Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [5]
That got his attention. He looked at her over the top of his shades for a moment, and for a second, she could have sworn that his irises sparkled like red glitter.
‘I can’t help you, Ma’am,’ he murmured. ‘Ma’am, I think it’s up your friend whether he talks to you. Ma’am, I think you should wait for him to talk to you. Yes? No?’
She couldn’t pick out his accent. It was more like he didn’t have one. He spoke in a monotone, like the robots from the Berserk game. She tried to interpret the sudden tumble of words. ‘I should wait?’ she repeated.
‘Ma’am, I think you should wait. I can’t help you, Ma’am.’
Peri stared at the guy. Was it some kind of message from the Doctor? Or was he just telling her to take off? ‘Please, can’t you tell me anything else? I’m really worried about him.’
But the guy just looked at her blankly. She got out of his way. He slouched into the kitchen, looking relieved.
Peri ate a couple of slices of pizza and went back to the hotel.
The phone call came at 6 a. m. on Christmas Eve, jolting her out of bed. ‘Doctor!’ she almost screamed. ‘What the hell is going on?!’
‘Calm down,’ he told her, ‘and listen. There’s a young man I want you to track down for me. His name is Robert Salmon.’ Peri scribbled it down on the hotel stationery. ‘He’s about fifteen years old, and lives in McLean, Virginia. He’s a computer expert.’
‘A computer expert? Doctor, where are you? What’s this all about?’
‘Later, Peri,’ he said. ‘For now, just find him. Get him to this phone. This planet may be in considerable peril. And I need you to steal something for me. I’ll call again.’ And he hung up.
Peri put the phone down. She was still shaking a little from the rude awakening. It wasn’t unusual for the Doctor to talk about the end of the world. In fact, given some of what she had been through at his side, there was a chance the fate of the human race might realty depend on her finding Robert Salmon.
Peri let out a sigh. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew there was terrible danger. In other words, things were back to normal.
Three
Peri stood outside the door of the university’s systems administrator, reading the Garfield cartoons. She knocked a second time. No answer.
‘He’s in there,’ said a passing student. ‘Just kick the door down.’
Peri pushed open the door to discover Bob Salmon stuffed into a sleeping bag underneath his desk, his snores mightily magnified by the cramped confines of the office. The walls were hidden behind shelves of composer manuals, boxes of components and floppy disks, old issues of Scientific American, dog-eared printouts, and several partly dismantled Rubik’s Cubes. It looked like it was all about to crash down onto the floor at any moment.
Bob woke up when the light from the hallway outside hit his face. He blinked up at her for a moment, then scooted out from under his desk. ‘Can I help you?’ He wriggled like a caterpillar, trying to get loose from the sleeping bag.
‘The Doctor asked me to come see you,’ said Peri, watching with dismay as Bob fished his sneakers out of the trash can. The Doctor had told her to look for a teenage kid, but Bob looked like he was maybe twenty. His fine, pale hair stuck out around his face like a halo. He wore a T-shirt printed with the black and white image of a tuxedo, complete with bow tie.
Bob had one foot halfway into a sneaker. ‘The Doctor?’ he said. ‘Are you talking about the tall blond British guy?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Peri, relieved she had got the right man.
They got coffee in plastic cups from a machine in the staff room. Peri sat down on a bright orange sofa in front of a long white coffee table. Bob sat cross-legged on top of the table.
‘I haven’t seen the Doctor for five years,’ he said. ‘Did he tell you the story?’ Peri shook her head. ‘There was a programmer working for the navy who put a trapdoor in his own program, so that he could log on to their computers any time he wanted to. If they had ended up using Professor Xerxes’ software, he could have completely taken over their network, or