Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [92]
The Kroton’s head did a 360-degree turn.
‘If it’s weapons you’re after, I can make you a better offer than that,’ slobbered Homunculette. Mr Qixotl pricked up his ears. Weapons technology was always a good investment, wherever you went in the universe, and he’d been hoping Homunculette would start thinking along those lines.
He acted casual, though. ‘Oh yeah, Mr H? What did you have in mind?’
‘The secret arsenal of Gallifrey itself.’ Homunculette glared at Justine, as if to say “beat this”. ‘You know what my people are capable of, Qixotl. You’ve heard the legends.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard. The Demat Gun, the Hand of Omega.’ Qixotl leaned back in his seat. ‘Trouble is, Mr H, I’ve also heard a nasty rumour all that stuff got lost at the start of your war.’
Homunculette’s smug look evaporated almost instantly. ‘Don’t underestimate us, Qixotl. We’ve still got some of the most advanced destructive technology in Mutter’s Spiral available to us. How would you like someone to unpick your whole timeline and replace it with monkey biodata?’
‘That a threat, Mr H?’
Homunculette clenched his teeth. ‘I’m giving you an example of what Time Lord weaponry can do, Mr Qixotl. That’s all.’
Qixotl stifled a fake yawn. ‘Hmm. Pardon me saying this, Mr H, but I can’t help noticing something about this war your people are fighting.’
‘What about it?’
‘You’re losing it. Badly. So your weapons can’t be that great, yeah?’ He turned to face Justine, leaving Homunculette to fume. Yeah, it was all a bluff. Yeah, Time Lord technology would do very nicely, thanks. But at this stage, Qixotl’s main aim was to up the ante as far as possible. ‘OK. Cousin Justine. What does the old family have to say?’
‘Hey,’ the man shouted.
The blooms were still hovering above Bregman’s head. Crude copies of her own face, dangling on the ends of sticky pink stalks. When the man had appeared out of nowhere, the heads had seemed more surprised than Bregman herself. They’d swung around to face him, and now they were bobbing up and down in an agitated fashion, hissing ineffectually.
The man didn’t seem to be all there. A hologram, Bregman guessed, all blue and blurry. The face was Little Brother Manjuele’s, and he was still grinning.
‘You wanna get out of here?’ the Little Brother asked. His voice crackled like an old audio recording.
Bregman shrugged. Manjuele laughed. ‘Jesus H. You out of your head.’ The hologram squinted at the hissing heads. ‘Ugly suckers. Take after their momma.’
Bregman said nothing. And felt nothing, come to think of it. Her mind was already made up. She was going to stay here and die. There wasn’t any point fighting this place. Chalk one for the BEMs.
‘Asked a question, UNI-bitch. Wanna get out of here?’
‘There’s no way out,’ Bregman told him. ‘It’s the vault. It’s not going to let me go. It’s never going to let me go.’
‘Yeah? See, you think you got no way out. F’you, maybe not. Me, I got the shrine. Shrine’s gonna find a way out for you.’
Bregman almost felt like laughing. ‘You don’t understand. This. The labyrinth. It’s me. I can’t get away from it. I can’t get away from me.’
It made sense to her, anyway. She wondered if she sounded as mad as the Colonel to Manjuele. ‘S’like I said,’ the man drawled. ‘Maybe you can’t get out. We got ways.’
‘Like what?’
‘You give up to us. You give up, you get out.’
The heads were turning between Bregman and Manjuele now, like spectators at a tennis match. ‘I don’t understand,’ Bregman said.
‘Control rite. We got biodata. Your biodata. We can ’trol you from this end. Like a toy puppy. You give up to us, we get your tush out the hole. Got it?’
Bregman hesitated. Mind control. Another one of those things voodoo cults were supposed to specialise in. And maybe Manjuele was right. She couldn’t escape the labyrinth alone, but with someone else inside her head, steering her by remote control...
If she let Manjuele into her skull, though, would she ever get her body back?
To hell with it. It wasn’t like she had anything left to lose.
‘Tell me one thing,’ she said. ‘Why do you want to help me?’
Manjuele