Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [88]
The woman dropped the axe, put both hands to her face and made an appalled small noise, for all the world like a child injured on the playground in the middle of a game that had got out of hand. But Butcher didn’t stop playing. He couldn’t. He swung the hose back and whiplashed it forward again, hitting the woman on the back of the head. She went stumbling clumsily to the ground, face first, and Butcher watched her warily. After a while she stopped moving and Butcher, standing over her holding his improbably vicious weapon, began to feel sick about what he’d done. One look at the axe, lying where she’d dropped it, restored his priorities, though.
He checked the woman. She was deeply unconscious but still breathing, wetly and noisily through her wrecked mouth. Butcher used the garden hose to truss her up, cutting lengths of it with his pocket knife. Butcher had a pair of handcuffs in his jacket pocket but he suspected that he’d have need for those later on. So he tied the woman up with the hose and stuffed his handkerchief in her mouth, knotting another length of hose around her head to keep it in place. He made sure she was still breathing through her nose, rolled her into a dark bed of shrubs, and started shakily up the marble steps towards the front door of the house.
Ace was looking at the Doctor. He was trying to tell her something and she was trying to work out what it was. If she didn’t, they were both going to end 154
up dead.
But the Doctor couldn’t say anything aloud or make any obvious moves because the goons with the machine guns were watching their every move.
Ace desperately tried to read the look he was giving her. Ray and Imperial Lee were still arguing about their fate, but Ace had no doubt about the eventual outcome.
‘I won’t let you do it,’ said Ray. ‘These people are my friends.’
Imperial Lee grinned. ‘You won’t let us kill two of your friends but you’re helping us wipe out an entire universe?’
‘That’s nothing to do with me, man,’ said Ray.
Lady Silk chuckled. ‘Ray’s in denial,’ she said. The Doctor was staring at Lady Silk, as though there was great significance in what she was saying.
Then he looked at Ace, then back at Lady Silk. Finally back at Ace again. He made the tiniest of movements with his head, the faintest suggestion of a nod.
He was trying to tell her something. But what? Ace felt like screaming with frustration.
‘That whole chain-reaction business is just hoodoo man. It’s never going to work. You’re never going to destroy any universe.’ Ray’s voice was trembling with emotion.
Imperial Lee was calm and amused. ‘Hoodoo? You mean like the hoodoo that opened a portal between the dimensions? The portal that brought you here? I suppose you’re not standing here now?’
Ray shook his head, his plump face mottled with thwarted rage. ‘That worked man. But all this destruction jive. That’s just a crazy power trip.
It’s not going to happen. I ought to know, man. I’m the only real physicist here.’
Lady Silk cleared her throat. Everybody looked at her, including the Doctor.
He hadn’t stopped looking at her. Then he glanced urgently at Ace and made a nodding motion. Ace met his gaze and tried to read his eyes. What was he trying to tell her?
‘That’s very interesting, Ray,’ said Lady Silk. ‘But why don’t you tell us what made you quit your job at the particle accelerator lab?’
‘I didn’t quit man. I was fired.’
‘That’s the story you like to tell,’ said Lady Silk. ‘But I’ve seen your files. I know what really happened. You resigned. Why don’t you tell us why?’ Ray stared at her, stubbornly silent. ‘All right,’ said Silk. ‘I’ll tell you why. You quit because you were scared. You thought that the danger of creating a rogue particle in the accelerator hinged on your equations. If you pursued your equations all the way to a solution then the rogue would appear. It would happen. And it would destroy the world.’
155
Ray stood there, slumped and silent staring at the tiled floor, which was scrawled with his equations. The basement was completely silent