Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [100]
‘Sheol,’ said Forrester. ‘The Civil War.’
‘What war?’
‘The Civil War. I know this from the simcords. Halfway through the next century. The nineteenth century.’ The horses’
hoofs threw up dust-clouds that smelt of gunpowder. If the soldiers had possessed eyes, Roz would have been able to see the whites of them by now.
‘Is this the place where we die?’ asked Daniel. He sounded quite calm, not at all like the whining brat Roz had met earlier in the evening.
‘Pass,’ she said.
Just a few yards away across the battlefield, the first of the mounted soldiers collided. Roz saw a great black charger bearing down on her, and she was sure the blob on its back looked like Abraham Lincoln. The armies met. Roz Forrester and Daniel Tremayne were caught between the philosophers and the barbarians.
The Carnival Queen looked like she was meditating. She sat on one of the taller dunes, her legs folded under her body at unlikely angles, her eyes closed. Every few minutes, a new kind of smile would appear on her lips, then the sands would split open and a new gynoid would be born into the world.
Each of the creatures looked completely different to the last, different in ways that Chris couldn’t quite get his head around.
He’d once been told that the people of the New Eskimo Alliance had three hundred and eight words for snow. If he’d come from a culture that had three hundred and eight words for darkness, he’d probably have found it much easier to get to grips with the gynoids.
Abruptly, the Carnival Queen opened her eyes. She looked almost thoughtful.
– The Doctor, she said. – He’s coming. He doesn’t want to come, but he’s coming.
Chris felt suddenly uneasy. She’d been in contact with the Doctor? How? Telepathy or something? Was she omniscient?
– No and no.
Chris tried to ignore that. ‘The Doctor knows you?’
– Not personally. To him, I’m just a random piece of symbolism. She sighed. Chris was still having trouble deciding where the Carnival Queen ended and her words began. – Ahh, it could break a girl’s heart. But he knows there are some things in this universe – or outside it – that just aren’t scientific, and that upsets him, even now. He’s a true Watchmaker at heart.
The Doctor a Watchmaker? Did that mean what Chris thought it meant?
– Of course, he was bound to find me eventually. As soon as he started taking psychic skills seriously, I knew it wouldn’t be long. You can’t chart a river without visiting its source...
thank you, Marielle, a very nice metaphor. I was hoping that the Doctor would lose his place and forget to tie up the loose ends after Yemaya ...
Back in his own time, Chris had flown what they called
‘shrouded’ craft, ships that bent light around their hulls so that they became invisible to the naked eye. That was how the Carnival Queen talked, he thought; the laws of language just seemed to warp around her.
‘Hold on. You’re claiming to be responsible for what happened on Yemaya 4? You’re saying you made SLEEPY
and GRUMPY and... er... everything?’ Chris suddenly felt he should be taking notes.
– Don’t be silly, Christopher. Can you imagine me building a computer? Terrible Watchmaker machines. But what happened on Yemaya was a... a legacy of mine. A side-effect of the talents I’ve been trying to nurture. Still, none of that will ever happen, once history’s been taken apart. But that’s beside the point. One way or another, the Doctor became involved, as some agent of the Watchmakers always does. Which is probably a good thing in this case, non?
‘Why?’ Chris felt like he was back in the interview room on Ponten IV, where the young Adjudicators-to-be were shut in with a training robot and told to get a confession out of it.
He remembered the sign on the wall: DO NOT BEAT THE
ROBO-SUSPECT UNLESS IT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY
NECESSARY.
– Why? Oh, why anything? There were so many possibilities. Catcher might have punched enough holes in the world to set me free all by