Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [5]
‘I’m a science writer,’ said Shreela. ‘The phenomena you’re describing falls into the category of what I’d describe as pseudo‐science. Superstition. Dross.’
‘Nonetheless,’ said the Doctor, ‘I’d like you to put your name on it and send it to your editor.’
‘Look at me,’ said Shreela. The Doctor was looking at her, his disturbing eyes watching her face. Waiting. ‘I’ve never lied in my writing and I’ve made damned few mistakes. I’ve certainly never delivered propaganda for anyone.’
‘I know,’ said the Doctor.
‘At this point in my life I don’t have a hell of a lot left.’
‘No.’
‘And now you want to take that away.’
‘It’s necessary.’
‘What will you use it for?’
‘Disinformation.’
‘To confuse the enemy, eh? Tell me, who is the enemy this time?’
The Doctor said nothing.
‘You know what I think, sometimes?’ said Shreela. ‘I think sometimes that perhaps you’re the enemy.’
The room was quiet. Shreela had learned to judge the time of night by the changing pattern of traffic noise in the West London streets outside. There weren’t many cars passing the hospital now. Perhaps ten a minute. That made it the middle of the night. Maybe two or three in the morning. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Shreela. ‘There’s something you can do for me. You see the window there?’
‘Do you want me to help you walk to it?’
‘No. Just tell me what I could see. If I could walk to it.’
‘It looks down on the wall of another building. There’s a concrete walkway in between.’
‘And if I could stand down there by the wall, what would it be like?’
‘There’d be walls all around you,’ said the Doctor. ‘You could feel air coming from the ventilators of the building opposite. Through a metal grille in the wall. The air’s warm. It smells like small animals. Hamsters, mice. Animals in the laboratory.’
‘I couldn’t see any green if I was standing down there? Any trees?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor.
‘What about the fields across from the hospital?’
‘The grass is all yellow on them. There were some trees there. They’re gone now. That field is called the Scrubs, where the prison used to be.’ The Doctor’s voice was gentle, low. Shreela could feel herself drifting off a little, carried by that voice. ‘Before they built the prison there it was a common. Once they held a fair on it every spring.’
‘When was that?’ Shreela heard her own voice at a distance. It was an effort to speak.
‘A long time ago. Before that it was marshland.’
‘Was it green then?’
‘Very green. There were birds wading in the water. You could see them bending down to catch fish.’
Shreela could see the birds, pale under a grey sky, dipping down to disturb their reflections in the calm fen water. ‘Could you see any people?’
‘No.’
‘It must have been nice then. Listen.’ She touched the plastic tube that ran into the vein on her arm. ‘They keep upping my medication. Every day now. That must mean something.’
‘Yes.’
‘If you’ve been in the hospital computer you’ll know what my status is.’ She swallowed. The only thing she didn’t like about the drugs was the way they made her mouth dry. ‘How long have I got?’
The Doctor was silent.
‘Weeks? Days?’
He sat there, saying nothing. Eyes lowered so she couldn’t read them.
‘Hours?’ she said.
He looked up at her.
The silence held for a full minute.
Finally Shreela cleared her throat. It was an unsettling sensation these days. She could feel the shifting of all sorts of unfamiliar, muscular structures. She looked down at the bedclothes. Her computer keyboard lying on the clean hospital covers, close to her pale hand.
‘Well, I’d better get started, then,’ she said.
* * *
2
The printer looked like a poised insect. It was finished in textured grey plastic with the bee‐and‐eye logo of the Butler Institute embossed on it. It stood on the table on slender legs, bent over its own shadow, its torso formed by the flat box shape of the paper cartridge. The cartridge was angled down so that each emerging sheet of paper slid gently out on to the surface of the table.
Mathew O’Hara picked up the first sheet as it hissed from the machine, waited for the second,