Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [51]
For the first time in hours the killer robot waiting in the darkness stirred. From across the street it acquired its target and it moved towards Toos with a calm and unhurried purpose. Its instructions and limitations were simple, its intelligence and its capacity for initiative were at least as complex as a human being’s, it was physically strong and unafraid and it had no empathy with the victim. In practical terms it was a superhuman sociopath whose obsession was murder. If Toos remained alone for a minimum of two minutes and thirty seconds from target acquisition it would kill her unobserved and disappear back into the blackness as silently as it had come. Ninety seconds into its run at her Toos had still not noticed it coming.
‘At your disposal, Captain Toos.’ The man between the shafts was tall and muscular and young. He trotted the buggy to a stop in front of her and smiled. ‘Your wish is my command,’
he said.
The killer robot paused in the shadows at the corner of the building. It had a decision to make.
‘My wish is to be taken back to my apartment.’ Toos said. ‘I think he knows that part,’ the manager said, coming out of the entrance to say goodbye.
‘That part is the only part,’ Toos said, allowing the young man to guide her up into the buggy.
‘I don’t please you?’ he murmured.
‘Robots don’t please me,’ she said. ‘You’re a replacement for a machine I’m uncomfortable with, nothing more.’
The killer robot was computing options. Underlying all of them was the one immutable instruction: no one but Captain Lish Toos herself must be allowed to know that her assassin was not human. The reason for that was that death made the knowledge irrelevant. The killer robot re-factored its options.
Toos smiled down at the manager. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘All things considered it was very enjoyable. I shall recommend the Robot Lounge to all my friends.’ Then seeing her expression she added, ‘My rich friends, that is.’
The manager gave a small ironic bow of acknowledgement.
‘What is it that separates the rich from the poor by the way? You didn’t say.’
‘Experience,’ Toos said. ‘But that’s what separates us all, isn’t it?’ That was when she saw it step out from the corner of the building and hurry towards them. It was about average height with brown hair and the plain smock and leggings of a man of taste and moderate wealth. It was almost indistinguishable from a human being but Toos knew at once that it was not human.
She knew it was a robot and she knew it was a killer and she knew it had come for her. In that moment she realised it was what she had been expecting all along. It was what she had been expecting for all the years since the Four. It was all she had ever been expecting. She had time only to say, ‘It’s there, look out it’s there,’ before the killer robot grabbed the manager and broke her back and snapped her neck and dropped her body on the ground. Next it reached out and pulled the young man into a chest-crushing embrace. The killer robot had re-factored for death and the irrelevance of knowledge. It was killing the witnesses.
The buggy-puller fought. He braced against the powerful arms of his attacker and tried to break his hold. He head-butted the strangely expressionless face. He kicked and struggled but nothing made any difference. As she heard his bones cracking Toos jumped out of the other side of the buggy. She ripped open the silk tube dress she was wearing and ran for her life.
‘I think hitting him was probably a mistake, don’t you?’ the Doctor remarked as he examined the lower lock of the cage they were sitting in. ‘It’s my experience that it doesn’t bring out the best in people.’ It was a crude lock. As he suspected, the cage was not designed for prisoners. It was a security cage obviously intended to hold relatively low value but easily pilfered stores. It seemed that the docking bays did not have the sort of crime rate that required on-site cells. It looked as though they were in an empty warehouse so, providing he could get them out of the cage, there should be no further problem.
‘He was