Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [29]
them in the search. The human was also killed.
It was at this point that the Doctor stepped in with his offer to help find the final two components Human beings must not learn the secret of the Eridani supercomputer. The Doctor believes it would disrupt their society to gain this knowledge prematurely. The Eridani do not wish their primitive neighbours to become their technological rivals.
That is the whole of the story.
I hadn’t stopped writing once while Mr Ghislain quietly related his tale, although I’d been tempted to flip the notebook shut and walk out. I wasn’t interested in heading off into outer space, but only in voyages into the inner space of the world inside the computer. But if this was the way some of the hackers thought, I needed to know about it. Or was the ludicrous cover story a way of stopping the secret leaking out
– because if someone spilled the beans, no-one would believe them?
Everyone was looking at me to see how I would react.
‘Whatever you say, folks,’ I declared. ‘I’m just along for the ride.’
Like the man said, you can take or leave this story as you please. My take on it? The ‘Eridani’ are code for the Russians.
The other aliens they’re supposed to have borrowed a ship from? Maybe a submarine their agents hitched a ride on. And the slow packet? That part’s straight: the components of a new generation of supercomputer. They lost control of it on American soil, and now they want it back.
If you accept the Doctor’s earlier claim – that the US
government doesn’t know anything about it – then the supercomputer’s parts had got into the hands of private citizens. But lucky for the Ruskies, the parts had been split up.
Swan got one, realised how important it was, and had set out to search for the other pieces.
What did she hope to do with the machine? Patent it as her own work? Sell it to the highest bidder? Whatever her plans, you have to wonder if she realised just what fire she was playing with. Bob and Peri did her a favour by stealing that thing out from under her nose before the other side could find it.
Or before our side could find it. What if I’d guessed wrong, and the Eridani were Americans? What if I’d guessed right, and the Doctor was working for the Russians? Or even just the British? Bob and Peri were just following the Doctor’s lead, but what was his angle?
Two
When we got. back to Bob’s house in the early evening, the first thing he did was go into the bedroom and emerge with a crowbar and a hex socket. ‘Gotta check for wiretaps,’ he muttered, giving me a look.
Peri picked up a phone and listened to the dial tone. ‘It sounds normal to me,’ she said.
‘No clicks?’ said Bob? ‘No funny sounds at all?’
She listened for a few moments. ‘No. Maybe I wouldn’t know what to look for’
‘Well, I do,’ said Bob.
The Doctor showed no interest at all in this. He knelt next to the coffee table, peering at the Eridani’s plastic toy. He turned it over in his hands, examining the configuration of the coloured rings. He tried moving them; they slid over each other, forming new patterns. He took odd-looking tools from the pockets of his suit and poked and prodded the device.
None of us had the slightest idea of what he was doing.
I followed Bob outside to the bridging box – the grey-green box squatting on the corner of the street. ‘I’m kind of hoping we find something in here,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna have to climb the pole.’ I hoped so too. I could already see a couple of Bob’s neighbours peering out of their windows at us.
The box turned out to be unlocked. Bob put down his crowbar and used his socket wrench to persuade the door to open for him. A moment later