Doctor Who_ Christmas on a Rational Planet - Lawrence Miles [74]
‘Of course,’ Roz explained, hurriedly. ‘But I had to ask. It’s all part of the test.’
‘Test?’ TEST? DID WE SET A TEST?
‘A loyalty test. To see if you could stay... rational... in the face of Cacophony.’
‘Test? I am devoted to the cause of Reason.’ IS DEVOTED
A RATIONAL WORD? ‘The Watchmakers have known me since I was... since I was a child.’ SOUNDS A BIT
RELIGIOUS TO ME.
‘Well, yeah. Which is probably why you’ve passed the test.
With flying colours.’ She started backing towards the doorway, noticing Daniel out of the corner of one eye. He was right behind her, moving in the same direction, trying to stay quiet. ‘You can give the gun back to the Watchmakers now, Mr Catcher.’
Catcher paused. Roz felt the breeze from the doorway against her back. GIVE THE GUN BACK. DO YOU WANT
TO USE THE GUN? REMOVE. DON’T REMOVE.
DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.
The snout of the gun was lowered.
‘Give back the gun,’ Catcher repeated.
His eyes dropped to the ground. Roz edged towards the hole-cum-doorway. Daniel was right beside her. She turned –
and suddenly, she was face-to-face with somebody she half-recognized. Two blue eyes set into a fat face, looking up at her. Startled. Startled and short. Standing in the doorway.
She jumped back. Daniel froze. The man made a shocked gargling sound.
‘ Witch! ’ he shrieked.
Roz became aware of two things at once. Firstly, she’d seen the man before; he’d visited her tent less than six hours ago, asking about the future and whether it had anything to do with cannibalism in Africa. His name was Isaac. Isaac something.
Secondly, there was a gun being pointed at her back. She didn’t have to look over her shoulder. A half-decent Adjudicator knows that kind of thing instinctively.
WITCH WITCH WITCH WITCH WITCH WITCH
WITCH WITCH
She saw Daniel turn, and saw him throw himself to the floor. She heard Catcher’s voices panicking, and heard the insanely quiet sound of a sweating finger closing on a plastic trigger. She felt her legs give way underneath her.
She was only halfway to the floor when the air cracked open over her head and a tongue of lightning leapt across the pub, igniting the space where her back had just been. The tongue swept across the wall of the building, the scientifically dubious electro-static galvanistic beam skipping from the snout of the gun and scorching the timbers by the doorway.
There was a sound like the screech of fast-flowing water. A smell of burning.
The next thing Roz saw was the man called Isaac Penley –
yeah, that was the name – as a silhouette in the doorway, surrounded by light and fire. His shape was only there for a split second, and his scream was the shortest the planet Earth had ever heard.
Then he burst open.
8
Various Gods Out of Assorted Machines
Ten minutes to twelve on the last night of the world, and there was a carnival on Burr Street. The idea was ludicrous, of course.
It had begun among the Negroes who’d been driven out of the ‘African quarter’ by the fires and the lynch-mobs. The black folk had rites and customs nobody else could understand, the people said, and Burr Street was the most powerful proof that anyone could have imagined. One of the men – the bastard offspring of a slave and a farmer’s wife, according to rumour (but then, according to rumour, everybody was the bastard offspring of a slave and a farmer’s wife) – had fled the riots and taken shelter in the quiet streets near the docks, where he’d begun some damned peculiar ceremony of mourning. He’d spoken words in an alien tongue, sung songs that made no musical sense, drummed out a queer rhythm on an improvised instrument. As far as the residents of Burr Street knew, it had started as a dirge.
But others had gathered around the man. At first they’d just been other Africans, engaging themselves in ‘uncivilized’
dances as the locals watched, nervously, from the shadows.
Then, unexpectedly, some of the white folk had joined in; the ones who