Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [101]
‘Robots aren’t afraid,’ Poul said. ‘Does that mean they understand?’
Uvanov shrugged and shook his head. ‘It means they’re not as subtle as us and they’re never going to replace us. You’re always going to need humans for the clever work. In fact, apart from heavy lifting, there isn’t a job a robot can do that a human can’t do better.’
Tani scowled. ‘Why waste people in the ’pits then? Why make working a privilege? Why is everyone kept insecure?’
‘I don’t know,’ Uvanov said. ‘But I do know it wasn’t robots that organised it that way. And it wasn’t robots that were plotting to keep it from changing. That was the twenty families.’
‘So,’ Poul said, ‘are the three of us enough witnesses?’
Uvanov smiled. ‘I want his disgrace to be public,’ he said.
‘But not too public. I want a victory, I don’t want a war.’
‘Are you sure he’ll come?’ Tani asked.
‘He’ll come,’ Uvanov said. ‘Carnell made sure of that. My man Rull confirmed she went directly to him.’
‘Is Fatso another witness?’ Poul asked.
‘He’s going to have power and influence. Just like the rest of you.’
It had taken Leela some time to locate the security operative who had taken her knife and rather less time to persuade him to return it to her. When Padil found her she had gone back to where the Doctor had been taken and was trying to identify the tracks of the robot which had taken him.
‘I cannot work out where it went,’ Leela said, ‘because I cannot understand its reasons. And it has left no tracks.’
‘He will triumph,’ Padil said. ‘You must know that in your heart.’
‘You really think he is your tribal shaman,’ Leela said. ‘Even a shaman is not indestructible.’
‘He will never die.’ Padil said solemnly.
Above them a flier banked and turned before putting down on an open area in front of the administration block. As they watched two figures alighted and headed for the entrance. Leela noticed Padil’s sudden tension. ‘You know those people?’ she suggested.
‘I used to know one of them once,’ Padil agreed.
Debriefing
The Doctor listened to the slight man with the piercing blue eyes, who said his name was Carnell, with amusement at first but before long he found he had stopped being funny.
‘So you eliminate the witnesses to the original robot killings,’
Carnel said, ‘and in the process you set up the situation which allows you to introduce the new generation of robots and re-establish the rule of the families.’
‘A full-blown conspiracy,’ the Doctor said. ‘How familiar.’
‘They’re strategies rather than conspiracies,’ Carnell said. ‘It’s a frequent misapprehension.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘I’ve never thought of strategic conspiracies as reliable.’
Camel shrugged ruefully. ‘In an android-based society like this it appears they’re not.’
The Doctor noted the man’s use of a term he hadn’t heard on Kaldor before. ‘You set out to drive poor Poul out of his mind and make it look as though he killed Toos and then Uvanov.’
Carnell said matter-of-factly, ‘Followed by a high-profile investigation. The revelation of a Company cover-up of the Storm Mine Four incident. Undermine the old robots, introduce the new. Undermine the new Company administration, re-establish the old.’
‘Why use robots to do the killing?’ the Doctor asked.
‘They’re more reliable,’ Carnell said wryly. ‘And it was what my client wanted. The client is always right. He wanted to prove them. And for his own peculiar reasons he wanted robot assassins available only to him. In psycho-strategist’s terms it’s a sub-plot, a closed variable. You see, you have to define the strategy and then make sure that there are enough motivating conspiracies within it, plots within plots, to drive it through to a conclusion. You also have to make sure there are no plots which will divert it. No undefined variables.’
‘The Tarenists?’ the Doctor prompted.
‘A generalised threat. I was rather pleased with the idea of Taren Capel as an anti-robot figure.’
‘You