Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [17]
* * *
‘Stupid cow,’ said Mulwray in the elevator going back down. He jerked his camelhair off his shoulders and twisted the coat into a shapeless bundle. Stuffed it tight under one arm.
‘Careful you don’t get creases in that.’
Mulwray let the coat flop loose. His hands were shaking a little. He smoothed out the camelhair and folded it up again, more carefully. There was a smell of sweat and aftershave in the elevator. Mulwray wasn’t looking at him. Didn’t want to look uncool.
Christian knew the feeling. Coming down from combat readiness without having anywhere to put all that energy. You needed an outlet. Then Christian remembered. They did have an outlet. Waiting for them down on 51. Christian was smiling as he remembered.
* * *
The man was standing at one of the floor‐length windows, watching the snow. The cat was curled in his arms, like a baby. Its head was turned so it could stare out the window, too. Maria wondered if it was looking for birds. It wouldn’t see any. Not in this city. ‘What do I call you?’ The man turned at the sound of Maria’s voice. ‘It doesn’t have to be your real name.’ she said. ‘It can be like your user name on your computer.’
‘The Doctor,’ said the little man. He set the cat down. ‘You can call me the Doctor.’
‘I knew someone used to call himself the Head Doctor,’ said Maria. ‘That was a log‐in name, too.’ She thought of others, coming back to her vividly now from the years and distance. Names they used on the public access computer network back home. The libraries had installed shatterproof screens in concrete booths and anyone could just go in and use them, provided you didn’t mind the urine stink. Maria burned joss sticks. When the lights were smashed she brought her own, fixing big flashlights to the ceiling with gaffer tape. She taught herself to touch type and then she didn’t need the flashlights any more. Working at the keyboard in the dark, eyes on the screen.
‘Secretarial skills,’ said Maria. She said it so quietly the man, the Doctor, could hardly have heard it. But he nodded. Sitting beside her now, watching the screen images change as she typed. Maria not looking at the keyboards, her fingers knowing where the symbols were. The big open‐plan office seemed to have closed in around her. It was like sitting in a small concrete cubicle. Instead of toner and corporate carpeting she could smell piss and incense.
The public access keyboards were always being ripped off, so eventually they’d been replaced with integrated units, stainless steel set in concrete. A bit noisy, but okay to use. They even found a way of making the mice theftproof. Maria remembered afternoons spent waiting for a free terminal, sitting on a bolted‐down chair reading and rereading the spray‐painted graffiti on the walls, boring equivalents of the user names on the system. On the public network you got to know the regulars. Cracker Cracker, Boner, Are you Glad To Be In America and You Can’t Eat A Snake (what kind of idiots had the patience to type those every time they logged on?), Eidolon, Liberty and Kool Aid. Kool Aid had been her. Named in the memory of the one time she had been busted. Jerome’s idea. Putting an LSD variant into the refreshments at a police picnic. Shame it had never come off. She remembered when Jerome had outlined the plan, telling her about it in their small kitchenette, cans of beer and a pipe on the table. She felt a ticklish sensation, excitement deep in her stomach.
The same feeling she had now.
‘Okay, we’re there,’ said Maria.
The Doctor studied the screen. Except for the small image in the centre it was blank, pale and clean. The image was a simplified diagram of the King Building. When Maria clicked on it the tiny building opened in a burst of colours. A chaotic scatter of icons appeared, all different shapes. Maria pulled down a menu, clicked on it and the jumbled screen vanished, replaced by neat rows of type. ‘Have to do that or I could never find anything around here.’ Maria selected and clicked, moving further