Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [18]
I must stop wasting time in idle speculation, the Doctor thought. I haven’t established for certain that they do communicate mysteriously and I’m already considering the telepathy of clones or possibly the cloning of telepaths.
Actually process cloning was not particularly unusual though the Doctor had seldom come across it in his travels. He had more often heard rumours of the practice and the bizarre side-effects it supposedly sometimes threw up. He never paid much attention to rumours of any kind, however, treating them with the same fine contempt that he reserved for anything which began with the words: It’s a wel -known fact that... or It is against the word of god to...
‘People! People?’ he called again. ‘Hullo? Do any of you know how to get out of here? Is there the remotest possibility that any of you know where you are supposed to go?’
There was no pointing this time. In fact most of them stopped what they were doing and turned to him and stood waiting patiently and respectfully.
‘I see,’ he said and smiled cheerfully around at them. ‘You expect me to tell you where you’re supposed to go. There is a tiny problem with that. I have no more idea than you seem to have. I have no idea where you’ve come from, or where you’re going, or why.’ He shrugged and groped about in the pocket of his long coat. ‘The basic questions are: what, where, when, how, why?’ he said. ‘And we don’t have the glimmer of an inkling about any of them, do we?’ He pulled a battered paper bag from his pocket. ‘Anyone for a jelly baby?’ he asked, taking one himself and offering the bag. No one moved to take one. He put the bag away. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ he said.
‘They’re extremely good. In my view the availability of jelly babies is one of the indicators of a mature civilisation.’ He chewed thoughtfully ‘To get out of this, he said, ‘we need a leap of imagination and originality. I know.’ He snapped his fingers and beamed. ‘We’ll try the doors.’
As the Doctor strode towards the doors the groups of people followed after him. They were smiling and if he had been paying closer attention the Doctor would have seen that all of them were making small chewing motions with their jaws.
A Company flier would have got him there quicker - which was one of the reasons why Uvanov chose to travel by tracked ground-runner instead. He couldn’t do a blind thing to stop the disaster that was happening at the central service facility but if he arrived too soon he could be available to take the blame for it.
No sane person wanted to be senior man on the ground when the ground was burning. If you were astute and ambitious like he was you got to such foul-ups when the smoke was beginning to clear. By then it was obvious what needed to be done and who was responsible for not doing it. If you got the timing right you could claim the credit for clearing up the mess without any serious risk of soiling your hands or your precious reputation.
You could be the expert of the moment: everybody’s favourite fire-fighter. Timing was everything, and the instinct for the rhythms of a desert storm that had made Uvanov a great mine captain seemed to serve him just as well in the windy wastelands of Company politics.
‘The flier would have been quicker,’ Cailio Techlan remarked, shuffling through from the driving cabin to the passenger pod. She handed him the printouts, sat down opposite him and twisted round to peer at one of the forward observation screens.
Uvanov ignored her implied criticism. ‘The production runs don’t seem to have been interfered with,’ he said, looking through the new data sheets. ‘Are the technicians responsible for Dome Six in the dome itself or at the monitoring centre?’
‘You’re asking me?’ she said, managing to put incredulity and boredom into the flat monotone she affected.
‘I’m telling you to call the service facility and check,’ Uvanov said. ‘What, now?’
‘Yes, now.’
‘Dome Six? Why do you want to know about Dome Six especially?’
Uvanov leaned forward so that his face was close to hers.
‘Because I’m