Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [81]
She ought to be on top of the world, and instead she was boxed in on every side.
Bob could be crushed simply by pressing charges. There must be more to my story than she had been able to find, something she could use to turn my editor’s stomach the way it had done in Los Angeles. And the Doctor; what could she find out about this Doctor, what was there about him that he would never want the authorities to know? She would dig and scrape and claw until she ruined us.
It didn’t take the Doctor long to find Luis Perez. He traced the MUD connection back to a forged university account, had a word with the sysadmin and got help tracing the connection back to a second forged account on another machine, and left a message in that account with a request for Luis to email him at Bob’s account.
Luis asked for a meeting in a cafeteria in one of the Smithsonian buildings. It had a sort of conveyor belt on which the food went round and round, and you snatched what you wanted. Kids stood next to it, watching all those desserts cruising past, just out of their reach.
The Doctor had insisted we all stay behind; he didn’t want to intimidate the man and he wasn’t sure if he was dangerous.
Bob and Peri protested a little, but it was obvious they were going to do as they were told. Not so me. I wasn’t going to miss a thing.
‘You got to remember,’ said Luis, raking at a bit of hair over his ear. ‘You got to remember what Swan has is a reputation. She’s supposed to be able to do anything. If word gets out that some other guy can beat her, that she can’t even do her thing without you peeking over her shoulder, then she’s got nothing.’
‘Good,’ said the Doctor. ‘Then she must realise that the only way to get rid of me is to hand over the Savant.’
‘She can’t do that, man.’ Luis’s fingers tightened around that lock of hair. ‘She can never let anybody beat her. If it happens once, it could happen again. If anybody even gets close to winning a bout with her, she crushes them down so hard they can’t get up again.’ He looked up at the Doctor.
‘That’s what she’s gonna do to you.’
The Doctor said dryly,’She is welcome to try.’
‘If she can’t hit you, she’ll hit the people around you. I’ve watched it happen. I’ve seen the lights go out.’
‘That’s not the only reason Swan can’t hand over the Savant,’ said the Doctor. ‘Is it?’
Luis shook his head. He went back to spooning his chocolate pudding around and around in its glass. I opened my mouth to ask a question, but the Doctor held up a hand to silence me. Luis muttered, ‘ What hatched out of that egg?
What did it do to me?’ He traced a circle in the air with his spoon, in front of his breastbone. ‘Is this feeling going to stop?’
‘Mr Perez,’ said the Doctor, ‘I promise you I’ll do everything I can to help you –’
‘That’s not enough, man!’ Luis slapped the spoon down on the table, knocking over the pudding. ‘I have to get that thing back from her.’
‘But that’s exactly what we want you to do,’ said the Doctor.
Luis stared at him. We both did.
‘Mr Perez, your contact with the Savant puts you in a unique position. You have already established a rapport with the creature. You should be able to approach and handle it safely. None of us could do that without risking a devastating psychological attack.’
‘You mean it can’t do anything worse to me,’ said Luis dryly.
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘What if I can’t let it go?’ mumbled Luis. ‘I feel like... if you tried to take it away from me again, I would kill you. I’d use it to kill you.’
‘I think he could do that,’ I muttered.
‘We’ll deal with that if and when the problem arises,’ said the Doctor.
‘You got to understand,’ said Luis. ‘I don’t want that thing. I mean, I want it more than anything else in the world. I am not eating and I’m not sleeping because I can’t