could easily switch off the Relic’s defences, but Qixotl wasn’t going to be the one to stand in his way. With any luck, the auction would be wrapped up before the Doctor could do any serious damage.
‘Even so, we should take precautions.’ Cousin Justine nodded towards her little Brother. ‘Manjuele. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to follow him...?’
Manjuele looked puzzled for a moment. Then his face lit up, and he gave her a quick salute. ‘No prob,’ he said. Bowing extravagantly to the others, he waltzed out of the hall.
‘Manjuele will make sure no sabotage is done,’ Justine explained, smoothly.
‘Fair enough,’ said Qixotl. Qixotl didn’t trust the cultists an inch, but if Manjuele thought he could take on the Doctor, he was welcome to give it a go. ‘Ah. Mr Trask. Dead on time, pardon the expression.’
Trask staggered into the hall, his joints stiff as ever. ‘Are we ready to begin?’ he asked.
‘Finally, yes,’ said Mr Qixotl.
‘Hallelujah,’ scowled Homunculette.
The systems were probing him again. Invisible machines were scraping molecules from his skin, peering at the samples through microscopic microscopes. The Doctor kept walking. Qixotl hadn’t done a bad job programming the defences around the security centre, but there were always loopholes.
He hadn’t been expecting the Doctor, for a start. Not alive, anyway. The Doctor was an ex-President of the High Council, party to the biodata ultra-sensitivity that came with the robes of high office. He’d worn the Sash of Rassilon, he’d felt the changes it had triggered on the deeper levels of his biology. When he’d inserted his biodata into the City’s systems, he hadn’t just put himself on the guest list. He’d given himself the biological equivalent of a backstage pass, access all areas. The High Council’s codes had reprogrammed the security devices from the inside.
There was nowhere in the ziggurat he couldn’t go. That included the vault, of course, but he’d think about that later.
Once the Doctor had reached the master console, he called up a complete schematic of the lowest level. Apparently, it had changed shape since the last time he’d been here. On the pixscreen, he identified a series of corridors that looked worryingly like a human digestive system. He found Sam first, and called up a visual image of her.
What he saw on the screen was genuinely horrifying.